Re: dialectics and logic
The material relevance of dialectics lies in the interconnectedness of material reality from the subatomic to the universal level. The German word for contradiction is closer to the word for contrast, and it has a flavour of contrasting perspectives about it. Gegensatz. It has some roots in the historical mode of production in the Middle Ages when without printing enormous economic and social progress was being made in a quasi theocracy. The clergy used disputation through dialogue to build up a robust system of ideas of interest economically but also technologically. The story about the angels dancing on a pinhead is a vicious one sided calumny by the rising bourgeoisie on the previous very lively social system. The middle ages also invented clocks and architecturally amazing cathedrals. Unfortunately the democratic William of Ockham also introduced an undialectical simplification of the scientific approach which is arbitrary and false. Some people sympathetic to marxism can see the relevance of dialectical materialism in the social or political sphere, but are uncertain about its universal applicability. I consider its universal applicability is linked as I indicated at the beginning not to abstract ideas but to the nature of material existence. Phenomena that are relatively durable, and affect our lives are usually the result of an interaction of self-perpetuating processes, as described in dynamical systems theory and in complexity theory. There are other phenomena which are evanescent as described in quantum theory, and they are probably far more numerous. The phenomena with which we interact, not just self reproducing biological ones like animal life, but systems like the solar system which are self-organising, are the result of the interaction of a possibly relatively small number of forces. Their reflection and analysis in thought requires a method of seeing not only the tensions within those systems that might blow them apart, but also the unity. This can be discussed by a dialectical materialist principle that looks at phenomena from contrasting perspectives of both unity and struggle, at both the centrifugal force of momentum and the centripetal force of gravity in the solar system, for example. Dialectical materialism is a surprisingly robust approach deriving from mediaeval social practice of addressing the universe of relatively permanent phenomena but which are only relatively permanent. Like not only the capitalist system, but the solar system. And probably also our own heartbeats, which we assume are permanent but are inherently potentially unstable. Sorry to be materialist. This frightening truth, this radical departure from idealism, suggests a flexible approach fully in accord with the latest developments in science which computerised technology allow us to see, and which enables us to share with our fellow men and women a knowledge of the social world that is not mystical. Yes in a world of riches and hunger there is a capitalist system in which there is a contradiction between the absolute law of capitalist accumulation and the immiseration of the masses in terms of exchange value. There is unity between these poles of the contradiction, which leads to its relative stability, shocking though that is. There is also struggle between these poles of the contradiction which can potentially lead to a higher level if reflected in conscious thought so that ideas can also themselves become a material force. That in turn can influence the contradiction of unity and struggle between the private owners of the means of production and those who provide the labour power by hand and brain for the means of production. Sorry to be dialectical. But don't think it is worth cherry picking the dialectics in the form of social struggle if you do not deeply understand that the dialectical materialist approach is relevant also for complex systems like solar system, and your own heartbeat, neither of which will last forever. That's how I join up dialectical materialism this morning as an approach deeply rooted in the complex material nature of reality. Charles might put is somewhat differently but I think we broadly agree. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 5:41 PM Subject: [PEN-L] dialectics and logic [was: RE: [PEN-L] absolute general law of capitalist accumulation] Charles B: For formal logic , arriving at a contradiction means there is a mistake, something is false. Chris D. Technically, this is false. In logic, ever since Plato, the rule has been that something cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time. Dialectics in Hegel and Marx do not deny this; they are more interested in seeing how different trends within a single phenomenon cause it to break apart. I won't talk about Hegel any more, since I'm no expert at all on his ideas (and he's not my cup
UK Liberal-Democrats and the three body problem
I was asked off-list what is the substantive programme of the liberal democrats, i.e. how do they differ from New Labour ? I would find it easier to give my perception of where they are ideologically and in terms of the class nature of their constituency, but it is a fair question In some ways they have started to appear to be to the left of Labour: some years ago they proposed to increase income tax by one penny in the pound to pay for better education, at a time when New Labour was committing itself against tax rises in competition with the Conservatives. They are in favour of abolishing the council tax and replace it with a local income tax. They are very much in favour of proportional representation, which of course would help them. They cooperated very much with Labour in Scotland in setting up fairly successfully the Scottish Assembly of devolved government. They were critical of the evidence about weapons of mass destruction and opposed going into the Iraq war. However once in, they supported our troops. They have not called for withdrawal. They do emphasise putting it on an international basis. Ideologically they are not economic liberals like the German Free Democrats - they believe in a mixed economy. They have no social basis like as in the German Mittelstand. Their basis is petty bourgeois, of people who are sure they see something wrong with the present system. They recruit support particularly in local campaigns of people who are annoyed about defects in local government, like rubbish etc. Some opinion surveys show that their supporters may also have backward populist prejudices like racism but it carefully does not show in the party platform. The political stand of the party is socially liberal rather than economically liberal. It therefore straddles the contradictions of bourgeois right in civil society. Although a thoroughly bourgeois party it therefore has progressive elements. It is essential for the Lib-Dems to be able to draw votes from disaffected Conservative supporters, and more Conservative seats are at risk than Labour seats from an increase in the Liberal vote. That is why the Liberal victory in the recent by-election is such good news for Labour! The Liberals were always hit badly before by the two party system, picking up seats in by-elections but losing them in general elections. However I think we are seeing a complex effect partly produced by New Labour's determination opportunistically and systematically to dominate the middle of the political agenda in terms of consumer reactions. The two party system is becoming more complex - a sort of three body problem. The Liberal Democrats have moved both the left and behind New Labour and in front of it. The Conservatives are now in a terrible position where they do not know where on earth to position themselves, and their leader now gets attacked by Labour for opportunism which is ironic. Why this matters is about the range of conversation in middle strata circles. People chatting with neighbours or over a more formal middle strata meal, carefully sharing and comparing their social aspirations, will be able to admit in passing they are not very sure about the Conservatives without losing social status. Tactical voting is now considered legitimate and to be tolerated, although middle class class loyalty is stronger than working class class. This process blurs the distinction between white and blue collar workers, and in fact puts working people more in the same boat. And the children of the middle class are no longer immune from all the risks run by the children of the manual working class, and often have to work as waiters and waitresses to pay for their university education. Although the number of Lib-Dem seats has climbed to over 50, the party is careful not to focus attention on whether it would support either of the other parties in a hung parliament. So the importance of the Liberal Democrats is that Conservative voters might feel they could tactically vote for them to keep Labour out, or tactically vote for the UK Independence Party, which taps into suspicion about the finance capitalist logic of the European Union. Chris Burford London
Blair finesses victory out of defeat
A third term victory for Blair in 2005 now looks a certainty. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/byelections/story/0,11043,1263434,00.html It is to do with his systematic use of market relations profiling to dominate the centre of the political agenda. The Conservatives threw their best shots at these byelections and ended up third in each. Blair has another five years if he wants it. Chris Burford
Bush insults mentally ill people
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. It smacks to me of the unanalysed fascist tendencies that were never addressed in American society in the 20th century. The BBC is clipping and relaying this quote not only because it appears to be Bush's latest defence, but because the individual reporters know it will go down terribly with a large section of British opinion, and not just on the left. There is a wider question that Bush's ideology may play well at home, but it is incompatible with the wider global civil society that is emerging. That is why Kerry and Edwards, despite Edwards protectionist tones, would be a better ticket for global finance capitalism. Chris Burford London
Defeat of invasion of Iraq
It is not Stalingrad, in that US troops are not surrounded, and the news is spun heavily to make each retreat sound like a success for the US-UK coalition, but the language of commentary is slipping towards the language of defeat. Yes, the US is mighty enough to use awesome force to destroy any minor regime militarily, as in Afghanistan or Iraq, but it cannot impose a new regime. This week the total of deaths of coalition troops went over 1000. Last night CNN had an item from an Arab or Middle East commentator. I did not catch the name but for the first time I heard the formula: there is no military solution. He was arguing that the insurgency is more than Al-Zarqawi and the remnants of the Baath regime. It is an extensive movement, and it will only be pacified by political negotiations which widen the consensus of forces behing a new regime. Allawi is already talking of amnesties. While the details are open to debate and are subject to misrepresentation and random misreporting that broad picture seems likely. It is confused by smaller groups that may have their own agenda - probably the spate of bombings against alcohol stores are of this nature - jostling for position about how secular and how islamist the balance of forces will be. There are acts of terrorism, and there are well targeted attacks eliminating allied security personal which we may not hear much about. A muslim Pakistani just released claims he was originally detained as being a secret agent, but he was let off. He reports he saw three others beheaded. There are softer targets like Iraqis who help the invaders, perhaps in the role of translators. But broadly this is no longer an insurgency, as the hegemons politely call it: it is a systematic war of resistance that will defeat the invaders. There is no military solution. This defeat of US hegemony could be even more significant than the defeat in Vietnam, because after that the cold war still continued in other forms. This defeat will be a signal that no power can dominate the world without some show of international legitimacy - That is my suggestion, but events are unfolding. Chris Burford Niall Ferguson ended a prophetic article in Newsweek at the turn of the year, based on the Terminator analogy - rather journalistic but basically correct - The United States has the capability to inflict appalling destruction while sustaining only minimal damage to itself. There is no regime it could not terminate if it wanted to-including North Korea. Such a war might leave South Korea in ruins, but the American Terminator would emerge more or less unscathed. What the Terminator is not programmed to do is to rebuild anyone but himself. If, as seems likely, the United States responds to pressure at home and abroad by withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan before their economic reconstruction has been achieved, the scene will not be wholly unfamiliar. The limits of American power will be laid bare when the global Terminator finally admits: I won't be back.
