June 30th Explained
In the Wednesday USA Today, the article that covers Bush's speech is subheaded: quote Occupation Will End Soon; Troops Remain Indefinitely unquote Michael
Re: Quality of Iraqi intelligence
Guardian Wed 26 Two Britons killed on Monday when their armoured car was targeted by a rocket grenade near coalition headquarters were yesterday named by the Foreign Office as Bob Morgan, 63, and Mark Carman, 38. Morgan was an FO-funded adviser and had been seconded to work with the Coalition Provisional Authority on the reconstruction of the Iraqi oil sector. Carman, a former soldier, worked for Control Risks Group, a private contractor that provides security and risk assessments. The company said he had been working for a team providing security to the Foreign Office. A third British civilian was understood to have been injured in the blast. Apart from the fact that British authorities decided to be more open than I had expected, perhaps to diffuse the potential of this story, the details are as I supposed. In terms of a guerrilla war, if you consider a guerrilla war a lawful and honourable response to an invasion of your country not approved by the United Nations, (a matter on which opinion may be divided) this appears to have been a very effective and audacious attack. One which the British authorities will have to take very seriously in terms of any countermeasures. I cannot imagine they have any effective answers as the intelligence of the insurgency if anything is likely to improve relative to the intelligence available to the British authorities. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 12:12 AM Subject: [PEN-L] 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: Analysts - Putin to Launch Systematic Campaign Against Oligarchs
The US Robber Barons participated in the creation of modern industry. Will there be any positive legacy of their Russian counterparts? --- Me: Except that the kept the Russian economy out of the hands of foreigners, I think not. The only one who actually did anything besides scoop up Soviet industries was Gusinsky, who at least created NTV.
Re: Analysts - Putin to Launch Systematic Campaign Against Oligarchs
The US Robber Barons participated in the creation of modern industry. Will there be any positive legacy of their Russian counterparts? --- BTW it looks like they may be gunning for Abramovich (to be fair to him, he does seem to have done a lot for Chukotka as governor there): Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty www.rferl.org May 25, 2004 Analysis: Another Oligarch, Another Investigation By Julie A. Corwin Question: What event of last July continues to have reverberations in Russian political life? A) The arrest of Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovskii; B) The ending of the transitional period for full implementation of the law on political parties; C) Oligarch and Chukotka Autonomous Okrug Governor Roman Abramovich's purchase of the Britain's Chelsea soccer club for $233 million; or D) All of the above. The correct answer is D. But if you answered C, then you will not be surprised to learn that avowed economic liberal and Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref only last week condemned the purchase of Chelsea by Abramovich, who formerly headed the Russian oil major Sibneft and is the country's second-richest citizen. Gref told reporters on 21 May that if people have such capital, then their moral obligation is to invest in their own country and to create jobs here, RBK reported. Audit Chamber head Sergei Stepashin was much more quick to condemn Abramovich's purchase publicly, and this week and last Stepashin and his lead auditor investigating Abramovich's management of Chukotka's finances revealed the findings of their three-month audit. Auditor Sergei Ryabukhin announced on 21 May that the okrug is bankrupt. According to Ryabukhin, the region's debt exceeded 9.3 billion rubles ($320 million) as of 1 January, while revenues amounted to only 3.9 billion rubles in 2003, Gazeta reported on 24 May. The audit found that illegal expenditures amounted to 1.09 billion rubles in 2003 and 23.5 million rubles in 2004, ITAR-TASS reported. It also found that the okrug administration illegally raised the salaries of local officials and public-sector employees during 2003, and as a result wages for local bureaucrats exceeded those of their federal counterparts by more than 5.6 million rubles. Responding to the findings, Stepashin called on Abramovich to step down. Looking at the results of the audit, I can say that Abramovich has let down the president badly, Stepashin told Interfax on 23 May. In an interview the previous day with Rossiiskaya gazeta, Stepashin compared the Chukotka's financial violations unfavorably with Chechnya's. He said auditors found that Chechnya had misspent almost 800 million rubles, but noted that Chechnya is experiencing war. Chukotka, on the other hand, is extremely small with a population of only 52,000. He also noted that Ingushetia had fewer violations of financial discipline than Chukotka even though that republic had to cope with an influx of refugees across its borders. However, by 25 May, in an interview with the same newspaper, Stepashin had tempered his criticism of Abramovich. Stepashin said that he did not understand why this particular investigation has produced such a storm of publicity, especially since the chamber has uncovered far greater violations in Chechnya. Stepashin had tried and failed to come up with enough evidence to launch a criminal case against Abramovich, Kommersant-Daily concluded on 22 May. As a result, Stepashin faced a choice -- avoid losing face or risk severely defaming his political opponent, Nezavisimaya gazeta commented on 20 May. (Both newspapers are tied to Abramovich's former business partner Boris Berezovskii.) According to Nezavisimaya gazeta, of the more than 1 billion rubles that were illegally spent in 2003, only around 200 million rubles can be held against Abramovich and his subordinates. According to Gazeta on 24 May, the okrug's debts started mounting years before Abramovich took office. For example, the region took out a credit worth $190 million in 1994-95. According to Izvestiya on 20 March, an audit conducted by the Audit Chamber in the late 1990s revealed substantial financial improprieties in the operation of a Chukotka Development Fund set up by Abramovich's predecessor in Chukotka, Aleksandr Nazarov. Documents were transferred to the Prosecutor-General's Office but no criminal case ever materialized. Nazarov subsequently went to work for the Audit Chamber, and Izvestiya commented it might be time to toughen the law on the appointment of auditors, as it is currently easy to appoint people who have a dubious credit history. Asked why Stepashin appeared to be trying to scare Abramovich, Vyacheslav Nikonov, president of the Politika Foundation, told Kommersant-Daily on 21 May that Stepashin has personal grievances against Abramovich. He has voiced them on several occasions both with regard to the purchase of the Chelsea soccer team and the fact that Sibneft pays the least amount of taxes of all of Russia's oil
Re: Famous last words
On Tue May 25, Michael Perelman wrote: As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants. snip Turns out he was only kidding about that part. I thought that he said that it was not an interview, only around drinks, not that he was joking. I didn't mean kidding haha, I mean saying one thing and doing the opposite. When, three months after he said this, we raided his office and made him the fall guy, he called a press conference to bash the US. That's not exactly falling on one's sword. Michael
End of oil
'End of Oil' Author Paul Roberts May 6, 2004 The demand for oil increases each year, but the supply is not inexhaustible. Experts predict that within 30 years our oil energy sources will be depleted. In his book, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World, Roberts looks at the implications for the world in terms of the economy, politics and the environment, and what alternatives exist for oil. Roberts writes about the energy industry for Harper's magazine and for other national publications. Audio/interview with Roberts is at: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1874931 -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Hooked on Empire's Logic
Colorado Democrats voted down resolutions to Bring the Troops Home Now at the party's state convention. More on the topic at http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/hooked-on-empires-logic.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/
Analysts - Putin to Launch Systematic Campaign Against Oligarchs
The name has been changed to protect the innocent, but on the whole , the ex-Soviet People seem to have retained much better anti-capitalist reflexes than those in the West have now. Charles ^^ Chris Doss BTW it looks like they may be gunning for Abramovich (to be fair to him, he does seem to have done a lot for Chukotka as governor there): Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty www.rferl.org May 25, 2004 Analysis: Another Oligarch, Another Investigation By Julie A. Corwin Question: What event of last July continues to have reverberations in Russian political life? A) The arrest of Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovskii; B) The ending of the transitional period for full implementation of the law on political parties; C) Oligarch and Chukotka Autonomous Okrug Governor Roman Abramovich's purchase of the Britain's Chelsea soccer club for $233 million; or D) All of the above. The correct answer is D. But if you answered C, then you will not be surprised to learn that avowed economic liberal and Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref only last week condemned the purchase of Chelsea by Abramovich, who formerly headed the Russian oil major Sibneft and is the country's second-richest citizen. -clip-
Re: The Origins of Continents
am I right to say that the division between Europe and Asia (which aren't separate continents, strictly speaking) simply reflects the us vs. them attitudes of the ancient Greeks? Jim Devine -Original Message- From: Shane Mage [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tue 5/25/2004 9:23 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Origins of Continents Jayson Funke asks: Can anyone tell me of [the] origin of the term continents? The term is of Greek origin, *epeiros*. It seems to have been first used in the sense of continent by Herodotos. Plato, at Timaios 25A, speaks of the American continent: ...all that we have here, lying within the Pillars of Herakles, is evidently a bay with a narrow entrance [in Phaedo he compares the Mediterranean to a frog pond] but that yonder [the Atlantic] is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Nick Berg and Ben Linder
