Re: Russian econ growth
--- Diane Monaco [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I read a little while ago that the Russian federal budget surplus was $8.4 billion during this first half of 2004 high growth period. Budget surpluses and high growth do often go hand-in-hand. Is there the feeling in Russia that the federal tax system does weigh heavily on business? Also, are military equipment exports fueling some of this growth? (See article below) --- Even though Russia has the lowest income tax on business in Europe (13% flat tax), the liberals _still_ keep complaining that it's excessive. But the real federal weight on business comes from corruption (bribe money). Arms exports are definitely part of it, but mostly it's exports of natural resources, plus the revived internal market for domestic production made possible by the 1998 devaluation of the ruble. __ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/
Re: Russian econ growth
By the way, I believe that this is the highest sustained rate of growth that Russia has experienced since the Stalin era. I read a little while ago that the Russian federal budget surplus was $8.4 billion during this first half of 2004 high growth period. Budget surpluses and high growth do often go hand-in-hand. Is there the feeling in Russia that the federal tax system does weigh heavily on business? Also, are military equipment exports fueling some of this growth? (See article below) __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
If dialectics form a system of logic, it's one that's qualitatively different from formal logic. In fact, I'd call them a system of heuristics (which Webster's defines as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving ... that utilize self-educating techniques). --- It is a system of logic in the Hegelian sense of the word, which refers to the relationships between ideas as the develop in the unfolding of Absolute Spirit. Hegel was using the word Logik with its Greek root, logos, in mind, esp. the use of logos in Hellenistic and Roman philosophy as a technical term for the rational order underlying all things, as in the Bible's en genesei en ho logos (in the beginning was the word [rational ordering priniciple]), or the Stoic happit of equating logos, nous (mind) and Zeus, the divinity. This is not logic in the Aristotelian or Russellian senses. __ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Re: Russian econ growth
Also, are military equipment exports fueling some of this growth? (See article below) -- BTW the following article (which as an aside were all edited by me) has data on the Russians arms business. Mukhin is a Russian defense analyst; I believe he is a Colonel, and writes (or has written) for Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), which is the Russian Army's newspaper. Russia's weapons makers gunning for new business By Vladimir Mukhin With Russia's arms exports at record post-Soviet levels, weapons manufacturers are turning to improved quality, stronger publicity and value-added services in a bid to win a bigger share of the trade. Earnings from arms exports reached a post-Soviet record of $4.8 billion in 2002, according to Mikhail Dmitriyev, chairman of the Russian Foreign Military-Technology Cooperation Committee (KVTS). Most exports went through state arms-export company Rosoboronexport, which earned a record $4.3 from the business. http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=35854 __ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/
National Guard needed at home to fight fires
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/20/national/20guard.html The New York Times July 20, 2004 Governors Tell of War's Impact on Local Needs By SARAH KERSHAW S EATTLE, July 19 - With tens of thousands of their citizen soldiers now deployed in Iraq, many of the nation's governors complained on Sunday to senior Pentagon officials that they were facing severe manpower shortages in guarding prisoners, fighting wildfires, preparing for hurricanes and floods and policing the streets. Concern among the governors about the war's impact at home has been rising for months, but it came into sharp focus this weekend as they gathered for their four-day annual conference here and began comparing the problems they faced from the National Guard's largest callup since World War II. On Sunday, the governors held a closed-door meeting with two top Pentagon officials and voiced their concerns about the impact both on the troops' families and on the states' ability to deal with disasters and crime. Much of the concern has focused on wildfires, which have started to destroy vast sections of forests in several Western states. The governor of Oregon, Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat, said in an interview after meetings here Monday that the troop deployment had left his National Guard with half the usual number of firefighters because about 400 of them were overseas while a hot, dry summer was already producing significant fires in his state. We're praying a lot that a major fire does not break out, he said. It has been dry out here, the snow pack's gone because of an extremely warm May and June and the fire season came earlier. He added, You're just going to have fires and if you do not have the personnel to put them out, they can grow very quickly into ultimately catastrophic fires.'' Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican of Idaho and departing chairman of the National Governors Association, also said through a spokesman that he was worried about the deployment of 2,000 members, or 62 percent of his National Guard, who are now training in Texas for a mission in Iraq. In the past we've been able to call on the National Guard, said Mark Snider, a spokesman for the governor. We may not be able to call on these soldiers for firefighting capabilities. California fire and forestry officials said they were not using National Guard troops to battle wildfires plaguing that state, but they did say that they were using nine Blackhawk helicopters borrowed from the Guard to fight the fires. Some of the helicopters are bound for Iraq in September. More than 150,000 National Guard and Reserve troops are on active duty. Many of the Guard troops have received multiple extensions of their tours of duty since the United States went to war with Iraq last year. While Western governors focused mostly on wildfires, governors and other officials from other regions expressed a host of other worries, both at the meeting here and in telephone interviews. In Arizona, officials say, more than a hundred prison guards are serving overseas, leaving their already crowded prisons badly short-staffed. In Tennessee, officials are worried about rural sheriff's and police departments, whose ranks have been depleted by the guard call- up. In Virginia, the concern is hurricanes; in Missouri, floods. And in a small town in Arkansas, Bradford, both the police chief and the mayor are now serving in Iraq, leaving their substitutes a bit overwhelmed. Our mayor and our police chief, along with six others were activated, and they're over in Iraq, said the acting mayor, Greba Edens, 79, in a telephone interview. We had a police officer that could step in as chief, and I've been treasurer for 20 years so that just put me in the mayor's spot whether I wanted or it not. Many of the most outspoken governors who expressed concerns here about the National Guard deployments over the weekend were Democrats, including Mr. Kulongoski, Tom Vilsack of Iowa, Mark Warner of Virginia and Gary Locke of Washington. This has had a huge impact, Governor Locke said during a news conference on Saturday. In his state, 62 percent of its 87,000 Army National Guard soldiers are on active duty, including the majority of the guard's best-trained firefighters, at a time when wildfires are beginning to sweep through the state, according to state officials. But even during a meeting that featured plenty of partisan sniping, Republicans also sounded worried about whether the deployments would leave them vulnerable in emergencies. Roger Schnell, Alaska's deputy commissioner for the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, said in a telephone interview that wildfires raging through central Alaska were especially worrisome, given that 15 percent of its National Guard was stationed overseas.
Ali G.
Unfortunately, Ali G.'s HBO shows are not available yet on DVD. I also fear that it will become more and more difficult for the highly educated and leftwing British Jew who plays him to fool people like Sam Donaldson, etc. into thinking that he is a poorly educated inner city rapper. In any case, you can snippets of his act at: http://www.hbo.com/alig/. While most of his interviewees are big-time rightwingers like Brent Snowcroft or fundamentalist Christian ministers, he does manage to fool some well-known leftists on occasion. Last Friday night, when I was watching an Ali G. marathon on HBO in preparation for the new season which began on Sunday, I was greatly amused by his interview of Nation Magazine writer and Columbia University professor Arthur Danto, whose humorlessly, impenetrable prose helped me decide to cancel my subscription to this magazine. The exchange went something like this: Ali G: So what is art nouveau [pronounced nuvio]? Danto: That's a style of art that was popular at the turn of the century done by people such as Gustav Klimt. Ali G: And what about art deco? Danto: Well, all of NYC is art deco. [At this point, Ali G. gives Danto one of his patented cocked-head What's up with that? look.] Ali G: Okay, then what is Art Garfunkel? At this point Danto, who should have known better, explains patiently that this is not art but a singer who used to be paired with Paul Simon, whereupon Ali G. retorts, Won't that confuse the youth [pronounced yoof]. Very funny stuff. The Cheerful Confessions of Ali G, Borat and Bruno By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN NY Times, July 15, 2004 Da Ali G Show, the British comic Sacha Baron Cohen's HBO series, returns for its second American season on Sunday. While playing the part of Ali G, an imbecilic and gonzo rapper who speaks in Caribbean-British slang, Mr. Baron Cohen in the first few episodes interviews Pat Buchanan, Sam Donaldson and Gore Vidal. For all the publicity that Ali G received in his initial HBO season, in which he put on the likes of Newt Gingrich, the former astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. and the former director of central intelligence R. James Woolsey, none of this season's august figures managed to see their disguised interviewer for who he is: a wickedly smart, left-wing comedian and practicing Jew with a degree from Cambridge. In man-on-the-street interviews and other stunts this season, Mr. Baron Cohen also reprises the characters of Borat, an unwashed, leering Kazakh, and Bruno, an Austrian gadfly from the fashion world. Typically averse to talking out of costume and character, Mr. Baron Cohen still sat down this week to discuss his approach to satire, his fear of America and the secret wild ways of Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Here are excerpts. VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN Why is Ali G so funny? SACHA BARON COHEN It's a pretty simple joke, which is why even some kids get it. Essentially you have two people who look totally different one guy dressed in an absurd yellow jumpsuit, and the other guys dressed in a suit. They're speaking in different ways, with different body language and totally different levels of intelligence. HEFFERNAN Is it more fun to play pranks on British people or Americans? BARON COHEN It depends on the class, actually. The best targets the legitimate targets are successful, powerful white men, who rule the country. And in Britain the upper class are incredibly accommodating. You can punch someone from the upper class in the face, and they'll go, Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry. They'll never ever throw you out of the room. Here, there have been some occasions where people just are blunt, where they will say, All right, enough is enough. Marlin Fitzwater threw Ali G out of the room. And this year Andy Rooney hated Ali G from the moment he saw him. He starts asking: Have you done this before? Is English your first language? And then basically tries to stop the interview after one question. HEFFERNAN Is Borat an anti-Semite? BARON COHEN Yeah, yeah. Part of the idea of Borat is to get people to feel relaxed enough that they fully open up. And they say things that they never would on normal TV. So if they are anti-Semitic or racist or sexist, they'll say it. HEFFERNAN And you asked someone, Do you have slaves? BARON COHEN Exactly. We were in a private gentlemen's club in Jackson, Miss. And all the serving staff were black. There's this unsaid racism; there's still segregation there. I can't remember the actual line, but I asked if he had slaves, and he said, Slavery's over now. And I go, Yeah, that's right. He goes, It's good. And I go, Good for them! He goes, Yeah, good for them. Bad for us. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/15/arts/television/15ALI.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: unions
There is a difference between the way you put it and the way sartesian puts it, I'd say. Pushing for democracy and responsibility is different than independent workers organizations constructed against the leadership. Wouldn't you say? I would say the latter promotes divisions. The former promotes unity. Joel Wendland Jim Devine wrote: I don't see why pushing to make labor unions more democratic and to make the established leadership more responsible represents a split in the working class. A union would be more effective if it were more democratic rather than having decisions made on high by plump cats. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine sartesian wrote: an industrial union, like the UAW or UMW, and even there and then independent workers organizations had to be, and will have to be again, constructed against the established leadership. _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: unions
why assume the membership will be smarter than some elected, autocratic leaders? It ain't necessarily so. I see leaders doing things they know are dumb because the members want it. Democracy is good in and of itself, but it isn't costless. mbs I don't see why pushing to make labor unions more democratic and to make the established leadership more responsible represents a split in the working class. A union would be more effective if it were more democratic rather than having decisions made on high by plump cats. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine sartesian wrote: an industrial union, like the UAW or UMW, and even there and then independent workers organizations had to be, and will have to be again, constructed against the established leadership. Ah yes. More splits in the working class. Joel Wendland
Re: Ali G.
