Re: Lesser evil politics in Russia
At the risk of annoying people through overposting, I wanted to make one more brief comments (I'm busy at the moment, and don't have much time to self-edit): I wrote: For one thing, not many Western reporters know Russian (and very few Russians know English). For another, they get cycled through with amazing speed. They tend to recycle the ideological line they are fed; e.g., Khakamada is presented as a beleagured democrat, even though her popularity rating is lower than the margin of error in most polls. -- I add: Another reason Western reporting tends to be such crap is that nobody who is actually important in Russia will talk to them, except for oligarchs and the liberals, whose entire support base is overseas. The Putin people, the KPRF, Rogozin and Glaz'yev don't give a fuck about what the West thinks of Russia. They target the Russian electorate; they have no interest in talking to the New York Times.
More on Argentina
Im not that knowledgeable as others on this list about these matters, but an interesting sidelight for me has been the reported role played by the Bush administration which has, in effect, inadvertently (or perhaps not so inadvertently) run interference for the Argentineans. North American football fans will recognize this as the expression which describes how big linemen clear the way for smaller running backs to skirt past the opposition. The US doesnt reportedly want to see a big IMF bailout of the banks; its Britain, Japan, and Italy who do. The conservative Republicans apparently have decided to draw the line here as concerns moral hazard the breakdown of lending self-discipline by the banks confident that governments and international financial institutions (IFI's)like the IMF will always be there to bail them out in the case of debt default. Paul ONeil, the former Treasury Secretary, was keen that if the banks wanted to speculate in risky emerging market debt, they should expect, as speculators, to be subject to the discipline of the market without expecting government/IFI relief. Leaving aside whether this is actually how the system works, the Kirchner government has taken advantage of this emergent US view to deepen the ideological split within the IMF. The FT article I referred the list to yesterday quoted the Argentinas economy minister Roberto Lavagna as follows: I agree that you must not use the money of American plumbers and carpenters or German dentists to bail out Argentina, Turkey or any other country. But if you take that decision many other things have to happen too. One of those things, he says, is that the world has to get used to lower debt-recovery levels. the FT article continues. And quotes Lavagna again: That is the reality. It was not Argentina's decision. It was the US's, and it means we have to carry out a restructuring deal with our own resources. The opponents of the US line cite Lavagna's stance, of course, as an example of how this approach just encourages defaults and bankruptcies and debt reductions by poorer nations, knowing that theyre not going to be subject to US heavy pressure to pay up. They say this ultimately puts the big banks and by extension the worlds financial system at risk, and these are simply too big to fail. The banks, of course, have always used this Cassandra cry to their advantage. Anyone else have any further information or special insights to offer about this reported ideological split? Todays FT report on Argentinas decision to pony up an IMF repayment, as had mostly been expected, follows. Marv Gandall Argentina agrees to meet IMF debt deadline By Adam Thomson Financial Times March 10 2004 Argentina on Tuesday agreed to make a $3.1bn payment to the International Monetary Fund, narrowly avoiding what would have been the biggest single default in the fund's history.The move broke a deadlock between President Nstor Kirchner's government and the IMF. Argentina is already in default with its private creditors after the country stopped servicing almost $100bn of debt in December 2001.It is expected IMF management will recommend that the fund's board members formally approve Argentina's second review under the current standby programme. Formal approval, expected within about two weeks, would unlock funds about equivalent to yesterday's payment. Argentine investors expressed relief at the agreement. The peso strengthened against the dollar while Argentine stocks and bonds were also higher. But there was no reaction in global markets, where some kind of deal had been expected. Global markets have generally been immune to this crisis, perhaps foolishly so, said Guillermo Estebanez, emerging markets currency strategist at Banc of America Securities. The agreement comes as the IMF searches for a new managing director after Horst Khler, the fund's current head, resigned last week after he was proposed as Germany's next president.Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's prime minister, said on Tuesday he would back the nomination of Rodrigo Rato, Spain's economy minister, to spearhead global attempts to head off financial crises. Details of how the IMF and Argentina broke the impasse were unclear on Tuesday afternoon. But people close to the negotiations told the Financial Times that Argentina had agreed to several IMF demands over the country's treatment of its private creditors. The most important of these is that Argentina should agree to enter formal negotiations with its private creditors to restructure the country's defaulted sovereign debt. Until now, Argentine authorities have gone out of their way to avoid using the word negotiation and, according to creditors, have done everything possible to delay the process. As part of the deal, Argentina will formally recognise the Global Committee of Argentina Bondholders (GCAB), a group claiming to represent institutional and retail investors holding about $37bn of defaulted Argentine bonds. It is
Re: Lesser evil politics in Russia
Chris Doss wrote: The Putin people, the KPRF, Rogozin and Glaz'yev don't give a fuck about what the West thinks of Russia. They target the Russian electorate; they have no interest in talking to the New York Times. You make Putin sound almost like Robert Mugabe. I would argue that all of his measures have been calculated to make Russia attractive to Western investors. The Banker December 1, 2003 Comment Support Putin Or Face A Return To The Bad Old Days - Western Investors Should Back President Putin In His Battle With The Oligarchs, Who Are Likely To Block Any Reforms That Would Harm Their Own Interests The Western media used to chastise Russia for allowing the oligarchs to run the place. When Boris Yeltsin was president, it was difficult to know who was calling the shots: the oligarchs or the president. The oligarchs were, in fact, created by Mr Yeltsin's controversial privatisation, in which they received state assets at rock bottom prices; and they continued to control the state throughout his presidency. When Vladimir Putin became president, he set out to wrest control back from the oligarchs. One outcome was that Boris Berezovsky (who was enormously powerful under Mr Yeltsin) and Vladimir Gusinsky went into exile. Mr Putin's deal with the others was that, provided they kept out of politics, no-one would investigate their acquisition of state assets. Peace was achieved and Mr Putin got on with the challenging job of forging a capitalist economy out of Russia. Reforms of the tax code and land ownership are among his achievements and the economy is marching ahead at a healthy clip. But no-one should be under the impression that Russia has reached the status of mature democracy. Given the upheaval and schisms of the past decade, that would be highly improbable. Under those circumstances it is best to back the reformers, even if their methods do not yet meet the ideal. In the furore between the now-jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Mr Putin, the stance of the Western press and investors to side with Mr Khodorkovsky is ill advised. We do not yet know the outcome of the fraud and tax evasion charges levelled against him but they are serious matters even if the reason for prosecuting them was political (to stop him financing opposition parties). If Mr Khodorkovsky were to prevail, the likelihood is that Russia would be thrown back into the Yelstin era and the reforms (or anything that didn't suit the oligarchs) stalled. Right now, the democratically elected Mr Putin has to defend his turf by fair means as well as foul if Russia is to progress further. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Lesser evil politics in Russia
-Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] You make Putin sound almost like Robert Mugabe. I would argue that all of his measures have been calculated to make Russia attractive to Western investors. Economic advisor to the president Andrei Illarianov is on record as saying that Russia does not need foreign investment. Jailing Khodokorkovsky is not a way to entice investment. Anyway, a great deal of the foreign investment going into Russia is from Cyprus; that is, it is offshore Russian capital re-entering the country to take advantage of the stabilization. Putin would like foreign investment; it is not high on the agenda.
Capitalist contradictions
LA Times, March 10, 2004 THE NATION Is Recovery Without Jobs Now the Norm? By Don Lee, Times Staff Writer For months, economists have been reassuring Americans that the employment market drought will soon end. With corporate profits surging and economic indicators improving, they said, it won't be long before there is a downpour of jobs. After all, history shows that strong economic growth is quickly followed by robust job creation. With this recovery, that still hasn't happened. Most economists aren't ready to throw out the history books, but the release month after month of disappointing payroll-gains reports has raised troubling questions about whether there has been a profound change in the way the U.S. economy operates: With advances in technology, rising productivity rates and the outsourcing of work to foreign countries, more economic activity won't translate into more jobs. I'm growing increasingly suspicious that something more fundamental may be happening to the job market and the economy, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, a research and consulting firm in West Chester, Pa. The government's latest employment report showed that employers nationwide added a puny 21,000 nonfarm jobs to payrolls in February. The California jobs report for last month, due this Friday, is likely to be as grim. The jobless recovery, nearly 2 1/2 years old, has gone on too long to be called an anomaly or a blip, Zandi said. Even if the economy finds its way and creates jobs, he added, this strange time will be remembered as part of economic lore. If the past pattern of growth no longer holds, the implications are enormous. Of course, for would-be entrants to the labor market, and the 8.2 million Americans who are officially jobless, the specter of fast economic growth without much hiring is discouraging. And on the political front, the lack of new jobs is weighing on President Bush's reelection bid. But economists have another concern: If hiring remains sluggish for several more months, it could dampen consumer spending, which has been a major stimulant for the economy. The recovery, then, could be derailed. At this point, most analysts don't see that happening. Our view is still that it's not a question of whether but when the job recovery will take place, said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Banc of America Capital Management in St. Louis. Some say it might already be happening. They contend that the chief monthly Labor Department report understates the gains because the agency surveys establishments that have one or more workers on the payroll. The agency counts the self-employed in a separate survey of households. And in fact, the household reports suggest that there has been more employment growth than the payroll reports indicate. Most economists agree that the next few months will tell whether there has been a temporary or a permanent shift in the relationship between economic and job growth. There are, after all, short-term factors to consider: Employers are still feeling a bit unsure about the recovery, for example, and they have tax incentives to invest more in equipment and capital rather than labor. The last recession officially ended in November 2001. And in recent months, the nation's broadest measure of economic output, gross domestic product, has been on a tear. Real GDP grew at an average annual rate of 6% in the second half of last year and probably has slowed only slightly in the first quarter. Business spending is rising, as are U.S. exports, and low interest rates and federal tax cuts have added plenty of juice to the economy. At the same time, by the Labor Department's tally, nonfarm employers in the United States added an average of 60,000 jobs a month since August an annual growth rate of about 0.5% and about one-third of what economists had been projecting. Compare that to the economic recovery of a decade ago: In that business cycle, the recession ended in March 1991 and it wasn't until about a year later that GDP growth shot up to about 4%. But the rapid growth was accompanied by accelerating payroll increases. By 1993, the U.S. economy was on its way to creating about 230,000 jobs every month. One explanation for the difference between then and now is increased productivity. Businesses can produce more with fewer employees because they are squeezing ever more output per hour from their workers. At nonfarm businesses, productivity rose by 4.2% last year, after a jump of 4.9% in 2002 marking the best back-to-back improvement in more than 50 years. In the fourth quarter, productivity slowed to a rate of 2.7%, leading economists to believe that employers would have little choice but to ramp up hiring. But a look at the paltry jobs gains in February suggests productivity may have picked back up again, BofA's Reaser said. Structurally, productivity growth does appear to be running at higher rates than
Re: Lesser evil politics in Russia
Chris Doss wrote: Economic advisor to the president Andrei Illarianov is on record as saying that Russia does not need foreign investment. Jailing Khodokorkovsky is not a way to entice investment. Anyway, a great deal of the foreign investment going into Russia is from Cyprus; that is, it is offshore Russian capital re-entering the country to take advantage of the stabilization. Putin would like foreign investment; it is not high on the agenda. The Washington Post December 10, 2003 Wednesday Final Edition Putin Is Free To Manage Capitalism by Steven Pearlstein There are two schools of thought about what kind of capitalism is developing in Russia. The pessimists, including many western journalists and academics, see Russia drifting away from the sometimes-chaotic American model of free markets toward a corrupt and arbitrary economic regime once again directed from the Kremlin. These critics cite the recent jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the country's richest man and onetime symbol of economic reform, as well as earlier campaigns that drove two other oligarchs from the country when their media empires dared to challenge President Vladimir Putin. And now that Putin has manipulated the electoral process and crushed all the political parties pushing real economic reform, pessimists warn of a stepped-up effort by Putin to consolidate his powers. Putin speaks eloquently in favor of the rule of law and free markets, but it is becoming increasingly clear he doesn't mean it, said Anders Aslund, director of Russian studies at the Carnegie Endowment. The opposite view comes from western money managers based in Moscow who credit Putin with restoring order to the Russian economy and standing up to the oligarchs who grew fabulously rich while the standard of living for most Russians deteriorated. Putin defenders note that over the past four years the Russian economy has grown smartly, the government budget has been in surplus, the ruble has rebounded, the county's credit rating has been restored and stock prices have soared. They also praise Putin for pushing through a series of laws that laid the foundation for a business sector open and honest enough to participate in the global economy. Putin has restored order and imposed rules so that six guys don't wind up with everything, said William F. Browder, who runs the $1.25 billion Hermitage Fund in Moscow. Anyone who has a chip on the table here wants him to continue what he's been doing. (clip) Putin's not-so-subtle message to western investors: You stick by me and we can all get what we want here. And it worked. Since then, Browder's Hermitage Fund has had its biggest monthly inflow, Deutsche Bank paid $70 million for a leading investment bank and General Motors agreed to invest $60 million in a new auto plant. We've seen variations of this sort of managed capitalism before -- in Japan, Mexico and Indonesia, among others. While it can work in the short run, history shows it eventually saps an economy of both political and economic vitality. For now, however, it's the model Putin has chosen for Russia, and there's nobody to challenge him. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Lesser evil politics in Russia
This is an editorial. This is Washington Post spin. The brokerage firms in Moscow are taking a positive or negative line depending on who funds them. These were the same people who said Yeltin was business-friendly just before the 1998 crash. Please, away with the know-nothing Western press editorials! Give me something from RosBalt, somebody who knows what they are talking about. I'll settle even for William Browder. Even the juvenile Moscow Times is better than the WP. (And the MT is full of gloom-and-doom stories or we're moving toward a brighter future! screeds on its op/ed page, depending on what brokerage is front and center that day. The oligarch-owned press is screeching the world is ending! rants every other day, if thet means anything. Novaya Gazeta is particularly shrill (not that I know who owns it). Anyway, even if Putin were actively courting foreign investment, what's the point? So is Cuba. Putin would like foreign investment; it is not high on the agenda. The Washington Post December 10, 2003 Wednesday Final Edition Putin Is Free To Manage Capitalism by Steven Pearlstein There are two schools of thought about what kind of capitalism is developing in Russia. The pessimists, including many western journalists and academics, see Russia drifting away from the sometimes-chaotic American model of free markets toward a corrupt and arbitrary economic regime once again directed from the Kremlin.
