Re: Monthly Review: China and Market Socialism
What is the best source that discusses the pre-reform political and economic developments in China. The Monthly Review special issue focuses almost entirely on post-1978. Would a comparison of directions/developments pre- and post -978 be worthwhile? Joel Wendland http://www.politicalaffairs.net Reply The archives of the A-List probably contains much material on China. Henry C.K. Lis is a first rate . . . actually excellent economist . . . in my opinion and is well within Marxism and a prolific writer on China and world economy. http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/a-list Recently we discussed aspects of the Monthly Review article on China. Currently things are a bit slow with it being the vacation time of year and all. Henry is a regular contribution to Asia Times. I generally write a more intense version of material sent to Pen-L on the A-List. At any rate the archives are really worth looking at. Melvin P.
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/21/04 3:07 AM I think if you really wanted to take over the state, you'd be better off with a state-wide IRV campaign. Probably equally doomed, but at least the interim incentives would make more sense: you'd build up an organization outside their grasp that could affect the media and politics independently. This is basically how people passed the term-limits laws. IRV would be more useful: it would really allow you to develop small principled parties that could grow until they won, and which would have an effect on the political discourse from the beginning. Michael term limits 'movement' movers shakers were closely associated with rep party, have read that modern-era notion (term limits idea has long history, pre-american revolution colonial and early republican-era u.s. state legislatures were commonly term limited) was hatched by paul weyrich and his free congress committee or foundation or whatever its called, number of term limits orgs were republican front groups... while '95 u.s. supreme court decision stating that limits for congress could only be imposed via u.s. constitutional amendment, not by individual states upon their own delegations, doesn't seem coincidence that wind began running out of term limits sails when rep party gained controlled of congress... 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: The South and the Election
The south and the elections By John Slaughter The benchmark of American democracy since its inception has been the vote. While the masses of the people who participated in the revolution of 1776 -- the workers fresh from the debtor's prisons of Europe, indentured servants, farmers, slaves, native Americans -- fought for a vision of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," their cause also included the fight for "representation," a government of the people. Today, in 2004, elections are showcased as the preeminent _expression_ of our democracy. Revolutions, however, are ultimately about which class will assume power, and who determines how society is reorganized. The propertied classes moved quickly to take control of the new government, and formed it to safeguard their interests. The aims of the masses were thwarted, and the battle continues to this day. When the form of rule is a democracy, an essential aspect of the exercise of that rule is the skillful control and manipulation of elections. Central to that process in the history of this country is the role of the South. A Slaveholders' 'Democracy' At the founding Constitutional Convention of 1787, James Rutledge, delegate from South Carolina, declared "[Economic] interest alone" should be "the governing principle of nations." By interest he meant property, specifically slave property. The Southern delegates insisted, as a condition of their states' participation in the new Union, that certain clauses be included to protect and further the interests of the slave power. These included especially the three-fifths clause (Article 1, Section 2). Full: http://www.lrna.org/league/PT/PT.2004.04/PT.2004.04.5.html
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
In a message dated 7/20/2004 1:20:58 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 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._ Comment Yea . . . Doug Fraser was a piece of work. An old timer out of the Desoto plants and "hard fist socialists" - rough counterpart to say A. Philip Randolph. Fraser was rewarded with a seat on the Chrysler Board of Directors in the wake of the company's failure to meet its obligations in the bond market in 1980 . . . the collapse hit November 1979 when Chrysler reported its greatest lost of revenue in history. The Jefferson events of 1973 was part of an intense strike wave. The summer months in Chrysler plants were unbearable . . . which no one understood because at that time Chrysler was the largest producer of industrial air conditioning units. The speed up . . . literally turning the speed of the assembly line up . . . was unbearable. You would literally run to keep up. On July 24, 1973 Issac Shorter and Larry Carter took direct action and climbed into the elctric power control cage and pushed one button and shut down the assembly line. They negoitated with the company directly from the cage and the workers pretended any action of force from removing them until the grievences were met. 13 hours later both of them were carried from the cage into the streets on the shoulders of a mass of workers that remain one of the most famous and important pictures of this era. Our unit immediately recruited Shorter into the Communist League . . . who had been the local Chairman of the Panther's Committee to Combat Fascism in Cleveland Mississippi. He had left Mississippi . . . goddamn . . . and move to Los Angeles and got a job with Chrysler only to be laid off. In 1971 he arrived in Detroit already political. A few weeks later the Chrysler Forge plant went on an unauthorized strike . . . a "wildcat strike" over working conditions. Fraser had stated earlier in respect to the Jefferson "wild cat strike" that the company had lost its "manhood" by not going through union channels and negotiating directly with the insurgents. At the Forge strike Fraser showed up in force with a squad of goons. The workers would not bulge and Fraser invited one of the leaders outside for a gentleman game of fisticuffs . . . a white worker named John Taylor who was a member of the Motor City Labor League. Anyone that even heard of John Taylor knew he was anything but soft. A year or two later all of us combined together to form the Communist Labor Party. "You want soft? . . . you better go get toilet paper. With the cameras rolling John politely explained that there was no need to go outside because we can fight our way onto the fucking street. Fraser back down on television and his goons were hopelessly outnumbered with many of them on the side of the strikers. The intensity of this strike wave was such that the conservative Detroit News was running headlines like . . . "Chrysler Treats Men Like A Piece of Meat." By the summer of 1973 there were dozens of groups with hundreds of active members in the plants. The cyclical nature of auto would disrupt all forms of organization because the cycles of work generally ran 36 months . . . maximum. Fraser was bad news all over and outlived his moment in history. He was not a bad individual as such but outlived his moment in history. For the record it was Alonzo Chandler and Larry Robinson (DA Mitchell) . . . because Larry Robinson was a phony name used because many of us were black balled and all had alias to get work . . . that recruited Shorter into the Communist League. Actually Alonzo was working under an alias that would not be resolved until he retired in year 2000 and the union won recognition of his work under another name. Even General Baker, Jr. worked under another name for Ford . . . Alexander Ware and the company tried to fired him when they found out. He won his case because their is a contract clause that allows anyone to work under an alias if they last 18 months on the job. I actually picked up 6 months toward retirement from someone working under my name at Jefferson Assembly. The established leaders are . . . established on the basis of another cycle of the class struggle and composition of the working class. Those were the days. John would have been harshly criticized for fighting Fraser because he was to old. On
Re: Greed
Ted Winslow writes: Is Marx making an empirical point? Yes. It's an empirical claim about the psychology dominant in capitalism. The idea of greed' as an irrational passion is ancient. As Marx points out in Capital, it can be found in Aristotle. Aristotle opposes Oeconomic to Chrematistic. He starts from the former. So far as it is the art of gaining a livelihood, it is limited to procuring those articles that are necessary to existence, and useful either to a household or the state. True wealth (o aleqinos ploutos) consists of such values in use; for the quantity of possessions of this kind, capable of making life pleasant, is not unlimited. There is, however, a second mode of acquiring things, to which we may by preference and with correctness give the name of Chrematistic, and in this case there appear to be no limits to riches and possessions. Trade (e kapelike is literally retail trade, and Aristotle takes this kind because in it values in use predominate) does not in its nature belong to Chrematistic, for here the exchange has reference only to what is necessary to themselves (the buyer or seller). Therefore, as he goes on to show, the original form of trade was barter, but with the extension of the latter, there arose the necessity for money. On the discovery of money, barter of necessity developed into kapelike , into trading in commodities, and this again, in opposition to its original tendency, grew into Chrematistic, into the art of making money. Now Chrematistic is distinguishable from Oeconomic in this way, that in the case of Chrematistic circulation is the source of riches poietike crematon ... dia chrematon diaboles . And it appears to revolve about money, for money is the beginning and end of this kind of exchange ( to nomisma stoiceion tes allages estin ). Therefore also riches, such as Chrematistic strives for, are unlimited. Just as every art that is not a means to an end, but an end in itself, has no limit to its aims, because it seeks constantly to approach nearer and nearer to that end, while those arts that pursue means to an end, are not boundless, since the goal itself imposes a limit upon them, so with Chrematistic, there are no bounds to its aims, these aims being absolute wealth. Oeconomic not Chrematistic has a limit ... the object of the former is something different from money, of the latter the augmentation of money By confounding these two forms, which overlap each other, some people have been led to look upon the preservation and increase of money ad infinitum as the end and aim of Oeconomic. (Aristoteles, De Rep. edit. Bekker, lib. l. c. 8, 9. passim.) (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch04.htm) I understand the Aristotelian argument -- that there is a difference in producing for use value and producing for money ad infinitum as an end in itself. I understand the criticism of capitalism as an ideology that glorifies accumulation free of all restraint. However, as an empirical point, is it your position that the typical businessman in modern capitalist society has a materially different subjective motivation than a typical businessman in say, Augustan Rome or 14th Century Venice? Similarly, as an empirical point, in my experience, most people engaged in business, whether self-employed or employed in an organization, are not primarily motivated by money as an end (although some are), but by other goals that can be achieved through the use of money, such as providing for a family in a comfortable manner, etc. David Shemano
Re: Russian econ growth
Woosh! It's boom time! RUSSIAN POPULATION: INCOMES GROW 9.8 PERCENT MOSCOW, July 21 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian population's real incomes (those minus mandatory payments, adjusted to the index of consumer prices) have gone up over the past six months by 9.8 percent in comparison with the same period last year, reports the federal statistics service. The real incomes went up in June 2004 in comparison with the corresponding period last year by 10.7 percent, in the second quarter by 7.2 percent. The average wage this June, according to preliminary data, stands at 6,980 rubles ($1 equals 29 rubles) to increase by 25 percent in comparison with June 2003. In May 2004, the average wage for employees in health services, physical training and social maintenance made 64 percent of its level in the industry, education, culture and art-57 percent each. In May 2003, these figures were correspondingly 59%, 54% and 56%. The share of the losing enterprises in January-May 2004, in comparison with the same period in 2003, diminished by 2.1 percent to comprise 41.3 percent. There is evidence that the balance financial result (profits minus losses) of organizations (without entities in agriculture, small business, banks, insurance and budget) in January-May 2004, is positive. Thus, the surplus of the receipts over the losses amounted to 795.8 billion rubles ($27.7 billion): 43,600 companies gained profits to the tune of 906.6 billion rubles and 30,700 companies accounted for the losses worth 110.8 billion rubles. In January-May, 2003, the balance financial result was also positive and stood at 532.6 billion rubles ($17 billion) with the comparable circle of organizations. Russia's foreign trade turnover, according to the methods of the balance of payments in April-May 2004, (actually in current prices) was worth $99,267 million, which is up from the figures of the corresponding period in 2003 by 24.7 percent. The export then amounted to $64.851 million while the import to $34.416. In comparison with the corresponding period of 2003, they have grown by 25.4 percent and 23.4 percent. Russia's foreign trade balance according to the methods of the balance of payments in May 2004 (in actually operating prices) made $20,800 million (603.3 billion rubles), having surpassed the figures of the same period in 2003 by 27.4 percent and gone down in comparison with April by 5.3 percent. The incorporated export comprised $13.4 billion (387.5 billion rubles) and the import was $7.4 billion (215.8 billion rubles). This compared to the figures of May 2003 and April 2004, the export in May grew by 27.9 percent and shrunk by 5.8 percent while the import soared 26.4 percent and dropped 4.3 percent. The foreign trade balance (difference between export and import) made $5,926 million for May, 2004 and $30,435 million for May-January, 2004. __ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/
Re: Chechnya Capitalism
I wrote, referring to Chechen nutball ideologist Nukhayev: Read the book! As it turns out, however, unless you read Russian, you can't. Klebnikov's book Razgovor s varvorom, his interviews with Nukhayev, has not been translated into English. Therefore probably not available on Lexis-Nexis either. Why am I not surprised. __ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Thanks for that Brother Melvin. Damned if I didn't think that Fraser tried to fight his way into Jefferson Avenue. But I was out of Detroit in 1973, and heard about it, and the other battles, from friends. 1970-73 were the years, though, weren't they. Funny how it coincides with a peak in the rate of profit, a big dip, and then a recovery in the rate. Do remember the brothers taking over the cage. That one created a picture in my head that will never go away. - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2004 12:58 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Frank op-ed piece In a message dated 7/20/2004 1:20:58 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 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._ Comment Yea . . . Doug Fraser was a piece of work. An old timer out of the Desoto plants and "hard fist socialists" - rough counterpart to say A. Philip Randolph. Fraser was rewarded with a seat on the Chrysler Board of Directors in the wake of the company's failure to meet its obligations in the bond market in 1980 . . . the collapse hit November 1979 when Chrysler reported its greatest lost of revenue in history. The Jefferson events of 1973 was part of an intense strike wave. The summer months in Chrysler plants were unbearable . .
Re: dialectics and logic
There is a Marxian metaphyisc in the principle " nothing is constant but change" but it is aworrysome religion to hold because it implies that freedom lies in the appreciation of necessity or neccesity to change things. building onto a logic that calls for a constant detection of what needs to bechanged runs counter to the inetrest of bourgeoisie and its dominant ideology. it will be fought tooth and nail. what is particularly poignant here and the only new thing that i can probably add to this discusion is that the concepts with which people think have to be redifined to reflect this fluidity and contradiction in unity. syllogistic logic, and for the well informed of Croce's paperon contradiction and or dualistic or monadic thought, becomes void when things flow out of each other.. formal sophistry can do little to conceal the ugliness of capitalism and the system will stand naked before our very eyes. but will this alternativeway of thinking be taken to schools? highly unlikely. I recall it was even difficult to get a good course on hegel in universities because it talked about processes and change. Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign!
