date:20031101

Sabri, yer gonna out live us all. Some Turkish hills thing. Worry not.

I don't smoke... But I think yer a bit harsh on our dyslexic lawyer
friend.

You wrote:

Western rationality requires, or leads to, Justins of the world.

Adults have the right to kill themselves, in any way they wish. As long
as it's an informed choice. (Tobacco is actually helping us, here,
making product warnings part of everyday life. Spreading the gospel of
merchant accountability across the whole spectrum of crap goods and
stupid consumption.)

If people then still choose slow suicide through tobacco, so be it.

Here in Canada, we do have a legion of lawyers trying to tie U.S.
tobacco to smuggling schemes via First Nation lands along the border. I
sure hope those Canadian prosecutors (we call 'em Crown) win.

But I stand with Justin on one thing: YOU put the smoke to yer mouth.
YOU inhale.

While we can peel off the layers of media influence, ads bought to sell
death products, etc. -- eventually, there is still the remaining
individual who puts the stinkin' shit to their lips and drags.

And that's where the buck ultimately stops. You have the facts --
increasingly so, today, because of tobacco and the lawyers and activists
who have fought them.

Smoke 'em if you gottem.

Ken.

--
I yam what I yam coz that's what I yam.
  -- Popeye
 (He had a pipe)

Re: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice of targets

JKS writes:I'd be proud to defend the First
Amendment ina NAzi case too.

if the gov't cracks down on the Nazis, they crack down on
the Left, too, most often in a bigger way. A first
amendment defense of the Nazis is indirectly
defending the Left.

Elementary, my dear Mr. Devine. :)

You know, FDR packed the Supreme Court down there and that was a huge
influence felt in the social fabric of US lives for decades... an
influence which is now waning.

But all that free speech stuff, and the finding of a right to privacy
in the penumbra of other rights... leading to Roe v Wade... that came
through those hired-guns from the FDR and Brandeis-Holmes era.

You should definitely support your local loon Nazi's right to smoke
tobacco.

Ken.

--
The Olden Days, alas, are turned to clay.
  -- Ishtar, at the Deluge

Re: In defence of Krugman

Actually, no. Roosevelt tried to pack the court, and
failed. One of the former bad guy justices switched
his view and started supporting the New Deal. The
Roosevelt era court mainly supported expanded govt
power to regulate business, not primarily enhanced
free speech and civil rights. Its most notably free
speech decision was probably US v. Dennis (1948),
upholding the conviction of the CPUSA leaders for
conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the govt. The
real civil libertarian court was the Warren Court,
whose key members were Warren and Brennan, appointed
by Eisenhower, and Goldberg, Fortas, and Marshall,
appointed by Kennedy and Johnson. The one right thing
you say here is that the Warren Court era is over. jks

--- Kenneth Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 JKS writes:I'd be proud to defend the First
 Amendment ina NAzi case too.
 
 if the gov't cracks down on the Nazis, they crack
 down on
 the Left, too, most often in a bigger way. A first
 amendment defense of the Nazis is indirectly
 defending the Left.

 Elementary, my dear Mr. Devine. :)

 You know, FDR packed the Supreme Court down there
 and that was a huge
 influence felt in the social fabric of US lives for
 decades... an
 influence which is now waning.

 But all that free speech stuff, and the finding of
 a right to privacy
 in the penumbra of other rights... leading to Roe
 v Wade... that came
 through those hired-guns from the FDR and
 Brandeis-Holmes era.

 You should definitely support your local loon Nazi's
 right to smoke
 tobacco.

 Ken.

 --
 The Olden Days, alas, are turned to clay.
   -- Ishtar, at the Deluge


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Tobacco


 But I stand with Justin on one thing: YOU put the
 smoke to yer mouth.
 YOU inhale.


What I do for the tobacco compnaies is antitrust work,
not product liability defense. Though the firm does do
PL defense, and I would do it for tobacco compnaies if
asked.

I'm a former pipe smoker myself . . .

__
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Re: In defence of Krugman

Well... yes and no.

Yes, it was Warren's court, and Eisenhower was disappointed with his
two appointments.

But,  no, Warren couldn't have done anything without Black and Douglas.
And Douglas was a major source of this extreme free speech-ism. (Mind
you, I wasn't there.)

Ken.

--
I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park
anywhere near the place.
  -- Steven Wright


-Original Message-
From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of andie
nachgeborenen
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 6:04 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] In defence of Krugman


Actually, no. Roosevelt tried to pack the court, and
failed. One of the former bad guy justices switched
his view and started supporting the New Deal. The
Roosevelt era court mainly supported expanded govt
power to regulate business, not primarily enhanced
free speech and civil rights. Its most notably free
speech decision was probably US v. Dennis (1948),
upholding the conviction of the CPUSA leaders for
conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the govt. The
real civil libertarian court was the Warren Court,
whose key members were Warren and Brennan, appointed
by Eisenhower, and Goldberg, Fortas, and Marshall,
appointed by Kennedy and Johnson. The one right thing
you say here is that the Warren Court era is over. jks

Re: The Indisepensable IMF

2003-11-01 Thread Carl Remick

From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]

The New York Times
May 15, 1998, Friday, Late Edition - Final
The Indispensable I.M.F.
By Paul Krugman,  CAMBRIDGE, Mass.;  Paul Krugman is a professor of
economics at M.I.T.
... the International Monetary Fund is all that we have, and it is a lot
better than nothing at all
[A current piece by Krugman in the NY Review of Books offers the nugget
below.  Ah, all the wonderful things Clinton had planned for the nation if
he hadn't been so cruelly denied a third term in office!  I can only assume
the executive order for implementing the food-safety regulations mentioned
here was in the Clinton's in-box ... right after Marc Rich's pardon ... when
the clock ran out on his Administration.]
Review

Strictly Business

By Paul Krugman

... Bill Clinton, with his close ties to the Arkansas chicken industry,
wasn't particularly good on food safety issues in the early years of his
presidency. But by the end his officials had devised and were on the verge
of implementing regulations that would have greatly reduced the risk of
Listeria infections from such foods as ready-to-eat turkey. The Bush
administration killed those regulations ...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16790

[BTW, here's some background info from a foodservice industry trade
publication, Restaurants and Institutions (3/15/01):]
Bush Receives Clinton's Last Word on Food Safety
Final report of Council on Food Safety offers specific goals and how to
reach them.
By Deborah Silver RI SENIOR EDITOR

Former President Clinton left the Bush administration a final parting gift:
a report, seven years in the making, which spells out a plan for food safety
and ways to achieve it.
Taking the form of a five-year plan, the President's Council on Food
Safety's report focuses on a number of objectives, including risk assessment
and management, research needs, legislative actions, and the role of private
enterprise, with the overriding goal being a 25% reduction of foodborne
illnesses by yearend 2005
http://www.rimag.com/601/Ops.htm

Carl

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CounterPunch Panel: Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitic? (Nov. 25)

2003-11-01 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi

Please forward widely!

IS ANTI-ZIONISM ANTI-SEMITIC?

A Panel on CounterPunch's controversial new book:

THE POLITICS OF ANTI-SEMITISM.

ALEXANDER COCKBURN - CounterPunch Editor
LENNI BRENNER - Editor, 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis
ALISA KLEIN - Anti-Zionist veteran of the Israeli army
Tuesday, November 25
7:00 PM
Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square South/Thompson St.
Manhattan
Admisison is free.

Copies of THE POLITICS OF ANTI-SEMITISM and 51 DOCUMENTS will be available.

Sponsored by CounterPunch, America's leading left magazine and website.

The meeting will also be a memorial for Edward Said, who had been
scheduled to be one of the panelists.
FOR INFORMATION:
www.counterpunch.org
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
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: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice oftargets

2003-11-01 Thread Carl Remick

Carl, I smoked a pipe for several decades before quitting -- and I would
be afraid to add up how many thousands of dollars (not covered by
insurance) I have spent on repairing (partly) the damage it did to my
teeth. Right now, I've got a large gap in the front of my mouth (upper)
which has cost me so far %3000 (for the implants) and will cost another
thousand or two for the crowns on the implants. ...
Carrol
I am very sorry to learn you have had such problems.  From family experience
I know what an expensive bother dental repair can be.  For myself, I'll take
my chances and keep puffing away.  I find little reason to smile these days
anyway :(
Carl

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The Court and Free Speech: Re: In defence of Krugman

No and yes. Douglas and Black were important advocates
of free speech, but the protections for political
speech we have were not won till the Warren Court era.
The first major victory was Yates v. US (1957),
saetting aside the Smith Act convictions of the lower
echelon Communist leaders on grounds of overbreadth,
written by Justice Harlan, an Eisenhower conservative.
Harlan also write Scales and and Noto (1961), cutting
back on the Smith Act somewhat. Justice Goldberger, a
Johnson liberal, writes Aptheker v. Sec. of State
(1964), upholding a CP leader's right to a passport.
The foundational advocacy of illegal conduct opinion
is Brandenberg v. Ohio (1969), a per curiam (unsigned)
opinion in a Klan case that holds that only speech
that advocates immanent illegal conduct may be
prohibited. Black and Douglas voted on the right side
in all of these, but given the lineup by 1964, their
votes were not strictly required.

jks

--- Kenneth Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Well... yes and no.

 Yes, it was Warren's court, and Eisenhower was
 disappointed with his
 two appointments.

 But,  no, Warren couldn't have done anything without
 Black and Douglas.
 And Douglas was a major source of this extreme free
 speech-ism. (Mind
 you, I wasn't there.)

 Ken.