Re: Lesser evil politics in Russia
Chris Doss wrote: Anyway, even if Putin were actively courting foreign investment, what's the point? So is Cuba. Huh? Cuba is courting foreign investment in order to preserve socialism. Russia is courting foreign investment in order to build capitalism. I have noticed illusions in Putin from some on the left, including my good friend Nestor from Marxmail who I think tended to project Peronism. I see it differently. Putin felt that it was necessary to restore order to Russia in order to safeguard future capitalist expansion. This meant cracking down on the original poster boys of people like Jeffrey Sachs. However, the world has moved on. People like Sachs, Soros et al are now convinced that the excesses of neoliberalism might threaten the system as a whole, so they advocate a return to a modicum of state control. In Russia, this has meant reinforcing the state sector and paying closer attention to the needs of the working class. Given the ultraright dynamics of the recent past, this has tended to make Putin's moves look more radical than they are. I suggest that he has a bit in common with FDR, whose crackdown on laissez-faire was necessary for the long-term stability of American capitalism. In any case, none of this should be of any great interest to Marxists who identify with the class interests of the workers rather than adroit bourgeois statesmen. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Lesser evil politics in Russia
See, I can quote self-interested know-nothing Western business reports too (there's so much nonsense in this piece I don't even want to go there -- Khodorkovsky a political threat? Please! -- but this does show that the business press is far from united in its assessment): http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/newswire/2003/10/27/rtr1123714.html
Re: FW: Who do you favor for the next president? Take our online poll.
I think we're really playing with their heads. As a result of the left's participation in their poll on gay marriage, one e-electorate has replaced another in the polling of the American Family Association, and they have been severed from their base. Joel Original Message: - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 20:44:53 -0800 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FW: Who do you favor for the next president? Take our online poll. FWIW, in this on-line poll, Ralph is beating George! but John is #1 by far. So if you want to wow the right-wing Xians, vote! -Original Message- From: American Family Association [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tue 3/9/2004 12:52 PM To: Devine, James Cc: Subject: Who do you favor for the next president? Take our online poll. AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION ONLINE POLL YOUR VOTE IS NEEDED NOW! You help is requested in gaining the opinion of on-line voters to the following question. Whom do you favor for the next President of the United States - John Kerry, George W. Bush, or Ralph Nader? Go to http://www.onlinepolls.net/pollv1/default.aspx?pid=10 to express your opinion. Cast your vote. Forward to a friend. Help us feel the pulse of America. Thanks, Don Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman American Family Association You are receiving this message because you took action on a previous AFA-sponsored poll or petition. If you do not wish to receive future mailings from us, click here http://lists.afa.net/u?id=7950090Nc=Fl=petitionsalt to unsubscribe. http://lyris.afa.net/db/1516688/7950090/1.gif mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .
Re: Lesser evil politics in Russia
-Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] T Russia is courting foreign investment in order to build capitalism. Well, he is not courtinf foreign investment, but he does intend to build capitalism of a state-directed variety, which is far, far, far better than Yeltsin-style Mafia capitalism. I have noticed illusions in Putin from some on the left, including my good friend Nestor from Marxmail who I think tended to project Peronism. That's probably because I had a long email exchange with him on the subject. I see it differently. Putin felt that it was necessary to restore order to Russia in order to safeguard future capitalist expansion. This meant cracking down on the original poster boys of people like Jeffrey Sachs. However, the world has moved on. People like Sachs, Soros et al are now convinced that the excesses of neoliberalism might threaten the system as a whole, so they advocate a return to a modicum of state control. In Russia, this has meant reinforcing the state sector and paying closer attention to the needs of the working class. No problem, this is all true. Given the ultraright dynamics of the recent past, this has tended to make Putin's moves look more radical than they are. I suggest that he has a bit in common with FDR, whose crackdown on laissez-faire was necessary for the long-term stability of American capitalism. In any case, none of this should be of any great interest to Marxists who identify with the class interests of the workers rather than adroit bourgeois statesmen. Personally, I identify with the general well-being of the Russian people.
Re: Lesser evil politics in Russia
I did not think that the point was that Putic = Castro, but that the fact that both nations are courting foreign investment may not prove much about intentions. On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 10:20:29AM -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: Chris Doss wrote: Anyway, even if Putin were actively courting foreign investment, what's the point? So is Cuba. Huh? Cuba is courting foreign investment in order to preserve socialism. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Lesser evil politics in Russia
Chris Doss wrote: Personally, I identify with the general well-being of the Russian people. It's really interesting how the Russian and US elections have such similar themes, except that it is a Kerry figure who is the incumbent over there. The lesser evil motivation seems directed against forces who have a lot in common with the Bush gang: corruption, nepotism, greed, shortsightedness, irresponsibility, etc. I hate to sound like a bronto-Marxist, but it seems that oppositional politics in Russia has to proceed on the basis that Putin and the general well-being of the Russian people are diametrically opposed. The San Francisco Chronicle JUNE 22, 2003, SUNDAY, FINAL EDITION Pragmatic Russian leader patches up spat with U.S.; Putin eyes economic development, oil contracts with Iraq Anna Badkhen DATELINE: Moscow Just weeks ago, nothing seemed to delight the Kremlin more than snubbing its Cold War-era archenemy, the United States. Russian President Vladimir Putin made scathing remarks as he questioned the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the U.S.-Russia rift over the war -- a war that Putin flatly called a mistake -- threatened to set back by a decade the relations between the two countries. Yet as the Bush administration comes under scrutiny in the United States over whether it misled the public about Iraq's arsenal before the war, Putin seems to have dropped the issue. The Russian leader mentions his recent falling-out with Washington only in passing, describing it as an issue the two countries have put behind them. The situation around Iraq was a serious test for the Russian-American relations. . . . We emerged from this situation with minimal losses, Putin said at a Friday news conference in the Kremlin. This is Putin's pragmatism on view, says Yuri Fyodorov, a Moscow-based analyst. The Russian leader regards improving his country's rundown economy as his top priority in the months before March's presidential election, Fyodorov said, and Putin finds it more expedient to maintain friendly relations with President Bush than to cut his country out of any potential deal involving oil development or infrastructure rebuilding in postwar Iraq. It is not advantageous for Russia to rub it in that the U.S. . . . made a mistake, said Fyodorov, deputy director of the Moscow-based Institute for Applied International Research. We made up with George W. Bush. Why rock the boat? As U.S. administrators move to revive Iraq's oil industry, Moscow is worried that a new Iraqi administration may decide not to honor contracts that Russian oil companies signed with Saddam Hussein's government to develop new oil fields in Iraq, opting instead to give the best deals to American and British firms. Before the United States and its junior partners invaded Iraq, analysts estimated that the long-term value of Russia's economic relationship with Hussein's government -- chiefly lucrative oil contracts, many granted as political favors -- was as high as $40 billion, a fortune for a country whose annual national budget is less than $70 billion. But the United States and Britain gave Russia only vague assurances before fighting began that it was not going to lose its contracts in postwar Iraq. Lukoil, Russia's second-largest oil producer, announced last month that it intended to begin developing Iraq's West Qurna oil field, for which it says it had signed a contract with Hussein, as soon as September. Lukoil said it would challenge any attempts to throw out its deal in international courts. Russian firms also hold $4 billion in contracts under the U.N. oil-for-food program, and it is unclear whether sanctions-free, post-Hussein Iraq will honor those deals. Under deals made with the now-toppled regime, Iraq owes Russia $8 billion, mostly for arms sales in the late 1980s, and the Kremlin expects to receive its share of Iraq's total foreign debt of $380 billion. Russia belongs to the so-called Paris Club, which renegotiates government debt of countries in default. The Bush administration contends that to speed up Iraq's recovery, creditors should relieve Baghdad of much of its obligations. The Kremlin, which is reluctant to forgive the debt, will need Washington's goodwill to recover the money Iraq owes. There will be talks about Iraq's debt. Why anger Americans when there is money to be made? noted Alexander Pikayev, a Moscow expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Even more important than Iraq's debt or Moscow's oil contracts is the question of stability of world oil prices, says Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow office of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. High oil prices triggered by the war have given a kick-start to Russia's economy -- which already was enjoying the highest rate of growth in the post-Soviet era -- by increasing the growth rate this year to more than 7.1 percent. Russia is the world's second-largest oil exporter and a major oil producer on its
Re: Lesser evil politics in Russia
A couple of comments, then I'm going to go home: 1. Well, Putin is the MUCH lesser of two evils. The difference between Yeltsin-style Mafia capitalism and Putin-style bureaucratic capitalism is the difference between collapsing living standards and rising living standards for most people. 2. There is almost no politics in Russia, oppositional or otherwise. The only genuine mass-based political party was the KPRF, and they were murdered in the Duma elections. This is in part because (almost) nobody is going to vote against Putin, who is the most popular Russian leader since 1917, and partly because they did it to themselves by defending Khodorkovsky and having Yukos people on their party list. That laid them open wide to attacks by the Kremlin that they were colluding with the oligarchs. The presidential election campiagn is truly amusing (elections are on the 14th, but you could be forgiven for not knowing that, since everybody knows Putin is going to win. Not only does he have an 80% popularity rating and is refusing to debate anybody, look who he is running against: Sergei Glayev. I actually rather like Glazyev, and he might be president after Putin in 2008. But Glazyev came into his current position by co-leading a Kremlin-sponsored group (to take votes away from the KPRF) which he just left. I predict he'll get 5% of the vote. Khakamada. This is a woman with approval ratings lower than the margin of error in most polls. The KPRF guy whose name I can't even remember. The KPRF is so bludgeoned that Zyuganov won't dare run. Mironov, who says that, if he becomes president, he will basically do everything Putin is already doing. Zhirinovsky's bodyguard, who is in effect running in a PR stunt (like all the LDPR's campaigns) as a boxer and he-man. Actually he will probably get the most votes out of any of these people. Ivan Rybkin, who appears to have disappeared on a drinking binge in Ukraine just before the Duma debates and now has a musical in his honor in Moscow called The Erotic Adventures of Ivan Rybkin in Ukraine. -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:29:30 -0500 Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Lesser evil politics in Russia Chris Doss wrote: Personally, I identify with the general well-being of the Russian people. It's really interesting how the Russian and US elections have such similar themes, except that it is a Kerry figure who is the incumbent over there. The lesser evil motivation seems directed against forces who have a lot in common with the Bush gang: corruption, nepotism, greed, shortsightedness, irresponsibility, etc. I hate to sound like a bronto-Marxist, but it seems that oppositional politics in Russia has to proceed on the basis that Putin and the general well-being of the Russian people are diametrically opposed.
