Re: Tariq Ali on the US election
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Before getting to the point of actually being able to split the Democratic and Republican Parties, we need an intermediate goal: do what we can to make the next POTUS a weak president, rather than a strong one. To do so, we need to decrease the shares of popular votes that go to the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. -- Yoshie Fewer votes mean a weaker president? Dream on. GWB lost the popular vote, and that didn't stop him from being the rootin'-tootin'-est, sure-as-shootin'-est hombre north, south, east, and west of the Pecos once he got into office. Mandates are for girlie men, as the governor of CA might put it. Carl Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges! -- Gold Hat, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre _ Check out Election 2004 for up-to-date election news, plus voter tools and more! http://special.msn.com/msn/election2004.armx
Re: Tariq Ali on the US election
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Before getting to the point of actually being able to split the Democratic and Republican Parties, we need an intermediate goal: do what we can to make the next POTUS a weak president, rather than a strong one. To do so, we need to decrease the shares of popular votes that go to the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. -- Yoshie Fewer votes mean a weaker president? Dream on. GWB lost the popular vote, and that didn't stop him from being the rootin'-tootin'-est, sure-as-shootin'-est hombre north, south, east, and west of the Pecos once he got into office. Mandates are for girlie men, as the governor of CA might put it. Carl Actually, Bush was a weak president until 9/11/01... Yes, he's fortune's child is GWB. Carl _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Jon Stewart versus Ted Koppel
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Koppel will be a guest on the Daily Show this thursday.) slate.com Battle of the Network Anchors Ted Koppel and Jon Stewart face off on the convention floor. By Dana Stevens ... In a one-on-one chat on the deserted convention floor after the day's festivities had ended, Koppel, in his low-key, dignified, What-Me-Worry way, got medieval on Stewart's ass. I hope that when he reports for duty on the Daily Show Thursday the low-key, dignified, What-Me-Worry -- whatever that means (Alfred E. Neuman should sue) -- Koppel wears the low-key, dignified combat outfit he sported when he was embedded like a suppository in the US Army during the Iraq invasion. Carl _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: No bounce for Kerry
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] So why did Bush, not Kerry, get the bounce? Tue Aug 3, 7:09 AM ET By Susan Page, USA TODAY There was a bounce after last week's Democratic National Convention. But it went to President Bush, not John Kerry. Kerry should lose Licorice the hamster. Carl _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: John Edwards speaks
Louis Proyect quoted John Edwards: ... Thats why we will strengthen and modernize our military. We will double our Special Forces, and invest in the new equipment and technologies so that our military remains the best equipped and best trained in the world. This will make our military stronger so were able to defeat every enemy in this new world It's going to be a long four years no matter who wins. Carl _ Overwhelmed by debt? Find out how to Dig Yourself Out of Debt from MSN Money. http://special.msn.com/money/0407debt.armx
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? -
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: You have no moral right to be acting superior to terrorists, since you intend to vote for one. But to be fair to John Kerry, he is only involved with state-sponsored terrorism. As far as I know, he has never been involved in a suicide bombing. Now he did apply botox to his forehead reportedly, but that did not affect innocent bystanders. It could. Introducing a foreign substance like botox might cause Kerry's crags to crumble like those of the Old Man of the Mountain under the onslaught of winter ice fissures. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/whites/old_man.html Kerry bears an eerie resemblance to the OMM so the risk of burying passersby under his rubble shouldn't be taken lightly. Carl _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thomas Frank's new book What's Wrong With Kansas argues implicitly that the Democrats lose elections because they are identified with the wrong side of the culture wars. This is the same sort of position that Michael Moore argued in the Nation Magazine in 1997 and that Richard Rorty put forward in Achieving Our Country. You get a more strident version of this in Todd Gitlin's The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars. Moving directly into the enemy's camp, you get Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society and Jim Sleeper's Liberal Racism: How Fixating on Race Subverts the American Dream. Somehow, this kind of economism that panders to white workers has been associated with Marxism in some circles. Frank himself would probably describe himself as a Marxist, but not on the Charlie Rose show--I don't imagine. In any case, this has little to do with the outlook of Lenin who urged that socialists act as a tribune of the people.) I think _What the Matter With Kansas?_ is a great book, but Frank doesn't really provide any explanation for conservatives' amazing, Lamont Cranston-style ability to cloud men's minds and substitute preposterous cultural issues for economic concerns that have life-and-death significance. Why *are* so many Americans so easily gulled, so mulish, so spiteful, so effing perverse? I was born in this country and have lived here for over a half century, but the basic weirdness of this place never fails to astonish me. BTW, just heard that Martha Stewart got a sentence (a phrase, really) of just five months. Guess she'll be out in time to offer decorating tips for Christmas. Carl _ MSN 9 Dial-up Internet Access helps fight spam and pop-ups now 2 months FREE! http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
From: Michael Hoover [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/16/04 10:13 AM (Thomas Frank's new book What's Wrong With Kansas argues implicitly that the Democrats lose elections because they are identified with the wrong side of the culture wars. nah, mainstream poli sci guys christopher achen and larry bartels have much better explanation, they've convincingly shown impact of droughts, flu, shark attacks, etc. on electoral responses, for example, 1916 shark attacks (that inspired peter benchley's novel 'jaws') along new jersey beaches resulted in 10% decline from 1912 in beach town votes for woodrow wilson... Hmm, well I think we can rule out shark attacks as a factor in the decline of the Kansas left. The American heartland remains shrouded in mystery. Carl _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Statin update
Panel's ties to drugmakers not cited in new cholesterol guidelines BY DELTHIA RICKS AND RONI RABIN July 15, 2004 Guidelines published by a government panel earlier this week, calling for aggressive use of statin medications to lower cholesterol in people at high risk of heart attacks, failed to list panelists' links to pharmaceutical companies, many of which manufacture statin drugs. Of the nine panelists, six had received grants or consulting or speakers' fees from companies that produce some of the most popular statin medications on the market, according to published material from 2001. Those drugs include Pfizer's Lipitor; Bristol-Myers Squibb's Pravachol, Merck's Lovastatin and AstraZeneca's Crestor. ... http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hschol0715,0,847235.story?coll=ny-health-headlines Carl _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Bush insults mentally ill people
From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] BBC in London this morning has just played a clip of Bush defending himself with some red-neck stuff about Saddam Hussein that if it is a choice between a madman and defending the American people he will defend the American people. If you take this literally, any mindset that Saddam Hussein was mentally ill is an even worse failure of intelligence than so far exposed. Just in terms of real politik how can you sensibly analyse any country on the basis that its leader is a madman? Perhaps that really was the problem. But in terms of crude stigmatisation of people with disabilities, this sort of statement would be completely unacceptable in Britain. For all his crimes and misdemeanours, his cynicism and his opportunism, Tony Blair could never have produced this slur on mentally ill people in British civil society. Huh? Bush is guilty of war crimes, and you're nailing him with a *PC* offense? Really, Chris, you're beginning to sound like St. Tony Blair yourself. Carl _ MSN Toolbar provides one-click access to Hotmail from any Web page FREE download! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200413ave/direct/01/
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thanks for your comment, Gil. Please excuse a layperson's question, but I have never quite been able to understand this economist's use of secular. What is the definition of secular. Please excuse a layperson's answer: Secular is a trend without end. Carl _ Get fast, reliable Internet access with MSN 9 Dial-up now 2 months FREE! http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/
Re: US under fire at AIDS conference
From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] How can you defeat an alliance of Christian fundamentalists and the drug companies? [Or for that matter, how do you defeat an alliance of drug companies and free-trade advocates?] Trade Pact May Undercut Inexpensive Drug Imports By ELIZABETH BECKER and ROBERT PEAR WASHINGTON, July 11 Congress is poised to approve an international trade agreement that could have the effect of thwarting a goal pursued by many lawmakers of both parties: the import of inexpensive prescription drugs to help millions of Americans without health insurance. The agreement, negotiated with Australia by the Bush administration, would allow pharmaceutical companies to prevent imports of drugs to the United States and also to challenge decisions by Australia about what drugs should be covered by the country's health plan, the prices paid for them and how they can be used. It represents the administration's model for strengthening the protection of expensive brand-name drugs in wealthy countries, where the biggest profits can be made. In negotiating the pact, the United States, for the first time, challenged how a foreign industrialized country operates its national health program to provide inexpensive drugs to its own citizens. Americans without insurance pay some of the world's highest prices for brand-name prescription drugs, in part because the United States does not have such a plan. Only in the last few weeks have lawmakers realized that the proposed Australia trade agreement the Bush administration's first free trade agreement with a developed country could have major implications for health policy and programs in the United States. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/12/politics/12DRUGready.html Carl _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: Africa should not pay its debts - Jeffrey Sachs
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have refrained from saying anything about Jeffrey Sachs or (Joseph Stiglitz) being more to the left than other economists, especially in their role as window dressing at Columbia University--my employer. Come, come. You're not threatening a crime against Columbia U. property a la 1968 -- occupying the president's office, smoking his cigars, etc. Just offering a bit of candor about one of the local all-stars. Surely Kings College can't be *that* repressive these days ;-) Carl _ Get fast, reliable Internet access with MSN 9 Dial-up now 2 months FREE! http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/
Re: Africa should not pay its debts - Jeffrey Sachs
From: Daniel Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have not followed Sachs closely in most recent times but I think he would strongly object to being called a 'man of the left'. maybe I was being too charitable on this point ... I'd say he's a man of the left in the same sense in which Brad DeLong is ... [In other words, a man of the left as perceived by someone who needs a hit of clozapine. Here, chosen at random, is a recent selection from Brad-the-Celebrated Lefty's windy blog:] It may be because Barbara Ehrenreich is a typical voice of the American left that it will in all probability be a waste of ink and paper to put her on the Times op-ed page, but a waste of ink and paper it will most likely be. I agree that Barbara Ehrenreich is a very smart and graceful writer, a keen analyst of American culture and society--she is worth, say, ten of David Brooks. But her brand of left-wing politics is an infantile disorder. [More, much more, at: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/] Carl _ Check out the latest news, polls and tools in the MSN 2004 Election Guide! http://special.msn.com/msn/election2004.armx
Re: Fw: [stop-imf] Africa should not pay its debts - Jeffrey Sachs
From: Daniel Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sachs has always been basically a man of the left, and has been saying sensible things about sovereign default fo longer than anyone else I can remember (including me and Richard Portes). Perhaps the whole Harvard Institute thing should be viewed by revisionist historians as a brief aberration in the career of a basically good bloke. dd Like Paul Krugman's honorarium from Enron? Carl _ MSN Toolbar provides one-click access to Hotmail from any Web page FREE download! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200413ave/direct/01/
Re: Fw: [stop-imf] Africa should not pay its debts - Jeffrey Sachs
From: sartesian [EMAIL PROTECTED] Really? That's quite an aberration-- participating in the dismantling of the Russian Revolution, transforming the remnants of socialized property into private fortunes. Bingo. As with, Apart from that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln? Carl _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: Herman Melville on the difference between capitalism and primitive communism
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] What a striking evidence does this operation furnish of the wide difference between the extreme of savage and civilized life. A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with infinitely less toil and anxiety than he expends in the simple process of striking a light; whilst a poor European artisan, who through the instrumentality of a lucifer performs the same operation in one second, is put to his wit's end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parents, pluck from the branches of every tree around them. full: http://www.online-literature.com/melville/typee/16/ [And let's not forget the classic portrait of bourgeoisie prudence offered by the lawyer in Bartleby the Scrivener:] I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous even to turbulence at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury or in any way draws down public applause, but, in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men's bonds, and mortgages, and title deeds. All who know me consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence, my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor, a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor's good opinion. ... [My office] was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly remunerative. I seldom lose my temper, much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages http://www.litrix.com/bartleby/bartl001.htm Carl _ Get tips for maintaining your PC, notebook accessories and reviews in Technology 101. http://special.msn.com/tech/technology101.armx
Re: Kerry that weight...
