Re: RE: marx's proof regarding surplus value and profit
COMMENT 1 Andrew Kliman's post is a PERFECT example of the fallacy of petitio principii or begging the question. One basic form of this fallacy consists in assuming as true what is being questioned. I questioned his identification of a certain argument as fallacious by attempting to show that the argument he uses to establish it as fallacious is not valid. That was the point of the analogy. It was also meant as a reductio. In his reply Andrew claims that my remarks are a perfect example of the fallacy he pointed to. But they can only be a perfect example of that if what he pointed to is a fallacy. But that was the question that is at issue. So his reply assumes as true what is being debated. If what he says is true then I am wrong no matter whether my response perfectly exemplifies his fallacy or is more like a Mother Goose rhyme. COMMENT 2 Kliman's response does not prove that my response is a PERFECT example of the fallacy he points out. Why? Because his response is fallacious: a) because it is a petitio and b) if what Kliman points out is a fallacy, his own comments exemplify that fallacy and hence are fallacious for that reason as well. Prove 2 b) please.. Kliman interprets my remarks as an interpretation of his remarks as ludicrous. But no proof or even evidence is given for this. He certainly hasnt even begun the monumental task of showing that there is no interpretation under which I might be right. Since he hasnt proved this it follows that his own argument is a PERFECT example of the fallacy he points out. But if his argument is fallacious then it does not prove that my own argument is a PERFECT example of his fallacy. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Ken Hanly's post (see below) is a PERFECT example of the fallacy I pointed to. I wrote: If you claim that something someone said can't be right, you have to show that there is *no* interpretation under which it is right. It just doesn't wash to say, 'here's my interpretation of Keynes. Under my interpretation, there is this error, that internal inconsistency, etc. Ergo, Keynes committed this error, that internal inconsistency, etc.' There's a missing premise, namely that one's interpretation has been proven to be correct. Ken has interpreted my comment and has used his interpretation to construct what he apparently thinks is an analogy. The analogy discloses that, under his interpretation, what I said was in error. Ergo, Ken suggests, I made an error. But this doesn't wash, because he hasn't shown that his interpretation of my comment is correct. It isn't. In fact, it is ludicrous. Andrew Kliman -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Ken Hanly Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 5:37 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:23984] Re: RE: RE: RE: Re: RE: marx's proof regarding surplus value and profit Let's suppose that X claims that if people believe strongly enough in the power of the deity Shazam that enemy bullets will not harm them when they go into battle. I point out that as a matter of fact lots of believers in Shazam have been killed by enemy bullets in battle. A defender of Shazam claims that this is just my interpretation. There is another interpertretation to the effect that those who were harmed did not believe strongly enough in Shazam. So the believer in Shazam has proved that my intepretation is incorrect since there is another intepretation in which the defender of Shazam's view makes sense ---and this disproves my claim. Cheers, Ken Hanly If you claim that something someone said can't be right, you have to show that there is *no* interpretation under which it is right. It just doesn't wash to say, here's my interpretation of Keynes. Under my interpretation, there is this error, that internal inconsistency, etc. Ergo, Keynes committed this error, that internal inconsistency, etc. There's a missing premise, namely that one's interpretation has been proven to be correct. But to disprove the claim, all one needs to do is show that there's some possible other interpretation according to which it makes sense.
filled in tabula rasa
Sorry I pushed the send button before I copied this..It is from the San Francisco Chronicle. For Turkey, new war with Iraq is a grim prospect Many fear result would be economic doom Russell Working, Chronicle Foreign ServiceSaturday, March 23, 2002 Ankara, Turkey -- From his shop in the ancient citadel of this busy capital city, Satilimish Sutchuoglu and three fellow carpet sellers gather to drink tea and trade forecasts of economic doom. Tourists, who provide most of his bread and butter, have been scarce since Sept. 11 in this secularly governed Muslim country that straddles Europe and Asia. And if the talk from Washington is to be believed, things could soon get worse just as the tourist season is ready to begin. Vice President Dick Cheney visited this week to discuss the possibility of forcing Saddam Hussein from power in neighboring Iraq, and a war would be a staggering blow to an already tottering economy. If a war happens, then we will run into a disaster, said Sutchuoglu. I would hate to see a war, because I know we won't have any business, and I'm already in debt. From the Cold War to Operation Desert Storm, Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, has staunchly supported U.S. foreign policy. Its biggest contribution in recent years has been to allow American jets to patrol the no-fly zones over Iraq from Turkish air bases. But talk of a new campaign to oust Hussein has drawn denunciations across the political spectrum in a land that lost billions of trade dollars with Iraq and slipped into an economic crisis after the Gulf War. Turkey, which imports most of its oil, was also