Re: Re: 2 Of Every 5 Gulf War Vets Are On Disability - WorldNetDaily.com
I do not know where I have across this, but one out of four Iraqi children in souther iraq is born with some sort illness related the 1990 bombing. Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there a government source to verify these figures? I have mentionedthem in class, but students want some verification.-- Michael PerelmanEconomics DepartmentCalifornia State UniversityChico, CA 95929Tel. 530-898-5321E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] not whwDo you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
Chomsky on imperial instruction
There is good reason to believe that the war with Iraq is intended, in part, to teach the world some lessons about what lies ahead when the empire decides to strike a blow Noam Chomsky Feb 1 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40ItemID=2938 And to teach the rest of the imperialist world, that it must accommodate to enormous preponderance of US power. Can France afford to isolate itself by the threat of a futile veto in the Security Council? That is the only question left now before the start of war if we are to read the messages the Bush administration appears to wish to send. Chris Burford London
Empires of Profit Guardian Review
Empires of Profit: Commerce, Conquest and Corporate Responsibility by Daniel Litvin 340pp, Texere Christopher Hope's review gives quite a lot of detail about this book on multinationals at work and at war. Litvin was an insider working for Rio Tinto. http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,6121,886365,00.html Hope concedes that Litvin accepts that new multinationals cannot really be nice . He ends: There is something fundamentally scary about large corporations practising moral virtue - it requires a degree of adjustment that would make an accountant blush. Happily no amount of CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] can spoil a good story and Empires of Profit is just that: hair-raising accounts of greed, megalomania, conspiracy, coups and armed robbery played out by godlike forces. Best take a look, because the new giants are not going away. You may not care about your friendly local multinational, but as Trotsky said about foreign policy, it cares about you. Chris Burford London
Re: Chomsky on imperial instruction
Chris: Can France afford to isolate itself by the threat of a futile veto in the Security Council? That is the only question left now before the start of war if we are to read the messages the Bush administration appears to wish to send. My bet is: No! Welcome to the internationally broadly supported preventive war against Iraq. Not best, Sabri
Re: Great moments in economic analysis
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/02/03 07:59PM Lowry, Tom. 2003. The NFL Machine. Business Week (27 January): pp. 87-94. We're 32 fat-cat Republicans who vote socialist, Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell quipped recently. above may be current incarnation of comment, modell has been quoted for years on matter, back in days when he owned cleveland browns, before he sucked up public subsidies from baltimore to move team (league made him change team name, what a severe penalty), and league had 28 teams he ostensibly said (with regard to nfl revenue sharing): 'we're 28 capitalists that vote socialist'michael hoover -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
new generation nuclear plants???
Huh? Nuclear power plant construction hasn't been approved by the NRC since 1979. Why start now? As far as I know, it's IMPOSSIBLE to operate a nuclear plant without releasing radioactivity -- during normal operation, that is, not just accidents. It seems, however, that plans are underway in 2003 for a new generation and advanced kind of nuclear power plant construction proposed by Dominion Energy, Entergy Nuclear, and Exelon in possibly Illinois, Virginia, and Mississippi. What's so new generation about it? Does anyone have any information? Radiation? Health and environmental risks? Many thanks in advance, Diane
Re: Imperial grief
There is also an imperial grief. I hope humane people on this list will forgive me, in speculating whether this tragedy might do anything to knock Bush's imperial arrogance. The idea that the whole nation must go into mourning because it is shocking that 7 people trained for struggle might fall foul of the risks, is not unconnected with the belief that the USA must remain inviolate from having to negotiate a collective global way of reducing risk in the world. Imperial grief is an appropriate title for this thread. The break up of Columbia and the death of its seven-member crew was unknown to my wife until I informed her. Her response was "Bush ass is in trouble." Sensing the look of bewilderment on my face she stated, "When you have a stupid mutherfu**er - that is also ignorant in power, trying to prove something to his daddy, everything starts going wrong." I grinned broadly because reality is interactive and I do not have to understand the avenue in which an individual makes the "connection" between seemingly unrelated events and administrators in authority. My mind drifted back some twenty odd years when my children were in elementary and Jr. High School and the Challenger explosion occurred. My son came home from school and said, "Dad do you know what NASA stands for." I said yea and spoke of the Space Administration. "No dad, Need Another Seven Astronauts - NASA," and start laughing. I was horrified at this ghastly sense of humor but understood it was produced in a social setting and environment. Shift. 9/11 I watched the events of 9/11 on television because it occurred on an election Tuesday and I had not gone to work to take part in passing out literature for several candidates. The events were horrifying and unbelievable. Later when the official body count came in - 3000 plus, I was not horrified. Last year when I found out that 18,000 died in America due to lack of medical coverage I was horrified. In my more than less daily debate on various chat lines over the current war drive I mentioned the death figures from lack of medical coverage and several folk responded, "shit happens, what about 9/11?" I asked for an explanation. "The 18,000 who died did that to themselves and 9/11 was done to us by someone else." The ideology of "someone else" was understood as the "philosophic other" - "the outsider in our midst," and I understood what was being said and expressed - imperial grief. The issue is complex but riveted to the ideological currents that grew up on the basis of slavery in America and the isolation of a class that evolved