Re: A Question for the Moderator
In a message dated 7/31/2004 7:33:32 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As I recall DuBois and James Jackson produced the best articles on the national question (especially as it regarded African Americans) for PA in the 1950s, all of which broke with the "Black-belt thesis" and the concept of regional autonomy, though they continued to argue for self-determination. In fact, about 10 years before he officially joined the CPUSA, DuBois, according to some, is said to have authored the Party's official position on the question in an article he wrote in 1951 -- the title of which escapes me and I can't find my copy of it. Joel Wendland Comment Yes . . . I still read Political Affairs on line. A part of my political history is tied to the CPUSA . . . through the old Communist League and before than the California Communist League and before that the Provisional Organizing Committee (POC) . . . that break with the party over the question of Stalin Contributions and the Negro Question. The theoretical presentation of issues tends to blind us of the historical moment and context or environment. Montgomery had exploded and most revolutionaries understood that the social and political equality of the African Americans was key to the revolutionary line of march. One must remember that this was the period of Nikita Khrushchev and the 20th party Congress of the CPSU. These sharp theory and ideological battles create a polarity and no one can stand adrift or outside whatever poles become crystallized. It is not a question of one side having all the answers or being "right" and the other side being all wrong. If life was that simply none of us would really have to study the issues closely and master the meaning of language and words. The California Communist League was formed on the basis of the Watts Rebellion in 1965 in Watts. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers or rather what would become the League took shape on the basis of publishing the newspaper "Inner City Voice" and factory leaflets on the heels of the 1967 Rebellion in Detroit . . . 1968. In the summer of 1969 . . . maybe 1970 I had go a part time job at Wayne State University and had been hanging in the offices of the League for about two years. The CPUSA book store was a couple of blocks from Wayne Campus and I use to live in the bookstore. After the split in the League - around 1971 . . . we joined up with the California Communist League on the basis of their presentation of what was then called the Negro National Colonial Question. Their presentation made sense to what we where experiencing as industrial workers . . . not African Americans. The LRBW was a federation with groups and factory circles at every conceivable scale of development. Those who criticized some our actions toward factory gate distributions focused on black workers tend to be people that have never done a factory gate distribution, worked in large scale industry, have never been elected to anything in life or for that matter have any experience in the flow of the social movement. I listen and keep stepping. They remind me of the guy who has never played baseball but also have the answer for what every player should have done . . . after the game is over. We are not involved in a spectator sport. What made us receptive to communism was the history of the CPUSA in the factories and their book store . . . although as a mass we could not accept the proposition of a peaceful transition to socialism . . . after the 1967 Detroit Rebellion and the little written about explosions in Detroit and Highland Park in 1968. Our demand was never for self determination of African Americans as a theory proposition or political policy . . . because it simply does not make sense. This was a demand more in tune with the Republic of New Africa or the Nation of Islam. Self determination for African Americans means electoral rights and voting blacks into political office or Black Power. Our slogans were "Black Workers Power" and we were very clear we did not mean the black bourgeoisie or the black petty bourgeoisie or what in history had been called the "Talented Tenth." The LRBW was formed almost at the exact moment of the political rupture of the workers and black bourgeoisie. The reason I did not join the CPUSA was its lack of militancy and its position on the Negro Question as well, as opposition to the Nikita Khrushchev polarity within the International Communist Movement. We sided with China in the polemics and their were some Maoists within our group as well as followers of Leon Trotsky . . . but our basis of organizational unity was victory to the workers in their current struggle. The point is this . . . if Lenin is the index for the slogan self determination of nations and the African American people are not a nation . . . what is one talking about other than the bourgeois ideology of
Re: A Question for the Moderator- race, ideology and the right thing to do.
In a message dated 7/31/2004 4:17:43 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I remember trying to speak with the boyfriend of my first wife's mother. He worked in a gas station. He was not stupid, but he was angry. He directed much of this anger at Blacks, but I think he was racist. He just had this anger and he did not know where to direct it. Fortunately, I just read a wonderful book -- The Hidden Injuries of Class -- which helped me to translate some of his words into what he was really thinking rather than to come down on him as a stupid racist. I do not pretend to be entirely successful. Usually the discussion would get to a degree of rationality, but then would return to the same ugly spot the next time we would meet. Comment I have met a few . . . not many ideological racists in my time in the plants. They are few and far in between . . . really. And they did not like me or my communism and this had nothing to do with my communism. Really. I must apologize if my distinction between chauvinism and racism is not crisp and sharp enough because none of the comrade are racists . . . period. I have been hard on Lou but he can take it on the chin and he has been most generous with me as a contributor on Marxmail. I am truly grateful for his art at moderation and squeezing out of all contributors . . . everything they got. to give. Folks who in fits of anger or causal conversion spew forth some of the rot all of us inherent in our society should not be condemned but understood and worked with. If I was held responsibly for all of my stupidities I would be in jail facing death role. After 9/11 about 30 percent of my electoral base wanted to string my ass up . . .. and 70% of my area . . . the Machining Division let me know I could kiss their multinational ass. Folks feelings were deeply hurt. The African Americans were disoriented and trying to find their balance in what seems to be unending waves of white chauvinism without beginning or end and the younger white workers wanted to kick my ass. I tend to offend America's honor. This is not my intention as a political leader . . . but what I supposed to say when you keep fucking me up? I happen to love America and hate being fucked up. The Slavic workers were my dogged base of support after I issued the open letter asking it our new German owners were going to put us in the ovens . . . after they called the police to escort the white collar workers from Auburn Hills during the first wave of massive layoff in 2001. (Auburn Hills is the headquarters of Chrysler Group.) The Slavic workers basically said "you really understand class and the German do not discriminate . . . they are better that everyone." Now . . . I happen to like the German managers better than my Yankee brothers and their bullshit. But . . . no one is going to call the police on us to escort us out of work after you have taken my fucking job and livelihood. I told the workers . . . "they coming for us tomorrow" and I will be damned if they did not lay off at the Jefferson plant and ask people to surrender their badges. I was very clear . . . you might think my badge is company property . . . but I shall not surrender shit. Not only am I not surrendering shit . . . but have a notion to chain myself to the job and make your ass pay me for my work. It got sticky and before I knew it my letters where being published in 20 plants in Chrysler's system. My brother was