Fw: Convocatoria revista mexicana
México, D. F., a 3 de febrero de 2004 CONVOCATORIA El Comité Editorial de la revista Política y Cultura de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (México), convoca a los(las) investigadores(as) de las ciencias sociales y las humanidades a enviar propuestas de artículos para ser publicados en el número 23 (primavera 2005). Los artículos deberán inscribirse en cualquiera de las líneas temáticas de esta convocatoria, sujetarse a lo establecido en el documento Requisitos para las colaboraciones y entregarse al Director o enviarse a la dirección electrónica de la revista a más tardar el 30 de abril de 2004. Tema General Migración: nuevo rostro mundial Objetivos: Analizar el significado de los movimientos migratorios, su origen, su desarrollo, el impacto del flujo migratorio en las zonas de origen y de destino de los exiliados, así como la importancia histórica en las formas de organización social y la relación multicultural de los países. Líneas temáticas . Razones políticas, económicas, religiosas y militares de la migración: exiliados, desplazados, evacuados, fuga de cerebros, etcétera. . Flujos nacionales e internacionales. . Políticas nacionales e internacionales ante los movimientos migratorios. . Migración documentada e indocumentada. Además, y de acuerdo con los lineamientos editoriales de nuestra revista, se recibirán propuestas de artículos de matemáticas aplicadas a las ciencias sociales y las humanidades, así como reseñas y entrevistas sobre las líneas temáticas para ser incluidas en el mismo número. Atentamente, José Fernández García Director PD: El documento Requisitos para las colaboraciones puede consultarse también en la página electrónica de la revista: http://cueyatl.uam.mx/~polcul/ Política y Cultura aparece citada en los siguientes índices, bases de datos y colecciones: Banco de Datos sobre Educación Iberoamericana (IRESIE), Benson Latin American Collection, Citas Latinoamericanas en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CLASE), Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI), Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y El Caribe, España y Portugal, en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (Red ALyC), Sistema Regional de Información en Línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina, El Caribe, España y Portugal (Latindex) y Ulrich's Periodicals Directory. REQUISITOS PARA LAS COLABORACIONES 1.Los artículos que se envíen para ser publicados deberán ser resultado de investigaciones de alto nivel dentro de las líneas temáticas de la convocatoria correspondiente; asimismo, deberán ser inéditos y no haber sido ni ser sometidos simultáneamente a la consideración de otras publicaciones. 2.Los trabajos deberán entregarse al(a la) Director(a) del Comité Editorial o enviarse por correo electrónico dentro del plazo establecido a la dirección: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 3.Las colaboraciones se acompañarán de una breve referencia de los(las) autores(as) que contenga: nombres completos, institución de pertenencia, áreas de investigación, dirección, teléfono, fax y correo electrónico. 4.Los textos se entregarán en original y dos copias, elaborados e impresos en computadora en formato Word, anexando el disquete respectivo, escritos en letra Arial de 10 puntos a espacio y medio con una extensión global máxima de 50,000 caracteres, incluyendo espacios. Los trabajos no deberán exceder de 25 páginas incluyendo texto, cuadros, gráficos, fotografías y mapas, de ser el caso. 5.Se incluirá un resumen en español del contenido del trabajo con una extensión máxima de 100 palabras (siete u ocho líneas), así como cinco palabras clave. 6.Se recomienda que el título no exceda de 60 caracteres, incluyendo espacios. 7.Todas las notas y referencias deberán ir a pie de página, conteniendo, cuando sea el caso, la información bibliográfica correspondiente con los siguientes datos, ordenamiento y formato: nombre(s) y apellido(s) de los (las) autores(as), título (entrecomillado si es artículo o subrayado si es el de la obra); nombre completo del traductor, prologuista, compilador, etc., si los hay: lugar de edición, casa editora y año de publicación; número (s) de la(s) página(s) consultada(s). No deberá incluirse bibliografía al final del texto. 8.Si la colaboración incluye citas textuales, estas deberán seguir las siguientes modalidades: si ocupan cinco líneas o menos irán precedidas de dos puntos y entrecomilladas; si son de mayor extensión se ubicarán en párrafo aparte, con sangrado, sin entrecomillar y a un espacio. Los agregados que hubiera en alguna cita textual deberán ir entre corchetes. 9.Cuando se utilicen acrónimos, el nombre correspondiente deberá escribirse in extenso la primera vez que aparezca, seguido del acrónimo entre paréntesis. 10.Los cuadros, gráficos, fotografías, mapas y todo elemento gráfico deberán entregarse tal y como se obtienen del programa o el equipo con que se hayan
Maoist Rebellion Shifts Balance of Power in Rural Nepal
* The New York Times February 5, 2004 Maoist Rebellion Shifts Balance of Power in Rural Nepal By AMY WALDMAN BARDIYA, Nepal - Until two-and-a-half years ago, Rachna Sharma and her husband lived as zamindars, or landlords, in this district in western Nepal, presiding over an ample estate just as their forebears had done. As members of a high caste, they did not dirty their hands working their land. That was left to the Tharus, a landless and powerless ethnic group indigenous to this plain area. Until 2000, when the government, under pressure, freed them, thousands of Tharus - including 15 families on Mrs. Sharma's estate - lived as bonded laborers, equal to slaves. But today Mrs. Sharma, an aristocratic beauty, lives as a refugee, if a cosseted one, in the town of Nepalganj. Maoist rebels are living in her former house and cooking in her kitchen. The Tharus are farming her lands - and keeping all of the crops. When they come to see her in town, she tries, futilely, to wheedle a share, making requests where she once issued commands. Now we have to be polite to them, Mrs. Sharma, 36, said. The guerrilla insurgency that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) began against the constitutional monarchy eight years ago has wreaked great damage in this country of Himalayan scenery and epic poverty. More than 8,500 people have died, including more than 1,500 since the end of August, when a cease-fire broke down. The insurgency has also, in parts of rural Nepal, wrought changes in the balance of power between the landed and the landless that multiparty democracy - ushered in with great expectations in the early 1990's - failed to bring. That dynamic helps explain why a rebellion that many say has become a criminal enterprise as much as a political movement still finds support among the Tharus and other disenfranchised ethnic groups and the country's low castes. In the villages of Bardiya, young Tharus talk happily about how the landlords have had to flee the Maoists' wrath. All the zamindars are scared of us now, said Bal Krishna Chaudhary, an intense 18-year-old Tharu student from a family of former bonded laborers. His eldest sister, Sita, was a Maoist supporter taken by the army more than two years ago. They said she was carrying a bomb, a charge he denies, but he does not dispute her Maoist sympathies. They speak for the people, he said, explaining why. They speak for the Tharus. Like a creeper wrapping itself around a tree, the Maoist movement has used the entrenched poverty and discrimination of this Hindu kingdom's deeply feudal society to build its insurgency. Nepal has perhaps the most rigid caste hierarchy remaining today. This country has been, and still is, dominated by two high castes: the Brahmins - called Bahuns in Nepal - or priestly caste, of Mrs. Sharma; and Chhetris, or warrior caste, of her husband. The two castes hold the highest positions in government, politics and business. They control the army and the press. And perhaps most crucially in a society still reliant on agriculture, they own the land. Much of that land was once farmed by the Tharus, an aboriginal group in Nepal's lowlands. With a population of about 1.2 million, out of Nepal's 24 million, they are one of the country's largest ethnic groups. Once self-sufficient farmers, the Tharus were gradually dispossessed as the government granted land to high castes to secure their loyalty and expand its reach. Then, the eradication of malaria - to which Tharus are believed to be immune - drew in large numbers of hill migrants to claim Tharu lands. Tharus, little educated and ill-equipped to battle for their rights, went from being owners to landless tenants. For several generations, an estimated 20 percent or more of Tharus in western Nepal - some 20,000 families - were indentured, usually with no hope of escape. The Maoists did little or nothing to free the Tharus from bonded labor; the pressure on the government came from domestic and international organizations. But the Maoists have woven the uplifting of the Tharus - and of Nepal's other downtrodden groups - into their tapestry of slogans, and it has resonated among a people who believe that both royalist rule and multiparty democracy have failed them. We work with them because we think they can help raise our issues and get us our rights as citizens, Bal Krishna Chaudhary, the student, said. He knew seven people who had joined the Maoists, he said. Most are dead or missing. Ekraj Chaudhary, a Tharu radio journalist based in Nepalganj, said he believed that most Tharus were involved with the Maoists, even if only passively. But even in the movement, he said, they were still relegated to low-level militants, and thus easy prey for the army. Col. Dipak Gurung, a spokesman for the Royal Nepal Army, said the Maoists were exploiting the Tharus. Tharus are very meek people, they normally don't resist, he said. By nature, by culture, they are submissive. No longer, as Mrs. Sharma could
