Bush's weakness at the UN
This morning the BBC analyses the confidential initial debate at the Security Council about the future regime in Iraq from June 30, as one in which Bush is so weak the US has had to signal it is sure there will be a resolution passed. In other words it will agree to any substantive text laid in front of it. That is a reflection of the extent to which unilateral imperialism has surrendered to multi-lateral imperialism. Look for the fine print about who controls Iraq's oil supplies. (At present vast numbers of Iraqi oil smugglers - which is probably as it should be) What a reversal of power compared to fifteen months ago. This is about the disempowerment of the most powerful armed forces in human history. Chris Burford London
Re: Newsday: Iran wanted US to invade?
No pejorative wording intended... capital vol 3 page 327: 'On the contrary wherever merchant's capital still predominates we find backward conditions.' that is the bazaar class. since the revolution there was no fundemental change in the forms and substance of social or economic relations that existed under the shah. the shah industrialisation project did undercut the interest of merchant capital. saddam was his own man and nobody's man...apart from conspiracy drivel, Islamic Iran kept intact the demeaning Algiers accord won by Iraqi Kurds for the shah. post hoc, is it not that the rise ofIslamic Iran put an end to the Kurdish, loori, and balush and other independence movements. do not the Farsis still represent the elite at present.. was it not the case that a pro soviet Iraq surrounded for a long time Iran Saudi Arabia and turkey from all sides.. what theory of history pins historical development on an individual like saddam, can there be no structure in place to explain things outside the single individual will and volition. I hope I did not abuse your national feelings I have no national feelings myself, I hate all nationalisms equally including my own.Mohammad Maljoo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: goes to show that the real reasons behind the rise of the mullahs and theiraqi iranian war was a resurrection of the farsi nationalism.A few meaningless words!Bazaar class? Farsi racism? resurrection of thefarsi nationalism? What are these at all? The mullahs in Iran are acontinuation of Arabian fundamentalism with other mask. The real reasonsbehind the iraqi iranian war can be found in Saddam phenomenon rather thanthe illusory resurrection of the farsi nationalism.MM_STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail Do you Yahoo!?Yahoo! Domains - Claim yours for only $14.70/year
Re: Newsday: Iran wanted US to invade?
What was forgotten in all this is that when saddam screamed mercy as he was losing the war in 1984, the Israelis moved in to support Iran (Iran-contra) and the Americans provided intelligence to Iraq. in one good analytical document that came out of Sweden the principal reason for turning against saddam later was the fact that he insisted on stopping the war.. the mullahs were so rigid that Khomeini replied stopping the war is similar to drinking poison. Iraq was never out of war since its inception as a weak and fabricated state in 1921... see M. Tarbush,ali alwardi etc... on the other hand, modern Iran is continuation ofa medieval state. Iraq was at war continuously with Iranduring theshah's regime. in both turkey and Iran a demonisation of the Semitic Arab was carried out as official propaganda at the state level. the Arabs turned out to be a people with many states and the Kurds a people without a state.. in both instances designed and implemented by the British with perfect foresight that instability will rein. and decisively so according to the international country risk guide the Arab near east is the region with the longest conflicts. "Devine, James" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: and didn't the US say to Saddam "let's you and him fight," encouraging Iran Iraq to have a war? Jim D.-Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sun 5/23/2004 11:47 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Newsday: Iran wanted US to invade?Why would Iran want more US bases next door?On Sun, May 23, 2004 at 04:22:19PM +, Mohammad Maljoo wrote: goes to show that the real reasons behind the rise of the mullahs and the iraqi iranian war was a resurrection of the farsi nationalism. A few meaningless words!“Bazaar class”? “Farsi racism”? “resurrection of the farsi nationalism”? What are these at all? The mullahs in Iran are a continuation of Arabian fundamentalism with other mask. “The real reasons behind…the iraqi iranian war” can be found in Saddam phenomenon rather than the illusory “resurrection of the farsi nationalism”. MM _ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail--Michael PerelmanEconomics DepartmentCalifornia State UniversityChico, CA 95929Tel. 530-898-5321E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Do you Yahoo!?Yahoo! Domains - Claim yours for only $14.70/year
Analysts - Putin to Launch Systematic Campaign Against Oligarchs
President Putin to Launch New Systematic Campaign Against Russian Oligarchs Say Analysts at London Think Tank Russian Axis Alfa Group's Mikhail Fridman Tops List of Vulnerable Businessmen LONDON, May 24 /PRNewswire/ -- In his state-of-the-nation address scheduled for Wednesday, recently re-inaugurated President Vladimir Putin will provide for the first time signals of a new campaign to methodically uproot Russia's system of oligarchic capitalism, according to analysts at Russian Axis, a think tank based here. Writing in a report released today, Russian Axis forecasts that Putin, sworn in for a second term just two weeks ago, is expected to offer a systemic solution to break the grip on the national economy that a small group of influential businessmen, often referred to as oligarchs, gained during the reign of his predecessor Boris Yeltsin. The address will be Putin's first major speech of his new term. It will be delivered before both chambers of Parliament -- the State Duma and the Federation Council. The analysts predict that Putin will reveal the contours of a de-oligarchisation campaign, while stopping short of making an explicit policy statement at this stage due to the issue's continuing political complexity. Important political messages articulated in Putin's address should gain force following the submission in mid-June of a special report from the government Audit Chamber, the supreme body of state financial control in Russia. The report is to comprehensively analyse the economic impact and legal aspects of the 1990s industrial privatisations. Those often-rigged auctions put a big fraction of Russian GDP in the hands of a small group of well-connected businessmen. Putin's address comes against the background of heightened media speculation in Moscow that magnate Mikhail Fridman of Alfa Group, as well as Vladimir Potanin of Interros, has now appeared in the cross hairs of the Kremlin's effort to undo one of the key negative economic legacies of the Yeltsin years. According to a calendar of likely events included in the report by Russian Axis, a spike in the campaign is probable in mid-summer - a time the Kremlin favours for controversial activities to exploit the light information flow of the vacation season. The arrest last year of oligarch Platon Lebedev, a principal shareholder in the oil company YUKOS, under investigation for massive tax evasion, took place in early July. The think tank report is titled The Second Presidential Term of Vladimir Putin and the Coming Campaign of De-Oligarchisation - Possible Scenarios. It says that the Russian President will move qualitatively beyond the seemingly ad hoc and selective assaults on big businesses seen during his first term. (Those actions included the exiling of Boris Berezovsky of Logovaz and Vladimir Gusinsky of MOST Group, and involve the continuing investigation of YUKOS and incarceration of former chairman Mikhail Khodorkovsky.) The report says that a renewed, more systemic solution for de-oligarchisation will be based on new tax legislation and anti-monopoly regulation and on winning the support of domestic and international public opinion. The report details ten big private business groups vulnerable to becoming targets of the de-oligarchisation campaign. Each is given a rating according to a set of susceptibility criteria derived from Russian Axis' exclusive methodology. The criteria range from volume of capital concentration in relation to the federal budget, to accumulated resources for lobbying Russian and particularly foreign governmental entities. Topping the list of vulnerable companies in the report is Alfa Group, a sprawling financial and industrial empire founded and lead by 40-year-old oligarch Mikhail Fridman. Alfa received a susceptibility rating of 7.64, compared with second-highest Interros at 5.01. The principal reasons for Alfa's top rating include a unique confluence of economic concentration in natural-resource industries, the Kremlin's perception of monopolistic tendencies, and disproportionately high levels of political influence within Moscow and the West in both the private and public sectors. Third in the ranking was the RUSAL-Base Element conglomerate of 36-year- old Oleg Deripaska; it had a vulnerability of rating 4.01. Fifty-one-year-old Vladimir Bogdanov's Surgutneftegaz oil company received the lowest rating of the ten business groups at 1.01. Our goal in this report was to go beyond reading tea leaves and merely making predictions to providing a thorough analytical framework for understanding possible future scenarios of Kremlin de-oligarchisation policy based on actual trends and conditions, said Dr Vadim Malkin, head of Russian Axis and editor of the report. Having done that, we do have a high level of confidence that this policy of the Putin Administration will unfold consistent with our evaluation of the situation. Drawing a distinction between Putin's first-term anti-oligarch
Nuclear marketplace
The case of an Israeli orthodox Jew selling nuclear weapons parts to a Pakistani Islamic fundamentalist illustrates the extensive underground trade in the components, todays Los Angeles Times reports. Asher Karni, an Israeli citizen now resident in South Africa, was arrested on a recent visit to the US and charged with violating federal laws against nuclear proliferation. The Karni case offers a rare glimpse into what authorities say is an international bazaar teeming with entrepreneurs, transporters, scientists, manufacturers, government agents, organized-crime syndicates and, perhaps, terrorists, writes reporter Josh Meyer. The trade is flourishing despite decades-long efforts by the US and its allies and the UNs International Agency for Arms Control to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The parts shipped by Karni to his Pakistani collaborator, who is allegedly linked to an Islamic militant group, were believed intended for use in Pakistans nuclear weapons program. Another report in todays Washington Post corroborates the ease with which nuclear weapons can be assembled from materials available on the open market for potential use against civilian populations. Both articles available on: http://www.supportingfacts.com or URLs: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-nukes24may24,1,7259909.s tory?coll=la-headlines-world http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50362-2004May23.html?referrer =email Sorry for any cross posting.
