Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
At 4:31 PM -0400 7/21/04, Michael Pollak wrote: self-selected candidates often don't care whether they get local party support or not (and sometimes prefer not), surely progressive/left folks can do better than this with whatever shell of an organization exists... I think there is now a much more effective model available for affecting the nomination than taking over the party: the MoveOn model. MoveOn almost nominated Dean. I don't think that it was worth leftists' time to fight to have Howard Dean nominated, as Dean's agenda in some crucial respects (especially on Iraq) went against leftists', but, supposing that there were left-of-center liberal folks who really, really, wanted to nominate him as the Democratic presidential candidate, it's now clear that it takes much more than internet communication to win in the caucuses and primaries. Besides, the MoveOn model is strictly one-way communication from the center to the margins (unlike the Dean model), far more centralized and undemocratic than any other organization on the left side of the political spectrum. At 4:10 PM -0400 7/22/04, Michael Hoover wrote: 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... And there is a reason why reforms and mobilizations did not last beyond Washington's death. At 4:10 PM -0400 7/22/04, Michael Hoover wrote: 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)... The US-style electoral system strongly acts against party-building, but it's better to have a political party like the Green Party than a Washington-style campaign, which is doomed to remain in one location and destined to die with the person with whom mobilization is inseparably associated. -- 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: Housing prices
it's only happened once in the UK since the war. dd -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Michael Pollak Sent: 23 July 2004 03:12 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 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
a Member of Parliament is the Honourable Member for Bogarse South. A Privy Councillor is The Right Honourable. Debrett's would encourage you to refer to a younger child of a hereditary peer as the Honourable as a courtesy title in the absence of any other title, but this practice is on the way out. Honorable spelled the American way, your guess is as good as mine. dd -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Devine, James Sent: 23 July 2004 02:18 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 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
Re: Housing prices
It may be the case that nominal house prices have rarely if ever fallen since WW II, but I would doubt their annual average percentage increase over this period exceeds the capital gain on stocks and certain classes of bonds, particularly when the carrying cost of this type of investment is factored in. We bought our house in Ottawa 20 years ago, and its value has risen steadily in tandem with the city's growth as a high-tech centre, but I still calculate the average annual price increase in our home at about 5-6% over that period, excluding maintenance, taxes, and interest charges. This includes the sharp increase in house values over the past few years when the stock market turned down from its peak in 2000. Marv Gandall - Original Message - From: Daniel Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 6:47 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Housing prices it's only happened once in the UK since the war. dd -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Michael Pollak Sent: 23 July 2004 03:12 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 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: Human Development Index 2004
--- Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there any common cause with any of today's 3rd world economic\political elite (Malaysians? Brazilians? Koreans? Russians? Vietnamese?)? --- Russia is not a 3rd world country. __ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/
HDI: Cuba vs. Mexico
Ulhas writes: Hi Diane ! Mexico is not far behind Cuba in HDI, AFAIK. Quite true: they are right next to each other this year (Cuba #52 with and index of 0.809; Mexico #51 with 0.802). And I think the comparison illustrates the point about indexes (and maybe about reconstituted statistics such as PPP). Also my point about using numbers that measure actual lives. A Mexican will look at her/his country's health statistics and see that *average* life expectancy at birth is 73.4 years which is not bad, but still 3.4 years behind Cuba (a poorer county). But when she looks at infant mortality rates (the largest single factor in life expectancy BUT less subject to the 'fallacy of the average' since poor infants' deaths are not 'offset' in the average) she will see that in Mexico 29 infants die per 1,000 while in Cuba only 9 children die. The issue then is clearer: in Mexico it is inequality that is producing a grave social injustice. Many innocent infants die and it is not necessary. You see what you have to change - and who has to be reached. My point about GDP (or GNI) per capita vs. the reconstituted PPP version of GDP is going to be harder to illustrate with this example. First of all, the Bank doesn't seem to list Cuba's GDP in either version. More importantly GDP would be a muddled indicator in any version: it is not really a human indicator, it is subject to the fallacy of the average, it doesn't include non-cash income and it misleads since international comparisons are inherently 'apples and oranges' (this goes back to, sigh, value theory). BUT, Mexico's GNI per capita is $5,920 (this standard version uses the actual exchange rates). The reconstituted (and imaginary) PPP version boosts the figure to $8,880. It does this (I am simplifying, but fairly) by taking a North American basket of traded goods and figuring out an exchange rate by comparing it to those items in Mexico (this has big problems but lets skip it). They then apply this imaginary exchange rate to things that can not be traded (e.g. the income a barber gets from giving an open air haircut in Mexico City) AS IF that item could be traded. So it is AS IF that Mexican barber could sell his service in the Los Angeles market. Of course the problem is that if that barber wants to buy more of the corn they now import for tortillas he has to do it with at the actual exchange rate with the actual pesos he earned - not the imaginary pesos that the PPP recalculation gave him AS IF he could sell it in Los Angeles. Which is why he has go to Los Angeles and work there. It short, in this way (and several other ways) the PPP version of GDP is an imaginary calculation drawing on lots of neo-classical trade theory about the law of one price and free markets. But this ideological reconstitution is now presented instead of the actual statistic (itself often misused) AS IF it is the real number. Hope I am not dragging this out. Paul
Michael Moore letter to las vegas
by Craven, Jim 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. ^ CB: I'd pick and choose among the Bill of Rights. Among my favorite Amendments are 13 ( Lucky 13 !), 14, 15, 19, and the Amendment Provision itself. Lawyers and judges have interpreted the Constitution; the thing is to change it ! As you say, Jim, a lot of de jure, of ideals. But this is a bourgeois idealist constitution with the _First_ Amendment being freedom of Conscience -speech, religion, press. We materialists would make the number one Amendment - in fact, lets put it in the original text - as a right to a living, to exist materially, bodily and economically, to thrive. You have to able to eat in order to speak. This provision is a premise for making the right to speak de facto. But what is it to just exist ? We must be able to thrive. We need an ERA for women's equality, if we are going to get real about life and the facts of it. And lets take the War Power away from Congress, because they have , in violation of the Constitution, abdicated it to the Executive. I'm for an Amendment that requires a vote of We, the People, before war can be declared. Well, all this is still idealist, constiutionalist talk. We've got to critique all, new Gotha Programmes more. Meanwhile, it seems as though Michael Moore is doing more good than harm, but criticism-self-criticism is one of our modes.
Re: Human Development Index 2004
nor is Malaysia -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Chris Doss Sent: 23 July 2004 14:40 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Human Development Index 2004 --- Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there any common cause with any of today's 3rd world economic\political elite (Malaysians? Brazilians? Koreans? Russians? Vietnamese?)? --- Russia is not a 3rd world country. __ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/
Re: Human Development Index 2004
Daniel Davies wrote: nor is Malaysia Behalf Of Chris Doss Russia is not a 3rd world country. Third World is not a useful category. Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: Human Development Index 2004
Cuba needs to be compared with other nations that have a similar history and resource endowment, like Jamaica or the Dominican Republic. Cuba ranks 52, while Jamaica is at 79 and The Dominican Republic ranks 98th. Imagine if Jamaica and The Dominican Republic were subjected to unremitting economic warfare and had lost their major economic benefactor, then you can see how impressive Cuba's gains are. I am quite sure that if the USSR had wound up with a leadership more in line with the Cuban CP, world history would have taken an entirely different path. Daniel Davies wrote: nor is Malaysia -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Chris Doss Sent: 23 July 2004 14:40 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Human Development Index 2004 --- Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there any common cause with any of today's 3rd world economic\political elite (Malaysians? Brazilians? Koreans? Russians? Vietnamese?)? --- Russia is not a 3rd world country. __ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/ . -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Cuba: Dealing with the dollar
Frontline Volume 16 - Issue 8, Apr. 10 - 23, 1999 CUBA Cuba: Dealing with the dollar C.P. CHANDRASEKHAR recently in Havana How Cuba copes with the long-term effects of the U.S. blockade against it by making the pursuit of dollar earning a virtual movement. http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1608/16081090.htm Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: Human Development Index 2004
Third World is not a useful category. Ulhas --- Thank you! That is so true. It seems to be a synonym for poorer than the West. (Except that Saudi Arabia is usually called a third-world country, even though the average Saudi private residence is five times the size of one in Western Europe). If Russia is a third-world country, then it is one that exports high-tech weapons, has builds cruise missiles, sends people regularly into space (the only country to be doing so at present), and in which half of the population owns a mobile telephone. And about half own their own apartments. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Re: HDI 2004\3rd World
Chris Doss writes (with related points from Daniel Davies and Ulhas Joglekar) : --- Paul wrote: Is there any common cause with any of today's 3rd world economic\political elite (Malaysians? Brazilians? Koreans? Russians? Vietnamese?)? --- Russia is not a 3rd world country. Point taken. And of course neither are any now 3rd world countries since the 2nd has disappeared. That may be part of the point. Doug's post illustrated some dilemmas that were faced: there were elites in the periphery that shared *some* of our goals vis-a-vis the center but did not share our goals vis-a-vis their own population. Likewise, there were 1st world liberals (actually includes lots of others) who shared *some* of our goals vis-a-vis oppressed poor, women, environment etc. in the 3rd world but only so long as these efforts did not threaten (and maybe strengthened) their privileged position internationally. I am concerned over how to handle these cross currents today (aside from saying 'death to all') and wonder how much can I apply my previous experience now that the 2nd and 3rd world categories are gone. I imagine Chris Doss finds that his difficulties explaining Putin to others on this list relates to this point - no? And, of course, all of us are caught in terrible conflicting priorities when it comes to events in the Middle East. Paul
City of God
I finally got around to seeing the Brazilian film City of God, which
was directed by TV commercial veteran Fernando Meirelles and that
enjoyed a very long run in NYC theaters a year or so ago. As most people
know, this film has been widely acclaimed by the critical establishment
and was an Oscar nominee last year. I was prepared to see something akin
to Hector Babenco's Pixote or Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados, but was
disappointed to discover that the film had more in common with Quentin
Tarentino. It is a highly aestheticized presentation of gang life in a
Rio de Janiero favela (slum) named City of God that left me with a
feeling of total revulsion for all the characters except Rocket, a
denizen who escapes this world by dint of his passion for photography
and his ineptitude at crime. It is through his eyes that a never-ending
procession of sadism and inhumanity unfolds.
