Re: Whither the Fed?
... and make the next POTUS John Kerry a weak president without a big mandate at the same time.) Is there a subtle flaw here? If either Kerry or Bush is elected they will have a big mandate. It just won't be from the people, but the corporate purchasers. I fear the people's mandate can no longer be given through the present electoral process. Dan Scanlan The larger the shares of popular votes for the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, the bigger the next POTUS's mandate will be, though the mandate is more apparent than real, as you say. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Greens for Nader: http://greensfornader.net/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
re PPP comparisons
I don't know anything myself about the way the PPP is constructed or the neoclassical assumptions that Paul proposed were used. Intuitively, though, it makes real sense to select the PPP measure (ie., something that takes into account prices) over one using market exchange rates. Eg., according to the dollar/cuban peso market exchange rate, we might conclude that Cubans live on the equivalent of $20 USD per month. Anyone think that tells us very much about the Cuban standard of living? michael PPP comparisons by sam pawlett 05 August 2004 14:54 UTC Thread Index Take a simple example of Japan and the US. Say the market exchange rate is 110 Yens = One US$. Now take an equivalent basket--in quantity and quality--that contains a burger with fries and a drink. It costs 450 Yens in Tokyo and US$ 2.50 in New York. The PPP exchange rate is then 180 Yens = One US$ (450/2.50). There is nothing imaginary about the PPP exchange rate since it gives you the purchasing power of a country's currency vis-a-vis the US dollar. One thing I've never understood about PPP, is it an attempt to measure -what it is like living in a poor country- or is the idea more modest as the above paragraph suggests trying to demonstrate what the market equivalent amount of currency buys in a given country? For example the PPP GDP or GNP per capita of a country is $US 500. Does this mean that living in that country on that given amount of money is like living in the USA on the same amount of money? PPP (and the averaging and aggregating that goes on) can be misleading.A string sampling bias exists. There are no price differences between countries in goods and services that are offered by MNC's. The costs of Mcdonalds,Bechtel water, Enron nat. gas, or a Blockbuster video is the same across geographical space with very limited differential. The IMF and its coat-tailers always (and ,yes, still) say that the most important economic fundamental is getting prices right. The right price or international market price always seems to be what the good or service costs in the USA. How could it be otherwise, inflation always exists and the bulk of demand for the goods and services offered by MNC's is still in the North hemisphere. Ultimately, the WTO project gets more goods and services to cost what they cost in the USA and Europe. And as that happens, people's access to those goods and services becomes more limited, Bechtel water in South Africa for example. The products offered by local or import substituting businesses cost much less. The marlboro, pizza hut or coca-cola knockoff costs %25 as much. The more foreign based products it counts in its basket of goods, the bigger the PPP number will be. As the world becomes globalized and the stricter that gov'ts enforce WTO rules, the Atlas rather than ppp will come closer to the truth especially with imports and exports being priced in US dollars and the ongoing dollarization of world economies. I don't think this is an unimportant quibble, as it represents trends sometimes called combined and uneven development. Sam Pawlett Michael A. Lebowitz Professor Emeritus Economics Department Simon Fraser University Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6 Currently based in Venezuela. Can be reached at Residencias Anauco Suites Departamento 601 Parque Central, Zona Postal 1010, Oficina 1 Caracas, Venezuela (58-212) 573-4111 fax: (58-212) 573-7724
Al Gore for overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2000
The New Yorker January 22, 2001 LETTER FROM WASHINGTON THE IRAQ FACTOR; Will the new Bush team's old memories shape its foreign policy? BYLINE: NICHOLAS LEMANN Let's assume, just for argument's sake, that George W. Bush's Presidency will have certain similarities to his father's-even that it will be a continuation of his father's, with the added elements of a surer political touch (especially in dealing with the conservative wing of the Republican Party) and a predilection for settling scores with people who did the old man wrong. The Presidential term limit has automatically taken care of Bill Clinton, the dethroner of George H. W. Bush. So who else might there be who was a major enemy to Bush Administration One, and could be given a comeuppance in Bush Administration Two? Might not the first name on the list be Saddam Hussein? It is true that Bush One administered a swift and splendid thrashing to Saddam in the Gulf War, but he is still defiantly in power in Iraq. His longevity rivals Fidel Castro's-Saddam has effectively been running Iraq since the Nixon Administration. In 1993, a year when Saddam was supposed to be history and Bush was supposed to be President, Saddam tried to have Bush assassinated. For almost ten years, the Bush One team has had to endure the accusation, rich in retrospective wisdom, that it could have nailed Saddam if only it had been willing to prosecute the Gulf War for a few more days. Now two of the leading accusees, Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, are assuming positions at the very top of the American government, subordinate only to the firstborn son of another of the leading accusees. Lots of other, lesser known Gulf War planners will probably be high-level officials in the new Bush Administration. The idea of overthrowing Saddam is not an idle fantasy-or, if it is, it's one that has lately occupied the minds of many American officials, including people close to George W. Bush. In 1998, during the period when Saddam was resisting the international inspection team that was trying to make sure he wasn't manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the Iraq Liberation Act, which made available ninety-seven million dollars in government aid to organizations dedicated to the overthrow of Saddam. Two of the act's co-sponsors were Senators Trent Lott and Joseph Lieberman-not peripheral figures on Capitol Hill. Clinton was unenthusiastic about the Iraq Liberation Act and has spent almost none of the money it provides, but Al Gore, during the Presidential campaign, put some distance between himself and Clinton on the issue of removing Saddam. In the second Presidential debate, after defending his Administration's Iraq record, he said, I want to go further. I want to give robust support to the groups that are trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein. (clip) It is noteworthy that so many members of the Bush officialdom, including Bush himself, have publicly toyed with the option of toppling Saddam, because that is not the consensus position in the foreign-policy world. In January of 1999, shortly after the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, Foreign Affairs published a devastating article called The Rollback Fantasy, which said that arming the Iraqi National Congress is militarily ludicrous and so flawed and unrealistic that it would lead inexorably to a replay of the Bay of Pigs. Still, the idea keeps coming up. Kenneth Adelman, the former head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and a member of the Cheney-Rumsfeld camp, told me, Ideally, the first crisis would be something with Iraq. It would be a way to make the point that it's a new world. The Washington headquarters of the Iraq-liberation cause is located in the basement of a brick town house in Georgetown, where a man named Francis Brooke, who constitutes the entire (unpaid) staff of the Iraq Liberation Action Committee, lives with his wife and children. Not long ago, I spent a morning with Brooke, who calls to mind a twenty-years-older Holden Caulfield. He has neatly parted blond hair, round wire-rimmed glasses, and a boy's open face, innocent manner, and undimmed capacity for outrage. In 1992, Brooke got a job in London with a public-relations agency run by a former Carter Administration political operative named John Rendon. He was assigned to publicize atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein, and was given a peculiarly high budget (including compensation for him of nineteen thousand dollars a month); Rendon wouldn't name the client. Brooke soon realized that he was working for the C.I.A. He then maneuvered himself into the most sensitive part of the operation, assisting the Iraqi National Congress. The congress had just been set up, with blessings and funding from the Bush Administration, which evidently had spent the better part of the year following the Gulf War in the hope that Saddam would fall, and then, realizing that he wouldn't, had settled on supporting an armed opposition.
