Re: JEP Schleiffer
Michael wrote: (B (BPaul deserves criticism for his summary of Shleifer -- he is far too gentle. Shliefer (Binsists that market-induced competition does not create undesirable consequences. It (Bis non-market corruption that is bad. (B (BResponse Jim C: I have been invited to present a paper in Beijing at Tsinghua (BUniversity at the upcoming conference on Sept 1-2 on The International Symposium on (Bthe Reform of Property Rights Enterprise Development in Transitional Countries. (BMy paper is on the "The Evolving Concept of Social Capital, Markets, Market-Based (BProcesses and Socialist Construction." (BThe paper argues that capitalism requires certain fundamental institutions, values, (Bnorms, power relations/structures, etc (social capital) for its expanded reproduction (Band the requisite fundamental social capital of capitalism is fundamentally (Bcontradictory to those fundamental institutions, values, norms, power (Brelations/structures requisite for socialist construction--even allowing for diverse (Bdefinitions of what socialism and socialist construction is all about. The social (Bcapital of capitalism, as in the case of social capital in general, involves (Binstitutions designed to foster some degrees of trust, hope, cooperation, social (Bcohesion and buying into the system on the part of the masses even as market-based (Bforms and levels of competition, values and behaviors associated with methodological (Bindividualism--along with the core relations and survival imperatives in capitalist (Bcompetition--undermine that social capital and objectively--and (Bmeasureably--cause/reinforce mas! (B s cynicism, loss of hope, loss of social cohesion, social darwinism, loss of trust, (Bfraud, environmental decay and inevitable trajectories/vicissitudes/trends that cause (Bloss of mass belief in the system itself. The paper argues that the core imperatives (Band power-relations/structures of survival in capitalist competition are (Bself-contradictory and undermine the requisite social capital of capitalism (necessary (Bfor its expanded reproduction) itself as well as being fundamentally in contradiction (Bwith--and hostile to--the requisite "social capital" of socialist construction (B (BThe paper argues that socialism is about dictatorship of the proletariat, changing (B"human nature" itself and progressively pulling up the poisonous weeds of capitalism (Band pre-capitalism (productive relations, ideas, myths, traditions, institutions, (Bpower relations/structures, etc) and that although China faces myriad challenges and (Bhorrible historical legacies that must be addressed, along with increasing hostility (Band threatening machinations from U.S. imperialism thus making rapid development of (Bmaterial forces even more imperative for survival and socialist construction of China, (Ball capitalist/market-based institutions are fundamentally contradictory to socialist (Bconstruction and should be regrarded as tactical compromises (as Lenin honesty (Bcharacterized the NEP in Russia) for the purposes of strategic advance and not a new (Bmodel of socialist construction to be emulated elsewhere. (B (BI have been asked to moderate a workshop on the question of whether or not capitalism (Bis being restored in China--or has already been restored in China--with proponents of (Bthe thesis--that capitalism is being/has been restored in China--(of which I am not (Bone)invited to debate the question with scholars from Tsingua and other Chinese (Buniversities who anxiously await the debate. (B (BI also note, that the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard, (Boriginally one of the sponsors of the Symposium, is no longer listed as one of the (Bsponsors and I wonder if the machinations of Schleiffer had something to do with that. (B (B (BPlace: Tsinghua University, Beijing (BTime: September 1-2, 2004 (B (BThe International Symposium on the Reform of Property Rights (B Enterprise Development in Transitional Countries (B (BINVITATION (B (BDear Professor: (B (BI am very pleased to invite you to take part in the International Symposium on the (BReform of Property Rights Enterprise Development in Sino-Russian Economic (BTransition, which will be held in Beijing on 1-2 September, 2004. The participants (Bwill include some distinguished scholars of this field from China, Russia, the United (BStates, Britain, Japan and other countries, about 20 from home and overseas (Bseparately; high officials from the National Development and Reform Commission, State (B-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, (BDevelopment Research Center of the State Council $B!$ (JFinance and Economics (BCommission of NPC, Law Commission of NPC, and distinguished entrepreneurs from both (Bstate-owned and private-owned enterprises and foreign corporations. (B (BMain topics of the
Re: quotation du jour
-Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Devine, James Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 9:48 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] quotation du jour George Monbiot in today's (Aug.3's) GUARDIAN on democracy in the so-called industrial democracies: we can vote out the monkeys but not the organ-grinder. Jim Devine Response Jim C: Loved the quote. Here is another one from Monica Lewinski (a real quote). For some time I was a Democrat but now I am a Republican. The Democrats just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Re: Communalising Kerala
This is truly sad. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Response Jim C: This does indeed break my heart. I lived in Kerala during part of the 1980s in a little village of about 150 people; the village was half Hindu, half Syrian Orthodox Christian, it was half Congress-I and half CPM in political orientation, and it was one of the few places in India where sectarian violence was unknown. Kerala was one of the few States of India where you could literally find Jews (many in Cochin), Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Communists, Jains and many other groups living side-by-side without the sectarian violence. Of course there were organizations like RSS, Shiv Sena, Arya Sammagayam (I met one of the leaders of RSS once by accident) but they confined themselves mostly to polemics and covert organizing with none of the violence common in the north. There were also survivors of the Naxalites who had been targeted for extermination by the central government but they mostly stayed underground and in some cases went on to other forms of political action on the inside. I still have friends in Kerala and I'll be asking about this from those on the ground there now. Jim C.
Re: FW: Blackfoot Constitution
Please, Jim no attachments. Not a Bhuddist comment. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Sorry about that Michael. I forgot...Old age and some powerfu meds at work I fear. Jim
Bush Family, Skull and Bones, Nazis and Eugenics (Parts 1-4)
Title: Message available at http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
FW: [Marxism] Fwd: Michael Moore letter to las vegas
From Michael Moore's letter to Las Vegas: What country do you live in? Last time I checked, Las Vegas is still in the United States. And in the United States, we have something called The First Amendment. This constitutional right gives everyone here the right to say whatever they want to say. All Americans hold this right as sacred. Many of our young people put on a uniform and risk their lives to defend it. My film is all about asking the questions that should have been asked before those brave soldiers were sent into harms way. For you to throw Linda Ronstadt off the premises because she dared to say a few words in support of me and my film, is simply stupid and Un-American. Response Jim C: Look, whatever the problems or deficiencies in Moore's film from any ideological purist's point of view (or from the point of view of those familiar with even more salient facts/perspectives than mentioned by Moorer in his film), I do applaud his effort and that he did manage to get some salient facts across to some very diverse audiences that would have not otherwise been exposed to such facts. But if part of the story that is missing--in order to get across another part of the story in ways more acceptable on a mass level--undermines the part of the story being put across and/or creates further illusions, and mystifications--or outright bourgeois falsehoods and lies about America--then what is the point? But... This appeal to de jure formalism and what America is really about and what those who put on uniform are really fighting for is noxious. Our young people--and not-so-young people--who put on a uniform may believe they are fighting for the American Way, American Freedom, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, etc. but they are really fighting for imperialism, plutocracy, oligarchy, despotism, illusions, puppet client-states, imperial hegemony and hubris, conspicuous consumption, unbridled environmental degradation, racism, sexism, fascism, militarism, etc--on the objective level--and on the subjective level, they are often fighting for money for college education, self-esteem issues, hero-complex, travel, adventure, relatively good pay for relatively little formal education, training, skills, resume embellishment, the Audy-Murphy-syndrome, family traditions, etc. And no, not all Americans hold the Bill of Rights as sacred; certainly not those who vote for Bush and also a good percentage of those who vote for Kerry do not hold these de jure (hardly rights de facto) rights as sacred. Jim C.
Re: Michael Moore letter to las vegas
Michael Moore writes: Last time I checked, Las Vegas is still in the United States. And in the United States, we have something called The First Amendment. This constitutional right gives everyone here the right to say whatever they want to say. All Americans hold this right as sacred. isn't free speech limited in corporate-owned venues? jd Absolutely true: Free speech and other rights apply--by law--only in federal or state employment (with exception of military, police and some other segments) and/or in venues receiving federal or state monies. Jim C
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Hoover wrote: people do different things, as for doug, he's a reporter (he may think of himself in other terms), i've indicated number of times in past impact that i think this has on his perspective re. certain things To which Doug Henwood replied: I usually say journalist, but I won't complain about reporter. I'm clearly not objective, in the New York Times-approved sense, but getting involved in party politics would ruin whatever credibility I have - and I don't have a lot of time to spare anyway. According to the old formula for policial action - agitate, educate, and organize - I concentrate on the first two. There are plenty of people around to handle the third. Doug Response Jim C: First of all, I have always seen these dimensions of political action as dialectially united and inseparable with each dimension informing, shaping and testing the others. It is through organizing and organizing goals/imperatives for example, that one directs, sees and tests effectiveness--or lack of effectiveness--on the agitational and educational fronts. Plus, real-world organizing often provides the raw data and information (outside of ideologically cherry-picked sources of data, methodologies and data)for effective agitation and education. On the issue of objectivity, I have always thought of degree of objectivity being a function of--and defined by--degrees of intellectual honesty, humility and courage along with methodological rigor--without fear or favor--as opposed to some supposed/asserted non-bias (the only people not biased are those in comas, dead or so brain damaged as not to know what planet they are on). In this sense, the NYT (not all the news that fit to print but rather all the news that is print to fit--the interests of the ruling class) meets none of tests or definitions of objectivity. On the issue of self-identity and self-identification, I have always defined myself not in terms of my primary occupation for purposes of earning a living--in my case an academic--but rather in terms of my core values and yes, biases--anti-Imperialist, anti-racist, anti-colonialist, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist... Jim C.
Bush-Hitler: Hypnotizing the Masses
Title: Message Thought you might find this interesting - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6528.htm
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
what then of US responsibility to clean up the mess we created? it seems to me that many (not necessarily on pen-l) who call for the return of the troops are primarily motivated by their concern for the safety of american soldiers. many of these same people i am sure supported the invasion that put these soldiers in iraq! why not first the call: US corporations out of iraq? --ravi I support these sentiments. The rank narcissism, parochialism, single-issues, myopia and outright opportunism on the part of some who call themselves part of the left in America is particularly odious. For example, we see MoveOn.org contrasting the Kerry and Bush military records not only to show Bush as a chicken hawk and hypocrite for supporting a war he refused to fight in, but also purporting to show that Kerry, despite some reservations about the war, did his duty and 'served'. No, Bush has blood on his hands for supporting the war while refusing to go, while Kerry has blood on his hands (as did all veterans who directly or indirectly participated in the Vietnam War--including me) for having reservations about it but going anyway--there was not one thing noble or worthy about the Vietnam War, an outright genocidal and imperialist war. We see some of the petit-bourgeois middle-class white feminists supporting Kerry but having nothing to say about his very active membership in an outright misogynistic, anti-Semitic, racist and proto-fascist Satanic cult--Skull and Bones, of which Bush is also a fellow member. We see some, as in previous anti-War movements before, who are far more anti-Draft(with particular focus on their own skins) than anti-War or anti-Imperialism or even anti-Capitalism. Jim C.
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
In fairness, Kerry has never denied having blood on his hands and has done more than most (indeed, has built his political career on it) to bring the facts about what US soldiers did in Vietnam into the public eye. dd Response Jim C: Then why the ads celebrating his Vietnam service? Why the ads noting that he chose to serve his country by going to Vietnam? Why the celebrations of his medals that many sought to throw away out of shame when they came home--myself included? Why was he in VVAW only on the periphery breaking with the organization after a relatively short time in it? Why the references to how many times he was wounded and no reference to how many he wounded and killed? Why the continual reference to honorable service in Vietnam and how do you honorably serve in an imperialist and genocidal war? And here we got a bunch of fucking liberals on Air America, who themselves never served in the military, now celebrating Kerry's military service and attacking Bush for being a chickenhawk (which he was) but tacitly promoting the justness and correctness--and even patriotism of Kerry having served in Vietnam. You cannot have it both ways: the anti-War movement was correct yet we must honor those who served in Vietnam. Bullshit. If the anti-War movement was correct, then we should honor those who refused to serve (for whatever reason) with the exception of those chickenhawks who actively supported the War while ducking out of it. Again the right-wing is driving the agenda and the liberals are just reacting to it tryiing to win debating points. That asshole David Horowitz (who in my opinion was never a real leftist ever), who is now a close advisor to Bush. came up with a twist on Von Clausewitz: Politics is war by other means instead of war is the continuation of politics by other means is correct about one thing when he says that the point is winning and crushing/exterminating the hard-core opposition and not debating or winning in terms of debating points. Jim C.
Re: [Fwd: Swans' Release: July 19, 2004]
Michael wrote: i've a hunch that some left interest in nader is reflection of absence of actual left alternatives, as panelist at forum i attended in ann arbor said yesterday: 'he's best known option, lousy way to develop actual left alternative... I think that those who are seriously interested in building a movement and political party capable of challenging the bipartisan consensus on the domestic and foreign policy ought to be able to think beyond the specific positive and negative attributes of Ralph Nader as an individual and think about who (among Green Party leaders, rank-and-file Green Party members, non-Green Party members, etc.) is supporting him and why, what we can do to work with them, and so on. Response Jim C: The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. (Josef Stalin)
Re: Spam fraud moves up a notch
Michael P wrote: Usually I get requests from the families of disgraced dictators. Now look who writes me. Office of the Chairman The Independent Committee of Eminent Persons 20 rue de Candolle (3rd Floor), 1205 Geneva, Switzerland email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]www.icep-iaep.org : web My name is Paul A. Volker, Chairman Independent Committee of Eminent Persons (ICEP), Switzerland. ICEP is charged with the responsibility of finding bank accounts in Switzerland belonging to non-Swiss indigenes, which have remained dormant since World War II. Jim C: I get the same--and also usually from families of disgraced dictators. But I didn't get this one from Volker, mine came from another source: My name is Mr Hanks Moss a member of Independent Committee of Eminent Persons (ICEP), Switzerland. ICEP is charged with the responsibility of finding bank accounts in Switzerland belonging to non-Swiss indigenes, which have remained dormant since World War II. It may interest you to know that in July of 1997, the Swiss Banker's Association published a list of dormant accounts originally opened by non-Swiss citizens. These accounts had been dormant since the end of World War II (May 9, 1945). Most belonged to Holocaust victims. The continuing efforts of the Independent Committee of Eminent Persons (ICEP) have since resulted in the discovery of additional dormant accounts - 54,000 in December, 1999.The published lists contain all types of dormant accounts, including interest-bearing savings accounts, securities accounts, safe deposit boxes, custody accounts, and non-interest-bearing transaction accounts. Numbered accounts are also included. Interest is paid on accounts that were interest bearing when established. The Claims Resolution Tribunal (CRT) handles processing of all claims on accounts due non-Swiss citizens. A dormant account of ORDNER ADELE with a credit balance of 45,000,000 US dollar plus accumulated interest was discovered by me. The beneficiary was murdered during the holocaust era, leaving no WILL and no possible records for trace of heirs. The Claims Resolution Tribunal has been mandated to report all unclaimed funds for permanent closure of accounts and transfer of existing credit balance into the treasury of Switzerland government as provided by the law for management of assets of deceased beneficiaries who died interstate (living no wills). Being a top executive at ICEP, I have all secret details and necessary contacts for claim of the funds without any hitch. The funds will be banked in the Cayman Island, being a tax free, safe haven for funds and we can share the funds and use in investment of our choice.Due to the sensitive nature of my job, I need a foreigner to HELP claim the funds. All that is required is for you to provide me with your details for processing of the necessary legal and administrative claim documents for transfer of the funds to you. Kindly provide me with your full name, address, and telephone/fax. I will pay all required fees to ensure that the fund is transferred to a secure, numbered account in your name in the Cayman Island, of which you will be capable of accessing the funds gradually and transferring to your country and other banks of choice in the world. My share will be 60 percent and your share is 40 per cent of the total amount. THERE IS NO RISK INVOLVED. You can find additional information about unclaimed funds through the internet at the following websites: www.swissbankclaims.com http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9902/09/germany.holocaust/ www.avotaynu.com www.icheic.org www.livingheirs.com www.wiesenthal.com The Holocaust Claims Processing Office has put funds in Escrow awaiting submission of valid claims for necessary disbursement.I find myself priviledged to have this information and this may be a great opportunity for a life time of success without risks.Due to security reasons, reply to my via email only. You may reply to me securely on the following email,[EMAIL PROTECTED] Thank you for your prompt response. Mr Hanks Moss
Re: Spam fraud moves up a notch
Should be reading dying intestate or without a will. Jim C. -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of sartesian Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 6:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Spam fraud moves up a notch The Claims Resolution Tribunal has been mandated to report all unclaimed funds for permanent closure of accounts and transfer of existing credit balance into the treasury of Switzerland government as provided by the law for management of assets of deceased beneficiaries who died interstate (living no wills). __ OK, I'll ask... isn't dying interstate a federal offense, and thus falls under jurisdiction of Fumblers, Bumblers, and Idiots?
Upcoming Conference on The Right to Self Determination, the UN and Civil Society
Title: Message Attached is a notice for an upcoming conference in Geneva from August 6-8 on The Right to Self Determination, the UN and Civil Society at which I have been invited to present some work. Those in Europe or planning to be in Europe at the time might want to come and attend. http://www.ihraam.org/Conference2.html Hope to see someof you there. Jim Craven James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Vets, current military and grass-roots Organizing
Title: Message
There is a
difference beweenunderstanding--and starting at--where people are
ideologically, conscious-awareness-wise, etc, and moving from there, to actually
pandering to where people are in order to get their ear and attention. As a
Blackfoot and U.S. Army veteran, I am often in contact with young Indigenous
persons whowant to join the military to excape the poverty of
reservations, get college tuition, deal with some low-self-esteem
problemsand/or think they are somehow "living the Warrior code" in joining
up (throughout U.S. history, even when Indians were not American citizens,
disproportionate--to their numbers in the general
population--
numbers of American
and Canadian Indians have "served" in the military forces of those countries). I
do not pander to their illusions and backward consciousness in order to try to
move them off their positions--I confront them directly. Why? Because as long as
they "serve" as tools and dupes of U.S. imperialism, no matter how
explainable/understandable the factors and causes of their false consciousness
and patent ingnorance about what and whom they are really serving, they are
ultimately more victimizers than victims. I ask young Indians directly how they
are any different than the Indians who served as "scouts" for Custer and if they
would have served as "Custer's scouts."They are objectively, despite their
subjective intentions and the reasons for such intentions, acting as agents of a
system that is daily exterminating what they dare to call "their own" People and
Blood.
If I had been in the
position of interviewing that mother who was at the White House asking why her
son was dead in Fahrenheit 9-11, I would have had no choice but to
haveasked her if she had ever considered how many innocents her little
Johnny had killed before he himself had been killed; I would have had to have
asked that question if for no other reason than respect and sorrow for the
victims of the imperial machine of which her little Johnny had once been a
willing part and accomplice.
I remember vividly,
during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I worked with VVAW and other
grass-roots organizations to develop outreach programs to those currently
serving in the military, that among the anti-War Vets, there were still many
harboring many illusions about what they had really been doingand for whom
they had been doing it. I remember that many were still stuck on the personal
and self-absorbed level (" I fought for freedom--[bullshit]--and now I have been
dumped like garbage, the government refuses to recognize/pay forthe
effects of Agent Orange, I'm not getting the benefits I was promised, I
lostsome limbs or buddies and now I am against the government and its
war..."). But few I knew, ever read the Pentagon Papers that told, from the
inside the U.S. imperial machine, what the real interests, motives, intentions
etc of the Vietnam War were really about. Few that I knew, really considered how
many victims they had left and createdwith as much intensity and pain as
they considered their own victimization and scars; many were as
self-centered/absorbed as the culture from which they came--whose media only
talks about American dead or the dead from a particular State or city on the
local news.Few I knew considered--and took some personal responsibility
for--how there own self-imposed/assisted backward and false consciousness
contributed to their own victimization--and the victimization of so many
innocents on "the other side"--as tools and dupes of U.S.
imperialism.