Kerry and Skull and Bones
Title: Message Kerry Skull Bones War Criminal... by Skull Bones Kerry Sunday, Jan. 18, 2004 at 10:47 AM What Skull Bones Member Sen John Kerry don't want you to Know/Remember... Portion of John Kerry remarks on NBC's "Meet the Press" May 6, 2001: MR. RUSSERT: You mentioned you're a military guy. There's been a lot of discussion about Bob Kerrey, your former Democratic colleague in the Senate, about his talking about his anguish about what happened in Vietnam. You were on this program 30 years ago as a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. And we went back and have an audiotape of that and some still photos. And your comments are particularly timely in this overall discussion of Bob Kerrey. And I'd like for you to listen to those with our audience and then try to put that war into some context: (Audiotape, April 18, 1971): MR. CROSBY NOYES (Washington Evening Star): Mr. Kerry, you said at one time or another that you think our policies in Vietnam are tantamount to genocide and that the responsibility lies at all chains of command over there. Do you consider that you personally as a Naval officer committed atrocities in Vietnam or crimes punishable by law in this country? KERRY: There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals. (End audiotape) Here is some more info about Kerry from former VIETNAM POW Michael Benge... John Kerry's war record When Mr. Kerry pontificated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Veterans Day, a group of veterans turned their backs on him and walked away. They remembered Mr. Kerry as the anti-war activist who testified before Congress during the war, accusing veterans of being war criminals. The dust jacket of Mr. Kerry's pro-Hanoi book, "The New Soldier," features a photograph of his ragged band of radicals mocking the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, which depicts the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, with an upside-down American flag. Retired Gen. George S. Patton III charged that Mr. Kerry's actions as an anti-war activist had "given aid and comfort to the enemy," as had the actions of Ramsey Clark and Jane Fonda. Also, Mr. Kerry lied when he threw what he claimed were his war medals over the White House fence; he later admitted they weren't his. Now they are displayed on his office wall. Long after he changed sides in congressional hearings, Mr. Kerry lobbied for renewed trade relations with Hanoi. At the same time, his cousin C. Stewart Forbes, chief executive for Colliers International, assisted in brokering a $905 million deal to develop a deep-sea port at Vung Tau, Vietnam ? an odd coincidence. As noted in the Inside Politics column of Nov. 14 (Nation), historian Douglas Brinkley is writing Mr. Kerry's biography. Hopefully, he'll include the senator's latest ignominious feat: preventing the Vietnam Human Rights Act (HR2833) from coming to a vote in the Senate, claiming human rights would deteriorate as a result. His actions sent a clear signal to Hanoi that Congress cares little about the human rights for which so many Americans fought and died. The State Department ranked Vietnam among the 10 regimes worldwide least tolerant of religious freedom. Recently, 354 churches of the Montagnards, a Christian ethnic minority, were forcibly disbanded, and by mid-October, more than 50 Christian pastors and elders had been arrested in Dak Lak province alone. On Oct. 29, the secret police executed three Montagnards by lethal injection simply for protesting religious repression. The communists are conducting a pogrom against the Montagnards, forcing Christians to drink a mixture of goat's blood and alcohol and renounce Christianity. Thousands have been killed or imprisoned or have just "disappeared." The Montagnards lost one-half of their adult male population fighting for the United States, and without them, there might be thousands more American names on that somber black granite wall at the Vietnam memorial. As Mr. Kerry contemplates a run for the presidency, people must remember that he has fought harder for Hanoi as
Geronimo's Remains
Title: Message A friend sent you this great article from Lovearth Network News asking you to please read it. http://www.georgewalkerbush.net/wherearetheyhidinggeronimosskull.htm
House votes to extend unemployment benefits
House votes to extend unemployment benefits From Ted BarrettCNN Feb 5, 2004 WASHINGTON (CNN) --Thirty-nine Republicans crossed party lines to join Democrats in approving a six-month extension of unemployment benefits to about 375,000 people whose regular benefits have run out. But passage may be little more than symbolic because opposition from GOP leaders is expected to prevent the measure from ever becoming law, which means unemployed workers are unlikely to receive the benefits, lawmakers from both parties predicted. Democrats hailed the vote to extend the temporary federal unemployment insurance benefits, which was attached to an unrelated bill dealing with community block grants, as evidence there is majority support in the GOP-controlled House for the extension -- an issue Democrats have pushed for months. But House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, dismissed the vote as a "clever political stunt" designed to give the Democrats fodder for the campaign season. "Sometimes people vote for political reasons," DeLay said about the GOP defections. "It's more important to provide jobs than unemployment." A Republican aide said the extension is not needed because the economy is improving and the unemployment rate is down. Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online
Kerry all but owns Michigan
Kerry all but owns Michigan BY KATHLEEN GRAY AND PATRICIA MONTEMURRI DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS February 5, 2004 U.S. Sen. John Kerry's commanding advantage in polls leading up to Saturday's Michigan caucuses has diminished the state's once-heralded status as a must-win state. Two of the top Democratic presidential contenders have given up campaigning in Michigan. Candidates John Edwards and retired Gen. Wesley Clark on Wednesday wrote off campaigning in Michigan before Saturday's caucuses to focus on Tennessee and Virginia primaries Tuesday. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who was once the front-runner in the state, today visits Flint, Royal Oak and Detroit to help counter comments he made Tuesday that he was conceding the state to Kerry. Kerry, of Massachusetts, plans to campaign Friday in Detroit, Warren and Flint, but that's not enough for Detroit's mayor and the local NAACP president, who warned the candidates not to put too much stock in poll numbers. Detroit "is probably the most Democratic city in the country and to not come here, to not participate during this caucus, I think is pathetic and ignorant," said Kilpatrick, who likes Dean but hasn't endorsed a candidate. "Michigan is the home of the Reagan Democrats. It's the home of organized labor. It's the home of an 80-percent-plus African-American city that wants to be engaged," said Kilpatrick. But it may not matter anymore. Just two days left until Michigan's Democratic presidential caucuses, and where are the candidates? Where are the ads? Where is the buzz? "Michigan is moot and I hate saying that, because it discourages people from showing up to vote," said Craig Ruff of the Lansing-based Public Sector Consultants. "But it certainly smells like the candidates have ceded Michigan to Kerry." Kilpatrick and the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, urged all contenders to show up at a town-hall meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. tonight at Detroit's Northwest Activities Center. Dean and the Rev. Al Sharpton are the only candidates planning to attend. Anthony was upset about that. "You can't diss us in the winter and expect to come back and kiss us in the fall," he said. More than 90 percent of Detroit voters supported the Democratic presidential ticket in 2000. Kerry and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio have campaign events scheduled in Detroit on Friday. Kerry and Dean have both campaigned in Washington state this week for the state's caucuses, also on Saturday. Maine has caucuses on Sunday. Kerry is expected to win in Maine and Washington. Edwards' Michigan campaign