The main character is L'il Ze, a psychopathic gang leader who reminds me
of the character Al Pacino played in Scarface. Comparable in terms of
his crude ambitions and talent for wiping out opponents, L'il Ze lacks
Tony Montaña's raffish charm. While this characterization might be more
realistic, it also makes for less interesting drama since a compelling
villain remains the lynchpin for a successful work of art.
L'il Ze's chief lieutenant is Benny, who seeks to escape gang life and
live a hippy existence on a farm (the film is set in the 60s and 70s.)
Although he is intended to be a relatively more attractive character, I
would be repelled by anybody in the position of henchman to L'il Ze. In
one scene, Benny joins L'il Ze in punishing one of the runts, a
preteen youngster similar to Pixote who has been terrorizing shopkeepers
under the gang's protection. They offer him the choice of a bullet in
the hand or the foot. After they shoot him in the foot, he is ordered to
walk--but not limp--away from them. They giggle hysterically as if they
had given somebody a hot-foot.
There is zero interest in explaining the broader social and economic
context for the gangster phenomenon. Although it is obvious that crime
is a function of poverty, Meirelles shows scant interest in the military
dictatorship which had crushed all hopes for economic improvement. Nor
does he seem interested in showing how a slum like City of God might
have emerged as a function of what Marxists call primitive
accumulation. When peasants are driven off their land and forced into
rural slums lacking all amenities and economic opportunity, no wonder
their sons and daughters turn to drugs and crime.
In an interview with the online magazine Trópico, the director explained
why he chose not to provide such a background:
Q: What were the major changes you made in adapting the book? [a
reference to the nonfiction book the film was based on]
A: In the film, it's Buscapé ('Rocket' in the American subtitles) who
tells the story, a kid who narrates how the outlaws came to be in the
City of God, how they got starting dealing and wound up taking over the
place. I was criticized for not showing the reason for all the violence,
or the external factors affecting this story. But the fact is that the
premise of my film is the viewpoint of the kid who narrates it.
If I wanted to present a sociological vision or explain the external
factors of all that, this wouldn't be the same film. Not to mention the
fact that it would make the film a dime a dozen. Everybody knows what
the middle-class perspective on the subject is. Do we need a film to
tell us that income distribution in Brazil is a disgrace?
I don't know. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I'd walk a mile for a
sociological vision in a story such as this.
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
F911 fizzle?
http://www.latimes.com/la-et-horn23jul23,1,1478123.story http://www.latimes.com/la-et-horn23jul23,1,1478123.story THE [Los Angeles] TIMES POLL Public Keeping Its Cool Over Election Effect of 'Fahrenheit' By John Horn Times Staff Writer July 23, 2004 Despite its continuing success with the box-office electorate, Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's sharply satirical attack on President Bush and his administration, appears to be wielding less influence among potential voters than the filmmaker and his supporters might have hoped, a Los Angeles Times Poll has found. The survey found that Fahrenheit is drawing an overwhelmingly Democratic audience, and of the Republicans who have ventured to see it, few appear to be swayed. One of those polled, 27- year-old Thomas Winney, a Republican construction worker who saw the movie in Washington, Mo., said it had no effect on how he views the election. It didn't change my mind at all, Winney said, noting that he was and remains a Bush supporter. Kerry says one thing one time, and another thing the next time. Of the 1,529 registered voters surveyed in the poll, conducted nationwide July 17-21, 9% had seen Moore's film, which has taken in more than $97 million since it opened last month and established itself as the highest-grossing feature-length documentary ever. Of those who have seen the movie, 78% identified themselves as Democrats, 9% as independents and 6% as Republicans. Predictably, the vast majority of those who had seen the film - 92% - said they were planning to vote for Sen. John F. Kerry and Sen. John Edwards for president. Only 3% planned to vote for Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Seventy-nine percent of those who had seen Fahrenheit said the film would not change their November votes; 18% said it made them more likely to vote against Bush; and 3% said it bolstered their resolve to vote for him. Because the Fahrenheit questions were asked only of registered voters, it was not possible to determine whether the film was prompting people to sign up to vote for the first time. Moore closes the film with the message Do something. At a celebrity-studded Beverly Hills screening of the film last month, he said: I hope this country will be back in our hands in a very short period of time. He could not be reached for comment by press time Thursday. Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, said he was not surprised that the film was appealing to a narrow political segment and added that it didn't necessarily need to win over GOP voters in order to have an effect on the election. The important role [movies like this] play is that they are energizers for political points of view, Kohut said. Rush Limbaugh is important not because he converts people - he can't convert anyone. But he gets people riled up. Catherine Krause, a 20-year-old student in Houston, is among the choir to whom Moore is preaching. Even though she identified herself as a Republican, Krause said she went into Fahrenheit intending to vote against Bush - and came out with the same opinion. I'm not a fan of the president, Krause, one of the Times Poll respondents, said in an interview Thursday. If Michael Moore had done the film more truthfully, I would have been more impressed with it. But I agree with the main premise. Overall, the Times Poll found that audience members had mixed feelings about the accuracy of Moore's brand of documentary filmmaking. Nine percent found it somewhat or completely inaccurate. But despite attacks from conservative critics, most others granted it at least some credibility, with 31% calling it completely accurate and 58% calling it somewhat accurate. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. ... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Nicaragua 25 years later
I am actually working on an article for Phil Ferguson's magazine that will expore this topic in some depth, but I would be remiss if I didn't comment on ISO leader Lee Sustar's article that appears in today's Counterpunch at: http://www.counterpunch.org/sustar07232004.html While giving the FSLN a generally good report card, Lee gives them a failing grade on the class struggle, a prerequisite for advancing to the graduate school of socialism. He writes: While the U.S. and its contra butchers are to blame for the destruction of the Nicaraguan economy, the contradiction at the heart of the FSLNs politics was instrumental in its downfall. FSLN leaders couldnt escape the centrality of class divisions in the revolutionary alliance--the fact that workers and nationalist employers had contradictory interests. The conditions of workers had deteriorated throughout the 1980s as runaway inflation wiped out wage gains. Workers participated in Sandinista unions and mass organizations--but they didnt hold political power, and their right to strike was suspended for a year as early as 1981. This allowed the opportunistic Nicaraguan Socialist Party--a longtime rival of the FSLN--to give a left-wing cover to Chamorros coalition, which in turn functioned as the respectable face of the contras. Just a couple of comments. First of all, you would get the impression from Sustar that the revolutionary alliance was some kind of popular front. In reality, the Sandinista government was anything but a cross-class alliance. Political decisions were made by the directorate, which had no connection to the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie. Furthermore, it is doubtful that an all-out assault on the big, privately owned farms in Nicaragua would have strengthened the revolution in any measurable fashion. These farms were mainly involved in agroexport, which was a source of desperately needed foreign currency. A radical land reform might have yielded an immediate improvement for some peasants, but the nation as a whole would have suffered from an inability to purchase imported manufactured goods. After all, it was sugar and beef that could be marketed internationally, not beans and corn. If these big farms had been seized by the state, the owners and the managers would have simply disappeared to Miami. Speaking as somebody who helped to place skilled agronomists and engineers in Nicaragua, I can assure you that Nicaragua could have ill-afforded such a disruption to an already chaotic economic. Of course, on paper there is always a radical solution to everything. With respect to the statement that workers...didnt hold political power and their right to strike was suspended for a year as early as 1981, this is just a boilerplate sectarian critique that could be raised against the Soviet Union in the 1920s, as well. For such an anti-working class government, it is odd that the Reagan administration broke laws and risked a constitutional crisis to overthrow it. Generally speaking, they have a much better grasp of class relations than those who have never held power in the name of the class they claim to represent. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: HDI 2004\3rd World
--- Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I imagine Chris Doss finds that his difficulties explaining Putin to others on this list relates to this point - no? And, of course, all of us are caught in terrible conflicting priorities when it comes to events in the Middle East. Paul --- I think that, in the case of Russia, you really have (at least) three elites, the interests are largely in conflict: 1. The so-called oligarchs, who made their fortunes on crooked deals with the government in the Yeltsin era and still dominate the megabusinesses. Even though the word is losing some of the meeting it had when it was originally coined, back when there were only seven oligarchs. There are about 40 billionaires in Russia today. The oligarchs tend to be very pro-Western, since they have no support base at home (there are exceptions to this -- Abramovich is allegedly close to the Kremlin). 2. Post-oligarchic big business, which entered the game after the oligarchs did, is jealous of their wealth and sees the oligarchs' control of the economy as a barrier to their own sucess. 3. The state apparatus, which lives off the two above elites (rent-seeking) and seeks to direct them to its own ends -- strengthening the state's control of the economy and extending its role at home and abroad. They view the oligarchs as simultaneously a threat to their own power, a danger to the power of the country with which they identify, and a real and potential source of enormous rents. Currently, I think you have, roughly speaking, an alliance of groups 2 and 3 against 1. There are numerous indications that the state is going to either renationalize oligarchic capital (read: re-Sovietize the commanding heights of the economy) or divvy that capital up to loyal members of group 2, or some combination of the two. That is what the Yukos affair is all about, IMO, and we will see which strategy teh Kremlin is taking very very soon, as the process is reaching its denouement. This is all complicated further because capitalism is still something of a novelty, and the worldviews of the players involved were all formed in the Soviet era. As near as I can tell, Putin considers the market economy as something that should serve the state -- capital is a handmaiden of the state, not vice versa. Business exists in order to fill the federal treasury. This is a very non-Western view, and I think it has a lot to do with Putin being in his late 30s when the USSR collapsed. Putin is not a product of a capitalist society. As far as I can tell, Putin sees himself as having been called to save his country, and he is doing it exactly the way you would expect a patriotic KGB-man to. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Re: HDI 2004\3rd World