The failure of intelligence
The BBC notes that the Senate's references to a global failure of intelligence implicates also the British intelligence services. The commentaries ventilate quite rightly the issue of how much of the blame should lie on their political masters. But there seems to me to be a gap. Neither now nor before the war was there any attempt to understand the Baathist regime in Iraq as composed of human beings. I remember asking on another progressive list before the war what could be Saddam Hussein's motivation for maintaining stocks of WMD and persisting in denying that he had them? No one was able to quote any source that illuminated this question. Psychologically this is about demonization of the enemy. Socially it is about contempt for non-european peoples whose regimes are just dicatorships and who torture people in a crazy way, unlike our own regimes which are models of pure democratic will. That is a failure of intelligence. And it is ideological blindness. Chris Burford London
Re: Why Does Fahrenheit 9/11 Pursue Conspiracy Theory?
Because like many radicals Moore's consciousness is at the level of moral anger. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2004 1:52 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Why Does Fahrenheit 9/11 Pursue Conspiracy Theory? Why Does Fahrenheit 9/11 Pursue Conspiracy Theory? (because 9/11 conspiracy theory protects the Democratic Party, while historical analysis would implicate it in the criminal consequences of decades of collaboration between Washington and Riyadh as well as other unsavory allies): http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/why-does-fahrenheit-911-pursue.h tml -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Fw: [stop-imf] Africa should not pay its debts - Jeffrey Sachs
- Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 5:10 AM Subject: [stop-imf] Africa should not pay its debts - Jeffrey Sachs http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3869081.stm BBC News July 6, 2004 Africa 'should not pay its debts' A special adviser to the United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan has said African countries should refuse to repay their foreign debts. Mr Annan's economic adviser Jeffrey Sachs first called on developed countries to cancel Africa's debts. But failing that, he said Africa should ignore its $201bn (£109bn) debt burden. Economic analysis, he said, had shown that it was impossible for Africa to achieve its development goal of halving poverty if it had to repay the loans. The time has come to end this charade, he said. The debts are unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves. 'A serious response' Africa should say: 'thank you very much but we need this money to meet the needs of children who are dying right now so we will put the debt servicing payments into urgent social investment in health, education, drinking water, control of aids and other needs,' he told the BBC's World Business Report. Mr Sachs insisted that such a response was serious and responsible, providing that the money was used transparently and channelled only into urgent social needs. And he denied that it would bar African countries from accessing money from the capital markets in the future. They won't be able to access those markets anyway until the debt is forgiven, he explained, adding that there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to borrow again provided the forgiveness was negotiated in a cooperative manner. Mr Sachs is special adviser to Kofi Annan on global anti-poverty targets. Reluctance He made his comments at a conference on the eve of a summit of the heads of state of the African Union in Ethiopia. He called on the developed world to double aid to Africa to $120bn a year in order to meet commitments made in 1970. There is some sympathy in some of the rich donor countries for the idea of debt cancellation. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer or finance minister Gordon Brown, did float the idea before the recent summit of the G8 major powers in the United States, although there has been no decision and some creditor countries do have a history of reluctance on debt relief issues. But none would be likely to welcome a unilateral decision by the poor countries themselves simply to stop paying their debts, which are owed mainly to international organisations such as the World Bank and to rich country governments. ___ stop-imf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/stop-imf To subscribe or unsubscribe by e-mail, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with your administrative request in the subject line. Or go to http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/stop-imf
Re: the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
I think it is one of the most important examples of Marx's method of abstraction at its most extreme. And it is True. It does assume the listener is prepared to work through the usual contradiction between the abstract and the concrete, the general and the particular. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 3:45 PM Subject: [PEN-L] the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation How broad does Marx intend this generalization to be ? His use of the term absolute seems to indicate that he is predicting that this generalization reaches beyond the specific English illustrations of the law he discusses. Charles ^^
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
Does the empirical generalization suggested below have validity today nationally or globally ? Of course. Absolutely. The industrial reserve army of unemployed or under-employed numbers billions in a world in which relative wages vary up to 30 fold ! The greater the centralization of capital in the imperialist heartlands the greater the relative pauperization of the rest of the world. How can they be unconnected except in the minds of people who are phobic about dialectics? Break the begging bowl. Liquidate the vast quantities of accumulated dead labour that hang like a millstone round the necks of the working people of the world. This revolution has to be achieved by radical reforms in the *relative* distribution of world money, and in the first place by the peaceful but utterly effective dethronement of the dollar. But this is not reformist conjuring tricks, essential though it is for the International Monetary Fund to discuss reforms in an elegant and civilised way. It implies in real terms that the relatively vastly privileged working people of the metropolitan heartlands must accept a halt on their relative rise in wealth in return for a redistribution of use values and social values, while the investment energies of the human race for perhaps at least a generation go into repairing the devastation of the lives and environment of the great majority of human beings. IMHO Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 2:46 PM Subject: [PEN-L] absolute general law of capitalist accumulation Does the empirical generalization suggested below have validity today nationally or globally ? Charles The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, develop also the labour-power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour-army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus-population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazarus-layers of the working-class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis of which does not concern us here. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S4
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
- Original Message - From: sartesian [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 1:51 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] absolute general law of capitalist accumulation Chris Burford states at the beginning of his post that the general law exists only to conclude, in his remedy, that Marx expresses the law upside down: I do not accept this is a correct summary of what I wrote, but others can judge for themselves, preferably by going to the whole text. Chris Burford Chris argues that the result of this law is the relative privilege and well being of the workers in the metropolitan countries, and that the only solution is a halt in the wealth (living standards?) of those workers in favor a radical redistribution of use values.. In theory, the general law argues that the 'reserve army' does not function to enhance the 'wealth' of the employed workers, but rather to pressure against relative and absolute improvements. In fact the bourgeoisie do not redistribute the extracted values from imperialized countries to their own workers. Careful examination of the facts regarding capital import/export, proportions of profit from overseas operations, rentier instruments etc, show that none of the notions so often vulgarized from Lenin's polemic about imperialism actually describe the functioning of the advanced capitalism. Any number of radicals, of left or right, can and will argue that the workers in the advanced countries must sacrifice their wealth for reasons of right and left-- like the national good, the international good, the moral good, and for the sake of the soul. But such sacrifice has nothing in common with Marx's analysis. Believe me, before the workers of the advanced countries begin their revolutionary struggle, they will have sacrificed plenty, without benefit to the workers of the less advance countries. The bourgeoisie will see to that. When the advanced workers begin their revolutionary struggle, they will be sacrificing more. The civil war will see to that. But to propose that the outcome of that process, which liberates the means of production from the obsolete, destructive relations of production, requires further declines in living standards is to make the revolution at heart a zero-sum at best, and a negative in practice. - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 12:16 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