cut off from cheap Iraqi oil. Only recently did Iraq start transshipping oil once again to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Before the war, our export revenue from Iraq was $5 billion annually. Multiply that by 12 years, and we have lost about $60 billion, said Sinan Aygun, president of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce. For the sake of being on better terms with the U.S., we lost a good neighbor and trading partner. Turkey insists that no attack against Iraq is warranted, worrying not only about the effects on its faltering economy but the political repercussions as well. Many Turks fear that despite their Western orientation, those concerns will not be taken seriously. But some observers suggest that Ankara might be willing to let the United States use its air bases to attack Baghdad if the right incentives are dangled. Turkey wants more financial aid, a partnership in the exclusive free-trade club with the United States and assurances that a post-Hussein Iraq would remain a single state. Seyfi Tashan, director of the Turkish Foreign Policy Institute at Bilkent University in Ankara, said a major concern is that a war could split Iraq into three sections -- a Shiite south, a Sunni middle and a Kurdish north. Turkey is well aware that the creation of a no-fly zone in northern Iraq turned the region into a sanctuary for Kurdish rebels seeking to secede from Turkey. Turkey responded with a brutal scorched-earth campaign against the Kurds, and it fears that the establishment of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq could embolden its own Kurdish minority and lead to renewed terrorist attacks. If Turkey is going to contribute to a war against Iraq, it must be assured that an independent Kurdish state will not be created, Tashan said. Even in hard times, Turkey is a progressive country compared to the lawless former Soviet states to the north and east and impoverished and repressive Middle Eastern neighbors to the south and east. And despite its spotty human rights record, Turkey has an elected government and takes pride in its secular constitution for a country whose population of 66 million is 97 percent Muslim. Officials finger prayer beads during interviews while sitting under giant portraits of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk. Urban streets are lined with Internet cafes, Renault automobile dealerships and Paul Shark Yachting apparel outlets. Street vendors talk passionately about Turkey's hope to join the European Union, and stylish young women thumb through lingerie at Version stores. Privately, many Turkish officials admit they would be better off without Hussein in power -- as long as the war was short and clean. Like Washington, Ankara is concerned about Iraq's potential for developing weapons of mass destruction. Ilnur Chevik, editor of the Turkish Daily News, has urged Turks to stop clinging to hopes that President Bush will rule out an attack. In a subsequent interview, he said that despite its skittishness, Turkey could benefit from Hussein's downfall. As long as Saddam is there, the Americans won't lift sanctions. As long as the Americans won't lift sanctions, we can't have a proper business relationship with Iraq, he said. Is the continuation of the status quo in the interests of Turkey? It isn't. If
Iraq war and the Turkish economy
Maybe some of our Turkish Pen-lers might have comments on this. Cheers, Ken Hanly
Servant Abuse in the US.
US rich accused of servant abuse as Saudi princess goes into hiding King's niece could face 15 years in American prison Helena Smith in Washington Sunday March 24, 2002 The Observer Princess Buniah al Saud, socialite and niece of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, no longer wants to show her face. She has gone to ground in Washington, under the protection of the Saudi embassy. Her live-in maid, Ismiyati Soryono, has accused her of abuse, which has highlighted concerns about what human rights groups say are ugly truths about the treatment of foreign servants in the US. Now she faces criminal proceedings and a civil lawsuit. Worse, as far her uncle is concerned, has been the notoriety. There have been pictures of the timid Indonesian servant's bruised and battered body all over America's media. Viewers have been given virtual tours of the princess's plush, pink townhouse in Orlando, Florida, a favourite haunt of the Saudi royals. When Buniah, 41, arrived there last March to study at the University of Central Florida, she brought Soryono, 36, as her personal servant. In Saudi Arabia she had never hit her but, claimed Soryono, this changed in Florida. She says she was slapped for minor misdemeanours - such as walking in front of the princess while they were shopping. She said she was seldom paid her small salary of $200 a month and that the princess threatened to have her jailed when they returned to Saudi Arabia. One day last December Soryono tried to assert her rights. We are in America now, she told her employer. The princess told her she could treat her how she liked because she was a member of the Saudi royal family with a diplomatic passport. Soryono answered back. And then, she claims, the princess reached out with two hands and pushed her. She fell backwards down the stairs, hitting her head and injuring a knee. She ran to a neighbour's house and asked them to ring the police. She was taken to hospital, treated and discharged. When Orange County sheriff's deputies arrived, the princess denied pushing Soryono. Charges were not pressed because Saudi officials told investigators the princess had diplomatic immunity. But they sooned learnt from the State Department that she did not. Three days after the incident, they charged her with aggravated battery, a crime that can carry a sentence of 15 years. Detectives went to the luxury hotel in which the princess had taken refuge. She was handcuffed and brought to the Orange County jail, where she was photographed, fingerprinted and locked up overnight. In the morning, a judge released her on $5,000 bail and ordered her to surrender her passport. She also faces a civil action from Soryono. The lawsuit describes Soryono as having a 'meek disposition' but she is determined to stand up to her employer now. 