into a people - an utterly unique phenomenon in history. What is being spoken of it not merely white chauvinism but national chauvinism, although there is no Great Wall of China that compartmentalizes ideological conceptions. The Bush Jr. administration and its ideologist correctly wanted to know the impact of Columbia on the thinking of the American peoples (peoples always have an "s" - plural) and the current drive to war against Iraq because "everything that happens under your watch is your fault, even it you did not directly interact on an occurrence." "Ideological interactivity," is the watchword. It is Bush Jr. fault because the focus of the country has been deliberately shifted to war and "screw the little man/women" and the money is going into the military and NASA could have been thrown a couple of more billion for a new space craft. One can of course explore the ideological frameworks of imperial peoples - who are stratified, and ascertain why they grieve a certain way while their governments reap havoc on the world' peoples and destroy the life force of billions of people. My statement to sum up this occurrence is simple and yes - dogmatic. "The multi-national state of the United States of America is the international hangman of revolution and the enemy of the peoples of the world." This statement was formulated in 1973 and remains true today. This statement is short, sweet, to the point and expresses the experience billions are living. The wife was right - again, and intuitive materialist in her outlook. Twenty some years ago my son was right, "Ned Another Seven Astronauts." To grieve for ones own and not that of "the other" is the height of imperial degeneracy, sectarianism and narrowmindness. To grieve for seven and not recognize the million who die daily is testimony to the degeneracy of the industrial stage of development and blood lust. The 3000 plus dead from 9/11 are not opposed to the 18,000 dead from lack of medical coverage. Rather we have 21,000 dead on our soil, - who happen to make the news, and the masses must learn the connection between events. I do not suggest that one use this understanding in their daily battle - art, of winning over the laboring masses to the cause of the just, unless they are dealing with people who can understand this elementary truth. When I said this to the wife she grinned broadly and said,
Bobby Seale to speak in SE Michigan, Feb 6
Bobby Seale will speak on Thursday, February 6, 2003 at Eastern Michigan University in the McKenny Union Ballroom, 8 p.m.. Co-Founder and former chair of the Black Panther Party, Seale is the last surviving architect of one of the most important movements in American and African-American history. Free and open to the public. For more information call McKenny Union and Campus Life at 487-3045.
Thousands of Ivory Coast women protest
Lots of coverage on the protests: Ivory Coast Women Condemn French BBC News Feb 3, 2003 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2720753.stm Thousands of women have surrounded the French embassy in the Ivory Coast commercial capital, Abidjan, angered by a French-brokered peace plan. The women, dressed in the national colours of orange, green and white waved tree branches and shouted Chirac, liar. This is the latest demonstration by supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo, accusing the French of forcing him to share power with rebels. Women March Against Accord in Tense Ivory Coast Mon February 3, 2003 Loucoumane Coulibaly Reuters http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNewsstoryID=2156800 ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Thousands of women in paper hats danced and chanted in a march to the French embassy in Ivory Coast on Monday as protests against a French-brokered peace deal to end war in the world's top cocoa grower began a second week. A return to chaos looms over the West African country after former colonial power France insisted that President Laurent Gbagbo stick to the agreement his supporters have rejected. Rebels said they would resume fighting if he did not. We want Gbagbo, the people chose him, chanted women decked in orange, white and green, the national colors, as they swayed peacefully along the street to France's embassy in Abidjan -- a marked contrast to last week's attacks by stone-throwing youths. Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Abidjan on Saturday to protest against a power-sharing deal worked out near Paris last month that they said gives too much to the rebels. The army has also challenged the deal.
RE: Imperial grief
Title: RE: [PEN-L:34303] Imperial grief some quibbles/comments... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Chris Burford writes [about the Columbia tragedy]: There is also an imperial grief. I hope humane people on this list will forgive me, in speculating whether this tragedy might do anything to knock Bush's imperial arrogance. The idea that the whole nation must go into mourning because it is shocking that 7 people trained for struggle might fall foul of the risks, is not unconnected with the belief that the USA must remain inviolate from having to negotiate a collective global way of reducing risk in the world. call me a crude materialist, but it's not just a belief. It's also the facts that (1) the US media find more to broadcast about national events; (2) the event involved the US government, the most powerful in the world; (3) it involved NASA, a government organization that (despite its military connections and privatization) is overwhelmingly supported by people in the US and gets a lot of support around the world; and (4) the US is currently the most powerful country in the world. The particular cruelty of the recent US wars, has been partly dependent on the idea that not a single US serviceman must die - the high level bombing of Yugoslavia, and then of Afghanistan. In the latter case specialist teams were allowed to take part and be in harm's way to use Bush's homely phrase, to the extent that a special interrogator who was too provocative got killed. The death reflected more on US cowardice than that of the perpetrator. I don't know if the word cowardice can be applied to an entire country. However, Chris probably meant the word US to refer to the US power elite. But even that elite isn't cowardly in its use of the sons and daughters of the non-elite in war. The problem isn't cowardice. The fear of losing even a single US soldier arises from the Vietnam syndrome (i.e., the mass resistance to and/or dissent against the US war against Vietnam, which was encouraged by the large number of US casualties) and from the brouhaha due to the disaster of the US adventure in Somalia more than 10 years ago. The elite doesn't want that kind of mass resistance and that kind of brouhaha, so it tries to spare US lives. However, I bet that Rummy, Wolfowitz, and the boys would love to destroy the Vietnam Syndrome forever so that they could be brave using other people's children again, just as in the good old days. Now we are on the threshold of Bush completing his father's unfinished business in Iraq, which took something over 100 US service lives if I recall correctly. most (almost all? all?) of whom were victims of friendly fire. JD