New book from the prolific Patrick Bond
NEW RELEASE INFORMATION FROM ZED BOOKS TITLE: Against Global Apartheid - South Africa Meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance AUTHOR: Patrick Bond, University of the Witwatersrand ISBN/PRICE: 1 84277 392 5 hbk GBP55.00/US$75.00 1 84277 393 3 pbk GBP16.95/US$29.95 FEATURES: Tables Illustrations Notes Bibliography Index 352pp Royal format LIBRARY CATEGORIES: African Studies Development PUBLICATION DATE: February 2004 TERRITORIAL RESTRICTIONS: Please note that the Zed edition of this title is not for sale in Africa (ref: UCT Press) and that the Zed paperback edition is not for sale in the UK (ref: Global Book Marketing) KEY POINTS + A compelling and wide-ranging critique of the impact of neoliberal prescriptions on developing countries + The most powerful account to date of South African economic policy since the end of apartheid MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE BOOK This is a lucid analysis of neoliberal economics as formulated by the World Bank and IMF and imposed on Africa and South Africa in particular. It shows the economic and human damage wrought by these policies, and how they have displaced the originally radical and pro-people orientation of the ruling African National Congress. The leadership's change of heart has cost the South African people a million jobs, stymied their hopes of sustainable access to housing, water, electricity, health and education, dramatically worsened income inequality, and opened up a dangerous gulf of disillusion between voters and government. Patrick Bond describes how South African civil society has resisted corporate-dominated globalization, and argues that there is another way to more socially just and economically rapid development. '...invaluable analysis. [Patrick Bond] does not shy away from ...challenging the smug orthodoxy' - Prof. Dennis Brutus, poet and former South African political prisoner ABOUT THE AUTHOR Patrick Bond is professor at the University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of Public and Development Management, South Africa, and a member of the Centre for Economic Justice - Southern Africa. Currently, he researches and assists social, labour and environmental movements in Southern Africa and internationally. CONTENTS PART 1: POWERS AND VULNERABILITIES 1. Global crisis, African Oppression - Introduction - Global crisis, and crisis displacement - The African crisis continues 2. Southern African socio-economic conflict - Introduction - Origins of the regional proletariat - Structural socio-economic and environmental decline - Workers, organisations and class politics - Capital accumulation and regional visions 3. Bretton Woods Bankruptcies in Southern Africa - Introduction - From Bretton Woods to the debt crisis - Shaping Southern African development - From projects to policy in Southern Africa 4. Foreign aid, development and underdevelopment - Introduction - Dependency and leverage - Currency risk on loans - Civil society expectations - Attributing blame PART 2: ELITE CONTESTATION OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE 5. The Global Balance of Forces - Introduction - The pro-status-quo forces - Forces for change - Alliances falter 6. Ideology and Global Governance - Introduction - Explaining globalisation - Globalisation's techno-economic fix? - Ideology and self-interest 7. Pretoria's Global Governance Strategy - Introduction - 'Globalisation made me do it' - Mbeki v. 'the globalisation of apartheid' - Towards - or against - 'global solidarity' PART 3: ECONOMIC POWER AND THE CASE OF HIV/AIDS TREATMENT 8. Pharmaceutical Corporations and US Imperialism - Introduction - US government pressure points - Drug companies pressure the US government - Resistance 9. Civil Society Conquest, State Failure - Introduction - Pharmaceutical pricing and street politics - A political economy of South African AIDS PART 4: GLOBALISATION? - OR INTERNATIONALISM PLUS THE NATION STATE? 10. The 'Fix-it-or-nix-it' Debate - Introduction - The World Bank under siege - Reformers run into trouble -Strategic divergences on the left - After the IMF/World Bank have gone: Local/national/regional development finance? 11. The Third World in the Movement for Global Justice - Introduction - The world against Washington - Lessons of Zapatismo - Does Africa need Washington? - South-South-North alliances against global finance/commerce 12. The Case for Locking Capital Down - Introduction - Comparative capital controls - A brief history of South Africa's domestic finance and uneven development - Exchange control options for South Africa - Conclusion: From global apartheid to democratised investment Afterword Index Copies of new Zed titles announced through this list may be ordered by mail order by academic customers in the UK, Europe and elsewhere, postage and packing free. (Customers in the USA and Canada, please see below.) Please
America's Love Affair with the Car
The ever-energetic Jurriann, asked me to forward this to Michael Dawson, but I thought it might interest others. I think you should try asking Michael Marsden or Thomas Arthur Repp. Almost certainly the quote has its source in the 1950s, although Jack Kerouac doesn't explicitly mention it in On The Road as far as remember. In theory, American culture suggests that car ownership is conditional on a certain mental development and objectivity. in reality, that is not the case. Jurriaan - you could try these: Driving Passion: America's Love Affair with the Car, Part 1 - Birth of the Automobile (1995) Video Format: Color, Closed-captioned, NTSC Warner Home Video July 25, 1995 VHS Color, ASIN: 6303494315 Michael Marsden, an Eastern Kentucky University professor who teaches a course in the automobile's role in society, said America's love affair with the car means solo drivers always will constitute a large portion of commuters. People want to drive their own cars, decide when they want to go, where they want to go, he said. In some ways, the only time people are in charge are when they are in their cars, not at home or at work. It's a very psychologically satisfying thing. Associated Press August 20, 2002, Business News; Washington Dateline We need to change America's love affair with the car, but first we need to change the car, says the Sierra Club's Becker. It's hard to influence the thinking of two hundred and forty million Americans, but there are only twelve companies that make the bulk of the world's cars. It's much easier to turn them around. www.ecocenter.org%2f199912%2fdetroit.shtmlqte=0o=0 Other seminars [at UC Berkeley] include ... Automobility, a course on America's love affair with the car, including the sport utility vehicle. 23 August 2001 The world was ushered into the Atomic Age in August, 1945, when the Allies dropped the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. And with the Japanese surrender effectively ending the war in the Pacific a month later, America's love affair with the car began in earnest. The resulting jubilation sent people into a frenzy of spending and driving. 21.4 million new cars were sold between 1946 and 1950. In 1949 production topped the five million mark for the first time. While 222,862 passenger cars were built in 1943, a staggering 2,148,699 were built in 1946 with General Motors selling the lion's share of 1,240,418. By 1946, the automobile had become the symbol of American freedom and independence. This new-found expression of freedom found Americans motoring from coast to coast after the war. DeSoto advertised Why Dream It?... Drive It! Chevrolet said, Get A Chevrolet And Get Away First! A Glorious Experience Awaits You! boasted Cadillac. Buick, which had produced aircraft engines during the war, said of its 1946 model, It's Big, It's Beautiful - It's Buick. From Rationing To Prosperity By Willy R. Wilkerson III. Excerpt from the book 'All-American Ads of the 40s', edited by Jim Heimann As the growing number of vacationers gassed up their new postwar sedans and took to the road, they also heard for the first time Get Your Kicks on Route 66, Bobby Troup's bluesy pop hit Of 1946, which joined Guthrie's ballads and the folk songs of Pete Seeger as an ode to the highway. Originally recorded by Nat King Cole, the simple tune went on to be immortalized by the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Asleep at the Wheel, Manhattan Transfer, Mel Torme, Depeche Mode, Michael Martin Murphy and a host of others. Nothing seems to have captured America's love affair with the road more than this song. If you ever plan to motor west; Travel my way, take the highway that's best. Get your kicks on Route Sixty-six! It winds from Chicago to L.A., More than two thousand miles all the way. Get your kicks on Route Sixty-six! Now you go thru Saint Looey and Joplin, Missouri And Oklahoma City is mighty pretty. You'll see Amarillo; Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona; don't forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino. Won't you get hip to this timely tip: When you make that California trip Get your kicks on Route Sixty-six! Get your kicks on Route Sixty-six! IN the 1950s, Route 66 was a genuine celebrity. Families could leave their homes in the East and Midwest and actually drive out to the Grand Canyon or Painted Desert. They could go all the way to the Pacific on a highway that passed through towns where Abe Lincoln practiced law, Jesse James robbed banks, and Will Rogers learned how to twirl a rope. http://www.motherearthnews.com/menarch/archive/issues/123/123-036-01.htm Trafic (1971) Réalisation: Jacques Tati Scénario: Jacques Tati, Jacques Lagrange et Bert Haanstra Photo: Eduard van der Enden et Marcel Weiss Musique: Charles Dumont Distribution: Jacques Tati (M. Hulot), Maria Kimberley (la chargée de relations publiques), Marcel Flaval (le conducteur), Honoré Bostel (le directeur
Re: America's Love Affair with the Car
Thanks to both of you. I'll pursue these leads, and report back when I find the source. The phrase certainly has the smell of the 1950s, and that would be logical, given that the Interstate Highway Act that arose there. Can you imagine any politician proposing a multi-trillion-dollar (adjusting for inflation here) public works project these days? Of course that's precisely what we need, but (with homage to Paul Sweezy) the difference is that, now, all such possible projects would undermine existing capitalist markets. While I'm replying, I meant to tell Professor Perelman that David Milton's new book does not mention Marx's role in the British working class's fight against British involvement in the U.S. Civil War. David focuses on the Liverpool Network, so London-based organizing doesn't really come in. Sorry for the extreme tardiness of this reply! - Original Message - From: michael perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 8:50 AM Subject: [PEN-L] America's Love Affair with the Car The ever-energetic Jurriann, asked me to forward this to Michael Dawson, but I thought it might interest others. I think you should try asking Michael Marsden or Thomas Arthur Repp. Almost certainly the quote has its source in the 1950s, although Jack Kerouac doesn't explicitly mention it in On The Road as far as remember. In theory, American culture suggests that car ownership is conditional on a certain mental development and objectivity. in reality, that is not the case. Jurriaan - you could try these: Driving Passion: America's Love Affair with the Car, Part 1 - Birth of the Automobile (1995) Video Format: Color, Closed-captioned, NTSC Warner Home Video July 25, 1995 VHS Color, ASIN: 6303494315 Michael Marsden, an Eastern Kentucky University professor who teaches a course in the automobile's role in society, said America's love affair with the car means solo drivers always will constitute a large portion of commuters. People want to drive their own cars, decide when they want to go, where they want to go, he said. In some ways, the only time people are in charge are when they are in their cars, not at home or at work. It's a very psychologically satisfying thing. Associated Press August 20, 2002, Business News; Washington Dateline We need to change America's love affair with the car, but first we need to change the car, says the Sierra Club's Becker. It's hard to influence the thinking of two hundred and forty million Americans, but there are only twelve companies that make the bulk of the world's cars. It's much easier to turn them around. www.ecocenter.org%2f199912%2fdetroit.shtmlqte=0o=0 Other seminars [at UC Berkeley] include ... Automobility, a course on America's love affair with the car, including the sport utility vehicle. 23 August 2001 The world was ushered into the Atomic Age in August, 1945, when the Allies dropped the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. And with the Japanese surrender effectively ending the war in the Pacific a month later, America's love affair with the car began in earnest. The resulting jubilation sent people into a frenzy of spending and driving. 21.4 million new cars were sold between 1946 and 1950. In 1949 production topped the five million mark for the first time. While 222,862 passenger cars were built in 1943, a staggering 2,148,699 were built in 1946 with General Motors selling the lion's share of 1,240,418. By 1946, the automobile had become the symbol of American freedom and independence. This new-found expression of freedom found Americans motoring from coast to coast after the war. DeSoto advertised Why Dream It?... Drive It! Chevrolet said, Get A Chevrolet And Get Away First! A Glorious Experience Awaits You! boasted Cadillac. Buick, which had produced aircraft engines during the war, said of its 1946 model, It's Big, It's Beautiful - It's Buick. From Rationing To Prosperity By Willy R. Wilkerson III. Excerpt from the book 'All-American Ads of the 40s', edited by Jim Heimann As the growing number of vacationers gassed up their new postwar sedans and took to the road, they also heard for the first time Get Your Kicks on Route 66, Bobby Troup's bluesy pop hit Of 1946, which joined Guthrie's ballads and the folk songs of Pete Seeger as an ode to the highway. Originally recorded by Nat King Cole, the simple tune went on to be immortalized by the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Asleep at the Wheel, Manhattan Transfer, Mel Torme, Depeche Mode, Michael Martin Murphy and a host of others. Nothing seems to have captured America's love affair with the road more than this song. If you ever plan to motor west; Travel my way, take the highway that's best. Get your kicks on Route Sixty-six! It winds from Chicago to L.A., More than two thousand miles all the way. Get your kicks on Route Sixty-six! Now you go thru Saint Looey and Joplin, Missouri And Oklahoma City is mighty
Marx and the Civil War
While I'm replying, I meant to tell Professor Perelman [MY GOD! EVEN MY STUDENTS DON'T CALL ME THAT!!!] that David Milton's new book does not mention Marx's role in the British working class's fight against British involvement in the U.S. Civil War. David focuses on the Liverpool Network, so London-based organizing doesn't really come in. Sorry for the extreme tardiness of this reply! I recall that Senator Hoare from Mass. [might more appropriately be spelled Whore, but I do not want to reignite our thread on prostitution] spoke about the enormous contribution of the International Working Men's Assn. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Marx and the Civil War
Sorry for the jarring formality. It's just that I've read your books and articles, and wanted to show my appreciation... To me, among the many reasons to know about the struggle to keep Britain out of the U.S. CW is its strong refutation of sophomoric (overstated) structuralism. History and social structure presented British workers with a 50/50 choice. With help, they chose the path that saved the U.S. from becoming South Africa. A great sociology lesson! - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 10:09 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Marx and the Civil War While I'm replying, I meant to tell Professor Perelman [MY GOD! EVEN MY STUDENTS DON'T CALL ME THAT!!!] that David Milton's new book does not mention Marx's role in the British working class's fight against British involvement in the U.S. Civil War. David focuses on the Liverpool Network, so London-based organizing doesn't really come in. Sorry for the extreme tardiness of this reply! I recall that Senator Hoare from Mass. [might more appropriately be spelled Whore, but I do not want to reignite our thread on prostitution] spoke about the enormous contribution of the International Working Men's Assn. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Software commodification