Another Democratic Party presidential candidate
July 22, 2004 PEN-L: When the state Democratic Party held its annual convention last year in Sacramento, young followers of LL attempted to disrupt a public event at the Capitol building. Democratic presidential candidate Carol Moseley Braun was one of the speakers. It was the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Earlier in 2003, LLs folks came to anti-war demos in downtown Sacramento. They told me and others about their great man. He was helping the world peace movement to coalesce, etc. Seth Sandronsky Date:Wed, 21 Jul 2004 09:34:58 -0400 From:Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Another Democratic Party presidential candidate The Independent, 21 July 2004 The cult and the candidate Lyndon LaRouche is a convicted fraudster and virulent anti-Semite. Now he's campaigning for the American presidency. Terry Kirby investigates his sinister global network - and his conspiracy theories about Tony Blair He has warned that the international monetary system is about to collapse and that five billion people will die in the ensuing chaos. The Royal Family and MI6 are, he claims, responsible for the international drugs trade. Welcome to the weird world of Lyndon LaRouche, the 81-year-old who is campaigning as an independent Democratic candidate for president of the United States in this November's election, for the fifth time. A millionaire who describes himself as the world's leading economic forecaster, LaRouche is also a convicted fraudster and conspiracy theorist par excellence. Until recently, LaRouche was virtually unknown in Britain, while in the United States he is dismissed as a crackpot, ignored by both the media and the political world. But since the death just over a year ago of the British student Jeremiah Duggan, a 22-year-old Jew found dead in mysterious circumstances in Germany after becoming involved with LaRouche supporters, his organisation has come under closer scrutiny than it has for decades. Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, a US think tank that monitors right-wing groups, said: In America we have treated him as a fringe eccentric, which is wrong because the truth is he recruits a lot of talented young people, like Jeremiah Duggan, and attempts to turn them into followers who will mindlessly celebrate a cause that's going nowhere. (clip) Earlier this summer, LaRouche accused Cheney of working with a crowd of scoundrels at Number 10 to run a dirty tricks operation against him through the British press in time for the Democratic convention. MEANWHILE, HE CAMPAIGNS UNDER THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET IN THE UNITED STATES, ATTRACTING FEDERAL FUNDING FOR EVERY CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION HE OBTAINS, AND WILL BE ON THE BALLOT PAPER IN MORE THAN 30 STATES. His latest theory is that the resurgence of something called Synarchist International - which he says helped former Nazis enter western intelligence networks - was responsible for the Madrid train bombing. Says Berlet: People in the US just tend to ignore him, but they do so at their peril. He is running a totalitarian group, a political cult. full: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=542953 -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Hoover wrote: A person who puts forward a proposal should be prepared to act on it. Otherwise, others will simply conclude that, if the idea is not even worth the proposer's time, then, it's not worth their time either. -- Yoshie people do different things, as for doug, he's a reporter (he may think of himself in other terms), i've indicated number of times in past impact that i think this has on his perspective re. certain things, but above conclusion is not necessarily one of them, in any event, i made suggestion (hesitate to call it proposal) not him... michael hoover (who has actually attended local dem ex com meetings) I'm asking if anyone will be doing it, because it's not a new idea, and a lot of people -- from famous guys like Michael Moore to local activists -- have proposed exactly the same thing, but they never do it themselves, much less try to make it a nationwide effort (to do the latter, you need a solid nationwide organization that exists outside electoral politics -- otherwise, no coordination among local attempts). At 3:18 PM -0400 7/21/04, Doug Henwood wrote: I don't have a lot of time to spare anyway Most Americans -- 99.99% of Americans? -- feel exactly the same way as you do. In any event, the Green Party has proven that it is possible to elect a lot of third-party city council persons, aldermen, and even a number of mayors: http://www.feinstein.org/greenparty/electeds.html. It can continue to elect more of them, and it will probably be able to make inroads into statehouses by doing more of the same. The GP organizing has worked at local levels. The idea that we need is how to make the GP a political party that can elect its candidates to the highest levels of national political offices: representatives, senators, governors, and president. -- 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/
absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
by Ted Winslow The ontological idea of internal relations, the idea that makes Marx's analysis of capitalism dialectical, leads to the treatment of law as immanent. The nature of individuals, in the case of human individuals the degree of their rational self-consciousness as expressed in their motives and, based on these, their characteristic forms of behaviour, is the product of their relations. CB: Ted, here you seem to say that Marx's analysis has the virtue of using internal relations. But at the end of this post you seem to imply that despite his use of internal relations , his absolute general law of capitalist accumulation is mistaken, when you say: These claims about how a subjectivity willing and able to transform productive relations into rational relations are mistaken. Individuals immiserized in this way would ( not) be subjects of this kind. there is no necessity, however, for capitalism to produce immiserization. The organic composition of capital doesn't have to change in the way marx assumes. For this and other reasons, the creation of an industrial reserve army isn't a necessity i.e. a necessary feature of these relations. Nor is it necessary that: they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital. One way of actually creating the kind of subjectivity required is to modify the working of capitalist relations so as to make them more and more consistent with the development of such a subjectivity. This requires that their existing form be consistent with a subjectivity sufficiently well developed to desire and create improvements such as reduction of the working day, increased wages, less alienated labour, improved developmental conditions for children, etc. In Canada, for instance, the political context has just been transformed by an election which has made it more likely that the existing medicare system will be significantly improved, that a national child care system attuned to some signfifcant degree to the developmental needs of children will be created, and that cities will be made better places to work and live. ^ CB: Nothing wrong with saying Marx is wrong, but what good is his internal relations approach if he makes a mistake , and especially on the fundamental issue of whether immiseration is a necessary result of capitalist relations of production ? I mean aside from internal relations, it seems more significant that you are the first one I recall on this thread who has said the law is invalid. You say both that the proletariat is not prepared by immiseration to be the subjectivity that ends capitalism , and that capitalism does not necessarily have to immiserate. You seem to be advocating a reform of capitalism, rather than a revolution to socialism. Do I read you correctly ?
More jobs, worse work
NY Times, July 22, 2004 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR More Jobs, Worse Work By Stephen S. Roach The state of the American labor market remains the defining issue of the current economic debate. Through February, the United States was mired in the depths of the worst jobless recovery of the post-World War II era. Now, there are signs the magic may be back. More than a million jobs have been added to total nonfarm payrolls over the past four months, the sharpest increase since early 2000. These gains certainly compare favorably with the net loss of 594,000 jobs in the first 27 months of this recovery. But there's little cause for celebration: the increases barely make a dent in the weakest hiring cycle in modern history. From the trough of the last recession in November 2001 through last month, private sector payrolls have risen a paltry 0.2 percent. This stands in contrast to the nearly 7.5 percent increase recorded, on average, over the comparable 31-month interval of the six preceding recoveries. Nor is there much reason to celebrate the type of jobs that have been created over the past four months. In general, they have been at the lower end of the economic spectrum. By industry, the leading sources of hiring turn out to be restaurants, temporary hiring agencies and building services. These three categories, which make up only 9.7 percent of total nonfarm payrolls, accounted for 25 percent of the cumulative growth in overall hiring from March to June. Hiring has also accelerated at clothing stores, courier services, hotels, grocery stores, trucking businesses, hospitals, social work agencies, business support companies and providers of personal and laundry services. This group, which makes up 12 percent of the nonfarm work force, accounted for 19 percent of the total growth in business payrolls over the past four months. That's not to say there hasn't been any improvement at the upper end of the labor market, with the construction industry leading the way. At the same time, there has been increased hiring in several of the higher-end professions: there is more demand for lawyers, architects, engineers, computer scientists and bankers. Manufacturing, however, has continued to lag. Putting these pieces together, there can be no mistaking the unusual bifurcation of the recent improvement in the American labor market. Lower-end industries, which employ 22 percent of the work force, accounted for 44 percent of new hiring from March to June. Higher-end industries, which make up 24 percent of overall employment, accounted for 29 percent of total job growth over the past four months. In short, jobs are growing at both ends of the spectrum, but the low-paying jobs are growing much more quickly. The contribution of low-end industries to the recent pick-up in hiring has been almost double the share attributable to high-end industries. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/opinion/22roac.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Kerry on the campaign trail
LA Weekly, July 23-29, 2004 15 Weeks and Counting Its Not Just the Stupid Economy Can Kerry, soon to be anointed the anti-Bush, find a message to carry the Democrats to victory? by Howard Blume But can this man give a straight answer to a probing question? So how are things in Ohio? With any luck for John Kerry, not too good. Nurse Pat Beane presents a near perfect crucible for the 2004 race for president. It starts with her location, in Ohios Stark County, where voters have correctly called the last nine elections, back to Richard Nixon. She is watching, waiting, for the appearance of the Democratic presidential hopeful in the trussed-out girls gym of Perry High School, Home of the Panthers, where banners proclaim, A Stronger Economy for Americas Workers. Beane voted for George Bush in 2000, tired of the moral turpitude she perceived in the Clinton White House. Bush impressed her as a man of decency and upright personal values. Four years later, she now says of Bush: Its not his character; its his choices. Kerry has a shot at her vote because of her unexpectedly less rosy world. Shes on strike with fellow nurses from Akron General Medical Center. The rising cost of health benefits could more than cancel out proposed raises. Pension-benefit reductions also are on the table. Were taking care of peoples lives every day, she says, and we cant even get decent health care. Also, two grandchildren, who have serious, ongoing health problems, are about to lose government-subsidized health coverage in a round of budget cuts. And why should we go to another country and fight their war when theres poor people in town? adds the 56-year-old nurse. My plan was to retire at 60. Now, it looks like Im going to be working till Im 70. She blames Bush. So far, so good for the Democratic nominee. (clip) Kerrys still on the hunt for themes to go along with his Economics Simplified. His campaign-trail closer has been Let America be America again, quoting from a Langston Hughes poem. So far, the tag hasnt gotten as much notice as the Two Americas trademark of running mate Edwards. In Phoenix, Kerrys tailored message to Latinos focused on education and immigration reform. Kerry said he wants immigrants raised in the U.S. to qualify for lower in-state college-tuition rates. He also talked of immigration reform that reunites families. And how he wants to prevent the exploitation of immigrant workers who risk their lives to cross the border. All of these points drew standing ovations from the audience of about 5,000 at the National Council of La Raza. La Raza is nonpartisan, but the event sure sounded like a Kerry rally. Bush turned down an invitation to appear, but Arizona Senator John McCain, the popular conservative Republican, addressed La Raza on a different day, inevitably leading to buzz about the fantasy Kerry-McCain ticket that could never be. Kerry was in and out of Arizonas 108-degree heat within six hours, but still managed to exhibit his less-than-deft side. First, his speech, originally billed as a Town Hall QA, went on so long that there was hardly time for questions. Second, he managed to alienate some Latinos in a brief post-speech interview, when he came out against drivers licenses for Latinos whod entered the country illegally. The remark undercut the pro-immigrant statements he made in his speech, said La Raza spokeswoman Lisa Navarrete. His campaign was hedging later, but he himself said he thought it wasnt a good idea for security reasons. We argue that it is a good idea precisely for security reasons. A Kerry spokesperson explained the full Kerry nuance later. He believes that this is an issue that should be left to the states, said Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli. He said that personally he does not support it, but he wont oppose a states decision. Its a matter of jurisdiction. Which leads to a new trivia question. What do immigrant drivers and gay lovers tying the knot have in common? Answer: John Kerrys against you, but wont stop a state from being for you or from being against you. Or maybe what Kerrys really implying is that he secretly supports marrying-gays and driving-immigrants, but he cant express that because it might cost him votes, and hes pretty sure most gays and Latinos will have to vote for him, anyway. Are we inspired yet? Well, at least one inspired endorsement came from former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca, who fairly gushed about Kerrys Web site during their backslapping joint appearance at San Jose State. Iacocca emphasized his conversion by acknowledging that hed once cut commercials touting George W. Bush. In fact, he named so many Republicans hed voted for that one person in the audience called out: We forgive you. Kerry, the top-of-the-ticket Yalie who made good grades, had no particular stumbles in Silicon Valley. At a San Jose fund-raiser, scientist Bill Lee, 49, found Kerry likably funny and comfortable with his
differences - Bush Kerry
Check this out: www.jibjab.com
James Heartfield on anti-capitalism
As probably the sole member of Frank Furedi's posse that retains a shred of Marxist credibility, his essay that appeared in a journal called interventions is worth considering: http://www.heartfield.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/interventions.pdf It tries to come to terms with the anti-globalization, global justice, anti-capitalist movement--or whatever you want to call it--and finds it lacking. It combines the residual ultraleftism of the Furedi-ites' early period with the kind of Kautskyism that marked the sect just before it morphed into libertarianism altogether. Without referring to him openly, Heartfield has a strong affinity for Verso author Meghnad Desai's Marx's Revenge, a work that turns Karl Marx into an early booster of the WTO, NAFTA, and other processes associated with globalization. The ultraleft side of Heartfield allows him to make some interesting observations: Increasingly, the distinction between the protestors outside the summits and the delegates inside has become less clear. International organizations like the World Bank have facilitated the role of NGOs and advocacy groups, inviting them into the lobby. The World Banks Development Report argues: Global action can empower poor people and poor countries in national and global forums (World Bank 2000). This is in effect an appeal to NGOs to lobby and protest outside the World Bank. The Bank promises open, regular dialogue with civil society organisations, particularly those representing poor people. The Bank supports ongoing global coalitions of poor people so that they may inform global debates (ibid.). International conferences have also adapted to the agenda of the lobbyists, as was the case with the United Nations Conference on Racism in 2002, where the floodgates were opened to radical complaint. The violence of the anti-capitalist protestors arguments is, for the most part, a pose. Moral indignation precedes compromise and accommodation. The point of the somewhat histrionic demands is not that they are to be taken literally or acted upon, but that they vouch for the sincerity of their framers. By demonstrating their emotional commitment to the issues, the protestors demand the attention of the authorities, as acceptable interlocutors for the poor and dispossessed. While the Kautskyism leads him to make some really boneheaded ones. In this instance, Marx is not just a prophet of Globalization in Desai's terms, but of consumerism as well. It should be recalled that Marx never made a blanket case against capitalism, but saw it as a combination of progressive trends that tended to economic growth, and reactionary constraints that set limits upon such development. He sought to liberate the former from the latter. By contrast, todays anti-capitalists seek to restrain growth, in favour of constraint. Most pointed is the latter-day anti-capitalists constant complaint against rising living standards and the expansion of consumer goods. This is far from the Marxist case that capitalism was to be faulted for the restrictions it placed on consumption. Marx allied himself with the working-class movements demands for increased living standards, specifically for higher wages. In contrast to todays anti-capitalists Marx thought that the emerging consumerism was capitalisms redeeming feature: he searches for means to spur them on to consumption, to give his wares new charms, to inspire them with new needs by constant chatter etc. It is precisely this side of the relation of capital and labour which is an essential civilising moment, and on which the historic justification, but also the contemporary power of capital rests. (Marx 1973: 287) -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
United Nations Human Indicators Index 2004
by Doug Henwood That was long ago, in the HDI's early days. In the first iteration, the U.S. scored badly. As someone in the UN told me, orders came down from the top - the White House - to make the numbers look better. And they were remade to look better in subsequent years. One reason - the first Bush admin had published docs saying illiteracy rates in the U.S. were in the low teens. The HDI people picked up on this, hammering the U.S. standing. Literacy was dropped in favor of school enrollment stats, on which the U.S. does well. ^^^ CB: I notice they seem to just assume a 99% literacy rate for the U.S. ( footnote e ?) ? Is this a fudge ?