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Kerry would keep US troops in Iraq far longer than Bush The Democrat looks like the one with the long-term imperial agenda Jonathan Steele Friday July 9, 2004 The Guardian Here's a dinner-party talking point that can run and run, certainly until November and, if the Democrats win the US presidency, for several months beyond. Would John Kerry, far from quickly bringing US troops home, keep them in Iraq even longer than George Bush? Just the kind of cynicism we don't need. The key thing is that Bush would keep troops in Iraq with a smirk on his face, while Kerry would do so with an expression of sorrow. All the difference in the world really. Carl _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Michael Moore's Dilemma: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and John Kerry
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Michael Moore's Dilemma: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and John Kerry (There are two conspicuous absences in Fahrenheit 9/11: John Kerry and Israel. The two absences are dependent on each other. Moore's electioneering really beats the stuffing out of the historical record. To examine the Iraq war without mentioning the neocons and the Wolfowitz Doctrine is like, say, looking at the origins of World War I without mentioning the General General Staff or the Schlieffen Plan. The movie should skip Wolfowitz's drool and look at Wolfowitz's thinking -- that's repellent enough. Carl _ MSN 9 Dial-up Internet Access helps fight spam and pop-ups now 2 months FREE! http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/
Re: Michael Moore's Dilemma: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and John Kerry
From: Carl Remick [EMAIL PROTECTED] ...To examine the Iraq war without mentioning the neocons and the Wolfowitz Doctrine is like, say, looking at the origins of World War I without mentioning the General General Staff ... Er, make that the German General Staff. I must have been thinking of another war and the redoubtable Major Major ;-) Carl _ MSN Life Events gives you the tips and tools to handle the turning points in your life. http://lifeevents.msn.com
Re: Business on Edwards
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the US, labor unions are on the wane, while the welfare state is getting meaner and less effective at doing its good jobs. So what's a worker to do if injured or cheated by some corporation? Call in a trial lawyer or personal injury lawyer! In the South, where unions and the welfare state have traditionally been weaker, the populist trial lawyer and the progressive side of tort law have been well established -- and enshrined in the novels of John Grisham -- at least in myth. That's where John Edwards, a practiced trial lawyer, comes from. (For some reason, Northern trial lawyers have a reputation for being sleazy rather than populist.) Even if there's some truth to the populist lawyer myth, it's clearly second-best compared to unions and the welfare state. Class action lawsuits are no substitute for more universal programs. Very well put. The whole notion that we can sue our way to a better society is pathetic, as erroneous as the notion that charity offers an effective approach to social need. Carl _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: Correction
From: Michael Pollak [EMAIL PROTECTED] [See comment at end] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/01/pageoneplus/corrections.html The New York Times July 1, 2004 Corrections ... As Eric Umansky of Todays Papers points out, this correction fails to mention the tiny bit of context that his purported desertion was what that article was about -- the only thing it was about. They should create a new section entitled Retractions. Michael Yes, and the NYT needs another new section called Recalls. E.g., both the paper's Thomas L. Friedman and, it would seem, Judith Miller have been pulled out of production for retooling. Carl _ MSN Movies - Trailers, showtimes, DVD's, and the latest news from Hollywood! http://movies.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200509ave/direct/01/
Re: Sowell
From: David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] BTW, the Reason review of Doug Henwood's book is now online: http://www.reason.com/0406/cr.co.that.shtml Well that was two minutes wasted. I'd suggest that Reason critic Charles Oliver hold onto his day job, in which he covers local government for The Daily Citizen in Dalton, Georgia. Carl _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: The presidential election and the Supreme Court
From: Daniel Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] I seem to remember from university days that the power of Congress to decide whether or not the USA is at war or not, is one that has repeatedly been ignored by successive US Presidents ... Hey, credit where it's due! This provision has been ignored by Congress also. Carl _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: Putin
From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED] By the way . . . Lenin is dead. This might come as a shock. I believe they have finally taken his body off display. I mean Leninism is dead. --- He's still in the Mausoleum on Red Square (which is a really nice little piece of architecture). They recently dressed him in some new, more up-to-date and fashionable threads. [As corpses go, he's quite a la mode.] Friday, 07-Nov-2003 6:40AM PST Story from AFP MOSCOW - Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, whose body remains on display in the mausoleum on Red Square, is getting a new suit, an official said Friday on the 86th anniversary of the Russian revolution. Lenin will be given new clothes during works that will be carried on his body between November 10 and December 29, said embalming expert Yuri Denisov-Nikosky, a senior official at the Russian centre for bio-medical technologies. The former Soviet leader has lain in the mausoleum on Red Square since his death in 1924, preserved by enbalming despite his declared wish to be buried in his native Saint Petersburg. Denisov-Nikolsky said Lenin's new suit will be his 10th during the 30 years in which he had been involved in preserving the body, the RIA Novosti news agency said. New clothes, including a white spotted tie, are ordered every three years, he said. After he was first buried in the mausoleum, Lenin was dressed in military uniform, but just before the (1941-45) war, someone decided it symbolised a militarist nature and he was immediately dressed in civilian clothes, Denisov-Nikolsky said. ... http://quickstart.clari.net/qs_se/webnews/wed/da/Qrussia-lenin.R3rw_DN7.html Carl _ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee® Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: Putin
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] I doubt that anyone wants to be put on permanent display... [Clearly you never met Jeremy Bentham.] The Auto-Icon At the end of the South Cloisters of the main building of UCL stands a wooden cabinet, which has been a source of curiosity and perplexity to visitors. The cabinet contains Bentham's preserved skeleton, dressed in his own clothes, and surmounted by a wax head. Bentham requested that his body be preserved in this way in his will made shortly before his death on 6 June 1832. The cabinet was moved to UCL in 1850. Not surprisingly, this peculiar relic has given rise to numerous legends and anecdotes. One of the most commonly recounted is that the Auto-Icon regularly attends meetings of the College Council, and that it is solemnly wheeled into the Council Room to take its place among the present-day members. Its presence, it is claimed, is always recorded in the minutes with the words Jeremy Bentham - present but not voting. Another version of the story asserts that the Auto-Icon does vote, but only on occasions when the votes of the other Council members are equally split. In these cases the Auto-Icon invariably votes for the motion. Bentham had originally intended that his head should be part of the Auto-Icon, and for ten years before his death (so runs another story) carried around in his pocket the glass eyes which were to adorn it. Unfortunately when the time came to preserve it for posterity, the process went disastrously wrong, robbing the head of most of its facial expression, and leaving it decidedly unattractive. The wax head was therefore substituted, and for some years the real head, with its glass eyes, reposed on the floor of the Auto-Icon, between Bentham's legs. However, it proved an irresistible target for students, especially from King's College London, and it frequently went missing, turning up on one occasion in a luggage locker at Aberdeen station. The last straw (so runs yet another story) came when it was discovered in the front quadrangle being used for football practice. Thereafter it was removed to the College vaults, where it remains to this day. Many people have speculated as to exactly why Bentham chose to have his body preserved in this way, with explanations ranging from a practical joke at the expense of posterity to a sense of overweening self-importance. Perhaps the Auto-Icon may be more plausibly regarded as an attempt to question religious sensibilities about life and death. Yet whatever Bentham's true motives, the Auto-Icon will always be a source of fascination and debate, and will serve as a perpetual reminder of the man whose ideals inspired the institution in which it stands. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/info/jb.htm Carl _ MSN Movies - Trailers, showtimes, DVD's, and the latest news from Hollywood! http://movies.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200509ave/direct/01/
Re: Thomas Frank's new book
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Eugene Coyle wrote: What's Wrong With Kansas, the new book by Thomas Frank is interesting. His acknowledgements include a roster of Pen-L ers. Including, if I'm remembering correctly, Eugene Coyle. Doug Hmm, modesty abounds. From WWWK's Acknowledgments: Gene Coyle, Doug Henwood, Jim McNeill, Nomi Prins, and Daryll Ray each helped me understand the particulars of the industrial fields discussed in the book. Carl _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: Ronald Reagan, R.I.P.