James M. Craven
Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi
Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business
Division Chair
Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin
Blvd.
Vancouver, WA. USA 98663
Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360)
992-2863
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5
Employer has no
association with private/protected opinion
"Who controls the past
controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George
Orwell)
"...every anticipation of
results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx,
"Grundrisse")
FREE LEONARD
PELTIER!!
Re: THE GAME OF GO AND THE CHINESE WAY OF WAR
Yes he did and he was considered a master of the game. It is every bit as complex as Vulcan three-dimensional chess would be (if such could be invented outside of Star Trek) Jim C. Didn't Mao write about Go? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Enron
Michael P wrote: It is worse that Jim says: Thus the Grass my Horse has bit; the Turfs my Servant has cut; and the Ore I have digg'd ... become my Property (Locke 1698, p. 307), On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 01:39:27PM -0700, Devine, James wrote: John Locke wrote that such stealing of public property was the basis of private property -- but that such theft was justified if one mixed one's labor with the stolen item. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine One of the central contradictions of capitalism, and this is one of the fronts Indigenous activists are working on, is that the central bougeois sacreds and institutions of private property--a central contradiction that Locke certainly anticipated and tried to get around--is that these private property sacreds and institutions, that constitute core elements in the requisite social capital of capitalism, wind up exposing and indicting the very private property they purport to protect. Yes, capitalism is not only legalized fraud and theft (in capitalist as well as common sense terms), but it is also legalized murder. This is why the capitalists, through their paid whores (with all due respect to whores) in the legistlative, executive and judicial branches of the state write the laws with enough loopholes and caveats such that only non-capitalists and certain selected and more egregious capitalists are held selectively held to laws and principles others are not held to. I can bequeath, sell, give away private property only if it is not stolen in capitalist terms. Otherwise legal title would rest only with the last one to hold the property and/or with enough power and ruthlessness to hold on to it in the face of others seeking to take it; thus orderly transfers of title, continuity and stable long-term investment in and use of property would be impossible. Legal title, in bourgeois terms, comes through sale, gift, bequest--of that to thiwch one has legal title--discovery or just war. Since so much of primitive accumulation of original capitalist property that formed the foundations of present-day property and gains is not gained through any just war, discovery, or sale/gift/bequest of legally titled property, capitalist property continues to be tainted and stolen--and/or the fruits of a poisoned tree--in capitalist terms. For Indigenous Peoples, take in the case of Canada where few traties were signed, even though the colonizing and genocidal occupiers claimed Natives never held proper legal title--in capitalist terms--to Indigenous lands and resources, they nonetheless tried to create, sign and enforce fraudulent treaties that, in effect, recognized, and then sought to have surrendered, Indigenous lands and titles--lands and titles that supposedly Indigenous Peoples never held. Why then have a treaty that calls for surrendering title and control over that which one of the treating partners claimed and continues to claim the other treating partner never held legal title to and control over? That was but one of the many contradictions of capitalism and private property to which Lenin was alluding in his simple but very profound and deep metaphor that when it comes time to hang the last capitalist, he will probably be the very one who sold us the rope. Jim C.
Re: FW: Redneck Awards
Hi Michael, Sorry about that. Just thought I would share. I'll not do it again. Hope you are well. Jim -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Perelman Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 7:54 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] FW: Redneck Awards Jim, please don't send pictures to the list. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Enron
Charles Brown writes: Hey , on an old thread, I haven't seen you since Enron. What to you think about bookcooking on Wall Street,now ? David Shemano writes: What do I think about it? I am against it. Look, fraud is illegal in a capitalist economy. There is a certain percentage of the population that is going to try and bend the rules to take advantage. I am sure that would never occur in a socialist economy. David Shemano Response Jim C: On what planet and under what system has this person been living? The vast majority of real fraud under capitalism is quite legal. Capitalism is basically legalized fraud and theft. The problem is not so much that the capitalists break the laws, although they do that too, the real problem is that they write the laws so they don't have to. Once in awhile, even the laws they write so loosely as to facilitate all kinds of real fraud, theft etc are still too confining; then they get caught and individual capitalists may be sacrificed with a small slap on the wrists, to preserve the essential illusions and social capital of the whole system--from which even the slapped-on-the-wrist capitalists also benefit in the long run. Fraud is illegal under capitalism only in the case of certain blatant and narrow definitions of fraud and only when certain elements do it. Of course fraud occurs in socialist economies since socialism is a protracted transitional process (not an end-state) and of course capitalist weeds (practices, ideas, values, institutions, power relations--and yes, apologists) survive for long periods of time--hoping to return to the old order that allowed them and their privileges to flourish so well. Get real please. Jim C.
Re: Enron
While many of us might agree with Jim, we should address David more respectfully. Response Jim C: I'm sorry, did I break some list protocol? This guy can make snotty passive/aggressive sarcasm (about fraud being not possible under socialism) and basically pimp a totally bullshit revisionist/myopic/mystified view of capitalism and fraud (a view that shelters/assumes away the real origins and nature of fraud under capitalism--system with so many victims) but I can't merely suggest that he please get real? Really. OK, from now on I'll be every so polite to these snotty passive/aggressive ideologues/polemicists no matter how snotty and passive/aggressive they get. Jim
Re: Enron
David is a conservative. He speaks English with a right wing dialect, but he does so with humor (not snottiness). We can disagree with him. I usually do, but we can still be polite. I don't see him as a red meat class warrior, but as a sincere [albeit misguided] conservative]. Response: Jim C Got it Michael. As it is your list, and as I do respect you and your own work and views, I'll also respect your protocols on the list. Jim C
FW: Fw: FW: mistaken identity
An honest man is being tailgated by a stressed-out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turns yellow, just in front of him. He does the honest thing , and stops at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. The tailgating woman hits the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration as she misses her chance to get through the intersection with him. As she is still in mid-rant, she hears a tap on her window and looks up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer orders her to exit her car with her hands up. He takes her to the police station where she is searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approaches the cell and opens the door. She is escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer is waiting with her personal effects. The officer said, I am very sorry for the mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping the guy off in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the Choose Life license plate holder, the What Would Jesus Do bumper sticker, the Follow Me to Sunday School bumper sticker, and the chrome plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally I assumed you had stolen the car.
Re: Mark Jones Still Wrong
Sabri Oncu wrote: My point, precisely! All I suggest is picking up another symbol, out of my respect to his virtual memory. Louis wrote: To the contrary. Mark was even more contentious than me. I'd like to think that he is sitting up on some cloud somewhere getting a chuckle over how he still generates such controversy. Response Jim C: I guess what distresses me most about some of these posts, as someone who carried on extensive off-list and very personal commuications with Mark--that always shook my mind and soul to the core--is that many have underestimated just how deep Mark's thinking was. Although he he eschewed Mathusianism and neo-Malthusianism, and understood the reactionary nature and uses of these doctrines, he also understood that no resources are infinite and that ultimately the petrol-based economies would come up against finite resources--an issue that the left should not ignore in mechanical reaction to neo-Malthusianism and their exaggerated and mechanical projections/extrapolations. Mark understood very well that cartels like OPEC can and do manage and manipulate magnitudes and overall elasticities of supply with effects on magnitudes/overall elasticities of demand (altering perceptions of necessity of the product, available effective and affordable substitutes for the product, time frames for effective decision making and even percentages of total costs and expenditures represented by costs/expenditures on the product.) He also understood that real-world co-determinancies between supply and demand magnitudes and overall elasticities blow the neoclassical bullshit and paradigm out of the water--with morphostatically-determined discrete partial equilibrium prices and quantities (and even the concepts of partial or general equilibrium) being reduced to pure bourgeois ideology, tautology and fantasy. When I think of Mark, I am reminded of two particular quotes from Marx: The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. If the construction of the future and its completion for all time is not our task, all the more certain is what we must accomplish in the present: I mean the ruthless criticism of everything that exists; the criticism being ruthless in the sense that it neither fears its own results nor fears conflict with the powers that be. Those who characterize what Mark truly believed and the basis upon which he believed it, might consider that they may indeed be caricaturing rather than properly characterizing what Mark wrote and meant. Not a day goes by that I do not think about and miss Mark Jones and his powerful voice. Jim C
Moon Over Washington
Title: Message Moon Over Washington Why are some of the capitals most influential power players hanging out with a bizarre Korean billionaire who claims to be the Messiah? by John Gorenfeld, Contributor 6.09.04 Should Americans be concerned that on March 23rd a bipartisan group of Congressmen attended a coronation at which a billionaire, pro-theocracy newspaper owner was declared to be the Messiah with royal robes, a crown, the works? Or that this imperial ceremony took place not in a makeshift basement church or a backwoods campsite, but in a Senate office building? The Washington Post didn't think so. For a moment on April 4, a quote from the keynote speech was in the Web version of its "Reliable Sources" column. The speaker: Sun Myung Moon, 84, an ex-convict whose political activities were at the center of the 1976-8 Koreagate influence-peddling probe. That's when an investigation by Congress warned that Moon, after having befriended Richard Nixon in his darkest hour, was surrounding himself with other politicians to overcome his reputation: as the leader of the cult-like Unification Church, which recruited unwary college students, filled Madison Square Garden with couples in white robes, wed them in bulk and demanded obedience. That was before he launched the Washington Times "in response to Heavens direction," as he would later say and a 20-year quest to make his enemies bow to him. He has also claimed, in newspaper ads taken out by the Unification Church, that Jesus, Confucius, and the Buddha have endorsed him. Muhammad, according to the 2002 ad, led the council in three cries of "mansei," or victory. And every dead U.S. president was there, too because Moon's gospel is inseparable from visions of true-blue American power. Now, this March, Moon was telling guests at the Dirksen Senate Office Building that Hitler and Stalin, having cleaned up their acts, had, in a rare public statement from beyond the grave, called him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent." But not long after it appeared on the Post's web site, the paper erased the quote. Columnist Richard Leiby told me via e-mail that it shouldn't have gone out in the first place. The paper replaced it with breaking news about "Celebrity Jeopardy!" with Tim Russert. The Return of the King So no one covered this American coronation, except Moon's own Times, which skipped the Messiah part. It wasn't in other newspapers, which only wink at the influence of Moon's far-right movement in Washington, when they cover it at all. In fact, the only place you could read about the new king, unless you bookmarked Moon's Korean-language website, was in the blog world. There, dozens of the most CSPAN2-hardened cynics reacted to the screenshots with a resounding "WTF," the sound of dismay and confusion at a scene that news coverage hadn't prepared them for. The images might as well have come from Star Trek's Mirror Universe. First, we're shown a rabbi blowing a ram's horn. Most Jews would hold off on this until the High Holy Days, but it probably counts if the Moshiach shows up in a federal office building at taxpayer expense. Then we see the man of the hour, Moon, chilling at a table at the Dirksen in a tuxedo, soaking all this up. He claps. He's having a ball. Cut to the ritual. Eyes downcast, a man identified as Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) is bringing a crown, atop a velvety purple cushion, to a figure who stands waiting austerely with his wife. Now Moon is wearing robes that Louis XIV would have appreciated. All of this has quickly been spliced into a promo reel by Moon's movement, which implies to its followers that the U.S. Congress itself has crowned the Washington Times owner. But Section 9 of the Constitution forbids giving out titles of nobility, setting a certain tone that might have made the Congressional hosts shy about celebrating the coronation on their websites. They included conservatives, the traditional fans of Moon's newspaper: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA.), Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Republican strategy god Charlie Black, whose PR firm represents Ahmed Chalabis Iraqi National Congress. But there were also liberal House Democrats like Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) and Davis. Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) later told the Memphis Flyer that he'd been erroneously listed on the program, but had never heard of the event, which was sponsored by the Washington Times Foundation. Rep. Curt Weldon's office tenaciously denied that the Congressman was there, before being provided by The Gadflyer with a photo depicting Weldon at the event, found on Moon's website. "Apparently he was there, but we really had nothing to do with it," press secretary Angela Sowa finally conceded. "I don't think it's quite accurate that the Washington Times said that we hosted the event. We may have been a Congressional
FBI Confidential Informant [snitch] T-10
Title: Message Some refer to him as "Dutch", others as "The Gipper", and some refer to just plain "Reagan". I have usually referred to him as just plain"T-10" or "FBI Confidential Informant [read snitch] number T-10". I am of the age, and also raised by politically-conscious parents, to vividly remember T-10 back in the days of HUAC, Joe Mc Carthy andSAG and the "Hollywood 10" when this creature was running aroundand gleefully and even openly (as well as covertly) ruining the lives of so many innocents. He was a malignant narcissist, whose career was winding down after the war, who sought the leadership of the Screen Actors Guild, snitching and pimping for virulent anti-communists to attempt to revive his failing career. And it wasn't simply a matter of responding to FBI inquiries as a SAG president. Anthony Summers, in his book " Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover", documents thoroughly that T-10 was an active snitch, often calling up the FBI to come over to his place under the cover of dark to get new info on those T-10 "suspected" as communists or "maybe" are communists or "might be" communists, thus adding to their extensive lists others even they had no prior suspicions of. In addition to being a malignant narcissist, T-10 was a calculating and predatory megalomaniac and a pimp for the rich he sought to become a part of but never really became a part of even as nouveau riche. As a pitchman (which is really all he ever was--a mouth and cue-card/teleprompter reader) for General Electric, he basically went around not only preaching anti-communism (for very lucrative speaking fees), but also was a pitchman/pimp for unbridled/unregulated capitalism, social darwinism, racism, U.S. global jingoism/hegemony and other forms of social pathology and U.S. imperial hubris. As an Indian child, instructed by a very informed Blackfoot mother,I was exposed to his virulent anti-Indian racism when he was a pitchman for "Death Valley Days" (brought to you by 20 Mule Team Borax) which preached historical revisionism, White-Settler-Triumphalism and naked racism that was over-the-top even for the times. I did not live in California, but I heard and read plenty about his fascist reprisals against the Free Speech movement and other dissidents in California as well as about his draconian socioeconomic policies that targeted the weakest and most vulnerable, threw thousands of mentally-ill patients on to the streets, tax-cuts-for-the-rich that ran-up monstrous state deficits and left fiscal and social messes that have still not been cleaned up. In 1980,T-10 and his cohorts, pulled their own "October Surprise" when they sabotaged U.S.-Iranian negotiations for the release of U.S. hostages and cut a private deal with elements in Iran to keep U.S. hostages until after the 1980 election to help ensure Carter's loss. And during the 1980s it was T-10 who set the policy to help to start, fuel and prolongthe seven-and-a-half-year Iraq-Iran War that cost over one-and-a-half million lives and casualties by selectively sending arms and intelligence to both sides at moments guaranteed to ensure that neither side would win and both would be savaged. T-10, a consummate jingoist and virulent anti-communist/U.S. hegemonist was instrumental in the world coming tonear total extinction in 1983. In 1983, as a result of his "Evil Empire" and other jingoistic stuff, both the U.S. and USSR were on high-alert statuswhen Soviet computers gave the alert that first a single--then later multiple--missle launch from the U.S. has taken place. Because T-10's regime has refused to renounce "First Strike" options, and because they had openly talked about the possiblilty of "winnable nuclear war", the soviets had every reason to believe an attack had been launched. And both the US and USSR had a "launch-on-warning" instead of "launch-in response" policy in the use of nuclear weapons (no waiting for a nuclear attack being accomplished before responding). One man, Colonel Stanislav Petrov (later villified and removed from his position as a Colonel in the Soviet nuclear forces protecting Moscow region), who had been sent in to evaluate the computer systems and was in charge of the nuclear wepaons unitsprotecting Moscow, decided that the U.S. would not launch just one missle initially anddecided to wait for further verification. Later further warning came that more missles had been launched, but still he waited thus violating Soviet policy. It turned out that the Soviet satellites had read reflected glare of the sun off of cloud formations as the signature of a missle flame and launch and were incorrect. T-10's mouth helped to bring the world to the edge of nuclear armageddon, while a single Soviet Colonel saved the world through his critical thinking and courageous act. T-10 was instrumental in a lot of death and destruction brought upon the Peoples of Latin
FW: funny as hell
Title: Message Go to Google and type in for search "Weapons of Mass Destruction" then, instead of hitting "enter" or clicking on "search", click on "I'm feeling lucky." enjoy. Jim C Here is what it says: These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate. Please try the following: Click the Regime change button, or try again later. If you are George Bush and typed the country's name in the address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly. (IRAQ). To check your weapons inspector settings, click the UN menu, and then click Weapons Inspector Options. On the Security Council tab, click Consensus. The settings should match those provided by your government or NATO. If the Security Council has enabled it, The United States of America can examine your country and automatically discover Weapons of Mass Destruction.If you would like to use the CIA to try and discover them, click Detect weapons Some countries require 128 thousand troops to liberate them. Click the Panic menu and then click About US foreign policy to determine what regime they will install. If you are an Old European Country trying to protect your interests, make sure your options are left wide open as long as possible. Click the Tools menu, and then click on League of Nations. On the Advanced tab, scroll to the Head in the Sand section and check settings for your exports to Iraq. Click the Bomb button if you are Donald Rumsfeld. Cannot find weapons or CIA ErrorIraqi ExplorerBush went to Iraq to look for Weapons of Mass Destruction and all he found was this lousy T-shirt.
FW: Vine Deloria refuses honorary degree
Title: Message Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 12:42 PM Subject: Vine Deloria refuses honorary degree Subject: Taking a Stand (leaders) The Denver Post diane carman Scholar: CU "honor" no compliment By Diane Carman Denver Post Columnist Tuesday, May 25, 2004 - Vine Deloria Jr. doesn't shrink from controversy. The retired University of Colorado-Boulder history professor and author of several books, including the bestselling "Custer Died for Your Sins," testified for the defense in Russell Means' 1974 Wounded Knee trial. He stood up to the state of Washington in the 1970s over the bloody Indianfishing-rights conflict that finally forced the federal government to reaffirm long-ignored treaties. And he has famously criticizedChristianity, which he calls "a religion at the end of its rope." So when the University of Colorado regents selected Deloria to receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree this year, they were prepared forhim to be outspoken. But probably not at their own expense. Last week, the man Time magazine called one of the 11 most influentialthinkers of the 20th century refused the honorary degree. "It's no honor tobe connected to these people," he said. CU has demeaned itself. "I am greatly disturbed by the actions of university officials and the board of regents in such a transparent coverup of the alleged scandals in the athletic department," he said in a letter to CU president Elizabeth Hoffman." As a scholar, I am dismayed at the use of language to obscure the factsand the intent to continue practices that reflect badly on the university." The final straw, he said in an interview, was the regents "recognizing theparents of the football players and not saying a word about the women whoreally suffered." He called it "an outrage." Regent Susan Kirk was disappointed. "It's his right to decline," she said. "But the bestowing of an honorarydegree should be bigger than the smaller issues we face from time to time." To Deloria, though, the issues are huge. He said CU's effort to duckresponsibility in the recruiting scandal is just another example of ashameful and increasingly common practice in America. "Nobody in this society ever gets punished except the people at the bottom, he said. "We're running amok in Iraq, but it turns out nobody knew what was going on" in Abu Ghraib prison. "The Catholic Church has all this pedophile abuse, and none of the bishops knew what was happening." Similarly, he said, coachesand administrators at CU claim they didn't know about the use of sex, drugsand alcohol to attract football recruits. "That's no excuse. They should know what's going on. None of them is willing to accept the blame." Deloria said that hiding behind plausible deniability "only serves toincrease the cynicism of the people that higher-ups will always weasel outof their responsibilities." The 71-year-old member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe clearly respects the significance of an honorary degree. In March, when the regents announced that he had been selected, he turned it down because he didn't think he'd done enough to deserve it. "They talked me into accepting it," he said. But as he watched the behavior of the CU administrators and regents, he said he went from humbled and honored to ashamed. "A university is supposed to reflect the highest values and beliefs that our society can achieve ...," he wrote to Hoffman. "The recent actions indicatethat the university is groveling in the mud, displaying a lower standard ofethics than the citizens of the state." Deloria said he mulled his options for two days before sending the letter. He's proud of his career as a scholar. He didn't take the action lightly. "Then I remembered Rosa Parks refusing to go to the back of the bus. I feltembarrassed that I even had doubts about objecting to the coverup. She had a lot more to lose than I ever did and more courage than I'll ever have. "So to hell with the degree." He's taking a stand. Diane Carman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1580 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
FW: Racist book The Arab Mind used to train military , but best use is as a doorstop.
