Re: Problems of the Left in North America
Lou called me a Tawat on pen-l, yesterday. Whatta loon. Michael Pugliese, Twatskyist 5/10/02 7:03:00 AM, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 03:37 AM 5/10/2002 -0500, Dr. Paul Stevenson wrote: Louis Proyect has taken a potshot at Ellen Meiksins Wood, Leo Panitch and Cloin Leys and has provided absolutely no evidence as to why such a potshot is justified. He has accused Wood of being intellectually lazy and has basically stated that the Socialist Register (edited by Panitch and Leys) as not being on the left, or on the socialist left, or, much less, on the Marxist left. Again, absolutely no evidence in support of such a position is offered. Whether or not, any or all of these individuals is an enemy of Marxism and stalling the class struggle might be a debatable point (all in my view are strong Marxists and strong supporters of a radical leftwing socialism regardless of the comradely disagreements we each might have with what their respective positions on this or that might be [frankly, much of what each and all have written and said I find myself in agreement with]). Frankly, we on the left (especially in North America) need to find all the common ground we can and we certainly do not need to throw out insulting epithets at people and not provide some really good documentation for doing so. -- Reply: I am not sure what you mean by potshot. I described Socialist Register as a general interest social democratic journal. Since Leon Panitch, one of the co-editors, has argued forcefully against what he calls Leninism, I am not sure what the problem is. Oh, I think I know. It is rather fashionable on the left academy to make fire and brimstone speeches about the evils of capitalism, but it is not so fashionable to actually roll up your sleeves and construct Marxist organizations. I find it vastly amusing that such figures as the SR editors, Immanuel Wallerstein, Barbara Epstein, Slavoj Zizek and Michael Hardt end up giving speeches on how to make a revolution. I don't think any of them ever made a leaflet in their illustrious lives. As far as Wood is concerned, I have replied to both her and Brenner on my own email list: 1. The Brenner Thesis 2. The Brenner Thesis, Ireland and Spain 3. The Brenner Thesis as Iberiantalism 4. Testing the Brenner Thesis Against Colonial Spain and Modern South Africa All of these are located at: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/economics.htm along with a review of the late Jim Blaut's 8 Eurocentric Historians that appeared in Socialism and Democracy originally. I began to take an interest in the Brenner Thesis after running into Jim on Marxmail, where we became very close politically. As far as Colin Leys is concerned, I had a running exchange with him that can be found at: http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism%40lists.panix.com/msg29637.html John Enyang, a Kenyan graduate student, also replied to him as follows: Colin Leys wrote: 2) The reaction against the then prevailing dependency interpretation of African development was more linked to Lenin's critique of the narodniks than to Marx's Preface to Volume 1 of Capital. In particular the dependentistas tended, as Lenin said the narodniks did, to picture capitalism as something existing in a few 'corners' of the economy, i.e. foreign-owned plants and estates and their penumbra of financial and other services, plus the ports and the railway system, and to see the rest of the economy as consisting of precapitalist social relations, capable of supporting some sort of non-capitalist alternative development path. By the mid-1950's the large majority of the Kenyan population had been either (i) expropriated of their land by the settlers who turned them into wage labourers on their plantations or (ii) been forced into the cash economy and through devices like hut-taxes and head-taxes imposed by the Britishers to stimulate the interest of the otherwise reluctant natives in export cash crops -- coffee, tea. [Exceptions to this would be pastoral peoples in the rather sparsely populated regions like Turkana, who retained relative autonomy from the colonial economy]. In the words of a character of Ngugi, 'the foreigner from Europe was cunning: he took their land and their sweat and their wealth [livestock], and told them that the coins he had brought, which could not be eaten, were the true wealth'. Of course a lot of Kenyan capitalists are dependent on foreign capital, as - nowadays - are a lot of British, Canadian, and even American capitalists, though much less so of course. A most peculiar statement. The relations which exist between say German and Japanese capital are in no way comparable with the relation between British capital and the Kenyan elites. Nor would anybody in their right mind would argue that the German capitalist class has no independent existence beyond acting as the local business agent of Japanese capital. But this is a good approximation
Barbara Epstein
Lou, you are such a **!!! Barbara Epstein at UCSC, if you'd read her book from U.C. Press on cultural and political radicalism or her pieces in Socialist Review started her activist carrer in the du Bois Clubs, if my memory serves, in the early 60's, moving on to SDS, like Steve Max. That you have such raging hostility to academic leftists makes me think that you haver deep seated anti-intellectual tendencies, however mant thousands of books you've read on Te Polical Economy opf Andulusian Textile Weavers From 1850- 1925. Michael Pugliese, Twatskyist
Colin Leys
http://www.versobooks.com/ http://www.versobooks.com/books/klm/leys_c_market_politics.shtml With the globalisation of the capitalist economy the economic role of national governments is now largely confined to controlling inflation and facilitating home-grown market performance. This represents a fundamental shift in the relationship between politics and economics; it has been particularly marked in Britain, but is relevant to many other contexts. Market-Driven Politics is a multi-level study, moving between an analysis of global economic forces through national politics to the changes occurring week by week in two fields of public life that are both fundamentally important and familiar to everyonetelevision broadcasting and health care. Public services like these play an important role, because they both affect the legitimacy of the government and are targets for global capital. This book provides an original analysis of the key processes of commodification of public services, the conversion of public-service workforces into employees motivated to generate profit, and the role of the state in absorbing risk. Understanding the dynamics of each of these trends becomes critical not just for the analysis of market- driven politics but also for the longer-term defence of democracy and the collective values on which it depends. Makes immediate sense to anybody marginally to the left of Ghengis Khan, Mrs Thatcher or Newt Gingerich. John Lonsdale, Trinity College, Cambridge, on The Rise and Fall of Development Theory Colin Leys is Emeritus Professor of Political Studies at Queens University, Canada. His previous books include Politics in Britain, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory and, with Leo Panitch, The End of Parliamentary Socialism. Publication Dec. 2001 256 pages Cloth 1 85984 627 0 £16 / US$25 / CAN$36
Re: Re: Re: Problems of the Left in North America
You called me a Twat. I mistyped, you !@#$%^*()_+ Michael Pugliese see the final part of the below. You are a twat. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http:/ / www.marxmail.org 5/10/02 8:03:25 AM, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Display all headers From: Michael Pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 21:58:42 -0700 Subject: Lou Calls Me a Twat The juvenile, bullying windbag is really in need of yrs. of psychoanalysis from Joel Kovel. Michael Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 15:48:36 -0400 From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PEN-L:25828] Re: Re: on the , axis of EEEevil (Richard Burton in Exorcist II) To: michael pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED] Apologies for my recent extreme obnoxiousness, first to all. Even, Lou, who I have learned more than a few things over the yrs. But, that said, what is the Howrad stern of the internet Left doing talking about manners? The king of scatology on alt.politics.socialism.trotsky newsgroup. My position on Cuban socialism, briefly. As a left Shactmanite I'd call it bureucrtic collectivism, as an oerthodox trot I'd say it's a deformed workers state in need of political revolutiuon from below which would strengthen the political base of the regime against the presures of the world market and the USG. Opposed to the embargo, in favor of a careful perestroika style opening of the the system without demogogic attacks on the internal opposition as purely the creation of the CIA and CANF. If Lou has ever seen the documentary by Nestor Alemendros on Cuba that interviews many exiled Cuban Communists he would have a more nuanced, less defensive p.o.v. that might generate more respect for his p.o.v. --- Original Message --- You are a twat. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http:/ / www.marxmail.org 5/10/02 8:03:25 AM, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 07:51 AM 5/10/2002 -0700, Michael Pugliese wrote: Lou called me a Tawat on pen-l, yesterday. Whatta loon. Michael Pugliese, Twatskyist I don't understand how Michael Pugliese has become so confused. He is responding to an exchange I had on PSN, not PEN-L, number one. Number two, if you check the PEN-L archives (http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/2002II/), you will find no such reference to me or anybody for that matter calling him a Tawat. Isn't there some way that PEN-L can be protected from these disruptions? Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Proyect%27s+Morninghl=enie=utf-8oe=utf-8 selm=appar-131019991918198657%40pm3-9-s33.traverse.netrnum=3 Groups Advanced Groups SearchGroups Help Groups search result 3 for Proyect's Morning From: uchural ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Search Result 3 Subject: f loves Proyect Newsgroups: alt.politics.socialism.trotsky View: Complete Thread (2 articles) | Original Format Date: 1999/10/13 Some people might regard being compared with Proyect as high praise. Jim F. For those of you who have not had a chance to read them, I submit Proyect's Morning and The Resume of Louis N. Proyect: PROYECT'S MORNING Subject: Proyect's Morning From: uchural Newsgroups: alt.politics.socialism.trotsky Date: Wed, Jul 7, 1999 11:36 AM Message-ID: Not even noon, and Columbia University's computers have churned out the following for the world to read: The Morally Filthy Louis N. Proyect Has a Busy Morning _ You miserable dirty little cunt the same fucking rot You miserable little mother-fucker Get cancer, you little prick You have a lot of fucking nerve quoting Rosa Luxemburg People like yourself who champion Ayn Rand, the Cato Institute, and Wall Street Journal editorials are no different than the social democratic scum who murdered Luxemburg and Liebknecht libertarian scum like yourself are good for nothing except defending corporate profits Therefore, you should get your slimy little ass off this newsgroup and someplace where you belong Go there, you little slug, and take your co-religionist Airdale with you No, what would help is if you took a pistol and stuck the barrel in your mouth and opened fire your excesses are driving many people into fantasizing about plunging knitting needles into your eyeballs You are nothing but a scumbag troll like Watson, aren't you Are you masochistically inclined Do you have the same sickness as Watson who probably masturbates after getting flamed THE RESUME OF LOUIS N. PROYECT You should seek out professional help Oh, big fucking deal obvious that Mor Cota/Big Mac/Justin Flude would piss on Hunter do you have a problem with reading comprehension you are so fucking out of it some sort of problem with your mental capacities Are you an alcoholic under the influence of alcohol an uneducated rustic who can must suffer from blackouts dumber than the cat he owns an illiterate clown incapable of understanding do you put on clown makeup
Re: Guerillas, Drugs and Human Rights in Columbia
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB69/ 5/6/02 2:45:47 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 5/6/02 11:43:35 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: http://www.gwu.edu=/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB69 This Link would not open.
No Sign of Exit for U.S. Special Forces (Phillipines)
URL courtesy of Tom Burghardt's anti-fascist list. http://www.bulatlat.com/news/2-12/2-12-SOFs.html Michael Pugliese
Guerillas, Drugs and Human Rights in Columbia
The latest from the left-liberal, National Security Archive at GWU. http://www.gwu.edu=/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB69 Michael Pugliese
Re: Re: Pim Fortuyn
And the League of Revolutionary Struggle before they became deep entrists into the Democratic Party through the Jesse Jeckson campaigns in '84 and '88, was different? Or March In Line's, I mean Line of March??? Michael Pugliese, Browderite Revisionist Running Dog 5/5/02 11:38:50 AM, Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jurriaan Bendien wrote: The Socialist Party I belong to here was originally Maoist, but they ditched that mostly, in order to create a new socialist movement which addressed the concerns of ordinary Dutch people and is relevant to their concerns. This is either amusing or tragic, considering that one of Mao's more important essays (in so far as one can wrench it to entirely different contexts*) is entititled Be Concerned with the Well-Being of the Masses, Pay Attention to Methods of Work. I am aware, however, that the first step western Maoist groups took in becoming Maoist was to reject Mao's fundamental principle: that general theory must be focused on the actual conditions of each nation. Hence, for example, the bizarre attempts in the '70s to form United Fronts, forgetting or not seeing that (a) the United Front of the CPC was in response to a foreign invasion and (b) that in any case all its principles presupposed a large peasantry. Carrol
RE: Racist threat in Netherlands
What a coincidence. Just an hour ago I was looking for some info on this character. On the 23rd of April the NYT byline of Alan Riding, in his piece on LePen said that Pim Fortuyn was an ex-marxist sociologist. Michael Pugliese--- Original Message --- From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 5/3/02 3:01:02 PM In the tolerant Netherlands a racist called Pim Fortuijn (whose style accessories include a butler) has recently won 30% of the vote in Rotterdam on a platform of barring all foreigners from entry to the country. He is particularly hostile to people of islamic faith. He has just launched his party nationally. I wonder how Juriaan would see the poossibility of him doing a Le Pen in the national elections later this month. The conventional (bourgeois) political parties are said to have no strategy for resisting this. What would stop him beating one of them into second or even first place? I appreciate Jurriaan's non-sectarian style of discussion, but I still detect him to be agnostic about whether the French left should support the crook in large numbers to defeat the fascist. I feel that is a political luxury. In the Netherlands how would you defeat Pim Fortuijn if you did not consider throwing the weight of the left behind a lesser evil bourgeois party. Or are you confident there is a principled left wing party that can come top of the bourgeois election? Chris Burford London
RE: Re: [PEN-L:25639: Million demonstrators in France
See, Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Marxists, by Larry Ceplair, Columbia Univ. Press. David Beetham has a similiar book. A new huge book ($35, pb.) by Geoff Eley on the 20th century Euroleft also has extensive background. Michael Pugliese P.S. The Communist Movement, two. vols. by Fernando Claudin of the PCE, published by Monthly Review Press and for a counterpoint the acerbic volume by F. Furet on Communism published by the Free Press or Basic Books. Cf. the very new book of letters to and fro from far rightist, Ernst Nolte and Furet. Michael Pugliese --- Original Message --- From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 5/3/02 3:05:19 PM At 03/05/02 08:29 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: My last post on this question dealt with the treachery of the SP. But the CP was equally culpable. It refused to bloc with the SP, which it called Social Fascist. Absolutely. An example of all struggle is wrong. Chris Burford
FW: [antifadc] 3 articles on BNP success in local elections (fwd)
--- Original Message --- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 5/3/02 12:55:28 PM AP Worldstream May 3, 2002 Modest losses for Blair in local ballot; small gain for right-wing extremists Changes dateline from Oldham BETH GARDINER; Associated Press Writer BURNLEY, England - Britain's main right-wing extremist party won three council seats in this racially divided town Friday, but failed to make meaningful gains as the governing Labor Party fared better than expected. The British National Party won just three out of some 6,000 seats at stake in elections Thursday across England for city and town councils that run local affairs. While showing that the far-right has virtually no support, the fact that the BNP won any seats was greeted with dismay by most people. The ballot for seats on 174 city and town councils was more important as the first major test of public opinion since Prime Minister Tony Blair's landslide general election victory at the national level last June. While Labor lost some seats, the main opposition Conservatives failed to make the major gains they needed to show they are regaining public support and are a credible future national government. A bad result for Blair, while having no effect on his hold on power, would have indicated that the government was losing the enormous support it achieved at the last two national elections. Local midterm elections usually cost the governing party seats, but there was not a big change in the overall number of councils that each of the three main parties control, despite public dissatisfaction over rising crime and faltering public health and transportation systems. The right-wing BNP, which fielded 68 candidates around England, won its first seats in nearly a decade with the victories of civil engineer David John Edwards and housewife Carol Hughes in Burnley, one of four cities in northwestern England that suffered racial riots last year. A recount in another Burnley district Friday morning gave a third BNP candidate, Terence Grogan, a seat. The BNP won three seats out of 45 on Burnley's council, which remained under the control of the Labor Party. The BNP - derided by mainstream politicians as fascists and neo-Nazis - played on white resentment against minorities, saying South Asians received a disproportionate share of public resources. Simon Woolley, of the group Operation Black Vote, was dismayed at the Burnley vote. Three candidates have a democratic mandate to apply their racist bigotry, he said. It's a general climate of saying to black Britons we don't want you; you don't belong. BNP leader Nick Griffin claimed Friday that the victory should not damage community relations. There's going to be a voice on the council for the white majority, he said, and I hope that will ease some of the tensions that have been here. Griffin later said the party's ultimate aim is an all white society. He claimed no one would be forced to leave under his plan, saying It can only be done by negotiation, agreement and consensus. But Shahid Malik, a Labor Party official and resident of Burnley, said, We've got to expose the BNP for the Nazis that they are, so they aren't able to hoodwink the people of this town as they did last night. They're repugnant, Malik said. They're not healthy for democracy, they're not healthy for society. In Oldham, near Burnley, all five BNP candidates lost, but four scored second in their races. The people of Oldham have slammed the door well and truly in the face of the BNP, said Riaz Ahmad, that city's mayor-elect. I hope they will get the message and go away. The BNP received less than 1 percent of the vote in last year's national election and has not won public office since 1993. But it has been encouraged by the success of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in the first round of France's presidential election. About 7 percent of Burnley's residents are minorities, many of them immigrants or descendants of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s to work in what was then a thriving textile i ndustry. In Oldham, about one-quarter of residents are of South Asian ancestry. With votes counted in 166 of 174 councils, Blair's governing party had lost 290 of the 2,745 seats it held before the election. The Conservatives added 217 to the 1,771 they had before and the third-largest party, the Liberal Democrats, had gained 21 more than their previous 1,223. Voters also were electing mayors in seven towns and cities - part of government plans to introduce U.S.-style elected mayors to Britain. Labor candidates won three of those races, and a third was taken by an independent candidate who had campaigned in a monkey suit as a joke. Press Association May 3, 2002, Friday All three of Burnley's new BNP councillors at first refused to speak publicly after their victories. BODY: But Mr Edwards today broke the
RE: RE: Response to JD re 1956
Anyone read this book? Workers' Control and Socialist Democracy: the Soviet Experience, (Verso, 1982), by Carmen Sirianni??? Or the Maurice Brinton pamphlet on the Soviets??? Michael Pugliese --- Original Message --- From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/29/02 3:07:58 PM You're right. I don't want to argue about this at this point. The key is when the workers' peasants' soldiers' soviets lost political power to the CPSU, so that decisions were made from above rather than democratically. I'll leave the dating of that shift to another discussion. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Hari Kumar [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 3:38 PM To: pen-l Subject: [PEN-L:25528] Response to JD re 1956 JD cites HK: Post 1956 the USSR was a neo-social-imperialist state, asks: why _only_ post 1956?? JD REPLY: Clearly we are not going to agree on the nature fo the state apparatus prior to the death of Stalin - I see no point in discussing it unless you wish to be quite specific please. Following 1956, however the capture fo state power by Khruschev-ite was complete. From this stage on - we would probably not disagree on what that made the class relation fo the USSR with other nations. Toe make the point explicit however, and to trace the steps: The Khruschev-ite now re-structured the economic system of renumeration in the USSR to re-enshrine profit - using the notion of managerial bonuses. This was first promulgate during Stalin's lifetime - fought off by Stalin. (See the Vosonosensky Affair in the below reference). After the death of JVS, the way was clear for a un-impeded implementation of the Lieberman Reforms. Bill Bland before his death used USSr documents to trace the steps way back in 1980. Alliance placed this on the web, until Yahoo shut us down. It is now at this web-site below: http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrindex.html
Re: Re: RE: RE: Response to JD re 1956
Care to give a brief summary? Is Carmen a social democrat (!) like Sam Farber of New Politics? ;-) Michael Pugliese 4/30/02 8:58:51 AM, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Anyone read this book? Workers' Control and Socialist Democracy: the Soviet Experience, (Verso, 1982), by Carmen Sirianni??? Or the Maurice Brinton pamphlet on the Soviets??? Michael Pugliese I have. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
The Myth of Capitalism Reborn in the USSR by Michael Goldfield
Good pamphlet circa '77 or so by the author of, The Color of Politics, from the New Press. Copies probably available from http://www.bolerium.com Michael Pugliese
Re: Response to JD re 1956
Re: Voznesensky. Found this googling. From the lengthy, Another view of Stalin. BTW, am re-reading the excellent, Stalin and the European Communists, by P. Spriono, Verso. By the official historian of the PCI, the Italian C.P. Michael Pugliese http://www.tiac.net/users/knut/Stalin/node152.html Next: Stalin's death Up: Khrushchev's coup d'état Previous: Khrushchev's coup d'état Beria's intrigues Zhdanov, Stalin's probable successor, died in August 1948. Even before his death, a woman doctor, Lydia Timashuk, accused Stalin's doctors of having applied an inappropriate treatment to accelerate his death. She would repeat these accusations later on. During the year 1949, almost all of Zhdanov's entourage was arrested and executed. Kuznetsov, Secretary of the Central Committee and Zhdanov's right hand man; Rodionov, Prime Minister of the Russian Republic; and Voznesensky, President of the Plan, were the main victims. They were among the most influential new cadres. Khrushchev claims that their elimination was due to Beria's intrigues. Stalin had criticized some of Voznesensky's theories, according to which the law of value should be used to determine the distribution of capital and labor among the different sectors. In that case, replied Stalin, capital and labor forces would migrate to light industry, which is more profitable, and hinder heavy industry: `(T)he sphere of operation of the law of value is severely restricted and strictly delimited in our economic system (by) ... the law of planned (balanced) development of the national economy'. . Stalin, `Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.', The Documentary Record of the 19th Communist Party Congress and the Reorganization After Stalin's Death (New York: Frederick A. Praeger), p. 5. However, in his text, Stalin refuted these opportunist points of view without treating their authors as traitors. According to Khrushchev, Stalin intervened several times for Voznesensky's liberation and appointment as head of the State Bank. . Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, op. cit. , p.`251. As for Timashuk's accusations against Zhdanov's doctors, Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, recalled that her father, at first, `did not believe the doctors were `dishonest' '. . S. Alliluyeva, p. 215; cited in Bland, op. cit. , p. 4. Abakumov, Minister of State Security, close to Beria, was then leading the inquiry. But in the end of 1951, Ignatiev, a Party man with no experience in security, replaced Abakumov, who was arrested for lack of vigilance. Had Abakumov protected his boss, Beria? The inquiry was then led by Ryumin, the man formerly responsible for Security in Stalin's personal secretariat. Nine doctors were arrested, accused of being `connected with the international Jewish bourgeois nationalist organisation `JOINT' (American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee), established by American intelligence'. . Pravda, 13 January 1953, p. 4; cited in Bland, op. cit. , p. 18. This affair was understood as Stalin's first attack against Beria. The second attack took place simultaneously. In November 1951, leaders of the Communist Party of Georgia were arrested for redirecting public funds and for theft of State property and were accused of being bourgeois nationalist forces with links to Anglo-American imperialism. In the ensuing purge, more than half of the Central Committee members, known as Beria's men, lost their position. . J. Ducoli, `The Georgian Purges (1951--1953)', Caucasian Review, vol. 6, pp. 55, 1958; cited in Bland, op. cit. , p. 11--13. The new First Secretary stated in his report that the purge was undertaken `upon Comrade Stalin's personal instructions'. . A. Mgdelaze, Report to Congress of Georgian Communist Party, Sept. 1952; cited in Bland, op. cit. , p. 24. Next: Stalin's death Up: Khrushchev's coup d'état Previous: Khrushchev's coup d'état Fri Aug 25 09:03:42 PDT 1995 4/29/02 3:37:34 PM, Hari Kumar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: JD cites HK: Post 1956 the USSR was a neo-social-imperialist state, asks: why _only_ post 1956?? JD REPLY: Clearly we are not going to agree on the nature fo the state apparatus prior to the death of Stalin - I see no point in discussing it unless you wish to be quite specific please. Following 1956, however the capture fo state power by Khruschev-ite was complete. From this stage on - we would probably not disagree on what that made the class relation fo the USSR with other nations. Toe make the point explicit however, and to trace the steps: The Khruschev-ite now re-structured the economic system of renumeration in the USSR to re-enshrine profit - using the notion of managerial bonuses. This was first promulgate during Stalin's lifetime - fought off by Stalin. (See the Vosonosensky Affair in the below reference). After the death of JVS, the way was clear for a un-impeded implementation of the Lieberman Reforms. Bill Bland before his death used
Re:Caspian oil investors
Those who read A. Rashi's book on the Taliban will recall that one of the potential ionvestors in the mid-90's was an Argentine company. http://www.wrmea.com/archives/march2002/0203016.html 04/28/2002 March 2002 Special Report The Great Caspian Sea Oil Pipeline GamePart II By Andrew I. Killgore As Sir Arthur Conan-Doyles fictional detective Sherlock Holmes might have said to his amiable if rather literal-minded close friend, Its elementary, my dear Watson, the oil pipeline is the clue to everything. But there are several; you must take care to pick out the right one. The Baku (Azerbaijan)-Supsa (Georgia) pipeline is small potatoes. Recently expanded, it carries Azerbaijans disappointingly low oil production to Georgias Black Sea coast. The Turks oppose the shipping of petroleum via the Black Sea because tankers might be wrecked at Istanbul, their mega- city on the Bosporus, or in the Dardanelles Strait. The Caspian Pipeline Consortiums (CPC) pipeline carries oil from Kazakhstans huge onshore Tengiz field to Novorossiysk on Russias Black Sea coast. The Turks dont like Tengiz-Novorossiysk, either, for environmental and other reasons. The Russians want to move more Caspian oil through their own country to Primorsk, their new port on the Baltic Seas Gulf of Finland. The Russians have another option, however, which is to send Caspian oil through the southern leg of its Druzhba pipeline, to exit on Croatias Adriatic coast. Moscow talks of avoiding the Bosporus choke point with a possible new pipeline that would run from Burgas, Bulgaria, to Alexandropolous on Greeces Aegean coast. This would be relatively short and cheap. It is not a new idea, but oil consultants tell the Washington Report that Athens has never picked up on it, perhaps because the line would run very close to the border with Turkey, with which Greeces relations are traditionally tense. When Secretary of State Colin Powell was recently in Astara, Kazakhstans new capital, he was told by President Nursultan Nazarbayef that his country favored an oil pipeline south through Iran to salt water in the Persian Gulf. Powell sidestepped Nazarbayef by saying the U.S. preferred Turkish and Russian routes. A year ago Washington opposed Caspian oil going to Russia on the presumed grounds that the Russian route would detract from the Israeli- favored Turkish route. However, President George W. Bushs rapport with President Vladimir Putin, plus Russias recent helpfulness in Americas war on terror, has put Moscow at least temporarily in Washingtons good graces. Consultants at Washingtons Petroleum Finance Company, in discussing the Caspian-oil-pipelines issue, recently rhetorically asked this writer, In the future, would America rather depend on Russia or the Arabs for its oil? Losing the important Baku-Ceyhan fight might trigger a decline in Israels power in Washington. Depending on just how much oil and gas are in the Caspian region, a pipeline could go south via Afghanistan to Pakistan and India. In present circumstances such a pipeline is no longer a wild idea. Alternatively, oil and gas pipelines might run across Kazakhstans broad expanses to neighboring China. Kazakhstans offshore (Caspian) Kashagan oil field seemsrepeat, seems to be larger than Tengiz. The Phillips Petroleum Company, which has an interest in Kashagan, declines to speculate on the fields recoverable potential, and corroborated to the Washington Report a recent article in Londons Financial Times that a public announcement can be expected at the end of this year. However, it is clear by now, Watson, that more pipeline will be needed to get the Caspian regions oil and gas to salt water, Holmes might continue. Nazarbayefs favoring the Iran route has a profound effect on the pipeline. Whether he reiterated his desire to President Bush in Washington last month, is not known. But it seems reasonable he did. The Washington Post didnt mention it, but that may mean nothing except that the Post would want to avoid mentioning an Iranian oil pipeline route that Israel opposes. Israel tricked President Bush in his first months in office last year. The new president had wanted only a two-year extension of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), the 1996 Israel-inspired law calling for U.S. sanctions against companies spending as much as $20 million on Iran/Libyas oil and gas industry. Bush seems to have been ready to dump ILSA when the two years expired. When the presidents attention was diverted elsewhere, however, the congressional component of the Israel-First cabal pushed through the five-year extension. Nevertheless, a new pipeline now brings natural gas from Turkmenistan into northern Iran. The U.S. tried, in line with ILSA, to lean on Turkmenistan not to build the line, but Washingtons leaning was ignored. The existence of that pipeline, however, now has dropped
Fw: Caspian oil investors
-- Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 18:50:16 -0400 From: pms [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Caspian oil investors Caspian Summit Failure Not Seen Deterring Investors By Selina Williams LONDON, April 26 (Dow Jones) - The presidents of the five countries bordering the Caspian Sea ended a two-day summit on the sea's legal status without deciding how to divide its oil and gas wealth. Printer-friendly version E-mail to colleagues But analysts and oilmen observing the summit in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat said the lack of any agreement would not necessarily deter foreign investors from future oil and gas projects in the region and that the meeting has laid the groundwork for future progress. It's a bit disappointing that nothing was signed, but it's not going to affect investor sentiment, and all the deals will go ahead apart from the ones in disputed areas, said Kate Mallinson of Control Risks Group. The presidents of Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia and Kazakhstan were supposed to sign a declaration on general principles at the close of the summit Wednesday, but the five leaders declined to sign it. Observers said the summit was dominated by infighting and squabbles as well as the stir caused by the early departure of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami due to a backache. But analysts said the tone of the meeting wasn't as negative as it seemed on the surface, and the fact that the scene had been set for further meetings was in itself a positive development. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Caspian leaders had agreed to meet again to continue talks and proposed holding further talks at a new Caspian summit in the spring of 2003 in Tehran. It's significant that they all met finally - it's the first time they've been able to sit around a table and discuss these issues and it's set a precedent for future meetings, said Terry Adams director of the Caspian Energy Program at the University of Dundee. It's also likely priority issues have been identified, although immediate compliance and cooperation wasn't in the nature of this particular meeting, Adams added. Priority issues include the environmental protection of the landlocked sea as well as the settlement of boundary disputes affecting specific oil fields in the northern sector between Russia and Kazakhstan. The two countries are already believed to be close to signing a bilateral agreement that would lay out the framework for joint development of several offshore oil fields in the northern sector of the Caspian. The fact that the summit has taken place has given added incentive to make progress on bilateral agreements now that it's clear the other solutions haven't progressed as quickly as hoped, said a source with a Western oil major investing in the region. However, disputes over oilfields in the southern sector will be trickier to solve because Iran wants a bigger share of the Caspian's oil riches and Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov is notoriously difficult to negotiate with. At stake is the development of a BP PLC-operated (BP) consortium's exploration prospect Alov, which Iran says lies in its sector. Last summer, Iranian gunboats chased off boats conducting seismic studies of the Alov structure, and the $9- billion project has been frozen ever since. But one source that Iran's apparent intransigence at the summit is a stance they have taken to negotiate a better deal. Iran says it wants a share of at least 20% of the Caspian instead of the approximate 12% share it would be allocated according to the length of the country's coastline. This is just Iran's opening position, and they can't understand why no one is negotiating with them, the source said. Iran is also concerned that if it gives way on the Caspian, it would set a precedent for a longer-running and more important dispute with the United Arab Emirates over the Tunb islands in the Persian Gulf, the source said. Other disputes in the southern Caspian include the Kyapaz/Serdar block that lies in the middle of the Caspian Sea. Both Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have been unable to generate interest from foreign oil companies, while the dispute over the fields remains unresolved. But not all projects on disputed oil fields are frozen. Development on Azerbaijan's key offshore oil field by the country's flagship foreign oil consortium has proceeded mostly unhampered since 1994 when the deal was signed. Turkmenistan says part of the structure lies in its territory and that it is entitled to a share of the profits. But this has so far fallen on deaf ears and hasn't stopped the BP-led Azerbaijan International Operating Company from investing billions of dollars to ramp up output at the Azerbaijani field to 1 million barrels a day in the next few years from the 130,000 b/d they are currently producing. The other positive outcome of the
Richard Gott on Chavez and Venezuela
http://www.versobooks.com/index.shtml http://www.versobooks.com/books/ghij/gott_shadow_liberator.shtml Bad Subjects... the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the ... ... Chavez and his crew are taking on the inequities in Venezuela?s system. With 80% of the population living in poverty, that?s no small feat. Richard Gott?s ... http://eserver.org/bs/reviews/2001-7-12-2.20PM.html - 9k - Cached - Similar pages Rightist at CSIS...looks like a real ravathon so... Volume VIII, Issue XVII October 17, 2000 VENEZUELA ALERT My Travels with Hugo A Book Review of Richard Gott, In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela (London: Verso, 2000). 246 pages. Scott B. MacDonald Editor's Note: With this issue we inaugurate a new feature - an occasional book review. These essays will highlight should-read publications about need to know subjects. Reader feedback is most welcome ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). The Bolivarian World On September 27-28th, 2000, Caracas hosted a summit for the leaders of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). While the OPEC meeting was taking place, international economic policy makers, including the G7 industrial nations, met in Prague at the annual IMF/World Bank meetings. Anyone with an interest in how the post-Cold War order is shaping up should take note: two different organizations, two different venues, and two different objectives. While it would not be fair to characterize OPEC as an anti-Western, and in particular, an anti-U.S. organization, a number of OPEC members are hardly on close terms with Washington, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, and most recently, Venezuela. In fact, it is Venezuela's leader, President Hugo Chavez, who has sought to instill greater discipline within OPEC and make it more aggressive in terms of pricing. He is also using OPEC as a leveler of what he regards as a too powerful United States. Indeed, he has stated: The 20th century was a bipolar century, but the 21st is not going to be unipolar. The 21st century should be multipolar, and we all ought to push for the development of such a world. So, long live a united Asia, a united Africa, a united Europe. That unity is, of course, against the United States. Who is Hugo Chavez? As he himself has stated: Many people thought that if I became president it would mean the return of Hitler and Mussolini rolled into one. The imagined disaster has not taken place. Both Hitler and Mussolini were elected to office, but both turned their respective political systems upside down, ultimately becoming names associated with brutal totalitarianism. Some of Chavez's harshest critics have stated that he will eventually become like the mid-20th century dictators. His supporters claim that he will redress old wrongs in Venezuelan society and promote a new anti-U.S. order in Latin America. Hugo Chavez is decidedly one of the more interesting and entertaining figures presently on the Latin American stage. A former coup leader and army lieutenant colonel, he was elected President of Venezuela in 1998. Since then, he has smashed the already dying, corrupt old order of Venezuelan politics; involved the people in the political process through a number of referendums; created a new constitution; and won re-election in 2000. Chavez's rise also signals a change in the international political structure in Latin America. While Mexico is becoming a key part of North America, and Brazil is quietly attempting to make itself felt as a leader for trade integration and democracy in South America, Chavez has opted to wave the revolutionary flag, rejecting globalization and banging the drum of old-time nationalism. He portrays U.S. political influence as overbearing and neo-liberal economics as a toxic waste- like northern export. He has developed new friendships with international statesmen of dubious reputation, in particular, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Ghadafi, while being all aglow of his revolutionary mentor, Fidel Castro of Cuba. Moreover, he is seeking to re-ignite an old land dispute with neighboring Guyana, hardly a dagger ready to be thrust into the soft underbelly of Venezuela. He has also made known his sympathy for Colombia's Marxist-drug trafficking FARC guerrillas and called for a South American equivalent of NATO aimed at the United States. As this charismatic and quirky character makes his march through history, it behooves us to know more. Is he an old-fashioned military dictator in the making, as his harshest critics maintain? Is he a well-intentioned Latin American populist, seeking to remold his country for the better? Or is he a would-be Fidel Castro, with a continent-wide ambition to dramatically counter- balance U.S. penetration in Latin America? Richard Gott, a veteran British journalist covering Latin America for The Guardian, has written the only book in English thus far on Hugo Chavez, In the Shadow of the