Re: Business on Edwards
Is a trial lawyer the nearest an electable public figure can get in the USA to waging a sort of class war against capitalism? To be a Robin Hood? To use the capitalist ideology of bourgeois right from within bourgeois civil society, against the private ownership of the means of production itself? Unfortunately Edwards's populist presentation will confuse the fundamental real class question and express it in sometimes objectively reactionary ways. And make him vulnerable to pressure for compromise. No? Chris Burford looking on from London
Re: Saddam on TV
BBC reported this as having been timed and arranged for US breakfast television. It appears that no British reporter was among the select band in the improvised courtroom, which I find an amazing lack of tact among coalition allies. Or just possibly it was British low key calculation of where their interests best lie. There were comments about who had selected the parts that were broadcast and whether it would be possible to see the whole transcription. A legal commentator with an English accent (?) on CNN, Jonathan Goldberg, described it as incredibly incompetent that the judge had insisted on Hussein answering incriminating questions without a lawyer present. UK media, television and newspapers all seem to assume an interventionist perspective, that it is normal and a good thing that justice should be imposed on a sovereign country like Iraq by outside intervention and pressure, few commenting on the legality of this. But in other respects by the standards of an emerging concept of international humanitarian justice, my impression is that the commentaries are looking for errors and blunders. One of the most fundamental divisions, courteously debated, is between those who think the trial should have been organised with international judges and advocates, and those who think it should somehow have the character of an Iraqi trial. What happened yesterday from the presentation on US breakfast television to the reports of the sounds of his chains falling to the ground in the ante-room where he had been escorted by US guards, suggests that this trial may fall between both stools. Their best bet is probably to concentrate on hearings of the other 12 and hope that will discredit and incriminate him, and now to keep him out of the lime-light. Salem Chalabi, the Iraqi minister for this area, indicated he did not think it desirable that Saddam Hussein's words should be broadcast live, and that was somehow a mistake. As was presumably the clumsy filming of the judge which was supposed to be from the rear to protect him from future assassination attempts but showed enough of his face for Iraqi's in the know probably to work out who he is. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Kenneth Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 12:50 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Saddam on TV For what it's worth... I saw Hussein on TV this morn, and Peter Jennings did an excellent job of old Murrow-style radio reporting... describing scenes without the aid of a TV camera. Jennings described a beaten down man, thin, polite, alert, tangling with the judge once. I have since seen the usual American news stuff about that -- CNN subheaders included Look, the pimp is speaking and accredited the statement to an anonymous janitor. Great journalism. BBC was better -- including some factual reporting on what he said about Kuwait and the chemical weapons against Kurds. Jennings remains the objective reporter, as far as I have seen. He was in the court room. Rather than get outraged at the media's false editorializing, I would encourage people to actually ask people to look at the statements. Mention Jennings' objective reporting. Ken. -- I am the passenger And I ride and I ride I ride through the city's backside I see the stars come out of the sky Yeah, they're bright in a hollow sky You know it looks so good tonight -- The Passenger Iggy Pop, 1977 www.american-buddha.com/iggy.passenger.htm
Bush's body language in Europe
UK media, to be honest BBC and Guardian, report Bush's latest visit to Europe in the context of his campaign trail. Guardian had a comic photo of him doing a power walk in lock-step with Ahern in the context of visit to Ireland so short it was obviously only for the purpose of election videos. The latest reception in Turkey shows him beaming everywhere, thrusting his head back to look taller than he is and manhandling a Tony Blair for the television cameras. Blair grins back in a way that could be boyish or more calculating. The latest triumph of Bush diplomacy with Nato in terms of content is analysed as a climb down. His request last week for NATO troop involvement in Iraq is admitted to be hopeless. The triumph yesterday was merely that NATO will give some relief in Afghanistan to US forces, and will help with training of Iraqi forces, but perhaps not even on Iraqi territory. BBC presentation is more representative of what is seen to be accepted opinion: Bush is severely weakened by the need to get agreements at any price ahead of the election. Developments in Iraq are not assumed to be going to hurt Blair further, now we have seen the limits of the protest vote at the European and local elections earlier this month. Chris Burford
Chechnya and capitalism
Much as I think Joseph Green argues his case carefully and is right to criticise the violations of human rights that occurred under Stalin's leadership, the apparently mindless clearing of the Chechens and others in 1944, while to be condemned, needs to be understood, and put in the context of other massive population clearances which we have all condoned. I am thinking of the deportation of 14 million Germans, and the clearing of eastern Pomerania, Silesia and Prussia. I dipped into Stalin's rather scholastic but detailed Marxism and the National Question (1913) again. Although on less than thorough examination I could not find a reference to Chechens, there is a lot on the Caucusus of course. In it he has this ominous phrase. The national question in the Caucusus can be solved only by drawing the belated nations and nationalities into the common stream of a higher culture. The argument here is that the different groupings have by no means achieved the clearer characteristics of a nation, including a common territory and economy. In accordance with Lenin, the assumption is that the national movement has substantially different contents according to whether the bourgeoisie is leading it, or whether it is occurring arguably at a time of the decline of the bourgeoisie. Hence the word belated. Under conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat national contradictions were kept under firm control at the expense of other values shall we say. As the state centralised socialist countries liberalised and disintegrated, in many cases but not all, we saw a resurgence of national and racist differences which they had no social or economic structure to contain. I suspect much as I disagree with the oppression of the Chechens now, and consider it disastrous for the unity of the people of the world, since they are seen as representatives of muslim people oppressed by christians, I suspect that hidden away in current Russian analysis there are details about the economic issues for Chechnya which assume correctly it is not viable on its own. This is tied up with the emergence of gangster capitalism in parts of the former Soviet bloc. And with the apparently relentless logic that smaller territories whatever their subjective feelings, economically have to be part of a larger economic bloc than the bourgeois nation state of 19th century Europe. There are strange or not so strange echoes in Stalin's early essay: What is to be done with the Ossetians, of whom the Transcaucasian Ossetians are becoming assimilated (but are as yet by no means wholly assimilated) by the Georgians, while the Cis-Caucasian Ossetians are partly being assimilated by the Russians and partly continuing to develop and are creating their own literature? How are they to be 'organised' into a single national union? To what national union should one attach the Adjarians, who speak the Georgian language, but whose culture is Turkish and who profess the religion of Islam? Only in the last week the new president of Georgia has shifted the official time zone of Georgia one hour forward to synchronise more closely with the time zones of the European Union. Quite explicitly. There appears to be no model for different national remnants to live side by side expect in super-states dominated by finance capital, which requires minimum rules of bourgeois democratic rights. Consider how the EU has flagrantly intervened in Turkey to insist on some minimum rights for Kurds. Whether Russian finance capital is strong enough to provide this umbrella to stabilise the basic interests of the Chechens appears to be highly problematic. My instincts are all on the side of erring against any oppression by reason of nationality, gender, race, sexual preference etc etc. as a way of building unity especially of that group with which you yourself do not identify. In large states this makes for a certain encouragement of identity politics which has some similarities to the cultural autonomy that Stalin and Lenin opposed. However I am really arguing that if we try to study history concretely, as well as with a flaming heart, we have to interpret these national questions not only from the point of view of the interests of the international unity of working people, but also from the point of view of economic viability of political structures. What is the Russian Federation's economic plan for the recovery of the entire North Caucusus? Chris Burford