(From the late 1980s until 1992, I was involved with an organization called Tecnica that sent skilled professionals and tradespeople to Nicaragua and to southern Africa to volunteer with government agencies and the ANC. Although Ben Linder, an US engineer who was murdered by the contras in northern Nicaragua while working on a small-scale hydroelectric dam, was not placed by Tecnica, we raised funds for his project which was completed by our volunteers after his death. It is too bad that Tecnica folded after the collapse of the FSLN, since it might have provided an outlet for Nick Berg whose idealism was channeled in the wrong direction largely it seems out of the profound ideological confusion of recent years. In an odd way, he was a rightwing version of the martyred Ben Linder.) NY Times, May 26, 2004 Tracing a Civilian's Odd Path to His Gruesome Fate in Iraq By JAMES DAO This article was reported by James Dao, Richard Lezin Jones, Christine Hauser and Eric Lichtblau and was written by Mr. Dao. Nicholas E. Berg had a distinctive strategy for soliciting work for his communications tower company: conduct free spot inspections, then offer to fix any problems. Where others went sightseeing, he went climbing and inspecting. Where others wrote postcards, he inventoried towers, from Texas to Africa. By late last year, Mr. Berg, 26, had turned his sights on Iraq. An adventurous entrepreneur and religious Jew, Mr. Berg had a passionate belief in capitalism's power to transform poor nations. He really believed, friends and relatives said, that he could help rebuild that war-shattered country one radio tower at a time. (clip) He attended Cornell University, distinguishing himself in engineering courses, a faculty adviser said. But his defining semester came in a small Ugandan village, where he spent the spring of 1998 in an exchange program. There he was exposed to poverty he had never imagined, friends said. He turned his inventiveness to good use, fashioning a brick-making machine to help villagers stabilize mud huts. In letters, he described schemes to help the Ugandans market mushrooms and make bricks from indigenous materials. He was shaken by his experience, a friend, James Wakefield, 52, said. He had nothing but a pair of pants, a shirt and boots when he came home. He gave away his clothing. Friends say Mr. Berg's Africa experience made him impatient with traditional academics. He left Cornell at the end of 1998, despite being on the dean's list and having only one year left, school officials said. He spent the next two years searching for ways to transform his Africa ideas into a practical plan, studying at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania before transferring to the University of Oklahoma in Norman in the fall of 1999. In Oklahoma's construction science program, he began testing designs for paper bricks that snapped together like Lego blocks, believing they could be manufactured inexpensively in undeveloped countries. He didn't seem willing to sit around and wait to be spoon-fed stuff, said William W. McManus, an associate professor of construction science at Oklahoma. He was always pushing on his own. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26BERG.html Excerpts from a book on the death of Ben Linder: http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2000m01.1/msg00171.htm -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Modest proposals for psyops
May 26, 2004 Psyops In Fourth Generation War by William S. Lind I recently received an invitation to speak at a conference at Ft. Bragg on psychological operations, or psyops. Regrettably, a schedule conflict prevented me from accepting, but the invitation got me thinking: what are psyops in Fourth Generation war (4GW)? It is clear what they are not: leaflets saying, No on can hope to fight the American military, surrender now, or We are here to liberate you. After the Iraq debacle, those messages will be met with open derision. The only way such leaflets are likely to be useful is if they are printed on very soft paper. Colonel John Boyd said that the greatest weakness a person or a nation can have at the highest level of war, the moral level, is a contradiction between what they say and what they do. From that I think follows the basic definition of psyops in Fourth Generation war: psyops are not what you say, but what you do. If we look at the war in Iraq through that lens, we quickly see a number of psyops we could have undertaken, but did not. For example, what if instead locating the CPA in Saddam's old palace in Baghdad and putting Iraqi prisoners in his notorious Abu Ghraib prison, we had located the CPA in Abu Ghraib and put the prisoners in Saddam's palace? That would have sent a powerful message. What if, when we get in a firefight and Iraqis are killed, General Kimmitt the Frog, our military spokesman in Baghdad, announced that with regret instead of in triumph? We could use every engagement as a chance to reiterate the message, We did not come here to fight. That message would be all the more powerful if we treated Iraqi wounded the same way as American wounded, offered American military honors to their dead and sent any prisoners home, quickly, with a wad of cash in their pockets. Years ago, my father, David Lind, whose career was in advertising, said, If the day World War II ended, Stalin had sent all his German prisoners home, giving them a big box of food for their families and a wallet full of Reichsmarks, the Communists would have taken all of Western Europe. He may have been right. In Fallujah, the Marines just showed a brilliant appreciation of psyops in 4GW. How? They let the Iraqis win. At the tactical level, the Marines probably could have taken Fallujah, although the result would have been a strategic disaster. Instead, by pulling back and letting the Iraqis claim victory, they gave Iraqi forces of order inside the city the self-respect they needed to work with us. Washington and the CPA seem to define liberation as beating the Iraqis to a pulp, then handing them their freedom like a gift from a master to a slave. In societies where honor, dignity and manliness are still important virtues, that can never work. But losing to win sometimes can. The CPA's complete inability to appreciate psyops in 4GW was revealed in a recent episode that suggested Laurel and Hardy are in command. It seems our Boys in Baghdad decided the new Iraq needed a new flag. Never mind that the new flag suggested Iraq is still a province of the Ottoman Empire and also conveniently included the same shade of blue found on the Israeli flag. What giving any new flag to Iraq's Quisling government in Baghdad really did was give the Iraqi resistance something it badly needed - its own flag, in the form of the old Iraqi flag. Couldn't anybody over there see that coming? Hello? Perhaps our most disastrous failure (beyond Abu Ghraib) to realize that psyops are what we do, not what we say, is our ongoing fight with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. At the beginning of April, Sadr had almost no support in the Shi'ite community outside Baghdad's Sadr City, while Ayatollah Sistani, who has passively cooperated with the occupation, had overwhelming support. Now, thanks to our attacks on Sadr and his militia, polls taken in Iraq show Sadr with more than 30% support among Shi'ites while Sistani has slipped to just over 50%. The U.S. Army has been Sadr's best publicity agent. Maybe it should send him a bill. Some of our psyops people probably understand all of this. Unfortunately, the people above them, in Iraq and in Washington, appear to grasp none of it. The end result is that, regardless of who wins the firefights, our enemies win one psychological victory after another. In a type of war where the moral and mental levels far outweigh the physical level, it is not hard to see where that road ends. http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=2662
Re: Nick Berg and Ben Linder
I find the question of whether Berg was actually killed by beheading and by whom far more interesting than the NYT article about Berg's personality. See, for example, The Nicholas Berg execution: A working hypothesis and a resolution for the orange jumpsuit mystery http://www.brushtail.com.au/nick_berg_hypothesis.html Paul Z. * 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
NY Times slaps its own wrist
(Fascinating. In this self-criticism, the name Judith Miller does not appear once.) NY Times, May 26, 2004 FROM THE EDITORS The Times and Iraq Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves. In doing so reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds. But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged or failed to emerge. The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on regime change in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations in particular, this one. Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all. On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been independently verified. On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago. Knight Ridder Newspapers reported last week that American officials took that defector his name is Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri to Iraq earlier this year to point out the sites where he claimed to have worked, and that the officials failed to find evidence of their use for weapons programs. It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers. On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts. That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on
Kerry and the Jewish vote