Re: Tariq Ali on the US election
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Before getting to the point of actually being able to split the Democratic and Republican Parties, we need an intermediate goal: do what we can to make the next POTUS a weak president, rather than a strong one. To do so, we need to decrease the shares of popular votes that go to the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. -- Yoshie Fewer votes mean a weaker president? Dream on. GWB lost the popular vote, and that didn't stop him from being the rootin'-tootin'-est, sure-as-shootin'-est hombre north, south, east, and west of the Pecos once he got into office. Mandates are for girlie men, as the governor of CA might put it. Carl Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges! -- Gold Hat, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre _ Check out Election 2004 for up-to-date election news, plus voter tools and more! http://special.msn.com/msn/election2004.armx
The New School of the Americas
Apologies if this was posted earlier. It seems that renaming is regarded as a good substitute for doing away with torture and repression. Cheers, Ken Hanly http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/35/news-ireland.php LA Weekly July 23 - 29, 2004 Teaching Torture Congress quietly keeps School of the Americas alive by Doug Ireland Remember how congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle deplored the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib as un-American? Last Thursday, however, the House quietly passed a renewed appropriation that keeps open the U.S.'s most infamous torture-teaching institution, known as the School of the Americas (SOA), where the illegal physical and psychological abuse of prisoners of the kind the world condemned at Abu Ghraib and worse has been routinely taught for years. A relic of the Cold War, the SOA was originally set up to train military, police and intelligence officers of U.S. allies south of the border in the fight against insurgencies Washington labeled Communist. In reality, the SOA's graduates have been the shock troops of political repression, propping up a string of dictatorial and repressive regimes favored by the Pentagon. The interrogation manuals long used at the SOA were made public in May by the National Security Archive, an independent research group, and posted on its Web site after they were declassified following Freedom of Information Act requests by, among others, the Baltimore Sun. In releasing the manuals, the NSA noted that they describe 'coercive techniques' such as those used to mistreat the detainees at Abu Ghraib. The Abu Ghraib torture techniques have been field-tested by SOA graduates - seven of the U.S. Army interrogation manuals that were translated into Spanish, used at the SOA's trainings and distributed to our allies, offered instruction on torture, beatings and assassination. As Dr. Miles Schuman, a physician with the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture who has documented torture cases and counseled their victims, graphically wrote in the May 14 Toronto Globe and Mail under the headline Abu Ghraib: The Rule, Not the Exception: The black hood covering the faces of naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib was known as la capuchi in Guatemalan and Salvadoran torture chambers. The metal bed frame to which the naked and hooded detainee was bound in a crucifix position in Abu Ghraib was la cama, named for a former Chilean prisoner who survived the U.S.-installed regime of General Augusto Pinochet. In her case, electrodes were attached to her arms, legs and genitalia, just as they were attached to the Iraqi detainee poised on a box, threatened with electrocution if he fell off. The Iraqi man bound naked on the ground with a leash attached to his neck, held by a smiling young American recruit, reminds me of the son of peasant organizers who recounted his agonizing torture at the hands of the Tonton Macoutes, U.S.-backed dictator John-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier's right-hand thugs, in Port-au-Prince in 1984. The very act of photographing those tortured in Abu Ghraib to humiliate and silence parallels the experience of an American missionary, Sister Diana Ortiz, who was tortured and gang-raped repeatedly under supervision by an American in 1989, according to her testimony before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. The long history of torture by U.S.-trained thugs in Latin and Central America under the command of SOA graduates has also been capaciously documented by human-rights organizations like Amnesty International (in its 2002 report titled Unmatched Power, Unmet Principles) and in books like A.J. Langguth's Hidden Terrors, William Blum's Rogue State and Lawrence Weschler's A Miracle, a Universe. In virtually every report on human-rights abuses from Latin America, SOA graduates are prominent. A U.N. Truth Commission report said that over two-thirds of the Salvadoran officers it cites for abuses are SOA graduates. Forty percent of the Cabinet members under three sanguinary Guatemalan dictatorships were SOA graduates. And the list goes on . . . In 2000, the Pentagon engaged in a smoke-screen attempt to give the SOA a face-lift by changing its name to the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) as part of a claimed reform program. But, as the late GOP Senator Paul Coverdale of Georgia (where SOA-WHINSEC is located) said at the time, the changes to the school were basically cosmetic. The lobbying campaign to close SOA-WHINSEC has been led by School of the Americas Watch, founded by religious activists after the 1990s murder of four U.S. nuns by Salvadoran death squads under command of one of SOA's most infamous graduates, Colonel Roberto D'Aubuisson. Lest you think that the school's links to atrocities are all in the distant past, SOA Watch has documented a raft of recent scandals postdating the Pentagon's chimerical reform. Here are just a few of them: In June 2001, Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, an SOA grad who was head of
Re: Al Gore for overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2000
Louis Proyect quoting the New Yorker article: The idea of overthrowing Saddam is not an idle fantasy-or, if it is, it's one that has lately occupied the minds of many American officials, including people close to George W. Bush. In 1998, during the period when Saddam was resisting the international inspection team that was trying to make sure he wasn't manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the Iraq Liberation Act, which made available ninety-seven million dollars in government aid to organizations dedicated to the overthrow of Saddam. Two of the act's co-sponsors were Senators Trent Lott and Joseph Lieberman-not peripheral figures on Capitol Hill. Clinton was unenthusiastic about the Iraq Liberation Act and has spent almost none of the money it provides, but Al Gore, during the Presidential campaign, put some distance between himself and Clinton on the issue of removing Saddam. In the second Presidential debate, after defending his Administration's Iraq record, he said, I want to go further. I want to give robust support to the groups that are trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein. --- But this -- the Iraq Liberation Act -- is old