called . . . who is an International Representative in the Chrysler division. "What wrong with your fucking brother . . . we have to cut back staff and this is not no goddamn blue collar workers. Talk to your brother before we put him on the streets and make him bargain for his job back." Big brother is the Stalin of the family and said "fuck you. Why did you call the police on the laid off members of the family in the first place?" "Because they steal the software programs to start an independent business and sabotage the system because they are mad." Brother say "I would steal everything to make sure my family had a chance to each what your family eat and ain't nobody a stool pigeon." The company say . . . "Nobody in the mood for this bullshit Maurice. You and your fucking brother are going to hit the wall." Maurice says . . . "what did you just say?" "Look Maurice we need to get together and resolve this issue. When can we talk/" Now this crap cause me to lose my last election to a black women I have known 40 years . . . and dated. Yers we had sex . . . and a lots of it. Her mother and my mother went to elementary and high school together. She became the first black women to win highest elected union position in our industrial compound . . . by kicking my ass. But then I aint a trade unionist or William Foster but a communist worker. Ain't no abstract class shit but real people and real individuals with opinion
A suicide in China
NY Times, August 1, 2004 THE GREAT DIVIDE Amid China's Boom, No Helping Hand for Young Qingming By JOSEPH KAHN and JIM YARDLEY PUJIA, China His dying debt was $80. Had he been among China's urban elite, Zheng Qingming would have spent more on a trendy cellphone. But he was one of the hundreds of millions of peasants far removed from the country's new wealth. His public high school tuition alone consumed most of his family's income for a year. He wanted to attend college. But to do so meant taking the annual college entrance examination. On the humid morning of June 4, three days before the exam, Qingming's teacher repeated a common refrain: he had to pay his last $80 in fees or he would not be allowed to take the test. Qingming stood before his classmates, his shame overtaken by anger. I do not have the money, he said slowly, according to several teachers who described the events that morning. But his teacher and the system would not budge. A few hours later, Qingming, 18 years old, stepped in front of an approaching locomotive. The train, like China's roaring economy, was an express. If his gruesome death was shocking, the life of this peasant boy in the rolling hills of northern Sichuan Province is repeated a millionfold across the Chinese countryside. Peasants like Qingming were once the core constituency of the Communist Party. Now, they are being left behind in the money-centered, cutthroat society that has replaced socialist China. China has the world's fastest-growing economy but is one of its most unequal societies. The benefits of growth have been bestowed mainly on urban residents and government and party officials. In the past five years, the income divide between the urban rich and the rural poor has widened so sharply that some studies now compare China's social cleavage unfavorably with Africa's poorest nations. For the Communist leaders whose main claim to legitimacy is creating prosperity, the skewed distribution of wealth has already begun to alienate the country's 750 million peasants, historically a bellwether of stability. The countryside simmers with unrest. Farmers flock to the cities to find work. The poor demand social, economic and political benefits that the Communist Party has been reluctant to deliver. To its credit, the Chinese government invigorated the economy and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty over the past quarter century. Few would argue that Chinese lived better when officials still adhered to a rigid idea of socialist equality. But in recent years, officials have devoted the nation's wealth to building urban manufacturing and financial centers, often ignoring peasants. Farmers cannot own the land they work and are often left with nothing when the government seizes their fields for factories or malls. Many cannot afford basic services, like high school. This year, the number of destitute poor, which China classifies as those earning less than $75 a year, increased for the first time in 25 years. The government estimates that the number of people in this lowest stratum grew by 800,000, to 85 million people, even as the economy grew by a robust 9 percent. No modern country has become prosperous without allowing some people to get rich first. The problem for China is not just that the urban elite now drive BMW's, while many farmers are lucky to eat meat once a week. The problem is that the gap has widened partly because the government enforces a two-class system, denying peasants the medical, pension and welfare benefits that many urban residents have, while often even denying them the right to become urban residents. Even in a country that ruthlessly punishes dissent, some three million people took part in protests last year, police data show. Most were farmers, laid-off workers and victims of official corruption, who blocked roads, swarmed government offices, even immolated themselves in Tiananmen Square in Beijing to demand social justice. India, the world's other developing giant, has a less pronounced gap between urban and rural living standards, and an open political system. In May, India's governing party lost an election largely because the strong economic growth did not trickle down fast enough to the rural masses. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/international/01CHIN.html -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: A Question for the Moderator
--- michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This was the problem that I was referring to when I was trying to describe a progression of fragmentations. I first began to think about this sort of problem when Lebanon began to fall apart. At first, it seemed to be a religious division, but then I began to realize that there were divisions within each religion that were made each others throats. The situation seemed like a fractal to me. Look at the post-Soviet situation in the early 90s. The Union falls apart, and you immediately start having all these bloody ethnic conflicts around its former borders: Armenians vs. Azerbaijanis, Georgians vs. Abkhazians and Ossetians, Romanians vs. Russians, Ossetians vs. Ingush... There are 34 distinct ethno-cultural groups in Dagestan, which is about the size of Maryland. There are villages of a few hundred people there that are the only representatives of entire languages. The potential for conflict is immense. __ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Messenger - Communicate in real time. Download now. http://messenger.yahoo.com
Re: A Question for the Moderator
Chris wrote: Look at the post-Soviet situation in the early 90s. The Union falls apart, and you immediately start having all these bloody ethnic conflicts around its former borders: Armenians vs. Azerbaijanis, Georgians vs. Abkhazians and Ossetians, Romanians vs. Russians, Ossetians vs. Ingush... There are 34 distinct ethno-cultural groups in Dagestan, which is about the size of Maryland. There are villages of a few hundred people there that are the only representatives of entire languages. The potential for conflict is immense. Something similar happened earlier, when the Ottoman Empire was defeated during WW1. The Ottoman Empire could integrate an endless variety of groups into its multicultural empire, but the nation-state of Turkey with its centrality of Turkish culture could not do the same thing -- hence wars on Armenians and Kurds. The Soviet Union was defeated, as was the Ottoman Empire before it and Yugoslavia after it -- first economically, later politically (mainly from inside the the Soviet Union, its multinational elites acting against its multinational masses) or with a combined political, economic, and military warfare (Yugoslavia). Russia and Serbia today cannot be expected to play the same roles that the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia used to be able to play. -- 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: A Question for the Moderator- race, ideology and the right thing to do.