 --
 I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You
 couldn't park
 anywhere near the place.
   -- Steven Wright


 -Original Message-
 From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Behalf Of andie
 nachgeborenen
 Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 6:04 AM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: [PEN-L] In defence of Krugman
 
 
 Actually, no. Roosevelt tried to pack the court,
 and
 failed. One of the former bad guy justices switched
 his view and started supporting the New Deal. The
 Roosevelt era court mainly supported expanded govt
 power to regulate business, not primarily enhanced
 free speech and civil rights. Its most notably free
 speech decision was probably US v. Dennis (1948),
 upholding the conviction of the CPUSA leaders for
 conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the govt.
 The
 real civil libertarian court was the Warren Court,
 whose key members were Warren and Brennan,
 appointed
 by Eisenhower, and Goldberg, Fortas, and Marshall,
 appointed by Kennedy and Johnson. The one right
 thing
 you say here is that the Warren Court era is over.
jks


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Re: In defence of Krugman

2003-11-01 Thread Carl Remick

From: andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED]

...  Roosevelt tried to pack the court, and
failed. One of the former bad guy justices switched
his view and started supporting the New Deal
Or as was said at the time:  A switch in time saves nine.

Carl

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Reflections on Vietnam War statistics

In the American involvement in the Vietnam war from 1964-1975, it is
generally accepted that of the American military personnel deployed, about
58,200 died, another 153,000 casualties were hospitalized with injuries, and
of those, about 100,000 were permanently disabled or disfigured. The number
of survivors physically disabled was enormously higher than in the second
world war and in the war against Korea.

But American casualties were extremely low compared to Vietnamese
casualties. The Vietnamese government estimated in 1995, ten years after the
cessation of hostilities, that the total civilian casualties (deaths and
wounded) in Vietnam throughout the armed struggle against foreign
imperialism from 1954-1975 had been about 2 million in the North, and about
2 million in the South. As regards military personnel, 1.1 million
Vietnamese soldiers were said to have been killed and 600,000 wounded during
the entire 1954-1975 period (about one out of six in the South, the rest in
the North). If you add that all up, you obtain a total figure of 5.7 million
human casualties (deaths plus wounded). This suggests an overall casualty
rate of about one in every 8 Vietnamese people (dead or injured).

In American presentations of the casualty statistics, however, the
Vietnamese casualties are usually completely ignored, they do not exist, and
this pattern is characteristic of almost any war the USA has ever been
involved in as combatant during its history. The total cost in casualties to
the USA during its involvement in the armed conflict was only about 4
percent of the total cost in casualties to the Vietnamese people during the
entire armed conflict of 1954-1975, in other words, for every American
military casualty there were at least two dozen Vietnamese casualties, of
whom the vast majority were civilians.

In 19th and 20th century history, the loss of American lives in wars in
which the US Government was openly involved has been relatively small,
compared to the loss of lives in the actual theatre of war (the place where
the war was being fought) and the same applies to non-fatal casualties.
Thus, in general, American troops killed or injured an amount of people in
other countries, that was enormously greater than their own losses and
casualties.

This explains to some extent the hostility and suspicion which a large part
of the world's population continue to feel towards the USA in this respect,
because, while dramatising the loss of American lives and focusing on the
plight of the Jews, they completely overlook the enormously larger number of
deaths inflicted in other countries in armed conflicts, and thus, many
people feel that, as regards deaths resulting from armed conflicts,
Americans simply do not know what they are talking about.

In addition, no war was ever fought by a foreign power on the main territory
of the USA since the genocide of the American Indians, beyond incidents such
as the attack on Pearl Harbour. Therefore, the consciousness of Americans in
this respect is also quite different from the consciousness of people in
many other countries, who suffered wars on their own territory within living
memory, and the psychological/physical effects resulting therefrom.

Jurriaan

Re: CounterPunch Panel: Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitic? (Nov. 25)

 A Panel on CounterPunch's controversial new book:

 THE POLITICS OF ANTI-SEMITISM.

I think it is really great that Counterpunch is organising this discussion.
That's exactly what is needed.

Jurriaan

Re: Query

I find Harrison's MARXIAN ECONOMICS FOR SOCIALISTS (Pluto) to be very good in terms of 
a clear presentation. By not hiding political implications, Harrison is in many ways 
less ideological than those who don't deal with those issues.
 
Charlie Andrews' FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY is also very good. I think it can be 
found at www.laborrepublic.org but I couldn't open that website today. 
 
as for mainstream economics, the Goodwin, Nelson, Ackerman, and Weisskopf book 
MICROECONOMICS IN CONTEXT (prentice-hall, preliminary edition).
 
Jim

-Original Message- 
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Fri 10/31/2003 8:19 PM 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Cc: 
Subject: [PEN-L] Query



Can anybody suggest a non-ideological, as well as an ideoligcally Marxist 
primary economics text for me?

Benjamin

Re: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice of targets

JKS writes:I'd be proud to defend the First
Amendment ina NAzi case too.

I wrote:
if the gov't cracks down on the Nazis, they crack down on
the Left, too, most often in a bigger way. A first
amendment defense of the Nazis is indirectly
defending the Left.

From: Kenneth Campbell 
Elementary, my dear Mr. Devine. :)

You know, FDR packed the Supreme Court down there and that was a huge
influence felt in the social fabric of US lives for decades... an
influence which is now waning.

-- for what it's worth, FDR didn't succeed in packing the Supes (by appointed a few 
beyond the usual nine members), though he did have an influence. Interestingly, it was 
Eisenhower who appointed Earl Warren, the leader of the liberal Warren Court. He 
later said that it was a mistake, but I think it reflects the fact that back then 
there was a wing of the GOP that wasn't that bad (compared to say, McCarthy).

... You should definitely support your local loon Nazi's right to smoke
tobacco.

-- they should be _forced_ to smoke tobacco.

Jim

Re: Tobacco

with second-hand smoke, SOMEONE ELSE puts the smoke in your mouth and nose, while YOU 
have little choice but to inhale.
Jim

-Original Message- 
From: andie nachgeborenen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Sat 11/1/2003 3:07 AM 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Cc: 
Subject: [PEN-L] Tobacco

 But I stand with Justin on one thing: YOU put the
 smoke to yer mouth.
 YOU inhale.

What I do for the tobacco compnaies is antitrust work,
not product liability defense. Though the firm does do
PL defense, and I would do it for tobacco compnaies if
asked.

I'm a former pipe smoker myself . . .

__
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Re: CounterPunch Panel: Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitic? (Nov. 25)

Of course, there are a lot of people who reject COUNTERPUNCH because it's anti-Zionist 
and they see this as involving anti-Semitism. (Of course, I don't respect such folks.)
Jim

-Original Message- 
From: Jurriaan Bendien [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Sat 11/1/2003 8:04 AM 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] CounterPunch Panel: Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitic? (Nov. 
25)

 A Panel on CounterPunch's controversial new book:

 THE POLITICS OF ANTI-SEMITISM.

I think it is really great that Counterpunch is organising this discussion.
That's exactly what is needed.

Jurriaan

Re: Query

It's Houghton-Mifflin (sp?), not prentice-hall. -- Jim
 
i wrote:
as for mainstream economics, the Goodwin, Nelson, Ackerman, and Weisskopf book 
MICROECONOMICS IN CONTEXT (prentice-hall, preliminary edition).

Jim

Re: CounterPunch Panel: Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitic? (Nov. 25)

Well most people don't think much, they just make thought associations.
Personally I believe that being anti-Zionist is being pro-semite, and being
Zionist is anti-semite, insofar as these terms are at all meaningful. Being
anti-Zionist facilitates human lives, because it allows us to view Jews and
Palestinians as human beings rather than hapless victims of the will of God
and Historical Destiny, as interpreted by George Bush, Ariel Sharon and
their devotees. For the rest I think Counterpucnh is great, and I have no
animosity aganst Alex Cockburn, I just made that criticism questioning the
helpfulness of a tirade against Krugman rather than an intelligent
engagement with his argument. The irrationalist, fundamentalist environment
promotes the habit of morally condemning other people, but my own attitude
(leaving aside moments of bad temper) is more to say, I know what I know
already, now what can I learn from this person ?.

J.

Re: Query

My favorite books on Marxist economics:

1. Paul Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development
-- a wonderfully lucid exposition of Marx's views.

2. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capitalism.
Still the best account of the exploitation of labor in
capitalism.

3. Ernest Mandel, Marxian Economic Theory, 2 vols.
Rather orthodox but fair and clear, makes serious
efforts to fill in gaps in practical sort of way.

4. Howard  King, The Political Economy of Marx. A
tough-minded, very critical neo-Ricardan account
that states (in my view) what is intelligible and
defensible in Marx's theory of political economy
considered from a somewhat formal point of view. NB,
you do NOT need maths to read the book.

5. Robert Brenner, The Brenner Debate: A good
introduction to the first Brenner debate, and
discussions about various  Marxist theories of the
rise of capitalism; see also The Boom and the
Bubble: the US in the World Economy; the basic text in
the _second_ Brenner debater, and the most complete
and successful attempt to articulate a credible
Marxist theory of crisis.

jks



--- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I find Harrison's MARXIAN ECONOMICS FOR SOCIALISTS
 (Pluto) to be very good in terms of a clear
 presentation. By not hiding political implications,
 Harrison is in many ways less ideological than those
 who don't deal with those issues.

 Charlie Andrews' FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY is also
 very good. I think it can be found at
 www.laborrepublic.org but I couldn't open that
 website today.

 as for mainstream economics, the Goodwin, Nelson,
 Ackerman, and Weisskopf book MICROECONOMICS IN
 CONTEXT (prentice-hall, preliminary edition).

 Jim

   -Original Message-
   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   Sent: Fri 10/31/2003 8:19 PM
   To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   Cc:
   Subject: [PEN-L] Query



   Can anybody suggest a non-ideological, as well as
 an ideoligcally Marxist primary economics text for
 me?

   Benjamin





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Re: Tobacco

I wasn't talking about second hand smoke... That's another topic.