NY Observer, May 26, 2004 Is Kerry Watching President Bartlet For Prep Lessons? by Robert Sam Anson The President we wish we had settled the Middle East crisis last week. Thats how it looked, anyway, for the first 58 minutes and 30 seconds of the cliff-hanging season finale of The West Wing. In case you were watching The Bachelor, heres how it went: Martin Sheen, who supports John Kerry in real life and plays President Josiah Bartlet as his day job, was catching hell for not immediately launching a cruise missile against the Gaza headquarters of the Palestinian terrorist the F.B.I. said blew up the visiting U.S. delegations Chevy Suburban in the previous weeks episode. Thats where dramatic license comes in: The F.B.I. couldnt find a terrorist bomber if he were hiding behind the drape John Ashcroft hung over the boobs of the Spirit of Justice holding the scales in the Justice Department lobby. (clip) Mr. Kerrys aim is to limit George Bushs take of the Jewish vote, which a poll conducted by the American Jewish Committee and Foreign Affairs magazine puts at 31 percentnearly double what Mr. Bush racked up in 2000. If the margin holds, it could be decisive in battleground states with significant Jewish population. Mr. Kerry has tried just about everything to dent the numbers, including noting that his grandfather was Jewish, and that his brother Cameron, a convert to Judaism, is married to a nice Jewish girl. But its hard to best an opponent whos literally willing to wage war to prove bona fides. Mr. Bushs success in staving off Mr. Kerry was demonstrated last week, when his speech before AIPAC was interrupted 21 times by standing ovations and chants of Four more years! That trumped his chief of staff Andy Card, who got an AIPAC ovation two years ago for having learned enough Hebrew to proclaim in the vernacular: The people of Israel live! A tactic candidate Kerry has yet to consider is standing for something. He used to, when talking about bringing a just peace to the Middle East. But that was before he became the presumptive Presidential nominee. If he needs cover for doing so again, he could conduct a census of the anti-war movement, where Jews outnumber the readers of Commentary, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic and the Forward put together. Better still, Mr. Kerry could start paying attention to the people who actually live in Israel, where revulsion at the killings in Gaza and the daily humiliations visited upon Palestinians on the West Bank infinitely exceeds any youd find in the spanking new headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. The moral outrage of hundreds of thousands of Israelisall never sure whether a bus ride will be their lastgoes largely unreported in the U.S., which really is anti-Semitism. In the service of expediency, though, Mr. Kerry prefers to take his cues from Ariel Sharon. A million years ago, I had a private meeting with the general. Perhaps misled by my middle name, hed gotten it into his head that I might be the ideal amanuensis for a memoir recalling Sabra and Shatila. For obvious reasons, the site of the flunked audition (a sealed-off floor of the Park Lane Hotel) wasnt disclosed until 15 minutes beforehand. When the elevator door opened, I was greeted by two young Israelis you wouldnt want to mess with, even if they werent toting Uzis. Freshly frisked, I was ushered to a living room to wait while the generalthen a minor minister in a short-lived coalition governmentcompleted a call to Tel Aviv, hoping to settle a dispute over domestic policy. Matter resolved, he came in offering apologies. Politics, politics, he grumbled, heaving his massive bulk into an easy chair. Its constant maneuver. The nice thing about battle is that its simple: All you have to do is kill people. We both laughed, I remember. full: http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage3.asp -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Corporations by their very nature are psychopathic
Move Over, Michael Moore! by Sheelah Kolhatkar In the soon-to-be-released documentary The Corporation, a commodities trader named Carlton Brown stares into the camera and describes his first reaction upon hearing that two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. How much is gold up? he wondered. My God, gold must be exploding! He explains that he and his clients went on to mint money as gold futures shot up and the buildings came down. Craven attempts to capitalize on tragedy aside, corporations and those who operate them are destined to behave amorally because, well, thats what they do, according to The Corporation, a film that won the World Cinema Documentary Audience award at Sundance and opens in New York on June 30. The filmmakers reasoning is simple: Corporations by their very nature are psychopathic. Both my parents are psychologists and I did my first degree in psychology, and in Psych 101 you learn that a psychopath is a person who is pathologically unable to care about another person, said Joel Bakan, a 44-year-old law professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the films co-creators. In law school, the first thing you learn about the corporation is that it always has to act in its own self-interest. So if that person was a human, it would be a psychopath. Mr. Bakan wrote a book about it, exploring the corporations 150-year history and its legal status as a person with a mandate to pursue only its own economic self-interest. The film was made concurrently, co-directed by 48-year-old Mark Achbar, who in 1992 made cult-documentary Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, and 39-year-old Jennifer Abbott. After premiering at the Toronto Film Festival last year, the film was scooped up by Zeitgeist Films for U.S. distribution. But the process leading up to that triumphant moment took nearly seven years. In the course of the production, the filmmakers interviewed economists and academics, philosophers and C.E.O.s, investigating what a modern corporation is and what it means, and whether any of it is a good thing. We wanted to alienate people from the normalcy of corporate culture and to try to encourage a kind of critical distance, so that people can see the corporate waters were all swimming in, said Mr. Achbar, without flinching. Because were lost in it. And there are aspects of that world that are highly problematic, and we take them for granted and accept them. And we shouldnt. We should question them. full: http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage6.asp -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
A poverty draft
NY Observer, May 26, 2004 Here's New Face Of U.S. Military: Lynndie England by Philip Weiss The condemnation of Lynndie England, the abuser of prisoners, in some ways echoes the exaltation a year ago of Jessica Lynch. Both young women come from small West Virginia towns. The privileged who offer such strong opinions about them are not their peers; they would never make the decision to enlist that these young women did. Notwithstanding the livid horror of Abu Ghraib, there is something condescending and unconvincing about the portrayals of the poor people who are fighting the war for the rest of us. The class issue has shadowed the war from the start but has lately been getting more attention. It is the impetus for several initiatives on Capitol Hill and a theme of Michael Moores antiwar documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. Its a poverty draft, said Rick Jahnkow, who does anti-military recruiting in California. The vast number of people in this country who are escaping this draft are not elites. Theyre middle-class or upper-middle-class people. The issue started percolating politically last year. We were looking at casualties from Texas on the Department of Defense Web site and it struck us that Gee, these kids are coming from towns in Texas that we never heard of, said Robert G. Cushing, a retired sociology professor in Austin who works with the Austin American-Statesman. Not just small towns. But small towns not even close to metropolitan areas. The newspaper undertook a study of the numbers and found that while one in five Americans live in non-metropolitan counties, nearly one out of three casualties in Iraq have come from these counties. These are places that do not have a city over 50,000 people and are not within commuting distance of a big city. The papers interviews with enlistees from these places have shown that they cant find good jobs in their communities and feel that a university education is out of their reach they couldnt afford to move to a community near a state school. Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking minority member on the House Armed Services Committee, was even more emphatic. Last fall he stated that 43.5 percent of the soldiers killed in Iraq came from rural cities and towns with a population below 20,000. full: http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage4.asp -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Analysts - Putin to Launch Systematic Campaign Against Oligarchs
You should see the reaction to the Forbes report! (Forbes just released a the 100 richest people in Russia issue.) In the 90s, the oligarchs would trumpet their wealth to the skies and (probably) vocally exaggerate it. Now, they are scurrying to say that Forbes is overstating their wealth. They are all potential targets. The exception is Boris political corpse Berezovsky, who is threatening to sue Forbes (again) for allegedly understating his wealth at a mere $640 million. BB and Forbes have a hate relationship that goes back to 1995. -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 09:32:09 -0400 Subject: [PEN-L] Analysts - Putin to Launch Systematic Campaign Against Oligarchs The name has been changed to protect the innocent, but on the whole , the ex-Soviet People seem to have retained much better anti-capitalist reflexes than those in the West have now. Charles
Re: The Origins of Continents
more accurately, I can imagine that the ancient Greeks saw the area north of the Black Sea as some sort of barrier dividing continents (along with the Black Sea itself and the Bosphorus) -- and later thinkers simply followed their lead without thinking. But I remember reading that the ancient Greeks considered Ionia (part of today's Turkey) to be part of Europe. Jim Devine -Original Message- From: Devine, James Sent: Wed 5/26/2004 6:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Origins of Continents am I right to say that the division between Europe and Asia (which aren't separate continents, strictly speaking) simply reflects the us vs. them attitudes of the ancient Greeks? Jim Devine -Original Message- From: Shane Mage [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tue 5/25/2004 9:23 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Origins of Continents Jayson Funke asks: Can anyone tell me of [the] origin of the term continents? The term is of Greek origin, *epeiros*. It seems to have been first used in the sense of continent by Herodotos. Plato, at Timaios 25A, speaks of the American continent: ...all that we have here, lying within the Pillars of Herakles, is evidently a bay with a narrow entrance [in Phaedo he compares the Mediterranean to a frog pond] but that yonder [the Atlantic] is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Liability of contractors for torture in Iraq