spokesman, Brad Anderson, said his candidate's schedule wouldn't bring him to Michigan because of campaign commitments in Tennessee and Virginia, which have primaries Tuesday. Anderson said the North Carolina senator's schedule decision meant no disrespect to Michigan's African-American voters, and said Edwards got significant support from black voters in his South Carolina victory and in other states. "This is not about dissing the African-American community," said Anderson. Edwards "feels he has more time to get his message out in states like Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin." Dan Kildee, cochairman of Clark's campaign in Michigan, said Clark never expected to win Michigan. He said it makes more sense for Clark to campaign in Tennessee, where he has a chance to win. Kilpatrick said of Edwards' decision: "He's making a big mistake and it's going to kill his campaign." Ed Sarpolus of the Lansing-based polling firm EPIC/MRA said Edwards' message could resonate with Michigan voters. "Skipping a visit to Michigan is a mistake. The populist message for the black community and his focus on issues appeals to young, college-educated women," said Sarpolus. His firm's polling of 300 likely caucus voters showed the Kerry runaway is for real, with Kerry at 58 percent, Dean at 13 percent, Edwards at 12 percent and Clark at 7 percent. Sharpton and Kucinich had negligible support. Other political observers described the absences of some candidates as misguided. Michigan's 154 delegates "are the highest total of this presidential contest so far," said Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Melvin Butch Hollowell. "It's a mistake for Edwards and Clark to skip the state. . . . "Our voters want to see your face and look into your eyes." While disappointing, the lack of face-time in Michigan is understandable, said Ruff of Public Sector Consultants. "You have to play a type of guerrilla warfare and pick and choose the areas where you have the best opportunity to win," said Ruff. Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, supports Edwards, although his union has not issued any endorsement. Gaffney said Wednesday he wouldn't second-guess Edwards' campaign strategy. Gaffney said polls indicate a race for second place between Edwards and Dean. And he said Dean could show strongly because he is backed by three
Update on Annie Mae's case
Title: Message SIRENS IN THE NIGHT:THE DEATH OF YET ANOTHER INDIAN WARRIOR By antoinette nora claypoole There is a water shortage in many places on the planet. Today in the courtroom of Rapid City's Federal building, that reality was a deception.Just like so many things about this complex and brutal murder trial. Tears were running like big rains into the arroyos of Northern New Mexico. Whichis where Darlene Nichols, aka Kamook Banks has lived over the past fewyears. From where she now flees, taking FBI relocation money with her, $42,000 in the past six months according to her testimony. Perhaps just like a storm over desert she imagines she was arriving to help. But sometimes lightening kills and sometimes slides bury drive by cars. With driversinside of them. This is what the courtroom was like today, in Rapid City. Myeyes still aching from tears I never expected to shed. For the loss of yet another Indian warrior woman happened right there for Judge and family to see. Darlene was one of a series of Indian women called to the stand today by the prosecution. She in her cry me a river presence she selected for the juryand observers a psychic connection to what it feels like to watch a warrior die. And that is what happened today. To Kamook Banks. She was no longer the AIM woman who claimed sovereignty for Indian people. She is now Darlene the woman dressed as a man in short hair and polyester blazers who with sullenresolve kisses into the schemes of a government she once knew would as easily murder her as any one of her best friends.Kamook spoke of her current relationship. With the FBI. Talked of how theyhelp her out, spoke with disdain about Leonard Peltier and revealed shecooperated full heartedly with a wiretap of her good friend Troy Lin. Withsomething like a mutant monotone voice Darlene said she believed herhusband, Dennis Banks 'was involved in the murder of Annie Mae". Ever sincehe phoned her about it back in Feb. 1976. Finally , she confessed, she "hadto do something." So she turned into the very thing that Annie Mae wasaccused of being. By the man who was lovers to them both. Kamook has beddeddown with the FBI that threatened the life of her best friend, her childrenand lover. Probably the intensity of this transformation of radical to FBIsnitch/collaborator was only softened by the fact that the defense attorney,Timothy Rensch, rose to the status of thunder being as he continuallyobjected to hearsay evidence (mostly to no avail). And then finallychallenged Special Agent Wood, FBI agent who was involved in investigatingAnnie Mae back in the day when she was walking with us here. What calledthis storm into the courtroom today? It was a slow rumble which shook manyof us like a 4.5 in northern California. The courtroom silenced, even thelaptop keyboards of New York Times reporters quiet as Darlene revealed not ashred of Kamook left inside of her heart.Still. Kamook herself was as rain in a needed dry season when she delivered somberly the truth she believed necessary to speak. That she had turned tothe FBI soon after her divorce from Dennis Banks.Dennis Banks was phoned by the New York Times during a court break forcomment. He did not come to the phone today. Maybe tomorrow will be a betterone for him. The father of Darlene's four children. Has muted theirrelationship. She spoke today like a Catholic girl to her confessor, kissingthe ring of the bishop prosecutor, telling the sins of silence, selling thesacredness of woman strength to the white men who examined her life. Whenshe spoke about Annie Mae the portrayal was one of a pitiful scared womanwho was captured and overpowered by the people around her.Kamook Banks aka Darlene has become the snitch Annie Mae never was. Theeerie paradox of this feels like some kind of a legend written with thewrong ending. Yet many of us know differently about Annie Mae, and though this trial haslittle to say of Annie Mae alive and brave, Troy Linn Yellowood, another witness in the collection of Indian women "presented" today, Troy Linn didher best to defy the prosecution and talk of Annie Mae as a woman who defiedher accusers. "Either kill me off or defend me" was what Troy Linn remembersAnnie Mae saying to her accusers, while Mathalene White Bear remembered Annie Mae as someone who cared deeply for her daughters, her family. Andthen relayed to us the story of the silver ring. Which might just top Tolkien's classic for mysticism and symbolic liberation. If it had a different ending. The courtroom and jury heard about how John Trudell cameto get a silver ring, in Santa Monica near the sea. A ring Annie Mae hadsent as a sign of distress. But White Bear implied Trudell never bothered toprotect Annie Mae from the death threats the ring was meant to signify."I hope the next time you see this ring it is on my finger. But if it comesto you any other way, you'll know I'm in trouble. Then you should
Re: disabilty
Joel, Thanks for this! Michael - Original Message - From: Joel Blau To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 5:31 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] disabilty Michael:You want "Laid-Off Workers Swelling the Cost of Disability Pay," written by Louis Uchitelle, and published on the first page of The New York Times on September 1, 2002.Joel Blau MICHAEL YATES wrote: I am looking for articles showing a rise in disability claims by workers in the US. I seem to remember one from the NYT arguing that this was a from of disguised unemployment. Any help appreciated. Michael Yates
Made in China -- With Neighbors' Imports