On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 10:34:19AM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: Unfortunately, Ali G.'s HBO shows are not available yet on DVD. I also fear that it will become more and more difficult for the highly educated and leftwing British Jew who plays him to fool people like Sam Donaldson, etc. into thinking that he is a poorly educated inner city He also interviews Gallbraith. Funny stuff.
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
dialectical thinking is a system of logic in the Hegelian sense of the word, [which] is not logic in the Aristotelian or Russellian senses. exactly. jim devine
Re: Ali G.
Dmytri Kleiner wrote: He also interviews Gallbraith. Funny stuff. Professor J. K. Galbraith about the economy. Ali: What is supply and demand? Is it like with me Julie? I supply it and she demand it. JKG: Supply and demand is an old economic expression... Ali: Is it like in me school? Everyone was well into Tashid Vegi because she was all well fit and had nice skin and whatever and you had to spend 75p even for a touch and Zoe Lewis who was a bit dodgy, looked a bit rough, she was 25p for fingers and thumbs. Ali: So what notes do you have here? JKG: Dollars, five dollars, ten dollars. Ali: Would it not be more convienient if instead of having like just a ten dollar bill and a twenty dollar bill you had like a five dollar nineteen cents bill or like a twelve dollar forty-eight cents bill or like a forty-eight dollar five cents bill or like a seventy-eight dollar three cents bill or like a two hundred and sixty-seven dollar fifty-four cents bill or like a three hundred and eighteen dollar nine cents bill, then you could pay for everything with one note, innit? JKG: I have no hesitation in saying that would be so complicated that only you and a few other people would understand it. Ali: I has got an idea and I want to run it by you, Professor Galbraith. What has everyone in the world got...? Feet, right? And what do they want their feet to become...? Comfy. How do they make their feet comfy? One word... JKG: Shoes. Ali: Slippers! Me idea is to make... slippers. JKG: Well, ah, um... you're not the only person with that idea. Ali: Yeah? Well, check this. I is going to use the intranet, and I is going to do it on wwf.slippers.com. What do you think about that? JKG: I would point out that you will only become a millionaire making slippers, internet or not, if you make them cheaper than anybody else... Ali: What happen if I use the intranet and I do it instead of that address, on wwf.swedishfanny.com, 'cos then everyone would think that they is going over to some nice girls or whatever, and what would they see? Me slippers! JKG: Okay, uh, that's your risk, fortunately, and not mine. Ali: Do you want to invest some money in it? JKG: Certainly not. Admiral Stansfield Turner about the CIA. Ali: So, Mr. Stansfield, what does the CIA stand for? AST: Central Intelligence Agency. Ali: So does it help if you was intelligent if you wanna get in? AST: Yes, to get in you need a college degree... Ali: Ain't that a bit racialist though that you have to be intelligent? AST: Isn't that a bit? Ali: Racialist, that you won't allow in thick people? Could I ever work for the CIA? AST: I would certainly think so, you seem intelligent. Ali: Thank you very much, I has got two GCSEs. Ali: So let's talk about spies now because the CIA has also got to do with spies, innit? Is it true that you have certain female spies that you put a camera in their punani? AST: ... Ali: What uniform to the CIA spies wear? AST: They don't wear a uniform, they have to be as incognito as possible. Now look, you go over to a foreign country, we have a CIA person goes to country X, and in that country he finds... Joe, who is willing to give us information. Ali: Who is Joe? AST: Joe is a member of country X, he is a citizen of country X. Ali: Is it not dangerous that you is saying his name because this maybe on the telly. Ali: What about landing a man on the moon, did it actually ever happen? AST: Of course it happened, I've actually shaken hands with the first man on the moon. Ali: How do we actually know that Louis Armstrong was actually stood on the moon? AST: It was Neil Armstrong. Ali: Whatever. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: unions
I wrote: I don't see why pushing to make labor unions more democratic and to make the established leadership more responsible represents a split in the working class. A union would be more effective if it were more democratic rather than having decisions made on high by plump cats. Joel W. writes:There is a difference between the way you put it and the way sartesian puts it, I'd say. Pushing for democracy and responsibility is different than independent workers organizations constructed against the leadership. Wouldn't you say? I would say the latter promotes divisions. The former promotes unity. Perhaps Mr. Sartesian is a bit more rough-tongued than I. To fight for democratic unions and responsible leadership, rank and file workers need to be independent of the existing union hierarchy. (That doesn't mean that the leadership will always be opposed. It means that any organization of workers for democracy, like TDU, should not be beholden to the leadership.) Since the leadership has a vested interest in keeping their power and will often fight to maintain it, it's better to think of it as fighting them rather than to use some namby-pamby word. (Much of the union leadership is quite distant, socially speaking, from the leadership.) Max writes: why assume the membership will be smarter than some elected, autocratic leaders? It ain't necessarily so. I see leaders doing things they know are dumb because the members want it. Democracy is good in and of itself, but it isn't costless. agreed. I don't assume that the membership will be smarter. Rather, it's their unions and they should rule them. Unfortunately, many of the leadership use their smarts for their own purposes, not for promoting unionism, democracy, or the interests of the members. Further, with the obvious exception of craft-type unions (which can be very democratic), being responsive and responsible to the membership makes it more likely that the union will expand, since it makes the union more attractive to those workers on the outside. It's true that leaders do dumb things that the union members want it. But democracy gives them a greater chance to learn from their mistakes. jim devine
Iran/Iraq
from MS SLATE: President Bush used a quick Oval Office QA to say that the government was looking into connections between Iran and al-Qaida--connections which the final report of the 9/11 commission is expected to detail when it's released Thursday. The NY [TIMES]'s off-lead cites government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, who said the report would offer new evidence that Iran has lent al-Qaida logistical support over the years, a stark contrast with Iraq, which the commission has repeatedly said had no collaborative relationship with the group. We will continue to look and see if the Iranians were involved, Bush said. So the war against Iraq was due to a spelling error? jd
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
dialectical thinking is a system of logic in the Hegelian sense of the word, [which] is not logic in the Aristotelian or Russellian senses. exactly. jim devine --- In fact in Hegel the dialectical thinking isn't merely a process taking place in the human mind, but simultaneously taking place in the structure of reality and the process of self-knowing of Absolute Mind (which is the same thing), so that the act of cognizing that the concept of Being passes into that of Nothingness and then into that of Becoming reflects a change from one metaphysical reality to another. Assuming my interpretation of Hegel is correct... there are so damn many of them... __ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Judge Approves Enron's Settlement With Regulator
[The government is to join the list of creditors to receive what? $35 million? What about the $7.2 billion received in government subsidies (mostly from the Bushes), the value of all the money received from contracts deceptively and inappropriately arranged -- through G7 meetings -- by the Bushes George HW in particular ] Judge Approves Enron's Settlement With Regulator Government to Join List of Creditors By Bradley Keoun Bloomberg News Tuesday, July 20, 2004; Page E03 A federal judge in Houston yesterday approved Enron Corp.'s $35 million settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over allegations the company manipulated natural gas prices in 2001. U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon entered a consent order that resolved all charges brought by the commodities regulator against the Houston energy company, the CFTC said in a statement. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez in New York approved the settlement in May. Approval of the settlement means the U.S. government will be added to the list of creditors owed as much as $74 billion by Enron, which collapsed in December 2001. Last week, the company won court approval for a plan to emerge from bankruptcy by paying creditors an average of 20 cents on the dollar. It's all a matter of whether there are sufficient funds available at the time of distribution of the estate, Vincent McGonagle, senior deputy director of enforcement at the CFTC, said in an interview. That will determine how much the U.S. Treasury is paid as a result of this settlement. In a separate statement, the commission said former Enron gas trader Hunter Shively agreed to pay $300,000 to settle charges relating to his alleged involvement in manipulating prices. The settlement requires Shively to cooperate with the commission's investigations. The commodities regulator in March 2003 alleged that Enron and Shively bought and sold large amounts of gas in a short time period in prearranged transactions, thereby affecting wholesale prices. Movement in wholesale prices affected futures prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange, according to the CFTC.
absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
by Chris Doss --- It is a system of logic in the Hegelian sense of the word, which refers to the relationships between ideas as the develop in the unfolding of Absolute Spirit. Hegel was using the word Logik with its Greek root, logos, in mind, esp. the use of logos in Hellenistic and Roman philosophy as a technical term for the rational order underlying all things, as in the Bible's en genesei en ho logos (in the beginning was the word [rational ordering priniciple]), or the Stoic happit of equating logos, nous (mind) and Zeus, the divinity. This is not logic in the Aristotelian or Russellian senses. ^ CB: In the context of this thread, in which the comparison between logic , grammar and math is thrown out there, I was going to mention logos as the root of logic, since word suggests the comparison and overlap between grammar (or language) and logic. Grammar, logic and math are systems of ordered symbols. The word was important at the beginning of the human species, because language was important. Perhaps the Gospel reflects this fact.
