Leftists and Electoral Politics Re: California recall results
At 2:02 AM -0500 10/8/03, Lou Paulsen wrote: Everyone knew it was going to be Schwarzenegger or Davis or maybe Bustamante. It's the old story: a vote for the 'third party' is a 'wasted vote' unless you know ahead of time who is going to win, in which case you have the luxury of casting a 'protest vote'. We -really- can't fall into the trap of thinking that vote totals in a bourgeois election are some kind of accurate measure of what you have accomplished during the campaign. A third party on the left in an electoral system like the United States' can never rise to power without a prior collapse of the political party controlled by the ruling class that had captured working-class votes (the Democratic Party, in the case of the United States). In Venezuela, the rise of Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian movement was made possible by the spectacular collapse of the two thitherto dominant political parties -- the social Democratic Action Party (Acción Democrática, AD) and the Christian democratic Social Christian Party (Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente, COPEI): * Venezuela: Popular Sovereignty versus Liberal Democracy Michael Coppedge April 2002 The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies ...Increasing disaffection with the system became evident as abstention grew from a low of 3.5 percent in 1973 to 12 percent in 1978 and 1983, 18 percent in 1988, and 39.8 percent in 1993. Many observers know that AD and COPEI, following the lead of their presidential candidates during the 1988 election year, passed an electoral reform that established the direct election of mayors and governors for the first time in 1989; this was seen as a move away from the hierarchical discipline typical of partyarchy. What fewer know is that few party leaders besides the presidential candidates were happy about this reform. They set about to nullify its effects immediately by reasserting tight cogollo control over nominations to these offices. AD was also primarily responsible for stalling and eventually shelving a constitutional reform bill that grass-roots organizations had succeeded in putting on the agenda in 1992. The two parties flirted with reform in 1993 by nominating for president a mayor and a governor who had genuine local grass-roots support and who advocated greater openness and participation and economic liberalism. But when both candidates lost in 1993 -- the first time neither AD nor COPEI had won the presidency in a fair election -- other party leaders systematically marginalized these candidates and purged hundreds of their supporters from the ranks. The AD candidate, Claudio Fermín, was eventually expelled by his party; President Pérez was impeached in 1993 and AD expelled him while he awaited trial. By 1998, COPEI had no viable presidential candidate of its own and so backed one, then another, independent. AD's top boss, Luis Alfaro Ucero, forced the party machine to nominate him for president and ran a doomed race in 1998 even when his own party dumped him two weeks before the vote. AD and COPEI contributed only 9.05 and 2.15 percent of the valid votes, respectively, to the independent candidate they both backed in the end, Henrique Salas Römer. The presidential election of 1998 that brought Hugo Chávez to the presidency was therefore the culmination of a fifteen-year process of traditional-party decline. Chávez did not destroy the old parties; rather, he filled a political vacuum. His promises were perfectly tailored to fill this particular void. His ultimate announced goal was to restore prosperity to the country -- to stop the waste and corruption that Venezuelans believe to have been siphoning off their wealth, and to distribute it fairly among all citizens. But his means to that goal squarely targeted the traditional parties, which he indicted for creating the mess and accused of standing in the way of the necessary reform. We are being called to save Venezuela from this immense and putrid swamp in which we have been sunk during 40 years of demagoguery and corruption, he proclaimed in his inaugural address. 16 Although AD's popular support had already diminished and COPEI was on the verge of extinction, their militants were believed to be entrenched still in the congress, the courts, the bureaucracy, the electoral council, and state and municipal governments. He promised to remove these corrupt politicians from power and replace them with honest, hard-working, patriotic -- and frequently, it turned out, military -- citizens. Rooting out the corrupt partisans would require a full-scale assault on the existing democratic institutions, and the tool Chávez proposed to carry out this political revolution was a constituent assembly. http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/com01/com01.pdf * Abstention has grown in the USA to an even greater extent than in Venezuela in the midst of the pre-Chavez and pre-Bolivarian crisis: The typical voter today is relatively well off financially and over
Reinforcements Unlikely
* Reinforcements unlikely Even if nations alter stance on Iraq, forces committed elsewhere By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News October 8, 2003 The NATO conference in Colorado Springs this week is unlikely to produce the news that tens of thousands of Coloradans would like to see: A promise that allied soldiers will replace their loved ones serving in Iraq. Even if NATO members were to change their positions on helping the United States in Iraq, countries with significant military forces already have them committed to peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Africa, said NATO spokesman Francois Le Blevennec. He was speaking to reporters as defense ministers from 19 NATO countries and eight guest nations began arriving at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs on Tuesday afternoon for two days of meetings. . . . Protesters dotted the last mile to the highly secure, closed-door conference. One held a sign, saying: We love our troops. Please bring them home. . . . The United States did enjoy some headway on Tuesday. The parliament of Turkey, a NATO ally, decided to send troops to serve as peacekeepers in Iraq. Estimates range up to 10,000 soldiers. But the Iraqi Governing Council is strongly opposed to Turkish peacekeepers anywhere in Iraq. The Turks have been fighting their own Kurdish minority at home. They cannot be sent to the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq because the Kurds have promised to fight them. Despite American wishes for military relief in Iraq, the breadth of NATO's international commitments is interfering, Le Blevennec said. Germany is running the NATO operation in Afghanistan, and it can't do any more because they reduced their defense budget so much in the last 15 years, he said. France has troops in various countries in Africa, while Bosnia and Kosovo continue to require security from many of the allies. Even Portugal's forces are still tied up in peacekeeping in East Timor, Le Blevennec said. People forget how long these operations run, he said. We've been in Bosnia since 1995, he said - although reducing NATO forces in the Balkans is reportedly on the agenda of the Springs meeting. A shortage of troops also is limiting NATO's efforts in Afghanistan, he said. NATO has just agreed to extend its peacekeeping - perhaps by several thousand troops - to several more cities beyond the capital of Kabul, and has asked for United Nations authorization. . . . But NATO cannot occupy the whole country, Le Blevennec said. . . . We just don't have the capability to do that, he said. Still, Le Blevennec did say that some countries could do better in providing support for international peacekeeping. But they are generally too small to provide the level of support that Americans are seeking, he said. . . . [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 303-892-5438. The Associated Press contributed to this report. http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_2330074,00.html * -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Leftists and Electoral Politics Re: California recall results
A third party on the left in an electoral system like the United States' can never rise to power without a prior collapse of the political party controlled by the ruling class that had captured working-class votes (the Democratic Party, in the case of the United States). We'll see about that. I completely disagree with this statement. It reminds of a way of thinking that a certain wellknown politician had in 1938, and that way of thinking became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I could also demonstrate why that way of thinking is false, with specific examples from my own experience. Lesser-evil arguments are inexhaustible, simply because there is always a lesser evil. J.