news. It's well established that it was under the Clinton admin that the Iraq policy shifted from containment to the overthrow of Saddam. But this was to be accomplished via an internal military coup using Iraqi exile groups as a conduit, with the conditions for such to be created by economic sanctions, acting in conjunction with the UN and the Europeans. It was also, as the article notes, a back burner issue for the Democrats. As we know, the Republicans made overthrowing the Baathist regime a foreign policy priority. They decided to invade and occupy Iraq with US forces, forcefully breaking with the US foreign policy establishment, the UN, and the Europeans over this matter. Gore, again as the article notes, continued with the Clinton line of support to groups inside Iraq. Whether you think invasion/occupation versus sanctions/subversion represents only a nuance of difference or is more significant than that is a matter of judgment, of course. Certainly, you can make a case that the sanctions cost many lives -- perhaps as many or more than the invasion and subsequent occupation. But I think, if forced to choose, the Iraqis would still have preferred to continue contesting and evading the sanctions rather than face occupation by an invading American army. To be sure, I haven't seen any evidence of Iraqis shrugging their shoulders and dismissing the US invasion as being really no different than the UN sanctions. I've only seen this view expressed by a minority of the US left which appears to dismiss that there are any differences within the American ruling class and between states which can and should be exploited in the interest of the world's peoples. Marv Gandall
Re: Al Gore for overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2000
Marvin Gandall wrote: Whether you think invasion/occupation versus sanctions/subversion represents only a nuance of difference or is more significant than that is a matter of judgment, of course. Certainly, you can make a case that the sanctions cost many lives -- perhaps as many or more than the invasion and subsequent occupation. But I think, if forced to choose, the Iraqis would still have preferred to continue contesting and evading the sanctions rather than face occupation by an invading American army. Of course. That is why the US ruling class opted for war rather than sanctions. They were becoming ineffective. Wars are made by a class, not individuals by the way. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
The West's pursuit of democracy in the Arab world
Toronto Star July 20, 2004 Why tyrants rule Arabs For 60 years, the West has propped up Arab despots, creating poverty and illiteracy where education once thrived By Gwynne Dyer It was just a random statistic, but a telling one: Only 300 books were translated into Arabic last year. That is about one foreign title per million Arabs. For comparison's sake, Greece translated 1,500 foreign-language books, or about 150 titles per million Greeks. Why is the Arab world so far behind, not only in this but in practically all the arts and sciences? The first-order answer is poverty and lack of education: Almost half of Arabic-speaking women are illiterate. But the Arab world used to be the most literate part of the planet; what went wrong? Tyranny and economic failure, obviously. But why is tyranny such a problem in the Arab world? That brings us to the nub of the matter. In a speech in November, 2003, President George W. Bush revisited his familiar refrain about how the West has to remake the Arab world in its own image in order to stop the terrorism: Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe ... because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty - as if the Arab world had wilfully chosen to be ruled by these corrupt and incompetent tyrannies. But the West didn't just excuse and accommodate these regimes. It created them, in order to protect its own interests - and it spent the latter half of the 20th century keeping them in power for the same reason. It was Britain that carved the kingdom of Jordan out of the old Ottoman province of Syria after World War I and put the Hashemite ruling family on the throne that it still occupies. France similarly carved Lebanon out of Syria in order to create a loyal Christian-majority state that controlled most of the Syrian coastline - and when time and a higher Muslim birth rate eventually led to a revolt against the Maronite Christian stranglehold on power in Lebanon in 1958, U.S. troops were sent in to restore it. The Lebanese civil war of 1975-'90, tangled though it was, was basically a continuation of that struggle. Britain also imposed a Hashemite monarchy on Iraq after 1918, and deliberately perpetuated the political monopoly of the Sunni minority that it had inherited from Turkish rule. When the Iraqi monarchy was finally overthrown in 1958 and the Baath party won the struggle that followed, the CIA gave the Iraqi Baathists the names of all the senior members of the Iraqi Communist party (then the main political vehicle of the Shias) so they could be liquidated. It was Britain that turned the traditional sheikhdoms in the Gulf into separate little sovereign states and absolute monarchies, carving Kuwait out of Iraq in the process. Saudi Arabia, however, was a joint Anglo-U.S. project. The British Foreign Office welcomed the Egyptian generals' overthrow of King Farouk and the destruction of the country's old nationalist political parties, failing to foresee that Gamal Abdul Nasser would eventually take over the Suez Canal. When he did, the foreign office conspired with France and Israel to attack Egypt in a failed attempt to overthrow him. Once Nasser died and was succeeded by generals more willing to play along with the West - Anwar Sadat, and now Hosni Mubarak - Egypt became Washington's favourite Arab state. To help these thinly disguised dictators to hang on to power, Egypt has ranked among the top three recipients of U.S. foreign aid almost every year for the past quarter-century. And so it goes. Britain welcomed the coup by Col. Moammar Gadhafi in Libya in 1969, mistakenly seeing him as a malleable young man who could serve the West's purposes. The United States and France both supported the old dictator Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia, and still back his successor Ben Ali today. They always backed the Moroccan monarchy no matter how repressive it became, and they both gave unquestioning support to the Algerian generals who cancelled the elections of 1991. They did not ever waver in their support through the savage insurgency unleashed by the suppression of the elections that killed an estimated 120,000 Algerians over the next 10 years. Excuse and accommodate? The West created the modern Middle East, from its rotten regimes down to its ridiculous borders, and it did so with contemptuous disregard for the wishes of the local people. It is indeed a problem that most Arab governments are corrupt autocracies that breed hatred and despair in their own people, which then fuels terrorism against the West, but it was the West that created the problem - and invading Iraq won't solve it. If the U.S. really wants to foster Arab democracy, it might try making all that aid to Egypt conditional on prompt democratic reforms. But I wouldn't hold my breath. Gwynne Dyer is a Canadian journalist based in London.