Rebels at oil pipeline: 'It's easy to bomb'
What's to stop, say, Hekmatyar, now sheltered in Iran, from bombing the pipelines in a few years in Afghanistan? http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/ The Center for International Policy offers a comprehensive source of information and analysis about peaceful efforts to end Colombia's conflict and the United States' increasing military involvement. Michael Pugliese Rebels at oil pipeline: 'It's easy to bomb' U.S. may train Colombian troops in new tactics against bombings Karl Penhaul, Chronicle Foreign Service Sunday, April 21, 2002 ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/21/ MN214028.DTL Saravena, Colombia -- As he sits outside a pool hall sipping tepid beer in the sweltering afternoon, there is little in the young man's quiet manner to suggest he is a foot soldier in an almost-invisible military operation that looms in the crosshairs of U.S. foreign policy. But his dark eyes flash as he demonstrates how he sparks two electric cables together to trigger an explosion. The bomber is one of a small band of rebel saboteurs for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's largest leftist guerrilla force. FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) routinely bomb Colombia's second largest oil pipeline as it pumps 110,000 barrels of crude a day from the nearby Cano Limon field operated by the U.S. multinational Occidental Petroleum Corp. The pipeline stretches 500 miles across oil-rich northeast Colombia to the Caribbean coast. Rebels bombed it a record 170 times last year, up from 99 attacks in 2000, leaving it crippled for more than half the year. Their mission is to stop what they call the plunder of Colombia's natural resources by foreign interests. It's great if the pipeline is pumping at full force. You hit the detonator, the pipe blows and oil shoots 80 yards into the air, said the rebel, who introduced himself only as Daniel. It's easy to bomb. It only takes about 10 kilos (22 pounds) of explosives. But bombing may suddenly get tougher. Amid a wider global crusade, President Bush is pressing Congress for an immediate $27 million emergency aid package to help fight terrorism in Colombia. About $6 million of that, along with another $98 million in the 2003 budget, would pay for U.S. Special Forces to train Colombian troops in new tactics to defend the pipeline in Arauca province. The stated aim is to protect Colombia's oil reserves -- the country's No.1 export -- and ward off rebel attacks against the installations of Los Angeles- based Occidental, which splits production with the state oil company, Ecopetrol. Critics in the U.S. Congress and human rights groups argue that such funding would mark a sharp shift away from the United States' traditional focus of bankrolling anti-narcotics operations and could serve as a trigger for wider U.S. involvement in Colombia's 37-year war between government forces and leftist guerrillas. That war kills 3,500 people a year. But the added millions of dollars seem to offer little guarantee of success against a sabotage campaign that has been going on for 15 years. The rebels use small bomb teams, difficult to detect by army patrols on the ground or by spotter aircraft. Daniel said the bombing raids were normally conducted by eight rebels dressed in civilian clothes, riding motorcycles and equipped with explosives made from fertilizer. Three of them stand watch for army patrols while the other five burrow down with picks to the pipeline, buried about six feet below the surface, or use an explosive charge to blow a crater. Once you reach the pipeline, you wrap the explosives in transparent tape, strap it to the pipeline and run an electric cord about 100 yards away. Then -- boom! The effects of the sabotage -- dark stains throughout the countryside and blackened palm trees -- were evident during a helicopter ride packed with troops from the army's 49th Counterguerrilla Battalion, the unit that protects the pipeline. Maj. Julio Burgos, commander of the 575-man unit, bitterly explained that he no longer counted the cost of a barrel of oil in dollars but in the blood of his men. In the last five years, 62 members of the battalion have died and more than 100 have been wounded in clashes with rebels along the snaking path of the pipeline. Burgos says he does not have the equipment to do the job and believes U.S. aid is desperately needed. At present, the battalion has no helicopters, and its lone bomb- sniffing dog was returned to Bogota after falling ill. Burgos says his most valuable resource is a 230-foot watchtower in a trench- ringed military compound in nearby La Esmeralda, which allows sentries to spot guerrillas about to launch weekly attacks on the base with home-made missiles built from gas tanks packed with dynamite. He hopes U.S. aid will buy three Blackhawk helicopter gunships and pay
Re: [Fwd: ISRAEL'S NEW ECONOMYAND THE INTIFADA:]
Heh, Carrol, if you didn't have me in your kill file you'd have noticed I posted this a while back ;-) http://www.mail-archive.com/pen-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu/msg67628.html Fw: ISRAEL'S NEW ECONOMY AND THE INTIFADA Fw: ISRAEL'S NEW ECONOMY AND THE INTIFADA * From: michael pugliese * Subject: Fw: ISRAEL'S NEW ECONOMY AND THE INTIFADA * Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2002 15:32:27 - 0800 Received: 4/2/02 1:03:53 PM From: nd lt;iradedeus#X0040;yahoo.itgt; Add to People Section To: wsn#X0040;csf.colorado.edu ... 4/25/02 6:23:01 AM, Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Original Message Subject: ISRAEL'S NEW ECONOMYAND THE INTIFADA: Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 09:52:29 +0100 From: Mervyn Hartwig [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This seems a really important analysis. It's nearly 6,000 words long, so I've only included the Intro. Let's know if you'd like the whole thing. Mervyn ISRAEL'S NEW ECONOMY AND THE INTIFADA: A note on the boycott campaign. by Naxos This article is Copyleft [see below] December 2001. At one end of London's Oxford Street the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has mounted a picket on Selfridge's department store, to persuade the management to stop selling produce from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. A similar campaign has been organised [March 2002] by Ya Basta in Italy (http://www.yabasta.it). In this article I take these actions as the starting point for a discussion of the radical transformations that have taken place in the Israeli economy during the past decade, and Israel's very specific location within the global knowledge economy. To Summarise: I would argue that Israeli capitalism of today offers a precious microcosmic possibility for the study of immaterial labour in action. It is also crucial that we understand this economy, because in a real world war sense our futures depend on what is happening here. In recent years the Israeli economy has undergone fundamental changes. An entirely new class composition was created by the ex-Soviet migrations of the 1990s. Markets for traditional Israeli produce became more restricted. The Internet created the conditions for transnational exports of high-value immaterial labour (knowledge) products to replace previous low-value products with high transit costs. And the nature of the new knowledge economies opened new interstitial possibilities for insertion. A new and technically skilled workforce proves capable of creating the flows of innovation that are the precondition for the survival of the large capitalist firms of this and the preceding era (head-hunting of promising new start-ups). Among other things, Israeli companies are particularly well-suited to meet the new demand for biomedical products. They also have a powerhouse of RD represented by the Israeli Defence Force's high-tech academies. And they have a guaranteed point of entry into the US military-industrial complex by virtue of lines of communication between Silicon Valley and the Silicon Wadi of Northern Israel. More than this, Israel also exports models of behaviour - biopower - in the form of knowledges of how to limit, constrain and eventually crush dissident behaviours. This is marketed as methods for defeating terrorism, but is in fact a set of methods for the creation and freezing of an adversarial other. I shall deal with each of these aspects in turn. In passing I would say that this conjunctural shift in the Israeli economy, this radical change in the composition of both class and capital in Israel, have been the necessary precondition for - and partial explanation of - the Israelis' radical break with the Palestinian labour-power which had served previous phases of production (notable in agriculture and construction). Put briefly, the inflow of Soviet (Russian) Jews made possible the break with Palestinian labour power. And simultaneously the Soviet Jews have turned out to be the electoral bedrock of the Israeli government's final solution for the Palestinians. Thus the political and economic precondition for Israel's radical break with Palestinian labour-power was the shift from traditional forms of agriculture and manufacture into the arena of immaterial labour which took place in the 1990s. But more than that, I would argue that the Israelis' war with the Palestinians operates as a factory of immaterial labour export possibilities. This war is, in a real sense, productive for the Israeli economy. Calls for boycotts of Israeli produce are symbolically significant and completely worthwhile. A necessary element of ethical hygiene. They should be supported. But the way in which the campaign is framed is simple-minded to the point of naivety. We are not talking a few packets of pretzels, a crate of Jaffa oranges and a face-pack of cosmetics. Two things need to be said. First, Israel's new immaterial economy and its immaterial-labour products are organically integrated into the very highest levels
International Labour and the Origins of the Cold War
http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-827366-5 International Labour and the Origins of the Cold War Denis MacShane, Official of the International Metalworkers' Federation; former BBC producer and President of the NUJ Price: £52.50 (Hardback) 0-19-827366-5 Publication date: 5 March 1992 Clarendon Press 334 pages, 216mm x 138mm Ordering Customers in Europe may: order by phone, post, or fax Customers in the USA should visit our US site. Customers in the rest of the world, see these instructions. Teachers in schools and FE colleges in Europe: order by phone, post, or fax Description This is the first major study of the role of industrial unions in the launch of the Cold War in the 1940s. Using unpublished archival material from Europe and America, Denis MacShane challenges existing interpretations of international labour's role in the Cold War, arguing that European traditions and political differences were more important than American interventions in determining labour's attitudes to international problems after 1945. Existing interpretations which focus on national confederations such as the TUC in Britain or the AFL in America treat the question of labour and the Cold War as a political and diplomatic quarrel. Dr MacShane revises the myth that the TUC shaped post-war trade union structures in West Germany, or that any TUC blueprint existed for German industrial trade unionism after 1945. In particular, he examines trade unions in the engineering, steel, car, and metal industries who were at the peak of their power, size, and influence in 1945. Their productionist philosophy, which was powerfully tapped by the Marshall Plan, is examined to show why Leninist and Stalinist forms of trade union organization were rejected after 1945. Readership: Teachers and students of international relations, political history, and European studies; specialists in current affairs. Contents/contributors International Trade Union politics; Metalworkers and Trade Union Internationalism 1890-1920; The impact of Communism on the International Metalworkers Federation 1920-1940; Metalworkers and the creation of the World Federation of Trade Unions; Centralism or diversity: Two world views; The American Federation of Labor and the International Labour Movement after the Second World War; Internationalism and the Congress of Industrial Organizations; The Congress of Industrial Organizations, the WFTU, and the Marshall Plan; British Metalworkers and the origins of the Cold War; British Metalworkers, Communism, and the Soviet Union after 1945; The politics of German unions after the end of Nazism; The organisation of German Metalworkers after 1945; The divisions in French Unions; External interference in French Labour; The lessons of 1945
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Le Pen triumph thanks to ultra-leftists
Or the Tercerista, in the FSLN? Daniel Ortega Saavedra - [ Translate this page ] ... cuyo seno Ortega desempeñó el cargo de coordinador. Miembro del grupo 'tercerista' del FSLN, la facción más moderada de las tres que lo conformaron durante ... http://www.gratisweb.com/ladron16/dortega.htm M.P. 4/24/02 8:51:21 AM, Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't understand your position of these issues, Louis. Are you opposed to cross-class alliances (such as the popular front that Dmitrov advocated)? but aren't a lot of the third-world causes you support organized as cross-class alliances? for example, wasn't Peron's movement a cross-class one? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Greg Schofield [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 7:11 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:25350] Re: Re: Re: Re: Le Pen triumph thanks to ultra-leftists Louis this is more guilt by historical association. what happens in history is obviously complex, contradictory and all too often ironic. Simply making a simple reduction of the Popular Front to siding with the bourgeousie, is not about the Front at all but rather a more abstract question misplaced in this context. Confronted with a massive reactionary attack Dimitrov simple gave voice in clear style to creating not some limited and secartian united front (which had been semi-offcial policy since the year dot and is the only form of unity a sectarian the limited left can have) but forming a political unity in the mass of the population itself (ie by-passing the fomal unities which you seem intent on foiting on the Popular Front). Dimitrov did not speak of parties but classes and sections of classes (ie not the political representatives but the classes themselves) the role he pushed forward for communists was to be the rock upon what all else could be built. As I said the Australian experience while having many stalinist warts was explosive and at the rank and file level led to all soughts of people working together and putting ideological differences aside while hammering out a common platform loosely connected with the main anti-fascist thrust of the Front. Hence in this period there was an explosition of proletarian culture, education and mobilization, a magnet which drew in people from every concievable position from conservative Christians to truely liberal members of the bourgeoise, to shop-keepers and the destitute (ie the very sections and classes which Dimitrov identified and which CAME UNDER PROLETARIAN LEADERSHIP - which bureacrats worked hard to convert into CP power). And all of this when Stalin is painted as Uncle Joe all seeing and all knowing demi-god, where party bureacracies fought a long and later successful battle against THE VERY ELEMENTS UNLEASHED BY THE POPULAR FRONT staretgy. Contradiction, irony, complexity - no simple formula of Popular Front = collaboration. We can either explore our history to understand the complex interactions which produced Spain, or we can look for dynamics long hidden by the official position of Trotskism and Stalinism (which soon as possible and where-ever possible broke with the Popular Front). Louis to this you bring banalities, at best misdirected but all displaying no attempt to comprehend the policy as policy or the period of history as history. We cannot pluck out random examples and simply say, there is the proof, nor can we argue by mischaractisation (Popular Front proposed class collaboration). It simply does not work, it is part of our sectarian legacy (or should I say leprosy). And beyond all the complexity that were Spain it was not all that difficult to work out what was going on - but none of this involved the Popular Front as such, though all of it was dressed up in frontism. Stalin and Russian state policy wanted a bargaining chip in their geo-political chess board. To have such a chip they needed direct control over the governement of Republican Spain and they needed a Governement which posed no real class threat to the rest of Europe (this was repeated again in the Greek Civil war, arguably in Yugoslavia until Tito picked up his ball and left the game, and later still in China - I might add the the Prague Spring was directly inspired by the experience of the Popular Front and soviet-tanks showed how compatable this was with Russian foriegn policy). To this external desire, must be added the opportunist desires of a rising middle class in Spain some of which had radical representation in the CP, these sought for their own miscalculated benefit (as class representatives) to willingly fit into Russian policy strategies. The result was needless catstrophe. To attribute this disaster to a mere policy deviod of class context is not what I would call a
Entrevista de Marta Harnecker a Humberto Ortega (FSLN,Popular Frontists?)
http://www.google.com/search?q=tercerista+FSLNhl=enie=utf-8oe=utf-8start=10 sa=N Entrevista de Marta Harnecker a Humberto Ortega - [ Translate this page ] ... liberado por una acción del FSLN en 1974. Desde muy joven Humberto ... pasaba encabezara tendencia insurreccional o tercerista. Luego al darse la reunificación ... http://www.lahaine.f2s.com/Historia/ entrevmartahumbertofsln.htm Nicaragua: The sorry path of Sandinism ... a new period in its activity through its tercerista tendency (chronologically the third to emerge within the FSLN, enjoying the support of the Socialist ... http://www.sinistra.net/lib/upt/compro/liqa/ liqamcecee.html [PDF] GUERRILLA AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF NATION IN ... File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML ... in the FSLN in 1975. The GPP believed - in contrast to the more urban Tendencia Proletaria , and the more pluralist and insurrectionary Tendencia Tercerista ... lasa.international.pitt.edu/LASA97/hawley.pdf International Trotskyist Review #2 - Resolution on Nicaragua ... different from this hope. The very Tercerista tendency on which these moderate ... positions the reunification of the FSLN had taken place?quickly revealed itself ... http://www.rwl-us.org/documents/itr2-5.htm INTERNACIONALES - [ Translate this page ] ... a los éxitos militares de la Tendencia Tercerista que comandaban. A nadie le extrañó ... cuando Sergio Ramírez propuso renovar el fsln en el congreso de 1995 ... http://www.brecha.com.uy/sic/n816/sandini.html Nicaragua 1978 - Introduction ... fought the North American intervention. At present, the FSLN is divided into three main factions: the Tercerista which is the most numerous, and which carried ... http://www.cidh.oas.org/countryrep/ Nicaragua78eng/intro.htm Untitled - [ Translate this page ] ... respecto a su principal contendiente, Daniel Ortega, del FSLN. ... de la tendencia predominante en el sandinismo (la tercerista), y gobernó al país desde el 19 ... http://www.jornada.unam.mx/1996/oct96/961021/ nica.html Informaciones sobre el Congreso del Frente Sandinista de ... - [ Translate this page ] ... la identidad. En el 79, la tendencia tercerista fue la que trazo la estrategia de centro ... LT )Esto es sano para el FSLN. No es necesario un nuevo liderazgo? VT ... http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/287.html
Fwd: Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare,Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990
--- Start of forwarded message --- From: Michael Pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: leftist_trainspotters [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Michael Pugliese Subject: Fwd: Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990 Date: 4/24/02 10:11:11 AM Watching the Neighbors: Low- Intensity Conflict in Central America http://www.statecraft.org/chapter17.html Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990 Watching the Neighbors: Low- Intensity Conflict in Central America Terrorism and Aid to the Political Police The outrage over the Beirut bombing of October 1983 prompted both the invasion of Grenada and the proliferation of U.S. covert counterterror operations. One of the provisions of the 1983 Anti-Terrorism Act was the renewal of overt police assistance. The object of the new legislation, unlike the stared objective of earlier programs, was explicitly political in nature: the violence to be opposed was political violence, political terrorism. For the first time, Congress approved a program explicitly aimed at better political policing overseasresponding to the popular sentiment against international terrorism that was fueled by the Reagan administration. The Reagan administration's renewal of major police assistance programs to counterinsurgency states began even before changes in the law were pushed through the way was opened tor the U.S. military to provide police assistance on a large scale simply by stressing the paramilitary nature of the police to be assisted and by redefining their primary tasks as essentially military in nature. The militarization of the Third World police, which had been a concealed consequence of U.S. assistance in the 1960s, was in the 1980s turned into a virtue: their militarized status made it possible to provide aid denied thus far to those forces stuck in the mold of the civil police tradition. A series of legislative initiatives facilitated the administration's broader objective: renewing an assistance program that could openly deal with nonmilitary police and intelligence agencies. At the top of the bill were initiatives promoted as part of the campaign against terrorism. The Anti- Terrorism Assistance Program (ATA) was approved by Congress in November 1983, its stated objective to enhance, through training and equipment, the ability of the law enforcement personnel of friendly foreign governments to deter and counter terrorism, with an emphasis on bomb detection and disposal, management of hostage situations physical security, and other matters relating to the detection, deterrence and prevention of acts of terrorism, the resolution of terrorist incidents and the apprehension of those involved in such acts.1 The initial appropriations were modest, a mere $5 million for each of the two subsequent fiscal years; this would be nearly doubled, to $9.8 million a year later.2 The increase was justified as a provision to improve airport security (a precaution about which no one could complain) and, for the first time, to permit the provision of certain commodities from the munitions list of military and police supplies requiring export clearance from the Department of Commerce.3 Considerable efforts were made by congressional human rights watchdogs in the 1980s to prevent an across-the- board revival of the defunct Public Safety program, wrapped in the flag of antiterrorism. Congress was to be notified in advance of countries programmed for assistance; respect for human rights was to be a factor in their eligibility and annual reporting On program activity was required.4 The act also limited overseas training by U.S. government personnel to no more than thirty consecutive daysapparently to prevent the repetition of the earlier cozy relationship of Public Safety's in- country advisers with foreign political police. Despite this, the ATA program appears to have been intended to maximize the opportunities to exert an influence very similar to that of its predecessor. The act required that training be provided almost exclusively in the United States, and it set out a three- stage program. Top security officers were first to attend a two-week seminar and visit a range of U. S. security agencies, from FBI to TEA and municipal police departments. A U.S. delegation was then to visit overseas counterparts and thrash out a detailed program. And, finally, foreign officers would begin training at establishments in the United States. Unlike Public Safety, when all began their instruction at Washington's International Police Academy (IPA), training would be provided by several agencies in many different placesa procedure that might reduce the clubbishness among participants but could also make monitoring the program more difficult.5 Within two years, Congress had been notified of the intention to develop programs with 70
Re: dem. cent. Venezuela
bespeaks a very democratic centralist relationship between massses and leaders. I would like to hear more information about this. ^^^ CB: I would too. Maybe Michael Pugliese can google Bolivarian Circles for us. ^ gotta go... JD
Re: Re: dem. cent. Venezuela
Good post! For once, I see (some) wisdom on CB's side. Thouigh, politically, I'm with Jim. Anyway. Will google after work for, Bolivarian Circles. (I work from 1-9 p.m. lousy hrs...) For now, go to http://www.pww.org for a recent article on Chavez and the Venuelan CP. He spoke to their convention recently. And, read (like I haven't!) the Richard Gott book on Chavez from Verso. Michael Pugliese 4/24/02 11:00:43 AM, Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: dem. cent. Venezuela by Devine, James 23 April 2002 21:06 UTC ... Explaining why I described the idea of democratic centralism as coming from the Marxist tradition rather than from Leninism, I wrote: It's from Lenin, but much of what's been written on democratic centralism comes from his epigones (Stalinists, Trotskyists, etc.), who are within the broad tradition of Marxism. A lot of it also came from Kautsky, from whom Lenin learned his stuff (see WHAT IS TO BE DONE?) CB: Epigones are ? Are followers of Hal Draper his epigones ? Of course, while being an epigone isn't always a bad thing. Some of Draper's best work (his multi-volume book, KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION) is totally epigonic, i.e., involving lots and lots of quotes from Marx. (In fact, Draper tries to dig up _all_ quotes by Marx on any given subject.) Note that I'm referring to the _idea_ (or ideal) of democratic centralism here. The usual practice of democratic centralism, i.e., bureaucratic centralism, has been practiced by governments and private corporations for centuries. The basic idea of the Vatican's system of organization is bureaucratic centralism. ^^^ CB: When you use epigone to refer to Lenin's followers it seems to be a negative epithet. ^ I said: The phrase Leninist theory is quite ambiguous since it is a contested theory (even more than Marxist theory), with Lenin's epigones fighting over it. Even Lenin himself did not follow a consistent theory all through his career (see, for example, Tony Cliff's multi-volume book on Lenin [another bunch of epigonic quotes, BTW]). It's unclear that such a dynamically changing vision can or should be distilled into an ism. CB: It wasn't so ambiguous to Lenin that it prevented him from taking definite and effective action. This is a key principle of both Marx and Lenin: not to get caught up in academic style ambiguities so as to fail to unite theory with action. The ambiguities aren't academic: they can be found in Lenin's written work itself. The problem is that the nature of the definite and effective action that Lenin would have taken changed several times in his career, at least given the way his position changed on paper. (BTW, I don't see why ambiguities are academic. Are you saying that the law has no ambiguities?) CB: The best way to discuss this issue is for you to bring here which parts of Lenin's work you think are ambiguous. I would say the comparison with the law is a good way to make the point I am making. A significant difference between the law and most other academic subjects is that the law places much more emphasis on the unity between its theory and practice than most other academic social scientific fields. The greater emphasis on practice is reflected in one of the specific ways that the law deals with ambiguities. This is the subject of statutory construction. If a party asserts that some statutory language is ambiguous, the process is that the parties argue for one side of the ambiguity or the other based on principles of statutory construction, and then the judge decides. The result is always that the statute is interpreted as not ambiguous, and to have the meaning of one side of the ambiguities or the other. The point is that when there is more emphasis on action and practice than in the typical academic situation, there is more emphasis on resolving ambiguities, because ambiguity paralyzes action. Another legal concept can help here: presumptions. Presumptions are basically being certain for now. Unless evidence rebuts the presumption it is presumed to be true ( based on accumulated experience , i.e. it is a posteriori, not a priori) and acted upon with certainty of its truth. A presumption allows action in the face of ambiguity. ^^^ BTW, I can see no reason why Lenin's work should be idolized. After all, his main achievement in practice -- leading the Boshevik revolution -- was, in the end, basically a failure. The failure wasn't totally his fault, of course, but neither does he deserve all the credit for revolution. (The soviets workers, peasants, and soldiers had something to do with the latter.) CB: In what sense do you mean failure here ? Marx was also a failure , no ? Why would Hal Draper spend so much time quoting Marx, when he was a failure ? In fact, has there ever been a success in human history in the sense of the opposite of failure that you use it ? Name a success in human history
Re: Re: Le Pen triumph thanks to ultra-leftists
Re; the Stalin-Hitler Pact. See, Betrayal, by Wolfgang Leonhard. On the reaction in Western European CP's after the Pact was announced. Leonhard also has an interesting autobio of his youth in the CP. Published here by right-wing publisher under the title, Child of the Revolution. Michael Pugliese 4/24/02 11:37:43 AM, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: CB: On this issue, what about the fact that fascism _was_ defeated by the Popular Front. Do you mean the Allies? I wouldn't exactly call the military alliance between Stalin and Churchill and Roosevelt a Popular Front. It was a military alliance between sovereign nations. For that matter, I saw it as eminently principled for Stalin to have signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler (despite the costly illusions that arose out of this.) Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Le Pen triumph thanks to ultra-leftists
Fascism was defeated by the world proletariat brigade - a class. This class was under the leadership of Stalin and that is a historically recorded fact. The subsequent defeat and collapse of fascism throughout the world was connected to the turning point in World World II or as it is called by Marxist, the Second Imperialist World War and the battle for Stalingrad. Melvin P. http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0106/1705.html. See, by Larry Ceplair, Under the shadow of war : Fascism, anti-Fascism, and Marxists, 1918-1939, Columbia Univ. Press, 1987. Thanked in the acknowledgements is Dorothy Healey, in the CPUSA till early '73 (see her great autobio. from Oxford Univ. Press), so anti-Communist seems a stretch to attach to Ceplair. Anti-Stalinist, yes.. http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/courses/faf/fafguide.htm Gluckstein, Donny The Nazis, capitalism and the working class Bookmarks, London 1999 Guérin, Daniel The brown plague: travels in late Weimar and early Nazi Germany Duke University Press, Durham, 1994 Mason, Tim Nazism, fascism and the working class Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995 Chifley HD8450.M3715 199 Barrett, Neil, A Bright Shining Star: The CPGB and Anti-Fascist Activism in the 1930s, Science Society 61 1997 pp. 10-26. Horn, Gerd-Rainer European Socialists Respond to Fascism: Ideology, Activism and Contingency in the 1930s Oxford Univ Press 1996 Chifley HX238.H67 1996 Theories of fascism How accurate is it to talk about fascism as a general phenomenon? To what extent was fascism a product of the inter-war period? Is it possible to speak of a Marxist theory of fascism? Outline the distinctive features of different Marxists approaches to fascism. What are the main features of theories of totalitarianism? How useful are such theories? Why did they emerge during the 1950s? How seriously should we take fascist ideology as a system of arguments and an account of the world? Does value free social science exist? Is it possible to undertake a disinterested study of fascism? Reading Renton pp. 18-29, 44-76 Eatwell pp. 3-29; Payne pp. 441-495 Soucy, Robert French fascism: the second wave, 1933-1939 Yale University Press, New Haven 1995 pp. 1-25Chifley DC396.S66 1995 Gregor, A. James The faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century Yale University Press, New Haven 2000 pp. 1-18 Chifley JC491.G674 Additional Reading Griffin, Roger International fascism: theories, causes and the new consensus Oxford University Press, London 1998 Chifley JC481 .I63 Marxist Beetham, David Marxists in the face of Fascism Manchester University Press, Manchester 1983 Chifley JC481.M28 Guerin, Daniel Fascism and Big Business Pathfinder Press, New York 2000 pp. 23- 148 Chifley JC481.G813 Trotsky, Leon Fascism, Stalinism and the United Front Bookmarks, London 1989 Chifley DD240.T76 1989 Trotsky, Leon The struggle against fascism in Germany Penguin, Harmondsworth 1975 Chifley DD240.T74 Tasca, Angelo (A. Rossi) The rise of Italian fascism, 1918-1922 Methuen, London 1938 DG571.T353 1938 Togliatti, Palmiro Lectures on fascism International Publishers, New York 1976 Chifley JC481.T5813 1976 Influential, contemporary multi-factor approach Griffin, Roger The nature of fascism Pinter, London 1991 Chifley JC481.G696 Totalitarianism Mason, Paul T. Totalitarianism: temporary madness or permanent danger Heath, Lexington 1967 Chifley JC481.M295 advocates of totalitarianism framework Schapiro, Leonard Totalitarianism Pall Mall, London 1972 Chifley JC481.S3 Nolte, Ernst 'The Past That Will Not Pass: A Speech That Could be Written But not Delivered' in James Knowlton and Truett Cates (eds.) Forever in the shadow of Hitler?: original documents of the Historikerstreit, the controversy concerning the singularity of the Holocaust Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J. 1993 , 18-23 on order. Nolte's essay triggered a major controversy ont he significance of Nazism. Nolte, Ernst 'Capitalism-Marxism-Fascism' Marxism, Fascism, and the Cold War Van Gorcum, Assen 1982 pp. 76-79 Chifley HX44.N5913 a foretaste of Nolte's 1986 position. Mommsen, Hans The concept of totalistarian dictatorship vs. the comparative theory of fascism. The case of National Socialism in Ernest A. Menze Totalitarianism reconsidered National University Publications, Port Washington 1981 pp. 146-166 Chifley JC481.T64 Kershaw, Ian The essense of Nazism: form of fascism, brand of totalitarianism or unique phenomenon in his The Nazi dictatorship : problems and perspectives of interpretation Arnold, London; 1993 3rd ed pp. 17-39 Chifley DD256.5.K47 1993 critique of totalitarianism framework Focus on ideology Sternhell, Zeev Fascist ideology in Walter Laqueur (ed.) Fascism: a readers guide Wildwood House, London 1976 pp. 325-408 Chifley JC481.F334 Sternhell, Zeev The birth of fascist ideology: from cultural rebellion to political revolution Princeton
Re: Palestine Vietnam
CB: What is imperialism up to today ? ~ Ask the ghost of Gus! Imperialism Today, by Gus Hall, International Publications, circa mid-80's, collection from PWW and Political Affairs by the, ...internationally renowned Marxist theoretician, Hall authored many books, articles and speeches. Two of his best known books are Working Class USA and Racism, the Nation's Most Dangerous Pollutant. http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve3/1022gus.html Gus Hall, Behind the news: The Clinton-Yeltsin summit in Helsinki ... By Gus Hall, in People's Weekly World 29 March 1997. ... now dominated by the one superpower - US imperialism. Today the world is a much more dangerous ... http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/63/044.html - 13k - Cached - Similar pages http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7078/read.html Gus Hall (1910-2000): Stalinist operative and decades-long leader ... ... was extremely useful to world imperialism. Falsely identifying Stalinism with socialism ... figures who had worked alongside Gus Hall, in some cases for decades ... http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/nov2000/hall-n06.shtml The Militant - July 16, 2001 -- Communist Party USA is dropping ... ... national chairperson Gus Hall. The ... danger of imperialism, or the ... the world today. ... party chairman Hall, in discussing ... from International Publishers. ... http://www.themilitant.com/2001/6527/652750.html US Presidential Elections: Leftist Votes ... A]. 1952, Vincent Hillinan, Charlotte Bass, 140,023 [A]. 1968, Gus Hall, Charlene Mitchell, 1,075. 1972, Gus ... http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/government/elections/president/ timeline.htm Evan Gahr ... longtime American Communist Party leader Gus Hall died this month, the ... Manhattan. Navasky hoped to examine Hall's books to investigate a much ballyhooed ... http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/gahr102600 Of Rockfish and Commies ... And listening to reports of the imminent demise of the rockfishes, I started thinking about Gus Hall, head of the Communist Party USA. Really, Im not kidding ... http://www.id.ucsb.edu/lovelab/commies.html Detroit newspaper strike chauvinism exposed again ... Most Maoists today know the ... Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960), pp ... of the Second International. ... you. Lenin, Imperialism and the ... benefits (Gus Hall, 1980 ... http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/contemp/marxspace/detroit Under discussion: State of the world communist movement ... Science for Our Times by Gus Hall, National Chair of the ... of the world communist movement today? As we enter a ... with the rise of imperialism, and ended with ... http://www.scienceofsociety.org/discuss/wc1.htm 4/23/02 9:01:49 AM, Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Palestine Vietnam by Max Sawicky 22 April 2002 19:16 UTC Concept shifting for $500 please Alex? Ian Answer: Israel is a garrison state that provides crucial support for the projection of U.S. military power from Africa to the Indian sub-continent, where the overwhelming bulk of the world's petroleum reserves are located. This military power is the armed force underlying economic arrangements that are euphemistically referred to as free trade, structural adjustment, neoliberalism, democratic capitalism. Question: ? _ CB: What is imperialism up to today ?