'I dare to do that because I am right,' she told ABC television. Whatever the outcome of the trial, rights appear to be in short supply for thousands of migrant servants living in slave-like conditions in the US. In Washington, behind the doors of glamorous Watergate condominiums, elegant Georgetown mansions and the town houses of Embassy Row, lurk tales of horror and sadness. Often, servants - mostly poor women from Latin America, Asia and the Philippines - are held in virtual captivity. 'I am a Colombian and I know about long hours,' said Ruth Vargas. She recited the abuse she and her husband, Luis, endured in the employment of an ambassador to the Organisation of American States. They were forbidden to leave the premises, take telephone calls or talk to strangers. Pay was docked and the couple had to sleep in a single bed. Luis, hired as a chauffeur, became butler, valet and gardener. Ruth often worked from 6am to 2am. In the end they escaped. Such servitude is not uncommon, according to the Washington-based Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers' Rights. 'There are gradations of abuse,' said Joy Zarembka who heads the campaign. 'But domestics are, almost always, forced to work extraordinarily long hours, with little or no time off, and for little or no pay.' 'What we are seeing, despite all of our civil rights, is slavery in the shadow of the nation's Capitol,' said Edward Leavy, an immigration attorney who encountered his first runaway maid back in the Seventies. 'There are women kept under virtual house arrest, in basements, who have not seen the light of day for two years - people working up the block from the White House.' Last year, he said, a Brazilian engineer in Maryland received a six-and-a-half-year jail sentence for imprisoning a Brazilian maid in his home, without pay, for 20 years. The woman, who was forced to eat household leftovers 'as her employers padlocked the fridge', emerged one day with a stomach tumour the size of a football. Over the past decade more than 30,000 domestic workers have entered the US on special visas sponsored mainly by foreign diplomats and international civil servants. Others are deceived, the victims of
Israeli Lobby
http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/5/massing-m.html
FW: AUT: Chinese workers make their bosses 'redundant'
--- Original Message --- From: Margaret [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/23/02 1:01:25 PM Times OnlineWorld News March 19, 2002 Sacked Chinese murder their bosses From Oliver August in Xianning WORKERS in China^s industrial heartland have started killing their bosses in protest at mass redundancies. In three recent, gruesome cases, managers at neighbouring state-owned factories were murdered in disputes with their employees. Sources say that labour-related killings have become widespread as reform programmes try to shift millions of workers into the private sector. Among the worst affected areas is Hubei province in central China, once the cradle of Maoist heavy industry but now weighed down with thousands of dead-end factories. In Xianning, a town 100 miles south of the Yangtse River, unemployed workers play cards at a decrepit chemical fibre factory while discussing its impending bankruptcy. They seem to accept the murder of their boss by Xu Yudong, a sacked colleague, as an almost normal by-product of Government restructuring. Many of Xianning^s residents share the frustrations of Xu, a 28-year-old worker who was laid off last October. The manager of the fibre plant, Wang Shihua, offered him a redundancy package worth 350 after eight years of employment. Xu is said to have protested: ^The severance pay is too little. It^s not even enough to start a small business. What am I going to do when I get old?^ The manager agreed to increase the package to 500 but Xu was still dissatisfied. When he began work at the plant in 1993, the Communist Party was promising lifetime employment. Now, the Communists wanted to throw him out with little hope of a new job. Xu returned to Mr Wang^s office on October 31 to negotiate again but this time he was armed with a fruit knife. Mr Wang rejected his renewed demands and an enraged Xu pulled out his knife and stabbed him in the lower abdomen. Mr Wang died in hospital the same day. Xu was sentenced to death three weeks later and executed in January. In the street outside the factory, grimy children play a game called Kill the Boss in which they re-enact the manager^s death, pretending to stab and throttle each other. A worker called Xiang said that people had become used to eating from the ^iron rice bowl^, the Chinese expression for a state-allocated job, guaranteed for life. ^They don^t know anything else, so when that^s taken away all of a sudden, they don^t know what to do with themselves,^ he said. Mr Wang^s murder is one of three at Hubei^s state-owned enterprises in less than six months. In Huanggang, two hours^ drive north of Xianning, the 19-year-old son of a man laid off from Huanggang Aluminium Group killed the general manager who had sacked 10 per cent of the workforce. Even the Xinhua state news agency, which usually plays down such incidents, reported that the son was enraged at his father^s redundancy and by the wealth of the general manager, an allusion to corrupt practices. The agency also reported the killing of the deputy manager of a subsidiary of Xiangfan Xiangyang Resources as he was closing the insolvent company. He, too, was the victim of a sacked worker. Beijing has admitted that unemployment is one of its biggest problems. Although the official total is seven million, the real figure may be more than 100 million. Times Newspapers Ltd. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Bill Blum autobiography