Re: United Nations Human Indicators Index 2004
Charles Brown wrote: CB: I notice they seem to just assume a 99% literacy rate for the U.S. ( footnote e ?) ? Is this a fudge ? Yup. I used to have the Bush 41-era literacy reports - they were appalling. Really high percentages of grownups who couldn't read a bus schedule, a simple bar graph, or basic reading comprehension questions. I don't know what they're looking like now, but it's hard to believe there's been a 10-15% improvement. Doug
Human Development Index 2004
Thanks to Louis and to Ulhas for pointing out the recently released Human Development Index 2004 and Doug for his comments. I want to make a somewhat different point about indexes themselves - caution about their use. Social, economic and political indexes have become a popular tool among think tanks, NGOs and in official governmental organizations - for some of the most important uses (such as allocating aid funds or assessing policies) they now often replace the use of the underlying data itself. Constructing mathematical indexes to present disparate data in a consolidated manner parallels the long-standing trend in Economics of presenting extensive mathematical or econometric models - and it falls into several similar traps. These newly emerging socio-economic indexes often use extraordinary arithmetical measures whose methods are not available to 99% percent of those who read the reports. I find three problems often appear: 1) Indexes (which inherently combine 'apples and oranges') often do so in arbitrary and misleading ways that are not accessible to 99% of the users. While at first glance there are enough similarities to the original data to make the index seem plausible, the flaws show up as the data gets put to use in important judgements (such as whether there is relative progress over time, or the value of particular controversial policies). Frequently these flaws show up with a bias. For example at http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/pdf/hdr04_backmatter_2.pdf you will see how the Human Development Index (HDI) is constructed. It merges data from 3 fields (health, education and GDP), so first it creates an index (normalizing) of each one. The health proxy is the least problematic: life expectancy of 85 years is = 100; 25 years = 0. But now we are not measuring years of life but numbers on the index and this can (and does) affect the final conclusions in unforeseeable ways. I will come back to the indexes on Education and GDP. The three indexes numbers are then merged into one index number: decided as 1/3 for each factor. (I am not making this up!) So one assumes that an index number of say 10 points in education equals an index number of 10 points in health or GDP and that they can be merged even though these index numbers themselves are arbitrarily chosen, correspond to nothing in the real world and can not be logically added together. 2) Some index numbers have other indexes or artificial constructs nested inside them, making them an arbitrary index of arbitrary indexes. For example in the HDI (per the website above), the education index contains an (arbitrary) literacy index and an (arbitrary) enrollment index mixed in (arbitrary) 2/3rds to 1/3 proportion. The most problematic is the GDP per capita element which is not, in itself, a human development indicator at all. In fact this index uses the PPP version of GDP - a vast recalculation of the GDP that has an enormous amount of arbitrary (and biased!) assumptions that create an as if world rooted in neo-classical trade theory [too much to elaborate in this post]. The PPP numbers produce numbers that narrow the gap between most developing and developed countries AND continue to show that gap narrowing over time (mostly because PPP assumes a world AS IF 3rd world labor could freely trade in the developed world market). PPP also shows the US significantly richer than Europe (mostly because it assumes a US based market basket AS IF Europeans strived to live an American style life). For no intrinsic reason (these are apples and oranges) the disparities in income numbers are larger than the numbers produced for health and education, so it is the natural logarithm of the PPP version of GDP/p.c. that is used (?!). 3) All of these index calculations create proxies of proxies. However inaccurate or biased they are (or are not), one is no longer debating the real problems of real people. Rather, one debates the meaning or the construction of indexes. The focus shifts from mass movements to policy analysts and negotiators. There are clear allies (and de facto opponents) of an effort to end unnecessary child deaths in the 3rd world or to provide functional literacy for every adult. But debates among NGOs, academics, and development officials about raising the human development index is not process that necessarily leads to mobilization of those allies in a common movement. In short, the indexes can sometimes take one away from a focus on the practical reality or actual people and lead away from the social processes that produce change. It is not that I am against all indexes for all uses (and the HDI is among the most benign). But as analytical and as mobilizing tools they have to be treated at arms length - above all one has to look 'under the hood'. Paul
Re: Human Development Index 2004
Paul wrote: It is not that I am against all indexes for all uses (and the HDI is among the most benign). I should have added that part of the impulse behind the development of the HDI was to reduce pressure for redistribution - to shift the focus from economic to social indicators. Of course, there are virtues to foregrounding social over economic indicators, and lots of people use the HDI complex for those purposes, but at the higher levels, the more sinister spin applied. My source on this is a former long-time UN press officer, and it was subsequently confirmed by someone very close to Mahbub ul-Haq, the Pakistani economist who guided the development of the index. Doug
Re: Human Development Index 2004
Paul wrote: Thanks to Louis and to Ulhas for pointing out the recently released Human Development Index 2004 and Doug for his comments. I want to make a somewhat different point about indexes themselves - caution about their use. Social, economic and political indexes have become a popular tool among think tanks, NGOs and in official governmental organizations - for some of the most important uses (such as allocating aid funds or assessing policies) they now often replace the use of the underlying data itself. I completely agree. Although I don't have the training to back this up, I suspect that these statistics paint too rosy a picture of 3rd world melioration. No surprise, since the World Bank is a major supplier of raw statistical data. That being said, it is remarkable that Cuba has climbed up into the first tier of nations. Could you imagine if the USA had a hostile neighbor to the North that was nearly 30 times the size in population and had about 500 times greater GDP and was bent on destroying our economy? The USA would fall apart within months, I'm sure. Cuba has not only not fallen apart, it has made steady improvement--even according to economic thinktanks hostile to its existence. That's a good argument for socialism. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: India's HDI Improves, Ranking Doesn't
Anthony D'Costa wrote: There are other splits, which have been better handled, for example language. Thus far 20 languages or so have been recognized by the government. How widely used is English? Doug
FW: hilarious!
http://www.jibjab.com/-- a funny two-minute flick. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
FW: berger whopper
Title: BOROWITZ report.com OSAMA FOUND IN SANDY BERGER'S PANTS [by Andy Borowitz]War on Terror Over The war on terror came to an unexpectedly abrupt end today as the al-Qaeda network kingpin Osama bin Laden was found hiding in the pants of former national security adviser Sandy Berger.While lawmakers on both sides of the aisle celebrated the discovery of Mr. bin Laden in the former White House aide's trousers, this latest episode left Mr. Berger, once again, with much explaining to do.The former adviser to President Clinton said that his lawyers would not permit him to divulge how, when, or why the world's most wanted man had found safe haven in his pants, but he did tell reporters, "It was an honest mistake."At the White House, President George W. Bush ordered an immediate and thorough search of Mr. Berger's pants "to see what else might be in there," hinting that the discovery of Saddam Hussein's long-sought weapons of mass destruction might be at hand.With the war on terror suddenly over, the White House was said to be casting about for another human emotion to declare war upon, with many speculating that the U.S. would soon announce a war on irritability or shyness.Meanwhile, the embattled Mr. Berger received support last night from an unexpected quarter as actress Winona Ryder vigorously defended him on CNN's "Larry King Live."Speaking of Mr. Berger's recent woes, Ms. Ryder said, "I don't know Sandy Berger, but if he was stuffing things into his pants, my guess is he was just doing research for a movie role."
Re: Not a dime's worth of difference
mh writes:i've always thought that wallace's assertion was incorrect, there's at least a quarter's worth of difference between 2 major parties... a better metaphor: the GOPsters are the hard cop, while the Dems are the soft cop. But if you're the prisoner, they're both against you. jd
Loss of faith in higher education
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 23, 2004 OBSERVER Keeping the Faith By SHANNON HODGES In 1965, at age 5, I was swept away, with my four brothers, from Kansas City to our grandparents' rural Arkansas home. My mother was at a Kansas State psychiatric hospital in Osawatomie, and, having recently survived a domestic gulag of abuse, we boys found our new residence in the laconic Ozarks to be a godsend. But I disliked school. Head Start in Kansas City had been a stifling experience under an authoritarian teacher fond of administering public corporal punishment. In Arkansas kindergarten was a tranquil though uneventful series of naps interrupted by occasional coloring. Bored stiff, I petitioned my grandparents for a withdrawal. My request was granted, though my grandmother counseled, Next year you can't quit. And someday, we want you boys to go to college. I nodded dimly, as first grade was a hazy concept and college seemed as distant as Saturn's rings. But for the moment, I was freed from a dull classroom with strangers speaking in weird accents. My gap year holiday ended abruptly. Get your clothes on. We'll eat in town, Granddad said as he woke me for the start of first grade. The sun was just making its lazy ascent as we walked in silence (we had no vehicle) to the CC diner in our matchbox-size downtown. Granddad was something of an enigma to me: a self-educated man who taught in one-room schoolhouses, he quoted Shakespeare, debated politics, and offered commentary on topics from astronomy to zoology. A firm believer in the Lord, a college education, and the Democratic Party -- in that order -- Granddad steadied me. Remember, education is how you improve your life. Not money, he instructed like an earnest country preacher. His ideology was in stark contrast to our environment. We lived in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the union, where, by my rough estimate, less than a fifth of the local high-school graduates went on to college each year. In Salem, Ark., a college education seemed as practical as fluency in Swahili. When we arrived at school, I noticed Granddad was the only male guardian at registration and by far the oldest. I felt the red mask of shame tighten when some classmates asked, Where's your mom? and Why's your grandpa here? In Sunday school we had studied running from responsibility in the famous allegory of Jonah. Though I lacked an appreciation for the finer considerations of biologically programmed fight or flight in the face of a perceived threat, I could empathize with old Jonah. Stifling the impulse to spring for home, I stood my ground. You'll go in Mrs. Brink's class, Granddad said quietly. That was a disappointment, as Mrs. Mooney, who taught the other group, was a family friend. To make matters worse, my classmates evidently knew each other, and their camaraderie reflected the small, rural nature of the area. The social adjustments continued. In one school discussion, we were to talk about our mother and father, our room at home, and the family car. I flushed with shame when it came to be my turn. As one of two kids in the class from a broken home, having no contact with my dad, a mother in a psychiatric hospital, sharing a bed with my younger brother in a dirt-floor basement in a household with no motor vehicle, I was well outside the margins of the exercise. At some point during our lives, we all have felt that sense of standing on the outside peering in. When we arrive at doors that appear barred, a role model can make the difference between acquiescence and fortitude. The teaching guru Parker Palmer speaks of Rosa Parks as his inspiration. Granddad was mine. Look, everybody feels scared their first day, he began, big gentle hand applying a reassuring squeeze to my shoulder. Don't let it stop you from doing what you need to do. Growing up in the rural south of the 1960s also created great dissonance. On TV, people who looked like me crushed demonstrations by black people seeking the educational and social opportunities afforded whites. Each morning as our class sang the national anthem, the phrase land of the free, and the home of the brave clashed with those images of a separate and unequal society. When I pointed out the apparent contradiction to my first-grade teacher, she simply shrugged. My grandparents, converts to Dr. King's dream, saw it differently. We're all people, my grandmother would say, shaking her head in disapproval at the fuzzy, hubristic image of George Wallace in white shirt sleeves and porkpie hat, spewing the Jim Crow rhetoric of intolerance and division. The grainy black-and-white images of campus unrest didn't dissuade my grandparents from a fervent belief in education. They were quick to point out that many students and professors supported integration. Later, disillusioned with the Vietnam War, my grandmother confessed she admired the long-haired student protestors -- at least those who protested nonviolently. Over the years,
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece/union democracy and revolutionary impulse