Fwd: Who is Ahmed Chalabi
www.globalresearch.ca Centre for Research on Globalisation Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation Global Research (Canada) Feature Article WHO IS AHMED CHALABI? by Michel Chossudovsky www.globalresearch.ca 21 May 2004 The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO405D.html On the 19th of May, US forces raided the Baghdad home of the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) Ahmed Chalabi. The media in chorus, without further investigation, described the raid as an effort to silence Chalabi's condemnation of the US-led occupation: My house was attacked... We avoided by a hair's breadth a clash with my guards. I am America's best friend in Iraq. If the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people. ( Press Conference in Baghdad quoted in the Independent, 20 May 2004) The reports pointed to a changed relationship between Chalabi and the Coalition. It's a stunning reversal!. Washington has decided to drop its backing for Mr Chalabi and to distance itself from him. Chalabi is said to have been plotting against the US by putting together a sectarian Shiite faction to apparently destabilize to the UN sponsored transitional government which is slated to take office on July 1st. According to press reports, Chalabi was the target of a US government investigation into whether he betrayed American intelligence secrets to foreign governments, including Iran. He is also accused of hiding the records of the oil for food program and for having exaggerated the threat of weapons of mass destruction, in intelligence transmitted to the Coalition in the months leading up to the war. In other words, he is said to have tricked US intelligence into believing there were WMDs. Where he got this intelligence is not mentioned. Chalabi returned to Kurdish held Northern Iraq in February 2003 after 45 years in exile and the INC did not have an active network inside Iraq, which would have enabled it to gather intelligence on WMDs PUPPET WITHOUT STRINGS From one day to the next, the puppet is presented as pulling the strings and maneuvering behind the scenes against the US led coalition. The official explanation, as conveyed by the press reports, simply does not make sense. Up until the 18th of May, Chalabi was still on the Pentagon's payroll receiving a modest monthly allowance of $355,000 (more than 4 million dollars a year). His job was described as intelligence gathering. Two days later his house is raided. According to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, cutting his pocket money was part of the natural evolution towards democracy in Iraq: That was a decision that was made in light of the process of transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi people... There has been some very valuable intelligence that's been gathered through that process that's been very important for our forces, but we will seek to obtain that in the future through normal intelligence channels. (quoted in the Financial Times, 21 May 2004) On the 18th of May, they cut his money and the following day they raid his office? A puppet does not turn against his master, particularly when key members of his staff, including his main advisers and spokesmen, are US appointees who report directly back to the Pentagon. WHO IS AHMED CHALABI? Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Council are a creation of the CIA. Chalabi is an Iraqi emigré, handpicked by US intelligence. He left Iraq and moved to the US with his family at age 13. He holds a US passport. Chalabi returned to Iraq barely one month before the war. He had not set foot in Iraq since his childhood. On April 6 2003, US troops escorted him to Nasiriya, where he established, with the support of the US military, the so-called Free Iraqi Forces, a paramilitary army of some 600 fighters. Since his return to Iraq, he has been a leading figure of the US sponsored Iraqi Governing Council. Chalabi may have some degree of controlled independence, but he remains a US sponsored intelligence asset. Key members of his staff, report to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. The press reports seem to suggest a blowback. Our trusted ally has gone against us.: Washington's longtime ally who was once favored by the Pentagon brass to be Iraq's post-war leader. The Iraqi National Police and American military police hauled away computers, documents, and a valuable Koran from his office, according to Chalabi, a senior member of Iraq's Governing Council and head of the Iraqi National Congress. In an angry letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director George Tenet, the Boston law firm that represents Chalabi, Markham Read, said a large contingent of police and armed plainclothes Americans ransacked the INC's offices and Chalabi's nearby home, ripping computers from their sockets and smashing doors. They marauded his office and disrespected his
Wal-Mart
May 24, 2004/New York TIMES Wal-Mart's Expansion Aided by Many Taxpayer Subsidies By BARNABY J. FEDER Wal-Mart Stores collected well over $1 billion in state and local government subsidies during its decades-long expansion from a regional discount chain to the world's largest retailer, according to a report scheduled to be released today by a group that monitors job-subsidy programs. We're not accusing them of doing anything illegal or unusual in the corporate world, said Philip Mattera, research director of Good Jobs First, a group based in Washington that compiled the report with financing from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. But, Mr. Mattera said, the report argues that the low wages paid by Wal-Mart and the downward effect that has on wages at other retail operations, its negative effect on small businesses in the communities where it locates and its contribution to urban sprawl and traffic raise serious questions about the value of giving it sizable financial incentives to expand. Similar complaints have been leveled against other big box retailers like Target and Kmart. But Wal-Mart's size, profitability and capacity to force other retailers to react to its practices make subsidizing its growth especially questionable, Mr. Mattera said. Greg LeRoy, founder of Good Jobs, said the report bolstered the group's argument that taxpayer-financed subsidies to giant retailers should be restricted to those expanding into poor neighborhoods where shoppers are underserved. Good Jobs also lobbies states and communities to require companies to pay what it calls a living wage to all workers as a condition for getting subsidies and urges that subsidy agreements include strong clawback provisions. Such restrictions require companies to repay subsidies if they fail to deliver on jobs or other benefits they project in their applications. A Wal-Mart spokeswoman, Mona Williams, said the retailer, which was not provided with a copy of the report, did not know the correct subsidy total. But, she said, if $1 billion is correct, Wal-Mart could make good use of the figure in its advertising. In the last 10 years, she said, Wal-Mart has collected more than $52 billion in sales taxes, paid $4 billion in local property taxes, and paid $192 million in income and unemployment taxes to local governments. It looks like offering tax incentives to Wal-Mart is a jackpot investment for local governments, she said. Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., has more than 2,900 Wal-Mart stores and 91 distribution centers in the United States. It also has more than 530 Sam's Club stores and nearly 70 Neighborhood Markets, which were not covered in the report issued today. The company had net income of nearly $9.1 billion on revenues of $256.3 billion last year. Good Jobs said it found published reports of 91 Wal-Mart stores having received tax refunds or credits, job training funds, community investment in roads and other subsidies ranging from $1 million to $12 million. The total was $245 million. In interviews with Good Jobs, local officials provided data indicating that 84 of Wal-Mart's distribution centers received subsidies averaging $7.4 million, for a total of $624 million. And searches of databases for tax-exempt bonds issued by state and local authorities to provide low-interest financing found that such benefits to Wal-Mart cut $138 million off the cost of developing 69 stores. The actual total is certainly far higher but the records are scattered in thousands of places and many subsidies are undisclosed, the report said. The report focused strictly on development subsidies. Critics of Wal-Mart say that wages in its stores are so low that many employees are eligible for food stamps and that lack of medical benefits leaves them dependent on taxpayer-financed medical services, which amounts to a large hidden subsidy. In an e-mailed statement, Wal-Mart said its wages were usually greater than those paid to other nonunion retail workers and virtually identical to those of unionized grocery workers. It said it also offered a range of fringe benefits. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Kerry Could Appoint Anti-Abortion Judges