Received: 3/16/02 7:25:01 AM From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Add to People Section To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Subject: Book announcement MIME Ver: 1.0 Attachments: Book Announcement West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Political Memoir (Soft Skull Press, New York, March 2002, cover price $15) by William Blum Author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower.* So who's William Blum and why should you read his memoir? Does he care abou t YOUR life? Well, he might if you wrote about it and made it as funny and as thought provoking (so he says) as he has about his life. He explores how he became, and what it felt like to be, a radical dissident, the proverbial outsider, in America in the 1960s, the 70s, and up to the present day, probing the aesthetics of a revolutionary who looks for beauty in the social arrangement as others look for it in art. As someone who spent four years with IBM and more than two years with th e Department of State, and then -- when the speeding locomotive of the Vietnam War and the Sixties roared headlong into his life and beliefs -- immersed himself in the anti-war and other leftist and counter-cultural movements, Blum was particularly well situated to perceive people, events, and ideology in both the bourgeois and alternative societies and arrive at non-knee-reflex judgements. Though serious in subject and purpose, the book nonetheless displays the author's vintage New York City sense of humor, with all the wit, satire and sarcasm the world associates with the Big Apple. No one is spared, least of all Blum's comrades in the movement. An important thread running through the book is the acute, non-negotiabl e tension existing between individuals like Blum and the National Security State that America has been for more than half a century now. The author takes on the CIA, FBI, State Department, the police, et al. He is, in turn, bedeviled by informers set upon him by the government. We read of how the authorities labored to wreck the underground press, with which Blum was intimately associated; also how the author wound up living with the leading bomber of the 1970s and his girlfriend who played a key role in the Patti Hearst kidnapping saga, a set of circumstances which gave rise to much irony and absurdity. A chapter on Blum's stay in Chile under Salvador Allende before his CIA-organized overthrow (of Allende, not Blum) is a particularly important slice of history. There is also Blum's experience in Los Angeles, working with Oliver Ston e to make a documentary film based on one of Blum's books on U.S. foreign policy. The film was stillborn, but the tale is replete with the well-known charms and idealism of Hollywood that America has come to know and love. Not least, West-Bloc Dissident is a desperately needed relief and antidote to the noxious fumes of patriotism that are choking American societ y today. Here is how the book begins: The fourth day of August, 1969, 7:30 of a warm, clear Monday morning, Route 123, Langley, Virginia. Before the week is out, the sociopathic followers of Charles Manson will carry out their gruesome murders. Strangel y enough, though what I'm about to do is completely non-violent, many American s would regard it with equal abhorrence. The web page for the book has not been set up yet, so here's what you need t o know if you'd like to buy a copy. Specify to whom I should inscribe the book. Send check or international money order in US dollars to: William Blum 5100 Connecticut Ave., NW #707 Washington, DC 20008-2064 United States: book mail (about a week) $13 United States: priority mail (about 2 days) $15 Canada: airmail (about a week) $15 Canada: priority mail (2 or 3 days) $18 Western Europe: priority mail (3-4 days) $20 Italy: (no priority mail); airmail (more than a week) $19 Australia/New Zealand: priority mail (4-5 days) $20 * Portions of these two books can be read at: http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm (with a link to Killing Hope)
Re: Revolution(s) In Our Time (Argentina)
Re: Revolution(s) In Our Time (Argentina) by Alan Cibils 21 March 2002 14:56 UTC Lil Joe had written: I looked at the photo and I could not tell whether those cops were armed are not. I therefore suggested two different scenarios: (1) Assuming the cops were unarmed and retreated from fear of the workers; or, (2) Assuming that the workers were armed and refused to fire on the people. What I meant to write was: ... (2)Assuming that the cops were armed and refused to fire on the people. Sorry bought the f*#k up, comrades. -- Joe --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From Buenos Aires: I think it's important to discuss dialectics, but there is no good side to the bad side of the Argentinian police. I did not witness the police withdrawal from Brukman factory. But I talked to several people who did. They all ascribed the police withdrawal to the mass support that developed in front of the factory. If the police had started shooting, they could have easily faced another December 20th. As I write, about 20 feet away from my cyber cafe, on a streetcorner in Ave de Mayo a motorcycle helmet with flowers sits on the ground on the spot where a motorcycle messenger was killed by the police on December 20. The police