In a message dated 7/22/2004 4:36:59 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Thanks for that Brother Melvin. Damned if I didn't think that Fraser tried to fight his way into Jefferson Avenue. But I was out of Detroit in 1973, and heard about it, and the other battles, from friends. 1970-73 were the years, though, weren't they. Funny how it coincides with a peak in the rate of profit, a big dip, and then a recovery in the rate. Reply Yea man . . . many folks on the left called this the period of the "Black Workers insurgency" but this description is inaccurate. One day after the Forge Strike was settled and Fraser backed down from this threat to fight the militant leaders . . . Mack Stamping plant exploded. William Gilbreth . . . a white member of Progressive Labor and member of the Workers Action Movement touched off the strike when he was fired for agitating over working conditions. He returned to work the next day on his regularly scheduled shift and sat down on the conveyor belt and the shift hit the fan. Gilbreth was what we called an open communist and the list of demand drawn up on the spot contained some party demands including a 30 hour work week. No one in their right mind opposed 30 for 40 . . . even those who did not know what it meant or how it was to be implemented. 30 for 40 sound good and meant more for less. All the local militants from every plant in the Detroit area showed up at Mack and lend support. All the subtle difference concerning the meaning of Marx in Chapter 25 of volume 48 in respect to an obscure footnote means nothing during a strike wave. Yet . . . the workers were eating up copies of the Communist Manifesto and walking around with "State and Revolution" in their coveralls. Most did not read the book but like the way "State and Revolution" sounded and would ask the seller of literature what the book was about. The standard reply was overthrowing the state and revolution and the reply would always be "give me a copy of that." Any way Fraser had learned his lesson from John Taylor and the Forge strike and this time he vowed to open the plant with union members. Interestingly during this period the company never considered calling on the police. The riot of 67 and 1968 had not been that long ago and the Southern white workers relocated to Detroit did most of the shooting and sniping at police and army guys . . . true story. To my memory and knowledge not one black person was shot by these white southern workers. Fraser cut a deal with the police Commissioner John Nicholas . . . who had declared that he would run for Mayor of Detroit. Detroit was a political inferno. All the scattered groups producing thousands of leaflets and distributing hundred of thousands copies of newspapers could not keep pace with the masses in motion. Now the police were in a state of panic because three guys had formed themselves into a unit and were kicking in the doors of dope houses and robbing them and leafleting neighborhoods talking about "off the dope pusher." One evening they were stopped by the police during a traffic check and this lead to gun play with them escaping and a couple officers dead. Any way this story played itself out a couple years later with one of them being slain in Atlanta Georgia. When his body was returned to Detroit for a funeral a little over 5,000 people showed up to paid honor and the local media went berserk . . . basically calling the masses ignorant lawless mutherfuckers. The men that made up this unit were known to all of us and named "Brown, Boyd and Bethune" . . . or the three "B's" or the blade, boot and the bullet. Our lead attorney's had gotten Brown exonerated before a jury of his peers and the political polarization was thicker than New York cheese cake. Back to Fraser. After the workers shut down Mack Fraser cut his deal with the Police Commissioner and showed up at the plant gate with 2,000 union members . . . many retired to open the plant. Some fighting took place but the size of the goon squad was overwhelming and caught everyone by surprise. It was a sad day for the union and forever spilt the union because workers who did not like communist propaganda could not comprehend why the top Union leaders would organized against its own members. For the rest of the year local union went in receivership for ousting the Woodcock slate and condemning Fraser in resolution after resolution . . . starting at the old Griggs Local . . . and they where the first to go under receivership. (Receivership means the International Union suspends all the local representatives and take over the day to day running of the Local Union). That was the fight for union democracy. Marxism is going to hit the streets in a big way and the semi-illiterate mass is going tolearn how to read in groups reading communist leaflets and books . . . really . . . and nothing on earth is going to
Re: India's HDI Improves, Ranking Doesn't
Anthony D'Costa wrote: The Hindu-Muslim divide is India's least problematic cultural divide. Hindu-Muslim divide has the potential to threaten India's unity and democratic structure. Caste divide does not have that potential. The Indian government has generally handled demands for autonomy reasonably well, if keeping the states within the Indian union is a criterion for managing splits well. Yes, we could compare India with the fSU, Yugoslavia and Pakistan. Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: India's HDI Improves, Ranking Doesn't
This is hard to estimate but the numbers that float around, are 3-4% of the population, which is not a small number by any means. English has been both a uniting factor (in a national sense) but also one that sets the rural-urban and class divide more forcefully. Indians want their children to go to English medium schools, irrespective of social, regional, religious, class background. But few can afford to and not all are good in terms of substance. But there is severe competitition severe from the demand side. The CPM (Communist Party of India (Marxist) in West Bengal, which has ruled the state for nearly quarter century, initially did away with teaching English in government schools. It was a bad decision from the very beginning, which made the students, who were otherwise very bright, disadvantaged compared to those with English abilities. They rescinded that policy not too long ago. But speaking English in India does not necessarily translate into being more westernized. It is one of several languages that Indians come to learn. cheers, anthony xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate 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 On Thu, 22 Jul 2004, Doug Henwood wrote: Anthony D'Costa wrote: There are other splits, which have been better handled, for example language. Thus far 20 languages or so have been recognized by the government. How widely used is English? Doug
Apropos Albany
[Michael Hoover rightly pointed out that New York State's politics were worse than most other states, so people in other states might have opportunities that we in New York don't. Apropos, here's an article on a recent study that claims to show that our state political system in New York politics isn't simply worse than most -- it's the worst one in the country period.] URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/nyregion/22york.html The New York Times July 22, 2004 So How Bad Is Albany? Well, Notorious By MICHAEL COOPER A LBANY, July 21 - Over a five-year period, 11,474 bills reached the floor of the two houses of the Legislature in Albany. Not a single one was voted down. And during that period, from 1997 through 2001, the Legislature held public hearings on less than 1 percent of the major laws it passed. When those laws made it to the floor of each chamber for a vote, more than 95 percent passed with no debate. Civic groups, policy advocates and even some lawmakers have long rolled their eyes at what has become known as Albany's dysfunction. But a study released here on Wednesday by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law illuminates just how bad the problem is, calling the Albany body the least deliberative, most dysfunctional state legislature in the nation. Neither the U.S. Congress nor any other state legislature so systematically limits the roles played by rank-and-file legislators and members of the public in the legislative process, the study concluded. The report, which compared New York's Legislature with those in the 49 other states, found that Albany represents the worst of all worlds, being at once stiflingly autocratic and strikingly inefficient. It noted that the two men who control the Legislature - Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, and the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican - have almost total power over which bills they will allow their members to vote on, and a wide range of sticks and carrots to help them keep their members in line. The report found that it is harder to get a bill voted on in New York than anywhere else in the nation. And it found that while New York has one of the most expensive Legislatures in the nation, if not the most expensive, its rate of bills that actually become laws is one of the lowest in the nation. The report includes a number of recommendations for change, and one of its authors, Jeremy M. Creelan, said he would be heading a statewide campaign to try to get each house of the Legislature to alter its rules. Some of the center's proposed rule changes were amusingly straightforward. Consider this one: Votes by members shall be recorded and counted only when the member is physically present in the chamber at the time of the vote. While that might sound self-evident, it would actually amount to a somewhat radical change in New York, where state lawmakers who sign in in the morning are automatically counted as voting yes on every bill that comes before them unless they signal otherwise - even if they have left for the day. The report found that 81 percent of the nation's state legislatures require their lawmakers to be physically present in the chamber to vote, and that New York's is the only Legislature that routinely allows empty-seat voting. Not surprisingly, the report was not warmly received by the two men who control the state's 212-member Legislature. Senator Bruno called the report pure nonsense, saying that other Republicans in the Senate confer with him constantly but that it falls to him to lead. Talk to the C.E.O. of any company, Mr. Bruno said. If you want to act on something, and the company has 212 employees, what are you going to do, have a discussion and let 212 employees do whatever the agenda is? Is that what you do? So you have 212 different agendas. And that is just chaotic, doesn't work. That is Third-World-country stuff. Speaker Silver said that he talked to the Democrats who make up his conference all the time. Nothing happens here in Albany, in the Assembly, without the input of the rank-and-file legislators, he said. But the input Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver were referring to comes mainly from the members of their own parties, and it is given in private, behind closed doors. Those party conferences, in fact, are where many of the real decisions are made. Just this week the Assembly Democrats held a passionate debate about whether they should reinstate the death penalty by passing a bill to change a section of the current law that was ruled unconstitutional. And the Republican senators agonized over whether to raise the state's minimum wage - an issue that has divided the Senate for some time. But neither debate was held in public. Sometimes lawmakers do not even know
Marc Cooper on the DP convention
(Talk about cognitive dissonance. Marc Cooper, one of the most strident anti-Nader voices, practically makes the case for Nader in this baleful account of the upcoming DP convention. Meanwhile, this issue of the LA Weekly contains an article by Micah Sifry--referred to below by Cooper--who I had a dust-up with the other day over the Nader question. Co-written with Nancy Watzman, it takes aim at the cash big corporations are showering on delegates to make sure they have a grand old time, which leads them to opine, By hosting all these lavish parties, they get to cajole lawmakers up close and nurture social relationships that will pay off with phone calls returned and bills favorably written down the line. Sounds like that Reform Party hobgoblin, Ralph Nader, doesn't it?) LA Weekly, JULY 23 - 29, 2004 Dissonance The Boston Braying Party The Democratic Convention misses the point by Marc Cooper Writing in The Wall Street Journal recently, Publishers Weekly news editor Steven Zeitchik neatly coined the term flockumentary to describe such films as Michael Moores Fahrenheit 9/11 and Robert Greenwalds Outfoxed. These are movies, he said, that people attend en masse, to nestle together in easy confirmation of their most cherished beliefs, an act of reaffirmation and self-validation rather than enlightenment or education. Now the same flock is about to get fleeced by that biggest of made-for-TV extravaganza productions, the mother of all schlockumentaries this coming weeks Democratic National Convention. The twist is that the faithful will bah and bray approval, this time of a script they dont really agree with very much at all, if they even know it. No easy confirmation here of their more prized values and priorities. But the show must go on anyway. In this years Democratic campaign, nearly all the energy, the political pop and electoral effervescence, has come from the partys left: from the Deaniacs, the Moore worshipers, the anti-war protesters and the Orthodox legions of MoveOn.org. While Presumed Nominee Kerry was mumbling as usual these past months about staying the course, the folks really bringing it on campaignwise were all these lefties. Take them out of the mix, and this years Democratic campaign falls as flat as . . . well . . . your average Kerry stump speech. But the sad irony of this Democratic left is that it arrives at the Boston convention utterly powerless and mostly ignored. Check out Micah Sifry and Nancy Watzmans piece in these same pages this week to see just who among banks, telecommunication companies, Big Pharma and, yes, even Big Tobacco has coughed up $39 million to finance Democratic Convention doings and to buy the meatiest slabs of insider influence. For months lefty standard-bearer Congressman Dennis Kucinich sustained his lonely campaign (I think it is still going on!) and, when asked by many including yours truly what the point of it was, he and his supporters answered that they were patiently building up forces to take to the convention. You know, peasants with pitchforks progressives with clove cigarettes, ready to lay siege to the centrist establishment and make the voice of the movement mightily heard. But when the party platform committee met last week, Kucinich immediately surrendered his fight to include a plank for immediate American troop withdrawal from Iraq. Not because Kucinich sold out as some of his more knuckleheaded acolytes now whine. But rather because Kucinich made a cool-headed appraisal of the real balance of forces inside his own party and rightfully concluded he didnt have a prayer (which, by the way, re-floats the question of what his campaign was about anyway). So, as the curtain rises next week in Boston, the simple operational principle will be, as always, money talks dissidents, walk quietly to your seats and applaud the show. The assigned role of the assembled will be to serve merely as compliant props for the TV show. The biggest of American and staunchly pro-Democratic labor unions the SEIU and AFSCME have passed resolutions calling for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. And though they have given millions to the party, there will be no convention-floor debate on those resolutions, or on anything else, except if you want chicken or salmon for dinner that night. Stand up and cheer on cue, wave your signs up and down when the candidate appears, march around the floor a couple of times for the spontaneous floor demonstrations. If, however, you have something uncomfortable to say, step outside, please, and climb into one of those designated protest areas where you will be permitted to chant under the open sky to your hearts content. Or you can stay inside, or even watch at home on TV, and, with pen and paper in hand, keep score to see how many of your highest hopes are addressed. We already know theres no difference between Kerrys and Bushs positions on Iraq. But listening
Re: FW: berger whopper
testing
Thomas Naylor on Iran/al-Qaeda fake reports of the past
http://www.juancole.com/2004_07_01_juancole_archive.html#109044887342331691 Professor Thomas Naylor of McGill writes: quote This is certainly not the the first time these tales about Iran cooperating with al-Qa'idah have surfaced. About two years ago US spooks floated via the Washington Post and other outlets some silly stories about al-Qa'idah involved in the underground traffic in gold. Since no one could find any other trace of the alleged bin Laden billions, the covert gold market was the choice-of-the-month. The main instrument for getting the story into the public domain was the same Washington Post reporter who had already given the world the fantasy about bin Laden running the conflict diamonds trade out of Sierra Leone. The result was a story that, when US bombs started to fall on Afghanistan, bin Laden and the Taliban secured the cooperation of prominent Iranian clerics to move the gold to the Sudan, that well known international financial haven, in planes the Iranians provided. (How this was supposed to be happening after Taliban forces slaughtered so many Shia' Hazara or ousted Iran's man from Herat, was never explained.) The story was mixed up with other nonsense that had al-Qa'idah and the Taliban running gold through the historic route that smuggles gold from Pakistan to the Gulf - this must have been a big surprise to all the dhow operators who were convinced they had been moving gold in the other direction for centuries. Anyway the story made a brief media splash, then seemed to magically vanish once U.S.-Iranian relations started to thaw. Further details on this are going to be published in the paperback reissue of a book of mine called Wages of Crime, Cornell UP autumn 2004. -- Professor R. T. Naylor Department of Economics McGill University 855 Sherbrooke St. West Montreal H3A2T7 Quebec end quote posted by Juan @ 7/22/2004 08:22:21 AM
Herald: War of subversion in Iran already getting geared up
URL: http://www.sundayherald.com/43461 Sunday Herald - 18 July 2004 Regime change in Iran now in Bush's sights By Jenifer Johnston _ PRESIDENT George Bush has promised that if re-elected in November he will make regime change in Iran his new target. Bush named Iran as part of the Axis of Evil along with North Korea and Iraq almost three years ago. A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that military action would not be overt in changing Iran, but rather that the US would work to stir revolts in the country and hope to topple the current conservative religious leadership. The official said: If George Bush is re-elected there will be much more intervention in the internal affairs of Iran. Full at: http://www.sundayherald.com/43461
LAT: Cheney to be indicted over violating laws against trading w/ Iran?
