economic warfare spreads to Saudi Arabia
It is clear that the attack in Khobar is part of a new pattern. These are not mainly excitatory terrorist activity (although dragging the dead Brit's body through the streets for a couple of miles before putting it on display, is clearly for political purposes). It is economic warfare. The authorities will not be giving publicity to the rational strategy of the insurgents: it is to attack oil installations owned by foreign, especially US companies. The Saudi regime has said the investment of foreign capital is essential. It has had to send in helicopters with elite troops, but it is likely there will be substantial deaths of hostages as well as of the insurgents. It has captured one of the leaders and can torture him, and the Yanbu attack last month ended arguably in victory for the regime. But this is now a war on Saudi territory which the insurgents may not lose in the longer term. The lack of democratic consensus and the unemployment in Saudi Arabia are not good omens for the Saui Royal family. The truce with radical islamist within the country has broken down, which allowed them to organise for 9/11. The war is now at home. Although the islamic insurgents are almost certainly motivated by ideas of martyrdom and are willing to attack civilians with terroristic methods, the intention is more than to be politically excitatory. It is therefore arguable they should be called insurgents rather than terrorists, and we should consider that a guerrilla war has now broken out of insurgents within Saudi Arabia itself, one that will not be easily stamped out. Its vulnerable targets are economic. US and UK governments may well have to instruct all their civilian citizens to leave the country. This is a war for control of Saudi Arabian oil supplies. Judging from the response of the UK government to the bombing of the crucial capitalist institution of the Baltic Exchange by the IRA in the 1990's, the Saudi Arabian regime will have to compromise. US capital may lose direct ownership of Saudi Oil. That has enormous global strategic significance for the hegemony of US imperialism over the world capitalist economy. Especially since the Islamic insurgents can probably deny Iraqi oil to the west for several years to come. The insurgents are backed by substantial capital resources and infrastructure. This is a war of global dimensions of a new form between rival capitalisms. In terms of its footsoldiers it is a war between the haves and the Islamic have nots. The latter are more determined, and more likely to win, at least some concessions. Their leadership are shrewd enough clearly to be thinking strategically as well as tactically in terms of organisation. This is perhaps the third world war, of a form very different from the first and second. I suggest... Chris Burford London
Re: economic warfare spreads to Saudi Arabia
It is very difficult to distinguish between elements that have ties to a Zionist agenda that wants an apocalyptic environment so that the crisis in the state of Israel is diluted within a more chaotic sectarian in-fighting milieu or a clear Islamic working class movement that aims to retain resources in the arab region... it is difficult when political work is so clandestine to decipher the political geography... what one can read on the surface of things is that there is primarily a crisis of governance. calls for reform from the US have weakened Arab regimes and, secondly,combined with a deteriorating social conditions the stage for change is a forteriori over-determined. the way things can go is anywhere between complete chaos, recall that Jordan is a volcano with sixty percent of its population being Palestinian. or some state of pax Americana. the latter you can already write off because of Iraqi resistance.. resistance usually judging by south Lebanon becomes highly organized and effective with time. so the Iraq war my bring the end of the us unipolar system and when the US goes so will Zionism in Israel, a country shooting missiles into a densely populated refugee camp is really in deep crisis but this leaves Iran, turkey.. there the EU is playing turkey on the ropes and how much will Iran swing towards the US will determine what the US's share will be.. speculative as this may seem.. a gradual and calibrated dose of violence is good for the US but when things start getting out of control in the biggest oil basin.. the old imperialist rivalries are likely to resurface once more. Do you Yahoo!?Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
EARLY WARNING: Venezuela's radical opposition will ignore CNE decisions on recall referendum
See what may be the outlines of the U.S.-led coup in preparation: http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=21394 Attention in the article is upon the radical-right opposition, rather than upon the government's preparations, and gives a feel for what the government and the Venezuelan masses have to prepare for. I have no idea whether the recall petition will be ruled sufficient or insufficient, but I have read that Chavez himself welcomes a recall vote as he believes he would easily win such a vote. I also don't know anything about protections for the integrity of any such recall vote, but I'm quite sure the opposition will claim fraud if they lose the recall, just as they will claim fraud if the repair process does not lead to a recall vote. So, the described preparations are as relevant for now or as for mid-August. Paul Z. * Vol.21-Neoliberalism in Crisis, Accumulation, and Rosa Luxemburg's Legacy RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, Zarembka/Soederberg, eds, Elsevier Science ** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
Re: Options expensing
it seems that options expensing is easy if firms are able to count options as a cost in their taxes (if I remember what Nomi said correctly). Simply count them as an equal cost when calculating profits for the stockholders. It's reminiscent of a land reform program I heard about (perhaps a fictional one, in Galbraith's THE TRIUMPH ) in which the landowners were compensated for their expropriated land according to the value that the claimed in their tax forms. Jim D.
