Re: cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems
Hi Pensters, My view from down here and from having known people in the rank file voting public of California is that they voted for Arnie because he promised them simple, honest good governance and a 'strong' government. The government under Davis was seen as weak, which is why so many people got screwed (the thinking goes) during the 'energy crisis (fix). The problem with the voting public is that they're, for the most part, a bunch of ignorant fools who, like the kool-aide drinkers of Jonestown, are looking for an honest guy to lead them to the simple life away from the slimy, weak polytricksters, like Davis. The ground for this kind of debacle is fertilized on a daily basis by mealy-mouthed liberals who won't stand up for what they believe--mostly because the DP is in the hands of a gang of bureaucrats beholden to various sections of the ruling class. These politicians are satisfied with playing the role of safety valve during the toboggan ride to the bottom which Capital and the Repugs are bound and determined to take the rest of us. They don't tell their constituencies that they're being ripped off royally. They tell them that businessmen and the 'free-market' can save the day, if the voters just choose to go with them on their nice toboggan ride with cushions, instead of on the 'mean old' Repugs' sled. A lot of people see through this 'propaganda'--it's all phoney--remember what Bobby D told you? But, because the major pollies in the DP, which is the only voice given credibility as an opposition by the corporate and State owned media (Camejo...who's he? Joe Shit the ragman asks as he quaffs his Bud and reads the sports section at the short bar) don't even begin to educate their constituency (because they're already bought and paid for as safety valves) the voters who vote in quantity choose Arnie because Arnie is better looking and he's like 'cool' baby. Best to all, Mike B) --- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: obviously, Cooper doesn't like Camejo, for whatever reason. I thought, however, that one of MC's points was that the progressive wing and ethnic-minority grassroots of the DP (which are not the object of MC's derision here) sat out because Gray Davis was so bad. And most of them -- and MC, I'd guess -- are wedded to the lesser of two weevils logic which says if you're not voting for Ah-nold or Bustamente, you might as well vote for Gary Coleman or Mary Carey or Larry Flynt. Davis' explanation -- right white nativist anti-immigrant uprising fueled by talk shows -- is true, but only part of the story. It's not only who voted for der Gropenfuehrer but also who didn't vote for Davis, or Bustamente. There were also a lot of people who voted for Mr. Universe for reasons besides those highlighted by Davis. btw, MC's article is from the curent L.A. WEEKLY. Jim -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sun 10/12/2003 2:48 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems As Eudora told me, the word Camejo was not found in this piece. Why, if this was a not-unadmirable uprising, as Marc Cooper argues, was there not more support for him (or Huffington)? Mike Davis' explanation - that it was a right white nativist anti-immigrant uprising fueled by talk shows - seems more compelling, given the demographics of the vote. Arnie's vote was highest in the above-$75k households. Doug = * A man's maturity consists in finding once again the seriousness he had as a child at play. Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (500 B.C.) http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
Re: I'm talkin' about you, or, the politics of socially responsible accumulation
Thanks for that interesting slice of life, Jurrian! Mike B) --- Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Youssef's brother Redouane visited us tonight, and I had a conversation with him in the kitchen, in bad German, telling him about the financial accounting for war costs in Iraq was developing (Redouane has worked for Moroccan banks implementing digitalised financial management systems) by appropriating new private assets in Iraq, establishing an Iraq futures market, obtaining contributions from other countries, and shifting the financial burden to Western and Iraqi taxpayers. Redouane agreed, it was a bad business. You got a job yet ?, I asked. No, he said, But I might go and sell cars in Paris, I will do something. Youssef asked, have you seen the photo's of Redouane's two daughters ?. I said, No, but I would be interested to see them. Redouane went to fetch the photo's from Youssef's room, and show them to me, two goodlooking, attractive, happy girls, and I said I was impressed. I joked a little, by way of doubt, well at least the photo's prove, anyway, that they can look very beautiful if they want to. Then I said, But why are you not with them now, I mean, how could you not want to be with them ?. Redouane looked a bit sad, and indicated this wasn't possible. He had been separated from his wife for some time now. We are living in false times, he said. Es ist eine falschen Zeit. Why false ?, I asked. Too many lies, perhaps ?. It is just the way the world is, said Redouane. Egoism, too much egoism. I asked him to explain further. Redouane shrugged. Take for example Iraq, they destroyed a museum with exhibits of the national heritage of the country, he said. I explained, that this did not matter so much to the bourgeoisie anyhow, in the wider scheme of things, because exhibits in a museum by definition cannot usually be traded, and therefore you cannot accumulate private capital from them, except through charging for entry and perceptual access to the exhibits in the museum, but profitability was not so high there (and if the charges were too high, then people would not visit the museum). Only if you could loot the museum, then you could accumulate private capital with the exhibits perhaps. I knew, that Iraqi's themselves had also looted on occasions. But, I said, Suppose now that, instead of exhibits in a museum, you could exhibit a person, and charge people for perceptual access to a person, or a meeting with a person, for example me, what would you have then ?. Redouane was silent, and thought about it, but said nothing. Hollywood, I joked. Redouane had to laugh too, Yeah, Hollywood, he said. On that note, we looked each other in the eye, shook hands. Lateron I asked Youssef about Redouane's car business idea. Ah, you should talk to him about it, if you want, he said (because Redouane was staying here tonight). So I went to Redouane in Youssef's room, to check out what the story was. You know, he said, working for peanuts is all very fine, but you and I could start a business, we could buy a BMW in Germany and sell it in Paris. Think about that. I explained that this was legally prohibited by my father's will, but promised I would think about his idea. Jurriaan = * A man's maturity consists in finding once again the seriousness he had as a child at play. Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (500 B.C.) http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
Quote du Jour: Paul Bremer on economic justice
I have to say that it is curious to me to have a country [like Iraq - JB] whose per capita income, GDP, is about $800 ... that a county that poor should be required to pay reparations to countries whose per capita GDP is a factor of 10 times that for a war which all of the Iraqis who are now in government opposed - Paul Bremer (in reply to a question whether, given Iraq's weakened economic condition, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would accept a delay in the compensation payments related to Hussein's invasion - the external debt of Iraq is currently estimated at US$100 billion) Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9E792DC7-A1AD-4AC1-A291-D92E26178F52. htm
Re: Cancun
In his reply to Doug Henwood's article in the Nation, Peter Bohmer makes points that are thought provoking. Confined to my bedroom due to a bad flu, I will share with you some of my misery in the form of lengthy comments on Peter's remarks. Forgive me. I won't happen again anytime soon. Peter writes: I believe it is a positive value for people to be able to stay on the land, as is production for local markets. This has been a central value to the majority of the world's population or close to a majority for a very long time including the present. This is a strong argument. I'll frame it differently: There are almost 3 billion people in the developing countries considered as rural population (FAO). That is about half of all humans. If the principle of democracy amounts to anything, then the desires of these people must be taken into account insofar as their living conditions are affected not by chance or natural factors, but by what the rest of the human race does. I live in a large city so I'll speak of *we* (the urban and rural dwellers in rich countries plus the urban dwellers in the poor countries) versus *they* (the rural dwellers in the poor countries) to whom Peter obviously refers. Conceivably, they would want to exercise control over the evolution of their lives. Forceful expulsion from the land, sudden changes in their lives, and calamities unleashed by human forces beyond their control (e.g., global markets, capitalism, etc.) would be unacceptable. My first thought here is that, even among us, there's no individual control over those human forces. They are human. And if there's anybody who can control them such people would be among us. But most of us are also under their spell. There are some among us who are under the impression (illusion?) that they benefit more from these forces than others. Some of us resist the forces and would like to turn things around. But, we haven't managed to do it yet. So, against our deepest wishes, those among us who benefit from the status quo are stealing resources from them and dumping on them our garbage. But, I don't want to leave any of us (the progressives among us) off the hook, because we also share a bit of the benefit that comes from abusing them. So think of us as a homogenous mass facing them -- in fact, threatening them. Our lives are a mess. But theirs are a bit complicated too. Regarding their lives, there is a host of factors -- of a more local character -- that affect them as well and don't let them fully control the changes in their living conditions: relations of personal and direct political subordination less common in our environs, oppressive traditions peculiar to their rural life, etc. These institutions tend to be closely associated with their connection to the land. (I know because I was born and grew up in a rural, isolated, impoverished area of south-western Mexico: the Tierra Caliente of Guerrero. I wonder where Peter was born and grew up.) Because of these local factors, the idea that by staying on the land, staying small, and producing for local markets, they will necessarily be more able to control change in their social environment is far from obvious. But I won't dwell on this argument anymore. What matters most is the implicit idea that by staying on the land, etc. they can participate on similar footing in the conduction of global affairs. And that implicit idea is not persuasive. When I say similar footing, I mean similar footing. I'm not talking of a balance that results from our compassion or generosity towards them, but from a true balance of power and a mutual interdependence between us and them -- such that we respect them because we have to. Otherwise, the balance would be fragile and subject to our whims. We'd always be the grownups. And they would always be the minors. The problem here is, how do they enforce their desires -- especially if we are not cooperating with them at all or sufficiently? This is a huge chicken and egg problem. Key to this is the fact that we are more productive. I mean, I'm aware of the fact that along with the massive stuff that we produce, we also produce a lot of garbage, and a lifestyle that drives us nuts and pits us against each other and against them. I know. So, let me assume that, although they produce less stuff, with less technological sophistication, they produce more human-scale common sense, and a much more sane, cleaner, healthy lifestyle. I'll assume such thing because deep down I don't believe it is accurate. But, let's say they can produce more good life. Still, we can easily destroy their good life and we tend to do it as we speak. They obviously cannot protect their good life from us. They can also destroy or seriously threaten our (less impressive) good life, but to do it they need to acquire at least a part of what we have -- they have to become a bit like us. If they stay like they are, stick to their land, stay small, mind their own
Re: Cancun
[Part II] Peter Bohmer continues: To this end, I support protectionism and subsidies, particularly in the global south to support this type of rural production. I think similarly protecting small farmers and particularly those producing for the local and the national market should be supported in France, U.S., South Korea as well as of course in Mexico. I believe the global justice movement should favor policies, including subsidies, protectionism, etc. that advance these values and goals. The impact of protectionism on the global south is not clear cut. A human being is a human being. A landless rural worker is just as worthy as a landholder. The landless worker will directly benefit from lower farm prices and be directly hurt by the protection of local farmers. (He may benefit indirectly to the extent the farmer may be able to hire her if the alternative is to be landless and unemployed.) There are countries where the number of landless workers (or semi-landless workers whose main sources of income are not farm revenues but wages, etc.) outnumber the landowners. It is clear to me that Mexico is one of these cases. Protection of agriculture under such conditions amounts to favoring the landowners by taking away resources from other uses that could be more effective in helping the rural working poor: health services, basic education, public infrastructure, utilities, environmental preservation, etc. Frankly, I'm against this kind of protectionism in the global south. In the U.S., we, the global justice movement, should totally oppose subsidies to agriculture that benefit agribusiness as well as those that make it possible to dump U.S. agricultural production in other countries, particularly in the south. I totally agree. With regards to food and agricultural exports by third world countries, I believe the global justice movement should ally, primarily, with movements who instead favor production for local markets and also movements of small farmers, cooperatives and policies that favor them. For the reasons above, I don't agree on this in general. I'd look at each case separately and avoid a general rule like Peter's. With regards to the G-22 proposals and actions in Cancun, their challenging the G-7 is exciting, especially in terms of their opposing the attempt by the G7 to get the MAI in the back door. On the other hand and as implied by the previous paragraph, we should strongly oppose subsidies for agribusiness but not necessarily ones in the North tailored to help the family farm and the small farmer. I realize care will have to be given in tailoring the policies. to further these objectives. I don't really object to this, except -- as I said -- when helping the family farm and the small farmer goes against the interest of the landless rural- and urban working poor. In such case, I take view that one human being is as worthy as any other human being. Julio Huato _ Charla con tus amigos en línea mediante MSN Messenger: http://messenger.yupimsn.com/
Re: Cancun
I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? Try to restrain the forces of capitalist and/or technological development in an effort to preserve existing arrangements? Doug
Re: Cancun
On Monday, October 13, 2003 at 10:21:11 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? Try to restrain the forces of capitalist and/or technological development in an effort to preserve existing arrangements? Why not ask the population what they would like? Perhaps they would welcome some undermining under their control. Bill
Re: Cancun