Maria Full of Grace
The 1989 British TV miniseries Traffik showed how the tentacles of the heroin trade reached both upwards and downwards, to rich and poor alike. One of the main characters was an impoverished opium farmer in Pakistan, who is forced into becoming a low-level employee of a trafficker after the army destroys his crops in an anti-drug sweep. When Steven Soderbergh remade the film as Traffic in 2000 and relocated it in the Mexican drug trade, he dispensed with all of the economically marginal characters who made the British film so compelling in class terms. Writer-director Joshua Marston's Maria Full of Grace, now showing in New York theaters, turns Traffic upside down. Dispensing completely with wealthy or powerful characters, either in the drug trade or in law enforcement, it focuses on lowly mules. At the low end of business, this is the easiest way to avoid detection. Desperately poor Colombians are enticed into swallowing dozens of heroin pellets wrapped in condoms in exchange for a few thousand dollars. A promise of such a small fortune is worth the risk of a pellet breaking inside one's stomach and certain death. Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a pregnant seventeen year old who has a job removing thorns from rose stems in a suburb of Bogotá. When an attack of morning sickness forces her to ask permission from the foreman to go to the bathroom, he tells her that she has already had a break and to continue working. She then throws up on a pile of roses, which he tells her to clean up and put back on the assembly line. In this Colombia factory, low wages and indignity go hand in hand. Despite lacking an alternative, she decides to quit. Maria's boyfriend is in no position to help out, even if he loved her. He lives with ten other family members in a small house. But it is not his meager economic prospects that repel her. Rather it is his limited horizons on life overall. Early in the film she invites him to climb to the roof of her family's house so that they can make love in privacy while enjoying the view. He turns her down, thus symbolizing his own pedestrian nature. She, on the other hand, scales the walls and surveys the surrounding countryside with a victorious expression on her face. This is not a woman willing to be bound by social and familial conventions. Since her economic prospects are so limited, she becomes a willing recruit to the drug trade. In a Bogotá saloon, she is introduced to a local dealer who lays out the job description as if she were applying to be a nurse or a secretary. They provide the passport, visa and drugs. She flies to New York City, where she will be greeted by his henchmen who will retrieve the drugs which by that point will have reached the final passages of her digestive system. Then and only then will she be paid. If any of the drugs are stolen, her family will be paid a visit by gang members. This veiled threat, uttered in a matter-of-fact manner, is emblematic of a film that has little use for the sort of pyrotechnics that typifies Traffic, Scarface et al. In this film, economic duress rather than a gun regulates behavior. Her biggest trial is learning how to swallow the pellets. Lucy (Guilied Lopez), a veteran of the Bogotá-New York City connection, trains her with large grapes. After she has mastered this inhuman task, she is brought to the headquarters of the drug gang where she is fed more than fifty pellets during a long night. When she is allowed a meal break, they make sure to put a pellet in a bowl of soup. In either the Taylorist flower or drug trade, not a moment is wasted. When Maria arrives in New York City, everything goes wrong. After Lucy, Maria and another mule--a fellow flower factory employee and friend named Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega)--are brought to a cheap hotel, Lucy becomes seriously ill from a pellet that has broken in transit. She is then killed by the two gangsters there to gather up the drugs. Maria and Blanca flee to a Colombian neighborhood in Queens, where they take refuge in the cramped apartment of Lucy's sister. The remainder of the film is involved with their desperate struggle to get a foothold in the United States, a country that Lucy described to her as too perfect when she first met her. At this point, the film unites drug and immigration themes in a seamless manner and begins to evoke El Norte, the memorable story of Guatemalan refugees trying to make it in Los Angeles. If Maria has not succeeded in the flower or drug business, surely there will be some other way for her to make it in the Land of Plenty. Her prospects for success remain an open question at the end of this powerfully realistic film. If she will make it, it will be because of people like Don Fernando, a character who helps recent immigrants out from his travel agency office. Don Fernando is played by Orlando Tobon, who runs a travel agency in Jackson Heights. The Los Angeles Times (Aug. 4,
Richard Falk on the ICJ decision on Israeli wall.
Kerry is obviously not a whit better that Bush on this matter..If the Israelis just wanted to protect their own territory they could legally build the wall on their territory instead of within occupied territory. The self defence defence is a non-starter. Cheers, Ken Hanly http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/9194447.htm?1c Miami Herald July 20, 2004 Support for wall mocks international law By Richard Falk What is most remarkable about the International Court of Justice decision on Israel's security barrier in the West Bank is the strength of the consensus behind it. By a vote of 14-1, the 15 distinguished jurists who make up the highest judicial body on the planet found that the barrier is illegal under international law and that Israel must dismantle it, as well as compensate Palestinians for damage to their property resulting from the barrier's construction. The International Court of Justice has very rarely reached this degree of unanimity in big cases. The July 9 decision was even supported by the generally conservative British judge Rosalyn Higgins, whose intellectual force is widely admired in the United States. One might expect the government of Ariel Sharon to wave off this notable consensus as an immoral and dangerous opinion. But one might expect the United States -- even as it backed its ally Israel -- at least to take account of the court's reasoning in its criticisms. Instead, both the Bush administration and leading Democrats, including Senators John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, mindlessly rejected the decision. Even the American justice in The Hague, Thomas Buergenthal, was careful in his lone dissent. He argued that the court did not fully explore Israel's contention that the wall-and-fence complex is necessary for its security before arriving at its sweeping legal conclusions. But Judge Buergenthal also indicated that Israel was bound to adhere to international humanitarian law, that the Palestinians were entitled to exercise their right of self-determination and, insofar as the wall was built to protect Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, that he had serious doubt that the wall would. . .satisfy the proportionality requirement to qualify as legitimate self-defense. The nuance in Buergenthal's narrow dissent contrasts sharply with, for instance, Kerry's categorical statement that Israel's barrier is not a matter for the ICJ. To the contrary, Israel's construction of the wall in the West Bank has flagrantly violated clear standards in international law. The clarity of the violations accounts for the willingness of the U.N. General Assembly to request an advisory opinion on the wall from the court, a right it has never previously exercised in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The clarity also helps to explain Israel's refusal to participate in the ICJ proceedings -- not even to present its claim that the barrier under construction has already reduced