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 5/21/2004 3:16:52 PM The New York Times October 23, 2003 Thursday Bill Barring Abortion Procedure Drew on Backing From Many Friends of Roe v. Wade BYLINE: By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas, considers herself decidedly in favor of a woman's right to abortion. I'm about 99 percent pro-choice, she says. On Tuesday, she voted the other 1 percent. Ms. Lincoln was among 17 Democratic senators, many of them strong advocates of abortion rights, who voted to ban the procedure that critics call partial-birth abortion. Their votes were not a surprise: most had voted to forbid the procedure several times before, as had many abortion rights proponents in the House. Still, it was those lawmakers' willingness to defy abortion rights groups, a crucial Democratic constituency, that allowed Congress to pass a bill that will ban a specific abortion procedure for the first time. For many of those senators, the issue was sealed years ago when abortion opponents coined the term partial birth for a procedure that doctors call intact dilation and extraction. Critics of the procedure described it in terms so gruesome and detailed that many lawmakers who otherwise support abortion rights already felt compelled to vote against it when the issue repeatedly came before Congress during the Clinton administration. thanks - in large measure - to mouthpieces of so-called 'liberal' media such as nyt... when opposing sides disagree re. words, vocabulary chosen and legitimized by media likely to frame debates and, ultimately, to embody unchallenged assumptions facilitating one side's arguments and uncutting others... media's acceptance - and promotion in its coverage - of anti-abortionist phrase 'partial-birth abortion' is excellent example... phrase took procedure out of medical realm and into policy realm, out of impersonal technical and into emotionally evocative language... early on, press prefaced phrase with 'so-called', ultimately, descriptive power of phrase too hold, was used almost universally by reporters, became important linguistic victory for anti-abortionists (so-called 'pro-lifers'), result is above (in addition to numerous state laws)... michael hoover
Bush and the Carlyle Group revisited
When War is Swell Bush's Crusades and the Carlyle Group By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Across all fronts, Bush's war deteriorates with stunning rapidity. The death count of American soldiers killed in Iraq will soon top 800, with no end in sight. The members of the handpicked Iraqi Governor Council are being knocked off one after another. Once loyal Shia clerics, like Ayatollah Sistani, are now telling the administration to pull out or face a nationalist insurgency. The trail of culpability for the abuse, torture and murder of Iraqi detainees seems to lead inexorably into the office of Donald Rumsfeld. The war for Iraqi oil has ended up driving the price of crude oil through the roof. Even Kurdish leaders, brutalized by the Ba'athists for decades, are now saying Iraq was a safer place under their nemesis Saddam Hussein. Like Medea whacking her own kids, the US turned on its own creation, Ahmed Chalabi, raiding his Baghdad compound and fingering him as an agent of the ayatollahs of Iran. And on and on it goes. Still not all of the president's men are in a despairing mood. Amid the wreckage, there remain opportunities for profit and plunder. Halliburton and Bechtel's triumphs in Iraq have been chewed over for months. Less well chronicled is the profiteering of the Carlyle Group, a company with ties that extend directly into the Oval Office itself. Even Pappy Bush stands in line to profit handsomely from his son's war making. The former president is on retainer with the Carlyle Group, the largest privately held defense contractor in the nation. Carlyle is run by Frank Carlucci, who served as the National Security advisor and Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Carlucci has his own embeds in the current Bush administration. At Princeton, his college roommate was Donald Rumsfeld. They've remained close friends and business associates ever since. When you have friends like this, you don't need to hire lobbyists.. Bush Sr. serves as a kind of global emissary for Carlyle. The ex-president doesn't negotiate arms deals; he simply opens the door for them, a kind of high level meet-and-greet. His special area of influence is the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia, where the Bush family has extensive business and political ties. According to an account in the Washington Post, Bush Sr. earns around $500,000 for each speech he makes on Carlyle's behalf. One of the Saudi investors lured to Carlyle by Bush was the BinLaden Group, the construction conglomerate owned by the family of Osama bin Laden. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Bush convinced Shafiq Bin Laden, Osama's half brother, to sink $2 million of BinLaden Group money into Carlyle's accounts. In a pr move, the Carlyle group cut its ties to the BinLaden Group in October 2001. One of Bush Sr.'s top sidekicks, James Baker, is also a key player at Carlyle. Baker joined the weapons firm in 1993, fresh from his stint as Bush's secretary of state and chief of staff. Packing a briefcase of global contacts, Baker parlayed his connections with heads of state, generals and international tycoons into a bonanza for Carlyle. After Baker joined the company, Carlyle's revenues more than tripled. Like Bush Sr., Baker's main function was to manage Carlyle's lucrative relationship with Saudi potentates, who had invested tens of millions of dollars in the company. Baker helped secure one of Carlyle's most lucrative deals: the contract to run the Saudi offset program, a multi-billion dollar scheme wherein international companies winning Saudi contracts are required under terms of the contracts to invest a percentage of the profits in Saudi companies. Baker not only greases the way for investment deals and arms sales, but he also plays the role of seasoned troubleshooter, protecting the interests of key clients and regimes. A case in point: when the Justice Department launched an investigation into the financial dealings of Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi prince sought out Baker's help. Baker is currently defending the prince in a trillion dollar lawsuit brought by the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks. The suit alleges that the prince used Islamic charities as pass-throughs for shipping millions of dollars to groups linked to al-Qaeda. Baker and Carlyle enjoy another ace in the hole when it comes to looking out for their Saudi friends. Baker prevailed on Bush Jr. to appoint his former law partner, Bob Jordan, as the administration's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Carlyle and its network of investors are well positioned to cash in on Bush Jr.'s expansion of the defense and Homeland Security department budgets. Two Carlyle companies, Federal Data Systems and US Investigations Services, hold multi-billion dollar contracts to provide background checks for commercial airlines, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. USIS was once a federal agency called the Office Federal Investigations, but it was privatized in 1996 at
Re: Collective wisdom
I quoted: In his classical contribution Condorcet (1785) described a committee as a mechanism that effciently aggregates decentralized information. In his famous jury theorem he argues that (i) increasing the number of informed committee members raises the probability that an appropriate decision is made and (ii) the probability of making the appropriate decision will converge to one as the number of committee members goes to infnity. (from http://www.ecb.int/pub/wp/ecbwp256.pdf.) then I said: Despite this, my feeling is that the group is always right, except when it isn't. Just as the individual is always right, except when he or she isn't. But for any collective decision, only the democratic body of the collective has any legitimacy. (One problem with this theorem is that the larger the group, the harder it is to come to a decision.) Ted asks: Is Condorcet's theorem true of a group of believers in the certainty that they are soon to be carried off in Rapture? How about the group composed of believers in neoclassical economics? I don't know, but I'd guess that it would apply. I'm not advocating C's theorem. Rather, I was throwing more weight behind the collective wisdom idea (and then, as Ted may have noticed, criticizing it). My feeling is that C was saying that a jury of 12 would be more accurate in its processing of the facts they were given -- to make a _binary decision_ (guilty/not guilty) -- than would be a jury of 1 or 6, assuming that one of the two verdicts is actually valid. It's like saying two heads are better than one, while twelve are better than two. Obviously, the facts they were given will have been limited and biased by the attorneys and the judge, while their interpretation would be limited by any shared ideology or shared social position that limited and shaped their world-views. Further, discussions about complex theological beliefs such as the Rapture or neoclassical economics seem to go against the assumption of binary decision-making. Strictly speaking, the theorem assumes that the jurors vote independently, rather than discussing matters and voting collectively (which is the way juries I've been on have worked). (See When Is Condorcet's Jury Theorem Valid? by Daniel Berend and Jacob Paroush, _Social choice and welfare_, Volume 15, Number 4 (August 1998).) In the case of the latter group, the