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] someone I know reported that he once saw Ronald Reagan walk on water -- and then turn water into wine. And mirabile dictu, he turned ketchup into a vegetable. Carl _ Getting married? Find great tips, tools and the latest trends at MSN Life Events. http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=married
Re: Reagan's legacy
From: Frank, Ellen [EMAIL PROTECTED] This morning, NPR's Nina Tottenberg was talking about Reagan's appointments of Scalia and Bork to the Supreme Court -- calling them leading intellects of the conservative movement. Ellen Reminds me of Groucho Marx's remark about so-and-so being the brains of the bunch which should give you some idea of the bunch. Carl _ Stop worrying about overloading your inbox - get MSN Hotmail Extra Storage! http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200362ave/direct/01/
Re: Thinking for ourselves: Remembering World War II
From: Joel Wendland [EMAIL PROTECTED] A WW2 vet and peace activist clleague of mine went to the memorial on its opening day. He described it as a celebration of empire and military might. He said that it completely ignored the human cost of war and there is only indirect indication that men and women fought fascism and sacrificed their lives and health for it. His description of the memorial sounded as though tis creators wanted to build amonument to power rather than a just struggle against the fascists. WWII, the good war, lends itself to this kind of abuse, and I welcome it receding in history. I look forward to the next commemorative of a similar nature: the 100th anniversary of WWI, just ten years from now. WWI was not a good war in any way, shape or form; it was suffering and waste of unprecedented scale all in the service of imperial vanity. It's better that people should move on from the recalling heroics of WWII and instead ponder the utterly mindless slaughter of WWI, the war that set the stage for WWII. Carl Carl _ Watch LIVE baseball games on your computer with MLB.TV, included with MSN Premium! http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200439ave/direct/01/
Re: NY Review of Books
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: PEN-L list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] NY Review of Books Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 16:32:49 -0400 In the winter of 1962-63, during a strike of the NY Times, Robert Silvers and a few close friends decided to launch the New York Review of Books (http://www.nybooks.com/), which is considered the premier intellectual print journal outside of academia. I recall NYRB was known at least at one time as the New York Review of Each Other's Books ;-) Carl _ Best Restaurant Giveaway Ever! Vote for your favorites for a chance to win $1 million! http://local.msn.com/special/giveaway.asp
Re: The Simpsons on Alcatraz
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Last night I turned on the Simpsons for the first time in months--ten minutes into the show. The family were guests on a Fox-TV type show with the host browbeating them for not loving America enough. When Marge and Lisa tell him something to the effect that if loving America means mindless flag-waving, then they don't love it. I was stunned by this episode -- easily the most political Simpsons in years. I'm not sure the voice actors deserve a tripling of their pay (they're reportedly asking for $8 million per season, triple what they made before), but I hope the show sticks around if they can sustain the level of this latest episode. Carl _ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee® Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: game theory
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freud recounts an old Jewish joke in, I think, his book on jokes. The gist of it is that one guy runs into another in the Warsaw railroad station and says, Why did you tell me you were going to Cracow the other day when you were really going to Cracow? Rimshot Hmm, I guess you need Dr. F's delivery. Carl _ Best Restaurant Giveaway Ever! Vote for your favorites for a chance to win $1 million! http://local.msn.com/special/giveaway.asp
Re: NYT: The story of the wounded
From: Michael Pollak [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Thanks to body armor, the proportion of the wounded that are amputees is supposed to be paradoxically higher, because without it many of them would have died. I keep wondering whether the count of the wounded might not end up someday being the politically important body count of the 21st century, rather than that of the dead. Because in many ways the shock of young people adjusting to an amputation or mutilation is more affecting to people who don't know them than hearing that someone they don't know has died. Also offers more possibilities for TV.] Every war seems to offer unique horrors due to changing technology/tactics. In WWI, trench warfare meant that many soldiers were wounded when they stuck their head up and got shot in the face. The French had a special term for the survivors, the faceless ones. I saw photos of a bunch of them on the Web once. Memorable. Carl _ Frustrated with dial-up? Get high-speed for as low as $26.95. https://broadband.msn.com (Prices may vary by service area.)
Re: Democrats worry about Bush pullout
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] NY Times, November 14, 2003 In U.S., Fears Are Voiced of a Too-Rapid Iraq Exit By STEVEN R. WEISMAN and CARL HULSE ... My greatest fear is that this administration, having made all the wrong choices, is going to conclude they have to bring Johnny and Jane home by the next election in order to survive, said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in an interview. This is Biden's greatest fear? I swear, those hair-transplant plugs of his must be growing inwards. Love the Johnny and Jane lingo. Carl _ Frustrated with dial-up? Get high-speed for as low as $26.95. https://broadband.msn.com (Prices may vary by service area.)
Re: new radio product
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] You also have to keep in mind that there was no such thing as advertising, department stores and mass communications in Marx's age. Sometimes I have to catch my breath when I look around me at all the advertising in NYC. Subways, buses, TV shows, radio, magazines, newspapers, web pages, movies (ads before it starts; ads during the flick), taxis are all plastered with ads. Yes, I'm sure George Orwell's famous line -- advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket -- once had plenty of punch, but today it merely sounds quaint. Advertising nowadays is more like having *your head* stuck in a bucket that some lunatic is pounding away on with a hammer. The din is incessant and maddening, pure torture. Carl _ Send a QuickGreet with MSN Messenger http://www.msnmessenger-download.com/tracking/cdp_games
Re: Myron Scholes' day in court
From: Michael Pollak [EMAIL PROTECTED] [This is hilarious. I missed it when it first came out, and someone just told me about it at a Halloween party.] New York Times July 13, 2003, Sunday A Tax Shelter, Deconstructed By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON ... Dr. Scholes has told friends that most of his wealth has been wiped out in the collapse of Long-Term Capital. If the court rules in the government's favor, he stands to owe millions of dollars to the I.R.S. Boffo stuff, but what's the upshot? Is Dr. S. on food stamps now or what? Carl _ Crave some Miles Davis or Grateful Dead? Your old favorites are always playing on MSN Radio Plus. Trial month free! http://join.msn.com/?page=offers/premiumradio
Re: The Indisepensable IMF
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] The New York Times May 15, 1998, Friday, Late Edition - Final The Indispensable I.M.F. By Paul Krugman, CAMBRIDGE, Mass.; Paul Krugman is a professor of economics at M.I.T. ... the International Monetary Fund is all that we have, and it is a lot better than nothing at all [A current piece by Krugman in the NY Review of Books offers the nugget below. Ah, all the wonderful things Clinton had planned for the nation if he hadn't been so cruelly denied a third term in office! I can only assume the executive order for implementing the food-safety regulations mentioned here was in the Clinton's in-box ... right after Marc Rich's pardon ... when the clock ran out on his Administration.] Review Strictly Business By Paul Krugman ... Bill Clinton, with his close ties to the Arkansas chicken industry, wasn't particularly good on food safety issues in the early years of his presidency. But by the end his officials had devised and were on the verge of implementing regulations that would have greatly reduced the risk of Listeria infections from such foods as ready-to-eat turkey. The Bush administration killed those regulations ... http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16790 [BTW, here's some background info from a foodservice industry trade publication, Restaurants and Institutions (3/15/01):] Bush Receives Clinton's Last Word on Food Safety Final report of Council on Food Safety offers specific goals and how to reach them. By Deborah Silver RI SENIOR EDITOR Former President Clinton left the Bush administration a final parting gift: a report, seven years in the making, which spells out a plan for food safety and ways to achieve it. Taking the form of a five-year plan, the President's Council on Food Safety's report focuses on a number of objectives, including risk assessment and management, research needs, legislative actions, and the role of private enterprise, with the overriding goal being a 25% reduction of foodborne illnesses by yearend 2005 http://www.rimag.com/601/Ops.htm Carl _ Never get a busy signal because you are always connected with high-speed Internet access. Click here to comparison-shop providers. https://broadband.msn.com
Re: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice oftargets
Carl, I smoked a pipe for several decades before quitting -- and I would be afraid to add up how many thousands of dollars (not covered by insurance) I have spent on repairing (partly) the damage it did to my teeth. Right now, I've got a large gap in the front of my mouth (upper) which has cost me so far %3000 (for the implants) and will cost another thousand or two for the crowns on the implants. ... Carrol I am very sorry to learn you have had such problems. From family experience I know what an expensive bother dental repair can be. For myself, I'll take my chances and keep puffing away. I find little reason to smile these days anyway :( Carl _ Send instant messages to anyone on your contact list with MSN Messenger 6.0. Try it now FREE! http://msnmessenger-download.com
Re: In defence of Krugman
From: andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... Roosevelt tried to pack the court, and failed. One of the former bad guy justices switched his view and started supporting the New Deal Or as was said at the time: A switch in time saves nine. Carl _ Enjoy MSN 8 patented spam control and more with MSN 8 Dial-up Internet Service. Try it FREE for one month! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup
Re: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice of targets
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jurriaan Bendien wrote: The question that needs to be asked is what we achieve by polemically writing off Krugman and calling him nasty names. Krugman is a very learned left-liberal economist capable of very good critical inquiry into the US economy and suggesting positive alternatives. I personally believe we should aim to attract people like that to the socialist movement, rather than vent abuse language against them. By doing so, we just shoot ourselves in the foot more than anything else. But that's what makes Cockburn Cockburn. He is the ultimate contrarian who coined the term pwogwessive. Although I enjoy reading Krugman (and Maureen Dowd) myself, I enjoy it even more when some self-congratulatory liberal gets a spitball tossed at them. I posted Cockburn's Krugman column to another list yesterday as a reply to a posting of Ed Koch's comment that Krugman was lamebrained in his attempts to anyalye Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad's thinking. Basically, Krugman is a voice of reason within the context of the NY Times and a preening horse's ass in any broader context. But as LBJ memorably said of J. Edgar Hoover, Its probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. Carl _ Cheer a special someone with a fun Halloween eCard from American Greetings! Go to http://www.msn.americangreetings.com/index_msn.pd?source=msne134
Re: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice of targets
From: andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED] I make my living in part defending tobacco companies, and I make a lot of money too -- not as much as Dees, but I'm getting there, if I stay here, I will someday. I must be a real scumbag. No, as a pipe smoker I must say you're serving a worthy cause. In fact, I think you should be serving in a pro bono capacity ;-) Carl _ Concerned that messages may bounce because your Hotmail account has exceeded its 2MB storage limit? Get Hotmail Extra Storage! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es
Re: PBS documentary on Iraq