Chris D. writes:... Putin considers the market economy as something that should serve the state -- capital is a handmaiden of the state, not vice versa. Business exists in order to fill the federal treasury. This is a very non-Western view, ... this was a Western view under Mercantilism. And it worked for South Korea, didn't it? jim devine
Re: HDI 2004\3rd World
--- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: this was a Western view under Mercantilism. And it worked for South Korea, didn't it? jim devine --- I think there is still a possibility that Russia will move in a South Korean chaebol-like direction. That seems to have been the original strategy adopted by the Kremlin back in 2000, to transform the oligarchic concerns into state-oriented ones. Events seem to have moved in a different direction since then, though. Maybe the Kremlin has more strength than it expected to have, or (some of) the oligarchs refused to play the game. __ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo
Re: Human Development Index 2004
Also worth noting (although to be honest I'm not anything like informed enough to be a booster or otherwise of the Cuban economy) that unlike Jamaica and Dom. Rep., Cuba's economy is not a material exporter of cannabis or cocaine, although it is perfectly well set up to be. This has to be considered something of an undeserved present from the Cuban economy to the USA. dd -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Louis Proyect Sent: 23 July 2004 15:12 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Human Development Index 2004 Cuba needs to be compared with other nations that have a similar history and resource endowment, like Jamaica or the Dominican Republic. Cuba ranks 52, while Jamaica is at 79 and The Dominican Republic ranks 98th. Imagine if Jamaica and The Dominican Republic were subjected to unremitting economic warfare and had lost their major economic benefactor, then you can see how impressive Cuba's gains are. I am quite sure that if the USSR had wound up with a leadership more in line with the Cuban CP, world history would have taken an entirely different path.
Forwarded from Patrick Bond
Hello from Johannesburg, Should capitalists who profited handsomely from South Africa's racist/sexist apartheid system pay back the victims? Should we, in the process, teach big corporations that they will pay a price for supporting undemocratic, oppressive regimes? A very important case is being heard in the (ordinarily quite hopeless) US courts, for which friends of the court are sought by South Africans trying to establish an international precedent. The targets are corporations and banks that profited from apartheid; the plaintiffs include Jubilee South Africa and the Khulumani apartheid-victims' support group. These are excellent social movements which deserve our respect and solidarity. After a June 29 US Supreme Court ruling, the plaintiffs' lawyers are optimistic. Please read the information below; if you have queries I can help with, please write ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), but the real experts -- activists and lawyers who are working on an urgent basis -- are also reached via email and phone/fax contact information at the end of this note. Please do sign on, and *pass this on to your listserves* too, and if all goes well, we'll be making a bit of anti-corporate history. Cheers, Patrick (Patrick Bond, Professor, Graduate School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand) - Original Message - Apartheid Debt and Reparations Campaign 12th Floor East Wing, Auckland House, 185 Smit Street. P.O. Box 31082, Braamfontein 2017, South Africa Tel. +27 11 403 7624/22 Fax. + 27 11 339 4560 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] 13th July 2004 To: Partners, solidarity organisations and supportive individuals: Re: Support for the Khulumani lawsuit / Sign on to an Amicus Curiae brief The Apartheid Debt and Reparations task team of Jubilee South Africa, would like to ask for your consideration in joining us in an unprecedented opportunity to advance the cause of human rights worldwide by signing on to an amicus curiae brief in support of the Khulumani lawsuit in the United States. Recently, a number of multinational corporations, supported by the American and British governments, requested the United States Supreme Court not to allow foreigners to file lawsuits in America for human rights violations committed elsewhere in the world. They used the case of Sosa v Alverez to suggest to the United States Supreme Court that the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) or the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) as it is generally referred to, cannot and should not be used for the purpose of human rights abuse. At present, a number of such cases brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), of which the Khulumani lawsuit is one, are pending before various courts in the United States for human rights abuses committed by multinational corporations in various parts of the world such as Burma, Nigeria, Indonesia and South Africa. 1. Victory for human rights globally However, on 29 June 2004 the United States Supreme Court in the case of Sosa v Alverez held that foreigners could use the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) to institute lawsuits in the United States for human rights abuses wherever they may be committed in the world. The Court held that today the door is open to a narrow class of international norms for litigants to institute lawsuits under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). The Court observed that it would take some explaining to say now that federal courts must avert their gaze entirely from any international norm intended to protect individuals. The Supreme Court held that Section 1350 was enacted on the congressional understanding that courts would exercise jurisdiction by entertaining some common law claims derived from the law of nations and there is every reason to suppose that the First Congress did not pass the ATS as a jurisdictional convenience to be placed on the shelf for use by a future Congress or state legislature that might, some day, authorize the creation of causes of action or itself decide to make some element of the law of nations actionable. . . the reasonable inference from the historical materials is that the statute was intended to have a practical effect the moment it became law. The court further held that courts should require any claim based on the present-day law of nations to rest on a norm of international character defined with specificity and that claims must be gauged against the current state of international law, looking to those sources we have long, albeit cautiously, recognized. This has been a great setback for the US and British governments as well some of the world's biggest multinationals. The decision comes at a time when the US Supreme Court also held that detainees at Guantanamo Bay are entitled to challenge the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities. A further advance for international human rights was the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague on Thursday, 9 July 2004 when it
quick question
What is a good source for the share of HMO dollars that goes to care rather than profits or overhead? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/23/04 3:29 AM I don't think that it was worth leftists' time to fight to have Howard Dean nominated, as Dean's agenda in some crucial respects (especially on Iraq) went against leftists', but, supposing that there were left-of-center liberal folks who really, really, wanted to nominate him as the Democratic presidential candidate, it's now clear that it takes much more than internet communication to win in the caucuses and primaries. Besides, the MoveOn model is strictly one-way communication from the center to the margins (unlike the Dean model), far more centralized and undemocratic than any other organization on the left side of the political spectrum. And there is a reason why reforms and mobilizations did not last beyond Washington's death. The US-style electoral system strongly acts against party-building, but it's better to have a political party like the Green Party than a Washington-style campaign, which is doomed to remain in one location and destined to die with the person with whom mobilization is inseparably associated. -- Yoshie agree re. leftists trying to get dean nominated which has nothing to do with suggestion i made several days ago, agree also re. moveon although democratic character of lots of groups generally is debatable... as for what happened in chicago following washington's death, there's not *a* reason why things turned, there's bunch of them incuding: racism, daley machine, Washington's death re-opened bitter struggle among various political factions and activists, movement (which is what was happening rather than personal-style campaign) might not have succeeded anyway given competitive character of 'global city' that literally responds to dictates of global capital markets *and/or* dominance of urban 'growth machine'... i previously indicated that example was partial and pointed out as well that washington role was problem for long run (in short run, he helped hold some things and folks together), attempt should be judged on basis of what it was able to accomplish in brief time under very trying circumstances and for its potential (among other things, independent political party was being organized)... responses to my initial post conveyed, by and large, varying degrees of maximalism, making quantitative leap from my modest suggestion all the way to presidential electoral politics (by such measures *all attempts will fail), pervasive problem imo... think i'll leave it at that, michael hoover (checking in for last time from ann arbor where i ran into al haber - an sds founder - the other day, he's trying to rekindle sds as 'students' for dem society on one hand, seniors for dem society on other) -- 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.