Melvyn's story about his dealings with the red necks at the workplace illustrate the degree of skill required to navigate the class divide. No easy answers in this regard. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Guarding the Right to Leisure
Guarding the Right to Leisure (workers in Western Europe, who enjoy the shortest workweeks and longest vacations in the world, confront downward pressures on free time exercised by longer hours in the USA and cheaper labor in former socialist nations): http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/08/guarding-right-to-leisure.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/
Jeffrey Sachs, Accenture, Columbia University
http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/news/2004/story07-22-04.html Earth Institute News Jobs Offshored for Cost Savings and Quality Seventy percent of companies that outsource report increases in quality of work, Columbia survey finds NEW YORK -- Forty-five companies known for sending work outside of their own employee base for completion, surveyed by the Earth Institute at Columbia University, show that 82 percent are currently outsourcing jobs, 79 percent to offshore businesses. The majority not only report finding competitive prices but better work skills than at home. Seventy percent of those who outsourced reported that the quality of outsourced business processes had increased between 5 to 25 percent. Companies, including offshore pioneers such as General Electric, Nortel Networks and Citibank, found that actual cost savings, which remain the primary reason for outsourcing, were achieved by 67 percent of the companies to the tune of 5 to 50 percent. This is an enormously important phenomenon that needs to be better understood, says Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute. Im very happy with my colleagues contributions. === http://www.ais.columbia.edu/ais/html/body_improvedstaffservices.html New and Improved Faculty Staff Services Starting in Fall 2004 A combined team from Human Resources, the Controllers Office, AIS, and Accenture Consulting is working on a multi-phased PeopleSoft project to implement new personnel, benefits, and payroll systems for Columbia. === http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/story/0,10801,93965,00.html Illinois moves to blacklist Accenture The state comptroller cites the firm's offshore status News Story by Dan Verton JUNE 21, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Bermuda-based IT services vendor Accenture Ltd. is taking heat from Illinois lawmakers who want to prevent the company from receiving taxpayer-funded contracts. At issue is the offshore location of Accenture's headquarters. At least four contracts awarded to Accenture have come under fire in the state, where legislators, local unions and the state's comptroller have attempted in recent weeks to block all payments to the company. State Comptroller Dan Hynes has asked the Illinois Procurement Policy Board for guidance on his desire to block all payments on four Accenture contracts totaling more than $2 million. The five-member board voted 3-2 on May 19 to send the issue to the board's legal adviser for review before making a recommendation. There is no word on when the board will make its decision. However, Alan Henry, a spokesman for Hynes, said the comptroller believes that he's in the right on the issue and that the policy board doesn't have the power to force him to make payments to Accenture.
Re: A Question for the Moderator
On the subject of foreign fighters in Chechnya, I should have added that, if memory serves, both the Kremlin and the various rebel sources put the number of foreigners in Chechnya at any given time at about 200. So, it's not a lot (given that there are supposedly about 1,500 full-time fighters). But they serve a major ideological and financial role. There is really no group of rebels in Chechnya. Chechnya has been in a state of civil war since 1996. You have the nationalists around Maskhadov; then you have the Wahabbis around Basayev; and then simple bandit gangs making money of carnage. (And the three groups interpenetrate.) Finally, you have the so-called Kadyrovtsy, the pro-Moscow security force, composed mostly of former rebels who switched sides, supposedly about 3,000 men. Most of the fighting in Chechnya is between the Kadyrovtsy and the rebels; I have heard that the Chechen Special Forces have declared blood feud on the Basayev clan, and they want the Russian Army to leave so that they can take care of business in their own way, if you get what I mean. The relations between all these groups are very obscure. During de facto independence, there were pitched battles between Maskhadov's men and the Wahabbis. Nevertheless, until the Dubrovka theater hostage-taking, they claimed to be on the same side (Maskhadov condemned the act, while Basayev took credit for it and resigned his official post). When Kadyrov was assassinated, Maskhadov condemned it (it took place, BTW, after a period in which Kadyrov and Maskhadov were allegedly negotiating the latter's surrender). The next day, Basayev took credit for it, and said I only regret that I do not have Kadyrov's head to give to Maskhadov. Then there is the alternative theory that Maskhadov and Basayev are actually working together, with Basayev carrying out terrorist acts, Maskhadov doing PR in the West while maintaining a state of plausible deniability, and the now-deceased Yandarbiyev doing PR in the Muslim world. Frankly, I don't think Maskhadov has much backing him up at this point beyong his own teip (clan). His men, I think, have mostly either joined the Kadyrovtsy or been radicalized and are now with Basayev. Maskhadov may not even be in Chechnya. __ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Re: A Question for the Moderator
I wrote: On the subject of foreign fighters in Chechnya, I should have added that, if memory serves, both the Kremlin and the various rebel sources put the number of foreigners in Chechnya at any given time at about 200. So, it's not a lot (given that there are supposedly about 1,500 full-time fighters). But they serve a major ideological and financial role. -- I add: Peter Lavelle interviewed the recently assassinated Akhmad Kadyrov, ex-rebel turned pro-Moscow president of Chenchya, last year (I edited the interview). I've linked to it before. Here, Kadyrov is referring to the role of the foreigners in Chechnya. By people of other nationalities, I assume he means, first and foremost, Arabs like Khattab. How do you estimate your opponents' chances? Can they pose serious competition for you in the election? I say it again - time will tell. I do not want to be philosophical about the seriousness of my competitors; I do not want to discuss that. One can see with the naked eye what they have done and contributed to the Republic of Chechnya to avoid war. Where were they in 1997-1999, and what were they doing when I was fighting Wahhabism? What were they doing to prevent the war? I have been living in Chechnya all this time, and I have always been against Wahhabis, which is why they constantly had me in their sights. The assassination attempts against me were not accidental. Who prepared them and what for? I always said that Wahhabism is unacceptable