catfish redux
[Federal Register: November 25, 2003 (Volume 68, Number 227)] [Notices] [Page 66072] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr25no03-28] Notices Federal Register This section of the FEDERAL REGISTER contains documents other than rules or proposed rules that are applicable to the public. Notices of hearings and investigations, committee meetings, agency decisions and rulings, delegations of authority, filing of petitions and applications and agency statements of organization and functions are examples of documents appearing in this section. [[Page 66072]] DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE Foreign Agricultural Service Trade Adjustment Assistance for Farmers AGENCY: Foreign Agricultural Service, USDA. ACTION: Notice. --- The Administrator, Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), certified a petition for trade adjustment assistance (TAA) that was filed on October 8, 2003, by the Catfish Farmers of America, Indianola, Mississippi; Rutledge Rutledge, Newport, Arkansas; and the Western Regional Chapter of the Kentucky Aquaculture Association, Farmington, Kentucky, on behalf of catfish producers in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. Producers are now eligible to apply for program benefits. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Upon investigation, the Administrator determined that increased imports of catfish and fillets of Vietnamese basa and tra contributed importantly to a decline in producer prices of farm-raised catfish in the above states by 20.9 percent during January 2002 through December 2002, when compared with the previous 5-year average. Catfish farmers certified as eligible for TAA may apply to the Farm Service Agency for benefits through February 16, 2004. After submitting completed applications, producers shall receive technical assistance provided by the Extension Service at no cost and an adjustment assistance payment, if certain program criteria are met. Producers of raw agricultural commodities wishing to learn more about TAA and how they may apply should contact the Department of Agriculture at the addresses provided below for General Information. Producers Certified as Eligible for TAA, Contact: The Farm Service Agency service centers in your respective state. For General Information about TAA, Contact: Jean-Louis Pajot, Coordinator, Trade Adjustment Assistance for Farmers, FAS, USDA, (202) 720-2916, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dated: November 14, 2003. A. Ellen Terpstra, Administrator, Foreign Agricultural Service. [FR Doc. 03-29398 Filed 11-24-03; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 3410-10-M
Easterbrook's new book
Has anyone reviewed *The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse* by Gregg Easterbrook? Bill
Re: Easterbrook's new book
Bill Lear wrote: Has anyone reviewed *The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse* by Gregg Easterbrook? This sounds like the kind of Panglossian horseshit you get from Brad DeLong and Virginia Postrel. From Publishers Weekly Easterbrook sees a widespread case of cognitive dissonance in the West: according to Easterbrook, though the typical American's real income has doubled in the past 50 years, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as happy remains where it was half a century ago (oddly, Easterbrook doesn't tell us what that percentage is). Why do so many of us remain discontented, he asks? Is it because now that even the middle classes can afford nearly every conceivable luxury, we have nothing left to look forward to? Easterbrook, a senior editor at the New Republic and contributing editor to the Atlantic, believes so. He also castigates modern psychology and the media for dwelling on minor problems without celebrating the broader, more upbeat context in which they exist. But his endless nagging about how Americans and Western Europeans should be more grateful for their standard of living leads him to overcompensate: for instance, he minimizes the harm done to Wal-Mart employees who were forced to work off the clock hours without pay because, after all, they're still living better than their ancestors, since stores like Wal-Mart sell necessities at such affordable prices. The book does confront some serious problems, like the health-care crisis, but suggests that they can be licked as effectively as we've fixed environmental, racial and other seemingly intractable problems. Sarcastic patter and a flair for catchphrases like abundance denial and wealth porn, however, barely disguise a padded thesis and one easily argued against with an alternative set of statistics. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
FW: Don't shrink from it
[humor] An Englishman is being shown around a Scottish hospital. At the end of the tour he is shown into a ward with a number of patients who show no signs of injury. He goes to examine the first man he sees, and the man proclaims Fair fa' yer honest sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin' race! The Englishman, somewhat taken aback, goes to the next patient, who immediately launches into: Some hae meat, and canna eat, and some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, and sae the Lord be thankit. The next patient sits up and declaims: Wee sleekit cow'rin tim'rous beastie, O what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, wi' bickering bl'attle. I wad be laith to run and chase thee, wi' murdering prattle. Well says the Englishman to his Scottish colleague I see you saved the psychiatric ward for the last. No, no the Scottish doctor corrects him This is the Serious Burns Unit
Last Call for AFIT Paper Proposals
Dear Colleagues, This is the last call for AFIT paper proposals. AFIT welcomes papers from Institutionalist, Marxist, feminist, post-Keynesian, and other heterodox economists. The deadline is December 1st to submit a proposal for a paper or panel for the 2004 AFIT conference in Salt Lake City in April. You can view the call for papers at: http://afit.cba.nau.edu/call_for_participants.htm Apologies for cross postings. -Geoff Schneider Vice President, AFIT Geoffrey Schneider Associate Professor of Economics Bucknell University Lewisburg, PA 17837 Phone: (570) 577-3446 Fax: (570) 577-3451 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web page: http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gschnedr/
Re: How to insult a millionaire
You've got a winner! Call Fox immediately. Gene joanna bujes wrote: OK. Alternative reality show: How to Insult a Millionaire! Contestants compete for the best letter (250 words or less) telling upper management exactly what they think of them.Winner HAS to make public the name of the company and walks away with 1/2 a mill. Three left-wing Siskel and Eberts discuss the top five entries and decide the winner based on most devastating and funny critique. Wadda ya think? Plenty of spinoffs possible: How to Insult a Neo-Con!, How to Insult Your Elected Representative! Joanna __ The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. -- Mark Twain
pensions once again