che and nytimes
May 26, 2004 Dear Editor, As the publisher of the book The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara, I was somewhat mystified by Larry Rohter's Che Today? (May 26, 2004) and references to its suppression in Cuba. The book has in fact been published in Cuba -- one edition published by the publishing house of the Union of Young Communists. A further edition is to be published in Cuba next month by the Che Guevara Studies Center, and our publishing house is assisting in the publication of this new, expanded edition. There was no conspiracy in Cuba to hide this book or prevent its publication. Having been personally involved in this and similar Che Guevara book projects in Cuba for more than twenty years I can testify that there is no conspiracy to prohibit the publication in Cuba of this or any other book by Che Guevara. In fact, the opposite is the case. The books are published with the support and enthusiasm of those who knew and collaborated with Che Guevara. These figures include Fidel Castro. Sincerely, David Deutschmann Publisher/President Ocean Press Editor of Che Guevara Reader (2003) *** The New York Times - May 26, 2004 LETTER FROM THE AMERICAS Che Today? More Easy Rider Than Revolutionary by Larry Rohter BUENOS AIRES, May 25 - Che Guevara is widely remembered today as a revolutionary figure; to some a heroic, Christ-like martyr, to others the embodiment of a failed ideology. To still others, he is just a commercialized emblem on a T-shirt. But for Latin Americans just now coming of age, yet another image of Che is starting to emerge: the romantic and tragic young adventurer who has as much in common with Jack Kerouac or James Dean as with Fidel Castro. The phenomenon began a decade ago with the publication of his long-suppressed memoir known in English as The Motorcycle Diaries, which has become a cult favorite among Latin American college students and young intellectuals. But it is being catapulted ahead now by the release this month of a Latin American-made film version of the book, enthusiastically received both in the region and last week at Cannes. Predictably, those on the traditional left in Cuba and elsewhere in the region, who view themselves as the guardians of Che's legacy, have not exactly welcomed this development. But others argue that it reflects not only the malleability of Che's own character and experience but also the need of each generation to fashion an image of Che to suit its own needs and circumstances. Very few young people today would subscribe to Che's belief that power can be seized through guerrilla warfare. But they are disillusioned with the wholesale embrace of capitalism that occurred across the region during the 1990's. They see it as having aggravated economic and social inequities that he railed against, and they are looking for alternatives. Che provides that because he is a figure who can constantly be examined and re-examined, as Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, puts it. To the younger, post-cold-war generation of Latin Americans, Che stands up as the perennial Icarus, a self-immolating figure who represents the romantic tragedy of youth, he added. Their Che is not just a potent figure of protest, but the idealistic, questioning kid who exists in every society and every time. Both the memoir and the movie retell the eight-month, 7,500 mile odyssey across five South American countries that Guevara, then an asthmatic 23-year-old medical student, began here in December 1951. Traveling first on a rickety motorcycle named La Poderosa, the powerful one, and then as hitchhikers and stowaways, he and a friend crossed the pampas, traversed the Andes and navigated the Amazon before arriving in Caracas, Venezuela, and going their separate ways. Che was simply Ernesto Guevara then, and his account of the journey is a classic coming-of-age story: a voyage of adventure and self-discovery that is both political and personal. We were just a pair of vagabonds with knapsacks on our backs, the dust of the road covering us, mere shadows of our old aristocratic egos, he writes when the pair reaches Valparaiso, Chile. His companion on the trip, Alberto Granado Jiménez, is still alive and living in Cuba. At the age of 82, he traveled recently to Brazil for the premiere of the film and immediately noticed the change in Che's image. He said he found himself surrounded by young people asking beautiful things, not just about the movie, but about what Ernesto and I were feeling back then, he said. Practically nothing was asked about politics, Mr. Granado recalled, somewhat wistfully. They were more interested in the human aspect, in the story of how two young men, two normal people but dreamers and idealists, set out on an adventure and with optimism and impetuosity, achieve their objective. The Cuban government, which