Some Implications of Software Commodification (c) 2004 David Stutz I often used the phrase the commodification of software to represent what I believe is the critical force behind the rise of open source software. Broadly used software is now defined primarily by its capacity for networked data exchange of standardized commodity datatypes such as a web page, an MP3 file, a UNIX executable, or a Word document, rather than its application model and user interface. This short note explores the concept of commodification in a historical context while also seeking to discover lessons that might be applied to contemporary open source business efforts. Commodity The word commodity is used today to represent fodder for industrial processes: things or substances that are found to be valuable as basic building blocks for many different purposes. Because of their very general value, they are typically used in large quantities and in many different ways. Commodities are always sourced by more than one producer, and consumers may substitute one producer's product for another's with impunity. Because commodities are fungible in this way, they are defined by uniform quality standards to which they must conform. These quality standards help to avoid adulteration, and also facilitate quick and easy valuation, which in turn fosters productivity gains. Karl Marx considers commodities important enough to begin his book Capital with a discussion of them. The first chapter concludes with a discussion of what he terms the fetishism of commodities, from which the following quote is taken: A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labor. It is as clear as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. Marx asserts that commodity markets are more about power, politics, and even religion, than they are about their actual underlying resources. Commodities exist to facilitate exchange (and, since this is Marx, to subjugate the laborer). They are a way to build up an abstract world in the image of commerce, rather than reflect a more natural order for the world. Commodities are a reflection of the politics of human values: the contracts by which commodities are defined, and the standards that form the foundation for such contracts, are more important than the inherent quality of the commoditized thing. This is a very important lesson to learn, and one which the open source community should heed when marshaling its limited resources. Commodity-based exchange existed in antiquity; the Sumerians seem to have developed accounting in order to deal with its implications. The word commodity first appeared as an abstract English term in the sixteenth century, when the pursuit of Commodity - that is to say advantage, profit, and/or expediency - began to be a potent political and social force. The seeds of mercantilism had begun to sprout, with capitalism fast on its heels, and the world needed new words with which to theorize about profits and losses. Built into the word is the notion of an underlying measure, or standard, to which the commodity conforms. (Commodus, the Latin root, can be translated as conforming with due measure.) At the time that this word was coined, Europe was understanding the massive advantages, flexibility, and productivity that could be pulled from the impersonal exploitation of standardization. This understanding would eventually lead to the commodity-based economic engines of the great colonial empires. full: http://www.synthesist.net/writing/commodity_software.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Question on public choice theory
Public choice theory suggests that people vote with their pocketbooks. How would they explain that more educated people have more liberal voting preferences? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Question on public choice theory
On Wednesday, March 10, 2004 at 10:26:23 (-0800) michael perelman writes: Public choice theory suggests that people vote with their pocketbooks. How would they explain that more educated people have more liberal voting preferences? Because people who are more liberal are likely to be more educated? Bill
Re: Marx and the Civil War
Professor Michael Perelman wrote: While I'm replying, I meant to tell Professor Perelman [MY GOD! EVEN MY STUDENTS DON'T CALL ME THAT!!!] :-) Julio _ Charla con tus amigos en línea mediante MSN Messenger: http://messenger.latino.msn.com/
A tactical debate
An interview with John Kerry in the latest Time, and an article in today s Wall Street Journal article on current US foreign policy, illustrate that Democratic and Republican differences primarily turn on the alliance with Europe. As the Journal reports, the Bush administration recognizes the need for multilateral diplomatic, military, and economic support in pursuit of US imperial objectives, while Kerry told Time he is prepared to act unilaterally if I have to mostly, like the Republicans, against weak and defenceless countries. But the Democrats generally adhere to the traditional bipartisan consensus favouring the use, in alliance with Europe, of recognized instruments like the UN and NATO, while the Republicans feel constrained by old Europe and prefer instead to assemble more pliable ad hoc and, if necessary, illegitimate coalitions of the willing. The differences though tactical are not inconsequential; Kerry, for opportunistic electoral reasons and despite his misgivings, voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq (as he earlier voted for Reagans invasion of Grenada), but it is almost certainly true, as he maintains, that he would not as President have initiated action against Iraq without European support and reliable evidence of WMD. At bottom, the differences over Europe would seem to reflect differing assessments of its military capabilities and whether its global economic interests are compliment or contradict those of the United States. Articles reproduced on www.supportingfacts.com Sorry for any cross posting
Re: [Marxism] A tactical debate
Marvin Gandall wrote: The differences though tactical are not inconsequential; Kerry, for opportunistic electoral reasons and despite his misgivings, voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq (as he earlier voted for Reagans invasion of Grenada), but it is almost certainly true, as he maintains, that he would not as President have initiated action against Iraq without European support and reliable evidence of WMD. This is an interesting question. Kerry insists that he voted for the war because he was misled. He based his vote on the documentation furnished by the CIA. If he has stated somewhere that he would have voted differently if he knew back then what he knows now (as even Colin Powell implied the other week), I haven't heard it. Newsday (New York) February 9, 2004 Monday VIEWPOINTS Kerry, Too, Needs to Clear the Air BYLINE: By Scott Ritter. Scott Ritter, former UN chief inspector in Iraq, 1991-1998, is the author of Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America. On April 23, 1971, a 27-year-old Navy veteran named John Kerry sat before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and chided members on their leadership failures regarding the war in Vietnam. Where is the leadership? Kerry, a decorated hero who had proved his courage under fire, demanded of the senators. Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? Kerry lambasted those who had pushed so strongly for war in Vietnam. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. Today, on the issue of the war in Iraq, it is John Kerry who is all pious rectitude. I think the administration owes the entire country a full explanation on this war - not just their exaggerations but on the failure of American intelligence, Kerry said following the stunning announcement by David Kay, the Bush administration's former lead investigator in Iraq, that we were all wrong about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in that country. The problem for Sen. Kerry, of course, is that he, too, is culpable in the massive breach of public trust that has come to light regarding Iraq, WMD and the rush to war. Almost 30 years after his appearance before the Senate, Sen. Kerry was given the opportunity to make good on his promises that he had learned the lessons of Vietnam. During a visit to Washington in April 2000, when I lobbied senators and representatives for a full review of American policy regarding Iraq, I spoke with John Kerry about what I held to be the hyped-up intelligence regarding the threat posed by Iraq's WMD. Put it in writing, Kerry told me, and send it to me so I can review what you're saying in detail. I did just that, penning a comprehensive article for Arms Control Today, the journal of the Arms Control Association, on the Case for the Qualitative Disarmament of Iraq. This article, published in June 2000, provided a detailed breakdown of Iraq's WMD capability and made a comprehensive case that Iraq did not pose an imminent threat. I asked the Arms Control Association to send several copies to Sen. Kerry's office but, just to make sure, I sent him one myself. I never heard back from the senator. Two years later, in the buildup toward war that took place in the summer of 2002, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Kerry sits, convened a hearing on Iraq. At that hearing a parade of witnesses appeared, testifying to the existence of WMD in Iraq. Featured prominently was Khidir Hamza, the self-proclaimed bombmaker to Saddam, who gave stirring first-hand testimony to the existence of not only nuclear weapons capability, but also chemical and biological weapons as well. Every word of Hamza's testimony has since been proved false. Despite receiving thousands of phone calls, letters and e-mails demanding that dissenting expert opinion, including my own, be aired at the hearing, Sen. Kerry apparently did nothing, allowing a sham hearing to conclude with the finding that there was no doubt Saddam Hussein had WMD. Sen. Kerry followed up this performance in October 2002 by voting for the war in Iraq. Today he justifies that vote by noting that he only approved the threat of war, and that the blame for Iraq rests with President George W. Bush, who failed to assemble adequate international support for the war. But this explanation rings hollow in the face of David Kay's findings that there are no WMD in Iraq. With the stated casus belli shown to be false, John Kerry needs to better explain his role not only in propelling our nation into a war that is rapidly devolving into a quagmire, but more importantly, his perpetuation of the falsehoods that got us there to begin with. President Bush should rightly be held accountable for what increasingly appears to be deliberately misleading statements made by him and members of his administration regarding the threat posed by Iraq's WMD. If
FT: US Jobs as Poor in Quality as in Quantity
Financial Times; Mar 10, 2004 Jobs data look as poor in quality as quantity By Christopher Swann in Washington Job-creation figures in the US may have struck many economists as dismal over the past few months. But even as job quantity dominates the political agenda, the quality of the few jobs being created has also caused concern. Of 290,000 private-sector jobs created since April 2003, most - 215,000 - have been temporary positions, according to last week's employment figures. Private-sector employment would have fallen last month without the creation of 32,000 temporary jobs in the professional and business services sector. About 4.3m Americans have also been forced to accept part-time positions because they have failed to find full-time work - 1m higher than the January 2000 number. The recent data show that US companies remain reluctant to commit themselves to hiring new permanent staff. Economists note wryly that US companies are happy to flirt but remain unwilling to walk to the altar. It is slightly depressing to think that even the poor job-creation figures we have had have been flattered by temporary positions, says Drew Matus, US economist at Lehman Brothers. A lot of what we have been getting is lower-quality jobs. The prevalence of such stop-gap job hiring casts doubt on President George W. Bush's ability to benefit from an economic feel-good factor ahead of November's presidential election. It also helps explain why wage growth is only just managing to keep pace with inflation, at about 2 per cent. Companies are becoming more aware of the attractions of temporary staff, says John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, an agency that helps find new jobs for dismissed workers. Not long ago companies were quite willing to have workers 'on the bench', so that they were available in case demand picked up, he says. Having overdone the hiring at the end of the 1990s, there is a greater appreciation of the need to keep workforce levels 'just in time'. Technology has made it easier for companies to recruit quickly when they urgently need to expand output, he says. Companies are trying to think of staff more like inventory, keeping things to a minimum. The appeal of temporary staff also stems from the soaring cost of the benefits enjoyed by permanent workers. In 2003 the cost of these benefits rose 6.3 per cent - most than twice the 2.9 per cent rise in cost of wage growth. Benefits now cost about a third of total cost of remuneration. This can often be enough to offset the disadvantages to temporary workers, who initially lack company-specific knowledge and are usually paid higher wages to offset their lack of work security. Some economists even suspect that Mr Bush's tax incentives for business investment, which allow for 50 per cent depreciation in the first year on most business equipment, may have temporarily helped tilt the balance in favour of spending on equipment instead of new permanent workers. This incentive is due to expire at the end of this year but may have contributed to the 15.1 per cent growth rate of business investment in the final quarter of 2003. On the margin this may help explain why companies have been keener on investment than permanent hires, said Nigel Gault, director of US research at Global Insight, the economic consultancy. But the most important benefit of temporary workers is that they can easily be dismissed if business conditions turn sour. There remains a sense of caution among executives, says Jan Hatzius, US economist at Goldman Sachs. They feel things are better but have seen enough false dawns that they are not yet totally convinced that things will stay better. Most economists continue to believe that as confidence in the recovery builds, and the opportunities to enhance efficiency become more scarce, companies will once again start to increase their permanent staffing levels. The lingering fear, however, is that the weak labour market itself could start to undermine the economic recovery, unless hiring picks up soon. Last month Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, told a congressional panel that US businesses continue to work off the stock of inefficiencies that had accumulated in the boom years.
Re: Question on public choice theory
Maybe liberal social attitudes. But what do the surveys show about the relationship between income/education and attitudes to taxes and social programs, for example? Is it not the case the higher up the education and income ladder you go, the greater receptivity there is to cutting taxes and programs? And if professional and technical white-collar jobs and income is threatened, would these issues not be thrust to the forefront of their concerns -- as, say, in Argentina or in relation to software programmers and back office workers who perceive a threat from outsourcing? Marv Gandall - Original Message - From: michael perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 1:26 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Question on public choice theory Public choice theory suggests that people vote with their pocketbooks. How would they explain that more educated people have more liberal voting preferences? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Is Recovery Without Jobs Now the Norm?
From the LA Times: The jobless recovery, nearly 2 1/2 years old, has gone on too long to be called an anomaly or a blip, Zandi said. Even if the economy finds its way and creates jobs, he added, this strange time will be remembered as part of economic lore. If the past pattern of growth no longer holds, the implications are enormous. Regression to the mean. I suspect that the real anomaly was the low unemployment rate of 1999-2000 and the jobless recovery has been simply working off a backlog of what might be called fictitious employment. In other words, the goldilocks economy was a bleached blonde and now the mousy brown roots are growing out. On the surface, things now are not quite as bad as they look-- it's just that they were too good to be true then. Deep down, though, things are worse than they appear. What drove the jobs bubble was an unprecedented asset inflation, the residual of which remains embedded in house prices. Paradoxically, poor job growth may be the only thing sustaining the recovery. Here's why: rapid job growth and, more importantly, the consequent income growth would increase inflationary pressures leading to the raising of interest rates and, ultimately, the bursting of the housing bubble. The other paradox is that poor job growth is likely keeping the unemployment rate lower than it otherwise would be. A hiring boom would swell the labour force. Interesting times. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: Question on public choice theory
michael perelman wrote: Public choice theory suggests that people vote with their pocketbooks. How would they explain that more educated people have more liberal voting preferences? Perhaps they would answer by being somewhat skeptical of your claim. To what degree is it true? I suspect they would demand that more educated be disaggregated into the various areas in which a person could be more educated. For the intellectuals, they would cite something like Robert Nozick's Why do intellectuals oppose capitalism (http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html) and for the others, probably, they would deny the alleged relationship. At least normal right-wingers would do this. I don't see why right wingers of the public-choice variety cannot also do this consistenly with their specific ideology (once they have managed to explain in the first place why people bother to vote at all!)
Re: Question on public choice theory
Public choice theory suggests that people vote with their pocketbooks. How would they explain that more educated people have more liberal voting preferences? as others have suggested, the word liberal is ambiguous. I would guess that all else constant, higher-income people are more liberal on social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, etc. But on issues that affect their incomes or the value of their homes, I'd guess that (all else constant) they are less liberal. The latter fits with the Buchanan/Tulloch/etc. version of public choice. It's like the liberal media issue: the US media is liberal on feminist issues and the like, but not so on unionism, corporate globalization, etc. Jim D.
Re: America's Love Affair with the Car
The phrase [love affair with the car] certainly has the smell of the 1950s, and that would be logical, given that the Interstate Highway Act that arose there. Can you imagine any politician proposing a multi-trillion-dollar (adjusting for inflation here) public works project these days? Back in the 1950s, the Interstate Highway system was justified in terms of national defense. I would guess there were references to the German autobahns, which allowed the Nazi government to move supplies troops between fronts more easily, while WW2 was a two-front war for the US, too, so the analogy would seem apt. Jim D.
