Tony Abdo wrote-
> Mark misinterprets what Fox is proposing, and
> why I criticize what's coming down.
I'm sure you are right to be so cynical about Fox. However I think there are
sufficient grounds for believing that the self-interest of corporate and
finance capital lies in the direction of open labour markets, and after all,
that has been the whole thrust of Anglo-American deregulatory policies for
20 ywears now ('flexible' labour markets etc) and is at the heart of the
Washington Consensus. If they can't do it right away it's not because they
don't want to, but open borders is surely what they want. And maybe it will
be even easier in the Nafta context, after all there are large Hispanic
communities already in the US. Language barriers are more of a problem in
the EU.
I also agree with Tony and Nestor about 'desirable' industrialisation. Where
I'm truly pessimistic is about the coming energy crisis, the dimensions of
which are not yet very widely understood. Not only people in the 3rd world
will be envying present day Japan and the US. Future Japanese and Americans
will also envy today's highly unsustainable prosperity.
One more thing: I have just been reading James Hansen's new and already
notorious article "Global warming in the twenty-first century: An
alternative scenario". Hansen is the Nasa scientist who first used the
phrase 'global warming" and who in 1988 shocked the US Congress into funding
big climate research programmes when he made a somewhat apocalyptic address
on the subject. Ten years later, in 1998, Hansen seemed to substantially
revise his early gloomy assessment. This gave much heart to
global-warming-denialists and was considered to be a recantation by Hansen
of his epoch-making thesis. But Hansen himself denied recanting.
His new article, however, seems to go much further along the road towards
accepting that anthropogenic global warming may not be such a problem after
all. This should be warmly greeted by our own Jose Perez for one, I think.
However, all may not be as it seems, so watch this space.
It costs $5 to download Hansen's article from the American academy of
science website (shameful), but if anyone wants it let me know offlist and
I'll send it you for free.
The PSAN url is http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/170278997v1
Mark
_______________________________________________
Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