npr's conservative sources
Published on Tuesday, May 25, 2004 by the Long Island, NY Newsday Watchdog Group Report: Most NPR Sources are Conservative by Peter Goodman Despite a perception that National Public Radio is politically liberal, the majority of its sources are actually Republicans and conservatives, according to a survey released today by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a left-leaning media watchdog. Republicans not only had a substantial partisan edge, according to a report accompanying the survey, individual Republicans were NPR's most popular sources overall, taking the top seven spots in frequency of appearance. In addition, representatives of right-of-center think tanks outnumbered their leftist counterparts by more than four to one, FAIR reported. Citing comments dating to the Nixon administration in the 1970s, the report said, That NPR harbors a liberal bias is an article of faith among many conservatives. However, it added, Despite the commonness of such claims, little evidence has ever been presented for a left bias at NPR. The study counted 2,334 sources used in 804 stories aired last June for four programs: All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition Saturday and Weekend Edition Sunday. For the analysis of think tanks, FAIR used the months of May through August 2003. Overall, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 61 percent to 38 percent, a figure only slightly higher now, when the GOP controls the White House and both houses of Congress, than during a previous survey in 1993, during the Clinton administration. Some people may think is too left of center because they are contrasting it to the louder, black-and-white sloganeering of talk radio, said FAIR's Steve Rendall, a co-author of the report. It could be that, just by contrast, the more dulcet [tone] and slower pace and lower volume of NPR makes many people think it must be the opposite of talk radio. NPR spokeswoman Jenny Lawhorn responded, This is America - any group has the right to criticize our coverage. That said, there are obviously a lot of intelligent people out there who listen to NPR day after day and think we're fair and in-depth in our approach.
facing south/28 may 2004
F A C I N G S O U T H A progressive Southern news report May 28, 2004 * Issue 81 Fingers _ INSTITUTE INDEX * America, Idle? (the sequel) Number of votes cast for the TV talent show, American Idol, this week in millions: 65 Number of U.S. citizens aged 18-35 in the year 2000, in millions: 64 Number aged 18-35 who voted in the 2000 elections, in millions: 25 Percent that youth voter turnout has declined since voting age was lowered to 18 in 1972: 14 Percent that overall voter turnout has declined since 1972: 4 Sources on file at the Institute for Southern Studies. _ DATELINE: THE SOUTH * Top Stories Around the Region NEW GENERATION OF BLACK AMERICANS RETURN SOUTH In a trend that started in the 1970s and intensified in the 1990s, African Americans are reversing the great migration that took them North, and are returning South. Between 1995 and 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau says 680,000 African Americans returned. The South is now home to 55 percent of the nation's black population. (MSNBC, 5/24) http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5052699/ SECRECY SURROUNDS FLORIDA VOTER LISTS The state of Florida is drawing criticism for creating a list of 47,687 supposed felons to be barred from voting in the 2004 elections -- and refusing to open the list for public inspection. In 2000, the state wrongfully scrubbed the names of tens of thousands of mostly African Americans from the voting rolls, wrongfully labeling them as felons. (Tallahassee Democrat, 5/19) http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/8699040.htm 10 COMMANDMENTS CASE DOMINATES ALABAMA PRIMARY Former Chief Justice Roy Moore may have been removed from office for refusing to illegally placing the 10 Commandments in front of a courthouse, but the Alabama judge may still be a major player in the state's June 1 primary. Supporters of Moore have lined up to run for one congressional seat and all three state Supreme Court seats that are open. (Associated Press, 5/24) http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/8748384.htm LAWYERS DECRY GEORGIA'S STATE OF EMERGENCY FOR ECONOMIC SUMMIT The National Lawyers Guild has condemned the recent announcement by the Governor of Georgia declaring a state of emergency merely because protests are expected in connection with the Group of Eight (G-8) summit meeting on Sea Island in June. (NLG, 5/24) http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0524-06.htm