[That would be delicious and completely deserved. The Halliburton subsidiary in Iran had its the Halliburton name on it! It's the kind of gossamer thin disguise that is used all the time to get around offshore regulations -- but which also get enforced from time to time when people decide to suddenly take the law seriously. The potential is there.] [The irony for someone like me of course is that I'm actually against the oil sanctions against Iran and think they have always been a terrible idea on both political and economic grounds. Maybe jailing Cheney will make Republicans fight to change the law -- then it'd be a twofer :o) July 19, 2004 Los Angeles Times By T. Christian Miller and Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writers WASHINGTON -- A Halliburton controversy erupted Tuesday, fueled by a grand jury investigation into whether the oil services giant violated federal sanctions by operating in Iran while Vice President Dick Cheney was running the company. The investigation centers on Halliburton Products and Services Ltd., a subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Dubai that provided oil field services in Iran. The unit's operations in Iran included Cheney's stint as chief executive from 1995 to 2000, when he frequently urged the lifting of such sanctions. Numerous U.S. companies operate in Iran, but under strict guidelines requiring that their subsidiaries have a foreign registry and no U.S. employees, and that they act independently of the parent company. At issue is whether Halliburton's subsidiary met those criteria. The Treasury Department has been investigating the matter since 2001. But Halliburton disclosed in public financial filings this week that the department had forwarded the case to the U.S. attorney in Houston for further investigation. The company said a federal grand jury had subpoenaed documents on its Iranian operations. The Treasury Department refers such complaints only after finding evidence of serious and willful violations of the sanctions law, a government official said. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), whose office has provided information on the case to the Treasury Department, said Tuesday that Halliburton Products and Services was a sham that existed only to circumvent the sanctions. It's unconscionable that an American company would skirt the law to help Iran generate revenues, Lautenberg told reporters during a conference call arranged by the campaign of the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts. Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt called the allegations against Cheney baseless, and accused Democrats of trying to use Halliburton as a distraction. Cheney's office and the White House characterized the latest criticisms of Halliburton as political. The Democrats have made clear that their all-purpose strategy, no matter the issue, whether it's healthcare or John Kerry's plans to raise taxes or John Kerry's votes against our men and women in uniform or John Kerry's proposals to cut the intelligence budget, will be met by one word: Halliburton, Schmidt said. The Kerry campaign has become increasingly flailing in their attacks as there has been increasing focus on John Kerry's record. Democrats have long criticized Cheney for his connections to Halliburton, hoping to link the vice president to the company's contracts for Iraq reconstruction and its overbilling for services in that country. Cheney has denied any connection to the contracts. The company has repeatedly found itself at the center of government investigations. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department are looking into allegations that top officials in a consortium that included a Halliburton subsidiary paid millions of dollars in bribes to win contracts in Nigeria. The Justice Department is also looking into reports that Halliburton officials took $6.3 million in kickbacks in Iraq. The Pentagon is examining whether the company overcharged U.S. taxpayers by more than $186 million for meals never served to U.S. troops abroad. Treasury and Justice officials declined to comment on their inquiry into the Halliburton subsidiary. Violation of the sanctions can result in criminal charges, and those found guilty can face 10 years in prison. A company can be fined as much as $500,000. Lautenberg said that in the Iran case, the actions taken by the Republican-controlled Justice and Treasury departments showed that the accusations against Cheney were more than political. He noted that the grand jury investigation comes amid a flurry of questions about Iran's role in terrorism against the United States. The independent commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks is expected to conclude in a report due Thursday that several of
Re: Loss of faith in higher education
test
Re: Human Development Index 2004
Doug writes: I should have added that part of the impulse behind the development of the HDI was to reduce pressure for redistribution - to shift the focus from economic to social indicators. Of course, there are virtues to foregrounding social over economic indicators, and lots of people use the HDI complex for those purposes, but at the higher levels, the more sinister spin applied. My source on this is a former long-time UN press officer, and it was subsequently confirmed by someone very close to Mahbub ul-Haq, the Pakistani economist who guided the development of the index. Doug Very relevatory (pays to have good sources?). In this specific case the sources (and the individual they cite) may not accurately reflect what drove events (the HDI and the HD Reports began in 1990 when the pressure for global redistribution from the North to the South was long gone) but no doubt this accurately reflects what your sources felt and/or Mahbub said to them. Above all, the comments DO highlight an important aspect of global economic politics for decades before 1990 and that history is relevant today. In the '60s and '70s, the third world elite was pressing for the New International Economic Order (North/South redistribution) and SOME people in this camp (maybe including your sources?) saw the movement for the poor/basic needs (and the later human rights, gender and environmental movements) as attempts by Northern 'liberals to avoid allowing the third world governments to construct autonomous states with their own elites. Hence the suspicions and possible confirmations. Conversely, SOME involved in the human needs movements viewed the 3rd world elite and their economic crowd as unlikely to be willing to redistribute the wealth (and the rest) within their country, and likely to 'take the money and run' if given the chance. These splits were very real and central at the time. In retrospect, I think it is fair to say that there WAS some of the worst in each group and that once the neo-liberal era began this group quickly left their old ideals and objectives behind. And this is not news to readers of this list - ironically, today the worst are mostly close allies. But new opportunities for 3rd world/progressive 1st world links will emerge (as they are already). What lessons should be learned? But what happened to the best in each group? What prevented the best from forging stronger links as neo-liberalism emerged as a threat? How does one learn to better distinguish the worst from the best? Is there any common cause with any of today's 3rd world economic\political elite (Malaysians? Brazilians? Koreans? Russians? Vietnamese?)? I wonder...where is Doug's source today? Paul
Kevin Phillips on the election
How Kerry Can Win By Kevin Phillips (The Nation, July 15) -- John Kerry can win, given George W. Bush's incompetence, and White House strategists realize that. All the Democrats need to do is to peel away some of the Republican unbase -- the most wobbly members of the GOP coalition. The caveat is that not many Democrats understand that coalition or why it has beaten the Democrats most of the time since 1968. Nor do most understand the convoluted but related role of Bill Clinton in aborting what could have been a 1992-2004 (or 2008) mini-cycle of Democratic White House dominance and in paving the way for George W. Elements of this shortsightedness are visible in both the party and the Kerry campaign. While attempts to harness Anybody but Bush psychologies and to attract voters without saying much that is controversial might win Kerry a narrow victory, this strategy would be unlikely to create a framework for successful four- or eight-year governance. Deconstructing the Republican coalition is a better long-term bet, and could be done. The result, however, might be to uncage serious progressive reform. Republicans, in contrast, have been successful in thinking strategically since the late 1960s. From 1968 until Bill Clinton's triumph in 1992, Republicans won five of the six presidential elections, and even Jimmy Carter's narrow victory in 1976 was in many respects a post-Watergate fluke. The two main coalitional milestones were Richard Nixon's 61 percent in 1972 and Ronald Reagan's 59 percent in 1984. The two Bushes, notwithstanding their dynastic achievement, represent the later-stage weakness of the coalition, which would have been more obvious without the moral rebukes of Clinton that were critical in the 1994 and 2000 elections. In the three presidential elections the Bushes have fought to date, their percentages of the total national vote have been 53.9 percent (1988), 37.7 percent (1992) and 47.9 percent (2000) -- an average of 46.5 percent. Keep in mind that in 1992, Bush Sr. got the smallest vote share of any president seeking re-election since William Howard Taft in 1912, while in 2000, the younger Bush became the first president to be elected without winning a plurality of the popular vote since Benjamin Harrison in 1888. The aftermath of 9/11 created transient strength, but the essential weakness of the Bushes was palpable again by mid-2004. Strategizing on behalf of a family with more luck and lineage than gravitas, the principal strategists for each Bush president -- Lee Atwater for [Bush] number 41 and Karl Rove for number 43 -- have necessarily been Machiavellian students of the Republican presidential coalition and how to maintain it. After helping to elect [Bush] 41 in 1988 because Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis was an Ivy League technocrat unconvincing as an occasional populist, Atwater observed that the way to win a presidential election against the Republicans is to develop the class-warfare issue, as Dukakis did at the end. To divide up the have and have-nots. Since then, the focus on keeping Republicans together has evolved and intensified. Despite the Republican weakness evident in 1992 and Bush's second-place finish in 2000, Rove is notable for his preoccupation with the GOP base, which he presumably thinks of in normal majoritarian terms. However, in the case of Bush's running for election or re-election, it is also useful -- and the Democrats of 2004 would find it particularly worthwhile -- to focus on the GOP's unbase. This, in essence, is the 20-25 percent of the party electorate that has been won at various points by three national anti-Bush primary and general election candidates with Republican origins: Ross Perot (1992), John McCain (2000) and, in a lesser vein, Patrick Buchanan (1992). Most of the shared Perot-McCain issues -- campaign and election reform, opposition to the religious right, distaste for Washington lobbyists, opposition to upper-bracket tax biases and runaway deficits, criticism of corporations and CEOs -- are salient today and more compatible with the mainstream moderate reformist Democratic viewpoint than with the lobbyist-driven Bush administration. Perot and Buchanan's economic nationalism (anti-outsourcing, anti-NAFTA) and criticism of Iraq policy under the two Bushes is also shared by many Democrats. Taking things somewhat further, these members of the unbase of the Republican presidential coalition ought to be the Democrats' key target because (1) they have some degree of skepticism about Bush and (2) they are the segment of the GOP coalition most logically open to recruitment for a progressive realignment, short-term or otherwise. That is the way small or large realignments work: by wooing the most empathetic part of the current coalition. In 1992, when Perot drew 19 percent of the November vote, George Bush Senior got only about 80 percent of the Republican vote. Most of the unbase
Bush Family, Skull and Bones, Nazis and Eugenics (Parts 1-4)
Title: Message available at http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com James M. Craven Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. USA 98663 Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 Employer has no association with private/protected opinion "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse") FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
It's a soldier's life
EDITOR'S CHOICE: JUST ADD URINE Chicken cooked in urine Sir? Food scientists have developed a dried food ration that military troops can rehydrate by adding the filthiest of muddy swamp water, or even by peeing in it. The idea is to reduce the amount of water soldiers trekking for miles have to carry. Developed by the same organisation that created the indestructible sandwich, the new rations can lessen a soldier's load by 3.1 kilograms...MORE http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns6185 Will the Bush administration declare battalion bullion an organic protein, and allow Halliburton to charge soldiers extra for the tinkle? Dan Scanlan -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
These claims about how a subjectivity willing and able to transform productive relations into rational relations are mistaken. Individuals immiserized in this way would ( not) be subjects of this kind. there is no necessity, however, for capitalism to produce immiserization. The organic composition of capital doesn't have to change in the way marx assumes. For this and other reasons, the creation of an industrial reserve army isn't a "necessity" i.e. a necessary feature of these relations. Nor is it necessary that: "they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital." Comment Marx explained what had already happened as the result of a long historical process that separates the producer from their means of production. Then made a series of projection based on the further unfolding of the process that separates the producer from his means of production. The fact of the matter is falling real wages since about 1973. The fact of the matter is a gigantic polarization between wealth and poverty. The fact of the matter is an enormous increase in debt and longer hours of work. There is an iron necessity for the bourgeois property relations to produce poverty . . . and poverty is a relationship with wealth. This does not require Marxists dialectic but reading economic indicators and walking outside and looking around. How we choose to explain this is a horse of a different color. What is missed is the revolution in the means of production that tends to cheaper agricultural products at a greater pace than industrial products and the actual dynamic of reproduction as a bourgeois property relations. The fact of unemployment is higher than the theory of why this unemployment occurs. Look at the world market and the six billion people on earth. Melvin P.