[My pension dollars at work.] Hello, Mr. Blue Chips TIAA-CREF gets a money makeover. By Daniel Gross SLATE/Posted Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2003, at 7:53 AM PT The financial adviser to the wine-and-cheese set is undergoing a money makeover. A year ago, TIAA-CREF, the $300-billion-asset not-for-profit company that invests on behalf of university professors and nonprofit employees, brought in a new, high-priced Wall Street chief executive: Herb Allison, the former president of Merrill Lynch. It bestowed upon him an uncharacteristically rich contract, the details of which were disclosed last week. In the past two months, Allison's strategy has become evident. In September, TIAA-CREF laid off 500 employees-about 8 percent of its staff-as part of a reorganization. Then, in October, it opened its first branch retail offices, in Princeton, N.J., and Hamden, Conn. TIAA-CREF has plans for several more. Staffed with financial advisers, the centers will become platforms for TIAA-CREF to sell new products and services both to existing TIAA-CREF customers and to new ones. Last week TIAA-CREF ditched Ogilvy Mather, its advertising agency of 17 years, and hired an edgy startup firm in Boston, Modernista. TIAA-CREF intends, as the New York Times reported, to increase its advertising spending significantly from last year's $25 million total. These moves-textbook for a financial services company-may seem odd for a not-for-profit institution that, for nearly a century, has defined itself in opposition to Wall Street's modus operandi. Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1918, TIAA (it stands for Teachers Insurance Annuity Association) began offering annuities and pensions for university teachers. As academic institutions established pension programs, they turned to TIAA to manage them. After World War II, when inflation was high, TIAA-which invested mostly in bonds-decided to begin investing in stocks as well. In 1952, it created the CREF (College Retirement Equities Fund) Stock Account. Over the past half-century, this glorified index fund has grown into one of the single largest pools of capital in the stock market-about $88 billion today. Like public employee pension funds, TIAA-CREF has thrived in recent decades because the number of employees at nonprofits, and in state government and education systems, has continued to grow over the years. As important, the entities that employ them continue to meet obligations to fund their pensions-unlike many private sector companies, which have switched to 401(k)s. TIAA-CREF now has the retirement funds of 2 million people in its hands and is among the nation's largest asset management companies. TIAA-CREF has always viewed its position as that of a trustee, since its academic clients typically didn't have much choice-or, frankly, interest-in how their pension funds were invested. Its customers are, by and large, presumed to be unsophisticated investors-people with other things to think about, as the recent advertising slogan put it. Things like Baudrillard, or String Theory. In keeping with its ethos, TIAA-CREF has been the campus protester of Wall Street, calling attention to poor corporate governance and excessive executive compensation. TIAA-CREF's image as a no-frills, no-nonsense, long-term investor has left it with a sterling reputation. Herb Allison is cut from a distinctly different cloth than previous TIAA-CREF chief executives, most of whom were university administrators. His immediate predecessor, John H. Biggs, a Ph.D. in economics, was an insurance executive who spent a substantial portion of his career as a finance executive at Washington University of St. Louis. But Allison's arrival marks a transition away from tweediness that may have been unavoidable. Today, TIAA-CREF's investors-many of whom came of professional age in the market-friendly 1980s and 1990s-aren't nearly as passive as they once were. Increasingly, they have choices as to the investment of their retirement plans. And other asset management companies have long been eager to horn in on this business. TIAA-CREF's educational background may have made it a natural to manage many of the so-called 529 college savings programs established by states. But last summer, New York pulled its funds from TIAA-CREF and awarded them to Vanguard Group, one of the few money management outfits able to offer lower expenses than TIAA-CREF. Meanwhile, prior efforts by TIAA-CREF to branch out-by, for example, offering mutual funds to the general investing public in the late 1990s-haven't paid dividends. At TIAA-CREF, Allison is receiving a Wall Street-sized salary, on a par with those received by the heads of large insurance companies. His compensation includes a $1 million base salary, a $3 million performance bonus for 2003 to be paid in early 2004, plus guaranteed long-term compensation of $4 million. The icing on the cake: a fat $24 million severance payment if he's booted out without cause by November 2004. With the
Bush trumps royalty
Prescott Bush's grandkid can't keep from killin' PLANTS for heaven's sake! Everything he touches seems to die... * GROUND FARCE 1 Nov 23 2003 from the Sunday Mirror in the UK Exclusive By Terry O'Hanlon THE Queen is furious with President George W. Bush after his state visit caused thousands of pounds of damage to her gardens at Buckingham Palace. Royal officials are now in touch with the Queen's insurers and Prime Minister Tony Blair to find out who will pick up the massive repair bill. Palace staff said they had never seen the Queen so angry as when she saw how her perfectly-mantained lawns had been churned up after being turned into helipads with three giant H landing markings for the Bush visit. The rotors of the President's Marine Force One helicopter and two support Black Hawks damaged trees and shrubs that had survived since Queen Victoria's reign. And Bush's army of clod-hopping security service men trampled more precious and exotic plants. The Queen's own flock of flamingoes, which security staff insisted should be moved in case they flew into the helicopter rotors, are thought to be so traumatised after being taken to a place of safety that they might never return home. The historic fabric of the Palace was also damaged as high-tech links were fitted for the US leader and his entourage during his three-day stay with the Queen. The Palace's head gardener, Mark Lane, was reported to be in tears when he saw the scale of the damage. The Queen has every right to feel insulted at the way she has been treated by Bush, said a Palace insider. The repairs will cost tens of thousands of pounds but the damage to historic and rare plants will be immense. They are still taking an inventory. The lawns are used for royal garden parties and are beautifully kept. But 30,000 visitors did not do as much damage as the Americans did in three days. Their security people and support staff tramped all over the place and left an absolute mess. It is particularly sad because the Queen Mother loved to wander in the garden just as the Queen and Prince Charles do now. Some of the roses, flowers and shrubs damaged are thought to be rare varieties named after members of the Royal Family and planted by the Queen Mother and Queen. Other Royals had their own favourite parts of the garden as children and some of those areas have been damaged. The Queen's insurers have told her she is covered for statues, garden furniture and plants she personally owns, but the bill for repairing damage to the lawns and the structure of the Palace will probably have to be picked up by the Government. The Americans made alterations to accommodate specialised equipment. The mass of gadgetry meant the Royals couldn't get a decent TV picture during the visit.
Re: Bush trumps royalty
the Bushes prefer long-dead plants, i.e., oil. BTW, in the lite-comedy movie LOVE ACTUALLY, the Prime Minister of England -- played by Hugh Grant, who would be an improvement over the poodle currently in that position -- gives a great speech against the over-bearing Americans, led by the President. The latter is played by Billy Bob Thornton, who combines the wolfishness of Clinton with the bullying of Bush. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Prescott Bush's grandkid can't keep from killin' PLANTS for heaven's sake! Everything he touches seems to die...