Made in China -- With Neighbors' Imports ¡ªRegion Growing Dependent on Giant Market Washington Post | 5 feb by Peter S. Goodman http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14093-2004Feb4.html TANGKAK, Malaysia -- With a decisive yank of his long-handled scythe, the worker sliced away a palm frond, then pulled magenta-ripe bunches of fruit down to the soil. The harvest of the Sagil Estates palm oil plantation began its journey to the ports of China, a route that traces a reordering of the global economy. Workers swept the chestnutlike fruit into woven baskets and dumped it into a cart pulled by a water buffalo. The cart carried the fruit to a truck that hauled it to a nearby mill, where steaming cookers extracted its juices. The resulting oil would be pumped aboard tankers and shipped to points worldwide -- more than one-fifth of it to China. There, it would grease the cooking pots of the world's most populous country, fill the fryers of instant-noodle factories and yield cosmetics and soap. As China's economy rapidly adds mass, it strengthens its pull on the rest of Asia. Rubber plantations in southern Thailand are filling demand for tires as China's auto industry accelerates by 75 percent a year. Rice farmers in northern Thailand now ship half of their premium jasmine rice exports to China and Hong Kong. Steelmakers in Japan and Korea, supplying the spines of the skyscrapers filling China's cities, now call China their largest customer. Computer chip plants in Taiwan, Korea and Malaysia press to satisfy the demand from the factories of coastal China, which now assemble vast quantities of electronics. And as China seeks to diversify its sources of energy while struggling to meet demand for power, it is tapping oil and gas fields in Indonesia and Australia. In the United States, Europe and Japan, fretful attention has been trained on the $438 billion worth of goods that China exported last year, provoking talk that its rise as a trade power is decimating manufacturing communities in the rest of the world. But here in Southeast Asia, the focus has largely shifted to the counterpart number -- the $413 billion worth of goods China imported last year, with the region's economies capturing a disproportionate share of the spoils. Last year, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines all saw exports to China swell by more than 50 percent, helping to change perceptions of China from potential threat into a land of opportunity. But the shipments also create some new concerns: Southeast Asia's dependence means that its own growth could be vulnerable if China's economy cools. And as Chinese manufacturing grows in sophistication, it likely will eat into the flow of finished products those countries send directly to the United States, Europe and Japan. For now, the biggest problem is simply keeping up with demand as China's relentless industrial expansion absorbs larger quantities of material. During the first nine months of 2003, China bought more than $15 billion worth of machinery and transportation equipment from Southeast Asia, according to Goldman Sachs, a leap of more than 70 percent from the same period a year earlier. Over the same period, China's imports of minerals, oils, chemicals, plastics and rubber from Southeast Asia jumped by half, to $6.4 billion. For 2003, China was our biggest buyer, said Yong Chin Fatt, general manager of the commodities section at IOI Group, the Malaysian conglomerate that owns Sagil Estates along with more than 60 other palm oil plantations. Malaysia's shipments of palm oil to China have nearly doubled over the past two years as has the price for its crop. IOI is now planting new acreage in anticipation of greater demand. We don't see China as a threat, Yong said. We see China as a savior. Sarasin Viraphol, executive vice president at the Charoen Pokphand Group Co. Ltd., a Thailand-based poultry conglomerate that was the first official foreign investor in the People's Republic of China, once worried that Southeast Asia could be wiped out by a flood of low-cost goods from the Middle Kingdom. Now, he sees it differently. If you make Chinese people richer, they are going to want all those things people want, he said. Can you imagine 1.3 billion people eating the way Americans eat? There might not be enough chicken in all the world. In recent months, China's leaders have signaled that they fear the economy could be overheating, tightening credit flowing to the country's fastest- growing sectors such as autos and real estate. They are cognizant that too much investment can spawn a disastrous bubble, a supply glut that eventually sends prices down. If such an unraveling were to occur in real estate, it could force China's banks, already stocked with some $500 billion in bad loans, to write off tens of billions more. Most economists now expect China to slow somewhat this year from a torrid pace that has seen growth in excess of 9 percent a year for the past two
China: Fears of social unrest as rural land grab worsens
Fears of social unrest as rural land grab worsens 40 million farmers have lost out in the name of progress SCMP | 5 feb by Nailene Chou Wiest http://www.chinastudygroup.org/index.php?type=newsid=4619 Each year two million mainland farmers lose their land and drift into the cities, only to be unable to secure a job or an education for their children. About 40 million farmers have been driven from the land nationwide and discontent over corruption and the low compensation they have been paid could seriously affect social stability unless their rights are better protected. This warning, published in the official People's Daily on Monday, was the latest call for the government to address land abuse, which is likely to be the hot issue at the annual conference of the National People's Congress next month. The problem has become acute since the campaign to develop the west accelerated the seizure of land from farmers for roads, dams, utilities and industrial parks. Half of the land appropriated by local governments had been resold to commercial developers, the report said. The farmers in those areas were paid a maximum of 18,000 yuan - enough to live for seven years in the countryside or two years in towns. Various taxes and levies are often deducted from the compensation or the payments are delayed for years, forcing thousands of landless farmers to join the swelling ranks of disgruntled people who have petitioned Beijing in the past two years. Under the constitution, all land belongs to the state or collectives. Only governments can acquire land and seizures are often carried out in the name of economic development or job creation. But in reselling the land at higher prices to developers, local governments often pocket most of the profits. The People's Daily article called for measures to increase the amount of compensation and allow farmers to share any profits from resales. It also urged local governments to take more responsibility for creating jobs and providing housing for dispossessed farmers. A resolution at the third plenum of the 16th Communist Party Congress last October stated that the wanton appropriation of farmland must be curbed to protect the rights of farmers and the security of the nation's grain production. Minister of Land and Resources Sun Wensheng announced in December that the government would put land officials below provincial level under the ministry's control, therefore depriving local governments of the right to control land use. Mr Sun said that close to half of the nation's 6,015 economic development zones had either been abolished or merged, and about 168,000 land fraud cases were investigated. At a recent meeting on fighting corruption, state investigators said that this year they would focus more on social injustices such as abuses by officials in land acquisitions. - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Ian Buruma on Occidentalism
Dear Professor Ian Buruma, As a Bard College graduate from the class of 1965, I continue to be impressed by the transformation of what Walter Winchell called the little red whorehouse on the Hudson into a wholly owned subsidiary of George Soros's Open Society. Along with your fellow NY Review of Books contributor Mark Danner on the Human Rights faculty, Bard seems uniquely positioned to lead the legions of the Cruise Missile liberal-left. In the latest Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i22/22b01001.htm), you have an article titled The Origins of Occidentalism that stakes out the rather courageous position that the West must resist Islamic radicalism. One reading it is reminded of those propaganda films from WWII when a swastika was seen sweeping across Europe like a vast oil spill on the Atlantic. By 1947 the swastika had been replaced by the hammer-and-sickle. And, today, in the latest phase of the war against the Other, the symbol of evil is the Islamic crescent. Joining with Thomas Friedman and other guardians of the Rational and Enlightened West, you look to Turkey as a symbol of what the rest of the Islamic world can become: The best chance for democracies to succeed in countries as varied as Indonesia, Turkey, and Iraq is if moderate Muslims can be successfully mobilized. But that will have to come from those countries themselves. Even though Western governments should back the forces for democracy, the hard political struggle cannot be won in Washington, or through the force of U.S. arms. In your view, the war against the West has less to do with imperialism or global inequality than it does with hatred for modernization and universalism. Since Jews supposedly symbolize these values, they are singled out by terrorists. Supposedly, Islamic radicals are following in the footsteps of European fascists and Japanese militarists who sought to smash 'Americanism,' Anglo-Saxon liberalism, and 'rootless cosmopolitanism' (meaning Jews). Hence, Auschwitz, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 become amalgamated. One wonders where you get this prettified version of Anglo-American society. My studies of English and US history leave me with an entirely different perception. Rather than a tableaux based on the Bill of Rights, NPR's All Things Considered and the Universalist Unitarian Church, I see an open sewer of blood and shit. In John Toland's biography of Hitler, he