Cuba: siempre con combate
Louis wrote: ...it is remarkable that Cuba has climbed up into the first tier of nations. Could you imagine if the USA had a hostile neighbor to the North that was nearly 30 times the size in population and had about 500 times greater GDP and was bent on destroying our economy? The USA would fall apart within months, I'm sure. Cuba has not only not fallen apart, it has made steady improvement--even according to economic thinktanks hostile to its existence. That's a good argument for socialism. Cuba IS a remarkable country -- I was there last month for the first time on an educational exchange, and I'm still utterly astonished by its obvious, ever-present and forward-looking optimism and hope for its future and for the future of all humankind really. Louis, I totally agree with you that socialism has everything to do with it...in particular the Cuban brand of socialism. The Cuban people are wonderfully kind, relaxed, interested, healthy...and wonderfully fit! Everyone is fit...including animals. I mean, even the pigs are in good shape, and there are plenty of pigs around -- on leashes no less -- as pork is a major meat source in Cuba. Cubans eat lots of fruit, rice, beans, pork, and chicken. The country is so naturally beautiful and it's been kept that way. There are no billboards contaminating the Royal and coconut palm laden landscape, other than a motivational or proactive quote or two (siempre con combate)...and the streets of Havana are lined with the magnificent and flowering - flamboyan...at least in June. Cuba is absolutely breathtaking with many Unesco biosphere reserves throughout. There are relatively few automobiles in Havana, but when you do see them, they are either American cars from the 1950s or Russian cars from the 1970s or thereabouts. Public transportation includes regular buses, camel buses, a few taxi cabs, bicycle cabs...and walking. I'm sure that's a good reason why they're so fit. There is lots of music, visual art work and murals in Cuba...which again points to their optimism. Cubans love ice cream (Coppelia and Nestle) and they obviously freely dress as they wish, but they mostly wear blue jeans, shorts, sleeveless shirts, and tees to keep cool...unless some type of uniform is required. All students and many government workers wear some type of uniform. I actually saw a lot of nationalism. There are many museums/sights (Museo de la Revolucion, Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana -- Carlos III of Spain) and memorials/events to honor the past and present of Cuba (a cannon is fired every night from la Cabana by Cubans dressed as 1800s era Spanish soldiers). There are busts of Jose Marti outside schools and government buildings...lots of posters of Ernesto Che Guevara everywhere...I also saw memorials to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Princess Diana, Ernest Hemingway, and John Lennon. So now as the Cubans would say: Don't tell me the whole story of tobacco (meaning cut to the chase) siempre con combate, Diane
Re: Cuba: siempre con combate
Diane writes:
I mean, even the pigs are
in good shape, and there are plenty of pigs around -- on leashes no less -- as
pork is a major meat source in Cuba.
did you see
any cats or dogs? when I was in Cuba in the late 1970s, I didn't see any of
them. I was wondering if someone had decided that they were luxuries. (I asked
about it and our guide accused me of thinking that people had eaten them!)
...There are no
billboards contaminating the Royal and coconut palm laden landscape, other than
a motivational or proactive quote or two (siempre con combate)..
the
motivational billboards ("one man may die, but the party lives forever") were
everywhere out in the countryside, especially near the Havana airport, when I
was there.
...Public transportation includes
regular buses, "camel" buses, a few taxi cabs, bicycle cabs...and walking
The buses
were stuffed to the gills when I was there. Is that situation better?
...lots of
posters of Ernesto "Che" Guevara everywhere...
It's
interesting that I never saw any pictures of Fidel Castro, except in some
homes.
jim
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/21/04 1:19 PM I think maybe I've over-interpreted your question. I seem to be going a level of specficity beyond what you're looking for. If all you meant to ask was is it useful for lefties to engage in electoral politics with some of their energies? then my answer's yes, and we have no more argument. I thought you were talking about the relative merits of specific strategies -- becoming Democrats, trying to become the dominant Democrats, launching a third party, going half and half (the fusion strategy), working as outside pressure groups, fighting to change the electoral rules, etc. Michael my modest suggestion was about folks looking into their local dem executive committees, for example, i live in orange county, florida, most precincts have no dem workers at all, comittee chair positions ae vacant... my experience in working with local dems years ago is that they want everything their way, can recall going to local executive committee for support/endorsement of activities/projects such as trying to save african-american school building that had been abandoned by school board during 70s desegregation (circumstance repeated throughout south) and they were sympathetic - typical liberal crap - but could really see nothing in it for them, executive council members only see things in terms of potential voters and really had little use for much else see nothing (which is understandable from their narrow perspective and also politically useless)... i also worked on a couple of campaigns at that time for 'progressive' candidates shunned by local dem committee, matter might have been different had there been slate of such candidates (which i argued for and was never able to convince enough people to pursue) and if committee was comprised of like-minded folks... point - in my mind - would certainly not be to become dems as such but to maybe create some tension within local dem organizational structures and, perhaps, try tu use those structures a bit, people could continue to focus on/do whatever activities they're already working on and they could agitate amongst local dem 'leadership' groups as well... 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.
he's a saint...
Kerry's war didn't end in the Mekong Tarred as a flip-flopper by Bush, he hasn't wavered since Vietnam Sidney Blumenthal Thursday July 22, 2004 The Guardian John Kerry's political education is far deeper than that of senators who have merely legislated. He has journeyed to the heart of darkness many times and emerged to tell the tale. It was not simply that Kerry's commander in Vietnam was the model of the blood-thirsty bombastic colonel in Apocalypse Now. Kerry's combat experience didn't end in the Mekong, but moved into the dangerous realm of high politics. From his first appearance on the public stage, giving voice as a decorated officer to the anti-war disillusionment of Vietnam veterans, when Richard Nixon and his dirty-tricks crew targeted him, he has uncovered cancers on the presidency. This is why the Bush administration fears him. He has explored the dark recesses of contemporary history, often without political reward. Tarred as a flip flopper by Bush's $85m TV ad campaign, Kerry in fact is one of the most consistent politicians of his generation. In his first month as a senator, in January 1985, he discovered the thread that would unravel the Iran-contra scandal - the creation of an illegal foreign policy apparatus run out of the national security council by Reagan's military aide, Oliver North, and the CIA director, William Casey. Kerry had the training and instincts of a prosecutor. As a district attorney in Massachusetts, he smashed the local mafia. Now, as senator, he has surrounded himself with tough investigators. In south Florida, they found men accused of drug-running who were shipping guns to the Nicaraguan contras and claiming to be instructed by the NSC. They tracked down a contra adviser in Costa Rica known as Colonel Flaco, who had evidence that North was involved in financing the contras with Colombian drug money. The path led further, to Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and to Saudi funding sources. Kerry won support from Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee to launch an official investigation, in large part because of the drug aspect. (Concerned about heroin addiction among Vietnam veterans, Kerry had followed the geopolitics of drugs.) North learned of Kerry's work and told the Secret Service and the FBI that Kerry was protecting a possible presidential assassin. The FBI harassed Flaco and determined he was no threat, but he was intimidated into silence. Republican staffers leaked information about Kerry's investigation to the Reagan White House and justice department. An assistant US attorney in Florida, prosecuting a case based on Kerry's leads, was ordered by the justice department to drop the matter. Virtually the entire Washington press corps dismissed Kerry's effort as a fantastic delusion and ignored it. In October 1986, Kerry questioned the neoconservative assistant secretary of state for Latin America, Elliot Abrams, who brazenly lied about foreign funding for the contras. This testimony led, in time, to Abrams pleading guilty to a felony. (He was pardoned by Bush Snr and is now NSC chief for Middle East policy.) A month later, the Iran-contra story broke in a Lebanese newspaper. However, Kerry was excluded from the congressional investigating committee for the sin of having been prematurely right. As consolation, he was given chairmanship of the subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international operations. After three years, he reported that individuals who provided support for the contras were involved in drug trafficking; the supply network of the contras was used by drug trafficking organisations; and elements of the contras received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the US government had information regarding the involvement, either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter. Kerry's work on the contra-drugs connection led him to discover a link to BCCI, an international banking operation that was a front for drug running, money laundering and terrorism. He launched an investigation that exposed its criminal corporate spider web in 1992. His report pointed to new areas that should be investigated, including the extent to which BCCI and Pakistan were able to evade US and international nuclear non-proliferation regimes to acquire nuclear technologies. From Vietnam onwards, Kerry has probed the inner recesses of government, pursuing a persistent and cumulative investigation into the underside of national security and terrorism. If the Democrats had held the Senate for a sustained period of time, his proposal to regulate the netherworld of money laundering, which was not enacted, might even have helped stymie al-Qaida. He has experienced the abuse of justice; had his patriotism impugned; battled enemies foreign and domestic; tried to restore accountability; and fought on, down to today - which is why he is running for president. * Sidney Blumenthal is former senior
the Pakistani connection
The Pakistan connection There is evidence of foreign intelligence backing for the 9/11 hijackers. Why is the US government so keen to cover it up? Michael Meacher Thursday July 22, 2004 The Guardian Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn't commit - of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US government and Pearl's wife have since acknowledged that Sheikh was not responsible. Yet the Pakistani government is refusing to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh and reveal too much. Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not? Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to retire by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn't the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in court? Another person who must know a great deal about what led up to 9/11 is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly arrested in Rawalpindi on March 1 2003. A joint Senate-House intelligence select committee inquiry in July 2003 stated: KSM appears to be one of Bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants and was active in recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the US, on behalf of Bin Laden. According to the report, the clear implication was that they would be engaged in planning terrorist-related activities. The report was sent from the CIA to the FBI, but neither agency apparently recognised the significance of a Bin Laden lieutenant sending terrorists to the US and asking them to establish contacts with colleagues already there. Yet the New York Times has since noted that American officials said that KSM, once al-Qaida's top operational commander, personally executed Daniel Pearl ... but he was unlikely to be accused of the crime in an American criminal court because of the risk of divulging classified information. Indeed, he may never be brought to trial. A fourth witness is Sibel Edmonds. She is a 33-year-old Turkish-American former FBI translator of intelligence, fluent in Farsi, the language spoken mainly in Iran and Afghanistan, who had top-secret security clearance. She tried to blow the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, but is now under two gagging orders that forbid her from testifying in court or mentioning the names of the people or the countries involved. She has been quoted as saying: My translations of the 9/11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date-specific information ... if they were to do real investigations, we would see several significant high-level criminal prosecutions in this country [the US] ... and believe me, they will do everything to cover this up. Furthermore, the trial in the US of Zacharias Moussaoui (allegedly the 20th hijacker) is in danger of collapse apparently because of the CIA's reluctance to allow key lieutenants of Osama bin Laden to testify at the trial. Two of the alleged conspirators have already been set free in Germany for the same reason. The FBI, illegally, continues to refuse the to release of their agent Robert Wright's 500-page manuscript Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission, and has even refused to turn the manuscript over to Senator Shelby, vice-chairman of the joint intelligence committee charged with investigating America's 9/11 intelligence failures. And the US government still refuses to declassify 28 secret pages of a recent report on 9/11. It has been rumoured that Pearl was especially interested in any role played by the US in training or backing the ISI. Daniel Ellsberg, the former US defence department whistleblower who has accompanied Edmonds in court, has stated: It seems to me quite plausible that Pakistan was quite involved in this ... To say Pakistan is, to me, to say CIA because ... it's hard to say that the ISI knew something that the CIA had no knowledge of. Ahmed's close relations with the CIA would seem to confirm this. For years the CIA used the ISI as a conduit to pump billions of dollars into militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan, both before and after the Soviet invasion of 1979. W ith CIA backing, the ISI has developed, since the early 1980s, into a parallel structure, a state within a
Be All You Can Be
Be All You Can Be (the US military offers its personnel free cosmetic surgery -- including breast augmentations): http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/be-all-you-can-be.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: he's a saint...
Devine, James wrote: Kerry's war didn't end in the Mekong Tarred as a flip-flopper by Bush, he hasn't wavered since Vietnam Sidney Blumenthal Thursday July 22, 2004 The Guardian In his first month as a senator, in January 1985, he discovered the thread that would unravel the Iran-contra scandal - the creation of an illegal foreign policy apparatus run out of the national security council by Reagan's military aide, Oliver North, and the CIA director, William Casey. Typical Kerry. Knowing all this, he still voted for contra humanitarian aid in 1988. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/22/04 8:26 AM I'm asking if anyone will be doing it, because it's not a new idea, and a lot of people -- from famous guys like Michael Moore to local activists -- have proposed exactly the same thing, but they never do it themselves, much less try to make it a nationwide effort (to do the latter, you need a solid nationwide organization that exists outside electoral politics -- otherwise, no coordination among local attempts). In any event, the Green Party has proven that it is possible to elect a lot of third-party city council persons, aldermen, and even a number of mayors: http://www.feinstein.org/greenparty/electeds.html. It can continue to elect more of them, and it will probably be able to make inroads into statehouses by doing more of the same. The GP organizing has worked at local levels. The idea that we need is how to make the GP a political party that can elect its candidates to the highest levels of national political offices: representatives, senators, governors, and president. Yoshie as i mentioned in earlier post on this matte and as anyone who has ever attended such meeting will testfiy, county party executive committees meetings can be dreadfully boring (as can meetings of all stripes, obviously) and one can't miss too many of them in order to retain membership... i posted list of reasons why i think that few people want to have a go at it and my own experience suggests that folks i'd like to see engaged see it as too 'establishment'... partial example of what i've been trying to get at: harold washington's brief time as chicago mayor in the mid-1980s remains important because what emerged was a potentially powerful dialectical relationship between politicians and movement, politicos in downtown 'suites' were emboldened by activsts in neighorhood 'streets', political mobilization and organization operated 'outside of government' yet were linked 'organically'' to it worked to embolden policymakers. Results were, admittedly, limited (but achieved in face of white-dominated city council and under scrutiny of white local media), but included some shifting power and resources to neighborhoods (including creating neighborhood coops), fostering further mobilization of previously inactive folks (neighborhood orgs could review all city economic development programs and submit economic assistance proposals), and attempting some redistribution towards lower-income individuals/groups (considere no-no for municipal gov't because spending on the poor requires higher local taxes that are unattractive to potential investors), things imploded in aftermath of washington's (not necessarily my idea of appealing politician but that's not point)untimely death... was underwhelmed by list of elected green party members, most had no links to them, number of links to some who did were apparently broken, and most sites i was able to access made no mention that folks were green party members, most offices held are probably nonpartisan with respect to ballot but i'd have thought these people would want to highlight/promote green party and their membership in it at their websites, no indication of concerted party efforts but rather individual candidates running conventional campaigns that have little real connection to one another (nothing wrong with this but not indication of party growth/strength)... michael hoover (who has probably posted too much on this topic at this juncture) -- 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.