Title: Message '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 Monday May 24, 2004 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
Re: Can corporations have sex?
-Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David B. Shemano Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 10:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] Can corporations have sex? James Devine writes: can a corporation have a gender, too? or rather, can a corporation have sex? Absolutely, what do you think a corporate merger is? One corporation propositions the other corporation. The do mutual due diligence to find out if they like each other. There is a closing dinner at a fancy restaurant where a lot of liquor is imbibed. Then they go and screw the shareholders. David Shemano Then there is hostile takeover a form of rape that, like all rape, is not so much about sex as power. Then there is greenmailing when you find out how expensive inter-corporate intercourse can really be. Jim C
Capitalism and differing systems/ideologies
Title: Message The fundamental nature of capitalism, and its teleologically-derivative imperatives--realization of maximum total possible real, after-tax, risk-adjusted surplus value is an imperative as a necessary--but not sufficient--condition of accumulation of capital (widening and deepening capital and expanded reproduction of capitalist relations and instituions) which becomes an imperative as a necessary--but not sufficient--condition of maximization of productivity, which becomes an imperative as a necessary--but not sufficient--condition of efffective competition, which becomes an imperative as a necessary--but not sufficient--condition of realization of maximum total possible real, after-tax, risk-adjusted surplus value...--simply will not allow coexistence with--or free, fair and open competition with--differing, contending and potentially antagonistic socioeconomic systems, ideologies or paradigms. They must seek to smash that which they lack the truth, intellect, preparation, experience, data, theory or willingnessto freely and fairly debate. For example: DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of Indian Affairs-Washington Supplement to Circular No. 1665 February 14, 1923 Indian Dancing To Superintendents: At a conference in October, 1922, of the missionaries of the several religious denominations represented in the Sioux country, the following recommendations were adopted and have been courteously submitted to this office: 1. That the Indian form of gambling[sic] and lottery known as the "ituranpi" (translated "Give Away") be prohibited. 2. That the Indian dances be limited to one in each month in the daylight hours of one day in the midweek, and at one center in each district; the months of March and April, June, July, and August be excepted. 3. That none take part in the dances or be present who are under 50 years of age. 4. That a careful propaganda be undertaken to educate public opinion against the dance and to provide a healthy substitute. 5. That there be close cooperation between the Government employees and the missionaries in those matters which affect the moral welfare of Indians. These recommendations, I am sure, were the result of sincere thought and discussion, and in view of their helpful spirit, are worthy of our careful consideration. They agree in the main with my attitude outlined in Circular No. 1665 on Indian dancing. Probably the purpose of paragraph 2 can be better fulfilled by some deviation from its specific terms according as circumstances or conditions vary in different reservations. Likewise, the restrictions in paragraph 3 may reasonably depend upon the character of the dance, its surroundings and supervision. I would not exclude those under 50 if the occasion is properly controlled and unattended by immoral or degrading influence. The main features of the recommendations may be heartily endorsed, because they seek lawful and decent performances free from excess as to their length, conduct and interference with self-supporting duties; because they urge cooperation towards something better to take the place of the vicious dance, and because they suggest the need of civilizing public sentiment in those white communities where little interest is taken in the Indians beyond the exhibition for commercial ends of ancient and barbarous customs. After a conscientious study of the dance situation in his jurisdiction, the efforts of every superintendent must persistently encourageand emphasize the Indian's attention to these political, useful, thrifty, and orderly activities that are indispensable to his well-being and that underlie the preservation of his race in the midst of complex and highly competitive conditions. The instinct of individual enterprise and devotion to the posterity and elevation of family life should in some way be made paramount in every Indian household to the exclusion of idleness, waste of time at frequent gatherings of whatever nature, and the neglect of physical resources upon which depend food, clothings, shelter, and the very beginnings of progress. Of course we must give tact, persuasion, and appeal to the Indian's good sense a chance to win ahead of peremptory orders, because our success must often follow a change of honest conviction and surrender of traditions held sacred, and we should, therefore, especially gain the support of the more enlightened and progressive element among the Indians as a means of showing how the things we would correct or abolish are handicaps to those who practice them. We must go about this work with some patience and charity and do it in a way that will convince the Indian of our fidelity to his best welfare, and in such a spirit we may welcome cooperation apart from our Service, especially from those whose splendid labors and sacrifices are devoted to moral and social uplift everywhere. The conditions in different
Collective wisdom
James Surowieki wrote: Generations of advertisers and business gurus have banked on the premises of Sigmund Freud's ''Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,'' a slender volume with a big argument: when people assemble en masse, all the raw material making up the individual psyche (libido, aggression, whatever) is also present, but on a gigantic scale. And the power for rational thought is thereby dwarfed. The crowd is considerably dumber than its smartest members. This explains, for example, Britney Spears, irrational economic exuberance and the occasional episode of public yearning for an authority figure to do the superego's job, whether by seizing state power (the fascist dictator model) or by going on television to say ''You're fired'' (the reality TV version). Response Jim C: Here we can get into what the bourgeois economists call--and only lightly touch on if at all in most textbooks--social capital (institutions, power structures/relations designed to foster trust, hope, social cohesion, allowable forms of cooperation and values of the dominant class shared on mass levels, etc.) so that under capitalism for example: a) individual forms and levels of competition do not aggregate to socially destructive levels and forms; b) individual propensities--biological and social-- are harnessed and utilized to produce manageable, predictable and optimal forms and levels of behavior--on individual as well as mass levels--from the perspective of expanded reproduction of the essential elements of the whole system and the system itself; c) individuals and groups buy into the system and buy into the notion that anyone can make it in that system with right and requisite values, attitudes and behaviors; d)core values, survival imperatives, myths, traditions, power structures/relations, institutions etc will be seen as natural and inevitable--and superior to any others--rather than products of the historical level of development and specific mode of production dominant in the social formation of a given nation; e) human behavior--individually and collectively--is more manageable, predictable, controllable and changeable from the perspective--and in accordance with interests--of the dominant class; f) the types of values and personality-types necessary for mass markets, profits for power and power for profits, saving, investment, mass consumption, etc (Homo Oeconomicus) on the one hand and yet--and contradictorily--the type of social person who can be counted on--and manipulated--to join-in collective jingoistic nationalism and mass participation in pseudo/anti-democratic processes and institutions; etc.; g) individual and mass acceptance of the notion of the destiny and natural order of global hegemony and dominance by a particular social formation or mode of production; Social formations undergoing socialist transformation and construction, especially when surrounded by other social formations dominated by capitalism or monopoly capitalism or imperialism, especially when integrated into a global economy run on capitalist principles/relations/institutions, especially when relatively poor and having to develop productive forces rapidly to handle myriad accumulated social needs and to be competitive in global markets, will inevitably have to make some concessions to capitalist-based activities and forces--domestic and global--to survive, trade and develop.But such capitalist-based institutions and forces, and their accompanying and requisite social capital, will inevitably constitute subversive and corrosive weeds in the garden of socialist construction; The lamb can only lie down and 'coexist' with the lion if the lion becomes a vegetarian... Within any given social formation, with remnants of old modes of production and embryonic forms of new and emerging modes of production, capitalism and socialism cannot ultimately co-exist.. It is the nature of real socialism, dictatorship of the proletariat, and in order to survive, to seek and attempt to progressively extinguish all remnants (weeds in the garden) of capitalism as they are fundamentally inconsistent with socialist construction, social capital, relations and institutions; similarly, it is the nature--and requirement of expanded reproduction of capitalism as a system and those who run it--to regard all non-capitalist relations, values, institutions and practices as inherently subversive, threatening, contradictory and inimical to capitalism and to seek to subvert and destroy such whenever possible. Markets are not simply [potentially] value-free or purely technical systems/mechanisms for posing and determining the answers to the What How/For Whom questions in the course of price determination, signaling and information, resource allocation, rationing, clearing surpluses and shortages and generalized commodification. They require certain requisite social capital characteristic of capitalism in order to function. The types of individuals or personality
Re: boston lecture on China
Professor Zhao Zhun (tsinghua Univeristy, Beijing) will be speaking at the Cambridge Public Library tomorrow, Saturday May 22 3pm - 5pm. The forum is entitled Can Socialism and Capitalism Co-Exist in China? Enterprise Ownership Reform Since 1978 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Response: I'll be giving a paper at the conference in Beijing on September 1-2 on essentially the same topic. Jim C.
Re: New York Times on Scarcity
Jim: As far as I could tell, you were saying that because Nash was crazy, NE was wrong in some sense. Response: What got Nash the Nobel was his attempted rescue of neoclassical theory from a critical contradiction: How is it that two or more ultra-individualistic-utility/profit-maximizing-atomistic-selfish-predat ory-calculating-crass-vicious-competitive Homo Oeconomicuses could possibly trust each other enough to collude and--as is done in the real world all the time--with each winding up in an individually optimal situation? Pure fucking neoclassical ideology and noting the old maxim--a neurotic is someone who builds castles in the sky and the psychotic is the one who moves in, and the Shrink collects the rent--there are a whole lot of psychotics in bourgeois economics. Jim C.
Re: a victory of sorts in india...
I could but I just finished teaching my India class and now heading into my development class. I'll try. cheers, anthony xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor Comparative International Development University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx On Thu, 13 May 2004, Doug Henwood wrote: Isn't there someone here who can tell us how the BJP is really the lesser of two evils? Doug With Congress-I and BJP you don't have any lesser of evils you have only the evil of lessers. Both parties have some prounced fascist tendencies as evidenced by Emergency Measures under Congress-I and covert operations of the fascist cults RSS/Shiv Sena and Arya Sammajayem under the umbrella of BJP. Jim C
Re: a victory of sorts in india...
I am afraid I have to diagree on the emergency issue. It was Mrs. Gandhi who was solely responsible for the emergency. But that was in 1975 and lasted until 1977, until she was thrown out, but then she came back in 1979! When she realized her populist garibi hatao (eliminate poverty) slogan was exhausted and she recognized that he staunch supporters within the Congress party were distancing themselves from her, she essentially grabbed the party power all to herself. This is the beginning of the decline of the Cong party (i.e. weakening internal party democracy). The BJP is certainly the worse party of the two at some levels. Alas, in this country the public has been lulled into complacency by a strange form of fascist democracy. Cheers, anthony xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor Comparative International Development University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx Response Jim C: When I lived in Kerala, I got a chance to see Congress-I and the core elements of BJP up close. My village was half Congress-I and half CP-M and half Hindu and Half Christian. Not only was the corruption of Congress-I extremely pronounced, but they still had many of the policies--and continued elements of Emergency Measures--well into the eighties. The massive forced sterilization campaigns run by Congress-I (I knew medical students who were coerced into giving forced vascetomies in dirty tents set up by the Indian Army under the threat of being removed from medical school) were nothing but out-and-out fascism (In India, in the late 70s, there was a slogan Indira hatao, Indiri bachao or abolish Indira and save your genitals that sort of summed it up) and inspired by fascist and caste-biased eugenics. On the BJP side, you have the core and rather covert elements of Shiv Sena, RSS and Arya Sammajayam that are out-and-out nazis and preach Aryan Supremacy in language right out of Mein Kampf. They are the real power brokers and engineers of mass action for the BJP. As they say in Malayalam: Yaa-tha-ruu vitthiassum illa or No real difference. Jim C.
FW: A Parable
In Jerusalem, an American female journalist heard about an old rabbi who visited the Wailing Wall to pray, twice a day, everyday, for a long, long time. In an effort to check out the story, she goes to the holy site and there he is! She watches the bearded old man at prayer--and after about 45 minutes, when he turns to leave, she approaches him for an interview. I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN, sir, how long have you been coming to the Wailing Wall and praying? For about 50 years, he informs her. 50 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for? I pray for peace between the Jews and the Arabs. I pray for all the hatred to stop and I pray for all our children to grow up in safety and friendship. And how do you feel, sir, after doing this for 50 years? Like I'm talking to a fucking wall.
body armor thief
Title: Message Posted on Tue, Apr. 06, 2004 Marine Sentenced for Selling Body ArmorAssociated Press CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - A Marine has been convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for selling stolen body armor over the Internet. Marine authorities said they believe Staff Sgt. Marvin Funiestas, 26, sold 100 to 110 of the ceramic-reinforced vests before he was arrested in November. The vests were intended for U.S. troops; some servicemen in the Middle East have reported trouble obtaining vests. Funiestas was sentenced last week on charges of conspiracy, wrongfully selling government property and larceny. Investigators believe another Marine, who has not yet been charged, falsified reports about the number of vests on hand and sent vests to Funiestas, who sold about $88,000 worth of equipment for $35,000 to $40,000. "This was brand-new equipment," prosecutor Capt. Mark Spalding said. "This is especially hard to take because we are having a hard time getting enough vests to field with our Marines." The sale of the vests, known as Point Blank Interceptor Ballistic body armor, is restricted to law enforcement and military personnel. Authorities are trying to retrieve the body armor. One eBay customer in San Diego bought two vests and shipped one to a son-in-law in the Army, who was stationed in Kuwait and had not been issued a vest. Spalding said that while most of the vests were sold domestically, at least two or three went to China, raising concerns that Chinese engineers may try to duplicate the design. James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
FW: [Dipity] Belgian minister sparks US genocide row
Belgian minister sparks US genocide row 9 April 2004 Expatica News BRUSSELS - Belgian Defence Minister Andre Flahaut has come under heavy criticism for approving an official document that says the United States is responsible for the biggest genocide committed during the past 500 years. The claim appeared in an official defence ministry magazine as part of a 16-page report on genocide around the world. The report was published to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which left up to a million people dead. According to the report, the worst genocide committed in the past 500 years has been the extermination of native Americans in what is today the US. The study said this mass killing began in 1492, when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, and that the genocide has claimed 15 million lives. The report gave no clear end date for the US genocide, implying, said some analysts, that the extermination of native Americans is still continuing today. Number two on the list of the world's greatest genocides was the extermination of native peoples in south America, the report continued. Flemish newspaper De Standaard vehemently criticised Flahaut for allowing the study to be published. This publication puts our relations with all north and south American countries at risk, the paper said in an angry editorial, adding that it considered Flahaut to be unfit or incompetent. Flahaut has already angered Washington in the past. Earlier this year he said in a magazine interview that he would vote Democrat if he were American. He was also a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq and briefly threatened to close Belgian airspace and the port of Antwerp to the American military ahead of last year's invasion of the middle eastern state. The Belgian authorities have sought to play down the impact of the report. A government official quoted on the website of national broadcaster RT! BF calle d the furore surrounding the document a storm in a teacup. Despite this, sources say Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, who was in Rwanda to commemorate the victims of that country's genocide when the furore blew up, has already spoken to the US ambassador in Africa's great lakes region in a bid to head of an embarrassing diplomatic spat. Michel was on Friday also set to discuss the affair with his US opposite number Colin Powell, sources added. Before Flahaut's latest diplomatic gaffe, relations between Belgium and the US appeared to be improving after two decidedly frosty years. Earlier this week it emerged that US President George W Bush had written to Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt to thank him for the role his country has played inside the Nato alliance and also for Brussels'efforts to tackle terrorism. [Copyright Expatica News 2004] Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. -Pericles, statesman (430 BCE)
Dangerous Anti-Semitic Filth
Title: Message Dear Friends, This was sent to me; I have no idea why or why I would be on the lists of such creatures as these. I post this filth only for informational-illustrative purposes. Those who define "anti-Bush" as progressive, without any reference to the core ideologies guiding the respective positions, those who play "the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend" game, are playing a dangerous and ultimately reactionary game. Click on the url below and see how disgusting this filth really is. This reminds me of an interview with Stephen Glass when he was telling how he did his numerous fraudulent stories while at New Republic. He would start with "Truth/Premise 1" which was well-known and incontrovertible; then he would go to "Truth/Premise 2" which had some well known/established truth but also some aspects that were controversial or open to debate but "solid Truth/Premise 1" would be used to suspend any disbelief about aspects of "Truth/Premise 2"; then he would move to "Truth/Premise 3" that had a few grains of truth in it but was mostly total bullshit--again "Truth/Premise 1" would be used to leverage belief/suspend disbeliefin "Truth/Premise 2" and "Truth/Premises" 1 and 2 would be used to leverage belief/suspend disbelief in "Truth/Premise 3" which would then lead to "Truth/Premise4" which was total, absolute and unadulterated bullshit; and so on... Jim C. FW: BUSH IS A JEW. 9-11 WAS GENERATED BY SECRET JEWDOM. A SECRET JEW, D.ROCKEFELLER OF CFR IS THE MASTERMIND -Original Message-From: Richard Koshimizu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 8:36 PMTo: Craven, JimCc: Eric Surrel; J.P.Darlet; Les forums de la Bande des Crados; Dmt-Usa; Dmt-Purchasing Louis Cunat,; DMT-D.Barbier; Dmt-Biax; DMT-Adeline; DMT-account; DMT_sales; dmt_china; dmt_asia; dmr_usa; dmr_russia; Louis Darlet; D.M.T. Chogard; Benoit Besch_dmtSubject: BUSH IS A JEW. 9-11 WAS GENERATED BY SECRET JEWDOM. A SECRET JEW, D.ROCKEFELLER OF CFR IS THE MASTERMIND DEAR SIRS, BUSH IS A JEW. 9-11 WAS GENERATED BY SECRET JEWDOM. A SECRET JEW, D.ROCKEFELLER OF CFR IS THE MASTERMIND. These are the result of my research on 9-11 as shown in the below website.:-http://homepage1.nifty.com/shkaiseigi/dmt_files/meanwhile.htmThen, a European company suddenly suspend payment of sales commission for the past business. Why? Any third party influencing the company to do so? Trying to squeeze me? BNAI BRITH? ADL? Unification Church? I strongly protest to DMT, S.A.,France for its extremely unreasonable behavior. A SHAME OF FRANCE http://homepage1.nifty.com/shkaiseigi/dmt_files/index.htm Richard Koshimizu Tel : 81-463-23-9246Fax : 81-463-23-9320 image001.jpg
Re: air america radio
That basically sums up the problem of Air America. Talk radio on the right never gets more angry with right-wingers to the right of the Republican Party than with liberals and leftists whom they simply and smartly classify in the same category. That's right-wing talk radio's recipe for success. In contrast, Air America concentrates its fire on Ralph Nader, rather than firing up angry liberals and leftists against the Republican Party. -- Yoshie Response (Jim C): It is the problem with liberalism in general. They are so hung up on appearances and appearing reasonable, open-minded etc. I can still remember vividly and often my dear mother's definition of the typical liberal: One whose heart bleeds, so piously and so sincerely, but always with other people's blood. She detested liberals as she saw them as caring about the oppressed only in such forms and levels as they would not have to invest anything serious--other than pious words and cliches--in their liberation. Jim C.