Re: RE: Imperial grief
Jim Devine wrote: call me a crude materialist, but it's not just a belief. It's also the facts that (1) the US media find more to broadcast about national events; (2) the event involved the US government, the most powerful in the world; (3) it involved NASA, a government organization that (despite its military connections and privatization) is overwhelmingly supported by people in the US and gets a lot of support around the world; and (4) the US is currently the most powerful country in the world. Not crude at all. Someone once said something like Ten deaths are a tragedy, 10,000 deaths a problem in public sanitation. One could add that the 10 deaths are tragic only if the media tell us about them. I think the best commentary was written about 60 years ago -- Carrol Deportee The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting, The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps. You are flying them back to the Mexican border To pay all their money to wade back again. Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria. You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane And all they will call you will be deportee. My father's own father he waded that river, They stole all the money he made in his life. My sisters and brothers come working the fruit trees And rode the truck til they took down and died. Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria. You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane And all they will call you will be deportee. Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted. Our work contract's out and we have to move on Six hundred miles to the Mexican border. They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves. Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria. You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane And all they will call you will be deportee. We died in your hills, we died in your deserts, We died in your valleys and died on your plains, We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes, Both sides of the river -- we died just the same. Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria. You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane And all they will call you will be deportee. The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon -- A fireball of lightning which shook all our hills, Who are all these friends all scattered like dry leaves? The radio says they are just . . . deportees. Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria. You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane And all they will call you will be deportee. Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit -- To fall like dry leaves, to rot on my topsoil And be called by no name except deportees? Goodbye my to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria. You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane And all they will call you will be deportee.
Re: Imperial grief
Excellent commentary, Carrol! Thank you. I think the best commentary was written about 60 years ago -- Carrol Deportee The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting, The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps. You are flying them back to the Mexican border To pay all their money to wade back again. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Art notes from all over
http://artdaily.com/news.asp?not=11 Guernica Reproduction Covered at UN NEW YORK.- The Guernica work by Pablo Picasso at the entrance of the Security Council of the United Nations has been covered with a curtain. The reason for covering this work is that this is the place where diplomats make statements to the press and have this work as the background. The Picasso work features the horrors of war. On January 27 a large blue curtain was placed to cover the work. Fred Eckhard, press secretary of the U.N. said: It is an appropriate background for the cameras. He was questioned as to why the work had been covered. A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings. This work is a reproduction of the Guernica that was donated by Nelson A. Rockefeller to the U.N. in 1985.
Empires of Profit - an insider's view of multinationals
More on local matters - about the friendly face, for instance, of HCS and AB You may not care about your friendly local multinational, but as Trotsky said about foreign policy, it cares about you. Fwd by Chris Burford: Empires of Profit by Daniel Litvin Christopher Hope's review gives quite a lot of detail about this book on multinationals at work and at war. Litvin was an insider working for Rio Tinto. http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,6121,8863 65,00.html Hope concedes that Litvin accepts that new multinationals cannot really be nice . He ends: There is something fundamentally scary about large corporations practising moral virtue - it requires a degree of adjustment that would make an accountant blush. Happily no amount of CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] can spoil a good story and Empires of Profit is just that: hair-raising accounts of greed, megalomania, conspiracy, coups and armed robbery played out by godlike forces. Best take a look, because the new giants are not going away. You may not care about your friendly local multinational, but as Trotsky said about foreign policy, it cares about you. Chris Burford London Politics, philosophy and society Bad company Greed, megalomania, conspiracy and coups - David Litvin gives an insider's view of multinationals in Empires of Profit Christopher Hope Saturday February 1, 2003 The Guardian Empires of Profit: Commerce, Conquest and Corporate Responsibility by Daniel Litvin 340pp, Texere, £18.99 Daniel Litvin had the fine idea of studying multinationals at work and at war. For a long while the two activities seemed almost interchangeable, and it was never a pretty sight. Do multinationals, must they, whether they mean to or not, sooner or later rip off the locals, wreck the countryside and mess around with politics? Litvin is well suited to taking a close look at the