Query: Ford/General Motors
what is progressive economist take on ford and general motors releasng info the other day indicating that each only made profits from credit/lending operations... 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.
Alexander Cockburn: Democrats Richly Deserve Nader
LA Times, July 22, 2004 COMMENTARY Democrats Richly Deserve Nader By Alexander Cockburn Always partial to monopolies, the Democrats think they should hold the exclusive concession on any electoral challenge to George W. Bush and the Republicans. The Ralph Nader campaign prompts them to hysterical tirades. Republicans are more relaxed about such things. Ross Perot and his Reform Party actually cost George H.W. Bush his reelection in 1992, yet Perot never drew a tenth of the abuse that Nader does now. Of course, the Democrats richly deserve the challenge. Through the Clinton years the Democratic Party remained united in fealty to corporate corruption and class viciousness, so inevitably and appropriately the Nader-centered independent challenge was born, modestly in 1996, strongly in 2000 and now in 2004. The rationale for his challenges has been as sound as that of Henry Wallace was half a century earlier. I quote from The Third Party, a pamphlet by Adam Lapin published in 1948 in support of Wallace and his Progressive Party. The Democratic administration carries the ball for Wall Street's foreign policy. And the Republican Party carries the ball for Wall Street's domestic policy. Of course the roles are sometimes interchangeable. It was President Truman who broke the 1946 railroad strike, asked for legislation to conscript strikers and initiated the heavy fines against the miners' union. There you have it: The laws including the Taft-Hartley Act, supported by 106 Democrats in the House that led to the destruction of organized labor were passed by bipartisan vote, something you will never learn from the AFL-CIO or from a thousand hoarse throats at Democratic rallies when the candidate is whoring for the labor vote. During President Clinton's years in office, union membership as a percentage of the workforce dropped because he did nothing to try to change laws or to intervene in disputes. Clinton presided over passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, insulting labor further with the farce of side agreements on labor rights that would never be enforced. By 1996 nearly half of all private employers were running aggressive anti-union drives, with familiar threats to relocate; less than 20% of private-sector workers trying to win a union contract got one. And what does John Kerry propose to help workers? Raising the minimum wage to $7 an hour by 2007, which would bring a full-time worker up to two-thirds of the poverty level. Let us suppose that a Democratic candidate arrives in the White House, at least rhetorically committed to reform, as happened with Jimmy Carter in 1977 and Clinton in 1993. Both had Democratic majorities in Congress. Battered from their first weeks over unorthodox nominees and for any deviation from Wall Street's agenda in their first budgets, both had effectively lost any innovative purchase on the system by the end of their first six months, and there was no pressure from the left to hold them to their pledges. By the end of April 1993, Clinton had sold out the Haitian refugees, put Israel's lobbyists in charge of Mideast policy, bolstered the arms industry with a budget in which projected spending for 1993-94 was higher in constant dollars than average spending in the Cold War, put Wall Street in charge of national economic strategy, sold out on grazing and mineral rights on public lands and plunged into the managed care disaster. One useful way of estimating how little separates the parties, and particularly their presidential nominees, is to tote up some of the issues on which there is tacit agreement, either as a matter of principle or with an expedient nod and wink that these are not matters suitable to be discussed in any public forum: the role of the Federal Reserve; trade policy; economic redistribution; the role and budget of the CIA and other intelligence agencies; nuclear disarmament; allocation of military procurement; reduction of the military budget; the roles and policies of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and kindred multilateral agencies; the war on drugs; corporate welfare; energy policy; the destruction of small farmers and ranchers; Israel. In the face of this conspiracy of silence, the more independent challenges the better. Nader is doing his duty. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
India: Human Development Report 2001
The Planning Commission Government of India National Human Development Report 2001 http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/reportsf.htm Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Who's Getting the New Jobs?
NY Times, July 23, 2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST Who's Getting the New Jobs? By BOB HERBERT A startling new study shows that all of the growth in the employed population in the United States over the past few years can be attributed to recently arrived immigrants. The study found that from the beginning of 2001 through the first four months of 2004, the number of new immigrants who found work in the U.S. was 2.06 million, while the number of native-born and longer-term immigrant workers declined by more than 1.3 million. The study, from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, is further confirmation that despite the recovery from the recession of 2001, American families are still struggling with serious issues of joblessness and underemployment. The study does not mean that native-born workers and long-term immigrants are not finding jobs. The American workplace is a vast, dynamic, highly competitive arena, with endless ebbs and flows of employment. But as the study tallied the gains and losses since the end of 2000, it found that new immigrants acquired as many jobs as the other two groups lost, and then some. Andrew Sum, the director of the center and lead author of the study, said he hoped his findings would spark a long-needed analysis of employment and immigration policies in the U.S. But he warned against using the statistics for immigrant-bashing. We need a serious, honest debate about where we are today with regard to labor markets, said Professor Sum, whose work has frequently cited the important contributions immigrants have made. The starkness of the study's findings, he said, is an indication that right now there is something wrong. The study found that the new immigrants entering the labor force were mostly male and quite young, with more than one-fourth under the age of 25, and 70 percent under 35. Hispanics formed the dominant group of new immigrants, the study said, with migrants from Mexico and Central America playing key roles. Slightly under 56 percent of the new immigrant workers were Hispanic, nearly another one-fifth were Asian, 18 percent were white, not-Hispanic, and 5 percent were black. Those most affected by the influx of new immigrant workers are young, less well-educated American workers and so-called established immigrants, those who have been in the U.S. for a number of years. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/23/opinion/23herb.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Query: Ford/General Motors
I think that this is very important. For me it signifies that the center of gravity of the economy is shifting in the direction of finance capital, except that I would include intellectual property as part of the nonmaterial properties that represent the core of finance capital. Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Hoover Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 10:33 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] Query: Ford/General Motors what is progressive economist take on ford and general motors releasng info the other day indicating that each only made profits from credit/lending operations... 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: Query: Ford/General Motors
accounting for the profits of lending is the second blackest of the black arts (accounting for the profits of life assurers is the blackest). There are often very substantial gaps indeed between even the best accruals accounts and cash. If the debt ends up not being repaid, this earnings stream can be very volatile indeed, particularly if the collateral is a motor vehicle. watch yer eye would be my view, although the epithets progressive and economist apply to me only marginally at best. General Motors is something like the third biggest lender in the UK's buy to let (speculative housing investment) sector - nobody knows why. dd -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Michael Hoover Sent: 23 July 2004 18:33 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Query: Ford/General Motors what is progressive economist take on ford and general motors releasng info the other day indicating that each only made profits from credit/lending operations... 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.