The Bush Administrations War on Women Children
The Bush Administrations War on Women Children by Becky Burgwin www.dissidentvoice.org July 19, 2004 By now everybody knows that Martha Stewart has been sentenced to 5 months in prison for lying about a phone call. I think it was Jeffrey Toobin who said, The government has sent a clear message to all Americans. If you lie, youre going to suffer the consequences. Isnt that just rich. The government sent a clear message that if you lie youre going to suffer the consequences. I think they should clarify that a little and say, If you lie youre going to suffer the consequences, unless of course you happen to BE in the government, or youre insanely greedy and your lies happen to kill tens of thousands of people or purposely bankrupt the second largest state in the continental United States with the third largest economy in the world. I dont even know how Kitty Pilgrim could sit there with a straight face when he said that. The government wants to send a message to people who lie. I would have been rolling on the floor. The government wants to send a message. The government sent a message alright and it was, if youre a woman or a child in this country, you better fasten your seat belt because its going to be a bumpy ride. The fact that Martha Stewart might do jail time in a real live womens prison with drug dealers, child abusers and perpetrators of other serious crimes, (there are no country club jails for female white-collar felons) merely serves to keep my Went-to-Sleep-in-America/Woke-up-in-The-Twilight-Zone experience alive and well. You see, a very important member of our government was once on the board of a big company called Harkin Energy. This person was asked to be on the committee that looked into all of this companys big financial problems. And even though he was warned that selling his own stock because of his knowledge of the companys financial situation would be illegal, he did it anyway making a tidy little profit of over $800,000 before the stock plummeted to just pennies per share and his investors lost their shirts. He, however, didnt have to go to jail with a bunch of filthy dope dealers. Oh no. He got to be the leader of the free world. Doesnt seem fair does it? Meanwhile, Kenny boy, better known as Ken Who? walks away from Enron with tens of millions of dollars after telling his employees and their families to keep buying Enron stock even as he was selling his own shares faster than you can say greedy, lying bastard. What next? Men who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children being nominated for Nobel Peace Prizes? I cant even sit still when some spokesperson for the Repugnant party says something like, Well, were still strong on our commitment to ending partial birth abortions. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION. Literally, the only time that procedure is performed is when the mothers life is at stake. Why wont somebody say that? For example: Andrea Mitchell, Well, yes, Mr. Santorum. But are you aware that if you deny a woman a late term abortion, the birth might kill her? Well, yes Andrea. And thats fine with us because we are way more protective of the unborn than we are of the born. And furthermore, we dont plan on helping women out at all by approving over-the-counter morning after pills or making birth control a little easier to get by having it covered by insurance like Viagra. And you can forget about day care, WIC programs or forcing the fathers to support the children they conceive because women are the cause of all of societys ills and therefore they shalt be punished. Where have I heard that before? Oh, yes. The Taliban. It seems as though theyre forgetting that two people are needed to conceive a child. Why isnt the man treated with the same disregard as the woman? Were sorry Mr. Thurmond but youre going to have to raise this child by yourself with no help whatsoever from anyone. What about the childs mother, you say? Well we dont know where she is. Probably off somewhere conceiving more children. Thats not our concern. Yesterday the Bush administration announced that theyre not going to give anything to the UN Family Planning Fund, again, which hasnt been done by a U.S. president in three-quarters of a century. According to studies done by NARAL this could mean nearly 2 million unintended pregnancies, 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths, 60,000 cases of serious maternal illness, and more than 77,000 infant and child deaths in the next twelve months. Elizabeth Cavendish, Interim President of NARAL states, George W. Bush is really showing his true colors. Protecting the health and well-being of women and babies around the world is insufficient as a reason to stop him from promoting his anti-choice agenda. Women and children everywhere will suffer as this administration continues to use draconian measures to make sure the unborn are protected. Stem
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
right. Hegel's dialectical logic isn't just a logic (or heuristic, as I would say). It's also ontology, a statement about the nature of reality: to paraphrase old GWF, the rational (mental) is real (empirical) and rhe real is rational. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine From: PEN-L list on behalf of Chris Doss Sent: Tue 7/20/2004 8:48 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] absolute general law of capitalist accumulation dialectical thinking is a system of logic in the Hegelian sense of the word, [which] is not logic in the Aristotelian or Russellian senses. exactly. jim devine --- In fact in Hegel the dialectical thinking isn't merely a process taking place in the human mind, but simultaneously taking place in the structure of reality and the process of self-knowing of Absolute Mind (which is the same thing), so that the act of cognizing that the concept of Being passes into that of Nothingness and then into that of Becoming reflects a change from one metaphysical reality to another. Assuming my interpretation of Hegel is correct... there are so damn many of them... __ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
CEPR: Apply Economics to Economists for Good Governance at the IFIs
CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND POLICY RESEARCH FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Todd Tucker, 202-293-5380, ext. 213 July 20, 2004 Bretton Woods' 60th Anniversary International Financial Institutions Need Internal Workforce Reform, say economists The World Bank and International Monetary Fund should tie its internal staff promotion system to the success of policy recommendations for developing countries, concludes a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker, the authors of the report, entitled Applying Economics to Economists: Good Governance at the International Financial Institutions, argue that the international financial institutions' (IFI) lending programs typically do not have well defined and quantified goals that allow for their success or failure to be clearly evaluated. They also argue that the economists responsible for the design of specific programs should be clearly identified (along with their supervisors) to ensure that they can be held accountable for the quality of their performance. This report comes out as the Bretton Woods institutions mark the sixtieth anniversary of their founding conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire on July 22, 1944. The report by CEPR argues that IFI recommendations would be more useful to the governments and the public in developing countries if they were accompanied by clear statements of the expected costs and benefits they implied. In many cases, for example the promotion of social security privatization, the IFIs did not provide a clear statement of the anticipated benefits of the policies advocated. Without reasonably well-defined projections of benefits, governments are not in a position to determine whether potential gains outweigh short-run economic and political costs. Furthermore, ambiguity about the expected goals and the extent to which countries are following recommendations makes it difficult to assess whether poor results are due to bad policy, or to the failure of governments to adequately adhere to IFI recommendations. As a corrective to these governance problems, Baker and Weisbrot propose that the international financial institutions should set out clear targets, with frequent assessments as to whether countries are on course to reach these targets. Insofar as countries are falling behind policy goals, the interim assessments should clearly indicate the reason for the failure. The reports should also include an open chain of authority that establishes responsibility for every program. Program documents would specify the economists responsible for making the projections, and their supervisors. In this manner, national policymakers would be able to gravitate towards IFI economists and supervisors with high program success rates, and these staff could receive promotions and benefits based on the quality of their work. The authors note that these recommendations are similar to those made by the IFIs themselves to European and developing countries, in their advocacy of more flexible labor markets. The full paper is available at: http://www.cepr.net/publications/ifi_accountability.htm Or in PDF format at: http://www.cepr.net/publications/ifi_accountbility.pdf Look for our upcoming commentary in The Guardian (UK) detailing this proposal. The Center for Economic and Policy Research is an independent, nonpartisan think tank that was established to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. ### Todd Tucker International Programs Center for Economic and Policy Research 1621 Connecticut Ave., NW; Suite 500 Washington, DC 20009 Phone: 202-293-5380, ext. 213 Fax: 202-588-1356 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.cepr.net
Titans of the Enron Economy
[I remember this terrific article from two years ago and I thought it might be pertinent to reread now] Titans of the Enron Economy by SCOTT KLINGER HOLLY SKLAR The Nation [from the August 5, 2002 issue] The pivotal lessons from the Enron debacle do not stem from any criminal wrongdoing. Most of the maneuvers leading to Enron's meltdown are not only legal, they are widely practiced. Many of the problems dramatically revealed by the Enron scandal are woven tightly into the fabric of American business. Outside the spotlight on Enron's rise and fall, government policies and accounting practices continue to reward and shelter many firms with harmful habits just like those of Enron. We've ranked the 100 worst companies for each habit and awarded Ennys for outstanding Enron-like performance. We've also given a Lifetime Achievement Award to the corporation with the highest combined score for Enron-like performance in all ten categories (a hint: Enron placed second). The Ten Habits of Highly Defective Corporations HABIT 1: Tie employee retirement funds heavily to company stock and let misled employees take the fall when the stock tanks--while executives diversify their holdings and cash out before bad news goes public. Winner: Coca-Cola. Once upon a time the upward slope of Coca-Cola's stock price was as smooth as a cold Coke on a warm afternoon. Over the past couple of years, however, the venerable soft drink maker's stock fizzled like New Coke. Employees saw their 401(k) retirement assets evaporate, with the stock down more than 31 percent in the three years ending November 2001. Eighty-one percent of Coke's 401(k) was invested in company stock. Not all employees fared poorly. Former CEO M. Douglas Ivester left Coke under a cloud of controversy but received a severance package valued at more than $17 million; it included maintenance of his home security system and payment of his country club dues. HABIT 2: Excessively compensate executives. Winner: Citigroup. CEO Sanford Weill took home more than $482 million between 1998 and 2000. In 2001 he made another $42 million. Weill's stock compensation plan was amazingly equipped with a reload feature: Each time Weill cashed in his options, he automatically received new options to replace them. Imagine if Citigroup customers had a reload ATM machine that automatically added replacement money to their accounts after withdrawals! While throwing money at its executives, Citigroup rips off low-income Americans with predatory lending practices. The Federal Trade Commission has brought suit against Citigroup, alleging abusive lending practices; if all charges are proven, Citigroup's liabilities could reach $500 million. HABIT 3: Lay off employees to reduce costs and distract from management mistakes. Increase executive pay for implementing this cost-cutting strategy. Winner: Lucent Technologies. Last year Lucent axed at least 42,000 jobs. While these layoffs occurred during the tech-industry tumble, Wall Street critics lay much of the responsibility for Lucent's misfortune at management's door. Lucent was the only company to end up on both the Fortune and Chief Executive 2001 worst boards of directors list. Though the board took action and fired CEO Richard McGinn in October 2000, it gave him a golden parachute of more than $12 million as a parting gift. HABIT 4: Stack the board with insiders and friends who will support lavish compensation and not ask difficult questions about the business. Winner: EMC Corporation. Only two years ago this leading producer of computer storage media could have held Thanksgiving dinner in its boardroom: The chairman, Richard Egan, his wife and son all sat on EMC's board. As a member of the board Junior got to help set Dad's allowance (and help determine his own inheritance). How many kids wouldn't love that? Of course, Dad might not have needed much help, since he also sat on EMC's compensation committee, which determined his and other executives' pay. Since winning this award, EMC has added an independent director to its board. HABIT 5: Pay board members excessively for their part-time service; pay them heavily in stock so they have a disincentive to blow the whistle on bad business practices that keep the stock price up. Winner: AOL Time Warner. AOL Time Warner is one of a growing number of companies to compensate directors solely in stock options. In 2000, according to an Investor Responsibility Research Center study, the potential value of these stock options (using SEC-specified formulas for computing the present value) was $843,200 per director--not bad for a part-time job. Each member of AOL Time Warner's board is annually granted 40,000 stock options. Directors make money for each dollar increase in the stock price. If AOL Time Warner's stock price rose $10 a share, the options would gain $400,000 in value. HABIT 6: Give your independent auditor generous non-audit consultant work, creating conflicts of interest
absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
by Devine, James dialectical thinking is a system of logic in the Hegelian sense of the word, [which] is not logic in the Aristotelian or Russellian senses. exactly. ^ The Aristotelian and Russllian senses are formal logic, for which the first principle is non-contradiction. Non-contradiction seems to be a principle that math shares with formal logic. A fundamental form of math proof or disproof is to make an assumption and derive a contradiction. For dialectics the first principle is contradiction. So, yes dialectics is not the same as formal logic ( Aristotelian and Russellian). For formal logic , arriving at a contradiction means there is a mistake, something is false. For dialectics, contradictions can be fruitful, drive the process to finding a truth. A dialectical question might be what contradictions is Marx dealing with in the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation ? Charles
job announcement
Dear Penners, Lewis and Clark College, where I teach, is looking to hire for a tenure track position. Information follows. I would appreciate any help you can give in generating great candidates. Marty Hart-Landsberg Macroeconomics: The LEWIS CLARK COLLEGE Department of Economics invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship in macroeconomics beginning Fall 2005. Additional teaching and research fields of interest include the economics of inequality and/or race, class and gender. PhD expected at the time of hire. Potential for excellent teaching and an appreciation of the role of research at an undergraduate institution are essential. Usual teaching load is five courses per academic year and includes regular participation in the Colleges first-year general education course. Review of applications will begin on December 1 and continue until the position is filled. The College will be interviewing at the January ASSA meeting in Philadelphia. Please include: (1) a curriculum vitae; (2) a letter of application which includes a statement of educational philosophy, teaching experience, and research interests; (3) evidence of teaching effectiveness; (4) sample of scholarship; (5) three letters of recommendation; and (6) graduate transcripts. CONTACT: Dr. Cliff Bekar, Chair, Department of Economics, Lewis Clark College, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR 97219. Lewis Clark College is a private liberal arts college with 1,750 undergraduates and is an Equal Opportunity Employer and encourages the applications of women and minority candidates.
Lights, Camera, Sexism!
[I missed this one, but it was just sent to me by my 68-year-old aunt named for Jeanne dArc of Greux-Domremy, Lorraine, France for crying out loud :). I had not heard about the film -- she had -- but I now hope -- as she does -- that other film festivals will pick it up and there will be future distribution deals with videos and DVDs.] I expected something serious and pedantic, but it was more like a radical documentary from the 1990s, she says. You can compare her to Michael Moore. Zimmerman says the media-confrontation scene was just as relevant today and should be a wake-up call. The media made the women's movement out to be ugly, but you can see that it was sexy, sensual and fun. The frightening thing is, 32 years later, these same . . . white men like Dan Rather and Mike Wallace are still on our screens and in such positions of power. Lights, Camera, Sexism! At the 1972 Democratic convention, an avant-garde group of feminist filmmakers set out to show America how chauvinist it was By Douglas Rogers The Washington Post Sunday, July 4, 2004 In 1972, at the height of his fame, sometime between his appearances in McCabe Mrs. Miller and The Parallax View, Warren Beatty made a cameo in a lost documentary about the women's movement. He is interviewed in the lobby of Miami Beach's glamorous Fontainebleau hotel by a beautiful blonde who has the sensuous looks of a '60s Hollywood screen star. At one point, the woman says, I think men could go to rehabilitation centers and be oriented toward their new role in society -- clearly catching Beatty off guard, and he tries to sound smooth. You think you've really licked it? he asks. And then his legendary charm totally evaporates. You've changed, he sputters, as the cameras close in. When you came and talked to me at the Beverly Wilshire, I liked you very much, but I don't think you were very direct and very firm the way you are now. The blonde deadpans straight back: Well, I was talking about something I didn't feel very firmly about. Which was you. The woman was poet, author and first-time filmmaker Sandra Hochman. It was an election year, and the interview was the opening salvo in Hochman's astonishing documentary, Year of the Woman. The good news for Beatty and other men skewered in the film, though, is that relatively few people ever got to see it. It was recently screened at the Sarasota Film Festival in Florida but has spent most of the past 30 years locked in a Manhattan film vault -- too radical, too weird and too far ahead of its time for any distributor to touch. Shot with hand-held 16mm cameras by an all-female documentary crew, the film takes place at the Democratic National Convention in Miami -- scene, too, of the first major meeting of the National Women's Political Caucus. The cameras follow Hochman as she provokes male politicians, delegates and celebrities into sharing their views about women and the feminist movement. The film features an extraordinary cross section of American cultural icons, among them Beatty, Shirley MacLaine, Norman Mailer, Gloria Steinem, Nora Ephron, Shirley Chisholm and electrifying black feminist Florynce Kennedy. Like Beatty, most of the men hang themselves. Future disgraced Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart says that no woman is up to standard to be president; a delegate from Alabama is bemused when Hochman calls him sexist for saying women should never be truck drivers. In one extraordinary scene, Hochman sneaks into a packed convention hall with a curvy blond stripper dressed in a revealing gold sequined dress. The convention virtually stops as the men ogle the stripper like dogs in heat. All because she had breasts! Hochman reflects onscreen afterward from a deck chair on South Beach. But if a man walked into a convention with a huge [penis], would women rush up and ask, 'Who is he, where is he, what's his name?' '' Interspersed with Hochman's poetry, fantasy-dream sequences and some hilarious ad-lib repartee with humorist Art Buchwald, the film caused a sensation when it opened for five nights at the Fifth Avenue Cinema in Manhattan in October 1973. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in a promotion for the movie that it was the greatest combination of sex and politics ever seen in a film. Hochman and Buchwald are the best new comedy team since Hepburn and Tracy. It sold out each night, and women lined up around the block to see it. And then: It disappeared. It was bought as a tax shelter for $150,000 by the 23-year-old daughter of a lawyer from the Philippines and her two brothers, convinced it was a masterpiece. Yet no film company would touch it. Since then, until Sarasota, it had been shown in public only once, at a gala screening at Lincoln Center in 1985 to raise funds for the Schlesinger Library at Harvard's Radcliffe College. Today it is not on video or DVD, and few people have even heard of it. I guess in 1973 the world wasn't ready for a group of beautiful women talking
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
Grammar, logic and math are systems of ordered symbols. -- Me: Not to the Greeks, or to Hegel. They are objectively real. That's why the Greeks never evolved the concepts of negative numbers or zero; how can you talk about zero of something? It's absurd. In one late work of Greek mathematics I studied in grad school (I can't remember the author), the writer, who is working up something like algebra, expressly rules out answers in which you will get a negative number, because they are impossible answers. -- The word was important at the beginning of the human species, because language was important. Perhaps the Gospel reflects this fact. -- Heidegger, in his many, many exegesis of ancient philosophy, says that the greek word for to speak, legein, which is what logos is derived from (or vice versa -- I don't know), comes from the word for to tie together, because what you are doing is finding different things in the world, tieing them together so to speak in a meaningful whole in a sentence, and then expressing them. God knows I'm not a Greek philologist and don't know if this is true or not. In any case by the time it made it to the Gospels logos had several centuries of use as a technical philosophical term, especially in the Stoics, who remember were the biggest philosophical school in the Roman Empire (and were famous for their system of logic too. :) ) It's very important to the neo-Platonists too. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
For formal logic , arriving at a contradiction means there is a mistake, something is false. -- Technically, this is false. In logic, ever since Plato, the rule has been that something cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time. Dialectics in Hegel and Marx do not deny this; they are more interested in seeing how different trends within a single phenomenon cause it to break apart. __ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
I mentioned Plato: Technically, this is false. In logic, ever since Plato, the rule has been that something cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time. --- Plato, of course, is where the conceot of dialectics got started in the first place. Does anybody know of Marx ever discusses the Platonic origin of the concept/term, or if he just restricts himself to Hegel? Man, this is making me wish I'd finished my dissertation and gotten the Ph.D. in phil I was aiming for before I moved to Russia. I haven't thought about this stuff in ages. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
dialectics and logic
[was: RE: [PEN-L] absolute general law of capitalist accumulation] Charles B: For formal logic , arriving at a contradiction means there is a mistake, something is false. Chris D. Technically, this is false. In logic, ever since Plato, the rule has been that something cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time. Dialectics in Hegel and Marx do not deny this; they are more interested in seeing how different trends within a single phenomenon cause it to break apart. I won't talk about Hegel any more, since I'm no expert at all on his ideas (and he's not my cup of schnapps). But for Marx, a contradiction was an empirical (real, practical) phenomenon, unlike the contradiction in logic. A social organization -- such as capitalism -- was a whole or totality, but in its structure, there were different parts that didn't work together well. (Kinda like putting an English-unit part in a car that has an engine that was specified built using metric units, as my father did once. Or like when NASA used metric and the private contractor used the English system, so the Mars probe crashed.) In Marx's case, the contradictions of capitalism were problems within the system such as class antagonism and competition amongst the capitalists, summarized by Engels as the contradiction between socialized production (the whole) and individualized appropriation (the parts). In orthodox or liberal economics, there's a (qualitatively different kind of) contradiction between what's good for society and what's good for the individual, as in public goods theory. jd