way these corporations built up their critical mass, got really heavy - then rolled over whoever got in the way. He served one of the most notable of these rolling asset-strippers, Rio Tinto plc, and seems shy about it, although I don't know why. After all, it is best to read war reports by someone who has seen action. Why is it, asks Litvin, that companies which swear they eschew politics and devote themselves entirely to profit, invariably end up mired in local politics? His answer seems to be the same for multinationals old and new: because they can't help themselves. Because with loot comes power and that's the real turn-on, the true primary ache. The people who run the mega-corporations secretly dream of running the world. Whether the Company arrives bearing glass beads or Bibles, maxim guns or free software, the giants on your doorstep tend to act in the same way. Too big, too rich and too blind. All they can do is to keep promising, like old lags, to go straight; or to camouflage themselves as friends of the Earth or born-again greens. It seems to me that multinationals may be divided into hard and soft - rather like porn. The old, hard-core transnational traders liked their profits raw. The British East India Company is the model later corporations grew to resemble. Litvin shows that the early British traders in India in the 18th and 19th centuries point up interwoven patterns of profits, politics, theft and self-deception that characterise big business abroad. The Company, and the conscientious rogues who served it, went after whatever wasn't nailed down: whatever they could ship, sell, barter or purloin was fair game. Together with the political elite, the Mughal emperors who ran India, they conspired, without pause or apology, to make politics pay. This was seen as good and healthy; eventually it was even something sacred. Corruption, peddling influence, the feathering of nests by local political elites and a steady build-up of military strength - in the name of progress and a better life for all - became a useful alibi, a nice little earner and a powerful new creed whose sacred music was the ringing till. It made British merchants in India rich; it also made them unbearable to their own people - and doubly so to their unwilling hosts. When Clive of India, who turned the East India Company into a conquering power, found himself charged with corruption by a parliamentary subcommittee, he could not contain his exasperation. Did the committee not realise where he'd been ? There he was - in India - surrounded by heaps of gold and hills of jewels. If he had deigned to take a sliver or two of the loot on offer, he simply could not see the problem: I stand astonished at my own moderation. John Stuart Mill thought the British East India Company one of the most beneficent creations known to mankind, which is an early reminder of how even the best minds, in the presence of rampant riches, come up with the strangest notions. Cecil John Rhodes also fascinated and seduced the respectable renegades who bought his shares, and the toll he took
Re: Art notes from all over
April 26, 1937 was market day in the small city of Guernica, located in the Spains Basque region. On that terrible day, Hitler's war planes, supporting General Franco and his troops that were engaged in the Spanish Civil War, bombarded the quiet city. Most men had already left the city to fight at the front, leaving mostly women, children, and the elderly behind. The bombardment lasted for three and a half hours, destroying 70 percent of the city and claiming 1600 lives, one third of the population. ... THE Pentagon has drawn up a blueprint for a shock and awe air assault on Iraq which will concentrate on killing as many of its leaders as possible and cutting the survivors off from contact with their troops in the field. Military planners believe they can minimise allied casualties by targeting Saddam Hussein, his ministers and the command element of his security services and Republican Guard divisions to stun the mass of the Iraqi army into either surrender or rebellion. The strategy calls for two days of overwhelming aerial bombardment with up to 900 Tomahawk cruise missiles and pinpoint strikes by stealth bombers against leadership centres in Baghdad and Tikrit. You will see simultaneous attacks on hundreds if not thousands of key points. No matter how they try to disperse, a large percentage of the Iraqi senior commanders will be dead in the first few hours, Harlan Ullman, a military analyst at Washington's centre for strategic and international studies, said yesterday. It's all designed to convince the ordinary Iraqi soldier that his personal situation is hopeless and certainly beyond the control of Saddam and his cronies. . ... Guernica Reproduction Covered at UN NEW YORK.- The Guernica work by Pablo Picasso at the entrance of the Security Council of the United Nations has been covered with a curtain. The reason for covering this work is that this is the place where diplomats make statements to the press and have this work as the background. The Picasso work features the horrors of war. On January 27 a large blue curtain was placed to cover the work. Fred Eckhard, press secretary of the U.N. said: It is an appropriate background for the cameras. He was questioned as to why the work had been covered. A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings. This work is a reproduction of the Guernica that was donated by Nelson A. Rockefeller to the U.N. in 1985. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
RE: Art notes from all over
Title: RE: [PEN-L:34320] Art notes from all over perhaps the problem is that Negroponte supports those who bombed Guernica? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Ralph Johansen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 12:02 PM To: Ralph Johansen Subject: [PEN-L:34320] Art notes from all over http://artdaily.com/news.asp?not=11 Guernica Reproduction Covered at UN NEW YORK.- The Guernica work by Pablo Picasso at the entrance of the Security Council of the United Nations has been covered with a curtain. The reason for covering this work is that this is the place where diplomats make statements to the press and have this work as the background. The Picasso work features the horrors of war. On January 27 a large blue curtain was placed to cover the work. Fred Eckhard, press secretary of the U.N. said: It is an appropriate background for the cameras. He was questioned as to why the work had been covered. A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings. This work is a reproduction of the Guernica that was donated by Nelson A. Rockefeller to the U.N. in 1985.