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] There is a telling moment in this documentary that makes the Iraqi resistance understandable. Shortly after a decision has been made by the US to crack down on looting, we see an army patrol that has captured a perpetrator who has a bunch of stolen wood on the top of his aging car. While they dress him down about the evils of looting, a tank rolls over his car reducing it to rubble. Afterwards, GI's high-five each other as if the car were a prop on Fear Factor. Later, Frontline learns that the man is a taxi driver and that the car was his sole means of income. It's worth watching the entire show just to catch this one scene, whose capacity to, er, shock and awe is considerable. The GIs sound and act exactly like members of Tony Soprano's crew. Carl Makiya is a real piece of work, as we put it in the USA. He appears rather disillusioned with what has happened in his native country but cannot make the connection between the US invasion and all that has gone wrong. This Brandeis professor is effusive in his praise of George W. Bush but blames just about everybody else in his administration for lacking the president's commitment to democracy. Makiya has often been described as an ex-Trotskyist. This morning I examined an online version of his Republic of Fear to detect any whiff of Marxism. This is what I found: All of this development highlights a dilemma whose underpinnings in our century arise within the communist tradition. The Russian experience has deeply affected all thinking on the relationship of political freedoms to development in backward countries irrespective of political persuasion. The contradictions were most paradigmatically expressed in the thought of Leon Trotsky. In his trenchant attack on Stalinism, The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky sought an explanation of the Stalinist phenomenon taken from outside its own peculiar distinctness and history of development. He wrote of the despotism of the new state as being an outcome of the iron necessity to give birth to and support a privileged minority in conditions of backwardness and how the power of the democratic Soviets proved cramping, even unendurable, when the task of the day was to accommodate those privileged groups whose existence was necessary for defense, for industry, for technique and science. The sense is of a transcendent causality maybe beyond the capacities of human intervention, through which today's freedoms have to be sacrificed in the interests of progress. This did not come from an economist, academician, or armchair revolutionary; it came from a leading intellect and political actor of the Russian revolution who had himself been cast aside by the iron necessity of the course it later took. What was for Trotsky a wrenching universal and personal dilemma, which he could only resolve by holding fervently onto the idea of world revolution, was transformed in the nationalist withdrawal and accelerating parochialism of all subsequent revolutions into an immutable law of the historical process, one that had been proved by the Stalinist experience. Invariably the ideology that captures this quality of imperial economic necessity in the Third World is the carping on about the falsity of bourgeois freedoms and the universal tendency to dislocate the realm of true freedom from the political to the social and economic domains. All later revolutions of this century (China, Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria) and all post-World War II nationalisms (Nasserism, Peronism, Ba'thism) have reaffirmed to one degree or another the apparently stringent objectivity of the choice: development or freedom? So evidently Makiya did at least read Trotsky. Whether he understood him is another question altogether. The freedom pole of the development/freedom polarity referred to above needs to be elaborated on. What does Makiya mean by freedom? It appears that this is the freedom to organize political parties, to put out newspapers--in other words the sort of freedom guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. It does not address social and economic freedom, however. If a nation does not have the freedom to develop its resources for the national good, then what use does civil liberties have? If Egyptians lacked the power to nationalize the Suez Canal or if Cuba could not expropriate the landed gentry, then true freedom would have eluded them no matter the trappings of formal democracy. But once private property is attacked, such countries inevitably find themselves threatened by imperialist war and blockade and are often required willy-nilly to impose somewhat draconian political norms. If they don't, they risk going the route of Allende's Chile or Sandinista Nicaragua. These questions constitute the cutting edge of politics today. Since the USA poses as a defender of freedom against all sorts of totalitarian dungeons from Cuba to North Korea, it is crucial that the left comes to term with this freedom/development contradiction. Elements of
The unique Michael Moore
A fine article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/michaelmoore/story/0,13947,1055591,00.html Carl _ Share your photos without swamping your Inbox. Get Hotmail Extra Storage today! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es
Re: George W. Bush, c'est fini
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bush is finished -- it's time to plan ahead for a struggle against a Democratic President in the White House who won't end the occupation of Iraq (thirteen months is a shorter period of time than you think). ... Over all, the poll found, Americans are for the first time more critical than not of Mr. Bush's ability to handle both foreign and domestic problems, and a majority say the president does not share their priorities. Thirteen months before the 2004 election, a solid majority of Americans say the country is seriously on the wrong track, a classic danger sign for incumbents, and only about half of Americans approve of Mr. Bush's overall job performance. That is roughly the same as when Mr. Bush took office after the razor-close 2000 election. . . . Whoa there, hold the confetti, Yoshie. You excised the key graf that followed the one above, i.e.: But more than 6 in 10 Americans still say the president has strong qualities of leadership, more than 5 in 10 say he has more honesty and integrity than most people in public life and 6 in 10 credit him with making the country safer from terrorist attack. Americans are still in denial so deep that spelunkers should be conducting national polls these days. Regretably, I wouldn't rule out Bush the wolverine just yet. Carl _ Share your photos without swamping your Inbox. Get Hotmail Extra Storage today! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es
Re: The oil and gas situation, according to the expurts
From: Mike Ballard [EMAIL PROTECTED] Only people with masochistic tendencies like being freely smacked around by the invisible hand. Most people instinctively put their hands up to protect themselves ... [Some, of course, are better positioned than others to blunt the blows :) The following is from today's Wall Street Journal.] Executive Pay Keeps Rising, Despite Outcry ... Surprisingly, despite all the negative publicity [about executive compensation], many big-business bosses continue to win this battle [for higher pay at the expense of shareholders] as they find new forms of compensation to make up for more modest salary increases and bonuses paid during the economic downturn Carl _ Instant message with integrated webcam using MSN Messenger 6.0. Try it now FREE! http://msnmessenger-download.com
Re: Rush Limbaugh
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] The other day I was reading an interesting commentary on George W. Bush, where unfortunately I cannot remember. It stated that he has been underestimated by the left and is capable of a wolverine-like intelligence when it comes to the imperial interests of the USA and the privileges of the ruling class--and just as importantly, he *never* doubts himself. That was in Robert Sam Anson's review of a number of books about the Bush presidency in NY Observer, viz.: Remember the good old days, back when the worst anyone could say about George W. Bush was that he was a dope? Remember the fun watching Will Ferrell imitate him on Saturday Night Live? The dazed, deer-in-the-headlights look? The way he said 'stra-teeg-er-ie'? Remember how harmless the smirking frat boy in the cowboy hat seemed? Dubya was the best yuk since Gerry Ford. Well, no ones laughing anymore. Not with Arlington filling up; three million jobs gone phfft; Antarctica melting; the deficit north of half a trillion; Osama and Saddam nowhere to be found; Ronald Reagan fondly remembered as a moderate; and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire starting to read like a self-help book. You surely know all that. But in the event youve been living in a secure, undisclosed location since his inauguration, these books provide a primer. Theyre chockablock with bone-chilling tidbits (inadvertently, in the case of We Will Prevail and The Faith of George W. Bush); and wading through even the densest of them is infinitely faster than waiting for the press to figure out that 'compassionate conservative' is oxymoronic. For starters, these books make clear that 43rd President is nowhere near as dumb as comfortingly imagined. He may still describe Kim Jong Ils toys as 'nuc-u-lur,' but events have shown him to be possessed of a wolverine intelligence. Hes also wholly unacquainted with self-doubt, a commodity on which liberals maintain the exclusive franchise. That Mr. Bush is thus blessed should come as no surprise: In addition to working out and getting to bed roundabout the time The West Wing is coming on, his daily routine includes talking to God. Whats more, God talks back. ... http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage7.asp By contrast, the left in the USA--at least the academic and mainstream versions such as the Nation Magazine--are filled with self-doubt and second guessing. With much hand-wringing from the likes of Todd Gitlin, we walk around like Hamlet doubting ourselves. Instead of being absolutely convinced of our mission--as is appropriate for the tasks before us--we blame ourselves for things that are utterly beyond our control--like Pol Pot or the Moscow Trials. If the left is to prevail, it will have to recover the kind of Jacobin self-assuredness it once had--or else it is doomed to fail. Hear, hear. Carl _ Get McAfee virus scanning and cleaning of incoming attachments. Get Hotmail Extra Storage! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es
Re: Michael Pollak's Pebble Theory
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] === Washington Post, Thursday, October 2, 2003 Can't They Just Admit It? By George F. Will ... Americans know that government, whether disbursing money or gathering intelligence, is not an instrument of precision. Hence they want the government to have the confidence -- in itself, and the public -- to say, as John Book did, that it was wrong. Lo, the progression of rats off the sinking ship Bush begins. Quite a sight to see Will squeeze through a scupper and swim for it. Carl -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org _ Help protect your PC. Get a FREE computer virus scan online from McAfee. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: Re: academic angst
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Devine, James wrote: from MS SLATE's on-line summary of major US newspapers Finally, the NY [TIMES] fronts the growing divide on college campuses between peace-loving professors, many of them veterans of the Vietnam era, and their hawkish, right-leaning students. The piece focuses largely on Amherst, where 40 professors appeared in a dining hall holding antiwar signs. Students objected vociferously and some shoving ensued. In Madison, teach-ins were as common as bratwurst, opines an Amherst prof. There was a certain nobility in being gassed. Now you don't get gassed. You walk into a dining hall and hand out an informational pamphlet. And get shoved by a 19-year-old, which is, presumably, in no way ennobling. You'd never know from reading this article that there's been an explosion of activism on U.S. campuses over the last 5 years. What planet does the newspaper of record live on? Doug Doug, I don't know how you can quarrel with the central point of the NY Times article -- namely, that campus antiwar fervor is nowhere near what it was during the Vietnam war. Are the leftist profs quoted in this article simply hallucinating when they talk about today's students as conservative sludge? Why, the article even sports your favorite stuff -- ;-) -- survey data: A nationwide survey of freshmen by the University of California at Los Angeles over the last 37 years reflected other shifts from Sept. 11. This year, more students called themselves conservative than in other recent surveys, and 45 percent supported an increase in military spending, more than double the percentage in 1993. Carl _ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Re: Re: the emporer
Your fervor to deny that anything good could be American is disturbing. jks You're mired in nostalgia, Justin. I can't think of a single good thing to say about the contemporary United States. Carl _ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the emporer
At 08:29 PM 04/03/2003 +, you wrote: You're mired in nostalgia, Justin. I can't think of a single good thing to say about the contemporary United States. The very, very large anti-war demonstrations? Joanna Ah, yes, the demonstrations -- with their very, very, very modest favorable impact on public opinion. Carl _ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
Re: Re: the emporer
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Well, Carl isn't a socialist -- he's a fellow traveler. :- The woes of taxonomy! As you'll recall, I am a soi-disant *fallow* traveler. But I do nail my colors to the mast as a socialist of some sort ... being, ah, mired in nostalgia myself. Carl _ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: the emporer
One case indeed. I assure you I make up in quality what I lack in quantity :) Carl From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] hmmm... it's amazing how JKS uses anecdotal evidence (one case) to trump a statistical argument about conditions on the left and pen-l in general. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: andie nachgeborenen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Yoshie, see? Carl Remick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Your fervor to deny that anything good could be American is disturbing. jks You're mired in nostalgia, Justin. I can't think of a single good thing to say about the contemporary United States. Carl _ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Re: the emporer
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Carl: a socialist of some sort Of a grouchy sort, I'm sure. :- Grouchy and worse. Like my neighbor Walt Whitman: I am he who knew what it was to be evil; I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, Blabbd, blushd, resented, lied, stole, grudgd, Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak, Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant; The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me, The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting, Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting. But I remain a socialist nonetheless. Carl _ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Re: Falling perles