Re: Question on public choice theory
Michael asks: Public choice theory suggests that people vote with their pocketbooks. How would they explain that more educated people have more liberal voting preferences? I hate to rise to the defense of public choice theory. However don't you find that in Europe (and to some degree Japan) there is (was?) a wider range of choice and that the pattern is a bit clearer? As a mass phenomena, urban educated middle class people have tended to range as far left as the Socialist Party (or in Britain the Liberals and New Labour) - but no further. In short the center-left. Slightly less educated middle class people, often more provincial, voted center-right. The center-left middle class group has often been employed in fields like education and health that relied heavily on public sector support or lived in urban areas that required heavy public investment and guidance. The center-right middle class group worked in fields like supervisors or middle managers in the private sector, often living in less urban areas. Then of course there was that small phenomena (so loved by penl-ers): the alienated intellectual, often propelled by social exclusion or a radicalizing experience in their youth. I suppose in the US the patterns become harder to sort out in a linear manner. Is this in part the 2 party system which leaves people with only a binary and not a continuum of choices? Isn't one also struck by the historical role that plantation slavery/racism continues to play in in distorting the income/politics correlation? I am always amazed when I think about what American history would be like (going back to the Mexican-American War!) if poor Southern whites had sided with their economic interests. Of course in Europe the race phenomena now starts to resemble the US and there are great efforts to impose a binary system centered using the votes of the middle class as the fulcrum. Japan has resisted the neo-liberal solution for an extraordinary decade and a half of stagnation, maybe in part because of the social solidarity in a society lacking that wedge issue. Paul --
Re: the global food supply
I finally got around to reading this. With regard to Ken H's comments, it's important to note that George M. is presenting a slippery slope argument: the dire results that Ken sees as unrealistic are _predictions_ of what may happen. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Eubulides [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 7:48 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] the global food supply Starved of the truth Biotech firms are out to corner the market, so they have to persuade us something else is at stake George Monbiot Tuesday March 9, 2004 The Guardian The question is as simple as this: do you want a few corporations to monopolise the global food supply? If the answer is yes, you should welcome the announcement that the government is expected to make today that the commercial planting of a genetically modified (GM) crop in Britain can go ahead. If the answer is no, you should regret it. The principal promotional effort of the genetic engineering industry is to distract us from this question. GM technology permits companies to ensure that everything we eat is owned by them. They can patent the seeds and the processes that give rise to them. They can make sure that crops can't be grown without their patented chemicals. They can prevent seeds from reproducing themselves. By buying up competing seed companies and closing them down, they can capture the food market, the biggest and most diverse market of all. No one in her right mind would welcome this, so the corporations must persuade us to focus on something else. At first they talked of enhancing consumer choice, but when the carrot failed, they switched to the stick. Now we are told that unless we support the deployment of GM crops in Britain, our science base will collapse. And that, by refusing to eat GM products in Europe, we are threatening the developing world with starvation. Both arguments are, shall we say, imaginative; but in public relations, cogency counts for little. All that matters is that you spin the discussion out for long enough to achieve the necessary result. And that means recruiting eminent figures to make the case on your behalf.
A tactical debate
Looks like I'm back on PEN-L after all, but hopefully more sparingly... I don't know what these comrades are talking about here, but then again, I realise I'm not an American. In a lead-up to the election, the candidates normally try to sound out or air views to find a consensus or base for unity, which could be modified lateron, and much more important than specific utterances of Kerry or Bush, is the strategic project which they represent, or seek to articulate beyond the rhetoric. In other words, they search for a winning formula in regard to supporters and voters, with themes which they think will appeal. But behind what is said, one ought I think to look at the objective predicament and the objective interests which the new president would have to deal with, in other words, the real constellation of political forces. Any bona fide Marxian analyst would seek thus to understand the real strategy behind the rhetoric, and not merely make disparaging remarks about the candidates, which is a rather useless activity anyhow. To demonstrate this, just have a look at Bush's statements just prior to the 2000 presidential elections and immediately after those elections, in other words, compare what he said then, to what actually happened and what he said later. It's quite clear there were numerous inconsistencies and absurdities, and that, really, often he had no basis at all for saying what he said. Whether or not Kerry happens to be in favour of multilateral foreign policy initiatives or unilateral policy initiatives at this stage probably has little bearing on what he would actually do if he became president, because in that case he would be under pressure to express the policy of a government apparatus and a team of politicians which is much larger than he is. Rather than rail against the unprincipled nature of the personalities, it's much more constructive I think to look at what the principles of the candidates really are, and what the implications of that are. Jurriaan
Re: A tactical debate
JB writes: To demonstrate this, just have a look at Bush's statements just prior to the 2000 presidential elections and immediately after those elections, in other words, compare what he said then, to what actually happened and what he said later. one thing that's striking is how humble Bush acted in the 2000 presidential debates and how arrogant his administration has been. Jim D.
Re: Marx and the Civil War
Michael wrote: ...I recall that Senator Hoare from Mass. [might more appropriately be spelled Whore In the mid-'30s, British Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare met in Paris with French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval and signed what came to be known as the Hoare-Laval agreement to appease Mussolini on the Abyssinian invasion. A pungent British response was: No more coals to Newcastle! No more Hoares to Paris! Does anyone know who should get credit for this line? Was it Churchill? Shane Mage Mortals immortals, immortals mortals, living their deaths, dying their lives Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62
Russian shadow economy, GDP and Marx's value theory
I will just post a digressive comment I made to Chris Doss, with some additions, in case anybody is interested in this type of issue. As I told Chris, I know little about contemporary Russia. I think the main thing to note is that the black and grey economy (or the shadow economy) in Russia is so large in money terms, that it is equal to anywhere between 20-40 percent of Russia's GDP, and that means the GDP estimate cannot accurately describe economic activity overall. Thus, it is important to understand what the Russian GDP measure actually does measure, what its limits are. Of course, the shadow economy would consist both of activities defined as production, and activities consist only of transactions unrelated to real production (transfer incomes), one guesses about half of the total shadow economy each. To some extent Russian statisticians do try to impute estimated values for the informal economy. Transfer incomes are part of personal income receipts, but they aren't included in GDP, because they are considered unrelated to the value of any production, and indirect taxes paid are thus offset (at least in UNSNA accounts) against government producer subsidies received by enterprises, to capture only that portion of indirect taxes paid by producers, which represents a fraction of net new income generated by production (net income taxes paid in the accounting period are considered simply as a portion of net new income produced). Central to Kuznets's GDP idea was really the notion that new additional net income is generated only through production (financial transactions could only redistribute or transfer that new wealth), and from there, a distinction is drawn between new value added and conserved/transferred value. Marx's idea that no new value is created in exchange is thus implicitly accepted to a great extent (although the social accountant could just argue, of course, that his measurement objective, is just to measure the value of production). Thus, the implicit idea of the GDP concept remains that the origin of new net additions of economic wealth must have its source in production. Production is widely defined in SNA type accounts, as any activity carried out under responsibility, control and management of an institutional unit, that uses inputs of labour, capital and goods and services to produce outputs of goods and services. (For some critical comments on how that definition is applied, see e.g.: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/soc/SocialMoments/yaiser8.htm). On that basis, the argument is then that the value of production (gross output) is equal to the incomes generated by that production, and by deducting the value of goods used up from gross output as an expenditure unrelated to the value of net new output wealth created (the intermediate consumption, goods and services used up), we then arrive at a net output value called GDP, considered to be the new value added. Curiously however, various business-to-business services, as distinct from services to final consumers, are not regarded as services used up to create final output, i.e. not regarded as intermediate consumption. This means that if business-to-business services increase, they could boost GDP, even although they may in reality not add any value to final output, but are rather constitute just an additional impost on real production, no different from raw materials used up (in BEA accounts, however, an attempt is made to distinguish between services which are intermediate consumption, and services which are not, but how that distinction could be validly drawn is not always easy to see). In reality, UN SNA-type national accounts often include insurance premiums paid in consumption of fixed capital (depreciation), the underlying argument being that such premiums, like depreciation charges, represent a portion of gross income newly generated by production, or that they could be treated as a necessary component of fixed capital used up. If you think about it, it is clear that consumption of fixed capital cannot be new value added, because it refers to the value of fixed assets consumed (used up) in making new outputs. Marx therefore refers to the value product as the sum of (gross) wages of productive labor and (gross) profits. The social accountant however looks at it more from the point of view of gross income of enterprises. The concept of value added in reality straddles conserved value (value of fixed assets transferred to the new product) and new value (profit+wages). Depreciation charges could be seen as part of gross income or gross profit (depreciation write-offs could contain a fraction of undistributed profit, as recognised in adjustements for economic depreciation as distinct from depreciation for tax purposes). All of this reflects ultimately an inability to decide conceptually precisely what is a cost of production and what is a revenue from the standpoint of society and the economy as a whole for some activities,
new radio product
Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: March 4, 2004 Corey Robin on the militarized worldview of the neocons * Laura Flanders on her new book on the women of the Bush administration, Bushwomen February 26, 2004 Susie Bright on sex, politics, and her new book, Mommy's Little Girl * Frida Berrigan on who's making money from the war in Iraq * Mark Levitan on the crisis of employment in New York City they join - February 19, 2004 Sara Roy, senior research scholar at the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, on the social crisis among Palestinians in the occupied territories and Israel's intentions behind building the wall * George Soros, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, on the Bush administration and the Bubble of American Supremacy * Christian Parenti on his January in Iraq, spent with the 82nd airborne and members of the resistance, which he wrote up in The Nation February 12, 2004 Keith Bradsher, author of High and Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV, on the ravages of that vehicle and the mindset of its buyers * Michael Mann, author of Incoherent Empire, on the Bush administration's lust for domination 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 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 * Joel Schalit, author of Jerusalem Calling, on the Counterpunch collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism * 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 * Simon Head, author of The New Ruthless Economy, on working in the era of surveillance, restructuring, and speedup* 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, and on his book The Soft Cage (about surveillance in America from slavery to the Patriot Act) * 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
Re: A tactical debate
Jim wrote: one thing that's striking is how humble Bush acted in the 2000 presidential debates and how arrogant his administration has been. Quite. Maybe like that song Oh Lord it is hard to be humble ?. To arrogate is to claim or seize without real justification, or to make undue claims to having something (a characteristic, attribute, property etc.). This suggests that arrogance or cheek has its emotional relevance in capital accumulation and imperialist conquest, which as Marx suggests, is always in the last instance based on getting something for nothing, whatever emotional duplicity might obscure this or twist it into something else. More generally, the pursuit of power seems to require a certain arrogance, namely the belief that it is fitting that one ought to have power or acceed to power. This can be philosophically justified with an elitarian philosophy such as Straussianism, according to which, egalitarian notions devalue philosophy by rejecting anything that cannot be understood by the common man. The idea here is that the public is not capable of understanding or accepting universal principles of right. Therefore, they posit the rectitude of the noble lie which shields the less enlightened public from knowledge of unpalatable truth, for which the public might hold the philosopher to blame (e.g. Socrates). But lying of some sort might in fact be necessitated by the modern information society itself in the specific way that, apart from not being able to cope with the consequences of honesty, still contains the inability to reconcile class or sectional interests with the interests of the community as a whole. I've often had occasion to think about the concept of arrogance, since, as a youthful student in New Zealand my mates thrashed me for being an arrogant upstart. They felt, that Dutch people often came across as arrogant, or that they were naturally arrogant. Returning later to the Netherlands from New Zealand, I had the same irritating experience, but how objective is that really ? Later I've often reflected, that maybe it is not really so much arrogance as a natural self-confidence or over-confidence instilled in children from a young age, of which one could indeed be envious, particularly if, as immigrant, one isn't so self-confident. But it's something that is difficult to be objective about, and I confess I still often get livid within myself about the emotional content of some interactions I experience here. Traditionally Dutch people often have an ability for a confident directness, where other ethnic groups would be much more reserved. The question is then whether this confidence is really justified or appropriate, or whether it has no real justification (maybe just a sort of bluff). It might take considerable emotional and practical insight to understand that. Paradoxically, that the corollary of self-confidence is often the attempt to viciously cut everybody down to size in ways, maybe even derogatorily, something which might culminate in the celebration of mediocrity or the lowest common denominator. Status envy and competitive rivalry seems an interminable problem... Machiavelli writes: Many times it is seen that humility not only does not benefit, but harms, especially when it is used by insolent men who, either from envy or for other reasons, have conceived a hatred against you. Of this our Historian gives proof on the occasion of the war between the Romans and the Latins. For when the Samnites complained to the Romans that the Latins had assaulted them, the Romans did not want to prohibit such a war to the Latins, desired not to irritate them; which not only did not irritate them, but made them become more spirited against them [i.e. the Romans], and they discovered themselves as enemies more quickly. Of which, the words of the aforementioned Annius, the Latin Praetor, in that same council, attest, where he says: You have tried their patience in denying them military aid: why do you doubt this should excite them? Yet they have borne this pain. They have heard we are preparing an army against their confederates, the Samnites, yet have not moved from their City. Whence is there such modesty, except from their recognition of both our virility and theirs? It is very clearly recognized, therefore, by this text how much the patience of the Romans increased the arrogance of the Latins. (Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses, chapter XIV). J.