basis for certainty of belief is described by Roy Weintraub as follows: mathematical (economic) models are rigorous (and 'true' in the only useful scientific sense of the word) if they are built on a cogent axiom base - like von Neumann and Morgenstern, and Debreu. (Weintraub, How Economics Became a Mathematical Science, p. 100) The Arrow-Debreu model was a major accomplishment; it presented an economy composed of individual, self-interested agents - both utility-maximizing households and profit-maximizing firms - pursuing their own self-interest and whose actions produced an equilibrium in which all choices were potentially reconciled. Put briefly, the pursuit of individual self-interest could lead not to social chaos but to a coordinated social order. But how did a piece of work in mathematical economics actually settle an economic question? How did it come to pass that a particular paper, in a journal at that time read by very few economists, came to be accepted as having established a foundational truth about market economics? These are not questions economists typically ask. The theorem proves that ...' is enough information to persuade economists that knowledge associated with the theorem is secure knowledge. Professional economists are confident about the result and the implications of the equilibrium proof, and no one needs to attend to the means of its construction: the validity of the equilibrium proof in incontrovertible. Economists-in-training must learn that the existence of a competitive equilibrium has been proved. All economists can make use of the proof of that result without subjecting it to incessant challenge and reassessment. Scientists take some components of their research as given; intellectual paralysis awaits the scientist who seeks to reopen every foundational issue every day. For most economists the competitive equilibrium proof is a tool to use with little regard to how the tool was constructed. Those who study science use the idea of a 'black box' for settled results that are locked up and impenetrable, and thus closed to current investigation. For every science, black boxes are both healthy and necessary. (p. 184) the way I learned the Arrow/Debreu stuff in grad school (UC-Berkeley, then home of Debreu) was that it showed the assumptions one had to make for competitive equilibrium to exist, and that since the assumptions weren't realistic, the Arrow/Debreu conclusions
Racial identifies of corporations
Michael Perelman requests: David, could you tell us more about this case, please? On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 11:39:22AM -0700, David B. Shemano wrote: Regarding corporations, everybody should be happy to know that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held this week that a corporation can sue for violations of civil rights protecting against racial discrimination, which necessarily required the Court to hold that a corporation can have a race.Tinket Ink Information Resources, Inc. v. Sun Microsystems, Inc., 2004 WL 1088296 (9th Cir. 2004). Here is a link to the case: http://www.metnews.com/sos.cgi?0504%2F0216754 The issue is very simple. The plaintiff was a minority-owned corporation (all of the shareholders are African-American). The plaintiff suppled services to Sun Microsystems, but then Sun stopped using the plaintiff. The plaintiff alleged that Sun refused to contract with the plaintiff solely on its status as an African-American owned business. The issue was whether the plaintiff, a corporation, had standing to sue in its own name for violation of an anti-racial discrimination civil rights law. The Court concluded that the corporation had standing. The Court acknowledged as an anti-anthropomorphic truism as a general proposition that a corporation does not have a racial identity. However, based upon prudential grounds, the court said that the corporation had standing to sue. The court was concerned that because the harm was suffered by the corporation and not the shareholders, nobody would have the right to sue if the court held the corporation could not sue in its! own name. David Shemano
Can corporations have sex?
James Devine writes: can a corporation have a gender, too? or rather, can a corporation have sex? Absolutely, what do you think a corporate merger is? One corporation propositions the other corporation. The do mutual due diligence to find out if they like each other. There is a closing dinner at a fancy restaurant where a lot of liquor is imbibed. Then they go and screw the shareholders. David Shemano
Re: Can corporations have sex?
-Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David B. Shemano Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 10:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] Can corporations have sex? James Devine writes: can a corporation have a gender, too? or rather, can a corporation have sex? Absolutely, what do you think a corporate merger is? One corporation propositions the other corporation. The do mutual due diligence to find out if they like each other. There is a closing dinner at a fancy restaurant where a lot of liquor is imbibed. Then they go and screw the shareholders. David Shemano Then there is hostile takeover a form of rape that, like all rape, is not so much about sex as power. Then there is greenmailing when you find out how expensive inter-corporate intercourse can really be. Jim C
new radio product
Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: May 20, 2004 Marathon Special: State of the Empire Gary Younge, New York correspondent of The Guardian, on U.S. reactions to the torture photos, comparisons with British and other European imperialisms, and race in the U.S. vs. the UK * Cynthia Enloe of Clark University, famous for her feminist analyses of the military, talks about masculinity in the Bush administration, the oil industry, and military prisons * George Monbiot, author of Manifesto for a New World Order, on offshoring as reparations, the WTO, the limits of localism, and the democratization of global governance May 6, 2004 Heather Boushey talks about child care, in anticipation of Mother's Day * Merrill Goozner, author of The $800 Million Pill, talks about drug development, and why medicines are so damned expensive April 29, 2004 Sean Jacobs, one of the organizers of the Ten Years of Freedom film festival, talks about the festival and South African politics * Richard Burkholder, Gallup's director of international operations, talks about the firm's polling in Iraq * Aimee Liu, author of the novel Flash House, talks about the CIA in Asia and trafficking in women April 15, 2004 Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of economics at Columbia and author of In Defense of Globalization, talks about trade, capital flows, poverty, and development April 8, 2004 Chalmers Johnson, author of The Sorrows of Empire, talks first about the political economy of Japan (recovery for real? rightward move among the elite?) and then the evil effects of the U.S. empire on the outside world and on our democracy they join: - April 1, 2004 Carlos Mejia, who left his national guard unit in Iraq to protest the war, and who faces desertion charges, talks about the war and his prospects * In a return engagement, Robert Fatton, author of Haiti's Predatory Republic, talking about the social structure of Haiti and the forces behind Aristide's rise, fall, rise, and fall March 25, 2004 DH on outsourcing - as big a deal as they say? * Leo Panitch, co-editor of The Socialist Register 2004, on the American empire along with -- * Nina Revoyr on the history of Los Angeles, real and fictional * Bill Fletcher on war and peace * Barbara Ehrenreich on Global Woman * Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy * Keith Bradsher on the SUV * Susie Bright on sex and politics * Anatol Lieven on Iraq * Lisa Jervis on feminism pop culture * Joseph Stiglitz on the IMF and the Wall St-Treasury axis * Joel Schalit, author of Jerusalem Calling, on the Counterpunch collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism * Naomi Klein on Argentina and the arrested political development of the global justice movement * Robert Fatton on Haiti * Laura Flanders on Bushwomen * Ursula Huws on the new world of work and why capitalism has avoided crisis * Simon Head, author of The New Ruthless Economy, on working in the era of surveillance, restructuring, and speedup * Michael Albert on participatory economics (parecon) * Michael Hudson, author of a report on the sleazy world of subprime finance * Hamid Dabashi on Iran * Marta Russell on the UN conference on disability * Corey Robin on the neocons * Sara Roy on the Palestinian economy * Christian Parenti on his visit to Baghdad, and on his book The Soft Cage (about surveillance in America from slavery to the Patriot Act) * Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, and Cynthia Enloe on the then-impending war with Iraq * Michael Hardt on Empire * Judith Levine on kids sex * Walden Bello on the World Social Forum and alternative development models * Christopher Hitchens on Orwell and his new political affiliations -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 38 Greene St - 4th fl. New York NY 10013-2505 USA voice +1-212-219-0010 fax+1-212-219-0098 cell +1-917-865-2813 email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] webhttp://www.leftbusinessobserver.com
Re: Can corporations have sex?