Shock and Awe: Guernica Revisited
From AlterNet http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15027 Shock and Awe: Guernica Revisited By Gar Smith, AlterNet January 27, 2003 Forget Osama. Forget Saddam. The Pentagon's newest target is the city of Baghdad. U.S. military strategists have announced a plan to pummel Iraq with as many as 800 cruise missiles in the space of two days. Many of these missiles would rain down on Baghdad, a city of five million people. If George W. Bush gets the war he wants, Baghdad could become the 21st century's Guernica. On April 26, 1937, 25 Nazi bombers dropped 100,000 pounds of bombs and incendiaries on the peaceful Basque village. Seventy percent of the town was destroyed and 1,500 people, a third of the population, were killed. The Pentagon now predicts that the Iraq blitzkrieg could approximate the devastation of a nuclear explosion. The sheer size of this has never been ... contemplated before, one Pentagon strategist boasted to CBS News. There will not be a safe place in Baghdad. The Pentagon dubbed its cold-blooded attack plan Shock and Awe, a bizarre conjunction of trauma and admiration. The concept of Shock and Awe was first developed by the Pentagon's National Defense University (NDU) in 1996 as part of the Rapid Dominance strategy. The strategy was first used in Afghanistan. In their 1996 NDU book, Shock and Awe, authors Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade wrote of the need to mount an assault with sufficiently intimidating and compelling factors to force or otherwise convince an adversary to accept our will. With an unsettling air of appreciation, Ullman and Wade invoked the haunting images from old photographs and movie or television screens [depicting] the comatose and glazed expressions of survivors of the great bombardments of World War I. Those images and expressions of shock transcend race, culture and history. Shock and awe also were the emotions that Americans experienced on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, like the 9/11 terrorists, Bush and Co. are planning a similar act of almost unparalleled ferocity a devastating premeditated attack on a civilian urban population. Bush seems determined to follow in the footsteps of Hulagu Khan and Tamerlane, the Mongol warlords who laid bloody waste to Baghdad in 1258 and 1401. But destroying Baghdad will not uncover hidden chemical, biological or nuclear weapons (if, in fact, any exist). Destroying Baghdad will not capture, topple or kill Saddam Hussein. Shock and Awe's expressed goal is simple: in the words of Harlan Ullman, to destroy the Iraqi people physically, emotionally and psychologically. Ironically, this was also the goal of the Nazi strategists who destroyed Guernica. The town had no strategic value as a military target, but, like Baghdad, it was a cultural and religious center. Guernica was devastated to terrorize the population and break the spirit of the Basque resistance. Surely cruise missiles have been programmed to demolish the Baath Party Headquarters, presidential palaces and Republican Guard compounds. But have missiles also been preset to obliterate the al-Qadiriya Shrine, the Tomb of Imam al-A'dham and the Mosque of Sheik Abdul Qadir al-Ghailani? We now know that there was no military need to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaski. The detonations were intended to demonstrate to the world and to the Soviet Union, especially that the U.S. had a functioning superweapon. Having sole possession of The Bomb gave Washington the power to dominate post-war world politics. Similarly, the destruction of Baghdad seems designed to underscore Bush's belligerent warning to the rest of the world: You're either with us or you're against us. Washington's new National Security Strategy describes an America dominating the world militarily, politically and economically. In a report published a month before the U.S. presidential elections, the conservative Project for the New American Century insisted on instituting a global U.S. pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests. This ringing endorsement of hyper-imperialism was co-authored by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby and Jeb Bush, none of whom (with the one exception of Rumsfeld) ever volunteered for military service. Today, thousands of citizen volunteers from around the world are converging in Iraq to stand as nonviolent human shields in hopes of forestalling a U.S. assault. The brave men and women in this international Peace Army include anti-war activists, religious witnesses, retirees, U.S. military veterans and members of families who lost loved ones in the September 11 attack. Mr. Bush repeatedly complains that Saddam Hussein deserves to be removed from office because he killed his own people. If Mr. Bush fails to promptly courtmartial the officials who came up with the Shock and Awe atrocity,
Re: Shock and Awe: Guernica Revisited
Shock and awe would work if the Iraqis had their troops lined up in batallions or whatever. Supposedly, they are dispersing the troops, so the effort to isolate the army would not work. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Shock and Awe: Guernica Revisited
It's not an anti army thing; it's an anti population thing. It is meant to traumatize to the point of unfeeling/unreaction. Joanna At 01:30 PM 02/03/2003 -0800, you wrote: Shock and awe would work if the Iraqis had their troops lined up in batallions or whatever. Supposedly, they are dispersing the troops, so the effort to isolate the army would not work. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Shock and Awe: Guernica Revisited
The reports I read indicated that it was anti-army, but that may just be BS to cover up impending war crimes. On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 01:31:28PM -0800, joanna bujes wrote: It's not an anti army thing; it's an anti population thing. It is meant to traumatize to the point of unfeeling/unreaction. Joanna At 01:30 PM 02/03/2003 -0800, you wrote: Shock and awe would work if the Iraqis had their troops lined up in batallions or whatever. Supposedly, they are dispersing the troops, so the effort to isolate the army would not work. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: What's next? Fallout in Texas?