Re: boycotting US products
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BoycottIsraeliGoods/?yguid=2002907 Description Category: Issues and Causes Boycotts and divestments will be very effective non-violent resistance to the ongoing occupation and oppression perpetuated by Israel. The educational aspects of these campaigns can be the most powerful tool to activists to reach out an audience not usually accessible by other means (consumers and the economic sector). The precedent of the success of this campaign is found in is found in the major part it played in the abolition of Apartheid in South Africa. This call to boycott Israeli goods and services has grown dramatically since February. See our web page at http:// www.BoycottIsraeliGoods.org for details. There are already initiatives of boycotts in many countries. A group of Israeli Jews and Arabs called last year for a boycott of Israeli products and leisure tourism (Matzpun, Hebrew for conscience; http://www.matzpun.com/). Gush Shalom has called for a boycott of settlement products (see http://www.gush- shalom.org/). Some groups in Europe have also called for boycotts (e.g. http://www.bismilah.com/storiesfacts/ boycott_zionism.htm, http://www.inminds.com/boycott-israel.html ). A Boycott Israeli goods campaign was also launched last year by British citizens and members of the British Parliament (see http:// www.aquascript.com/psc/campaigns.asp?d=yid=100 ). Divestment campaigns were initiated at Universities in Michigan and California. Al-Awda (http://Al-Awda.org) has been working on asking Intel to divest and disinvest from Israel. Intel built a plant on land whose owners were driven out by Israeli forces after the war. Most Recent Messages Apr 23 Re: Organizing better - lschmittroth I live in a very small town, Athabasca, that is 100 miles north of Edmonton. Apr 23 Re: The Holocaust shouldn't be part of the boycott - sleepyinspring hi! i completely agree with greg. if we want our message to be heard by the ge Apr 23 Berkeley Readies a Boycott of Israelis and Palestinians - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0423-02.htm Published on Tuesday, April Apr 23 The Holocaust shouldn't be part of the boycott - gregsmith14_2000 Hi All, I've seen a recent post complaining that too much money or attention Apr 23 Some vampires' profiles/ financing the Zionists and the settlements - Anwer EL GOUL Hi, I was tracking Zionist money and I found that among the 500 richest people 4/23/02 12:23:11 PM, Diane Monaco [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 15:23:11 -0400 From: Diane Monaco [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:25319] boycotting US products To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Published on Monday, April 22, 2002 by Inter Press Service Mideast Street Anger Turns into Calls for Boycott of U.S. Goods by N Janardhan DUBAI, Apr 22 - The university cafeteria at the University of Sharjah has stopped selling softdrinks manufactured by U.S. multinationals, and instead stocks other beverages produced in the country or region. The American economy is surviving on Arab money, which is used to supply the Israelis with monetary and military assistance to kill the Palestinians who are resisting the occupation for 50 years,'' Nawal Jasim, head of the Women Students' Union at the university, said in explaining the boycott. If the Arab governments do not boycott American goods, we believe it is our responsibility to take the initiative,'' Jasim added in an interview. ''We are a billion Muslims and imagine how much the U.S. economy would be affected if each of us boycott a softdrink can or all American products.'' These moves for a boycott, amid the Israeli offensive against Palestinian areas for weeks now, are triggering a people's revolution of a kind rarely seen before in the region. They reflect how the angry political calls in the Arab street for Israel's withdrawal are fast turning into a search for an economic threat against Washington, in order to force a policy shift by the United States. Unlike the rhetoric of Arab governments, people in the region are resorting to taking action at their level by boycotting U.S.-made products - thus, UAE journalists are organizing a boycott conference, some Lebanese have begun turning their backs away from American products like cigarettes. Some have gone as far as calling for a repudiation of the U.S. dollar in international trade. I have never seen the streets in the Gulf filled with so much hatred and anger as they have been in the past fortnight. The situation is reaching boiling point,'' said Dr Saeed Hareb, professor of law at the UAE University. The striking feature of the demonstrations is that the initiatives have been taken not by the governments, but by students as a collective group and by individuals out of their own choice, he said in an interview. Last week, the UAE
Re: Socialists and Equality
Not that Uncle Joe was a socialist. At least, I don't thin so. Others might have a brief for him though! Cf. Peter Osborne ed., Socialism and the Limits of Liberalism, Verso, 1991 Egalitarianism Readings ... Baker, John (1987) Arguing for Equality (Verso) SLC 323.4. ... equality' in Peter Osborne (ed.), Socialism and the Limits of Liberalism (Verso) SLC 320.15. ... http://www.ucd.ie/~esc/eqism2.htm Michael Pugliese Conversation with the German writer, Emil Ludwig, 1931. From the Collected Works of I. F. Stalin. Vol. 13. Szikra Publishing House, Budapest, 1951. Ludwig: ( ) You speak about leveling with some irony although general equality is a socialist idea. Stalin: Marxism has nothing to do with that type of socialism in which everybody gets the same salary, receives the same amount of food and wears the same uniform. Marxism only states that until all classes vanish, and until work has become a voluntarily contribution to society instead of being simply necessary for survival, people will be paid according to their actual contribution: From each according to his ability; to each according to his work this is the main principle of the first stage of communism. This will be replaced only at the highest, final stage of communism by a new principle: From each according to his ability; to each according to his need. It is obvious that in socialism different people have different needs. Socialism has never denied the variability of the quantity and quality of needs. Just read The Critics of the Gotha-program by Marx, or other relevant works by Marx, Engels and Lenin. The source of the idea of leveling was the individualistic peasant mentality. It was based on the psychology of an equal share of goods, upon the psychology of primitive peasant communism. This kind of desire for leveling has nothing to do with Marxist socialism. Only ignorant critics of Marxism believe that the Russian Bolsheviks first want to collect goods, then distribute them equally among the people. That was how communism was imagined in the age of Cromwell or during the French Revolution by the primitive communists. But neither Marxists nor Russian Bolsheviks have such crazy ideas about equality and real communism. ( ) 4/23/02 12:05:37 PM, Ismail Lagardien [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 20:05:37 +0100 (BST) From: Ismail Lagardien [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Socialists and Equality To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Is this a fair representation of socialists? Very few socialists have ever been or are now in favour of complete material equality. (Brian Barry 1989: 17) Do You Yahoo!? Get personalised at My Yahoo!.
Iraqi Kurds Planning to Oust Saddam
Iraqi Kurds Planning to Oust Saddam By Salah Nasrawi Associated Press Writer The Associated Press Monday, April 22, 2002 CAIRO, Egypt -- Leaders of the two main Kurdish parties that control northern Iraq met with U.S. officials last week to coordinate efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power, according to Iraqi dissidents and Arab press. Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, and Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, also discussed plans for a government that would replace Saddam's regime once the Iraqi leader is ousted, the Iraqi dissidents told The Associated Press. Officially, the Kurdish groups -- the only armed Iraqi opposition groups -- have said nothing about the meeting, perhaps out of fear of being accused by other Iraqi factions of working unilaterally with the United States. On Sunday, the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported that both Barzani and Talabani met officials from the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA in Germany last week. Quoting a Kurdish source, the paper said both sides met for three days near Berlin and reviewed coordination to launch a strike against Saddam most likely by the end of this year. The Iraqi dissidents told AP on Sunday that Barzani and Talabani also discussed with U.S. officials plans for merging their two governments administrating northern Iraq ahead of a possible move against Saddam. German Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Michaelis confirmed Monday that the two Kurdish leaders were in Germany last week but refused to provide further information. A spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin told AP that the United States never comments on intelligence matters. Delshad Miran, a spokesman for the KDP in London, and Fouad Massoum, the British-based PUK's Europe's representative, told AP their two leaders are in Europe but declined to divulge more. If confirmed, it would be the first meeting between the two leaders since their parties fought a bloody war over control of the Kurdish area in 1994. The United States, which imposes a no-fly zone on the enclave to protect Kurds against Saddam's incursion, has been mediating between the two parties. Such a meeting would be a strong signal to Saddam that the Bush administration is determined in its efforts to remove him from power. The 1995 Iraq Liberation Act, passed by Congress and signed by then- President Clinton, made it a matter of law that the United States supports regime change, or the ouster of Saddam. Bush has recently reiterated that goal. Earlier this month, several Iraqi opposition leaders, including representatives from the two Kurdish groups, met in Washington to iron out plans for a post- Saddam government. The Bush administration reportedly is weighing options for deposing Saddam, among them supporting a local insurgency, fostering a coup by the Iraqi leader's closest lieutenants and an outright U.S.-led invasion
Re: RE: Re: Thousands march in S.F. protest
A book I just bought, Perceptions of Palestine, by Kathleen Christison, University of Ca. Press, 1999, has this footnote. Pg. 316, fn. #29, The original quote-, 'A country without a nation for a nation without a country, - came from Lord Shaftesbury in 1839. (Michael W. ) Suleiman Palestine and the Palestinians in the mind of America, in, U.S. Policy from Wilson to Clinton, Normal, Illinois, American Asociation of Arab-American University Graduates, 1995. Michael Pugliese 4/21/02 2:17:55 PM, Forstater, Mathew [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Michael wrote: I recalled too many leftist jewish people getting irrational about Israel. I forget who said it, but it has always seemed accurate for many I've known or known of: Israel/Palestine is one subject where otherwise very intelligent people become stupid as a doorknob. I have some family members who are simply incapable of accepting the facts concerning Zionism/Israel. It is not even discussable. For years their outlook was supported and protected by the U.S. government and media, who went along with the Zionist propaganda machine. It does seem to have changed somewhat, but the changes may only reflect Israeli policy. It wasn't so long ago that Israeli leaders would not even admit that there exists a Palestinian people. Recall the famous Golda Meir quote. And the old slogan A people without a land for a land without a people. Palestinians were simply obliterated. The whole phenomenon is also related to the move to the political right on the part of many American Jews. Rather than face the facts on Israel/Zionism they changed their views on everything else--so at least they are less inconsistent. If only people had been able to separate out being Jewish (religiously, culturally, or both) from Israel. By melting them into one thing, people who feel strongly about their Jewishness became strong supporters and apologists for Israel. Of course, this was an intentional policy of the Zionists. They exploited feelings about Jewishness and the Holocaust to garner support for Israel. Any criticism of Israel was automatically considered anti-Semetic, etc. People were duped, and they don't like to face up to their mistakes. And the longer it goes on, the more difficult it is to admit the truth.
What The Fuck Are You Saying How The Left Has Failed...
http://www.clamormagazine.org/issue13.3_feature.html Mentioned in the Chron. of Higher Ed. Michael Puggliese
Re: Re: Argentina, Australia and Canada
The CIA in Australia, Part 1 ... and individuals in Australia. Today, in part 1 ... operations against the Whitlam government through the ... for covert actions. Covert Action often means the ... http://www.serendipity.magnet.ch/cia/cia_oz/cia_oz1.htm - 24k - Cached - Similar pages The CIA in Australia, Part 2 ... was involved in covert activities against the ... industrial upheaval in Australia leading virtually to ... centre of the action was Whitlam Cabinet Minister Clyde ... http://www.serendipity.magnet.ch/cia/cia_oz/cia_oz2.htm http://www.pir.org/main2/Gough_Whitlam.html WHITLAM GOUGH Australia 1972-1984 Agee,P. On the Run. 1987 (197) Blum,W. The CIA: A Forgotten History. 1986 (278-83) Canadian Covert Activity Analyst 1984-W (9) Christic Institute. Sheehan Affidavit. 1988-03-25 (36-8) Corn,D. Blond Ghost. 1994 (303-7) CounterSpy 1982-01 (54) CounterSpy 1982-08 (4) CounterSpy 1984-02 (46-8) Covert Action Information Bulletin 1982-#16 (53) Covert Action Information Bulletin 1987-#28 (7) Freney,D. Get Gough! 1985 (54-62) Intelligence/Parapolitics (Paris) 1984-06 (4-6) Jeffreys-Jones,R. The CIA and American Democracy. 1989 (206-7) Kwitny,J. The Crimes of Patriots. 1987 (16, 127-42) Leigh,D. The Wilson Plot. 1988 (xii, 230, 232-3) Lernoux,P. In Banks We Trust. 1984 (72) Mother Jones 1984-03 (14-20, 44-5, 52) Parapolitics/USA 1982-03-31 (14) Seagrave,S. The Marcos Dynasty. 1988 (370-1) Stich,R. Russell,T.C. Disavow: A CIA Saga of Betrayal. 1995 (93-4) Texas Observer 1991-09-20 (11-4) Thomas,K. Keith,J. The Octopus. 1996 (42, 90-1) Wall Street Journal 1982-08-24 (22) Washington Post 1985-01-01 (A20) pages cited this search: 83 Order hard copy of these pages Show a social network diagram for this name The names below are mentioned on the listed pages with the name WHITLAM GOUGH Click on a name for a new proximity search: ANGLETON JAMES JESUS Blum,W. The CIA: A Forgotten History. 1986 (279) Freney,D. Get Gough! 1985 (55-57) Intelligence/Parapolitics (Paris) 1984-06 (6) Jeffreys-Jones,R. The CIA and American Democracy. 1989 (207) Kwitny,J. The Crimes of Patriots. 1987 (132-133) Mother Jones 1984-03 (14 16 19) Parapolitics/USA 1982-03-31 (14) ANTHONY J DOUGLAS Blum,W. The CIA: A Forgotten History. 1986 (280) Christic Institute. Sheehan Affidavit. 1988-03-25 (37) Corn,D. Blond Ghost. 1994 (303) CounterSpy 1982-01 (54) Intelligence/Parapolitics (Paris) 1984-06 (4 6) Kwitny,J. The Crimes of Patriots. 1987 (135) Mother Jones 1984-03 (20) Texas Observer 1991-09-20 (13) API DISTRIBUTORS INC Stich,R. Russell,T.C. Disavow: A CIA Saga of Betrayal. 1995 (94) ASIA FOUNDATION Blum,W. The CIA: A Forgotten History. 1986 (283) Intelligence/Parapolitics (Paris) 1984-06 (4) ASKIN ROBERT Parapolitics/USA 1982-03-31 (14) ASTON JOHN Wall Street Journal 1982-08-24 (22) AUSTRALIAN SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE Corn,D. Blond Ghost. 1994 (303-304) Leigh,D. The Wilson Plot. 1988 (232-233) AUSTRALIA CIA IN Blum,W. The CIA: A Forgotten History. 1986 (278-283) Canadian Covert Activity Analyst 1984-W (9) CounterSpy 1982-01 (54) CounterSpy 1982-08 (4) CounterSpy 1984-02 (46-48) Intelligence/Parapolitics (Paris) 1984-06 (4-6) Kwitny,J. The Crimes of Patriots. 1987 (127-142) Mother Jones 1984-03 (20 44-45 52) Parapolitics/USA 1982-03-31 (14) BARBOUR PETER Freney,D. Get Gough! 1985 (55) Leigh,D. The Wilson Plot. 1988 (232) Mother Jones 1984-03 (15-16) BARNETT HARVEY CounterSpy 1984-02 (48) BEAZLEY DONALD E Stich,R. Russell,T.C. Disavow: A CIA Saga of Betrayal. 1995 (94) BLACK EDWIN F (GEN) Thomas,K. Keith,J. The Octopus. 1996 (91) Wall Street Journal 1982-08-24 (22) BOYCE CHRISTOPHER JOHN Blum,W. The CIA: A Forgotten History. 1986 (283) Corn,D. Blond Ghost. 1994 (305-307) Covert Action Information Bulletin 1982-#16 (53) Intelligence/Parapolitics (Paris) 1984-06 (4) Kwitny,J. The Crimes of Patriots. 1987 (130-131) BRANDT WILLY Leigh,D. The Wilson Plot. 1988 (230 232) BROWN COLIN (ASIO) Kwitny,J. The Crimes of Patriots. 1987 (129) BRUNN HERBERT THEODORE Texas Observer 1991-09-20 (14) BUSH GEORGE W Texas Observer 1991-09-20 (11) BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL CounterSpy 1984-02 (46) CAIRNS JIM Intelligence/Parapolitics (Paris) 1984-06 (6) Kwitny,J. The Crimes of Patriots. 1987 (134) CAMERON CLYDE Leigh,D. The Wilson Plot. 1988 (232) CANADA CIA IN Canadian Covert Activity Analyst 1984-W (9) CARROLL ALAN CounterSpy 1984-02 (46) CARTER LEO Wall Street Journal 1982-08-24 (22) CHAVEZ RICARDO Christic Institute. Sheehan Affidavit. 1988-03-25 (38) CITY NATIONAL BANK (MIAMI) Stich,R. Russell,T.C. Disavow: A CIA Saga of Betrayal. 1995 (94) CLINE RAY STEINER Corn,D. Blond Ghost. 1994 (306-307) Covert Action Information Bulletin 1982-#16 (53) Kwitny,J. The Crimes of Patriots. 1987 (133-134) Thomas,K. Keith,J. The Octopus. 1996 (90) COCKE ERLE JR Wall Street Journal 1982-08-24 (22) COLBY WILLIAM EGAN Covert Action Information Bulletin 1982-#16 (53) Freney,D. Get Gough! 1985 (56-57) Texas
Re: Re: Re: Argentina, Australia and Canada
April 5, 1998 THE SWISS, THE GOLD, AND THE DEAD By Jean Ziegler. Translated by John Brownjohn. 322 pp. New York: Harcourt Brace Company. $27. (Review) Gnomes and Nazis An account of Switzerland's role in financing Germany's war machine. By PETER GROSE (Peter Grose, a research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is the biographer of Allen Dulles. He is completing a book on covert action in East Europe during the cold war.) The day of reckoning for mighty Switzerland has been long in coming. In the manner of a post-modern Zola, an angry man of letters, Jean Ziegler, has thrown down his J'accuse with The Swiss, the Gold, and the Dead, and brigades of auditors, financiers, factors, historians, lawyers and publicists are trying to cope with it. During the cold war, successive Swiss generations wrote off the ambiguities of the World War II era as the time-honored way of neutrality. The enormous self- enrichment that grew from the financing of Hitler's war machine came, it was always said, through Switzerland's normal banking acumen. The disappearance into Swiss public and private coffers of assets seized by the Nazis from Jews and other victims was beneath polite discussion. For half a century, Switzerland lived as a nation in denial. But the country has been set aflame by this modest volume, published last year by a petulant professor of sociology at Geneva University, a longtime Member of Parliament and a socialist, too left wing for the bankers' tastes yet Swiss through and through. Readers of English can now savor his polemic for themselves (in a fine translation from the German by John Brownjohn). The awesome, world-encompassing financial power wielded today by the major Swiss banks is founded on wartime profits, Ziegler writes. And, he says, the Swiss public, those who benefited directly or indirectly from these profits, accept this outcome with pride and an absolutely clear conscience. Ziegler's fundamental aim is one that no board of auditors would presume to undertake: to analyze sociological factors and human behavior, complicities and constraints. His is a book about the Swiss people, his own countrymen, a nation of guilty innocents and innocent guilty, consumed in a mania for self-righteousness, guiltlessness and perpetual purity. What never fails to fascinate me about Swiss business tycoons, industrial magnates and bankers is their combination of great professional ability and infinite political naivete, Ziegler declares. We Swiss are 'available,' as Bernese political jargon still calls it. We have no political opinions, we merely offer our services. Ziegler is no stranger to the Swiss banking community. His scholarly works over three decades have dwelt on capitalist exploitation in the third world. More than 20 years ago, he turned his acerbic scrutiny inward, to lift the story of his own society out from under the stifling and alienating blanket of fog which is produced by the ruling discourse and produces the silence and uniformity of consent. This first tentative foray was published in 1976, but attracted little notice in or out of Switzerland; an English edition entitled Switzerland Exposed found no American publisher. But in the changed mood of 1997 Ziegler's latest broadside has provoked anguish among the Swiss. At best they are astonished; more often they are outraged. Geneva television held a three-hour town meeting on the issues raised by Ziegler's book; the studio audience jeered its author and applauded his critics. The Foreign Minister instructed all our embassies to persuade 'friendly' journalists to denigrate the book in the foreign press, Ziegler writes in an afterword for this American edition. He also reports on a long-scheduled parliamentary debate about dormant Jewish bank accounts that was canceled in September 1996, a few moments before it was to start. The presiding officer seems puzzled by my indignation, says Ziegler, one of those listed to speak in the debate. His rosy face registers profound surprise, his response strikes a reproachful note: 'You surely don't want us to make an exhibition of ourselves in front of all these foreigners?' The press galleries were indeed crowded with American, French, British and German correspondents; the Ambassadors from Israel and the United States were settled in the diplomatic gallery. They were incredulous as word spread of the cancellation. The issues that have to be aired have mounted far beyond the capacity of any single debate or author. Even as Ziegler was writing his book, the British Foreign Office put out a hastily assembled review of evidence from its official archives. In May 1997 the United States weighed in with a more thorough investigation led by Stuart Eizenstat, then an Under Secretary of Commerce; disputing Eizenstat's conclusions (which largely coincided with Ziegler's), the Swiss Government nonetheless declared the research factual
Re: ads
www.sfgate.com Return to regular view BEYOND THE BANNER New online ads float, flash and can't be clicked off Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, April 2, 2002 ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/02/ BU98776.DTL Web surfers have learned to ignore banner ads and click past pop-up ads. But they can't ignore the animated lizard that skitters across the Lycos.com home page with a Saturn sport utility vehicle in pursuit. The cartoon blocks the Web page from full view for 20 seconds. That Saturn pitch, which has also run on ComedyCentral.com, ESPN.com, Weather.com and EOnline.com, exemplifies the latest generation in the increasingly intrusive evolution of online advertising. Visitors have no choice: They have to watch the advertisement until it disappears. These new advertisements take three forms, all of which obscure the page the reader wants to view: floating ads like the Saturn lizard spot, which feature cartoon-style animation; so-called in-line interstitials that are essentially flashing full-page billboards; and full-page commercials. Advertisers are willing to shell out as much as four times more for the floaters and commercials than they do for banners. They say the new ads give greater opportunity for creativity. And their virtual inescapability is a major plus. But while surfers may not like the more aggressive salesmanship, they'd better get used to it, analysts said. People are learning by watching all these online services go out of business that, well, somebody has got to pay for this stuff, said Jonathan Gaw, an analyst for IDC, a market research firm. The more intrusive the ad the better, from the advertiser's perspective. So it would seem, judging by the dozens of examples now on the Web. At Playboy.com, viewers have to watch a 25-second Jack Daniel's whiskey ad before entering the site. Enlarged images of microscopic cells partially veil the online encyclopedia Britannica.com in an ad for Norton antivirus software. And on SportingNews.com, two basketball players and a runner holding a flag sprint across the home page for 12 seconds in a pitch for Planters peanuts. ANNOYING FOR WEB USERS Not surprisingly, consumers are starting to complain. These ads are an in-your-face annoyance that you can't miss, said Gary Ruskin, executive director for Commercial Alert, a group co-founded by Ralph Nadar that opposes the proliferation of all kinds of advertising. One wonders whether Internet users are going to be bombarded with so many ads that they use the Internet less. These new ads, which began showing up within the past year, make up less than 5 percent of all online advertising, analysts said. But they agreed that the new sales pitches are picking up steam. They're obviously starting to become a force, said Tamara Gaffney, an analyst for Nielsen/NetRatings, an online audience measurement firm. Making consumers sit through advertising is nothing new in the media world. Television and radio shows are regularly interrupted by commercials, yet keep their audiences. Online advertising has tended to have been subtler, however. Banner ads, which run across the top of a screen, and tower ads, which run down the side, have gotten bigger lately, but they don't usually interfere with viewing. Pop-up ads, which spring up on computer screens in separate browser windows and sometimes block the site's pages, ushered in an era of intrusion around two years ago. However, pop-ups can usually be dispatched within a few seconds. WAYS TO AVOID ADS The new ads are harder to get rid of. Some of them carry delete buttons, but they're small and hard to find. In many cases, the ads lack a delete button altogether, leaving no alternative for consumers but to wait for them to play out and then vanish. One way to get rid of these ads is to install ad-blocking software. But even that is no guarantee that every floating ad will be eliminated. For example, AdSubtract, blocking software manufactured by Intermute, was initially useless against the pitch for Jack Daniel's whiskey on Playboy.com. However, the company adjusted the software after a reporter's telephone call, and the ad no longer appeared. We started seeing these new kinds of ads about nine months ago and immediately got to work adjusting our software, said Ed English, chief executive for Intermute. We always have to work to keep up with the latest technology they use. Gerry Eramo, assistant general manager for interactive media services for Panasonic, said the electronics manufacturer is pleased with the floating ads it has run on Rivals.com, a sports Web site. One of the advertisements featured a cartoon athlete catching a football thrown to him and then crashing into a high definition television. It really does break through the clutter as long as you're careful in who you are showing the ad to,
tapes from 2002 Socialist Scholars Conference
( eCLEANER got rid of the ) tapes from 2002 Socialist Scholars Conference From: Mark Pavlick ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Date: Fri Apr 19 2002 - 11:33:30 EDT Next message: Michael Pugliese: Re: Hardliners turn against Putin the reformer Previous message: pms: Bullish on the Euro Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ] The 2002 Socialist Scholars Conference was the greatest. Very optimistic and uplifting. From a raucous debate on intervention vs. non-intervention with lots of booing, cheering and audience comments to a savvy panel on Enron/corporate corruption. The following is a listing of audio and video tapes recorded at the 2002 SSC available for purchase from Radio Free Maine. More listings will be forthcoming. Opening Plenary After 9/11: New Politics for Social Movements and the Left Available on extended audio for $15.00 and video for $20.00 Fri. 7:00 pm Great Hall - Foundation Sponsor: Socialist Scholars Conference Chair: Bogdan Denitch Transition to Democracy Elaine Bernard Harvard Trade Union Program Bernard Cassen ATTAC-France Manning Marable Black Radical Congress Dot Keet Alternative Information and Development Center, S. Africa Tariq Ali New Left Review Panel 2 Sat. 10:00 am Great Hall - Foundation Clash of Fundamentalisms Available on audio for $11.00 video for $20.00 Sponsor: Socialist Scholars Conference Chair: Wadood Hamad Campaign Against Sanctions and Dictatorship in Iraq Nawal El-Saadawi novelist and author of Woman at Point Zero Tariq Ali New Left Review Panel 17 Sat. 1:30 pm Great Hall - Foundation Just War? - A Debate Available on audio for $11.00 video for $20.00 Sponsor: The Nation Institute, Dissent Chair: Maxine Phillips Dissent Ian Williams The Nation Tariq Ali New Left Review Michael Walzer Dissent Stephen R. Shalom William Paterson University of New Jersey Panel 26 Sat. 3:30 pm Great Hall - Foundation ENRON - Unnatural Disaster Available on audio for $11.00 video for $20.00 Sponsor: Union for Radical Political Economics, The Nation, Dollars and Sense Chair: Elizabeth Santucci New School University Ellen Frank Dollars and Sense, Emmanuel College Nomi Prins former investment banker Tyson Slocum Public Citizen Doug Henwood The Nation, Left Business Observer, WBAI Panel 75 Sun. 3:30 pm Great Hall - Foundation Security: Politics, Technology, Environment Available on audio for $11.00 video for $20.00 Sponsor: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Jonathan Schell The Nation Institute Nancy Holmstrom Rutgers University Tobias Pfl¸ger Wissenschaft und Frieden Claudia Haydt Militarization Information Center, Germany Panel 87 Sun. 5:30 pm Great Hall - Foundation Final Plenary: Bush's America What Future for Democracy? Available on video for $20.00 or extended video (includes the Opening Plenary) for $25.00 Sponsor: Socialist Scholars Conference Chair: Bogdan Denitch Honorary Chair, Democratic Socialists of America Mark Seddon The Tribune, U.K. Christine A. Kelly William Paterson University of New Jersey HÈctor Figueroa Local 32B-J Service Employees International Union Barbara Epstein University of California, Santa Cruz Tom Palley AFL-CIO Please make check payable to Roger Leisner and mail to Radio Free Maine P.O. Box 2705 Augusta, Maine 04338 Web Site http:// www.radiofreemaine.com/ www.radiofreemaine.com Email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] FOR MORE INFOMATION Socialist Scholars Conference c/o Ph.D. Program in Sociology CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10016 (212) 817-7868 http://www.socialistscholar.org/ www.socialistscholar.org -- Next message: Michael Pugliese: Re: Hardliners turn against Putin the reformer Previous message: pms: Bullish on the Euro Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ] This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Apr 19 2002 - 13:00:14 EDT
Re: Re: totalitarianism
Telos No. 41, Fall 1979 Andreas Wildt: Totalitarian State Capitalism: On the Structure and Historical Function of Soviet-Type Societies Gabor T Rittersporn: The State Against Itself: Social Tensions and Political Conflict in the USSR, 1936-1938 Notes and Commentary: Antonio Gramsci: Science and Scientific Ideologies 4/17/02 11:37:02 AM, Bill Lear [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wednesday, April 17, 2002 at 09:24:23 (-0700) Devine, James writes: ... In any event, I don't see the USSR as totalitarian, simply because it didn't have very efficient labor-power markets (or other markets) of the sort that capitalism has. ... ... Yes, there's always a dictionary definition. That's useful for communicating with other people, but I think that in this case, the word totalitarianism has too much ideological baggage. If you want to use the word as a rhetorical epithet, that's fine with me. But I don't think it's useful as part of a social analysis. In fact, it distorts the analysis. ... Maybe that makes sense in terms of rhetoric, but my concern is with political economy, with trying to be scientific. Well, if we want to be scientific, I would think we should start with the dictionary term. I see totalitarian as a word that modifies something else, so I would see the Soviet Union as state totalitarian, whereas the US economy is corporate totalitarian with immense support from the state. I see both as forms of totalitarian control. Decoupling the two loses more than it's worth. I think your definition of totalitarian, as a society that does not have efficient labor-power markets is simply bizarre. The form of control is what we are talking about, not whether or not it is effective. If chattel slavery were not effective in exploiting slaves, we wouldn't cease to call it slavery. It's true that a corporate hierarchy is in some ways like the image of a totalitarian society but there are also dissimilarities. Similarly, a corporate bureaucracy is a lot like the actual situation of the old USSR, but there are also major differences. There are always dissimilarities between distinct elements of a class of things. Squares are not circles, but both are shapes, have centers, perimeters, areas, etc. To say that shape has too much baggage when applied to squares because squares are pointy whereas circles are smooth is to ignore the definition of the word shape and its power of abstraction to allow grouping of strongly related items. I see corporate America and top-down command-and-control societies as having a tremendous amount in common in the realm of social control (again, within the US, I'm speaking fairly strictly of conditions within a firm). Bill
Re: Re: US foreign investment
[13938] Varga, Eugene And L. Mendelsohn. New Data for Lenin's Imperialism. NY: International, 1940. Hard Cover. Very Good / Very Good. 322 pgs., very light oxidation stains to endpapers, lightly bumped spine ends, slight rubbing to corners, dj lightly rubbed at edges with a few very small tears $10.0 4/17/02 11:57:03 AM, Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Louis Proyect wrote: You'll notice that (D) (E) are practically the same for each country. So can you draw any meaningful inferences about whether the same level of exploitation exists for both countries? Obviously not. Bottom line, we have to avoid the temptation to do economic analysis based on such a reductionist view. There is no substitute for the concrete analysis of concrete class relations. In other words, if the contemporary statistics don't say what you want them to, turn to Lenin instead. Doug
FW: AUT: Re: The Coup *Will* be Televised: Hugo Chavez's Downfall and the Venezuelan
--- Original Message --- From: Jon Beasley-Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/16/02 12:25:12 AM Louis, I'm sorry that by some freak of internet you only received the last two sentences of the first of two longish texts I sent out yesterday. Thanks to Michael P, readers of aut-op-sy will also think that my commentary on what's been going on in Venezuela is brief indeed. I'll gladly pass on the full texts of both pieces. Take care Jon Jon Beasley-Murray Spanish and Portuguese University of Manchester [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.art.man.ac.uk/spanish/jbm.html http://www.art.man.ac.uk/lacs/ On Mon, 15 Apr 2002, Louis Proyect wrote: On Mon, 15 Apr 2002 15:38:49 -0700, Jon Beasley-Murray wrote: The current regime lacks any legitimacy, however much it may have paraded invented rituals for the cameras, and will survive only through repression or apathy. But the multitude is waiting for other alternatives, and other possibilities The multitude is waiting for other possibilities? This must be a reference to Spinoza-ist communism which will be ushered in by broken Starbucks windows. I would think the one thing that Argentina and Venezuela dramatize is the need for the working-class to organize itself politically as a class in order to create a new STATE that reflects its own needs. Both Venezuela and Argentina are potentially wealthy countries that can provide a level of income and security that are much higher than Cuba's, let alone the average 3rd world country. It continues to amaze me that these silly quasi-anarchist formulas about the multitude have any credibility. With hunger and disease rampant in Argentina, the STATE can deliver food and health care that is urgently needed. By polemicizing against the need for SOCIALISM let alone a left social democratic or populist government in the Chavez or Peron mold, the autonomists reveal themselves to be an anti-working class current. They are for pie in the sky in the future, while people go to sleep hungry today. -- Louis Proyect, [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 04/15/2002 Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Hugo Chavez's Return and the