interesting latest US hostage
I posted commentary within the last couple of weeks suggesting that at least one of the insurgent groups in Iraq has been effectively targeting UK security personnel. Strikingly islamic looking photograph of latest US hostage with the unAmerican name of Wassef Ali Hassoun according to the identity card ... Even stranger he was captured with a Pakistani whom the Pakistani government cannot identify. UK Guardian: Pakistani interior minister Faisal Saleh Hayat told reporters that his government was trying to find details of the man captured. We are not sure if he is a Pakistani. Our embassy in Iraq is taking the necessary action. [He could of course be a Brit, particularly since to the best of my knowledge Pakistan is not meant to have any military personnel in Iraq.] Associated Press: The group identified itself as Islamic Response, the security wing of the 1920 Revolution Brigades referring to the uprising against the British after World War I. What better organisation to target security staff of British and US origin. What a rational strategy for Baathist loyalists in the former Saddam Hussein security services totally to undermine the remaining power of the coalition after June 30 while negotiating amnesty with Iyad Allawi for Baathist regime. Lets watch how many assassination attempts there are on Allawi. The fewer there are, the more effective we can assume coordination between Iraqi groups, even those of differing interests has become. We can assume Allawi will be very well informed on the balance of forces. We can assume that uncaptured elements of the Saddam Hussein security forces have the information gathering and organisational capacity to hunt down security forces of the hegemonic coalition. It will be a game of cat and mouse, in which the independent information gathering abilities of the coalition forces will be severely restricted. If the latest hostage is who it may be, we can assume that Bush may have a series of humiliating hostage crises leading up to the election, which will rival Carter's before his defeat. It is the sort of thing that could make hard-core Republican support for Bush haemorrhage. What is the point of voting for a swaggerer when his power-plays blow up in his face? Chris Burford London
Now Serbia prepares to be swallowed
BBC website: The presidential election in Serbia has been won by the pro-Western candidate of the Democratic Party, Boris Tadic. His rival in the run-off poll, Tomislav Nikolic of the nationalist Serbian Radical Party, has admitted defeat. Previous three ballots were declared invalid because of a now abolished law that required a minimum turnout of 50%. According to final estimates from the Centre for Free and Fair Elections, Mr Tadic won 53.7%, with Mr Nikolic polling 45%. Turnout was about 49%. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3845043.stm With Romania and Bulgaria lining up to join the EU, I think there is a historical materialist inevitability about this, not withstanding the imperialist tricks, pressures, and war that were of course employed. It has to do with the relatively weak role now possible for national capital compared to finance capital, which transcends the limits of the old national states these days, and the difficulties of finding a genuine socialist alternative for a relatively small state. Not without many crimes and misdemeanours, the broad picture is that the Yugoslav state was pulled apart and broke up to fall into the more powerful gravitational field of the European Union, around which the fragments orbit in relative order, awaiting their turn to be swallowed up with resignation and without enthusiasm. The most important thing is the try to build the international solidarity of working people to fight another day. Chris Burford
global insurgency against states
Rumsfeld allowed himself to be interviewed on the David Frost programm on BBC1 this morning, and appeared to display an unusual degree of uncertainty. He seemed to attempt to redefine it not as a war against terrorism, because terror is only one method he said, but as a global insurgency, among what he claimed was a very small number of people across the islamic world against states and the state system. This would be consistent with him accommodating to a more multi-lateral conceptual model of Empire and the threats to it. He appeared to hope that the differences between Bush and Blair on the Brits in Guantanamo Bay would be solved over soup this weekend. He put on a show of good humour about whether he would serve again if Bush was re-elected. Chris Burford London
Danforth's appointment
Danforth's appointment to be US representative at the UN has intervention in Sudan written all over it. But the model is probably going to be by multi-lateral consensus making rather than by US military hegemonism blasting the infrastructure of local militia from 30,000 feet. Chris Burford
Bush's rapid shifting of position
While left wing electors in the US pose what seems to me to be the wrong question - whether Kerry is the lesser evil to Bush - does anyone notice how much the shape of the beach is shifting under the pressure of events? (I am referring to the consumerist model of the bourgeois two party system as one where on a crowded beach two ice-creamer sellers will maximum their take if they both set up their stall near the centre of the beach) But if this is a systems approach to boureois democracy, what happens if the centre of gravity of the system is shifting? What happens is the tide is coming in, or the tide is going out? If, if, he wins, a second GWBush presidency might be very different from the first. Of course he will disguise it, but he is shifting his policy fast is he not? Or has this been fully ventilated in posts that I have skimmed over? Chris Burford
EU prepares to swallow Croatia
One of the controversies about the attacks on the former Yugoslavia were the allegations that the European Union particularly Germany accelerated the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the process of ethnic cleansing by early recognition of Croatian independence. Although the story below dates back to Saturday week ago: it is important to note for the record how history has worked out. All part of the onward march of European finance capital and intervention in neighbouring countries. The Guardian which, like me, was in favour of some sort of intervention in Kosovo (though not the imperialist intervention that occurred) appears to be publishing this story which has been lined up as a favourable propaganda piece to justify the EU decision to open negotiations and accelerate the entry of Croatia as early as 2008 along with Romania and Bulgaria. Croatia builds goodwill in Serb villages Handing in war crime suspects and welcoming home refugees opens door to EU membership Ian Traynor in Zagreb Saturday June 19, 2004 In Brussels yesterday the leaders of the EU invited Croatia to enter negotiations to join the union: a big victory for a prime minister only six months in office, and one which sets an example to the rest of the war-ravaged western Balkans - Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania. After years of having their EU ambitions blocked, not least by Britain, the Croats are being invited in because their government is surrendering war crimes suspects to the international tribunal in The Hague and, finally, letting ethnic Serbs return to their homes and property. The surprise is that these policy changes have come from the Croatian Democratic Union - the same nationalist party which was led by the late president Franjo Tudjman and was responsible for grievous war crimes in the 90s. Mr Sanader has purged the party of extremists, seeking to turn it into a mainstream European Christian democratic party, and is achieving human rights and war crimes' objectives which eluded his well-meaning but weak Social Democratic predecessor, Ivica Racan. On the question of Serbian refugees, his policy reaps dividends and plaudits internationally while running little political risk at home, simply because so few Serbs are returning. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1242401,00.html including much human interest details.Nothing of course about the social and political system. Chris Burford
Farming back to 23,000 years ago
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3826731.stm
Blair in public split with Bush