murderers of December 20th are still in their jobs, even though the President and the chief of police was changed. On Sat, 23 Mar 2002 16:17:24 -0800 (PST) Li'l Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 'You can, because you ought' - this expression, which is supposed to mean a great deal, is implied in the notion of ought. For the ought implies that one is superior to the limitation; in it the limit is sublated and the in-itself of the ought is thus an identical self-relation, and hence the abstraction of 'can'. But conversely, it is equally correct that:'you cannot, just because you ought.' For in the ought, the limitation as limitationis equally implied; the said formalism of possibility has, in the limitation, a reality, a qualitative otherness opposed to it and the relation of each to the other is a contradiction, and thus a 'cannot', or rather an impossibility. Hegel: Science of Logic * The Marxian analysis is not just a collection of dead facts, as in the case of positivism and empiricism; but, to analytically penetrate that which appears, the things as the appear to discover the things in themselves, to discover the tendencies, the negative in the positive, its negation, i.e. negation of negation engendering new beginnings: being is in a constant becoming, transitions from the one into its opposite. In our analytical questions, from which mutually exclusive possible hypothesis were formulated, to which Alan Cibils responded, our purpose was not to present dead data, facts that could be drawn from as newspaper. The dialectic methodology is the recognition that the thingsare and are not - as Hericlitus says, becauseall things are in flux, we are concerned with the tendencies, the becoming, the 'qual of matter as Jacob Bohme put it. Lenin said it best in his summary of dialectics the contradictory nature of the thing itself (the other of itself), the contradictory forces and tendencies in each phenomenon -- One could perhaps present these elements in greater detail as follows: 1) the objectivity of consideration (not examples, not divergencies, but the Thing-in-itself). 2) the entire totality of the manifold relations of this thing to others. 3) the development of this thing, ( phenomenon, respectively), its own movement, its own life. 4) the internally contradictory tendencies (and sides) in this thing. 5) the thing (phenomenon, etc) as the sum and unity of opposites. 6) the struggle, respectively unfolding, of these opposites, contradictory strivings, etc. Neither Connie White nor her husband, me, merely study dialectical materialism to discuss them on e-mail discussion lists but have internalized that method of analysis to make our analysis a dialectical one. These analysis are premised on the material were are considering, and its changes. Cops are many other things besides, for instance. They are children of their parents and parents of their children; they are sisters and brothers, siblings, and uncles, cusins, c., Each individual cop, or soldier, is a mass of contradictions derivative of the mode of appropriation, conditions and relations of production they are hired (or drafted) to protect. The task of the Marxist revolutionary is to recognize those contradictions and conflicting pressures, obligations, c., as ultimately mutually excluding tendencies. Thus to develop conscious strategies, and tactics to
Nash, Harsanyi and Selten
Nash, Harsanyi and Selten by Justin Schwartz 22 March 2002 22:51 UTC Well, you're different. I built a perpetual motion machine myself. jks ^^^ CB: That would be like a price system giving most people good information.
Islam and Tolerance
Via, http://www.bostonreview.mit.edu Michael Pugliese A Conservative Legacy A Response toThe Place of Tolerance in Islam Sohail H. Hashmi have long been intrigued by an exchange between Abraham and God that comes early in the Qur'an: Behold! Abraham said: 'My lord! Show me how you give life to the dead.' [God] said: 'Do you not then have faith?' He said: 'Yes, but [I ask this] to satisfy my heart.' [God] replied: 'Take then four birds and teach them to incline toward [or obey] you. Then place a part of them on every hill around you, and then summon them. They will come flying to you. And know that God is almighty, wise'(2:260). This verse follows several others and precedes many more in which Abraham is depicted as steadfast in his private faith and his public preaching so much so that he is called khalil Allah (the friend of God) based on Q. 4:125. Why would the Qur'an even allude, I have wondered, to the possibility that this great prophet of God would harbor any doubts about God's power? Could it be that through this dialogue the Qur'an is intimating that skepticism and open questioning are intrinsic aspects of faith? To me, this verse is one of the most powerful commandments for tolerance contained in the Qur'an, for if God can answer a prophet's troubled heart with such compassionate understanding, how much more likely is He to understand the doubts of ordinary humans? And if God understands, then how much more incumbent is it upon us human beings to do the same? The Qur'an is a deep well from which Muslims may draw plentiful supplies of tolerance, pluralism, respect for diversityeven doubt. Khaled Abou El Fadl outlines these resources well in his thoughtful essay. I agree with him that such resources have been misappropriated by Muslim puritans and extremists. But his argument for misappropriation fails to account for the more widespread exclusivity and intolerance that we encounter in the Islamic intellectual heritage. Narrow and illiberal readings of the Qur'an are not exclusively the province of fringe elements. If that were so, the task of constructing liberal and tolerant societies among Muslim populations would be