Re: Bush trumps royalty
Well, we just have to agree with the Queen on that one... but let us notice one little thing: The repairs will cost tens of thousands of pounds but the damage to historic and rare plants will be immense. They are still taking an inventory. Notice here that there is no referencing at all to the actual human work which gardeners have to do to tidy up the mess and restore the exulted garden with tender care and the love of plants. It is just talk about damage done and pounds, pounds and more pounds, and there seems not be no glimmer of understanding there at all, that behind those pounds, pounds, pounds there is a gardener who does this work, must do this work, and seeks to restore this garden to its full splendour, not simply for the sake of the Queen, not simply because he has to earn a crust, but because of his belief in a genuine stewardship for nature, nature caringly cultivated in a way fit for people to participate in and enjoy. The oil of such vital interest to the Pentagon and the White House may be like the blood of Jesus, but the gardener thinks further ahead, beyond oiliness, to the health of all living things, forgotten with all the philosophy of grease. Jurriaan
Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement (MST) on Living Room
Tues 11.25.03| Struggles of the Landless Its been called Latin Americas most important social movement. The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement has been occupying and redistributing land in the world's most unequal country for the past twenty-five years, providing a model for agrarian reform struggles in Bolivia, South Africa and Indonesia. Wendy Wolford and Angus Wright have studied the MST for many years and assess its history, successes and challenges. Listen at 12pm PST/ 3pm EST on KPFA 94.1 or on the web at www.kpfa.org Or listen after the fact at www.livingroomradio.orgSasha LilleyProducer, KPFA's Living Room510 848-6767 ext 209 www.livingroomradio.org Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
Re: Easterbrook's new book
Oh damn. I will have to look at that crap, since I am taking on that literature in my new book project. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Easterbrook's new book
Michael Perelman wrote: Oh damn. I will have to look at that crap, since I am taking on that literature in my new book project. btw, it came up in David Brooks's op-ed piece in the Times today. Brooks is being groomed to replace Safire. My own rude comments are interspersed. OP-ED COLUMNIST Refuting the Cynics By DAVID BROOKS The Economist magazine recently observed that in the 40 years following World War II, America and Europe seemed to be growing more like one another in almost every way that matters. Demographically, economically and politically, the United States and Europe seemed to be converging. Then, around the middle of the 1980's, the U.S. and Europe started to diverge. The American work ethic shifted, so that the average American now works 350 hours a year 9 or 10 weeks longer than the average European. American fertility rates bottomed out around 1985, and began rising. Native-born American women now have almost two children on average, while the European rate is 1.4 children per woman and falling. Economically, the comparisons are trickier, but here too there is divergence. The gap between American and European G.D.P. per capita has widened over the past two decades, and at the moment American productivity rates are surging roughly 5 percent a year. The biggest difference is that over the past two decades the United States has absorbed roughly 20 million immigrants. This influx of people has led, in the short term, to widening inequality and higher welfare costs as the immigrants are absorbed, but it also means that the U.S. will be, through our lifetimes, young, ambitious and energetic. Working off U.N. and U.S. census data, Bill Frey, the indispensable University of Michigan demographer, projects that in the year 2050 the median age in the United States will be 35. The median age in Europe will be 52. The implications of that are enormous. As we settle down to the Thanksgiving table in a few days, we might remind ourselves that whatever other problems grip our country, lack of vitality is not one of them. In fact, we may look back on the period beginning in the middle of the 1980's as the Great Rejuvenation. American life has improved in almost every measurable way, and far from regressing toward the mean, the U.S. has become a more exceptional nation. The drop in crime rates over the past decade is nothing short of a miracle. Teenage pregnancy and abortion rates rose in the early 1970's and 1980's, then leveled off and now are dropping. Child poverty rates have declined since the welfare reform of the mid-1990's. The black poverty rate dropped to the lowest rate ever recorded, according to a 2002 study by the National Urban League. The barren South Bronx neighborhood that Ronald Reagan visited in 1980 to illustrate urban blight is now a thriving area, with, inevitably, a Starbucks. (Brooks neglects to mention that many of the original inhabitants were burned out. Those who replaced them are settlers in a kind of gentrification project run amok. Despite the latte, 28.7 percent of the population lives under the poverty line.) The U.S. economy has enjoyed two long booms in the past two decades, interrupted by two shallow recessions, and perhaps now we're at the start of a third boom. More nations have become democratic in the past two decades than at any other time in history. (Or else be blown to pieces--like Nicaragua or Yugoslavia.) In his forthcoming book, The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook piles on the happy tidings. The air is cleaner. The water is cleaner and we are using less of it. Our homes have doubled in size in a generation and home ownership rates are at an all-time high. There are now fewer highway deaths in the U.S. than in 1970, even though the number of miles driven has shot up by 75 percent. (Easterbrook is a notorious anti-environmentalist along the lines of Bjorn Lomborg and John Stossel. For a good rebuttal of his views, go to: http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/3311) Obviously, huge problems remain. But the overwhelming weight of the evidence suggests that despite all the ugliness of our politics, this is a well-governed nation. The trends of the past two decades stand as howling refutation of those antipolitical cynics who have become more scathing about government even as the results of our policies have been impressive. The evidence also rebukes those gloomy liberals who for two decades have been predicting that the center-right governance of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush would lead to disaster. (Interesting that Brook sees Clinton as a link in the chain of these scumbags.) Most of all, the evidence rebuts the cultural critics of the right and left, who have bemoaned the rise of narcissism, cultural relativism, greed, and on and on. And while many of these critics have made valid points, if you relied on their work you would have a horribly distorted view of the state of this
Re: Easterbrook's new book
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/25/03 04:35PM btw, it came up in David Brooks's op-ed piece in the Times today. Brooks is being groomed to replace Safire. My own rude comments are interspersed. OP-ED COLUMNIST Refuting the Cynics By DAVID BROOKS The evidence also rebukes those gloomy liberals who for two decades have been predicting that the center-right governance of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush would lead to disaster. (Interesting that Brook sees Clinton as a link in the chain of these scumbags.) brooks has expressed above number of times...an intellectual lightweight if there ever was one, he now and again makes useful - if not entirely/necessarily accurate - point such as when he suggests in his book 'bobos in paradise' that clintonoids represent merger of 60s (i'd suggest whatever remained of the worst of that decade's dead, stinking carcass) and 80s while bushites represent rejection of it... in any event, so much for ron inglehart's post-materialism thesis... michael hoover
Tommy Franks/WMD/US Constitution
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack John O. Edwards, NewsMax.com Friday, Nov. 21, 2003 Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government. Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men's lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado. In the magazine's December edition, the former commander of the military's Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government. Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that the worst thing that could happen is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties. If that happens, Franks said, ... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy. Franks then offered in a practical sense what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack. It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world * it may be in the United States of America * that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important. Franks didn't speculate about how soon such an event might take place. Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent. But Franks' scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government. The usually camera-shy Franks retired from U.S. Central Command, known in Pentagon lingo as CentCom, in August 2003, after serving nearly four decades in the Army. Franks earned three Purple Hearts for combat wounds and three Bronze Stars for valor. Known as a soldier's general, Franks made his mark as a top commander during the U.S.'s successful Operation Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait in 1991. He was in charge of CentCom when Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11. Franks said that within hours of the attacks, he was given orders to prepare to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan and to capture bin Laden. Franks offered his assessment on a number of topics to Cigar Aficionado, including: President Bush: As I look at President Bush, I think he will ultimately be judged as a man of extremely high character. A very thoughtful man, not having been appraised properly by those who would say he's not very smart. I find the contrary. I think he's very, very bright. And I suspect that he'll be judged as a man who led this country through a crease in history effectively. Probably we'll think of him in years to come as an American hero. On the motivation for the Iraq war: Contrary to claims that top Pentagon brass opposed the invasion of Iraq, Franks said he wholeheartedly agreed with the president's decision to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein. I, for one, begin with intent. ... There is no question that Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America. That intent is confirmed in a great many of his speeches, his commentary, the words that have come out of the Iraqi regime over the last dozen or so years. So we have intent. If we know for sure ... that a regime has intent to do harm to this country, and if we have something beyond a reasonable doubt that this particular regime may have the wherewithal with which to execute the intent, what are our actions and orders as leaders in this country? The Pentagon's deck of cards: Asked how the Pentagon decided to put its most-wanted Iraqis on a set of playing cards, Franks explained its genesis. He recalled that when his staff identified the most notorious Iraqis the U.S. wanted to capture, it just turned out that the number happened to be about the same as a deck of cards. And so somebody said, 'Aha, this will be the ace of spades.' Capturing Saddam: Franks said he was not surprised that Saddam has not been captured or killed. But he says he will eventually be found, perhaps sooner than Osama bin laden. The capture or killing of
Re: Tommy Franks/WMD/US Constitution
aren't there a lot of laws currently on the books that would allow the detention of large numbers of US citizens if/when a national emergency were declared? JD Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack John O. Edwards, NewsMax.com Friday, Nov. 21, 2003 Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government. Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men's lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado. In the magazine's December edition, the former commander of the military's Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.