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1247759,00.html Interesting how this is done. The Attorney General, a government minister, who is meant to give impartial legal advice (which is then kept secret - eg whether it is lawful to invade Iraq) has delivered a speech in a foreign capital - Paris - saying as a matter of pure jurisprudence that it is difficult to accept the system of military tribunals at Guantanamo. Typically the Blair administration has negotiated the repatriation of 5 British detainees from Guantanamo Bay (at least one of whom gave evidence of sexual humiliation and psychological torture going on there). There are only four remaining. And this news story is presented in such a way as to make highly ambiguous the degree of disagreement between Bush and Blair, and to treat is as an ongoing part of the business of diplomatic relations. But the manner of handling, allows others to speculate that the alliance is not much of an alliance, and for Blair to distance himself from Bush a little, while putting pressure for Bush to confront the Pentagon and release the remaining 4 in a gesture that will show he has not been a poodle. And this at a time when Bush is on the retreat internationally and in Iraq, whereas Blair may just be forgiven in the UK for his realpolitik that Britain had to decide whether to ally with the USA over a matter of great importance to that administration. Bush does not have that excuse, and further adverse events in Iraq may hurt Bush more than Blair. Which of course might require a sympathetic observation or two from the Brits, but could work out to be rather favourable to Britain's role in the world - the peace maker, the peace keeper, but committed to the rule of law, and with a tolerably efficient body of armed men at the disposal of a multi-lateralist model of emerging Empire. Meanwhile of course it is just a matter of time before the Brits get their remaining 4 citizens back from Guantanamo Bay, as Powell's officials have probably already privately indicated to them. When these citizens arrive in the UK there will be further news stories, which the Brits will handle with superb responsibility, but will further distance Blair if not from Bush, from Rumsfeld, and the detainees will probably be released. Thereby raising further questions in the international community about whether the USA's military adventures are in conformity with any concept of international law or not. The well judged balancing act of Perdious Albion continues to unfold, rather professionally. And as a bye-product 4 detainees may get released. If you attempt to be a modern marxist, watch news management to see how the material balance of forces is moulded in the ideological superstructure. Chris Burford London
Re: Blair in public split with Bush
In answer to Michael's question [below] my impression is that it has all been handled very discretely by the British government, which did nothing to fan the controversy when the previously released detainees gave a number of interviews. But the Guardian article which I quoted, refers to Blair's split with Bush on this question emerging in the course of a legal response to an application by lawyers on behalf of some of those Brits who are still detained, that the British government must appeal for their release. Blair has now done this. It is typical of New Labour to handle all these issues as purely technical ones of social and economic engineering, and I cannot prove that Blair is using this issue to distance himself slightly from Bush. I think his action is multiply determined as so many things are, but I think you can guess the background briefings behind the scenes in which government spokepersons spread the word in studied undertones, that, of course, the British government's position is not identical to that of the US administration. As for the previously released Brits I am not aware they have found a legal opening to sue. The British government probably meets with them, sounds very willing to help if only a way can be found, but unfortunately cannot see a way to help in this murky legal situation... However, of course, the British government is already to signatory to the International Criminal Court, does uphold the principle of the rule of international law, [while wishing to rewrite it if you are Tony Blair] and things are moving in more accountable direction. etc etc Perhaps another Brit subscriber knows more or could even get their MP to forward a well-phrased question to the Home Secretary, which is the only way to ensure a reply. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2004 12:45 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Blair in public split with Bush What was the response to the other released Gitmo Brits having been accused falsely?
and Robin Cook Re: [PEN-L] Clinton, Kerry and Kosovo
Robin Cook was explicit last night on BBC tv that he is an interventionist - and he cited Kosovo. The point he chose to make was that the declared basis for the intervention in Iraq did not turn out to be well founded, and if it was to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein it was very ill prepared. This position seemed to be regarded as a highly cogent argument against the Blair administration's alliance with the USA in invading Iraq. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 3:51 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Clinton, Kerry and Kosovo Counterpunch, June 24, 2004 Clinton, Kerry and Kosovo The Lie of a Good War By DIANE JOHNSTONE For U.S. politicians, if all wars are good, some are better than others. Democrats prefer Clinton wars and Republicans prefer Bush wars. But in the end, they almost unanimously come together to support all wars. The differences concern the choice of official rationale.. To suggest subtle criticism of the Republican war against Iraq, while making it clear that they are by no means opposed to war as such, the 2004 Democratic election campaigners can be expected to glorify the Kosovo war. The prominence of General Wesley Clark in the Democratic camp makes that quite clear. John Kerry's foreign policy adviser Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, author of Democratic Realism: the Third Way, points to the exemplary nature of the 1999 U.S.-led intervention in Kosovo. It was a policy consciously based on a mix of moral values and security interests with the parallel goals of halting a humanitarian tragedy and ensuring NATO's credibility as an effective force for regional stability. The humanitarian rationale sounds better than the weapons of mass destruction or the links to Al Qaeda which never existed. But then, the genocidefrom which the NATO war allegedly saved the Albanians of Kosovo never existed either. But while the WMD deception has been exposed, the founding lie behind the Kosovo war is still widely believed. It effectively distracts from the very existence of the what Marshall calls the parallel goalof strengthening NATO. Aside from the crippling material damage inflicted on the targeted country, the Kosovo lie has caused even more irreparable damage to relations between the Serb and Albanian inhabitants of Kosovo. The situation in that small province of multiethnic Serbia was the result of a long and complex history of conflict, frequently encouraged and exploited by outside powers, notably by the support to Albanian nationalism by the Axis powers in World War II. Each community accused the other of plotting ethnic cleansing and even genocide. But there were reasonable people on both sides willing to work out a compromise solution. The constructive role of outsiders would have been to calm the paranoid tendencies in both communities and support constructive initiatives. Indeed, the Kosovo problem could have been easily managed, and eventually solved, had the Great Powers so desired. But as in the past, the Great Powers exploited and aggravated the ethnic conflicts for their own purposes. In total ignorance of the complex history of the region, sheeplike politicians and media echoed and amplified the most extreme nationalist Albanian propaganda. This provided NATO with its pretext to demonstrate credibility. The Great Powers have in effect told the Albanians that all their worst accusations against the Serbs were true. Even Albanians know who know better (such as Veton Surroi) are intimidated and silenced by the racist nationalists backed by the United States. The result is disastrous. Empowered by their official status as unique victims of Serb iniquity, the Albanians of Kosovo -- and especially the youth, raised on a decade of nationalist myth -- can give free rein to their cultivated hatred of the Serbs. Armed Albanian nationalists proceeded to drive the Serbian and gypsy populations out of the province. Those remaining do not dare venture out of their ghettos. Albanians willing to live with the Serbs risk being murdered. Ever since the NATO-led force (KFOR) marched into Kosovo in June 1999, violent persecution of Serbs and Roma has been regularly described as revenge -- which in the Albanian tradition is considered the summit of virtuous conduct. Describing the murder of elderly women in their homes or children at play as acts of revenge is a way of excusing or even approving the violence. Last March 17, following the false accusation that Serbs were responsible for the accidental drowning of three Albanian children, organized mobs of Albanians, including many teenagers, rampaged through Kosovo destroying 35 Serbian Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries, some of them artistic gems dating from the fourteenth century. Well over a hundred churches had already been attacked with fire
Re: hegemony humbled