There are laws against smoking in public places. Nothing wrong with those.

Ken.

with second-hand smoke, SOMEONE ELSE puts the smoke in your 
mouth and nose, while YOU have little choice but to inhale.
Jim

   -Original Message- 
   From: andie nachgeborenen 
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
   Sent: Sat 11/1/2003 3:07 AM 
   To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
   Cc: 
   Subject: [PEN-L] Tobacco
   
   

   
But I stand with Justin on one thing: YOU put the
smoke to yer mouth.
YOU inhale.
   
   
   What I do for the tobacco compnaies is antitrust work,
   not product liability defense. Though the firm does do
   PL defense, and I would do it for tobacco compnaies if
   asked.
   
   I'm a former pipe smoker myself . . .
   
   __
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   Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
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Re: Reflections on Vietnam War statistics

2003-11-01 Thread joanna bujes

Jurriaan Bendien wrote:

In the American involvement in the Vietnam war from 1964-1975, it is
generally accepted that of the American military personnel deployed, about
58,200 died, another 153,000 casualties were hospitalized with injuries, and
of those, about 100,000 were permanently disabled or disfigured. The number
of survivors physically disabled was enormously higher than in the second
world war and in the war against Korea.


One piece of info about American casualties that's not often reported is
that after the war ended as many former soldiers committed suicide as
were killed in battle.
Joanna

Re: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice oftargets

2003-11-01 Thread Michael Perelman

Why is it that we generate so much more interest discussing personalities
rather than ideas?  Why when a person takes a contrary postion, do we --
not just on this list --  find a need to denounce the person in general.

I just heard Studs Turkel -- tape delay -- interviewd on KPFA discussing
Dan Burton, who usually seems pretty bad.  Kucinich told him to interview
Burton, and he found some surprisingly good features in his take on life.


 --
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: In defence of Krugman

Hey Justin 

I will take a re-peek at the Dennis case. But I believe Black (and
Douglas) were strongly against it. I believe Rutledge and Murphy were
replaced by conservative Democrats. And Frankfurter and Jackson were a
kind of reverse of what Eisenhower felt about Warren and Brennan.

I guess its really all moot, but if you also enjoy this kind of thing
(as I do), what the hell...

Myself, Id be more inclined to say that Warren and Brennan signed onto
the Black-Douglas train  in particular, their efforts against loyalty
initiatives.

Black-Douglas had long aimed to give First Amendment protection to even
those unworthies. The Court, as an entity, resisted their dynamic-duo
efforts. In Yolanda Yates case, Black made his famous sarcastic shot
against the prosecutions evidence  proof here is sufficient if Marx
and Lenin are on trial.

But they began to get their way (on this issue) with the disappearance
of a Vinson, Jackson (Nuremberg prosecutor), Minton, and the advent, as
you note, of Warren and Brennan.

Douglas wrote about that sea change in his book Court Years: The Court
began to swerve its course and act to protect the rights of the people
by limiting the thrust of the anti-subversive program. The arrival of
Earl Warren made part of the difference.

There were other cases before that, where the trend was being given
inertia. Like Jones v. Opelika in 1943. Douglas, Black and Murphy joined
with Stone, and when Rutledge replaced Byrnes, the mandatory flag
saluting crap was overturned.

That was a Jehovahs Witness case, btw. The Jehovahs unflagging
obnoxiousness also helped clarify some fundamental issues in Canada with
the case of Roncarelli v. Duplessis.

In the 1940s, the JWs were also irritating the Catholic majority of
Quebec  going to their door and politely telling them they were all
going to hell. Maurice Duplessis was premier of Quebec  and he ruled
through a triad of reactionary Francophone nationalism, Church authority
and big business alliances. Duplessis reacted to public and Church
pressure to target the JWs. Roncarelli was some Montreal restaurateur
(if I recall) who had the money to keep bailing JWs out when arrested.
Duplessis finally ordered a public servant to withdraw Roncarellis
liquor licence forever. Justice Rand wrote the opinion, drawing on
Marbury v. Madison and Edward Coke et al.

Anyway...

So, I wont disagree with you if you want to put a historical marker at
Warren. I would put it with Douglas and Black, but it doesn't really
matter. It wasnt a case of Heeres Earl!  and poof it all
changed. (I'm not saying you actually said that.)

Ken.

--
We have no reliance
On virgin or pigeon;
Our method is science,
Our aim is religion.
  -- Aleister Crowley



Actually, no. Roosevelt tried to pack the court, and
failed. One of the former bad guy justices switched
his view and started supporting the New Deal. The
Roosevelt era court mainly supported expanded govt
power to regulate business, not primarily enhanced
free speech and civil rights. Its most notably free
speech decision was probably US v. Dennis (1948),
upholding the conviction of the CPUSA leaders for
conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the govt. The
real civil libertarian court was the Warren Court,
whose key members were Warren and Brennan, appointed
by Eisenhower, and Goldberg, Fortas, and Marshall,
appointed by Kennedy and Johnson. The one right thing
you say here is that the Warren Court era is over. jks

--- Kenneth Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 JKS writes:I'd be proud to defend the First
 Amendment ina NAzi case too.
 
 if the gov't cracks down on the Nazis, they crack
 down on
 the Left, too, most often in a bigger way. A first
 amendment defense of the Nazis is indirectly
 defending the Left.

 Elementary, my dear Mr. Devine. :)

 You know, FDR packed the Supreme Court down there
 and that was a huge
 influence felt in the social fabric of US lives for
 decades... an
 influence which is now waning.

 But all that free speech stuff, and the finding of
 a right to privacy
 in the penumbra of other rights... leading to Roe
 v Wade... that came
 through those hired-guns from the FDR and
 Brandeis-Holmes era.

 You should definitely support your local loon Nazi's
 right to smoke
 tobacco.

 Ken.

 --
 The Olden Days, alas, are turned to clay.
   -- Ishtar, at the Deluge


__
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Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/

Re: The Indisepensable IMF

2003-11-01 Thread Michael Perelman

Despite Marc Rich, Clinton was pretty good in his last few minutes of
office.  So was Gray Davis.  I cringe to think what Bush might dare in his
last few minutes.


On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 02:02:31PM +, Carl Remick wrote:

 [A current piece by Krugman in the NY Review of Books offers the nugget
 below.  Ah, all the wonderful things Clinton had planned for the nation if
 he hadn't been so cruelly denied a third term in office!  I can only assume
 the executive order for implementing the food-safety regulations mentioned
 here was in the Clinton's in-box ... right after Marc Rich's pardon ... when
 the clock ran out on his Administration.]

 Review

 Strictly Business

 By Paul Krugman

 ... Bill Clinton, with his close ties to the Arkansas chicken industry,
 wasn't particularly good on food safety issues in the early years of his
 presidency. But by the end his officials had devised and were on the verge
 of implementing regulations that would have greatly reduced the risk of
 Listeria infections from such foods as ready-to-eat turkey. The Bush
 administration killed those regulations ...

 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16790

 [BTW, here's some background info from a foodservice industry trade
 publication, Restaurants and Institutions (3/15/01):]

 Bush Receives Clinton's Last Word on Food Safety
 Final report of Council on Food Safety offers specific goals and how to
 reach them.

 By Deborah Silver RI SENIOR EDITOR

 Former President Clinton left the Bush administration a final parting gift:
 a report, seven years in the making, which spells out a plan for food safety
 and ways to achieve it.

 Taking the form of a five-year plan, the President's Council on Food
 Safety's report focuses on a number of objectives, including risk assessment
 and management, research needs, legislative actions, and the role of private
 enterprise, with the overriding goal being a 25% reduction of foodborne
 illnesses by yearend 2005

 http://www.rimag.com/601/Ops.htm

 Carl

 _
 Never get a busy signal because you are always connected  with high-speed
 Internet access. Click here to comparison-shop providers.
 https://broadband.msn.com

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply to Joanna on War Quantities

War casualty statistics only give an approximate indication of the scale of
deaths and injuries, and can really do no more. An elementary principle of
measurement taught in Statistics 101 is that in order to measure a quantity
of objects in a valid way or assign values to them, the objects must have a
common characteristic which defines them as discrete measurement units
belonging to a class. (Karl Marx confronted this problem at the beginning of
Das Kapital, in trying to get people away from fetishizing prices and focus
instead on exchange relations between people). We can hide behind an
administrative definition of casualties applied by the military or by
hospitals, or focus on demographic patterns, but this rarely captures the
full reality. If you have ever worked with mortality statistics, as I have,
then you know that the causes of injury and death are manifold, and that it
takes theory and analysis to understand the real concatenation of events
which produce an increase in mortality rates.

The reality is that even in Vietnam today, people are still dying or ill
because of the war, and babies are born with deformities due to the war. In
the case of Iraq, a narrow focus on direct war casualties in my opinion
misses the wood for the trees, because far more deaths are caused by
malnutrition, starvation, misadventure, and illnesses causes by economic
chaos, poisoning and the destruction of basic infrastructure. However, it is
not easy to establish exactly what the quantitative picture is in that
regard, certainly not at this stage, never mind attributing precise causes
in an exact way. I think many US policymakers are aware of it, but it is a
political hot potato, their focus is on what to do, and nobody inquires into
the deeper causes of why all this is happening, that is all just academic.
Except that when hundreds of thousands of people die, then it is not
academic anymore, then we need to go and talk about something else.

My own argument is that the narrow focus on direct war casualties serves an
ideological purpose, namely, while demonising Saddam Hussein, attention is
drawn away from the gruesome reality of an amount of deaths (mainly civilian
deaths) that must ultimately amount to something like 2 million from the
beginning of the 1990s, extending into the future. Bad policies by Saddam
Hussein have been held responsible, while abstracting from the very people
in the West who helped enthrone him, supported his regime, provided him with
killing technology, deprived Iraqi citizens from food and medical supplies,
and then on top of that ravaged his country militarily. That is just to say,
that the ideological apology for imperialism creates a definite pattern of
abstraction, which prohibits any thinking incompatible with the expansion of
market economy, including thinking about imperialism.