Re: Tommy Franks/WMD/US Constitution
If General Franks ends his story with the conclusion that It's not in the history of civilization for peace ever to reign. Never has in the history of man. ... I doubt that we'll ever have a time when the world will actually be at peace. then perhaps we ought to start there, making a distinction between a mode of relating which engenders violent conflict, and a mode of relating which engenders non-violent conflict. The foundational premise of the military enterprise, is that violent intervention really solves a problem that could not be solved otherwise, or at least, solves more problems than it creates. And I think we can legitimately question that, when we look at the state of the world after centuries of imperialist violence. Jurriaan
Re: Easterbrook's new book
Why not rebut point by point ? E.g., If he says, The American work ethic shifted, so that the average American now works 350 hours a year 9 or 10 weeks longer than the average European. Then, This is meaningless, because (1) is working longer without holidays a virtue (2) what do you get back for the work in terms of income, (2) the hard work leads only to more debts. If he says, American fertility rates bottomed out around 1985, and began rising. Native-born American women now have almost two children on average, while the European rate is 1.4 children per woman and falling. Then, of course the fertility rates will be different if you have a different demographic structure. That difference in demographic structure is fundamentally due to the occurrence of two world wars on European territory. Europe has as many immigrants entering as the USA. Sex is easier in the USA and cars are cheaper there, now what. If he says, The gap between American and European G.D.P. per capita has widened over the past two decades, and at the moment American productivity rates are surging roughly 5 percent a year. Then, What productivity measure is being used ? More capital produced per worker which can be used by bosses to incur more debts and fund more wars ? If he says, The biggest difference is that over the past two decades the United States has absorbed roughly 20 million immigrants. This influx of people has led, in the short term, to widening inequality and higher welfare costs as the immigrants are absorbed, but it also means that the U.S. will be, through our lifetimes, young, ambitious and energetic. Then, Have a look at the immigration data for Europe. If he says, Working off U.N. and U.S. census data, Bill Frey, the indispensable University of Michigan demographer, projects that in the year 2050 the median age in the United States will be 35. The median age in Europe will be 52. The implications of that are enormous. Then, People who are older are, other things being equal, also wiser and make fewer stupid mistakes. The juice that oils the wheels of American capitalism in the short run, might mean ruination for all in the long run, with the rest of the world paying it off. If he says: As we settle down to the Thanksgiving table in a few days, we might remind ourselves that whatever other problems grip our country, lack of vitality is not one of them. Inquire into who or what we should really be giving thanks for. If he says, In fact, we may look back on the period beginning in the middle of the 1980's as the Great Rejuvenation. American life has improved in almost every measurable way, and far from regressing toward the mean, the U.S. has become a more exceptional nation. Then discuss at whose expense this improvement has occurred, exactly. If he says, The drop in crime rates over the past decade is nothing short of a miracle. Teenage pregnancy and abortion rates rose in the early 1970's and 1980's, then leveled off and now are dropping. Child poverty rates have declined since the welfare reform of the mid-1990's. The black poverty rate dropped to the lowest rate ever recorded, according to a 2002 study by the National Urban League. The barren South Bronx neighborhood that Ronald Reagan visited in 1980 to illustrate urban blight is now a thriving area, with, inevitably, a Starbucks. Then point out the misrepresentation of the facts this contains. And so on... J.
Re: Tommy Franks/WMD/US Constitution
nje, troubling that we have this type of mind high up in the military- little depth for an alternative vision- S Michael Hoover wrote: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack John O. Edwards, NewsMax.com Friday, Nov. 21, 2003 Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government. Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men's lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado. In the magazine's December edition, the former commander of the military's Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government. Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that the worst thing that could happen is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties. If that happens, Franks said, ... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy. Franks then offered in a practical sense what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack. It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world * it may be in the United States of America * that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important. Franks didn't speculate about how soon such an event might take place. Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent. But Franks' scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government. The usually camera-shy Franks retired from U.S. Central Command, known in Pentagon lingo as CentCom, in August 2003, after serving nearly four decades in the Army. Franks earned three Purple Hearts for combat wounds and three Bronze Stars for valor. Known as a soldier's general, Franks made his mark as a top commander during the U.S.'s successful Operation Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait in 1991. He was in charge of CentCom when Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11. Franks said that within hours of the attacks, he was given orders to prepare to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan and to capture bin Laden. Franks offered his assessment on a number of topics to Cigar Aficionado, including: President Bush: As I look at President Bush, I think he will ultimately be judged as a man of extremely high character. A very thoughtful man, not having been appraised properly by those who would say he's not very smart. I find the contrary. I think he's very, very bright. And I suspect that he'll be judged as a man who led this country through a crease in history effectively. Probably we'll think of him in years to come as an American hero. On the motivation for the Iraq war: Contrary to claims that top Pentagon brass opposed the invasion of Iraq, Franks said he wholeheartedly agreed with the president's decision to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein. I, for one, begin with intent. ... There is no question that Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America. That intent is confirmed in a great many of his speeches, his commentary, the words that have come out of the Iraqi regime over the last dozen or so years. So we have intent. If we know for sure ... that a regime has intent to do harm to this country, and if we have something beyond a reasonable doubt that this particular regime may have the wherewithal with which to execute the intent, what are our actions and orders as leaders in this country? The Pentagon's deck of cards: Asked how the Pentagon decided to put its most-wanted Iraqis on a set of playing cards, Franks explained its genesis. He recalled that when his staff identified the most notorious Iraqis the U.S. wanted to capture, it just turned out that the number happened to be about the same as a deck of cards. And so somebody said, 'Aha, this will be the ace of spades.'