The Great Society
NY Observer, Oct. 8, 2003 Seinfelds Dumb Porsche-Haus by Ron Rosenbaum Jerrys Garage. Jerrys Porsche-haus. I didnt believe it until I saw it with my own eyes. Id read about it here in The Observer a year or so ago and immediately went into a state of denial. No. Jerry Seinfeld cant be just handing me material like this. It must be a joke. Jerry Seinfeld is a comedian, isnt he? I mean, thats how hes identified in the media. Just because I dont find him funny; just because I think he may be the worst stand-up comedian in recorded history, one whos generated a devil-spawn of unfunny observational comedians who make interminable cutting-edge jokes about, you know, Starbucks calling its smallest size tallstuff like that. (Roll over, Sam Kinison!) But hey, some people find the guy funny. Live and let live. So the whole Porsche-haus thing could have been Jerrys attempt at a joke. And then I saw it. After years in the planning, construction is going forward, even though (well get to this later) the citys Department of Buildings says the applications have not been fully approved. But Ive been there. Ive been to the site! Its almost like being able to say I was there when they put the capstone on the Great Pyramid of Cheops. I was there when they were building Jerrys Garage, Jerrys Porsche-haus, the entire building hes constructing on an Upper West Side street to house a very special few of Jerrys Very Special Collection of Porsches, the one hes building three blocks away from his $4.35 million duplex in the Beresford, so he could be close enough to say nighty-night and beddy-bye to his beloved German sports cars whenever he wants to. I was there when it was close to completion. Its just too good to be true. Nearly a million and a half dollars to provide housing for homeless Porsches! Poor Jerry. Im sure hes very deep. But it suggets that he is just as superficial and self-absorbed as the character he played on his sitcom. More so! Even Jerry would have ridiculed Jerry for this tribute to childish grandiosity, this monumental folly: Porsche-haus. The Great Pyramid of Dumbness. full: http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage3.asp -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Leftists and Electoral Politics Re: California recall results
--- Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A third party on the left in an electoral system like the United States' can never rise to power without a prior collapse of the political party controlled by the ruling class that had captured working-class votes (the Democratic Party, in the case of the United States). We'll see about that. I completely disagree with this statement. It reminds of a way of thinking that a certain wellknown politician had in 1938, and that way of thinking became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I could also demonstrate why that way of thinking is false, with specific examples from my own experience. Lesser-evil arguments are inexhaustible, simply because there is always a lesser evil. J. ** The lesser evil party is in power in the UK and, IT IS a lesser evil than the Tories. An even lesser evil would be for the SWP to take command of the Labour Party. But boring from within can be boring to the working class and hard on the burn out rate of sacrificial militants. Best just to be a revolutionary and try to develop soldarity where you can, at work, in the streets and everywhere you go. Sure, vote for whomever you like, but nobody is going anywhere until the working class organizes to take power for itself. Best to all, Mike B) = * Commodification works in our favour in the instance of the influence of learned ideology over class consciousness, she said. How's that? Oh yes, the cheapening of the *quality* of knowledge absorbed by the *majority* of brains manifesting itself as consciousness, also applies to the depth which ideology is rooted as a power against material interest, he replied. http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
Re: internet infrastructure investment data
On Tue, Oct 07, 2003 at 08:33:52PM -0700, Doyle Saylor wrote: Doyle, Couple of things, while for you the term moron is simply a label that indicates you think Shirky is not interesting, for me as a disability rights advocate I find the term anti-disabled. If you read Stephen Jay Gould's book on The Mismeasure of Man you get a decent insight on this made-up word. The basic concept from the early nineteen hundreds in the IQ 'science' underlying the word moron was a person too stupid to learn how to read. The science behind the concept was dismantled by Gould. So the term moron while associated in the public mind with developmentally disabled persons is simply empty of meaning because it has not scientific validity. Ah, yes, thanks Doyle. Your point is well taken, and I apologize for loosely throwing around that term. I did, in fact, mean precisely what you said: I simply don't find Shirky interesting or convincing. He's probably a really smart person, I just don't care for his work. Thanks for the gentle correction. As to your personal insight into Shirky, I always thought Bush was not intellectually able, but I don't dwell on labeling him stupid because that is an empty way of trying to understand what is going on. Just a brief reaction to your wording about Shirky. Noted and accepted. (And I really meant my comments to be taken as my opinion of the value of his *work*, not as any sort of insight into *him*.) I would say though you can't argue that investment in the telecom industry is what made things scale up to 5B + documents, if people didn't use the internet as well, it was after all for a couple of decades just a back water in the sciences community. My point was that infrastructure investment is systematically under-estimated, among the technical crowd I write for regularly, as *part* of the overall explanation. I didn't mean to imply that such investment was alone a necessary or sufficient condition. Sorry if that wasn't clear. If you are meaning 5B+ (billion plus) documents I am struck by this statistic that there are roughly one document on the web to every five hundred documents in private intranet resources. So I think about these things in terms of public and private intellectual property. Well, sure, and that's an interesting way to think about them, just not one that I was working toward in this context. While my publisher will let me do a bit of politech, it's a very short leash, and this really is a practical programming book. support for the web. So you are downgrading the intellectual labor process that goes into the web by dwelling on the machinery behind it. Maybe that isn't your intent, but strikes me that way. I'm surprised that you read anything I wrote to mean *that*. There are lots of books which explain to programmers how to write software for running on the Web. That seems a perfectly reasonable kind of book to write. I'm writing one such book. It strikes me as relevant to dwell on the machinery behind it, since that is what the book is about. I have no interest in downgrading the intellectual labor process that goes into the web, nor do I think I've done that. I've been part of that process since 1995, so it would be an odd thing for me to downgrade. me, This reads to me like you have a thing about the W3C (world wide web consortium) being over blown in value. And the machinery and spending on the infrastructure as much more important. In point of fact, the HTTP protocol is a product of the IETF, not the W3C. I think that the W3C is a very peculiar institution, and I've written about it a lot. I'd be perfectly happy to discuss those issues with you. My throwaway comment about Berners-Lee was simply meant to suggest, as I've done on LBO before, that I think he's overrated. 'ideas' across. Even if I think you are off the beam I get a lot out of a capable person writing in depth including having a historical sense of time and place. That's a fair and good suggestion. Again, I'm not sure I can squeeze that into *this* book, but this is the sort of thing I do regularly in my weekly columns, for what it's worth. I hope I gave you some value for your request for advice. I was trying to be helpful. I appreciate and recognize that. Thanks, Kendall Clark
Bus 174
I saw this film at Lincoln Center New Directors festival this year. It opened today at the Film Forum in NYC. I strongly urge New Yorkers to see it and to look for it in your own city. --- Bus 174 On June 12, 2000 a drugged-out, pistol-brandishing 22 year-old Afro-Brazilian named Sandro de Nascimiento hijacked a bus in Rio de Janeiro and threatened the passengers with death unless a series of incoherent demands were met. As SWAT teams laid siege to the bus, TV crews transmitted images of the ghastly scene to viewers throughout the country who had a predictable reaction: a madman was committing a mad act. As young documentary film-maker Jose Padilha told the audience in a QA at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall following the showing of Bus 174 as part of the annual New Director/New Films series, he was not satisfied with this narrative and began his own investigation. Combining stock footage of the hijacking with background interviews with Sandro's family and the street kids he eventually hooked up with, Padilha not only provides a coherent social analysis but a gripping character study of the sort that has novelistic depth. The determining event that formed Sandro's character was the stabbing murder of his single mom, a shopkeeper, when he was 10 years old. So traumatized was he by the event that he ran off to join Rio's countless homeless children. When he was 14 years old, he survived a police massacre of a large group of homeless children in the Candelaria district of Rio. With his gun pointed at the head of one of the captive women on the bus, he yelled out at the window, I was at Candelaria. I know what it means to die. This is no action movie. I will begin killing at 6PM. On July 24, 1993, the NY Times reported: Hooded members of an 'extermination group' killed seven homeless boys and wounded two others as they slept before dawn today in the shadows of the city's symbols of luxury and power. Men cruising Rio's banking district in a taxi and in a private car, who survivors later said were police officers, stopped in front of Candelaria Church and sprayed a group of 45 sleeping boys and girls with pistol fire. Four boys died instantly. A fifth was shot and killed as he ran from the front of the church, a gold-encrusted landmark that is a regular setting for lavish society weddings. Driving through deserted streets, the men shot to death two more boys who were sleeping in gardens at the Museum of Modern Art, on Rio's showcase Seaside Avenue. Since