Re: air america radio
I heard some Randi Rhodes yesterday.
She had Nader on as a guest and kept
shouting over him with stupid questions
('who will you caucus with if you are
president?'). He wasn't too good either,
but there wasn't much he could do. He
hung up.
Otherwise her rap was ultra-partisan-
Democrat, not too sharp on facts, and
effective in the same way that Limbaugh
etc are. I suppose somebody has to do it.
I can't say how effective it will be.
She's good as a radio talker, glib,
funny.
mbs
Response (Jim C) I caught a few minutes of this Randi Rhodes and thought
she was a shrill, abusive, know-it-all who kept interrupting and
wouldn't let a guest or caller get a word out that didn't fit with her
bullshit lib-dem line and her Nader bashing. She kept repeating that
line that Nader cost Gore the election. Bullshit. Gore himself, plus
Clinton, plus the calculated purging of 94,000 voters in Florida as
convictec felons (a process begun in 1998--which constitutes criminal
conspiracy to deprive persons of civil rights--91,000 of whom were not,
54% of who were Afircan Americans) cost Gore the election.
So far, this is no liberal alternative to right-wing talk--it is an
imitation.
Jim C.
Re: liberals
Sometimes it seems that liberals attract more fire on PEN-L than does the bourgeoisie. I could understand this if we were in a period of proto- or quasi-revolutionary ferment, when they'd be the co-opters and/or betrayers. But right now, anyone in public life who stands up for vaguely egalitarian social values and the defense of civil liberties is rare and almost precious. It sounds like people are replaying scripts from 30 or 40 years ago. Doug On one hand I can understand what Doug is saying especially in the context of a need for a broad--but principled--united front against the prospect of full-blown fascism, more imperialist adventurism etc in the near future. On the other hand, to take a metaphor, suppose I have a headache, very painful one, and someone gives me aspirin or perhaps even vicodin, and the headache disappears. They have done me a favor only if the cause of the headache is not something serious or lethal like a brain tumor; if the cause is a brain tumor, all the aspirin or vicodin does is to delay effective diagonosis and treatment of the whole syndrome including its real causes--the aspirin or vicodin is actually worse than no pain relief at all and this is what liberalism is basically about--superficial short-term pain relief for systemic pathogens thus delaying effective diagnosis and treatment of the real and most dangersous causes. When I think about liberalism and liberals, I am reminded of the old joke that German socialists used to tell about why revolution in Germany might be difficult or impossible. The reason, they said, is because the pathway going up to the Reichstag is very narrow and on each side are spacious lawns with keep off the grass signs everywhere and how are you going to get all those revolutionaries storming the Reichstag up that narrow pathway? Jim C.
Dr. Laura, the Bible and Social Policy
Title: Message doctor laura and the bible Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a radio personality who dispensesadvice to people who call in to her radio show. Recently,she said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexualityis an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22 and cannot becondoned under any circumstance. The following is an openletter to Dr. Laura penned by a east coast resident, whichwas posted on the Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:Dear Dr. Laura:Thank you for doing so much to educate people regardingGod's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, andtry to share that knowledge with as many people as I can.When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, forexample, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearlystates it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do needsome advice from you, however, regarding some of the otherspecific laws and how to follow them:When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know itcreates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problemis my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctionedin Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think wouldbe a fair price for her?I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while sheis in her period of menstrual unseemliness - Lev.15:19- 24.The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but mostwomen take offense.Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, bothmale and female, provided they are purchased fromneighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that thisapplies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Whycan't I own Canadians?I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath.Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am Imorally obligated to kill him myself?A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish isan abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination thanhomosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of Godif I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wearreading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20, or isthere some wiggle room here?Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, includingthe hair around their temples, even though this is expresslyforbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pigmakes me unclean, but may I still play football if I weargloves?My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19 by planting twodifferent crops in the same field, as does his wife bywearing garments made of two different kinds of thread(cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse andblaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to allthe trouble of getting the whole town together to stonethem? - Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death ata private family affair like we do with people who sleepwith their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)I know you have studied these things extensively, so I amconfident you can help. Thank you again for reminding usthat God's word is eternal and unchanging.Eric Maddox[EMAIL PROTECTED]"If religion is the opiate of the masses, then religious zealots must be the crackheads." -Dennis Miller_ James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Conference on UN and Internaitonal Power Politics
IHRAAMRoundtableEWUlatest.pdf Description: IHRAAMRoundtableEWUlatest.pdf
Re: Another classroom exercise
Title: Message While Michael is undoubtedly right, university administrations reward those who do research and slight teaching. But that is no excuse for teachers to neglect their moral responsibility to teach properly and to serve their students. I think Jim was once a student of mine and I hope he never felt that I neglected the students for easier paths to money and promotion. And, if he wants to help his students, he can refer them to my text "Inside Capitalism" where I have almost all of his key words in the index, or at least discussed.;-)Paul Phillips Actually I was never in one of Paul's classesbut I never heard from others that he had ever slighted students. I have not read his "Inside Capitalism" but I will order it for sure. Generally speaking, atleast in graduate school, I had teachers who enjoyed teaching and who did not put "pop" (publish or perish) above their teaching responsibilities; I generally lucked out at least in my graduate studies. Jim C.
classroom exercise
Title: Message I ask my students what "Omission is often the greatest lie" means. I ask them if they are just picking up a book for the first time, written by an author with whom they are unfamiliar, how do you get a sense of that the author's ideological biases and rhetorical intentions are. Usually I get "look at the book jacket", preface, introduction, recommendations by other authors. Few come up with "looking at the index"--what is in it, and what is not. So I give them the following assignment for extra-credit: Find as many past and present economics texts as possible (libraries, book stores, rummage sales etc) and fully document, from the indexes of those books, any references to any of the following concepts (You get one point added to your-then--final course grade for each documented reference you find(Text, pages,): imperialism, colonialism; neo-colonialism; racism; sexism; homophobia; war; genocide; socialism;communism;Karl Marx; Friedrich Engels;V.I. Lenin; fascism; metropolis; periphery; American Indians/Native Americans; African-Americans; Latinos; social class; social strata; gender inequality; racial inequality; social systems engineering; suicide; divorce; teengage pregnancy; abortion; religious fundamentalism; economic centralization; falling rate of profit; economic surplus; traditional economies; slavery;feudalism; eugenics; "primitive"communalism; power; mail-order-brides; global AIDS; global refugees; globalization; low intensity conflict; global sexual slavery; wealth and income inequality (domestic and global); lobbyists; terrorism; national security; social capital; Sweezy, Paul; Magdoff, Harry; Robinson, Joan; Amin, Samir; contradictions of capitalism; For each of these concepts--except the names--there is general agreement that all of these concepts have something to do with economics. The students wind up totally pissed off as of the books they manage to find, fewif any of these concepts are even mentioned let alone discussedand they have put a lot of work in for a meager return in terms of extra-credit points. Jim C. James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Re: classroom exercise
-Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of joanna bujes Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 12:30 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] classroom exercise So you're punishing your students because most economic text books are biased? If I were your student, I'd be pissed at you. Joanna Well as they say: No pain, no gain. It drives the point home more forcefully than just saying it. Then it opens up a discussion of what those concepts really mean and why, if they are indeed highly related to economics, they are not in the mainstream texts. Plus, with a little initiative, finding some heterodox books in out-of-the-way places, they can find those concepts mentioned. Jim C.
Re: classroom exercise
So you're punishing your students because most economic text books are biased? If I were your student, I'd be pissed at you. Joanna Response Jim C: All texts are biased; the only persons not biased (having preferences for certain outcomes, priorities etc) are those in comas and/or without sufficient intellect to know what planet they are on. Jim C.
Another classroom exercise
Title: Message Tomorrow, when I go back to the classroom, as I have done on other occasions, each of my classes will be told that during the course of the term, there will be four key lectures whose content will most definitely be covered on exams. These lectures will be total bullshit: phony sources, phony data bases, logical fallacies, math errors, etc and these lectures will be delivered straight without any indication that the content is total bullshit. If the students uncritically copy down the stuff during lecture without checking it out or waiting until the night before an exam, they will find the "right answer" from their notes; only the "right answer" will be from one of the bullshit lectures that will not be correct if they have failed to cross-check what they are being handed in class. I note that these lectures willl be delivered with all "sincerity" and note Groucho Marx's axiom: "The two keys to success are honesty and sincerity; and if you can fake those, the sky is the limit." Jim C. James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
one more classroom exercise
Title: Message I give my students the famous quote from Lenin (that's Vladimir not John) :"When it comes time to hang the last capitalist, he is probably the one who sold the rope." I ask what that means. Eventually, with some probing, they get the idea that what Lenin meant through his metaphor, it that capitalism, in terms of its core "logic" and imperatives of profit maximization, accumulation of capital, expanded reproduction of the whole system itself, winds up doing in the short-run what ultimately digs its own grave and undermines its stability and viabilityin the long run. I ask the students to study ads on tv and come up with some that reflect contradictions between short-run profit maximization and long-term viability and interests. One of my all-time favorites has to do with marketing sleeping aids during early-morning hours when insomniacs are likely to be watching: If the ads are successful, fewer and fewer former insomniacs are likely to be watching during these hours--they are now sleeping--so that audience numbers/shares will drop in the long-run (as will ad revenues and revenue rates) the more successful the ad campaigns for sleeping aidsin the short-run. Jim C. James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Re: Another classroom exercise
That's fucked. You have all the power and you're using it to humiliate your students. Great. Joanna Response: I can see from your previous comments ( So you're punishing your students because most economic text books are biased? If I were your student, I'd be pissed at you. Joanna) that you are obviously not a very deep or critical thinker (biased not the same as objective--to be human is to be biased) so what you call humiliation others might call creative pedagogy. In my textbook citations assignment, it is extra-credit; the operative word is extra as in extra work for me, sometimes necessitated by students not being with the program and then winding up needing extra-credit. Further, if students take the time and effort to find texts like Anti-Samuelson by Marc Linder or others written by the likes of Sherman, Bowles, et al they can find cites. Now on this assignment, just who exactly gets humiliated? Remember, the warning is given on the first day of class and the exact number of bullshit lectures is given. So who gets humiliated?: Those who do not take the assignment seriously; those who do not regularly attend class; those who do not cross-check but rather uncritically accept what they are told; those who do not connect what they are taught about epistemology, critical thinking ,logical fallacies etc and the content of what they are getting; those who see themselves as passive consumers rather than active participants in their own education; those who are as superficial, lazy and mechanical in their thinking as this person Joanna (Who I hope is not a teacher) appears to be. I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand. Lao-tze
Re: Another classroom exercise
Thank you. All of my exercises are designed to reward and teach those who take an active interest in their education and to weed out--and deny rewards to--those who don't. On another list, someone made the following comment followed by my response. Please note that I am actually diminishing my powers--not enhancing them--as I am teaching them that what I say, perhaps especially what I say, must also be challenged, questioned, sourced etc. It's too bad that it's necessary to go to such extremes in order to break students of the habits they learn from teachers who punish critical and independent thinking. I can't say that law school grading (based wholly on 3-hour final exams consisting mainly of hypothetical fact situations and possible legal claims arising from them) promotes anything resembling critical thinking about the actual purpose served by the legal system whose doctrines we diligently swallow. (name withheld) Response (Jim C) Well this exercise has many purposes: a) it is in the student's interest to continually challenge content to try to figure out if this is one of the bullshit lectures; b) they get to see what goes on every day in government and the courts--someone pimping a case, with all sincerity and gusto, that privately that person might be gagging on; c) distrust all authority including--perhaps especially--me; d) cross-check always and never uncritically copy down--and summarily accept--anything; e) when you see someone like Bush, feigning sincerity and honesty, the more --and the more likely--the feigning, the more likely it is bullshit; f) the students are supposed to be active participants--not passive consumers--in their own education; etc. Jim C. My apologies, I thought you did not tell the students that some of the lectures were bullshit. Joanna Craven, Jim wrote: That's fucked. You have all the power and you're using it to humiliate your students. Great. Joanna Response: I can see from your previous comments ( So you're punishing your students because most economic text books are biased? If I were your student, I'd be pissed at you. Joanna) that you are obviously not a very deep or critical thinker (biased not the same as objective--to be human is to be biased) so what you call humiliation others might call creative pedagogy. In my textbook citations assignment, it is extra-credit; the operative word is extra as in extra work for me, sometimes necessitated by students not being with the program and then winding up needing extra-credit. Further, if students take the time and effort to find texts like Anti-Samuelson by Marc Linder or others written by the likes of Sherman, Bowles, et al they can find cites. Now on this assignment, just who exactly gets humiliated? Remember, the warning is given on the first day of class and the exact number of bullshit lectures is given. So who gets humiliated?: Those who do not take the assignment seriously; those who do not regularly attend class; those who do not cross-check but rather uncritically accept what they are told; those who do not connect what they are taught about epistemology, critical thinking ,logical fallacies etc and the content of what they are getting; those who see themselves as passive consumers rather than active participants in their own education; those who are as superficial, lazy and mechanical in their thinking as this person Joanna (Who I hope is not a teacher) appears to be. I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand. Lao-tze
Re: Another classroom exercise
Certainly, I believe every word you say. His reaction to my misunderstanding however spoke volumes too. Joanna Yes, it is a kind of Blackfoot thing. When attacked, and it is clear that the attack comes from someone not having properly read and understood that which they were attacking, then the response is as direct and pointed as the attack and is inversely proportionate in degree of directness to the degrees of careful thought, argument and critical thinking evidenced in the attack. Now one more for effect: As Michael noted, all of my classes are full and with waiting lists. I do overload to help students about to graduate and who desperately need my course to graduate. I give out my syllabus and ask that the students sign (the next day) an agreement that they have fully read and agree to comply with the terms on the syllabus. The syllabus is, of course, in English. But the agreement is in Blackfoot language. I tell them (a little deception is necessary in all experimentation; e.g. placebos in double-blind studies on drugs) that those who do not sign the agreement will be dropped with those who will sign on the waiting list taking their places. Some raise hell about being asked to sign some agreement in a language--they don't even know what the language is--they do not and cannot understand. I ask what languages the U.S. and Canadian Treaties were/are written in? I ask them if they can honestly say that every agreement they have signed they fully read and understood. This prompts a full discussion on elements of a treaty/contract, informed consent, the legitimacy of past and present treaties, unconscionability etc etc. Jim C.
Final response: Another classroom exercise
Title: Message While Zizek's behavior is reprehensible, especially given that his teaching duties are almost certainly minimal, it is not uncommon that when teachers get burned out, they start to take short cuts. These are often indirectly encouraged by the administration which cuts funding for teaching, takes on too many students for the faculty, rewards easy teachers who give high grades, etc. Teachers start to give micky mouse tests, reduce readings, cut short their classes, take days off, etc.Avoiding students is a common enough short cut. Of course, a basic problem is that tenure often enough has little to do with teaching well. Disdain for the undergraduates is an occupational disease. Michael Yates Response Jim C: Absolutely true. I am ever mindful that being tenured, I have some degrees of freedom in my own work--sometimes--that few people have in their own work situations. I am always mindful that abuses of tenure provoke reactions to eliminate tenure which is exactly what the right-wingers want. I am also mindful at all times of the sacrifices that students are making and must make and that they are paying dearly and count on me to be ready to rock n' roll in and out of the classroom. But I am also mindful that I have x amount of physical/emotional/compassion energy that must be rationed so that some of the obvious punks, deadbeats, flakes, posturers, players and just plain preppy punks (like Bush) do not crowd out the truly deserving and/or get with the program to be among the truly deserving of extra attention and care. I know that my students (who were assigned Michael's book "Naming the System" as soon as it came out and still are) were so taken that the author of one of their texts would care enough to come and talk with them and answer their questions. I told them I only met one of the author's of one of my texts when I was in school--and he was a total asshole and pompous narcissist. Every one of my students had read Michael's book cover-to-cover within two weeks without any prompting by me and not one, I mean not one, ever asked me if the content would be on the tests or what to focus on in the book; it was truly inspiring and a testimony to the clarity, engaging writing style and content in Michael's book. Those who hold these scarce and potentially influencial positions in academia must always remember that without those students, such positions--their jobs--would not exist. Beyond that, there is simply the mandate for all self-described radicals: serve those in need of helpor get out of the way. Jim C.
Shifting genres in media/pop culture and the shifting SSA of Monopoly Capitalism/Imperialism
Title: Message Does anyone know of work being done to analyze emergences/passings/dominance of various genres in media/"pop culture" (content, scope, impacts, sponsors, target demographics, revenues, linkages, methods of competitionetc) and the shifting SSA and SSA requirements of Monopoly Capitalism/Imperialism? For example, I find this "criminal forensics genre" interesting.Starting with "Quincy" in the early 1980s and up to the present CSI, CSI Miami, Cold Case, Crossing Jordan, Law and Order Criminal Intent, NCIS, etcwe see the message of the omnipotence and omniscience of "bourgeois science" in the hands of the bourgeois state. One little hair, twenty years later, can get you busted for a crime committed twenty years prior--or released from prison for a crime you did not commit. Just the "facts" and the "science" will ultimately drive the law and justice system and will ultimately win out with sufficient patience and faith in the system--the systemcan and will work. Those in the system are professionals driven by curiosity, a passion for justice and superb technical skills using state-of-the-art technology. These shows compete against each other and for expanded audiences by getting more and moregraphic in the gruesome details of autopsies and forensicsand by linking actual cases in the news with story lines (Quincy never showed an actual body being cut open, now these showsgo in exquisite graphic detail). And for those who dare to commit crimes--or oppose the system--omnipotent and omniscient technology in the hands of the bourgeois state (represented by nice guys and women who are just like us with all their own peculiarities and vulnerabilities). In the case of the "Reality shows", they are relatively cheap to produce, focus on trappings of wealth (temporary) like being set in exotic locales and big mansions, and of course utilize, celebrate, preach, rewardand reinforce: rat-race individualism, greed, selfishness, intrigue, betrayal, egoism, narcissism, racism, sexism, homophobia, social darwinism, hard-body youth, phony patriotism, Machiavellianism, cut-throat competition, situational ethics, get-rich-quick, fear, national chauvinism, "civilization" versus "primitivism", crass materialism, predatory calculations of cost/benefit, etc etc. Thanks, Jim C. James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Re: Shifting genres in media/pop culture and the shifting SSA of Monopoly Capitalism/Imperialism
With the cowboys, the railroad people, bankers, and owners of large estates were often the bad guys. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Very perceptive. You can of course add us savage Indians who lacked refinement and appreciation of the wonders of private property along with the wonders of technology and religion that the settlers--and some cowboys--tried to bring to us to deliver us from our primitiveness and savagery. ;-) Jim C.