Sure, sure, like the Atomic Energy Commission assuring everyone in the fifties that fallout from nuclear tests was not harmful, because their studies said so. What, are we all stupid or something? No, but memory is short and no help at all from the media. For ex., this article. The weapons are 'new', the former ones are 'obsolete', so it's a new ballgame. And a 'fast-track program' - look out, here they come! Also. the computers are assisted by a 'team of experts', we're assured. More DOD handouts, 'unpublished Pentagon documents obtained by The Times', involving 'senior administration officials' without critical comment forthcoming from the execrable whoring press. And this is not about testing, but about use, and there's no longer any threat [if there ever was] of anyone using nuclear weapons as a first response against the US. I don't know where or when or how to respond - most of us on these lists certainly know all this, but my response falls out [falls out!] in astonishment. Ralph - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 4:27 AM Subject: [PEN-L:34308] What's next? Fallout in Texas? LA Times, Feb. 3, 2003 Making Nuclear Bombs 'Usable' Pentagon wants to see whether deep bunkers can be blasted without the damage spreading. By Richard T. Cooper, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has launched a fast-track program to develop computers that would help decide when nuclear weapons might be used to destroy deep underground bunkers harboring weapons of mass destruction or other critical targets, documents show. The program, described in unpublished Pentagon documents obtained by The Times, seeks to design an array of high-speed computers that could take in structural and other data on a prospective underground target, calculate the amount of force needed to destroy it, then determine whether a nuclear bunker buster would be required. In addition, the system supplemented by teams of experts would assess the potential for killing nearby civilians and inflicting other collateral damage, including the spread of radioactive dust thrown into the air by the nuclear device and the dispersal of toxic chemicals from weapons in the bunker. The $1.26-billion program is the latest step in a little-publicized campaign by some senior administration officials, members of Congress and their supporters in the defense community to press for a new generation of smaller nuclear weapons as an alternative to the huge but obsolescent strategic missiles of the Cold War. Both the White House and the Defense Department declined to comment. full: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nukes3feb03,0,1013258.s tory -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: The human cost of budget cuts
- Original Message - From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003 1:56 PM Subject: [PEN-L:34275] Re: Re: re: The human cost of budget cuts - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Of course, the Rumsfeld line is that space warfare is the key to the future military dominance. -- === I just heard on NPR news that the US no longer has the manufacturing ability to make any more space shuttles... Ian
Re: Re: The human cost of budget cuts
Ian Murray wrote: I just heard on NPR news that the US no longer has the manufacturing ability to make any more space shuttles... Eh? It's a 1970s design that it would make no sense to replicate now. But it's impossible to believe the U.S. couldn't design and build one based on 2000s technology. You have more context? Doug
Re: Re: Re: The human cost of budget cuts
- Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ian Murray wrote: I just heard on NPR news that the US no longer has the manufacturing ability to make any more space shuttles... Eh? It's a 1970s design that it would make no sense to replicate now. But it's impossible to believe the U.S. couldn't design and build one based on 2000s technology. You have more context? Doug == It was NPR, the masters of anti-context. The guy they interviewed said the last one built was made from spare parts. Here's a look at what's currently getting funds, which NPR did not discuss: http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2002news/spacegrant.htm Ian
MANIFESTO ON THE CALIFORNIA ELECTRICITY CRISIS
http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/news/manifesto.html
Re: Re: Re: The human cost of budget cuts
Most likely what the NPR bloke meant is that the original machine tools used for manufacturing the Shuttles have been dismantled and put to other uses, the dies have been melted down or whatever, and so you can't just phone up an order to the factory for another shuttle. dd Doug Henwood wrote: Ian Murray wrote: I just heard on NPR news that the US no longer has the manufacturing ability to make any more space shuttles... Eh? It's a 1970s design that it would make no sense to replicate now. But it's impossible to believe the U.S. couldn't design and build one based on 2000s technology. You have more context? Doug
What's next? Fallout in Texas?
LA Times, Feb. 3, 2003 Making Nuclear Bombs 'Usable' Pentagon wants to see whether deep bunkers can be blasted without the damage spreading. By Richard T. Cooper, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has launched a fast-track program to develop computers that would help decide when nuclear weapons might be used to destroy deep underground bunkers harboring weapons of mass destruction or other critical targets, documents show. The program, described in unpublished Pentagon documents obtained by The Times, seeks to design an array of high-speed computers that could take in structural and other data on a prospective underground target, calculate the amount of force needed to destroy it, then determine whether a nuclear bunker buster would be required. In addition, the system supplemented by teams of experts would assess the potential for killing nearby civilians and inflicting other collateral damage, including the spread of radioactive dust thrown into the air by the nuclear device and the dispersal of toxic chemicals from weapons in the bunker. The $1.26-billion program is the latest step in a little-publicized campaign by some senior administration officials, members of Congress and their supporters in the defense community to press for a new generation of smaller nuclear weapons as an alternative to the huge but obsolescent strategic missiles of the Cold War. Both the White House and the Defense Department declined to comment. full: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nukes3feb03,0,1013258.story -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
L'Chayim Comrade Stalin