for the Chechen nation. We are Muslims, and we did not convert to Sufi Islam just a couple of days ago. They tried to thrust an idea upon us that had been originally invented against Islam, albeit allegedly under the banner of Islam. Do you see the Republic of Chechnya as a Muslim, an Islamic one? I was strongly against the introduction of a Sharia government in the republic - but not because I did not want such a thing. I am working hard for it, actually. But I know that we are not ready. One has to nurture a new generation, to raise children in the spirit of Islam. The Sharia regulations that they gave us were simply an interpretation of the Sudanese ones. They were approved by Yandarbiyev, and he did not ask anyone. When Aslan Maskhadov and I visited Saudi Arabia and met with the government of Sudan, Sudanese officials told us that it had taken them 11 years to institute a Sharia government. Did we want to have everything done in one day? Things do not work like that. Furthermore, who dictated Islam to us? Movladi Udugov, who does not have any idea what Islam is? Or Maskhadov and Yandarbiyev? Who are they? They do not know the bases of Islam, they do not understand it. All these people ran a separatist policy deliberately. Why is all this happening in Chechnya? Because the Chechens are warriors, first and foremost. Second, they are very trusting people - I am saying this to you as a Chechen man. We trust everyone else, but we do not trust each other. We believe people of other nationalities more than we believe each other. All the wars that have taken place in Chechnya since the era of tsarist Russia were unleashed by people of other nationalities. Unfortunately, our nation has never had a leader who would stand up for his nation. Military troops were withdrawn from Chechnya on Dec. 31, 1996. But what did free Chechnya do? It opened the door to criminals from the entire territory of Russia, the former USSR and its outskirts. Criminals were coming to Chechnya from all over the world - they did not have a place in their own countries. But they could live perfectly well in Chechnya. Non-Muslims were allegedly converting to Islam. It is ridiculous to talk about such a thing . Becoming a Muslim for them implied growing a beard and learning how to pronounce salam aleykum. What kind of a Muslim is that? I grew up in a very religious family. I could read the Qu'ran easily at the age of five. Do you think I can stay calm when such people try to teach me what Islam is, how to pronounce it and what to do with it?! If Yeltsin and Maskhadov signed a peace treaty between Russia and Chechnya, why did the incursion into Dagestan take place? If we, as a separate state that had concluded a peace treaty with Russia, attack a neighboring republic, a unit of the Russian Federation, is it called Jihad? No, it is not. It is a provocation to unleash a war in Chechnya. But you declared Jihad on Russia in 1995. You were waging war on Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov's side. Yes, I was on that side, and I am proud that I was able to choose the right way to go. There are specific reasons for why I declared Jihad and why I changed my position. That was a time when people were gripped with the idea of liberation. They thought that people like Dudayev or Yandarbiyev wanted freedom and an Islamic state for Chechnya. And what happened next? There is a rule of Sharia: If the enemy wants to suppress you, you are supposed to put up a strong resistance. But the enemy did
Chechnya
Maybe we have played out this whole question of ethnic divisions. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Tashkent looks to Moscow to replace lost U.S. aid
Tashkent looks to Moscow to replace lost U.S. aid The Jamestown Foundation Eurasia Daily Monitor Thursday, 22 July 2004 - Volume 1, Issue 57 WASHINGTON PUSHES KARIMOV CLOSER TO MOSCOW On July 15 Elizabeth Jones, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, officially concluded her two-day visit to Uzbekistan, where she had met with the country's leadership and local representatives of several human rights organizations. On July 13, on the eve of her visit to Tashkent, the U.S. administration announced its decision to cut $18 million in financial assistance to Uzbekistan. According to the official statement issued by the U.S. Department of State, this measure was adopted in reaction to the insufficient progress in implementing democratic reforms in Uzbekistan. The statement specifically mentioned the deaths of suspects held in prisons and the unwillingness of the authorities to register opposition parties. There is increasing speculation that Great Britain and other European Union members may follow suit (Nezavisimaya gazeta, July 15, 2004) Many observers in Uzbekistan and Russia believe that Assistant Secretary Jones had intended to hold private discussions about human rights issues with the Uzbekistani leadership, to whom Washington repeatedly expressed sincere gratitude for assistance in the conduct of the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan. Uzbekistan was the first of the post-Soviet Central Asian states to offer the United States permission to open an air force base on its territory, specifically in Khanabad, which is located close to the border with Afghanistan. This air base became the largest U.S. military bridgehead in the region, and it marked the beginning of a serious shift in the balance of strategic forces between the United States and Russia. In the course of her visit, Jones was supposed to convince Tashkent that the aforementioned decision to cut financial assistance did not imply a change in the American interests in the region or the unwillingness to continue cooperation with Uzbekistan. According to sources close to government circles in Uzbekistan, Tashkent did not take the news of the $18 million cut well, as the government had relied on the funds. The U.S. Department of State's decision is viewed as a public rebuke of the Karimov regime, and Uzbekistan's leaders realize that this move signals a new and very unfavorable turnaround by Washington. However, President Islam Karimov will not respond by revoking the agreement on the American air base in Khanabad, because its operation brings a relatively small but stable income to the Uzbekistani authorities. Besides, the continuous operation of the air base is considered an asset for the stability of the regime. It must be also noted that Washington continues to offer substantial military-technical assistance to Uzbekistan. In May 2004 the United States gave Tashkent equipment and special hardware for border defense, which was worth total of $516,600. Since April 2000 the total of American military-technical assistance to Uzbekistan amounts to approximately $7 million. Some political elites in Tashkent believe that Karimov had anticipated the shift in U.S. attitudes long before it occurred. For example, when he visited the United States in 2002, Karimov was furious that his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base was greeted only by Assistant Secretary Jones. For the president of a country with 25 million people, this was a demeaning diplomatic gesture. Karimov had flown to Washington with hopes of securing U.S. political support and to resolve