FW: re Chomsky fundraiser Van
for your own info, and you may want to pass this on to Chomsky, the NDP, whom I believe he'll be speaking at one of their fundraisers have committed great human rights violations against indigenous people in this province. UPCOMING EVENTS IN SUPPORT OF INDIGENOUS SOVERIGNTY 1) picket in honour of gustafsen lake defenders 2) forum with gustafsen lake defenders and movie screening 3) down with delta for more info: NYM Secwepemc Chapter: [EMAIL PROTECTED] NYM Vancouver Chapter: [EMAIL PROTECTED] No One is Illegal Vancouver: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Native Solidarity Network: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anti Poverty Committee: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ORPHEUM THEATHRE SAT MARCH 20 @ 6:30 PM (Smithe at Seymour) *** INFORMATIONAL PICKET *** It is time for all those opposed to the Canadian colonial system to support, through tangible actions, those struggling for land, life, dignity and soverignty. The statement below will be presented on March 20 at a NDP fundraiser at a ticketed event in Vancouver. Several Gustafsen Lake defenders will be converging in Vancouver on that night to speak about the injustices at Gustafsen Lake. (SEE END OF MESSAGE FOR STATEMENT AND ENDORSEMENTS) FORUM WITH GUSTAFSEN LAKE DEFENDERS AND MOVIE SCREENING ABOVE THE LAW Palestine Community Centre Sunday March 21st @ 4:45 PM 1874 Kingsway (cross street Victoria) suggested donation: 2-5$ no one will be turned away for more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Several Gustafsen lake defenders will be speaking out about the injustices at Gustafsen Lake. After close to one decade since the military siege, we cannot allow ourselves to forget this history of indigenous struggle. DOWN WITH DELTA Thursday, March 25 @ 4pm Gather at Victory Square * with food, speakers, drummers This picket of Delta Hotels is being coordinated in Kamloops, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal on March 25. Sun Peaks Resort and Delta Hotels is built in Secwepemc territories, land which has never been ceded, released, nor surrendered. The Canadian and British Columbias governments harassment of Secwepemc people is a continuation of colonial practices that have robbed Indigenous people's of their self-determination by usurping the land of Indigenous peoples and destroying Indigenous people's livelihoods. We stand in support of the Secwepemc people and in their fight in defense of the land in maintaining their livelihood. __ * If you are able to endorse the demand below: please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] IN HONOUR OF THE GUSTAFSEN LAKE DEFENDERS !!! IN SUPPORT OF INDIGENOUS SOVERIGNTY! !! We are gathered here today to remind everyone about the role of the NDP government in the largest paramilitary operation in Canada. The NDP launched a full assault on indigenous defenders asserting their inherent and legal rights to self-determination on unceded territories of BC. In honour of the Gustafsen Lake Defenders, in memory of Dudley George and the millions who were and continue to be victims of the colonial regime, we aim to expose the hypocrisy of progressive politicians. I am unable to support the call for a public inquiry... my New Democratic colleagues and I will continue to support the treaty negotiation process in BC, including the recently concluded Nisga'a treaty. This process, while often painstakingly slow and difficult, is certainly preferable to taking up guns and violence, as occurred in the summer of 1995, said Svend Robinson. And We do further strictly enjoin and require all Persons whatever who have either wilfully or inadvertently seated themselves upon any Lands within the Countries above described, or upon any other Lands which, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are still reserved to the said Indians as aforesaid, forthwith to remove themselves from such Settlements. -Royal Proclamation Act, 1763. Kill this Clark, smear the prick and everyone with him. -Dennis Ryan, RCMP Gustafsen Lake Crisis Management Team, Sept. 1995. Disclosed during the Gustafsen trial. BACKGROUND In 1995, after a long history of peaceful attempts to have Shuswap sovereignty respected, indigenous people from the Shuswap and other nations and a few non-indigenous supporters took a stand on sacred Sundance lands at Ts'Peten, aka Gustafsen Lake. People came to the Sundance grounds after a call for help went out, in response to threats made by a local rancher; one ranch hand pulled out a bullwhip and said: 'This is a good day to string up some red niggers.' (Defenders' press release, June 19/95) Shortly afterwards the Royal Canadian Mounted Police(RCMP) surrounded the Ts'Peten Defenders and held the people there under siege. On June 19, Counsel Dr. Bruce Clark confirmed that as a matter of strict law, you are acting within your existing legal rights by resisting the invasion. Over the next month police, politicians, and media escalated the situation to make the siege the most expensive domestic military operation in Canada's
Delicious, just fucking delicious...
Title: Message As many may know, I give the following extra-credit assignment: With respect to any culture, any period of history and any person with real (life or death) power, give me a list of questions that would, if posed, highly likely get you killed and/or your career totally destroyed. Well I am presently marking these papers and got one I just had to share. This person attached to his list of questions, an autographed picture (little George and Laura) addressed to him by name that said: To, Thank you for your early commitment and dedication as a Charter Member of the campaign in Washington. Grassroots leaders like you are the key to building a winning team. Best Wishes, George Bushand Laura Bush." Of course I thought here come some zingers. Uusally, from the Republicans, it is about Clinton's sexual (or sort of sexual or proto sexual)activity or about Gore lying about the internet. The typical republicans, being typically limited in intellect and experience, ask the typical questions. Well instead, here is what this hard-core "Republican" kid wrote: "A series of questions directed towards George W. Bush and his committee for re-election in the upcoming 2004 presidential campaign: 1. Is it true that the Republican Party and specifically your campaign for re-election have tendencies to carry prejudices based on color of skin and economical status with Ametrican voters? 2. If not, then how do you explain and justify the purging of seven thousand votes in Hillsborough, (Tampa County) Florida at which 54% were of American-American descent? 3. Democracy is where government listens to its voters, but then how do you explain the premeditated purging of voters by using a bias [sic] data base company (Database TEchnologies) by lining their pockets with $4,000,000 and supplying them with a list of bum names from Choice Point, an Atlanta firm who is who are filled with Republican funders? 4. Florida State law does strips [sic] those of voiting rights those who have been convicted of felonies, but how do you explain the some 1,704 voters from Illinois and Ohio who in their earlier lives were convicted of felonies that restored their voting rights and still they were barred from having their votes counted? Then how are your guns for hire (Harris/Choice Point) selecting these disqualified voters? Is is based on very large parameters where names are truncated to fit several different people? 5. In the upcoming 04 presidential election barring your integrity Mr. Bush, how can we trust you and your campaign not to fraud the system with incorrect voter information and have innocent people stripped of their voting rights, based on among other things, misdemeanors who like yourself have committed? As ol Hannibal used to say on the "A-Team": "God I love it when a plan comes together..." There is a less in all of this. I showed the dvd "Unprecedented: the 2000 Election" (I urge all to see and show it especially the special features section) and it shook some hard-core Republicans to the core. Jim C. James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Re: FW: election issues forum
so I was supposed to do some public speaking in early May ...and I get this letter: Jim, Well, the shadow of McCarthy still lingers. When your name and description was given by our sub-commitee on the Issues Forum to the overall coordinating commitee, they balked and said they did not want a radical (translate Marxist) on the program. So, I truly apologize for what has happened but I;m afraid I have to cancel your invitation for May 2. My husband and I (who are both radicals) are so disgusted, we are planning to opt out of the whole process. What will it take in this country for people to see the light? Another depression? So, again, I'm sorry. [name omitted] --- Jim Devine Response Jim C: Perhaps consider this an honor--you must be doing something right. Given the obvious proclivities of those in the position to give a thumbs up or down on your speaking, if you had been invited it would signal no threat--which every serious radical should be. Write them back and thank them for honoring you by canceling the invitation. Yesterday, the president of my college was commenting Craven, some of the stuff you say is brilliant and then you turn around and marginalize and demonize yourself with some of your more brtual and direct comments. I noted to him that the marginalization and demonization I suffer is from those who lack the intellect, preparation, experience, evidence, legal authority and just plain guts to answer the questions and comments I pose; it is an honor to be marginalized and demonized by half-wits, sycophants and idiots and if for some reason they did like me I would worry and lose sleep what I am doing wrong--why I have not drawn the line of demarcation clear enough. Jim C.
FW: Locating Bin Laden
Title: Message Subject: Locating Bin LadenWhen recently interviewed -- Pentagon officials believe they have been unable to locate Bin Laden because he has found a place to hide out withthese characteristics: 1) It is easy to get in if you have money;2) No one will recognize or remember you;3) No one will realize you have disappeared;4) No one keeps any records of your comings and goings; and5) You have no obligations or responsibilities.Pentagon analysts are still puzzled, however, as to how Bin Laden foundout about the Texas Air National Guard in the first place.
Re: Revolutionary socialism
Michael Perelman wrote: I suppose that we must look rather comical to some sitting in front of our computers, laying out a strategy for revolutionary socialism. Yeah, that's true. But not so comical to the young people who launched lefthook.org a few months ago. When I met with them this weekend, we kicked around some ideas about what role that their website might play in a couple of years. It is by no means excluded that if they continue to enjoy support of the kind that has been demonstrated up till now that a national conference of young revolutionaries can be convened. Not only are these people in no mood to compromise with the system, they know how to go out and organize people. These are the people who matter to me, not burned out professors and journalists who couldn't organize a demonstration or put together an effective leaflet if their life depended on it. First we need to be able to communicate why someone who has no idea about the potential benefits of socialism should be interested in the subject. Then we would have to find a way to indicate to them what they could do now to further the goal of socialism, even though the ultimate results might not come for decades. Not really. The socialist movement grows not by convincing people of the need for socialism, but through a critique of capitalism and effective leadership of the mass movement. B-52's raining Volkswagen size bombs on peasant villages recruited me to socialism, not elegant descriptions of the benefits of a future world. Louis Proyect Marxism list: www.marxmail.org Response Jim C: As someone who has often railed against keyboard warriorism on radical lists as not necessarily a radical endeavor if that is all that is going on, I do belive that these lists and discussions are a necessary part of the overall effort to develop revolutionary movements and effective change. I can tell you that in the case of Blackfoot and other Indigenous Nations, many without access to a telephone line let alone internet, these discussion do reach audiences--and are effectively utilized--that people on the lists might never imagine or meet personally. Further, as someone who has railed against theory/quote mongering, scholarship detached from praxis/application, I must note that radical scholarship, and yes some degree of specialization in scholarship, is also necessary and vital to overall revolutionary praxis. But I am always taken by the letter of Marx to Arnold Ruge in 1843 in which he noted: If the construction of the future and its completion for all time is not our task, all the more certain is what we must acomplish in the present: I mean, the ruthless criticism of everything that exists; the criticism being ruthless in the sense that it neither fears its own results nor fears conflict with the powers that be. There are no past or present magic formulas or a-prioris to guide us except setting out on the journey, linking/developing/testing theory with concrete praxis with concrete forces engaged in concrete struggles, admitting and learning from mistakes, trying to form broad tents and alliances that are principled and not opportunistic, developing strategies and tactics that are mutually reinforcing rather than contradictory, and as in the case of path dependency, paths chosen early shape and limit and determine possible, available and effective paths branching from those originally set out on. It is all trial and error with some limited guidance from theory and the past and from other struggles in other contexts. These discussions are, in my opinion, potentially very useful as lessons shared often save blood and lives or repeating costly mistakes. But at the end of the day, it is also where we go, whom we serve, what we do and how we utilize and apply the content of these discussions. Jim C.
The Moon
Title: Message Subject: The moon The moon Early Warning When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training.One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks. The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people: "What are these guys in the big suits doing?" One of the astronauts said that they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon. Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, "Why certainly!" and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder's comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate. So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder's message to the moon. Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After hefinally stopped laughing the translator relayed the message: "Watch out for these assholes. They have come to steal your land." James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Re: corporations/More Side Issue
- Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] How do you avoid touching during sex ? Must be quite a trick. Charles === Remember the condom scene in The Naked Gun? Ian Response Jim C: Or, there are those phone numbers for phone sex, plus new innovations in virtual technologies. Or, as that great exponent of family values Woody Allen put it: Masturbation is safe sex with the one you truly love. Jim C.
George Carlin on Indians
Title: Message Subject: George Carlin on Indians"...Now the Indians. I call them Indians because that's what they are. They're Indians. There's nothing wrong with the word Indian.""First of all, it's important to know that the word Indian does not derive from Columbus mistakenly believing he had reached India. India was not even called by that name in 1492, it was known as Hindustan.""More likely, the word Indian comes from Columbus's description of the people he found here. He was an Italian, and did not speak or write very good Spanish, so in his written accounts he called the Indians, 'Una gente in Dios.' A people in God. In God. In Dios. Indians. It's a perfectly noble and respectable word.""As far as calling them 'Americans' is concerned, do I even have to point out what an insult this is? -We steal their hemisphere, kill twenty or so million of them, destroy five hundred separate cultures, herd the survivors onto the worst land we can find, and now we want to name them after ourselves?It's appalling. Haven't we done enough damage? Do we have to further degrade them by tagging them with this repulsive name?""You know, you'd think it would be a fairly simple thing to come over to this continent, commit genocide, eliminate the forests, dam up the rivers, build our malls and massage parlors, sell our blenders and whoopee cushions, poison ourselves with chemicals, and let it go at that.But no. We have to compound the insult.""... I'm glad the Indians have gambling casinos now. It makes me happy that people are losing their rent money to the Indians. Maybe the Indians will get lucky and win their country back. Probably they wouldn't want it. Look at what we did to it." James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Re: Prabhat Patnaik on Paul Sweezy
OBITUARY A SAINT AND A SAGE PRABHAT PATNAIK Volume 21 - Issue 06, March 13 - March 26, 2004 India's National Magazine from the publishers of THE HINDU Response Jim C: What a wonderful obit. When I lived and taught in India (Kerala), I eagerly looked forward to getting and reading The Hindu every day. I still have a large stack of old copies because the analysis and writing was just first-rate; I used to go through withdrawal pains if there was a delay in delivery. In the old days, before TV was introduced or known in Kerala (I begged some at the Center for Development Studies in Trivanndrum to do a study of the impact of TV on a virgin population--shifting attitudes, consumer expenditures, study habits, family life, voting patterns, culture etc--as TV was introduced in Kerala) of course reading was the primary pleasure in the villages And folks of all classes and strata would read The Hindu for news and commentary simply not available in any other periodical in India at the time. Economists in Kerala were very familiar with Paul Sweezy's work and used his books regularly in the courses. Jim C.
Re: Correction
I wrote: But this story has another implication. As I have said previously, the perfect crime is the crime which is not a crime since then it considered a crime, and can be prosecuted legally as such. That should obviously be: But this story has another implication. As I have said previously, the perfect crime is the crime which is not a crime since then it cannot be considered a crime, and cannot be prosecuted legally as such. Jurriaan As an old saying goes: The problem is not that the rich break the law; the problem is that they need not break the law as they are the ones who make, write and judge it. Jim C
Classroom Exercise
I have a large number of students from China (who have no desire to stay here) who are generally very sharp and keen to learn. But they mostly stay isolated among themselves. Some time ago (June 1999) I wrote this open letter to the Government of China which, with the help of Henry, was published in Chinese language in the China Press on 6-22-1999. What I do is give out a copy of the letter in Chinese only to the students. They have to find some way to have it translated and then write a short essay on what they have learned from the exercise which includes commentary on the content of the letter. Of course, all of a sudden the Chinese students find the Americans approaching and begging them to translate (teaching the Americans what it feels like to be locked out by language) and this also forces discussions among them vis-a-vis the content on the article as well. Jim C. This is an open invitation to members of the Government of China. Next time you are in the U.S. give me a call (I need some warning time) and I'll take you on a personally guided tour of Indian Reservations (Yakima, Lummi, Makah, Blackfoot, Lakota) to show you some realities that the government of the U.S. will never show you and about which some of our illustrious progressive academics know nothing and about which some appear to care nothing. Then we can hit some other spots on the tour. I can take you to a shelter for refugees from U.S.-armed-and-trained death squads in Central and Latin America. I can take you to some areas of Seattle and L.A. where ethnic mafias (suitably anti-communist and formerly/still on CIA payrolls) terrorize their own people. After that, we'll have lunch at some missions for the homeless and then we can do a little role reversal: you work for a day in a Chinese restaurant run by Tong and Kuomintang types and also get to see how white liberals really treat the help when no one is watching. Then we go to some land fills to survey the waste and products of ostentacious lifestyles that are thrown away. We can visit some orphanages with unwanted/unloved/disposable children that are the products of bourgeois decadence and the ultra-invidualism/narcissism central to the profitability/capital accumulation of capitalism. Then we can go to some Think Tanks and you can interview--in Chinese--some of our leading China Scholars. You can sit in their classes and see what kind of stuff they teach and produce. Perhaps we could arrange open debates to contrast the preparation/depth/intellect of your America Scholars with our China Scholars. Perhaps even a tour of how the Faustian Bargains in academia are made and secured. Perhaps some talks with actual students to get their views about the quality of education and preparation for survival in the real world they are getting. Then we finish up the tour with a visit to the Court system where we can watch Justice for two individuals: one rich, white and with an expensive lawyer and one poor, non-white with a legal defender. Call me and please bring plenty of film. Jim Craven
Reality TV and the SSA of Monopoly Capitalism
Title: Message It is set in a jungle with more deadly flora and fawna than any extreme jungle on any of the "Survivor" shows. It has more narcissistic and self-absorbed "hardbodies" than anything on the "Bachelor", the "Bachelorette" or "Are You Hot?" It has plots, twistsand "reveals" more twisted and humiliatingthan anything on "Joe Millionaire" or "Meet My Folks". It has more intrigue, humiliation, Social Darwinism, dog-eat-dog competition, Machiavellianismand rat-race individualism than anything on "The Real World", "Who Wants to Marry My Dad" or "Average Joe". It has stunts and participants are forced to eat shit more extreme and disgustingthan anything on "Fear Factor". It has more megalomania, hubris, narcissism, viciousness, manipulation, superficiality, voyeurism, Machiavellian intrigueand predatory behavior than anything on "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire", "Survivor" or any of the other "Reality" [of capitalism] shows on the air. It has more predatory, toadying and disgusting yuppy pukes than "L.A. Law" or "Ally McBeal".The "it" to which I am referring is"The Apprentice" which focuses on,in addition to the narcissism, superficiality, megalomania, sexism, racism, possessions, wealth, predatory behavior, hubris, callousness,and empire of Trump, going through various stunts and intrigues to find someone to run one of Trumps businesses as a president making $250,000 per year plus perks; it is billed as the ultimate job interview. It features eight men and eight women, initially formed into men versus women, to perform certain business-related stunts. First they wereformed into two teams of women versus men with their first exercise being sellinglemonade (it is up to them by the glass, the case of by the truck load) with the winning team getting to see some of the inside and disgusting trappings of wealth of Trumpand the loser teamgoing to the boardroom where one of them gets fired by Trump (who appears to really enjoy doing it). Each team selects a project manager, different eacfh week, and if the team loses, the project goes to the boardroom and the project manager selects two--supposedly most responsible for the failure--to accompany him or her. In the boardroom they turn on each other, ratting each other out, trying not to be the one selected to "go down to the street instead of up to the suite" [in Trump Towers]. Otherassignments have included: form a marketing plan to sell credit cards for travel in executive jets, fixing up an apartment and renting it out, selling artto art buyers at a gallary, selling "Trump Ice" (bottled water), selling rickshaw rides/advertising in NYCetc. Supposedly each assignment focuses on some aspect of business: marketing, sales, deal making, etc. Trump, along with his bad toupe, is in his glory and obviously has no idea--or care--how shallow, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, egomaniacal and really not very bright that he reveals himself to be. Throught this show we get these homilies of Trump: "It's not personal, only business."; "You cannot sell what you do not believe in", "No excuses", "It is genes that determine greatness" (being from the same stock of a rich father, it is supposedly the genes and not the inherited wealth that makes "suckcess" in business). I have no doubt that the emergence and dominance of this genre--called "Reality TV" is an integral and calculated part of the changing SSA and SSA requirementsof monopoly capitalism and imperialism. A new article entitled "Voting Democracy off the Island: Reality TV and the Republican Ethos" by Francise Prose, in Harper's Magazine, March 2004 is along these lines but does not refer to or utilize the SSA concept; it is nonetheless worth reading. Jim C. James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Call for papers
Title: Message CFP: Exterminating Narratives: Identifying and Resisting Genocidal Cultural Logics (Deadline: 9/15/2004)Seeking proposals for papers for an edited volume exploring andforegrounding genocide as a cultural and literary category for approaching narrative with the objective of identifying cultural logics of genocidethat might not typically be understood as such and also of highlightingnarratives of resistance of resistance to genocide that provide animagination of an alternative way of living and organizing socialrelationships. In the current critical discourses of literary and culturalstudies, we hear much about postcolonialism, colonialism, nationalism,globalization, citizenship, and, of course, paradigms of race, class,gender, and sexuality. Related to such discourses but much less mentionedare the discourse, concept, and above all practice of genocide which suchcritical discourses rarely confront directly or in depth. Thesediscourses, however, could be mobilized to help us address, comprehend, and resist the practices and cultural logics of genocide that, far from being facts of history we seek to understand retrospectively, are ongoingpractices that often elude naming, identification, and redressas we see byrecent events in Rwanda, Bosnia, Chiapas, and persistently in NativeAmerica. Proposals for papers are sought exploring such issues as howgenocide is represented, how it is narratively recognized, misnamed, ormisidentified, how it is defined; what is the continuum of genocidal logicinto practices of everyday life not usually or necessarily understood aspart of such a logic, such as the logic of the commodity? What do comparingacts of genocide reveal about its logic? Papers should deal with specifictexts which might include literary works as well as political texts such asUN policies and resolutions and also critical studies of genocide such as Samantha PowersThe Problem from Hell, Philip Gourevitchs work, andothers.Inquiries and abstracts should be sent to Tim Libretti at[EMAIL PROTECTED]. === From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Full Information at http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/ or write Erika Lin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ===Tiokasin GhosthorseFirst Voices Indigenous RadioWBAI NY 99.5 FM 10 AM Thursdays EST[EMAIL PROTECTED]212.209.2979 voicemail Wake Up Call6-9am Fridays ESTwww.wbai.orgWBAI Pacifica Radio covers an audience area of 21 millionWho is really listening?Mother Earth will have her day and night.forever!www.earthpeoples.orgwww.wole.org/index.htmLong ago the peoples of the Americas were divided into two groups--the people of the Eagle (North America) and people of the Condor (South America). When the two begin to come together again, mixing the tears of the Eagle and the Condor, there will begin an era of renewed life and spirit for Indigenous peoples. inline: Untitled01.jpg
Classroom exercise
Title: Message Here is a classroom exercise I do illustrating some of the contradicitons of capitalism. I asked students, which of the two personality types would you prefer to have--and would likely generate the most sales and profits--were you a capitalist. They always say person B. Now which personality type would you prefer to have as a neighbor in the middle of a flood or which would you prefer to have in a military unit in combat; they always answer person A. Then we get into "physical versus social capital formation/accumulation" under capitalism; atomism/ultra-individualism versus social awareness/action etc. Jim C. Person A Person B 1. Able to delay gratification 1. Unable to delay gratification 2. Unconcerned with Status or Fads 2. Obsessed with Status and Fads 3. Pays cash only (no frivolous use of credit) 3. Willing to run large debt for immediate gratification 4. Cooperative in temperament 4. Super competitive 5. Willing to think of welfare of others 5. Self-absorbed/narcissistic 6. Motivated by transcendent causes 6. Motivated by self-gratification 7. Future oriented 7. Present oriented 8. Non-materialistic/non-acquisitive 8. Ultra-materialistic/acquisitive 9. Views world holistically 9. Views world in ultra-reductionistic terms 10. Principles and morality govern behavior10. Narrow and selfish interests govern behavior 11. Extended time horizon in decision making11. Short-term and narrow time horizon in decision making 12. Data/Evidence/Reasoning-basedin thought and action12. Emotional/Prejudiced/Superficial in thought and action 13. Willing to help without reciprocity13. Unwilling to help without reciprocity 14. Satisficer 14. Maximizer James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Whale Rider
Considering all the hype surrounding Lord of the Rings, one might have missed another New Zealand export that is now available in DVD/Video and whose 13 year old star was nominated as Best Actress in 2004. I am speaking of Whale Rider, a Maori coming of age story with a twist--in this case the protagonist is a teenage girl rather than a boy. This is a wonderful movie and my own daughter, going through some of the same stuff learning traditional Blackfoot Ways, was truly inspired by it. She saw the parallels immediately. Another contribution of the Maori was through diet. Mark Jones and I used to discuss his medical condition and treatments and I had found out that various forms of cancer are virtually unkown among the traditional Maori. The thinking is that it is primarily due to their traditional diet heavy in green-lipped mussels. I sent Mark some literature on this and soon after he would write to me about his new diet that included green-lipped mussels. I can't but help thinking that this extended his life somewhat and of course gave all of us on the lists some more intellectual soul food from Mark. Jim C.