Suicides, Military and Economic
Suicides, Military and Economic (rising suicide rates of Israeli soldiers, Japanese workers, and Indian farmers): http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/suicides-military-and-economic.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/
Query: Ford/General Motors
what is progressive economist take on ford and general motors releasng info the other day indicating that each only made profits from credit/lending operations... michael hoover ^ You must be reading Detroit newspapers in Ann Arbor, Michael. Charles
Re: Query: Ford/General Motors
Wall Street analysts said they'd like to see GM -- as well as Ford -- make more money from selling cars and trucks. Ford is even more dependent than GM on its credit business, getting about 77 percent of its profits from there. "I think at both GM and Ford the reliance is a general concern. If you buy the stock of these companies, it's like you are buying a finance company that comes with an auto piece attached," said Daman Blakeney, an equity analyst for Victory Capital Management, which manages about $50 billion for investors. "They are supposed to be selling cars and making money at that." Worldwide, GM's profits on the sale of new cars and trucks rose to $529 million, up from $140 million a year ago. In North America, GM earned $328 million, up from $83 million a year ago. GM sales for the quarter grew 7 percent to $49.1 billion, up from $48.3 billion a year ago, largely because it sold more vehicles in Latin America and the Asian Pacific. GM continued to struggle in Europe, which has been a sore spot for years. GM had quarterly losses of $45 million, compared with a loss of $3 million a year ago. Devine said sales improved in Europe but GM's costs were too high, a signal GM may be preparing for more cuts on the continent. FULL: http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/gm22_20040722.htm
Spam I got
Subj: Bush large shareholder - New USA Oil Find USA SMALL CAP REVIEW DMT Energy, Inc. (DMTY) RECORD SETTING HIGH PREDICTED THIS WEEK!! Current Price @ Close July 22 $0.55 7-Day Price Target $1.70 30-Day Price Target $2.30 12-Month Target $3.75 Shares Outs 25.0 M Float 3.8 M We hear News expected about a large find due out Monday The outlook for North American oil and gas exploration is extremely positive from an investment perspective, with increasing US energy demands projected over the near and long term sustaining major gains for oil and gas producers. The recent California energy crisis, the looming United States energy crunch (the most serious domestic energy situation since the 1970's), and the increasingly unstable international environment for oil and natural gas exploration and production, have placed a renewed emphasis on domestic energy exploration. While crude oil and natural gas prices on the spot market are likely to come off of their current highs, the immediate term price outlook remains favorable, and long term price projections forecast significant increases. Even as government and academia invest billions in the search for alternative sources of energy, the demand for natural gas and oil continues to grow and is expected to expand exponentially over the next twenty years. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) the US demand for refined petroleum products will grow by over 35 percent in the next two decades, increasing from 18.0 million barrels per day in 1996 to over 24.6 million barrels per day by 2020, a 35% increase. The growth of domestic demand for natural gas, driven by expanding natural gas-fired electric generation plants, will be even more pronounced skyrocketing from current levels of roughly 23 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) to 32-37 Tcf by 2020. As the recent energy crisis in California has demonstrated, the US natural gas and energy supply will prove increasingly tenuous without additional and vigorous exploration and production efforts are undertaken. At the same time, the international situations in Iraq and Venezuela have show the vulnerability of US petroleum stocks and highlighted the urgent need for increased domestic production. The recent National Energy Policy of President Bush and Vice President Cheney has called for dramatically increased production of domestic oil and natural gas resources to meet this expanding domestic energy demand. For the petroleum industry, this renewed impetus on domestic exploration and production has led to several new developments that improve the likelihood of exploration success and the location of new reserves. Many of the technologies associated with oil and gas exploration have been significantly enhanced over the last several years, and the refinement of techniques such as three dimensional seismic imaging have made oil exploration far more efficient, increasing the accuracy of modeling and decreasing the chances of missing oil. The second way that oil exploration is becoming more efficient is the increased practice of reexamining properties that were no longer thought to be profitable. Many properties through the 1970's were extracted only using primary production techniques and then prematurely abandoned when production became more expensive and problematic, leaving significant quantities of oil and natural gas. It has been estimated that many of these early producing fields can contain as much as 50-60% of recoverable production. Smaller oil exploration and production companies, such as Newfield Exploration Oil (NYSE: NFX) and Houston Exploration Company (NYSE: THX) have enjoyed huge successes through employing strategies that focus on reworking overlooked and bypassed production properties. With a diversified portfolio of balanced oil gas properties, an exploration and production strategy that emphasized the importance of developing and exploiting overlooked and bypassed reserves with new technologies and innovative approaches, and a seasoned management team and advisory board with over 150 years of collective petroleum industry experience, DMT Energy, Inc. is well positioned to benefit from new oil and gas production initiatives. DMT Energy has developed an impressive portfolio of oil and gas properties in Alberta and British Columbia, and Northern Canada that have B potential for successful production over the near-to-intermediate term period with limited capital investment. The Company is capitalizing on both of the major trends in domestic oil and gas EP efforts, carefully selecting and screening properties for maximum potential of overlooked and bypassed production opportunities in oil producing area, and utilizing 3-D seismic and other advanced exploration techniques, including proprietary reservoir modeling techniques developed by EVP Don Hryhor, to mitigate risks. The Company is within months of beginning production efforts on its Acadia and Wainwright properties, where B oil gas
Re: Query: Ford/General Motors
Charles Brown wrote: what is progressive economist take on ford and general motors releasng info the other day indicating that each only made profits from credit/lending operations... michael hoover ^ You must be reading Detroit newspapers in Ann Arbor, Michael. It made the Chicago papers too; I can't remember now, but I think there was a brief story on it in the Bloomington Pantagraph. GM Ford are big news reverberate outside the City of Eddie Guest. :-) Carrol
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Hoover wrote: responses to my initial post conveyed, by and large, varying degrees of maximalism, making quantitative leap from my modest suggestion all the way to presidential electoral politics (by such measures *all attempts will fail), pervasive problem imo... The questions of what we can do to improve local governance and what we can do to change national politics shouldn't be put in terms of minimalist vs. maximalist programs, I believe, because it is not the case that you can make even minimal changes in foreign policy by taking the city halls. Even if the Green Party were to succeed in electing Green mayors in all cities in the United States, for instance, an impact of such a dramatic change in local politics on US foreign policy won't be even minimalist -- it will be practically zero. The thing is that it is possible for us to make a lot more changes for better at the local level either by building the Green Party, or taking over local Democratic parties, or pursuing some other measures (we have viable tactics and successful models of various sorts here, lacking only in enough activists willing to put in time and energy), and we should be doing what we can, but taking on national politics is qualitatively (rather than quantitatively) different from working on local politics, and here we can use some innovative ideas. Yoshie
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Even if the Green Party were to succeed in electing Green mayors in all cities in the United States, for instance, an impact of such a dramatic change in local politics on US foreign policy won't be even minimalist -- it will be practically zero. Not necessarily. One can't judge that _If_ as though in a laboratory where one element changes while all other elements remain constant. The conditions under which the GP could elect mayors in several hundred substantial (150k+ population) cities around the u.s. would be conditions which could not occur without profound reverberations elsewhere from the activities which brought about the electoral victories. You and I have both complained about those comments on revolution which presuppose that revolutionary action would occur with all other conditions (as now experienced) remaining constant. (E.g. someone once asked the silly question of how we could ask the working class to risk everything for overthrow of capitalism, when of course we would never ask that but conditions, now unpredictable and undescribable -- perhaps of rising expectations, perhaps of utter chaos, perhaps of something we cannot describe now--would do the asking.) I tend to agree that the local politics route to national power is illusional, but in considering it we can't consider it in a vacuum. The mass assault on u.s. foreign policy which is needed can't demonstrate in D.C. every week (this is a caricature but take it as a gesture towards a more complex reality), and the energies recruited and ultimately aimed towards national impact could well be (partly) nourished and enhanced through local political initiatives, including perhaps the election of mayors or (perhaps though I doubt it) even through contesting for power in local DP organizations. Carrol
Query: Ford/General Motors
It made the Chicago papers too; I can't remember now, but I think there was a brief story on it in the Bloomington Pantagraph. GM Ford are big news reverberate outside the City of Eddie Guest. :-) Carrol ^ CB: Well GM is only about the third largest company in the world now. I wonder if what's good for General Motors is still good for America. Way back in the thirties it was Alfred P. Sloan ( I think) who said GM is in the business of making money ,not cars. Nice slogan for the merger of industrial and finance capital as Finance Capital. Alfred P. Sloan - encyclopedia article about Alfred P. Sloan. Free ...encyclopedia article about Alfred P. Sloan. Alfred P. Sloan explanation. ... Alfred P. Sloan. Word: Word. ... encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Alfred%20P.%20Sloan - Alfred P. Sloan. 1875-1966. ... Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Too often we fail to recognize. and pay tribute to the. creative spirit.. -Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. ... www.virtualology.com/virtualpubliclibrary/ halloffounders/automotivefounders/ALFREDPSLOAN.COM/ - 22k - Cached - Similar pages Alfred P. Sloan, Late Chairman of General Motors Corporation... The reason is that I have a famous relative, or at least my father and grandfather believed that he was our relative, namely Alfred P. Sloan. ... www.ishipress.com/al-sloan.htm - 7k - Cached - Similar pages Alfred P. Sloan Museum in Flint, MI - Details | MuseumStuff.comAlfred P. Sloan Museum details page from MuseumStuff.com, the web's leading guide to 1000's of museums worldwide. ... Alfred P. Sloan Museum. ... www.museumstuff.com/rec/org_20020201_10164.html - 7k - Cached - Similar pages ^^ High anxiety for U.S. automakers Big summer sales needed; suppliers, analysts fret July 23, 2004 BY JEFFREY MCCRACKEN FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER About 60 degrees and six months ago, during the Detroit auto show, there was a feeling of hope and optimism that an improving economy and slew of new and redesigned vehicles -- Chevrolet Corvette, Ford minivan, Chrysler 300 sedan -- would combine to increase Detroit automakers' sales while slowing down the rebates and incentives that wreak havoc on profits. Now, just past the year's halfway point, as second-quarter financial results pour out from General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and the area's largest auto suppliers, a new feeling is in the air: uncertainty. Or nervousness. Or concern. Whatever word is used to capture it, there is a definite sense that the second half of the year needs to go better than the first for Detroit's auto industry. Already, some are warning it won't. A number of Detroit's largest auto-parts makers -- such as Delphi Corp. and Visteon Corp. -- have told Wall Street they won't make as much as predicted in the third quarter or have given less-than-rosy projections for the rest of 2004. GM, too, gave the investors and analysts that cover them a cautious view of the year. I think the real fear among these auto executives is that they only can get better auto sales with huge incentives. The automakers, like GM, misplaced their bets that better employment and a better economy would eliminate the need for these rebates and low-interest deals, and that hasn't been the case, said Diane Swonk, chief economist for Bank One Corp. There is concern that if July and August aren't blockbuster sales months for Detroit's three automakers -- especially GM -- they will have to slam on the brakes of vehicle production, which would cause a ripple effect across the industry and might push small suppliers into bankruptcy. The big fear: GM will need to idle some plants in the fourth quarter, and other automakers will follow suit. Already, GM's and Ford's plans for how many cars and trucks they will build from July through September are lower than they were last year by about 76,000 vehicles. Ford's third-quarter production plan calls for it to build 755,000 cars and trucks, the lowest third-quarter number in the automaker's history. GM's third-quarter production of 1.2 million vehicles is the lowest it has been since the 1990s and down about 4 percent from a year ago. GM and Ford will announce their production plans for the rest of the year Sept. 1, making that an important day in the immediate future of many Detroit suppliers. There are quite a few suppliers around town that are watching to see what happens because they are so dependent on GM and the domestics. If GM decides to pull back a lot, that will send a message to the whole industry and have some scary ripples for some local suppliers, said Jeff Schuster, executive director of vehicle forecasting at J.D. Power and Associates, the market analysis firm. Really, what Detroit needs is just a big, big sales month in July and August from the traditional Big Three. Schuster's firm recently lowered its production expectation for the rest of the year by about 100,000 cars and trucks. Schuster called that just a minor tweak. But noted it would have been lower, except
Re: FW: Blackfoot Constitution
Please, Jim no attachments. Not a Bhuddist comment. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Query: Ford/General Motors
I don't recall the exact details, but a few years ago when Rupert Murdoch was looking to expand his satellite business the Wall Street Journal said that he was mulling over the possibility of buying General Motors, because its satellite division was worth more on the market than the company as a whole. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: FW: Blackfoot Constitution
Please, Jim no attachments. Not a Bhuddist comment. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Sorry about that Michael. I forgot...Old age and some powerfu meds at work I fear. Jim
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Carrol wrote: even through contesting for power in local DP organizations. At the local level, what a Green politician does and what a really good left-wing Democratic politician does may not be so different anyway. (Real irreconcilable political differences make their appearance at the level above state representatives and senators, I think.) The reason I don't push for working through local Democratic parties is that the Green Party has already shown that it can elect its own candidates for local offices, so why bother trying the second best now? Even if the Green Party were to succeed in electing Green mayors in all cities in the United States, for instance, an impact of such a dramatic change in local politics on US foreign policy won't be even minimalist -- it will be practically zero. Not necessarily. One can't judge that _If_ as though in a laboratory where one element changes while all other elements remain constant. The conditions under which the GP could elect mayors in several hundred substantial (150k+ population) cities around the u.s. would be conditions which could not occur without profound reverberations elsewhere from the activities which brought about the electoral victories. You and I have both complained about those comments on revolution which presuppose that revolutionary action would occur with all other conditions (as now experienced) remaining constant. (E.g. someone once asked the silly question of how we could ask the working class to risk everything for overthrow of capitalism, when of course we would never ask that but conditions, now unpredictable and undescribable -- perhaps of rising expectations, perhaps of utter chaos, perhaps of something we cannot describe now--would do the asking.) I tend to agree that the local politics route to national power is illusional, but in considering it we can't consider it in a vacuum. That's a good point. But, all the arguments in favor of concentrating on local politics that are advanced now here and elsewhere, I think, come with a subtext: you, leftists, had better work on only local issues like zoning -- leave big national and international issues like war and peace to the Democratic Party, because you can't win presidency immediately anyway. To the contrary, war years are especially important years when leftists need to make interventions in national politics, including mounting electoral challenges through presidential elections. The question is how exactly to do that effectively, knowing that our candidate won't become the next POTUS. Yoshie
Re: Query: Ford/General Motors
In a message dated 7/23/2004 4:04:00 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: CB: Well GM is only about the third largest company in the world now. I wonder if what's good for General Motors is still good for America. Way back in the thirties it was Alfred P. Sloan ( I think) who said GM is in the business of making money, not cars. Nice slogan for the merger of industrial and finance capital as Finance Capital. Comment Would one call General Motors and Ford Motors primary sources of profitability - outside of purely vehicle financing . . . mortgages for instance (DITECH) . . . a tendency towards the domination . . . if not outright domination . . . of speculative capital? This is meant in the sense that no one speaks of an industrial capital today that is dominated by banks . . . but rather something that is different. General Motors owned the Hughes communications outfit (counterpart and competitor of DIRECTV). All the large automakers have these massive high tech communications networks to tie their organizations together. For instance DaimlerChrysler has it own television network that runs continuous news in its plants as well as its financial arm . . . Chrysler Financial. These communications system are league beyond video conferences and match modern news agencies like CNN. About a year or so ago on Marxmail we had a discussion about "profitless prosperity." "Profitless prosperity"was the exact term used by the financial analyst of Ford Motor Company in a worldwide broadcast on the state of the auto industry and its market shares and projections for the future back in December 2002. It was in fact about a year ago that a discussion took place where Sartesian pointed out the 40% drop in labor input per vehicle since 1973 . . . yet the competition in auto is a dogfight . . . always requiring a massive outlay of capital to intensify the production process (organic composition), maintain the production and administrative infrastructure as well as other cost associated with labor. Profitless prosperity on the basis of vehicle production speaks of the incredible pull of value in the direction of zero and not away from zero. These companies possess incredible and magnificent industrial and communications infrastructures tied together an increasingly interactive world. Wait until the vehicles from China hit the market and go after first the Korea makers and then everyone else. The vehicles are already produced and waiting approval for market entry. For my money I cannot understand the economic incentive for the large automakers to NOT advocate for a nationwide health plan paid by the government. Chrysler has a 1 employed for two retired workers cost structure . . . and just cut some of our health benefits . . . for retired workers and GM slashed the medical benefits for its retired executive workers (nonunion) almost a decade ago and won it case in court about 3 . . . maybe four years ago. Jergen Schemp announced back in 2001 that perhaps upwards of 200,000 workers would be cut from the world automotive industry. Then again it was rumored that a section of the management of Chrysler Motors wanted to drop the car division altogether and concentrate on trucks. Strange. General Motors put on the back burner for a moment its new production facility design of modular produced vehicles . .. where the modules are shipped to a central point for assembly. By the early 1970 General Motors already had the blueprints for a 90 - 95% automated engine assembly plant . . . and I remember their statement that such a plant would destroy the labor market and their consumer base. Even without utilizing the advance technology available per unit labor input has still dropped at least 40% in 30 years. What next . . . trying to make money at big stakes crap tables? Melvin P.
Re: Query: Ford/General Motors
General Motors put on the back burner for a moment its new production facility design of modular produced vehicles . .. where the modules are shipped to a central point for assembly. By the early 1970 General Motors already had the blueprints for a 90 - 95% automated engine assembly plant . . . and I remember their statement that such a plant would destroy the labor market and their consumer base. Even without utilizing the advance technology available per unit labor input has still dropped at least 40% in 30 years. What next . . . trying to make money at big stakes crap tables? Melvin P. Comment A per unit drop of labor input of 40% in 30 years is running at an annual improvement factor of more than 10% and what is built into the union contract is an annual improvement factor of 3% increase in wages. The 3% annual improvement factor (AIF) was actually lost during years of concessionary contracts - 1980-1993, and "re-won" in the mid 1990s. If you were hired in the auto industry in 1972 and retired 2002 - after 30 years, what you experienced was a revolution in production that defines the meaning of downsizing. The increase in production was not accomplished just on the basis of speed up. Speed up is very different from a deep going intensification of the production process itself. There is another process of revolution in the material power of the productive forces taking place. The physicaltoilof a man's muscles can get easier as he is deployed to do the job of 25 people . . . due to advanced robotics and computers. Ford is slated to build its 3rd plant in China . . . in partnership with local manufacturers and these new plants are always built on the basis of a quantitative expansion of the intensive dynamic - quality, of the configuration of the production process. Unlike the Ford Motor Company's dealing with the Soviets in the 1920 and 1930 where they sold the USSR old tooling and antiquated production equipment . . . vehicles from China can only be profitable on the basis of not just cheap labor but revolutionizing the production process itself. Auto seems to be in the process of catching a cold . . . although the expansion of credit and debt has taught me a real lesson about consumption and production. I thought we would crash in 1996, 97 and 98 . . . only to see the expansion of credit and then in the wake of 9/11 . . . 2001/2202 cycle . . . zero interest rates. I did not predict zero interest rates and 60 month car notes. I actually come out of a historic 36-48 month credit and production cycle. What next . . . the ten year loan . . . with a guaranteed free upkeep - scheduled maintenance of ones vehicle? The Koreas makers are setting the pace on maintenance. And no . . . Marx did not predict this. Wasn't Marx dead when the gasoline automobile came on line? He did predict the process as the general law of capital accumulation in its absolute sense. Nevertheless when auto catches a cold the economy goes into withdrawal from consumption . . . and is driven to the emergency room for blood transfusion and pumped up with dope. Melvin P.