okay, while we're on the subject of answering rhetorical questions, can corporations attain orgasm? Jim D. -Original Message- From: David B. Shemano [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Mon 5/24/2004 10:42 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: [PEN-L] Can corporations have sex? James Devine writes: can a corporation have a gender, too? or rather, can a corporation have sex? Absolutely, what do you think a corporate merger is? One corporation propositions the other corporation. The do mutual due diligence to find out if they like each other. There is a closing dinner at a fancy restaurant where a lot of liquor is imbibed. Then they go and screw the shareholders. David Shemano
Re: Can corporations have sex?
Jim asked: okay, while we're on the subject of answering rhetorical questions, can corporations attain orgasm? Jim D. No. They can play an important role, though, in the orgasms of those for whom they are a fetish object. The sex involved is anal sadistic and non-consensual. This is thinly disguised source of the beauty of the Coase Theorem. Ted
Re: Collective wisdom
Jim wrote: My feeling is that C was saying that a jury of 12 would be more accurate in its processing of the facts they were given -- to make a _binary decision_ (guilty/not guilty) -- than would be a jury of 1 or 6, assuming that one of the two verdicts is actually valid. It's like saying two heads are better than one, while twelve are better than two. Obviously, the facts they were given will have been limited and biased by the attorneys and the judge, while their interpretation would be limited by any shared ideology or shared social position that limited and shaped their world-views. Further, discussions about complex theological beliefs such as the Rapture or neoclassical economics seem to go against the assumption of binary decision-making. Strictly speaking, the theorem assumes that the jurors vote independently, rather than discussing matters and voting collectively (which is the way juries I've been on have worked). Group dynamics are ignored. Given a certain kind of individual psychology, for instance, obviously false beliefs - e.g belief in the possibility of Rapture - can come to be held with greater certainty the greater the number of individuals who share them. Projective idenfication generated phantasies about the motives of excluded others can be reinforced by group psychology (as in paranoid conspiracist theories). There is an account of intersubjective decision making consistent with the conclusion that the realism of judgments will increase with the number participating in the judgment, but it requires the idea of the individuals as transcendental subjects, i.e. as subjects able to perceive truly. Each subject is limited in perspective by their location in events (their perspective) so by increasing the number of subjects who communicate about their perception enlarged thinking, i.e. thinking less biased by the limitations of individual perspective, is achieved. This is Husserl's idea of transcendental intersubjectivity. The word transcendental in this context means the capacity to perceive truly so it makes assumptions about the potential character of human experience (it elaborates experience as experience of internal relations, for example). This is a sublation of Kant's idea of enlarged thought as the sensus communis. Kant develops this idea in the context of elaborating production through freedom as artistic creation. Freedom here means through a will that places reason at the basis of its actions. (Critique of Judgment [Bernard trans.], p. 145) This requires taste which Kant defines as the faculty of judging of that which makes _universally communicable_, without the mediation of a concept, our feeling [of pleasure] in a given representation. (p. 138) This in turn requires a sensus communis, a capacity for enlarged thought. under the _sensus communis_ we must include the idea of a sense _common to all_, i.e. of a faculty of judgment which, in its reflection, takes account (_a priori_) of the mode of representation of all other men in thought, in order, as it were, to compare its judgment with the collective reason of humanity, and thus to escape the illusion arising from the private conditions that could be so easily taken for objective, which would injuriously affect the judgment. This is done by comparing our judgment with the possible rather than the actual judgments of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man, by abstracting from the limitations which contingently attach to our own judgment. p. 136 In the sublation of this by Hegel, Marx and Husserl, the independence of the actual judgments of others is subtituted for by communication with others understood to be other transcendental subjects (universally developed individuals in Marx's terminology). Other aspects are also changed e.g. the limitation of art to communication without concepts is removed. Thus sublated, however, these ideas reappear in Marx's epistemology and in his aesthetics. They underpin, for instance, his account of true human production in the Comments on James Mill. Persons are only potentially transcendental subjects, however. Such subjectivity is the endpoint of a successful developmental process. Where social relations are incompatible with such development, the rationality and realism of group judgment will be limited by psychopathology. the way I learned the Arrow/Debreu stuff in grad school (UC-Berkeley, then home of Debreu) was that it showed the assumptions one had to make for competitive equilibrium to exist, and that since the assumptions weren't realistic, the Arrow/Debreu conclusions didn't apply. Any deductive theorem cuts both ways. Weintraub's account both of the beliefs held by economists with certainty and of the generation of this certainty by the information 'The theorem proves that ...' doesn't apply to your grad school days at UC-Berkeley then (. But it wasn't the utility function approach itself which was called in question, was it? What
The New UN resolution on sovereignty
The text does not seem available as yet but there are some odd sections and some odd omissions. The article does not mention the fact that the government will in effect not have any legislative functions. The law in effect will be that passed under the occupation. Obviously any corruption in expenditures from oil revenues will be internationalised. The Iraqis apparently are not to be entrusted with expenditure of their own assets without proper supervision in the interests of foreign investors. The US will be in command of security through a multinational force. There is no mention of the opt-out provisions where Iraqi troops could refuse to take part in missions. Why should UN members agree not to file any lawsuits against Iraq for 12 months? Given that all the officials are to be chosen by Brahmini after first being vetted by the US (and UK?) the govt. is not likely to ask the multi-national force to leave. Furthermore it seems that there are advisors attached to ministries just to keep them in line and also other groups that have been set up by the CPA that will have real powers. I wonder who will be the private mercenaries awarded the special contract to protect UN personnel. Cheers, Ken Hanly By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A new U.S.-British drafted U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing sovereignty for an Iraqi caretaker government approves the presence of the U.S.-led force there but sets no date for the troops to leave. The resolution, distributed to council members on Monday, would endorse the formation of a sovereign interim government that would take office by June 30 and says that government would assume the responsibility and authority for governing a sovereign Iraq. The draft emerged as President Bush prepared a televised speech later on Monday mapping out his plans for Iraq, where violent attacks on occupying forces have dimmed U.S. hopes for a peaceful transfer to democratic rule. The definition of sovereignty is a contentious issue, with the Bush administration attempting to assure U.N. Security Council members they would not be asked to approve an occupation under another name. British ambassador Emyr Jones Parry told reporters the resolution underlines clearly that all sovereignty will be returned to the Iraqis, that the interim Iraqi government will assume total responsibility for its own sovereignty. But the text is bound to run into criticism by France, Germany, Russia and others. It does not give a definite timetable for deployment of the U.S.