Bad Subjects article
Reminds me of Noriega's tortilla flour, described by Colin Powell's invaders as cocaine. Was any evidence of Noriega drugs ever turned up? mbs Try www.expertwitnessradio.org See archives of radio shows. See also The Big White Lie and Deep Cover by Mike Levine. Jim C.
Mel Gibson and Opus Dei
Title: Message Here are some links on Gibson's relationship with Opus Dei an ultra-rightist cult inside the Catholic Church--Skull and Bones of the Catholic Church. At one prominent Opus Day church in Virginia, the membership included Scalia, Thomas, Louis Freeh and Robert Hanssen (the FBI master spy). This cult, founded by an outright fascist priest Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, favored by JP II, is an extremely well connected and very fascist network. Part of their rituals, involves, every week, putting a belt with spikes around the legs to inflict pain--there is a strong S M/Bondage element in all of their rituals. http://www.odan.org/ Here is Mr. "Super Christian/Catholic" Gibson in action in part of an interview for Playboy: PLAYBOY: We take it that you're not particularly broad-minded when it comes to issues such as celibacy, abortion, birth control -- GIBSON: People always focus on stuff like that. Those aren't issues. Those are unquestionable. You don't even argue those points. PLAYBOY: You don't? GIBSON: No. PLAYBOY: What about allowing women to be priests? GIBSON: No. PLAYBOY: Why not? GIBSON: I'll get kicked around for saying it, but men and women are just different. They're not equal. The same way that you and I are not equal. PLAYBOY: That's true. You have more money. GIBSON: You might be more intelligent, or you might have a bigger dick. Whatever it is, nobody's equal. And men and women are not equal. I have tremendous respect for women. I love them. I don't know why they want to step down. Women in my family are the center of things. An good things emanate from them. The guys usually mess up. PLAYBOY: That's quite a generalization. GIBSON: Women are just different. Their sensibilities are different. PLAYBOY: Any examples? GIBSON: I had a female business partner once. Didn't work. PLAYBOY: Why not? GIBSON: She was a cunt. PLAYBOY: And the feminists dare to put you down! GIBSON: Feminists don't like me, and I don't like them. I don't get their point. I don't know why feminists have it out for me, but that's their problem, not mine. [...] PLAYBOY: How do you feel about Bill Clinton? GIBSON: He's a low-level opportunist. Somebody's telling him what to do. PLAYBOY: Who? GIBSON: The guy who's in charge isn't going to be the front man, ever. If I were going to be calling the shots I wouldn't make an appearance. Would you? You'd end up losing your head. It happens all the time. All those monarchs. Ifhe's the leader, he's getting shafted. What's keeping him in there? Why would you stay for that kind of abuse? Except that he has to stay for some reason. He was meant to be the president 30 years ago, if you ask me. PLAYBOY: He was just 18 then. GIBSON: Somebody knew then that he would be president now. PLAYBOY: You really believe that? GIBSON: I really believe that. He was a Rhodes scholar, right? Just like Bob Hawke. Do you know what a Rhodes scholar is? Cecil Rhodes established the Rhodes scholarship for those young men and women who want to strive for a new world order. Have you heard that before? George Bush? CIA? Really, it's Marxism, but it just doesn't want to call itself that. Karl had the right idea, but he was too forward about saying what it was. Get power but don't admit to it. Do it by stealth. There's a whole trend of Rhodes scholars who will be politicians around the world. PLAYBOY: This certainly sounds like a paranoid sense of world history. You must be quite an assassination buff. GIBSON: Oh, fuck. A lot of those guys pulled a boner. There's something to do with the Federal Reserve that Lincoln did, Kennedy did and Reagan tried. I can't remember what it was, my dad told me about it. Everyone who did this particular thing that would have fixed the economy got undone. Anyway, I'll end up dead if I keep talking shit. (By the way, both of Gibson's parents are Holocaust deniers.) James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
a unique leverage issue
Title: Message Where a "wedge issue" is typically one that divides and causes people to become entrenched in their respective positions, a leverage issue can be one that causes people to examine other issues and perhaps even change from previous positions. I just had an example of this the other day which might offer a lesson for organizing. Leonardo de Vinci once wrote: "For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, and there you long to return." Indeed all the real pilots I know: a) do turn their eyes skyward when a plane passes over (astro-projecting themselves into the cockpit of the plane passing over to visualize what the instruments are likely reading, what procedures the pilot is followingand the view from above); b)live in dread of their next flight physical the older they get; my father and some of his oldtimer friends used to find a friendly flight surgeon who would, shall we say, look more "holistically" and sympathetically when doing his physicals.I have been on the ground for over two years due to medical issues and miss being in the air every day. Well a colleague of mine, a hard-core Bush supporter, a Vietnam-era veteranand fellow pilot and Iwere out talking and watching planes flying the pattern at nearby Pearson Air Park. He told me that his "Type II diabetes" was kicking his ass and was worried about busting a medical. He asked how long I had been grounded and I told him a bit more than two years and that for now, my simulator has to do to try and keep up my skills. I asked him: "What kind of a real pilot would, after getting the advantage of over $1 million being spent on him to teach him to fly, and having access to F-102s to fly, and claiming to be pro-military while there was a nationwide pilot shortage, claim that his personal physician (not a flight surgeon) was not available and then refuse to take a flight physical (he would have no trouble passing if drug testing were not part of it) effectively grounding himself with at least two years of flight status and duty ahead of him? My colleague said: "Asusual you mean Bush". I said "Yes, and his buddy James R. Bath, who also refused to take the required flight physical at the same time." My colleague asked: "Who was or is James R. Bath?" I answered: "Instead of taking my word for it, as rabidly anti-Bush as I am, why not do a google search on Mr. Bath and see what you find; I'll give you a hint:James Bath, at the time, in addition to being a "Guard buddy" of L'il George, was a principal representative of thebin Laden family in Huston." I noted to my colleague that "every time I see Bush wearing a military uniform, particularly with air force wings on it, my blood boils as L'il George wouldn't make a wart on a real pilot's or real soldier'sass." He asked if Bush's "honorable discharge" was not sufficient evidence that Bush had done his Guard duty and I noted that the same family wealth, name and connections that got him into the Guard, 12 days before his deferment was up, ahead of over 100,000 on a national waiting list and ahead of over 500 on a Texas Air Guard waiting list and with a 25 percentile score on the airman's aptitude exam, could easily be employed to get him an "honorable discharge" he didn't deserve. Further, even if the charge was not AWOL (Absent Without Leave), certainly a charge of AWPL (Absent With Privileged Leave) was appropriate. I also noted for him to check out when random drug testing was initiated in the Texas Air Guard (April 1972, the very month Bush made his last flight in a F-102). Well this colleague has now come back, after doing a google-search on James R. Bath, finding out about theCIA connections, the leadingrole in the BCCI scandals, his role in arming Saddam and the Taliband on behalf of the Saudi Royal family, etc and now he says "it looks like[I] simply cannot vote for Bush and wants some more information. I lent him Hatfield's "Fortunate Son" plus some more information on the origins of the wealth and connections of the Bush empire (financing Hitler from 1924 onward, trading with the enemy during war time by selling nazi bonds after Pearl Habor, $1.5 million in"equity" from a synfuel plant at Auschwitz in partnership with Fritz Thyssen, etc). I told him to please spread the information around to all his Bush-supporter buddies. Some of the smallest and apparently least significant issues can indeed be used as leverage to much bigger and more significant issues depending upon how they are approached and handled. I plan to write pilot associations and magazines to put that one simple question: "What kind of real pilot would refuse to take a flight physical and ground himself/herself (aftr declaring in his Guard application that he wanted to make a lifetime career of flying) and should such an individual wear the wings of a pilot?" Jim C. James M.
response to bragging
Title: Message Ordinarily I think that what I have written is pretty plebeian. But these students (as well as those in Jim Craven's classes at Clark college where I lectured in December)really seemed to like my book.They said that it was both interesting and accessible and covered a lot of ground. So, some of you might want to take a look at it for possible use in classes. Maybe I can make a visit to your classes. I'm not too bad a teacher! Michael Yates Response: Michael lectured three of my classes using his book and even the self-described right-wingers loved it. They found both the book and Micxhael's lecture quite accessible, dealing with serious issues, doing a good job taking on neoclassical theory and they were also impressed with the breadth/depth of coverage of issues and well as of the breadthof the issues considered for coverage. What was really impressive is by week three of my courses, as is the case this quarter, virtually all of my students had read the book cover-to-cover and not one, I mean not one, asked me the usual: "Is this going to be on the tests?" Further, when Michael self-identified himself as a "radical economist", the students were genuinely interested and wanted to know how he got that way and what delineates him as a radical--rather than shutting down or calling for the resurrection of "Tailgunner Joe" [McCarthy]. And yes, Michael is, in my opinion, a great teacher and storyteller. Invite him to your classes and use his book. Jim C.
Native Americans
Title: Message When I hear this term, "Native Americans", my blood boils. And it is the same for many "Natives" (we use this term not as a shorthand for "Native Americans" but as shorthand for "of Indigenous ancestry") I know. Why? First of all, although Natives were subject to the draft in World War I, Natives were not declared--summarily and without permission--to be "American citizens" until 1924 (and not until 1963 in Canada). The records of the congressional debates at the time reveal that the summary declaration of supposed "citizenship" was a ruse to attemept to summarily declare Natives as citizens and "therefore" to be "national minorities" who would supposedly not becovered by international law (at the time, the allies were talking about putting the Germans and Turks on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity and it was noted that the U.S. and Canada could easily be tried for the same things as a result of what was done/was being done to Natives.) In Canada, the same thing was done in the 1960s, for the same reasons, and was done by the Soviets, French and other nations seeking to summarily declare their Indigenous nations to be "national minorities" and ostensibly also not to be covered by international law that would expose the genocidal nations. The second reason this term makes my blood boil is that it genericizes and homogenizes diverse nations--as it is intended to do--and glosses over the reality of separate and very diverse Indigenous nations, with very diverse cultures and histories,that have, as a matter of facts on the ground and international law, derivative rights to independence, self-determination, sovereignty and freedom from extermination--flowing from the facts of their nationhood. The third reason, is that this term is often used to imply, implicitly or explicity, a form of crude "nativism", that the further back in "American history" one's ancestors go the more "real American" one is. Since most native nations I know of routinely adopted from outside their nations and had no concept of "nativism" as some kind of credential of being a "real" whatever, this term is also non or anti-Native in origin and spirit. Fourthly, when, from the beginning of this "Republic", built on slavery, genocide, theft, fraud, deceit, racismand hubris, have Natives ever been any kind of "Americans" orpart of "America" or had access to any of the rights and promises embodied in the U.S. Constiution? Would someone call an Irish person a "Native Brit"? This is what it feels like for many Natives. The entity or nation called "America" is for many of us nothing but an occupying and genocidal power bent on our extermination as Peoples and nations--partly, not exclusively, through forced assimilation and redefinition. We are Blackfoot, Makah, Lakota, Osage...from many nations, some of which no longer exist, others with only a few members left, others on the brink of total annihilation. Finally this term is most often employed by solicitious white liberals and/or outright anti-Natives often trying to sound so solicitous and caring: "You people, the original 'Americans', 'Native Americans', have been so... and we believe that you 'Native Americans' should also share in the American dream." No recognition, of course, that this "American dream" is a myth for the many, only available for the few, and was built through stolen resources, genocide, forced assimilation of various Native nations--and it is not past tense, but is going on as we speak. There is no BCA (Bureau of Caucasian Affairs) or even BA-AA (Bureau of African-American Affairs). That is why I and many other ndns I know object to the use of this term. Of course there is not a general consensus, but generally speaking, the more active and radical the Natives, the less inclined they are to use the term "Native Americans." for the reasons I have given--and more. Jim C. James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Saddam as CIA agent: Thanks for the memories
Title: Message http://www.bushflash.com/thanks.html James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
More on Beware Generals Bearing a Grudge
I recall that Truman described Macarthur's farewell address to Congress as 100% pure bullsh*t, which was probably accurate. Macarthur was a winner and a bastard.. He's even less favourably remembered in Australia --- for most of 1942, most of his land forces were Aussies, and from his office in Melbourne he rode them hard, considering they were overwhelmingly made up of reservists and/or conscripts (the regular army being mostly in the Middle East and in POW camps in Malaya at the time). Even though Australians achieved the first clear land victory in the theatre (at Milne Bay), as soon as Macarthur gained enough US troops he virtually disregarded his non-US land forces (allegedly reluctant to share the glory). regards, Grant. PS Response Jim C: Add to his long list of crimes, MacArthur was instrumental in shielding many Japanese Class-A war criminals including those from the infamous Unit 731 in China in return for these criminals turning over their research on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons using live human subjects including U.S. and allied prisoners of war. Like another general, also a malignant narcissist, megalomaniac and control freak--General Patton--MacArthur put leading Japanese fascists back into power in postwar Japan as Patton had done with nazis in postwar Germany ( no, it wasn't simply a matter that the fascists were the only ones with requisite skills for postwar reconstruction). Then there was the opening fire and killing of bonus marchers (in direct violation of an order given by Commander in Chief Herbert Hoover) in 1932 who had come to Washington, D.C. to protest not being given the bonus bonds promised them for service during World War II. Then there was the staging of his courageous exit from the Philippines and covert lobbying for the Medal of Honor he thought he deserved and desperately wanted as his own father Arthur MacArthur (another malignant narcissist and megalomaniac who ran the Philippines as Governor like a slave plantation)had obtained. He publicly rebuked General Wainwright for not fighting to the death in the Philippines, yet used a presidential order as a cover (he had violated many presidential orders previously and did so subsequently in Korea) for his own escape from the Philippines. When he gave his famous I shall return shit, he was asked by a reporter: General, shouldn't it be We shall return? to which the asshole replied I don't see the point. in a rather imperial and dismissive fashion. Of all the major U.S. generals, this creature was probably the lowest scum of the bunch. Many of his crimes, such as his involvement in the plot to overthrow FDR and set up a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. are only now partly coming to light. My own father used to say, and he also called him dugout Doug, that had he seen him in the field (MacArthur was his theater commander) he would have likely tried to put a bullet or two into him as was done in some cases with career-climbing officers and non-coms who needlessly risked the lives of troops for their own glory and from their own positions of relative safety. See An American Caesar (film or book) for more details. Jim C.
More on Beware Generals Bearing a Grudge
Jim C. writes: Like another general, also a malignant narcissist, megalomaniac and control freak--General Patton--MacArthur put leading Japanese fascists back into power in postwar Japan as Patton had done with nazis in postwar Germany Patton MacArthur were both from the most aristocratic families. I understand that they both had their own strings of polo ponies and both played polo, a very aristocratic sport. Jim Devine Yes indeed. Both went to the right prep schools, both got into West Point through the ol inside fix, both pursued tactics of leap-frogging in deploying forces (sometimes it worked out sometimes it didn't), both got meteroic promotions relative to time in service, both were repeatedly censored for violating orders of higher-ups and not giving due deference of military protocol to superiors while at the same time coming down hard on those who did--or were alleged to have done--the same to themselves. MacArthur was a total Mommy's boy whose mother, Pinky MacArthur, even moved in right next to West Point so she could be near him the whole time and who used her own standing to cover him while at West Point. Both believed in reincarnation and believed they were reincarnations of previous great generals and leaders. And the list of similiarities goes on and on. It all reminds me of my times with my father who used to tell me stories from World War II and whever a picture of MacArthur would pop up on some historical thing on the tv, my father would just get this look on his face and shudder. My father used to fly regularly to the Philippines that he knew so well and he would tell me that sure their were Filipinos who revered MacArthur from the I shall return shit but he told me that he also knew Filipinos who had been guerrilas against the Japanese, who saw Japanese war criminals get off and even used as postwar police as had been done by the French in Vietnam, who absolutely hated MacArthur but whose own views would never be aired on tv in the Philippines because of the even postwar influence of the MacArthur name (e.g. the family owned San Miguel brewery--one of the most famous of the beers in the Philippines--plus a whole lot of land, plus many gold mines etc. Jim C.