notes: Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa And for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination-by starvation and uneven combat-of the 'Red Savages' who could not be tamed by captivity. In other words, Hitler drew inspiration from your liberal and rational Great Britain and USA when it came to core aspects of his genocidal program. Not to speak of his admiration for another element of our culture. Nazi marching band music was copied from American Ivy League football rallies that Hitler heard on records brought back to Germany from one of his henchmen who had been at Harvard. It also seems highly specious to depict pro-Western moderates in Islamic countries as defending democracy from a siege mounted by democracy and Pepsi-Cola hating Islamicists who evoke the Orcs in The Lord of the Rings movie, since history teaches a somewhat different lesson. In 1992, when being poised to won an electoral majority, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was thwarted by the Algerian army which arrested most of its leadership. Since then, guerrillas fighting in the name of the FIS and its more radical offshoot, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), have fought a terrorist war with the Algiers regime. It is difficult for any rational and fair-minded person to choose sides in a war which has cost civilian lives on either side, although you appear to profess sympathy for the uniformed torturers whose disrespect for democracy touched off this disaster. In Turkey, the story is depressingly similar although at less cost to civilian bystanders. In 1998 the moderate Welfare Party, which was also the largest party in Parliament, was banned and its leaders were charged with sedition. Although the ban was expressed in terms of suppressing fundamentalist challenges to Kemalist secularism, it seems much more likely that unhappiness over an 80 percent annual inflation was being channeled through the Islamist party, just as resentment over corruption and poverty in Algeria was. Since the United States and England had backed all and any efforts in the Arab and Islamic world to smash Marxist parties, it is no big surprise that hatred of imperialist exploitation is taking a rather atavistic form as hijacked planes are used as terrorist weapons. As Malcolm X, another Islamic radical once said, the chickens are coming home to roost. Louis
Capitalist plagues
http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=1227 A Deadly Plague of Slums By Mike Davis Mass death soon may be coming to a neighborhood near you, and the Department of Homeland Security will be helpless to prevent it. The terrorist in this case will be a mutant offspring of influenza A subtype H5N1: the explosively spreading avian virus that the World Health Organization (WHO) worries will be the progenitor of a deadly global plague. The most lethal massacre in human history was the 1918-19 influenza pandemic that culled more than 2 percent of humanity (40-50 million people) in a single winter. Although never proven, many researchers believe that the pandemic was caused by a bird virus that exchanged genes with a human strain and thus acquired the ability to spread easily from person to person. Humans have little immune protection against such species' jumps. The biological reservoir of influenza is the mixed agriculture of southern China where wild and domestic fowl, pigs (another influenza vector) and humans are brought into intense ecological contact in farms and markets. Breakneck urbanization, a soaring demand for poultry and pork, and what Science magazine recently characterized as denser concentrations of larger poultry farms without appropriate biological safeguards create optimum conditions for the rapid evolution of viruses and their promiscuous passage from one species to another. Influenza, indeed, is like a viral fashion industry: every winter changing styles (glycoprotein coats) to create new strains, but then, perhaps every 30 years, undergoing a revolution (species jump) that unleashes a virulent pandemic. The last pandemic killed half a million people in 1968, but scientists interviewed by Nature and Science expressed fears that H5N1 might be on the verge of evolving into something more like the 1918-19 monster. Although so far we have confirmation only that it has been transmitted by direct contact with birds and especially their droppings, the current strain is far more lethal than last year's SARs epidemic that caused so much international havoc. As a result, a top researcher told Nature, Everyone's preparing for the worst-case scenario. At this moment, WHO investigators are checking on the terrifying possibility that the first human-to-human transmission has already occurred in Vietnam. Moreover H5N1 is spreading at a much higher velocity than previous avian flus. There have been outbreaks annually since 1997 -- a phenomenon that puzzled WHO researchers until they discovered that migratory birds are dying in large numbers across Asia. (It is chastening to recall that West Nile virus, also a bird disease, was able to fly across the Atlantic.) H5N1's progress has also been abetted by poor monitoring and government secrecy in half a dozen countries, but especially in Thailand, Indonesia, and China. The Chinese staunchly deny covering up an avian epidemic as they did SARs, but the eminent virologist Kenneth Shortridge, interviewed by Science, said all evidence points to natural reservoirs in southern China where the disease might have emerged as early as last October. This winter's moderate flu epidemic, which overwhelmed emergency rooms and quickly used up supplies of vaccine, vividly demonstrated how ill-prepared even the richest countries are to deal with an imminent pandemic. Current vaccine production lines, which depend upon a limited supply of fertile hen eggs, couldn't meet even a fraction of potential demand. But a true pandemic would probably overwhelm the world long before a vaccine could be developed and produced in large quantities. The potential accelerators of a new plague are the huge slums of Asia and Africa. Concentrated poverty, indeed, is one of the most important variables in any model of how a pandemic might grow. The bustees of Kolkata, the chawls of Mumbai, the kampungs of Jakarta, or the katchi abadis of Karachi are, from an epidemiological standpoint, landscapes saturated in gasoline, only awaiting an errant spark like H5N1. (Twenty million or more of the deaths in 1918-19 were in poor, congested and recently famished parts of British India.) Last fall the United Nations Human Settlements Program published a historic report, The Challenge of Slums, warning that slums across the world were growing in their own hothouse, viral fashion. One billion people, mainly uprooted rural migrants, are currently warehoused in shantytowns and squatters' camps, and the number will double in the next generation. The authors of the report broke with traditional UN circumspection to squarely blame the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its neocolonial conditionalities' for spawning slums by decimating public-sector spending and local manufacturing throughout the developing world. During the debt crisis of the 1980s, the IMF, backed by the Reagan and Bush administrations, forced most of
inequality no longer measured?
I noticed today that the personal distribution of income numbers that come from the Census Bureau that measure inequality (e.g., http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ie3.html) stop at 2001, just as they did a year ago. Has the Census stopped collecting these numbers? Last year at about this time, the name of the page seems to have changed from income inequality to income equality, as if to sugar-coat their message. have the Bushwackers cut off funds to prevent the dissemination of numbers indicating the skewed nature of the benefits of their program? yes, I know the answer. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Taboo Questions
Title: Message
In my classes, as an
extra-credit assignment, I ask the students for the following: "With respect to
any culture, any period of history, any person(s) with real power, present a
list of questions that would highly likely result in your death and/or your
career being totally destroyed if posed."
Some of the
responses I get are truly amazing. Of course this exercise has many purposes and
effects. It teaches them that the "permissible" limits of questioning and
analysis need not be explicitly spelled out by the powers-that-be and are well
understood and adhered to on a mass level and particularly by whoring academics,
journalists, politicos, religious bodies etc. Why, for example, not one word
about Skull and Bones, the nature of the organization, its methods of
recruitment, agenda, provclivities, occult rituals, racism, misogyny,
anti-Semitism, sexism, homophobia (yet homo-erotic rituals), felony thefts
("copping" or "crooking"), associations etc--all of which speak directly to the
issue of the character--and fitness for access to nuclear codes and warmaking
capabilities--(e.g. Bush and Kerry)of those who would seek to belong to it
and be proud of membership in it?