MEDIA WATCHDOG ASKS THAT LIMBAUGH BE TAKEN OFF TAXPAYER-FUNDED MILITARY RADIO A liberal watchdog group has asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to remove Florida-based radio host Rush Limbaugh from the American Forces Radio and Television Service. Limbaugh's right-wing show is broadcast for one hour per day on the American Forces Network, at taxpayer expense, to nearly 1 million U.S. troops stationed in more than 1,000 outlets in more than 175 countries and U.S territories, including Iraq. (US Newswire, 5/26) http://mediamatters.org/static/pdf/rumsfeld-press-release-20040526.pdf AMERICA IDOLIZES SOUTHERN CROONERS In its popular three years on the Fox network, all three winners of the American Idol talent contest have been from the South; two of the runner-ups have hailed from Southern states, and the remaining second-place finisher grew up in Georgia. (Associated Press, 5/25) http://tv.yahoo.com/news/ap/20040525/108549402000.html
Re: Thinking for ourselves: Remembering World War II
Charles Brown wrote: Thinking for ourselves: Remembering World War II Analysis by Shea Howell Special to The Michigan Citizen http://www.michigancitizen.com/ A new monument opens in Washington, D.C. this Memorial Day, honoring the sacrifices of Americans during World War II. The dedication of this memorial is an opportunity for all of us to remember the lives lost and changed forever by war. It is also an opportunity to remember the questions that that war brought to the generations that followed. In many ways it was the probing of the World War II experience that compelled many of us to resist the use of military power in Korea and Vietnam. A WW2 vet and peace activist clleague of mine went to the memorial on its opening day. He described it as a celebration of empire and military might. He said that it completely ignored the human cost of war and there is only indirect indication that men and women fought fascism and sacrificed their lives and health for it. His description of the memorial sounded as though tis creators wanted to build amonument to power rather than a just struggle against the fascists. Joel Wendland I uploaded a new blog entry on the memorial: Memorial Politics The National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. is now open. The construction of the monument was surrounded by many controversies. For instance: One of the two American companies selected . . . to build a World War II memorial on the Mall is owned by a German construction company that used concentration camp labor during World War II. . . . The full posting at http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/memorial-politics.html. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Thinking for ourselves: Remembering World War II
His description of the memorial sounded as though tis creators wanted to build amonument to power rather than a just struggle against the fascists. Joel Wendland And that is exactly why the memorial is so appropriate to the struggle- because it was NOT just a just struggle against fascists, but a struggle for power. Before we go all misty eyed about Memorial Day and the 60th anniversary of D-Day, we should be clear about the real price paid by the real people prior to and during this struggle for power: the war was the result of the defeat of the working class revolutionary struggles from 1926 forward throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. And not the least of these was the defeat of the Left Opposition inside the USSR. Whereas Saint Just supposedly said Those who make revolutions halfway merely dig their own graves, the truth of the 20s and 30s is that the arrested half revolution initiated by the destruction of the Russian bourgeoisie, dug the graves of lots of others, those same workers inside and outside the USSR. At every moment the war is a struggle for power . Justice has nothing to do with it, west or east. It is the destruction of the producers and conditions of production initiated by capital. Militarily, the liberation of Europe, begins not with D-Day, but a year earlier with the Battle of Kursk when the Red Army (let's hear it for Vatutin, Katukov, Rotmistrov, but especially Vatutin) absorbed everything Model's, Hauser's, Kempf's, Hoth's Panzer Armies, and SS Panzer Armies, could project in their Operation Citadel, and then immediately turned the Red Army to the offensive along the entire front from the Black to the Baltic Seas. That victory was made possible by the enduring strength of the unfinished revolution, the collectivized production organization. The cost too was paid by the legacy, living and material, of the Russian Revolution. Only that made US/UK landings in Sicily, Italy, and eventually Normandy viable and worth the cost..