Bill Bowles on Ralph Nader
(Bill Bowles was a Tecnica volunteer who worked with the ANC.) http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0252.html Book Review: Ralphs Revolt: The Case for Joining Naders Rebellion by Greg Bates [The] Progressive Policy Institute, an arm of the Democratic Leadership Council, published a 19-page manifesto for the New Democrats, who include all the principal Democratic Party candidates, and especially John Kerry. This called for the bold exercise of American power at the heart of a new Democratic strategy, grounded in the party's tradition of muscular internationalism. Such a strategy would keep Americans safer than the Republicans go-it-alone policy, which has alienated our natural allies and overstretched our resources. We aim to rebuild the moral foundation of US global leadership --Bush Or Kerry? Look Closely And The Danger Is The Same by John Pilger, the New Statesman, 03/04/07 For less than one hundred years, most of us who live in the so-called democracies have had the universal franchise the vote. Every four or five years we cast our ballot (those who bother that is). Being able to vote is seen as the bedrock of democracy. Indeed, the vote has been peddled very effectively as the measure of what democracy really means. In the UK the propaganda around the right to vote has been so effective that if one believed it, the English have had the vote for nigh on a thousand years, ever since Magna Carta (the mother of democracies and so on and so forth). Yet a universal franchise (that is for men and women) wasnt achieved until after WWI in most developed countries. And so too, in the US, according to the Constitution, many believe that since 1776 (or thereabouts) Americans have had a universal franchise. The reality of course, is very different. In fact, in the US, following a brief period after the Civil War and after the period of Reconstruction, saw Black (males) systematically have the right to vote taken away from them. It wasnt until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that saw the right to vote enshrined in law for all Americans (unless of course, you're Black and live in Florida). So whats so important about the vote when its almost impossible to distinguish the two dominant political parties one from the other in the US (and for that matter, the UK)? And perhaps just as importantly, with each election, fewer and fewer people actually bother to vote. The issue around the power of the vote has taken centre stage, especially for progressives and the Left in the forthcoming US presidential election this November and has split the anti-Bush, anti-war movement right down the middle. For us here in the UK it also has great significance firstly because of vassal Blairs slavish adherence to the Bush imperium and secondly, because come a parliamentary election in 2005 or 6, progressives and the Left will be faced with a comparable dilemma. Setting aside the issues of the iniquities inherent in both electoral systems (in the US the role of the Electoral College, where the real outcome is decided and in the UK, the first past the post system that distorts how parties get represented in Parliament), in a two-party system, the argument for progressives about who to vote for comes down to one thing, the lesser of two evils and effectively, this is the way its been for generations. This and whether a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, is the core of the argument in Greg Bates book Ralph's Revolt: The Case for Joining Naders Rebellion. Those who contend that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, base their argument on the actions of the Bush presidency, contending that it is the worst on record, worst that is for its attacks on working people, democratic rights, the environment and the rest of the planet. Therefore, defeating Bush is the primary objective. Those who are opposed to voting for Nader, contend that with Kerry in power, progressives will be in a better position to exert influence over a Kerry administration. full: http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0252.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Apropos Albany
California is pretty bad. Gene Coyle Michael Pollak wrote: [Michael Hoover rightly pointed out that New York State's politics were worse than most other states, so people in other states might have opportunities that we in New York don't. Apropos, here's an article on a recent study that claims to show that our state political system in New York politics isn't simply worse than most -- it's the worst one in the country period.] URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/nyregion/22york.html The New York Times July 22, 2004 So How Bad Is Albany? Well, Notorious By MICHAEL COOPER A LBANY, July 21 - Over a five-year period, 11,474 bills reached the floor of the two houses of the Legislature in Albany. Not a single one was voted down. And during that period, from 1997 through 2001, the Legislature held public hearings on less than 1 percent of the major laws it passed. When those laws made it to the floor of each chamber for a vote, more than 95 percent passed with no debate. Civic groups, policy advocates and even some lawmakers have long rolled their eyes at what has become known as Albany's dysfunction. But a study released here on Wednesday by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law illuminates just how bad the problem is, calling the Albany body the least deliberative, most dysfunctional state legislature in the nation. Neither the U.S. Congress nor any other state legislature so systematically limits the roles played by rank-and-file legislators and members of the public in the legislative process, the study concluded. The report, which compared New York's Legislature with those in the 49 other states, found that Albany represents the worst of all worlds, being at once stiflingly autocratic and strikingly inefficient. It noted that the two men who control the Legislature - Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, and the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican - have almost total power over which bills they will allow their members to vote on, and a wide range of sticks and carrots to help them keep their members in line. The report found that it is harder to get a bill voted on in New York than anywhere else in the nation. And it found that while New York has one of the most expensive Legislatures in the nation, if not the most expensive, its rate of bills that actually become laws is one of the lowest in the nation. The report includes a number of recommendations for change, and one of its authors, Jeremy M. Creelan, said he would be heading a statewide campaign to try to get each house of the Legislature to alter its rules. Some of the center's proposed rule changes were amusingly straightforward. Consider this one: Votes by members shall be recorded and counted only when the member is physically present in the chamber at the time of the vote. While that might sound self-evident, it would actually amount to a somewhat radical change in New York, where state lawmakers who sign in in the morning are automatically counted as voting yes on every bill that comes before them unless they signal otherwise - even if they have left for the day. The report found that 81 percent of the nation's state legislatures require their lawmakers to be physically present in the chamber to vote, and that New York's is the only Legislature that routinely allows empty-seat voting. Not surprisingly, the report was not warmly received by the two men who control the state's 212-member Legislature. Senator Bruno called the report pure nonsense, saying that other Republicans in the Senate confer with him constantly but that it falls to him to lead. Talk to the C.E.O. of any company, Mr. Bruno said. If you want to act on something, and the company has 212 employees, what are you going to do, have a discussion and let 212 employees do whatever the agenda is? Is that what you do? So you have 212 different agendas. And that is just chaotic, doesn't work. That is Third-World-country stuff. Speaker Silver said that he talked to the Democrats who make up his conference all the time. Nothing happens here in Albany, in the Assembly, without the input of the rank-and-file legislators, he said. But the input Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver were referring to comes mainly from the members of their own parties, and it is given in private, behind closed doors. Those party conferences, in fact, are where many of the real decisions are made. Just this week the Assembly Democrats held a passionate debate about whether they should reinstate the death penalty by passing a bill to change a section of the current law that was ruled unconstitutional. And the Republican senators agonized over whether to raise the state's minimum wage - an issue that has divided the Senate for some time. But neither debate
Re: Herald: War of subversion in Iran already getting geared up
Wow. I cannot imagine karl rove thinking how that will win him votes as a campaign issue. On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 02:14:55PM -0400, Michael Pollak wrote: The official said: If George Bush is re-elected there will be much more intervention in the internal affairs of Iran. Full at: http://www.sundayherald.com/43461 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
41 million Chinese believed to have hepatitis C virus: report
People's Daily Online Life UPDATED: 17:34, June 26, 2004 41 million Chinese believed to have hepatitis C virus: report An estimated 41 million people in China have contracted the hepatitis C virus, which could become a fatal quiet epidemic, according to Professor Xu Daozheng, a liver disease expert with Ditan Hospital in Beijing. The Chinese Ministry of Health said in a report, issued in February, the number of hepatitis C patient was growing. A national epidemicological survey covering the 1992-1995 period found 3.2 percent of the country's population, or 38 million people, had hepatitis C virus. Prof. Xu said his estimate is quite conservative, and suggested the disease should be included in normal medical checks, like hepatitis B, because it has become a serious public health issue in China. At present, a patient with hepatitis C may look normal and feeljust as good as a healthy person, and the disease will not be detected until it is too late, the professor warned. Unlike other types of hepatitis B, 75 percent of people with hepatitis C show no signs of symptoms in the early stage, said Xu. About 15 percent of the people with hepatitis C will develop hepatocirrhosis and 5 percent would develop cancer if the disease is detected in a later stage, the expert explained. There is still no vaccine against hepatitis C in China, and theChina Medical Association has called for screening the disease in normal blood tests, especially among high-risk groups. China has about 20 million people with chronic viral liver diseases out of its 1.3 billion population, and half of the 280,000 patients of liver disease died of liver cancer. Source:Xinhua Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
FW: [Marxism] Fwd: Michael Moore letter to las vegas
From Michael Moore's letter to Las Vegas: What country do you live in? Last time I checked, Las Vegas is still in the United States. And in the United States, we have something called The First Amendment. This constitutional right gives everyone here the right to say whatever they want to say. All Americans hold this right as sacred. Many of our young people put on a uniform and risk their lives to defend it. My film is all about asking the questions that should have been asked before those brave soldiers were sent into harms way. For you to throw Linda Ronstadt off the premises because she dared to say a few words in support of me and my film, is simply stupid and Un-American. Response Jim C: Look, whatever the problems or deficiencies in Moore's film from any ideological purist's point of view (or from the point of view of those familiar with even more salient facts/perspectives than mentioned by Moorer in his film), I do applaud his effort and that he did manage to get some salient facts across to some very diverse audiences that would have not otherwise been exposed to such facts. But if part of the story that is missing--in order to get across another part of the story in ways more acceptable on a mass level--undermines the part of the story being put across and/or creates further illusions, and mystifications--or outright bourgeois falsehoods and lies about America--then what is the point? But... This appeal to de jure formalism and what America is really about and what those who put on uniform are really fighting for is noxious. Our young people--and not-so-young people--who put on a uniform may believe they are fighting for the American Way, American Freedom, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, etc. but they are really fighting for imperialism, plutocracy, oligarchy, despotism, illusions, puppet client-states, imperial hegemony and hubris, conspicuous consumption, unbridled environmental degradation, racism, sexism, fascism, militarism, etc--on the objective level--and on the subjective level, they are often fighting for money for college education, self-esteem issues, hero-complex, travel, adventure, relatively good pay for relatively little formal education, training, skills, resume embellishment, the Audy-Murphy-syndrome, family traditions, etc. And no, not all Americans hold the Bill of Rights as sacred; certainly not those who vote for Bush and also a good percentage of those who vote for Kerry do not hold these de jure (hardly rights de facto) rights as sacred. Jim C.
Re: Michael Moore letter to las vegas
Michael Moore writes: Last time I checked, Las Vegas is still in the United States. And in the United States, we have something called The First Amendment. This constitutional right gives everyone here the right to say whatever they want to say. All Americans hold this right as sacred. isn't free speech limited in corporate-owned venues? jd
Re: Chevez and Uribe (was: oil query)
Sorry for the delay. Our line is that it's a Very Good Thing. First, because the anti-Chavez forces in the U.S. Administration, Miami and Caracas want to spread, without evidence, the notion that the government of Venezuela is supporting the FARC, is a threat to its neighbors, etc. So, this sort of thing is good for us because we can point to it and say, what are you talking about? Venezuela is getting along fine with its neighbors. Second, because it's the policy of the anti-Chavez faction in the Administration to try to isolate Venezuela. So this sort of thing is a defeat for that policy. Finally, because its the policy of the Venezuelan government to promote regional economic integration, as opposed to FTAA-like integration with the U.S. So this represents a small victory for that policy. At 12:34 PM 7/16/2004 -0400, you wrote: Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 12:34:12 -0400 Reply-To: PEN-L list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: PEN-L list [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Dmytri Kleiner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] Chevez and Uribe (was: oil query) Hey, I'm a Canadian, living in Germany, so I'm not exactly The American Public... but if would inform me anyway, I would love to know what you make of the recent meeting between Chavez and Uribe. Thanks. -- Robert Naiman Senior Policy Analyst Venezuela Information Office 733 15th Street, NW Suite 932 Washington, DC 20005 t. 202-347-8081 x. 605 f. 202-347-8091 www.veninfo.org ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: The Venezuela Information Office is dedicated to informing the American public about contemporary Venezuela. More information is available from the FARA office of the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.