Kurdish warlords delay unity
The Hindu Saturday, Jul 24, 2004 Kurdish warlords delay unity By Jonathan Steele Kurdistan's two big party leaders may end up producing a deal with Baghdad that their own people denounce. SHORT OF leaving Iraq altogether, the only chance of escaping Baghdad's overwhelming heat and the constant risk of suicide bombs is to drive to Kurdistan. Little more than three hours from the capital is a land of lakes and mountains where you can venture outdoors in the afternoon without having to dash to the nearest spot of shade. Groves of slender date-palm, now starting to brim with clumps of fruit, give a certain dignity to the flatlands of Mesopotamia, but there comes a time when you long for some undulation in the landscape, a grassy knoll perhaps, or even a respectable hill. Go east, south, or west and there is no chance of finding it. Travel north and you will. So it is no surprise that increasing numbers of better-off Iraqis who can afford a short holiday plump for the Kurdish area. For 12 years, it was effectively separate from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and Baghdadis had little idea what was going on behind the curtain. Many are stunned to discover a region that is not just different scenically but has a thriving economy, minimal unemployment, and no serious security problems. The word has gone out that cities such as Sulaimaniya are enjoying a boom in house-building. As a result, workers from the Arab south are also coming up in droves to take up construction jobs. Nothing is quite what it seems, and beyond the attractive landscape and the security calm, the Kurdish region has serious unsolved problems. Its leaders try to project a united front in Baghdad and abroad, but few Kurds in the north or Arabs in the south have forgotten that the region's two dynasties spent four of their Saddam Hussein-free years fighting a civil war. Indeed one of them, Massoud Barzani, the head of the Kurdish Democratic party (KDP), based in Irbil, even committed the ultimate sin of inviting Mr. Hussein's tanks to come up and help him push back the forces of Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The United States' mediation produced a truce in 1998, and last year the armies - known as peshmerga (those who face death) - helped their U.S. protectors bring down Mr. Hussein. They reject the label militias and see themselves as liberators. Many Kurds hoped victory would produce unity. They looked to a plan agreed with the U.S. occupation authorities in June, under which all Iraqi militias were supposed to disband and become part of Iraq's national army. Mr. Barzani and Mr. Talabani accepted the deal but, as Iraq gradually becomes sovereign, they show no sign of implementing the so-called peshmerger. Kurdistan is due to hold elections for its regional assembly in January, at the same time as Iraq's national elections. They will be the first parliamentary vote for 12 years. But as long as the two big parties rule their areas like fiefdoms, Kurds fear that the peshmerga will act as intimidators during the coming campaign. The parties' nepotism and lack of internal democracy also cause anger. Some feel that Mr. Barzani and Mr. Talabani failed to exploit their wartime alliance with the U.S. to extract more concessions on autonomy. If the elections are free, they may show a surge for radical nationalist and pro-independence candidates. The U.S. plan for disbanding the peshmerga is based on a twin formula of cash and restructuring. Instead of the peshmerga being financed by the KDP and the PUK, the Iraqi Ministry of Defence will pay them, thereby cutting the party link. They are to be cut by at least two-thirds from their current estimated number of 75,000, with some pensioned off or retrained for police or other civilian jobs. The rest will be divided between border troops, the national guard and a counter-terrorism force based in Kurdistan. With Mr. Hussein gone, Kurdistan's leaders have decided to give Arab politicians another chance. They have five Ministers in the un-elected, U.S.-approved government in Baghdad. Compromising with the Arab majority is an understandable strategy but the ground needs to be better prepared. Unless they depoliticise their militias, accept open debate and cease to behave like warlords, the two big party leaders may end up producing a deal with Baghdad which their own people denounce. Yesterday's heroes can become tomorrow's traitors if they fail to change with the times. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 Copyright © 2004, The Hindu. Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: quick question
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Michael Perelman wrote: What is a good source for the share of HMO dollars that goes to care rather than profits or overhead? Just about anything written by Steffie Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Plan (http://www.pnhp.org) Here's a short one: http://www.pnhp.org/news/high.pdf [F]or-profit HMOs take 19% for overhead, versus 13% for non-profit plans, 3% in the US Medicare program and 1% in Canadian Medicare. She's got 2 footnotes to go with it. She also had a great interview with Doug where she summarized an article she published (I think in the New England Journal of Medicine) that analyzed and compared the cost structure in lots of great ways: http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio_1.html#020711 I seem to remember that in that interview she gave astonishing figures for the range of HMO overhead rates, that they ran from a low of 12% to a high of 34%. If it wasn't in here, it was in another interview. Michael
Re: quick question
I had been looking at my notes on her work, but could not find anything recent. Thank you very much. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Don't you think it will be necessary for the Greens to win a number of congressional seats before they can be seen as a potential alternative to the Democrats by the unions and social movements, and a durable third party in the country as a whole? After all, electoral politics in a capitalist democracy, whether of the presidential or parliamentary kind, ultimately turns on which parties of the left and right can respectively advance the competing agendas of the social movements and business lobbies, and the legislative arena is where this contest centrally unfolds. So you have to have representatives there who can work with the leaders of the mass organizations to help them implement their legislative programs so far as political circumstances permit. This was the route followed by the early labour and socialist parties in continental Europe and the English-speaking countries. The Democrats, of course, currently have a monopoly on this kind of contact in the US. It seems to me Nader's campaigns draw a lot of national attention, but are ephemeral propaganda exercises which don't sink lasting political roots. Green mayoralty campaigns can build local party organizations, but their influence by definition is limited. What kind of emphasis do the US Greens give to winning seats in state legislatures and Congress, and what kind of results have they had to date at this level? Marv Gandall - Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 4:35 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Frank op-ed piece Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Even if the Green Party were to succeed in electing Green mayors in all cities in the United States, for instance, an impact of such a dramatic change in local politics on US foreign policy won't be even minimalist -- it will be practically zero. Not necessarily. One can't judge that _If_ as though in a laboratory where one element changes while all other elements remain constant. The conditions under which the GP could elect mayors in several hundred substantial (150k+ population) cities around the u.s. would be conditions which could not occur without profound reverberations elsewhere from the activities which brought about the electoral victories. You and I have both complained about those comments on revolution which presuppose that revolutionary action would occur with all other conditions (as now experienced) remaining constant. (E.g. someone once asked the silly question of how we could ask the working class to risk everything for overthrow of capitalism, when of course we would never ask that but conditions, now unpredictable and undescribable -- perhaps of rising expectations, perhaps of utter chaos, perhaps of something we cannot describe now--would do the asking.) I tend to agree that the local politics route to national power is illusional, but in considering it we can't consider it in a vacuum. The mass assault on u.s. foreign policy which is needed can't demonstrate in D.C. every week (this is a caricature but take it as a gesture towards a more complex reality), and the energies recruited and ultimately aimed towards national impact could well be (partly) nourished and enhanced through local political initiatives, including perhaps the election of mayors or (perhaps though I doubt it) even through contesting for power in local DP organizations. Carrol
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Marvin Gandall wrote: Don't you think it will be necessary for the Greens to win a number of congressional seats before they can be seen as a potential alternative to the Democrats by the unions and social movements, and a durable third party in the country as a whole? You are assuming business as usual in u.s. politics. There is another factor in all the discussions of the elections -- the failure of so many to see that social democracy is as dead as stalinism. Both were equally discredited by the events of the twentieth century. Justin argues that there will never again be mass Marxist parties. Could be. But the same argument suggests that there will never again be mass social democratic parties. And if there can be no more social democratic parties (and classical liberalism is one would think equally dead) all the jargon and pieties of social democracy (lesser evils, small gains, progressive wing of bourgeosie) are as dead as the slogans of Stalin's _Foundations of Leninism_. Those leftists appealing to the social democratic tradition (e.g., cooperation with progressive or less reactionary bourgeois politicians) are as trapped in dead pieties as are the Sparticists. ABBs and Sparticists unite in the Graveyard. I think Yoshie has gotten a bit too wrapped up in the Greens (in the 2004 election). We cannot know the form that socialist activity will take in the future, but we can be fairly certain that it will not be electoral and will involve mass resistance to imperialist policies. Arguments against the Greens are equally arguments against paying any attention at all to elections at any level. I think that until the electoral hysteria has ebbed it would be more interesting and more relevant to the future to explore the forms of commodity fetishism int he 21st century. Carrol