The WAY this story was reported in the UK was also revealing. The withdrawn UN vote was carried by CNN International but not CNN USA websites. The BBC presented it without a single comment about British support or lack of support. It was merely suggested that there was not sufficient support from other council members to get the necessary 9 votes. It was also emphasised that as the US now has case by case indemnity approved by the UN for each of the areas in which it has troops involved, in practice it did not make a lot of difference. But that means in future it will only be possible for hegemonic forces to engage in peace making or keeping by permission of a vote in the security council. And this plays into Britain's claim to be able to punch above its weight in international affairs: capable of intervening militarily, but more multi-lateralist in spirit than the USA, less controversial, reasonably well trained. Nice chappies. Including how they murmured sympathetically to the US delegation on the Security Council about how they had been lobbying but they really did not think the votes were there, and besides they have now got the unanimous vote on Iraq. And how they would not make a mention of the British position in any press briefing. This is the nature of inter-imperialist contradictions these days. The resultant of forces is towards a multi-lateral version of Empire. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 11:46 PM Subject: [PEN-L] hegemony humbled US backs down in its attempts to win Security Council endorsement of exemption of its forces from possible redress in International Criminal Court after strong warning by Secretary General. http://edition.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/23/us.war.crimes.court.ap/index.html Compare to how this adminstration was purging UN officials it did not like four years ago. U.S. offers deal if N. Korea halts nuclear program http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/06/23/nkorea.talks/index.html US has been forced to respond to the audacious demand of North Korea for a treaty guaranteeing its security, launched just as US was preparing to invade Iraq. This is a superpower that has been humiliated into recognising the limits of its powers, not least its inability to fight more than one war at once effectively. Imperialism is still in command but in the face of opposition from people over the world, unilateralist imperialism has had to cede key ground to multi-lateralist imperialism. Blair has inched ahead of Rumsfeld. In the process towards world government the rule of law, however imperfectly, is being imposed on the incomparably powerful superstate. This is a tipping point that has tipped. The weakening of US dominance may now gather pace a little. Chris Burford
hegemony humbled
US backs down in its attempts to win Security Council endorsement of exemption of its forces from possible redress in International Criminal Court after strong warning by Secretary General. http://edition.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/23/us.war.crimes.court.ap/index.html Compare to how this adminstration was purging UN officials it did not like four years ago. U.S. offers deal if N. Korea halts nuclear program http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/06/23/nkorea.talks/index.html US has been forced to respond to the audacious demand of North Korea for a treaty guaranteeing its security, launched just as US was preparing to invade Iraq. This is a superpower that has been humiliated into recognising the limits of its powers, not least its inability to fight more than one war at once effectively. Imperialism is still in command but in the face of opposition from people over the world, unilateralist imperialism has had to cede key ground to multi-lateralist imperialism. Blair has inched ahead of Rumsfeld. In the process towards world government the rule of law, however imperfectly, is being imposed on the incomparably powerful superstate. This is a tipping point that has tipped. The weakening of US dominance may now gather pace a little. Chris Burford
Re: Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq
We probably agree on some broad principles, not necessarily all. I would not contest your knowledge of the local conditions, Chris, not only because you are very well informed but because even the most progressive of movements may often have some unappealing or reactionary feature, as Michael suggests. There will some Chechens who are better than others and some worse. It sounds as if Chechen clan law may have features reactionary even by the standards of mainstream islam which is adapted to cultures favouring merchant activity. But also unless the local negative features are very reactionary, I think the overall policy of what is progressive or not should be influenced by the global features rather than the local features. It is globally that I think we have what? 1000 m people of islamic culture and 2000m people of judaeo christian culture. Bitter divisions between them will help the cause of reaction, oppression and exploitation. I would prefer to ban all the monotheistic religions, but that would be idealist, and they seem to fulfil a psychological and material need. In working for the possibility of greater unity, even in small trivial ways, a good principle is to err on the size of internationalism towards the community other than your own. I do not know whether it is clear from my posts, but I feel undeniably prejudiced *against* muslim people. That is why in any situation involving people of the monotheistic cultures, I feel I should err on the side of internationalism towards muslim people. Ultimately that is not a moral gesture to purify my soul, but based on a stance that I believe is necessary for promoting unity in the world of the oppressed and exploited. But maybe I am one-sided in applying it. Regards Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 18, 2004 11:28 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq Oh, in principle I agree with you, except that there were no democratic bourgeouis rights in Chechnya in 1999 to defend. Chechnya was under Shariah law as mediated through traditional Chechen adat' clan law. (Anecdotally, the retention of adat' was a real minus in the eyes of the foreign mujaheed, who thought the Chechens should junk it and just follow their imported interpretation of the Qu'ran. That seems to have been as successful as when Imam Shamil tried to root out adat' during the Caucasus Wars.) There are also almost no Chechen working people, and haven't been since aroubd 1993. (Not in Chechnya, anyway -- most Chechens do not live in Chechnya. The entire Chechen elite lives in Moscow, along with around 200,000 other Chechens, who get harrassed regularly by the cops. The lead singer of up-and-coming rock band Dead Dolphins is a Chechen, as is one of the newscasters on NTV -- I could go on.) About the only real sources of income for Chechen men involve carrying guns. In the interwar years, the economy of the republic was based on the kidnap industry, oil smuggling and counterfeiting. (Not that many people in the West know this, since Western journalists and human rights workers fled the area en masse to flee the hostage industry after the massacre of the Red Cross employees in 1996. The only reason they are able to function in Chechnya today is because they are under the protection of the federals and the Chechen police, which is why you hear about human-rights violat ions today and did not in 1997.) Theoretically, I could visit Chechnya, as the Moscow-Grozny rail line just reopened to load fanfare. However, having a sense of self-preservation, I do not intend to do so. :) About 8,000 people took teh train from Grozny to Moscow a couple of weeks ago to watch the Russian Cup football championship match, which the Chechen team Terek won.
Re: Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq
I don't now the answer to this specific question. I just wanted to respond to the difficult issue that there are massive historical forces for global intervention and that the liberal intelligentsia of the world, from which I am not separable, tend to be cautiously sympathetic to intervention. I think the battle has to be against imperialist ways of doing this, but it is not always possible to stop it. And, here of course I differ from others on this list, I think there are times when intervention preferably done the right way, is better for the long term unity of the working people of the world. So I am very aware of the massive amount of imperialist internvention in Turkey at the moment. and I am in favour of its bourgeois liberal features. I was not in favour of the US organised kidnapping of Ocalan and think we should be campaigning for his release. About Russia I think there is a potential progressive agenda of uniting against any oppression of the bourgeois democratic rights of a minority, with the strategic aim of minimising the splits between working people of christian and of islamic cultural background. From the point of view of unity of the working people of the world, and not just for humanitarian reasons, I would like the oppression of the christian people of Sudan lifted without oppressing the rights of the islamic people of Sudan. I think it is most unlikely that this will be achieved without illustrating the imperialist features of present global power relations against which we shold protest. That's as best as I can put it this morning. Regards Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 1:06 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq I regret as the inhabitant of a country with a historical Christian tradition, that there was not more pressure to intervene in the politics of the Russian Federation on behalf of the people of muslim culture in Chechnya. Putin has good reason to try to control the interventionist agenda in his own sectional interests. Chris Burford London --- Should Putin have been pressured into not responding when Dagestan got attacked or something? Write Khattab a nice letter to please cut it out?