Jon Beasley-Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] Add to People Section To: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED], aut-op- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: AUT: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (fwd) -- Forwarded message -- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 14:42:25 +0100 (BST) From: Jon Beasley-Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jon Beasley-Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: GARETH X. WILLIAMS [EMAIL PROTECTED], Subject: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised text number two... Jon Beasley-Murray Spanish and Portuguese University of Manchester [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.art.man.ac.uk/spanish/jbm.html http://www.art.man.ac.uk/lacs/ - The Revolution Will Not be Televised: Hugo Chavez's Return and the Venezuelan multitude So this is how a modern coup d'etat is overthrown: almost invisibly, at the margins of the media. Venezuela's return to democracy (and democracy it is, make no mistake) took place despite a self-imposed media blackout of astonishing proportions. A huge popular revolt against an illegitimate regime took place while the country's middle class was watching soap operas and game shows; television networks took notice only in the very final moments, and, even then, only once they were absolutely forced to do so. Thereafter television could do no more than bear mute witness to a series of events almost without precedent in Latin America--and perhaps elsewhere--as a repressive regime, result of a pact between the military and business, was brought down less than forty-eight hours after its initial triumph. These events resist representation and have yet to be turned into narrative or analysis (the day after, the newspapers have simply failed to appear), but they inspire thoughts of new forms of Latin American political legitimacy, of which this revolt may be just one (particularly startling) harbinger. By Friday night, Caracas, Venezuela's capital, seemed to be returning to normal the day after the coup that had brought down the increasingly unpopular regime of president Hugo Chavez. In the middle classes' traditional nightspots, such as the nearby village of El Hatillo, with its picturesque colonial architecture and shops selling traditional handicrafts, the many restaurants were full and lively. Those who had banged on pots and pans over the past few months and marched the previous day to protest against the government seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief that the whole process had eventually been resolved so quickly and apparently so easily. A Step in the Right Direction was the banner headline on the front page of one major newspaper on the Saturday, and the new president, Pedro Carmona (former head of the Venezuelan chamber of commerce), was beginning to name the members of his transitional government, while the first new policies were being announced. Control over the state oil company, PDVSA (the world's largest oil company and Latin America's largest company of any kind), had been central to the ongoing crisis that had led to the coup, and its head of production announced, to much applause, that not one barrel of oil would now be sent to Cuba. Not all was celebration, it is true: the television showed scenes of mourning for the thirteen who had died in the violent end to Thursday's protest march, but the stations also eagerly covered live the police raids (breathless reporters in tow) hunting down the Chavez supporters who were allegedly responsible for these deaths. Elsewhere, however, another story was afoot, the news circulating partially, by word of mouth or mobile phone. Early Saturday afternoon, I received three phone calls in quick succession: one from somebody due to come round to the place I was staying, who called on his mobile to say he was turning back as he had heard there were barricades in the streets and an uprising in a military base; another from a journalist who also cancelled an appointment, and who said that a parachute regiment and a section of the air force had rebelled; a third from a friend who warned there were fire-fights in the city centre, and that a state of siege might soon be imposed. My friend added that none of this would appear on the television. I turned it on: indeed, not a sign. Other friends came by, full of similar rumours, and with word that people were gathering outside the national palace. Given the continued lack of news coverage, we decided to go out and take a look for ourselves. Approaching the city centre, we saw that indeed crowds were converging. But as we drove around, we saw almost no sign of any police or army on the streets. In the centre itself, and at the site of Thursday's disturbances, some improvised barricades had been put up, constructed with piles of rubbish or with burning tyres, marking out the territory around the national palace itself. The demonstration was not large, but it was growing. We then headed towards the city's opulent East Side, and
RE: Re: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Hugo Chavez's Return and the
oOoPS! ;-) sINCE cHRIS bURFORD and lnp3.exe have requested it, I'll change my e-mailer from this web based webbox.com to the Opera/Eudora mailer. BTW, another Dr. Sidney...this one Sidney Gottlieb at UCLA shot up an elephant with LSD-25. Some people might say he shot me up too? Michael Pugliese --- Original Message --- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/16/02 8:56:26 AM it will continue to do so. The current regime has legitimacy, but this legitimacy does not come from paraded invented rituals for the cameras; it comes from the multitude's constituent power. And the multitude is also waiting for other alternatives, and other possibilities. This is the same article that was posted yesterday and it generates just as much eyestrain as the day before. Scientific studies conducted at the Institute for Eye, Nose and Ear Research in West Passaic, New Jersey have found that improperly formatted email posts can induce epileptic seizures. Dr. Sidney Weintraub, the director of the Institute, recommends the use of Internet Exporer, Netscape Navigator versions higher than 5.0 or Opera in order to eliminate the dreaded staircase effect. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
RE: Re: Bureaucracy (speculative rant alert)
From the Trotsky archive at MIA. ...n the chapter Down With Substitutionism in Party II of the book, Trotsky writes in what could be a description of Stalinism : In the internal politics of the Party these methods lead, as we shall see below, to the Party organisation substituting itself for the Party, the Central Committee substituting itself for the Party organisation, and finally the dictator substituting himself for the Central Committee. M.P. Leon Trotsky Our Political Tasks First published: 1904 as Nashi Politicheskiya Zadachi Translated by: New Park Publications Transcribed by: Andy Lehrer in 1999 for the Trotsky Internet Archive On-Line Edition's Forward by the Transcriber Preface Part I: Introduction: The criteria of Party development and the methods of evaluating it. Part II: Tactical Tasks The content of our activity in the proletariat. Part III: Organisational Questions. Part IV: Jacobinism And Social Democracy On-Line Edition's Forward by the Transcriber Our Political Tasks is Trotskys response to the 1903 split in Russian Social Democracy and a spirited reply to Lenins What Is To Be Done? and One Step Forwards, Two Steps back. A passionate, insightful attack on Lenins theory of party organisation and an outline of Trotskys own views on party structure, this controversial work was later disowned by Trotsky after he joined the Bolsheviks. Though it is far from Trotskys best work on a literary level (the young Trotsky tends to be repetitive, excessively sarcastic, overly verbose and generally in need of a good editor), the work is, nevertheless, a remarkable insight into the young Trotskys thinking and a vibrant expression of his commitment to revolution. It is, at times, hauntingly prophetic in its predictions of where the Leninist conception of democratic centralism may lead. For example, in the chapter Down With Substitutionism in Party II of the book, Trotsky writes in what could be a description of Stalinism : In the internal politics of the Party these methods lead, as we shall see below, to the Party organisation substituting itself for the Party, the Central Committee substituting itself for the Party organisation, and finally the dictator substituting himself for the Central Committee It is very difficult to find an edition of this work in any language, as the books line on the party is not consistent with that of most Trotskyist organisations. Our Political Tasks fell into obscurity after the 1917 Revolution only to be used and misrepresented by Trotskys enemies during the leadership struggle, which followed Lenins death. The book (and, implicitly, the Marxist tradition of spirited debate and critical thought) was used to attack Trotsky for being insufficiently Leninist and to smear him with the accusation of Menshivism, (for an especially viscous example see Stalins1927 speech The Trotskyist Opposition Then and Now). In fact, Our Political Tasks outlines a political position which, while critical of Lenins, is also clearly revolutionary and distinct from what would become Menshevism. This version is based on the English language translation published by New Park Publications in the early 1970s. Spelling and typographical errors have been corrected (and hopefully not replaced with new spelling and typographical errors) and several of the translations more egregious grammatical errors have also been corrected. For another criticism of Lenins position on party organisation from a left wing perspective, see Rosa Luxemburgs Organisational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy later republished as Leninism or Marxism? For Lenins views, see What Is To Be Done? and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. For Trotskys later views on the 1903 split see chapter 12, The Party Congress and the Split in My Life. --- Original Message --- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/17/02 7:08:03 AM BTW, in practice, most democratic centralist organizations end up not being democratic. The rank and file end up being manipulated by the central committee or its leader, i.e., end up being passive followers rather than active, democratic, participants. CB: Most ? Do you have stats on this ?This is a standard anti-democratic centralist claim and opinion. Standard because historically substantiated, Charles. Democratic centralism leads to bureaucratic centralism and, ultimately, an apparat not unlike a ruling class, whose being (and material interests) is unlike that of its 'constituency' and whose consciousness comes to reflect this. It's a process of substitutionism. First, the party stands for the class on the grounds that those not yet in the party (the vast majority of the class) could not yet be expected to know its own interests (just what you'd expect a middle class intellectual minority to think, I suppose). Then, to disagree with the party (or,
ICDSM-Ireland - Solidarity with people of Palestine
Display all headers Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 12:54:51 -0700 From: jane kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], cp-of- [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], right- [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], liberez- [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [right-left] ICDSM-Ireland - Solidarity with people of Palestine PRESS RELEASE - OPEN LETTER To Media - Politicians and to Friends CDSM-IRELAND - SOLIDARITY WITH PEOPLE OF PALESTINE John Kelly Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic Ireland E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Fax/phone - +044 45787 14.4.2002 DISTURBING THE PEACE - The Israeli army could learn from the way the German troops operated in the Warsaw Ghetto. These are the words of an Israeli General Staff commander quoted in the Israeli press . Haaretz April 1 2002. Here is acknowledgement of rampant militarism as essentially fascistic be it then as in the days of the second world war or now in the era of the New World Order. The events of September 11 furnished an altogether too perfect rationale, some might say cover, for Israeli incursions into Palestinian territory and the subsequent slaughter or forcible expulsion of Palestinian people. State terrorism by Israeli forces to effect the seizure of land with the obvious agenda being Israeli expansionism. A process aided and abetted hugely from Washington. In recent years the Pentagon has shipped to Tel Aviv on behalf of its Israeli protectorate, strategically located to police the oil rich states of the Middle East, military hardware in the form of helicopters and assorted missiles capable of mass destruction amounting to an approximate value of at least three billion dollars. Media coverage of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people consistently omits facts of this kind related to Israels tremendous preponderance of destructive weaponry contrasted with the slingshot like situation of the Palestinian respondents to Israeli onslaught. Consider if you will the text of an interview conducted by David Hanly a presenter with Irelands national broadcasting service RTEs Morning Ireland radio programme Friday April 12th 2002. Hanly is speaking to Mary Kelly a nurse from Cork in Ireland who is currently located in Nablus Palestine where she has placed her own life on the line as a peace activist and nurse amongst Palestinians in crisis. Bias and lack of balance characterize this exceptionally patronizing supposed interview which by implication is supportive of the acts of State terrorism by Israel in contravention of mandated international laws and most especially in violation of the Geneva Convention. Hanly is sycophantically adherent to the party line when he omits mention of Israeli military supremacy choosing instead to project into the public domain allegations as to Palestinians secreting arms in ambulances entering into Palestinian refugee camps. Mary Kelly quite correctly calls on Hanly to provide the source of his information. - TEXT OF INTERVIEW WITH MARY KELLY BY RTES DAVID HANLY - 12.4.2002 : David Hanly (DH) Well go to the middle east now to the Middle East now Specifically the town of Nablus, a town of 180 000 people which was invaded by Israeli forces a week ago. Mary Kelly is working with the Red Crescent in the town, Mary Kelly good morning to you Mary Kelly(MK) Good morning. DH Tell us about your daily life. MK Ive been in Nablus here for three days. It was very difficult to get into the town because there was many checkpoints so we ended up coming over the mountains doing a journey of four hours. And the first place we came to was the hospital, Rafidia hospital and thats the place Ive been mostly based since Ive been here. The first thing I want to say is that I want to appeal all the medical people in Ireland to please protest about the fact that were not allowed to bring medical aid to the people here. There is a complete crisis in this hospital. The Israeli government actually agreed that oxygen could be brought into the hospital for emergency surgery, but now theyve reneged on that. The oxygen is being held up at the checkpoints. Thats the first appeal I want to make today because the situation is very serious. Also the fact that daily our ambulances are being shot at and this is totally in contravention of everything that medicine is upposed to be about. Ambulances are supposed to have safe passage. But I mean Ive been out on the ambulance several times. We get constantly held up by tanks. Made get down from the ambulances. The drivers are forced to strip to show theyve no weapons.
Venezuela: Not Another Banana-Oil Republic by Gregory Wilpert
NACLA, I think, had a recent piece by Wilpert. M.P. Received: 4/14/02 11:09:37 PM From: Gregory Wilpert [EMAIL PROTECTED] Add to People Section To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Subject: Venezuela: Not Another Banana-Oil Republic MIME Ver: 1.0 Attachments: Part Number: 1 Part Type: Plain Text Dear Friends, here is my latest analysis of the recent events in Venezuela. Anyone who has a website or a print publication is welcome to reprint this article. Apologies to Spanish-speakers, as I have not had a chance to translate this. In Solidarity, Greg Venezuela: Not a Banana-Oil Republic after All By Gregory Wilpert The Counter-Coup It looks like Venezuela is not just another banana-oil republic after all. Many here feared that with the April 11 coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela was being degraded to being just another country that is forced to bend to the powerful will of the United States. The successful counter-coup of April 14, though, which reinstated Chavez, proved that Venezuela is a tougher cookie than the coup planners thought. The coup leaders against President Chavez made two fundamental miscalculations. First, they started having delusions of grandeur, believing that the support for their coup was so complete that they could simply ignore the other members of their coup coalition and place only their own in the new government. The labor union federation CTV, which saw itself as one of the main actors of the opposition movement to President Chavez, and nearly all moderate opposition parties were excluded from the new democratic unity cabinet. The new transition cabinet ended up including only the most conservative elements of Venezuelan society. They then proceeded to dissolve the legislature, the Supreme Court, the attorney general's office, the national electoral commission, and the state governorships, among others. Next, they decreed that the 1999 constitution, which had been written by a constitutional assembly and ratified by vote, following the procedures outlined in the pervious constitution, was to be suspended. The new transition president would thus rule by decree until next year, when new elections would be called. Generally, this type of regime fits the textbook definition of dictatorship. This first miscalculation led to several generals' protest against the new regime, perhaps under pressure from the excluded sectors of the opposition, or perhaps out of a genuine sense of remorse, and resulted in their call for changes to the sweeping democratic transition decree, lest they withdraw their support from the new government. Transition President Pedro Carmona, the chair of Venezuela's largest chamber of commerce, immediately agreed to reinstate the Assembly and to the rest of the generals' demands. The second miscalculation was the belief that Chavez was hopelessly unpopular in the population and among the military and that no one except Cuba and Colombia's guerilla, the FARC, would regret Chavez' departure. Following the initial shock and demoralization which the coup caused among Chavez-supporters, this second miscalculation led to major upheavals and riots in Caracas' sprawling slums, which make up nearly half of the city. In practically all of the barrios of Caracas spontaneous demonstrations and cacerolazos (pot-banging) broke out on April 13 and 14. The police immediately rushed-in to suppress these expressions of discontent and somewhere between 10 and 40 people were killed in these clashes with the police. Then, in the early afternoon, purely by word-of-mouth and the use of cell phones (Venezuela has one of the highest per capita rates of cell phone use in the world), a demonstration in support of Chavez was called at the Miraflores presidential palace. By 6 PM about 100,000 people had gathered in the streets surrounding the presidential palace. At approximately the same time, the paratrooper battalion, to which Chavez used to belong, decided to remain loyal to Chavez and took over the presidential palace. Next, as the awareness of the extent of Chavez' support spread, major battalions in the interior of Venezuela began siding with Chavez. Eventually the support for the transition regime evaporated among the military, so that transition president Carmona resigned in the name of preventing bloodshed. As the boldness of Chavez-supporters grew, they began taking over several television stations, which had not reported a single word about the uprisings and the demonstrations. Finally, late at night, around midnight of April 14, it was announced that Chavez was set free and that he would take over as president again. The crowds outside of Miraflores were ecstatic. No one believed that the coup could or would be reversed so rapidly. When Chavez appeared on national TV around 4 AM, he too joked that he knew he would be back, but he never imagined it would happen so fast. He did not even have time to rest and write some poetry,
The Coup *Will* be Televised: Hugo Chavez's Downfall and the Venezuelan
Jon Beasley-Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.art.man.ac.uk/spanish/jbm.html http://www.art.man.ac.uk/lacs/ -- The Coup *Will* be Televised: Hugo Chavez's Downfall and the Venezuelan multitude by Jon Beasley-Murray So this is how one lives a modern coup d'tat: watching television. Venezuela's coup (and coup it is, make no mistake) took place in the media, fomented by the media, and with the media themselves the apparent object of both sides' contention. But while South America's longest-standing democracy was brought down in the confused glare of media spectacle, any attempt to turn this spectacle into narrative or analysis must also take into account, first, oil and, second, the general breakdown of Latin American political legitimacy, of which this coup has been just one (particularly bloody) symptom. In Caracas, Venezuela's capital, everyone has been watching television over the past few days: every restaurant, shop, and business has had a television on, showing almost constant news coverage, and diners and shoppers have been dividing their attention between what they are consuming and what they are seeing of developments in the ongoing crisis that came to a head last night with the overthrow of president Hugo Chavez. For several months now, support for (now former) president Chavez's once overwhelmingly popular regime has been in steady decline, in part as a result of a relentless assault by both the press and the television networks. In response, Chavez took to decreeing so-called chains, in which he obliged all the networks to broadcast his own--often long and rambling--addresses to the nation. The media only redoubled its opposition, subverting the broadcasts by superposing text protesting against this abuse of press freedom, or for instance by splitting the screen between Chavez's speech on the one side and images of anti-government demonstrations on the other. Moreover, through the media came more and more calls for the president's resignation or, failing that, for the intervention of the military. The military has now answered these calls. The trigger for the most recent convulsions has been (predictably enough) a battle for control of Venezuela's oil. The country is the world's fourth largest producer, and the third largest exporter of oil to the United States; the state oil company, PDVSA (the world's largest oil company and Latin America's largest company of any kind), is crucial to the economy as a whole, and among Chavez's policies had been the attempt to rejuvenate OPEC and to run PDVSA according to national and political priorities rather than simply acceding to market demands. Two weeks ago, the president sacked several members of the company's board of directors, replacing them with his own allies. The management immediately cried foul, initiating a production slowdown, and taking up a position at the vocal centre of anti-government protest. At the weekend, Chavez replaced more board members, and on Monday the union federation Confederacion de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV) and the national chamber of commerce, FEDECAMERAS, allied with the oil industry's management and joined to call a general strike for Tuesday 10th. While the opposition gathered to demonstrate around the headquarters of PDVSA, in Caracas's opulent East Side, those loyal to the government congregated around the presidential palace in the more working class and dilapidated city centre. Tuesday night Chavez decreed another chain, declaring to the nation that the strike had been a failure; in response, the coalition of union, business, and oil management declared that the strike had been 100% successful (of course, the truth was somewhere in between) and announced, first, another day's general strike and, then, the following day, that the strike would be indefinite. The atmosphere in the city became palpably tenser. Opposition supporters, mainly from the middle and upper classes, drove through the city, the national flag and the black flag of opposition waving from the electric windows of their four-wheel drive vehicles, while a broader spectrum of opponents added to the cacophony by banging pots and pans from their windows (exchanging shouted insults with government supporters) either when Chavez appeared on television or, on those days when he was off the screen, at pre-arranged times in the evening. Encouraged by this show of support, anti-Chavez forces called for a march within the East Side for Thursday morning. On the day of the march, the two hundred thousand demonstrators then continued on beyond their stated destination, heading for the city centre and the core of the president's power base. Undoubtedly this was a provocation (and almost certainly planned in advance), but at this point the two sides had become so polarised that confrontation was inevitable. The final moments of Chavez's regime began that
Will China shake the world? by LIU YUFAN
From:International Viewpoint [EMAIL PROTECTED] FI press [EMAIL PROTECTED] FI-press-l Fourth International Press List -- Will China shake the world? LIU YUFAN concludes his analysis of the state and civil society in contemporary China (see IV 338 for part one) Social services under the impact of market reform THE lack of opportunities for education has always been an important fact or in understanding poverty. Among the rural poor in China, illiterate or semi-illiterate peoples account for an exceptionally high proportion. Unfortunately the Chinese government has withdrawn from providing univers al educational opportunities to its citizens. Although the Chinese economy h as grown over 600 per cent since 1979, the share of expenditure on education relative to GDP has grown little. Between l979 and l992, the average annu al expenditure on education accounted for 2.88 per cent, which is far lower than the 4 per cent average of many developing countries. The figure has further been lowered to 2.49 per cent in l997. What money there is for education is syphoned off into urban areas at the expense of rural, and post-secondary education eats up a disproportionate ly large part of the fund. Rural education expenses are largely met by local towns and villages. However, many of them are simply too poor to build an d maintain school buildings and pay teachers adequate salaries. Currently, there are 50,000 village and township governments in debt to the tune of RMB 200 billion. And although official enrolment rates for primary school s are as high as 98.9 per cent, the drop out rate is also high. A report by the World Bank in l999 stated that 30 million children were n ot enrolled at all, of which two thirds were girls. A survey indicated that, among 125 villages and towns, the wages for over 60 per cent of teachers were not paid on time. Many schools survive by forcing pupils to work wit h little or no pay. In March 2001, an explosion in a Jiangxi primary school killed 50 students as they were assembling firecrackers. In urban areas the situation is also deteriorating. College students now have to pay large sums of money to enrol, a far cry from the situation 15 years ago. Free elementary education has evaporated in many cities. Due t o a lack of funding, and also an eagerness to get rich, many schools now engage in commercial activities ranging from renting out office space to direct involvement in business themselves. These conditions have given ri se to a new type of school; so called 'sparrow schools', thus named for thei r size. In a primary school in Guangzhou, one of China's wealthiest cities, 820 students crowd into a small school with a total usable area of 1,700 squa re metres. The school can only afford one small basketball court in which th e children can play. This is a luxury compared to several other schools nearby, which possess no play area and allow their students to do exercis es on the footpath. According to the law, property developers should build o ne primary and one secondary school for every 100,000 people housed. However , in the course of redeveloping old areas, it is common for developers to simply ignore these laws. Hence the 'sparrow schools'. As to the children of rural migrant workers, their right to education is simply denied. Urban officials do this on the grounds that they are rural residents under the hukou system (or household registration system). This means that rural migrants are not officially regarded as urban residents even though they may have worked and lived in a city for years. When Li Sumei, a migrant to Beijing from Henan province, founded the Xingzhi Migrant School in l994, there were nine pupils. It has since grown to accommodate 2,000. Yet the city government still refuses to grant any school educating migrant children an official school permit, therefore leaving them at the mercy of officials. In this environment Xingzhi Schoo l has been forced to relocate five times in seven years. The flip side to this coin is that entrepreneurs and high-ranking officials are able to se nd their children to elite private schools or send them abroad. In the health sector, while the rural population continues to be excluded from free health care, the free or at least partially free health care system which the urban working population once enjoyed is now largely gon e or being privatized. During the past 10 years, 'user pay' has become the guiding principle, mainly on the grounds that the old health care system was thought to encourage wastage of valuable medicine and resources. Now employees have to contribute 2 per cent of their wages - which are alread y very low - and employers 6 per cent to workers' personal medical accounts .. Most medical expenses are to be funded by
RE: RE: Fw: Margolis on the tail wagging the dog
Just a side note...ad hominem! Eric Margolis was one of a zillion Western journalists that trekke to Afghanistan in the 80's to do some Reaganite agit-prop for the anti-Soviet mujahdeen. Wrote a book reprinted after 9-11. If I had time to do a search on Margolis and Hekmatyar, the leader who loved to throw acid in woman's faces, I betcha I'd find some tributes. Forwarding stuff by right-wingers (like another Canadian columnist, whose name escapes me now who was anti-NATO during the anti-Milosevic bombing campaign and had in earlier years done lotsa agit-prop for Jonas Savimbi) is well... Michael Pugliese --- Original Message --- From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/15/02 3:32:05 PM I think it's a mistake to put so much emphasis on the Israeli lobby's impact. As Seumas Milne argued in the GUARDIAN awhile back, the reason why the U.S. elite favors Isreal is because the latter is the most loyal strategic ally that the U.S. has in a very strategic (read: oil) area. The Israeli lobby exploits that. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Ken Hanly [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 3:57 PM To: pen-l Cc: Cy Gonick; Sid Shniad Subject: [PEN-L:24957] Fw: Margolis on the tail wagging the dog Sorry about the blank message! Cheers, Ken Hanly Why Bush dances to Sharon's tune Israel's right-wing Likud party dominates U.S. Mideast policy through a powerful lobby in the American Congress By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor Who really is running America's Mideast policy? Last week, the astounded world saw the grotesque spectacle of President George W. Bush pleading in vain with Ariel Sharon, leader of a nation of only 6.3 million people which receives almost $5 billion in annual U.S. aid, to cease laying waste the Occupied West Bank. Ignoring worldwide condemnation and demands from the UN Security Council, Sharon ordered his armour, much of it American-supplied, to accelerate shooting up and bulldozing Palestinian towns, refugee camps and all symbols of Palestinian identity or statehood. Twenty years ago, Sharon invaded Lebanon, to crush Palestinian terrorism. His big guns and warplanes blasted Beirut for three weeks, killing 17,000 civilians. Today, he remains determined to hold Arab lands Israel conquered in 1967 and to destroy any hopes or vestiges of a viable Palestinian state. President Bush and senior aides Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell were left looking weak, indecisive, and inept. Bush clearly is a political soulmate of ultra-hawk Sharon; they share a mutual detestation for Yasser Arafat and, it would seem, for Arabs in general. Bush has been encouraging Sharon's attacks on Palestine for months. But Israel's invasion of the West Bank - reminiscent of Soviet tanks crushing Hungary in 1956 - gravely threatened America's Mideast client regimes, so Bush had to demand Sharon relent. SHEER FARCE In an act of sheer farce, Powell was sent on a slow boat to Israel, via Madrid and Morocco. Before Powell even arrived, former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu summoned fawning U.S. senators and arrogantly informed them Powell's mission would fail. While the rest of the world condemned Israel's invasion and destruction of the Palestinian ghettos, not a peep was heard from the White House, Congress or America's media about Israel's violation of U.S. law in using U.S.-supplied armour and warplanes against civilians. Nor about Israel's violation of the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. There were no protests when Israel's Shimon Peres described massacres of Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers. Nor even a tut-tut when Sharon named to his cabinet a fanatical right-wing general who advocates ethnic cleansing of Palestinians - the same crime for which the U.S. pursued Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic. To be sure, there is deep and justified sympathy in the U.S. for the frightful suffering Israel has endured at the hands of suicide bombers, and its need for self-defence. Still, why was America alone in defending Israel's ruthless punishment of the Palestinians? How could Bush, only a few weeks ago, still bathing in the bogus glory of a military triumph against a few thousand medieval tribesman in Afghanistan, be so suddenly made to look foolish and impotent by events in the Mideast? Simply put, Sharon's right-wing Likud party has come to dominate U.S. Mideast policy through its powerful American lobby, which guides Congress. Under pressure from the Israel lobby, 89 out of 100 senators and at least 280 congressmen recently demanded Bush give Sharon carte blanche to crush Palestine. As the Israeli writer Uri Avnery wryly noted, if the Israel lobby gave orders to repeal the Ten Commandments, Congress
Re: Chavez?