cointelpro
http://www.counterpunch.org/ November 25, 2003 Ashcroft's COINTELPRO Neutralizing Dissent in America By DAVID LINDORFF Disclosure of a confidential memorandum sent by the FBI to local police disclosing a massive program of infiltration and surveillance of lawful anti-war and anti-WTO protest movements confirms what most progressives and leftists in the U.S. knew already--that the Bush Administration and the Ashcroft Justice Department have ushered in a full-fledged return to the Nixon-era practice of employing police-state tactics against opposition movements. The disclosure also led to a remarkably light-weight and historically shallow and inaccurate report on those Nixon years by the New York Times. The Times, in an article on Sunday by Eric Licktblau, quite appropriately draws a parallel between the current surveillance efforts of the FBI and the abuses of the national security establishment during the 1960s and '70s, but it minimizes the abuses of that earlier era, and further implies that the abuses ended in 1971. In fact, Cointelpro, a campaign designed, in the FBI's own words, to neutralize and disrupt such target organizations as the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Black Panther Party, etc., and the individuals within them, began officially in 1956, and never really ended. Indeed, the FBI's campaign of surveillance, disruption, character assassination and outright murder were expanded well beyond the agency's own actions to include local police red squads, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, and the National Security Agency, as well as other government agencies. The Times article describes Cointelpro as a program designed to harass and discredit Hoover's political enemies. This hardly does justice to the scope and scale of the program. Hoover did, reportedly, attempt to monitor and undermine his personal enemies, who included a number of politicians in Washington, and he seemed to have a personal vendetta going against Martin Luther King and some other civil rights leaders. But Cointelpro was much more than a device to deal with Hoover's personal foes. It was a broad campaign against organizations that threatened the interests of the state, of presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, and it bred countless other extra-legal operations, including Nixon's notorious legion of White House Plumbers. The scale of the Cointelpro campaign and its less publicized offspring of later years (most of Cointelpro's nefarious activities, exposed during Senate hearings in the early '70s, were made legal by executive orders issued by President Reagan in 1981 during his first year in office), was mind-boggling. I discovered, for example, when I obtained my own FBI file, that in 1969, when I was still 19, I was the subject of an FBI Cointelpro investigation that made use of an agency informant in my school administration at Wesleyan University, simply because of my membership in SDS and the Resistance, an organization that was providing information about resistance to the draft. I also discovered that the Justice Department in Washington was directing the US Attorneys Office in Hartford, CT to have me arrested and jailed for public burning of my draft card in 1969. And I wasn't a leader of anything--just a footsoldier in the antiwar movement. The sorry and frightening truth is that Cointelpro was a massive, and probably hugely successful, campaign by the state to use secret police tactics to destroy a popular movement and its leaders, and to intimidate the public from exercising their constitutionally protected right to protest and organize in opposition to the government and its policies. Furthermore, while as a program with a name, Cointelpro ended in 1971, that campaign of disruption and surveillance has continued uninterrupted through to the present. It is, for example, well known and documented that the FBI, during the Reagan years, was infiltrating and disrupting CISPES, one of the main organizations opposing U.S. intervention in Central America. Similarly, local police red squads, such as the Public Disorder Intelligence Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, with close ties to the FBI, was massively infiltrating and spying on as many as 200 organizations, ranging from the Peace Freedom Party to the National Organization for Women and the Los Angeles Democratic Party as late as 1979, with much of the information collected being turned over to the FBI or a national data base operated by a shady firm with national security links called Western Goals, Inc. That LAPD spy unit wasn't disbanded in the '80s; it just changed its name, and many other local police red squads continued to operate at least into the 1990s. Indeed there is reason to believe that the FBI, barred for many years from infiltrating legal opposition organizations in the domestic U.S., deliberately made use of local police departments to gather information on such organizations. While the Times report on
Amnesty International
I would be grateful for assistance: Recently there was somewhere or other an article analyzing the stances that Amnesty has taken, showing its' marked preference for pro USA positions. Does anyone recall this where it might be found? My goggling being less than Pugliesian in its over-whelming-ness, has been unsuccessful in locating said. Thanks for any help, Cheers, Hari Kumar
Re: Amnesty International
I would be grateful for assistance: Recently there was somewhere or other an article analyzing the stances that Amnesty has taken, showing its' marked preference for pro USA positions. Does anyone recall this where it might be found? My goggling being less than Pugliesian in its over-whelming-ness, has been unsuccessful in locating said. Thanks for any help, Cheers, Hari Kumar http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/AmnestyInternational.htm http://www.counterpunch.org/rooij1031.html Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Tommy Franks/WMD/US Constitution
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack John O. Edwards, NewsMax.com Friday, Nov. 21, 2003 Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government. I gotta disagree with this. The Constitution has already been rendered to the waste bin of history. What we are in the middle of now is the mopping up phase. The corporations have taken over. It's a done deal. When this government hits this country with a weapon of mass destruction it will be to keep dullards glued to the talking furniture while it rounds up what remains of thinking Americans. Of course, I could be wrong. Dan Scanlan
Re: Tommy Franks/WMD/US Constitution
General Franks could of course ponder my argument insofar as he ponders anything (which he does do), but, he might say to me, listen up young man, you ought to look at the bright and positive side of life, and inspire the troops. And I might reply, You try telling that to the Iraqi people. Jurriaan
Rummy and Boeing
[Financial Times] Rumsfeld orders Pentagon probe into Boeing By Marianne Brun-Rovet in Washington and Peter Spiegel in London Published: November 25 2003 23:19 | Last Updated: November 25 2003 23:19 Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, on Tuesday asked Pentagon staff to look into the dismissal of two senior Boeing executives and its impact on an air force deal to lease and buy 100 Boeing 767 aircraft as air-to-air refuelling tankers. The probe may delay the air force plan to lease 20 and buy 80 aircraft, although the deal is part of the defence spending bill that president George W Bush signed into law on Monday. But Mr Rumsfeld said at a briefing he had asked senior Pentagon staff to ask themselves whether the contract should be delayed until the Pentagon had reviewed it. Does it have implications in any way for things that we're doing or thinking about doing? Mr Rumsfeld said he asked staff. We're the custodians of taxpayers' dollars. We have an obligation to see that things are done properly. Boeing on Monday fired chief financial officer Mike Sears after discovering he had tried to hire Darleen Druyun, a US Air Force official, while she was responsible for Boeing-related business. Ms Druyun had overseen the competition for the $22bn Pentagon deal to lease 100 Boeing aircraft. Boeing won the contract and Ms Druyun became a Boeing vice-president shortly after. But the senate's armed services committee forced the Pentagon to modify the deal after fierce criticism from John McCain, the Arizona senator. Mr McCain's campaign helped to launch an investigation by the Pentagon inspector-general into whether Ms Druyun gave Boeing proprietary information about a rival's bid for the tanker contract. The US Air Force on Monday said it was considering asking for a further probe. Meanwhile, leaders of a consortium offering the British defence ministry 19 Boeing 767s yesterday sought to distance themselves from the scandal. Keith Archer-Jones, head of the TTSC consortium, said the American deal to sell the US air force 100 new Boeing 767s was a radically different proposition from his proposal to the Royal Air Force, which calls for revamping existing 767s owned by British Airways. TTSC is owned in equal parts by Boeing, BAE Systems, and UK-based service provider Serco, and - as in the US - pits Boeing-made 767s against Airbus's A330. The £13bn ($22bn) contract is the largest outsourcing deal in the defence ministry's history. Officially, the ministry insisted this week that the firing of Mr Sears and Ms Druyun would have no effect on the outcome of the UK deal. But privately, one government official acknowledged that the problems at Boeing could complicate the decision-making process.