-led force and instead calls for a review after a year, which a new Iraqi government can request earlier. A review, however, would be similar to an open-ended mandate and would not mean the force would leave unless the Security Council, where the United States has veto power, decides it should do so. The resolution, contrary to expectations, does not give an opt out clause that would allow Iraqi troops to refuse a command from the American military. Instead it calls for arrangements to ensure coordination between the two. As part of the transition process, U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, now in Baghdad, is due to name a president, a prime minister, two vice presidents and 26 ministers before the end of May. They would stay in office until elections for a national assembly, expected to be held by January 2005. The resolution also says a separate force would be created within the multinational force for the sole purposes of providing security for U.N. staff and operations within Iraq. On oil, the draft resolution says Iraq would have control over its oil revenues. But it would keep in place an international advisory board, which audits accounts, to assure investors and donors that their money was being spent free of corruption, U.N. envoys said. Under a May 2003 Security Council resolution adopted after the fall of Saddam Hussein, all proceeds of Iraq's oil and gas sales were deposited into a special account called the Development Fund for Iraq, controlled by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. The new measure calls on all U.N. member-states to take steps to ensure that no law suits are filed against Iraq or any of its state-owned enterprises for a period of 12 months. Curtailing an existing U.N. arms embargo, the draft would allow the importation of arms by either the multinational force or the Iraqi government. ((Editing by David Storey; Reuters messaging: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 1-212-355-7424) © Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
Capitalism and differing systems/ideologies
Title: Message The fundamental nature of capitalism, and its teleologically-derivative imperatives--realization of maximum total possible real, after-tax, risk-adjusted surplus value is an imperative as a necessary--but not sufficient--condition of accumulation of capital (widening and deepening capital and expanded reproduction of capitalist relations and instituions) which becomes an imperative as a necessary--but not sufficient--condition of maximization of productivity, which becomes an imperative as a necessary--but not sufficient--condition of efffective competition, which becomes an imperative as a necessary--but not sufficient--condition of realization of maximum total possible real, after-tax, risk-adjusted surplus value...--simply will not allow coexistence with--or free, fair and open competition with--differing, contending and potentially antagonistic socioeconomic systems, ideologies or paradigms. They must seek to smash that which they lack the truth, intellect, preparation, experience, data, theory or willingnessto freely and fairly debate. For example: DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of Indian Affairs-Washington Supplement to Circular No. 1665 February 14, 1923 Indian Dancing To Superintendents: At a conference in October, 1922, of the missionaries of the several religious denominations represented in the Sioux country, the following recommendations were adopted and have been courteously submitted to this office: 1. That the Indian form of gambling[sic] and lottery known as the "ituranpi" (translated "Give Away") be prohibited. 2. That the Indian dances be limited to one in each month in the daylight hours of one day in the midweek, and at one center in each district; the months of March and April, June, July, and August be excepted. 3. That none take part in the dances or be present who are under 50 years of age. 4. That a careful propaganda be undertaken to educate public opinion against the dance and to provide a healthy substitute. 5. That there be close cooperation between the Government employees and the missionaries in those matters which affect the moral welfare of Indians. These recommendations, I am sure, were the result of sincere thought and discussion, and in view of their helpful spirit, are worthy of our careful consideration. They agree in the main with my attitude outlined in Circular No. 1665 on Indian dancing. Probably the purpose of paragraph 2 can be better fulfilled by some deviation from its specific terms according as circumstances or conditions vary in different reservations. Likewise, the restrictions in paragraph 3 may reasonably depend upon the character of the dance, its surroundings and supervision. I would not exclude those under 50 if the occasion is properly controlled and unattended by immoral or degrading influence. The main features of the recommendations may be heartily endorsed, because they seek lawful and decent performances free from excess as to their length, conduct and interference with self-supporting duties; because they urge cooperation towards something better to take the place of the vicious dance, and because they suggest the need of civilizing public sentiment in those white communities where little interest is taken in the Indians beyond the exhibition for commercial ends of ancient and barbarous customs. After a conscientious study of the dance situation in his jurisdiction, the efforts of every superintendent must persistently encourageand emphasize the Indian's attention to these political, useful, thrifty, and orderly activities that are indispensable to his well-being and that underlie the preservation of his race in the midst of complex and highly competitive conditions. The instinct of individual enterprise and devotion to the posterity and elevation of family life should in some way be made paramount in every Indian household to the exclusion of idleness, waste of time at frequent gatherings of whatever nature, and the neglect of physical resources upon which depend food, clothings, shelter, and the very beginnings of progress. Of course we must give tact, persuasion, and appeal to the Indian's good sense a chance to win ahead of peremptory orders, because our success must often follow a change of honest conviction and surrender of traditions held sacred, and we should, therefore, especially gain the support of the more enlightened and progressive element among the Indians as a means of showing how the things we would correct or abolish are handicaps to those who practice them. We must go about this work with some patience and charity and do it in a way that will convince the Indian of our fidelity to his best welfare, and in such a spirit we may welcome cooperation apart from our Service, especially from those whose splendid labors and sacrifices are devoted to moral and social uplift everywhere. The conditions in different
Quality of Iraqi intelligence
This evening BBC tv carried reports of two British civilians killed by an rpg in a car just as it was about to enter the Green Zone in Baghdad which is the centre of coalition forces. One of the reports said it was partially armoured. But the individuals were civilians. No other explanation was given of their identity. It was described as audacious. The use of a single rpg in the centre of Baghdad just a short distance away from US troops. A US soldier suggested it looked a targeted job. And there are not many British deaths in Iraq, and still less in Baghdad. To my mind this suggests that the targets could well have been key figures in British security. I suspect we will hear little more of the identity of the victims, but I could be wrong. Besides if the attack was that audacious, why waste it on a couple of clergymen from the Church of England? Tonight the BBC website says The Foreign Office later confirmed that one of the Britons who died was working for international business risk consultancy Control Risks Group. It notes Since July 2003 12 [only!]British civilians have been killed in Iraq, the Foreign Office said. On Tuesday security worker Andrew Harries, 33, from south Wales, was shot when a gunman ambushed his car. We know that the resistance is well planned. The key document on the strategy for the resistance dated January 2003 was attributed to Iraqi security sources. There may be many thousands of them still in the country, highly motivated to bring down the present regime. They will know how to mingle with the crowd, and to take advantage of relationships among Iraqis. They have learned how the coalition allies work. In the coming months their intelligence is likely to get better. That of the hegemonic power, worse. Another factor in the shifting balance of forces. Chris Burford PS the website of Control Risks Group I see from Google claims about Iraq We are currently providing project security management services in Iraq for a number of government departments, companies and NGOs, and have security managers permanently deployed in Iraq for these clients. Our office has been set up to co-ordinate these activities and provide on-the-ground advice. Control Risks Group has established a project office in Iraq to assist organisations operating or planning to operate in the country. Its presence means that we are well placed to provide accurate, up-to-date information on the situation in-country and are available to help clients to understand the uncertainties and volatility that affect activities in the region, to mitigate the risks involved and to successfully manage the security of their assets and staff. BBC website again Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the deaths were shocking and showed the risks civilians had to take in Iraq. - and the British government it would appear. This may be just a taster for what will intensify after June 30.