The real pattern of intervention in Iraq is something which, if people knew
it, would make them realise it could not be morally sustained in any way
under any conditions. But precisely because this is so, the genocidal policy
is denied and hidden, and the focus is placed on an evil dictator in
response to whom we are the good guys seeking to make a humanitarian
intervention, and for the rest we prattle a bit about the clash of
civilisations. At a deeper level, this signifies a radical confusion about
the meaning of moral responsibility in the West, and this confusion is
directly related to that fact that in a society where the allocation of
resources is established mainly via the market, it is no longer possible to
pinpoint so easily who or what precisely is morally responsible for any
given human disaster - human beings are related more and more in ways which
escape their control, and hence they can no longer establish any reasonable
and objective relationship between individual responsibility and social
responsibility. In this context, the Internet contains a potential to
disinform just as much as to inform, but what is not even discussed, is the
deeper causes and motives for spreading disinformation and obstructing the
quest for truth.

In reality, there is not really any humanitarian intervention beyond
individual acts, but only a self-interested political intervention,  and the
clash of civilisations is something which we cause ourselves, and bring on
ourselves. As I have noted, the beauty or efficacy of the notion of a war
against terrorism from an ideological point of view is, that you no longer
have to talk about real massive massacres occurring, rather, we are now
dealing with an unseen, hidden bunch of individuals who might or might not
appear from behind the bushes and attack. At the same time, attention is
drawn away from a focus on the real massacres occurring, which we can
observe and verify jolly well, if we care to do it, but the sad thing is
that the West is mostly indifferent to it, and indeed encourages this
indifference. The Left will say things like we must remove the breeding
grounds of

Re: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice oftargets

 Why is it that we generate so much more interest discussing personalities
 rather than ideas?

If you don't know that, why are you a socialist ?

J.

The Court

Being a lawyer, I do enjoy this sort of thing. Your
facts are right. Black (especially) and Douglas were
important forerunners, but compatively isolated on
liberties questions. I don't think you dispute that.
ACtually it was sort of like Rehnquist's early days on
the Burger Courtr,w hich was pretty liberal, as we see
in retrospect. And I'm not saying that the Warren
Court changed everything from the start, indeed, and
more than the Rehnquist Court did.  It wasn't till 69
that the Warren Court got in line for Brandenberg.
There were bad anti-Communist decisions through the
early 60s. I actually think it was the 60s that
changed things. Actually, the time of Brandenberg,
Black had sort of swung to the right, comparatively.
jks
--- Kenneth Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hey Justin 

 I will take a re-peek at the Dennis case. But I
 believe Black (and
 Douglas) were strongly against it. I believe
 Rutledge and Murphy were
 replaced by conservative Democrats. And Frankfurter
 and Jackson were a
 kind of reverse of what Eisenhower felt about Warren
 and Brennan.

 I guess its really all moot, but if you also enjoy
 this kind of thing
 (as I do), what the hell...

 Myself, Id be more inclined to say that Warren and
 Brennan signed onto
 the Black-Douglas train  in particular, their
 efforts against loyalty
 initiatives.

 Black-Douglas had long aimed to give First Amendment
 protection to even
 those unworthies. The Court, as an entity,
 resisted their dynamic-duo
 efforts. In Yolanda Yates case, Black made his
 famous sarcastic shot
 against the prosecutions evidence  proof here
 is sufficient if Marx
 and Lenin are on trial.

 But they began to get their way (on this issue) with
 the disappearance
 of a Vinson, Jackson (Nuremberg prosecutor), Minton,
 and the advent, as
 you note, of Warren and Brennan.

 Douglas wrote about that sea change in his book
 Court Years: The Court
 began to swerve its course and act to protect the
 rights of the people
 by limiting the thrust of the anti-subversive
 program. The arrival of
 Earl Warren made part of the difference.

 There were other cases before that, where the trend
 was being given
 inertia. Like Jones v. Opelika in 1943. Douglas,
 Black and Murphy joined
 with Stone, and when Rutledge replaced Byrnes, the
 mandatory flag
 saluting crap was overturned.

 That was a Jehovahs Witness case, btw. The
 Jehovahs unflagging
 obnoxiousness also helped clarify some fundamental
 issues in Canada with
 the case of Roncarelli v. Duplessis.

 In the 1940s, the JWs were also irritating the
 Catholic majority of
 Quebec  going to their door and politely telling
 them they were all
 going to hell. Maurice Duplessis was premier of
 Quebec  and he ruled
 through a triad of reactionary Francophone
 nationalism, Church authority
 and big business alliances. Duplessis reacted to
 public and Church
 pressure to target the JWs. Roncarelli was some
 Montreal restaurateur
 (if I recall) who had the money to keep bailing JWs
 out when arrested.
 Duplessis finally ordered a public servant to
 withdraw Roncarellis
 liquor licence forever. Justice Rand wrote the
 opinion, drawing on
 Marbury v. Madison and Edward Coke et al.

 Anyway...

 So, I wont disagree with you if you want to put a
 historical marker at
 Warren. I would put it with Douglas and Black, but
 it doesn't really
 matter. It wasnt a case of Heeres Earl!
  and poof it all
 changed. (I'm not saying you actually said that.)

 Ken.

 --
 We have no reliance
 On virgin or pigeon;
 Our method is science,
 Our aim is religion.
   -- Aleister Crowley



 Actually, no. Roosevelt tried to pack the court,
 and
 failed. One of the former bad guy justices switched
 his view and started supporting the New Deal. The
 Roosevelt era court mainly supported expanded govt
 power to regulate business, not primarily enhanced
 free speech and civil rights. Its most notably free
 speech decision was probably US v. Dennis (1948),
 upholding the conviction of the CPUSA leaders for
 conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the govt.
 The
 real civil libertarian court was the Warren Court,
 whose key members were Warren and Brennan,
 appointed
 by Eisenhower, and Goldberg, Fortas, and Marshall,
 appointed by Kennedy and Johnson. The one right
 thing
 you say here is that the Warren Court era is over.
 jks
 
 --- Kenneth Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  JKS writes:I'd be proud to defend the First
  Amendment ina NAzi case too.
  
  if the gov't cracks down on the Nazis, they
 crack
  down on
  the Left, too, most often in a bigger way. A
 first
  amendment defense of the Nazis is indirectly
  defending the Left.
 
  Elementary, my dear Mr. Devine. :)
 
  You know, FDR packed the Supreme Court down there
  and that was a huge
  influence felt in the social fabric of US lives
 for
  decades... an
  influence which is now waning.
 
  But all that free speech stuff, and the finding
 of
  a right to

The words of a war veteran

I killed many of them. Because that was my speciality. I knew several
different kinds of weapons, I was also a demolitions expert, OK ? I also
dealt with the flamethrower. I burned up bodies so that they were crispy
critters. (...) in my way of thinking, everything is scripted in life and
it's long-range planning. You've been around a long time, you should know
that. Oh, war sucks man. There's no doubt about it. There ought to be other
ways of handling situations - it's just TOO bad. We're human beings, we're
always going to be human beings, and as long as we have different religions,
you know... We're the most dangerous things on this earth.

- Vietnam war veteran Victor Israel Marquez, talking to American  biographer
Studs Terkel.

Source: Studs Terkel, Will the Circle be Unbroken ? Reflections on Death,
Rebirth and Hunger for a Faith (New York: The New Press, 2001), p. 110-111.

new frontiers in electricity privatization

Regulation by Contract: A New Way to Privatize Electricity Distribution?
by Bernard Tenenbaum , Fiona Woolf , Tonci Bakovic  Price: $ 15.00
Available Immediately

English 104 pages 7 x 10
Published October 2003 by World Bank ISBN:  0-8213-5592-9 SKU:  15592


In many developing countries, both governments and investors have
expressed disappointment with the performance of recently privatized
electricity distribution companies. Some investors claim that the design
of the new regulatory system is fundamentally flawed and recommend that
independent regulatory commissions be replaced or supplemented by more
explicit regulation by contract that would reduce the discretion of new
commissions.

This paper examines whether regulation by contract or a combination of
regulation by contract and regulatory independence would provide a better
regulatory system for developing and transition economy countries that
wish to privatize distribution systems.

...pulls together a vast amount of country cases to identify key issues
and approaches for addressing political tension and economic trade-offs.
You can be sure that we will incorporate the insights into the PURC/World
Bank Training Course - for energy regulators, but also for other sectors
facing similar issues - especially water.

Professor Sanford Berg, Director
Public Utility Research Center, University of Florida

.combines insight, curiosity and common sense.I have recommended this
paper wherever I go.

Beatriz Arizu, Director of Regulatory Studies
Mercados Energéticos, S.A.

This is an excellent, informative and useful paper. I learned a lot - and
relatively painlessly, too.

Robert T. Crow, Former Chief Economist
The Bechtel Group, Inc.

A new start: the meaning of weapons of mass destruction, and an Al Jazeera poll result

(this article describes how the forces of imperialism literally poison
people to death, which over time may make official war casualty rates look
like chickenfeed - and I am not talking tobacco. The poisoning would also
affect American and British soldiers stationed in Iraq - JB).

(...) American forces admit to using over 300 tonnes of depleted uranium
weapons in 1991. The actual figure is closer to 800. This has caused a
health crisis that has affected almost a third of a million people. As if
that was not enough, America went on and used 200 tonnes more in Baghdad
alone this April. I don't know about other parts of Iraq, it will take me
years to document that. Hardan is particularly angry because he says there
is no need for this type of weapon - US conventional weapons are quite
capable of destroying tanks and buildings. In Basra, it took us two years
to obtain conclusive proof of what DU does, but we now know what to look for
and the results are terrifying.