Re: A tactical debate
I think the Bushmasters are arrogant because of their long experience with having power (as part of the economic or military elite). Bush and the like went to elite schools, etc., etc. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Jurriaan Bendien [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 3:59 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] A tactical debate Jim wrote: one thing that's striking is how humble Bush acted in the 2000 presidential debates and how arrogant his administration has been. Quite. Maybe like that song Oh Lord it is hard to be humble ?. To arrogate is to claim or seize without real justification, or to make undue claims to having something (a characteristic, attribute, property etc.). This suggests that arrogance or cheek has its emotional relevance in capital accumulation and imperialist conquest, which as Marx suggests, is always in the last instance based on getting something for nothing, whatever emotional duplicity might obscure this or twist it into something else. More generally, the pursuit of power seems to require a certain arrogance, namely the belief that it is fitting that one ought to have power or acceed to power. This can be philosophically justified with an elitarian philosophy such as Straussianism, according to which, egalitarian notions devalue philosophy by rejecting anything that cannot be understood by the common man. The idea here is that the public is not capable of understanding or accepting universal principles of right. Therefore, they posit the rectitude of the noble lie which shields the less enlightened public from knowledge of unpalatable truth, for which the public might hold the philosopher to blame (e.g. Socrates). But lying of some sort might in fact be necessitated by the modern information society itself in the specific way that, apart from not being able to cope with the consequences of honesty, still contains the inability to reconcile class or sectional interests with the interests of the community as a whole. I've often had occasion to think about the concept of arrogance, since, as a youthful student in New Zealand my mates thrashed me for being an arrogant upstart. They felt, that Dutch people often came across as arrogant, or that they were naturally arrogant. Returning later to the Netherlands from New Zealand, I had the same irritating experience, but how objective is that really ? Later I've often reflected, that maybe it is not really so much arrogance as a natural self-confidence or over-confidence instilled in children from a young age, of which one could indeed be envious, particularly if, as immigrant, one isn't so self-confident. But it's something that is difficult to be objective about, and I confess I still often get livid within myself about the emotional content of some interactions I experience here. Traditionally Dutch people often have an ability for a confident directness, where other ethnic groups would be much more reserved. The question is then whether this confidence is really justified or appropriate, or whether it has no real justification (maybe just a sort of bluff). It might take considerable emotional and practical insight to understand that. Paradoxically, that the corollary of self-confidence is often the attempt to viciously cut everybody down to size in ways, maybe even derogatorily, something which might culminate in the celebration of mediocrity or the lowest common denominator. Status envy and competitive rivalry seems an interminable problem... Machiavelli writes: Many times it is seen that humility not only does not benefit, but harms, especially when it is used by insolent men who, either from envy or for other reasons, have conceived a hatred against you. Of this our Historian gives proof on the occasion of the war between the Romans and the Latins. For when the Samnites complained to the Romans that the Latins had assaulted them, the Romans did not want to prohibit such a war to the Latins, desired not to irritate them; which not only did not irritate them, but made them become more spirited against them [i.e. the Romans], and they discovered themselves as enemies more quickly. Of which, the words of the aforementioned Annius, the Latin Praetor, in that same council, attest, where he says: You have tried their patience in denying them military aid: why do you doubt this should excite them? Yet they have borne this pain. They have heard we are preparing an army against their confederates, the Samnites, yet have not moved from their City. Whence is there such modesty, except from their recognition of both our virility and theirs? It is very clearly recognized, therefore, by this text how much the patience of the Romans
The Great Middle East Initiative
We don't want your Great Middle East Initiative you bloody USA. It is up to us, not to you, to decide where we want to go! Sabri The Globalist http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=3754 The Greater Middle East The Bush Administration's Perspective By Dick Cheney | Friday, February 06, 2004 Following wars with Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States called for a democratization of the Middle East to tackle the region's many problems. Amidst continuing controversy and setbacks, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney lays out what progress has been made and what still needs to be accomplished in this Globalist Document. What was once said about Europe has been said at various times about Asia, Africa and Latin America and is often said today about the greater Middle East. Islamic democracy We are told that the culture and the beliefs of the Islamic people are somehow incompatible with the values and the aspirations of freedom and democracy. These claims are condescending and they are false. Many of the world's Muslims today live in democratic societies. Turkey is perhaps the premier example. That is why it has recently been the target of terrorist violence. Turkey deserves our support, including for its European aspirations. Millions of other Muslims live and flourish as democratic citizens in Europe, Asia and the United States. The desire for freedom is not just America or Western it is universal. Fencing in freedom Whenever ordinary people are given the chance to choose, they choose freedom, democracy and the rule of law not slavery, tyranny and the heavy tread of the secret police. In the years of the Cold War, we learned that we could not safely put a border on freedom. Security was not divisible in Europe. And it is not divisible in the world. One world Our choice is not between a unipolar world and a multipolar world. Our choice is for a just, free and a democratic world. That requires the insights, the sacrifices and the resources of all democratic nations. And it requires the courage, sacrifice and the dedication of those now denied their basic freedoms. It's clear that reform has many advocates in the Muslim world. Arab intellectuals have spoken of a freedom deficit and of the imperative of internal reform, greater political participation, the rule of law, economic openness and wider trade. Womens rights We have seen movement toward reform in the greater Middle East. In Morocco, King Mohammed recently called for greater protection of women's rights. In Jordan, elections have been held and the government is taking steps to reduce state control of the press. In Bahrain, elections were held last year and women were able to run for office for the first time. Leaders of the pack In Egypt, the ruling National Democratic Party has called for increased economic reform and expanded political participation. In Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Abdullah has issued an Arab Charter for reform and called for the holding of municipal elections. These changes demonstrate what we all know that true reform and democracy must come from brave and forward-looking people in each country. And those of us who are privileged to live in freedom have a responsibility to support these historic steps. Transatlantic unity for Iran The rulers of Iran must follow the example being set by others throughout the greater Middle East. In that great nation, there is a growing call for true democracy and human rights. Europe and America must stand as one in calling for the regime to honor the legitimate demands of the Iranian people. They ask nothing more than to enjoy their God-given right to live their lives as free men and women. Drama in Afghanistan Of course, the most dramatic recent examples of democratic progress are to be seen in the liberated countries of Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan two years after the overthrow of the brutal Taliban regime the Loya Jirga has approved a constitution that reflects the values of tolerance and equal rights for women. Under President Karzai's leadership, and with the help of democratic countries around the world, the Afghan people are building a decent, just and free society and a nation that will never again be a safe haven for terror. Ousting Saddam Hussein In Iraq, too, after decades of Baathist rule, democracy is beginning to take hold. Less than a year ago, the people of that country lived under the absolute power of one man and his apparatus of intimidation and torture. Today the former dictator sits in captivity, while the people of Iraq prepare for full self-government. Saddam Hussein can no longer harbor and support terrorists and his long efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction are finally at an end. Full freedoms A new Iraqi police force now protects the people instead of bullying them. Hundreds of Iraqi newspapers are now in circulation with no Baathist enforcers
Europe looks at plan for a Greater Middle East
Europe looks at plan for a Greater Middle East http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/10_03_04_d.asp To understand how Europe will respond to US plans for the Greater Middle East, it may be helpful to contrast European approaches to the approaches and philosophy followed by the US administration. Four points are likely to be intensively discussed: the issue of democratization, questions of regional order and structure, the importance of individuals and of institutions, and the relevance of the Arab-Israeli conflict and peace process for regional developments. The US and the EU agree that a democratic transformation of the Arab world or the wider Middle East is a goal that should be pursued. Europeans will likely remind their US counterparts that Europe has pursued this goal even before Sept. 11, 2001, and not only discovered the lack of democracy in the Arab world in the context of its struggle against international terrorism. As a matter of fact, democracy-building, the support of civil society, the rule of law and human rights have been key elements of the political and security chapter of the Barcelona process (the Euro-Mediterranean partnership) both in its multilateral and bilateral dimensions. Certainly, the Barcelona process has not been totally successful, and Europe may not have pushed enough for its political elements. One of the lessons of the Barcelona process, however, may be that it is wise to break up the concept of democracy into its constituent elements, such as: the rule of law, independence of the judiciary, transparency, accountability, strengthening of civil society, etc. This may make it easier to take the elites of these countries along, and create common interests rather than fears of enforced regime change. The difference between the US and the European approaches becomes very clear with regard to the example of Iran. While the US tends to see the Islamic Republic of Iran as a rogue state whose regime should be changed, Europe sees Iran a complicated partner, but at the same time as the most politically pluralistic state in the Gulf. Iran also serves as an example that democratization will always be a complex and complicated process, never a linear one, and will always be marked by contradictions and occasional setbacks. From a European perspective, therefore, what is needed is not a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East, as US President George W. Bush said, but a common perspective for political, economic and social change in our (European) neighborhood that builds on the potentials in these countries and takes their societies along, respects their dignity and realizes the links that exist between both political and economic underdevelopment, and unresolved regional conflicts. Europe, partly based on the historical experience of former colonial powers such as Britain and France, does not really believe in grand designs to reorder entire regions. It rather seeks to establish regional cooperative structures that to build confidence and security between its states and societies. The Barcelona process is a prime example; it is itself built on the experiences of the CSCE (Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe) process. While it may be too early to establish a CSCE-like process structure for and in the Middle East (or the Middle East/North Africa region), one might well think about sub-regional structures that may serve similar purposes in a more geographical limited area. We should consider, for example, the establishment of a 6+4+1 group for Iraq, consisting of Iraqs six neighbor states, the four parties in the so-called Middle East Quartet (US, EU, Russia, UN), and the Iraqi government. Such a grouping would be a place to discuss regional problems and policies with regard to Iraq (rather than trading accusations about mutual subversion etc.), build trust, and create common interests. In dealing with the Middle East, as well as other regions, Europe generally puts more emphasis on institution-building, while the US focuses more on the persons in charge. This is partly a reflection of the different structures of both political entities: In the US, politics are much more personalized, and the prime decision-maker is much more important; in Europe, with its complicated institutional structure, individuals do not make so much of a difference (consider the difference between a presidential phone call from the White House, and a call from the president of the European Commission). The clearest example for this difference in approaches can be seen in the EU-US debate about how to deal with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat: US and EU policymakers may agree on what they think of Arafats personality, but while the US administration has decided to boycott him, the EU maintains relations, stressing the importance of maintaining institutions which Europe and the US have themselves helped to create. The Palestinian presidential institution was helped by
Will the oil run out ? Reflections from a layman
After the second world war, the Middle East was said to have perhaps 16 million barrels in oil reserves (deposits), by 1967 the estimate had risen to 250 billion barrels, in the 1990s it reached 500 billion, and now it's at over 900 billion barrels or close to a trillion. In approximate figures, official estimates of world oil reserves seem to range from about 1 trillion barrels to 2.3 trillion barrels (correct me if I am wrong). That's just to say we don't truly know how much oil there is on the planet, in advance of more exploration (sounds poetic). The big difference here is between proven reserves and potential or possible reserves (see Dept of Energy estimates, US Geological Survey estimates and various other expert estimates). I cannot assess how accurate these figures really are, but let's suppose for the sake of argument that world oil consumption is about 28.3 billion barrels per year. Then this suggests oil reserves would be sufficient for anywhere between 35-80 years if consumption remained at a constant level, and if no new reserves are proven or estimated. Now of course in reality there is no constant level, and the average growth in annual world consumption (taking the last decade) is around 1.3% - it might well rise to an average of 2%. You'd have to factor that in. In that case, you'd think that oil reserves would be depleted by consumption within anywhere between about 15 to 40 years or so, if no new reserves are discovered. Apart from not distinguishing precisely between output, extracted stocks held, various oil uses, oil sales and final oil consumption, this simplistic approximate calculation does not of course consider prices, or price fluctuations. If oil prices rise, consumption falls, and if prices fall, consumption tends to rise. Oil prices are likely to rise in the future; but technological change which would substitute other energy sources could change the picture completely. Rising oil prices would certainly cause a diversification into other fuel sources. That leads me to think the debate really is about the oil running out, but about who should have it, at what price, that's the salient point really. Whatever the case, it's a good bet that masses of people in poor countries will never have the opportunity to drive petrol-fueled motorcars. By the time they have the money to buy them, insufficient oil remains to fuel those cars with petrol at an affordable price. As regards OPEC, while the total world output of oil in physical terms is estimated to have trebled since 1974, in those thirty years OPEC's share of the world oil market declined from half in 1974 to about 38% at the present, and continues to decline. At the same time, while oil supplied one half of the world's total primary energy demand in 1974, today it is below 40 percent. That is just to say, that oil supply is becoming relatively less important in aggregate as an energy source, even although world oil output has increased gigantically in physical terms, and that, in addition, the actual share of OPEC countries in that oil supply is substantially reduced. This just reduces OPEC's very ability to be a price setter, quite apart from political factors and larger strategic oil stocks. Take for example gas. The share of natural gas in the world's total primary energy use is said to have risen from less than a fifth to nearly a quarter since 1974, and continues to rise. US domestic natural gas production for example is expected to increase by over a third in the next twenty years, when natural gas would generate nearly a third of all US electric power, versus less than a sixth today (but mainly US gas is substituting for US coal, not petrol; it's cars that burn up most of the oil products). The United States still has very large reserves of (both known and undiscovered) natural gas and oil deposits in the ground, but really conditions in the world energy market determine whether those resources are explored and developed. Petroleum exploration in the US itself just happens to cost more than in places like Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East, and in these places deposit finds are larger than in the US, while fewer bores need to be drilled to identify and extract the deposits. Oil companies just focus on exploiting reserves in regions where energy can be produced most profitably, at a given price structure. Although this may mean increased dependence on imported fuels, their own relative production costs are lowered against cartellised prices for oil, making possible surplus-profits of various kinds. The US itself supposed to produce about a tenth of world oil output, but consumes nearly a quarter of that output, thus, the US imports over half of oil consumed there. Those imports could be reduced by greater local oil exploitation or alternative energy sources, but if this isn't happening, it's mainly just a matter of relative prices and costs in a capitalist market. That is just to say, that I
Re: new radio product
On Wednesday, March 10, 2004 at 18:35:25 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: March 4, 2004 Corey Robin on the militarized worldview of the neocons * Laura Flanders on her new book on the women of the Bush administration, Bushwomen Great name. Doug, are your radio products compatible with the iTunes/MP3 type players? Bill
European perceptions, Americas Greater Middle East
European perceptions, Americas greater Middle East http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/09_03_04_d.asp Following the divisions over the Iraq war between the United States and some of its key European allies as well as within the European Union actors on both sides of the Atlantic have been trying to heal the wounds and better prepare themselves for future challenges that may come up. On the European side, where the split over Iraq was seen as a real threat to the perspective of political integration, the EU has made an effort to unify its perception of international and European security in its European Security Strategy, adopted by the EUs heads of state and government in December 2003. At the same time, a quieter debate on how to deal with threats in the world is being conducted between the United States and Europe in transatlantic fora such as, among others, NATO and the G8. The European Security Strategy describes the risks and threats which Europe perceives as emanating from its geopolitical environment. Five key threats are defined, namely terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional conflicts, state failure and organized crime, including drug smuggling, illegal migration and trafficking in human beings. It is noticeable that many of these risks and challenges emanate from, or are in one way or other, a feature of Europes southern neighborhood i.e. the Middle East. The strategy points to the Middle East explicitly in its dealing with proliferation and regional conflicts. Somalia and Afghanistan are mentioned as examples for state failure; and many European policy-makers are fearful that the American-led occupation of Iraq will not actually bring about a stable and democratic new Iraq, but another failed, disintegrating state. Speaking of terrorism, the paper mentions that this phenomenon has recently been mostly linked to violent religious extremism. Europe has had its own experience with secular types of terrorism; and the European Security Strategy expresses European thinking well, in not confusing Islam and terrorism. Instead, it points to the complex causes of terrorism, including the pressures of modernization, cultural, social and political crises, and the alienation of young people living in foreign societies. There is no doubt, however, that terrorism with Islamist backgrounds is increasingly seen as a threat that demands international action and cooperation including, as in the case of Afghanistan, military means. At the same time, Europe does not fear any peaceful take-overs by political Islamic parties; at least the decision-making elites are quite aware that radical Islamists do not represent a majority in most Arab or Muslim countries, and that any democratic transformation that would allow regular and free elections would most likely reduce their appeal. The experience of Turkey, where democratic competition has allowed a conservative party with Islamist roots to become the force of reform, is certainly reassuring in this respect. In the transatlantic debate on common challenges and opportunities, the Middle East again takes a pivotal position. There is agreement of sorts that the Middle East will be in the center of international geopolitics for at least the next decade to come; it will therefore also be a major issue for EU-US cooperation. Note that the so-called US Greater Middle East Initiative is still a project under construction which the US government is going to present to its European allies at the coming NATO and G8 summits in June 2004. Not even the precise geopolitical content of the project has been defined so far. US policy-makers see the initiative as a scheme that could give new life to these transatlantic institutions. This may explain one of its major weaknesses, namely that it is being discussed with the Europeans on various levels, but not with the political and societal elites of the states it deals with. Little wonder that so many Arab commentators perceive it negatively as a dictate and not as an offer of cooperation. Very generally, compared to European approaches, US strategies tend to be more global, more security-biased, and based on certain perceptions of a moral order of what is good and what is bad in the world. And, as the only remaining world power, the United States gives less value to time-consuming consultations with the objects of their policies. European strategies tend to be more regional in focus the European Security Strategy is the most global approach on offer from the European side and it is still, as shown, heavily centered on developments in its immediate geopolitical neighborhood. European policies also tend to be more multidimensional, and institutional. In other words, Europe would see to it that security policies are not only military policies, but be combined with political, economic, cultural contents and means; and European policy-makers believe in the virtues of
US-Australia FTA: drug prices...........