Re: cointelpro
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/EDW311A.html Commentary on General Franks' statement re possible repeal of the Constitution, by Michel Chossudovsky. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!! In today's LA Times, William Arkin, Mission Creep HIts Home, about the increasing domestic role of the military. http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=466424host=3dir=62 Sweeping New Emergency Laws to Counter UK Terror. Most drastic moves in over a century, The Civil Emergencies Bill will allow the British gov't to override civil liberties, confiscate property, restrict movement,... More on this bill at http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0147.html = * My other piece of advice, Copperfield, said Mr. Micawber, you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and and in short you are for ever floored. As I am! Charles Dickens' DAVID COPPERFIELD http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/
Re: Amnesty International
I would be grateful for assistance: Recently there was somewhere or other an article analyzing the stances that Amnesty has taken, showing its' marked preference for pro USA positions. Cheers, Hari Kumar You might try this: www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/credib/2003/1306interview.htm Is Amnesty International Biased? Dennis Bernstein Dr. Francis Boyle Discuss the Politics of Human Rights CovertAction June 13, 2002 Editor's Note It has often been said that Amnesty International's agenda tends to fit nicely with the political needs of the United States and Great Britain. Around the world, supporters of the Nicaraguan people's struggle for self-determination were outraged by the timing of a 1986 Amnesty report critical of the Sandinista government, which helped Reagan push another Contra Aid appropriation through a reluctant congress, at exactly the moment when the anti-Contra movement was beginning to get serious political traction. With regard to South Africa's apartheid regime, AI was critical of the human rights record of the South African government. However, as you will see below, AI never condemned apartheid per se. By the time Amnesty endorsed the Hill Knowlton nursery tale concerning Kuwaiti infants pulled from incubators by Iraqi soldiers, many otherwise sympathetic observers of Amnesty's work became increasingly alarmed. [This was the manufactured (false) incident used to start the first Gulf War -- JW] More than a decade of grassroots organization within Amnesty's membership base finally succeeded just two years ago in moving the organization to take a position critical of the genocidal sanctions against the people of Iraq, sanctions which have killed approximately a million and a half Iraqis, one third of them children. According to Dr. Boyle, this delay was political, and it clearly served the interests of the U.S. and Britain, the two governments on the Security Council preventing the lifting of the sanctions. A recent search of the internet shows that AI Venezuela very quickly took up the U.S. line by charging President Chavez with crimes against humanity for the bloodshed during the recent failed coup attempt against his administration. Amnesty's performance on the April 2002 massacre at Jenin is another blot on its frequently laudable record. As our readers are aware, the United Nations attempted to investigate the Jenin massacre, but was prevented from doing so by Sharon and Bush. The announcement on May 3, 2002 by Human Rights Watch of no massacre at Jenin effectively killed the story, although there was a lot of argument about what constitutes a massacre. No such arguments were heard when a suicide bomber turned a Passover dinner into a tragedy. This magazine will cover the topic of Human Rights Watch in a future issue. For this issue, we were fortunate to be forwarded the transcript of a June 13th [2002] interview with Dr. Francis A. Boyle, professor of International Law and former board member of Amnesty International. What follows is a shortened version of the transcript... __ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/
Re: $/Euro dynamics
Hi PEN-Lers, I am looking for current data on what share of the China US trade surplus comes from American firms such as GM China. Thanks in advance, folks. Seth Sandronsky Date:Mon, 24 Nov 2003 15:04:18 -0800 From:Eubulides [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: $/Euro dynamics Illusion of grandeur The dollar's weakness is buoying up the euro, but that's not necessarily good news for the eurozone economies, writes Mark Milner Monday November 24, 2003 The Guardian During the next couple of days the eurozone finance ministers will be wrangling over what to do with France and Germany's failure to comply with the stability and growth pact. The European commission upped the stakes last week when it said it wanted Germany to cut its budget deficit by more than the Berlin government reckons it can afford. It is a classic row. The commission argues arguing that eurozone countries should stick by the rules, while backsliders warn that doing so would choke off recovery. In the normal run of things, the tug of war over the stability and growth pact would have policy makers twitching with concern about the credibility of the euro. The slightest sign of weakness from the euro would have been interpreted as collateral damage from the battle over the pact. But instead, the single currency has climbed against the dollar to levels not previously seen in its short lifetime. Signs that the US economy is turning feisty while that of the eurozone remains flat merely add to a sense of perversity. European policy makers should not run away with the idea that the euro has become the darling of the foreign exchange market. It hasn't. It is simply that investors prefer it to the dollar, and these days that isn't saying much. The factor giving the euro an unexpected edge is the ballooning US trade deficit. Even the septuagenarian billionaire, Warren Buffett, the sage of Omaha, has confessed that for the first time in his life he has holdings in currencies other than the greenback. Mr Buffett cites the parlous state of the US current account - the broadest measure of trade - as evidence that the US may be living beyond its means. Last week, portfolio investment data showed that international investors are turning leery too. Net inflows were the lowest for five years, and US policies haven't helped much either. The decision to slap quotas on some Chinese textiles added political ineptitude to economic disquiet. While China needs access to the US market to keep growing, the US needs China to recycle its trade surplus into buying dollar assets. If Beijing were to decide to stage a buyer's strike, the dollar would be left in an uncomfortable position. But, for some, the euro's position is uncomfortable, too. The commission and the European Central Bank may argue that currency volatility is more worrying than actual exchange rate levels. Tell that to Germany's exporters who will have to lead the country's crawl out of the economic mire. They fear the euro may not only hit $1.20 but even top it, laying waste to export prospects. As long as the dollar stays out of favour, it will remain a brake on the eurozone. Still, finance ministers will be able to indulge in a decent bout of squabbling this week without having to keep a watchful eye on the foreign exchanges. · Mark Milner is the Guardian's deputy financial editor. _ Share holiday photos without swamping your Inbox. Get MSN Extra Storage now! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es
Rates of profit: Where goes the US economy?