1) [Press
Conference, Reich Chancellory, 1938] Mr. Hitler, you have often written and
talked about the "Aryan Ideal"--blond, blue-eyed, tall, muscular, statuesque,
etc--yet you are short, fat, overweight, pasty and anemic looking, with dark
hair and brown eyes. Shouldn't the "Fuhrer" of a supposed Aryan State look
much more like the "Aryan Ideal" than you appear to look like? Do your own
physical features not suggest that you yourself are some kind of "mongrel"
racially and a candidate for your own methods to deal with
non-Aryans?
2) [Press
Conference, Washington D.C. 1803] Mr. Jefferson, given that a slave by
definition is in no position to give truly free, informed and voluntary consent
to do anything requested to do, does that fact not indicate that in addition to
being a patent liar and hypocrite, your sexual activities with Sally Hemmings
also make you also a rapist? And as a follow-up Mr. Jefferson, how could someone
write all that flowery and eloquent stuff you wrote in the Declaration of
Independence and in your letters and yet keep your own children and their mother
in slavery?
3) [Press
Conference, Washington, D.C. 2004] Mr. Bush, you continually make a public point
of--and trade on--your supposed "born-again" Christianity. What kind of
"Christian" is it that belongs to an occult secret society, as you and Kerry
both do,that engages in ritualistic masturbation while laying naked in a
coffin recounting one's supposed sexual history, felony thefts/holdings of
remains of deceased Natives like Geronimo, patently racist rituals mocking
victims like Abner Louima and the brutality he suffered at thehands of
NYPD, promotion of racist eugenics and eugenics laws, graverobbing,
Machiavellian schemes, covert support of outright nazis--past and present--and
all sorts of Satanic or Satanic-like rituals?
Jim
C.
James M. Craven
Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi
Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business
Division Chair
Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin
Blvd.
Vancouver, WA. USA 98663
Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360)
992-2863
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5
Employer has no
association with private/protected opinion
"Who controls the past
controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George
Orwell)
"...every anticipation of
results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx,
"Grundrisse")
FREE LEONARD
PELTIER!!
Re: inequality no longer measured?
Devine, James wrote: I noticed today that the personal distribution of income numbers that come from the Census Bureau that measure inequality (e.g., http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ie3.html) stop at 2001, just as they did a year ago. Has the Census stopped collecting these numbers? Last year at about this time, the name of the page seems to have changed from income inequality to income equality, as if to sugar-coat their message. have the Bushwackers cut off funds to prevent the dissemination of numbers indicating the skewed nature of the benefits of their program? yes, I know the answer. But it may not be the right answer. Census is often very slow about updating those historical tables. But appendix table A-3 in the annual income booklet http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p60-221.pdf gives you the historical gini series. And they're still calling it income inequality in the text. Doug
Re: inequality no longer measured?
my faith in humanity is restored. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 10:34 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] inequality no longer measured? Devine, James wrote: I noticed today that the personal distribution of income numbers that come from the Census Bureau that measure inequality (e.g., http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ie3.html) stop at 2001, just as they did a year ago. Has the Census stopped collecting these numbers? Last year at about this time, the name of the page seems to have changed from income inequality to income equality, as if to sugar-coat their message. have the Bushwackers cut off funds to prevent the dissemination of numbers indicating the skewed nature of the benefits of their program? yes, I know the answer. But it may not be the right answer. Census is often very slow about updating those historical tables. But appendix table A-3 in the annual income booklet http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p60-221.pdf gives you the historical gini series. And they're still calling it income inequality in the text. Doug
Re: inequality no longer measured?
Hi Jim, My own experience of statisticians is that they have a lot of curiosity and appreciate tidy workmanship, they aim for objectivity, and that they try to help the clients, but they can get annoyed with people who don't know what they're talking about. They often have a high political awareness, but normally don't like participating in political or power games, and can be very cynical about the political game. Their problem is that different political fashions come and go, which may create new data requirements, where (1) people may ask for impossible things, and (2) do not use the data already available as it should be. Somehow, the statistician has to reconcile the continuity of data sets and series, with requirements for new data and data compilations. Usually the government looks for data which proves, justifies or is compatible with its case, and publications are oriented to that, and to market demand, hence, in the presentation of data, the statistician can be influenced by the political requirements of the day. However, normally the statistician tries to have specialised and detailed information available on request, to scholars and researchers, and inquiries are always welcome, because this helps to establish what information people actually want. The biggest problem that statisticians have, is to know exactly what data people want, and what data is relevant, so that it can be presented correctly, so that it is really useful and relevant. The real situation is, that much more data is collected, than is actually tabulated or published, that is an inherent characteristic of the statistical enterprise, because to construct a statistical aggregate that is used, normally requires the production of initial sets of base data that is not used or underused. In data economics, the emphasis therefore is to devise data classifications, query and collection systems which reduce the amount of data sets required to produce the data reports for which there is real demand or potential future demand, while preserving the continuities necessary for comparisons over time. For example, say that you need to measure the change in the value of inventories. You can survey the value of inventories at initial and final balance dates, but you can also survey an enterprise directly about the value of the change in inventories over an accounting period. In the former case, you obtain several stock aggregates and then calculate the change in value, in the latter case, you only have one aggregate, i.e. the value of the change (but then you don't know the actual stock levels). Of course, it is better to have the stock levels for estimation purposes in this case, it is better to have too much data than too little, but the aim of data economics is certainly to reduce the amount of data you don't really need anyway, or have little use for. In modern times, there has been a trend among management, to see a statistics department as a factory producing a data commodity (we produce the numbers, other departments will interpret and analyse them) but this is useless because a statistics department must always be autonomously self-reflective, interpret its own data, and understand the overall meaning of its own activity. If it does not do so, it starts to confuse the means and ends of its own activity. It is a desirable characteristic of government statistics departments that they should be impartial and responsive to information demand, but these imperatives can conflict at times, such that the statistician is forced into a situation of trying to be all things to everybody, which is impossible. In statistical classification theory, it is well-known that classifications contain value-judgements which may be ideological, and also, that data collections and presentations may emphasise some themes over others, in a way that may inadequately describe the real situation. But, the conscientious, scientific statistician aims to compensate for this in two ways: (1) by making additional information available on request to citizens; (2) by devising classification systems, data storage systems and tabulations which permit alternative presentations to users and alternative aggregations; (3) by distinguishing clearly between measurable entities, and entities which cannot be measured for technical or financial reasons. The client may complain about the presentation of data, because it does not fit with his ideas, but the data could be presented in any number of ways, and the way it is presented normally reflects actual data demand, i.e. actual data use or consumption, assessed on the basis of user or consumption statistics and qualitative assessments of type of query. Originally, the collection of population and income statistics in civil society started in connection with taxation policy, at which time statistics was called political arithmetick, and since that time, the compilation of official statistics has always been a politically
Bush on MTP
George W. Bush is on NBC's Meet the Press - live. The word is that internal polls have turned very bad at the white house. Clearly the risky strategy of allowing Bush to be on live TV answering hard questions from possibly the most articulate and direct mainstream journalist (Tim Russert) confirms this. This president has the fewest live press conferences by far of any president in history. No doubt corporate pressure will be put on NBC to let him off easy. I believe it would help to let the show know how many americans feel it is important to have their questions asked. Let's be heard. Encourage others to send e-mails in their own words. If you feel to...send an email to the show to encourage the questioning to be reflective of the despair many of us feel about how this administration represents us. Use- [EMAIL PROTECTED] That so much of this country's assets have been put at risk to execute a global war strategy when so little money can be found to fix roads and hire teachers, to provide health coverage and secure things right here, is incomprehensible . pass the word...