homeless children, who are linked with petty crime, begging and other anti-social acts, powerful businessmen often hire hit squads to clean them out of neighborhoods like Candelaria. The social dimensions of this ongoing conflict amount to a one-sided civil war. Considering that about half of Brazil's 60 million children survive on less than $1 a day and three-quarters do not finish primary school, it is not surprising that the country is swamped by feral youth. Veja, Brazil's version of Time Magazine, wrote at the time, It is almost unbelievable that a contingent of children equal to the entire population of Colombia or Argentina silently live on this miserable slice of the national wealth. In an interview with an older woman who became Sandro's surrogate mother at one point, we discover that he longed to be famous one day, despite the fact that he had never worked a day in his life nor had he successfully overcome various addictions, from sniffing glue to cocaine. His fame did eventually come at the expense of his own life and one of his female captives, who are revealed as uncommonly sensitive and sympathetic to this poor soul who had taken them captive and threatened them at gunpoint. Sandro's performance on TV camera seems eerily evocative of films like Dog Day Afternoon, in which a hostage taker finally becomes visible in the public eye. In the final analysis, this is really Padilha's point. It took a desperate act for one of Brazil's invisible people to become known. If this powerfully dramatic film ever finds its way into commercial distribution, it must be seen. Belonging to a long tradition of films such as Los Olvidados, Pixote, City of God, it reaffirms our bonds with those who are most powerless. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
California Dreaming
It's too early to tell if the recall will turn out badly. For example, Proposition 54 -- the racial ignorance proposition -- failed because it Bustamante got millions of dollars for his campaign, which the courts ruled to be illegal. He turned the money over to the anti-proposition 54 campaign, which probably turned the tide. California's budget last year avoided most of the pain by passing most of the budget cuts on to the following year. The hard cuts come next year. Schwarzenegger will have trouble pleasing many people with his choices, possibly discrediting Republicans even more. The negative side of the campaign is too obvious to mention. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Leftists and Electoral Politics Re: California recall results
Best just to be a revolutionary and try to develop soldarity where you can, at work, in the streets and everywhere you go. Sure, vote for whomever you like, but nobody is going anywhere until the working class organizes to take power for itself. Thanks for your advice, but I am not interested much in what the political left says, really, I am interested in the conditions for success in all fields, and I do not want to hang around people who tell me what I am not, what I am incapable of, what cannot happen, what you cannot do, what you cannot achieve, why something is impossible, why you are wrong, and so on. It distract from what I can and could do. Because I just think, yeah, there's always limits, and sometimes I miss the bus, shit happens. I do know that that lots of Leftists find psychic comfort in the ability of not being able to do something, and telling the world about it, but personally I find it terrible, and so I would rather hang out with people, who do want to do the things that it takes to succeed, and find out what you need to do, rather give me a complicated story and then say tell me the answer, because in that case I am better off rereading the Beatitudes. I think Camejo fought a great political campaign, and I congratulate him for that, for his dedication and commitment and creativity, and after the disappointment of the election result, I would now focus on what we have achieved, how far we have come, and what we should conclude from experience about the way we want to tacke things in the future. And if people want to prattle about lesser evil theories in justification, or talk about all the things we cannot do, then I prefer to leave them to it, and get on with it for myself. Best thing is that Camejo was out there, and if Arnold's policies are a disaster for any reason, at least Camejo can say that he provided an alternative, and is in no way responsible for the mess, and that really people ought to think more of the alternative he offers if they really want to improve life in California for people who work hard but don't have a lot of money. The honest thing is when we can specify the priorities we have, the useless thing is if we try to find a justification for what didn't happen anyway. United we stand, Jurriaan
Re: California Dreaming
Driving to work to day, I heard a US National Public Radio reporter suggest that der Gropenführer's resistable rise will have a big effect on the California Republican Party. I think she's right. The Cal-GOPs are a bunch of right-wing sectarians (with a lot of money, so that they're not as marginal as us left-wing sectarians) and these days couldn't win any state-wide election. The other GOPster in the race, Tom McClintock is principled, but his principles are all wrong for California. Mr. S wouldn't have won a GOP primary, because on social issues he's moderate (he's pro-choice, okay on gays, etc.) His election was a victory for him (and for the type of people who voted for Ross Perot), but in some ways a loss for the GOP. In some way, S's election makes a lot of sense: term limits mean that the legislature is filled with amateurs, so why not have an amateur governor. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine California's budget last year avoided most of the pain by passing most of the budget cuts on to the following year. The hard cuts come next year. Schwarzenegger will have trouble pleasing many people with his choices, possibly discrediting Republicans even more. The negative side of the campaign is too obvious to mention. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: internet infrastructure investment data
Kendall Clark wrote: On Tue, Oct 07, 2003 at 10:16:51PM -0400, ravi wrote: But there is an idea floating around geekdom that the Web works (in the sense that it scales 5B+ documents, something which no one really expected) because of various purely technological ideas... i could use some clarification of the statement above. does it mean that in geekdom there is an idea that the web works *only* because of technological ideas? if not, then the claim is a truism isnt it? No, it means that many technical people believe the Web *still* works at the present scale because of some specific changes that were made to the HTTP protocol. That is, these folks give no credence to the alternative explanation that, even w/out those specific technical changes, the Web would work at the present scale because of massive infrastructural investment... could you point me to some sources? i find it very surprising that technical people believe that changes to HTTP can be the sole cause of performance gains (especially given that caching, which indeed does, at great cost, distribute load, was mostly possible with early HTTP versions, and further modifications of HTTP were aimed, in a large sense, at addressing some of the technical defeciencies of a protocol designed by a non-protocols person, eg: persistent connections). almost all the technical people i know will readily point to the increase in network bandwidth (due to the excessive deployment by telcos in the boom years), the large drop in disk/memory/cpu prices, etc as significant (perhaps even larger causes) for the gains in scaling. they would also not find these gain surprising at all. i do not. i do not find it surprising at all that the internet has scaled to the modest level it currently is at. i *would* be surprised if we were doing real-time video over the internet (at the scale of current radio/tv broadcasting), but that's another beast. 1. what is the web? is it the internet + the various web servers and documents that they serve? That's a good question. I mean in this case it's that part of the Internet which happens via HTTP, server client. It's a significant percentage of total Internet usage. so, you are talking about the web component of internet usage? and by that i assume you mean network usage i.e., available bandwidth and throughput on routers and other intermediate devices? 2. what does scaling to 5b+ documents mean? 5b+ html files stored somewhere on networked computers? 5b+ documents transmitted in parallel (i.e., capacity)? Neither, actually. There are something like 5B+ addressable resources (things which have URIs), but they aren't all HTML files on servers, many of them are resources which are computed on-the-fly. And I doubt anyone believes that all of these resources could be simultaneously requested. i use HTML files as shorthand, but if we are talking about dynamic content, are you including server load and performance? (the previous point suggests otherwise). i wouldn't be surprised actually if there comes a day in the near future, when 5 billion documents are in transit simultaneously on the internet. i would guess (admittedly a very rough guess) that that number is already in the millions right now. and as more and more people blindly adopt HTTP as their transport protocol (simply because of such technologies as web services), often ignoring the years of work done with protocol design, many of these documents will be transported over HTTP (though it might not be the right transport at all) -- to take the rant a bit further about the ascendancy of buzzword compliance since the corporatization of the net and the IETF, the current craze with XML was well ridiculed by a recent RFC (an internet technical specification document) which parodied this trend by putting forward a proposal for IP over XML!! http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3252.html what does default libertarian geek mind mean? that by default you assume all geeks are libertarians? or that you have found them to be so? I mean that the dominant ideology among the geek set (well, large chunks of it anyway, it's probably not more monolithic than any other subculture) is strong right libertarian, especially on the issue of where technology comes from. It's *not* a David Noble-friendly part of the world, at least as I have experienced it. (And, yes, I do tend to assume that most geeks are right libertarians, given the dominant ideology, but it's a loose assumption which I stand ready to modify. Anyway, not sure how this is relevant...) i am not sure how this is relevant either, but hey, i didnt mention it ;-). you must have thought it relevant, otherwise why would you mention it? ;-) and as a geek, of course i take offense! seriously however, all the geeks i know are somewhat of a mix of humanitarian or analytical leftist. of course we might differ on what we consider a geek. perhaps this is a west vs east coast