Re: unions
In a message dated 7/19/2004 11:16:11 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't see why pushing to make labor unions more democratic and to make the established leadership more responsible represents a "split in the working class." A union would be more effective if it were more democratic rather than having decisions made on high by plump cats. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine sartesian wrote:an industrial union, like the UAW or UMW, and even there and then independent workers organizations had to be, and will have to be again, constructed against the established leadership. end Ah yes. More splits in the working class.Joel Wendland Comment The organized sector of the working class called trade unions or the trade union movement . . . by definition represents an institutional spilt in the working class between the organized and the unorganized. There are enormous differences and splits between various kinds of unions . . . with perhaps the oldest being the great division and shift from craft unionism to industrial unionism. From the late 1930s up until yesterday the great spilt was manifested in the CIO or as it stands today the UAW and the AFI. Within the industrial form of unions are the great divergence and splits between skilled and unskilled. The color factor has always been a sharp form of the institutional spilt within the working class as a whole and the trade union movement. However, it would be a serious and unpardonable mistake to dismiss the other aspects of the national factor than manifested itself as a spilt in the union movement within the European immigrant workers. The Slavic workers lingering on the bottom of the totem pole until this social position at the bottom was replaced by blacks have craved themselves a heroic chapter in the history of our country. The history and memory of "Big Steel" (and "little steel") will live forever. Within the skilled sector of the unions exists splits as wage differentials that grew out of the evolution of different crafts or kinds of skilled work. The electrician is higher than the pipe fitters and the old German style machinists has been obliterated by the advance of industrial technique. In the old Steel Workers Union and the UAW the historic split within the unions appeared as the skilled sector occupying all the bargaining positions and given the color factor in our history appeared as the skilled white workers dominating the unskilled mass that was black at its core. We do however understand that the blacks as a mass simply replaced the Slavic workers not only in the unions but as the configuration of the housing pattern in the industrial centers. There is an enormous split within the working class on the basis of wage structures that is manifest as the worse paid sector of the working class called the proletariat (the lowest stratum of society - Communist Manifesto) and the higher paid workers who may or may not be in trade unions. This lowest paid stratum of the working class called the proletariat is female in its dimensions and a "womanists" point of view - as opposed to say . . . political feminism, cannot be lightly dismissed or ignored because what is being expressed is an economic category as female . . . whereas one hundred years ago and closer . . . the female category in society expressed a range of economic categories.The shifting emphasisare not separate categories but the proletariat as . . . is . . . female. The fight for union democracy (without quotes) is a mixed bag and tricky. The "referendum vote" demand in the union movement picks up steam during different periods of history based on the changing composition of the industries the unions are connected to and the downward push on wages. The fight for union democracy makes sense . . . in my opinion, when it is housed in a specific demand from the company . . . other than that this political forum of insurgency quickly degenerates into sectarian politics and pursuit of the individual for office . . . especially in an industrial union. In an industrial union like the UAW 90% of your International Representatives (not the staff that service the activity of the International reps and the staff cannot vote on contract issues as such or policy as such) come from the factory floor and in fact make less in wages than the highest paid skilled workers. They are fat cats in relationship to the unskilled and receive a generous pension - two pensions. One from the company and one from the union after ten years of service as International reps . . . or roughly $6,000.00 a month in addition to medical benefits andother benefits . . . like tuition refund given to all retirees. The large unions in our country tend to be modeled on the constitutional framework of our government, with elected representatives electing the next level of leadership.
beyond the Dixie Chicks...
Ronstadt Loses Vegas Gig After Praising Michael Moore Some of the 4,500 people in attendance stormed out of the theater after Ronstadt's comments. LAS VEGAS (July 20) - Linda Ronstadt not only got booed, she also got the boot after lauding filmmaker Michael Moore and his new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, during a performance at the Aladdin hotel-casino. Before singing Desperado for an encore Saturday night, the 58-year-old singer called Moore a great American patriot and someone who is spreading the truth. She also encouraged everyone to see the documentary about President George W. Bush. Ronstadt's comments drew loud boos, and some of the 4,500 people in attendance stormed out of the theater. People also tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air. It was a very ugly scene, Aladdin President Bill Timmins told The Associated Press. She praised him and all of a sudden all bedlam broke loose. Timmins, who is British and was watching the show, decided Ronstadt had to go - for good. Timmins said he didn't allow Ronstadt back in her luxury suite and she was escorted off the property. Ronstadt's antics spoiled a wonderful evening for our guests and we had to do something about it, Timmins said. Timmins said it was the first time he'd sent a performer packing. As long as I'm here, she's not going to play, Timmins said. Ronstadt had been booked to play the Aladdin for only one show. Calls to Ronstadt's manager were not immediately returned. In an interview with the Las Vegas _Review-Journal_ before the show, Ronstadt said, I keep hoping that if I'm annoying enough to them, they won't hire me back. Looks like she got her wish. 07/20/04 06:32 EDT Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Please, before you remark upon others's comments-- I didn't know you were the moderator. I'll let your request for further discussion on another subject go. Clearly you think you know what I think and don't want to waste my time trying to disabuse you of your sagacious superiority. I'll be sure to avoid reading your posts in the future. Take care, Joel Wendland _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/19/04 6:29 PM Michael Hoover wrote: maybe the three million or so people who voted for nader in 2000 should take control of local democratic executive committees, use structure in place to recruit candidates, slag off on dems who suck, use available funds to issue policy statements and press releases one after another, show up at public and government meetings, control of county dem mechanisms might lead to control of state dem parties... This sounds like a very good idea, or at least one worth trying. What's the argument against it? Doug An argument against it? You would actually try it yourself if it were really a good idea. Yoshie nah, doug's a journalist, he'd write about it... michael hoover -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
With all deserved respect: No, I'm not the moderator, nor very moderate. I recognize being a left apologist for occupation is not always a bed of roses. I'm sure there are days when you feel like chucking everything and going away for a well-deserved rest, but there is no rest for the weary. You did argue against immediate withdrawal of the US from Iraq as that would destabilize the entire society; that the US was the force the could create the breathing space needed for a democratic government. The US GAO, now known as the Government Accountability Office (recent name change) has issued a report detailing the increased instability and economic decay wrought by the occupation. Care to make your arguments again? Guess not. Just one more thing: Is apologizing for the occupation part of being a great uniter rather than a divider of the working class? Just curious, you know, because my experience with union bureaucracies and leadership was that they were the dividers, like, ummh... Douglas Fraser, who secured his position in the UAW, and I would guess the board of Chrysler, after leading armed goons into the Jefferson Avenue plant to break the wildcat strike of the mostly African-American workers protesting the speed-ups and lack of safety. Now that's unity. _ Now for something completely different, re Deregulation Contortions: Some of you might remember Wendy Gramm, married to free market Phil, from her service for the Enron corporation prior to its collapse, a position she obtained after her service on the government's Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where she advocated and secured deregulation of the trading in energy futures that made Enron what it is today. Hugs to All -Original Message- From: Joel Wendland [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Jul 20, 2004 1:29 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Frank op-ed piece Please, before you remark upon others's comments-- I didn't know you were the moderator. I'll let your request for further discussion on another subject go. Clearly you think you know what I think and don't want to waste my time trying to disabuse you of your sagacious superiority. I'll be sure to avoid reading your posts in the future. Take care, Joel Wendland _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/19/04 3:33 PM Michael Hoover wrote: maybe the three million or so people who voted for nader in 2000 should take control of local democratic executive committees, use structure in place to recruit candidates, slag off on dems who suck, use available funds to issue policy statements and press releases one after another, show up at public and government meetings, control of county dem mechanisms might lead to control of state dem parties... This sounds like a very good idea, or at least one worth trying. What's the argument against it? Doug in no particular order: dem party is thoroughly and hopelessly capitalist, with some exceptions, dem party has dishonorable past, some left folks' preference for 'resistance' and 'struggle', would be too hard to accomplish (not to mention, really boring), inevitable/inexorable march of socialism, folks misunderstand marx re. 'parliamentary cretinism' and 'executive of modern state as committee for managing common affairs of whole bourgeoisie', incompatible with lifestyle things, better to encourage people to read marx/lenin/whomever and join one of numerous alphabet soup vanguard party comprised of ten and hundred of comrabes, red badge of being 'the opposition', dislike/fear of success, preference for whining instead of winning, activism (at least some of what passes for it) would lose character of surrogacy for psychotherapy...michael hoover -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
This is not the way to operate here. On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 01:29:41PM -0400, Joel Wendland wrote: Please, before you remark upon others's comments-- I didn't know you were the moderator. I'll let your request for further discussion on another subject go. Clearly you think you know what I think and don't want to waste my time trying to disabuse you of your sagacious superiority. I'll be sure to avoid reading your posts in the future. Take care, Joel Wendland _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