Some hits found via daypop. The Gabriel Garcia Marquez piece s/b interesting. Michael Pugliese, hasn't dropped dead yet...hmm. http://www.daypop.com/search?q=venezuelasearch=Searcht=w http://www.letterneversent.com/ April 13, 2002 Narconews Narconews has been doing a great job of covering the Chavez coup. Actually, Narconews is a great resource for information on the Drug War and on Central South America in general. Definitely check them out. Here are some good links I've snatched off their site: Coup Questions Journalists should be asking Gunpoint democracy from SFGate.com: Leading the junta is Pedro Carmona, leader of the nation's business lobby. With no apparent legal authority, he dismissed the entire Congress and Supreme Court, abolished the constitution and claimed the right to fire any elected state or municipal leaders Narconews: Q A on Remote Control Coup Journalist Jules Siegel interviews Narco News Publisher Al Giordano Common Dreams News Center: Coup in Venezuela: An Eyewitness Account by Gregory Wilpert EYEWITNESS: THE PLOT WAS WELL PREPARED by Maximilien Averlaiz, Caracas Why US tries to overthrow Venezuelan government: Thorn in the side of new world order By Vincent Browne of the Irish Times posted by chris at 08:02 PM | talk back (0) On the flight to Venezuela Hugo Chávez, who has won a new mandate at the July elections, has engaged in a series of sweeping reforms since his triumphant election as president of Venezuela in 1998: Congress has been dissolved and a new constitution approved. But despite a spectacular increase in oil revenue, he has failed to remedy serious economic and social problems, and observers wonder if his current populism may not degenerate into despotism. by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ -- Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 06:15:59 -0400 From: Nathan Newman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Venezuelan Interim President Resigns - - Original Message - From: Diane Monaco [EMAIL PROTECTED] CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela's interim president resigned Saturday, a day after he was sworn in, in the face of protests by thousands of supporters of the ousted president, Hugo Chavez. - -Perhaps there is mounting cause to take a look at why coups are common - -vehicles for political change here In this case, at least part of the explanation is the shifting decision of the main union federation based in the state oil company. Apparently, they supported the initial coup, but when the coup leaders put in the new President, his actions in dissolving parliament and the constitution alienated the union federation, so they came out against the new government. - -- Nathan Newman --
RE: Re: Re: Chavez?
reservations about the concept of civil society. It too is a contradiction. Originally used in a somewhat negative sense by Marx, it has been used by Gramscian supporters as a potentially positive arena for struggle. IMO Wilpert uses it in a dialectical sense referring to progressive and conservative attitudes to civil society. Whenever you hear the term civil society fear for your life. The good news of this year is that militant street demonstations in Argentina and Venezuela can force the fall of a government. The bad news is that the balance of forces in the world overwhelmingly favours finance capital and its supporters in each country. A progressive regime needs both a resolute core of supporters, and the ability to defuse the opposition, if not win over the great majority of the population. So are you saying that the great majority can be mobilised by a left bourgeois leader like Chavez to win against global capital, or does a revolutionary party and program need to intervene to call for the building of soviets and a workers militia? That IMO opinion points to the need for an agenda that is not exclusively socialist, but is new democratic, embracing civil rights issues but from a progressive social perspective. 'Not exclusively socialist' can only mean part bourgeois. That is the class confusion of the popular front. The communist program embraces bourgeois civil rights but it recognises that workers have to overthrow the bourgeois state to realise any real workers democracy. Let us hope Chavez can stay and this has an impact on the global balance of forces. It will take more than hope. The lessons of similar regimes, the Popular Unity in Chile, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the popular revolution in Ecuador in 2000, all show that if there is no worker and poor peasant seizure of power, the right will regroup and stage a counter-revolution against the masses. Dave B [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis --- Original Message --- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/14/02 9:04:03 AM On Sun, 14 Apr 2002 09:17:16 -0700, michael pugliese wrote: Hugo Chávez, who has won a new mandate at the July elections, has engaged in a series of sweeping reforms since his triumphant election as president of Venezuela in 1998: Congress has been dissolved and a new constitution approved. But despite a spectacular increase in oil revenue, he has failed to remedy serious economic and social problems, and observers wonder if his current populism may not degenerate into despotism. by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ Actually, the conflict with the oil union arose over Chavez's determination to clean house at the state-owned company. He accused executives of owning luxurious chalets in the Venezuelan Andes and other excesses and has said the company's costs must be cut and its benefits spread to the 80 percent of Venezuelans who live in poverty. On April 7th the Washington Post reported that Chavez had installed a board of directors loyal to him and named a leftist economist, Gaston Parra, as president. Parra had criticized company policies for two decades. Company executives were outraged by the moves. Hundreds of managers demanded that the appointments be rescinded, arguing that Chavez's changes were based on politics rather than merit. Of course they were based on politics. He is a left-populist friendly to Marxism, while the oil union and teachers union spearheading the CIA-backed coup are rightwing social democrats. Here's how an energy trade publication sized things up. Much more reliable an assessment than that coming from magical realism quarters: Energy Day, February 14, 2002 Venezuela oil fears as Chavez ousts Lameda By Amy McLellan Fears that Venezuelan oil policy could make a further swing to the political left grew at the weekend with news that state-run Petroleos de Venezuela has a new boss - the fourth in just over three years. President Hugo Chavez ousted General Guaicaipuro Lameda - regarded as a capable manager by many in the industry and a critic of the new and unpopular hydrocarbons law - and replaced him with central bank economist Gaston Parra. Mr Parra has no oil industry experience, said Alejandro Bertuol, a New York-based analyst with ratings agency Fitch. He helped draft the nationalisation law in the 1970s and he has followed the industry from an academic point of view but he has no operational experience. The move came amid deepening political uncertainty in the country, forcing Mr Chavez to deny any risk of a military coup after Colonel Pedro Soto last week called on the army to defy the president and his tyrannical government. This generates additional uncertainty for the oil industry, said Mr Bertuol. PdVSA needs continuity to reinforce confidence in its
FW: RE: Argentina posts: what's next
--- Original Message --- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: michael pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/10/02 12:35:34 PM Telos No. 54, Winter 1982-83 Juan E. Corradi: The Mode of Destruction: Terror in Argentina Drop dead. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
RE: The Consequences of Telling the Truth About Palestine
Subject: RE: [ASDnet] John Lacny Column Under Censorship Attack RE: US aid to Israel From: Max Sawicky ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 16:29:33 EDT Next message: Gar Lipow: Re: Why we will need lawyers anyway Previous message: Yoshie Furuhashi: Re: Oodles and oodles of life In reply to: Micheal Ellis: RE: US aid to Israel Next in thread: Doug Henwood: RE: US aid to Israel Reply: Doug Henwood: RE: US aid to Israel Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ] . . . Since 1949 the U.S. has given Israel a total of $83.205 billion. The interest costs borne by U.S. tax payers on behalf of Israel are $49.937 billion, thus making the total amount of aid given to Israel since 1949 $133.132 billion. This may mean that U.S. government has given more federal aid to the average Israeli citizen in a given year than it has given to the average American citizen. well the 84 billion total does not include loan guarantees. which israel isn't required to pay back. there have been the approximately $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees and perhaps $20 billion in tax-exempt contributions made to Israel by American Jews in the nearly half-century since Israel was created. i think this is the article that he got those figures from http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1297/9712043.html This article has some fuzzy math in it. The main item is the bogus interest figure cited (accurately) above. The assumption underlying this number is that Israeli aid is uniquely financed by borrowing, unlike all other spending that is offset by revenues. If you applied this adjustment to *all* spending, you would get a total interest obligation vastly in excess of the actual amount. In other words, suppose total spending is $10, revenues are $8, and aid to Israel is $1. In truth, only $2 is added to debt, which at 5% interest is 10 cents a year. The article's claim is that a dollar of aid means 5 cents of interest. But if all spending is treated likewise, total interest is 50 cents, rather than 10 cents. It's also fuzzy to add loans to loan guarantees, as the author acknowledges in the article (but does anyway). The value of the loan guarantee is just the spread in interest rates, not the principal (as the author acknowledges). There is this funny sentence in the article, and I don't mean funny ha-ha, I mean creepy . . . Probably the only members of Congress who even suspect the full total of U.S. funds received by Israel each year are the privileged few committee members who actually mark it up. And almost all members of the concerned committees are Jewish, have taken huge campaign donations orchestrated by Israel's Washington, DC lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or both. I have to wonder why people waste their time with this stuff while the IDF is shooting Palestinians down like dogs in the street. mbs Next message: Gar Lipow: Re: Why we will need lawyers anyway Previous message: Yoshie Furuhashi: Re: Oodles and oodles of life In reply to: Micheal Ellis: RE: US aid to Israel Next in thread: Doug Henwood: RE: US aid to Israel Reply: Doug Henwood: RE: US aid to Israel Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ] This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue Apr 09 2002 - 16:00:06 EDT --- Original Message --- From: Hunter Gray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: RedBadBear [EMAIL PROTECTED], ASDNET [EMAIL PROTECTED], Socialist Lists [EMAIL PROTECTED], socunity [EMAIL PROTECTED], StopWarDiscussion [EMAIL PROTECTED], Red Youth [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/9/02 11:20:59 AM Note by Hunterbear: John Lacny, a grad student in his early twenties at University of Pittsburgh, is a sharp and committed young activist who has very ably managed the Marxist Discussion Group for more than two years and, since thi s mid-March, has also handled his new It's No Accident list which publishes his thoughtful and lively column by the same name which has -- has -- appeared with regularity and popularity in The UP's Pitt News. Now that column is under censorship attack by bigots and fearmongers at the University. John has climbed high enough for the Lightning to strike out at him -- but he is, of course, keeping right on keeping on and full ahead. Here is John Lacny's just issued statement on the matter: - A Special Announcement from It's No Accident, April 9, 2002 Dear friends and comrades, Since January of this year my political column, It's No Accident, had bee n making regular appearances in the pages of The Pitt News, the student newspaper at the University of Pittsburgh. Well, no longer. Here's the stor y why.
RE: Students Rally for Palestinians
www.sfgate.com Return to regular view 79 held as Cal rally turns rowdy Palestinians' supporters storm building, demand UC divest from Israel Tanya Schevitz, Michael Pena, Chronicle Staff Writers Wednesday, April 10, 2002 ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/04/10/MN168301.DTL Opponents of Israel's occupation of the West Bank carried out their own occupation at the University of California at Berkeley yesterday, taking over Wheeler Hall for several hours until police dragged them out, arresting 79 protesters. Comparing Israel's slaughter of Palestinians to the Holocaust and calling for UC to divest from Israel and companies that do business there, about 1,500 students and community members rallied on Sproul Plaza, then marched across campus and stormed the building. Jewish students, who were holding a 24-hour vigil in a small tent on the corner of Sproul Plaza, commemorated the Jewish Holocaust by reading the names of its victims. Tension erupted as pro-Israeli students called for an end to suicide bombings and responded to the rally's speakers. How dare you take such a day and use it for your own political purposes, said Micki Weinberg, an 18-year-old freshman. Weinberg was angry that Palestinian supporters chose to hold an event at the same time, but the rally's sponsoring group, Students for Justice in Palestine, said it had planned in February to hold a nationwide day of action for divestment, commemorating the anniversary of the 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin, where more than 100 civilians were killed by Jewish paramilitary fighters. Mostly peaceful pro-Palestinian events were held across the country yesterday at the University of Michigan, Ohio State University and the University of Minnesota. Will Youmans, 24, a Berkeley law student and a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, said, The primary lesson from the Holocaust is that ethnic cleansing must be stopped wherever and whenever it happens. As the group approached Wheeler Hall just before 1 p.m., students waiting inside held open the doors, waving the demonstrators inside. They then locked arms and declared they would not leave until they were granted negotiations for divestiture. The building houses classrooms for Middle Eastern studies. Junior Maryam Gharavi, 20, said some of the companies produce the tools of violence used against Palestinians. UC divested from South Africa to protest apartheid. But yesterday, regent chairman John Moores said in a statement that the regents' first responsibility is the security of the pension and endowment funds. Police started pulling students out at 2:47 p.m. UC Berkeley Police Capt. Bill Cooper said 79 people -- including about 60 students -- were arrested and cited for trespassing and released. Six also were cited for resisting arrest. UC student Roberto Hernandez, 23, was arrested and accused of assaulting an officer. Karen Kenney, director of student activities and services, said the university had directed police to arrest students and had warned the students they could face suspension for disrupting classes. Students from the same group had taken over the building last April, and 33 people had been arrested. The protesters were hissed at and forced out when they tried to enter one classroom. As the protesters sat inside the building, hundreds more rallied outside, banging on the doors. Israel supporters stood quietly, holding an Israeli flag. They definitely have the right to be out here saying what they need to say, and so do we -- supporting Israel and Israeli security, said a senior who would give only her first name, Charlene. After all the students were taken out of Wheeler, about 200 marched down to the Berkeley Police Station and collected $500 to get Hernandez out on bond. At San Francisco State University, several hundred students marched on 19th Avenue in support of the Palestinian struggle. People are beginning to see that there's a pro-Palestinian movement in America, said student Nabeel Silimi, 24. It's rooted in international law and human rights. Chronicle staff writer Charles Burress contributed to this report. / E-mail Tanya Schevitz at [EMAIL PROTECTED] and Michael Pena at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle Page A - 19
RE: Argentina posts: what's next
Telos No. 54, Winter 1982-83 Juan E. Corradi: The Mode of Destruction: Terror in Argentina Michal Reiman: Political Trials of the Stalinist Era Frederick Johnstone: State Terror in South Africa Norberto Bobbio: Italy's Permanent Crisis Norbert Elias: Civilization and Violence Notes and Commentary: Joel Kovel: Theses on Technocracy Klaus Segbers: The European Peace Movements, The Soviet Union and the American Left Halina M. Charwat: Poland: August 1980-December 1982: A Conference Report Stanislaw Warecki: The Landscape After Battle Adam Michnik: An Open Letter to International Public Opinion Reviews: Russell Berman: Joachim Hirsch, Der Sicherheitsstaat Russell Jacoby: Ira H. Cohen, Ideology and Consciousness Gregory Calvert: Wini Breines, Community and Organization in the New Left Paul Mattick, Jr.: Rudolph Hilferding, Finance Capital Ellen Comisso: Miklas Haraszti, A Worker in a Workers' State This page Copyright © Telos Press, Ltd., 1997. All Rights Reserved --- Original Message --- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/10/02 11:00:51 AM I had intended to post a lengthy article on Juan Perón next in my series on Argentina's collapse, but while reading Juan Eugenio Corradi's chapter on Argentina in Chilcote-Edelstein's Latin America: the Struggle with Dependency and Beyond, I became convinced that is crucial to fill in the period from roughly the end of the 19th century to Peron's rise to power. These are the country's supposedly halcyon days, when capitalism worked. Among other questions, Corradi tries to explain how Argentina's golden age was built on rotten foundations. I will focus in on this period in my next post. As well as recapitulating some of Corradi's insights, which are very strongly influenced by dependista theory, I will include material from the following: --Jeremy Adelman, The Social Bases of Technical Change: Mechanization of the Wheatlands in Argentina and Canada, 1890-1914, Comparative Studies in Society and History April 1992 --Herman Schwartz, Foreign Creditors and the Politics of Development in Australia and Argentina, 1880-1913 Most importantly, I will draw from the aptly titled collection Prologue to Perón: Argentina in Depression and War, 1930-1943, edited by Mark Falcoff and Ronald Dolkart. In their introduction, they write: The Argentine dilemma finds its roots, we believe, in the abrupt disappearance of the conditions that made possible the emergence of the modern republic in the late nineteenth century. Those conditions were the existence of the British Empire as a principal market for foodstuffs, the international division of labor, and the relatively free movement of goods and services across national boundaries. For most underdeveloped countries those props were perceptibly weakening as early as 1914, but for Argentina--thanks to a peculiar constellation of circumstances--they lasted until 1930. Then, under the combined impact of the world depression and the Second World War, they collapsed. The failure of Argentina's leadership to respond adequately to the double crisis explains, we hold, the Revolution of 1943 and the subsequent emergence of Colonel Juan Perón. Marxmail links of interest: 1. Comments by Carlos on original post: http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism%40lists.panix.com/msg32687.html 2. Reply to Carlos by Nestor G. http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism@lists.panix.com/msg32738.html 3. Carlos answers Nestor G. http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism@lists.panix.com/msg32747.html 4. Excerpt from Corradi article: http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism@lists.panix.com/msg32820.html 5. Comments by Carlos on Corradi: http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism@lists.panix.com/msg32823.html http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism@lists.panix.com/msg32826.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Bill Domhoff on Nader and the Greens
http://www.inthesetimes.com Web Exclusive | Greens or Green (Egalitarian) Democrats? By G. William Domhoff A Commentary on the Nader 2000 Campaign. March 29, 2002 Ralph Naders decision to challenge Albert Gore Jr. in the Democratic presidential primaries in 2000 will go down in history as a major turning point for Americans who seek greater equality and fairness for everyone in all areas of life. from the personal to the economic to the political. Already it has had several positive consequences in energizing egalitarian activists inside and outside the electoral arena. Not that it was an easy decision for Nader; he needed a lot of convincing, and almost went along with those who urged that he run as a third-party candidate because of the impurity, corruption and timidity of present-day Democrats. In the end, however, Nader was persuaded by comparative political studies of many dozens of countries. They show it is rare for a third party to develop in a single-member district plurality electoral system, which is what the United States happens to have through historical accident and political compromise. In the few countries with such a system where there is a third party, it is usually one that represents a specific region or ethnic group. These third parties can have an impact when they choose which major party to join with to form a parliamentary majority, but such post-electoral coalitions are not to be in the United States because it has a presidential, not a parliamentary, system. Single-member plurality districts and a strong presidency, itself rooted in one giant single-member district called the United States, dictate that coalitions must be formed before the election by people who want to avoid being governed by their least-favored candidate. Hence the two pre-electoral coalitions called the Democratic and Republican parties, which have been dominated by rival factions of the ownership class since the 1790s. Nader not only grasped this structural logic, but he learned from the disastrous history of previous third parties, especially the Progressive Party of 1948. The formation of that party led to bitter battles between liberals, who stayed with the Democrats, and progressives (mostly Communists, socialists and pacifists), who backed former Vice President Henry Wallace as the third-party candidate. The campaign received only a little more than 1 million votes, about half of them from New York alone. Worse, it set in motion the events that completely destroyed the strong left-liberal coalition built slowly during the New Deal and war years. Nader also knew that the Peace and Freedom Party of 1968 and the Citizens Party of 1980 had zero positive impact. Nader further understood that the two major political parties are now in part an extension of the government, first of all because the government registers citizens as members of one or another party, which means the party cannot control its own membership by refusing admittance or initiating expulsions. Then the government conducts primaries in which any member of the party can run on any platform he or she so desires, thereby contending with fat cats and hired guns for control of the party. From a governmental perspective, the Democratic Party is the name for one of the two structured pathways into government. It is a shell. Thats a far cry from the days when court house gangs controlled nominations in the South and city bosses decided on candidates in most big cities in the North. Nor was it lost on Nader that insurgencies in party primaries have done much better than third-party candidates over the past 70 years. The most famous example is socialist Upton Sinclairs switch to the Democrats in 1934 so he could run for governor in the California partys primary, where he won 51 percent of the vote in a field of seven candidates, and went on to take 37 percent of the vote in the regular election against the incumbent Republican. The success of the New Right in transforming the Republican Party was not overlooked by Nader either. So the combination of structure and history came down in favor of a Democratic insurgency. Third-party advocates were displeased, but not the great majority of Nader admirers and those leftists who suffered through the lean times of the last 30-plus years. Not that there was a groundswell of voters for Nader at first, or even later. It looked for months like he was going nowhere; established political operatives and the media focused on Gore and Bradley. But when Bradley dropped out and Nader refused to quit, things began to get interesting. Suddenly there was more media attention because it was a David and Goliath story at a time when there was not much other news. Moreover, Naders principled decision to avoid personal attacks on Gore, along with his laser focus on the tremendous failures of big corporations, and his equal focus on the possibilities of using government to tame them,
Earl Browder, Liquidationist
From Daniell Aaron's history of the Left and the literary intelligentsia. Preface by Alan Wald, Columbia Univ. Press. M.P. ...Maltz's article bristled with heresies. Had he written it during the united-front days of 1935-39 or in the war years of Soviet-American co-operation, when everybody from Monsignor Fulton Sheen to Captain Eddie Rickenbacker had kind words for the Stalin regime,27 it might have slipped by without commercial censure. It appeared, however, well after the famous Jacques Duclos letter of May 1945 presaged the end of peaceful collaboration between the United States and the Soviet Union and the bankruptcy of Browderism. William Z. Foster now headed a reorganized Communist Party, which Browder had dissolved in May 1944 and had reconstituted as the Communist Political Association. A week before the publication of Maltz's article, Browder, once hailed as the beloved leader of our movement, was expelled from the party as a social imperialist. Maltz, in his innocence, had expressed his scorn for a historian he knew of who after reading the Duclos letter felt obliged to revise completely the book he was engaged upon. But Howard Fast did not agree with him, nor did Joseph North, Alvah Bessie, Mike Gold, John Howard Lawson, Samuel Sillen, or William Z. Foster, each of whom sharply reprimanded Maltz for his dangerous revisionism. Maltz's article, it seemed, was liquidationist, anti-progressive, and reactionary. In effect, he argued for a split between the citizen and the writer in saying that art and politics don't mix. Were this true, the Communist Party, the most political of movements, would be the most detrimental to the writer. In fact his description of the Duclos letter as another headline, and his plea that writers place human experience above politics, simply invited the writer to dispense with the party altogether. Most reprehensible to his critics was Maltz's conception of the self-contained writer, who irrespective of his social views might produce a work of true literary value.28 These counterarguments were advanced firmly and sometimes harshly be fellow writers, but no one was more anti-Maltzian than Maltz himself when he acknowledged his errors a few months later in the party press. His one-sided, non-dialectical approach, he confessed, had been revisionist in the worst sense. For what is revisionism? he asked. It is distorted Marxism, turning half-truths into total untruths, splitting ideology from its class base, denying the existence of the class struggle in society, converting Marxism from a science of society and struggle in apologetics for monopoly exploitation. Because of his mistaken zeal, the enemies of the Left had once more been able to raise the cry of artists in uniform. Clearly his fundamental errors indicated a failure to break deeply old habits of thought. He had severed the organic connection between art and ideology. He should have explained, as the histories of Céline, Farrell, and Dos Passos did so well, how a poisoned ideology and an increasingly sick soul can sap the talent and wreck the living fibre of a man's work. Although he thought his article better suited to the slanderous social-democratic New Leader than to The New Masses, he saw at least one merit in its publication: the intense answers it provoked marked a return to sound Marxist principles, which under the misleadership of Browder had been abandoned. Unable to attend a New Masses symposium on the subject of Art As a Weapon, at which his mistaken ideas were once again dissected, he sent a message of congratulation from California.29 Foster, who spoke at the symposium, had already pronounced the last words on the Maltz case in The New Masses. The evil genius, he said, was really Browder. Just as his imperialist theories set the party to tailing after the capitalists in the field of politics, so Maltz accepted the bourgeois propaganda to the effect that art is 'free' and has nothing to do with the class struggle. His views, said Foster, happily being corrected by Maltz himself, would make the artist merely an appendage and servant of the decadent capitalist system and its sterile art. Of course the party did not want to regiment the artists, but Maltz's incorrect assumptions had to be discussed with all the sharpness necessary to achieve theoretical clarity.30 If Foster's tone was benevolent, his words indicated plainly enough what the party expected from its artists. Isidor Schneider notwithstanding, political correctness was more important than being faithful to reality. The novelist and Spanish Civil War veteran Alvah Bessie expressed Foster's mind faithfully when he told Maltz: We need writers who will joyfully impose upon themselves the discipline of understanding and acting upon working-class-theory. Fosterism in 1946 doomed any hopes that Schneider and other New Masses editors may have entertained about the liberating of Left culture. Political tactics were elevated into
RE: re: Bureaucracy
Again Charles, read some sources like, The Communist Movement, 2 volumes, translated in the late 70's by Monthly Review Press, author is Spanish Communist Fernando Claudin and/or, Stalin and the European Communists, by Italian Communist historian, Paulo Spriono, published by Verso Books in the mid-90's. It has a chapter on one of your canonical works, The Short Course, of the CPSU, which as Eric Hobsbawm remarks was manditory reading for Communist cadre. Michael Pugliese Date Index RE: RE: Bureaucracy by michael pugliese 05 April 2002 01:04 UTC Thread Index Earl Browder, was ejected from the CPUSA after the publication in a French Communist journal of the, Duclos Letter, which accused Browder after the Teheran conference of '44 of being a liquidationist lackey of US imperialism. See the biographies/studies of Browder by James Ryan and Maurice Isserman. The latter has blurbs from Victor Navasky, hardly a Cold war Liberal, so I'd assume, it doesn't carry the virus of anti-Sovietism. Michael Pugliese P.S. George Charney's, Dorothy Healey's, Al Richmond's and Junius Scale's autobiographies as well as '56 reformist John Gate'es memoir are valuable in placing Browderism in the CPUSA in context.--- Original Message --- From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/4/02 3:39:30 PM I wrote: Applied to the CPUSA, the phrase democratic centralist involves an abuse of the word democratic. cb: Are you saying that the majority's votes were ignored in some election of Gus Hall ? Earl Browder ? John Reed ? Henry Winston ? Sam Webb ? on a provision of the Constitution ? Give me specific examples of where the vote of the majority was not followed in the CPUSA ? Actually, that was a typo. I meant to write the CPSU -- specifically referring to the period of the 1920s and after, since I have limited knowledge of the inner workings of the CPUSA. (That it was a typo makes sense in the context of the larger message: it was followed by the sentence The elections in the old USSR were a sham, while the members of the CP didn't have real democratic control over the leaders or over the Party Line.) But wasn't Earl Browder -- a long-term leader who was quite popular with the CPUSA's rank and file members -- kicked out of the leadership of the CPUSA for disagreeing with the Party Line handed down by Moscow? gotta go... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Date Index Progressive Economists Network List Archives at CSF Subscribe to Progressive Economists Network Thread Index --- Original Message --- From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/8/02 8:45:17 AM If I reply to one message per day in this thread (as I'm constrained to do), it will continue until 2010. I haven't even read Miychi's missives yet... JD I wrote:But wasn't Earl Browder -- a long-term leader who was quite popular with the CPUSA's rank and file members -- kicked out of the leadership of the CPUSA for disagreeing with the Party Line handed down by Moscow? charles brown writes:On Browder, I was going to use him as an example of the ability to remove the very top leader in the CPUSA . He was General Secretary. in most historical interpretations, the top leader of the cpusa wasn't the real top leader, since the cpusa was subordinate to the comintern or cominform... (note: i do not believe that the cpusa was simply a puppet of the ussr. it had to also keep its own rank and file happy and so reflected their wishes to some extent. when they didn't as with the hitler/stalin pact or the secret speech of 1956, they lost members in droves. though the organization involved bureaucracy, it was not purely so, because of the role of the member's exit option, and to a lesser extent their votes and statements of opinion.) cb:There was a letter from a French, not Moscow, Communist , named DeClou (sp.) criticizing Browder's proposal that the CP become an educational organization rather than a political party. In general, that was termed liquidationism, liquidating the party... Most interpret that letter as a statement of the opinion of the leadership of the COMINTERN/FORM. That opinion had a very strong impact, indicating the power of that international, Moscow-centered, organization. JD
Re: Bureaucracy
http://www.frontpagemag.com/archives/leftism/two_evils.htm .,..The Soviet tie, according to Schrecker, along with the outrageous orders that the Party issued to its cadres, did not interfere with its ability to play a progressive role in American society and culture. The small but cunning word seems turns up frequently in Schrecker's account. She uses it to imply a distinction between appearance and reality, so that she can claim that in reality the Communists were not serving the needs of the Kremlin first and foremost. When it comes to specifics, however, the ludicrous nature of her argument becomes plain. Consider her discussion of the Duclos letter--a missive to the American Communist Party published in the French Communist Party's theoretical journal in April 1945, under the French Communist leader Jacques Duclos's name. In that letter, Duclos condemned Earl Browder; the leader of the American Communist Party since the 1930s, for revisionism, for abandoning the class struggle, and for preaching a doctrine of peaceful coexistence between the United States and the Soviet Union at a time when imperialist war was looming on the horizon. Browder was quickly removed from his post. The broad Communist Political Association that he had created, as a social-democratic alternative to traditional Communist parties, was dissolved, and the official Communist Party was reconstituted. The Party leaders quickly condemned their recent hero in the harshest of terms. Browder himself was to argue that the Duclos letter was the first public declaration by Moscow of the coming Cold War. Schrecker writes that the so-called Duclos letter...--a supposedly Moscow- inspired criticism of the American party that the French Communist Jacques Duclos published in his party's theoretical journal in April 194--prompted the CP's leaders to change their line and drop Earl Browder. The speed of the about-face ... seemed to demonstrate Moscow's control. There's that word again: seemed. Schrecker- goes on to note that the FBI and witnesses before the House Un-American Activities Committee regularly referred to this document, as if this is all you need to know. Her intention, clearly, is to denigrate the notion of Soviet control. Unfortunately for Schrecker, Klehr and Haynes found conclusive evidence in the Party archives in Moscow that, as long suspected, the Duclos letter was conceived and written in Moscow. It was given to Duclos by the Comintern, most likely by Georgi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian head of the Comintern in the 1930s and 1940s who was tried (and acquitted) for the Reichstag fire in 1933, or by Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's right-hand man; and he was ordered to publish it. Klehr and Haynes present the documents that prove, as they write, that the article was not only written but published in Moscow in Russian; it was then translated into French and given to Duclos for attribution. The significance of the letter, as Klehr and Haynes explain, was that the party reversed its strategy from cooperation with established liberal and labor leaders to a policy of opposition to anyol1e who did no support American accommodation of Stalin's postwar goals. They speculate that, by having the French Communists appear to be the authors of the condemnation of Browder, the Soviets may have hoped to avoid alerting American leaders prematurely to the anticipated change in Soviet policy. They write that this new proof of the Duclos letter's Soviet origins does indeed lend additional weight to the view that it constituted the first salvo in Stalin's confrontation with the West.