Re: Leftists and Electoral Politics Re: California recall results
At 2:02 AM -0500 10/8/03, Lou Paulsen wrote: Everyone knew it was going to be Schwarzenegger or Davis or maybe Bustamante. It's the old story: a vote for the 'third party' is a 'wasted vote' unless you know ahead of time who is going to win, in which case you have the luxury of casting a 'protest vote'. We -really- can't fall into the trap of thinking that vote totals in a bourgeois election are some kind of accurate measure of what you have accomplished during the campaign. A third party on the left in an electoral system like the United States' can never rise to power without a prior collapse of the political party controlled by the ruling class that had captured working-class votes (the Democratic Party, in the case of the United States). the real action has to involve the development of a mass movement of the left, something that will never come from the DP. Only when there's a working-class movement outside of the electoral arena will the political balance shift back in the human direction. Jim
Re: California Dreaming
When Arnold finishes his term, California will have had Republican governors for 19 of 24 years. The state likes Republican governors. Gene Michael Perelman wrote: It's too early to tell if the recall will turn out badly. For example, Proposition 54 -- the racial ignorance proposition -- failed because it Bustamante got millions of dollars for his campaign, which the courts ruled to be illegal. He turned the money over to the anti-proposition 54 campaign, which probably turned the tide. California's budget last year avoided most of the pain by passing most of the budget cuts on to the following year. The hard cuts come next year. Schwarzenegger will have trouble pleasing many people with his choices, possibly discrediting Republicans even more. The negative side of the campaign is too obvious to mention. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: internet infrastructure investment data
ravi wrote: snip I mean that the dominant ideology among the geek set (well, large chunks of it anyway, it's probably not more monolithic than any other subculture) is strong right libertarian, especially on the issue of where technology comes from. It's *not* a David Noble-friendly part of the world, at least as I have experienced it. (And, yes, I do tend to assume that most geeks are right libertarians, given the dominant ideology, but it's a loose assumption which I stand ready to modify. Anyway, not sure how this is relevant...) i am not sure how this is relevant either, but hey, i didnt mention it ;-). you must have thought it relevant, otherwise why would you mention don't know why that got cut off, but here's the rest of my message: i am not sure how this is relevant either, but hey, i didnt mention it . you must have thought it relevant, otherwise why would you mention it? and as a geek, of course i take offense! seriously however, all the geeks i know are somewhat of a mix of humanitarian or analytical leftist. of course we might differ on what we consider a geek. perhaps this is a west vs east coast thing? the IETF (or perhaps the IAB or IESG, i forget who authored the document) for instance suggests that it is neither a dictatorship nor a democracy, but that it works by technical consensus (if you believe some) or as a meritocracy (in the words of others). in the words of dave clark: we reject kings, presidents, and voting -- we believe in running code! would you call that a libertarian viewpoint? Sorry, but I wouldn't dream of asking an actual computer technical question on PEL-L or LBO. : why not? Because it's completely off-topic? Isn't that obvious? its obvious that its off-topic, but its not obvious (at least to me) that that's why you wrote the above. michael has been quite lenient towards computer tech questions on this list and people have asked them, and some have even got answers! I've already explained it, so I won't do so again. I'm not gonna go 'round and 'round about this, Ravi, since it's not really germane to my question. I'm starting to regret including any surrounding context. you have to realize that i ask these questions because: 1. what you specified as the context was not clear to me. it still is not (and probably because i am not reading you right). 2. i am surprised by your generalizations about the geek and computer science community. perhaps what you mean by geek is the high-school geek set while what i mean is the hacker crowd (for the general audience: 'hacker' does not mean what the media has wrongly used the term to represent i.e., someone who breaks into computers). i have lived among the hacker and computer science community for 15 years now (including a long stint at one of the temples: bell labs) and your statements do not match my experiences very well. if that is because i have misunderstood my community, then i would appreciate any clarifications that disabuse me. while these might be peripheral to your main question, once you put these opinions out in a public venue, i think discussion on them is valid. of course, if michael thinks we should go off-list, i will gladly do so. --ravi
Re: Leftists and Electoral Politics Re: California recall results
Devine, James wrote: the real action has to involve the development of a mass movement of the left, something that will never come from the DP. Only when there's a working-class movement outside of the electoral arena will the political balance shift back in the human direction. Precisely. This is the perspective which should guide all political thought and action of leftists. Carrol Jim
Re: internet infrastructure investment data
On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 11:54:43AM -0400, ravi wrote: could you point me to some sources? i find it very surprising that technical people believe that changes to HTTP can be the sole cause of performance gains (especially given that caching, which indeed does, at great cost, distribute load, was mostly possible with early HTTP versions, and further modifications of HTTP were aimed, in a large sense, at addressing some of the technical defeciencies of a protocol designed by a non-protocols person, eg: persistent connections). I've never said *sole* cause, which may be part of the problem. I think there are many engineers (probably 'computer scientists' was a bit over the top earlier) who believe it was a *crucial* cause. I don't know anyone who claims it's the *sole* cause. so, you are talking about the web component of internet usage? and by that i assume you mean network usage i.e., available bandwidth and throughput on routers and other intermediate devices? Yes, each time I've specified the kind of infrastructural investment I'm interested in quantifying, I've specifically mentioned router bandwidth advances and capacity investments. As you know, the Web part of the internet is still TCP/IP traffic. and as more and more people blindly adopt HTTP as their transport protocol (simply because of such technologies as web services), Well, part of this argument is about the way SOAP breaks the caching benefits of HTTP 1.1 (overuse of POST over GET, for example), so, yeah, that's part of the issue. I would probably quibble with the blindly adopt bit; I think it's more that people are misusing it rather than reflexively using it when something else entirely should be used. The utter market failure of BEEP suggests that HTTP has a lot of general purpose life left in it. Because it's completely off-topic? Isn't that obvious? its obvious that its off-topic, but its not obvious (at least to me) that that's why you wrote the above. That's why I wrote the above. : 2. i am surprised by your generalizations about the geek and computer science community. perhaps what you mean by geek is the high-school geek set while what i mean is the hacker crowd (for the general audience: 'hacker' does not mean what the media has wrongly used the term to represent i.e., someone who breaks into computers). No, I mean hackers. Obviously it's not a monolithic set of attitudes beliefs. There are obviously pockets of leftie hackers and geeks. But I still stand by my claim that the dominant ideology is right libertarian. I'm thinking of the Slashdot crowd, Eric Raymond and his hangers-on, and the like. Obvious counterpoints include Richard Stallman, the IMC hacker crowd, many anarchist groups who actively use Web tech, and so on. match my experiences very well. if that is because i have misunderstood my community, then i would appreciate any clarifications that disabuse me. I'm not trying to convince you that you've misread your experience. Hell, I'm jealous that the parts of the hacker world you've interacted with have not been right libertarian. The parts I have run into frequently have been and I still tend to think that it's it forms the dominant ideology (which is different than saying that everyone who is a hacker is a right libertarian. That's clearly wrong). while these might be peripheral to your main question, once you put these opinions out in a public venue, i think discussion on them is valid. Of course the discussion is valid, if Michael doesn't object. That doesn't mean I'm interested in pursuing it. : Kendall
Re: internet infrastructure investment data
No, I mean hackers. Obviously it's not a monolithic set of attitudes beliefs. There are obviously pockets of leftie hackers and geeks. But I still stand by my claim that the dominant ideology is right libertarian. I'm thinking of the Slashdot crowd, Eric Raymond and his hangers-on, and the like. Obvious counterpoints include Richard Stallman, the IMC hacker crowd, many anarchist groups who actively use Web tech, and so on. I have been working in computing (Tandem/Apple/Sun) for 20 years, and I would say that though there are a lot of libertarians, they seem to me to be pretty even split between the right and the left. There are also a fair amount of socialists. Then I would say that the current and continuing outsourcing of techhies to India and China is likely to polarize this group even further. (I thought HTTP was big because it could get you through fire walls, but ravi, please correct me if I'm wrong. Oh, and that IP over XML was hillarious.) Joanna
Re: Leftists and Electoral Politics Re: California recall results - reply to Jim