the incidence of suicide bombing by as much as 90 percent. Significantly, the court confirms that Israel is entitled to build a wall to defend itself from threats emanating from the Palestinian territories if it builds the barrier on its own territory. The justices based their objection to the wall on its location within occupied Palestinian territories, as well as the consequent suffering visited upon affected Palestinians. If Israel had erected the wall on its side of the boundary of Israel prior to the 1967 war, then it would not have encroached on Palestinian legal rights. The court's logic assumes the unconditional applicability of international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, to Israel's administration of the West Bank and Gaza (a principle affirmed by Judge Buergenthal). That body of law obliges Israel to respect the property rights of Palestinians without qualification, and to avoid altering the character of the territory, including by population transfer. The decision creates a clear mandate. The ICJ decision, by a vote of 13-2, imposes upon all states an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation created by the construction of the wall. This is supplemented by a 14-1 vote urging the General Assembly and Security Council to consider what further action is required to bring an end to the illegal situation. Such a plain-spoken ruling from the characteristically cautious International Court of Justice will test the respect accorded international law, including U.S. willingness to support international law despite a ruling against its ally. The invasion of Iraq and the continuing scandals have already tarnished the reputation of the United States as a law-abiding member of the international community. When U.S. officials dismiss the nearly unanimous ICJ decision without even bothering to engage its arguments, America's reputation suffers further. In fact, elsewhere in the world, U.S. repudiation of this decision can only entrench existing views of
Re: Al Gore for overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2000
Louis Proyect wrote: Marvin Gandall wrote: Whether you think invasion/occupation versus sanctions/subversion represents only a nuance of difference or is more significant than that is a matter of judgment, of course. Certainly, you can make a case that the sanctions cost many lives -- perhaps as many or more than the invasion and subsequent occupation. But I think, if forced to choose, the Iraqis would still have preferred to continue contesting and evading the sanctions rather than face occupation by an invading American army. Of course. That is why the US ruling class opted for war rather than sanctions. They were becoming ineffective. Wars are made by a class, not individuals by the way. - You seriously misunderstand the nature of the conflict when you state that the US ruling class opted for war. The US ruling class was and remains very divided over the invasion of Iraq, over whether it served or hurt US strategic interests. I think its closer to the truth to characterize the Iraq invasion as a hubristic adventure by the Bush administration, acting in maverick fashion against the wishes of a large, probably major, part of its own ruling class and the international bourgeoisie. That operation, as anticipated, turned into a debacle, and the Bushites have since been reined in and their early foreign policy doctrines discredited. I don't think you would argue the sanctions were becoming ineffective in terms of the harm they were inflicting on the Iraqi population. It's true that they had been ineffective in fostering the hoped-for coup, and were being evaded and loosened in negotations through the UN. Nevertheless, it doesn't follow from this (and there is no evidence to indicate) that a Gore administration would have launched an invasion, especially when this would have precipitated a rupture with its traditional and would-be allies and weakened the authority of the UN, which the Democrats and many Republican leaders properly view as a useful instrument of US foreign policy. As Clinton has noted, and I believe this to be so, the Democrats would have continued to work through the UN, prodding Blix and the inspectors to disarm, humiliate, and neuter Saddam -- accepting this as a less certain, but less risky, means of regime change than an invasion. They didn't have the peculiar Saddam obsession of the Bushites, nor did they think it would be easy to secure Iraq. Like you and I, the bipartisan foreign policy establishment thinks more in terms of its overall class interests than individuals. Marv Gandall
Tariq Ali on the US election
by Shane Mage No, its garden-variety Pabloism. war in Iraq...is very much a neocon agenda, dominated by the need to get the oil and appease the Israelis. (as if Kerry wasn't gung-ho to appease the Isrealis!) ^^ Next thing you know we'll be quoting the Protocols. Just kidding ! Charles
Re: Al Gore for overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2000
Marvin Gandall wrote: You seriously misunderstand the nature of the conflict when you state that the US ruling class opted for war. The US ruling class was and remains very divided over the invasion of Iraq, over whether it served or hurt US strategic interests. I think its closer to the truth to characterize the Iraq invasion as a hubristic adventure by the Bush administration, acting in maverick fashion against the wishes of a large, probably major, part of its own ruling class and the international bourgeoisie. That operation, as anticipated, turned into a debacle, and the Bushites have since been reined in and their early foreign policy doctrines discredited. If the invasion went as well as the invasion of Panama or Grenada, there would be no differences. The differences, such as they are, have not been reflected in the choice of candidates. I don't recall huge amounts of money being directed from Wall Street to Howard Dean. I don't think you would argue the sanctions were becoming ineffective in terms of the harm they were inflicting on the Iraqi population. It's true that they had been ineffective in fostering the hoped-for coup, and were being evaded and loosened in negotations through the UN. Nevertheless, it doesn't follow from this (and there is no evidence to indicate) that a Gore administration would have launched an invasion, especially when this would have precipitated a rupture with its traditional and would-be allies and weakened the authority of the UN, which the Democrats and many Republican leaders properly view as a useful instrument of US foreign policy. I have no idea what Gore would have done or not done. The main point I was stressing was his counter-revolutionary appetites. How such an execrable creature can be refashioned as some kind of leftist is beyond me. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Tariq Ali on the US election