Re: Thinking for ourselves: Remembering World War II
Carl wrote: WWII, the good war, lends itself to this kind of abuse, and I welcome it receding in history. Stealing Images of the Good Fight Geoffrey M. White, professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai'i and senior fellow at the East-West Center, writes that the 'new' American patriotism being produced in the post-9-11 era frequently invokes earlier forms of patriotism, especially in images of World War II, the 'good war' (Pearl Harbor and September 11: War Memory and American Patriotism in the 9-11 Era, Japan Focus). As White notes, Pearl Harbor quickly became a reference point for American interpretations of September 11 (Pearl Harbor and September 11: War Memory and American Patriotism in the 9-11 Era). Beyond explicit references to Pearl Harbor, the verbal and visual rhetoric of American political discourse became full of allusions to World War II: the term 'infamy' or 'day of infamy' also appeared in many accounts, redeploying the phrase first used by Franklin Roosevelt in his declaration of war speech the day after Pearl Harbor (when his reference was actually 'date that will live in infamy'), says White, using as illustration the Time magazine's special issue on the September 11th attacks . . . . It is not the right-wing politicians and corporate media alone that have tried to mobilize Americans by exploiting the images of the good fight. Some liberals and leftists, too, have resorted to a misleading analogy to seduce activists for the agenda of electing John Kerry. What they seek to appropriate, however, is not the images of Pearl Harbor and Iwo Jima but the rhetoric of the Popular Front. Take, for instance, a liberal blogger Billmon's Whisky Bar. Near the top right corner of the front page of the Whisky Bar, you can see a reproduction of a poster from the Spanish Civil War, below which Billmon's caption reads: Stop Bush -- Support The Popular Front. . . . It is the bipartisan consensus responsible for the birth and growth of the prison empire, as well as the bipartisan consensus for liberal imperialism, that the stolen images of the good fight -- the Popular Front on the left, Pearl Harbor and Iwo Jima on the right -- are meant to conceal. The full posting at http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/stealing-images-of-good-fight.html. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: [Marxism] Stealing Images of the Good Fight
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Geoffrey M. White, professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai'i and senior fellow at the East-West Center, writes that the 'new' American patriotism being produced in the post-9-11 era frequently invokes earlier forms of patriotism, especially in images of World War II, the 'good war' Saving Private Ryan The only thing surprising about Saving Private Ryan is how conventional it is. I fully expected a much more noir vision of WWII along the lines of Oliver Stone's Platoon. What I saw was an updated version of such 1950s classics as Walk in the Sun, written by Robert Rossen, the CP'er who named names. Walk in the Sun, also known as Salerno Beachhead, just about defines this genre. A group of GI's are out on a patrol and they get killed off one by one. The enemy is faceless and evil. Our soldiers, by the same token, are good boys who are just trying to get home. The reason that CP'ers were so adept at turning out this sort of patriotic pap is that they had bought into the myth of FDR's fight for freedom. So patriotic were the CP'ers that they also backed the decision to intern Japanese-Americans. The buzz about Spielberg's movie is clearly related to his decision to make battle wounds much more graphic than ever before. This decision roughly parallels the breakthrough made by Bertolucci in Last Tango in Paris to depict sexuality openly and honestly. The question of what is more jarring--Brando in full-frontal nudity or a soldier's intestines spilling out of his midsection--I will leave to others. A war movie ultimately relies on the same dramatic tensions as slasher or science-fiction movies. The audience is at the edge of its seat waiting for the next sniper's bullet to tear through the flesh of one of the good guys. The suspense is similar to that which awaits us for the next moment when Halloween's Michael Myers will come barreling out of a closet with a kitchen knife in hand. Who will get slashed in the throat next? The most interesting variation on this theme is the film Aliens which blends monsters from outer space and Walk in the Sun war movie conventions. The acid-spitting monsters of this film are stand-ins for Nazis or Japs. All the soldiers want to do is complete their job successfully and return home, in this case planet Earth. Since the aesthetic dimensions of Saving Private Ryan are so underwhelming, the more interesting question