the real action has to involve the development of a mass movement of the left, something that will never come from the DP. Only when there's a working-class movement outside of the electoral arena will the political balance shift back in the human direction. Jim We had this whole dispute already from A to Z in New Zealand, because we had a Labour Government from 1984 which implemented an extreme neo-liberal programme not unlike in Chile under Pinochet, except that we didn't have military dictatorship and fascist politics. My club said clearly from that start that this was happening, but most people on the Left denied it. Subsequently there was a big debate about what ought to happen, whether the Labour Party would or could split, whether the labour movement should form a new party, what prospects there were for the Labour Party in the future, where our lyalties should lie, and so on. We took a clear position on it because we said the NZLP is a dead dog for workingclass/socialist politics, and we had better get on with something else, and not hope for easy successes, we just work in our jobs and communities and try to establish ourselves as people who can really show what has to be done, positively. Most of the Left just called us dirty names, jibed, or thought we were naive and stupid, but that wasn't the problem, the problem was that we were historically to late in politics to demonstrate an experientially based policy which showed people everywhere what they actually had to do to turn things around, we were ourselves still picking up skills and developing, and more experienced people with politically shitty ideas got the better of us. Apart from that, there was almost nobody around who had done the work of making a credible economic and political analysis, and if they had the knowledge, they still didn't do anything with it. And that was proved by the fact that dissident MP Jim Anderton ended up setting up an Economic Policy Network after the fact, i.e. after the Labour Government had won a SECOND term. Okay, eventually the Labour Party did split, as I explained on Marxmail replying to Ed George, but that was already after the horse had bolted, 85-90 percent of the members had left, and the trade union movement was being legally smashed and membership dwindled. It was just a massive defeat, but people couldn't even see, why it had all happened. The real point, in answer to Yoshie, is however that today, the New Zealand Labour Party is actually the leader of the New Zealand Government again, and Helen Clark got to be Prime Minister !!! And why ? People just retreated and retreated with lesser evil arguments to the point where the very party which smashed practically everything the Left traditionally stood for, re-established itself as a governmental power, with a new bunch of faces, and people voted for them, BECAUSE they think the other guys are worse, and the parliament just change the laws for funding political activity and for political organisation, so that you don't need to have a mass party membership in order to sustain an effective political party anyway. So all considered what New Zealand Leftism mainly consisted in, in essence, was mainly negative oppositionism and defensive conservatism, and because this was the case, they were always reactive to what the others guys were doing, and depended crucially on what the other guys were doing, they had few positive political projects of their own that the Right couldn't rip off. Ultimately that sort of obsession is masochistic, and most people will say, if you want to cry, you can. Now of course you do need to defend yourself when people attack your rights and gains and way of life, nobody denies that, Iraq offers a dramatic case of that, but if you think that this is all there is to it, or that kicking against oppressive forces is all there is to it, then you're wrong, because you have to plot a positive strategy for getting out of the mess, and that is the importance of heterodox economics for example, because you need more than Marx's critique. And for this purpose, if lesser-evilism defines the terms of debate, and if Hegelian schemas for the further development of world history define the terms of debate, you will not get very far, because it distracts from actually recognising what you can do, with what you have got already, how you can target an opponent effectively, and it might in fact be conducive to denying what you have got already, in which case you incapacitate yourself even more, or, as they say about neurotic people, in denial. If somebody like Ernest Mandel was able to become a main leader of the Fourth International, that was not because he was a great political actor, because he wasn't, it was very simply because he was a thoroughly positive person, he was constantly explaining what you can do, what could happen, what possibilities there were, how you could change things, what you should aim for and so on, framed in
Re: California Dreaming
Liberal Massacusetts has had a Republican governor since Dukakis embarrassed himself in 1988. People vote for Republicans in part to rein in the corrupt Democratic machine that controls the state legislature. One thing worse than a two-party political system is a one-party system. Ellen Frank PEN-L list [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: When Arnold finishes his term, California will have had Republican governors for 19 of 24 years. The state likes Republican governors. Gene
oscar wilde on socialism?
below was posted to another list... michael hoover The statement The trouble with Socialism is too many meetings, is frequently attributed to Oscar Wilde. A Google search has turned up several attributions of the statement, but no formal citations. It does not appear in my editions of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations or Bergen Evans' Dictionary of Quotations. Does anyone have a firm citation to where (or if) he wrote or said it? Thanks.
Why Schwarzenegger won
Counterpunch, October 9, 2003 A Black Day for Democracy Schwarzenegger and the Failure of the Dems By DAVID LINDORFF The election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of America's largest state represents a kind of milestone in the decline of American democracy. This is not Reagan II, the Movie, as some have suggested--a second actor being elected governor of the tinsel state. Reagan, for all the criticism that he was just an actor, in fact had paid his political dues, leading the actors union and getting involved in a variety of campaigns--for example against Medicare--before jumping into electoral politics to run for governor. While he certainly relied on his actor's charm to manufacture a persona, he had a conservative political agenda and was fairly candid about it. Schwarzenegger, in contrast, has no political background. He is a total artifice, a creation of a group of Republican backers who care little or nothing about his personal beliefs or ideology, and see him as a vehicle for restoring Republican control in a state that has been becoming increasingly Democratic. What is incredible, and terribly demoralizing about this election is that a majority of voters in a state holding a fifth of the U.S. population bought the product. In a moment of nihilistic fury at the corruption and cronyism of the Democratic Party apparatus and its titular head, Gov. Gray Davis, they cast their votes along with the state's Republicans for a man who stands for nothing but himself, who is a long-time misogynist with a history of assaulting women, and who is in thrall to business interests (who can be expected attempt to gut the state's once model regulatory apparatus). Make no mistake: the Democratic Party richly deserved this debacle. California Democratic politicians have long taken their traditional liberal, labor and minority base for granted. The ultimate Clintonians, California's Democratic leadership bought into the neo-Liberal idea of deregulation, bringing on the state's electricity crisis; they have endorsed right-wing get-tough approaches to crime that have made the state a leader in prison construction, and in the grotesque mass incarceration of minorities, and most seriously they have surrendered to the three-decades long Republican-led drive to limit property taxes (a grossly favor-the-rich campaign), refusing to offer progressive alternatives that would tax corporations and the rich to pay for schools, roads and other essential local services. Little wonder then that in a crisis, that progressive Democratic base not only failed to turn out to defend an embattled Democratic politician, but in many cases actually voted for his nemesis. The sad thing is that they didn't have to do it. There was an alternative, and I don't mean Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamonte, who despite his Hispanic name and working class background was just another cog in the Clintonian centrist Democratic Machine. The alternative was Peter Camejo, the Green Party candidate--a genuine progressive and, like Bustamonte, a Latino. full: http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10082003.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: California Dreaming
At 8:04 AM -0700 10/8/03, Michael Perelman wrote: It's too early to tell if the recall will turn out badly. For example, Proposition 54 -- the racial ignorance proposition -- failed because it Bustamante got millions of dollars for his campaign, which the courts ruled to be illegal. He turned the money over to the anti-proposition 54 campaign, which probably turned the tide. California's budget last year avoided most of the pain by passing most of the budget cuts on to the following year. The hard cuts come next year. Schwarzenegger will have trouble pleasing many people with his choices, possibly discrediting Republicans even more. * Institute for Public Accuracy 915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ PM Wednesday, October 8, 2003 Interviews Available: After the Recall RUTH WILSON GILMORE, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://geography.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/faculty/R_Gilmore.html Gilmore is a professor of geography and African American studies at the University of California at Berkeley. She said today: Some fundamental contradictions deepened on Election Day. More California voters cast ballots against the so-called 'racial privacy' act [Proposition 54] than in favor of the successful recall. Here we have an activist electorate persuaded by the health and education-related arguments that sank Prop. 54. The new governor promises to cut 'fat' from a budget stretched tightly across these spending areas. Yet, the prison budget has about a billion dollars that can be excised by someone with the political will to stop construction of Delano II [prison] and use alternatives to incarceration. * -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: oscar wilde on socialism?