new surf 'n turf special
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=487945 Scientists could make GM beef with healthy fish oils By Steve Connor, Science Editor 05 February 2004 It sounds like a culinary catastrophe but scientists have shown that it may soon be possible to breed beef cattle whose meat is enriched with the healthy properties of fish oil. The researchers have shown that it is possible to create genetically modified (GM) mammals that secrete the Omega-3 constituent of fish oil in their muscles. Although the work has so far been carried out only on laboratory mice, the Harvard University scientists believe it is just a matter of time before a similar attempt is made on farm livestock. Jing Kang, the leader of the research team from Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said that mammals cannot normally make their own Omega-3 fatty acid which is found in abundance in fish oil and is known to prevent heart disease and furred-up arteries. However, when the research team inserted a gene into mouse embryos for an enzyme that can help to synthesise Omega-3, the researchers found abundant amounts of Omega-3 in muscle tissues and relatively low amounts of the less beneficial Omega-6 fatty acid - which the enzyme converts into Omega-3. The researchers wrote in the journal Nature: The obvious follow-up would be to create livestock animals and see if their tissues also contain Omega-3s, Dr Kang said. Some domestic livestock, such as laying hens, are already fed a diet rich in fish oils in the hope of boosting levels of Omega-3 in farm products. But the scientists believe a that a GM alternative could be more effective. Mr Kang said that meat, milk or eggs from the GM animals will not taste fishy because Omega-3 does not have a taste. Correction of the usually Omega-3 deficient western diet has become a key step towards reducing the risk of several modern diseases, Dr Kang said. The enzyme gene used in the study was derived from a nematode worm. The gene, called fat-1, helped to convert Omega-6 fatty acid into Omega-3 and causes no apparent harm to the laboratory mice, the researchers said. Another possibility to explore would be gene therapy to introduce fat-1 directly into human tissues, he added. That idea could lead to people being able to manufacture their own Omega-3 internally. Lord Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association, which certifies organic farmers, dismissed the idea that the research would lead to GM farm livestock that would benefit human health. We know that all or nearly all such claims turn out to be rubbish, Lord Melchett said. There is a widespread view that GM farm animals are going to be even less acceptable to the public than GM crops. Joyce d'Silva, of Compassion in World Farming, said the idea of creating GM livestock enriched with Omega-3 is an appalling prospect. Omega-3 is easily obtained from plant sources such as rape oil. GM and cloned farm animals often suffer from a range of defects, such as malformed limbs or organs, Ms D'Silva said.
new LBO web and radio product
Newly added to the LBO website http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com: An interview with Slavoj Zizek - the Sage of Ljubljana on Iraq, Bush, Chomsky, fantasy 'Action Will Be Taken': Left Anti-intellectualism and Its Discontents, by Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood, and Christian Parenti (comments highly welcome!) Newly added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: January 22, 2004 MARATHON SPECIAL Noam Chomsky on Bush, empire, and the facts * Barbara Ehrenreich on Global Woman * Naomi Klein on market fundamentalism in Iraq * Alexandra Robbins on John Kerry and Skull Bones January 15, 2004 Archi Piyati of Human Rights First (formerly LCHR) on the barbaric U.S. treatment of refugees * Satya Gabriel on the Chinese economy they join - January 8, 2004 Anthony D'Costa on the Indian economy * Anatol Lieven on Afghanistan's new constitution * Joan Roelofs, author of Foundations and Public Policy, on foundations' influence on politics and culture December 18, 2003 Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, on the Central America Free Trade Agreement * Simon Head, author of The New Ruthless Economy, on working in the era of surveillance, restructuring, and speedup December 11, 2003 Steffie Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Program on the Medicare reform bill * Robert Pollin, author of Countours of Descent, on neoliberalism and the economy of the 1990s December 4, 2003 Psephologist Ruy Teixeira on Bush's poll numbers * Michael Dawson, author of The Consumer Trap, on marketing November 27, 2003 Thanksgiving Bigotry Discrimination Special: Joel Schalit, author of Jerusalem Calling, on the Counterpunch collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism * Patrick Mason on the economics of race (rebroadcast of June 19, 2003, interview) November 13, 2003 Tim McCarthy John McMillan, editors of The Radical Reader, on the history of American radicalism * Christian Parenti, author of The Soft Cage, on surveillance in America from slavery to the Patriot Act along with -- * Nina Revoyr on the history of Los Angeles, real and fictional * Bill Fletcher on war and peace * Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy * Susie Bright on sex and politics * Anatol Lieven on Iraq * Lisa Jervis on feminism pop culture * Faye Wattleton on a poll of American women * Joseph Stiglitz on the IMF and the Wall St-Treasury axis * Naomi Klein on Argentina and the arrested political development of the global justice movement * Ursula Huws on the new world of work and why capitalism has avoided crisis * Michael Albert on participatory economics (parecon) * Michael Hudson, author of a report on the sleazy world of subprime finance * Hamid Dabashi on Iran * Marta Russell on the UN conference on disability * William Pepper on the state-sponsored assassination of Martin Luther King * Sara Roy on the Palestinian economy * Christian Parenti on his visit to Baghdad * Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, and Cynthia Enloe on the then-impending war with Iraq * Michael Hardt on Empire * Judith Levine on kids sex * Richard Burkholder of Gallup on polling Baghdad * Walden Bello on the World Social Forum and alternative development models * Christopher Hitchens on Orwell and his new political affiliations * Ghada Karmi on her search for her Palestinian roots * Jonathan Nitzan on the Israeli economy -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 38 Greene St - 4th fl. New York NY 10013-2505 USA voice +1-212-219-0010 fax+1-212-219-0098 cell +1-917-865-2813 email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] webhttp://www.leftbusinessobserver.com
movie review
from Alternet Corporations Are Insane By Ross Crockford AlterNet January 29, 2004 Enron. WorldCom. Bechtel. Halliburton. To the cheerleaders on MSNBC and in The Wall Street Journal, such deceitful, profiteering companies are a few bad apples in a healthy economic barrel, as rare as a murderer in a convent. But a new documentary that premiered at the Sundance festival film last week argues that these rogue companies aren't the exception, they're the rule. The controversial premise of The Corporation is that every company is legally programmed to act like a psychopath. And the bigger it gets, the worse it behaves. The corporation is a paradox, says Mark Achbar, who co-directed and wrote the documentary with Vancouver filmmaker Jennifer Abbott and law professor Joel Bakan. It generates tremendous wealth, but at tremendous social and environmental cost. Achbar, best-known for his 1992 documentary Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, says that when he started working on the new film six years ago, it originally was about the anti-globalization movement. But he realized that the growing protests were really against corporate power - and despite the millions of news hours and pages devoted to mergers, acquisitions, marketing strategies and CEO profiles, no one had really examined the history and the character of the corporation itself. An unlikely subject for a hit film, perhaps. But The Corporation's entertaining mix of interviews, cartoons and old industrial films has already won three people's choice prizes at film festivals, including Sundance's World Cinema Documentary Audience Award (sponsored, ironically, by Coca-Cola). In Canada, where The Corporation has garnered rave reviews - one compared it to the best issue of Harper's magazine set to music - it's currently playing to sold-out theatres across the country. Everybody wants to buy their products from a socially responsible corporation, not from some horrible polluter, Achbar says. The question is, how are we going to resolve this dilemma? As the film spells out, corporations have often been regarded with suspicion. America's founding fathers worried that enterprises like the Dutch West India Company, which controlled vast areas of the new world, would overwhelm their republic. (Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend: I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.) So