Doug asks: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? as Bill says, consult the people. Of course, there's a need for a deeper kind of democracy, one that undermines local autocracies and patriarchy, while enfranchising ethnic and religious minorities. Try to restrain the forces of capitalist and/or technological development in an effort to preserve existing arrangements? restrain capitalist development, since that kind of development twarts democracy, especially that of the local and grass-roots variety. Instead of restraining technological development, try to adapt foreign technology to local needs (as expressed democratically) and/or find home-grown solutions provided by the people. all of the above is abstract, sketchy, and (horrors!) utopian, but without looking for these kinds of answers, a socialist government -- and more importantly, a socialist movement -- is f*cktup from the start. Jim
Re: Cancun
Doug asked if we would want to see a socialist government restrain the forces of capitalist and/or technological development. Bill said, ask the people, not us. Correct. I would add that we can distinguish between capitalist and technological development. Of course, any kind of change -- even socialist change -- has winners and loosers. Socialist change is distinguished, I hope, by having fewer loosers. Even so, any definitive answers to such a broad question can be answered with obvious counterexamples. On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 10:21:11AM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? Try to restrain the forces of capitalist and/or technological development in an effort to preserve existing arrangements? Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICAPE bulletin board
John Harvey asked me to post this. ICAPE BBS DearColleague,ICAPE (the International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics)now sponsors a BBS, and you're invited! At best, I hope to see it become a place for conversation among the various approaches to economics. At the worst, it's a repository for calls for papers, job announcements, etc. (there are already many listed). It's cheap to run, so any benefit to you is a net gain! Also, joining a BBS adds nothing to your e-mail--you onlysee it if you decide to check the web page. You need not join the BBS in order to read it, but you must to post. If there's something you'd like to post but would rather not join, simply mail it to me and I'll take care of it. If you do decide to sign up, the instructions for accessing the forum can be found on the ICAPE web page:www.icape.org (look for the menu choice: "The ICAPE BBS/Forum")Follow those instructions carefully and you shouldn't have any trouble registering. If you do, please let me know.Once you are on, please make your first stop the "BBS Announcements" forum, where the guidelines for the BBS are posted. As time passes I will add and subtract sections of the board based on your comments, and I may solicit help--I know from experience that running a BBS can be very time consuming!Please make use of this resource and feel free to suggest other ways to use it!JohnP.S. For those of you completely unfamiliar with BBS's, there is a small "help" link at the top of our BBS in addition to the info offered in my guidelines under the "BBS Announcements" forum. John T. HarveyProfessor of EconomicsDepartment of EconomicsTexas Christian UniversityFort Worth, TX 76129(817)257-7230 office(817)924-9016 homehttp://www.econ.tcu.edu/harvey.htmlhttp://www.icape.org
Re: Cancun
Devine, James wrote: Doug asks: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? as Bill says, consult the people. Well of course. But if we're seriously worried about mass poverty in the Third World - the 2 billion living on $2/day by the World Bank definition count - then that means raising productivity and incomes. Raising productivity and incomes means education, technological development, and the disturbance of existing social structures. Saying consult the people can be a way of dodging the difficulties of that. Doug
Re: Cancun
On Monday, October 13, 2003 at 11:59:46 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes: Devine, James wrote: Doug asks: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? as Bill says, consult the people. Well of course. But if we're seriously worried about mass poverty in the Third World - the 2 billion living on $2/day by the World Bank definition count - then that means raising productivity and incomes. Raising productivity and incomes means education, technological development, and the disturbance of existing social structures. Saying consult the people can be a way of dodging the difficulties of that. I didn't mean to be flip. But, step one, as you note, is education, a component of which should be educating about what the possibilities are. Then, you get feedback from people as to what they would like to see. Tell them the trade-offs, as far as you know, and let them decide by themselves. Not to be overlooked are the mechanisms necessary for not only coming to know the opinions of the people, but allowing them to share with each other. How does one do that in an impoverished nation? Seems that you need this in place, or thought through, before you can proceed. Bill
Re: Cancun
Devine, James wrote: Doug asks: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? as Bill says, consult the people. Well of course. But if we're seriously worried about mass poverty in the Third World - the 2 billion living on $2/day by the World Bank definition count - then that means raising productivity and incomes. Raising productivity and incomes means education, technological development, and the disturbance of existing social structures. Saying consult the people can be a way of dodging the difficulties of that. any really leftist government could only have come to power with some sort of mass base, some sort of grass-roots organization amongst the people. That means that consulting could be people, with the people telling the government what to do. Jim
Re: Cancun
Focus on food, education, health, housing first. When that is dealt with, proceed at a very deliberate pace, with ample time for review and evaluation, with an ecologically responsible industrialization policy. Prepare to be invaded for terrorizing the capitalists. Joanna Doug Henwood wrote: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? Try to restrain the forces of capitalist and/or technological development in an effort to preserve existing arrangements? Doug
Re: Cancun
Yes, I left the ask the people stuff off my post, because people in the third world have a skewed image of what industralization and modernity imply. What they're exposed to in the media is the magic outcome of that process...without understanding what that process implies. So, health, education, and a full stomach first; then a clear understanding of what different degrees of industrialization bring with it...then a democratic decision about what to do next...then, more democratic decisions about whether it's worth it. Joanna Doug Henwood wrote: Devine, James wrote: Doug asks: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? as Bill says, consult the people. Well of course. But if we're seriously worried about mass poverty in the Third World - the 2 billion living on $2/day by the World Bank definition count - then that means raising productivity and incomes. Raising productivity and incomes means education, technological development, and the disturbance of existing social structures. Saying consult the people can be a way of dodging the difficulties of that. Doug
Re: PBS documentary on Iraq
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] There is a telling moment in this documentary that makes the Iraqi resistance understandable. Shortly after a decision has been made by the US to crack down on looting, we see an army patrol that has captured a perpetrator who has a bunch of stolen wood on the top of his aging car. While they dress him down about the evils of looting, a tank rolls over his car reducing it to rubble. Afterwards, GI's high-five each other as if the car were a prop on Fear Factor. Later, Frontline learns that the man is a taxi driver and that the car was his sole means of income. It's worth watching the entire show just to catch this one scene, whose capacity to, er, shock and awe is considerable. The GIs sound and act exactly like members of Tony Soprano's crew. Carl Makiya is a real piece of work, as we put it in the USA. He appears rather disillusioned with what has happened in his native country but cannot make the connection between the US invasion and all that has gone wrong. This Brandeis professor is effusive in his praise of George W. Bush but blames just about everybody else in his administration for lacking the president's commitment to democracy. Makiya has often been described as an ex-Trotskyist. This morning I examined an online version of his Republic of Fear to detect any whiff of Marxism. This is what I found: All of this development highlights a dilemma whose underpinnings in our century arise within the communist tradition. The Russian experience has deeply affected all thinking on the relationship of political freedoms to development in backward countries irrespective of political persuasion. The contradictions were most paradigmatically expressed in the thought of Leon Trotsky. In his trenchant attack on Stalinism, The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky sought an explanation of the Stalinist phenomenon taken from outside its own peculiar distinctness and history of development. He wrote of the despotism of the new state as being an outcome of the iron necessity to give birth to and support a privileged minority in conditions of backwardness and how the power of the democratic Soviets proved cramping, even unendurable, when the task of the day was to accommodate those privileged groups whose existence was necessary for defense, for industry, for technique and science. The sense is of a transcendent causality maybe beyond the capacities of human intervention, through which today's freedoms have to be sacrificed in the interests of progress. This did not come from an economist, academician, or armchair revolutionary; it came from a leading intellect and political actor of the Russian revolution who had himself been cast aside by the iron necessity of the course it later took. What was for Trotsky a wrenching universal and personal dilemma, which he could only resolve by holding fervently onto the idea of world revolution, was transformed in the nationalist withdrawal and accelerating parochialism of all subsequent revolutions into an immutable law of the historical process, one that had been proved by the Stalinist experience. Invariably the ideology that captures this quality of imperial economic necessity in the Third World is the carping on about the falsity of bourgeois freedoms and the universal tendency to dislocate the realm of true freedom from the political to the social and economic domains. All later revolutions of this century (China, Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria) and all post-World War II nationalisms (Nasserism, Peronism, Ba'thism) have reaffirmed to one degree or another the apparently stringent objectivity of the choice: development or freedom? So evidently Makiya did at least read Trotsky. Whether he understood him is another question altogether. The freedom pole of the development/freedom polarity referred to above needs to be elaborated on. What does Makiya mean by freedom? It appears that this is the freedom to organize political parties, to put out newspapers--in other words the sort of freedom guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. It does not address social and economic freedom, however. If a nation does not have the freedom to develop its resources for the national good, then what use does civil liberties have? If Egyptians lacked the power to nationalize the Suez Canal or if Cuba could not expropriate the landed gentry, then true freedom would have eluded them no matter the trappings of formal democracy. But once private property is attacked, such countries inevitably find themselves threatened by imperialist war and blockade and are often required willy-nilly to impose somewhat draconian political norms. If they don't, they risk going the route of Allende's Chile or Sandinista Nicaragua. These questions constitute the cutting edge of politics today. Since the USA poses as a defender of freedom against all sorts of totalitarian dungeons from Cuba to North Korea, it is crucial that the left comes to term with this freedom/development contradiction. Elements of
Re: Cancun
To Julio, thanks for your thoughtful responses. I think your point about also putting at the center the needs of landless peasants and farmworkers is really important and much appreciated, Peter Julio Huato wrote: [Part II] Peter Bohmer continues: To this end, I support protectionism and subsidies, particularly in the global south to support this type of rural production. I think similarly protecting small farmers and particularly those producing for the local and the national market should be supported in France, U.S., South Korea as well as of course in Mexico. I believe the global justice movement should favor policies, including subsidies, protectionism, etc. that advance these values and goals. The impact of protectionism on the global south is not clear cut. A human being is a human being. A landless rural worker is just as worthy as a landholder. The landless worker will directly benefit from lower farm prices and be directly hurt by the protection of local farmers. (He may benefit indirectly to the extent the farmer may be able to hire her if the alternative is to be landless and unemployed.) There are countries where the number of landless workers (or semi-landless workers whose main sources of income are not farm revenues but wages, etc.) outnumber the landowners. It is clear to me that Mexico is one of these cases. Protection of agriculture under such conditions amounts to favoring the landowners by taking away resources from other uses that could be more effective in helping the rural working poor: health services, basic education, public infrastructure, utilities, environmental preservation, etc. Frankly, I'm against this kind of protectionism in the global south. In the U.S., we, the global justice movement, should totally oppose subsidies to agriculture that benefit agribusiness as well as those that make it possible to dump U.S. agricultural production in other countries, particularly in the south. I totally agree. With regards to food and agricultural exports by third world countries, I believe the global justice movement should ally, primarily, with movements who instead favor production for local markets and also movements of small farmers, cooperatives and policies that favor them. For the reasons above, I don't agree on this in general. I'd look at each case separately and avoid a general rule like Peter's. With regards to the G-22 proposals and actions in Cancun, their challenging the G-7 is exciting, especially in terms of their opposing the attempt by the G7 to get the MAI in the back door. On the other hand and as implied by the previous paragraph, we should strongly oppose subsidies for agribusiness but not necessarily ones in the North tailored to help the family farm and the small farmer. I realize care will have to be given in tailoring the policies. to further these objectives. I don't really object to this, except -- as I said -- when helping the family farm and the small farmer goes against the interest of the landless rural- and urban working poor. In such case, I take view that one human being is as worthy as any other human being. Julio Huato _ Charla con tus amigos en línea mediante MSN Messenger: http://messenger.yupimsn.com/
Re: cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems
I wouldn't take issue with the contempt displayed for the California electorate, the Lib-Dems, and Schwarzenegger personally. But. The one important progressive proposal to emerge from the entire recall circus came from... Schwarzenegger! He promised a program to provide hydrogen refueling facilities *every twenty miles* along California's major highways by 2010. How important this idea is was recognized by the NYTIMES editorially with the adjectives unrealistic and utopian. Of course, this may turn out to be campaign verbiage. But I did have an experience that reflects favorably on Schwarzenegger. In May 2001 I served on the jury in a lengthy damage trial against GM for the death of a husband in an SUV rollover. He was gruesomely crushed when the roof collapsed on his head. GM claimed that its design was not defective because reinforcing the supporting columns would do nothing for safety. We found against GM. On the next day I read in the Financial Times an article reporting that before Schwarzenegger agreed to buy a Hummer he had insisted that GM include exactly the reinforcement that had been at issue in our trial! Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Hi Pensters, My view from down here and from having known people in the rank file voting public of California is that they voted for Arnie because he promised them simple, honest good governance and a 'strong' government. The government under Davis was seen as weak, which is why so many people got screwed (the thinking goes) during the 'energy crisis (fix). The problem with the voting public is that they're, for the most part, a bunch of ignorant fools who, like the kool-aide drinkers of Jonestown, are looking for an honest guy to lead them to the simple life away from the slimy, weak polytricksters, like Davis. The ground for this kind of debacle is fertilized on a daily basis by mealy-mouthed liberals who won't stand up for what they believe--mostly because the DP is in the hands of a gang of bureaucrats beholden to various sections of the ruling class. These politicians are satisfied with playing the role of safety valve during the toboggan ride to the bottom which Capital and the Repugs are bound and determined to take the rest of us. They don't tell their constituencies that they're being ripped off royally. They tell them that businessmen and the 'free-market' can save the day, if the voters just choose to go with them on their nice toboggan ride with cushions, instead of on the 'mean old' Repugs' sled. A lot of people see through this 'propaganda'--it's all phoney--remember what Bobby D told you? But, because the major pollies in the DP, which is the only voice given credibility as an opposition by the corporate and State owned media (Camejo...who's he? Joe Shit the ragman asks as he quaffs his Bud and reads the sports section at the short bar) don't even begin to educate their constituency (because they're already bought and paid for as safety valves) the voters who vote in quantity choose Arnie because Arnie is better looking and he's like 'cool' baby. Best to all, Mike B) --- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: obviously, Cooper doesn't like Camejo, for whatever reason. I thought, however, that one of MC's points was that the progressive wing and ethnic-minority grassroots of the DP (which are not the object of MC's derision here) sat out because Gray Davis was so bad. And most of them -- and MC, I'd guess -- are wedded to the lesser of two weevils logic which says if you're not voting for Ah-nold or Bustamente, you might as well vote for Gary Coleman or Mary Carey or Larry Flynt. Davis' explanation -- right white nativist anti-immigrant uprising fueled by talk shows -- is true, but only part of the story. It's not only who voted for der Gropenfuehrer but also who didn't vote for Davis, or Bustamente. There were also a lot of people who voted for Mr. Universe for reasons besides those highlighted by Davis. btw, MC's article is from the curent L.A. WEEKLY. Jim -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sun 10/12/2003 2:48 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems As Eudora told me, the word Camejo was not found in this piece. Why, if this was a not-unadmirable uprising, as Marc Cooper argues, was there not more support for him (or Huffington)? Mike Davis' explanation - that it was a right white nativist anti-immigrant uprising fueled by talk shows - seems more compelling, given the demographics of the vote. Arnie's vote was highest in the above-$75k households. Doug = * A man's maturity consists in finding once again the seriousness he had as a child at play. Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (500 B.C.)
question on university corporate governance courses
Does anyone know anything about the number or nature of new corporate governance courses that have been added to undergraduate or MBA programs following the Enron/WorldCom scandals? Thanks, Nomi -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jurriaan Bendien Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 7:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] Quote du Jour: Paul Bremer on economic justice I have to say that it is curious to me to have a country [like Iraq - JB] whose per capita income, GDP, is about $800 ... that a county that poor should be required to pay reparations to countries whose per capita GDP is a factor of 10 times that for a war which all of the Iraqis who are now in government opposed - Paul Bremer (in reply to a question whether, given Iraq's weakened economic condition, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would accept a delay in the compensation payments related to Hussein's invasion - the external debt of Iraq is currently estimated at US$100 billion) Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9E792DC7-A1AD-4AC1-A291-D92E26178 F52. htm
question about Iraq
On his radio show yesterday, satirist Harry Shearer said that the British GUARDIAN reported that the US was going to end the UN food program in Iraq in January. Is there any truth to this? Jim Subject: [PEN-L] Quote du Jour: Paul Bremer on economic justice I have to say that it is curious to me to have a country [like Iraq - JB] whose per capita income, GDP, is about $800 ... that a county that poor should be required to pay reparations to countries whose per capita GDP is a factor of 10 times that for a war which all of the Iraqis who are now in government opposed - Paul Bremer (in reply to a question whether, given Iraq's weakened economic condition, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would accept a delay in the compensation payments related to Hussein's invasion - the external debt of Iraq is currently estimated at US$100 billion)
Re: question on university corporate governance courses
- Original Message - From: nomi prins [EMAIL PROTECTED] Does anyone know anything about the number or nature of new corporate governance courses that have been added to undergraduate or MBA programs following the Enron/WorldCom scandals? Thanks, Nomi == These folks might be able to help you out: http://www.be.udel.edu/ccg/ John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance l Lerner College of Business Economics University of Delaware l Lerner Hall l Newark, DE 19716-2709 l 302.831.6157 l 302.831.3329 (fax) http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/ccg/ Center for Corporate Governance Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth 100 Tuck Hall Hanover, NH 03755 USA Phone: 603-646-0567 Fax: 603-646-4067 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/ccg
Re: cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems
Peter Camejo put forward a number of progessive proposals, more important by far than anything put forward by anyone else. I am repeatedly surprised by the fascination many environmentalists have with the wonderful future world of hydrogen. Let's see, we build power plants to generate electricity to extract hydrogren, then ship, by pipe or other means the hydrogen to someplace else to make electricity? And so we end up with less energy than we started with. Why is this good? Gene Coyle Shane Mage wrote: I wouldn't take issue with the contempt displayed for the California electorate, the Lib-Dems, and Schwarzenegger personally. But. The one important progressive proposal to emerge from the entire recall circus came from... Schwarzenegger! He promised a program to provide hydrogen refueling facilities *every twenty miles* along California's major highways by 2010. How important this idea is was recognized by the NYTIMES editorially with the adjectives unrealistic and utopian. Of course, this may turn out to be campaign verbiage. But I did have an experience that reflects favorably on Schwarzenegger. In May 2001 I served on the jury in a lengthy damage trial against GM for the death of a husband in an SUV rollover. He was gruesomely crushed when the roof collapsed on his head. GM claimed that its design was not defective because reinforcing the supporting columns would do nothing for safety. We found against GM. On the next day I read in the Financial Times an article reporting that before Schwarzenegger agreed to buy a Hummer he had insisted that GM include exactly the reinforcement that had been at issue in our trial! Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Hi Pensters, My view from down here and from having known people in the rank file voting public of California is that they voted for Arnie because he promised them simple, honest good governance and a 'strong' government. The government under Davis was seen as weak, which is why so many people got screwed (the thinking goes) during the 'energy crisis (fix). The problem with the voting public is that they're, for the most part, a bunch of ignorant fools who, like the kool-aide drinkers of Jonestown, are looking for an honest guy to lead them to the simple life away from the slimy, weak polytricksters, like Davis. The ground for this kind of debacle is fertilized on a daily basis by mealy-mouthed liberals who won't stand up for what they believe--mostly because the DP is in the hands of a gang of bureaucrats beholden to various sections of the ruling class. These politicians are satisfied with playing the role of safety valve during the toboggan ride to the bottom which Capital and the Repugs are bound and determined to take the rest of us. They don't tell their constituencies that they're being ripped off royally. They tell them that businessmen and the 'free-market' can save the day, if the voters just choose to go with them on their nice toboggan ride with cushions, instead of on the 'mean old' Repugs' sled. A lot of people see through this 'propaganda'--it's all phoney--remember what Bobby D told you? But, because the major pollies in the DP, which is the only voice given credibility as an opposition by the corporate and State owned media (Camejo...who's he? Joe Shit the ragman asks as he quaffs his Bud and reads the sports section at the short bar) don't even begin to educate their constituency (because they're already bought and paid for as safety valves) the voters who vote in quantity choose Arnie because Arnie is better looking and he's like 'cool' baby. Best to all, Mike B) --- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: obviously, Cooper doesn't like Camejo, for whatever reason. I thought, however, that one of MC's points was that the progressive wing and ethnic-minority grassroots of the DP (which are not the object of MC's derision here) sat out because Gray Davis was so bad. And most of them -- and MC, I'd guess -- are wedded to the lesser of two weevils logic which says if you're not voting for Ah-nold or Bustamente, you might as well vote for Gary Coleman or Mary Carey or Larry Flynt. Davis' explanation -- right white nativist anti-immigrant uprising fueled by talk shows -- is true, but only part of the story. It's not only who voted for der Gropenfuehrer but also who didn't vote for Davis, or Bustamente. There were also a lot of people who voted for Mr. Universe for reasons besides those highlighted by Davis. btw, MC's article is from the curent L.A. WEEKLY. Jim -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sun 10/12/2003 2:48 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems As Eudora told me, the word Camejo was not found in this piece. Why, if this was a not-unadmirable uprising, as Marc Cooper argues, was there not
California circus aftermath: cleaning up after the elephants
Gene said: Peter Camejo put forward a number of progessive proposals, more important by far than anything put forward by anyone else. a lot of people were saying that Camejo (and before him, Huffington) was the best candidate, in terms of actually having principles and expressing them coherently. More than one pundit pointed to both Camejo and McClintock as fitting in this category. Jim
Re: cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems
The Repug. energy plan has a new nuke to be built in Idaho, I believe, to help to make hydrogen -- so the Bushits are true environmentalists. On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 01:23:18PM -0700, Eugene Coyle wrote: Peter Camejo put forward a number of progessive proposals, more important by far than anything put forward by anyone else. I am repeatedly surprised by the fascination many environmentalists have with the wonderful future world of hydrogen. Let's see, we build power plants to generate electricity to extract hydrogren, then ship, by pipe or other means the hydrogen to someplace else to make electricity? And so we end up with less energy than we started with. Why is this good? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems
of course, putting it in Idaho would fit with the reactionary nature of much of the electorate there. A lot of white LAPD cops retire there so they can find similar people. It's called blue heaven. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine The Repug. energy plan has a new nuke to be built in Idaho, I believe, to help to make hydrogen -- so the Bushits are true environmentalists. Michael Perelman
News from the Front
from SLATE's news summary: USA Today's lead says the military is looking into soldier suicides in Iraq, since, as one military psychiatrist said, the overall number of them has caused the Army to be concerned. There have been at least 14 suicides among troops in Iraq in the past seven months. That's an annual rate of 17 suicides per 100,000 troops, about double the military's rate last year. Also, four hundred seventy eight soldiers have been sent home because of mental health issues. ... [of course, some of the people running the Pentagon have mental health issues.] The [Wall Street JOURNAL] gets hold of the draft of an Army report concluding that 1) contrary to the administration's claims, Saddam did not have big plans to blow oil fields, dams, and bridges 2) among the biggest factors in the U.S.'s initial win was Iraqi ineptitude; most of Saddam's soldiers hadn't trained with live ammo in more than a year. I worry that Pentagon is drawing cosmic lessons from the defeat of a truly inept enemy, said one analyst. That is a big, big mistake. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems
Eugene Coyle wrote: I am repeatedly surprised by the fascination many environmentalists have with the wonderful future world of hydrogen. Let's see, we build power plants to generate electricity to extract hydrogren, then ship, by pipe or other means the hydrogen to someplace else to make electricity? And so we end up with less energy than we started with. Why is this good? Because the *solar* energy we started with is mostly unusable until it is stored as hydrogen. Wind farms in North Dakota. Solar farms in Arizona-New Mexico. Enough for all our transportation uses and much more. Plus huge numbers of jobs from construction of the farms, reconfiguration of the vehicle fleet, revitalization of depressed areas, etc., etc. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: question about Iraq
I am out of town right now using remote access, so I will only give a limited reply - yes. This was first established by the big Security Council Resolution at the end of the war. The readiness of the French et. el. to withdraw the embargo and turn the UN role to the U.S. was a major and unacknowledged (in the US press) concession (or cave-in, if one is less generous). The second shoe dropped when the US announced the import role of the UN program (the program actually covered food and all other imports)would actually be taken over by JP Morgan and a consortia of Banks from (mostly) the other coalition countries (I believe I posted the announcement). Nomi Prims has pointed out that each of these banks has specialized in exotic ways to turn assets (read petroleum reserves and future income streams) into current debts. It is not expected that this phase will be discussed before the non-US donors are pressed to announce pledges from their development funds at the upcoming Madrid Donors Conference next week. Paul Original Message: On his radio show yesterday, satirist Harry Shearer said that the British GUARDIAN reported that the US was going to end the UN food program in Iraq in January. Is there any truth to this? Jim mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .
Re: cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems
Hydrogen is useful because it is not a carbon based fuel. Global warming and other problems associated with air/water/Earth pollution can be dealt with in real substatial ways, if humans get wise and organise ways to use fuels which don't involve burning carbon based fuels for energy. I doubt that this can be done under capitalism before it is too late i.e. we've drunk far too much of the carbon based kool-aide our fearless leaders are selling us now. Generating hydrogen from nuclear fission plants is a stupid idea because of the old problems associated with radioactive waste. One might expect this from capitalist politicians. As Shane has indicated, there are other, safer ways to obtain hydrogen. It is not useful for us to continue to poison the Earth. But production for use and need is not what 'the economy' is all about under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Capitalists who own shares in the carbon based fuel industry will always try to convince you that converting to non carbon based fuels is utopian. It's the same argument they use against socialism i.e. TINA. Regards, Mike B) --- Eugene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter Camejo put forward a number of progessive proposals, more important by far than anything put forward by anyone else. I am repeatedly surprised by the fascination many environmentalists have with the wonderful future world of hydrogen. Let's see, we build power plants to generate electricity to extract hydrogren, then ship, by pipe or other means the hydrogen to someplace else to make electricity? And so we end up with less energy than we started with. Why is this good? Gene Coyle Shane Mage wrote: I wouldn't take issue with the contempt displayed for the California electorate, the Lib-Dems, and Schwarzenegger personally. But. The one important progressive proposal to emerge from the entire recall circus came from... Schwarzenegger! He promised a program to provide hydrogen refueling facilities *every twenty miles* along California's major highways by 2010. How important this idea is was recognized by the NYTIMES editorially with the adjectives unrealistic and utopian. Of course, this may turn out to be campaign verbiage. But I did have an experience that reflects favorably on Schwarzenegger. In May 2001 I served on the jury in a lengthy damage trial against GM for the death of a husband in an SUV rollover. He was gruesomely crushed when the roof collapsed on his head. GM claimed that its design was not defective because reinforcing the supporting columns would do nothing for safety. We found against GM. On the next day I read in the Financial Times an article reporting that before Schwarzenegger agreed to buy a Hummer he had insisted that GM include exactly the reinforcement that had been at issue in our trial! Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Hi Pensters, My view from down here and from having known people in the rank file voting public of California is that they voted for Arnie because he promised them simple, honest good governance and a 'strong' government. The government under Davis was seen as weak, which is why so many people got screwed (the thinking goes) during the 'energy crisis (fix). The problem with the voting public is that they're, for the most part, a bunch of ignorant fools who, like the kool-aide drinkers of Jonestown, are looking for an honest guy to lead them to the simple life away from the slimy, weak polytricksters, like Davis. The ground for this kind of debacle is fertilized on a daily basis by mealy-mouthed liberals who won't stand up for what they believe--mostly because the DP is in the hands of a gang of bureaucrats beholden to various sections of the ruling class. These politicians are satisfied with playing the role of safety valve during the toboggan ride to the bottom which Capital and the Repugs are bound and determined to take the rest of us. They don't tell their constituencies that they're being ripped off royally. They tell them that businessmen and the 'free-market' can save the day, if the voters just choose to go with them on their nice toboggan ride with cushions, instead of on the 'mean old' Repugs' sled. A lot of people see through this 'propaganda'--it's all phoney--remember what Bobby D told you? But, because the major pollies in the DP, which is the only voice given credibility as an opposition by the corporate and State owned media (Camejo...who's he? Joe Shit the ragman asks as he quaffs his Bud and reads the sports section at the short bar) don't even begin to educate their constituency (because they're already bought and paid for as safety valves) the voters who vote in quantity choose Arnie because Arnie is better looking and he's like 'cool'
hydrogen
[was RE: [PEN-L] cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems] Note that one of the things that right-wingers (such as Bush, Schwartzenegger) like to do is to appear environmentalist by promising hydrogen power in the future while not doing anything substantive to promote hydrogen. Hydrogen is one of these fuels where mere research isn't enough. You need to have an infrastructure of pipes, refineries, tanks, and fueling stations -- or else the vehicles are pretty useless. Without the vehicles being successful and in demand, no private business will invest in the infrastructure. There's a vicious circle, so that a big public investment is needed. But the right-wingers want to only invest in research (if that). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Mike Ballard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 2:15 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems Hydrogen is useful because it is not a carbon based fuel. Global warming and other problems associated with air/water/Earth pollution can be dealt with in real substatial ways, if humans get wise and organise ways to use fuels which don't involve burning carbon based fuels for energy. I doubt that this can be done under capitalism before it is too late i.e. we've drunk far too much of the carbon based kool-aide our fearless leaders are selling us now. Generating hydrogen from nuclear fission plants is a stupid idea because of the old problems associated with radioactive waste. One might expect this from capitalist politicians. As Shane has indicated, there are other, safer ways to obtain hydrogen. It is not useful for us to continue to poison the Earth. But production for use and need is not what 'the economy' is all about under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Capitalists who own shares in the carbon based fuel industry will always try to convince you that converting to non carbon based fuels is utopian. It's the same argument they use against socialism i.e. TINA. Regards, Mike B) --- Eugene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter Camejo put forward a number of progessive proposals, more important by far than anything put forward by anyone else. I am repeatedly surprised by the fascination many environmentalists have with the wonderful future world of hydrogen. Let's see, we build power plants to generate electricity to extract hydrogren, then ship, by pipe or other means the hydrogen to someplace else to make electricity? And so we end up with less energy than we started with. Why is this good? Gene Coyle Shane Mage wrote: I wouldn't take issue with the contempt displayed for the California electorate, the Lib-Dems, and Schwarzenegger personally. But. The one important progressive proposal to emerge from the entire recall circus came from... Schwarzenegger! He promised a program to provide hydrogen refueling facilities *every twenty miles* along California's major highways by 2010. How important this idea is was recognized by the NYTIMES editorially with the adjectives unrealistic and utopian. Of course, this may turn out to be campaign verbiage. But I did have an experience that reflects favorably on Schwarzenegger. In May 2001 I served on the jury in a lengthy damage trial against GM for the death of a husband in an SUV rollover. He was gruesomely crushed when the roof collapsed on his head. GM claimed that its design was not defective because reinforcing the supporting columns would do nothing for safety. We found against GM. On the next day I read in the Financial Times an article reporting that before Schwarzenegger agreed to buy a Hummer he had insisted that GM include exactly the reinforcement that had been at issue in our trial! Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Hi Pensters, My view from down here and from having known people in the rank file voting public of California is that they voted for Arnie because he promised them simple, honest good governance and a 'strong' government. The government under Davis was seen as weak, which is why so many people got screwed (the thinking goes) during the 'energy crisis (fix). The problem with the voting public is that they're, for the most part, a bunch of ignorant fools who, like the kool-aide drinkers of Jonestown, are looking for an honest guy to lead them to the simple life away from the slimy, weak polytricksters, like Davis. The ground for this kind of debacle is fertilized on a daily basis by mealy-mouthed liberals who won't stand up for what they believe--mostly because the DP is in the hands
Re: hydrogen
Agreed. That's why it's called political-economy. ;D Cheers, Mike B) --- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [was RE: [PEN-L] cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems] Note that one of the things that right-wingers (such as Bush, Schwartzenegger) like to do is to appear environmentalist by promising hydrogen power in the future while not doing anything substantive to promote hydrogen. Hydrogen is one of these fuels where mere research isn't enough. You need to have an infrastructure of pipes, refineries, tanks, and fueling stations -- or else the vehicles are pretty useless. Without the vehicles being successful and in demand, no private business will invest in the infrastructure. There's a vicious circle, so that a big public investment is needed. But the right-wingers want to only invest in research (if that). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Mike Ballard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 2:15 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems Hydrogen is useful because it is not a carbon based fuel. Global warming and other problems associated with air/water/Earth pollution can be dealt with in real substatial ways, if humans get wise and organise ways to use fuels which don't involve burning carbon based fuels for energy. I doubt that this can be done under capitalism before it is too late i.e. we've drunk far too much of the carbon based kool-aide our fearless leaders are selling us now. Generating hydrogen from nuclear fission plants is a stupid idea because of the old problems associated with radioactive waste. One might expect this from capitalist politicians. As Shane has indicated, there are other, safer ways to obtain hydrogen. It is not useful for us to continue to poison the Earth. But production for use and need is not what 'the economy' is all about under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Capitalists who own shares in the carbon based fuel industry will always try to convince you that converting to non carbon based fuels is utopian. It's the same argument they use against socialism i.e. TINA. Regards, Mike B) --- Eugene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter Camejo put forward a number of progessive proposals, more important by far than anything put forward by anyone else. I am repeatedly surprised by the fascination many environmentalists have with the wonderful future world of hydrogen. Let's see, we build power plants to generate electricity to extract hydrogren, then ship, by pipe or other means the hydrogen to someplace else to make electricity? And so we end up with less energy than we started with. Why is this good? Gene Coyle Shane Mage wrote: I wouldn't take issue with the contempt displayed for the California electorate, the Lib-Dems, and Schwarzenegger personally. But. The one important progressive proposal to emerge from the entire recall circus came from... Schwarzenegger! He promised a program to provide hydrogen refueling facilities *every twenty miles* along California's major highways by 2010. How important this idea is was recognized by the NYTIMES editorially with the adjectives unrealistic and utopian. Of course, this may turn out to be campaign verbiage. But I did have an experience that reflects favorably on Schwarzenegger. In May 2001 I served on the jury in a lengthy damage trial against GM for the death of a husband in an SUV rollover. He was gruesomely crushed when the roof collapsed on his head. GM claimed that its design was not defective because reinforcing the supporting columns would do nothing for safety. We found against GM. On the next day I read in the Financial Times an article reporting that before Schwarzenegger agreed to buy a Hummer he had insisted that GM include exactly the reinforcement that had been at issue in our trial! Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Hi Pensters, My view from down here and from having known people in the rank file voting public of California is that they voted for Arnie because he promised them simple, honest good governance and a 'strong' government. The government under Davis was seen as weak, which is why so many people got screwed (the thinking goes) during the 'energy crisis (fix). The problem with the voting public is that they're, for the most part, a bunch of ignorant fools who, like the kool-aide drinkers of Jonestown, are looking for an honest guy
Social transformation of the Cuban peasantry
Cuba is a model for such a process. After the revolution took power, it prioritized rural development. To this day Havana remains neglected. Large-scale farming enterprises were the beneficiaries of clinics, day-care centers, schools, sports and cultural programs. It is also important to consider that most of the rural population was of African descent. As the children of the original population became educated, they began to move to the cities on their own accord and usually because there was some skilled job that had opened up for them. As mechanization was introduced into the sugar and tobacco fields, it freed up additional labor. None of this was done coercively. It is a model of socialist transformation and a painful reminder of how bad Stalin fucked things up. For all of the hatred poured on this despot from Western liberals, we should never forget that he was simply imitating Great Britain and US primitive accumulation. Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: hydrogen
At 03:09 PM 10/13/2003 -0700, you wrote: Agreed. That's why it's called political-economy. ;D Cheers, Mike B) I don't understand why participants on this listserv can't clip text from previous posts. Mike's one-line comment was trailed by a 3 mile long stream of 's in front of obscure messages from days ago when this thread started. It is a waste of bandwidth and an eyesore.