May 26, 2004 THE LAW Who Would Try Civilians of U.S.? No One in Iraq By ADAM LIPTAK hough civilian translators and interrogators may have participated in the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, prosecuting them will present challenges, legal experts say, because such civilians working for the military are subject to neither Iraqi nor military justice. On the basis of a referral from the Pentagon, the Justice Department opened an investigation on Friday into the conduct of one civilian contractor in Iraq, who has not been identified. We remain committed to taking all appropriate action within our jurisdiction regarding allegations of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement. Prosecuting civilian contractors in United States courts would be fascinating and enormously complicated, said Deborah N. Pearlstein, director of the U.S. law and security program of Human Rights First. It is clear, on the other hand, that neither Iraqi courts nor American courts-martial are available. In June 2003, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator in Iraq, granted broad immunity to civilian contractors and their employees. They were, he wrote, generally not subject to criminal and civil actions in the Iraqi legal system, including arrest and detention. That immunity is limited to their official acts under their contracts, and it is unclear whether any abuses alleged can be said to have been such acts. But even unofficial conduct by contractors in Iraq cannot be prosecuted there, Mr. Bremer's order said, without his written permission. Similarly, under a series of Supreme Court decisions, civilians cannot be court-martialed in the absence of a formal declaration of war. There was no such declaration in the Iraq war. In theory, the president could establish new military commissions to try civilians charged with offenses in Iraq, said Jordan Paust, a law professor at the University of Houston and a former member of the faculty at the Army's Judge Advocate General's School. The commissions announced by President Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks do not, however, have jurisdiction over American citizens. That leaves prosecution in United States courts. There, prosecutors might turn to two relatively narrow laws, or a broader one, to pursue their cases. A 1994 law makes torture committed by Americans outside the United States a crime. The law defines torture as the infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering. But some human rights groups suspect that the administration may be reluctant to use the law, because its officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have resisted calling the abuse at Abu Ghraib torture. If they don't want to use the word `torture,' Ms. Pearlstein said, prosecutions under the torture act aren't likely. A 1996 law concerning war crimes allows prosecutions for violations of some provisions of the Geneva Conventions, including those prohibiting torture, outrages upon personal dignity and humiliating and degrading treatment. Bush administration lawyers cited potential prosecutions under the law as a reason not to give detainees at Guantánamo Bay the protections of the Geneva Conventions. But the administration has said that the conventions apply to detainees in Iraq. Both the torture law and the war-crimes law provide for long prison sentences, and capital punishment is available in cases involving the victim's death. The broader law, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, allows people employed by or accompanying the armed forces outside the United States to be prosecuted in United States courts for federal crimes punishable by more than a year's imprisonment. People who are citizens or residents of the host nations are not covered, but Americans and other foreign nationals are. The law has apparently been invoked only once, in a case involving charges that the wife of an Air Force staff sergeant murdered him in Turkey last year. The case will soon be tried in federal court in Los Angeles. The law was passed to fill a legal gap that had existed since the 1950's, when Supreme Court decisions limited the military's ability to prosecute civilians in courts-martial during peacetime. In 2000, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in New York, citing that gap, reluctantly overturned the conviction of an American civilian who had sexually abused a child in Germany. In an unusual move, the judges sent their decision to two Congressional committees. That helped encourage enactment of the law that year. The law requires the Pentagon, in consultation with the State and Justice Departments, to establish regulations on how to carry it out. Though it was enacted four years ago, the regulations are still under consideration. In any event, there are gaps and uncertainties in the law. For one thing, it applies only to contractors employed by the Defense Department. Contractors hired by
Re: End of oil
Back in 1991, heightened insecurity in the Arab region also resulted in short lived high oil prices. Pinning a projection on any price, save the oil price movement, is audacious at best. There are definite supply constraints, but these remain for the time being at least remotely related to the depleting nature of the resource and the possibility that hitting peak production lies in store. Many forecasts situate global oil production at or about peak circa 2006-2008. What goes unmentioned however is that these predictions are based on the present fine and cheaply extracted quality of oil and not lower quality oils as those in tar sands for instance? Hence, with that natural bottleneck discounted, it is the present supply policy conditions, including the politics of instability in oil producing regions and not the exhaustive nature of oil that are to blame. Presently, there is enough slack in capacity, at least before reaching refineries, to offset any fear of serious shortages. The power brokers behind prices are already at work cutting corners to lessen the cartel-oil companiesoligarchic power and increase supply. Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 'End of Oil' Author Paul RobertsMay 6, 2004The demand for oil increases each year, but the supply is notinexhaustible. Experts predict that within 30 years our oil energysources will be depleted. In his book, The End of Oil: On the Edge of aPerilous New World, Roberts looks at the implications for the world interms of the economy, politics and the environment, and whatalternatives exist for oil. Roberts writes about the energy industry forHarper's magazine and for other national publications.Audio/interview with Roberts is at:http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1874931--The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org Do you Yahoo!?Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
Re: The Origins of Continents
am I right to say that the division between Europe and Asia (which aren't separate continents, strictly speaking) simply reflects the us vs. them attitudes of the ancient Greeks? Jim Devine These supposed us vs. them attitudes are certainly not to be found in Homer, Herodotos, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, or Demosthenes. For the ancient Greeks it was always much more us vs. us. Nor did they consider Europe, Asia, and Libya to be continents in the sense indicated by Plato, but rather as areas within a much larger landmass whose total dimensions were only vaguely known. Shane Mage -Original Message- From: Shane Mage [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tue 5/25/2004 9:23 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Origins of Continents Jayson Funke asks: Can anyone tell me of [the] origin of the term continents? The term is of Greek origin, *epeiros*. It seems to have been first used in the sense of continent by Herodotos. Plato, at Timaios 25A, speaks of the American continent: ...all that we have here, lying within the Pillars of Herakles, is evidently a bay with a narrow entrance [in Phaedo he compares the Mediterranean to a frog pond] but that yonder [the Atlantic] is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Analysts - Putin to Launch Systematic Campaign Against Oligarchs
Melvin: I would not like to be in Putin shoes, although the leather on these shoes can sustain an immediate long haul. Putin is going to defeat the oligarchy and expropriate their wealth or a large part of it through taxation or direct state intervention. Putin does not desire to defeat a class or property relations but individuals. What would you do that makes economic sense with oil over $40 a barrel? Ten dollars a barrel could immediately be earmarked for pensions, housings, social programs and a bureaucracy on your side. Gas can be heavily taxed based on ownership of private automobiles. The profits from the petroleum industry can be taxed . . . according to what the government says is fair . . . which can change daily . . . or those opposed to this policy of fluidity can go to jail. --- Me: Bingo. The Putin position seems to be that, if you do what the state wants, you can have all the money you want. If you cross the state, you go down. Hard. We will see what happens to the shares of Yukos that were frozen. I am 90% sure that they will either be renationalized or go to a proxy for the state. Really, those KGB guys who were muzzled while the Yeltsin people were looting the country must be having the time of their lives. They have incriminating material on so many people... All it takes is a signal from above, and they run and do their thing like happy little attack dogs. It's almost a thing of beauty. Allegedly, when Putin had his famous meeting with the oligarchs in 2000, he brought a case of kompromat (compromising materials) just to remind those present that he was KGB (now, FSB), that the KGB knows things, and that they had better know their place.