Fred (and all others interested in commenting), Thanks very much for a useful post. It also gave me a chance to revisit your '97 RRPE article which gives valuable perspective (I mistakenly recalled it only analyzed data to the end of the '80s) and see that you find that the fundementals have not changed much since then. If it is any help to the list I have tried to summarize how (in my view) you, Dumenil Levy, and Wolff compare on the assessment of the current rate of profit. [Excuse the simplistic abbreviations of complex issues and arguments. I also realize the large limitations here, and that authors are using mutually incompatible data and categories to tell their 'story' (and that these choices greatly influence the outcome). But, to the extent possible on a mail list, it is a comparison of those 'stories' that I am trying to promote for discussion among us. I also hope to help mobilizing an awareness and desire for greater research of these issues.] 1) Similarities I think everyone agrees that at least since around the early '80s there has been a limited up tick in the profit rate (and you usefully warn us again that the up tick is very limited). In fact, despite the disparate approaches, Wolff, Dumenil Levy, and yourself all broadly concur - profit rates are back to about where they were in the early '70s. I also think everyone agrees that at least a big part of this increase is due to a shift in shares from labour to capital (increase in the rate of surplus value). That leaves the next question: are there also any OTHER factors that have contributed to this weak rise in the profit rate? Is something additional going on 'under the hood'? If so, this could have important consequences both for the description we give and the strategy decisions of a movement. 2) Differences A. Wolff answers no - there is a shift from labour to capital and there are no other big factors. But, as you have pointed out in comments on Wolff's previous work, he has been an exponent of wage-profit squeezes (a bit like the late David Gordon) and never found much significance to the composition of capital (if I recall right, this was in your AER comment on Wolff, and in the Introduction to the book you co-edited with him, but also perhaps a logical extension of your comments on Weisskopf's work in the '80s? Very good work BTW.). B. Dumenil and Levy (using data to 2000) answer, partly yes. Again, we are only talking of a limited rise in the rate of profit - but they do refer to a period of recovery with profit levels comparable to 1970 for the business sector overall and mid '70s for most select categories (although this is still only 60% of the post-war golden age average RoP). In addition to the shift in shares from labour to capital they DO find some of the increase in RoP due to the composition of capital (p.455 for a summary). D L trace this to an increase in the productivity of capital in the 'non-capital intensive corporate sector' that then shows up in the non-corporate business sector as a reduction in the relative price of capital (pp.456-7, the conclusions, and the appendix devoted to this question). In the past, DL have tended to find that the composition of capital is significant and in long wave patterns, so this new work goes along the same lines. C. Moseley (see post below) also answers partly yes, something more than the shift in shares from labour to capital is going on: - that there is an overarching drag on profits, i.e. the ongoing rise in non-productive. While thisrise in non-productive labor has slowed, it continues and so long as it does so, long term prospects for profits are grim. - that there is only a small change in the composition of capital. - that the current weak up tick is largely due to the change in shares favoring capital (and brace for more of the same). Hope this helps. Paul Fred Moseley writes: So I would say that the US economy is still not out of the woods so far as the rate of profit is concerned. Therefore, in terms of the strategic importance of our assessment of the medium-term direction of the US economy that you mention, I think workers will continue to face strong persistent attempts to restore the rate of profit - by wage cuts, pension cuts, speed-up, moving to low-wage areas around the world, etc.. In other words, the attacks on the living and working standards of US workers in recent decades is not over and will continue. I think that is the nature of the challenge that we face. According to Marx's theory, one of the main reasons for the prior decline of the rate of profit was a very significant increase in the ratio of unproductive labor to productive labor (in addition to an increase in the composition of capital). Furthermore, according to Marx's theory, the main reason why the rate of profit has only partially recovered is that the ratio of
Re: $/Euro dynamics
- Original Message - From: Seth Sandronsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 5:28 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] $/Euro dynamics Hi PEN-Lers, I am looking for current data on what share of the China US trade surplus comes from American firms such as GM China. Thanks in advance, folks. Seth Sandronsky === Trade deficit w/China in 2002 was $103billion http://www.ita.doc.gov/td/industry/otea/usfth/aggregate/H02T13.html For info on just how much [as of 2000] was due to US MNC's setting up shop over there see: http://www.ustdrc.gov/research/china1.pdf Some easy stats below: http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20030714-mon.html Jul 14, 2003 Global: The Scapegoating of China Global: Is the Tide Turning? United States: Higher Rates Will Accompany -- Not Kill -- Recovery India: Letting Rupee Appreciate Instead of Cutting Rates Asia Pacific: Two Stars and a Laggard Global: The Scapegoating of China Stephen Roach (New York) A persistently weak global economy is now moving into a dangerous place -- the blame game. Temptations are rising to point the finger elsewhere rather than look in the mirror. Such sentiment is nearly unanimous in singling out a new scapegoat: a rapidly growing Chinese economy. I have picked this up in my recent travels to Japan, Europe, Australia, and around the United States. World opinion is becoming increasingly united in putting pressure on China to defuse this threat by revaluing its currency. In my view, that would be a serious mistake. The world has got the China story dead wrong. The blaming of China goes something like this: With real GDP growth currently hovering near 1.5% in the industrial world, the ongoing vigor of the Chinese economy obviously sticks out -- industrial output up an astonishing 16.9% (y-o-y) in June with exports surging by 32.6%. China is certainly capturing market share in an otherwise sluggish world. The problem is China's currency peg, goes the common complaint. Tied to the US dollar, it has been given a competitive boost by the greenback's recent depreciation. And if I'm right and the dollar has a good deal further to go on the downside -- perhaps as much as 20% over the next couple of years -- then most believe that China's current competitive advantage will become all the more powerful. In this context, the world is nearly unanimous in demanding that China revalue the renminbi in order to relieve a growing source of global tension. I was back in China last week -- my first post-SARS visit -- and this issue came up at every meeting. The Chinese are acutely sensitive to global opinion and are quite concerned at this obvious shift in world sentiment. Although Chinese officials remain unwavering in their commitment to the RMB peg, I was asked repeatedly for my thoughts on how to handle this delicate issue. I urged the Chinese to stay the course -- to leave RMB policy unchanged. I offered three reasons in support of this conclusion: First and foremost, there is enormous confusion over the character of the so-called Chinese export threat. In my opinion, the world has formed an erroneous impression that newly emerging Chinese companies are capturing global market share with reckless abandon. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The real export dynamic in China comes far more from the conscious outsourcing strategies of Western multinationals than from the rapid growth of indigenous Chinese companies. In fact, China's increasingly powerful export machine has the stamp of America, Europe, and Japan all over it. That's been true over most of the past decade. Over the 1994 to mid-2003 interval, China's exports basically tripled from US$121.0 billion to $365.4 billion. It turns out that foreign-invested enterprises (FIE) -- Chinese subsidiaries of global multinationals and joint ventures with industrial-world partners -- have accounted for fully 65% of the cumulative increase in total Chinese exports over that period. (Over the most recent 12-month interval, the FIE contribution to China's 33% export surge was 62%). Not surprisingly, nearly two-thirds of China's foreign-driven export dynamic since 1994 is traceable to the impact of multinationals alone. This is hardly an example of China grabbing market share from the rest of the world. Instead, it is more a by-product of the struggle for competitive survival of high-cost producers in the industrial world. Last year, a record US$52.7 billion of foreign direct investment flowed into China, making the country the largest recipient of FDI in the world. This inflow did not occur under coercion -- it was entirely voluntary. A high-cost industrial world has made a conscious decision that it needs a Chinese-based outsourcing platform for its own competitive survival. A revaluation of the RMB would destabilize the very supply chain that has become so integral to new globalized production models. By putting
China: from bras to tv's