Venezuela
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/662026/posts yahoo.com | Mon Apr 8, 2002 - 3:01 PM ET | Pascal Fletcher,Reuters CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan troops tightened security at oil facilities on Monday as stoppages by state oil workers halted exports, jolting the world's No. 4 oil exporter and throttling the economic lifeblood of President Hugo Chavez's government. Armed Forces chief Gen. Lucas Rincon said that National Guard soldiers who routinely protect oilfields, refineries and oil export ports in Venezuela were being reinforced by other units of the armed forces. What we want to do is guarantee peace and quiet, Rincon told a news conference. The military protection was stepped up as shipping and trade sources said the escalating six-week-old dispute by executives and employees of the state oil giant PDVSA had halted Venezuelan oil shipments. Production was also being cut as storage facilities were full to the brim, they added. However, Energy Minister Alvaro Silva and PDVSA president Gaston Parra insisted oil industry operations were normal. The revolt by the dissident PDVSA staff, who oppose management changes made by Chavez, put intense pressure on the president a day ahead of a 24-hour national strike called by opposition labor and business chiefs. The disruption of oil exports, which account for a third to a half of Venezuelan government revenues, clamps a heavy economic squeeze on the left-wing populist leader, who is battling a wave of opposition to his three-year-old rule. But Chavez, a pugnacious former paratrooper, has shown no sign of backing down and Sunday used a live television broadcast to sack seven dissident executives in PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela), and to forcibly retire 12 more. The government has promised to guarantee both international oil deliveries and internal gasoline supplies. Most gas stations appeared to be still operating normally Monday. The president, who has threatened to send in troops if PDVSA, Latin America's biggest oil company, is brought to a complete halt, accused the protesters of subversion bordering on terrorism and said security forces were on the alert. Chavez's words have thrown more fuel on the fire, one local shipping agent, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. The abrupt sackings, announced by Chavez on television as he blew a soccer referee's whistle, infuriated the disgruntled state oil company employees, who said they would intensify protests and stoppages. Today, tomorrow and the next day, our actions are going to be even more radical, Eddie Ramirez, one of the PDVSA staff sacked Sunday, told reporters in Caracas, surrounded by a crowd of protesting colleagues chanting, We are not afraid. Three years after he won elections with widespread support, Chavez is confronting a storm of criticism from political foes, business and labor chiefs, dissident military officers, and the opposition- dominated media. The president, who in 1992 tried unsuccessfully to seize power in a botched military coup, defends his self-proclaimed revolution as a noble campaign to help the poor. But critics accuse him of trying to introduce a Cuban-style leftist regime in Venezuela. OIL INDUSTRY IN TURMOIL Chavez has repeatedly rejected demands that he revoke the appointment of five new PDVSA board members named in late February. The dissidents complain the appointments were based on political loyalty to the president, not on merit. Local shipping and trade sources said the revolt in PDVSA was severely hitting production, refining and exports although there were conflicting reports of the precise impact. Nothing is going out (in shipments), one private trader told Reuters, saying exports had been halted from the main loading terminals at Puerto La Cruz, El Palito and Paraguana. Other estimates said shipments had been reduced to around 15 percent to 20 percent of normal levels. There isn't a complete halt yet, although it looks as though it's headed that way, the Caracas-based shipping agent said. Venezuela's oil production, which normally runs at 2.6 million barrels per day (BPD), was also being cut back, the sources said. You can't produce for long if you're not exporting, the trader said. Storage facilities are full to the brim, he added. But PDVSA president Gaston Parra insisted oil output and exports were being maintained. There will be no stoppage in the country and especially not in PDVSA, Parra said. He's lying, the shipping agent said. PDVSA chief Parra told state television that the 960,000 bpd Amuay Cardon refinery complex, Venezuela's largest and a key supplier of gasoline and heating oil to the United States, was working normally. But a PDVSA spokesman from the refinery in the Paraguana Peninsula told Reuters the complex was reducing its throughput to minimum levels and that oil shipments had been halted. What are we going to load up? There are no ships and no business, he added. FEARS OF STREET VIOLENCE On top of
RE: Re: (Partial) response to Michael's plea
...What is really wierd is that no leaders around the world seem ready to challenge Bush -- even rhetorically... Is this not criticism? http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1816000/1816395.stm Michael Pugliese
Bitter labor dispute at Venezuelan oil monopoly begins to affect exports
www.sfgate.com Return to regular view Bitter labor dispute at Venezuelan oil monopoly begins to affect exports FABIOLA SANCHEZ, Associated Press Writer Saturday, April 6, 2002 ©2002 Associated Press URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/04/06/international0329EST0446.DTL (04-06) 00:29 PST CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- An escalating confrontation between the government and workers at one of the world's largest oil companies has started to affect exports from Venezuela -- the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States. Protesting workers closed two of Venezuela's five major loading terminals Friday, stranding a dozen ships waiting to load cargo, Venezuelan oil officials told Dow Jones Newswires. Staff at state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, are protesting President Hugo Chavez's appointment of five board members to the company's seven-member board, claiming the appointments were political. They also want fired dissident executives reinstated. The leftist Chavez refuses to budge, creating a bitter standoff whose outcome could rock global oil markets. The closed terminals include the El Palito, which serves the domestic market, and Puerto La Cruz, which ships about 12 percent of Venezuelan exports. A clash between government supporters and opposition party members at a drilling site in the eastern state of Monagas on Thursday left two oil workers dead and three injured, police said Friday. In Caracas, police stood outside PDVSA headquarters to keep protesters and pro- government demonstrators apart. Venezuela's largest oil union had yet to join the month-old protest, which is mainly by administrative workers, but the possibility of a strike affecting all PDVSA operations was growing each day, said Juan Fernandez, a spokesman for dissident white-collar oil workers. Potentially, this is a bigger threat for the U.S. market than disruptions in the Middle East, which are hypothetical. This isn't hypothetical, said John Lichtblau, chairman of the nonprofit Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York City. Lichtblau said market prices could rise rapidly if the work stoppages seriously affect production. Venezuela shipped an average 1.3 million barrels per day of crude and 400,000 barrels daily in refined products to the United States last year. Total U.S. daily imports of crude were 9.1 million barrels. Chief mediator and lawmaker Luis Salas on Friday gave up on his efforts to negotiate a solution. PDVSA's board, meanwhile, suspended four top dissident managers in the corporation's refining sector. PDVSA President Gaston Parra insisted that supplies were normal, while Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez said there were legal alternatives to a presidential state of emergency decree that would stop disruptions and dislodge protesting workers. Oil is the South American nation's economic lifeblood and Chavez has vowed not to let protests disrupt production and exports. The Fedepetrol union, which represents about 25,000 oil workers, refused to support the executives' protests. Fedecamaras, Venezuela's largest business confederation, endorsed the demonstrations. ©2002 Associated Press
Generals in court for actions in East Timor
www.sfgate.com Return to regular view Generals in court for actions in East Timor Rights activists worry it's 'show trial' Ian Timberlake, Chronicle Foreign Service Thursday, March 14, 2002 ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/14/MN220924.DTL Jakarta -- A long-delayed human-rights trial to probe the 1999 violence in East Timor begins today amid concerns that high-ranking Indonesian military officers will escape justice. The military is still powerful, so it's difficult for the government to take them to court, said Hendardi, chairman of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association. Like many Indonesians, he has only one name. Three generals are among the 18 suspects accused of crimes against humanity following the vote by East Timor's residents in favor of independence from Indonesian rule. The other defendants include 10 police and military commanders, two government officials and three pro-Indonesia militia gang leaders. More than two years ago, Indonesian forces ended a 24-year occupation of East Timor with an orgy of arson, looting and murder that killed an estimated 1,000 East Timorese and forced more than 200,000 into Indonesian-controlled West Timor. Tens of thousands of refugees are still not allowed to return home. East Timor is under U.N. administration until full independence is declared May 20 after its people vote for a president. The trials, which are likely to continue for months, will focus attention on President Megawati Sukarnoputri's close relationship with the military, which backed her rise to power last July. INDONESIA-U.S. MILITARY TIES The legal proceedings will also have long-term implications for ties between the world's most populous Muslim nation and the U.S. military, which were essentially suspended because of the East Timor violence. Under the Leahy Amendment, U.S. military sales and training assistance to Indonesia are suspended until certain conditions are met, including effective measures to bring to justice members of the armed forces and militia groups suspected of rights abuses. Many human-rights observers doubt that the panel of at least three judges will find any of the generals guilty. Indonesian courts are notoriously corrupt and susceptible to political pressure. They are holding (the trial) to meet demands made by the international community. It's more like a show trial, said Hilmar Farid, 34, a rights activist who has worked extensively in East Timor. The first cases scheduled to be heard involve East Timor's former police chief, Col. Timbul Silaen, and governor, Abilio Soares. The highest-ranking suspects are Maj. Gen. Adam Damiri, former head of the regional military command, and Col. Tono Suratman, who was the top soldier in East Timor. Suratman and Silaen were promoted to brigadier general after the 1999 bloodletting. A later report by the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights accused the military and police of setting up, arming and coordinating the militias that terrorized East Timorese to dissuade them from supporting independence. The court will hear about an attack that killed more than 50 at a church in Liquica, an assault on the home of a pro-independence leader that left at least 12 dead, and the massacre of some 200 refugees and three priests who sought shelter at a church in Suai. SEPARATE U.N. COURT A U.N. court in East Timor is simultaneously hearing human-rights cases and has sentenced 10 militia leaders to jail terms of up to 33 years. U.N. prosecutors have also indicted two Indonesian soldiers and nine militiamen for what was allegedly an attempt to exterminate educated young men. The suspects are believed to be in Indonesia, and Jakarta has made no effort to find them. Albert Hasibuan, who headed the probe by the Indonesian rights commission, says a little bit of compromise is going on between Megawati, the military and the attorney general's office. When Hasibuan's panel ruled in early 2000 that military officers should be held responsible, then-President Abdurrahman Wahid dismissed the armed forces commander, Gen. Wiranto. Wiranto is noticeably absent from the list of the accused, which Hendardi says is proof of a deal. The whole process is being managed in a way to keep these principal figures of the TNI (armed forces) out of trouble, said a Western diplomat. Hendardi believes a recent decision to allow a separate military command in Aceh province, where a military campaign to stamp out armed separatists has left hundreds of people dead this year, was a trade-off with the army to allow the trials to go forward. Yet another Western diplomat has a more positive view, arguing that the Megawati government is making a serious effort to achieve justice and that although the military may not like the trials, they accept the judicial process. COURT'S SCOPE LIMITED Even if all the suspects show up in court and their
UN-Australia Deal Is Near on Timor Oil and Gas
UN-Australia Deal Is Near on Timor Oil and Gas http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/etimor/2001/0521aust.htm By Michael Richardson International Herald Tribune May 21, 2001 Australia and the United Nations temporary administration in East Timor are reportedly near an agreement on new revenue-sharing rules covering the rich oil and gas fields between northern Australia and the former Indonesian territory. If the deal can be finalized in the next few weeks, as Australian officials hope, it will clear the way for supplying liquefied natural gas from the area to the U.S. West Coast. While Indonesia ruled East Timor from 1975 to 1999, Canberra negotiated a treaty with Jakarta governing a 75,000-square-kilometer (30,000-square-mile) area in the Timor Sea. The zone was jointly managed by the two countries, and production royalties from oil and gas fields were divided equally. Eight months ago, after East Timor's break from Indonesia, negotiations on a new treaty began between Australia and the UN-led administration, which is preparing the former territory for independence. The next round of talks is scheduled to take place this week in Dili, the capital of East Timor. The negotiations have proved tougher and slower than expected; a UN official on the East Timor side said last month that the zone was closed for business unless Australia agreed to new boundaries in the Timor Sea that gave East Timor much more resources. The UN official, East Timor's interim minister for political affairs, Peter Galbraith, said the difference between the East Timorese and Australian positions amounted to a large revenue loss to East Timor. Depending on the outcome of the talks, the United Nations expects oil and gas production in the Timor Sea to generate annual revenue of $100 million to $500 million for East Timor. There are several oil fields under production in the zone, and in February the liquefied natural gas project moved a step closer to reality when Phillips Petroleum Co. of the United States, Royal Dutch/Shell Group and Woodside Petroleum Ltd. of Australia agreed to work together to jointly develop their separate gas fields in the Timor Sea. This arrangement will ensure sufficient gas reserves for Phillips to go ahead with construction of a plant near Darwin, in northern Australia, to produce 4.8 million metric tons a year of liquefied natural gas for export. But the company has a July deadline for approving construction of a 500-kilometer (300-mile) pipeline to Darwin from its Bayu-Undan field in the Timor Sea zone. Phillips must also finalize key supply contracts in the next three months, including a deal worth up to 7 billion Australian dollars ($3.68 billion) to supply liquefied natural gas to El Paso Corp. El Paso has signed a letter of intent to buy the gas over 15 years starting 2005, mainly for use in California, which is facing serious energy shortages. The entire set of gas export contracts could be jeopardized if the treaty is not agreed in time, said Jim Godlove, the Darwin area manager for Phillips Petroleum Co., which is part of a consortium developing gas fields in the Timor Sea. Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, said recent talks with East Timorese and UN officials had made considerable progress after an extremely difficult phase in the negotiations. After initially proposing to split revenue on a 60-40 basis, Australia is reported to be offering East Timor an 85 percent share, much closer to the East Timorese request for 90 percent. East Timor is said to have withdrawn its demand for a redrawing of the sea-bed boundaries. Mr. Downer said it should now be possible to conclude a framework agreement for a new Timor Sea zone treaty in the next couple of months. More Information on East Timor More Information on the Dark Side of Natural Resources If you appreciate the information we provide, please support our work. Make a donation or become a member of Global Policy Forum.
RE: Iraq and Middle East
Hmm, one could say instead that Sharon has precluded the possibility of Bush attackng Saddaam by his invasion of the PA. You want more informed speculation, trey Luttwak here. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101020408-221163,00.html Michael Pugliese --- Original Message --- From: Karl Carlile [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/4/02 10:28:05 PM The war on terror, as it misleadingly called by Bush, including Bush suggestion to launch a war against Iraq may have encouraged the sustained and intense aggression mounted by Sharon against Palestinian Arabs. Because such a war might encourage Saddam to launch an attack on Israel may feel the need to wipe out its internal Palestinian opposition --an opposition that might join up with Iraq in such a war-- and even push the Arab population into Jordan. Here is what may be a classic example of Bush's aggressive strategy contributing to international instability. Bush, if he really intends to attack Iraq, may support such action by Sharon. Click below to access Communism List site: http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/ Yours etc., Karl Carlile
RE: RE: Bureaucracy
Earl Browder, was ejected from the CPUSA after the publication in a French Communist journal of the, Duclos Letter, which accused Browder after the Teheran conference of '44 of being a liquidationist lackey of US imperialism. See the biographies/studies of Browder by James Ryan and Maurice Isserman. The latter has blurbs from Victor Navasky, hardly a Cold war Liberal, so I'd assume, it doesn't carry the virus of anti-Sovietism. Michael Pugliese P.S. George Charney's, Dorothy Healey's, Al Richmond's and Junius Scale's autobiographies as well as '56 reformist John Gate'es memoir are valuable in placing Browderism in the CPUSA in context.--- Original Message --- From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/4/02 3:39:30 PM I wrote: Applied to the CPUSA, the phrase democratic centralist involves an abuse of the word democratic. cb: Are you saying that the majority's votes were ignored in some election of Gus Hall ? Earl Browder ? John Reed ? Henry Winston ? Sam Webb ? on a provision of the Constitution ? Give me specific examples of where the vote of the majority was not followed in the CPUSA ? Actually, that was a typo. I meant to write the CPSU -- specifically referring to the period of the 1920s and after, since I have limited knowledge of the inner workings of the CPUSA. (That it was a typo makes sense in the context of the larger message: it was followed by the sentence The elections in the old USSR were a sham, while the members of the CP didn't have real democratic control over the leaders or over the Party Line.) But wasn't Earl Browder -- a long-term leader who was quite popular with the CPUSA's rank and file members -- kicked out of the leadership of the CPUSA for disagreeing with the Party Line handed down by Moscow? gotta go... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: Speaking of What's Left
I cheated! Googing away...The below was published in Crossroads, a journal that was an attempt from (mostly) ex-Line of March and CofC to dialogue with the broad left. Market Leftism: Money, Machines and the Left's Decline Nathan Newman and Anders Schneiderman connect the proliferation of market leftist organizations and the decline of progressive politics... In the mid-90's, John Judis in Ther American Prospect wrote a piece saying much the same. This piece is collected in, Ticking Time Bombs: The New Conservative Assaults on Democracy Robert L. Kuttner, editor; published in conjunction with The American Prospect. The New Press. Mark Dowie has a new book on Foundations from M.I.T. Press. The Nation - Selected Feature Selected Feature Why Do Progressive Foundations Give Too Little To Too Many? By Michael H. Shuman The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy recently reported that between 1992 and 1994, twelve major foundations on the right, often working in concert, pumped more than $200 million ... http://past.thenation.com/issue/980112/0112shum.htm Michael Pugliese --- Original Message --- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/3/02 6:52:17 AM Speaking of What's Left by Ian Murray 02 April 2002 15:44 UTC === Please count the young people for us : Today, the left is really a professional apparatus of leaders, a fundraising machine, and mailing lists that no one bothers to mobilize. Instead of establishing a human relationship, a phone call or a door-knock or a letter from a progressive group is almost always just a way to raise money. As a result, more and more young people are refusing to even answer their doors or phones when political groups call -- which isn't often, because young people can't make large contributions of cash that attract contact by progressive organizations. Market leftism gives young activists and the rest of the left the same kind of choices that the free market offers us for getting where we want to go. We can choose between several brands of (used) cars; we just can't choose to build a better system of mass transit. The only people who really get to choose the direction the left takes are the big money foundations and governments. A few years ago, Michael Albert at Z Magazine estimated that progressive organizations have raised an impressive $1 billion in the last 25 years. But because the left is so fragmented, progressives don't really control this capital. Instead, many progressive organizations are dependent on foundation and government money. In a sense, the foundations and governments are the venture capitalists of the left -- and that venture capital can dry up when foundation or government elite fads change or when groups get too radical. So what should our generation of young activists make of this undemocratic disaster? We could just blame it on the power-hungry, graying activists who find it more comfortable to run their own small bureaucracy than participate in a broader movement. But that's too easy an answer. The present mess is a result of the efforts of another generation of young activists who fought for democracy and youth participation. We need to understand their struggles to understand what we need to go today. The Sixties youth rejected the centralized, bureaucratic democratic decision-making of the unions, parties, and the established civil rights organizations (the legacy of another generation of young activists). Instead, organizations like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) believed in the ideal of engaged participatory democracy. They believed this was more likely to occur in smaller, more decentralized organizations where everyone could do their own thing. These smaller groups would also allow young people to overcome the racism, sexism, imperialism, and other shortcomings of the older, top-down organizations who refused to respond to growing demands from the grassroots. In the 1970s, the attitudes of SDS/SNCC, the women's movement, and the new environmental ethic of small is beautiful converged with the lawyer/lobbyist-driven Naderite activism and the community organizing gospel of Saul Alinsky. These ideas would spawn an explosion of organizations, by some estimates leading to a total of as many as two million citizen groups encompassing 15 million people by the 1980s. Since many organizations were too small to support themselves through their members, they relied on assistance from the government and foundations. They gradually became professionalized, and the goal of democratic participation went by the wayside. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected -- in no small part because decentralized progressive groups could not unite to effectively oppose him. Under Reagan and Bush, the federal government defunded the left and many foundations followed suit. As a result
RE: Midldle East conspiracy theory
Yup, Karl, the essence and appearence of the ME realities are so totally upended and discordent. (Hope you take your vitamin supplements. I take lotsa to keep my Irony Supply Fully Loaded.) So, Sharon really wants to save Arafat so Yassir can implement a neo-colonial diktat for his Zionist masters after the entire apparatus undernath Arafat imn the PA which would be in charge of repressing the Palestinian masses after the IDF slaughters and/or imprisons as many militants as it can grab. Meanwhile, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah over the border in Lebanon are the most likely winners of the insane policy of Sharon and the U.S.I don't believe in conspiracy theories (though heh, if I did, on the Middle East, you should the extensive book by Rightist, Daniel Pipes on Conspiracy Theories in the Middle East!) but, if I did, I'd say that Sharon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad are in this deadly symbiosis that will lead to more and more escalation benefitting neither the long term interests of the Palestinians or the Isrealis. Michael Pugliese --- Original Message --- From: Karl Carlile [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: PEN-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/3/02 1:51:50 AM - Original Message - From: Karl Carlile [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Communism List: http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/ Workers of the world unite! ___ Concerning the Middle East a specific conspiracy theory may be valid: Israeli forces have surrounded and stripped Arafat down. Given that Arafat's popularity had been declining and that he has been fast becoming a figure who carried little cred Sharon may be actually (deliberately) turning him into a heroic figure holding out in his bunker in the eyes of the Palestinian masses. Sharon may be actually intending to save Arafat political and even physical life. By surrounding he may also protecting him from an Islamic assassin squad. At the same time the aggressive military exercise being undertaken by Sharon is intended to flush out, destroy and capture the more militant intifada activists including its leaders. In so far as Israel successfully achieves this aim of crushing or at least seriously defeating the militant intifida network it has also successful disposed of Arafat's competitors even rivals for power. In the aftermath the Palestinian masses will be more demoralised while Arafat will emerge as the redeemed leader whose status in the eyes of the Palestinians will have recovered significantly. Under these conditions Arafat will be in a much stronger position to copper-fasten a sell out to the Israeli state with less fear of its being upended and his being assassinated. Under these conditions too Sharon or his ilk will be, from a position of victory, in a much stronger position to have the freedom to manouevre and negotiate an effective settlemement. Arafat may even know of this plan. Please forward this posting to other mailing lists and to newsgroups --- Click below to access Communism List site: http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/ Yours etc., Karl Carlile Click below to access Communism List site: http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/ Yours etc., Karl Carlile Communism List ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re: Bureaucracy
To Control or to Smash Bureaucracy: Weber and Lenin on Politics, by Erik Olin Wright, Berkeley Journal of Sociology circa '75 or so. Reprinted (I think ) as a chapter of his, Class, Cris and the State, Verso Books. Michael Pugliese, g*d knows why I bother posting these cites here. No one ever goes to the library to read 'em! ;-) --- Original Message --- From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/3/02 9:26:49 AM Charles Brown wrote: Open Bureaucracy vs Bureacracy behind a Screen of Participatory democracy. Carrol CB: Isn't bureaucracy a Weberian and not Marxist concept ? Bureaucracy is comparable to middle class in the damage it has done to the political consciousness of masses of workers and petit bourgeoisie, peasants. Mostly correct. After some fiddling I've given up arriving at a precise formulation of the necessary qualifications. Your further remarks distinguishing the mass of workers in a bureaucracy from the ruling elemtn is wholly correct. I've argued with students in the past about one aspect of this distinction: the face of the Administration (bureaucracy) are the clerks and secretaries and lower-level working supervisors, and hence just as Russian peasants looked to the Czar to correct the local tyranny of minor officials or gentry, so students would look to the Deans etc. to correct the tyranny or obstructionism which they would blame on the grossly underpaid clerks they dealt with. Same thing happens in the resentment people will quite naturally feel (but misdirect) when they are dealing with the desk personnel in an Emergency Room. [Digression: As to the last, when I was going through that series of destructive headaches a few years ago, I finally wrote out on a card answers to all the questions one had to answer at the front desk. It is really enraging to have to give your social security number or list the drugs one is allergic to while half dead from a migraine.] Carrol
Fw: [R-G] 03.04.2002 THE GRAND OIL PRICE TERRORISM CONSPIRACY - STOP!!! THE RUMORS!