Re: Beware Generals Bearing a Grudge
This article was interesting, but unlike the other generals, Clark was briefly the head of an hardly heroic mission in the Balkans. Comparison between the efforts of McClellan or MacArthur seems to be a bit exaggerated. -- Michael Perelman My father, who served in the China/Burma/India theater during World War II ( the infamous 490th Bomb Squadron known as the Burma Bridge busters--94 missions in B-25s against the Japanese fascists; low-level bombing so low they didn't carry parachutes) had an abiding hatred of MacArthur. His own hatred came from MacArthur having appropriated several air transports to take out his personal valuables during the fall of the Philippines--transports that could have been used to save some who wound up on the Batan death march. He also ordered air strikes against gold mines owned by his family that had been played out in order to collect reparations for bomb damages. But in addition to being a malignant narcissist, megalomaniac, manipulator, pathological liar and hypocrite, Mac Arthur had a direct role in the attempted overthrow of FDR in 1934 and attempts to set up a fascist state by members of the Committee For a Sound Dollar and the American Liberty League who attempted to recruit Maj. Gen Smedley D. Butler (three times awarded Medal of Honor, twice given as the first time in 1905 the Medal of Honor was not presented as Butler was ineligible as the medal was not awarded to officers until 1914) who was revered by veterans (they wanted Butler to organize an army of 500,000 veterans from the 1932 bonus marches to act as shock troops to take the white house and hold it) as those same veterans absolutely hated MacArthur for his role in opening fire against the bonus marchers (against the direct orders of Herbert Hoover). See History Channel film The Plot to Overthrow FDR or Jules Archer's The Plot to Seize the White House. Of course MacArthur and his fellow conspirators (J.P. Morgan, John Davis, Al Smith, Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker, Irenee Du Pont et al) were never tried; the plot was exposed by General Butler himself. Jim C.
The Punk in Chief:Oh what a tangled web we weave...
Title: Message So now the handlers of L'il George have come up with "dental records" from 1973 supposedly showing he had a dental exam in Alabama. So he managed to get a dental exam in 1973, and didn't need his own personal dentist, but from May to September 1972, didn't manage to get a flight physical, as he was ordered to do, saying his "personal physician" (not a flight surgeon) wasn't available. Interestingly, it was in April of 1972 that random drug testing was instituted, and apparently the "personal physician" of Bush's buddy James R. Bath (then, principal representative of the Bin Laden family in Huston, fellow Guard member in the "Champaigne Squadron" full of politician's kids who went on to be heavily involved in the BCCI scandals and give evidence of longstanding CIA connections) was also not available; all of this when there was a Guard pilot shortage domestically and Bush never went on to return to flight status but instead "worked it out with the Guard" to get out 8 months early to go to Harvard Business School (after being denied entrance to the Univ. of Texas law school for horrible grades from Yale). Here's the story from a previous post entitled "The Punk in Chief" -Original Message- From: Craven, Jim Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 2:41 PM To: Campus Master List; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'; Subject: The "Punk in Chief" From: "Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President", by J.H. Hatfield, Soft Skull Press, N.Y. 2001 "Junior lost his deferment from induction into compulsory military service. Four years at Yale had helped him avoid the draft, but now he was suddenly faced with the possibility that he would join the ranks of the other half-million American youth in Vietnam, who were dying at the rate of 350 a week..." During the 1960s, however, many of George W's generation who joined considered it an option to outright evasion of the draft. Overall, National guard members had only a remote chance of ending up in Vietnam. Throughout the war, only 15,000 of the more than 1,000,000 of the Guard and reserves were sent to fight in the Southeast Asian country... Speaking of himself in the third person, Bush later said, ' Yeah, I mean one could argue that he was trying to avoid being the infantryman but my attitude was I'm taking the first opportunity to become a pilot and jumped on that and did my time.'.. Junior told Roland Betts, one of his classmates from Yale, that while he wasn't particularly enthusiatic about enlisting in the Guard, he 'felt that in order not to derail his father's political career he had to be in military service of some kind.'.. In 1968, the national waiting list for Guard slots contained approximately 100,000 names. Although there are no records of how long the Texas waiting lists were at the time, Retired Major General Thomas Bishop, who was the state's adjutant general in the late 60s, stated there were lengthy waiting lists in Texas. ' We were full', he flatly stated. In addition, Dale Pyeatt, associate director of the National Guard Association of Texas, was quoted in the press as stating: 'There were definately waiting lists. There wasn't any question about that.'.. Although pilots were in demand in Vietnam, Tom Hail, a historian for the Texas Air National guard noted that records from the era did not show a pilot shortage in the Guard squadron. Hail, who reviewed the unit's personnel files for a special Guard museum display on Bush's service, stated that his unit had 27 pilots at the time he initiated his application for enlistment. While that number was two short of its authorized strength, the unit had two other pilots who were in training and another waiting a transfer. Hail asserted that there was no need to fast-track applicants... Four months before enlisting, Bush reported to Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts, a recruiting office near the Yale campus, to take the Air Force Officers Qualification Test. While scoring 25 percent for pilot aptitude on the screening test--'about as low as you could get and still be accepted', according to Retired Colonel Rufus G. Martin, a former Guard personnel officer--and 50 percent for navigator aptitude in his initial enlistment test, Bush scored 95 persent in the 'officer quality' section, compared with the current-day average of 88 percent... His Guard application form asked for 'background qualifications of value to the Air force.' Bush wrote 'None". Another question he had to answer was whether he was interested in an overseas assigment. Bush checked the box that said: 'do not volunteer...' However Staudt [former Guard commander, Retired Brigadier General General Walter "Buck" Staudt] did admit to the "Houston Chronicle" in 1988 that George W's wealthy background 'indirectly' helped him qualify for on
Fun movies--George the Chickenhawk
Title: Message http://www.ericblumrich.com/topgun.html http://www.takebackthemedia.com/triwimp.html http://www.symbolman.com/chickenhawks.html http://www.hornsandhalos.com/ James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Response:Bush and the F 102
Fascinating stuff, Jim Craven. Never knew the details. Is it all documented in one place? http://www.awolbush.com/
Re: Response:Bush and the F 102
You bet it is. Try Fortunate Son by J.H. Hatfield, 3rd ed. (found dead in a motel rooom in Alabama supposed suicide). Hatfield actually started out to write a pro-Bush book and wound up with the most devastating and most detailed book yet. He is an ex-convict who was noted as a journalist before going to jail. The Bushies tried to use his ex-con status to impeach him but the scholarship is first--rate and irrefutable. Jim C -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Marvin Gandall Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 3:16 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Response:Bush and the F 102 Fascinating stuff, Jim Craven. Never knew the details. Is it all documented in one place? - Original Message - From: Craven, Jim [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 5:32 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Response:Bush and the F 102 Bush and the Texas Guard flew the F 102. An aviation buddy points out that the F 102 had no conceivable mission in Vietnam. So even if he showed up, his unit wasn't going to go. Gene Coyle Response (Jim C) Absolutely true. At the time Bush got into the Texas Air Guard (with a national waiting list of over 150,000, got in the same day he applied--with 12 days left until his deferment was up, and with a waiting list of 160 in Texas for 2 pilot slots max, and with a score of 25% on the airman exam--lowest possible passing) The F-102 was being phased out. Then he gets a direct commission to 2nd Lt. bypassing a requirement for 23 weeks OCS, then he goes to flight school and finishes 100 hours or so short of the hours requirement, then he is transferred to the Alabama Air Guard with no aircraft (to work on the Senate campaign of his daddy's buddy Winston Blount) then he is missing for 13 months (records since lifted from the Guard records in 1994 by two shadowy characters who paid a visit), then in April 1972 the medical exams are changed to include random drug testing, and he is due for an exam in May of 1972 but in September 1972, he and his buddy James R. Bath (then a principal representative of the Bin Laden family in Houston) refuse to take a medical exam and are taken off flight status--with a pilot shortage existing at the time. Then he gets out 8 months early to go to Harvard Business school after first being denied entrance to Univ of Texas Law School for bad grades. Bush served a total of 51 months out of a 72 month Guard obligation. Jim C.
Popular issues and mass work
I agree with tom (as usual). There is enormous **agitational** value
behind
the films Jim forwarded. I have already used them to good effect today.
Now of course in terms of advancing theory they may be of limited
value. But the fact that they are enjoyable should not be held against
them. Just for once in our lives can't we Marxists have fun while we
smite
the enemy.
Being boring isn't always the best way forward you know!
regards
Gary
You know the old definition of a Puritan: Someone who lives with the
haunting fear, in abject terror, that somehow, someone, somehow, might
be having a good time. I wonder if that might apply to some
self-described Marxists as well.
Serious is doing one's homework (Al Gore was a journalist in an
abbreviated tour in Vietnam kept under relatively safe conditions, but
nonetheless did volunteer to go and as an enlisted man although he would
have been qualified for OCS--for the same reason as Kerry as a
credential for future political office he was already plotting to go
after; Kerry was a swift boat commander in the brown water navy--a
river rat) and serious is taking causes that matter to people (but may
not matter much in the scheme of things) and turning them into issues
that do matter. For example, this issue with Bush and the Guard opens up
all sorts of other issues (class privilege, those who send men and women
to war never see their own kids go, the class system and how the right
to life is determined by class privilege, hypocrisy as Bush was active
at Yale promoting the Vietnam War, the real nature and interests of the
Vietnam War and parallels with Iraq, etc etc). I can't tell you how many
veterans I know who are now reading Marx, and at first there would have
been no way, but starting with an issue they knew and cared about, they
were taken to whole new issues (the contradictions and imperatives of
capitalism, imperialism, no glory in being a tool of imperialism etc,
throwaway{ vets who get used up, marched in some bullshit parrade and
then thrown away etc) and levels of consciousness about the system, who
runs it, what their real roles were in it etc.
I'll use whatever hook I can find. If I start out with the 18th
Brumaire or State and Revolution, of the value-price transformation
problem all I get is what the fuck are you talking about and what does
it matter to me?
Too often we see leftists talking to themselves, in language they
themselves can barely understand, about cloistered or esoteric issues,
leading to no one or nothing on the mass level. That is exactly what
the Man wants: talking around and above the masses about issues that
matter only to a few rather than starting with issues that do matter and
them taking those issues, step-by-step, to a whole new level linking the
popular issues with others typically discussed at other cloistered
levels. It is a step-by-step process and there are few shortcuts.
The Philosopher's have only interpreted the world in various ways; the
point, however, is to change it.
Karl Marx, 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, inscription on the tomb of Karl
Marx at Highgate cemetary, London,
Jim C.
And more on Bush's military record
-Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Devine, James Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 5:03 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] more on Bush's military record see http://www.calpundit.com/archives/003220.html A letter sent to Department of Defense by a buzzflash reader just after the last election: RE: Desertion Department of Defense The Pentagon Washington, D.C. 20301-1900 To whom it may concern: Recently, I was made aware of allegations concerning several violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) by George W. Bush during the Vietnam War. The alleged acts include being Absent Without Leave (UCMJ Article 86) for a period of more than a year from his National Guard assignments in Texas and Alabama. According to the UCMJ, a person who is AWOL for more than 30 days with evidence of no intent to return to duty is guilty of Desertion. (UCMJ Article 85) To understand the gravity of this offense, one need only read the section 4.9.5 e. of Article 85, which states that the maximum punishment for desertion in a time of war (3), is, Death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct. As far as I am aware, George W. Bush has never received any punishment for these alleged crimes, nor has he ever been charged. When I read about these allegations in national media outlets including, but not limited to; The Boston Globe(1), The Washington Post(2), The Birmingham News(3), and The Dallas Morning News(4), I decided to call the Department of Defense to find out what the Statute of Limitations was for these crimes. I was informed that because of the nature of the crimes; deserting one's country during a time of war, that there is NO statute of limitations, and these crimes, if proven, can still be prosecuted today. The purpose of this correspondence is to make a formal written complaint with circumstantial and documentary evidence of George W. Bush's violations of the UCMJ. Since he is the Commander in Chief of our armed forces, the details of his past service or lack thereof, are of particular interest to the American people. DETAILS: From May to November 1972, George W. Bush was living in Alabama working on the US senate campaign of Winton Blount and was required to attend drills with the Air National Guard unit in Montgomery, Alabama. There is no record that he attended any drills whatsoever. Additionally, General William Turnipseed (r) who was commander of the unit at that time has stated in interviews that he never saw Bush report for duty. On September 5, 1972, Bush had requested permission to perform duty for September, October, and November at the 187th Tactical Recon Group in Montgomery. Permission was granted, and Bush was ordered to report to General William Turnipseed. In interviews, Turnipseed, and his administrative officer at the time, Kenneth K. Lott, have stated that they had no memory of Bush ever reporting. Seven months later, at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas, Bush's two superior officers were unable to complete his annual evaluation covering the year from May 1, 1972 to April 30, 1973 because, Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report. Both superior officers, who are now dead, and also Ellington's top personnel officer at the time, mistakenly concluded that Bush served his final year of service in Alabama. Bush returned to live in Texas after the senatorial election in November, 1972, so this is obviously not true. According to the records available from the National Guard, the period between May 1972 and May 1973 remains unaccounted for. George W. Bush himself has refused to answer questions about this period in his life, other than to state that he fulfilled all of his National Guard commitments. If this were true, why is there no record of him fulfilling these commitments at either of his posts in Texas or Alabama? Why is there not one commanding officer that can come forward and state unequivocally that Bush reported for duty? If the allegations are true that Bush deserted his country during a time of war, this is one of the gravest offenses one can commit against their country, short of treason. This is why there is no Statute of Limitations concerning these crimes. My father served proudly as a field surgeon in Vietnam, and it distresses me greatly that a person could use his family's influence and power to not only avoid the draft for service, but then to not fulfill the duties that he was assigned in substitute for serving in Vietnam. These crimes are not to be taken lightly, and I believe that all men and women who serve America proudly would be shocked that a soldier was allowed to abuse the system in the way that George W. Bush allegedly has. These charges warrant investigation, and until a satisfactory record of Bush's service is produced, I can only assume that Bush did indeed desert his country in a time of war. I implore you to investigate these
Response: Psychoanalysis Re: happiness is a transitory state
Bill Lear wrote: So, our chains become part of us, and attempts to break the chains therefore hurt? They not only become part of us, they made us. Doug Very true, but does the fact that we can conceptualize and grasp that we are partly the product of the chains and backwardness that bind us not suggest the possibility of transcendence or at least of not accepting such chains as limits or a fait accompli? Jim C.
U$ Judge approves subpoenas served on anti-war activists
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=216707category=; BCCode=newsdate=2/7/2004 Feds win right to war protesters' records Albany Times-Herald Saturday, February 7, 2004 By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press DES MOINES, Iowa -- In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists. In addition to the subpoena of Drake University, subpoenas were served this past week on four of the activists who attended a Nov. 15 forum at the school, ordering them to appear before a grand jury Tuesday, the protesters said. Federal prosecutors refuse to comment on the subpoenas. In addition to records about who attended the forum, the subpoena orders the university to divulge all records relating to the local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a New York-based legal activist organization that sponsored the forum. The group, once targeted for alleged ties to communism in the 1950s,announced Friday it will ask a federal court to quash the subpoena on Monday. The law is clear that the use of the grand jury to investigate protected political activities or to intimidate protesters exceeds its authority, guild President Michael Ayers said in a statement. Representatives of the Lawyer's Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union said they had not heard of such a subpoena being served on any U.S. university in decades. Those served subpoenas include the leader of the Catholic Peace Ministry, the former coordinator of the Iowa Peace Network, a member of the Catholic Worker House, and an anti-war activist who visited Iraq in 2002. They say the subpoenas are intended to stifle dissent. This is exactly what people feared would happen, said Brian Terrell of the peace ministry, one of those subpoenaed. The civil liberties of everyone in this country are in danger. How we handle that here in Iowa is very important on how things are going to happen in this country from now on. The forum, titled Stop the Occupation! Bring the Iowa Guard Home! came the day before 12 protesters were arrested at an anti-war rally at Iowa National Guard headquarters in Johnston. Organizers say the forum included nonviolence training for people planning to demonstrate. The targets of the subpoenas believe investigators are trying to link them to an incident that occurred during the rally. A Grinnell College librarian was charged with misdemeanor assault on a peace officer; she has pleaded innocent, saying she simply went limp and resisted arrest. The best approach is not to speculate and see what we learn on Tuesday when the four testify, said Ben Stone, executive director of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, which is representing one of the protesters. Mark Smith, a lobbyist for the Washington-based American Association of University Professors, said he had not heard of any similar case of a U.S.university being subpoenaed for such records. He said the case brings back fears of the red squads of the 1950s and campus clampdowns on Vietnam War protesters. According to a copy obtained by The Associated Press, the Drake subpoena asks for records of the request for a meeting room, all documents indicating the purpose and intended participants in the meeting, and all documents or recordings which would identify persons that actuallyattended the meeting. It also asks for campus security records reflecting any observations made of the Nov. 15, 2003, meeting,including any records of persons in charge or control of the meeting, and any records of attendees of the meeting. Several officials of Drake, a private university with about 5,000 students, refused to comment Friday, including school spokeswoman Andrea McDonough. She referred questions to a lawyer representing the school, Steve Serck, who also would not comment. A source with knowledge of the investigation said a judge had issued a gag order forbidding school officials from discussing the subpoena.
Response:Bush and the F 102
Bush and the Texas Guard flew the F 102. An aviation buddy points out that the F 102 had no conceivable mission in Vietnam. So even if he showed up, his unit wasn't going to go. Gene Coyle Response (Jim C) Absolutely true. At the time Bush got into the Texas Air Guard (with a national waiting list of over 150,000, got in the same day he applied--with 12 days left until his deferment was up, and with a waiting list of 160 in Texas for 2 pilot slots max, and with a score of 25% on the airman exam--lowest possible passing) The F-102 was being phased out. Then he gets a direct commission to 2nd Lt. bypassing a requirement for 23 weeks OCS, then he goes to flight school and finishes 100 hours or so short of the hours requirement, then he is transferred to the Alabama Air Guard with no aircraft (to work on the Senate campaign of his daddy's buddy Winston Blount) then he is missing for 13 months (records since lifted from the Guard records in 1994 by two shadowy characters who paid a visit), then in April 1972 the medical exams are changed to include random drug testing, and he is due for an exam in May of 1972 but in September 1972, he and his buddy James R. Bath (then a principal representative of the Bin Laden family in Houston) refuse to take a medical exam and are taken off flight status--with a pilot shortage existing at the time. Then he gets out 8 months early to go to Harvard Business school after first being denied entrance to Univ of Texas Law School for bad grades. Bush served a total of 51 months out of a 72 month Guard obligation. Jim C.