Re: Nick Berg and Ben Linder
I found the NYT article very suspicious. It ignores or does not resolve important questions and leaves out important details. Although the article notes at one point that Iraqi police and US officials both deny they had custody of Berg it also recounts as fact that he was in Iraqi police custody. What sort of crappy journalism is that? Also it does not mention such important details as the part in the video execution where the executioners claim he is being executed because a deal could not be made to trade Berg for Abu Ghraib prisoner(s). Nor as you suggest it doesnt discuss the execution video details either. Nor does it mention the fact that Berg was said to have been in possession of a Koran and anti-semitic literature. The article is a human interest entertainment fluff job. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Paul Zarembka [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:01 AM Subject: Re: Nick Berg and Ben Linder I find the question of whether Berg was actually killed by beheading and by whom far more interesting than the NYT article about Berg's personality. See, for example, The Nicholas Berg execution: A working hypothesis and a resolution for the orange jumpsuit mystery http://www.brushtail.com.au/nick_berg_hypothesis.html Paul Z. * 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 Origins of Continents
There are very solid geological theories on which our understanding of the continents is based. Here is one site with some basic information: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets/earth/Continents .shtml Frederick Emrich, Editor commons-blog (http://info-commons.org/blog/) RSS Feed: http://www.info-commons.org/blog/index.rdf info-commons.org (http://info-commons.org/index.shtml) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Shane Mage [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:26 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Origins of Continents am I right to say that the division between Europe and Asia (which aren't separate continents, strictly speaking) simply reflects the us vs. them attitudes of the ancient Greeks? Jim Devine These supposed us vs. them attitudes are certainly not to be found in Homer, Herodotos, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, or Demosthenes. For the ancient Greeks it was always much more us vs. us. Nor did they consider Europe, Asia, and Libya to be continents in the sense indicated by Plato, but rather as areas within a much larger landmass whose total dimensions were only vaguely known. Shane Mage -Original Message- From: Shane Mage [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tue 5/25/2004 9:23 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Origins of Continents Jayson Funke asks: Can anyone tell me of [the] origin of the term continents? The term is of Greek origin, *epeiros*. It seems to have been first used in the sense of continent by Herodotos. Plato, at Timaios 25A, speaks of the American continent: ...all that we have here, lying within the Pillars of Herakles, is evidently a bay with a narrow entrance [in Phaedo he compares the Mediterranean to a frog pond] but that yonder [the Atlantic] is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: The Origins of Continents
http://homepage.smc.edu/morris_pete/continents.pdf The Myth of Continents, or How our Grade-School Teachers Distorted the Truth by Peter S. Morris How many continents are there? It seems like a simple enough question, and most of us who grew up in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century come prepared with a pat answer to which we give little thought: There are seven continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. Next question, please. The official flag of the Olympic games, however, displays a famous symbol of interlocking rings, each ring intended to represent one of the five continents of the world, the two Americas treated as one and Antarctica simply forgotten. Rather than some sort of geographic maverick, this lineup of five continents, not seven, is a standard one taught throughout much of Europe. So what is the answer to our question? Is it five, or is it seven? Well, the most thoughtful answer might actually be none of the above, or better yet, it depends. There are few terms in geography that are more loaded with implied meanings and biased world views than continent. As a common-sense concept, the idea is simple enough: pick up a globe and one can readily observe a half-dozen distinctive (if barely connected) land masses. The exact number is debatable, depending on ones size threshold for when an island becomes a continent. Is Australia large enough to be a continent? How about Greenland? Madagascar? Personally, Im inclined to answer these questions Yes, No, and No, giving me a list of six: North America, South America, Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. To my eyes at least, this half-dozen represents the worlds primary distinctive land masses, as opposed to islands. While this list is debatable, one thing clearly isnt: Europe is not a continentat least as long as we continue to see continent as more or less a synonym for land mass. Without question, Europe is a distinctive world region, both in social-cultural terms and as an environmental subcontinent of Eurasia. If we insist on calling Europe a continent, though, then consistency demands we do so for other, analogous regions around the world, such as South Asia (India and its neighbors) and Mesoamerica (Mexico and its neighbors). Our original list of five, six, or seven continents now expands to a dozen or more. The bigger lesson, though, is not that there are really six continents, rather than the usual list of five or seven. Instead, this whole subjective exercise in continental definition teaches us how fruitless the idea of dividing the world into continents really is. As a type of region, continents are intended to provide a classification scheme by which we make some sense of the world. But closer inspection reveals that continents provide us with, at best, only a limited and rather distorted sense of world geography. There are two primary problems with the concept. First, the history of the continental idea is closely tied to ideas of European superiority. As geographers Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen discuss in their wonderful book, The Myth of Continents, Europeans defined Asia as a catch-all concept to hold the various non-Christian, non-Western peoples who didnt live up to their notions of what modern civilization should be. Not only did the idea of Asia, or Orientalism, hide from view the great diversity of places, peoples, environments, landscapes, and cultures that occupy the eastern three-quarters of Eurasia, but it served to simplify Europes conception of itself. The idea of a continental divide between Europe and Asia became a tool for those seeking to excise Islam, Communism, Judaism, and any other ideologies and cultures that conflicted with their personal visions of what Europe was and should be. The second problem with using continents, or even a more innocent notion of land masses free of the eurocentrism described above, as an organizational framework for understanding the world, is its implied environmental determinism. A major theme of geography is how physical environments help shape the cultures and societies that inhabit themhow climate and soil and topography and natural avenues of transportation influence agricultural and other economic activity and the location of cities and other human settlements. But one of the biggest geographic fallacies is to take such thinking to the extreme, to say that environmental conditions are the single, dominant determinant of human activitythe ultimate explanation for all the cultures, landscapes, and geographies of wealth and poverty that we see today. Such simplistic thinking geographers reject as environmental determinism. What does this have to do with continents? It is all well and good to recognize that land and water on earth is grouped into a pattern we might identify as a geography of oceans and land
FW: [PEN-L] The Origins of Continents