Sorry, all I know about that one, is the bit by Bob Dylan, Oh Mama, can this really be the end To be stuck here with my mobile phone With the Memphis blues again J.
Re: California Dreaming
One thing worse than a two-party political system is a one-party system. Ellen Frank Disagree, haha. What is worse is when you have a one party system, or a two party system, but the government simply disregards any party in what it does, such that, for example, just a few people decide the fate of foreign policy towards Israel/Palestine. A case could be made that there is no democracy in the USA at the central government level, just a bit of rubberstamping, and that we are dealing with a type of optical illusion on TV. Some people actually have the impression that the US government is a kind of multinational corporation, where the CEO forms various working groups to execute particular tasks, and submits policies for a chat to Congress while we get on with the real work. J.
Re: oscar wilde on socialism?
I don't have any source, but the quote I recall (and one that sounds much more like Wilde) was the problem with Socialism is that it takes up too many spare evenings. I'd love to hear the exact quote, of course. Frederick Emrich, Editor commons-blog (http://info-commons.org/blog/) RSS Feed: http://www.info-commons.org/blog/index.rdf info-commons.org (http://info-commons.org/index.shtml) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Michael Hoover [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 2:13 PM Subject: [PEN-L] oscar wilde on socialism? below was posted to another list... michael hoover The statement The trouble with Socialism is too many meetings, is frequently attributed to Oscar Wilde. A Google search has turned up several attributions of the statement, but no formal citations. It does not appear in my editions of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations or Bergen Evans' Dictionary of Quotations. Does anyone have a firm citation to where (or if) he wrote or said it? Thanks.
Re: oscar wilde on socialism?
it sounds like a response to Albert Hahnel's participatory economy. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine I don't have any source, but the quote I recall (and one that sounds much more like Wilde) was the problem with Socialism is that it takes up too many spare evenings. I'd love to hear the exact quote, of course. Frederick Emrich, Editor below was posted to another list... michael hoover The statement The trouble with Socialism is too many meetings, is frequently attributed to Oscar Wilde. A Google search has turned up several attributions of the statement, but no formal citations. It does not appear in my editions of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations or Bergen Evans' Dictionary of Quotations. Does anyone have a firm citation to where (or if) he wrote or said it? Thanks.
Re: internet infrastructure investment data
joanna bujes wrote: (I thought HTTP was big because it could get you through fire walls, but ravi, please correct me if I'm wrong. no, you are quite right -- HTTP is/was used as a fallback transport for various applications (such as audio/video streaming), even though it was not well-suited for them, because, as you suggest, firewall administrators permitted HTTP into the intranet. i was referring to the additional effect of these extremely abstracted web based network solutions. many of these are quite heavy duty network applications but, imho, in their object oriented/over-abstracted design, they carry the blackbox model of the protocol stack too far. protocols can and should be fine-tuned to particular applications (i admit i am being a little vague here). i use transport protocol in a loose sense above. HTTP is not really a transport protocol -- its an application protocol. perhaps i should not make this loose reference, since this is exactly what i am complaining against: the use of HTTP as a transport protocol for all applications. i.e., HTTP as the default and only application layer protocol -- whether it is ready to perform such an important role is questionable (and afaik has not been determined. one could even argue that the opposite, i.e., HTTP is a poorly designed application protocol, has been shown to be a valid conclusion). Oh, and that IP over XML was hillarious.) glad you liked it! --ravi
She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes
It is difficult to quantify, but from spending much time there, my estimate would be that the typical Swiss spends perhaps 50 to 75 percent more time per week than a comparable Western European adult on civic, church, and other volunteer activities, and say 25 to 35 percent more than a typical American. The typical Swiss town is run by unpaid council members. The local schools are operated, for the most part, directly by parents, rather than by officials who report only indirectly and periodically to the parents. Parents, for example, hire the teachers in most cantons. The cantonal parliaments, and even the federal parliament, are populated mainly by people who keep their regular job. About one third of the members of the Supreme Court are nonlawyers, and the body does not really review cases for constitutionality because, as any number of Swiss put it to me, that is already done by the people. This is not to say the spirit of let's roll is dead in America or other parts of the West, especially over the last several months. It does seem to me, however, to be at a high level among the Swiss, and to be a very steady fact of life. Now, Swiss voluntarism or citizenship is not the product merely of direct democracy. It arises from many factors. One is the country's policy of near universal male military service, which raises civic time directly and inculcates an ethic of service indirectly. As well, Swiss federalism leaves many tasks, from important environmental policy questions to decisions about immigration and citizenship, and real management of the local schools, up to locals. And not just local officials, but to the people. Federalism thus plays a role as well. But there is no escaping the pervasive and subtle message of a political culture in which many of the major questions of state, and nearly all controversial ones, are referred directly to citizens ?most of them, repeatedly. The message to the voter is, you are competent to take care of your own affairs. In fact, it's your responsibility. In a very real way, Switzerland is a nation with some million members of the legislature. This accounts, in part, for a second observation about the Swiss. 2. PEOPLE'S COMPETENCE Development economists often wonder whether a given people are ready for democracy. The assumption is that until they have attained a certain level of formal education, wealth, or other achievements, they are not quite fit for self-government. The Swiss, by many statistical measures, are extremely ready. Their rate of newspaper readership is rivaled only by that, for some reason, of the Norwegians, and it must be remembered that a significant number of Swiss read in two or more languages. Swiss performance on standardized math and reading tests is high, even though the country has a significant plurality, for such a wealthy country, of persons who do not attend graduate school or even the university. Their facility with language is legend, and while a necessity in the case of French and German, now extends even to English. I found, in very general terms, that many Swiss were not as well informed about their leading politicians as one might see in the United States or most of Europe. (It is possible to read the front page of a Swiss newspaper several days in a row and not see the president's name.) They were, however, more knowledgeable in general about policy issues, and seem to feel they have more of a stake in settling them, than is common in more indirect democracies. The same holds true even of world affairs, though in part this reflects the simple fact that in Switzerland, if something happens 100 miles away, it is very likely overseas news. Does this high level of sophistication make the Swiss fit for direct democracy, or has their direct democracy helped produce a highly capable and skilled electorate? There is clearly some causality moving in both directions. If we consider Switzerland's position in the 19th Century, however, compared to today, there is some evidence that faith in the people's capacity to govern helped raise that capacity itself. Full article: http://www.adti.net/html_files/swiss/fossedal_bigmed_rx_.html
The Guardian viewpoint on re-establishing economic equilibrium in California
By far the most economically sensible thing to do would be to raise property taxes (...) voters consider Proposition 13 [still] to be sacrosanct, whatever state law says about balancing budgets. (...) Mr Schwarzenegger['s] margin for manoeuvre is extremely limited. California very much depends on the national economy. If the US recovery takes hold after a cocktail of tax cuts and massive public spending - what the IMF has referred to as the best recovery money can buy - California, along with the rest of the country, will benefit. (...) California lost 275,000 jobs, a 1.9% decline, from January 2001 through to August this year. Over the same period, 2.6 million jobs were lost nationally, a 2% fall. (...) [I]n the early 90s... the jobless rate soared to 9.3% as deep cuts in defence spending devastated the state's aerospace industry. In the present downturn, unemployment is running at 6.6%, compared to the national rate of 6.1%. Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1058644,00.html
Re: Allen Barra defends Limbaugh's football comments
has yogi berra had anything to say on matter...