becomes one of Steven Spielberg's motivation in turning out such a retro movie. What would compel a director working in 1998 to recycle themes from the immediate post-WWII period? It is not really too hard to figure out. When Spielberg is not turning out escapist fantasies like the lovely ET or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he is functioning as a latter-day Frank Capra spinning out morality tales to mold public opinion. Movies like Amistad, Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan all basically put forward the same message, namely that the wealthy and the powerful are the ultimate guardians of what's decent and humane. In Amistad, this role is assigned to John Quincy Adams who stands up for the slaves. In Schindler's List, it is the industrialist who delivers the Jews. General George Marshall, while a secondary character in Saving Private Ryan, puts the dramatic narrative into motion through his decent and humane decision to remove Private James Ryan from the battlefield after his three brothers have been killed in action. Marshall tells his fellow officers that he didn't want to be in the same situation that faced Lincoln when he informed a mother that all of her sons had been killed in Civil War fighting. Once this decision is reached, Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and a group of soldiers are sent on their way to track down Private Ryan and send him back home. Their trek through hostile territory is familiar territory to anybody who has sat through the 1950s classics. Unfortunately, Saving Private Ryan does not even achieve the level of character development of a film like Walk in the Sun. The stories about life back home are much more interesting in Rossen's screenplay. This should not come as any great surprise because the Hollywood Reds were some of the most accomplished writers ever to work in tinseltown. Standing above this film like a canopy are a whole set of assumptions about American decency. Not only is General George Marshall decent enough to rescue a single GI from the fighting, the GI's themselves are also more decent than the despicable Nazis. There is one plot device that drives this point home. Hank's men have captured a German soldier. They want to kill him but Hanks says that this would not be right and sends him off. In the climax of the film, this soldier turns up again and plunges a knife into one of the good guys in hand-to-hand combat. After he is captured once again, a GI shoots him in cold blood. The moral of the story is that it is forgivable to shoot Germans in this manner because they are embodiments of
Somebody's not right
http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com/
Re: Martha Stewart and 18 USC 1001
Right, the lesson is, don't lie to the feds. In a criminal case, you don't even have to talk to them unless they immunize you. I was fairly flabbergasted when I learned a out 1001 in my White Collar Crime class. And like all laws, it poses a greater danger to the poor, because the poor aren't typically going to be represented by high priced defense counsel. (Although there are many excellent lawyers in the Federal Public Defenders office.) I'm not sure that the poor are more likely to be scared than the rich. No one looking into the cold eyes of the US Attorney's Office is going to feel very cheery. Immigrants definitely are more likely to be scared than citizens. But, as a Bulgarian lawyer in the Chicago Guild chapter often reminds me, immigrants have no rights anyway. jks Perhaps, a more compelling reason for leftists to take a second look at the Martha Stewart affair is 18 USC 1001: [D]efense lawyers for white-collar criminal cases say the focus on Ms. Stewart's celebrity misses the point. The real lesson of the case, they say, is that it once again proves the potency of a little-known federal law that has become a crucial weapon for prosecutors. The law, which lawyers usually call 1001, for the section of the federal code that contains it, prohibits lying to any federal agent, even by a person who is not under oath and even by a person who has committed no other crime. Ms. Stewart's case illustrates the breadth of the law, legal experts say. . . . From social welfare to immigration to criminal justice, 18 USC 1001 is likely to present a far more danger to the poor than to the rich, especially during the endless war on terrorism. The full posting at http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/martha-stewart-and-18-usc-1001.html. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
money, sex, happiness