From: joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Say what? He just resigned his chairmanship -- lowering his profile, increasing his ability to influence policy AND rake in the $$. That's all. Alas. Hold the alas please. Perle's not exactly chortling with glee at this development. As the NY Times reports: In a brief phone conversation this afternoon before the Pentagon's announcement, Mr. Perle sounded angry. Asked whether he had resigned, he replied: 'Let me just tell you something. If I had, you'd be the last person in the world I'd want to talk to.' He then slammed down the phone. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/28/business/28GLOB.html Carl _
Re: FT readers against the war
From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... I am going to stick my neck out: if the people of the world and finance capitalism are not in favour of this war we should not expect it to be very successful politically. Who will be the fall guy? Who will take the blame for any fiasco? Judging from history, the left will. Carl _ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
Re: An Empire in denial
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chronicle of Higher Education, March 28, 2003 America: an Empire in Denial By NIALL FERGUSON ... Was the British empire a good or bad thing? It is nowadays quite conventional to think that, on balance, it was a bad thing. ... [Score one for conventional wisdom. Here are a few points for deeply-in-denial Ferguson to reflect on:] Heart of smugness: Unlike Belgium, Britain is still complacently ignoring the gory cruelties of its empire Maria Misra Tuesday July 23, 2002 The Guardian So the Belgians are to return to the Heart of Darkness in an attempt finally to exorcise their imperial demons. Stung by another book cataloguing the violence and misery inflicted by King Leopold's empire on the Congo in the late 19th and early 20th century, the state-funded Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels has commissioned a group of historians to pass authoritative judgment on accusations of genocide: forced labour, systematic rape, torture and murder of the Congolese, around 10 million of whom are thought to have died as a consequence. This is not the first time that the Belgian empire has been singled out for censure. Back in the Edwardian era, British humanitarians spilled much ink over its excesses and Conrad's novella was corralled into service to show Leopold's Congo as a sort of horrific other to Britain's more uplifting colonialism. Complacency about Britain's imperial record lingers on. In the post-September 11 orgy of self-congratulation about the west's superiority, Blair's former foreign policy guru, Robert Cooper, and a host of journalistic flag-wavers were urging us not to be ashamed of empire. Cooper insisted empire was as necessary now as it had been in the 19th century. The British empire was, we were assured, a generally well-intentioned attempt to inculcate notions of good government, civilised behaviour and market rationality into less well-favoured societies. Is such a rosy view of British imperialism justified? Many argue that it is. After all, surely the British have less blood on their hands than the French and the Belgians? Wasn't the British addiction to the free market a prophylactic against the horrors of forced labour? And didn't those peculiar class obsessions make them less racist than the rest - silly snobs, but not vicious yobs? And isn't India not only a democracy, but, thanks to the British, one with great railways? Perhaps there is a kernel of truth in some of this, but there's also much wilful smugness. While the complex consequences of colonial economic policy require extended analysis, it is possible to dispel more swiftly the myth that the British Empire, unlike King Leopold's, was innocent of atrocities. It has become a modern orthodoxy that Europe's 20th century was the bloodiest in history and that atrocities must be recorded and remembered by society as a whole. But while a Black Book of Communism has been compiled and everybody is aware of the horrors of nazism, popular historians have been surprisingly uninterested in the dark side of the British Empire. There are exceptions, such as Mike Davis's powerful Late Victorian Holocausts, but much else still lies buried in the academic literature. Davis and others have estimated that there were between 12 and 33 million avoidable deaths by famine in India between 1876 and 1908, produced by a deadly combination of official callousness and free-market ideology. But these were far from being a purely Victorian phenomenon. As late as 1943 around 4 million died in the Bengal famine, largely because of official policy. No one has even attempted to quantify the casualties caused by state-backed forced labour on British-owned mines and plantations in India, Africa and Malaya. But we do know that tens of thousands of often conscripted Africans, Indians and Malays - men, women and children - were either killed or maimed constructing Britain's imperial railways. Also unquantified are the numbers of civilian deaths caused by British aerial bombing and gassing of villages in Sudan, Iraq and Palestine in the 1920 and 1930s. Nor was the supposedly peaceful decolonisation of the British Empire without its gory cruelties. The hurried partition of the Indian subcontinent brought about a million deaths in the ensuing uncontrolled panic and violence. The brutal suppression of the Mau Mau and the detention of thousands of Kenyan peasants in concentration camps are still dimly remembered, as are the Aden killings of the 1960s. But the massacre of communist insurgents by the Scots Guard in Malaya in the 1950s, the decapitation of so-called bandits by the Royal Marine Commandos in Perak and the secret bombing of Malayan villages during the Emergency remain uninvestigated. One might argue that these were simply the unfortunate consequences of the arrival of economic and political modernity. But does change have to come so brutally? There are plenty
Re: Letter to Michael Ignatieff
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... liberal pundits like Max Lerner who supported the war and in whose careerist footpath you are following. Haven't heard Lerner mentioned in years. In his day, he was the gold standard in fatuousness. He wound up as Scholar-in-Residence at the Playboy Mansion, as I recall. Carl _ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: an establishmentarian liberal speaks.
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Good Foreign Policy a Casualty of War Today, it is we Americans who live in infamy. By Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Good column until: Why let the opposition movement fall into the hands of infantile leftists? I think it's time for Arthur to grasp both ends of his bow tie and pull real tight. Carl _ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Re: Bin Laden's victory - Richard Dawkins
From: soula avramidis [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.michaelparenti.org/IRAQGeorge2.htm Liberal intellectuals are never happier than when, with patronizing smiles, they can dilate on the stupidity of George Bush. What I have tried to show is that Bush is neither retarded nor misdirected. Given his class perspective and interests, there are compelling reasons to commit armed aggression against Iraq---and against other countries to come What twaddle. On the one hand, there's no question that ridiculing Bush's intelligence is a mug's game; if he's so stupid how exactly did he become emperor of the world? OTOH, the equally patronizing claim that Bush's war makes perfect sense given his class perspective and interests is preposterous. The left is wasting its time looking for rational reasons for a war that ultimately is just plain insane -- a war that in a million and one ways will invite future resistance toward the US both in the Islamic world and among American's traditional allies and trading partners. This war subverts its own goals; it's nuts. Carl _ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: Re: Re: Re: Bin Laden's victory - Richard Dawkins
From: soula avramidis [EMAIL PROTECTED] Carl Remick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:From: soula avramidis http://www.michaelparenti.org/IRAQGeorge2.htm Liberal intellectuals are never happier than when, with patronizing smiles, they can dilate on the stupidity of George Bush. What I have tried to show is that Bush is neither retarded nor misdirected. Given his class perspective and interests, there are compelling reasons to commit armed aggression against Iraq---and against other countries to come What twaddle. On the one hand, there's no question that ridiculing Bush's intelligence is a mug's game; if he's so stupid how exactly did he become emperor of the world? OTOH, the equally patronizing claim that Bush's war makes perfect sense given his class perspective and interests is preposterous. The left is wasting its time looking for rational reasons for a war that ultimately is just plain insane -- a war that in a million and one ways will invite future resistance toward the US both in the Islamic world and among American's traditional allies and trading partners. This war subverts its own goals; it's nuts. Carl If the hisotry of wars can be explained by insanity then a universal mental assylum would be the objective of all peace loving people. but alas. it subverts its own goals if the USA looses or it takes too long to win, if not, then that is one big war booty, after which everyone will fall in line, else no oil. oil is about ten percent of world trade and it is a depletable resource, it first came into recorded history in Iraq when alexander took babylon, he tested a young boy after painting him with the black liquid and setting him on fire to see whether it could be used in battle. see will durant, our oriental heritage, the sory of civilization. what price oil? Droll fellow, that Alexander -- very much on Donald Rumfeld's wavelength. But I thought wheeling/dealing modern capitalism was supposed to be more subtle and sly in its practices and not have to rely on main force. There's a big difference between swindling -- business's default mode, as amply illustrated by the 1990s -- and armed robbery, which this war clearly represents. Carl _ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: More Lawyers say war illegal
Canadian law professors declare US-led war illegal Hmm, once Iraq gets pulverized I guess there will be an opening in the Axis of Evil, so perhaps the Bush crew will turn their gaze northward -- across that famous world's longest undefended border -- and realize they can do some cleaning up right in their own neighborhood. I mean, the US still has unfinished business as regards Fifty-Four Forty or Fight, right? Carl _ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
Re: Zizek's latest
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] In any case, I urge one and all to read Zizek's essay, if for no other reason, than ... ... it helps to kill time while waiting for this goddamned war to begin. Carl _ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: war and the economy
From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Has any member of Congress spoken up against this war? I saw Daschle's comment where he started out strong, condeming the bastard's lack of diplomacy, but then he said support the troops. [Even Daschle's guarded comments were enough to get him branded a virtual traitor by Speaker of the House Hastert:] House Leader Hastert Blasts Sen. Daschle Remarks Tue March 18, 2003 01:05 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives accused Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle on Tuesday of coming mighty close to giving comfort to U.S. foes and undermining President Bush's march toward war with Iraq. Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois ripped into Daschle for saying on Monday: I'm saddened, saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war. Daschle made the remarks after Bush decided to give up on diplomacy in his showdown with Saddam Hussein and instead give the Iraqi leader 48 hours to leave his country or face war. I was disappointed to see Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's comments, Hastert said in a statement. Those comments may not undermine the president as he leads us into war, and they may not give comfort to our adversaries, but they come mighty close, Hastert said. ... http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNewsstoryID=2401283 Carl _ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
Re: Code name for Iraq Invasion
From: k hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] So what is the code name of the upcoming invasion of Iraq? Operation Just Because? Operation Enduring Freedom Fries? Operation Desert Madness?Operation Enduring Misery? Operation Infinite Arrogance? Operation Just Us Carl _ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
Re: Re: Forbes includes Arafat Castro among wealthiest heads ofstate
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] ...Forbes refers to fortunes, which in ordinary English means personal wealth. Now there have been charges leveled against Fidel Castro, but owning a fortune is not one of them. I think that Forbes grouped Saddam Hussein, Yasir Arafat and Fidel Castro with the dregs of European and petrodollar aristocracy for an obvious reason, not so much to sow disinformation since nobody can really figure out what they are driving at--but just to score facile propaganda points. Just what you'd expect from the Capitalist tool. I believe Castro is somewhat deficient in the appurtenances of personal wealth. For instance, Castro appears to have far fewer global estates, yachts, hot-air balloons, motorcycle fleets, Faberge Easter eggs and collections of historical toy soldiers than Malcolm Forbes did. Also, unlike Malcolm Forbes, to my knowledge Castro has never dated Elizabeth Taylor. Carl _ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
Re: Blix report a blow to U.S.