many internal problems with the American financial assistance. Nonetheless, by late 2002 U.S. financial aid to Uzbekistan amounted to only $160 million and another $55 million in loans to purchase goods in the United States for developing small and medium business in Uzbekistan. As one well-connected source commented, This meant that Tashkent was put in the common waiting line in front of the main entrance to the White House. In September 2003 Karimov told Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had made a brief stopover in Samarkand on his way to India, that he had finally overcome the initial euphoria of hopes related to developing economic relations with the West. This meeting prompted the later reassessment of relations between Uzbekistan and Russia, which eventually culminated in the two presidents signing the Uzbekistan-Russia Treaty on Strategic Cooperation in June 2004. Moreover, Uzbekistan and Russia also reviewed their bilateral military cooperation and resolved to strengthen this relationship. Tashkent firmly believes that, unlike Washington, Moscow will never make its assistance contingent on demands for democratic changes. At the same time Uzbekistan does not want to jeopardize its relations with the United States and wants to preserve the bilateral partnership. This is why on the eve of the Jones visit to Tashkent, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued
Re: Jeffrey Sachs, Accenture, Columbia University
I'm sure that for some work outsourcing does provide excellent quality, but my personal experience with outsourcing comes from contacting help desks. Not only is the line quality poor, impeding communication, but the help desks are not particularly helpful. My guess is that because these jobs are very desirable, the workers accept a very tight scripting. As a result, they are very unhelpful unless your question is fully anticipated. On the other hand, I have had very good experience asking questions of techies from domestic help desks, who seem to [have the freedom to] enjoy the challenge of a complex question. The artificial offshoring of moving a company to Bermuda is despicable on all counts. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
The Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem
'The Museum of Tolerance' in Jerusalem (The Simon Wiesenthal Center is building a Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem -- an ugly white elephant designed by Frank Gehry -- on a spot that once was an ancient Muslim cemetery, a museum which Palestinians in the occupied territories, blocked by checkpoints and elusive permits, will have a formidable time visiting): http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/08/museum-of-tolerance-in-jerusalem.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/
back to PPP comparisons
I have just received some comments from a former colleague on the questions posed about the use of PPP. They include his comments in a letter plus an attachment which I have copied into the text below. in solidarity, michael - He writes: I beg to disagree with the idea that the PPP method is imaginary and the Atlas method is actual. As I explain in the attachment, the PPP exchange rate takes into account the price difference of goods and services between countries,or the purchasing power of a country's currency vis-a-vis the currencies of other countries (or the US dollar), whereas the market exchange rate does not take into account the price difference. Take a simple example of Japan and the US. Say the market exchange rate is 110 Yens = One US$. Now take an equivalent basket--in quantity and quality--that contains a burger with fries and a drink. It costs 450 Yens in Tokyo and US$ 2.50 in New York. The PPP exchange rate is then 180 Yens = One US$ (450/2.50). There is nothing imaginary about the PPP exchange rate since it gives you the purchasing power of a country's currency vis-a-vis the US dollar. The important point is that the market exchange rate seems to be a valid conversion factor for settling payments between countries on account of trade, debt, aid, etc. and the PPP exchange rate seems to be a valid conversion factor for comparing the standard of living of people in different countries. Now please turn to the data shown in my attachment Table. In the GNI differences between the high income and middle + low income economies for any year (1996, 1998, or 2002), our focus should be on the ratios of the GNI of high income countries to the GNI of middle + low income countries under the Atlas and PPP methods separately. I see little change in the ratios between 1996 and 2002: the GNI gap between the high income countries and the middle + low income countries does not change over time (compare the 1996 and 2002 data). GNI (Atlas Method): in 1996 the ratio is 4.41 to 1.00 and in 2002 the ratio is 4.18 to 1.00. GNI (PPP Method): in 1996 the ratio is 1.36 to 1.00 and in 2002 the ratio is 1.30 to 1.00. The fact that the ratios of GNI between the high income and middle + low income countries in each year differ so much under the two methods is simply because the Atlas Method does not take into account the price differences between countries and PPP Method does. There is no indication that the income gap between the rich and poor countries has narrowed. However, the income gap is larger with the market exchange rate compared to the income gap with the PPP exchange rate. The attachment: Gross National Income (GNI) of Countries, 1996, 1998, 2002 GNI (Atlas Method) GNI (PPP Method) Billion US Dollars Billion US Dollars Economy 1996 1998 2002 1996 1998 2002 High Income 23,772 22,592 25,596 20,574 20,745 27,516 Middle Income 4,141 4,401 5,056 8,305 8,834 15,884 Low Income 1,597 1,842 1,070 6,809 7,678 5,269 World 29,510 28,835 31,720 35,688 37,136 48,462 Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 1998, 2000, 2004. Notes: 1. Definitions: · Gross National Income (GNI) = GDP plus net receipts of primary income (wages and salaries plus property income) from abroad. GNI is a new term used for the good old Gross National product (GNP): GNI and GNP have the same formula. · Gross Domestic Product (GDP) = Sum of value added by all resident producers plus any product taxes (less subsidies) not included in the valuation of output. 2. Internationally Comparable Values of GNI and GDP:[1] The World Bank uses two methods for estimating internationally comparable values of GNI and GDP. · The Atlas Method: Each countrys GNI and GDP estimates (made in local currency) are converted by using the market exchange rate for its currency in US dollars. The market exchange rate between currencies is a product of several factors, including trade and capital flows. It is used for financial transactions between countries (trade, debt services, etc.). It should not be used to compare the GNI and GDP of countries in the context of differences in their standard of living because the market exchange rate does not take into account the price difference between countries for goods and services. · The Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) Method: The PPP exchange rate is simply the number of units of a countrys currency required to purchase the same quantity of goods and services (included in GDP) as one US dollar purchases in the United States. In other words, this exchange rate reflects the purchasing power of each countrys currency vis-à-vis the US dollar. The PPP exchange rate for the poor countries tends to be higher than the market exchange rate because prices of goods and services, especially the non-traded ones, tend to be lower in poor countries than in rich countries. In other words, the purchasing power of poor countries currencies vis-à-vis the US dollar is generally higher than