Drug costs will rise with deal: US official http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2004/03/10/1078594434762.html Date: March 11 2004 By John Garnaut, Sydney Morning Herald The US trade deal is the first step in a campaign to raise global pharmaceutical prices, a US Senate finance committee heard yesterday. Contradicting the Prime Minister, John Howard, America's top trade official told the committee that the cost of Australian drugs would be changed under the agreement. It would change the distribution of prices in Australia and the relative prices of generic and patented drugs, the US Trade Representative, Bob Zoellick, said. Under intense pressure on rising drug costs at home, an influential Republican senator told the committee that the Australian deal was a breakthrough that began the process of getting other countries to bear a greater share of drug company research and development costs. One of the ways of addressing the causes [of high US prices] is to get the other countries of the world to help bear part of the burden of the RD, said Senator Jon Kyl, who lobbied Australian ministers on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme last year. So, my hat's off to your [Mr Zoellick's] team and the work that you did in at least beginning to address this with Australia. Senator Kyl said the final agreement, released last week, was only the beginning of negotiations over Australia's pharmaceuticals system. We don't need to discuss it here, but I know that there is much more work that needs to be done in further discussions with the Australians. Labor's health spokeswoman, Julia Gillard, said the deal had set in train a process that could threaten the PBS. This is the thin end of the wedge in an American drug company campaign to impose global drug prices on Australian patients and taxpayers. Mr Howard said recently there would be certainly no direct or indirect effect on price and the Health Minister, Tony Abbott, and Trade Minister, Mark Vaile, have made similar claims. Who's lying here, Ambassador Zoellick or John Howard and Tony Abbott? Ms Gillard said. A spokesman for Mr Vaile rejected the US suggestion that Australia did not carry its share of research and development costs and reiterated that nothing in the agreement would affect pharmaceutical prices. Regardless of the language used by officials in the US it won't change what's been agreed in this free trade agreement, the full text of which is available for all to see. Mr Zoellick told the committee he had protected American beef and dairy interests from Australian competition.In beef, we had a very long phase-out with various safeguards, slow quota increase. We tried to take care of the dairy industry as well because we didn't touch the tariff and we just increased the quota basically about $40-$50 million of imports a year. US Democrat Senator Max Baucus said that Mr Zoellick's trade agenda had been hijacked by foreign policy objectives.
IMF-Argentina: from bully to weakling
Argentina helps keep up facade By coming to a last-minute deal with Buenos Aires, the International Monetary Fund has avoided showing how powerless it really is Charlotte Denny and Larry Elliott Thursday March 11, 2004 The Guardian It was like a boxing match which goes to the final bell on Tuesday evening in Washington as the two sides in the long drawn-out battle between Argentina and the International Monetary Fund withdrew to their corners, punchdrunk. Both were telling the judges, the world's media, that they had won on points. At almost the last moment, Argentina had stumped up the $3.1bn (£1.7bn) it owed the Fund - on the face of it a victory for the Washington-based lender, the country's last remaining financial lifeline. But Buenos Aires said it had only signed the cheque after securing a promise from the Fund of further lending without new and more stringent conditions. The strings the Fund was hoping to attach involved the $90bn Argentina owes to private-sector creditors. The country has been offering to repay just 25 cents in every dollar borrowed, an offer seen as unacceptable by the IMF. Further lending, the Fund said, was conditional on Argentina negotiating in good faith with its private-sector creditors. Having slugged it out for days, at the post-match press conferences yesterday it was time to kiss and make up. The last minute telephone call from the IMF's acting director, Anne Krueger, to Argentina's president, Nestor Kirchner which clinched the deal with just hours to go before the deadline was cordial and respectful, a presidential spokesman said. Both sides have made face-saving concessions. Argentina yesterday signed a new agreement with the Fund, conceding to several of its demands over the treatment of private creditors. The IMF said its agreement with Argentina included a specific course of action for negotiations with creditor groups and a tentative timetable for the talks. Argentina's economy minister Roberto Lavagna made it clear however that Argentina's September offer to repay private creditors 25 cents in the dollar still stood. Tellingly, groups representing investors in Argentinian debt were less impressed with the commitments the IMF has secured on their behalf. Argentina and the Fund are making the best fist of what is a situation fraught with danger for both. Mr Kirchner has staked his reputation on standing up to the IMF and had to take the fight to the wire in order to maintain his populist credentials. But he had to weigh up the risks of triggering the largest ever default to the Fund. Failing to make its IMF payment would have relegated Argentina to the bottom league of creditworthy countries, alongside Sudan, Zimbabwe and Somalia, putting at risk future borrowing on world capital markets. When Argentina defaulted to its private creditors in December 2001 it triggered a financial crash during which the country's economy shrunk by a fifth. The resulting political and social chaos saw four occupants of the presidential palace in a month, unemployment of more than 20% and half of Argentinians falling below the poverty line. While the short-term impact would undoubtedly be painful, Mr Kirchner could have gambled that the capital markets would eventually open their lending books again to one of the world's most important developing economies. The lesson from the Russian debt default in September 1998 is that if a country is big enough, investors will come back. Capital markets have short memories, admits one IMF official. The Fund is usually portrayed as having the upper hand in negotiations. Argentina's debts are, however, so big that a default would have a damaging effect on the Fund's balance sheet. Of the $95bn in outstanding loans to the Fund, Argentina accounts for 15%. The Fund says it would be forced to charge other borrowers higher rates to make good its losses. That threat seems unlikely to be realised, given that two other countries, Brazil and Turkey, account for a further 57% of its loans portfolio. Higher borrowing charges would risk tipping two more countries into default. More likely the Fund would have to turn to its major shareholders, the rich countries of the west, for a cash injection. For the Fund, the confrontation with Argentina risked exposing the confidence trick on which its role as the world's financial fireman has been built. In reality, there is not enough money in its coffers to rescue a country facing imminent bankruptcy, which is why the Asian countries burnt by the series of financial crises of the late 1990s have decided to build up their own foreign exchange reserves instead. Argentina did the Fund a favour by not unmasking the illusion. But in the long term, the only solution is a proper mechanism for sharing the burden of dealing with sovereign bankruptcies more equally between the stakeholders, as Ms Krueger has argued. When she first advanced the plan, just months before Argentina spiralled into crisis in late 2001,
Re: [Marxism] A tactical debate
Louis Proyect wrote: This is an interesting question. Kerry insists that he voted for the war because he was misled. He based his vote on the documentation furnished by the CIA. If he has stated somewhere that he would have voted differently if he knew back then what he knows now (as even Colin Powell implied the other week), I haven't heard it. - An interesting question -- why? I think even if Kerry knew then what he knows now, he would still have voted for the resolution authorizing war provided the WMD issue was not a matter of public controversy as it is now. What he personally believed at that time about the existence or non-existence of WMD's had little to do with it. Surely you know that. If he could have foreseen that the war and occupation would become unpopular and that his vote would later almost cost him the nomination and subsequently give the Bush people a chance to attack him as a hypocrite, then he would have voted the other way. But a finger to the wind can only pick up today's breezes, not tomorrow's. But, anyway, that's not the issue. What's important is less what he did as a opportunist politician running for President, than what he would have done as the incumbent President. You seem to be suggesting that his dissembling means he might have, like Bush, invaded Iraq. Against the strenuous objections of France, Germany, Russia, and China, the UN, and the opposition of a large part of his base? If that is your position, you would be saying, against all evidence and logic, that there was a bipartisan consensus for the invasion of Iraq, and all the past year's noise and talk of a split in the US ruling class over the war was just so much malarkey. In fact, as you know, Scowcroft, Kissinger, Eagleburger, Holbrook, Brzezinski, Albright, and Christopher -- who between them embody the consensus -- were very much against going to war, until the administration had proceeded so far down that path that they closed ranks with it in the overarching interest of preserving America's credibility. But they never favoured putting boots on the ground to overthrow Saddam Hussein. They knew the risks much better than the neocon naifs in the Defence department and around Cheney. Their preferred method is to rely on economic pressure rather than military power, ie. on sanctions and, if necessary, aerial bombing of infrastructure, to force regime change from within. It's much safer and, if it doesn't result in regime change, it least allows for containment. That's why Bush Sr. halted short of Baghdad, and it was also the policy of the Clinton administration. You would also be saying that Kerry, as President, and the Democrats would have, like the conservative wing of the Republican party, decided to turn its back on its historic alliance with Europe, NATO, and the UN. In fact, even though they were forced by political expediency to vote for the war resolution, they never ate freedom fries and continued to agitate for a greater UN role. The Republican right has a long history of of experiencing the UN and Europe as an intolerable fetter on American power; the Democrats have none. There is no reason to suppose, then, that Kerry as President would have followed the same course as Bush. The Bush administration represented a radical break with the past against the opposition of the major part of the Republican establishment, the Democrats, and joint chiefs. But, as we know, the demonstration effect it intended of American power had quite the opposite effect, the US got bogged down in Iraq, and the bipartisan consensus reeled Bush back in. Now that the administration's wings have been clipped, the case can be made that the foreign policy of a second term Bush and a first term Kerry administration would look pretty much the same. But you can't make that case for last April, if that is what you're hinting at. This may be another instance where your visceral response to the Democrats and efforts to show they are indistinguishable from the Republicans may have clouded your judgement. Marv Gandall
Japan: frontiers of 'privatization'
Cabinet OKs highway privatization plan The Japan Times: March 10, 2004 By TETSUSHI KAJIMOTO Staff writer The Cabinet endorsed contentious legislation Tuesday aimed at privatizing the nation's four expressway corporations. The move paves the way for the new entities to repay combined debts worth 40 trillion yen over a period of 45 years, while pursuing planned road construction projects with borrowing backed by government guarantees. The privatization of the expressway firms is a pillar of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's structural reform drive. The legislation advocates establishment of six privatized entities via the regrouping of Japan Highway Public Corp., Metropolitan Expressway Public Corp., Hanshin Expressway Public Corp. and the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Authority, as well as a separate asset-holding and debt-servicing administrative organization. The privatized companies will be given special status and undertake expressway construction, maintenance and toll-collection while leasing expressways from the administrative organ. The latter will concentrate on debt repayment by using road lease fees from the expressway operators. The central and local governments will own more than one-third of shares with voting rights that will be issued by the privatized companies. The process will therefore follow the same format used to privatize the former state-owned corporations that resulted in the creation of NTT Corp. If the legislation is approved by the Diet during the current session, which runs through mid-June, the expressway corporations will be privatized by the end of fiscal 2005, according to officials at the Land, Transport and Infrastructure Ministry. Although the privatization scheme was initially expected to prioritize debt repayment and halt the construction of unprofitable routes, some experts charge that the plan will have little impact other than reducing the cost of completing the planned 9,342 km expressway network. Under the current system, Japan Highway, the largest of the four expressway firms, undertakes expressway construction when issued administrative orders by the land, infrastructure and transport minister. Upon privatization, this administrative order system will be abolished and the privatized entities are expected to act at their own discretion. They will apply to the land minister for new road construction projects after concluding agreements with the administrative organ. Critics doubt whether the privatized entities will be given real autonomy, as the companies will be able to raise construction funds by issuing bonds backed by government guarantees. All of these debts and completed expressways will be taken over by the administrative organ -- and eventually by either the central or local governments. The legislation stipulates that the administrative organ will be disbanded after debt repayment is completed 45 years after privatization. The expressways will be toll-free thereafter. Toll-free expressways have been promised by the government for decades, though they have never been realized because of the so-called pool system, in which users of expressways whose construction costs have been paid off must continue paying tolls to cover the construction costs of unprofitable expressways in rural areas.