Message: 3 From: IJA [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: The people anarchists and authorities world wide [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 16:24:54 +0200 Organization: International Journal of Anarchism Subject: [R-G] 03.04.2002 THE GRAND OIL PRICE TERRORISM CONSPIRACY - STOP!!! THE RUMORS! Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From IJ@ 4(31) updated 03.04.2002 -= --- PRESS RELEASE AND NOTE FROM THE Anarchist International Embassy in Oslo http://www.anarchy.no/embassy.html=20 -= --- THE GRAND OIL PRICE TERRORISM CONSPIRACY - STOP !!! THE RUMORS!!! -= --- The rumors that some high ranking, mainly marxist Norwegians and their = useful idiots, have given much aid-money to Arafat, so he could = support the terrorists, to make trouble in the Mid East and thus hike = the oil price (and tank-rates), must be seen as a 1st of April joke and = nothing else. The Anarchy of Norway just doesn't play politics so dirty, = although the oil-price of course have hiked now as usual when there is = trouble in the Mid East, and the PLO-state of Arafat has gotten = relatively much money in aid from Norway. These events should not be = seen combined, and introducing a (false) conspiracy theory is not = correct. There are also other reasons for a hike in the oil-price, say, = the USA's talks vis-=E0-vis Saddam Hussein, and better economical = conjunctures in general.=20 02.04.2002. Although the Conference on terrorism and IJ@ yesterday tried = to stop the rumors, they continue to grow. We must simply repeat that = these growing rumors are not based on facts! The whole idea of the so = called secret operation, code name Bongo from Congo where=20 1. the Yes to EU-bureaucrats in the Labor Party, some of them having got = top jobs in Statoil without too much qualifications,=20 2. the UN's peace envoy for the Middle East Terje Red Larsen plus = Gro Harlem Brundtland and tops in the Royal Norwegian Foreign Ministry, = UD;=20 3. the leaders of the Red oil-workers unions, plus=20 4. the coming bureaucrats of the Labor Party's Youth organization AUF, = have a conspiracy with=20 5. Y. Arafat and the PLO-State terrorists, to=20 6. hike the oil-price, and share the profit through different channels, = aid included, to make even more trouble in the Mid East and hike the = oil-price even more, etc., in=20 7. an oil-price terrorism spiral, in a prolonged war with Israel, also = including trade boycott etc. to make it real long, that's=20 8. just far out! Although=20 9. the marxist influenced Norwegian media also write about a long Mid = East war 02.04.2002, and thus contribute perhaps to even more oil-price = hike, there are no reasons to believe that=20 10. the Oil-price Terrorism Conspiracy , code name Bongo from = Congo, really exists.=20 11.- 03.04.2002 the rumors are getting even wilder: A faction of OPEC = with ramifications to rich muslims and bin-Laden's al-Qaeda, some = factions in the UN and in CIA connected to some warprofit sharks in USA, = are part of this Grand Conspiracy, and they also are behind the = 11.09.2001 events. 12. IJ@ can not confirm that the rumors are rooted back to some leftists = at Industrial Workers of the World, that earlier have made up = smearstories and lies about the Anarchy of Norway and the International = Workers of the World, or some rightist Americans , that think UN is a = commie nest ruling the USA. Both groups have however traditionally a = tendency to dream up large Conspiracies, and think economy is the basis = - or the only thing that counts - to explain what is going on in = society, and try to make up scapegoats. However to think Gro Harlem = Brundtland, the other Labor Party bosses and the UD tops, etc. are the = real spiders behind the Grand Conspiracy and the 11.09. 2001 attacks as = well as the Mid East trouble is far out. To make the Anarchy of Norway = scapegoat for the 11.09 and Mid East trouble is not fair! NACO demands such nonsense rumors should be stopped at once!=20 However to stop further rumors, more restrictions on the aid-money to = the PLO-State of Arafat should perhaps be introduced, NACO says: It = must be certain not an =F8re of the Norwegian aid-money to Palestine = goes to support the terrorists, directly or indirectly, to avoid the = Anarchy of Norway gets a bad reputation internationally.=20 Even 1st of April joke rumors may spread and be harmfull, if there is = just a small fraction of possible truth in it. So all support that = doesn't go directly to peaceful organizations of the Palestinian people, = and 100% certain avoid their corrupt authorities plus terrorists, and = other political measures that may make Norwegians be looked
Updates: A20 Mobe
Received: 4/3/02 8:54:45 AM From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Add to People Section To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Subject: [ASDnet] FYI: A20 please circulate to friends Tuesday, April 2 Updates April 20th Mobilization http://www.unitedwemarch.org (202) 265-3980 Dear Friends, We're three weeks away, woohoo! The weekend of April 19th - 22nd is indeed going to be historic. Our apologies if this update reaches you somewhat delayed, but know you can always contact us at the DC office(202) 265-3980. The Rally March ...in case you didn't already know - bg demonstration in DC on April 20th! Gather at 10:30am at the Washington Monument for a kick-off rally 11:00am - Rally begins! with mcee Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now 1:00pm - March let your voice be heard - we'll walk north on 15th Street, southeast on Pennsylvania Avenue, joint mobilization convergence at Freedom Plaza. 3:00pm - National Rally for Peace Justice at the national mall (between 3rd and 4th Street, across the west steps of the Capitol Building). We're happy to announce... The Reverend Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King, III have confirmed their presence on April 20th! They will join a growing list of prominent speakers including Media Benjamin (Global Exhange), Kathy Kelly (Voices in the Wilderness), Philip Berrigan (Jonah House), Ron Daniels (Center for Constitutional Rights), Amber Amundson (Peaceful Tomorrows), Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights), Erica Smiley (Black Radical Congress - Youth Caucus) and many more! And music from folk singers David Rovics and Pat Humphries and political hip-hop sensation Division X. Pacifica Radio We're also happy to announce Pacifica Radio will broadcast live throughout the event. Sister stations nation wide will broadcast our message on April 20th. ...so is this a permited event? Yes, we have indeed secured a permit for this event. Banners and Puppets and Balloons, Oh my! For all those curious bearers of signs - we've been informed by the Park Police that are NO restrictions for banner, puppet and sign dimensions and constructions. Balloons are restricted only in that they must not be air borne (meaning big Thanksgiving Day helium balloons). Tabling at the Event Bring your literature, bumper stickers, newspapers, pamphlets and any other political construct and set up a table at the kick-off and closing rallies at the Washington Monument and/or on the Mall (between 3rd 4th Streets, west of the Capital Building). Give us a call to confirm (202) 265-3980. Trainings and Workshops Thursday, April 18th Nonviolence Skills Training 7:30pm - 10:30pm Legal Training 8:00pm - 10:00pm Friday, April 19th Teach-Ins: DC Links: War and it?s Impact on the District 9:30am- 11:30am Militarism, Youth People of Color 12noon - 2:00pm Racial/Cultural/Religious Profiling-USA Patriot Act 2:00pm - 4:00pm Skills Training: Nonviolence 9:00am-12noon, 1:00pm-4:00pm Nonviolence 12noon-5:00pm Anti-Oppression 9:00am-12noon, 1:00pm-4:00pm Media 4:00pm - 5:30pm, 5:30pm-7:00pm Legal Training 5:00pm-7:00pm Plenary Panel - Kick Off to Global Justice Weekend 8:00pm - 10:00pm Evening Solidarity Concert 10:00pm If you're taking a bus to DC... we have a drop off point and parking location for you. We have reserved parking spaces for Saturday, April 20th at RFK Stadium for $25 per bus per day. Parking spaces have been reserved from 8:00am to 9:00pm. Your driver should drop you off at the Washington Monument (between 15th and Independence Avenue SW) then head to 2001 East Capitol Street SE for parking. (To return to the Washington Monument - from there go east on Independence Avenue toward 16th Street, left on 19th Street SE, slight right unto East Capitol Street SE. If you are bringing a bus, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that we can accurately secure space for parking. If you're coming on Friday, let us know and we will work to secure a bus parking space for you. Lobby Days Get to town early and take your message to Congress! Sign up for a Congressional visit. You can either contact your Senator or Representative directly to schedule a visit (call the Congressional switchboard at 202.224.3121 for your Member's phone number) or contact the DC office (202) 265-3980 and we will schedule the visit for you. You can also visit http://www.house.gov/writerep to find your Representative and www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_senate.cfm. to find your Senator. Then, sign up for our lobby training. This 3 hour skills share workshop will help you prepare for your visit. Workshops are scheduled from 9:00am to 12noon both on Friday, April 19th and Monday, April 22nd. Call the DC office to reserve your spot, or sign up online at
FW: Re: Markets and Marx: Whither China?
--- Original Message --- From: James Lawler [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/3/02 3:48:42 PM I am curious about the statistics cited by Cliff below from Sidney's previous message. I just read other statistics from an article posted on another list, at http://www.pww.org/article/view/899 http://www.pww.org/article/view/899 Here a recent delegation of the Communist Party USA to China was told that the state-owned sector in 1997 was over 75% of the economy. The impression is given that this figure continues to be roughly valid. Was this misleading? Could the state sector have dropped so drastically in such a short time? The article just posted on our list by Michel Pugliese (March 28, China) states Since 1998, 25 million workers have been laid off from state companies, Li Rongrong, the country's economy minister, said in Beijing on March 8. I don't see how that can imply a drop from 75% to 37% of the economy. No doubt this has already been explained in one of our earlier very informative messages on this topic. So excuse me if I need some repetition. Best wishes, Jim Lawler -Original Message- From: Society for the Philosophical Study of Marxism Listserve [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Cliff DuRand Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2002 8:38 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Markets and Marx: Whither China? For some time now I have been wanting to make some points in the debate about markets and socialism as it relates to China. I apologize to Ed that I have not found the time until now to weigh in on his side. I look at the percentages Sidney Gluck cites: 33% of China's gross national product produced by small private businesses, 30% by large joint stock companies, and 37% by state owned and collective and village enterprises. That shows an economic system that is nearly equally divided between the petty bourgeoisie, capitalism, and socialism. While the socialist sector still has a slight (but declining edge), three decades ago it was 100% of the economy.
RE: Bureaucracy...and Al Szymanski
Jim...(my late friend al szymanski (sp.?) Nope, you got it right. He was one of the editors of the journal, The Insurgent Sociologist now called Critical Sociology. Another friend, wrote the below. (After another google hit...) Michael Pugliese, the creepy one;-) logical errors of leninist fundamentalism ... in this day and age*! As did Ted Goertzel, who on Tue, 14 Dec ... Leninist doctrines of the late great Al Szymanski or our own Comrade Berch Berberoglu ... http://www.stile.lut.ac.uk/~gyedb/STILE/Email0002101/m15.html Albert Szymanski: A Personal and Political Memoir by Ted Goertzel Versions of this essay appeared as Albert Szymanski: A Personal and Political Memoir, Critical Sociology, 15: 139-144 (Fall, 1988) and in my 1992 book Turncoats and True Believers. The 1969 meetings of the American Sociological Association were held in the sterile towers of the San Francisco Hilton. The meetings were particularly incongruous at the climax of the social upheavals of the sixties. While blacks rioted in the streets and students bombed draft boards, the sociologists hid in their dummy variables and multiple dimensions, speculating about the functions of conflict and the need for values to maintain the social equilibrium. Colorless men in business suits read bland papers full of theoretical frippery and statistical fastidiousness. Al Szymanski was an oasis of genuineness in this desert of scholasticism. He dressed casually in faded jeans and a work shirt, with a disheveled mop of dishwater blond hair topping his large round head. He was only a few months older than me, having been born in 1941. At 6'2 and 190 pounds he was the largest of a small group of radicals who stood quietly in the back of a meeting room holding up a sign saying bull shit whenever the speaker made a particularly galling remark. The shy grin on his cherubic face revealed his embarrassment with this tactic, which he had agreed to as an experiment in ethnomethodology. Al quickly recruited me into the sociology radical caucus, which gave me a support group of other young professors to replace the political groups I had belonged to as a student. We were committed to direct action and had little patience with the stuffy professionalism of academic sociology. We had missed the deadline to place a resolution condemning American involvement in Vietnam on the agenda for the business meeting. Courtesy resolutions, on occasions such as the death of a colleague, could be introduced at any time, however. Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese leader, had died during the meetings. We felt that he was our colleague and sought to extend the courtesy to him. When our parliamentary maneuver failed we simply marched to the front of the room and held our ceremony anyway. The officials wisely retreated to resume their deliberations in another room, allowing our action to fizzle out gracefully. Al was the son of a Polish-American Rhode Island lobster fisherman who loved to work with his hands and never really understood his son's intellectual and political inclinations. It was his strong- minded, deeply religious, Italian-American mother who nurtured his precociousness, taking him to get his first library card as soon as he became eligible on his sixth birthday. When he first entered school, she told him that other children could be cruel to another child who was different because of color or how he dressed and if he saw anyone alone or rejected to become a friend to them. Al read Freud and Marx at the University of Rhode Island and tried to shock his mother first with the revelation that he had loved her unconsciously as a child, then with his discovery of Marxism. She professed to be flattered by the first revelation, and did her best to understand the second. She believed he was true to the fundamental values she had taught him, and defended his right to political views she did not share. Al became involved in a group called Students for Democratic Affairs in 1963, writing a letter to the Providence Journal advocating that students be allowed to visit Cuba. He argued that students might return finding that Castro was not as bad as they had been told, or they might return as staunch anti-communists. In any event, they would be better off with first hand knowledge instead of repeating sterile clichés composed by people who had never left the state of Rhode Island. On April 14, 1963 he organized an appearance by Hyman Lumer of the Communist Party on the Rhode Island campus. He thought that the communist system was a tremendously important ideology in the world today. The Worker quoted him as stating that if, after eighteen years of being schooled in the American way, two hours of listening to Dr. Lumer could change a student's political views, something would indeed be wrong with our system. Al abandoned physics for sociology as an undergraduate major, and went on to do a doctorate at Columbia University, where he
RE: RE: Bureaucracy
Jim...Under the Soviet system, the ruling stratum was bureaucratic: the leadership of the Communist Party ruled their party in a top-down way, while that Party held a monopoly of political power. (State force was mobilized to suppress or buy off any opposition.) That is, the Party owned the state, which in turn officially owned the means of production and controlled the economy (to the extent that the planning process worked), i.e., they had more control than anyone else did over the process of the production and utilization of surplus-labor and the accumulation of fixed means of production... Whoa there Jim, you're sounding like Max Shactman in, The Bureaucratic Revolution, published 1962, the yr. after the Bay of Pigs invasion 'ol Max S. supported because trade unionists were part of the invasion force. These Revisionist Tendencies Of Yours Must Be Held In Check Or Is That Cheka? Comrade Karl Kautsky aka Pugliese The Renegade Kautsky and his Disciple Lenin ... If we apply to Kautsky and Lenin the opposite treatment to that which they subjected Marx to, if we link their ideas to the class struggle instead of ... http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/barrotk.htm --- Original Message --- From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED] ' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 4/3/02 8:23:04 PM CB:Isn't bureaucracy a Weberian and not Marxist concept ? ... the issue is not whether it's a marxist concept in the sense of whether marx talked about it as much as whether it fits with marx's materialist conception of history. but see, for example, hal draper's book karl marx's theory of revolution (several volumes, monthly review press), especially volume i. marx talked a lot about bureaucracy. for example, in capital, he talks about how bureaucrats (hired managers) were doing more and more of the work that capitalists took credit for doing. btw, marx was quite familiar with a quasi-weberian view of the state bureaucracy, that of hegel. weber marx have different theories of bureaucracy. weber was pro-bureaucracy, seeing hierarchies of this sort as an efficient and rational way of attaining goals. (my late friend al szymanski (sp.?) once embraced this view, arguing for his version of leninism by saying that a top-down (bureaucratic) organization was the most efficient way to organize a revolution. if corporations use hierarchy, why can't we?) draper quotes marx again and again as being anti-bureaucracy (and in favor of democracy, as with the paris commune) or at least as having a more realistic vision of bureaucracy than weber. ...When a giant bureaucracy is mentioned, I get this picture of an enormous collection of people sitting at desks in office buildings. HOWEVER, it is not this bureau-proletariat of secretaries, clerks, mailboys, receptionists, beancounters, etc. that is the cratic, the power in either Russia or the New Deal, or any government. This mass of deskclerks is not the cause of redtape or anti-democratic rule from above, as if they took a vote among the vast bureaucracy to exercise its power on major questions before whatever institution with whatever bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a very misleading concept that is rife in liberal political analysis. the thing about bureaucracy is that the power of any individual rises as you go up the hierarchy (though that power is hardly absolute, since people down below can often block the effectiveness of the organization --that's one of the things that red tape is about). the difference between the top bureaucrats and the petty bureaucrats is a little like the difference between the grand and petty bourgeoisie. (unlike weber, i see a bureaucracy as involving a lot of competition.) usually these days, however, the bureaucracy is only a means to an end: the corporate owners use it to try to attain maximum profits by organizing production, marketing, etc. the state bureaucracy is similarly a tool of the state elite, which under capitalism by and large serves the preservation of the system. getting beyond capitalism, there are lots of cases where the bureaucracy could be seen as a ruling class of some sort. the pharoah couldn't rule ancient egypt without relying on the bureaucracy, so the latter got a lot of the power. in pre-modern china, the bureaucracy was clearly a powerful and self-perpetuating stratum, bringing in only those who could pass the calligraphy test (and the like) to run the show. in pre-revolutionary (and in many ways, pre-capitalist) russia, the upper bureaucrats had noble titles and quite a bit of power, often combining feudal power with a piece of state power. under the soviet system, the ruling stratum was bureaucratic: the leadership of the communist party ruled their party in a top-down way, while that party held a monopoly of political power. (state force was mobilized to suppress or buy off any opposition.) that is, the party owned the state, which in turn officially owned the means of production and controlled
Fw: ISRAEL'S NEW ECONOMY AND THE INTIFADA
Received: 4/2/02 1:03:53 PM From: nd [EMAIL PROTECTED] Add to People Section To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Subject: A MUST READ: ISRAEL'S NEW ECONOMY AND THE INTIFADA MIME Ver: 1.0 Attachments: ISRAEL'S NEW ECONOMY AND THE INTIFADA: A note on the boycott campaign. by Naxos This article is Copyleft [see below] December 2001. At one end of London's Oxford Street the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has mounted a picket on Selfridge's department store, to persuade the management to stop selling produce from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. A similar campaign has been organised [March 2002] by Ya Basta in Italy (http://www.yabasta.it). In this article I take these actions as the starting point for a discussion of the radical transformations that have taken place in the Israeli economy during the past decade, and Israel's very specific location within the global knowledge economy. To Summarise: I would argue that Israeli capitalism of today offers a precious microcosmic possibility for the study of immaterial labour in action. It is also crucial that we understand this economy, because in a real world war sense our futures depend on what is happening here. In recent years the Israeli economy has undergone fundamental changes. An entirely new class composition was created by the ex-Soviet migrations of the 1990s. Markets for traditional Israeli produce became more restricted. The Internet created the conditions for transnational exports of high-value immaterial labour (knowledge) products to replace previous low-value products with high transit costs. And the nature of the new knowledge economies opened new interstitial possibilities for insertion. A new and technically skilled workforce proves capable of creating the flows of innovation that are the precondition for the survival of the large capitalist firms of this and the preceding era (head-hunting of promising new start-ups). Among other things, Israeli companies are particularly well-suited to meet the new demand for biomedical products. They also have a powerhouse of RD represented by the Israeli Defence Force's high-tech academies. And they have a guaranteed point of entry into the US military-industrial complex by virtue of lines of communication between Silicon Valley and the Silicon Wadi of Northern Israel. More than this, Israel also exports models of behaviour ñ biopower ñ in the form of knowledges of how to limit, constrain and eventually crush dissident behaviours. This is marketed as methods for defeating terrorism, but is in fact a set of methods for the creation and freezing of an adversarial other. I shall deal with each of these aspects in turn. In passing I would say that this conjunctural shift in the Israeli economy, this radical change in the composition of both class and capital in Israel, have been the necessary precondition for ñ and partial explanation of ñ the Israelis' radical break with the Palestinian labour-power which had served previous phases of production (notable in agriculture and construction). Put briefly, the inflow of Soviet (Russian) Jews made possible the break with Palestinian labour power. And simultaneously the Soviet Jews have turned out to be the electoral bedrock of the Israeli government's final solution for the Palestinians. Thus the political and economic precondition for Israelís radical break with Palestinian labour-power was the shift from traditional forms of agriculture and manufacture into the arena of immaterial labour which took place in the 1990s. But more than that, I would argue that the Israelis' war with the Palestinians operates as a factory of immaterial labour export possibilities. This war is, in a real sense, productive for the Israeli economy. Calls for boycotts of Israeli produce are symbolically significant and completely worthwhile. A necessary element of ethical hygiene. They should be supported. But the way in which the campaign is framed is simple-minded to the point of naivety. We are not talking a few packets of pretzels, a crate of Jaffa oranges and a face-pack of cosmetics. Two things need to be said. First, Israel's new immaterial economy and its immaterial-labour products are organically integrated into the very highest levels of the globalised high-tech communications, military and security economy. Second, and perhaps more importantly it appears that the trade-mark Israeli model of suppression of opponents has been exported and projected onto the world stage, to become the dominant paradigm of US foreign policy. The characteristics of this model are (a) radical negation of the Other (for several decades, in Israeli discourse the Palestinians have always and only been the terrorists; (b) Preventive security strikes, extending increasingly to assassination; (c) micro-level capillary monitoring of populations at
RE: Re: Re: Re: Nader
fROM A WEBPG. ON aLAN bRINKLEY Michael Pugliese ...The End of Reform discusses the erosion of the New Deal after the 1937 recession and the experience of World War II. Brinkley notes how FDR, a consummate pragmatist, had held no design for recovery but rather relied on bold experimentalism to carry the day. Under this rubric of experimentalism, many different ideologies got their time in the sun, including budget-balancers, New Freedom decentralization, New Nationalist federalism, and Hoover-style associationalism. When the 1937 recession hit, destroying what little recovery had occurred since the Great Slump, FDR finally began to rely on what we now consider the New Deal's prime legacy - Keynesian fiscal spending. This emphasis on pump-priming [a.k.a. throwing money at problems, with no underlying civic mission] was set in stone by the financial necessities of the war effort. By the time the dust had settled in 1945, all other strands of progressivism had been discarded and forgotten, leaving only the convenient yet strangely disempowering monolith of postwar liberalism on the political landscape. Step by unfolding step, Brinkley relates the men of various philosophies who crafted the New Deal, and how they all ultimately came to embrace the tenets of the liberalism now floundering in our nation's capital. --- Original Message --- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/31/02 9:07:49 AM There were two lines in the New Deal. The corporatists were not dominant at first -- the Thurman Arnold, trust-busting line, was. The idea was that corporate power caused the Depression by keeping prices high and curtailing output. On Sun, Mar 31, 2002 at 02:29:55PM +, Justin Schwartz wrote: Actually the old New Deal (pre 1937) was opposed to competition and very much in favor of corporativist planning. The New Dealers were very impressed by the successes of the WWI War economy and the apparant successes of the USSR in those days in avoiding the ravages of the Great Depression, and if you read the histories of the period, they utterly rejected the invisible -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re:: Nader
hese search terms have been highlighted: alan brinkley new deal fdr Copyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. This work may be used, with this header included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without express written permission from the JHU Press. Reviews in American History 23.4 (1995) 710-715 FROM NEW DEAL TO NEW LIBERALISM William R. Brock Alan Brinkley. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. New York: Knopf, 1995. x 271 pp. Archival sources, notes, and index. $27.50. This is an important addition to New Deal historiography, but, as with many other academic monographs, the subtitle tells more than the title. The book's primary purpose is not to examine the end of reform but to explain how and why American liberalism was transformed. In that it brings together much that is already known and advances no startling new interpretations, it can be described as a synthesis; but it is synthesis of a high order. No other book covers the ground with such mastery and at numerous points a new insight or citation illuminates what has hitherto been obscure. Seventy-two archival sources and eighty-one pages of notes (several of them condensed historiographical essays) demonstrate the width and depth of his learning. Even more telling is the good judgment with which the material is handled. The New Deal gave birth to a new species of liberalism. In Roosevelt's words, quoted by Brinkley, its leading characteristic was a changed concept of the duty and responsibility of government toward economic life. Progressive moralism slipped into the background, city bosses were flattered rather than challenged, all forms of populism were distrusted as antiintellectual and irrational, racial questions were avoided, gender was not yet an issue, and so far as the New Dealers were concerned anyone could imbibe as much alcohol as they wished. What the New Deal liberals did have in overflowing measure was intellectual energy harnessed to the conviction that society could be reconstructed on just, rational, and efficient lines, and that the intelligent use of political power would make general welfare more than an empty phrase. To these liberals of the New Deal everything seemed possible after the election of 1936; then came recession to show that it was not. Worse followed with the ill- fated attempt to reform the Supreme Court, the loss of the Executive Reorganization Bill, and the resurgence of conservative and frequently virulent opposition. In the next five years appropriations for the Works Progress Administration were cut and cut again until it expired, other New Deal innovations were dropped or rendered ineffective, and the National Resources Planning Board -- repository for so many liberal hopes -- was [End Page 710] killed. During the war industrialists won praise but mismanagement in the wartime agencies discredited government direction of the economy. Faced by these setbacks and operating in a cold climate liberals so modified their own attitudes and aims that Brinkley can write with authority of a new liberalism emerging during the years of disillusion and war, and maintain that it rather than the New Deal was the parent of liberalism as it is known today. The new liberalism was less adventurous than the old and not merely because intellects grew weary. In the heady days of the early New Deal, liberals had assumed that capitalism would remain but could be transformed; new liberals recognized that in all essentials it would remain the same. Despite a few attempts at resuscitation the ideas that had inspired the NRA were dead. Big business might still be unpopular, but political antimonopoly faded away. Facing a future in which corporate power would survive and probably grow stronger, liberals shifted their emphasis from regulation to fiscal management, from disciplining producers to protecting consumers, from emergency measures of relief to a permanent and expanding welfare system. They dropped the idea that the economy was mature and looked for growth, putting profits into private pockets with the proviso that it must also provide full employment. Victory of a sort came with Truman's triumph in 1948 but the Fair Deal was separated by an intellectual gulf from the New Deal. Brinkley's introduction and epilogue provide a stimulating overview of this decisive stage in the history of American liberalism. The ten chapters that make up the body of the book provide massive substance to support his generalizations, but close argument and much detail should not deter readers. His style is fluent, lucid, readable, and devoid of pretentious jargon. Also the text is enlivened by perceptive pen portraits of leading personalties. It is for the most part an insiders' story. The greatest insider, FDR himself, is a
Nader, when he was a Libertarian (The Freeman, 1962)
From The FreemanOCTOBER 1962 Quotes about the magazine Order Form Back-issues January 2000 February 2000 March 2000 April 2000 May 2000 June 2000 July 2000 August 2000 Search this site: How Winstedites Kept Their Integrity by Ralph Nader OPPOSE a public housing project! You might just as well come out against Mother and Social Security. In the face of this typical defeatist attitude, the rejection of a federal housing project in three successive referendums in Winsted, Connecticut, is of more than local significance. The issue first arose in this New England mill town of 10,000 people in December 1957 when the local housing authority brought before a Town Meeting a proposal for fifty federal housing units. Despite public apathy, the proposal was defeated by the tiny vote of 20 to 16. However, it was re-submitted the following month and approved by a voice vote. The townspeople seemed largely unconcerned through the next two years of preliminary preparations for construction. But in January 1960, a young housewife's letter in the local paper questioned the whole idea of public housing, pointed to some of the likely injurious consequences, and berated citizens for letting it be imposed upon them by default. In short order, 550 signatures were secured petitioning for a referendum on the project; and when the vote was counted in April 1960, after the largest referendum turnout in recent history, the project had been rejected two to one. By then, however, the local housing authority had spent some $20,000 of federal disbursements; and housing proponents petitioned for another referendum, which was held in August 1960. The vote, even heavier than that of April, again spelled a resounding rejection. The next move came when the federal Public Housing Authority called a meeting of selectmen and local housing officials to offer what it called a redirected program. The earlier proposal had involved 40 low-rent units and 10 units for the elderly. The new alternative was to reverse that ratio. And in some unexplained way, the adoption of the redirected program would also absorb the $20,000 otherwise to be billed against the town. Their concern for the elderly prompted the selectmen to call for a new referendum. On April 28, 1962, aroused but weary voters rejected the program for the third time--a most remarkable showing of integrity in the face of formidable pressure. Enabling Legislation In Connecticut, the state enabling act for the creation of local housing authorities by municipalities sets the official tone. The statute declares that a serious slum condition exists, unrelieved through private enterprise. This supposedly justifies the use of tax- collected funds to provide housing accommodations. As in other states, local housing authorities are given autonomous status which shields them from both the town governing body and the voters and thus fails to encourage responsible action. The statute is so drawn that the members of the housing authority, who serve without pay (which can be very costly), may delegate all powers and duties to the executive director. This had been done in Winsted. The statute does not require that local housing authorities make any housing surveys or other studies before proposing public housing. When the law itself encourages rather than safeguards against abuse and bureaucratic dominance, freewheeling and irresponsible projects are likely to result. Unrestrained by legal standards and used to public apathy, housing officials at federal, state, and local levels are prone to assume that they need only decree a project to have it carried out. Under the U.S. housing law, the local authority is permitted the use of federal funds to acquaint the public with any housing proposal. Prior to each of the first two Winsted referendums, the authority drew upon federal funds for newspaper advertisements in behalf of its program, for progress, growth, and sympathy for one's less fortunate neighbors. Need for Information A group of citizens, sought to break the authority's monopoly of significant facts, requesting the selectmen to send the authority a list of questions concerning costs, consequences to the Town, and the alleged need for the project. But, secure in its autonomy, the authority rejected brusquely this bid for public information. Such agencies can maintain their secrecy with near impunity, since resort to the courts is expensive and time-consuming and seldom satisfactory, anyway, in suits against housing authorities. To rely on the popular vote is not an entirely satisfactory alternative. A majority decision may be unjust, though democratic, and the rights of a minority may be violated. Moreover, the right to vote is impaired in substance when there is not access to information upon which to base judgment. Nevertheless, the referendum appears to be the only
Martin J. Sklar on Progressivism and Corporate Liberalism
http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~shgape/sklar2.html
A20 Anti-War March Endorsers
http://www.a20stopthewar.org/endorse.php
RE: growin' gunstocks W-stylee
General Electric has a plant in Pennsylvania working 24/7 to replenish the supply of bombs to use in Iraq in 6 months... M.P. --- Original Message --- From: Forstater, Mathew [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/25/02 9:31:12 AM true solicitation received recently. don't even know where to begin with this one! - Friends, acquaintances, economists, investors: Are you interested in investing a bit of your assets or pension funds in defense (Raytheon, Northrup, etc.) or corporate/airport security (Wackenhut, etc.) companies? If so, let me know with a positive reply. I'll be making some recommendations based on research that I'll be using for my personal investing. Bush is clearly going to be spending so much readying the armed forces to threaten and then go to war with Iraq, and anyone else who dares standup to the American Economic Globalization Empire (China?), that even tiny defense sub-constractors will soon be rolling in dough. Esp. those firms run by his friends and Cheney's friends in Texas, and in states where he needs to keep joblessness low to win re-election (as he did for PA recently). Even the US Marines will be spending more money for advanced ship to beach landing craft. Maybe they will actually come ashore in the Tigris-Euphrates delta marshes at Basra this time, instead of just faking it like they did in the Gulf War. Remember, only a reply saying Guns Yes will keep you on this list after this first notice. Otherwise, no more on this topic will be sent to you.