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blix report a blow to U.S. Feb. 14, 2003 NBCs Andrea Mitchell reports that the inspectors reports are extremely favorable to Iraq and a blow to U.S. diplomacy. full: http://www.msnbc.com/news/default.asp?0ct=-34o Andrea sure has a lot more cojones than hubby Alan G. -- this is an excellent report. One person in particular who looks worse and worse in this whole fiasco is Colin Powell, whose reputation as the only relatively honest member of Bush crew has been destroyed. Carl _ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: RE: What is wrong with the mainstream economics?
From: Devine, James What a big order! If I were to be forced to talk about this subject, I'd stick to the basic point that the problem with mainstream economics is not that it's wrong in its own terms as much as that it's incomplete. ... E.g., it doesn't account for negative externalities, the social costs paid for private profit, as discussed in general terms here: http://www.essaybank.co.uk/free_coursework/1992.html Carl _ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
Re: duct and cover
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] If anyone wants to buy duct-tape, I'll be at Grand Central Station in NYC under the big clock at noon on Saturday. I expect to be able to sell it at about four times the going rate in California... ;-) Hmm, more up-to-date, entrepreneurial conduct than what the Yippies showed at the same location in '68 :) Viz.: As would eventually happen in Chicago, the [anti-war] Grand Central Yip-In [in February 1968] was a police riot. The celebration started off innocently enough. From 11 p.m. until about 1 a.m., an estimated six thousand tie-dyed, tangle-haired hippies poured into Grand Central Station from all imaginable directions, emerging from both the streets above and the subways below. The hippies carried balloons and noise-makers, guitars and bells and flutes, joints and incense. They sang songs and chanted and danced and packed the Station to the hilt with energy. By quarter after twelve, a group of youths had climbed up on the Station's information desk and began to play with the arms of the booth's four clocks. Not able to resist the temptation to, as Voice reporter McNeill described it, 'rape time,' they tore the arms off in defiance. http://www.wbaifree.org/fass/fasschp7.html Carl _ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
Re: PEN-L equals redistributionist LIBERALS
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I look at PEN-L and all I see are a bunch of LIBERALS from universities whose economic schemes all seem to involve big government coming in to enact their redistributionist schemes. I see a lot of talk about economics, including the discredited Marx. Well here are some things that you seem to have left out of your socialist redistributionist plans: #1 For all your carping about business, businesses CREATE JOBS. People would be out of work if business did not create jobs for them. #2 People who invest in business are RISKING THEIR MONEY on their investment. They deserve to be rewarded for this risk, not taxed by the nanny state. #3 People who don't like working for a company should START THEIR OWN BUSINESS. Neat-o. CAPITALIZATION to the rescue of capitalism! Carl _ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
Re: leaked British intelligence report
From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] BBC: Leaked report rejects Iraqi al-Qaeda link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2727471.stm This caused Blair some embarrassment and obliged him to make clear the differences between Britain and the USA ahead of Powell's speech on the question of whether Iraq has links with Al Qaeda http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2728535.stm [ABC News had a story about this too. ABC said that Ansar al-Islam, Saddam's supposed sinister nexus with Al Qaeda, is in fact Saddam's sworn enemy.] Weak Link? Radical Islamic Leader Denies Powell's Link Between Al Qaeda and Iraq By Brian Ross and Jill Rackmill Feb. 5 As part of Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council today, he said there was a sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network the nexus being a small, little known terrorist group called Ansar al-Islam, which is now at the center of the U.S. case. Powell showed a satellite photograph of what he said was a chemical weapons training center in Northern Iraq, used by al Qaeda and protected by Ansar al-Islam. Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq, said Powell. The group, whose name means Supporters of Islam, rules a remote portion of the autonomous northern Kurdish territories in Iraq near the Iran border, which is not controlled by Saddam Hussein. In fact, their leaders say they seek to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his government. ... http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/ansar030205_krekar.html Carl _ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: tax theory/policy
From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] washingtonpost.com An Economist On a Mission R. Glenn Hubbard's Theory Anchors Bush's Tax Plan -- but Can It Survive? By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 22, 2003; Page E01 ... At once owlish and boyish, Hubbard, 44, has already proven himself a survivor. He weathered a White House purge of the Bush economic team that sent the president's first Treasury secretary and his top economic adviser packing. ... January 23, 2003 Report: Bush Economist Hubbard to Leave By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 4:00 a.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) -- Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, will step down this spring to return to his teaching post at Columbia University, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. ... The Journal said administration officials emphasized they weren't trying to oust Hubbard, as happened with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, and would have preferred that Hubbard remain. [Hmm, I wonder what the real story is here.] http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-White-House-Economist.html Carl _ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
Re: RE: Re: tax theory/policy
From: Max B. Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:34061] RE: Re: tax theory/policy Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 09:55:35 -0500 career damage control. January 23, 2003 Report: Bush Economist Hubbard to Leave [Hmm, I wonder what the real story is here.] [Oops, guess the WSJ goofed. Hubbard will still be available to kick around.] January 23, 2003 White House's Hubbard: Departure Report Premature Filed at 9:37 a.m. ET PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - White House economic adviser Glenn Hubbard said on Thursday a newspaper report that he was planning to leave the administration was premature, but that he did not plan on being a lifer in the White House. It's too soon to write my obituary. It's a bit premature. They didn't talk to me, Hubbard told reporters, referring to a Wall Street Journal newspaper article saying he planned to leave his post as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and return to academia. Hubbard was speaking to reporters after addressing the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. Asked if he was planning to leave the administration by this spring, Hubbard said: At some point I will but I don't want to comment on the specific times. But obviously at some point -- I'm not a lifer. [end] Carl _ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Re: the pen-l fairness doctrine
From: Bill Lear [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Monday, January 13, 2003 at 06:59:36 (-0800) Devine, James writes: ... By Larry Paquette ... However, I feel no need to defend my position. Over the years I have worked hard and earned every dollar of the obscene wealth I am accused of hoarding. This is where he goes right off the rails. $100,000 per year does not an obscene amount of wealth make. Try $65,000,000 per year and you are closer to the target. Of course the rest of this is selfish, whining nonsense. Verily, Americans' awesome capacity for self-delusion is the most powerful weapon in the nation's entire arsenal for defending the American Way of Life. Carl _ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: the British empire as entertainment
From: Ian Murray A very Tory kind of history Niall Ferguson's feel-good television series on the British empire is a blinkered and sentimental romp Im reminded of Salons interview in November with Steve Earle, the radical country rocker and composer of John Walker's Blues, in which Earle said this of Brits endless nostalgia for their empire: ... nearly every country in Western Europe has been the most powerful country in the world for at least 30 seconds. They've lived through it. They've gotten through that to the other side and they know that there's life after that. With the possible exception of Britain, who are totally defined by their postcolonial self. That's who they are. They're like fucking Blanche DuBois. They're just sort of living in this world where everybody else is like, 'Yeah, we know you had an empire. We heard about your empire.' Carl _ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
Re: Re: the humbling?
From: Michael Pollak [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sun, 22 Dec 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Absolutely. The fines broken down per bank are minimal. Less than a daily trading revenue swing in any one product. Compared to the $650mln fine levied against Drexell Burnham for their junk bond scandals And now you just reminded me: Michael Milken got fined $600 mln personally on top of that. And was banished from his industry for ever. And got a ten year jail sentence. Compared that, what happened to these guys was like a backrub. Yes, this has been quite a charade. All of Spitzer's sound and fury about Wall Street's depredations signified nothing. There was an instant poll on the CBS MarketWatch site last Friday that asked readers whether they thought this settlement was severe enough on the banks, and 80% said no. That's not a scientific survey, of course, but I suspect it accurately reflects widespread investor dismay about the trivial penalties delivered here. But I haven't seen one word in the media about investors' disgust. Carl _ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemailxAPID=42PS=47575PI=7324DI=7474SU= http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsgHL=1216hotmailtaglines_addphotos_3mf
Re: Re: Re: Re: the humbling?