Re: US-Australia FTA: drug prices...........
The absurdity of the argument repeated by Senator Kyl (where's he from?) is so obvious that even a US journalist ought to call these people on it. Let's suppose the Australians now will have to pay more for pharmacueticals. The drug companies get the money. Why in the world would they reduce prices in the USA? Does anyone believe that there is a certain amount of money that they need and once they have more from the Australians they'll take less for USA customers? No one could possibly accept that. I can understand the senators and trade officials saying it, but why don't journalists laugh at them? No, I understand that as well. Just ranting here. Gene Coyle Eubulides wrote: Drug costs will rise with deal: US official http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2004/03/10/1078594434762.html Date: March 11 2004 By John Garnaut, Sydney Morning Herald The US trade deal is the first step in a campaign to raise global pharmaceutical prices, a US Senate finance committee heard yesterday. Contradicting the Prime Minister, John Howard, America's top trade official told the committee that the cost of Australian drugs would be changed under the agreement. It would change the distribution of prices in Australia and the relative prices of generic and patented drugs, the US Trade Representative, Bob Zoellick, said. Under intense pressure on rising drug costs at home, an influential Republican senator told the committee that the Australian deal was a breakthrough that began the process of getting other countries to bear a greater share of drug company research and development costs. One of the ways of addressing the causes [of high US prices] is to get the other countries of the world to help bear part of the burden of the RD, said Senator Jon Kyl, who lobbied Australian ministers on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme last year. So, my hat's off to your [Mr Zoellick's] team and the work that you did in at least beginning to address this with Australia. Senator Kyl said the final agreement, released last week, was only the beginning of negotiations over Australia's pharmaceuticals system. We don't need to discuss it here, but I know that there is much more work that needs to be done in further discussions with the Australians. Labor's health spokeswoman, Julia Gillard, said the deal had set in train a process that could threaten the PBS. This is the thin end of the wedge in an American drug company campaign to impose global drug prices on Australian patients and taxpayers. Mr Howard said recently there would be certainly no direct or indirect effect on price and the Health Minister, Tony Abbott, and Trade Minister, Mark Vaile, have made similar claims. Who's lying here, Ambassador Zoellick or John Howard and Tony Abbott? Ms Gillard said. A spokesman for Mr Vaile rejected the US suggestion that Australia did not carry its share of research and development costs and reiterated that nothing in the agreement would affect pharmaceutical prices. Regardless of the language used by officials in the US it won't change what's been agreed in this free trade agreement, the full text of which is available for all to see. Mr Zoellick told the committee he had protected American beef and dairy interests from Australian competition.In beef, we had a very long phase-out with various safeguards, slow quota increase. We tried to take care of the dairy industry as well because we didn't touch the tariff and we just increased the quota basically about $40-$50 million of imports a year. US Democrat Senator Max Baucus said that Mr Zoellick's trade agenda had been hijacked by foreign policy objectives.
Re: new radio product
Bill Lear wrote: On Wednesday, March 10, 2004 at 18:35:25 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: March 4, 2004 Corey Robin on the militarized worldview of the neocons * Laura Flanders on her new book on the women of the Bush administration, Bushwomen Great name. Doug, are your radio products compatible with the iTunes/MP3 type players? Yes. Two options - streaming and download. And two speeds, 16kbps (for dialup) and 64kbps (broadband). I misnamed the 2/26 files - fixed it now. Doug
GM crop contamination...
2/3 of US crops contaminated: GM contamination rampant in US http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5365FC37-1E08-4C17-9516-911EA47AEBC1.htm
The Russian Default the Beginning of the End of Neoliberalism (Capitalism versus socialism)
Lou says: Chris Doss wrote: Just as an aside, I know a guy who sells shoe polish in the Moscow train stations who makes over four times that much. I am not sure what point you are trying to make. Is this anecdotal evidence meant to refute the radical critique of the counter-revolution in the USSR? Do you think that it is a good thing that capitalism has been restored in the USSR? Are you a socialist? A Russian nationalist? I honestly can't figure out where you are coming from. There was a guy named Ulhas who used to post on PEN-L and Marxmail. He loved to come up factoids about how some airport was being built in Uttar Pradesh or how cell-phone usage was up in Bombay. And all the while couching this in terms of what Marx said back in 1848. I don't even get the sense that you are even appealing to that kind of authority, misguided as it would be. Over on LBO-talk, Chris has been saying that the Russian citizens on the average probably had it best materially during the Brezhnev years. Anyhow, I think that Chris is trying to say that, though the Russian economy tanked after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, its economy has recovered quite a bit since Russia defaulted on its foreign debt in 1998. Putin has managed the post-default Russian economy well by capitalist standards. Russia's economy has grown by a third under Putin, after shrinking by half in the seven years following the end of communist rule, as oil prices averaged more than $27 a barrel under Putin. Under Yeltsin, oil prices averaged $17.55 and dropped as low as $9.55 after the 1998 debt default (at http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=1085sid=aygjUnmmVAaUrefer=europe). The Russian default was a blow against neoliberalism: Neoliberalism at the global level has also been dealt some serious blows--although one of the hardest punches has not received the attention it deserves: Russia's default on $200 billion worth of debt, some $40 billion of which is owed to foreigners. Like the proverbial sewer smell arising in the midst of a dinner party, the guests--the international creditors--do not want to mention it. This is a first for the international system of debt peonage, and the idea could easily spread (Mark Weisbrot, Neoliberalism Comes Unglued, http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/weisbrotoct98.htm). And it has! Once again, the Russians proved themselves to be the vanguard. :- *Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services - Feb. 5, 2004 Providence Journal - February 8, 2004 It Pays to Get Tough with the IMF For the second time in less than six months, the government of Argentina stood up to the International Monetary Fund -- and the IMF backed down. Last week the Fund approved the latest installment of its lending to Argentina, after having failed in its efforts to get a better deal for Argentina's private creditors. This is unprecedented. The IMF is the most powerful lending institution in the world, and is used to having its way -- especially with a country that is not so big (38 million people) but is one of the Fund's largest debtors in the world. And it's not like Argentina can get easy credit elsewhere. The government is currently in default on $88 billion of debt, the biggest sovereign debt default in history. Argentina has offered the private creditors a haircut -- or reduction -- of 75 percent on their debt. This might sound like a lot, but it would still leave Argentina with an enormous debt burden of more than 90 percent of GDP. To do better than this, the government of President Nestor Kirchner would have to run large primary (not counting interest) budget surpluses. This is exactly what the IMF wants from Argentina: squeeze its taxpayers and citizens and use any surplus due to long-awaited economic growth to pay off foreign creditors. Kirchner had other ideas. From 1998 through 2002, Argentina suffered one of the most devastating depressions in the history of Latin America. It went from having the highest living standards in the region, to a country with the majority of people living below the poverty line. When Kirchner was elected last May, he pledged not to return to paying debt at the cost of hunger and exclusion of Argentines, generating more poverty and increasing social conflict. IMF economists had plenty of loans to encourage the disastrous economic policies that led to the country's economic collapse. Chief among these was the convertibility plan that fixed Argentina's peso at one-to-one with the U.S. dollar. Together with trade and financial liberalization, this helped destroy the country's manufacturing jobs, and set the stage for a series of financial crises in the late nineties. And the Fund pushed its standard fare of high interest rates and budget cuts to deal with the crises as they unfolded, making matters worse. But when the currency finally collapsed, and the financial system imploded at the end of 2001 -- when Argentina was flat on its back -- the IMF offered nothing. The country descended
Re: A tactical debate - some more views
Jim wrote: I think the Bushmasters are arrogant because of their long experience with having power (as part of the economic or military elite). Bush and the like went to elite schools, etc., etc. Quite. You say it very succinctly. But here's some additional comments, for the more patient readers: At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that people are poor because they are lazy. He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to free market competition. To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was socialism. Recently, President Bush's Federal Appeals Court Nominee, California's Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated the same broadside at her Senate hearing. She knew that her pronouncement would please President Bush and Karl Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying all the democratic political, social, judiciary, and economic institutions that both Democrats and moderate Republicans had built together since Roosevelt's New Deal. President George Bush and the Gilded Age by Yoshi Tsurumi (Professor of International Business, Baruch College, the City University of New York ).http://www.glocom.org/opinions/essays/20040301_tsurumi_president/ Republican gerrymandering of electoral districts has created a Congress where a Republican majority is virtually assured as most seats become permanently 'safe'. Experts now believe there are only 25 contestable House seats left. At the same time, a Bush win would mean that by 2008 a Republican President would have controlled the appointment of senior judges for 20 of the past 28 years. By the end of a second term, Bush would be likely to have named three more Supreme Court judges, locking up the court for cultural and political conservatives for a generation. 'There is something dangerous at work here. The Republicans, if they win again, are in a position to change the structure of American democracy,' said Robert Kuttner, editor of US Prospect magazine. Source: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/2-21-2004-50835.asp?viewPage=2 MSNBC: And [John Kerry] becomes the anti-establishment candidate then? [Tim] Russert: That's exactly what he's hoping for. Someone wants to be the alternative to the front-runner. First it was Dean, now it's Edwards. (...) MSNBC: All in all then, what are we hearing in all these Democratic primaries, beginning with Iowa? Russert: They oppose the war. They think the economy's in bad shape by a margin of 80 percent and over 80 percent say they're angry or dissatisfied with President Bush. The one interesting thing that's been so striking to me is the way the Democratic Party has united. And, at the polls, if you ask about the war, every state -- Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina; north, south, east and west -- there is overwhelming opposition to the war. When it comes to the economy, in Oklahoma, Missouri and South Carolina, over 70% say the economy is not good. And there's anger and dissatisfaction with George W. Bush. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4146741 It looks to me, that there's no way at all in which Kerry could match the Bush team in campaign funding, in which case the image of being anti-establishment is really the only way to go, and then you hope for a large anti-Bush default vote (at the very least a lesser evil vote). The problem in these elections is really is, that they are about nothing, because nobody seems to have any comprehensive constructive policy which genuinely aims to resolve the social, economic and environmental problems of American society itself. The Federal Government basically functions as a technically bankrupt corporation which, unless some genial financial policies are devised, can only survive by selling off the family silver. One thinks of what Marx wrote in Capital Vol. 3: Accumulation of capital in the form of the national debt, as we have shown, means nothing more than the growth of a class of state creditors with a preferential claim to certain sums from the overall proceeds of taxation. In the way that even an accumulation of debts can appear as an accumulation of capital, we see the distortion in the credit system reach its culmination. These promissory notes which were issued for a capital originally borrowed but long since spent, these paper duplicates of annihilated capital, function for their owners as capital in so far as they are saleable commodities and can therefore be transformed back into capital. Marx, Capital Vol. 3, chapter 30 (Money capital and real capital, I), Pelican edition, p. 607-608. How could Kerry deliver a New Deal or social contract of any sort, if he couldn't actually finance that, but is in reality forced to
My little brother and several other boys and girls from Turkey
Here is a book that you may find interesting: The Politics of Permanent Crisis: Class, Ideology and State in Turkey Edited by Nesecan Baykan and Sungur Savran. Here is an excerpt from Baykan and Savran's editorial piece: Having been thrown by history to the front stage in Eurasia, one of the most delicate regions of the world at present and also having been accorded a significant mission by its allies, in particular the US, and torn, on the other hand, by such profound tensions in economics, society and the polity, Turkey seems to be a powder keg sitting in the midst of the fateful triangle formed by the Balkans, the Middle East and the Caucasus. Here is where you can find some information about the book: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?show=Hardcover:Sale:159033129x:55.20 I have not read the book yet but happen to know many of the contributors and read my brother's review of the book for Science and Society about 10 minutes ago. It sounded interesting. Best, Sabri