Leukaemia has already become the most common type of cancer in Iraq among
all age groups, but is most prevalent in the under-15s. [In Basra, the
overall incidence rate of all cancerous malignancies for persons below 15
years of age only was about 4 per 100, 000 children in 1990, about 7 per
100, 000 children in 1997 about 10 per 100, 000 children in 1999 - JB]. It
has increased way above the percentage of population growth in every single
province of Iraq without exception. Women as young as 35 are developing
breast cancer. Sterility amongst men has increased ten-fold. But by far the
most devastating effect is on unborn children. Nothing can prepare anyone
for the sight of hundreds of preserved foetuses - barely human in
appearance. (...) Not only are there 200 tonnes of uranium lying around in
Baghdad, the containers which carried the ammunition were discarded. For
months afterwards, many used them to carry water - others used them to sell
milk publicly.

After his experience in Basra, Hardan says that within the next two years he
expects to see significant rises in congenital cataracts, anopthalmia,
microphthalmia, corneal opacities and coloboma of the iris - and that's just
in people's eyes. Add this to  foetal deformities, sterility in both sexes,
an increase in miscarriages and premature births, congenital malformations,
additional abnormal organs, hydrocephaly, anencephaly and delayed growth. I
had hoped the lessons of using DU would have been learnt - especially as it
is affecting American and British troops stationed in Iraq as we speak, they
are not immune to its effects either.

If the experience of Basra is played out in the rest of the country, Iraq is
looking at an increase of over 300% in all types of cancer over the next
decade.  (...)  I'm fed up of delegations coming and weeping as I show them
children dying before their eyes. I want action and not emotion. The crime
has been committed and documented - but we must act now to save our
children's future.

Source:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E8C356F9-E89F-4CD3-88B5-BBBDF9E085C1.
htm

PS - my first sister died of leukemia in 1964, when I was 5 years old, and
it wasn't a funny joke to me.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has conducted a poll (to which 17399 responses were
received) as follows:

Is the war on terror a showdown between the West and Islam? (48% yes, 43%
no, 8% unsure)
Will anti-Iraq occupation sentiment in the US increase, as occupation gets
more costly? (84% yes, 12% no, 4% unsure)
Should the US prevent other countries from pursuing nuclear technology? (37%
yes, 55% no, 8% unsure)
Are Bin Laden and al-Qaida now a 'spent force'? (31% yes, 52% no, 17%
unsure)
Should the US withdraw from Iraq and let the UN take the lead role? (72%
yes, 24% no, 4% unsure)

'the new great game' redux

Politics, philosophy and society
To hell and Baku

The vast scale and bloody price of the rush for oil in the Caspian has
been little noticed. Now Lutz Klevermann's powerful new study, The New
Great Game, reveals all

Misha Glenny
Sunday November 2, 2003
The Observer


It has been an encouraging fortnight for America's strategic partners in
central Asia. Craig Murray, the UK's man in Tashkent, has been an
especially painful thorn in the side of Uzbekistan and its President,
Islam Karimov, whose regime regularly tortures political opponents. Murray
has been relentless in his criticism of these human rights abuses despite
the distress this has caused the Pentagon. Karimov has been George W
Bush's significant other in the region ever since he agreed to the setting
up of US military bases in his country. But Murray's credibility has now
been fatally undermined after it emerged that he had been the target of a
Foreign Office internal investigation. No more talking out of turn in the
ranks!

Ten days before the Murray story broke, Ilham Aliyev, the son of
Azerbaijan's ailing president, was elected to take his father's place. The
establishment of this dynasty will ensure stability for the development of
the country's oil industry and its Western investors even if there is some
regrettable collateral damage to the country's democracy, not to mention
an opposition movement that is literally and metaphorically battered.

Politics in central Asia increasingly takes its cue from the rich mineral
deposits that are spread all along the Azerbaijani coast, permeating every
brick and every beam of wood in the capital Baku with the slightly sweet,
slightly sickening smell of oil, or as it is known locally, 'the devil's
tears.'

The devil attracts some persuasive pilgrims to Baku these days. It is said
of David Woodward, the head of BPAmoco's operation in Azerbaijan that he
is as powerful as the Aliyev family. 'If we pull out of Baku,' a BP
spokesman pointed out to Lutz Kleveman in this compelling book, The New
Great Game, 'the country would collapse overnight.'

Frankly, it hasn't fared too well with the full backing of BPAmoco; it has
lost 15 per cent of its territory to the Armenians and most of its
citizens live in abject poverty. Indeed as most ordinary Azeris probably
know by now, the only thing worse than living in a weak dysfunctional
state is to live in a weak dysfunctional state that is home to a valuable
natural resource, in particular oil, diamonds, coca leaves or opium
poppies. Ask anyone from Angola, Congo, Colombia or Afghanistan.

This has proved an unhappy circumstance for a swath of territories in
central Asia and the Caucasus stretching from the Chinese border to
Turkey. In 1990 and 1991, they unexpectedly found themselves to be
independent nations and no longer members of the Soviet Union (with the
distressing exception of Chechnya). That in itself was not necessarily
bad, although these new countries were of course woefully unprepared for
the demands of statehood. Indeed, for several the champagne was still
flowing when they found themselves in the middle of vicious wars and
communal conflict.

Within a couple of years, geologists and oil engineers predicted that
several countries around the Caspian Sea might be sitting on much greater
oil and natural gas reserves than had been thought. And this happened just
when the US was embarking on a strategic review of its future energy
requirements, prompted by a worrying overdependence on the Gulf and, above
all, Saudi Arabia.

Soon, Amoco and Exxon started sniffing around Baku and the biggest
littoral state, Kazakhstan, where it was thought sensational discoveries
might lie. Moscow was, however, not just going to stand idly by and permit
the United States to usurp its two-century-old role as colonial master of
the Caucasus and Central Asia.

And if this was not sufficient for all manner of chaos, China and its
state oil company, which employs more than 1.5 million people, immediately
perceived the Caspian to be the answer to the energy needs of its
hyperactive economic growth rates.

The great powers were right - in July 2000, the Kashagan field in
Kazakhstan was discovered, one of the biggest oil bubbles in decades. But
the Caspian oil rush is more complicated than any other because the black
gold is locked within the globe's largest lake. Technology is now able to
extract the stuff, notwithstanding frequently adverse conditions, but you
still have to get it to the open seas. And many of the wars in the
surrounding areas are not about who owns the oil, but who controls the
territory for the proposed pipelines.

The big three form coalitions of avarice with their local allies. In
Chechnya, President Putin has raised the standard of the war on terror to
justify the obliteration of the territory, insisting that the Chechens are
fully fledged al-Qaeda operatives. But in neighbouring Georgia, Orthodox
Russia throttles its co-confessional Georgians by backing the

Marx and fiat money

2003-11-01 Thread Lance Murdoch

After several unsuccessful stabs at starting Marx's Capital, I have
finally made it through a chapter or two.  I already have a problem
though, which is perhaps due to the age of the material.

Towards the end of Chapter 1, Marx makes it pretty clear that gold is a
commodity just like any other commodity.  But due to certain qualities
(it's homogeneity and so forth), it has become a universal commodity, it
has become money.  So this brings a question to my mind - well what about
nowadays?  In the USA we used fiat money ever since Auguest 15th, 1971.

So then I get to Chapter 2.  In one of the footnotes, Marx says

Long before the economists, lawyers made fashionable the idea that money
is a mere symbol...This they did in the sycophantic service of the royal
power, supporting the right of the latter to debase the coinage, during
the whole of the Middle Ages, by the traditions of the Roman Empire and
the conceptions of money to be found in the Digest.

Marx seems to be saying in Chapters 1 and 2 of Capital that money is a
commodity like any other.  Thus if American fiat money truly were not
backed by a commodity with a certain magnitude of value, it is worthless.
Note Marx does not say that fiat money is historically impossible, as he
notes the pressure put by the state power on lawyers and economists to
claim that fiat money has worth.

So is this Marx's theory?  It would seem a tenet of Marxian thought that
fiat money is worthless (or at least that it would be implied that it is
backed by gold or some other commodity in an emergency, if not in actual
current legality).

-- Lance

When a spelling error gave the game away

$4 trillion swindle foiled by spelling error

PAUL VALLELY (Independent)

LONDON - Every Monday morning 69-year-old Graham Halksworth would bid
farewell to his wife and leave his home at the top end of the little town of
Mossley, high on the shoulder of the Pennines. Smartly dressed and carrying
a suitcase, he would negotiate the steps down from their unprepossessing
little brick-built semi, whose only sign of pretension was its windows
leaded with an unlikely escutcheon in the stained glass. (...) Few, then,
could have suspected that inside Halksworth's briefcase was a plan to pull
off one of the biggest frauds in history.

The quiet man from up the hill was unobtrusively plotting to swindle the
American government out of US$2.5 trillion ($4 trillion). Deep in the vaults
of a London bank there lay 22 cases stamped with the American golden eagle.
Inside them were crammed US Treasury bonds with a face value so high that if
anyone tried to cash them it would virtually bankrupt the US government. An
extraordinary story attached to them.

In 1934 the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek was facing a twin
threat - from the invading Japanese and from the Communist rebels of Mao
Tse-tung. For safe-keeping his supporters sent 125,000 tonnes of Chinese
gold to America and, in a covert deal with US President Franklin Roosevelt,
were given US bonds in return. The sum was so large that it led to the
creation of Fort Knox and paved the way for America to abandon the gold
standard. But the bonds never reached China. The B-29 plane carrying them
crashed shortly after stopping to refuel at Clark Air Base in the
Philippines. The gilt-edged US government IOUs, packed in metal containers,
lay undiscovered in the jungle on the island of Mindanao for decades, until
found by local tribesmen who sold them to a former Yugoslav spy named
Michael Slamaj.