Re: Can corporations have sex?
okay, while we're on the subject of answering rhetorical questions, can corporations attain orgasm? Jim D. If an orgasm were defined as that which provides self-awareness and positive feedback at the climax of a developmental event, then corporations attain orgasm. Evolution, however, rewards the more potent orgasm of the most evolved/evolving participants -- and the Corporate Orgasm of Aikido Activism is a coming Corporate Orgasm of massive evolutionary resonance. In the Aikido Activism model, Noble Corporations (blissful corporations?) throw off the misplaced sexual conservatism that together with broader moral authoritarianism aims to retain subversive control, and thereby to retain privelege -- but fails to maximize individual empowerment. In the Aikido Activism model, Corporate Orgasm is essentially Individual Empowerment Capitalism (but I like the more evocative terminology of, Corporate Orgasm, -- can I credit you Jim in a footnote if I employ that terminology in an update to the essay?). The essay on Aikido Activism (now updated) is the first part of the new, more potent, Corporate Orgasm (the first part being self-awareness of what Aikido Activism can birth in progressive corporations and awareness of the anticipated transformations). The second part of the orgasm of Aikido Activism (the positive feedback part) is currently in a stage of initial, but heightening foreplay -- the excitement that I am hearing from others who believe that such a transformation in corporate purpose is possible (such as leading author/thinker Douglas Rushkoff, at www.rushkoff.com, who shares with me that Aikido Activism is the obvious next step), driven by the excitment that new substantial corporations birthed in the model of Aikido Activism can provide historically unmatched transformations in society and economics. Can I tempt others to engage in the current foreplay of Aikido Activism by having a look at the current version of the essay at http://tinyurl.com/2fupr (this version is without graphics and endnotes... to get the full copy, please request a copy from me via email)? Burkhart
Re: Capitalism and differing systems/ideologies
Jim Craven wrote: The fundamental nature of capitalism, and its teleologically-derivative imperatives--realization of maximum total possible real, after-tax, risk-adjusted surplus value is an imperative as a necessary--but not sufficient--condition of accumulation of capital (widening and deepening capital and expanded reproduction of capitalist relations and instituions) which becomes an imperative as a necessary--but not sufficient--condition of maximization of productivity, which becomes... Is there a general sentiment here regarding the idea that that maximizing profit maximizes productivity? ... realization of maximum total possible ... surplus value ... becomes ... a necessary condition of maximization of productivity... If: - 1 - capitalism (at least today's, adolescent, capitalism) is based on the power of profit maximization, and, - 2 - profit maximization leads to many social and ecological risks/disasters/ pending disasters, but, - 3 - another model -- Individual Empowerment Capitalism, for example, that balances dollar profit with ecological and social profit -- actually creates greater productivity, Then: ... it may be possible to retain the positive elements of capitalism (encouraging collaboration and industrious efforts) while weaning negative elements of unjust social and environmental exploitations. (An important footnote, is that productivity might need rethinking and remeasuring. If productivity is maximization of dollar revenue, and a proxy for maximization of dollar profit, then what type of productivity would be the maximization of ecological and social profit?) I am exploring the realization of - 3 - above, and the presumed link between maximal profit and maximal productivity is important because both are proxies for power. Burkhart
(just published) NEOLIBERALISM IN CRISIS, ACCUMULATION, AND ROSA LUXEMBURG'S LEGACY
NEOLIBERALISM IN CRISIS, ACCUMULATION, AND ROSA LUXEMBURG'S LEGACY Research in Political Economy, Volume 21, 2004, 298 pages Editors: Paul Zarembka, State University of New York at Buffalo, and Susanne Soederberg, University of Alberta This volume explores overlapping themes in radical political economy. The first section looks at the disciplinary role of capital under neoliberalism through an examination of official development policies of the US government and the World Bank, labour restructuring in Argentina, the tenuous nature of global finance, and cultural dimensions of bourgeois ideology. The second section examines, theoretically, accumulation of capital and finance and, empirically, the relation of values to prices. The third section focuses, both theoretically and biographically, on the legacy of one of the most important Marxists of all time: Rosa Luxemburg. Photos PART I. THE DISCIPLINARY ROLE OF CAPITAL UNDER NEOLIBERALISM Responding to Neoliberalism in Crisis: Discipline and Empowerment in the World Bank's New Development Agenda Marcus Taylor, University of Warwick American Imperialism and New Forms of Disciplining the 'Non-Integrating Gap' Susanne Soederberg, University of Alberta The Logic of Neoliberal Finance and Global Financial Fragility: Towards Another Great Depression? Anastasia Nesvetailova, University of Liverpool Disciplining Labor, Creating Poverty: Neoliberal Structural Reform and the Political Conflict in Argentina Viviana Patroni, York University Global High Culture in the Era of Neo-Liberalism: The Case of Documenta11 Karyn Ball, University of Alberta PART II. ACCUMULATION AND FINANCE Marx and the Theory of the Monetary Circuit Andrew B. Trigg, The Open University Hilferding's Banking Theory in the Light of Steuart and Smith Costas Lapavitsas, University of London Economic Crisis and Socialist Revolution: Henryk Grossman's Law of Accumulation, Its First Critics and His Responses Rick Kuhn, Australia National University Spurious Value-Price Correlations: Some Additional Evidence and Arguments Andrew Kliman, Pace University PART III. ROSA LUXEMBURG The Coherence of Luxemburg's Theories and Life Estrella Trincado Aznar, Complutense University of Madrid 'Like a Candle Burning at Both Ends': Rosa Luxemburg and the Critique of Political Economy Riccardo Bellofiore, University of Bergamo Publisher: Elsevier Science/JAI 655 6th Avenue New York, NY 10010-5107 Fax: (212)-633-3680 . . . Tel: (888)-437-4636 Or email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or, click www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/BS_RPE/description#description * Vol.21-Neoliberalism in Crisis, Accumulation, and Rosa Luxemburg's Legacy RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, Zarembka/Soederberg, eds, Elsevier Science ** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
Re: The New UN resolution on sovereignty
The Reuters article is not so clear. The NY Times (below) has it closer: The text itself is not publicly available because it was presented for consultation and not tabled. Apparently no one is as outraged as they were last year, when the US draft was leaked for publication. As widely reported some governments on the Security Council find it difficult to establish the precedent that the UN will find a country fully sovereign but *legally* precluded from ordering foreign troops out its country - and indefinitely. [For these countries' much of the UN Iraq debate has become a matter of avoiding establishing future legal precedents.] Also, for those with an eye to regional stability, they want to avoid having the U.S. order Iraqi troops into a Faluja or a Karbala. The point about lawsuits is twofold: first, there are frustrated creditors who may try to seize Iraqi oil, since debt relief (including the '91 War reparations) and some form of 'bankruptcy' shield have STILL not been fully worked out. Second, despite the talk, many courts might well find that this resolution does not fulfill minimum requirements for national sovereignty and that the Geneva Conventions and UN Conventions are still in force on the US as an occupying power. These Conventions limit the ways an occupied country can have its natural resources exploited and limit the degree you can privatize national assets. These courts might order the oil (or the proceeds) seized out of respect for international law. Worth remembering: attempts to get the UN to sanction bypassing the Geneva Conventions in Iraq has been a reoccurring major theme for the Bush Administration. At the end the war, the U.S. draft resolution of May *2003* fought strenuously to do the same for all areas - at that time it was for release of responsibilities in the military as well as the political and economic spheres. (See the then proposed U.S. text of Resolution http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/08/international/worldspecial/09UNTEXT.html?pagewanted=1 and Pen-l's discussion of it). http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/international/middleeast/25NATI.html UNITED NATIONS, May 24 The United States and Britain introduced a draft Security Council resolution on Monday that pledged a transfer of power to an interim government in Iraq on June 30 but left open to further negotiation the authority and duration of the