s.artesian wrote: The US GAO, now known as the Government Accountability Office (recent name change) has issued a report detailing the increased instability and economic decay wrought by the occupation. i read the news about the GAO report also, and i have been listening to arguments (on pen-l and elsewhere) on both sides of the issue of pulling out US troops. by both sides, i mean both sides of rational argument (as opposed to: lets pull the troops out since we may not get re-elected otherwise). i am not sure i am convinced by either side. take the point above, for example. is the increased instability and decay caused by the occupation or the invasion? both were/are perpetrated by the same party but they are a bit different, aren't they? is it possible that the US army/govt is the only group with the money and power to cleanup the mess they created? for instance, if the US govt dumped a shitload of nuclear waste in my backyard, i would want it to clean it up (with oversight by me and a neutral informed party). what would happen if we pull out the troops? would iraqis, rid of an illegal occupying force, unite and form a peaceful and just govt, or at least one that is more just than either saddam's or bremmer/allawi's? or would the country descend into even further chaos? what would happen if we keep the troops? would we, as american taxpayers, be able to influence our govt to use them to undo the massive harm we have caused the people of iraq? or would the troops contribute to further degradation of life in iraq? --ravi
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/19/04 10:37 PM First, all three million do not exist in the same locality. Secondly, a large number who voted for Nader then now are happily reunited with friends inside the regular Democratic Party. Thirdly, fat chance of getting the national party to change anything, or even state parties. Remember the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party? Fourthly, the Democratic Party is not an industrial union, like the UAW or UMW, and even there and then independent workers organizations had to be, and will have to be again, constructed against the established leadership. Need I continue? no idea who lister responsible for above is but: that 3m don't live in same locality is basic point, that certain left-celebs have signed onto anyone but bush/kerry means only that those left-celebs have done so, reference to miss freedom dem party is msplaced given it was singular attempt rather than across-board - er, nation - one (btw: wouldn't take 3m people, used number bit facetiously), this form of 'entryism' would - by definition - be opposed to established leadership... again, nothing may well come of it... heighten the contradictions man , michael hoover ps: thanks for link to milo reno papers, brief bio was bit helpful, have since stumbled across book about farm holiday assn by a john shover, _cornbelt rebellion: the famers' holiday association'... -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Hoover wrote: This sounds like a very good idea, or at least one worth trying. What's the argument against it? Doug in no particular order: dem party is thoroughly and hopelessly capitalist, with some exceptions, dem party has dishonorable past, some left folks' preference for 'resistance' and 'struggle', would be too hard to accomplish (not to mention, really boring), inevitable/inexorable march of socialism, folks misunderstand marx re. 'parliamentary cretinism' and 'executive of modern state as committee for managing common affairs of whole bourgeoisie', incompatible with lifestyle things, better to encourage people to read marx/lenin/whomever and join one of numerous alphabet soup vanguard party comprised of ten and hundred of comrabes, red badge of being 'the opposition', dislike/fear of success, preference for whining instead of winning, activism (at least some of what passes for it) would lose character of surrogacy for psychotherapy...michael hoover So almost all the reasons not to are really weak. You weren't stacking the deck, were you? I've got to disagree with the last - it's less a surrogate for psychotherapy than a symptom in itself. Doug
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
How can anyone believe that keeping troops in the US could possibly help bring social justice? Unfortunately, Kerry will not bring troops home without strong international cover. Otherwise he will be blamed for loosing Iraq. He will have to keep putting more troops in until Jeb takes over. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Perelman wrote: How can anyone believe that keeping troops in the US could possibly help bring social justice? i assume, you meant keeping troops in iraq? --ravi
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
sorry. you are correct. but I would be happy to remove the troops from the US. On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 03:18:05PM -0400, ravi wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: How can anyone believe that keeping troops in the US could possibly help bring social justice? i assume, you meant keeping troops in iraq? --ravi -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
No, I think he meant what he wrote. Gene ravi wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: How can anyone believe that keeping troops in the US could possibly help bring social justice? i assume, you meant "keeping troops in iraq"? --ravi
Killing the Future of Iraq
Killing the Future of Iraq: http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/killing-future-of-iraq.html
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Perelman wrote: How can anyone believe that keeping troops in the US could possibly help bring social justice? i assume, you meant keeping troops in iraq? --ravi or maybe Michael's remembering the old anarchist slogan US out of North America! Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
The Restorer
Although the local cable access station MNN is a very hit-or-miss affair, I want to announce the schedule for a truly memorable documentary as indicated below. The Restorer tells the story of a Turkish-Armenian rug restorer who is trying to make it in NYC in the economic downturn following 9/11. It is both a portrait of an individual who has many interesting things to say about art, tradition, life as an immigrant and war/peace, as well as a subtle portrait of NYC. This is the second worthy documentary I have seen on MNN involving Turkish immigrants. The other was about a wedding musician that I will announce the next time I get wind of it. In the meantime, check out The Restorer. It will be greatly worth your while. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Again Louis, Today I got the schedule, feel free to announce it on the Net. July 21, 8.30 pm. channel 34 Time Warner or 107 RCN, July 29, 3.00pm channel 56 TW, or 108 RCN Aug 4, 12 midnight channel 67 TW, 110 RCN. It will be shown in Manhattan only. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Iraq
I also think Michael meant what he wasn't aware he wrote, and I endorse his unconscious wholeheartedly. I believe that the first step in the liberation of Iraq must be our opposition to the deployment of US military forces anywhere in the world, including upon the soil of the United States.
Peter Camejo Speaks (Audio File)
Peter Camejo Speaks (San Francisco, July 16, 2004): http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/peter-camejo-speaks.html -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Greens for Nader: http://greensfornader.net/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
I'd be *very* careful how one went about this. It feels like entryism, and the experience of the (UK) Labour Party in the 1980s suggests that the 'mainstream' Dems would react to it very badly indeed (by which I mean that this, if it didn't work, would be the *end* of friendly relationships between the US Left (S.A.I.I) and the Democratic Party. There are lots of people in the UK Labour party who were good friends once but who still don't speak to each other, because of things that happened with Militant during the 80s. dd Michael Hoover wrote: This sounds like a very good idea, or at least one worth trying. What's the argument against it? Doug in
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
sorry. you are correct. but I would be happy to remove the troops from the US. Or bring all the troops home here and re-train them into an army of fitness instructors -- sorely needed in the fattest nation in the world. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Greens for Nader: http://greensfornader.net/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Daniel Davies wrote: I'd be *very* careful how one went about this. It feels like entryism, and the experience of the (UK) Labour Party in the 1980s suggests that the 'mainstream' Dems would react to it very badly indeed (by which I mean that this, if it didn't work, would be the *end* of friendly relationships between the US Left (S.A.I.I) and the Democratic Party. There are lots of people in the UK Labour party who were good friends once but who still don't speak to each other, because of things that happened with Militant during the 80s. We're not talking about people like Militant I hope. Our Trots wouldn't touch the DP with a 10-ft pole. (On this question, even some ex-Trots carry on the tradition, suggesting that membership is that community is a lot like the Party of the Right, for life at least.) We're talking about Nader voters, Greens, liberal Dems, etc. Of course that they lack the discipline of Militant they'll get chewed up quickly by the DP machinery. Tom Frank (whose book is selling 10,000 copies a week) says that the Dems he now meets in DC say there is no working class, and the target demographic is suburban professionals. Doug
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Doug writes: Tom Frank (whose book is selling 10,000 copies a week) says that the Dems he now meets in DC say there is no working class, and the target demographic is suburban professionals. He is quite critical of the Democratic Leadership Council for promoting this attitude. In fact, in the article in Sunday's L.A. TIMES, one of his criticisms was that the DLC had replaced class issues (which he called something else) with issues such as abortion rights, etc. That doesn't have to say that the latter are wrong to push for, but rather that the DLC is wrong to go suburban and give the finger to the working class and the poor. jim devine
NEW Thomas Frank op-ed piece
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-frank18jul18,1,3286333.story How the Left Lost Its Heart Now, the working class has no true champion By Thomas Frank Thomas Frank is editor of the Baffler magazine and author of What's the Matter With Kansas? This article was adapted from that book by arrangement with Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt a July 18, 2004 WASHINGTON - That our politics have been shifting rightward for more than 30 years is a generally acknowledged fact of American life. That this movement has largely been brought about by working-class voters whose lives have been materially worsened by the conservative policies they have supported is less commented upon. And yet the trend is apparent, from the hard hats of the 1960s to the Reagan Democrats of the 1980s to today's mad-as-hell red states. You can see the paradox firsthand on nearly any Main Street in Middle America, where going out of business signs stand side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush. I chose to observe the phenomenon by going back to my home state of Kansas, a place that has been particularly ill served by the conservative policies of privatization, deregulation and deunionization - and that has reacted to its worsening situation by becoming more conservative still. Indeed, Kansas is today the site of a ferocious struggle within the Republican Party, a fight pitting affluent moderate Republicans against conservatives from working-class districts and down-market churches. And it's hard not to feel some affection for the conservative faction, even as I deplore its political views. After all, these are the people that liberalism is supposed to speak to: the hard-luck farmers, the bitter factory workers, the outsiders, the disenfranchised, the disreputable. Although Kansas voters have chosen self-destructive policies, it is clear that liberalism deserves a large part of the blame for the backlash phenomenon. Liberalism may not be the monstrous, all-powerful conspiracy that conservatives make it out to be, but its failings are clear nonetheless. Somewhere in the last four decades liberalism ceased to be relevant to huge portions of its traditional constituency, and liberalism just as surely lost places like Wichita and Shawnee as much as conservatism won them over. This is due partly, I think, to the Democratic Party's more-or-less official response to its waning fortunes. The Democratic Leadership Council, the organization that produced such figures as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman and Terry McAuliffe, has long been pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues. The larger interests that the DLC wants desperately to court are corporations, capable of generating campaign contributions far outweighing anything raised by organized labor. The way to collect the votes and - more important - the money of these coveted constituencies, New Democrats think, is to stand rock-solid on, say, the pro-choice position while making endless concessions on economic issues, on welfare, NAFTA, Social Security, labor law, privatization, deregulation and the rest of it. Such Democrats explicitly rule out what they deride as class warfare and take great pains to emphasize their friendliness to business interests. Like the conservatives, they take economic issues off the table. As for the working-class voters who were until recently the party's very backbone, the DLC figures they will have nowhere else to go; Democrats will always be marginally better on bread-and-butter economic issues than Republicans. Besides, what politician in this success-worshiping country really wants to be the voice of poor people? Where's the soft money in that? This is, in drastic miniature, the criminally stupid strategy that has dominated Democratic thinking off and on ever since the New Politics days of the early '70s. Over the years it has enjoyed a few successes, but, as political writer E.J. Dionne has pointed out, the larger result was that both parties have become vehicles for upper-middle-class interests and the old class-based language of the left quickly disappeared from the universe of the respectable. The Republicans, meanwhile, were industriously fabricating their own class-based language of the right, and while they made their populist appeal to blue-collar voters, Democrats were giving those same voters - their traditional base - the big brushoff, ousting their representatives from positions within the party and consigning their issues, with a laugh and a sneer, to the dustbin of history. A more ruinous strategy for Democrats would be difficult to invent. And the ruination just keeps on coming. Curiously, though, Democrats of the DLC variety aren't worried. They seem to look forward to a day when their party really is what David Brooks and Ann