Getting far fetched? That is what the City of London police thought when
they stumbled across the whole affair after a report by a sharp-eyed Mountie
in Toronto (..). But when they approached Graham Halksworth, the man who had
authenticated the find, and told him that the boxes were fakes - constructed
of plastic that had been spray-painted black and lined with concrete to make
them heavy - he shrugged and told them: I don't authenticate boxes. (...)

Two years ago, two men - a Korean living in Japan and a Canadian - walked
into the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce's main branch in downtown
Toronto and tried to cash US$25m of US Treasury Bonds. With the bonds they
offered a certificate of authentication bearing Halksworth's signature. What
the eagle-eyed Mountie spotted was that the letter 's' was missing from the
word 'dollars' on the bond. This was not what those behind the scam had
intended. The idea was not to try to cash the bonds. It was to offer them to
financial institutions, along with the authentication documents, and the
indication that the US government backed the documents with gold, to secure
a line of credit.

But the attempt to cash them subjected the whole scheme to close scrutiny.
It was not long before the police were knocking on Halksworth's door. Even
then the old hand was unfazed. Deliberate mistakes were often made in such
bonds as a security device; ask the CIA, he said. But some bonds had so many
mistakes on them it looked like a child had printed them, the police said;
exactly, he replied, as if that proved his point. But the boxes were fakes,
the police said. Not my responsibility, I just do the documents, he
riposted. But the US authorities say the bonds aren't genuine, the police
said. They would say that, countered Halksworth, because the sums involved
are so huge the US Treasury nowadays can't afford to pay up on them; so they
say they are fakes, but they're not.

Indeed he told the UK police that even after the US secret service had
hauled him in to say these were counterfeits, he had continued to
authenticate them since he thought the Americans were lying because they
could not afford to repay the US$2.5 trillion debt. There was in fact, he
insisted, a semi-official redemption programme whereby the US government was
seeking to get the bonds back but only at arm's length. It was a position he
continued to maintain in the witness stand in the teeth of evidence from US
secret service agents, FBI officers and Royal Canadian Mounties who all
averred that there are no genuine Federal Reserve notes from 1934.

But there were some bits of evidence to which Graham Halksworth had no
answer. He and Slamaj claimed that Chiang Kai-Shek had given the Americans
125,000 tonnes of gold in the 1940s. But police inquiries on the London
Bullion Market revealed that the cumulative total of all the gold mined in
recorded history was only 63,500 tonnes by 1950. (It was only 145,200 tonnes
by the end of 2001). Even more damning, the documents contained zip codes,
which the US postal service only introduced in 1963 - and a Treasury Seal
which was too modern. Oh,

Re: Query

2003-11-01 Thread Mike Ballard

--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Can anybody suggest a non-ideological, as well as an
 ideoligcally Marxist primary economics text for me?

 Benjamin
**

Hi Benjamin,

Go to the source.  Marx's speech now titled, Value,
Price and Profit is my favourite introductory piece.
From there, go to the first chapter of the firt volume
of CAPITAL and read it very closely.

These essential works are available free at:

http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1864-IWMA/1865-VPP/

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/guide.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm

Class conscious greetings,
Mike B)




=
*
the Council Republic is not the culmination of everything, and even less does it 
stand for the most perfect form in which humans can live together. However the Council 
Republic is a prerequisite for the reconstruction of culture, because it makes 
possible the liquidation of the state,. It must be the task of the revolutionary of 
today to work for the Council system and the Council Republic. (Der Ziegelbrenner)



http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

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Bulldozering away Palestinians by remote control technology

02.11.2003


JERUSALEM - Israeli forces will soon be able to carry out demolition of
Palestinian buildings by remote control, an Israeli high-tech concern said.
Palestinians and human rights groups, including Amnesty International,
condemn demolitions as collective punishment that has made thousands of
Palestinian civilians homeless. The Technion Institute of Technology said in
a statement it had adapted US-made, armoured [Caterpillar] D-9 bulldozers to
operate without drivers and they would be deployed by the Israeli army in
the very near future. The army declined to comment. (Reuters)

Source:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3531999thesection=newst
hesubsection=worldthesecondsubsection=

New rules for the primitive accumulation of capital

02.11.2003 NEW YORK - The UN General Assembly has approved the world's first
anti-corruption treaty that requires nations to return stolen assets to
countries from which they were pillaged. The treaty, two years in the
drafting, will enter into force 90 days after 30 governments have ratified
it. It opens for signatures in Merida, Mexico, from December 9 to 11.
Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately, UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan told the 191-member assembly today. Corruption is a key element in
economic under-performance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation and
development.

The treaty, he said, makes a major breakthrough by requiring member states
to return assets obtained through corruption to the country from which they
were stolen. Developing nations were anxious to have the asset recovery
provision adopted, particularly those where high-level corruption plundered
the national wealth.

Source:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3531996thesection=newst
hesubsection=worldthesecondsubsection=

Re: Marx and fiat money

Lack the time to go into the subject just now, but try:

http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalogue/index.asp?isbn=0312211643

The plan for primitive accumulation in Iraq: Greg Palast reveals all

Editor's note: BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast is also the author of
the recent bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a look at the
American political process. He is also one of two journalists who obtained a
document from the administration of US President George Bush titled Moving
the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth, a confidential
report of 101 pages from inside the US State Department and written prior to
the invasion of Iraq. It outlines the plan for what it terms the
postconflict economy and involves the mass privatization of virtually every
Iraqi government asset.
He decided to grant an interview to the [Baghdad] Bulletin because you
speak to some people in Iraq, and they ought to know what is planned for
them.

Same old question: Was oil really the reason for war?

The leaked document, which only Palast and a reporter from The Wall Street
Journal have managed to obtain, contains plans of private sector
involvement in strategic sectors, including privatization, assets, sales,
concessions, leases and management contracts -- especially in the oil and
supporting industries.  Said more plainly; it is a plan to sell off the
oil fields, the pipelines and the oil infrastructure of Iraq to private
business and to turn what is left of Iraq into a freemarket paradise,
Palast said.

The plan is obviously made to make it easier for the giant operators that
could possibly afford to take over Iraq's oil wealth, he said. Palast's
suggestion to what organizations would possibly take over the oil wealth
included two giant American operators, two British and one Russian
operation. Needless to say, Palast's theory and the leaked document echoes
the European and Middle Eastern claim that the reason to start the war was
oil.

The document does not only indicate that US is planning to privatize every
economically beneficial asset, but also the very backbone of Iraq, its laws.
The plan contains details of how to rewrite Iraq's laws, including the
nation's copyright laws, the nation's business regulations laws, taking over
the banking sector and includes such strange things as writing for Iraq its
application to join the World Trade Organization. On top of that, the plan
includes a detailed rewriting of Iraq's tax code, Palast said.

The plan in action

Quoting the plan, Palast reads: the US government will, through a private
contract: Design fiscal regimes for petroleum, mining and transit
pipelines, for para-legislations, implementing regulations and strategies
for implementations and identify priorities of revenue tax reform. . If
property tax regimes fit tax policy strategy; to provide support for
regulation and implementing instructions and procedures and appropriate
staffing and training of taxing personnel.

Interestingly, the document also outlines plans to use the World Economic
Forum, rather than the World Bank, which is designed for postwar
reconstruction. The World Economic Forum is a private organization,
controlled by multinational corporations with no experience or authority to
take over a nation's economy.

By eliminating the World Bank, they indicate that there is no time for the
World Bank's indirect methods. The grab for the assets has to be done before
a government is elected, which would stop it -- any government is going to
want to maintain some Iraqi ownership over Iraqi resources, which is not in
the plan. It is a deliberate go-around around the World Bank.

Though Palast himself is one of the most well-known critics of the World
Bank, he said that: Compared to Paul Bremer and the World Economic Forum,
the World Bank is a wonderful agency. That is how bad this is.

Complete article:
http://www.baghdadbulletin.com/pageArticle.php?article_id=146cat_id=1PHPSE
SSID=109971372ea5f9fa0bd3056d5a82f862

Iraqi businessmen complain about American primitive accumulation

One of the most common accusations levelled against the US-led occupation is
that it was simply paving the way for a subsequent corporate invasion.
Monolithic US companies with strong ties to the administration of US
President George Bush have been handed huge contracts to repair the damage
wrought by war. But despite assurances that the underlying motivation for
this work is the revival of the Iraqi economy, people are starting to doubt
how much is for the sake of Iraqis and how much is for the international
companies to make a fast buck.

From the work that we are handling, 41 of 75 is the latest tally for
subcontracting which has been given out to Iraqi companies, said Francis
Canavan, spokesperson for Bechtel who received a $680 million contract for
handling civil reconstruction from USAID. These range from five to
six-figure contracts reaching up to the low millions.

But it is the sizes of these contracts which are leading Iraqi businessmen
to the conclusion that they are getting a raw deal. The USAID website lists
a string of multi-million dollar contract awards which have been given to US
companies [... But t]he biggest contract the businessmen at the KBR meeting
had heard of was for building a new gas station. (...) more than 4 months
since the Bush declared the end of hostilities, Iraqi companies are still
finding it difficult to impose themselves on the market for carrying out the
reconstruction work of their own country.

For example, some of the tenders stipulate that you have to have certain
brands for the objects that are contained within your project, said another
businessman at the KBR meeting. This makes it impossible for us to make a
successful bid since we cannot get hold of these materials. The objective
should be re-construction and not a transformation of the economy and the
country, said Rania Masri, from the US-based Institute of Southern Studies
which on Aug. 5 launched the Campaign to Stop the War Profiteers and End the
Corporate Invasion of Iraq. Masri, an author on Iraq, believes that there
should be a full open-bidding process, with preference given to Iraqi
companies. The companies would only reconstruct as it was before the war, no
redesigning.