American-led multinational force remaining in the country. The draft resolution would give that force broad authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq, including by preventing and deterring terrorism. But, while it calls for close coordination between Iraq's new government and the foreign troops, it does not set a date for their withdrawal or explicitly empower Iraqis to order their departure. The resolution, aimed at gaining international support for the political transition in Iraq, backed the current effort of the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, to appoint the caretaker government and endorsed a timetable of United Nations-planned direct elections for a national assembly by the end of January. Ambassadors from the 15-nation Security Council, which split bitterly last year over the American and British decision to go to war, greeted the proposal on Monday with general approval, despite misgivings over the security arrangements. Gunter Pleuger, the ambassador from Germany, whose country opposed the war in tense and fractious deliberations last year, called the draft text a good basis for discussions. He said the final resolution would make clear that we have a new start in Iraq. I don't see major disagreements, although there are points to be refined, said Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz of Chile. There are differences, but at the same time I have seen progress and growing agreement. Diplomats said they hoped for a vote on the final resolution early in June, but that timing seemed overly optimistic with the many imponderables on the central security issue in the draft circulated on Monday. Much of the timing depends on when Mr. Brahimi makes his choices and returns to New York to present them to the Council. He has been directed to pick a president, two vice presidents, a prime minister and 26 members of a cabinet by the end of this month but may not make that deadline. A number of Security Council diplomats said they were disappointed by the draft resolution's determination that the contentious issues of how detainees will be handled and what will be the relationship between the new Iraqi government and the multinational force will be detailed only in an exchange of letters next month between the force, the United Nations and the members of the new government. That step cannot be taken until those members are chosen by Mr. Brahimi. A senior United States diplomat said the majority of questions at the closed session had focused on
Solution to the torture problem: Ban Cameras
Rumsfeld bans camera phones From correspondents in London May 23, 2004 MOBILE phones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, The Business newspaper reported today. Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones. Digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq, it said, adding that a total ban throughout the US military is in the works. Disturbing new photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse, which the US government had reportedly tried to keep hidden, were published on Friday in the Washington Post newspaper. The photos emerged along with details of testimony from inmates at Abu Ghraib who said they were sexually molested by female soldiers, beaten, sodomised and forced to eat food from toilets. http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9643950%255E401,00.html
The Feminism of Fools, Cont'd
The province of Ontario approved the use of sharia in Ontario's Muslim community, allowing the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice to claim the right to hold tribunals, darul qada, in which marriage, family and business disputes can be settled according to sharia (Lynda Hurst, Ontario Sharia Tribunals Assailed, Toronto Star, May 22, 2004). . . . The Canadian Council of Muslim Women, which opposes the use of sharia in Ontario for good reasons, is placed in the sort of difficult position that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and other feminists of color have analyzed, having to fight a two-front war against conservative Muslim men who seek to define Islam according to their patriarchal terms and control Muslim women and right-wing Westerners who try to use Muslim women's struggles as ammunitions against all Muslims. . . . The rest of the posting at http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/feminism-of-fools-contd.html. -- 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/
how many
Title: how many How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to replace a light bulb? The answer is seven: 1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be replaced. 2. One to attack and question the patriotism of anyone who has questions about the light bulb. 3. One to blame the previous administration for the need of a new light bulb. 4. One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs. 5. One to get together with Vice President Cheney and figure out how to pay Haliburton Industries one million dollars for a light bulb. 6. One to arrange a photo-op session showing Bush changing the light bulb while dressed in a flight suit and wrapped in an American flag. 7. And, finally, one to explain to Bush the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.
correct
Title: correct HOW TO SPEAK ABOUT WOMEN AND MEN AND BE POLITICALLY CORRECT: (new 2004 version) WOMEN: 1. She is not a BABE or a CHICK - She is a BREASTED AMERICAN. 2. She is not a SCREAMER or MOANER - She is VOCALLY APPRECIATIVE. 3. She is not EASY - She is HORIZONTALLY ACCESSIBLE. 4. She is not DUMB - She is a DETOUR OFF THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY 5. She has not BEEN AROUND - She is a PREVIOUSLY ENJOYED COMPANION. 6. She is not an AIR HEAD - She is REALITY IMPAIRED. 7. She does not get DRUNK or TIPSY - She gets CHEMICALLY INCONVENIENCED. 8. She does not have BREAST IMPLANTS - She is MEDICALLY ENHANCED. 9. She does not NAG YOU - She becomes VERBALLY REPETITIVE. 10. She is not a SLUT - She is SEXUALLY EXTROVERTED. 11. She does not have MAJOR LEAGUE HOOTERS - She is PECTORALLY SUPERIOR. 12. She is not a TWO BIT WHORE - She is a LOW COST PROVIDER. MEN: 1. He does not have a BEER GUT - He has developed a LIQUID GRAIN STORAGE FACILITY. 2. He is not a BAD DANCER - He is OVERLY CAUCASIAN. 3. He does not GET LOST ALL THE TIME - He INVESTIGATES ALTERNATIVE DESTINATIONS. 4. He is not BALDING - He is in FOLLICLE REGRESSION. 5. He is not a CRADLE ROBBER - He prefers GENERATIONALLY DIFFERENTIAL RELATIONSHIPS 6. He does not get FALLING DOWN DRUNK -He becomes ACCIDENTALLY HORIZONTAL. 7. He does not act like a TOTAL ASS - He develops a case of RECTAL CRANIAL INVERSION. 8. He is not a MALE CHAUVINIST PIG - He has SWINE EMPATHY. 9. He is not afraid of COMMITMENT - He is MONOGAMOUSLY CHALLENGED 10. He is not HORNY - He is SEXUALLY FOCUSED. 11. It's not his crack you see hanging out of his pantsIt is MALE CLEAVAGE
Corporate orgasm?
okay, while we're on the subject of answering rhetorical questions, can corporations attain orgasm? Yes, with a stroke of luck on the floor. Scanlan -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
Re: Newsday: Iran wanted US to invade?
the real area of interest of iran is not north in pakistan or south lebanon.. the real one is in the gulf where sunni arab moslems control commerce and rent appropriation by wedding a merchant class to despotic politics. the gulf is where the money is and to extract the money you need some politics. americans in iraq would have to deal with a majority shiite turning power to them underminig a whole history of sunni control over govenment and commerce in a major gulf country. a pro us shiite iraq is a dream come true for commercilaising mullahs and a nightmare for the sauds et al. thus, in the final analysis there will be more shiite merchants buying cheap on the international markets and selling dear to a bigger gulf market with a high purchaing power.. an arrangement that is at rock bottom reminisecnt of ventian trade or trade that does industrialise any of the countires of the region because the merchant holds power over industrial capital in the is post colonial formation. small countries with big armies and capital flight will persist in a pre capitalist form of despotic internal articulation where women don't drive and just get fat watching tv. as to an arabmetaphor similar to goethe's from the koran: 'a word of truth that harbours mal intent'Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why would Iran want more US bases next door?On Sun, May 23, 2004 at 04:22:19PM +, Mohammad Maljoo wrote: goes to show that the real reasons behind the rise of the mullahs and the iraqi iranian war was a resurrection of the farsi nationalism. A few meaningless words!Bazaar class? Farsi racism? resurrection of the farsi nationalism? What are these at all? The mullahs in Iran are a continuation of Arabian fundamentalism with other mask. The real reasons behind the iraqi iranian war can be found in Saddam phenomenon rather than the illusory resurrection of the farsi nationalism. MM _ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail--Michael PerelmanEconomics DepartmentCalifornia State UniversityChico, CA 95929Tel. 530-898-5321E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Do you Yahoo!?Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