Re: Greed
greed describes an aspect of a personality, whereas rational profit maximization is simply behavior. Economics can't deal with personality issues. It simply assumes that people are sociopaths (without the charming personality) and leaves it at that. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Ted Winslow wrote: Greed in this context can't be translated into instrumentally rational profit maximization. Ted, all this squishy talk makes economists nervous. Doug
Re: Michael Moore letter to las vegas
Michael Moore writes: Last time I checked, Las Vegas is still in the United States. And in the United States, we have something called The First Amendment. This constitutional right gives everyone here the right to say whatever they want to say. All Americans hold this right as sacred. isn't free speech limited in corporate-owned venues? jd Absolutely true: Free speech and other rights apply--by law--only in federal or state employment (with exception of military, police and some other segments) and/or in venues receiving federal or state monies. Jim C
Re: Cuba: siempre con combate
Diane Monaco wrote: Cuba IS a remarkable country Hi Diane ! Mexico is not far behind Cuba in HDI, AFAIK. Btw, 75% Singaporeans, 50% Malaysians 33% of Thais have cell phones. How many cell phones Cuba has? Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
phones and human welfare
[was: RE: [PEN-L] Cuba: siempre con combate] Ulhas writes: 75% Singaporeans, 50% Malaysians 33% of Thais have cell phones. How many cell phones Cuba has? it seems to me that cell phones are at best a mixed blessing. (I have one, but I hate it: it rings when I'm driving, so I either have to pull over to talk or drive in a risky way. This morning it interrupted a good song by Townes Van Zandt.) They are only really necessary if the land-line system is broken for some reason. If you see phones as part of some sort of human development index, it would be as cell phones _plus_ access to land-lines or something like that. In any event, there's no way one could reduce human welfare to either cell phones or all phones. jim devine
Re: Michael Moore letter to las vegas
Yes, I think that would have been a better point for Moore to make. Remind people they don't have free speech at work. Gene Coyle Devine, James wrote: Michael Moore writes: Last time I checked, Las Vegas is still in the United States. And in the United States, we have something called The First Amendment. This constitutional right gives everyone here the right to say whatever they want to say. All Americans hold this right as sacred. isn't free speech limited in corporate-owned venues? jd
Re: phones and human welfare
The point I think Ulhas is driving at is the really interesting thing in those HDI statistics; Cuba has managed to achieve first world life expectancy and literacy on a GDP of just over $5k per head. I think that the next lowet on the list is close to $8k. That's the really interesting thing to me, and probably the one that would appeal to socialists of the spartan back-to-nature tendency; it is apparently possible to live about as many quality-adjusted life years as an average British person without having the whole ghastly apparatus. dd -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Devine, James Sent: 23 July 2004 00:45 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: phones and human welfare [was: RE: [PEN-L] Cuba: siempre con combate] Ulhas writes: 75% Singaporeans, 50% Malaysians 33% of Thais have cell phones. How many cell phones Cuba has? it seems to me that cell phones are at best a mixed blessing. (I have one, but I hate it: it rings when I'm driving, so I either have to pull over to talk or drive in a risky way. This morning it interrupted a good song by Townes Van Zandt.) They are only really necessary if the land-line system is broken for some reason. If you see phones as part of some sort of human development index, it would be as cell phones _plus_ access to land-lines or something like that. In any event, there's no way one could reduce human welfare to either cell phones or all phones. jim devine
Slave labour in Brazil
The Hindu Tuesday, Jul 20, 2004 Slave labour in Brazil By Paul Brown An unpublished report for the ILO says that despite the best efforts of the Brazilian Government, slave labour continues in the country's interior. AN ESTIMATED 25,000 people are working as slave labourers in Brazil clearing the Amazon jungle for ranchers, or producing pig iron in the forest using charcoal smelters, according to a new study. An unpublished report for the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation concludes that despite the best efforts of the Government of President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva to free slaves and prosecute offenders, the level of lawlessness in the country's interior means that the practice continues. The report also uncovers a new area of labour analogous to slavery, where men, women and children who are illegal immigrants from Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay are working in sweatshops in Sao Paulo. Workshop owners are part of a flourishing cheap clothes industry that uses the fear of deportation to enforce harsh conditions under which people are sometimes locked up where they work and sleep. The London-based Guardian newspaper was passed a copy of the report because anti-slavery campaigners feared that the ILO was suppressing it. They believe that officials are nervous of criticism of the organisation's failure to make an impact on the situation. The report is also sensitive because it shows that the United States is directly benefiting from the proceeds of slavery. But Roger Plant, head of the ILO's forced labour programme in Geneva, denied the report was being withheld. He said it had been held back to include more statistics and it would be updated and published next year. Mr. Plant said the report made clear that the Brazilian Government was making efforts to attack slavery, and it was unfair to single out a state when Peru and Bolivia also had slaves, probably in similar numbers. New figures show that since the Lula Government took office in January 2002 with a promise to end slave labour, 5,400 slave workers have been released and £ 1.4 million paid to them in compensation. The author of the report, Jan Rocha, said on Sunday: After a good start cracking down, the Government has given in to the landowners' lobby's pressure in Congress to delay a bill that would confiscate their estates when slave labour has been found, in exchange for their votes on other bills. As the report pointed out, the scandalous fact is that many federal Congressmen and regional politicos have been found using slave labour on their cattle ranches - so some of the men who got the law postponed are those who personally benefit from the delay. Attempts to tackle slave labour have been hindered by the lawlessness of the territories involved and the puny punishments that have been handed out. Ms. Rocha describes how slave workers live in hovels under plastic sheets without sanitation, with the job of clearing the forest for soya bean plantations and cattle. In the charcoal smelters they work without protective clothing in extreme heat. The report concludes that the only way slavery will disappear is that if everyone regards it as a national outrage and ranches and businesses are confiscated as a punishment. - Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 Copyright © 2004, The Hindu. Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: phones and human welfare
Devine, James wrote: In any event, there's no way one could reduce human welfare to either cell phones or all phones. 300 million Indians watch CTVs today, but I know there is no way one could reduce human welfare to CTVs. Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
C.I.A. Plays It Safe by Accentuating the Negative
[An obvious point but a good one to keep in mind: there are always at least two very strong incentives toward threat assessment inflation: CYA and the drive for institutional expansion] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/international/16DISPATCHES.html The New York Times July 16, 2004 DISPATCHES C.I.A. Plays It Safe by Accentuating the Negative By MICHAEL. R. GORDON, International Herald Tribune A former intelligence officer once told me that when faced with a confusing mass of data the safest course of action was to emphasize the potential threat. If the danger turned out to be less grave than forecast, the policy makers would be relieved. But if a serious threat indeed emerged, no one could accuse the intelligence community of having let the nation down. The analysts would not be raked over the coals for yet another intelligence failure. Given the scrutiny the CIA has received in recent years, it is not surprising that some analysts would see this as a key to bureaucratic survival. U.S. intelligence analysts have been faulted for failing to anticipate India's series of nuclear tests, underestimating the capability of North Korea to make a three-stage missile and failing to foresee the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. In the case of Iraq, it seems, the agency's analysts learned the lesson too well. Faced with a paucity of solid intelligence and confronting a regime schooled in the art of deception, the CIA filled in a sketchy picture in the darkest hues. As the recent Senate intelligence committee report makes abundantly clear, the CIA presented informed guesswork as established fact and drew far-reaching conclusions on the basis of a handful of unreliable sources. Rather than acknowledge how little firm information the American intelligence community had about Iraq's weapons programs, the CIA seems to have told 110 percent of what it knew. What made this approach so contentious is that it occurred while the White House was asserting the right to pre-emptive war. It is clear that there are situations in which the United States may have to act in the face of less-than-perfect intelligence, as the White House has noted. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack, President George W. Bush stated in his 2002 National Security Strategy. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act pre-emptively. But the risks of inaction have to be balanced against the risks of overreaction: spending too many lives, too much time and too much treasure to cope with a second-order threat. Rest at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/international/16DISPATCHES.html
Re: C.I.A. Plays It Safe by Accentuating the Negative
Michael Pollak writes: [An obvious point but a good one to keep in mind: there are always at least two very strong incentives toward threat assessment inflation: CYA and the drive for institutional expansion] speaking of threat assessment inflation, there was an ad by the Committee on the Present Danger in the NY TIMES yesterday. That kind of inflation is their business. some of them were called honorable as their titles. What makes someone officially honorable? jim devine
Silence shrouds the moral abyss spawned by the war against Iraq
Vancouver Sun July 22, 2004 Silence shrouds the moral abyss spawned by the war against Iraq By Stephen Hume On what appeared to be its website last week, the British newspaper The Independent carried a four-paragraph item dated July 16. I say appeared, because who knows anymore what's real and what's not? How do I know the website wasn't a fake lofted by some dirty trickster in the political spin wars? In our brave new media world, weapons of mass destruction turn out to be, in the words of a new documentary currently doing the indy film festival circuit, Weapons of Mass Deception. Photos of British soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq turn out to be false -- although I note that an official investigation into the alleged abuses quietly continues. Ditto for explicit digital images that purported to show coalition soldiers serially raping Iraqi women. They were lifted from a pornographic film. However, pictures of U.S. soldiers sexually humiliating prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison proved legit after first being denounced as fakes. Alternately, the story of plucky heroine Jessica Lynch and her rescue by brave fellow soldiers turns out to have been hugely embroidered for a gullible media by the military spin machine. Welcome to the world of Wag the Dog, the movie in which a bogus war is sold on television to the American public to shore up a U.S. president's sagging ratings. Which brings me back to that item that appeared to have appeared in The Independent. It was forwarded to me by a reader, but I learned long ago to go to original sources whenever possible. Checking took me to what I think was The Independent's website. The story cited investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who chronicled for the New Yorker Magazine the appalling abuse of prisoners under the control of U.S. military authorities at Abu Ghraib. It's worse, Hersh apparently told a meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, although he didn't go into details, presumably because he hasn't finished reporting on the subject. Hersh said a film depicts young Iraqi boys being sexually assaulted. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking, Hersh told the silent audience. That your government has. Now here's the interesting thing. When I searched the database of American periodicals that's part of the Canwest electronic library, I didn't find a single hit on this particular story. On the web I did find a reference to a United Press International item, probably based on The Independent. When I Googled it, I found Hersh's speech was a subject of wide discussion on independent media sites, blogs, forums and web-based list servers. But none of the hits led to a report in the mainstream media. Did he say it? I drilled a little deeper. At the ACLU site, I found a streaming video of the Hersh speech. (You can watch it yourself at http://www.aclu.org/2004memberconf/Program/program.htm; starting at 1:07:50 with the relevant comments coming at 1:30:28). Apparently he did say it -- that caveat again. He said more. He said women had sent notes from the prison asking their husbands to kill them because of what they'd experienced. So here we have an issue which seems of crucial importance -- allegations of monstrous treatment of mothers and children in the custody of U.S. occupation forces. It's widely discussed by techno-savvy young people around the world, but goes largely unremarked by the U.S. media. For me, it was a telling moment. It suggests that not only is the moral authority of the U.S. in tatters, so, increasingly, is the credibility of a media that likes to present itself as a model for free expression. Frankly, President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair can twist, weasel, equivocate, obfuscate, deny, dissimulate and strew the political landscape with as many red herrings as they like. It won't change the fact that they beat the drums for a war that has caused the deaths of thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent civilians based upon information that even a smidgin of prudence would have warned them was unreliable. So where were the vaunted U.S. media when the governments they claim to hold accountable began marching toward the moral abyss? The so-called liberation of Iraq is now a nightmare of civil violence in which senior officials of the new regime are routinely assassinated, a clandestine resistance seems to be growing rather than shrinking and the moral capital accumulated by Britain and the U.S. over many decades has been squandered in a matter of months. Yet few media moguls seem to be asking about the global consequences of the foreign affairs catastrophe visited upon us all by the hubris of these two governments. What Hersh was really pointing to at the ACLU conference was that dreadful, disheartening moment at which citizens discover that the only cop in town has gone bad. Much is now being made by politicians and
Re: Human Development Index 2004
This is one of the best threads on the list for a long time. Valuable information. No acrimony. Am I dreaming? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: C.I.A. Plays It Safe by Accentuating the Negative
On Thu, 22 Jul 2004, Devine, James wrote: speaking of threat assessment inflation, there was an ad by the Committee on the Present Danger in the NY TIMES yesterday. That kind of inflation is their business. some of them were called honorable as their titles. What makes someone officially honorable? It's the official form of address for a judge, a federal legislator, or a chief executive officer at any level from president to mayor. And at the presidential level, any of his direct plenipotentiaries are honorable, including ambassadors and cabinet members. It's SOP to keep those titles afterwards (except usually for cabinet members). I believe most on that list got it from being ambassadors (including to the UN), federal legislators and judges. Michael
Housing prices
I recently read that nominal housing prices have never declined in the US since WWII. Real prices have declined three times, durind the mid and late seventies and the early 90s, but nominal prices never. Is that really true? It makes it look as if people who think they're ever-rising, rather than being delusive, have quite a track record -- you have to be a wonk to have noticed any falls ever, and even those have been short and fleeting. If it is true, is there any non-bubble-headed explanation for it? And how come it's true here but not in the UK? Michael
Re: C.I.A. Plays It Safe by Accentuating the Negative
Jim Devine asks: ...there was an ad by the Committee on the Present Danger in the NY TIMES yesterday...some of them were called honorable as their titles. What makes someone officially honorable? When someone is introduced to me as 'the honorable' I hold fast to my wallet...Mark Twain
Re: United Nations Human Indicators Index 2004
there is a high functional illiteracy in the US as opposed to utter illiteracy elsewhere. the difference is minute but could make a world of difference in the HDICharles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: by Doug HenwoodThat was long ago, in the HDI's early days. In the first iteration,the U.S. scored badly. As someone in the UN told me, "orders camedown from the top" - the White House - to make the numbers lookbetter. And they were remade to look better in subsequent years.One reason - the first Bush admin had published docs sayingilliteracy rates in the U.S. were in the low teens. The HDI peoplepicked up on this, hammering the U.S. standing. Literacy was droppedin favor of school enrollment stats, on which the U.S. does well.^^^CB: I notice they seem to just assume a 99% literacy rate for the U.S. (footnote e ?) ? Is this a fudge ? Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign!