I ran across this definition that sheds some light: A continent (from the Latin continere for to hold together) is a large continuous mass of land in the planet Earth. There is no single standard for what defines a continent, and therefore various cultures and sciences have different lists of what are considered to be continents. In general, a continent must be large in area, consist of non-submerged land, and have geologically significant borders. While some consider that there are as few as four or five continents, the most commonly used counts are six or seven. Two of the largest disagreements in listing continents are whether Europe and Asia should be considered separately or combined into Eurasia, and whether North America and South America should be considered separately or combined into America. A few geographers have also suggested grouping Europe, Asia, and Africa into a continent of Eurafrasia (see Africa-Eurasia). The seven continent model is commonly taught in Western Europe and North America, while the six continent (combined Eurasia) model is also taught in North America and is the primary continent model used in scientific contexts. The six continent (combined Americas) model is commonly taught in Eastern Europe and South America. The continents of the five continents model (as shown by the five Olympic Games flag rings) are speculated to be the five permamently populated continents (viewing Antarctica as only temporarily populated, and all the Americas as one). Continents are sometimes conceptually combined to make supercontinents or subdivided to make subcontinents. These terms are less precisely defined than continent itself. Islands are usually considered to belong to the continent they are closest to, and hence the British Isles are considered to be a part of Europe. Sometimes Australasia or Oceania is used to refer collectively to Australia and the Pacific islands. Both terms, however, have fairly precise meanings. When The Continent is referred to without clarification by a speaker of British English, it is usually presumed to mean Continental Europe, i.e. Europe, explicitly excluding Great Britain and Ireland. Similarly, when the term the Subcontinent is used, it is presumed to refer to India. See also List of countries by continent, Satellite Images of Continents. Some systems of defining continents Seven Continents: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia (Oceania), Europe, North America, and South America. Six Continents: Africa, Antarctica, Australia (Oceania), Eurasia, North America, and South America. Six Continents: Africa, America, Antarctica, Asia, Australia (Oceania), and Europe. Five Continents: Africa, America, Antarctica, Asia, Oceania. Five Continents: Africa, America, Australia (Oceania), Antarctica, Eurasia. Four Continents: America, Australia (Oceania), Antarctica, Eurafrasia. See also: continental shelf, earth science, geography, geology, plate tectonics. Full at: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Image:Physical_world.jpg Thanks to everyone for their help. Jayson Funke 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)
Che at Cannes
Cannes stands to cheer story of Che's road to revolution By Hugh Davies (Filed: 20/05/2004) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ As the 20th century's most romanticised revolutionary, Ernesto Che Guevara, dead since 1967, is being immortalised in a rash of new films led by a British-backed epic based on his writings. At two screenings in Cannes yesterday, audiences reacted with standing ovations. Critics hailed what Variety called a beautifully wrought account of how 52 years ago, Guevara travelled on a 1939 Norton 500 from Buenos Aires through Chile, Machu Picchu in Peru and Venezuela, on an eye-opening road trip. The Motorcycle Diaries shows how the journey set the tone for his devotion to communism. The grisly details of what happened to him after the 1959 Cuban revolution - his role in nearly 2,000 executions, his falling out with Fidel Castro, and his miserable death in Bolivia where he had tried to trigger another uprising - are left to other film-makers. Instead, the Brazilian director Walter Salles, acclaimed for Behind The Sun and Central Station, has concentrated on Guevara's eight months in the company of a fellow Argentinian, Alberto Granado, recreating his dawning social conscience. At the time, Guevara, an inward-looking asthmatic, was an upper-class medical student with no particular interest in politics. The diaries, given to Salles in Havana by Guevara's widow, Aleida, show how his travelling companion stirred his interest in Stalin and the Russian revolution. Granado, a tiny, impish man, now 81 and living in Havana, worked closely with Salles to recreate the journey, travelling with the director and his actors. He said in Cannes: I was 29 and he was 24. There was a sort of progressive transformation. We were young, and we saw what the reactionaries were doing to the world. Crucial to the making of the film, which took five years, was the £6.6 million raised by Film Four and the help of Robert Redford, the executive producer. Six years ago, Redford visited Cuba, where Guevara remains lionised in statues, on murals, and at stores which sell photographs of him marlin fishing with Castro and Ernest Hemingway. Redford returned to Havana four months ago to show The Motorcycle Diaries to Guevara's family. Che's daughter, Celia, said: If you read the books Daddy wrote, you will see that the film is very faithful to the original. A former revolutionary commander, Ramiro Valdes, was also at the screening, and later Castro turned up at the Hotel Nacional to discuss the film with Redford. Whether he saw the picture is not known. Castro's uneasy relationship with the more charismatic, and harder-working Guevara has never been fully explained. It is thought that when he went to Bolivia, the leader was glad to see the back of him. Interest in the diary film is intense, especially as Guevara is played by Gael Garcia Bernal, 25, the dark-eyed Mexican actor who came to prominence in another road film, Y tu mama tambien. Omar Sharif played Che in 1969, and Antonio Banderos took the role in Evita, eight years ago. In July, Terrence Malik, who made Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, starts shooting the $40 million Che, which will follow Guevera's final years.
South Asia's Women Garment Workers: Globalisation's Race to the Bottom
Date: Sun, 24 May 2004 South Asia's women garment workers: Globalisation's race to the bottom By Ron Chepesiuk The Daily Star (Pakistan) Vol. 4 Num 344 Wed. May 19, 2004 Ech day, 20-year old Farida leaves her home in the slums of Dhaka and walks for one hour to her job at the Dalia Garment Factory. Farida, who, like many garment workers interviewed for this article, didn't want her real or last name used for fear of losing her job, works 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and sometimes as much as two hours more, often seven days a week. For her labour, the young worker earns the equivalent of about $18 per month. At night, Farida must walk through the pitch black and dangerous streets of a city notorious for its crime rate. For 32-year old Narayan, the walk to her job at the Krishna Garment Factory in Kathmandu, Nepal, is shorter than Farida's, but she complains of having to stand on her feet all day, 48 hours per week, and not getting paid on time. A month or two sometimes will go by before I get paid, explained Narayan, who has worked at the factory for 14 years. I want my employer to follow the law and pay me on time. Meanwhile, 30-year old Bathra Kumari toils on the production line at Martin Imprix Factory in the Free Trade Zone on the outskirts of Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital. With overtime, Bathra can earn about $28 per month. At night she walks 45 to 50 minutes to get to her boarding house where she shares a 10 by 12 feet room with three other women. There are three toilets for the thirty workers, a shortage of water and often no electricity, Bathra revealed. These three workers are among the thousands of women working in South Asia's Ready Made Garment (RMG) industry. Their stories document a harsh reality -- the RMG industry is the quintessential poster example of globalisation's false promise of prosperity. The garment workers make the brand-name clothing and apparel that many of us buy, but compared to the profits reaped by the factory owners and buyers, the vast majority of them are barely scratching out a living, earning poverty level wages and working in substandard and unregulated conditions. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as US $1 a day, but my investigation found that few workers in South Asia's RMG industry are earning that amount. The competition among factory workers within South Asia and among other garment-producing regions has created the proverbial race to the bottom whose effects are not hard to identify, explained Ashwini Sukthankar, Director of Research and Investigations for the Washington, DC based Workers' Rights Consortium. The labour organisation monitors labour standards at factories producing apparel bearing the names and logos of 112 colleges and universities in the U.S. The RMG industry is vital to growth of the South Asian economies. Indeed, the industry is the biggest foreign exchange earner for most of the region's countries. In Bangladesh, for instance, the total RMG industry share is 76 percent, while for India and Sri Lanka, the figure is 45 and 54 percent respectively. The garment sector is not only Bangladesh's biggest foreign exchange earner, it has played a key role in our development efforts, explained S.M. Nurul Hoque, Acting President of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. South Asia's RMG industry has attracted big-time buyers like GAP, J.C. Penney, Levi Strauss, Disney and Wal- Mart, among others, with promises of cheap labour and big tax breaks. These buyers are at the top of the RMG industry ladder. They place orders with brand name manufacturers, who, in turn, use contractors in the local country to assemble the garments. The contractors then recruit, hire and pay the workers, who occupy the bottom rung. The contractors' competitive bidding drive contract prices so low that they have a difficult time paying the minimum wage or overtime to workers. Most contractors are put in a take it or leave it position and must accept whatever low price the manufacturers give them or see the work placed in another garment factory either somewhere else in the country or abroad, explained Nikki Fortunato Bas, Co- Director of Sweatshop Watch.. The contractors must sweat their profits out of their workers, cut corners and operate unsafe workplaces. Sweatshop Watch is an Oakland, California based labour coalition committed to eliminating the exploitation in sweat shops in the U.S. and globally. Most of the workers who have made the RMG industry a success are women -- young women between age 20 and 29 -- who have left their villages in the region's rural areas in search of a better life or to get away from abusive environments. During the formative period of South Asia's garment industry, from 1980 to 1995, the share of its female employment rose from 17 to 69 percent in Bangladesh and from 23 to 49 percent in India. Even Nepal, which has a lower share of female employment compared to other countries in the region, saw a significant rise in the