Re: Allen Barra defends Limbaugh's football comments
Uh, he's still alive? I quote him all the time :) (mostly to myself.) Joanna Michael Hoover wrote: has yogi berra had anything to say on matter...
Re: Allen Barra defends Limbaugh's football comments
I saw Yogi in an ad on TV recently. go Cubs! Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: joanna bujes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 2:41 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Allen Barra defends Limbaugh's football comments Uh, he's still alive? I quote him all the time :) (mostly to myself.) Joanna Michael Hoover wrote: has yogi berra had anything to say on matter...
Re: Allen Barra defends Limbaugh's football comments
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] I saw Yogi in an ad on TV recently. go Cubs! = ...and they give you cash, which is almost as good as money!
Yogi
* This is like deja vu all over again. * You can observe a lot just by watching. * He must have made that before he died. -- Referring to a Steve McQueen movie. * I want to thank you for making this day necessary. -- On Yogi Berra Appreciation Day in St. Louis in 1947. * I'd find the fellow who lost it, and, if he was poor, I'd return it. -- When asked what he would do if he found a million dollars. * Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time? * You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there. * I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early. * If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else. * If you can't imitate him, don't copy him. * You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six. * Baseball is 90% mental -- the other half is physical. * It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much. * Slump? I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hitting. * A nickel isn't worth a dime today. * Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded. * It gets late early out there. -- Referring to the bad sun conditions in left field at the stadium. * Glen Cove. -- Referring to Glenn Close on a movie review television show. * Once, Yogi's wife Carmen asked, Yogi, you are from St. Louis, we live in New Jersey, and you played ball in New York. If you go before I do, where would you like me to have you buried? Yogi replied, Surprise me. * Do you mean now? -- When asked for the time. * I take a two hour nap, from one o'clock to four. * If you come to a fork in the road, take it. * You give 100 percent in the first half of the game, and if that isn't enough in the second half you give what's left. * 90% of the putts that are short don't go in. * I made a wrong mistake. * Texas has a lot of electrical votes. -- During an election campaign, after George Bush stated that Texas was important to the election. * Thanks, you don't look so hot yourself. -- After being told he looked cool. * I always thought that record would stand until it was broken. * Yeah, but we're making great time! -- In reply to Hey Yogi, I think we're lost. * If the fans don't come out to the ball park, you can't stop them. * Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel. * It's never happened in the World Series competition, and it still hasn't. * How long have you known me, Jack? And you still don't know how to spell my name. -- Upon receiving a check from Jack Buck made out to bearer. * I'd say he's done more than that. -- When asked if first baseman Don Mattingly had exceeded expectations for the current season. * The other teams could make trouble for us if they win. * He can run anytime he wants. I'm giving him the red light. -- On the acquisition of fleet Ricky Henderson. * I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat, and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself? * It ain't the heat; it's the humility. * The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase. * You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours. * I didn't really say everything I said.
Modern Times, Ancient Hours (Pietro Basso)
Pietro Basso, _Modern Times, Ancient Hours: Working Lives in the Twenty-first Century_: http://www.versobooks.com/books/ab/b-titles/basso_modern_times.shtml Pietro Basso: http://helios.unive.it/~philo/basso.html Jonathan Sterne's review of _Modern Times, Ancient Hours_: http://eserver.org/bs/reviews/2003-9-22-11.06PM.html * Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 10:44:13 -0700 From: Rakesh Bhandari [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: modern times, ancient hours (Pietro Basso) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In his brilliant book Modern Times, Ancient Hours: Working Lives in the 21st Century (Verso, 2003) Pietro Basso provides a careful analysis of the 35 hour work week in France. Basso shows that this gain has been won at the cost of increased intensification and flexibilization (more shift work, less overtime pay, employer determination of working schedules). Perhaps some would argue that capitalist progress in the reduction of working time should not be measured in terms of the length of the working day or the hours worked in the course of a week or in the number of weeks worked per year; rather progress has come in the form of the reduction of work in the course of a lifespan. That is, while life spans have almost doubled in the last one hundred years, the absolute number of hours worked by a proletarian over the course of his lifetime has even decreased a bit. Is this proof of the continued progressiveness of capitalist development? Basso thinks not for clearly specified reasons. What do others think? Basso's book raises questions of fundamental importance. Could not be more highly recommended. Yours, Rakesh * -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: internet infrastructure investment data
Greetings Pen-'Ellers, Well KGC's response was just fine. No need to pursue anything in my view, however, I found some nuggets or tidbits of Telecom stuff here and there in my notes so I'll pass it along assuming that it might find some interest for KGC. Tidbits about Telecoms from here and there which includes some dollar figures here and there as well as other comparisons, Gridlock on the superhighway Dec 12th 2002 From The Economist print edition ...In America, the telecoms bust of 2000 has wiped out some 500,000 jobs and $2 trillion in (apparent) stockmarket value. ...But the main source of the problem, we argued, was that most of the newcomers (called competitive local exchange carriers, or CLECs, in America) had simply failed to do their homework. In particular, the DSL (digital subscriber line) technology that most of them adopted was singularly inappropriate for the task. Apart from causing interference problems, the 2B1Q algorithm used in America (and the 4B3T line code used in Europe) to transmit digital signals along a pair of copper telephone lines stumbles badly over bridge taps where the wires get spliced. ...Some readers believed that the CLECs' choice of technology was not entirely arbitrary. Part of the reason, suggested one insider, was that most of the CLECs were dependent on 'vendor financing' from the makers of the older line codes-and, as such, were locked into purchases of inferior equipment. from Pen-L, December 6, Nomi writes in response to a Paul Krugman article, ...Krugman Bad metaphors make bad policy. Everyone talks about the information highway. But in economic terms the telecommunications network resembles not a highway but the railroad industry of the robber-baron era - that is, before it faced effective competition from trucking. And railroads eventually faced tough regulation, for good reason: they had a lot of market power, and often abused it. Telecoms are worse than railroads. The railroads built twice as much capacity as was needed, while the robber barons cashed out, over a period of 25 years. In telecoms, 20 times as much capacity was built as was needed, and the cash-out period was 3 years. Railroads were substantially financed by business speculators in Europe. Teleco's by the US public. washingtonpost.com Telecom Sector May Find Past Is Its Future Giant Phone Companies Offer Stable, Well-Funded Option By Peter S. Goodman Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 8, 2002; Page A01 ...Investors poured large sums of money into telecommunications -- $880 billion from 1997 to date, according to Thomson Financial in New York. But there were not enough phone calls or e-mails to sustain the hundreds of new phone and Internet networks. As that reality emerged in the spring of 2000, the great unraveling began. No one knows how much of the investment -- $326 billion in stock and bonds, plus $554 billion in bank loans -- has been destroyed, but it is surely a huge sum. Half is as good a number as any, said Richard J. Peterson, chief market strategist at Thomson Financial. At least 63 telecommunications companies have landed in bankruptcy since 2000, according to Bankruptcydata.com. ...This enormous construction project cycled huge amounts of money through the economy. Local and long-distance telephone companies spent $319 billion building their networks from 1997 to 2001, said RHK Inc., a San Francisco research firm. Mobile telephone companies spent more than $58 billion. The money landed in the coffers of