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Before getting to the point of actually being able to split the Democratic and Republican Parties, we need an intermediate goal: do what we can to make the next POTUS a weak president, rather than a strong one. To do so, we need to decrease the shares of popular votes that go to the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. -- Yoshie Fewer votes mean a weaker president? Dream on. GWB lost the popular vote, and that didn't stop him from being the rootin'-tootin'-est, sure-as-shootin'-est hombre north, south, east, and west of the Pecos once he got into office. Mandates are for girlie men, as the governor of CA might put it. Carl Actually, Bush was a weak president until 9/11/01: a big inauguration protest, Enron, unimpressive ratings, etc. According to Fox, for instance, Bush's approval rating during 1/24-25/01 was a mere 46%! FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. Aug. 3-4, 2004. N=900 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 3. Do you approve or disapprove of the job George W. Bush is doing as president? Approve Disapprove Don't Know % % % 9/19-20/01 81 12 7 8/22-23/01 55 32 13 7/25-26/01 59 25 16 7/11-12/01 56 30 14 6/6-7/01 59 28 13 5/9-10/0159 26 15 4/18-19/01 63 22 15 3/28-29/01 57 24 19 3/14-15/01 56 23 21 2/21-22/01 61 16 23 2/7-8/01 55 16 29 1/24-25/01 46 14 40 ABC News/Washington Post Poll. July 30-Aug. 1, 2004. N=1,200 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3. Fieldwork by TNS. Trend includes polls conducted independently by ABC News and by the Washington Post. Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president? Approve Disapprove Don't Know % % % 9/13/01 86 12 2 9/6-9/01 55 41 3 7/26-30/01 59 38 3 5/31-6/3/01 55 40 6 4/19-22/01 63 32 5 3/22-25/01 58 33 8 2/21-25/01 55 23 22 CBS News Poll. July 30-Aug. 1, 2004. N=1,052 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3 (total sample). Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president? Approve Disapprove Don't Know % % % 9/11-12/01 72 15 13 8/28-31/01 50 38 12 6/14-18/01 53 34 13 5/10-12/01 57 30 13 4/23-25/01 56 29 15 4/4-5/01 53 35 12 3/8-12/0160 22 18 2/10-12/01 53 21 26 (a href=http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm;President Bush: Job Ratings/a) I do think that Governor Terminator got it right, his sexist expression notwithstanding: liberals and leftists in the USA are more lily-livered than our counterparts in Spain. Big foreign terrorist attacks happen in the United States, and too many US liberals and leftists cancel planned protests, get all defensive about our alleged deficiency in patriotism, wave flags, call for war (under a UN mandate, naturally) on Afghanistan, inveigh against other liberals and leftists whose convictions against imperialism do not weaken after terrorism, etc. Big foreign terrorist attacks happen in Spain, and almost all Spanish liberals and leftists get galvanized, organize a gigantic demonstration, vote out the party in power, and bring their troops home from Iraq. What US leftists need is a stronger backbone and a harder ass. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Greens for Nader: http://greensfornader.net/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: More on Venezuela and oil numbers
I'm well out of my depth on this one but it doesn't strike me that there is any great mystery here on the investment numbers. The investment budget of PDVSA is $5.3bn. Minus $1.7bn which has been diverted into the social housing budget gives $3.6bn. The capital expenditure needed to cover depreciation is $2.7bn. So, all parties are fairly near the truth; it doesn't look as if PDVSA is systematically and/or chronically underinvesting and mortgaging the future, but it equally doesn't look as if they're going to be spending enough to seriously ramp up production. I'd add two things: first I would be very sceptical about the assumption of a linear input/output function; the one thing that we do know about oil wells is that they tend to come in big lumps and I would guess it would be pretty difficult to drill half of one (I may well be bum-talking at this point though). And second, it is not obvious to me that PDVSA could have spent the extra money anyway, since Chavez tin-tacked a lot of their senior management during the strike. Most of the people sacked were bourgeois revisionists, etc and all around bad lots, but it's likely that most of them also knew a bit about oil, and experienced oilfolk can't always be replaced in a hurry. I would be surprised if the distance between government and independent bpd figures was down to omitting the petroleum products. It might be something as simple as the independent analyst having driven past one of the fields on a day when the donkeys weren't nodding and counting it as not yet producing, then PDVSA got it back onstream later in the month. Alternatively, one of the PDVSA managers might have fibbed to the government in order to get a bonus. As you say, though, the figures aren't so massively different as to be worth cutting up rough about; everyone is agreed on the broad historical sweep of things which is that the Venezuelans are doing a surprisingly good job in getting the oilfields back in order after the political purge. In general, oil analysts at stockbroking firms are among the most trustworthy you will find, as they almost always have experience in the oil industry. cheers dd -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Robert Naiman Sent: 06 August 2004 00:51 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: More on Venezuela and oil numbers I'd like our broker colleague -- and others -- to consider the following. In Peter Millard's (Dow Jones) article Venezuela 's PdVSA Ramps Up Publicity Ahead Of Recall (July 30), the second-to-last paragraph reads: The government claims the new PdVSA has brought oil production back to the 3.1 million barrels a day Venezuela was producing before the strike, but independent analysts put the figure closer to 2.6 million b/d. I suspect that there is an apples-and-oranges issue here. I think the government is counting 200,000 bpd in petroleum products that the analysts are not counting. If so, the govt and independent analyst numbers are closer than usually acknowledged. The last paragraph reads: Furthermore, oil analysts warn that the focus on social spending has diverted funds from needed investments in exploration and production, making it difficult for PdVSA to increase production in the near term. I have no doubt that *some* oil analysts do say this (especially the ones that used to work for PDVSA!), but I think the numbers tell a different story. On July 16, Millard reported that PdVSA has a total investment budget of $5.3 billion this year, but noted that analysts warn that the company will fall short of this target. On July 12, Matthew Robinson, reporting for Reuters, cited Jan Dehn, emerging markets analyst for Credit Suisse First Boston in London: I would expect that unless they meet the $2.7 billion capital spending they need every year, production would start to suffer in 2005. Now, if we assume that the numbers here ($2.7b and $5.3b) are apples-and-apples, and we suppose that in the range we're talking about, future production capacity is a roughly linear function of investment, then those numbers would suggest to me that PDVSA could miss its investment target by a country mile and still invest enough to increase production. If this is so, then, unless one takes it as an axiom that any amount of social spending by PDVSA is intrinsically offensive to oil markets -- which I'm sure some people do! -- isn't social spending by PDVSA totally irrelevant to the question of future oil production? Might it be the case that some independent oil analysts simply have an ideological bias against the notion of using some of PDVSA's profits for social spending? What am I missing? By the way, in an article on July 24 in the New York Times, Juan Forero reported that many oil analysts and executives of large oil companies doing business in Venezuela say that the government may be able to spend big on social programs and still invest adequately in production. What do you make of all
Re: Tariq Ali on the US election
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Before getting to the point of actually being able to split the Democratic and Republican Parties, we need an intermediate goal: do what we can to make the next POTUS a weak president, rather than a strong one. To do so, we need to decrease the shares of popular votes that go to the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. -- Yoshie Fewer votes mean a weaker president? Dream on. GWB lost the popular vote, and that didn't stop him from being the rootin'-tootin'-est, sure-as-shootin'-est hombre north, south, east, and west of the Pecos once he got into office. Mandates are for girlie men, as the governor of CA might put it. Carl Actually, Bush was a weak president until 9/11/01... Yes, he's fortune's child is GWB. Carl _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Ha!