This is a departure from a scenario many see as inevitable in post-Saddam
Iraq -- privatization of public services. Iraqis are used to paying minimal
bills for amenities such as water, electricity and telephones. In a country
where a third of the population was employed by the state, citizens will not
be accustomed to paying anything like what international companies would
charge for these services. Before the invasion, electricity cost around ID
1000 per month, and Saddam even gave petrol away for free at times. It is
not certain that the administration will invite bids for the distribution of
public services, but it would be follow the general pattern were this to
happen. (...)

Perhaps advocates of privatization are right to think that this would be the
most speedy and efficient way to get Iraq's public services up and running
again. There is certainly a huge amount of investment needed. Privatization
in itself is no bad thing, the important factor is accountability, based on
need, not price, said Pratap Chaterjee, the managing director of CorpWatch,
a non-profit activist group monitoring the practices of multinational
companies. Secrecy is the problem - the lack of transparency in these deals
signed behind closed doors.

Here lies the most worrying aspect for Iraqis -- nobody knows what the
future holds for public services and the economy in general. The US-led
administration is keeping tight control over what information is available
(...).

Complete article:
http://www.baghdadbulletin.com/pageArticle.php?article_id=162cat_id=1PHPSE
SSID=109971372ea5f9fa0bd3056d5a82f862

Re: New rules for the primitive accumulation of capital

- Original Message -
From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED]



 02.11.2003 NEW YORK - The UN General Assembly has approved the world's
first
 anti-corruption treaty that requires nations to return stolen assets to
 countries from which they were pillaged. The treaty, two years in the
 drafting, will enter into force 90 days after 30 governments have
ratified
 it. It opens for signatures in Merida, Mexico, from December 9 to 11.
 Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately, UN Secretary-General
Kofi
 Annan told the 191-member assembly today. Corruption is a key element
in
 economic under-performance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation
and
 development.

 The treaty, he said, makes a major breakthrough by requiring member
states
 to return assets obtained through corruption to the country from which
they
 were stolen. Developing nations were anxious to have the asset recovery
 provision adopted, particularly those where high-level corruption
plundered
 the national wealth.


==

And just what is the non-defeasible, baseline definition of corruption
international lawyers are to deploy in order to unwind the 'original'
appropriations???

This is the kind of stuff that gives the US Right even more anti-UN
'ammo.'


Ian

Re: A new start: the meaning of weapons of mass destruction, and an Al Jazeera poll result

2003-11-01 Thread joanna bujes

If this is not genocide, I don't know what is.

Joanna

Jurriaan Bendien wrote:

(this article describes how the forces of imperialism literally poison
people to death, which over time may make official war casualty rates look
like chickenfeed - and I am not talking tobacco. The poisoning would also
affect American and British soldiers stationed in Iraq - JB).
(...) American forces admit to using over 300 tonnes of depleted uranium
weapons in 1991. The actual figure is closer to 800. This has caused a
health crisis that has affected almost a third of a million people. As if
that was not enough, America went on and used 200 tonnes more in Baghdad
alone this April. I don't know about other parts of Iraq, it will take me
years to document that. Hardan is particularly angry because he says there
is no need for this type of weapon - US conventional weapons are quite
capable of destroying tanks and buildings. In Basra, it took us two years
to obtain conclusive proof of what DU does, but we now know what to look for
and the results are terrifying.
Leukaemia has already become the most common type of cancer in Iraq among
all age groups, but is most prevalent in the under-15s. [In Basra, the
overall incidence rate of all cancerous malignancies for persons below 15
years of age only was about 4 per 100, 000 children in 1990, about 7 per
100, 000 children in 1997 about 10 per 100, 000 children in 1999 - JB]. It
has increased way above the percentage of population growth in every single
province of Iraq without exception. Women as young as 35 are developing
breast cancer. Sterility amongst men has increased ten-fold. But by far the
most devastating effect is on unborn children. Nothing can prepare anyone
for the sight of hundreds of preserved foetuses - barely human in
appearance. (...) Not only are there 200 tonnes of uranium lying around in
Baghdad, the containers which carried the ammunition were discarded. For
months afterwards, many used them to carry water - others used them to sell
milk publicly.
After his experience in Basra, Hardan says that within the next two years he
expects to see significant rises in congenital cataracts, anopthalmia,
microphthalmia, corneal opacities and coloboma of the iris - and that's just
in people's eyes. Add this to  foetal deformities, sterility in both sexes,
an increase in miscarriages and premature births, congenital malformations,
additional abnormal organs, hydrocephaly, anencephaly and delayed growth. I
had hoped the lessons of using DU would have been learnt - especially as it
is affecting American and British troops stationed in Iraq as we speak, they
are not immune to its effects either.
If the experience of Basra is played out in the rest of the country, Iraq is
looking at an increase of over 300% in all types of cancer over the next
decade.  (...)  I'm fed up of delegations coming and weeping as I show them
children dying before their eyes. I want action and not emotion. The crime
has been committed and documented - but we must act now to save our
children's future.
Source:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E8C356F9-E89F-4CD3-88B5-BBBDF9E085C1.
htm
PS - my first sister died of leukemia in 1964, when I was 5 years old, and
it wasn't a funny joke to me.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has conducted a poll (to which 17399 responses were
received) as follows:
Is the war on terror a showdown between the West and Islam? (48% yes, 43%
no, 8% unsure)
Will anti-Iraq occupation sentiment in the US increase, as occupation gets
more costly? (84% yes, 12% no, 4% unsure)
Should the US prevent other countries from pursuing nuclear technology? (37%
yes, 55% no, 8% unsure)
Are Bin Laden and al-Qaida now a 'spent force'? (31% yes, 52% no, 17%
unsure)
Should the US withdraw from Iraq and let the UN take the lead role? (72%
yes, 24% no, 4% unsure)

Re: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice of targets

2003-11-01 Thread Mike Ballard

--- Kenneth Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 You should definitely support your local loon Nazi's
 right to smoke
 tobacco.

(tobacco doused in lots of pesticide)

Mike B)

=
*
the Council Republic is not the culmination of everything, and even less does it 
stand for the most perfect form in which humans can live together. However the Council 
Republic is a prerequisite for the reconstruction of culture, because it makes 
possible the liquidation of the state,. It must be the task of the revolutionary of 
today to work for the Council system and the Council Republic. (Der Ziegelbrenner)



http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
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Re: New rules for the primitive accumulation of capital - reply to Ian

Ian,

I think of it in the same way as intellectual property rights, about which I
have written already. IPR required an objective theory of property, and in
fact a true theory of capitalism as we know it. But if there is some facet
or relation of capitalism which you cannot admit in your theory, then this
impairs your concept of property rights so that your application of IPR
becomes problematic. What they cannot admit is that the whole capitalist
system of private appropriation is based on getting something for nothing,
i.e. formal juridical equality combines with economic unequality in
exchange; juridically transactors have equal status, but in the real world
their bargaining position is structurally unequal. They hope that they will
get sex for nothing, and they hope that for the rest people will notice, and
they will say that according to the contract, employer is entitled to the
full labour-power of the employee, i.e. all potential and observable
behaviours. This shades off into slavery, such that the struggle against
corruption sets the stage for slavery, with the difference that the worker
can choose his exploiter.

The same kind of idea applies to corruption, and therefore, somewhere along
the line you must end up saying that a corrupt practice in some sense is not
a corrupt practice, or at any rate that it is not immoral (i.e. it's honest
exploitation), with reference to a universal ethical principle. The
implementation of the new rules therefore once again effectively requires
enforcing a new morality which naturalises the unequal bargaining position
with certain legal norms, and it justifies itself by saying that
anti-corruption rules contain the social framework which provides the
freedom to equalise bargaining position with integrity, just as, in
educational theory, equality of opportunity is supposed to provide a
meritocracy. But as to the precise legal ramifications, you better ask
Justin, I am not a legal expert.

Jurriaan

In a message dated 11/1/03 4:51:28 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
So is this Marx's theory? It would seem a tenet of Marxian thought thatfiat money is worthless (or at least that it would be implied that it isbacked by gold or some other commodity in an emergency, if not in actualcurrent legality).-- Lance

Henry C.K. Liu has written several articles - in depth, on the banking system and fiat versus specie money. Fiat money is not worthless, but apparently valueless - without quotes.

Full article at Asia Times: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/EI16Dj03.html

"Fiat money issued by government is now legal tender in all modern national economies since the collapse of the Bretton Woods regime of fixed exchange rates linked to a gold-backed dollar in 1971. The State Theory of Money (Chartalism) holds that the general acceptance of government-issued fiat currency rests fundamentally on government's authority to tax. Government's willingness to accept the currency it issues for payment of taxes gives the issuance currency within a national economy. That currency is sovereign credit for tax liabilities, which are dischargeable by credit instruments issued by government. When issuing fiat money, the government owes no one anything except to make good a promise to accept its money for tax payment. A central banking regime operates on the notion of government-issued fiat money as sovereign credit. That is the essential difference between central banking with government-issued fiat money, which is a sovereign credit instrument, and free banking with privately issued specie money, which is a bank IOU that allows the holder to claim the gold behind it."

That ain't workin', that's the way to do it

The new Iraqi dinar is rising against the US dollar, the old banknotes being
changed to new bills printed in England, by a consortium led by UK-based
banknote printer De La Rue. The new currency was was unveiled in Baghdad on
October 4, 2003 and introduced on October 15, and Iraqis have three months
to change all their Saddam era dinars to new ones.