[Fwd: Swans' Release: August 2, 2004]
http://www.swans.com/ August 2, 2004 -- In this issue: Note from the Editor: My fellow Americans, this is the most important election of our lifetime. The stakes are high. We are a nation at war -- a global war on terror against an enemy unlike we've ever known before, said Mr. Bush the other night in Crawford, Texas. What, what, what do you say? It was Mr. Kerry who uttered those words last Thursday in Boston, not Mr. Bush? Not Crawford? Are you sure? Oh well, we did not listen to Kerry's peroration as we were rejoicing upon our first day out of suburbia -- at long last, AT LONG LAST! (more on this another time. We have a house for sale though; if you are interested to live in Menlo Park in the Bay Area, rush to 545 Palmer Lane -- Beautifully renovated redwood/fir bungalow on almost one half of an acre of land...the American Dream, you know... Suburbia!) Anyway, seriously, these words could have originated from the mouth of our great war leader, could they not? And thinking of it, they could have come as well from another great war leader, Mr. Hitler, who, after reading the short report filed by Eli Beckerman on the street protests -- or better said, the gagging of the protesters -- brings to mind the comment William Shirer made in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Germans imposed the Nazi tyranny on themselves. A people has the government it deserves... Here we are, in Boston, the First Amendment pretty much abrogated while a hypnotized crowd cheers another savior. Talk about mass psychosis...which Manuel García does quite eloquently as he examines how small groups of wealthy elites control larger populations, and looks into the psychological key, if any, that could open the American mind to a Green Socialist future. Then, if you still have any doubt about who calls the shots in Washington D.C., the mascot in the Oval Office or his corporate masters, Phil Rockstroh adds his 2 cents that will make you much richer, from a neuron perspective, mind you; and Philip Greenspan uses his bullshit detector to bring another of his reality checks to the fore without mincing words. Buried by propaganda, getting their news from Jay Leno and Rush Limbaugh, the American people are marching, in the words of Marilynne Robinson (Harper's, August 2004, p. 17), lockstep to enormity and disaster. She continues, A successful autocracy rests on the universal failure of individual courage. The halls of power, as noted by Richard Macintosh, glitter by the dearth of cowardice, with the exception of a few lonely voices. And it must take some moral courage for new contributor, José Tirado, to plead, stop urging us to vote for your party [Democratic], and to state the obvious, we can't get the system we want by voting for people who don't want our system. Duh! Whether it's courage or exile (Tirado lives in Iceland, like John Steppling lives in Poland -- perhaps Americans should travel more...) he sure gets it. Michael Moore gets it too as Gerard Donnelly Smith avers (at least to a point...that should exclude his idiotic endorsement of Wesley Clark, the perfect embodiment of a war crimes criminal). Gerard reviews Farenheit 9/11 and its objective propaganda, in which Moore allows the players and events to speak for themselves -- no need for scripting and staging -- and you be the judge. Milo Clark, a history buff, and an even-tempered mind, reminds us that the Rule of Law can be and has been upheld or restored by some faction of the elites demanding and getting a piece of the action. So, yes, there is hope, even if faintly, that the Rule of Law will be restored (Americans think of FDR as a man of the people...when he was nothing more than the rescuer of capitalistic interests, forced by the masses to legislate compromises favorable to the workers -- compromises that, when implemented, have been chipped away ever since); but it remains that the laws are made by the elites themselves...to serve their own interests...and there is no mass movement in the U.S. of 2004 and JFK II is no FDR! When a Moroccan Swede gets interested in Straussian and Wilsonian politics, the idealist/realist discourse in the U.S., you end up with a Clinton looking much like a Bush, and vise versa. Please welcome the scholarly work of Mohammed Ben Jelloun, another new contributor. A poem on Gomorrah; the work of Louis Proyect still posted on the front page (it was indeed a book review); and the Letters to the Editor conclude this issue. Enjoy it as much as we did pulling it off in the midst of boxes! As always, please form your OWN opinion, and let your friends (and foes) know about Swans. * Here are the links to all the pieces: http://www.swans.com/library/art10/elib018.html I Will Not Be Herded by Eli Beckerman http://www.swans.com/library/art10/joset001.html Damned If We Do? Damned 'Cause We Didn't! by José M. Tirado
China and socialism
If any confirmation of the correctness of Marty Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett's China and Socialism (a book-length article in the July-August 2004 Monthly Review) was needed, you can look at the heartrending Aug. 1, 2004 NY Times article on the suicide of Zheng Qingming. This 18 year old peasant youth threw himself into the path of an onrushing locomotive because he lacked the $80 in fees to continue with college. It is the first in a series of NY Times articles dealing with class divisions in China, a country in which 85 million people earn less than $75 per year. I strongly urge everybody to get a copy of the current MR since it is high time that the left come to terms with what is happening in China. In this post, I am recapitulating some of their main arguments for the benefit of Marxmail subscribers outside the USA who may have difficulty purchasing a copy. Not only do Marty and Paul put the nail into the coffin of Chinese socialism; they pose broader questions about how to understand problems of development. I can think of nothing since Robert Brenner's NLR article on the world financial crisis that makes as big a statement as their article and hope that it opens up some dialog on the left about the issues it poses. This post is a first step in that direction. In part one, Marty and Paul discuss China's Rise to Model Status. Obviously, one would expect people like Stephen Roach of Morgan-Stanley to hail China's unwavering commitment to reform. However, China has also ingratiated itself as a model to so-called progressives like Joseph Stiglitz who was profiled in the Nation Magazine of May 23, 2002 titled Rebel With a Cause. Referring to Stiglitz, Eyal Press tells us that: He also believes the spread of global capitalism has enormous potential to benefit the poor. As an example of a country that has successfully integrated into the global marketplace--but in a