When he was a young boy, Yale Strom noticed two sidukah (charity) boxes in his father's shop. One was the omnipresent blue Jewish National Fund box intended for Israel that my own father kept in his fruit store. The other was targeted for Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region that Stalin decreed in 1932. His curiosity about the lesser-known Jewish homeland became the seed for his documentary L'Chayim Comrade Stalin, now showing at the Quad Cinema in NYC. Based on interviews with current and past residents and archival material, including a altogether charming Soviet feature film of the period promoting settlement, the film not only sheds light on an under-documented aspect of Stalinist rule, it also inspires a variety of reactions to the Jewish Question. (Strom utilizes a graphic of these two words writ large in red repeatedly through the film as a kind of leitmotif.) Most of the older veterans of Birobidzhan make clear that the project tapped into youthful idealism. Combining a belief in communism with a desire to create a cultural homeland for the Jews, they came to the Siberian hinterland with great hopes. Despite the fact that anti-Semitism prompted Stalin to create the settlement in a geographically remote area, the settlers did not necessarily view this as a kind of internal exile. Stephen Cohen points out eloquently in his biography of Bukharin that Stalin's despotic revolution from above did not preclude a kind of egalitarian zeal from bubbling to the surface. Despite repression, many people felt that they were on a great adventure to build a new society, including the Jews who came to Birobidzhan. It was not only Russian Jews who came to this remote, mosquito-infested region that was closer to Korea than to Moscow. IKOR, an international organization of Jewish Communists, actively recruited people in more or less the same manner as people were recruited to construction brigades in Nicaragua in the 1980s. A widow of an US electrician recounts the arduous journey that brought them to the desolate outpost with nothing but their clothes and a generator that her husband intended to bring on-line for the settlement. Like a 1930s version of martyred engineer Ben Linder who died from contra bullets, he understood that in the cold, rainy Siberian wilderness, electricity could dramatically improve the quality of life. At its peak, Birobidzhan only included about 45,000 Jewish settlers. Most were poorer Jews from rural Byelorussia or the Ukraine, who were trained to cobble shoes (like my mother's father) or make hats. The Soviet film shows a bearded Jew struggling and finally succeeding to yoke two oxen to a plow. This image evokes a long standing theme that falls under the general rubric of the Jewish Question. There is a tendency among early Zionist theorists and Marxists alike to explain Jewish weakness and isolation as a failure to develop the full range of skills and occupations found in society as a whole. The absence of Jewish farming in particular spurred not only the agrarian colonizing efforts in Birobidzhan, it also led to similar efforts in my own Sullivan County in the 1800s. Farming experiments were an expression of the Enlightenment tendency in Judaism that also produced colonies in Argentina, New Jersey and Palestine. The very earliest farmers who settled in Palestine were not Zionists as much as they were agrarian socialists. After the USSR allowed Jews to emigrate, most of Birobidzhan's citizens flooded into Israel. Now there are only 17,000 left. Strom's interviews with those who stayed behind are among the film's most poignant moments. One elderly woman named Rivkele explains that she only speaks Russian nowadays and has almost forgotten her Yiddish, the official language of the Jewish Autonomous Region. She is also married to a Russian, as are her children. One gets the impression that such Jews are rapidly become assimilated in the same fashion as Jews elsewhere in the world, including the USA. Rather than having to worry about the secret police arresting a man for toasting a baby at a circumcision ritual for coming into the world as a Jew (an event that the documentary details), they have to worry more about the inexorable process of unfavorable demographics and the natural tendency of a secular society to erode particularistic customs and religious beliefs. Although the economic changes in the post-Communist USSR have been largely negative (one interviewee spits out that you can't eat freedom), they do include a cultural latitude that allows the remaining Jews in Birobidzhan to study their customs, re-familiarize themselves with Judaism and--most intriguingly--to learn Yiddish. Just as I studied Hebrew at the age of 11 and 12, these young Jews now study Yiddish, a dying language. During a QA session after the film, Strom hinted at the class/cultural divide between Hebrew and Yiddish. His own father had
George Soros disavows his demon offspring?
The Washington Post, July 7, 1989, Friday, Final Edition EDITORIAL; PAGE A17 How to Help Poland by George Soros When the heads of state meet in Paris later this month, they will have Poland on the agenda. It will be one item out of many, and there is a danger that they will miss an opportunity that comes along only once in a great while. (clip) The dire economic situation has a positive aspect; it would not need a great deal of resources to turn it around. At the current free market rate of exchange, the budget deficit, which is the engine of inflation, is in the region of $ 1 billion. Existing economic structures have become so dysfunctional that there would be little resistance to a complete restructuring of the economy. Moreover, both the government and Solidarity are not only receptive but positively eager for radical change. A trade union agitating for a return to capitalism sounds unbelievable to Western ears; yet that is the case in Poland today. A moment's reflection will show that a solvent employer is in the best interests of the employee -- especially in Poland, where the state is both morally and financially bankrupt. === From 2/3/2003 Transitions Online - Intelligent Eastern Europe, a magazine funded by Soros's Open Society Institute. I am including the whole thing because it of some considerable interest and only available to subscribers. Letting go of a lifetime job is hard, and Polands industrial workers are not ones to give up a battle quickly. Just ask the picketers in possibly Europes longest-running industrial dispute. by Wojciech Kosc OZAROW MAZOWIECKI, Poland--Ozarow Mazowiecki seems an unlikely site for what is probably the longest-running picket in Europe. Favorably located just 15 minutes by car from Warsaw on the busy Warsaw-Poznan highway, it should perhaps be home to many prosperous businesses. Instead, Ozarow has become the latest symbol of the predicament of Polands old industrial workers as they are forced to adapt or die in a market economy. It all began back in April 