The new dinar features pictures of an ancient Babylonian ruler, and a 10th
century mathematician in place of the face of Saddam Hussein. An ancient
Islamic compass, patterned on the an Astrolabe from Baghdad dated 1131 AD is
shown on the new Iraqi 250 dinar banknote. This is the same Arabic Astrolabe
that was used on the ½ dinar note of the 1980s issue and the 1000 Dinar note
of the 2002 issue. The new notes are issued in 50, 100, 250, 1000, 5000,
10,000, and 25,000 Dinar bills. Currency can be exchanged at the Rafidain
and Rasheed banks, and Iraqis have three months in which to make the
exchanges.

Paul Bremer had said on 7 July that the so-called print dinars in
circulation in most of Iraq, nor the formal national currency (or Swiss
dinar) still used in some parts of the Kurdish North were suitable for the
new Iraq, and in August, the Central Bank of Iraq had already advised Iraqis
to deposit all their Dinars in local banks to facilitate their change into
the new currency.

The new Dinar rose to 1,960 to the dollar in the currency market run by the
Central Bank recently. Nearly three million dollars were offered for sale on
Wednesday this week, and snapped up by private banks and businessmen. The
currency market is arranged to keep a lid on inflation, and prevent the
dinar from big fluctuations in value. Currency dealers and money changers
have now focused their attention on the newly created market, and they try
to offer competitive rates. It is not clear whether the Central Bank will
continue with its policy of selling dollars to the public. Previously, bank
officials said they would not interfere in fixing the exchange rate of the
new currency. Nevertheless the dinar exchanged outside the banks at a rate
of 20,004 dinars for the dollar, but dealing is sluggish.

Money has been a problem for Iraqi's lately. Billions worth of 10,000 dinar
bills were looted from banks and banks' printing storages, and a large
majority of these were without printed serial numbers. But the looters
simply stole the whole bank press and machinery. So businesspeople at Al
Kifah street (which is the Wall street of Baghdad) decided not to accept
10,000 bills, and bought them at prices ranging from 6,500 to 8,000 per
note. But merchants followed suit, and then no matter how genuine your notes
were, nobody would accept them at their real value. Most Iraqi merchants,
businessmen, and families had exchanged their smaller notes with 10k notes
before the war, and the CPA paid salaries in 10k bills. Central Bank and CPA
officials stated all the time that 10k bills were valid, and that there was
no truth in the rumours.

Thus, on 1 October it was disclosed that agents from the Defense Criminal
Investigative Service (DCIS) and the 812th Military Police Company assisted
by Iraqi police and the Ministry of Finance had broken a counterfeit
printing operation in Baghdad run by Amar Fadil Ramadan Al-Kayse and seized
counterfeit currency worth 100 billion dinars. The investigation leading to
the arrest of Al-Kayse revealed that Al-Kayse was printing and attempting to
pass counterfeit 250 Iraqi dinar notes to the Central Bank, itself funded
and operated by the CPA. Al-Kayse owned and operated a local Baghdad
printing shop and worked as editor of Nuktat Dhaw (Spot Light), a
newspaper in Baghdad.

As regards the 250 dinar bill, AL Kifah st. financial experts told clients
that most small 250 D bill were forged, and so they wouldn't deal with them,
except at lower prices. In present day Iraq, the grapevine works better than
official statements, people think that any official statement is just a
cover up or some sort of conspiracy to fool them. Iraqis generally don't
trust their governments, and they don't believe what governments say.
The Iraq dinar has a glorious history. The 'swisry' Dinar used during the
80's up to a couple of years following the first Gulf war was a very stable
currency and exhanged for 0.33 Dinars to the dollar, being still used in the
autonomous Kurdish territories. it comes in 0.25, 0.5, 1, 5, 10, and 25
Dinar notes. The bills were nicknamed Swiss dinar either because of their
relative stability and strength or because it was made in Europe, depending
on the account. The Swiss dinar was trading at about 6.7 to the dollar in
early July 2003. But now one swisry Dinar will equal 250 new Dinars, so one
Dollar would equal 7-8 Swiss Dinars, but according to another report, the
the Swiss dinar used by the Kurds will be exchanged at 150 for each new
dinar.

Then there is the tabu' Dinar (tabu' means printed) in three versions:
locally printed versions of the swisry Dinar with some

Joan Robinson question

Does anyone on the list know if JR read John Commons Legal Foundations of
Capitalism? I'm re-reading Morton Horwitz' The Transformation of
American Law: 1870-1960 and seeing intimations of the CC controversy in
US court cases from the 20's and am wondering if I'm
hallucinating

Juriaan, I'll try to reply to your new rules post tomorrow.





To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for
originality. There aren't any. [Les Paul]

Re: Marx and fiat money

- Original Message -
From: Lance Murdoch [EMAIL PROTECTED]



 After several unsuccessful stabs at starting Marx's Capital, I have
 finally made it through a chapter or two.  I already have a problem
 though, which is perhaps due to the age of the material.

 Towards the end of Chapter 1, Marx makes it pretty clear that gold is a
 commodity just like any other commodity.  But due to certain qualities
 (it's homogeneity and so forth), it has become a universal commodity, it
 has become money.  So this brings a question to my mind - well what
about
 nowadays?  In the USA we used fiat money ever since Auguest 15th, 1971.

 So then I get to Chapter 2.  In one of the footnotes, Marx says

 Long before the economists, lawyers made fashionable the idea that
money
 is a mere symbol...This they did in the sycophantic service of the royal
 power, supporting the right of the latter to debase the coinage, during
 the whole of the Middle Ages, by the traditions of the Roman Empire and
 the conceptions of money to be found in the Digest.

 Marx seems to be saying in Chapters 1 and 2 of Capital that money is a
 commodity like any other.  Thus if American fiat money truly were not
 backed by a commodity with a certain magnitude of value, it is
worthless.
 Note Marx does not say that fiat money is historically impossible, as he
 notes the pressure put by the state power on lawyers and economists to
 claim that fiat money has worth.

 So is this Marx's theory?  It would seem a tenet of Marxian thought that
 fiat money is worthless (or at least that it would be implied that it is
 backed by gold or some other commodity in an emergency, if not in actual
 current legality).

 -- Lance

=

http://www.marxmoney.com/

See especially the essay by Duncan Foley.

Microsoft and the future of anti-trust

Microsoft Hearing Could Conclude the Case
Appeals Judges to Consider Challenges to Antitrust Accord
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 1, 2003; Page E01


For Microsoft Corp., an unusual U.S. appeals court hearing next week could
bring the most ignominious chapter in the company's storied history to a
close.

For those who think the software giant has all but gotten away with
breaking antitrust laws, the hearing will probably be the final shot at
redress.

For the Justice Department, it will be a chance for affirmation that its
heavily criticized handling of the case has been appropriate.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear
challenges to an antitrust settlement between the Justice Department and
Microsoft in late 2001.

Several states that helped prosecute the company signed on to that deal.
Another group of states pressed for stiffer sanctions but were largely
rebuffed by a lower-court judge after two months of hearings this year.
They won a separate settlement with slight modifications, and most decided
not to push any further.

But one state, Massachusetts, refused to give up the case, which has been
running for more than five years.

If this is the remedy in a case of this magnitude, then there is little
reason why any monopolist, or would-be monopolist, should hesitate to
embark on a similar course of unlawful conduct, the state said in legal
briefs challenging the settlement approved by U.S. District Judge Colleen
Kollar-Kotelly. The flaws in the remedy adopted by the district court are
profound.

Two technology trade groups also are challenging the Justice Department's
settlement.

Many legal experts say the challengers have a tall hill to climb: They
must show that the judge abused her discretion, a difficult task in any
legal case.

But what makes next week's hearing unusual is that the seven judges
scheduled to hear the appeal are the ones who in June 2001 upheld several
findings of Microsoft violations but rejected a trial judge's order that
the company be broken up. They sent the case back to the lower court with
new guidelines for determining how the violations should be addressed.

The appeals court also tossed out the original trial judge, Thomas
Penfield Jackson, for mishandling aspects of the case and improperly
talking to the media about it. Kollar-Kotelly was assigned in his place.

Whether Kollar-Kotelly followed those guidelines is central to the appeal.

The District Court's remedy will not restore competition, deny Microsoft
the fruits of its illegal conduct or otherwise satisfy this court's
remedial objectives, Massachusetts argues.

In its filings, Microsoft counters that the suggestion that the District
Court disregarded this court's mandate is baseless.

In one example of the dispute, the appeals court held that the world's
largest software maker illegally protected its Windows monopoly by
co-mingling the code for its ubiquitous operating system with the code for
its Internet browsing software.

The court ruled that such bundling was an unfair barrier to rival browser
makers.

In its settlement, the Justice Department elected not to force the company
to unbundle the code. Instead, the deal gives computer makers and users
the ability to mask access to Microsoft programs and show preference to
rival software if they so choose.

The states said that was insufficient because non-Microsoft developers
would know that the company's programs still reside on the computer and
would still write more applications based on Microsoft's platforms.

Kollar-Kotelly sided with Microsoft and the Justice Department, rejecting
a plan by the states that would have required Microsoft to offer a
stand-alone version of Windows if it wanted to continue to offer a version
with other programs bundled into it.

There is a broad zone of discretion for the judge, said Paul M. Smith, a
Washington antitrust lawyer.

As for the well-established doctrine that antitrust remedies should deny
the lawbreaker the fruits of its actions, Smith said a judge can decide
that such a course is not feasible.

Jeffrey Shohet, an antitrust lawyer in San Diego who has followed the
case, agreed that the appeals court is likely to give the lower court wide
latitude.

Shoet added that the appeals court is not likely to judge whether the
settlement might open the gates to future illegal behavior by would-be
monopolists.

That role, he said, is the Justice Department's.

Separately this week, the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee's
antitrust subcommittee, Sens. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) and Herb Kohl (D-Wis.)
introduced a bill to require courts to more thoroughly review antitrust
settlements.

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