Re: Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq
I think the title of this thread is correct. The liberal intelligentsia of this world are interventionist, like the dominant forces of global finance capitalism. They just want the interventions to be done more carefully and with multi-lateral coordination than the neo-Cons want. The stage is being set to justify intervention over the muslim government of the Sudan. And ten days ago, the generally progressive UK Guardian led its front page (Sat 5th) with the banner title 90 days to stop another disaster in Africa. No surprise that the G8, huddled in their island retreat, were quick to claim the moral authority also to pronounce on this issue. This is part of a coordinated global trend in world politics, which I suggest has historical materialist foundations in the tendencies towards the global centralization of capital. I regret as the inhabitant of a country with a historical Christian tradition, that there was not more pressure to intervene in the politics of the Russian Federation on behalf of the people of muslim culture in Chechnya. Putin has good reason to try to control the interventionist agenda in his own sectional interests. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 12:26 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq Saturday, June 12, 2004 The Bush-Kerry Conundrum: Our Only Choice is the War Party By Kurt Nimmo Russian President Vladimir Putin has a point. Democrats have no moral right to criticize Bush for invading Iraq. Why? Because they were gung-ho about invading Yugoslavia. Putin made the comment at the G8 neolib feast on Sea Island, Georgia. Democrats, of course, are attacking Bush because they want John Kerry in the White House next year. Kerry says he will continue Bushs failed policy in Iraq with the notable exception that he would internationalize the mess and ask Europeans to help out in the murder of Iraqi freedom fighters and innocent civilians. Turn Democrats upside down and they look like Republicans. Most of them voted for Bushs invasion. Most of them believe killing Iraqis will return the sort of results the neocons had in mind when they lied their way into the invasion. Most of them are responsible for war crimes. Most of them should be standing alongside Bush and his neocons rabble in the docket at the Hague. How soon we forget. Clinton attacked Yugoslavia. He ordered the bombing of civilian targetshomes, roads, farms, factories, hospitals, bridges, churches, monasteries, columns of refugees, TV stations, office buildingsand killed a few thousand random civilians for good measure, and thus weakening the will of the population to resist, so that they would submit to NATO occupation, as David Ramsay Steele summarizes. By attacking Yugoslavia Clinton and the Democrats basically laid the groundwork for Bush and the neocons: For Clinton and the Democrats, it is perfectly acceptable to attack other nationsthis is not a Republican proclivityeven if they pose no threat to the United States or anybody else. The United Nations does not need to be consulted. Neolibs believe they possess the moral authoritythe neocon faction like to call it moral clarityto murder anybody and everybody who stands between them and oil, minerals, rainforests chock full of lumber, and natural monopolies, that is publicly owned power grids, railroads, telecoms, schools, hospitals, and even aquifers of fresh water. On this Democrats and Republicans are in agreement. The American people only need be lulled to sleep. Or exposed to a pantheon of spine-chilling demons. Its easy to frighten children with scary stories. Halloween can be easily rescheduled to June or December or March. Freddy Kruger Hussein or Chuckie Slobodan Milosevic are trotted out on cue. Booga booga. Arab cave dwellers with satellite phones want to kill your first born. full: http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/nimmo06122004/ -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
EU election - German results
German EU results compared to 1999 % total vote CDU down from 48.7 to 44.5 SPD down from 30.7 to 21.5 Green upfrom 6.4 to 11.9 PDS upfrom 5.8 to 6.1 FDP upfrom 3.0 to 6.1 So PDS slightly consolidates its position while SPD has a further severe fall, but presumably little sign of breakthrough in west Germany. Fall in dominant position of CDU in line with European wide falls in major parties. No anti-EU party, unlike trend in other countries, but PDS have had an interesting criticism of the politics and economics of the EU in the past. Does anyone know a recent text by them in English? Green critical stance predictable. FDP as party of the light-government- seeking Mittelstand, would be interesting as to how they see EU now. Chris Burford London - hopefully with comment on UK results once they are all in.
Re: EU election - UK results
Northern Ireland and Scotland only declared today partly for religious reasons. Excluding the former where the parties are so different, the aggregate vote for the rest of the UK broadly were in % with change from 4 years ago 27 - 9 Conservatives 23 -5.4 Labour 16 + 9 UK Independence Party 15 + 2 Liberal Democrats 6 Greens 5 British National Party (fascist) 1.5 Respect - George Galloway, anti Iraq war coalition. Vote markedly up associated with much tactical voting for smaller protest parties. Across the EU little enthusiasm for parties supporting EU and strong oppositional votes for parties intuitively against it. UKIP may have drawn votes also from racists opposed to immigration. It now presents a big problem for the Conservatives who will have illogically in terms of the interests of capitalism, to move even further against Europe and for Blair's Labour party which will have a big problem with a referendum on the new EU constitution, which it has already had to concede. Iraq has badly damaged Blair's credibility, and this was more clearly seen without the EU distraction, in the local votes counted on Thursday. This may have helped the Liberal Democrats a bit. But the modest rise for them and the weak showing for Galloway's Respect shows that opposition to the Iraq war is not the result of a deeply engrained opposition to imperialist interventions, merely opposition to this one. About the dilemmas over Europe for the conventional political parties of capitalism to paraphrase Lenin, one might say, the masses know the benefits of large markets and large states, but they have little enthusiasm for them. And whereas the national bourgeoisie in the 19th century poured money into chauvinist building of the nation state, the finance capitalist companies of the 21st century have no interest for example in welding European solidarity against the USA. Even though George Bush's neo-Cons do not really represent the best interests of capitalism, they can be discarded in other ways, than by drumming up too severe a polarisation between Europe and the USA. So Europe has won peace but it is finding that democracy is not the shining ideal it was when held up against communist dicatorship. It is about many pragmatic alliances, and being able to achieve things only when potential opponents are bored or diverted by something else. Not a bad model for world unity if gradually it requires the wishes and interests of ordinary working people to be appeased. But that leaves it more likely to be vulnerable to populist or fascist rebellions than to glorious and coordinated proletarian revolution. Chris Burford London
The story of the second front
Amid the idealised sentimental ceremonies last week about Reagan and D Day, the only serious discussion I picked up about the complex politics of the very late opening of the Second Front against Hitler was this item from a Russian source in the IHT. Even if you accept the progressive nature of intervention against Hitler, as I do, it illustrates the atmosphere of imperialist mistrust that underlay the alliance, delayed its start and delayed the second front. http://www.iht.com/articles/523780.html Chris Burford London
PDS almost twice as strong as SPD in Thuringia
Subject to confirmation the exist poll prognoses in Thuringia, former East Germany, capital Erfurt this evening are compared to 1999 SPD down from 18.5 to 14.5% PDS up from 21.3 to 25.5% CDU down from 51.0 to 46.0 CDU lost out also to increased votes to FDP and Greens, but these were minuscule before and unless the Greens go over 5% to enter the assembly, CDU will be able to rule with an absolute majority of seats. PDS appears to be consolidating its position in former East Germany and likely to be able to insist on a red-red coalition next time round. Chris Burford London
Re: [POHG] the whole country has dementia hollywoodius fwd
- Original Message - From: alex scott-samuel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 6:24 PM Subject: [POHG] [spiritof1848] the whole country has dementia hollywoodius fwd --- Begin Forwarded Message --- Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 17:31:23 -0400 From: Thompson, Kenneth [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [spiritof1848] the whole country has dementia hollywoodius Sender: Thompson, Kenneth [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] hello all, it appears that the dementia that afflicted ronald reagan has infected the media and the people they are interviewing. as a country we seem to have no recollection of what actually occurred in the 1980s (i think of the collapse of industry here in pittsburgh and elsewhere, the absurd war against the dangerous people of el salvador and nicaragua, and the systematic training in torture techniques across Latin America which was part of the absurd war. Worse than what has been photographed and publicised by means of digital cameras today. And indispensible to the project of defeating the evil empire, in such an apprently good-humoured way. Chris Burford
hegemons
I intended to imply that Britain is hand in glove with the US although the UK does wiggle its little finger in occasionally relevant ways, which perhaps become more relevant when the hegemonic bloc is under considerable pressure to change course, as it is now. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 2:47 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] screwing the hegemons Aha I see the hegemons this evening have already decided to move fast to revise their text to accept that the troops will be go whenever the Iraqis even the interim government, request it, as I suggested might be the end result of the debates. --- Q: How can there be more than one hegemon?