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In a message dated 12/23/02 10:16:45 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There was an instant poll on the CBS MarketWatch site last Friday that asked readers whether they thought this settlement was severe enough on the banks, and 80% said no. That's not a scientific survey, of course, but I suspect it accurately reflects widespread investor dismay about the trivial penalties delivered here. But I haven't seen one word in the media about investors' disgust. ... there's a complete disconnect between the punishment (which doesn't extend beyond these rounding-error fines) and public sentiment - but it's being swept away to make room for a brand new year of 'corporate responsibility.' [Plus, there's apparently room for much mirth! There's nothing Americans enjoy more than a good joke at their own expense, or so says Slate in the following:] Is Enron Funny Yet? Heineken's jokey corporate-scandal ad By Rob Walker Posted Monday, December 23, 2002, at 11:39 AM PT Remember when the fall of Enron was going to go down as a historical inflection point that forever shattered our image of corporate America? Well, at least you remember Enronsome bad guys in suits, complex financial maneuvers, paper shredding, that sort of thing. Maybe you're even hanging on to your outrage. Meanwhile, however, there is evidence from the world of advertising that the zeitgeist has reduced business chicanery from Defining Issue of Our Time to mere punchline. In a recent spot from Heineken we peer through a high-rise window at an office holiday party, to the crooning of Dean Martin. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, sings Dino in his vaguely decadent but always seductive style, and indeed the white stuff seems to be coming down plenty thick outside. Slowly the camera tilts upward, toward the top floor. Oddly, that's where the snow seems to be coming from. Within, we find power-suited execs, madly snatching up papers from a fancy conference table and stuffing them into a shredder. Box after box of documentation is getting the treatment, resulting in wastebaskets full of confetti, which are promptly emptied out the window. It cascades out in little flakes, fluttering past the happy (and innocent?) workers below. While Martin warbles blithely on, titles emerge against a background of corporate-made flurries: To all of us who weren't naughty this year Happy Holidays. The Heineken logo appears briefly at the end. Now wait a minute. Isn't it risky to make light of corporate malfeasance? What about all those solid Americans who showed up back when there were eight or nine congressional committees meeting daily on this subject to complain that CEOs are overpaid and selfish villains? The answer is no, it's not risky. We've moved on. Last week the New York Times reported that former CSX honcho and Treasury secretary nominee John W. Snow will draw a pension based on 44 years of service, although he actually put in 25, and that his benefits will be based not just on his salary, but on his salary, bonus, and the value of the huge chunk of CSX stock he was awarded, meaning his former firm will pay him about $2.5 million a year for the rest of his life. As that piece noted in passing, this comes on top of a 69 percent pay hike between 1997 and 2002he was pulling down more than $10 million annually as of last yearin a period when CSX shares fell 53 percent, lagging the SP 500. Enrichment for mediocrity isn't criminal fraud, but it's certainly outrageous. So was there anger and wailing in the streets? No. It was a one-day story. So the Heineken ad is in perfect sync with general attitudes about corporate excess: Nowadays it's good for a chuckle. ... http://www.slate.msn.com/id/2075745/ Carl _ MSN 8 limited-time offer: Join now and get 3 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialupxAPID=42PS=47575PI=7324DI=7474SU= http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsgHL=1216hotmailtaglines_newmsn8ishere_3mf
Re: Re: muscular economics
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Michael Perelman wrote: Krugman's latest says: The Washington Post reports that one of Mr. Bush's frequent complaints about Larry Lindsey was that he didn't get enough physical exercise. Yeah, and an earlier article said he looked jowly on TV. ... Lindsey looked jowly *on TV*? That's it, blame the media :) Carl _ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 3 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmailxAPID=42PS=47575PI=7324DI=7474SU= http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsgHL=1216hotmailtaglines_smartspamprotection_3mf
UAL ESOPs
[ESOPs today will keep communism at bay, says CBS MarketWatch:] ESOP's Fable Commentary: United they fell, yet others succeed By Chris Pummer, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 8:06 AM ET Dec. 11, 2002 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- In 1994, United Airlines became one of the world's largest employee-owned companies when its workers accepted a 55-percent stake in return for a concessions package to keep the then-No.1 airline aloft. United's employees now stand to lose their entire stake as the company proceeds through Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Yet no one is bemoaning their fate, like we did Enron workers whose 401(k) company-stock holdings were snuffed out by corrupt executives. As it turns out, United (UAL: news, chart, profile) was a terrible candidate for employee ownership, due to long-seething antagonism between its powerful unions and king-of-the-roost management. Its workers, viewed by many as the industry's least hospitable despite the famed Fly the Friendly Skies slogan, became even pricklier since their airline fell to No. 2 behind American. The victim in this case isn't United's pilots or machinists, but the concept of employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs. United's collapse is giving ESOPs a bad name, despite the fact the strongest U.S. airline -- Southwest -- is one of the last decade's greatest corporate successes based on that same principle. Communist infiltration When ESOPs began proliferating in the 1980s, fed by newly enacted tax breaks, many in Corporate America recoiled at the seemingly Marxist notion. The Reagan Administration was all about paying lip service to blue-collar workers, inviting them onto management teams while quietly shipping their jobs abroad. But giving them a share of the profits? Who let Trotsky in the house? Yet some of America's most-successful public companies, including Procter Gamble (PG: news, chart, profile) and Lowe's (LOW: news, chart, profile), embrace employee ownership. And perhaps it's no coincidence that their stocks, along with Southwest's (LUV: news, chart, profile), have held up better than most in this bear market. The rise of ESOPs spurred several other advances in sharing corporate wealth, including awarding stock options to the rank-and-file, and related employee stock purchase plans, or ESPPs, in which workers can buy shares at reduced prices. Unfortunately, ESOPs became a pretext for companies to move to 401(k) retirement savings from traditional pension plans. Egregious employers looking to unburden themselves of fixed pensions sold their own stock and then offered matching shares as an inducement within newly adopted 401(k) plans. Many employees found out too late they were merely supporting their company's stock price for the long term with their own money, not sharing in present profits. A private affair While their growth leveled off in the 1990s, there are still more than 10,000 ESOP companies in the U.S., employing about 8.5 million people. ESOPs have most rewarded employees of private companies. Their owners gained the greatest tax breaks in the 1980s with the ability to defer capital gains on stakes sold to employees. Private companies account for about 90 percent of ESOPs -- the median size of employee-owned companies is about 100 workers. The average employee stake is about 35 percent. At those companies, studies found annual sales, productivity and staffing levels grew about 2 percent more on average than at non-ESOP companies. And profits and return on assets grew about 3 percent more per year. Sure, there are the New Age adherents like the highly celebrated ESOP at W.L.Gore Associates, maker of Gore-Tex. How's this for radical: Gore has no hierarchy, no job titles and no reporting system. It won't build a facility to house more than 200 people to avoid communication breakdowns. New hires aren't given a job function, just a mentor to figure out what they'll do, and you float proposals to 'idea champions' who shoot them quickly up the line. As bizarre as that may seem, it's proven a blueprint for success, says Corey Rosen, executive director of the National Center for Employee Ownership. Companies with top-down management actually do worse after ESOP conversions, Rosen said. They raised employee expectations. 'Now, you're owners, but by the way, you're not going to be treated that way.' It's the Dilbert school of ESOPs. Companies like Southwest that share financial information with you and push down decision-making, and that give employees lots of leeway on judgment calls and celebrate people's mistakes, they grow about 8 to 11 percent faster. A bigger stake at risk As the rest of the world knows, communism isn't dead, it's just bankrupt like United. To prevent its resurrection, America needs to let evolutionary economics run its course. The answer doesn't lie in deferred compensation like stock options or discounted stock purchases for those
Re: RE: Blowback
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] I don't like the word Holocaust as it's been applied. It's best to avoid it, since it's used as part of pro-Israel propaganda. Better is Isaac Deutscher's explanation of the connection between the Nazis and Israel: it's as if someone had jumped out of a burning building -- and had fallen and squashed his neighbor (the Palestinians). Still better would be: it's as if someone had jumped out of a burning building, had fallen and squashed his neighbor (the Palestinians), and on arising had then jumped up and down on that neighbor. Carl _ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: A real horror
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Last night after returning from the tasty horror film The Ring, I turned on Charlie Rose and witnessed a real horror. Nancy Pelosi, who I've never seen before, was holding forth on the Democratic Party's prospects. On her lapel was the largest and most garish American flag pin I've ever seen on a politician. During the cold war Western pop culture forever depicted Soviet officials as preposterous figures in medal-bedecked business suits. Funny how all the ostentatious patriotic hardware is now appearing on American chests. Saw Bush and Powell meeting with Putin on TV the other night and was amused to see that both Bush and Powell were wearing flag pins on their lapels but Putin was not. Carl _ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
Re: The Economics Biz
From: michael perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Columbia Buys Residence To House Top Professor Jon E. Hilsenrath, Wall Street Journal NEW YORK -- Columbia University has taken star wars for college economics professors to a new level with the acquisition of an $8 million townhouse in Manhattan that will house one of its top economists, Jeffrey Sachs. In April, the university lured Mr. Sachs away from Harvard University, where he earned a reputation as a confidant to leaders in developing countries. He is now head of Columbia's Earth Institute and an adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, not to mention Bono, the rock star and activist. ... Mr. Sachs plans to use the institute to push a broad agenda focused on what economists call sustainable development. This means the university is keen to focus not just on the cold-hard formulas of economics, but also on issues like disease and the environment and how they affect poor economies [Wow. Making Sachs head of this Earth Institute is pretty much like naming Typhoid Mary director of the World Health Organization. E.g., consider what Jude Wanniski had to say in 1998 about Sachs' wondrous role in Russia's economic transformation:] On Thursday, June 4, [1998] The New York Times published an op-ed, Rule of the Ruble, by Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Harvard Institute for International Development, a non-profit group that has been making a fortune in salary and perks for the incompetent economists, who are living off U.S. taxpayer grants from the Clinton administration. You can read about this scandal in the June 1 issue of the Nation, which the NYT does not mention. Sachs from December 1991 to January 1994 was an economic advisor to the Russian Government, according to the NYT. It was in fact Sachs who authored the shock therapy plan that was sold to the Yeltsin government, which sent the ruble into its inflationary spiral, from four to the dollar to more than 6000 to the dollar -- wiping out the ruble savings and pensions of the ordinary people of Russia. The shock therapy scheme was backed to the hilt by The New York Times editorial page, which gets its economic orders from the Harvard boys. These include Larry Summers, who is now the deputy Treasury Secretary and was the chief economist of the World Bank when Sachs was poisoning Russia with his economic nostrums. At the time, I called Summers Mr. Inside, and Sachs Mr. Outside. ... Countless thousands of Russians have died of malnutrition, alcoholism and disease as a result of Jeffrey Sachs and his Ph.D. henchmen from the Ivy League http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/06-05-98.html Carl _ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: RE: Re: The Economics Biz
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:32463] RE: Re: The Economics Biz Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 07:55:17 -0800 This is all true about Sachs, but don't trust Jude Wanniski, who's a fool and a knave (the supply-sider sort that the Wall Street Journal's editorial page loves). -Original Message- From: Carl Remick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] [Wow. Making Sachs head of this Earth Institute is pretty much like naming Typhoid Mary director of the World Health Organization. E.g., consider what Jude Wanniski had to say in 1998 about Sachs' wondrous role in Russia's economic transformation:] Am well aware of Wanniski's rap sheet. Whenever his comments are cited on the LBO list, which happens with fair frequency, it sets off smoke alarms all over the place. In general I think supply-siders should be sent to the nethermost circle of the Inferno; they played a leading role in the conservative ascendancy of the last two decades that now seems destined to extend to a thousand-year reich. But credit where it's due: Wanniski does a good job summing up the case against Sachs. Carl _ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: single-payer national health insurance plan
From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] Washington Post 16 Nov:- Gore already was making political news. On Wednesday night, he told a New York audience that he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that the only solution to the impending crisis in health care was a single-payer national health insurance plan for all Americans. That marks a sharp break with his past position, pushing him sharply to the left on what could be an important issue in the next presidential campaign. Without putting any particular faith in Gore, what is a single-payer national health insurance plan in the US context? Well, if you listen to, say, the pharmaceutical companies, a single-payer plan in the US would mean that the sun would become black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon become as blood. And the stars of heaven would fall unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And heaven would depart as a scroll when it is rolled together. And every mountain and island would be moved out of their places. Something like that. Carl _ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Re: little upward mobility in the US, says Fed economist
From: joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... Hey everybody, we can't all be white collar professionals and we shouldn't reduce education to 1) a ticket to the gated middle class or 2) job training for corporations. Whay can't we proceed from the following assumptions: 1) we all have to share in doing the shit jobs 2) we all do the best we can; for some best means theoretical physics; for others, best may be farming, or being a plumber, or cutting hair. 3) an hour of my working life is worth an hour of anyone else's working life: no fucking pay differentials. Best comment I've seen on a maillist in quite a while, Joanna. Those starkly stated principles still seem sensible and inspiring to me even at this time of capitalism's greatest triumph worldwide. I think they would seem sensible and inspiring to many other Americans if they ever found their way into the US political arena. Carl _ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: against lesser of two evils
From: joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] At 05:21 PM 11/01/2002 -0500, you wrote: Yes, and he should have stayed away from that batty Frieda Kahlo as well. Hell, he didn't even get a portrait out of it. Joanna No, not of himself. Instead, he was honored in a more characteristically Kahlo-esque way via her Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky, described thus by one web source: In this portrait, Kahlo faces her audience in a stage-like space between two curtains ... she holds a small bouquet of flowers in one hand, and in the other a letter inscribed: 'For Leon Trotsky with all my love I dedicate this painting on the 7th November, 1937.' See http://www.artchive.com/artchive/K/kahlo/kahlo_trotsky.jpg.html Carl _ Choose an Internet access plan right for you -- try MSN! http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/default.asp
Re: Re: Western Rationality
From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... (western) rationality is that human behaviour, possibly emerged in Europe some centuries ago, which attemps to impose a complete order on an infinite dimensional set, that is, a continuum, that I call life. Life as a continuum can at best be a partially ordered, if that, at least, to my experience. Hence, western rationality, as a form of human behaviour, is unreasonable and, therefore, illogical. Well put. The extreme selectivity in fact-finding that forms the basis of western rationality provides a very distorted picture of reality and tends to subjugate, not liberate, the human spirit. Carl _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Re: Re: Re: What is science
From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... Both (Carl Sceptical Inquirer) are pitching religous woo-woo and can't tell us much about the actual world. Carrol Woo-woo it may be, but it is of a decidedly irreligious nature. Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, what? The proper study of mankind is man. Carl _ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
Re: RE: Re: RE: Western Rationality
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Carl: I think enlightenment comes from within, not from any evidence the social sciences can produce. But that's just me channeling R. W. Emerson again. if enlightenment comes only from within, then there's no way to convince anyone else of the validity of your enlightenment. It's like those religious people who say you have to Believe to understand. Well, I don't believe, so I'll just put your religion on the shelf next to astrology. The crowning irony is that belief in science *is* a religion, in effect if not design. Lay people usually aren't competent to decide whether scientists have provided adequate proof for their arguments, and they're almost invariably unable to make reasoned assessments of disputes between scientists. For most people, scientific pronouncements aren't at all illuminating but are as arbitary, opaque and mystifying as priestly decrees of ancient times. Historian Carl Becker made this argument many years ago, as I recall, in his essay The Heavenly City of 18th Century Philosophers -- i.e., that the Enlightenment has not proved very enlightening. Sure, people enjoy all the material benefits that modern technology produces, but they don't have a clue how this technology actually works; it might as well be magic. This remains very much the age of belief, not the age of reason. Carl _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: what is science?