immeasurably easier. If contemporary Muslims are to realize the full blessings of the Qur'an's spirit, as Abou El Fadl urges, they must face up to the full burden of their political and intellectual history. I want to be clear about my argument: I am not suggesting that Islamic history is one of intolerance. The historical record is clear that Islamic societies of the pre-modern period were generally as accommodating of diversity and religious freedom as their contemporaries in other parts of the world, and in many instances more so. The same cannot be said of modern Islamic states and societies, which lag far behind international standards of equality, democracy, and human rights. My point is that whether we are discussing tolerance, diversity, and freedom in pre-modern or modern Islamic societies, Muslims have generally fallen far short of qur'anic standards. And some of the responsibility for this failure in practice must be ascribed to the limitations in the interpretation of the Qur'an itself. To return to Q. 2:260, for example: The most influential commentators have gone to great lengths to eliminate the faintest hint of doubt from Abraham's plea to God. Most classical and modern exegetes agree with al-Qurtubi (d. 1273) that Abraham's request does not signify doubt at all, only the desire to rise from the knowledge of certainty ['ilm al-yaqin] to the reality of certainty ['ayn al-yaqin].1 Underlying this exegetical activity is the orthodox dogma that prophets are protected from error and doubt. This principle has to be maintained even if it requires glossing over God's direct question to Abraham, Do you not then have faith? If God were to give Abraham the reality of certainty, then Abraham would no longer require faith. Moreover, we ordinary humans cannot likewise petition God for proof to solidify our faith. The Qur'an repeatedly points to the complexities and ambiguities of faith. It stresses throughout the narrow line separating righteousness from self-righteousness, and admonishes believers to be humble in the knowledge that no person nor even any creed can claim to have the full truth. Yet repeatedly, the tradition of qur'anic exegesis strains to prove the opposite. Let us consider how two qur'anic verses cited by Abou El Fadl have been treated over the long history of exegesis. First, Q. 2:62: Those who believe, and the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabiansany who believe in God and the Last Day, and act righteously shall have their reward with their Lord. On them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. The verse seems clearly to be extending God's salvation to all humans who profess faith and do good deeds. Nevertheless, the majority of classical commentators found ways to limit its promise. One method was to argue for what Jane McAuliffe calls salvific
RE: marx's proof regarding surplus value and profit
Here's why Ken Hanly's supposed analogy is ludicrous. 1. I was dealing with cases in which there are various possible interpretations of what someone said. In Ken's analogy, by assumption, there are not various possible interpretations of what someone (X) says. Rather, there are various interpretations of certain other events. This is not a reductio ad absurdum. It is a bait and switch. (What's the Latin for bait and switch?) 2. I indicated that it was illegitimate to use one possible interpretation of what Keynes said to conclude that s/he can't be right. To arrive at that conclusion, one needs to show that there is *no* interpretation possible under which what Keynes said is right. Nothing I wrote states or implies that the existence of another interpretation proves that the first interpretation is incorrect. In Ken's analogy, however, the existence of another interpretation (according to which X's statement makes sense) supposedly disproves his own interpretation of X. Another bait and switch. 3. Nothing I wrote states or implies that the existence of another interpretation proves that Keynes' critics are wrong about the substantive matter. In Ken's analogy, however, the existence of an interpretation of objective events according to which X is not necessarily wrong about the substantive matter supposedly disproves Ken's claim that X is wrong. Still another bait and switch. Andrew Kliman -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Ken Hanly Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 5:37 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:23984] Re: RE: RE: RE: Re: RE: marx's proof regarding surplus value and profit Let's suppose that X claims that if people believe strongly enough in the power of the deity Shazam that enemy bullets will not harm them when they go into battle. I point out that as a matter of fact lots of believers in Shazam have been killed by enemy bullets in battle. A defender of Shazam claims that this is just my interpretation. There is another interpertretation to the effect that those who were harmed did not believe strongly enough in Shazam. So the believer in Shazam has proved that my intepretation is incorrect since there is another intepretation in which the defender of Shazam's view makes sense ---and this disproves my claim. Cheers, Ken Hanly If you claim that something someone said can't be right, you have to show that there is *no* interpretation under which it is right. It just doesn't wash to say, here's my interpretation of Keynes. Under my interpretation, there is this error, that internal inconsistency, etc. Ergo, Keynes committed this error, that internal inconsistency, etc. There's a missing premise, namely that one's interpretation has been proven to be correct. But to disprove the claim, all one needs to do is show that there's some possible other interpretation according to which it makes sense.