Faculty for Israeli-Palesntinian Peace - May 2004 Update
May 2004 FFIPP Update Dear Friends of FFIPP, Recent events in Gaza, the massive destruction of homes and civilian lives in Rafah and Gaza City, should be protested world wide. (See below information on events in Gaza and email addresses for sending messages of outrage and condemnations.) Moreover, urgent action is needed to prevent further destruction and death in Gaza. Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon is quoted in the Haaretz, saying, Hundreds of Palestinian houses along the Israel-Egypt border have been targeted for demolition. The large demonstration in Tel Aviv to ³Get out of Gaza and Start talking² is encouraging. We hope it will energize the peace camp in Israel to be active in building a movement to end the occupation of all Palestinian land taken in 1967 and to work with Palestinians for reconciliation, peace and justice for both people. FFIPP Upcoming Activities FFIPP 3rd International Conference FFIPP 2nd International Conference: An End to Occupation, A Just Peace in Israel-Palestine: Toward an active International Network, will take place at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium on July 3 -5, 2004. The conference will address the following issues: Higher Education in Palestine and the Defense of Academic Freedom The Wall, the Settlements and the Occupation: Which Way Forward? The Role of the European Union Report from Peace Groups in Israel-Palestine Reconciliation Today, Peace Tomorrow Group Discussions: Proposals for Action Panelists include: Prof. Okasha, Egypt; Eric Rouleau, France; Pierre Galland, Belgium; Issac Jad, Palestine, Oren Yiftachel, Israel; Salim Tamari, Palestine; Dr. Eyad El Sarraj, Palestine; Shulamit Aloni, Israel; Johan Galtung, Norway; Prof. Etienne Balibar, France; Prof. Adi Ophir, Israel; Luisa Morgontini, Italy; and others. A special effort is made to attract students to the conference and establish a student network for peace, justice and democracy in Israel-Palestine and the Middle East. Please spread the word about the conference among your colleagues and students. Registration for the conference can be done on the FFIPP web site, http://www.ffipp.org/, or at the conference. Information on hotels for the participants of the conference is on the FFIPP web site as well. Please let us know if you need an invitation from a faculty member at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. FFIPP Faculty Delegation to Israel-Palestine: June 18 - July 1, 2004 FFIPP 5th Delegation to Israel-Palestine is planned for June 18 to July 1. The delegation will meet with faculty and students in Israel and the occupied territories, Israeli and Palestinian community and political leaders, peace activists and experts on the conflict. Please visit FFIPP web site, http://www.ffipp.org/, to learn about past FFIPP delegations. FFIPP Fall Semester Campus Plans FFIPP will continue with the joint talks of Israeli and Palestinian faculty. FFIPP is also planning to organize a campus tour of an Arab and Jewish students from Haifa University and a campus tour of two Palestinian students from the occupied territories. A tour of two Israeli refusers is planned as well. Please let us know if you are interested to host any of these events on your campus. FFIPP Petition in Support of Academic Freedom for Palestinian and Freedom from Occupation In case you did sign the petition please do so via the FFIPP web site, http://www.ffipp.org/. Please ask your colleagues to sign the petition as well. Thank you. For Peace and Justice Yoav Elinevsky
Kissinger telcons
Sender: The National Security Archive [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: NSARCHIVE [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Update: Read the Kissinger Telcons To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] National Security Archive Update, May 26, 2004 READ THE KISSINGER TELCONS Five years after the National Security Archive initiated legal action to compel the State Department and the National Archives to recover the transcripts of Henry Kissinger's telephone calls from his private collection at the Library of Congress, the National Archives today released approximately 20,000 declassified pages (10 cubic feet) of these historic records, spanning Kissinger's tenure from 1969 to August 1974 as national security adviser and then secretary of state to President Nixon. To celebrate the public recovery of this previously sequestered history, the National Security Archive today posted The Kissinger Telcons, the 123rd electronic briefing book in the Archive series. One highlight of the posting are ten Kissinger telcons obtained by Archive senior analyst Dr. William Burr. All ten will be officially released today, but we found copies in other, previously released, Nixon administration files, and are providing them here as a sampler of things to come. These records feature conversations with President Nixon, Motion Picture Association president Jack Valenti, and Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller, among others. Later today, the Archive will post additional telcons from the new release. Today's posting also includes the full text of the finding aid to the Kissinger telcons collection, created by the Nixon Presidential Materials Staff of the National Archives and Records Administration; the National Security Archive's legal complaint (written by Lee Rubin and Craig Isenberg of the Mayer Brown law firm) and correspondence that persuaded the government to recover the telcons from Kissinger; and a side by side comparison of a Kissinger telcon and a Nixon tape of the same conversation. Please use the following link to read the Kissinger telcons: http://www.nsarchive.org __ -- --- 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: Analysts - Putin to Launch Systematic Campaign Against Oligarchs
In a message dated 5/26/2004 9:41:46 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Bingo.The Putin position seems to be that, if you do what the state wants, you can have all the money you want. If you cross the state, you go down. Hard.We will see what happens to the shares of Yukos that were frozen. I am 90% sure that they will either be renationalized or go to a proxy for the state.Really, those KGB guys who were muzzled while the Yeltsin people were looting the country must be having the time of their lives. They have incriminating material on so many people... All it takes is a signal from above, and they run and do their thing like happy little attack dogs. It's almost a thing of beauty.Allegedly, when Putin had his famous meeting with the oligarchs in 2000, he brought a case of kompromat (compromising materials) just to remind those present that he was KGB (now, FSB), that the KGB knows things, and that they had better know their place. Reply The first law of all politics on earth is that "politics are local." If you are Putin then local politics means the corporation that is Russia. Pardon, but I am a communist worker - second generation auto, and have spent some time over the last 30 years looking at the Soviet Union. I am also a former trade union leaders which gave me access to very clear data about production, reproduction and the material projections of that section of the bourgeoisie connected to large scale industrial production. For reasons that are hard to describe . . . comrades simply do not believe me when I statethat in the top level meeting between the union and the company, the representatives of capital are brutally frank. Their lives and careers are depended upon their frankness with their industrial counterparts.Both parts of this labor capital relationship - as organized labor, is mutually interdependent. I understand men of responsibility like Putin. He has a mandate that neither Bush Jr. or Clinton for that matter can claim. Politics at its base line is the art of the possible. What makes Pen-L extremely interesting and exciting for me is that I can leave the orbit of ideology and "get down" to the hard nasty business of economic interest and money. Putin is running a corporation called Russia. He is not playing a game. Putin has more credibility than Bush and a much larger popular mandate. And he looks fucking good . . . and calm . . . on television. Melvin P.