Ha! You think you're just going to leave the country when things get bad? Think again. U.S. TO IMPLANT ID TAGS IN PASSPORTS The U.S. State Department plans to implant electronic ID chips in U.S. passports to allow computer face-recognition systems to match facial characteristics of the digital passport photo on the chip against a photo taken at the passport control station and against photos on government watch lists. The change is planned despite warnings that face-recognition technology has a high error rate. Critics suggest using fingerprint identification instead, as a more reliable technology. The new passports are scheduled to enter use in 2005. Washington Post, 6 August 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43944-2004Aug5.html
get stoppo
Ashcroft Orders Libraries To Destroy Copies Of Laws Federal Statutes On Asset Forfeiture May Not Be Published, In another move towards federal tyranny, the Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered the American Library Association to destroy all copies of the federal laws on asset forfeiture and to deny access to those laws to the general public. The unprecedented move, in which US citizens would be unable to read or know the text of the laws they are expected to obey, was another stage in the growing power of President George W Bush. The American Library Association has refused the request of the Justice Department to destroy copies of the law, and made the following statement: Statement regarding DOJ request for removal of government publications by depository libraries The following statement has been issued by President-Elect Michael Gorman, representing President Carol Brey-Casiano, who is currently in Guatemala representing the Association: July 30, 2004 Statement from ALA President-Elect Michael Gorman: Last week, the American Library Association learned that the Department of Justice asked the Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the Department has deemed not appropriate for external use. The Department of Justice has called for these five these public documents, two of which are texts of federal statutes, to be removed from depository libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library. The topics addressed in the named documents include information on how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation. The documents to be removed and destroyed include: Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure; Select Criminal Forfeiture Forms; Select Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes; Asset forfeiture and money laundering resource directory; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA). ALA has submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the withdrawn materials in order to obtain an official response from the Department of Justice regarding this unusual action, and why the Department has requested that documents that have been available to the public for as long as four years be removed from depository library collections. ALA is committed to ensuring that public documents remain available to the public and will do its best to bring about a satisfactory resolution of this matter. Librarians should note that, according to policy 72, written authorization from the Superintendent of Documents is required to remove any documents. To this date no such written authorization in hard copy has been issued. Keith Michael Fiels Executive Director American Library Association (800) 545-2433 ext.1392
Nader 2004 Nader 2000
Nader 2004 Nader 2000 (The best kept secret of this presidential election year is that Ralph Nader has been polling better in 2004 than 2000, despite the relentless barrage of attacks by Anybody But Nader intellectuals. Compare the Gallop survey results in 2000 and 2004. Intellectuals who aid and abet the Democratic Party's crime of excluding Nader from the ballots and disenfranchising working-class voters on the left are committing the same crime as those who aid and abet the disenfranchisement of working-class voters -- especially working-class Black voters -- through criminal disenfranchisement laws. After all, voting rights mean nothing if voters are allowed to vote for only the candidates pre-approved by the power elite.) [Full Text with charts: Nader 2004 Nader 2000, http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/08/nader-2004-nader-2000.html.] -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Greens for Nader: http://greensfornader.net/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
in defence of Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali has been criticised for the following statement in an interview: DH: You've said that a defeat of Bush would be regarded globally as a victory. What did you mean? TA: As you know, I travel a great deal, and everywhere I go there is growing anger and if one can be totally blunt real hatred of this administration because of what it did in Iraq - the war it waged, the civilians it killed, the mess it's made, and its inability to understand the scale of what it's done. And from that point of view, if the American population were to vote Bush out of office, the impact globally would be tremendous. People would say this guy took his country to war, surrounded by neocons who developed bogus arguments and lies, he lied to his people, he misused intelilgence information, and the American people have voted him out. That in itself could have a tremendous impact on world public opinion A defeat for a warmonger regime in Washington would be seen as a step forward. I don't go beyond that, but it would have an impact globally. If I were living in the States, I would not organise or vote for Kerry--- for the same reasons that people on the list have given--- although I'm certain that I would prefer to be living under and organising against a Kerry government than a Bush one. Why? Because of all the illusions (about the good capitalist,etc party) that would be retained in the absence of the former and the greater possibility for revealing the nature of the system. But, I wonder if this might not be a bit of a self-indulgent perspective when I think about Tariq's statement. There's no question in my mind that in Cuba (which I visit often) Bush's defeat would be regarded as a victory. Similarly, in Venezuela (where I am) the end of a Bush government would be welcomed. I suspect the same would have been true in El Salvador recently among FMLN supporters (and in another time and setting in Nicaragua). Conversely, the victory of Bush would be viewed as a big defeat... and, indeed, as a mandate for new aggressive international adventures. (Certainly, in Cuba they worry about the implications of a new Bush mandate.) As I see the perspective of those outside the US (which is what Tariq was addressing), the defeat of the Bush government would be seen as providing a bit of space and a bit of hope. But, no illusions. Simply the breathing space that comes when the rulers are disrupted a bit. in solidarity, michael Michael A. Lebowitz Professor Emeritus Economics Department Simon Fraser University Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6 Currently based in Venezuela. Can be reached at Residencias Anauco Suites Departamento 601 Parque Central, Zona Postal 1010, Oficina 1 Caracas, Venezuela (58-212) 573-4111 fax: (58-212) 573-7724
Re: in defence of Tariq Ali
At 4:22 PM -0400 8/7/04, michael a. lebowitz wrote: Simply the breathing space that comes when the rulers are disrupted a bit. That makes sense, and I'm sure that in 2008 there will be another disruption, as John Kerry will be a one-term president. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Greens for Nader: http://greensfornader.net/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Tariq Ali on the US election
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/07/04 1:25 AM Before getting to the point of actually being able to split the Democratic and Republican Parties, we need an intermediate goal: do what we can to make the next POTUS a weak president, rather than a strong one. To do so, we need to decrease the shares of popular votes that go to the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Yoshie what poli sci people called 'political capital' is mixture of public approval party seats in congress, kerry prez - almost by definition - would be weak, win will likely be close, dems unlikely to regain control of either congressional chamber (jfk campaign appears to have taken page from '96 clinton playbook in that regard)... michael hoover -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
Re: Whither the Fed?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/07/04 2:11 AM ... and make the next POTUS John Kerry a weak president without a big mandate at the same time.) Is there a subtle flaw here? If either Kerry or Bush is elected they will have a big mandate. It just won't be from the people, but the corporate purchasers. I fear the people's mandate can no longer be given through the present electoral process. Dan Scanlan The larger the shares of popular votes for the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, the bigger the next POTUS's mandate will be, though the mandate is more apparent than real, as you say. Yoshie notion (hesitate to call it theory) of presidential mandate is myth, of course, myths can have powerful influence... some occupants of white house start terms with more 'political capital' than others (i.e., lbj began first full term with deep reservoir following '64 landslide victory, gerald ford, on other hand, had little after becoming prez because of 2 resignations - as if to confirm latter's precarious position, reps loss of seats to dems in '74 congressional elections was large enough to result in smallest congressional minority for sitting prez in 20th century *and* ford had largest percentage of vetoes subjected to congressional override in country's history)... prez attempts to claim mandates are part of pseudo-democratization of office, reagan claimed mandate following '80 election even though he received just over 50% of 'popular' vote by pointing to number of states he won and - more importantly - number of electoral college votes he received (about 495 if memory serves), 'winner-take-all' distribution of ec votes in 48 states gives some prez winners opportunities to claim mandates by transforming small 'popular' majorities into 'super' ec majorities... michael hoover -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