David G. Blanchflower, Andrew J. Oswald. Money, Sex, and Happiness: An Empirical Study. NBER Working Paper No. w10499 Issued in May 2004 Another version can be found at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~blnchflr/papers/sentScanJEsexmoneyhappinessj une2003.pdf This paper studies the links between income, sexual behavior and reported happiness. It uses recent data on a random sample of 16,000 adult Americans. The paper finds that sexual activity enters strongly positively in happiness equations. Greater income does not buy more sex, nor more sexual partners. The typical American has sexual intercourse 2-3 times a month. Married people have more sex than those who are single, divorced, widowed or separated. Sexual activity appears to have greater effects on the happiness of highly educated people than those with low levels of education. The happiness-maximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is calculated to be 1. Highly educated females tend to have fewer sexual partners. Homosexuality has no statistically significant effect on happiness. Our conclusions are based on pooled cross-section equations in which it is not possible to correct for the endogeneity of sexual activity. The statistical results should be treated cautiously Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
A US General: I Don't Care If They Are Innocent
The New York Times obtained an unpublished Army report (completed on November 5, 2003) by Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, which confirms the Red Cross's findings: General Ryder, the Army's provost marshal, reported that some Iraqis had been held for several months for nothing more than expressing 'displeasure or ill will' toward the American occupying forces (Jehl and Zernike, May 30, 2004). . . . The article by Douglas Jehl and Kate Zernike included a particularly telling remark attributed to an American general at the headquarters in Baghdad: I don't care if they are innocent; if we release them, they'll go out and tell their friends that we're after them (Douglas Jehl and Kate Zernike,Report Warned Hundreds Held in Abu Ghraib on No Evidence: Top U.S. Brass in Baghdad Vetoed Release, San Francisco Chronicle, May 30, 2004). What is a little odd is that, while the National Edition (in print) of the New York Times and the online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, both of which published Jehl and Zernike's article, included the general's remark quoted above, the online edition of the New York Times somehow omitted it. The full posting at http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/detained-for-expressing-displeasure-or.html. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Options expensing
James Devine wrote: it seems that options expensing is easy if firms are able to count options as a cost in their taxes (if I remember what Nomi said correctly). Simply count them as an equal cost when calculating profits for the stockholders. Of course. It's reminiscent of a land reform program I heard about (perhaps a fictional one, in Galbraith's THE TRIUMPH ) in which the landowners were compensated for their expropriated land according to the value that the claimed in their tax forms. Fictionalized, but not in the least fictional. Right after the barbudos entered Havana on Jan. 1, 1959, a large number of capitalist properties were intervened and soon thereafter expropriated. The owners were offered full compensation *at the value they themselves had estimated on their tax forms*. This was the casus belli for the 45+ years of US economic, political, and covert military war against Cuba. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Options expensing
Right, I believe Guatamala did the same thing -- but that government was less successful. On Sun, May 30, 2004 at 09:21:36PM -0400, Shane Mage wrote: James Devine wrote: it seems that options expensing is easy if firms are able to count options as a cost in their taxes (if I remember what Nomi said correctly). Simply count them as an equal cost when calculating profits for the stockholders. Of course. It's reminiscent of a land reform program I heard about (perhaps a fictional one, in Galbraith's THE TRIUMPH ) in which the landowners were compensated for their expropriated land according to the value that the claimed in their tax forms. Fictionalized, but not in the least fictional. Right after the barbudos entered Havana on Jan. 1, 1959, a large number of capitalist properties were intervened and soon thereafter expropriated. The owners were offered full compensation *at the value they themselves had estimated on their tax forms*. This was the casus belli for the 45+ years of US economic, political, and covert military war against Cuba. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner) -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
money, sex, happiness
pooled cross-section equations in which it is not possible to correct for the endogeneity of sexual activity. The statistical results should be treated cautiously Right, chicken and egg... because we happy people tend to attract and have significantly more sex than the grumpy ones. :-) _ De todo para la Mujer Latina http://latino.msn.com/mujer/