Steelworkers, California Nurses Launch New Union to BoostOrganizing
Steelworkers, California Nurses Launch New Union to Boost Organizing by michael pugliese 22 March 2002 23:39 UTC Charles: It's your compulsive recitation of people's red backgrounds that makes you look like a creep. Hey , maybe you aren't a creep and you just like to show off all this stuff you know. But it's a bit weird to go around announcing everybody's left pedigree so much, or at all, e.g. see what you say below. ^^^ I've known Giulana Milanese, an organizer for the CNA (met her after she left the CPUSA for the CofC/CCDS) for over a decade. Great organizer, wonderful person. Warm, smart, savvy. And she's never said I was a red-baiter. Hmm., wonder why? Plus, she works well with Michael Lighty, from DSA, another CNA staffer. As does Carl Bloice, from the CCDS, formerly in the CPUSA. Michael Pugliese
Squared Circles
Squared Circles by Justin Schwartz 23 March 2002 23:32 UTC The curriculum goes from the Greeks to Descartes, Hume, and Kant. I had one (elective) class in the scholastics at Tigertown, and sat in on Michael Frede's class on Scotus's ontological argument. That was a scary experience. jks ^ Charles: What was scary about it ?
RE: Steelworkers, California Nurses Launch New Union to Boost Organizing
Hey, the Reds I like as friends and comrades are mostly Trotskyists. You like the friends of Uncle Joe. Stop calling me a race baitin', red-baitin' and I'll stop calling you a Stalinist. I hear, in person you are warm and friendly, to comrades you've known to decades, aND KNOW TO BE SOLID RADICALS, YET YOU CALL THEM ANTI-COMMUNISTS! Michael, The Warm, not the war-mongerer...;-) --- Original Message --- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/24/02 10:54:57 AM Steelworkers, California Nurses Launch New Union to Boost Organizing by michael pugliese 22 March 2002 23:39 UTC Charles: It's your compulsive recitation of people's red backgrounds that makes you look like a creep. Hey , maybe you aren't a creep and you just like to show off all this stuff you know. But it's a bit weird to go around announcing everybody's left pedigree so much, or at all, e.g. see what you say below. ^^^ I've known Giulana Milanese, an organizer for the CNA (met her after she left the CPUSA for the CofC/CCDS) for over a decade. Great organizer, wonderful person. Warm, smart, savvy. And she's never said I was a red-baiter. Hmm., wonder why? Plus, she works well with Michael Lighty, from DSA, another CNA staffer. As does Carl Bloice, from the CCDS, formerly in the CPUSA. Michael Pugliese
Price of Free Trade: Famine
Price of Free Trade: Famine Los Angeles Times March 22, 2002 http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-20842mar22.story COMMENTARY Price of Free Trade: Famine By MARC EDELMAN Central America is in the grip of famine, and if President Bush mentions it when he visits El Salvador on Sunday, he will likely suggest that free trade is the solution. Yet Bush's proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement is hardly going to remedy the worsening disaster in rural Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. Unregulated markets are a large part of the reason why 700,000 Central Americans face starvation and nearly 1million more suffer serious food shortages. Hardest hit are coffee plantation workers and maize farmers. Coffee prices have spiraled downward since the 1989 collapse of the International Coffee Agreement, which assigned countries production quotas. In the past few years, prices plummeted further with a surge in exports from Vietnam and Indonesia, where the World Bank encouraged expansion of coffee acreage. With the market glutted, many coffee farmers did not bother to harvest this year. The result has been evictions from plantation housing, increased migration to teeming slums and severe hunger among unemployed coffee workers. Maize farmers too have been feeling the free-market squeeze. Since 1992, Central America has had intra-regional free trade in grains and almost no tariff protection against low-cost imports. Forced to compete with highly subsidized U.S. farmers, many Central American farmers have abandoned food production, gone bankrupt and lost their land. Some of Central America's most conservative figures--Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo and Nicaraguan Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo--acknowledge that the intensity and suddenness of the food emergency make it a famine, worse than the hunger characteristic of the region. Famine is always rooted in economic policies and political decisions, as Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel Prize winner in economics, has long maintained. Sen also points out that famines do not occur in democracies, where contested elections and vigorous journalistic oversight force policymakers to try to prevent occurrences that might threaten constituents or allow opponents to make political hay. U.S. policymakers should ask, then, what the widening famine says about Central American democracy, for which Washington spent billions of dollars and waged three proxy wars during the 1980s. Apparently, the gap between rulers and ruled in the four affected countries is so large that policymakers feel little pressure to address the crisis. No wonder polls show that a mere 35% of Hondurans, 24% of Nicaraguans, 21% of Salvadorans and 16% of Guatemalans say they are satisfied with how democracy functions in their countries. Right now, tens of thousands of Central Americans are heading north. In contrast to the 1980s and early 1990s, most are not escaping war and repression. Many are abandoning farms that failed because of globalized trade and the dumping of U.S. grain. Others are fleeing liberalized interest rates so high that they have no hope of ever starting a small business. Still others are trying to escape life in the free trade zones, where factory owners enjoy huge public subsidies and workers face immense obstacles in organizing for a living wage. Central American land could produce decent living standards for small farmers if they could obtain small-scale irrigation systems, better access to land, secure title to property, low-cost credit and shelter from unfair competition and the ravages of global market forces. These measures would give even the poorest of the poor a stake in their societies, but they would require elites to take popular needs seriously. Public sectors eviscerated by privatization and budget cuts can't address the inequalities that globalization generates. Rural Central Americans are already reeling after a decade or more of free-market reforms. President Bush's trade proposals could be the knockout blow. -- Marc Edelman, a professor of anthropology at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, is author of Peasants Against Globalization (Stanford University Press, 1999).