Re: hydrogen
Absolutely! On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 06:16:29PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: I don't understand why participants on this listserv can't clip text from previous posts. Mike's one-line comment was trailed by a 3 mile long stream of 's in front of obscure messages from days ago when this thread started. It is a waste of bandwidth and an eyesore. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: hydrogen
Will clip in future. --- Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: eyesore. = * A man's maturity consists in finding once again the seriousness he had as a child at play. Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (500 B.C.) http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
Re: hydrogen
great exchange! Mike Ballard wrote: sore. -- card
Re: Social transformation of the Cuban peasantry
I read an excellent book on the development of Cuba's medical care programmes. It was written by an academic from the mid-west, who was obviously not a socialist. And yet he was impressed and his account was one of the most amazing accounts of what intelligence, good will, and a humane project could achieve:remarkable results in one generation; astonishing results in two generations...all on a shoestring. Joanna Louis Proyect wrote: Cuba is a model for such a process. After the revolution took power, it prioritized rural development. To this day Havana remains neglected. Large-scale farming enterprises were the beneficiaries of clinics, day-care centers, schools, sports and cultural programs. It is also important to consider that most of the rural population was of African descent. As the children of the original population became educated, they began to move to the cities on their own accord and usually because there was some skilled job that had opened up for them. As mechanization was introduced into the sugar and tobacco fields, it freed up additional labor. None of this was done coercively. It is a model of socialist transformation and a painful reminder of how bad Stalin fucked things up. For all of the hatred poured on this despot from Western liberals, we should never forget that he was simply imitating Great Britain and US primitive accumulation. Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
The role of oil-for-food in the modern imperialist theory of primitive accumulation: a new market emerges
The UN Oil-for-Food program was launched in 1996 in a bid to alleviate the genocidal sanctions imposed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. On 29 September this year, the Executive Director of the UN Office of the Iraq Programme (OIP), Benon Sevan said that the terrorist bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, the resulting reduction in international staff and tardy action by the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) dealt a major blow to Sevan's timetable for ending the Oil-for-Food programme that fed most Iraqis during Saddam Hussein's regime. In his progress report to the Security Council, Sevan said that Despite the enormity of the tasks involved, the United Nations remained confident, subject to security conditions, of meeting the challenge for an orderly termination of the programme by 21 November. He warned that without much speedier action by the CPA, difficulties could become insurmountable. The UN Oil-for-Food programme was to be phased out by 21 November and transferred to the CPA under Security Council resolution 1483 of last May. After a very slow start, the CPA has finally taken steps to increase its staff capacity for the transfer process, Mr. Sevan reports. Regrettably, however, CPA's efforts coincide with the heightened insecurity and drastic reduction in the number of UN international staff in the three northern governorates. The UN Steering Group on Iraq earlier in Spetember authorized the minimum number of 115 UN international staff required for the transfer, but Sevan said However, unless CPA increases most expeditiously the number of its personnel involved in the transfer process, the difficulties faced there may become insurmountable irrespective of the number of UN personnel in the three northern governorates. Just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the UN Security Council had adopted a resolution to allow the resumption of humanitarian aid for Iraq through its existing oil-for-food scheme, which would run for 45 days under the resolution. At that time, about 60 percent of the Iraqi population of 22 million depended on the oil-for-food program for daily supplies. The program had been suspended on March 18. The resolution was promptly rejected thereafter by Baathist Information Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf on the ground that Only Iraq can administer this program. An international consortium of financial institutions led by J.P. Morgan Chase Co. has been aiming to run a Trade Bank of Iraq enabling the Iraqi government make large purchases from other countries, the creative policy idea being, as a spokesman said, to run a commercial type of program''. The contract for the international consortium of banks has been projected to last a year with a renewal option for another two years, paid for by Iraqi revenue from oil or other financial assets. The trade bank's employees and its top executive are projected to be Iraqis who receive training and guidance from J.P. Morgan Chase and the consortium. Initially, a total of 13 banks were included in the consortium, namely J.P. Morgan Chase, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, Melbourne, Australia; Standard Chartered PLC, London; National Bank of Kuwait SAK, Safat, Kuwait; Bank Millennium SA, Warszawa, Poland; Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd., Tokyo; San Paolo IMI S.p.A, Turin, Italy; Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto; Credit Lyonnais, Paris; Caja De Ahorros Y Pensiones De Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; Standard Bank Group Limited, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Banco Comercial Portuges, Lisbon, Portugal. Later, however, it was reported that five groups led by U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wachovia Corp., Bank One Corp., Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase Co. were on the list of finalists to manage the new Trade Bank of Iraq Wachovia leads the largest group with about two dozen member banks. The bank could command some $500 million a month, at least if Iraq's oil industry recovered. Joseph Stiglitz commented recently that The problem is that Iraq today is encumbered by huge debts - with estimates totaling anywhere from $60 billion to the hundreds of billions, which includes reparations imposed on the country after the 1991 Gulf War, earlier debts incurred because of ammunition purchases, and obligations assumed under contracts signed during Saddam Hussein's regime. As Iraq's oil starts to flow again, much of the revenue it generates may go directly into the hands of international creditors, greatly impeding reconstruction efforts. Iraq needs a fresh start, and the only real way to give it one would be to free the country from what some call its odious debts - debts incurred by a regime without political legitimacy, from creditors who should have known better, with the monies often spent to oppress the very people who are then asked to repay the debts. Most of Iraq's current debt was incurred by a ruthless and corrupt government long recognized as such - although complicating the matter is the fact that the Iraqi
Re: Social transformation of the Cuban peasantry
joanna bujes wrote: I read an excellent book on the development of Cuba's medical care programmes. It was written by an academic from the mid-west, who was obviously not a socialist. And yet he was impressed and his account was one of the most amazing accounts of what intelligence, good will, and a humane project could achieve:remarkable results in one generation; astonishing results in two generations...all on a shoestring. Even World Bank president James Wolfensohn has touted Cuba's success with social indicators. It's impossible to deny (which doesn't stop some hacks from trying). Doug
Re: question about Iraq
On his radio show yesterday, satirist Harry Shearer said that the British GUARDIAN reported that the US was going to end the UN food program in Iraq in January. Is there any truth to this? Jim * New York Times October 12, 2003 CULTURE OF DEPENDENCY Another Challenge in Iraq: Giving Up Food Rations By JOHN TIERNEY BAGHDAD, Iraq - The overhaul of welfare in America may seem complicated, but it has been simple compared with the challenge in Iraq. In the United States, the people who relied on public assistance were defined as the underclass. In Iraq, they're the entire nation. To Saddam Hussein, a culture of dependency was not a social problem but a political plus. Father Saddam, as he liked to be called, provided citizens with subsidized homes, cheap energy and, most important, free food. After international sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, he started a program that now uses 300 government warehouses and more than 60,000 workers to deliver a billion pounds of groceries every month - a basket of rations guaranteed to every citizen, rich or poor. American and Iraqi authorities are now struggling to get out of the grocery-delivery business without letting anyone go hungry. They're trying to find a politically practical way of replacing the rations with cash payments or some version of food stamps. Planners would ultimately like to see the aid given only to the needy, but for starters they would simply like to get all Iraqis accustomed to shopping for themselves. We need to replace the food program and attack the dependency culture created by Saddam Hussein, said Barham Salih, the prime minister of a Kurdish section of northern Iraq, which also receives the rations. This culture has become one of the biggest obstacles to rebuilding Iraq. Everybody expects the U.S. to turn on its supercomputer and make all of our problems go away, but we should be learning to do things by ourselves. You can get a sense of the challenge facing reformers by visiting Zayuna, one of Baghdad's most affluent neighborhoods. While many Iraqis - 60 percent of the population, by some estimates - depend heavily on the food rations, the residents of Zayuna generally do not. In fact, many of them disdain the items in the basket, which includes rice, flour, beans, sugar, oil, salt, powdered milk, tea, soap and laundry detergent. But most residents still make sure to collect - or have their servants collect - their monthly rations from the program's agent operating in their neighborhood. Then they take the items they don't want and drive to a roadside kiosk at the nearby Thulatha market, where vendors are legally allowed to buy the rationed groceries and resell them to less picky consumers. After the citizens sell their government-issued groceries, they either pocket the cash or apply the proceeds toward the purchase of better products available at the market, like olive oil to replace the cheaper soy oil. To an outsider watching people make these exchanges, it might seem odd for people in Mercedeses and BMW's to be profiting from government food aid, especially since the original justification for the aid has vanished. The program began as an emergency response to United Nations trade sanctions, and was later supplemented with provisions from the separate oil-for-food program of the United Nations. Even though the sanctions have ended, the program is still considered indispensable. It would be a disaster if the program ended, said Haidar Hassan, one of the vendors at the market, and he was not merely speaking of his own business as a middleman. If the government did not give out all this rice, there would be a shortage of rice in the market. He predicted the price of a kilogram (about two pounds) would quadruple from its current price of 10 cents. His clientele was similarly alarmed. My economic situation is good, but even I could not afford the new higher prices if they stopped the program, said Thaeir Ezadden, a police captain whose salary had recently more than quintupled, to $150 per month, thanks to the new pay scales instituted by American authorities. Mr. Ezadden said he might be willing to go along with one change currently being considered - giving everyone cash payments instead of rations - but only if it was accompanied by more central planning. If they gave out money instead of food, he said, the Americans would have to establish an office in the Ministry of Trade to control all the food prices. Otherwise businessmen would import food and make a profit with high prices. The Americans should also give jobs to everyone who needs one. Economists, while acknowledging the need for protecting consumers during the transition, say that a market economy would provide food much more cheaply and efficiently than the current government-run system. But the American and Iraqi officials in charge of the program know that economists' arguments are not going to assuage the fears of citizens who have forgotten how the market
Re: question about Iraq
This is fucking priceless: (sorry Yoshie -- polite speech eludes me more and more) Economists, while acknowledging the need for protecting consumers during the transition, say that a market economy would provide food much more cheaply and efficiently than the current government-run system. But the American and Iraqi officials in charge of the program know that economists' arguments are not going to assuage the fears of citizens who have forgotten how the market works. So, if I go to the pickup point and get free food, this is inefficient. But if I got to the pickup point and get money and then take the money to the market and get what I need, then that's efficient. Joanna
Baghdad hotel bombed
From http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ Joanna Baghdad Hotel... Baghdad Hotel was bombed today on Al-Sa adun street, which is a mercantile area in Baghdad. Al-Sa adun area is one of the oldest areas in Baghdad. The street is lined with pharmacies, optometrists, photographers, old hotels, doctors, labs, restaurants, etc. The Baghdad Hotel is known to be home the CIA and some prominent members from the Governing Council. No one is sure about the number of casualties yet- some say its in the range of 15 dead, and 40 wounded while other reports say 8 dead and 40 wounded. There were other bombings in Baghdad- one in Salhiya, one in Karrada (near the two-storey bridge). - posted by river @ 1:47 AM http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#10659988634190897 Palms and Punishment... Everyone has been wondering about the trees being cut down in Dhuluaya area http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=452375. Dhuluaya is an area near Sammara, north of Baghdad. It s an area popular for its wonderful date palms, citrus trees and grape vines. The majority of the people who live in the area are simple landowners who have been making a living off of the orchards they ve been cultivating for decades. Orchards in many areas in Iraq- especially central Iraq- are almost like oases in the desert. From kilometers away, you can see the vivid green of proud date palms shimmering through the waves of heat and smoke, reaching for a sky rarely overcast. Just seeing the orchards brings a sort of peace. There are over 500 different kinds of palm trees in Iraq. They vary in type from short, stocky trees with a shock of haphazard, green fronds to long, slim trees with a collection of leaves that seem almost symmetrical in their perfection. A palm tree is known as a nakhla and never fails to bring a sense of satisfaction and admiration. They are the pride and joy of Iraqi farmers and landowners. A garden isn t complete if there isn t a palm tree gracing it. We locate houses by giving the area, the street and then, Well, it s the fourth- no, wait the fifth house on the left or was it the right? Oh never mind- it s the house on the street with the tallest palm tree. The palm trees, besides being lovely, are highly useful. In the winter months, they act as resorts for the exotic birds that flock to Iraq. We often see various species of birds roosting between the leaves, picking on the sweet dates and taunting the small boys below who can t reach the nests. In the summer months, the female palms provide hundreds of dates for immediate consumption, storage, or processing. In Iraq, there are over 300 different types of dates- each with its own name, texture and flavor. Some are dark brown, and soft, while others are bright yellow, crunchy and have a certain tang that is particular to dates. It s very difficult to hate dates- if you don t like one type, you are bound to like another. Dates are also used to produce dibiss , a dark, smooth, date syrup. This dibiss is eaten in some areas with rice, and in others it is used as a syrup with bread and butter. Often it is used as a main source of sugar in Iraqi sweets. Iraqi khal or vinegar is also produced from dates it is dark and tangy and mixed with olive oil, makes the perfect seasoning to a fresh cucumber and tomato salad. Iraqi areg , a drink with very high alcoholic content, is often made with dates. In the summer, families trade baskets and trays of dates- allowing neighbors and friends to sample the fruit growing on their palms with the enthusiasm of proud parents showing off a child s latest accomplishment... Every bit of a palm is an investment. The fronds and leaves are dried and used to make beautiful, pale-yellow baskets, brooms, mats, bags, hats, wall hangings and even used for roofing. The fronds are often composed of thick, heavy wood at their ends and are used to make lovely, seemingly-delicate furniture- similar to the bamboo chairs and tables of the Far East. The low-quality dates and the date pits are used as animal feed for cows and sheep. Some of the date pits are the source of a sort of date oil that can be used for cooking. The palm itself, should it be cut down, is used as firewood, or for building. My favorite use for date pits is beads. Each pit is smoothed and polished by hand, pierced in its center and made into necklaces, belts and rosaries. The finished product is rough, yet graceful, and wholly unique. Palm trees are often planted alongside citrus trees in orchards for more than just decoration or economy. Palm trees tower above all other trees and provide shade for citrus trees, which whither under the Iraqi sun. Depending on the type, it takes some palm trees an average of 5 10 years to reach their final height (some never actually stop growing), and it takes an average of 5 -7 years for most palms to bear fruit. The death of a palm tree is taken very seriously.