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Social democracy is as dead as stalinism. Both were equallydiscredited by the events of the twentieth century. Justin argues thatthere will never again be mass "Marxist" parties. Could be. But the sameargument suggests that there will never again be mass social democraticparties. But aren't there? I mean right now, SD parties govern large chunks of the industrialized world outside the US. They're not militant, sometimes they lean toward neoliberalis, but they command electoral majorities. Not here in the US of course. Here they never took off. And if there can be no more social democratic parties (andclassical liberalism is one would think equally dead) all the jargon andpieties of social democracy (lesser evils, small gains, progressive wingof bourgeosie) Is that how they talk in Europe? are as dead as the slogans of Stalin's _Foundations ofLeninism_. Those leftists appealing to the social democratic tradition(e.g., cooperation with progressive or less reactionary bourgeoispoliticians) are as trapped in dead pieties as are the Sparticists. ABBsand Sparticists unite in the Graveyard. So, we're fucked, right, Carroll? Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
Re: Cuba: siempre con combate
Jim wrote: 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!) Come to think of it I didnt see any cats at all, but I did see a few dogs. I guess I dont think it was related to the luxury thing, as many people would also consider musical instruments luxury items and there were plenty of those around Cuba. I spent some time at a campesino farm cooperative and there I saw some dogs. Btw, these cooperatives actual produce around 70% of the vegetables, fruits, beans, corn, and tobacco in Cuba now, and this shift away from the Soviet models to the cooperatives has been growing since 1994. I had the best malanga with mojo sauce EVER at the campesino -- been experimenting to try to reproduce that very recipe. Was it lime or sour orange? :) 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. The messages are much more related to the successes of the revolution now...and how they're still in struggle... siempre con combate ...as most of us are. The buses were stuffed to the gills when I was there. Is that situation better? Well, the camel buses are still pretty stuffed, but there are more cars now and other modes. It's interesting that I never saw any pictures of Fidel Castro, except in some homes. That's still true and noticeable...but is sincere to the spirit and nature of the revolution in Cuba. One can, however, see the Granma ship that ushered Fidel and 81 others from Tuxpan Mexico to Cuba in 1956, at the Museo de la Revolucion in Havana. Speaking of ships... Way, way back, Cuba and the US signed a treaty giving the US a perpetual lease to Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamera is a girl from Guantanamo Bay. Pete Seeger writes that in 1961 a young Cuban was working at a childrens summer camp in the Catskill Mountains when he read some simple verses by Jose Marti. He found that the verses could be fitted to an old popular song of Havana that was used to sing any verse one wished. He combined Martis patriotic verses with a chorus addressed to a country girl (Guajira). GUANTANAMERA Original music by Jose Fernandez Diaz Music adaptation by Pete Seeger Julian Orbon Lyric adaptation by Julian Orbon, based on a poem by Jose Marti I am a truthful man from this land of palm trees Before dying I want to share these poems of my soul My verses are light green But they are also flaming red Chorus: Guantanamera Guajira Guantanamera Guantanamera Guajira Guantanamera I cultivate a rose in June and in January For the sincere friend who gives me his hand And for the cruel one who would tear out this heart with which I live I do not cultivate thistles nor nettles I cultivate a white rose Chorus: Guantanamera Guajira Guantanamera Guantanamera Guajira Guantanamera [Add a new verse as you wish]
Re: Cuba: siempre con combate
Ulhas wrote: 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? Hola! Hola! I really don't know the answer to that question and I don't recall seeing a cell phone while I was there. I never missed mine actually and I couldn't use an American credit card either -- another embargo thing. But all that was kind of nice. I also drank tap water to conserve my cash -- but that's something I always do anyway wherever I travel to. :) Speaking of Cuba and Mexico... Mexico, Cuba will reinstate envoys Monday Associated Press Jul. 23, 2004 12:00 AM HAVANA - Mexico and Cuba have said they will reinstate ambassadors in each other's countries next week, ending a diplomatic rift between Fidel Castro's government and its former strongest ally. Both countries withdrew their ambassadors in May after Mexico accused Cuba of meddling in its internal affairs. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and his Mexican counterpart Luis Ernesto Derbez said the ambassadors would be reinstated Monday. We've made progress and agreed on the importance of working in favor of bilateral relations, Perez Roque said. Derbez, who arrived Sunday in Havana, said, There can be differences among friends on certain issues, but these differences can be talked out. Mexico, the only Latin American country to maintain ties with Havana after the 1959 Cuban revolution, has been the communist island's strongest ally in the region. For decades, Mexico used that connection to mollify leftists upset by their country's close relationship with the United States. Relations between the two nations have been rocky since President Vicente Fox took office in 2000 and criticized Cuba's human rights record. In 2002, Mexico supported a resolution of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva condemning Cuba. Mexico was later angered by Cuban allegations that a Mexican official arrested in Havana on fraud charges was part of a larger political conspiracy. Mexican officials also said members of Cuba's Communist Party were holding unauthorized political meetings in Mexico and took offense at comments by Castro that Fox was a U.S. lackey.
Re: Slave labour in Brazil
Of course, bonded labor practices are nothing new, were only seeing newer versions emerging as our borders open with increasing globalization. Using the fear of deportation to exploit the labor illegal immigrants from neighboring countries is a bonded labor practice where the impossible to pay back loaned amount is zero and the interest on the loaned amount is your life. I suppose that it is a progressive step for the ILO to say these newer debt bondage practices are analogous to slavery. The fear of deportation AND the fear of social stigmatization are the forces behind another kind of bonded labor slavery -- sex slavery. The ILO report did call these newly defined slavery practices the result of lawlessness in the country (interior Brazil). Bush also just last week urged tough new law enforcement against human trafficking as he says, Human life is the gift of our creator and it should never be for sale meanwhile in the US Experts: Vt. sex slavery fits U.S. pattern By WILSON RING ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER Friday, July 23, 2004 · Last updated 4:27 a.m. PT ESSEX JUNCTION, Vt. -- The regulars at the Park Place Tavern weren't surprised when police raided what is being described as an Asian brothel in a small house across their shared driveway. But they were surprised when news reports linked the now-closed Tokyo Spa and two other health clubs in the area to what police say is an international prostitution ring that smuggled Asian women into the United States and made them sex slaves. We joked about it here all the time, said Sandy Maloney, who lives in an apartment complex out back. Maloney said she watched as older men driving expensive out-of-state sport utility vehicles visited the Tokyo Spa at all hours. Experts in sexual slavery say the Vermont case fits the pattern of a problem that is reaching into the smallest corners of the country. Modern-day slavery is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, said Derek Ellerman, co-executive director of the Washington-based Polaris Project, a grass-roots anti-trafficking organization. They have done a very good job of spreading into suburban and even rural areas, Ellerman said. It's a market-driven criminal industry. Wherever there is demand for commercial sex the traffickers will spread to those areas. There's an eviction notice on the door of the light gray two-story clapboard house that operated as the Tokyo Spa for about a year. The city of Burlington is moving to evict the tenants from another of the spas. At the third, the building owner insists all the activity inside was legal. Police, though, contend the clubs were offering sexual services along with massages. During the raids earlier this month, authorities arrested eight women - five Korean and three Chinese - on federal immigration charges. All except two have been released, said Essex police Lt. Gary L. Taylor. No state criminal charges have been filed. Taylor refused to discuss the ongoing investigation but knew of no other organized prostitution in Vermont's history. It's the first time I am aware of, Taylor said. I n court documents, police say the women who worked at the spas never left. Even groceries were brought to the house. One Korean woman told investigators she had been smuggled into the United States and had only recently arrived at the Tokyo Spa. Court documents filed by police to get search warrants for the three businesses outline what authorities say could be a link to international organized crime and sexual slavery. Similar operations, according to the papers, are being investigated by federal authorities in New York City, New Jersey and Maine. The way these massage parlors or spas or health clubs work, they are really fronts for prostitution, said Linda M. Hughes of the University of Rhode Island. Hughes, who has studied international sex trafficking for 15 years, said many of the women have been smuggled into the United States and are being held by some sort of forced fraud or coercion. Typically, sex rings offer to bring women into the United States for a fee. Once in the United States, the women are forced to repay the cost of their passage by working as prostitutes. The women will give most of the money they make to the brothel owner. They are charged for rent and expenses. They can be fined for rule infractions, Hughes said. There are all sorts of things they do to prevent these women from getting out, Hughes said. That may mean these women have been enslaved for 20 years. The women are then rotated between the brothels as part of a network that has, in some cases, operated nationwide. Asian women aren't the only ones enslaved. The Vermont case appears to be a Korean network, Ellerman said. And traffickers bring women to the United States from around the world. Law enforcement has a new tool for fighting the international trafficking. The federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act of 2000 defines women who