when the U. S. government granted charters allowing new corporations to come into being, the terms were restricitve. But corporations grew in size and power during the booming 19th century, and their owners wanted to expand their legal rights as well. Since owners or shareholders couldn't be held personally liable, they argued, the corporation itself should be treated as a person - thus entitling it to all the protections of the Constitution. The argument was accepted by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1886, in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway Company. Consequently, a corporation today has the right to free speech, the right to own property, and the right to due process of law, just as a person does. So what kind of person is it? To answer that question, the film ingeniously compares notorious examples of bad corporate behavior to a list of psychiatric symptoms. Nike jumping from sweatshop to sweatshop in ever-poorer countries? That shows an incapacity to maintain enduring relationships. Monsanto's refusal to acknowledge the harm caused by Agent Orange? That's an incapacity to experience guilt. Corporate directors are required by law to do only what's best for the company, regardless of the consequences to anyone else - in other words, a corporation is motivated purely by self-interest. Add up the symptoms, as an FBI consultant does onscreen, and the corporation starts to resemble Ted Bundy. Several of these points are scored in the film by Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, writer Naomi Klein and historian Howard Zinn. The filmmakers also interviewed CEOs - and discovered that many of them are equally troubled by corporate pathology. The perverse genius of the corporation is not just that it maximizes profit by offloading as many costs (employee education, environmental cleanup) as possible onto the public; it also enables owners and managers to simultaneously claim that each other are ultimately responsible for the company's actions. Even to those at the top, the corporation seems like a monster beyond anyone's control. Even though the perception is that you have absolute power to do what you want, the reality is that you don't have that power, says Sam Gibara, the former CEO of Goodyear, when asked in the film about the massive layoffs he oversaw in the late 1990s. Sometimes, if you really had a free hand, if you really did what suited your personal priorities, you'd act differently. But as a CEO you cannot do
Respect ?
Michael, I was visiting the Respect project site at http://www.respectproject.org/main/context.php and I wonder if you have a policy on this ? The site some (rather tame) comments: Developments in IST technologies have introduced new research tools and greatly multiplied the sources of information available. The speed of change combined with the volume of information available makes it increasingly difficult to verify the authenticity, originality, or reliability of data available on the Internet and raises issues of research quality. These developments also raise issues of intellectual property. The availability of material in digital form (and of technologies for the digitisation of hard copy material) makes plagiarism easier to carry out. Simultaneously the sheer volume of information available makes such plagiarism much more difficult to detect. Even when there is no conscious intention to plagiarise, the increasing pressures on the research community to deliver results speedily creates incentives to 'borrow' more widely than was traditionally the case. The new forms of electronic publishing, or circulation of drafts attached to emails also blur the line between the 'public' and the 'private'. Early drafts of material may reach a much wider audience than that originally intended, and confidential material may inadvertently be made public. This has serious implications for data protection, particularly in the case of qualitative research (such as case studies or Delphic polls) or surveys where analysis is carried out in a highly disaggregated form. A breach of trust between researchers and respondents may thereby be created. J.
so much for 're-regulation'
[even some accountants are getting upset!] Nobody is called to account Mis-selling, stock hyping and tax avoidance are out of control, but the authorities show no sign of bringing the finance services industry to heel Prem Sikka Friday February 6, 2004 The Guardian Last week the Financial Services Authority revealed that 5.3 million endowment mortgage policy holders face a shortfall of around £30bn. This is on top of the £11bn pensions mis-selling scandal affecting around 1.4 million people. UK bank chiefs admit that credit companies are ripping people off and more than £100bn is estimated to be sitting in bank accounts giving derisory returns to investors. There have been some puny fines for pension mis-selling, but no company executive has returned his or her financial rewards. No company has been prosecuted or closed for the biggest financial scandals. Yet this is only a small part of the rottenness affecting the finance industry. Its fingerprints are clearly visible on the Parmalat, Enron, WorldCom and other scandals. Many dubious transactions and schemes were designed by accountants, lawyers, bankers and financiers with only one thing in mind: their fees. When executive pay packets are tied to financial results, almost anything goes. Some of the biggest financial houses have been hyping up business with misleading research, unduly influencing the market and making secret fees. In April 2003, after extensive investigations, 10 big financial houses (including Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, JP Morgan, Bear Stearns and UBS Warburg) were fined a total of $1.4bn (£760m) by US regulators for feeding misleading stock market research to investors in an attempt to drum up business and higher fees. For years, Morgan Stanley steered clients toward preferred mutual funds in exchange for millions of dollars in commission payments from those fund companies. Investors were not told of the practice nor the higher fees. The regulators eventually homed in and, in November 2003, the company was fined $50m. In 2002, banking giant Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) agreed to pay $100m to US regulators to resolve allegations of abuses involving initial public stock offerings. A few months later, two executives were fined $200,000 each for their role in the firm's alleged abuses in distributing shares of hot new stock offerings. The comparatively light fines seem to do little to curb the industry's appetite for more money and profits. The $7.5 trillion-a-year US mutual fund industry is engulfed in scandals. It is the usual story of secret kickbacks for promoting stocks. Another example of rapacious behaviour, some of it lawful even if anti-social, is corporate tax avoidance, which has reached epidemic proportions. With the help of accountants and lawyers, WorldCom funnelled $19bn of income through tax haven subsidiaries to avoid taxes. Enron paid its bankers, lawyers and accountants $88m to avoid $2bn in taxes. A 2,700-page report by a US senate committee estimates that it will take 10 years to unravel the dubious schemes operated by the company. Yet the tax avoidance industry shows no remorse or sense of public responsibility. Another report by a senate committee claims that Deutsche Bank lent billions to enable companies to construct transactions for the sole purpose of avoiding taxes. In recent years, large accountancy firms earned $1bn in fees from selling tax avoidance schemes, which the authorities are closely examining, especially as $85bn of tax revenues have been lost. The tax authorities are investigating 125 accounting, banking and law firms for selling tax avoidance schemes which may be costing the US taxpayer $170bn each year. The Big Four accounting firms, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst Young, Deloitte and KPMG, are facing regulatory action and a number of lawsuits over tax schemes which may be unlawful. According to a senate report, KPMG had a complex infrastructure for developing, marketing and selling around 500 tax products. Just four strategies netted $180m in fees. In internal emails, a senior US tax professional told colleagues that if regulators took action over their sales strategies, the possible penalties were much less than the potential profits. One email said: Our average deal would result in KPMG fees of $360,000 with a maximum penalty exposure of only $31,000. KPMG recently announced that it had overhauled its US tax practice. The same financial mammoths dominate the UK, but regulators here do little to check their power and privileges. The chairman of the Financial Services Authority admitted last April to having evidence of systemic bias in analyst recommendations and of bad management of conflicts of interest among merchant bankers, financial analysts and stockbrokers, but there have been no prosecutions and the government rarely shows any interest in cleaning up the finance industry. Other countries make estimates of tax