The errors of SCIENCE will never be corrected by the kind of critique Carl offers because what Carl is attacking doesn't exist Carrol What a relief. Would that were true for everything I attack. Carl _ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
Re: RE: what is science?
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] BTW, I still want to know what the alternative is to scientific (logical-empirical) thinking. I'd say intuition, but that's only a hunch :) Carl _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Re: what is science?
From: ravi [EMAIL PROTECTED] my own suspicion (which i will try to flesh out if this thread proceeds) is that what is broadly accepted as science or scientific activity (or approach), by the high priests and their followers, is indeed inherently dehumanizing (i think that's carl remick's [sp?] position?) and dangerous. Yes. At heart I guess I'm just a peasant with a pitchfork eager to storm Dr. Frankenstein's castle. And indeed, I have my very own mad scientist right in the neighborhood. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -- headed by Dr. DNA himself, wacky ol' James D. Watson -- is just a couple of miles from where I live. Carl _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: RE: Western Rationality
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Carl writes: Again, I believe it's the nature of science itself -- not just the corruptive effects of capitalism -- that so often causes technology to have a destructive, dehumanizing impact on society. The ever increasing specialization of scientific knowledge seems to *require* division of labor, bureaucratization of RD and minimization of individual responsibility for long-term consequences -- an extremely toxic combination. I don't understand why scientific (consistent logical empirical) thinking _requires_ division of labor, bureaucratization, and the rest. Please explain. The sheer complexity of modern technologies requires that RD be a team effort; no one individual acting alone can supply the expertise needed to advance the state of the art. If you have a team effort, you need administrators to coordinate efforts, allocate resources, etc. Further, is there any way to convince anyone of the validity of your vision except in a (social) scientific way? Ah! I think enlightenment comes from within, not from any evidence the social sciences can produce. But that's just me channeling R. W. Emerson again. Carl _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Western Rationality
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Joanna writes: A critique of the development of science under capitalism would take much more than an email. Suffice it to say that what we refer to as SCIENCE today is a specific historical form suffering from specific historical deformations. I leave it to your imagination to envision how intelligent, conscious beings might be able to develop alternative forms. there's a difference between science in theory (what intelligent, conscious beings might be able to develop) and science in practice (the degenerated science of a pharmaceutical company, etc.) Again, I believe it's the nature of science itself -- not just the corruptive effects of capitalism -- that so often causes technology to have a destructive, dehumanizing impact on society. The ever increasing specialization of scientific knowledge seems to *require* division of labor, bureaucratization of RD and minimization of individual responsibility for long-term consequences -- an extremely toxic combination. (Apologies for the delay in responding -- lately my pen-l posts seem to be taking the scenic route through the web.) Carl _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: RE: Re: Western Rationality
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ian: Indeed, lots of the problems of modernity are the uses to which logic, scientific thinking etc. have been put and those problems are not reducible to the problems created by capitalism. Carl: Yes, I think the basis of many of modern society's worst difficulties is the pernicious objectification of the individual that results from the scientific method, in all its many forms -- especially including the social sciences -- and with all its many appurtenances, including collection and analysis of statistics such as the jobless rate. so we shouldn't care about the number of unemployed individuals, even when this number is measured accurately, because it peniciously objectifies the individual? so if I refer to the high unemployment rate of 1933 in the United States, I am objectifying people (and doing so perniciously)? I think statistics are pernicious because the joys of playing with numbers dull awareness of the great sorrow that *any* quantity of joblessness creates -- one unemployed is a tragedy, a million, statistics, so to speak. When you start pondering numbers in the abstract, the next thing you know you're blathering about unavoidable tradeoffs, NAIRU and what level of unemployment is acceptable. The acceptable level of unemployed is, of course, zero, and any economic system that can't accommodate that has to go. Statistics get in the way of recognizing that truth. I don't know any answer to this problem, since science is so central to modern life, but I do see it as a problem. Scientific study by its nature puts distance between a human observer and human subject, creates a hierarchical relationship and deliberately limits development of empathy. I think this has had a deeply damaging effect on human relations overall. How does scientific study do this by its nature? Because scientific study requires that you rule out all variables not having to do explicitly with the subject being investigated. If you're conducting a focus group, taking a poll or whatever, you have no interest in bonding with the interviewees/participants as full-dimensional people, you simply want to pump them for info on one narrow topic. You ignore their existential reality in order to strip-mine their consciousness for data. Ugly stuff. and what is the alternative to scientific thinking? That's the horror of it all. As Huxley suggested in Brave New World, there doesn't seem to be any choice between the dehumanization of science and reversion to simple savagery. As I said, I don't have any answer to this. Carl _ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
Re: RE: Western Rationality
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] The issue of attaining zero unemployment is not about measuring it. Rather, it's about figuring out a better way to organize society that doesn't organically involve unemployment (open or hidden). Hear, hear, Jim. Yes, let's keep our eyes on the prize! There was merit in the other points you made in your post also. My sour view of quantification certainly owes something to the fact that I scored far, far lower on my math than my verbal SAT and have been socially marginalized ever since :) Carl _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Western Rationality
From: joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] At 02:41 PM 10/09/2002 +, you wrote: That's the horror of it all. As Huxley suggested in Brave New World, there doesn't seem to be any choice between the dehumanization of science and reversion to simple savagery. As I said, I don't have any answer to this. Oh, that's just silly. We have a historically constructed scientific model -- which is deformed by the bureaucratization of science and by its largely unconscious and unreflective formation -- all of which is to say that our choice encompasses far more than this dehumanized science and savagery. Joanna I'm all ears. The dilemma Huxley poses has always struck me as the most nightmarish, and compelling, depiction of the human prospect. I'd welcome details on how you see we can get out of this fix. Carl _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Western Rationality
Ian: Indeed, lots of the problems of modernity are the uses to which logic, scientific thinking etc. have been put and those problems are not reducible to the problems created by capitalism. Yes, I think the basis of many of modern society's worst difficulties is the pernicious objectification of the individual that results from the scientific method, in all its many forms -- especially including the social sciences -- and with all its many appurtenances, including collection and analysis of statistics such as the jobless rate. I don't know any answer to this problem, since science is so central to modern life, but I do see it as a problem. Scientific study by its nature puts distance between a human observer and human subject, creates a hierarchical relationship and deliberately limits development of empathy. I think this has had a deeply damaging effect on human relations overall. Carl _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Re: Denis Dutton's website goes belly up
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dutton, a New Zealand professor hailing originally from the USA, first attracted attention for handing out Bad Writing awards each year to people like Judith Butler. At the time, I was a big fan of Alan Sokal and greeted these awards with great relish just as I reacted to Alan's spoof in Social Text. Subsequently I learned that not every swipe at postmodernism is a sign that you are on the side of the angels. The animosity directed against postmodernist relativism can often drift into a kind of reactionary belief in Absolute Values such as the supremacy of the capitalist system, the right to smoke cigarettes in restaurants ... Tsk, tsk. I don't know what Marx would have made of conflating the evils of capitalism with those of secondary smoke, but, yes, Arts Letters Daily was quite a mixed bag: many interesting articles combined with a great many more instances of tiresome right-wing claptrap. Not surprising to learn Dutton is a con man. As Lou notes, Dutton isn't going away; his new site, Philosophy Literature -- http://www.philosophyandliterature.com/ -- is almost identical to ALD. Carl _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: RE: Re: Holy Roman Empire 2002
From: Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:30886] RE: Re: Holy Roman Empire 2002 Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 08:59:10 +0100 I can't remember who it was who said of the Holy Roman Empire that it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. Macaulay? Mark Voltaire. Carl _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