query: labor arbitrage
what's the name of the economist (left-Keynesian, pessimistic, works for some big bokerage) who recently wrote about labor arbitrage? where can I find his article? what do people think of that article? Jim Devine
Perfect Neocon Iraq Cartoon
http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?mscssid=AT1VQC89CE608MUND8P0LBU63RKK1R88sitetype=1sid=70643did=4
Operation Eternal Racism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1223525,00.html The GuardianMay 24, 2004. 'Its best use is as a doorstop' Brian Whitaker explains why a book packed with sweeping generalisations about Arabs carries so much weight with both neocons and military in the US Consider these statements: Why are most Africans, unless forced by dire necessity to earn their livelihood with 'the sweat of their brow', so loath to undertake any work that dirties the hands? The all-encompassing preoccupation with sex in the African mind emerges clearly in two manifestations ... In the African view of human nature, no person is supposed to be able to maintain incessant, uninterrupted control over himself. Any event that is outside routine everyday occurrence can trigger such a loss of control ... Once aroused, African hostility will vent itself indiscriminately on all outsiders. These statements, I think you'll agree, are thoroughly offensive. You would probably imagine them to be the musings of some 19th century colonialist. In fact, they come from a book promoted by its US publisher as one of the great classics of cultural studies, and described by Publisher's Weekly as admirable, full of insight and with an impressive spread of scholarship. The book is not actually about Africans. Instead, it takes some of the hoariest old prejudices about black people and applies them to Arabs. Replace the word African in the quotations above with the word Arab, and you have them as they appear in the book. It is, the book says, the Arabs who are lazy, sex-obsessed, and apt to turn violent over the slightest little thing. Writing about Arabs, rather than black people, in these terms apparently makes all the difference between a racist smear and an admirable work of scholarship. The book in question is called The Arab Mind, and is by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at several US universities, including Columbia and Princeton. I must admit that, despite having spent some years studying Arabic language and culture, I had not heard of this alleged masterpiece until last week, when the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh mentioned it in an article for New Yorker magazine. Hersh was discussing the chain of command that led US troops to torture Iraqi prisoners. Referring specifically to the sexual nature of some of this abuse, he wrote: The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was The Arab Mind ... the book includes a 25-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression. Hersh continued: The Patai book, an academic told me, was 'the bible of the neocons on Arab behaviour'. In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged - 'one, that Arabs only understand force, and two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation'. Last week, my own further enquiries about the book revealed something even more alarming. Not only is it the bible of neocon headbangers, but it is also the bible on Arab behaviour for the US military. According to one professor at a US military college, The Arab Mind is probably the single most popular and widely read book on the Arabs in the US military. It is even used as a textbook for officers at the JFK special warfare school in Fort Bragg. In some ways, the book's appeal to the military is easy to understand, because it gives a superficially coherent view of the Arab enemy and their supposed personality defects. It is also readily digestible, uncomplicated by nuances and caveats, and has lots of juicy quotes, a generous helping of sex, and no academic jargon. The State Department, too, used to take an interest in the book, although it seemingly no longer does. At one stage, the training department gave free copies to officials when they were posted to US embassies in the Middle East. In contrast, opinions of Patai's book among Middle East experts at US universities are almost universally scathing. The best use for this volume, if any, is as a doorstop, one commented. The book is old, and a thoroughly discredited form of scholarship, said another. None of the academics I contacted thought the book suitable for serious study, although Georgetown University once invited students to analyse it as an example of bad, biased social science. There is a lot wrong with The Arab Mind apart from its racism: the title, for a start. Although the Arab countries certainly have their distinctive characteristics, the idea that 200 million people, from Morocco to the Gulf, living in rural villages, urban metropolises and (very rarely these days) desert tents, think with some sort of single, collective mind is utterly ridiculous. The result is a collection of outrageously broad - and often suspect - generalisations. Patai asserts, for example, that Arabs hate the west.
Re: query: labor arbitrage
Stephen Roach? http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20040209-mon.html On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 04:55:42PM -0700, Devine, James wrote: what's the name of the economist (left-Keynesian, pessimistic, works for some big bokerage) who recently wrote about labor arbitrage? where can I find his article? what do people think of that article? Jim Devine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: query: labor arbitrage
right. thanks. -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wed 5/26/2004 5:20 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] query: labor arbitrage Stephen Roach? http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20040209-mon.html On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 04:55:42PM -0700, Devine, James wrote: what's the name of the economist (left-Keynesian, pessimistic, works for some big bokerage) who recently wrote about labor arbitrage? where can I find his article? what do people think of that article? Jim Devine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Washington Post on Chavez
Action Alert: The Washington Post Should Support Democracy in Venezuela Instead of Spreading Misinformation Wednesday, May 26, 2004 By: Venezuela Information Office CONTACT THE WASHINGTON POST TO SUPPORT DEMOCRACY IN VENEZUELA Today, 26 May 2004, the Washington Post ran an Op-Ed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez calling on the opposition and the Bush administration to commit to respect the results of the signature repair process that will take place this coming weekend The Op-Ed is available online at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55957-2004May25.html, and is included at the end of this e-mail. Opposite the Op-Ed, the Washington Post's editorial page printed a factually inaccurate attack on the Venezuelan government (This editorial is available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55981-2004May25.html). Moreover, the Op-Ed will undoubtedly provoke a flurry of e-mail from right-wing radicals in the U.S. seeking to spread misinformation about Venezuela. Therefore, the Venezuela Information Office is asking people to write publishable letters to the editor of the Washington Post, in order to provide factual information about recent events in Venezuela and point out the factual inaccuracies contained in the Post's editorial. GUIDELINES FOR LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Send to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. Remember to include your home address and evening and daytime telephone numbers. Letters to the editor should no longer than 200 words long -- the shorter the better (roughly one-third of a page, single-spaced, maximum). Mention in your letter the date and title of the Op-Ed you are responding to. If you would like help drafting or editing your letter to the editor, please do not hesitate to contact the Venezuela Information Office at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 202-737-6637, x.27 (In the United States) While writing your letter you may want to keep in mind the following: --While the Hugo Chavez and other Venezuelan government officials have repeatedly pledged to respect the rule of law and obey the upcoming ruling by Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE), the opposition and the Bush administration have yet to offer such a guarantee. --Opposition leaders, including former President Carlos Andres Perez and former union leader Carlos Ortega, have recently made statements suggesting they plan to once again resort to violence in their drive to unseat Hugo Chavez. This raises the alarming possibility of renewed political violence in Venezuela. --Venezuela remains a democracy. Hugo Chavez was elected in both 1998 and 2000 in elections declared free and fair by international observers. The opposition controls 48 percent of the seats in Congress and regularly delays or blocks legislation supported by the government. The Supreme Court is independent, and has repeatedly ruled against Hugo Chavez, finding his land reform decrees unconstitutional and releasing from prison military officers charged with participating in the 2002 coup. The Venezuelan media is completely free, and attacks Chavez in the harshest of terms on a daily basis. The opposition regularly holds large, peaceful demonstrations without fear of police harassment. --The Chavez administration has implemented a wide variety of new social programs benefiting poor Venezuelans. These include clinics in impoverished neighborhoods, new schools, adult literacy classes, infrastructure projects in poor areas, and land reform. --Independent polls give Chavez an approval rate of 40%-50% nationwide, a figure comparable to US president George W. Bush. --The opposition blames Chavez for Venezuela's economic woes; in fact, the country fell into economic decline in the 1980s due to mismanagement and corruption. The economy has been no worse under Chávez than under his predecessors. Moreover, the single most economically destructive event in recent Venezuelan history was last year's opposition shutdown of the state oil company, which cost the economy around 14 billions dollars. The economy is growing rapidly right now and the IMF projects an 8.8 percent growth for 2004 (World Economic Outlook Spring 2004). --The Bush administration supported the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez. U.S. officials continue to make very hostile statements about the Chavez administration, and have said that they will not accept anything other than a recall referendum, regardless of whether the legal requirements for such a vote have been fulfilled. The administration should declare its support for Venezuela's independent electoral authorities and pledge to abide by their decision. --The editorial response to Chavez's Op-Ed contains multiple factual errors, some of which you may want to point out in your letter. These include: Since 1999, the Venezuelan economy has contracted 14 percent, not 25 percent as the editorial claims. Most of this contraction is due to the three months shutdown of the state oil company in 2002-2003, which was organized by the
Two, Three, or Many Oil Wars
Mike Davis appears to believe that the curve of global oil production is indeed near the point of descent and that Washington has a foreign policy to match it, a US master plan for the control of oil in an age of diminishing supply and soaring prices, dictated by narrow interests of corrupt oil men . . . Contrary to Davis's view, it is probably the case that the glaring lack of coherent foreign policy-making has made Washington fight two major oil wars at the same time, against the interests of Washington's governing elite themselves if not against those of oil men . . . Add Nigeria's labor unrest, the growing Chinese economy's oil demands, and terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia to Iraq and Venezuela, and Washington has in fact many oil wars on its hands. We may be closer to the hour of the furnaces than we know, not because Washington has any master plan, pace Davis, but in fact because its contradictory policy-making without a master plan (except the single-minded determination to always attack any gains made by the poor in any nation) has inadvertently helped to initiate more oil wars than it can handle. . . . The rest of the posting at http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/two-three-or-many-oil-wars.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/