Re: Cancun
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031027s=henwood Collapse in Cancün by DOUG HENWOOD [posted online on October 10, 2003] snip Which raises a question: What is progressive about using public resources to support farming on cold, snowy, mountainous land? Isn't the benefit of trade exactly to address something like this? South Korea isn't an impoverished country whose population is dominated by a peasantry that would be ruined by opening up to food imports--it makes cars and cell phones. Why shouldn't South Korea import food? Because food is a matter of national security in this cruel world? For instance, a nation that is totally or even largely dependent upon imported food or imported inputs (e.g., fuels, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) for food production and distribution is vulnerable to foreign powers' use of economic warfare (like trade embargoes) on it. -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Cancun
- Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031027s=henwood Collapse in Cancün by DOUG HENWOOD [posted online on October 10, 2003] snip Which raises a question: What is progressive about using public resources to support farming on cold, snowy, mountainous land? Isn't the benefit of trade exactly to address something like this? South Korea isn't an impoverished country whose population is dominated by a peasantry that would be ruined by opening up to food imports--it makes cars and cell phones. Why shouldn't South Korea import food? Because food is a matter of national security in this cruel world? For instance, a nation that is totally or even largely dependent upon imported food or imported inputs (e.g., fuels, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) for food production and distribution is vulnerable to foreign powers' use of economic warfare (like trade embargoes) on it. -- Yoshie = Precisely the argument the citizens of Norway use to defend subsidies after they were nearly starved to death by the Nazis. Ian
Re: Cancun
Eubulides wrote: Because food is a matter of national security in this cruel world? For instance, a nation that is totally or even largely dependent upon imported food or imported inputs (e.g., fuels, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) for food production and distribution is vulnerable to foreign powers' use of economic warfare (like trade embargoes) on it. -- Yoshie = Precisely the argument the citizens of Norway use to defend subsidies after they were nearly starved to death by the Nazis. All that homegrown food would rot in the face of an oil embargo. Doug
Hydrogen is not a fuel!
Mike Ballard, I usually find your views dead-on but I think you are off here in a couple of dimensions. First, hydrogen is not a fuel. It is a storage medium for energy extracted from other fuels -- whether wind or nuclear or whatever. Mike Ballard wrote: Hydrogen is useful because it is not a carbon based fuel. snip Capitalists who own shares in the carbon based fuel industry will always try to convince you that converting to non carbon based fuels is utopian. It's the same argument they use against socialism i.e. TINA. It looks to me here as if you are making the mistake of thinking of a change in technology as a change in an economic system. Is hydrogen the alternative to capitalism? Amory Lovins has led a whole generation of environmentalists down the road of thinking that there is a technological fix for capitalism. In the part of your post I snipped out you made clear that you don't think that way. But why defend hydrogen? Shane Mage sees hydrogen as a way to "reconfigure our vehicle fleet." Why not think a little about getting rid of the need for "our vehicle fleet"? Forget trying to dream up technological fixes to save capitalism. Gene Coyle
Re: question about Iraq - the theoretical significance of prostitution economics
Basically the banks are arguing your love gimme such a thrill, but your love don't pay my bills, so gimme money, that's what I want. (actually John Lennon was sick in the plane prior to performing this song at the Live Peace in Toronto concert in 1969). Suppose that you are or feel dependent for your survival on monetary income from the market. Then you are bound to argue that there has to be a market and there has to be private property, because there is no other way to survive. What economics adds to this, as you imply, is an ideological justification: it's efficient, and results in a better form of civilisation. Or, if we become a little more dogmatic, we could say that it is inconceivable (untheorisable) to run an economy without markets and bourgeois private property, and the United Nations just haven't understood Milton Friedman. Neo-liberalism (sic.) takes this idea further, and says there exist only markets and only bourgeois private property, public ownership, commonly held goods, sharing and co-operation are a fiction, outside of private consumption in households and outside private enterprise. Neo-conservatism (sic.) is just a tack more cautious and defensive in this, because it admits there are some areas of public assets in the world which could be still be privatised, for example to pay off debts, but, all the same, christian fundamentalism basically admits only private property, only Jesus Christ is permitted to do things like sharing out loaves and fishes and stuff and he is in heaven now, and no longer available to do it except through the hidden hand of the market. The conceptual issue here is how we deal with the historical evidence, because for most of human history there was no monetary economy at all and for a very long time monetary economy played only a very small role in economic life. This issue can ultimately be resolved only by the theorem that God (sic.) created the market and God created money for us to use one day to allocate his bountiful resources (a creationist theory), or else simply by ignoring this sticky issue (history is bunk theory). Now suppose that in a market economy, you already have assets, resources, wherewithal of life etc. then you can still in principle exchange without using money, receive stuff, give away stuff, share stuff, own stuff in common, because of the freedom with the market provides, which is the basis for a lingering socialist evil (sic.). But this creates a problem at the very frontiers of bourgeois economic (sic.) thinking, namely: how do we prevent people from giving stuff away instead of selling, receiving without buying, sharing things, and owning things in common ? What do we need here ? Armies ? Police ? Security staff ? Brainwashing ? In other words, how do we move the privatisation process forward and thus expand the market ? At the most theoretically advanced level, neo-liberalism resolves this through prostitution economics, because if we model prostitution, we can obtain the data necessary to devise institutions in which all observable transfers of economic resources between people can take the form of a monetary transaction, and then we can phase this program in, and remove all outstanding impediments to the market. The theoretical objection to this is, that the model shows, that there is still a problem with pricing and costing, because observable interactions between economic agents (the negotiation process, the bargaining process) involve a significant number of unknowns, and the very act of observing a buyer or seller, may change prices. To overcome the volatility problem, christian fundamentalism provides an answer: prayers and faith in the hidden hand of God, because if we all have faith, then the market will work well, and economic behaviour of economic agents will become more consistent, regulated and predictable. Churches should therefore be theorised as essential market instruments. As I implied at the start, love cannot be the theoretical foundation of bourgeois economics, and it is not surprising therefore that Marx discovered that bourgeois economics is actually a highly contradictory enterprise. References: Karl Marx, Economics and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 Note also: http://www.yakupkucukkale.com/nobel/GunnarMyrdal.htm J.
Re: Cancun
Eubulides wrote: Because food is a matter of national security in this cruel world? For instance, a nation that is totally or even largely dependent upon imported food or imported inputs (e.g., fuels, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) for food production and distribution is vulnerable to foreign powers' use of economic warfare (like trade embargoes) on it. -- Yoshie = Precisely the argument the citizens of Norway use to defend subsidies after they were nearly starved to death by the Nazis. All that homegrown food would rot in the face of an oil embargo. Doug During World War II in Japan, many urban families fled, or at least sent children away, to the countryside, both to escape bombings and to get access to food. -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Cancun
- Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 6:20 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Cancun Eubulides wrote: Because food is a matter of national security in this cruel world? For instance, a nation that is totally or even largely dependent upon imported food or imported inputs (e.g., fuels, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) for food production and distribution is vulnerable to foreign powers' use of economic warfare (like trade embargoes) on it. -- Yoshie = Precisely the argument the citizens of Norway use to defend subsidies after they were nearly starved to death by the Nazis. All that homegrown food would rot in the face of an oil embargo. Doug === They've got a 400 year supply of oil handy. http://amsterdam.park.org/Guests/Stavanger/sg08.htm I'm not attempting to justify the subsidies but we do need to look at the [cultural] path dependency issues rather than assume all uses of subsidies are inefficient a la economism. Ian
warlord capitalist state?