Israeli Lobby
http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/5/massing-m.html
FW: AUT: Chinese workers make their bosses 'redundant'
--- Original Message --- From: Margaret [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/23/02 1:01:25 PM Times OnlineWorld News March 19, 2002 Sacked Chinese murder their bosses From Oliver August in Xianning WORKERS in China^s industrial heartland have started killing their bosses in protest at mass redundancies. In three recent, gruesome cases, managers at neighbouring state-owned factories were murdered in disputes with their employees. Sources say that labour-related killings have become widespread as reform programmes try to shift millions of workers into the private sector. Among the worst affected areas is Hubei province in central China, once the cradle of Maoist heavy industry but now weighed down with thousands of dead-end factories. In Xianning, a town 100 miles south of the Yangtse River, unemployed workers play cards at a decrepit chemical fibre factory while discussing its impending bankruptcy. They seem to accept the murder of their boss by Xu Yudong, a sacked colleague, as an almost normal by-product of Government restructuring. Many of Xianning^s residents share the frustrations of Xu, a 28-year-old worker who was laid off last October. The manager of the fibre plant, Wang Shihua, offered him a redundancy package worth 350 after eight years of employment. Xu is said to have protested: ^The severance pay is too little. It^s not even enough to start a small business. What am I going to do when I get old?^ The manager agreed to increase the package to 500 but Xu was still dissatisfied. When he began work at the plant in 1993, the Communist Party was promising lifetime employment. Now, the Communists wanted to throw him out with little hope of a new job. Xu returned to Mr Wang^s office on October 31 to negotiate again but this time he was armed with a fruit knife. Mr Wang rejected his renewed demands and an enraged Xu pulled out his knife and stabbed him in the lower abdomen. Mr Wang died in hospital the same day. Xu was sentenced to death three weeks later and executed in January. In the street outside the factory, grimy children play a game called Kill the Boss in which they re-enact the manager^s death, pretending to stab and throttle each other. A worker called Xiang said that people had become used to eating from the ^iron rice bowl^, the Chinese expression for a state-allocated job, guaranteed for life. ^They don^t know anything else, so when that^s taken away all of a sudden, they don^t know what to do with themselves,^ he said. Mr Wang^s murder is one of three at Hubei^s state-owned enterprises in less than six months. In Huanggang, two hours^ drive north of Xianning, the 19-year-old son of a man laid off from Huanggang Aluminium Group killed the general manager who had sacked 10 per cent of the workforce. Even the Xinhua state news agency, which usually plays down such incidents, reported that the son was enraged at his father^s redundancy and by the wealth of the general manager, an allusion to corrupt practices. The agency also reported the killing of the deputy manager of a subsidiary of Xiangfan Xiangyang Resources as he was closing the insolvent company. He, too, was the victim of a sacked worker. Beijing has admitted that unemployment is one of its biggest problems. Although the official total is seven million, the real figure may be more than 100 million. Times Newspapers Ltd. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Bill Blum autobiography
Received: 3/16/02 7:25:01 AM From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Add to People Section To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Subject: Book announcement MIME Ver: 1.0 Attachments: Book Announcement West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Political Memoir (Soft Skull Press, New York, March 2002, cover price $15) by William Blum Author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower.* So who's William Blum and why should you read his memoir? Does he care abou t YOUR life? Well, he might if you wrote about it and made it as funny and as thought provoking (so he says) as he has about his life. He explores how he became, and what it felt like to be, a radical dissident, the proverbial outsider, in America in the 1960s, the 70s, and up to the present day, probing the aesthetics of a revolutionary who looks for beauty in the social arrangement as others look for it in art. As someone who spent four years with IBM and more than two years with th e Department of State, and then -- when the speeding locomotive of the Vietnam War and the Sixties roared headlong into his life and beliefs -- immersed himself in the anti-war and other leftist and counter-cultural movements, Blum was particularly well situated to perceive people, events, and ideology in both the bourgeois and alternative societies and arrive at non-knee-reflex judgements. Though serious in subject and purpose, the book nonetheless displays the author's vintage New York City sense of humor, with all the wit, satire and sarcasm the world associates with the Big Apple. No one is spared, least of all Blum's comrades in the movement. An important thread running through the book is the acute, non-negotiabl e tension existing between individuals like Blum and the National Security State that America has been for more than half a century now. The author takes on the CIA, FBI, State Department, the police, et al. He is, in turn, bedeviled by informers set upon him by the government. We read of how the authorities labored to wreck the underground press, with which Blum was intimately associated; also how the author wound up living with the leading bomber of the 1970s and his girlfriend who played a key role in the Patti Hearst kidnapping saga, a set of circumstances which gave rise to much irony and absurdity. A chapter on Blum's stay in Chile under Salvador Allende before his CIA-organized overthrow (of Allende, not Blum) is a particularly important slice of history. There is also Blum's experience in Los Angeles, working with Oliver Ston e to make a documentary film based on one of Blum's books on U.S. foreign policy. The film was stillborn, but the tale is replete with the well-known charms and idealism of Hollywood that America has come to know and love. Not least, West-Bloc Dissident is a desperately needed relief and antidote to the noxious fumes of patriotism that are choking American societ y today. Here is how the book begins: The fourth day of August, 1969, 7:30 of a warm, clear Monday morning, Route 123, Langley, Virginia. Before the week is out, the sociopathic followers of Charles Manson will carry out their gruesome murders. Strangel y enough, though what I'm about to do is completely non-violent, many American s would regard it with equal abhorrence. The web page for the book has not been set up yet, so here's what you need t o know if you'd like to buy a copy. Specify to whom I should inscribe the book. Send check or international money order in US dollars to: William Blum 5100 Connecticut Ave., NW #707 Washington, DC 20008-2064 United States: book mail (about a week) $13 United States: priority mail (about 2 days) $15 Canada: airmail (about a week) $15 Canada: priority mail (2 or 3 days) $18 Western Europe: priority mail (3-4 days) $20 Italy: (no priority mail); airmail (more than a week) $19 Australia/New Zealand: priority mail (4-5 days) $20 * Portions of these two books can be read at: http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm (with a link to Killing Hope)
Islam and Tolerance
Via, http://www.bostonreview.mit.edu Michael Pugliese A Conservative Legacy A Response toThe Place of Tolerance in Islam Sohail H. Hashmi have long been intrigued by an exchange between Abraham and God that comes early in the Qur'an: Behold! Abraham said: 'My lord! Show me how you give life to the dead.' [God] said: 'Do you not then have faith?' He said: 'Yes, but [I ask this] to satisfy my heart.' [God] replied: 'Take then four birds and teach them to incline toward [or obey] you. Then place a part of them on every hill around you, and then summon them. They will come flying to you. And know that God is almighty, wise'(2:260). This verse follows several others and precedes many more in which Abraham is depicted as steadfast in his private faith and his public preaching so much so that he is called khalil Allah (the friend of God) based on Q. 4:125. Why would the Qur'an even allude, I have wondered, to the possibility that this great prophet of God would harbor any doubts about God's power? Could it be that through this dialogue the Qur'an is intimating that skepticism and open questioning are intrinsic aspects of faith? To me, this verse is one of the most powerful commandments for tolerance contained in the Qur'an, for if God can answer a prophet's troubled heart with such compassionate understanding, how much more likely is He to understand the doubts of ordinary humans? And if God understands, then how much more incumbent is it upon us human beings to do the same? The Qur'an is a deep well from which Muslims may draw plentiful supplies of tolerance, pluralism, respect for diversityeven doubt. Khaled Abou El Fadl outlines these resources well in his thoughtful essay. I agree with him that such resources have been misappropriated by Muslim puritans and extremists. But his argument for misappropriation fails to account for the more widespread exclusivity and intolerance that we encounter in the Islamic intellectual heritage. Narrow and illiberal readings of the Qur'an are not exclusively the province of fringe elements. If that were so, the task of constructing liberal and tolerant societies among Muslim populations would be immeasurably easier. If contemporary Muslims are to realize the full blessings of the Qur'an's spirit, as Abou El Fadl urges, they must face up to the full burden of their political and intellectual history. I want to be clear about my argument: I am not suggesting that Islamic history is one of intolerance. The historical record is clear that Islamic societies of the pre-modern period were generally as accommodating of diversity and religious freedom as their contemporaries in other parts of the world, and in many instances more so. The same cannot be said of modern Islamic states and societies, which lag far behind international standards of equality, democracy, and human rights. My point is that whether we are discussing tolerance, diversity, and freedom in pre-modern or modern Islamic societies, Muslims have generally fallen far short of qur'anic standards. And some of the responsibility for this failure in practice must be ascribed to the limitations in the interpretation of the Qur'an itself. To return to Q. 2:260, for example: The most influential commentators have gone to great lengths to eliminate the faintest hint of doubt from Abraham's plea to God. Most classical and modern exegetes agree with al-Qurtubi (d. 1273) that Abraham's request does not signify doubt at all, only the desire to rise from the knowledge of certainty ['ilm al-yaqin] to the reality of certainty ['ayn al-yaqin].1 Underlying this exegetical activity is the orthodox dogma that prophets are protected from error and doubt. This principle has to be maintained even if it requires glossing over God's direct question to Abraham, Do you not then have faith? If God were to give Abraham the reality of certainty, then Abraham would no longer require faith. Moreover, we ordinary humans cannot likewise petition God for proof to solidify our faith. The Qur'an repeatedly points to the complexities and ambiguities of faith. It stresses throughout the narrow line separating righteousness from self-righteousness, and admonishes believers to be humble in the knowledge that no person nor even any creed can claim to have the full truth. Yet repeatedly, the tradition of qur'anic exegesis strains to prove the opposite. Let us consider how two qur'anic verses cited by Abou El Fadl have been treated over the long history of exegesis. First, Q. 2:62: Those who believe, and the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabiansany who believe in God and the Last Day, and act righteously shall have their reward with their Lord. On them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. The verse seems clearly to be extending God's salvation to all humans who profess faith and do good deeds. Nevertheless, the majority of classical commentators found ways to limit its promise. One method was to argue for what Jane McAuliffe calls salvific
RE: Steelworkers, California Nurses Launch New Union to Boost Organizing
Hey, the Reds I like as friends and comrades are mostly Trotskyists. You like the friends of Uncle Joe. Stop calling me a race baitin', red-baitin' and I'll stop calling you a Stalinist. I hear, in person you are warm and friendly, to comrades you've known to decades, aND KNOW TO BE SOLID RADICALS, YET YOU CALL THEM ANTI-COMMUNISTS! Michael, The Warm, not the war-mongerer...;-) --- Original Message --- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/24/02 10:54:57 AM Steelworkers, California Nurses Launch New Union to Boost Organizing by michael pugliese 22 March 2002 23:39 UTC Charles: It's your compulsive recitation of people's red backgrounds that makes you look like a creep. Hey , maybe you aren't a creep and you just like to show off all this stuff you know. But it's a bit weird to go around announcing everybody's left pedigree so much, or at all, e.g. see what you say below. ^^^ I've known Giulana Milanese, an organizer for the CNA (met her after she left the CPUSA for the CofC/CCDS) for over a decade. Great organizer, wonderful person. Warm, smart, savvy. And she's never said I was a red-baiter. Hmm., wonder why? Plus, she works well with Michael Lighty, from DSA, another CNA staffer. As does Carl Bloice, from the CCDS, formerly in the CPUSA. Michael Pugliese
RE: Steelworkers, California Nurses Launch New Union to Boost Organizing
I've known Giulana Milanese, an organizer for the CNA (met her after she left the CPUSA for the CofC/CCDS) for over a decade. Great organizer, wonderful person. Warm, smart, savvy. And she's never said I was a red-baiter. Hmm., wonder why? Plus, she works well with Michael Lighty, from DSA, another CNA staffer. As does Carl Bloice, from the CCDS, formerly in the CPUSA. Michael Pugliese --- Original Message --- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/20/02 1:38:11 PM Steelworkers, California Nurses Launch New Union to Boost Organizing Nationwide http://www.bna.com/ SACRAMENTO, Calif.--The California Nurses Association and the United Steelworkers are launching a new union to organize health care workers across the United States, leaders of the two organizations told BNA March 11. The union will work to organize nurses and other health care workers, mainly in states where the Steelworkers union already has a strong presence, USW President Leo Gerard said. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Illinois, and northern Indiana are likely targets of the organizing efforts. The new organization does not yet have a name, but will be a separate union with links to both CNA and USW, Gerard and CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro said. The launch of the new union expands an alliance that CNA and USW formed one year ago, which has provided a structure for them to work together to organize health care workers. Under the alliance, CNA organizes registered nurses and USW organizes ancillary health care and service workers (15 LRW 307, 3/15/01). Few health care workers in the Midwest and steel-producing states are represented by unions, Gerard said. Many of those workers come from families that have worked in the steel industry. There is not a lot of health organizing going on there, he said. Gerard, in Sacramento to speak to 350 nurses attending a CNA conference, told BNA that USW and CNA signed the addendum to their alliance agreement March 11, signaling the beginning of the launch. In the year that the alliance has been in place, CNA negotiated a contract for 125 nurses at a hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area that gives the nurses retirement benefits under the USW pension trust (15 LRW 924, 8/2/01). CNA will be seeking the same pension benefits in upcoming contract negotiations this year on behalf of 20,000 nurses who work at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., Sutter Health, or Catholic Healthcare West, DeMoro said.
RE: Re: Economists beware!
...some men rob you with a six gun...others with a fountain pen... Woody Guthrie on bankers. --- Original Message --- From: Charles Jannuzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/20/02 9:09:19 PM Italian guerilla group blamed for economist's murder I condemn this brutal and senseless act of violence. Where are the investment bankers? Well, they are busy either helping to run the government or the businesses that will further enrich Berlusconi. Like with the Bushes, it's hard to tell the difference. Reminds me of a Housemartins' song: Paupers will be paupers Bankers will be bankers Some save money in a jar Some own oil tankers Don't shoot someone tomorrow That you can shoot today A bit too incendiary, apparently, for the major label CD retrospective, but it was one of their catchiest songs. Given that the real dangers to Italian democracy constantly come from the right, the story is prime for a conspiracy theory. Again, Berlusconi benefits most from the guy's death. Now this one story I'd actually like to hear what Antonio Negri has to say. Charles Jannuzi
FW: Re: AUT: Re: Berlusconi Government Aide Murdered in Italy
--- Original Message --- From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Nestor=20McNab?= [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/21/02 1:36:14 AM There is a very good possibility that it is. I enclose the press release of the COBAS Confederation (Italian base unions) which makes interesting reading. In solidarity, nestor --- cwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does anyone else feel that this might actually be another of the Italian governments 'sacrifice fly balls' to start a scare? This kind of stuff is very convenient at times when a crackdown looks to be in order. Chris Italian government aide murdered PRESS RELEASE Preceded by a bomb near the Ministry for Internal Affairs with TV cameras which saw nothing, pre-announced by a secret service report which claimed that government advisers were in the sights of terrorists, there arrives, as punctual as clockwork, the murder of Professor [Marco] Biagi, who (by yet another curious coincidence) had his armed escort in Bologna removed on 1st January last. This exemplary action in its cold-blooded rituality of death is a chilling message to the entire labour movement, to all those who have taken to the streets to demonstrate against the policies of social restoration on the part of the centre-right government, those who are building the mobilization towards the general strike. It is an explicit invitation to stay at home... As the government starts to topple under the weight of social conflict the bombs and murders start - once more the strategy of provocation and/or tension rears its head. Whoever they may be, the murder is manna from heaven for the Berluskoni government and Confindustria [the Employers' Federation] who have already started a reactionary backlash against the legitimate demands of the workers and the movement of struggle and have announced police and judicial reprisals against the social opposition. The murder of Professor Biagi is intended to spread fear among the workers and throughout the country. The Cobas [Base unions] will not allow themselves to be intimidated. We believe that we must double our efforts in the struggle until such a time as the government retracts the changes to Article 18 and Maroni's White Book, to pensions, severance pay, education and tax. In the face of so much hesitation and withdrawals among the ranks of the mainstream unions, Cobas also believes that it is indispensable to go ahead with the General Strike of all workers at some point during the month of April (the 19th being the most probable date at the moment), a strike which needs to be reinforced through a national demonstration in Rome. For the COBAS CONFEDERATION Pino Giampietro [trans. NMcN for A-Infos] = In solidarity, Nestor http://www.geocities.com/nestor_mcnab/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
China Labour Bulletin on Oil Workers
http://www.iso.china-labour.org.hk/iso/article.adp?article_id=2059
RE: Moving it offlist
I apologize for the characterization of Comrade Kliman, who emerges out of a tradition I admire. But, YUP, as Doug said the other day, pen-l isn't the place for humor, mockery or saracasm, self-deprecation, immolation lest that Old Mole of Criticism Inflame those damn Carbuncles in the marxian Whiskers. I'll take Chaz'es implication that I'm a racist in stride, after all if he calls Justin an anti-communist,(someone who spent a number of years in the New Democratic Movement, which was the post-party formation of the maoist Communist Workers Party (who gave their lives in Greensboro, N.C. in 1980. One of the five had been a member previously in the organization I belonged to in the 80's, the new leftish New American Movement that got swallowed up by DSOC to create DSA, much ado about nothing in retrospect ;-( )end of that parethesis!]~ he'll call Trotsky an anti-communist, I guess! Anyway, keep on arguing y'all, nothing this Fascist Insect That Preys On the Life of the People... --- Original Message --- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/15/02 7:28:43 AM Moving it offlist I say this not in a retort , but as political criticism. It is important that the left retain or revive criticism of redbaiting. Anti-communism and redbaiting are as politically reprehensible as sexism, racism, anti-Semitism and the rest. We have to start calling out redbaiting the way we call out male supremacy. Somehow nowadays the left does not direct as much political critcism at redbaiting. Of course, we are not in a period of repression of communists, as in the Palmer raids or McCarthyism , so this is not exactly exposing communists to the same dangers of old, although there can be harmful consequences of the same still. And anyway, I think Andrew has in the past ( I recall specifically from LBO-Talk) been open with his political affiliation. I recall on LBO, in criticizing one of my posts, Andrew echoed a criticism of Angela Davis made by a former autoworker leader of the Marxist-Humanist tradition. ( So, once again Michael Pugliese presumes to tell me something! I already know. As he does this so much, it starts to become a species of paternalism ; assuming M. Pugliese is white, it seems like white paternalism). Nonetheless, his post seems to evince historical forgetfulness of the fundamental left antagonism to redbaiting. Of course, the old saying was cratch a redbaiter and find a race-hater. Comrade Brown I thought that the message that I received was sent to me off list. Obviously, such a personal characterization of any member obnoxious has no business here. That can start a stupid flame war. On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 02:03:07PM -0800, Michael Perelman wrote: I am sure that he still is. On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 10:46:58AM -0800, michael pugliese wrote: While you have Andrew send e-mail addy to you Chaz, ask the obnoxious comrade if he is still a member of News Letters. You too should have a good dialogue in state capitalism in ther fSU and Raya Dunayevskaya on Hegel. Michael, the obnoxious, Pugliese
RE: Moving it offlist
While you have Andrew send e-mail addy to you Chaz, ask the obnoxious comrade if he is still a member of News Letters. You too should have a good dialogue in state capitalism in ther fSU and Raya Dunayevskaya on Hegel. Michael, the obnoxious, Pugliese News and Letters ... Tahmeena Faryal of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. Her speach, in New York on Oct. 30, was sponsored by News and Letters Committees. ... Description: US Marxist-Humanist journal founded in 1955 by Raya Dunayevskaya (1910-1987). Current issues carry... Category: Society Politics Socialism Marxism Theorists Dunayevskaya, Raya http://www.newsandletters.org/ --- Original Message --- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/14/02 8:53:33 AM Andrew, Could you send me your email address ? Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FW: (SCPEL) U.C. Billions in Reserve
--- Original Message --- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: SCPEL [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/11/02 11:47:49 AM = Santa Cruz Progressive Email List (SCPEL) = - Message begins - Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 12th, there will be two *special* presentations by respected economist Dr. Peter Donohue, Ph.D on UC's budget. The Coalition of University Employees (CUE), the union that represents UC clericals across the state, his hosting Dr. Donohue, who has been researching UC's finances for the past year and found that UC has billions of dollars in unrestricted reserves it could use to fund better salary increases. CUE is in bargaining with UC right now and UC is offering a 1% cost of living increase for 2001-2002. This is a great opportunity to learn more about CUE's assertions that UC has accrued billions of dollars in surplus funds over the last decade and that there's plenty of money to give clericals and other workers a decent wage increase. Please check out http://www.cuesantacruz.org/Donohue.htm to get more info about Dr. Donohue, to download a flyer and read the press release! There will be TWO meetings on March 12th: Main UCSC Campus: Noon-1:00pm at the Kresge Seminar Room (room 159 at Kresge College). Downtown Santa Cruz: 5:30pm-7:00pm in room 232 at the University Town Center Please forward this email to all you think might be interested! Questions? Contact CUE organizer Leslie, 420-0258 _ Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com - Message ends - = Was your message not posted? Visit: http://members.cruzio.com/~spitzer/scpel.html#criteria Submit messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, send a blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, see below. = ==^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?ausWeS.a26nIH Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED TO FREE TURKISH JOURNALIST
Received: 3/10/02 4:21:46 PM From: ILPS Information Bureau [EMAIL PROTECTED] Add to People Section To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Subject: INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED TO FREE TURKISH JOURNALIST MIME Ver: 1.0 Attachments: 8/3/2002 For immediate release INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED TO FREE TURKISH JOURNALIST An international campaign has been launched calling for the release of the Memik Horuz managing editor of a Turkish newspaper Ozgur Gelecek (Free Future).His is one of the worst cases of victimisation of a journalist in Turkey where the government is currently using the country's Penal Code and Anti-terrorist law to conduct a massive clampdown on media freedoms. Memik Horuz, held in Sincan prison in Ankara, has been detained since 18 June 2001. He was arrested in Cemberlitas, Istabul by the Turkish state security forces and charged with interviewing a guerrilla leader. This charge was subsequently dropped but he is now charged with belonging to a banned organisation. His case will now come before the courts on 18 March. He has been subjected to sleep deprivation and is kept blindfold much of the time. Memik Horuz is married, the father of two children. He has worked for Ozgur Gelecek since 1993 and is one of many left journalists in Turkey to suffer frequent harassment and intimidation. He spent several years in prison in the1980s. On 2 April last year, before his latest arrest, he was detained, strip-searched and interrogated at the Istanbul security headquarters when he went to apply for a passport. The world-wide campaign for the release of Memik Horuz is being mounted jointly by the International League of People's Struggle (ILPS), the international organisation of which he is deputy chairperson, Peoples Right Watch-Belgium (PRW) and International Association of Peoples Lawyers (IAPL). It is co-ordinated from Brussels. The campaign has organised a special delegation of foreign observers to attend the court hearing on 18 March. Supporters meetings are being held in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France, UK, India, the Philippines, the US, ... Petitions demanding the release of Memik Horuz are being sent to the Turkish Interior Ministry and Justice Ministry. A spokesperson for the campaign.said 'The throwing out of the charges against Noam Chomsky's Turkish publisher last month shows that the Turkish government is sensitive to international attention. We want to make sure that it does not get away with persecuting Memik Horuz or any other journalist in Turkey trying to do their job. A press conference is being held at : Date: 11 March Time: 11.OO am Place: 'Greenwich café'- Rue des Chartreux 5, 1000 Brussel Tel: 02/5114167 Ends Memik Horuz' lawyer is Filiz Kalayci, Address: Ilkiz Sk. No 26/12 Sihhye, ANKARA. Tel/fax +90 312 229 0946. Mobile +90 532 672 6684. For further information: Dr. Anne Van Mackelenbergh (Campaign Coordinator), People's Rights Watch Belgium, Broederminstraat 42, 2018 Antwerp, Belgium Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 0032-486-219017 International Campaign to Free Memik Horuz c/o ILPS, Postbus 1452, 3500 BL Utrecht, The Netherlands Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ilps2001.com/edp/memik to be removed from mail list click here
Re: Steel Tariffs
http://www.cpusa.org http://www.pww.org According to the People's Weekly World, 30,000 USW members demonstrated in Washington, D.C. to pressure the Bush admin. M.P.
RE: RE: God
See Jeffrey Russell Burton's 5 vols. on the Devil from Cornell U. Press. And, yup, I can't imagine say, Hans Kung or Jurgen Moltmann, say believing in that guy with horns and pitchfork. BTW, Proctor Gamble has for yrs. been, 'er, bedeviled, with allegations over the yrs. by Xtian fundies that they are ruled by satan! Michael Pugliese--- Original Message --- From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED] ' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2/26/02 7:02:50 AM There is a very powerful argument against the existence of a a 3-A God: the problem of evil. jks ^ CB: Yes, and are those who are agnostic about God agnostic about the Devil ? *** JD: I wasn't raised as a Christian, but as I understand that faith, it's humanity that's the source of evil. (The Devil is most important to the fundamentalists, not the more sophisticated Christians.) God gave us free will and we mostly chose to be evil. In my view (as far as I can tell), we also created good (and God), along with the definition of good vs. evil.
RE: Re: Re: Help Stop Ohio's Anti-Choice Resolution
Anyone remember the Reproductive Rights National Network or R2N2 as us vets from NAM called it then in the 80's? http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Reproductive+Rights+National+Network%22btnG=Google+Searchhl=enie=utf-8oe=utf-8 Michael Pugliese --- Original Message --- From: Diane Monaco [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2/24/02 5:22:27 PM Rakesh wrote: Diane, have you had a chance to read Rickie Lee Solinger's criticism of framing the fight for abortion rights in terms of choice (there was a favorable review in the NY TImes review of books a few weeks ago). Plus two excerpts from the amazon.com reviews: From Publishers Weekly; Feminists need a paradigm shift, argues Solinger (Wake Up Little Susie;, The Abortionist), away from the post-Roe v. Wade concept of choice and back to the '60s concept of rights, based on the approach of the civil rights movement, which argued that all citizens were entitled to vote, for instance, regardless of class status. From Booklist: Historian Solinger argues cogently that the post-Roe v. Wade decision to articulate the women's movement's goals in terms of choice, not rights, had fateful consequences for women and for the movement. Rakesh, I apologize for not being able to get this post out before you unsubbed...and I will certainly miss your posts. But for what it's worth, I have always felt uncomfortable with the movement away from rights to choice during the 1980s. But I'm sure it is no surprise that this post Roe v. Wade shift during the 1980s occurred when the so-called conservative feminists surfaced (or were created) to redefine the issues. I just heard a Christina Hoff Sommers (author of Who Stole Feminism?) lecture the other day where she said in virtually the same breath that she is a feminist and women are no longer oppressed in the US. Hmmm? As far as I know, the definition of feminism hasn't changed: a movement that works toward achieving equal rights for women and men. But when I look at the demographic composition of upper agenda setting elites, e.g., Congressional Committee chairs, I see a distinct absence of women (or color). Well, if relations are not oppressed along gender lines, how would this oddity come about? What is the probability that this would happen on its own? Anyway, I think it was the anti-feminist sector that attempted to steal feminism. And I do agree with Solinger that it was a mistake for feminists to move away from the rights argument. But it's of course not too late and NARAL stands ready to enter as the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League -- hey notice the rights there! Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Best, Diane
RE: RE: Dallas Smythe student
Re: Tran Vanh Dinh. Listed here in Edwin Moise biblio. Moise is a big source in Gabriel Kolko book from mid 90's on Vietnam War, specifically on North Vietnamese land reform that has been for decades subject to alot of debate esp. from Trotskyists and others I'm familiar with. Michael Pugliese Edwin Moïse Bibliography: The Communist Viewpoint ... National Independence, Unity, Peace and Socialism in Vietnam. Moscow: Progress ... Le Nhu Huan and Tran Van Binh, eds., Nam Dinh: lich su khang chien chong ... www.vwip.org/mb/commview.htm --- Original Message --- From: Forstater, Mathew [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2/25/02 9:25:51 AM I am way behind in e-mail messages, but would recommend Smythe's book, called Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and Canada to everyone. Smythe had been a visiting prof at Temple the two years before I started there, and it seemed like everyone was reading him when I arrived. My teacher Tran van Dinh was especially fond of Smythe's perspective, which he saw as an antidote to some of the more economic determinist readings of Marx. Smythe also wrote the Foreword to Dr. Tran's book, Independence, Liberation, Revolution, a real under-appreciated classic. Some may be familiar with Tran's pieces that appeared in Monthly Review over the years, especially on the Vietnamese Revolution. Smythe considered the production and reproduction of consciousness an important part of Marxist theory. mat
RE: RE: Dallas Smythe student
Re: Tran Vanh Dinh. Listed here in Edwin Moise biblio. Moise is a big source in Gabriel Kolko book from mid 90's on Vietnam War, specifically on North Vietnamese land reform that has been for decades subject to alot of debate esp. from Trotskyists and others I'm familiar with. Michael Pugliese Edwin Moïse Bibliography: The Communist Viewpoint ... National Independence, Unity, Peace and Socialism in Vietnam. Moscow: Progress ... Le Nhu Huan and Tran Van Binh, eds., Nam Dinh: lich su khang chien chong ... http://www.vwip.org/mb/commview.htm --- Original Message --- From: Forstater, Mathew [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2/25/02 9:25:51 AM I am way behind in e-mail messages, but would recommend Smythe's book, called Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and Canada to everyone. Smythe had been a visiting prof at Temple the two years before I started there, and it seemed like everyone was reading him when I arrived. My teacher Tran van Dinh was especially fond of Smythe's perspective, which he saw as an antidote to some of the more economic determinist readings of Marx. Smythe also wrote the Foreword to Dr. Tran's book, Independence, Liberation, Revolution, a real under-appreciated classic. Some may be familiar with Tran's pieces that appeared in Monthly Review over the years, especially on the Vietnamese Revolution. Smythe considered the production and reproduction of consciousness an important part of Marxist theory. mat
RE: Re: Re: Carnagie 2002 and developments in Venezuela
I agree that with the exception of a about a half dozen of the more leftish Democrats like Lee, Waters and Kucinich, the Democrats have been spineless. Today, walking to work I was comparing in my head the response to Iran-Contra by congressional Democrats or the battles over Contra Aid (see the Cynthia Arneson book on this from Pantheon Books) to the PATRIOT Act and other repressive sheeit. Should the below give one any hope? Or, just more pseudo-left rhetoric to keep left-liberals from radicalizing influences and keep them on the DFemocratic Party plantation? Interesting that this was an ADA meeting too. http://www.frontpagemag.com/guestcolumnists2002/anderson02-22-02.htm Michael Pugliese --- Original Message --- From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2/24/02 7:50:09 PM Michael Perelman wrote: The coup in Venezuela should be easy, especially after all the US troops hit Colombia. I cannot believe what a free ride the spineless Dems. are giving W. They are not at all spineless, Michael. They are bravely sacrficing possible electoral advantage by supporting those interests which they and Bush share. Carrol