Re: Squared Circles
Why is it scary? It's a circular argument especially when applied to the concept of evil ( as in axis o'evil umpire) (I too, unfortunately sat in on (or through) a medieval philosophy course as an undergrad) Which raises another question, is an agnostic a Gnostic who graduates from a land-grant college? --Ann - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2002 2:28 PM Subject: [PEN-L:24295] Squared Circles Squared Circles by Justin Schwartz 23 March 2002 23:32 UTC The curriculum goes from the Greeks to Descartes, Hume, and Kant. I had one (elective) class in the scholastics at Tigertown, and sat in on Michael Frede's class on Scotus's ontological argument. That was a scary experience. jks ^ Charles: What was scary about it ?
STOP!!!
This sort of exchange has no business here. On Sun, Mar 24, 2002 at 11:38:19AM -0800, michael pugliese wrote: Hey, the Reds I like as friends and comrades are mostly Trotskyists. You like the friends of Uncle Joe. Stop calling me a race baitin', red-baitin' and I'll stop calling you a Stalinist. I hear, in person you are warm and friendly, to comrades you've known to decades, aND KNOW TO BE SOLID RADICALS, YET YOU CALL THEM ANTI-COMMUNISTS! Michael, The Warm, not the war-mongerer...;-) --- Original Message --- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/24/02 10:54:57 AM Steelworkers, California Nurses Launch New Union to Boost Organizing by michael pugliese 22 March 2002 23:39 UTC Charles: It's your compulsive recitation of people's red backgrounds that makes you look like a creep. Hey , maybe you aren't a creep and you just like to show off all this stuff you know. But it's a bit weird to go around announcing everybody's left pedigree so much, or at all, e.g. see what you say below. ^^^ I've known Giulana Milanese, an organizer for the CNA (met her after she left the CPUSA for the CofC/CCDS) for over a decade. Great organizer, wonderful person. Warm, smart, savvy. And she's never said I was a red-baiter. Hmm., wonder why? Plus, she works well with Michael Lighty, from DSA, another CNA staffer. As does Carl Bloice, from the CCDS, formerly in the CPUSA. Michael Pugliese -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
job opening
Monmouth University is looking to hire a labor economist. We took out an ad in the March JOE, and the response has been pretty pathetic. The department is rather eclectic and open, and I would like to try to hire a heterodox economist for the position. If you are interested, or know of anyone who might be interested, check out the ad and feel free to contact me (email is best) if you have any questions. Best wishes, Steve Pressman -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
U.S. YOUTH SUMMIT on SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
The U.S. YOUTH SUMMIT on SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT for students and youth in the United States Friday, March 29 - Sunday March 31 New York University School of Law 40 Washington Square South, New York, NY (Registration will begin at 6:00 p.m. on Friday) Especially for students, youth, and young professionals interested in: . Sustainable Development . Environmentalism . International Studies and US Politics . Globalization . Proactive student organizing . Representing youth at the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, August 25-September 4 . Meeting with young environmentalists from the U.S. and around the world . Influencing the environmental and political process from here to Johannesburg and protecting your future For more information, a conference itinerary, speakers, co-sponsors, and to register go to: http://www.geocities.com/youthsummitny = If you ignore the earth it will go away Daniel Jones * 425 e. 25th st. box 281 * nyc, ny 10010 * 917-916-1923 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sustainable Development conference
Forwarded by Ian Here is a link to a recent Conference Board report on why business should be focused on the WSSD. It may be of interest list participants. It requires Acrobat Reader. http://www.conference-board.org/ea_reports/ea_17.pdf Charles J. Bennett, PhD Senior Research Associate Global Corporate Citizenship/ Townley Global Management Center The Conference Board 845 Third Avenue, NY NY 10022-6679 212-339-0356 212-836-9717 (Fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://conference-board.org -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