On Korea
IHT article: The International Herald Tribune Philip Bowring: Who owns South Korea? Philip Bowring IHT Monday, July 19, 2004 Foreign vs. local investment HONG KONG At one level South Korea represents a triumph of globalization over economic nationalism. Yet because of the head-in-the-sand policies of the Seoul government this could well turn sour. Foreigners now own most of the commercial crown jewels of South Korea, the newest and seemingly most nationalist member of the developed world. Whether it is the world's leading chip maker and mobile phone challenger, Samsung Electronics, or the world's largest and most profitable steel producer, Pohang Iron Steel, or Korea's major financial groups Kookmin and Shinhan, most of Korea's high-profile companies are now more than 50 percent owned by foreigners. In some cases the foreign stakes go above 70 percent. Foreigners now account for 44 percent of the total Korea stock market capitalization of around $360 billion. The statistics are especially remarkable given that less than a decade ago foreign ownership of equity in Korean companies was highly restricted. Even when the nation joined the OECD in 1996, liberalization was at snail's pace. It took the Asian financial crisis and strong-arm IMF and creditor tactics to force Koreans to accept almost unrestricted foreign ownership. Koreans still often express resentment at how the sudden withdrawal of foreign bank lending in 1997-98 caused a collapse in the Korean currency and asset values. The crisis opened the way to equity capital liberalization and made it possible for foreigners to acquire large portions of Korean commerce and industry at very depressed prices. Nor was this just a one-time process. The foreign buying of Korea has continued steadily, and with occasional big waves. Over the past year some $25 billion in new foreign portfolio equity has arrived. So far there has been no major backlash. Koreans may be uncomfortable with the numbers, but they can take comfort from the fact that in most cases foreign ownership is fragmented and management control rests firmly with Koreans - frequently with the families of the former major shareholders. Still, resentment of foreigners, especially when they try to exercise their rights as shareholders, lurks not far below the surface. Yet Koreans are failing to acknowledge that they themselves now bear the main responsibility for the foreign capital invasion. Instead of buying their own companies, they are investing in government bonds, houses and U.S. debt. Despite foreign buying, Korean equities continue to be priced at a fraction of overseas equivalents. The Korean stock market is selling on nine times its historic earnings compared with 21 for the SP 500, 14 for London, 15 for Taiwan, 16 for Hong Kong or 32 for Japan. The foreign owners are even collecting dividend yields of around 2.5 percent - as much as Koreans are earning on their massive holdings of short-term U.S. debt. The fact is that individual Korean savers are put off equity investment by the volatility of the market, and by memories of 1997. In turn, volatility is a result of the lack of Korean institutional investment, which is a direct result of laws forcing the majority of Korea's vast household savings held in insurance and pension funds into bonds and fixed deposits. While foreigners buy their farm, Koreans are buying bonds. The situation grows more ridiculous by the day. The government is in the process of issuing vast quantities of won-denominated bonds as a war chest in order to be able to sell won and buy dollars to prevent the exchange rate from appreciating. This obsession with maintaining an undervalued currency will result in further expansion of bloated foreign reserves. These are now $230 billion - far more than the foreigners have spent acquiring their 44 percent of Korean equities. The Korean government's failure to let market forces determine the exchange rate is leading directly to the foreign acquisition of Korean assets by keeping them cheap in dollar terms and channeling Korean savings into U.S. consumer debt rather than into ownership of the true pride of Korea - Samsung, POSCO, etc. Such dumb policies could spark both a nationalist backlash in Korea and a trade backlash by Korea's trading partners. IHT Copyright 2004 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor Comparative International Development University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx
Re: Socialism Betrayed/4 - value and the industrial system
Waistline2 wrote: Socialism Betrayed by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny contains an underlying theory grid that evolved from the evolution of the Communist Party USA . . . in my opinion . . . and limited to the industrial phase of development. I read SB as well and also consider it worth reading, but was less impressed. I was disappointed that the book almost solely focuses on inner-party conflict and, contrary to what one might expect from an historian like Roger Keeran, it presents a socialist version of the great man history (if that is possible) we were supposed to have rejected from bourgeois historians. Their conclusion: one man, specifically Mickail G. is responsible for the collapse of the USSR, and along the way competing personalities representing two trends in the CPSU fought over the direction of development. Where is the working class? Also, questions such as why a second economy necessarily arose out of the planned economy aren't really addressed except as they relate to the history of the personalities that dominate the book? Why would workers and the mass of the population turn to the SE? Why would they need to? What does this say about how the USSR was developing socialism? Does it have anything to say about planning itself? Also, I have to say I didn't think the unqualified (or at the most very underqualified) defenses of Stalin were just way too much to handle. Likewise the attacks on those in the Soviet party that criticized Stalin by the authors of this book (and by implication everyone else), calling them social democrats or being aligned with imperialists etc., was unconvincing. Also, (another also) the authors handling of the question of democracy seemed out of another era altogether. The book does contain a lot of useful information, I think, about the Soviet economy and some Party-related history. I'd give it 2 and 1/2 red stars. Joel Wendland _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: On Korea
The situation grows more ridiculous by the day. The government is in the process of issuing vast quantities of won-denominated bonds as a war chest in order to be able to sell won and buy dollars to prevent the exchange rate from appreciating. This obsession with maintaining an undervalued currency will result in further expansion of bloated foreign reserves. These are now $230 billion - far more than the foreigners have spent acquiring their 44 percent of Korean equities. the problem, of course, is that South Korea lets its currency rise and China doesn't (and other East Asian countries don't), then SK is at quite a competitive disadvantage. If they were to all let their currencies rise at the same time, it wouldn't be so bad for any individual country in East Asia. jim devine
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Perelman wrote: sorry. you are correct. but I would be happy to remove the troops from the US. On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 03:18:05PM -0400, ravi wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: How can anyone believe that keeping troops in the US could possibly help bring social justice? what then of US responsibility to clean up the mess we created? it seems to me that many (not necessarily on pen-l) who call for the return of the troops are primarily motivated by their concern for the safety of american soldiers. many of these same people i am sure supported the invasion that put these soldiers in iraq! why not first the call: US corporations out of iraq? --ravi
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
ravi writes: what then of US responsibility to clean up the mess we created? shouldn't it be what then of the US power elite's responsibility to clean up the mess they created? Do you think that US troops are the best tool for cleaning the mess they were hired to create? It seems that they are serving the US corporations, so if you're calling for US corporations out of Iraq, you're also calling for their servants to leave. As some predecessor of Mohammed said, no man can serve two masters. Can US troops serve their current masters _and_ do good things? --- BTW, did you see that the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings. They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs. They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they deserved worse than death. The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Herald, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun. But the informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence. goodbye to the old Saddam, hello to the new? a newer, better, Saddam, _our_ SOB. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine what then of US responsibility to clean up the mess we created? it seems to me that many (not necessarily on pen-l) who call for the return of the troops are primarily motivated by their concern for the safety of american soldiers. many of these same people i am sure supported the invasion that put these soldiers in iraq! why not first the call: US corporations out of iraq? --ravi
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
what then of US responsibility to clean up the mess we created? it seems to me that many (not necessarily on pen-l) who call for the return of the troops are primarily motivated by their concern for the safety of american soldiers. many of these same people i am sure supported the invasion that put these soldiers in iraq! why not first the call: US corporations out of iraq? --ravi I support these sentiments. The rank narcissism, parochialism, single-issues, myopia and outright opportunism on the part of some who call themselves part of the left in America is particularly odious. For example, we see MoveOn.org contrasting the Kerry and Bush military records not only to show Bush as a chicken hawk and hypocrite for supporting a war he refused to fight in, but also purporting to show that Kerry, despite some reservations about the war, did his duty and 'served'. No, Bush has blood on his hands for supporting the war while refusing to go, while Kerry has blood on his hands (as did all veterans who directly or indirectly participated in the Vietnam War--including me) for having reservations about it but going anyway--there was not one thing noble or worthy about the Vietnam War, an outright genocidal and imperialist war. We see some of the petit-bourgeois middle-class white feminists supporting Kerry but having nothing to say about his very active membership in an outright misogynistic, anti-Semitic, racist and proto-fascist Satanic cult--Skull and Bones, of which Bush is also a fellow member. We see some, as in previous anti-War movements before, who are far more anti-Draft(with particular focus on their own skins) than anti-War or anti-Imperialism or even anti-Capitalism. Jim C.