Re: Tariq Ali on the US election
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/07/04 1:27 PM Actually, Bush was a weak president until 9/11/01: a big inauguration protest, Enron, unimpressive ratings, etc. According to Fox, for instance, Bush's approval rating during 1/24-25/01 was a mere 46%! Yoshie pre-9/11: congress passed major bush tax cut, education, energy bills (latter 2 after jeffords became ind and dems gained control of senate), congress also passed bush's so-called 'bankruptcy reform', bush abandoned kyoto treaty, bush signed regressive executive orders re. abortion, labor, health care, among other things... while 9/11 'made' bush presidency, dems and conservative media had already allowed bush to get out from under stigma of being 'his fraudulency 2' (rutherford hayes was called 'his fraudulency' through term after winning 'corrupt bargain' election of 1876)... michael hoover -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
Loath by the rich: Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory
Loathed by the rich Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory Richard Gott in Caracas Saturday August 07 2004 The Guardian To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chavez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow. First elected in 1998 as a barely known colonel, armed with little more than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme, Chavez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to Fidel Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority of the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome the economic and political recipes devised in Washington. While Chavez has retained his popularity after nearly six years as president, support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as Vicente Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to nothing. Even the fence-sitting President Lula in Brazil is struggling in the polls. The news that Chavez will win this month's referendum will be bleakly received in Washington. Chavez came to power after the traditional political system in Venezuela had self-destructed during the 1990s. But the remnants of the ancien regime, notably those entrenched in the media, have kept up a steady fight against him, in a country where racist antipathies inherited from the colonial era are never far from the surface. Chavez, with his black and Indian features and an accent that betrays his provincial origins, goes down well in the shanty towns, but is loathed by those in the rich white suburbs who fear he has mobilised the impoverished majority against them. The expected Chavez victory will be the opposition's third defeat in as many years. The first two were dramatically counter-productive for his opponents, since they only served to entrench him in power. An attempted coup d'etat in April 2002, with fascist overtones reminiscent of the Pinochet era in Chile, was defeated by an alliance of loyal officers and civilian groups who mobilised spontaneously and successfully to demand the return of their president. The unexpected restoration of Chavez not only alerted the world to an unusual leftwing, not to say revolutionary, experiment taking place in Venezuela, but it also led the country's poor majority to understand that they had a government and a president worth defending. Chavez was able to dismiss senior officers opposed to his project of involving the armed forces in programmes to help the poor, and removed the threat of a further coup. The second attempt at his overthrow - the prolonged work stoppage in December 2002 which extended to a lockout at the state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, nationalised since 1975 - also played into the hands of the president. When the walkout (with its echoes of the CIA-backed Chilean lorry owners' strike against Salvador Allende's government in the early 1970s) failed, Chavez was able to sack the most pampered sections of a privileged workforce. The company's huge surplus oil revenues were redirected into imaginative new social programmes. Innumerable projects, or missions, were established throughout the country, recalling the atmosphere of the early years of the Cuban revolution. They combat illiteracy, provide further education for school dropouts, promote employment, supply cheap food, and extend a free medical service in the poor areas of the cities and the countryside, with the help of 10,000 Cuban doctors. Redundant oil company buildings have been commandeered to serve as the headquarters of a new university for the poor, and oil money has been diverted to set up Vive, an innovative cultural television channel that is already breaking the traditional US mould of the Latin American media. The opposition dismiss the new projects as populist, a term customarily used with pejorative intent by social scientists in Latin America. Yet faced with the tragedy of extreme poverty and neglect in a country with oil revenues to rival those of Saudi Arabia, it is difficult to see why a democratically elected government should not embark on crash programmes to help the most disadvantaged. Their impact is about to be tested at the polls on August 15. Vote Yes to eject Chavez from the presidency. Vote No to keep him there until the next presidential election in 2006. The opposition, divided politically and with no charismatic figure to rival Chavez to front their campaign, continue to behave as though their victory is certain. They discuss plans for a post-Chavez government, and watch closely the ever-dubious and endlessly conflicting opinion polls, placing their evaporating hopes on the don't knows. They still imagine fondly that they can achieve a victory
Kerry favored Missouri amendment against gay marriage
Los Angeles Times August 7, 2004 Saturday THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE; Kerry Backs Missouri Ban on Gay Marriage BYLINE: Mark Z. Barabak, Times Staff Writer DATELINE: KANSAS CITY, Mo. Drawn into a Missouri debate over same-sex marriage, Sen. John F. Kerry said in an interview published Friday that he would've voted for the gay marriage ban passed overwhelmingly this week by state voters. The Democratic presidential nominee, who spent parts of two days campaigning across Missouri, told the Kansas City Star that the ballot measure was the same as one his home state of Massachusetts passed a few years ago. Kerry supported that measure. In a separate interview with Kansas City's NBC affiliate, Kerry reiterated that both he and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, are opposed to gay marriage, though they favor civil unions. We support nondiscrimination against our fellow Americans, Kerry said. We've always argued the states will be capable of taking care of this by themselves. Massachusetts and Missouri are proving they are capable of taking care of it by themselves. [That] I think bears out that we didn't need a [federal] constitutional amendment in order to do what's right. Kerry was referring to a proposed amendment, backed by President Bush, that would outlaw same-sex marriage. The amendment was derailed in the Senate in July. On Tuesday, about 70% of Missouri voters approved adding language to the state Constitution reading, To be valid and recognized in this state, a marriage shall exist only between a man and a woman. A spokesman for the Human Rights Fund, a Washington group that lobbies for gay rights, said Kerry's support for the Missouri amendment was not surprising. This is consistent with what he's been saying all along,'' Steven Fisher, the group's communications director, said. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Art Spiegelman: In the Shadow of No Towers
Art Spiegelman: In the Shadow of No Towers: http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/08/art-spiegelman-in-shadow-of-no-towers.html. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Greens for Nader: http://greensfornader.net/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Loath by the rich: Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory
Right wing polls show Chavez loosing. Isn't that correct, Michael L? With the possibility of fraud, can we really expect a victory? Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Loath by the rich: Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory
Title: Re: Loath by the rich: Why Hugo Chavez is heading for Michael Perelman writes: Right wing polls show Chavez losing. Isn't that correct, Michael L? With the possibility of fraud, can we really expect a victory? Cheer up, Michael. Those polls are fixed or downright inventions. The actual news is of a massive popular mobilization for the NO. Expect squeals of fraud from the routed oligarchy. Les Gracchus du sud surgiront triomphales Au grand dépit des sbires imperiales Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus. Herakleitos of Ephesos
Re: Loath by the rich: Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory
Title: Re: Loath by the rich: Why Hugo Chavez is heading for See VHeadline.com Venezuela Right wing polls show Chavez loosing. Isn't that correct, Michael L? With the possibility of fraud, can we really expect a victory? Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