States of war Appeasing the armed forces has become a political necessity for the American president George Monbiot Tuesday October 14, 2003 The Guardian The relationship between governments and those who seek favours from them has changed. Not long ago, lobbyists would visit politicians and bribe or threaten them until they got what they wanted. Today, ministers lobby the lobbyists. Whenever a big business pressure group holds its annual conference or dinner, Tony Blair or Gordon Brown or another senior minister will come and beg it not to persecute the government. George Bush flies around the United States, flattering the companies that might support his re-election, offering tax breaks and subsidies even before the companies ask for them. But while we are slowly becoming aware of the corporate capture of our governments, we seem to have overlooked the growing power of another recipient of this back-to-front lobbying. In the United States, a sort of reverse military coup appears to be taking place. Both the president and the opposition seem to be offering the armed forces, though they do not appear to have requested it, an ever greater share of the business of government. Every week, the state department makes a list of Mr Bush's most important speeches and visits, to distribute to US embassies around the world. The embassy in London has a public archive dating from June last year. During this period, Bush has made 41 major speeches to live audiences. Of these, 14 - just over a third - were delivered to military personnel or veterans. Now Bush, of course, is commander-in-chief as well as president, and he has every right to address the troops. But this commander-in-chief goes far beyond the patriotic blandishments of previous leaders. He sometimes dresses up in the uniform of the troops he is meeting. He quotes their mottoes and songs, retells their internal jokes, mimics their slang. He informs the dog-faced soldiers that they are the rock of Marne, or asks naval cadets whether they gave the left-handed salute to Tecumseh, the God of 2.0. The television audience is mystified, but the men love him for it. He is, or so his speeches suggest, one of them. He starts by leading them in chants of Hoo-ah! Hoo-ah!, then plasters them with praise and reminds them that their pay, healthcare and housing (unlike those of any other workers in America) are being upgraded. After this, they will cheer everything he says. So he uses these occasions to attack his opponents and announce new and often controversial policies. The marines were the first to be told about his interstate electricity grid; he instructed the American Legion about the reform of the Medicare programme; last week he explained his plans for the taxation of small businesses to the national guard. The troops may not have the faintest idea what he's talking about, but they cheer him to the rafters anyway. After that, implementing these policies looks like a patriotic duty. This strikes me as an abuse of his position as commander-in-chief, rather like the use of Air Force One (the presidential aeroplane) for political fundraising tours. The war against terror is a feeble excuse. Indeed, all this began long before September 2001; between February and August that year he gave eight major speeches to the military, some of which were stuffed with policy announcements. But there is a lot more at stake than merely casting the cloak of patriotism over his corporate welfare programmes. Appeasing the armed forces has become, for President Bush, a political necessity. He cannot win the next election without them. Unless he can destroy the resistance in Iraq, the resistance will destroy his political career. But crushing it requires the continuous presence of a vast professional army and tens of thousands of reservists. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the troops do not want to be there, and that at least some of their generals regard the invasion as poorly planned. At the moment, Bush is using Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as his lightning conductor, just as Blair is using Geoff Hoon. But if he is to continue to deflect the anger of the troops, the president must give them everything they might want, whether or not they have asked for it. This is one of the reasons for a military budget that is now entirely detached from any possible strategic reality. As the World Socialist website has pointed out, when you add together the $368bn for routine spending, the $19bn assigned to the department of energy for new nuclear weapons, the $79bn already passed by Congress to fund the war in Iraq and the $87bn that Bush has just requested to sustain it, you find that the US federal government is now spending as much on war as it is on education, public health, housing, employment, pensions, food aid and welfare put together. You would expect this sort of allocation from a third world military dictatorship. But all this has come from a
Re: Cancun
At 11:59 AM -0400 10/13/03, Doug Henwood wrote: Doug asks: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? as Bill says, consult the people. Well of course. But if we're seriously worried about mass poverty in the Third World - the 2 billion living on $2/day by the World Bank definition count - then that means raising productivity and incomes. Raising productivity and incomes means education, technological development, and the disturbance of existing social structures. Of course, we leftists are, first of all, in the business of disturbing existing social structures, in the sense of expropriating the expropriators, whether or not expropriation leads to any rises in productivity and income in the short term. -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Quote du Jour: Paul Bremer on economic justice
Did Chalabi oppose the war? I doubt it. Jurriaan Bendien wrote: I have to say that it is curious to me to have a country [like Iraq - JB] whose per capita income, GDP, is about $800 ... that a county that poor should be required to pay reparations to countries whose per capita GDP is a factor of 10 times that for a war which all of the Iraqis who are now in government opposed - Paul Bremer (in reply to a question whether, given Iraq's weakened economic condition, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would accept a delay in the compensation payments related to Hussein's invasion - the external debt of Iraq is currently estimated at US$100 billion) -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
A view of Iraq from the Moscow Times
Metropolis / Global Eye Front Page Current Issue News Business Stock Market Opinion Elections 2003 Metropolis Travel Guide News Summary Subscribe Archive Search PDF Edition Press Review Advertising Jobs Career Conferences English Courses Photobook Classifieds Reprints About/Contacts http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/10/10/120.html Friday, Oct. 10, 2003. Page XII Global Eye -- Red River By Chris Floyd On March 17, 2003, George W. Bush appeared before the American people to announce that he had ordered the invasion of Iraq. In a short speech, Bush declared that there was no doubt that Saddam Hussein possessed a storehouse of weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to the security of the United States and the world. This was offered as a straightforward and unambiguous statement of fact, unqualified by any caveats. It was, of course, a blood libel, the culmination of an intensive propaganda campaign designed to whip up war fever in the populace with lurid images of Saddamite nukes mushrooming in Manhattan and robot spy drones spraying anthrax all over Boise, Idaho. Later, with the bloodletting underway, chief warlord Don Rumsfeld, bolstered this iron certainty about the existence of Iraq's fearsome weapons, announcing forthrightly: We know where they are. He even pinpointed the location: the area around Tikrit, Saddam's hometown. Again, there was no ambiguity, no doubts, no qualifications. Then last week, the Bush Regime's own CIA hireling, David Kay, leader of the search for Saddam's smoking guns, confirmed what the rest of the world has known for months: there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was not even an active program to develop them. In the face of these facts, the Bushists -- and the lapdogs they keep kenneled on that little island north of France -- were reduced to making the ludicrous argument that their war of aggression was justified by Kay's alleged discovery of some evidence that Saddam had a plan to one day re-start a weapons program that could have led to the development of WMD somewhere down the line. This assumed, of course, that any such new capabilities would not have been immediately destroyed by the ongoing Anglo-American bombing campaign against Iraq (which raged unabated for 12 years) or taken out in a limited strike like the 1998 Desert Fox operation, or -- and here's a novel idea -- circumvented by the presence of United Nations inspectors crawling all over the country. In fact, there were many options short of war that could have been taken had Saddam actually possessed any WMD. Kay's report, along with dozens of pre-war intelligence concerns that have since come to light, show clearly that there was absolutely no justification for launching a full-scale conquest of Iraq in mid-March 2003. Even by the barbaric standards of the Bush Regime, which holds -- in contravention of international law and American tradition -- that aggressive war is justified under certain conditions, the invasion of Iraq was a wanton criminal act. Their own evidence proves that their own conditions were not met. Even by their own lights, the Bushists cannot justify the decision to go to war in March. No, that particular date was chosen for one reason only: to get the long-planned conquest of Iraq out of the way before George W. Bush's presidential campaign next year. Thus, every Coalition soldier killed in Iraq has died solely for the personal aggrandizement of George W. Bush. Every one of the estimated 30,000 innocent Iraqi civilians killed in the invasion (according to a detailed body count carried out by an anti-Saddam Iraqi dissident group) died for the personal aggrandizement of George W. Bush. And the soldiers and civilians go on dying, day after day. All this blood and destruction so that Bush might remain in power, and dole out the plunder of two nations -- Iraq and America -- to the gilded corporate mafia he represents. And now the greatest prize in the history of the world beckons: domination of the world's oil reserves, precisely at the point when the rising, insatiable demand for oil is about to exceed the remaining supply. Nations will be increasingly desperate, willing to pay any price -- financial and political -- to those who control access to the precious, dwindling resource. For the criminal mind, this is indeed a prize worth lying for, worth cheating for, worth killing tens of thousands of innocent people for. And as often noted here, a gang that doesn't blanche at aggressive war will certainly have no scruples about subverting the political process -- by any means necessary, even violence -- to maintain their power. Yet the political fate of George W. Bush is insignificant. What matters now is the fate of the Republic itself. Always an imperfect instrument -- as are all human constructions -- and buffeted by decades of militarization and vast corruption, the Republic nevertheless has served as a vehicle to
Re: Cancun
At 11:59 AM -0400 10/13/03, Doug Henwood wrote: Doug asks: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? isn't need for change in land ownership in such countries supported by evidence that smaller farms get higher yields per hectare...seem to recall study indicating that equal distribution of ag land to farming families would result in substantial increase in food production (countries studied included colombia, malaysia, pakistan, brazil, among others)... michael hoover
Re: question about Iraq
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/13/03 8:16 PM Planners are considering gradually replacing some groceries with cash welfare payments or some version of food stamps that could be redeemed at local markets. Besides giving shoppers more choices, the change would also help Iraqi merchants and farmers, because consumers would presumably buy more local fruits and vegetables instead of relying on the many imported foods in their rations. Yoshie re. iraqi grown fruits and vegetables, isn't percentage of country's irrigated land damaged by salinization one of highest in world (on order of about 1/3rd)... michael hoover
Re: Cancun
I discussed this in my first book, Farming for profit in a hungry world. On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 10:42:32PM -0400, Michael Hoover wrote: At 11:59 AM -0400 10/13/03, Doug Henwood wrote: Doug asks: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? isn't need for change in land ownership in such countries supported by evidence that smaller farms get higher yields per hectare...seem to recall study indicating that equal distribution of ag land to farming families would result in substantial increase in food production (countries studied included colombia, malaysia, pakistan, brazil, among others)... michael hoover -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cancun
The discussion of Cancun is interesting but I would like to propose a change in emphasis. Generally speaking the Cancun meeting came to a halt because the developed capitalist countries were not willing to engage agriculture as they had previously promised. Rather, they demanded that third world countries first accept negotiations on new agreements dealing with services, competition policy, government procurement and the like. The third world refused this demand, maintaining their position that nothing new would be discussed until agriculture was settled. This means that those of us living in the developed capitalist world were spared the negative consequences form new agreements that would greatly reduce the quality of our own lives, thanks to the third world position on agriculture. There was a lot of attention in the U.S. press on third world demands on agriculture but very little about these other agreements except to say that everything was for the benefit of the third world and werent they silly to undermine the talks. Activists in the developed capitalist countries, or at least the U.S., did not succeed in making what was at stake in these other agreements very clear, and in the celebration over the (temporary) collapse of these talks have done little to call attention to them. So, the question I would like to pose concerns how best to deal with this situation. Should our conversations about the WTO remain focused on agriculture and the need to demand an end to subsidies for agri- business so as to help the third world? Or should we also be finding a way to reignite attention on and concern about these other agreements? And if so how should we do it? Obviously the U.S. is going to push them in the FTAA and other venues, and I hear very few progressives discussing this and strategizing over what we should do about it. So, how can we build opposition to government procurement and somehow tie that work into revitalizing a sense of the importance of public services. Are there ongoing struggles that can be tapped? What about the service agreement? How do we make connections between these agreements and the Bush attempt to commodify and marketize our lives? It is probably worth noting that these other agreements would also greatly hurt third world working people so this struggle against them is not just a developed capitalist struggle. Marty Hart-Landsberg
tax breaks/intra class conflict redux