chip-making, software, computer and network equipment companies. ...From October 1998 to February of this year, the transmission capacity across the Atlantic expanded by a factor of 19. Meanwhile, the price of a leased transmission line dropped to $10,000 a year from $125,000, said Eli Noam, a professor of finance at Columbia University Business School. FEBRUARY 7, 2002 NEWS ANALYSIS:TECHNOLOGY By Alex Salkever Business Week ...What happened? The numbers in the subsea cable business paint a stark picture. From 1997 to 2001, trans-Atlantic cable capacity increased more than 20-fold, according to TeleGeography, a telecom consultancy. Trans-Pacific capacity soared 40-fold. As so many lines were laid, demand for the services became diluted. Prices for wholesale bandwidth on land and sea plunged apace, falling between 50% and 70% a year. DIVING AND DIGGING. Before Global Crossing launched in 1998, the standard lifetime contract for 155 megabytes of capacity went for $20 million. Global Crossing dropped that immediately to $8 million. By the end of 2001, that same deal drew only $350,000. Long-term contracts no longer hold their allure for customers, who now seek out more flexible one-year or two-year leases. FEBRUARY 4, 2003 Business Week SPECIAL REPORT: ALL-DISTANCE TELECOM Alex Salkever Eating Asia's Broadband Dust Unlike the halting and financially crippling rollout of high-speed access in the U.S., in the Far East it has gone much faster and cheaper
Dr. Doom
New world disorder It's 30 years since oil prices soared and monetarism triumphed - and there could be more upheaval to come Larry Elliott, economics editor Thursday October 9, 2003 The Guardian Some say the 1960s ended with Woodstock in August 1969. Others date the decade's demise to the break-up of the Beatles eight months later. Both are wrong. The 60s died 30 years ago this week when, on October 6 1973, Egypt and Syria chose Yom Kippur, the holiest date in the Jewish calendar, to launch a surprise attack on Israel. The twin offensive was quickly halted so, in response, the Arab-dominated oil-producers' cartel, Opec, announced price increases, production cutbacks and an embargo on Israel. If the intention was to inflict pain on the west, it worked. By early 1974, oil prices had risen fourfold and a golden age of prosperity came to a halt. The Yom Kippur war thus provided a hinge between the two halves of the post-1945 period. Up until 1973 came the era of social democracy; years of expansion in which governments, armed with Keynesian economic ideas, pursued full employment. After 1973, the pendulum swung to the right in favour of governments wielding free-market policies aimed at tackling inflation. As the recent Israeli strike on a Palestinian base in Syria illustrated, the underlying conflict shows no sign of being resolved. The oil wealth for the Gulf states proved a double-edged sword: the windfall has allowed them to spend in the arms bazaars, but has acted as a disincentive for autocratic regimes to embark on reforms. Instead of putting their petro-dollars to good use at home, oil states put them on deposit in the world's money markets. From there, they were recycled as loans to poor countries eager for capital to finance development. The result was not economic take-off but - thanks to reckless lending, corruption and a stagnant global economy - a debt crisis that is still burdening poor countries. Shockwaves from the Yom Kippur war were equally strong in the west. The first-wave effect of higher inflation was followed by a second wave of higher unemployment, as companies faced spiralling costs. The third-wave effect was the triumph of a right that was committed to shifting the balance of power in favour of capital. Egalitarianism, tax-and-spend and nationalisation were out; trickle-down, balanced budgets and privatisation were in. More than 20 years of full employment had allowed pay bargainers by the early 1970s to negotiate deals in excess of productivity gains, with profits squeezed as a result. By the late 1970s, high unemployment had undermined the power of labour, bearing down on wages and pushing up profitability. The fate of the National Union of Mineworkers illustrates the point. In the months following the Yom Kippur war, the NUM humbled the Heath government. Little more than a decade later the pit strike ended with victory for Margaret Thatcher. The seeming impotence of Keynesianism to come up with solutions for a cocktail of rising unemployment and higher inflation validated the monetarist ideas that had been nurtured by free-market thinktanks from the 1950s onwards. To this day, central banks and finance ministries remain obsessed with price stability. Likewise, the political thrust of the right's post-1973 counter-revolution - curb union power, cut taxes, set markets free - has not been seriously challenged. Centre-left politicians claimed their third way would steer a path between those who, in Bill Clinton's words, said government was the enemy and those who said government was the solution. Yet in some key areas of policy - welfare reform, for example - Clinton went even further than Ronald Reagan. The assumption is that the post-1973 consensus will last indefinitely. That is precisely what social democrats assumed in the early 1970s. Indeed, even when the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in 1971 was acting as the harbinger of the crisis to come, Richard Nixon was insisting we are all Keynesians now. Similarly, just as the postwar golden age was undermined by rising inflation and the combined cost to the US of the Vietnam war and Lyndon Johnson's great society programmes, so there have been signs of strain for the new world order promised by George Bush senior after the Berlin Wall came down. For the collapse of Bretton Woods, read the succession of financial crises since 1992. For the hubris of organised labour, read corporate corruption and greed. For the diminishing returns from public-sector pump priming, read the diminishing returns from a build-up in private sector debt. For a world struggling to cope with inflation, read a world struggling to cope with deflation. There are three ways of looking at all this. The first is that any comparisons between 1973 and 2003 are pointless because history doesn't repeat itself. The second is that we are suffering from the birth pangs of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative
corruption, openness, growth
[the link to the paper is at the bottom] http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns4247 Free markets can hit economic growth 19:00 08 October 03 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. If developing countries join the global economy too soon, they risk becoming trapped in a cycle of poverty and corruption, a new analysis suggests. A number of empirical studies have shown that poorer countries experience higher levels of corruption. Badly paid officials are easily tempted by bribes, the reasoning goes, while the well paid officials in richer nations risk losing their comfortable salaries if they are caught taking backhanders. But if corruption so bedevils developing nations, how do they escape and become rich? Daniele Paserman, an economist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and his colleagues say they have found a simple answer. If a poor country opens up its economy to the outside world too quickly, the flow of money across its borders encourages corruption, which in turn hampers growth. Bribery and wealth But those countries with closed economies can grow until they can afford to pay their officials well. This runs counter to the conventional wisdom that free markets across borders encourage development and cut corruption. We are highlighting one of the dangers of being more open, says Paserman. But there are other benefits. Paserman's team tested the idea by gathering data on economic output in the late 1990s from 165 countries. They adopted a recently developed index of corruption, which pools the views of various organisations on how corrupt individual countries are. They then classified countries as open, western-style economies or closed economies. To do this they used several criteria, including the strength of each country's black market, which always flourishes in closed economies. In open countries there was a strong link between poverty and corruption, with poor countries far more corrupt than rich ones. But in closed countries they found no correlation (see graphs). The most plausible explanation for this disparity, says Paserman, is that in a closed country, corrupt officials are obliged to spend their ill-gotten gains at home. Even if this money is spent on the black market, it still helps boost the nation's economic growth. But in open nations, corrupt money leaves the country, doing nothing to relieve poverty, so encouraging more corruption. Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, a think tank based in London, UK, says developed countries could take some steps to help developing countries join the global economy. Forcing imported money to be placed within banks for a fixed period would help track dirty money and deter money laundering. Mick Hamer http://micro5.mscc.huji.ac.il/~economics/facultye/paserman/Neeman-Paserman-Simhon_August2003.pdf