2002 when the towns biggest employer, Tele-fonika, slashed 900 jobs at the local cable factory. Its old employees didnt just pass through the gate and return home, however. Instead, they set up three huge military tents outside the gates to their former workplace and a picket line. Seven months later, they are still there. This is a particularly harsh winter, and conversation does not come easily: Three men clad in greatcoats have popped out of the tents for a cigarette, not conversation. When they do talk, it is about the picket and what they have lost. One says it is more and more difficult to provide his kid with the things he needs for school. Another one is interested in photography, but says he now hasnt got enough money to pursue this hobby. The car of the third man stays parked in its garage more and more frequently. The atmosphere is a little less gloomy inside, and conversations do not revolve exclusively around the picket. People drink tea and coffee, and grill sausages on an improvised stove. My family is suffering because Im here all the time. I havent cooked dinner for them for several days now, says Miroslawa Pisarska. 285 DAYS AND COUNTING Every building near the entrance to the factory is covered with banners: 900 workers of the Cable Factory fight for their jobs and The SLD [the Democratic Left Alliance, Polands co-ruling party] and the police defend thieves run some of the slogans. Another keeps count of the days since the demonstration began. By now it must read: Mr. Miller and Mr. Cupial--we have been here for 285 days now. Leszek Miller is the Polish prime minister, and Boguslaw Cupial is the CEO of Tele-fonika, the company responsible for closing down the factory. It is Polands biggest cable producer, with a 60 percent share of the Polish market, and produces 8 percent of the cables sold in Europe. Half of its output is exported to Germany and the United Kingdom. It may have a commanding share of the market, says spokesperson Jerzy Jurczynski, but this has not been a good market to be in lately. The company ended 2002 with a loss of $2 million. To save money, he said, it had to lay off workers. It also began to wind down the factory. That decision is what prompts the reference to the police. On the protests most dramatic day, 27 November, Tele-fonika decided to withdraw all the equipment it could from the factory for use at its other production sites, in Bydgoszcz and Szczecin. The picketers tried to stop the trucks but were held back by the police and Tele-fonikas paid security men. Twelve hundred policemen arrived at the factory at 3 a.m., recalled Slawomir Gzik, the leader of the picketers organization, which they have dubbed the Polish Protest Committee. The committees abbreviation, OKP, seems to be a deliberate reference to the committees Solidarity formed in 1989, just prior to
Prelude to Iraq
In a December 8, 2002 NY Times Magazine article titled The Liberal Quandary Over Iraq that is still available online, author George Packer stresses the importance of the Balkan wars in the defection of a wing of the left to American social patriotism. He writes: So let me rephrase the question. Why there is no organized liberal opposition to the war? The answer to this question involves an interesting history, and it sheds light on the difficulties now confronting American liberals. The history goes back 10 years, when a war broke out in the middle of Europe. This war changed the way many American liberals, particularly liberal intellectuals, saw their country. Bosnia turned these liberals into hawks. People who from Vietnam on had never met an American military involvement they liked were now calling for U.S. air strikes to defend a multiethnic democracy against Serbian ethnic aggression. Suddenly the model was no longer Vietnam, it was World War II -- armed American power was all that stood in the way of genocide. Without the cold war to distort the debate, and with the inspiring example of the East bloc revolutions of 1989 still fresh, a number of liberal intellectuals in this country had a new idea. These writers and academics wanted to use American military power to serve goals like human rights and democracy -- especially when it was clear that nobody else would do it. In light of this, it is useful to consider arguments from the Spectre online magazine that cast doubt on the humanitarian intervention motives of that prelude to the war against the Iraqi people. === SpectreEzine An Alternative View of What Happened in Yugoslavia As we move towards another war, Alfred Mendes looks at the background to the US's last major imperialist adventure. (snip) In September 1995, with the ARRC now ready, NATO announced its readiness to deploy a large force to implement a Bosnian peace settlement. They would now be in overt control of the situation and they pressurised the warring factions to sit around the table. On the 5th of October 1995 they announced a 60-day cease-fire which came into effect a week later. Ultimatums were now the order of the day - accompanied by the carrot of an embargo-lift. Simultaneously, the UN echoed NATO's cease-fire announcement by announcing its intention to reduce its troops in the region. The Dayton peace talks took place in the intimidating atmosphere of the Wright-Patterson Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio. The embargo against Yugoslavia was lifted in November - and the peace accord signed in Paris on the 14th of December 1995. Just previously, in early December, as a result of a conference convened in London to discuss the implementation of the Dayton accord, a Peace Implementation Council - with no UN representatives onboard - was set up in Brussels. The resulting Implementation Force (IFOR), a force of 60,000 American, British and French troops - under the command of the ARRC - was then deployed throughout Bosnia into three zones of operation. In December 1996 IFOR was augmented by the Stabilisation Force (SFOR) of 30.000 troops. The cease-fire could now be ensured by this display of military might. America's tactics in the crisis from early on had raised doubts as to its impartiality and avowed compliance with the tenets of reconciliation inherent in a peace-making process. David Owen had voiced such doubts, and certain subsequent actions were to validate such doubts. As a result of a signed agreement on military co-operation between the US and Croatia (the latter had already signed a similar agreement with Turkey), the Croatian Ministry of Defence had signed a contract with Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) in 1994, under which the latter would act as military advisors to the Croat army at the Petar Zrinski military school in Zagreb. full: http://www.spectrezine.org/war/Mendes3.htm -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