Congress Weighs Corporate Tax Breaks Lawmakers Look to Help Manufacturing Sector While Averting Conflict Over Export Subsidy By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, October 14, 2003; Page E01 Congressional tax writers are rushing to complete legislation that would offer tens of billions of dollars in new U.S. corporate tax breaks, many of them for overseas operations, setting off a lobbying battle between major domestic manufacturers and some of the largest multinational corporations in the world. Driven by a Dec. 31 deadline, lawmakers hope to end a long-standing U.S. export subsidy in time to avert a trade war with the European Union. But several are also seeking to use the repeal of the $5 billion-a-year subsidy as an opportunity to pass new corporate tax cuts worth much more. Most of those would be aimed at earnings from domestic manufacturing, but many new proposals would also shield billions of dollars in earnings from overseas operations. The debate over how to balance the bill's tax breaks between those for domestic and overseas sales has pitted companies including Boeing Co. and Caterpillar Inc. against Coca-Cola Co. and General Motors Corp. The deadline -- coupled with pent-up demand from businesses that felt slighted by the large tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which were aimed mainly at individuals -- has sent corporate tax lobbyists into a frenzy. This is a godsend for lobbyists, one of them said yesterday. You wouldn't be a decent tax lobbyist if you didn't have tons of stuff in these bills. The House and Senate tax committees are still far apart, and there is no guarantee the corporate tax cuts will emerge from either chamber, much less reach President Bush's desk this year. But in recent weeks, senators and House members say they have made remarkable progress. The Senate Finance Committee overwhelmingly approved legislation this month that would cut corporate taxes by $100 billion over 10 years while eliminating $56 billion in export subsidies. The Senate measure is designed to cost the Treasury nothing, since it would scrap the export subsidies and raise additional revenue by curtailing abusive corporate tax shelters and closing tax loopholes. House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) hopes to complete a bill this week or next that would reduce the Treasury's revenue by around $100 billion over 10 years, but lobbyists say the true cost could be considerably more than the $130 billion version Thomas drafted this summer. To advocates of the measures, Congress has no choice but to act. Two years ago, the World Trade Organization ruled illegal a U.S. tax provision that allows exporters to exclude 15 percent of their net export income from taxation. The WTO gave the European Union permission to impose $4 billion in trade sanctions on U.S. manufacturing and agricultural exports. The EU has given Congress until year's end to come into compliance. But after 37 months of declining payrolls in manufacturing, lawmakers are not about to slap what they see as a tax increase on the nation's most ailing economic sector. Jobs are important, said Ways and Means spokeswoman Christin Tinsworth. That's the focus of this. The Senate bill, co-authored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and the committee's ranking Democrat, Max Baucus (Mont.), would replace the export subsidy with a $60 billion tax cut for manufacturers that effectively lowers the tax rate on earnings from domestic manufactured goods to 32 percent from 35 percent. It also includes a dozen smaller measures, worth $39 billion, that would shield corporate overseas income from immediate taxation. Another provision would encourage U.S. companies to bring overseas profits back home by lowering the corporate income tax for one year to 5.25 percent, a measure that supporters say will bring a rush of fresh capital into the country but would also prove a boon to the firms who have lobbied hard for it, like Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc., Eli Lilly and Co., and Merck Co. The provision would cost the Treasury $4.2 billion over 10 years. The Senate measure would extend specific tax breaks to lumber mills, oil refiners, cooperatives and even independent filmmakers. Thomas's bill would lower the corporate income tax rate to 32 percent for virtually all companies as well as speed up the rate manufacturers could write off new equipment, extend the length of time business losses could be written off future profits and weaken the alternative minimum tax, which was designed to ensure companies pay some income tax. But Thomas's political problems -- even among Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee -- stem from nearly two dozen provisions worth some $84 billion over 10 years that would aid multinational companies and protect overseas income. Thomas has said such measures would amount to a long-overdue reform of the nation's byzantine system of taxing overseas earnings, and most of them
Re: Cancun
At 3:09 PM -0400 10/11/03, Doug Henwood wrote: But are progressives against rich-country farm subsidies? * New York Times Magazine October 12, 2003 THE WAY WE LIVE NOW The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity By MICHAEL POLLAN Sometimes even complicated social problems turn out to be simpler than they look. Take America's ''obesity epidemic,'' arguably the most serious public-health problem facing the country. Three of every five Americans are now overweight, and some researchers predict that today's children will be the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will actually be shorter than that of their parents. The culprit, they say, is the health problems associated with obesity. . . . Since 1977, an American's average daily intake of calories has jumped by more than 10 percent. Those 200 or so extra calories have to go somewhere. But the interesting question is, Where, exactly, did all those extra calories come from in the first place? And the answer takes us back to the source of all calories: the farm. . . . The rules of classical economics just don't seem to operate very well on the farm. When prices fall, for example, it would make sense for farmers to cut back on production, shrinking the supply of food to drive up its price. But in reality, farmers do precisely the opposite, planting and harvesting more food to keep their total income from falling, a practice that of course depresses prices even further. What's rational for the individual farmer is disastrous for farmers as a group. Add to this logic the constant stream of improvements in agricultural technology (mechanization, hybrid seed, agrochemicals and now genetically modified crops -- innovations all eagerly seized on by farmers hoping to stay one step ahead of falling prices by boosting yield), and you have a sure-fire recipe for overproduction -- another word for way too much food. All this would be bad enough if the government weren't doing its best to make matters even worse, by recklessly encouraging farmers to produce even more unneeded food. Absurdly, while one hand of the federal government is campaigning against the epidemic of obesity, the other hand is actually subsidizing it, by writing farmers a check for every bushel of corn they can grow. We have been hearing a lot lately about how our agricultural policy is undermining our foreign-policy goals, forcing third-world farmers to compete against a flood tide of cheap American grain. Well, those same policies are also undermining our public-health goals by loosing a tide of cheap calories at home. While it is true that our farm policies are making a bad situation worse, adding mightily to the great mountain of grain, this hasn't always been the case with government support of farmers, and needn't be the case even now. For not all support programs are created equal, a fact that has been conveniently overlooked in the new free-market campaign to eliminate them. In fact, farm programs in America were originally created as a way to shrink the great mountain of grain, and for many years they helped to do just that. The Roosevelt administration established the nation's first program of farm support during the Depression, though not, as many people seem to think, to feed a hungry nation. Then, as now, the problem was too much food, not too little; New Deal farm policy was designed to help farmers reeling from a farm depression caused by what usually causes a farm depression: collapsing prices due to overproduction. In Churdan, Iowa, recently, a corn farmer named George Naylor told me about the winter day in 1933 his father brought a load of corn to the grain elevator, where ''the price had been 10 cents a bushel the day before,'' and was told that suddenly, ''the elevator wasn't buying at any price.'' The price of corn had fallen to zero. New Deal farm policy, quite unlike our own, set out to solve the problem of overproduction. It established a system of price supports, backed by a grain reserve, that worked to keep surplus grain off the market, thereby breaking the vicious cycle in which farmers have to produce more every year to stay even. It is worth recalling how this system worked, since it suggests one possible path out of the current subsidy morass. Basically, the federal government set and supported a target price (based on the actual cost of production) for storable commodities like corn. When the market price dropped below the target, a farmer was given an option: rather than sell his harvest at the low price, he could take out what was called a ''nonrecourse loan,'' using his corn as collateral, for the full value of his crop. The farmer then stored his corn until the market improved, at which point he sold it and used the proceeds to repay the loan. If the market failed to improve that year, the farmer could discharge his debt simply by handing his corn over to the government, which would add it to something called, rather quaintly, the ''ever-normal
Re: Hydrogen is not a fuel!
Title: Re: Hydrogen is not a fuel! Eugene Coyle wrote: ...hydrogen is not a fuel. It is a storage medium for energy extracted from other fuels -- whether wind or nuclear or whatever. On the contrary, hydrogen is the energy source provided by virtually all the fuels in current use--petroleum, methane, wood, cow dung, coal. A fuel (except uranium) is nothing but a way of storing and releasing solar energy in the form of its hydrogen atoms. ...Shane Mage sees hydrogen as a way to reconfigure our vehicle fleet. Why not think a little about getting rid of the need for our vehicle fleet?... I thought about it a little, but could come up with no way to get pigs to fly. Of course if our only means of transportation were horseback and shank's mare we might have enough horse manure to do without any other source of hydrogen -:) Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Hydrogen is not a fuel!
Hi Eugene, --- Eugene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: First, hydrogen is not a fuel. It is a storage medium for energy extracted from other fuels -- whether wind or nuclear or whatever. Hydrogen can be burned. It is an element. It can be extracted from water. http://www.hionsolar.com/n-hion96.htm Mike Ballard wrote: Hydrogen is useful because it is not a carbon based fuel. snip Capitalists who own shares in the carbon based fuel industry will always try to convince you that converting to non carbon based fuels is utopian. It's the same argument they use against socialism i.e. TINA. It looks to me here as if you are making the mistake of thinking of a change in technology as a change in an economic system. Is hydrogen the alternative to capitalism? Hydrogen is an alternative to burning carbon based fuels. Using carbon based fuels causes pollution which we don't need and in fact is killing us and the Earth. Hydrogen probably won't be used on a wide enough scale to stop say, global warming before it goes too far, as long as capitalists own and profit from the sale of carbon based fuel commodities. It could be used on a wide scale, if the means of production were socially owned by the producers and employed to fulfill our desires to live in harmony with the Earth. Shane Mage sees hydrogen as a way to reconfigure our vehicle fleet. Why not think a little about getting rid of the need for our vehicle fleet? Forget trying to dream up technological fixes to save capitalism. I don't mind vehicles. I'm not trying to fix capitalism or replace it with enlightened commodity production. In fact, I think commodity production is the fetter which holds humanity back from freedom and stabs the Earth in the side of the dawn in the modern age. Best, Mike B) = * A man's maturity consists in finding once again the seriousness he had as a child at play. Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (500 B.C.) http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
Re: Quote du Jour: Paul Bremer on economic justice
Did Chalabi oppose the war? I doubt it. Jurriaan meant Gulf War II. He was of course a warhawk for GWIII. I have no idea what his position, if any, was on GWI--except that he stayed well away from the action. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Bolivia
[speaking of the FTAA] Bolivia's President Halts Controversial Gas Project Strike Paralyzes Capital as Protests Spread By Carlos Valdes Associated Press Tuesday, October 14, 2003; Page A16 LA PAZ, Bolivia, Oct. 13 -- Bolivia's president suspended on Monday a controversial project to export natural gas through Chile to the United States, hoping to defuse weeks of widening anti-government protests in which about 40 people have been killed. Despite the decision, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets and a public transportation strike virtually paralyzed the capital. President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada also faced criticism from his vice president over the use of deadly force against the protesters. I cannot continue to support the situation we are living, Vice President Carlos Mesa said, urging the president to change his policies. But Mesa said he would not resign. Another senior official, Development Minister Jorge Torres, did resign, citing insurmountable differences with the president. As calls mounted for Sanchez de Lozada's resignation, the embattled president addressed the nation on radio and television after meeting with top advisers and military leaders. Sanchez de Lozada vowed to defeat the sedition and restore order, and called the massive protests a plot encouraged from abroad aimed at destroying Bolivia and staining our democracy with blood. As the president spoke, marches and sporadic clashes continued in La Paz. Witnesses said demonstrators threw rocks at the residence of former president Jaime Paz Zamora, a close associate of Sanchez de Lozada's. The presidential palace remained under heavy military guard. For the most part, however, the marches appeared peaceful. Radio stations urged soldiers and police to use restraint. Protesters were reportedly blocking roads in several parts of the country. During protests in El Alto, a La Paz suburb of 750,000 people, soldiers killed at least five demonstrators, according to witnesses. The government had earlier reported 11 deaths in El Alto. The government declared martial law, sending soldiers with automatic weapons to patrol the streets. In La Paz, many shops, banks and offices were closed as opposition leaders called for the president's resignation. We will not stop until he goes away, said Roberto de la Cruz, a union leader in El Alto. Protest leader and former presidential candidate Evo Morales said Sanchez de Lozada's resignation was the only political solution to this crisis. The president's decision to shelve the gas plan is not enough for the Bolivian people, Morales, a member of congress, told Chile's Radio Cooperativa. What the Bolivian people want is that the gas remain in Bolivia, for the benefit of Bolivians.
Mapping the CA Political Geography for the Green Party
Arnold Schwarzenegger received 3,850,982 votes (at http://vote2003.ss.ca.gov/Returns/gov/00.htm). Let's say that each Green campaign worker in California should be responsible for securing 100 votes for the Green Party gubernatorial candidate, by getting registered Greens to vote, getting angry Democrats to vote Green, or registering new voters. The Green Party, then, needs at least about 38,510 dedicated campaign workers to have a fighting chance. If the campaign workers spend 99% of their time energy on getting Black and Latino votes (Cf. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html), more or less ignoring whites except those who are already registered as Greens, it should be possible for the Party to win the next time. [I don't know, though, if the Green Party in California has 35,000 - 40,000 activists.] In any case, the Green Party needs to prioritize where its activists should spend their time and energy, mapping the political geography of race and class, and to set numerical targets (how many campaign workers, how many votes, etc. in each precinct), in order to garner more than 2-5% of the total votes. Is the Green Party organized enough to do so? -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