Re: skull bones
-Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Perelman Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2004 5:47 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] skull bones I think we have picked the bones clean on this one -- unless we come up with something shockingly new. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Got it. But as a last comment for the moment: Russert: you're trailing John Kerry in both U.S.A. Today and Newsweek polls by seven and five points. President Bush: Yeah. Russert: This is what John Kerry had to say last year. He said that his colleagues are appalled at the quote President's lack of knowledge. They've managed him the same way they've managed Ronald Reagan. They send him out to the press for one event a day. They put him in a brown jacket and jeans and get him to move some hay or move a truck, and all of a sudden he's the Marlboro Man. I know this guy. He was two years behind me at Yale. I knew him, and he's still the same guy. Did you know him at Yale? President Bush: No. Russert: How do you respond to that? President Bush: Politics. I mean, this is-you know, if you close your eyes and listen carefully to what you just said, it sounds like the year 2000 all over again. Russert: You were both in Skull and Bones, the secret society. President Bush: It's so secret we can't talk about it. Russert: What does that mean for America? The conspiracy theorists are going to go wild. President Bush: I'm sure they are. I don't know. I haven't seen the (unintel) yet. (Laughs) Russert: Number 322. President Bush: First of all, he's not the nominee, and I look forward Russert: Are you prepared to lose? President Bush: No, I'm not going to lose. Russert: If you did, what would you do? President Bush: Well, I don't plan on losing. I have got a vision for what I want to do for the country. See, I know exactly where I want to lead. I want to lead us I want to lead this world toward more peace and freedom. I want to lead this great country to work with others to change the world in positive ways, particularly as we fight the war on terror, and we got changing times here in America, too. Russert: Biggest issues in the upcoming campaign? President Bush: Who can properly use American power in a way to make the world a better place, and who understands that the true strength of this country is the hearts and souls of the American citizens, who understands times are changing and how best to have policy reflect those times. And I look forward to a good campaign. I know exactly where I want to lead the country. I have shown the American people I can lead. I have shown the American people I can sit here in the Oval Office when times are tough and be steady and make good decisions, and I look forward to articulating what I want to do the next four years if I'm fortunate enough to be their president. Russert: Mr. President, we thank you for sharing your views, and I hope we could come back and talk about issues during the course of the campaign. President Bush: Thank you, Tim. Russert: That's all for today. We will be back next week. If it's Sunday, it's Meet The Press. Note: the one time Bush was asked about S and B before he feigned not knowing if it still existed asking it if still exists. He didn't mention, and no media asked, why his first meeting after stealing the White House was with his 14 fellow Bonesmen in his class; nor did anyone ask about the 5 Bonesmen he has appointed to high-level offices. Russert could have easily picked up on that noting: Mr. President, you say this organization is secret and you can't talk about it, the last time you were asked you wondered if it still exists, but since you hold the office and powers you hold, how is it that your membership and activities in any organization, not covered by government secrecy laws, along with the nature, objectives and activities of that organization, that say so much about the character of the members of the organization--and vice versa--could or should be secret and not a matter for full disclosure for potential voters? Were those Skull and Bones members you have appointed to high-level positions when vetted for security clearances, allowed to remain silent about the organizations of which they have been members and the nature, objectives and activities of those organizations? And finally, I thought, after the puff-piece by Russert, that once again the V in Oval Office should have been replaced with an R...The spirit of Monica Lewinski lives on through Russert doing a metaphorical blow job in the Oral Office. Here is another type of journalist: From Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League and the Hidden Paths of Power by Alexandra Robbins, Little Brown, 2003 Under the society's direction, Bonesmen developed and dropped the nuclear bomb and navigated
October Surprises
Title: Message In addition to the well-known October Surprise in 1980 (see below): http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile1.html Another one occurred earlier that still has gotten little notice except in "The Trials of Henry Kissinger" CD featuring Christopher Hitchens when he had something closer to something approximating a soul. In 1968, around August/September, Kissinger was known as a "Rockefeller Man" favoring Rockefeller over Nixon for the republicannominationin the upcoming election, he held a fairly high-level Dept of Defense position, was aware of backchannel moves by LBJ to negotiate a settlement to the Vietnam War which both the Vietnamese and LBJ thought might be propitious and mutually advantageous for all. Humphrey's poll numbers were moving upward and very close to Nixon; all were predicting a close race that was ultimately decided by less than 1% of the popular vote. According to this CD, Kissinger made some calls to the Nixon camp telling them about the backchannel negotiations and about the possibility of a breakthrough before the election. The Nixon gang got ahold of Madame Clair Chennault who was tight with Nguyen Van Thieu and told him to stay out of any negotiations and refuse to participate. This effectively caused any potential negotiations or breakthroughs to be sabotaged; and the ensuing carnage is a matter of history. Look for another one coming near you soon. Jim C. James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Skull and Bones
Writing on behalf of Andie Nachgeborenen, jks asks: Michael Perkman said that you would be a good person to ask about Yale's Skull Bones -- did you have a recent post or some information on this? Thanks, jks First of all, start with a google search for skull and bones. Keep in mind that there is a lot of junk on the net and keep in mind that there are many rightists, Christians, professed anti-occultists etc with their own agenda, every bit as elitist, racist, sexist, misogynistic, anti-Semtitic and ultra-capitalist as Skull and Bones but who profess to be anti-S and B. I would suggest starting with Alexandra Robbins' Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League and the Hidden Paths of Power, Little Brown, N.Y. 2003 as she was the first--and only--to actually interview disaffected Bonesmen and Boneswomen (over 100) and her scholarship is solid, non-sensational, non-salacious and measured. See www.secretsofthetomb.com.I would also recommend some of the work of Ron Rosenbaum who was the first, along with others, to actually tape record and videotape with infrared cameras, part of a S and B initiation rite which shows how sick, twisted, occultist and even satanic these creatures are. http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=4136 I would also recommend America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones by Anthony Sutton. Now you will hear some screams and cries over the name of Anthony Sutton. He is often quoted by the right-wingers who have their own thing about Bones, the companies that publish Sutton are generally right-wing, and Sutton himself came out of a background with the infamous Hoover Institution at Stanford and doing CIA estimates of Soviet intentions, technological development and capabilities. What is interesting however, is that Sutton was tossed by the right-wing and CIA for refusing to ratify their own conclusions with respect to Soviet capabilities--they wanted overestimates to justify and get funding for the continuing arms race against the Soviets--in his three-volume Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development. Many who summarily dismiss his work have never read any of his stuff. He also wrote on Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (the major thesis of which was that the Bolshevik Revolution was partly financed by Wall Street and aided by Western technology transfers)and Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (the same thesis with respect to the rise of Hitler). I quarrel with many of his inferences and conclusions from the primary source data he reproduces, but the primary source data itself is invaluable and Sutton was fluent in the languages necessary to acquire and translate them. Sutton also did work on the Bohemian Grove and the British The Group or US, founded at Oxford and the British version of S and B without some of the Masonic and Illuminati occultism. He also documents, throughly, the role of S and B in setting up the American Historical Association, the American Economic Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Philosophical Associaton, the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, and influences of John Dewey in American education. Sutton's work is primarily useful for the orginal and primary source documents, artifacts and letters from inside S and B as well as from key Bonesmen in key positions in the U.S. Government, business, academia and media. Sutton was one of the first to fully document with primary source materials, in the original languages, the role of Wall Street, and Bonesmen Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George Herbert Walker in the financing of Hitler from 1924 onward and the selling of Nazi securities AFTER Pearl Harbor (work that thoroughly pissed the right-wing off and was later confirmed--and an inspiration for--similar work by Charles Higham in Trading With the Enemy and by The Secret War Against the Jews by John Loftus and Mark Aarons. I would also recommend Fleshing Out Skull and Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society., Edited by Kris Milligan, Trine Day Press, 2003. This work has a compendium of articles from diverse sources but is worth going through. Some of the work is from known LaRouchite sympathizers Anton Chaitkin and Webster Griffin Tarpley from their Unauthorized Biography of George Bush (available online in toto) and I would again urge reading their stuff for the primary source materials, sources, etc. Again, many of their facts are quite correct and their scholarship through primary sources impressive, but some of their conclusions--and certainly their affiliations--need to be regarded with suspicion. I would also urge a reading of War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. by Edwin Black, Four Walls Eight Windows Press, N.Y. 2004 which documents thoroughly, the role of key Bonesmen and S and B in the eugenics movement in the U.S. and Britain that directly inspired and directed
Response Speculating on Kerry
Michael Perelman wrote: I think that the dialogue between Michael and Lou is valuable. Dean Was taken down,but not just by Gephardt. I've mentioned before, that I've never seen so much negative press about a candidate since Jesse Jackson. Then I hear about Roger Stone, the Republican operative, supporting Sharpton. Village Voice, February 5th, 2004 8:20 AM A Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton's Campaign Sleeping With the GOP Response Jim C. Check this out. http://www.democrats.com/preview.cfm?term=Reverend%20Moon Both Bush and Sharpton (along with Jerry Falwell) have taken some serious Moon money and these tricks are classic Moonie shit along with republican shit. Jim C.
Re: [Marxism] Taboo Questions
Eiza Segal wrote: These are great students that you've got. Please post some more of your students' work. Craven, Jim [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my classes, as an extra-credit assignment, I ask the students for the following: With respect to any culture, any period of history, any person(s) with real power, present a list of questions that would highly likely result in your death and/or your career being totally destroyed if posed. [White House Press conference February 2000] Mr. Clinton. You looked straight into the camera and waived your crooked finger and said that quote I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinski; I did not tell anyone to lie. You testified under oath that you did not have sexual relations with Ms. Lewinski as you understood sexual relations to be defined by the court. You even met Dr. Lewinski, a father like you, in the Oval Office where you had been diddling his daughter. Dr. Lewinski even shook the hand that shook the dick that was in his daughter's mouth. My question, Mr. President, is if your daughter Chelsea had decided to do a Lewinski on her prof at Stanford, in order say to improve her chemistry grade, would that be: a) not sexual; b) not an abuse of power on the part of the prof. no matter what gusto Chelsea might have put into it; c) a personal matter and not anyone's business; d) just boys being boys and doing what they are hardwired to do? [Press Conference, Bush Ranch, 2003] Mr. Bush. Given that the nature, objectives, intentions, proclivities and activities of any organization says a lot about the character and intentions of those in it, and given that you have managed to acquire access to nuclear [and by the way that's nuclear not nuculur] codes and warmaking systems, why is it that you feel that the public, whose votes you are soliciting, has no right to know about your membership in Skull and Bones along with the real nature and intentions of this secret occult cabal to which you belong? [Press Conference, Washington, D.C. 2003] Mr. Bush, you routinely trade on your supposed born-again Christianity and claim to have employed the concept of WWJD? (What Would Jesus Do?) in your decision making. My Question is, Mr. Resident, would Jesus lay naked in a coffin, jacking off, while recounting his supposed sexual experiences? Would Jesus engage in ritualistic grave robbing of Native remains like those of Geronimo? Would Jesus conspire to deprive African-Americans and others of their right to vote in places like Florida? Would Jesus finance Hitler from 1924 onward, plot to overthrow the U.S. government under FDR, sell nazi securities AFTER Pearl Harbor and set up a synthetic fuel plant at Auschwitz, using slave labor, as your grandfather Prescott Bush and great grandfather George Herbert Walker did? Would Jesus belong to a racist, hompohobic, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, elitist, conspiratorial and predatory cult like Skull and Bones? Jim C.
Check this out
Title: Message http://www.ericblumrich.com/topgun.html James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
Kerry, Skull and Bones and War records
Title: Message
Kerry
Skull Bones War Criminal...
by Skull Bones Kerry
Sunday, Jan. 18,
2004 at
10:47
AM
What Skull Bones Member Sen
John Kerry don't want you to Know/Remember...
Portion of John Kerry remarks on
NBC's "Meet the Press" May 6, 2001: MR. RUSSERT: You mentioned
you're a military guy. There's been a lot of
discussion about Bob Kerrey, your former Democratic colleague in
the Senate,
Here is some more info about Kerry from
former VIETNAM POW Michael Benge...
John Kerry's war record When Mr. Kerry
pontificated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Veterans Day, a group of
veterans turned their backs on him and walked away. They remembered Mr.
Kerry as the anti-war activist who testified before Congress during the
war, accusing veterans of being war criminals. The dust jacket of Mr.
Kerry's pro-Hanoi book, "The New Soldier," features a photograph of his
ragged band of radicals mocking the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, which
depicts the flag-raising on Iwo
Jima, with an upside-down
American flag. Retired Gen.
Response Jim
C: I believe that it is important to visit and even reproduce some of
these sources if for no other reason than to provokediverse responses. But I have to say,
not only for the Kerry types but for other vets as well, you can't have it
both ways: 1) I participated in a genocidal war and a cornocopia of outright
war crimes while serving as a willing tool of U.S. imperialism; versus 2) I am
still somehow "proud" of my "service" and medals and continue to trade
onmy "service"and medals andeven celebrate all
of it.
There is no
aspect of my own military service I am interested in celebrating, bragging
about, or whatever; it is a shame I will carry with me for the rest of my
life. When I came home in 1966, and later joined and worked with VVAW, I saw,
among some of the "anti-War" Vietnam and non-Vietnam vets, some of the same
shit you find at the typical VFW and American Legion meetings: wearing
bush/fatigue jackets and medals, pecking orders based on bush versus REMF
time, in-country versus out-of-country, officers versus enlisted, CIB
versus non-CIB, airborne versus non-airborne, etc etc etc. I saw some of the
vets still doing "vet-speak" ("Charlie" versus NLF, "the Nam" versus Vietnam)
and some still had a glint in the eye when thinking about the "primo dope" and
"cheap pussy" available; they didn't get the point.
Up until the
Tet Offensive in 1968, almost all troops in Vietnam were volunteers; only
after Tet were draftees sent without putting in a 1049 for
transfer.There is nothing like a good war to turn a "nobody" into a
"somebody"--the Audie Murphy syndrome. Some of those I "served" with
were outright sociopaths, losers, fuck-ups, predators, psychopaths etc looking
for a war environment with few rules and restraints. They didn't get fucked
upFROM Vietnam, they went to Vietnam because they were already fucked up
and looking for a little "glory" to nurture some of the ol self-esteem
problems. Even VVAW, by its own name, still celebrates the veteran status
(ostensibly to note that combat veterans can be the best source to warn others
about what war is really about.) and had, in my day, some forms of celebration
of exactly what they were designed not to celebrate but to
expose--participation in genocidal wars as tools of U.S.
imperialism.
In Kerry's
case, as a member of Skull and Bones (68) before he left, he was driven by the
"three ordeals" of the Bones: prep school; business; war. Bonesmen are
expected to "make their bones" through participation in all three of the
"ordeals." So Kerry's own celebrations of his "war record" and "bravery" are
indeed hypocritical, disingenuous etc regardless of who is making the point
and regardless of for what agenda. That is why they are making some noise
about Bush's own "military record" which can be seen and documented fully on
www.awolbush.com (The dems of course had
nothing to say about it in the last selection 2000).
Jim
C
Re: Skull Bones distraction
Skull Bones is a distraction. My uncle used to put it more clearly: They all shit in the same pot. Gene Coyle Response Jim C: Saying it is so doesn't make it so. Study the history, connections, machinations, ideology, etc of S and B. Just the fact that this cult, with some 2600 lifetime members since 1832, and about 800 living at any one time, managed to put up two opposing presidential candidates (thus breaking their oaths to support fellow Bonesmen/Bones women above all others) is quite remarkable and worthy of attention if for no other reason than tactical and building possible united fronts. Some on the left need to get beyond the usual appeals to classics (authority), formulaics, ancient and sterile debates, quote mongering, source/data cherrypicking, gotcha, nit-picking, etc and investigate concrete conditions and threats as they emerge and change. This cult has serious organizational connections and intentions worthy of note, examination and critique. The fact than not one of the Dems has even deigned to mention S and B, along with the press, should say something about their influence, powers and dangers. Jim C
Response to Skull Bones distraction
are the capitalist pigs of the sort who get elected President of the US who are members of Skull and Bones worse than those who aren't members? I presume that John Edwards isn't a bonesman (since he didn't go to Yale). Does that make him better? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Response Jim C: Of course in a strategic sense, perhaps there are no differences. But in a tactical sense? And of course it depends upon who you are and what you are doing. If I am tenured, white, male, educated, and my contributions to revolution and social change amount to x hours behind a keyboard spouting and asserting a-piori or revealed wisdoms/absolutes from the classics to cloistered audiences and lists with very limited distributions, then yes, there is no difference, or not much difference between any of them; Bush and his type haven't really hit me except perhaps in my 401K. If, on the other hand, I am a poor Reservation Indian, ghettoized African-American, a poor Iraqi farmer, a single mother about to lose unemployment, or an organizer doing grass-roots mass work with real people with diverse temperaments under conditions of heightened police surveillance and latitude for repression, then yes, there is a difference just as as disgusting as some of the German social democrats were, there was a distinct difference between Weimar and Nazi Germany. On another list someone noted that they personally haven't felt much repression and the evidence was that they can still write Marxist-sounding polemics on the list and are not yet in a camp as would be the case if the threat of full-blown fascism were real and growing. First of all, this might be evidence of how non-threatening the list--and that person--are rather than evidence of lack of prospects of fascism. And secondly, the focus was extremely individualistic and narcissistic. Guess what? All over America are people who do not have the luxuries we tenured academics have, people who are on the margin of life and death, people who are totally screwed with no means to seek redress, people on death row who are innocent etc etc etc. Saying a priori, with sweeping and cloistered hubris, there are no differences worth discussing, exploring or perhaps trying to take tactical advantage of is, in my opinion, not simply an example of hubris, it is an example of why so many on the left are simply irrelevant to anything real. Perhaps, if you haven't, at least do some study of S and B, before summarily waving it off as irrelevent. While they of course represent extreme capitalism, oligarchy, elitism etc, their historical and present-day connections and intentions make them uniquely dangerous, capable of less restraint, capable of worse extremes and worth looking at. Because some of the ultra-rightists have their own fixations for their own purposes, this should not and does not speak to the issue of the importance or non-importance of giving S and B some special analytical attention. And Finally, I don''t know how many people here have actually lived under martial law and extreme repression, where one mistake or one wrong word can cost someone his/her life and/or some jail time, but there are some tactical differences between various wings of elements of the capitalist class that can and should be exploited; not to look for reform in lieu of revolution, but to note that blood is precious and should never be wasted due to tactical errors, adventurism, or not taking a particular enemy--and his capabilities and intentions--seriously but rather summarily and a-priori waving them away as unworthy of consideration. Jim C
FW: Quotes
Title: Message Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we weresupposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot liveforever, which is why I would not live forever,"Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss U.S.A. contest.``"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, Ican't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."-- Mariah Carey, singer`"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part ofyour life,"-- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become Spokesperson for theFederal Anti-smoking Campaign.`"I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body,"-- Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky Basketball Forward.`"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates inthe country,"-- Marion Barry, Mayor of Washington, D.C.```"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are thePresident."-- Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpoenaed documents."That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it,"-- A U.S. congressional candidate in Texas."Half this game is ninety percent mental."-- Danny Ozark, manager of Philadelphia Phillies``"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities inour air and water that are doing it."-- former U.S. Vice President Al Gore```" It's no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way oranother"-- George W. Bush, U.S. President``"I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix."-- former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle``"We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?"-- former president of American Motors, Lee Iacocca```"I was provided with additional input that was radically different from thetruth. I assisted in furthering that version."-- Colonel Oliver North, from his Iran-Contra testimony.`"The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy likeNorman Einstein."-- Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback sports analyst."We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types ofpeople."-- Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor.`"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."-- former U.S.. President Bill Clinton,``"We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur."-- former U.S. Vice President Al Gore``"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas."-- Keppel Enderbery```"Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992, because we receivednotice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances."-- State Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina"If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record."-- Mark S. Fowler, former Federal Communications Commission Chairman