Chinese upset as US imposes TV tariffs David Teather in New York Wednesday November 26, 2003 The Guardian Chinese trade officials said yesterday that they were gravely concerned by a US decision to slap tariffs on imported televisions. The US commerce department ruled that TVs being made by four Chinese firms were being sold in America at less than fair value and announced duties between 28%-46%. The Chinese commerce ministry reacted angrily. A statement said the decision amounted to serious discrimination and unfair treatment of the firms. The comments raised fears of further retaliatory action. A trade mission to US cotton, wheat and soya bean growers by Chinese buyers planned for next month has already been cancelled after the US last week moved to curb the import of Chinese textiles. The US government is coming under increasing pressure from domestic manufacturers and labour unions to act on China and the issue is likely to be a crucial one in next year's presidential election. US firms and labour unions argue that the American manufacturing base is being devastated by free trade agreements with China, where costs are lower and regulations less stringent. The Chinese currency is also pegged to the dollar, which economists argue keeps it artificially low. US TV makers and unions said that imports from China and Malaysia had soared from 210,000 units in 2000 to 2.6m last year. One company affected by the tariffs, Sichuan Changhong Electronic, said it was surprised by the allegation of dumping. All of Changhong's exports to the US have reasonable profit margins, it said. To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any. [Les Paul]
Army Says Troop Rotation Into Iraq Poses Increased Danger
* The New York Times In America November 26, 2003 Army Says Troop Rotation Into Iraq Poses Increased Danger By THOM SHANKER WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 Senior Army officers have told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the rotation of more than 100,000 soldiers into Iraq early next year will present a great risk for American forces, with officials saying they must prepare for a surge in attacks on troops who may be more vulnerable during the transition. The worry, according to Pentagon and military officials, is based on a number of factors, including a temporary increase in the number of troops present in Iraq during the rotation and the prospect that they will be traveling across unfamiliar territory before reaching more secure bases. There will be a lot of movement, a lot of forces in transit, one Army officer said. This raises serious force protection issues for us. While recognizing these risks, American commanders in Iraq say proper planning could result in significant advantages that could help offset the dangers. According to Pentagon and military officials, commanders are planning to take advantage of the overlap of arriving and departing soldiers, which offers a natural, if temporary, increase in troop strength without the politically contentious process of requesting additional forces. Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of American and coalition forces in the region, is said by senior Pentagon officials to be well into planning for new operations intended to help stabilize Iraq and to capture or kill anti-American fighters during the rotation period. Officers declined to discuss specific plans being considered. During the troop rotation, which will take place roughly from February to May, more than 105,000 troops will flow into Iraq to replace the current deployment of about 130,000. A senior Pentagon official said that during planning discussions for the rotation, Mr. Rumsfeld was told by senior officers that the more American forces you have over there, the more targets the other guys have. This issue, the official said, was raised in all of its context: What happens when you have that many more U.S. forces? What are the opportunities? What are the risks? Senior military officers expressed concerns not as a warning, but said it is definitely a factor, the Pentagon official added. Those worries did prompt the Army to begin a series of tabletop simulations to plan for protecting American forces during the rotation, Army officers said. Military analysts outside the Pentagon added another cautionary note, pointing out that the rotation comes during the presidential primary season, which may allow anti-American forces to think they can influence American politics. Guerrilla insurgencies are ultimately about affecting political will, said Loren Thompson, an analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Washington-area policy research center. Even as the White House and Pentagon describe plans for decreasing American troop numbers by spring as driven by military requirements and not domestic politics, anti-American forces are aware of the election cycle and probably hope their violence will diminish support for the effort in Iraq, Mr. Thompson said. They see their attacks as a potentially significant issue for the president's re-election, he said. The bulk of the new troops will first gather at bases in the region outside Iraq, where they will become acclimated to the terrain and weather and join up with their heavy equipment before entering Iraq. Plans then call for arriving units to overlap with those they replace, conducting joint missions. . . . The coming rotation is described by senior Army officers as the largest American troop movement in such a time frame since World War II. Senior Pentagon officials said Tuesday that Mr. Rumsfeld was readying another set of alert orders for reservists to prepare for possible duty in Iraq next year, and that 2,000 to 3,000 additional active-duty marines might also be added to the rotation of forces entering Iraq next year. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/26/international/middleeast/26TROO.html *
Market tolerance: firing a magazine in the Dutch Wild West
AMSTERDAM - The editing bureau of the monthly Dutch business magazine Quote was the target of gunfire yesterday or this morning, by unknown people. Thursday night, the home of Quote publisher Maarten van den Biggelaar in Amsterdam South was the target of gunfire as well. The perpetrators are unknown. The Quote editorial team reckons with the possibility of a revenge action by people who were portrayed in the magazine last year. In the ceiling of the editing room, on the second floor of its premises on the Singel near King's Square, 19 bullet holes were found this morning. According to the editors, they were bullets with a hefty caliber, given the number of bullet holes, presumably fired with a firearm equipped with a muffler. This morning the premises were briefly evacuated by a technical police team for investigation. The shots must have been fired yesterday or last night. Yesterday afternoon there were still people present in the editorial office, an employee said. This morning we discovered the bullet holes. The editorial office was sieved, you can say that for sure, said publisher Maarten van den Biggelaar, who discovered bullet holes in his own home in Amsterdam South. We haven't heard the shots at home, but there appeared to be bullet holes in the window and the ceiling of the room of my son. Is he frightened ? Well, hey, I don't have to answer that now, do I ? Something like this, we've never had to go through before. Van den Biggelaar doesn't want to speculate about the perpetrators. The police will sort that out. No one has claimed responsibility for the action so far. The editorial team connects the shootings with a feature Quote published about the abduction of Mr Heineken as hostage by Willem Holleeder, and his relationship with real estate magnate Willem Endstra. Quote published the story exactly a year ago. He posted with his bicycle at the editorial office. Chief editor Jort Kelder doesn't want to speculate. This is just bizarre, he said. You ask yourself, why us ? Quote is a lifestyle business magazine, we don't rake up so many quarrels. We just do our work, I don't know at all who did this, but if somebody has complaints, I prefer it that we drink a cup of coffee with him instead of bullets going through the ceiling. Translated from Het Parool at: http://www.parool.nl/artikelen/NIE/1069653826149.html Technical note: According to the Scientific Research and Documentation Centre of the Dutch Ministry of Justice, the number of illegally owned firearms confiscated by police has been rising in recent years. For example, in 1995, 992 firearms were confiscated, as against 2576 in 1999 and 2463 in 2000. The number of confiscated pistols and revolvers remains fairly constant, but the number of machine guns encountered by police continued to rise between 1997 and 2000. In 2000, 58 weapons were confiscated per 100.000 inwoners inhabitants in the Amsterdam region, and in Holland as a whole, 1,554 gas and alarm pistols plus 1,781 imitations weapons were confiscated. In Holland, guns can be legally owned, but there are also many illegal weapons. No overview statistics are provided by the Dutch government to citizens about legally owned firearms, to my knowledge, this is all a bit hush-hush. Estimating the total number of illegal firearms owned by Dutch residents is not easy, but it is said to be between 75,000 and 125,000 weapons altogether, suggesting a minimum of one illegal firearm per 200 inhabitants and a maximum of one firarm per 125 inhabitants. Holland contains 7 million households, and has a population of 16.2 million. If therefore there are said to be 5-8 illegal firearms per 1000 inhabitants, and if the average humber of inhabitants per household is about 2.3 people, this suggests one illegal firearm per 87 or so households as a minimum and one illegal firearm per 54 or so households maximum (I haven't the time to calculate it to 5 decimal points). However, this rough estimate refers only to the total population, not to the adult population, and they are not adjusted for the differences between adult households, and family households either. The likelihood that adult households without children would contain illegal firearms is quite possibly greater. By combining demographic, postal and geographic information, it is of course possible to arrive at much more accurate estimates for the presence of firearms within spatial co-ordinates, although the Ministry of Justice has not done this to my knowledge or keeps it secret. But, basically, you can say, there is at the very least one illegal firearm present per street in a residential area, in addition to legal firearms which may be owned by residents. In Holland, the murder rate is still comparatively low, and about 4 out of 10 men are murdered with a firearm, as against just under 7 out of 10 women. The likelihood of murder increases in the weekend, especially among 20-30 year old men, and the overall susceptibility to murder increases