manner that defies the conventional wisdom of the Washington Consensus--Stiglitz points to China. China has adopted privatization and lowered trade barriers, he argues, but in a gradual manner that has prevented the social fabric from being torn apart in the process. Full: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610c=4s=press I guess throwing oneself into the path of an onrushing train does not constitute a rift in the social fabric. When Stiglitz was in Beijing in July, 1998, he called China by far the most successful of the low-income countries' in moving to a market economy. With 85 million people making less than $75 per year, one would dread less successful examples. Moving along, one encounters a fondness for the Chinese development model among the market socialist academic left. In the 1993 Rethinking Marxism, Victor Lippit considers China as an exception to the capitalist triumphalism that was sweeping the world. He hoped that a mixture of state and privately owned enterprises could be a formula for success. Although somewhat noncommittal on the exact character of Chinese society, Walden Bello has been one of the most outspoken defenders of the development model which he describes as a successful revolutionary nationalist struggle that got institutionalized institutionalized into a no-nonsense state, whatever that's supposed to mean. In defending China's policies against people like Lester Brown, who invoke neo-Malthusian arguments against them, Bello writes: China is one of the world's most dynamic economies, growing between 7-10% a year over the past decade. Its ability to push a majority of the population living in abject poverty during the civil-war period in the late forties into decent living conditions in five decades is no mean achievement. That economic dynamism can't be separated from an event that most of us in the South missed out on: a social revolution in the late forties and early fifties that eliminated the worst inequalities in the distribution of land and income, and prepared the country for economic take-off when market reforms were introduced to the agricultural sector in the late 1970s. full: http://www.focusweb.org/popups/articleswindow.php?id=251 In other words, socialism in China was a kind of training wheels that helped the country prepare for the turbo-capitalism of the recent period. One wonders if Zheng Qingming felt a part of this dynamism, especially in light of a verse he composed: Do not toady to those above. Do not flatter the rich. Do not cheat the poor. Make way for a new generation. While I appreciate Marty and Paul's decision to challenge precepts about market socialism, especially in relation to China, I wonder if this trend all that powerful in the academy. As one who tries to keep track of academic fads, I don't recall that many articles in praise of the Chinese CP over the past 15 years or so in obscure journals on the left. By and large, market socialism was a kind of utopian socialism that turned Mondragon and other such
welcome to the banana republic
August 1, 2004 ECONOMIC VIEW Does the Economy Have Cement Shoes? By EDUARDO PORTER THE economy is a major electoral battleground, and President Bush and Senator John Kerry have been jousting over everything from budgetary policy to the unemployment rate. Yet even as the candidates unfurl their clashing economic philosophies, some experts say the next president will not easily turn the American economic ship. Like never before, economic policy will be constrained by the nation's foreign debt. The debt load mounted when the nation's current account deficit started to bloat in the late 1990's. That deficit - the broad measure of America's balance of trade and interest payments with the rest of the world - grew despite the recession of 2001, and now amounts to about 5 percent of the nation's total output. The growing foreign debt led to one of the most radical turnarounds in modern financial history. Until the late 1980's, the rest of the world owed the United States more than it owed the world. At the beginning of 2004, though, the balance between the United States' foreign assets and its liabilities was in the red by an amount equivalent to nearly 30 percent of gross domestic product. The United States is hurtling into debt, said Wynne Godley, a professor of economics at Cambridge University and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College in New York. No one knows how high this debt can go. We're in new territory, said James W. Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management. It can scare the jeebies out of a lot of people. Still, Professor Godley and two colleagues - Alex Izurieta of Cambridge and Gennaro Zezza at the University of Cassino in Italy - made some projections on how the rising foreign debt load would limit economic growth. They assumed that the dollar would stay at current levels after declining 9 percent since 2002, and that the economy in the rest of the world would grow by 4 percent, on average, over the next four years. Then they factored in the propensities of Americans to import and export, and the impact of rising interest rates on the servicing of foreign debt. What they found wasn't pretty. Under these conditions, for the United States' economy to grow by 3.2 percent per year, on average, over the course of the next administration, the American current account deficit would have to surge to an unprecedented 7.5 percent of G.D.P. over the next four years. The nation's net financial deficit with the world would widen to more than 50 percent of G.D.P. These precarious finances could limit action on the budget deficit, despite the claims of the two candidates. President Bush says the deficit will pretty much take care of itself, mainly through faster economic growth that will increase government revenues and reduce entitlement spending. Senator Kerry says he can cut the deficit painlessly by scrapping some of Mr. Bush's tax cuts and reducing corporate subsidies and tax loopholes. Neither of these options is a slam-dunk. As things stand now, it is questionable whether the United States can sustain brisk growth. But Mr. Kerry's plan would further reduce growth as higher taxes and lower spending cut into aggregate demand. And while lower budget deficits tend to reduce long-term interest rates and stimulate private spending, the over-indebted American consumer is unlikely to pick up the slack. In fact, using the same assumptions as before on the dollar and foreign economic growth, Professor Godley and his colleagues found that if the next administration cut the overall government budget deficit by around 2 percentage points of gross domestic product, this could reduce annual G.D.P. growth by about 2 percent. There is an alternative to this bleak outlook, but it will not be easy to achieve: let the dollar fall much further. This would improve the United States' net trade balance by increasing exports, reducing imports and putting a lid on the current account deficit. It would also improve the country's net financial position by increasing the dollar value of the country's foreign assets. If the dollar fell by 5 percent a year from now until the end of the next administration, for a total decline of about 23 percent, the economy would grow 3.2 percent a year, according to Professor Godley's calculations. At the same time, the current account deficit would shrink to less than 3 percent of G.D.P. and the nation's net external financial deficit would halve to some 15 percent of G.D.P. This would also allow for a significant cut in the budget deficit, because slowing imports and rising exports would transfer the pain of reduced domestic demand onto the rest of the world. IT'S possible that this will happen naturally, and the dollar will simply decline in value, Mr. Paulsen said. Foreign purchases of American stocks and bonds have been falling in the last several months, and if this trend