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
In fairness, Kerry has never denied having blood on his hands and has done more than most (indeed, has built his political career on it) to bring the facts about what US soldiers did in Vietnam into the public eye. dd -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Craven, Jim Sent: 21 July 2004 02:55 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece No, Bush has blood on his hands for supporting the war while refusing to go, while Kerry has blood on his hands (as did all veterans who directly or indirectly participated in the Vietnam War--including me) for having reservations about it but going anyway-
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
The US establishment could do a lot more good by leaving Iraq, admitting that they were wrong, that the press screwed up, and warning that the people should be more attentive to the truth next time. On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 09:37:03PM -0400, ravi wrote: what then of US responsibility to clean up the mess we created? it seems to me that many (not necessarily on pen-l) who call for the return of the troops are primarily motivated by their concern for the safety of american soldiers. many of these same people i am sure supported the invasion that put these soldiers in iraq! why not first the call: US corporations out of iraq? --ravi -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Socialism Betrayed/4 - value and the industrial system
The intention was to do perhaps two more pieces on "Socialism Betrayed" focusing on the Epilogue. In my opinion how one assess Soviet socialism and its overthrow pushes the boundary of how the past generation of communist workers and Marxist understood the law of value, its operations and the context called the industrial mode of production - with the property relations within. The question of the second economy or the black market as an attribute of the industrial mode of production is important because one cannot liquidate the act of exchange - outside the bound of legality, under conditions of relative scarcity and industrial bureaucracy. For instance the pipes under the kitchen stink leaks and one sign up for repair and goes on the waiting list. A waiting list exits in the first place as a manifestation of shortage of plumbers or plumbers being deployed for more important work in the national economy. I happen to know Ivan the plumber next door and we go back twenty years and he does things for me and I do things for him to shortcut the system. These simple and not so simple acts of exchange of labor cannot be outlawed and becomes a vortex drawing people into the value relationship because acts of exchange of labor under these conditions must reach a certain equilibrium or you deny the labor input to your family. People turn to the second economy (SE) for the same reason they do it in America . . . and everywhere else on earth, today . . . to increase consumption and gain access to greater services. Yes, this is simplistic but far to often true in real life. The point is that the industrial mode of production is advanced productive forces looking through the prism of history and primitive looking through the prism of a vision of the future . . . on hundred years of development of computers, digitalized production processes and advance robotics. "Socialism Betrayed" assembles all the pieces of the puzzle and I do not object to their treatment of leaders as manifestation of classes, class fragments and policy. How the puzzle is assembled is what challenges everyone's ideology and thinking. The authors pose in an easy to read framework every fundamental question in my opinion. I assemble the puzzle differently. The fact of the criticism of Stalin and the actual policy of those putting forth the criticism cannot be dismissed, although Stalin remains the bone in the throat of the communist movement that can neither be swallowed of spit up. The fact of the matter is a policy shift - beginning with Nikita K. on the emphasis of developing heavy or light industry, which determines the rate of reproduction and extensive expansion of the industrial mode of production. This is an issue that may never be solved in our lifetime. Sides were taken and I never took Nikita K. side . . . and have always been firmly within the Stalin polarity concerning the operation of the law of value and why it cannot be abolished under industrial socialism. This question of democracy is not an abstract category depending on ones belief system. To ascertain "where was the working class" one has to dig into the fact of society administration, the culture of the average Soviet citizen, rates of incarceration compared to say . . . bourgeois America today . . . forms of organizations engaging the average citizen . . . scale of trade union organizations . . . actual working of Soviets and cooperative societies . . . vacation time . . . educational levels, etc. How the Soviets developed industrial socialism has no framework of real comparison in the sense that we can speak of how America developed the bourgeois mode of production and compare it with say Germany, England or Japan. Ones ideological bent . . . which in American tends to be utterly bourgeois, needs to be suspended and Soviet society be looked at on the basis of tits own internal development on a hostile mode of production in a hostile world. These are sharp questions that cannot be treated lightly. Why could they not overcome the law of value? Melvin P. Waistline2 wrote:"Socialism Betrayed" by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny contains an underlying theory grid that evolved from the evolution of the Communist Party USA . . in my opinion . . . and limited to the industrial phase of development.I read "SB" as well and also consider it worth reading, but was lessimpressed. I was disappointed that the book almost solely focuses oninner-party conflict and, contrary to what one might expect from anhistorian like Roger Keeran, it presents a socialist version of the "greatman" history (if that is possible) we were supposed to have rejected from bourgeois historians. Their conclusion: one man, specifically Mickail G. is responsible for the collapse of the USSR, and along the way competing personalities representing two trends in the CPSU fought over the direction of
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Devine, James wrote: ravi writes: what then of US responsibility to clean up the mess we created? shouldn't it be what then of the US power elite's responsibility to clean up the mess they created? for an iraqi is there a difference? or even for us? 30-50% of the taxes i pay go towards funding american adventures in other countries and the further excesses of client states like israel. am i not complicit in the suffering of iraqis and palestinians and east timorese? Do you think that US troops are the best tool for cleaning the mess they were hired to create? i don't know. that's why i am trying to follow this debate. but often all i hear is dismissal without justification of the opposing position. perhaps the reasons are obvious? It seems that they are serving the US corporations, so if you're calling for US corporations out of Iraq, you're also calling for their servants to leave. i dont know about the last part. perhaps US troops as part of a multinational force could help ensure peace. that might be a naive hope. the corporations (hallibortun, bechtel, etc) are by their very nature a corrupting and degenerate influence. BTW, did you see that the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government... indeed i read about this, and it only adds to my doubt. i am not very knowledgeable about iraq but is it not possible that the thugs who will rush in to fill the void left by a suddenly departed US army, would be worse? i remember reading pieces about east timor, rwanda, and elsewhere, of the horrors that ensued when any provisional authority pulled out (in those cases these authorities were a bit more legitimate, such as the UN). isnt it important not to forget that their thugs are as bad as ours? only, we can try to control our thugs but they cannot control theirs or ours. --ravi
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Ravi, with all due respect, Iif the US really wanted to make things better the money that they spend now could buy many more Islamic soldiers, without the stigma of US control. If the US left Iraqis decide the fate of their gov't, it would probably be anti-American and theocratic. Engels once said that the worst time for a bad government is when it first tries to do good. Doing good in this case will not be easy, but the military is too blunt an object to acomplish anything good. But the US is not interested in doing good. It wants to avoid humiliation. One of the generals said that the US can take its humiliation now or later. It has to decide how much humiliation it wants. But then, maybe with enough money and lives, the US can establish an ARENA-like party that will do its bidding, allowing the US to sneak away. I doubt it, though. On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 10:37:15PM -0400, ravi wrote: Devine, James wrote: ravi writes: what then of US responsibility to clean up the mess we created? shouldn't it be what then of the US power elite's responsibility to clean up the mess they created? for an iraqi is there a difference? or even for us? 30-50% of the taxes i pay go towards funding american adventures in other countries and the further excesses of client states like israel. am i not complicit in the suffering of iraqis and palestinians and east timorese? Do you think that US troops are the best tool for cleaning the mess they were hired to create? i don't know. that's why i am trying to follow this debate. but often all i hear is dismissal without justification of the opposing position. perhaps the reasons are obvious? It seems that they are serving the US corporations, so if you're calling for US corporations out of Iraq, you're also calling for their servants to leave. i dont know about the last part. perhaps US troops as part of a multinational force could help ensure peace. that might be a naive hope. the corporations (hallibortun, bechtel, etc) are by their very nature a corrupting and degenerate influence. BTW, did you see that the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government... indeed i read about this, and it only adds to my doubt. i am not very knowledgeable about iraq but is it not possible that the thugs who will rush in to fill the void left by a suddenly departed US army, would be worse? i remember reading pieces about east timor, rwanda, and elsewhere, of the horrors that ensued when any provisional authority pulled out (in those cases these authorities were a bit more legitimate, such as the UN). isnt it important not to forget that their thugs are as bad as ours? only, we can try to control our thugs but they cannot control theirs or ours. --ravi -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
In fairness, Kerry has never denied having blood on his hands and has done more than most (indeed, has built his political career on it) to bring the facts about what US soldiers did in Vietnam into the public eye. dd Response Jim C: Then why the ads celebrating his Vietnam service? Why the ads noting that he chose to serve his country by going to Vietnam? Why the celebrations of his medals that many sought to throw away out of shame when they came home--myself included? Why was he in VVAW only on the periphery breaking with the organization after a relatively short time in it? Why the references to how many times he was wounded and no reference to how many he wounded and killed? Why the continual reference to honorable service in Vietnam and how do you honorably serve in an imperialist and genocidal war? And here we got a bunch of fucking liberals on Air America, who themselves never served in the military, now celebrating Kerry's military service and attacking Bush for being a chickenhawk (which he was) but tacitly promoting the justness and correctness--and even patriotism of Kerry having served in Vietnam. You cannot have it both ways: the anti-War movement was correct yet we must honor those who served in Vietnam. Bullshit. If the anti-War movement was correct, then we should honor those who refused to serve (for whatever reason) with the exception of those chickenhawks who actively supported the War while ducking out of it. Again the right-wing is driving the agenda and the liberals are just reacting to it tryiing to win debating points. That asshole David Horowitz (who in my opinion was never a real leftist ever), who is now a close advisor to Bush. came up with a twist on Von Clausewitz: Politics is war by other means instead of war is the continuation of politics by other means is correct about one thing when he says that the point is winning and crushing/exterminating the hard-core opposition and not debating or winning in terms of debating points. Jim C.
The U.S. and the Iraqi economy
I think the discussion of whether the U.S. withdraws its troops has to be broadened to acknowledge that the U.S. has already made great progress in forcing the neoliberalization of the Iraqi economy. Brenner signed several orders which continue to be in place that among other things: put all Iraqi industry, except for oil and banking, up for privatization with the potential for 100 percent foreign ownership; mandate free entry and exit for foreign capital; ended tariffs and import restrictions; outlaw strikes, etc. Thus while we should, in my opinion, demand the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq we must also recognize that we need to begin struggling more openly and directly, also in solidarity with the Iraqi people, against the forced restructuring of the Iraqi economy. This is an area that we have so far done very little to highlight. Marty Hart-Landsberg