privacy
I just found this on Risks Digest. [http://www.odci.gov/cia/notices.html#priv] Privacy Notice The Central Intelligence Agency is committed to protecting your privacy and will collect no personal information about you unless you choose to provide that information to us. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
God supports communism
I found this on Risk Digest as well Cosmic ray hits Brussels election - really? Dirk Fieldhouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thu, 29 Jul 2004 13:04:14 +0100 John Miller, Dow Jones Newswires (07/26/04); seen via ACM Tech News: http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0728w.html#item1 European citizens and governments generally prefer traditional paper-based voting because of unresolved reliability and security issues surrounding electronic voting. ... [DF comment: what a fair summary, and in the UK issues are also being raised by the extension of postal paper voting] ... Fueling the arguments of paper ballot supporters are incidents such as a 2003 Belgian election in which almost 4,100 extra votes for Maria Vindevoghel's Communist Party were recorded in a precinct of Brussels due to a malfunction triggered by a cosmic ray. ... I found this jaw-dropping -- not the possibility of a cosmic ray causing a computer malfunction, which is an obvious threat for space-borne systems, but how such an apparently unrepeatable external event could be accepted as the cause of a terrestrial computer malfunction. The lack of any confirmation through Google seems to support my astonishment. Can the select RISKS readership confirm whether this actually occurred, or is it an urban legend? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: China and socialism
If any confirmation of the correctness of Marty Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett's "China and Socialism" (a book-length article in the July-August 2004 Monthly Review) was needed, you can look at the heartrending Aug. 1, 2004 NY Times article on the suicide of Zheng Qingming. This 18 year old peasant youth threw himself into the path of an onrushing locomotive because he lacked the $80 in fees to continue with college. It is the first in a series of NY Times articles dealing with class divisions in China, a country in which 85 million people earn less than $75 per year. Comment Interesting . . . 85 million people with $75(US) per year . . . what was it twenty years ago? Where is the relationship? What do $75 (US) buy amongst these 85 million peoples . . . peasants? The first rule of politicsfor political leaders on the side of the proletariat in the American Union is that if the New York Times or Washington Post run a story on China . . . position yourself in opposition to it and you will be on the right side of the polarity . . . 90% of the time . . . always. A 10% loss rate is acceptable for any political leader. This is not to say one rejects data from the bourgeoisie . . . but rather . . . the story of an 18 year old boy killing himself because he could not go to college is for suckers and political panhandlers. Let's political thug. Earlier in July there was a series of articles about China on the A-List and the review of the Monthly Review article. To my knowledge no one disputes capitalism in China . . . or rather . . . I do not dispute the existence and operation of the bourgeois property relations and the unrestrained law of value . . . creating the specific circuit of reproduction. By "no one" is meant those who wrote concerning China and prior to that the issue of the loss of manufacturing jobs in China was spoken of. Questions like why are the manufacturing jobs lost was asked since China is hands down the low cost producer? Why are manufacturing jobs being lost in low producer China and the reason is not capitalism. Again . . . I have written nothing to dispute the bourgeois property relations in China . . . at least in the last 15 years. There was a question of what portion of the GDP was driven by FDI and/or its economic weight as reproduction and development of the industrial and post industrial infrastructure . . . as opposed to consumer goods. This includes most certainly the military infrastructure. The military infrastructure emerged as of supreme importance to socialism as a transition in the form of property. The point is that if one is to get into the meat of the matter . . . an analysis from two different direction is necesaary. One direction is the import of the military technology and military wares on the basis of bourgeois property. The other is the system of reproduction of these wares and its subjection to the unrestricted law of value . . . or capitalism. Actually . . . military production is important to bourgeois America and it is all capitalism. Get into the issue and lets dealwith something more than ideology and what we already know about bourgeois property in China. Pardon me . . . but capitalism in China is not what produces class divisions. The bourgeois property relations exacerbates inequality based on property and ownership rights . . . as it takes root on the basis of the industrial system. I do believe that what is taking place in China can . . . in the future . . . open another level of discussion absent amongst Marxists . . . as opposed to the left which is uniformly anti-Communist . . . and have always been basically anti-Communists in America and fundamentally anti-China and anti-Soviet. The strength of the counterrevolution is not a subjective question rooted in the thinking of individuals and I do not subscribe to a "great individual theory" of history. One might as well say that Hitler was responsible for German fascism. No . . . I believe more is involved in history than simply the individuals whose personality captures the moment. In other words I am a dogmatic materialist. Rather the question that has not been explored is the law of value as it operates under the industrial system no matter what stage of transition of its property relations. Here is the economic base of the counterrevolution. This is what Cuba and North Korea faces . . . in addition to a more powerful imperial antagonists. If class divisions are not the result of capitalism (and one must separate these issues or they cannot wage the proper political struggle) but rather the mode of production as a specific combination of human labor + machinery + energy source . . . we can begin to describe more accurately the environment we operate in. This is important because people follow leaders who realize their collective vision and their vision is rooted in how they understand what is possible