Ashcroft memos
are surely the smoking gun. What further authority does a ruler require than to say the equivalent of Rid me of this turbulent priest and imply that there are no legal objections to how this might have to be done. Rid us of these fundamentalist islamic terrorists who are waging war against us! There is therefore an asymmetical War against terrorism. The rest follows. Chris Burford London
Re: screwing the hegemons US to leave Najaf and Kufa
- Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 11:22 PM It seems possible that the interim government is quite sophisticated and Allawi knows how to balance everything out, including how to use Shristani to neutralise Al Sadr's militia. Yesterday BBC reported that Sistani and Al Sadr have met. No doubt this had been prepared for some time so it is interesting they both agreed to a public meeting. Today BBC reports that the US is pulling back from the holy cities of Najaf and Kufa to hand over the the Iraqi police (whoever they may be) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3777407.stm It is also reported that Al Sadr has agreed to withdraw his militia from the cities, but that does not mean disbanding it. It means that he is prepared to manage an accommodation with Shristani which they have both given their names to publicly, in order to remove any excuse for the hegemonic power to withdraw from the heart of the Shia community. What will really matter is whether Al Sadr will and can protect the US troops from mortar attacks and attacks on their convoys, and what his political price will be for this act of generosity. The interim government has made a good start in managing negotiations, no doubt some of them indirect, about the bodies of armed men in a way favourable to stability and Iraqi sovereignty. Chris Burford
Re: screwing the hegemons
The hegemons presumably calculate that abject surrender is best achieved as promptly as possible so that the technicalities will not be noticed against the backdrop of Bush meeting the Pope. It is a mark of their defeat that they have to pretend they are not being screwed. Crude domination is not an option now:] - therefore they have actively to adopt a tone of noble dignity. Chris Burford
sudden loss of spam
The amount of spam I get has fallen drastically in the last few weeks. Is this a sign of further globalisation - the US government finally moving in coalition with major monopoly capitalist bodies like Microsoft, to hunt down the spammers? And the spammers have suddenly got scared? I am afraid I am grateful. It is a step towards the global enforcement of global standards, and the capitalists are unfortunately in control. Chris Burford
screwing the hegemons
Interesting public debate in the Security Council, with Zebari taking full advantage of its attention, and other powers like China, France, Germany and Russia, enjoying keeping the hegemons waiting for approval. Time is not on Bush's side. Everyone knows that. While saying that a specific deadline for withdrawal of troops would not be helpful Zebari emphasised the wording of the resolution should be strengthened to emphasise full sovereignty for Iraqis - which sounds like encouragement for an amendment that the hegemonic troops will leave whenever the Iraqis request it, rather than subject to a Security Council resolution which the US and UK could veto. The subtleties of inter-imperialist rivalry these days! Chris Burford
Re: screwing the hegemons
Aha I see the hegemons this evening have already decided to move fast to revise their text to accept that the troops will be go whenever the Iraqis even the interim government, request it, as I suggested might be the end result of the debates. The hegemons presumably calculate that abject surrender is best achieved as promptly as possible so that the technicalities will not be noticed against the backdrop of Bush meeting the Pope. It also undermines the advantage the imperialist rivals get by spinning out the negotiations, and it moves the power game onto a new territory altogether. It seems possible that the interim government is quite sophisticated and Allawi knows how to balance everything out, including how to use Shristani to neutralise Al Sadr's militia. Interesting that the kidnappings stopped as a general policy. Meanwhile it becomes in the interests of the occupying troops to retire to barracks, avoid confrontations, and too many convoys, and try to think of a strategy against mortars. Indeed the tables may be turned with the intermin government pleading with them not to leave, in a way that will finally give some political support to Bush and Blair in covering themselves with their domestic electorates. The other pay off would be if it manages to turn military hegemony once again into financial dominance, if in return for staying in Iraq the interim government will give primacy to a financial framework in which US interests dominate over those of old Europe. The fine print of these inter-imperialist skirmishings could get even finer and harder to analyse. They will include hazy terms for debt forgiveness - there are technical terms like odious I think. It will also depend on how contracts get awarded. The interim government will minimise the hegemons bargaining power the faster it achieves on the ground compromises with local militias. Llocal militias in turn may be persuaded to compromise if this allows the interim government apparently to accelerate statements distancing themselves from the occupyers. It is just possible then that as almost all sides want the occupying troops out as rapidly as possible, things will stabilise punctuated only by terrorist activity that finds it difficult to find a target that will strengthen its position with general Iraqi opinion. All right, highly speculative, but the last speculations were not wide of the mark. What I am basing these thoughts on to be explicit is 1) calculation of the shifting balance of power and how others may see it 2) respect for the intelligence and resilience of Iraqi people. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 8:14 AM Subject: [PEN-L] screwing the hegemons Interesting public debate in the Security Council, with Zebari taking full advantage of its attention, and other powers like China, France, Germany and Russia, enjoying keeping the hegemons waiting for approval. Time is not on Bush's side. Everyone knows that. While saying that a specific deadline for withdrawal of troops would not be helpful Zebari emphasised the wording of the resolution should be strengthened to emphasise full sovereignty for Iraqis - which sounds like encouragement for an amendment that the hegemonic troops will leave whenever the Iraqis request it, rather than subject to a Security Council resolution which the US and UK could veto. The subtleties of inter-imperialist rivalry these days! Chris Burford
Re: sudden loss of spam
Ah. Chris - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 3:05 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] sudden loss of spam Chris, I must be getting your spam, because my inflow has gone up. I can forward it to you if you want. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
envy, sadism, and crude communism
If I don't jump on in this thread I will miss the opportunity perhaps for a lifetime. I want to echo Doug's praise for this remarkable quote by Ted from Marx's early manuscripts (thanks Doug for making clear you were not being ironic - one does not always know!). This comes at a moment for me in my personal trajectory, where after a lot of hesitation I am reading Freud's final work Outline of Psychoanalysis in the new 2003 translation which is closer to the German original. I am struck by how Freud fundamentally declares what seems to me to be arguably a dialectical materialist stance, which of course comes from deep German philosophical roots - that there is much in the psychological as well as the physical universe that we do not know directly from our sense organs. These consciously bring us only in touch with immediate surface phenomena. Rather we have to look beneath the surface to discover the forces and their dynamical interaction to have a theory of what is really going on. Cosmic physicists would agree without hesitation. Freud however was not a *historical* materialist and was explictly critical of the dictatorial tendencies he saw associated with the marxist movement. The link I suddenly see in the passage that Ted quotes and the adjacent text of the cite, is that it provides a bridge between psychology and society at a valuably and extremely high level of abstraction. One of the dilemmas in interpreting the success and failures of the state centralist societies that came into existence largely through Lenin's inspiration is the problem of lack of labour efficiency, and loss with time of revolutionary commitment by the mass of workers who often ended up resenting the privileges of the state intelligentsia. Understandable though that is, it suggests to me a society caught between primitive conceptions of communism and a more scientific communism. It was a contradiction that Marx was well aware of eg in the case of Russia, that historical developments could leap forward with progressive aspects of primitive communism straight to socialism without going through a capitalist stage. In post revolutionary China there was an attempt at an accelerated leap from socialism to the communism of the communes, without going through capitalism, which relied a lot on envious motives as well as inspired egalitarianism. Now the retreat in China to something that often looks indistinguishable from rampant capitalism except for the attempts to maintain a strong state in relation to the world, appears to represent the resurgence of primitive selfish motives which are the other side of the coin of the idealism of crude communism. The Trotskyist criticisms of state centralised socialism, whether as a deformed workers state or a state dominated by a new capitalist class, while often correct in some respects, seem to me not to wrestle profoundly enough with the historical contradictions. And in a country like the UK where we still have a large state sector, it seems to me to be inadquate just to mount a rearguard defence, despite evidence of inefficiency and lack of customer appeal to the recipients of those services. This post probably is too big a stretch in too many directions, and makes partial sense only to me, but Ted's quote seems to me to free up the parameters of the marxist debate in potentially creative ways. (Of course some though would say that in 1844 Marx was still not a scientific socialist.) I suppose I am looking, hopefully with others, for a redefinition of a historical materialist project, that is flexible enough to take into account psychology as well the inexorable development of the means of production, and is still historically optimistic. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2004 2:56 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hubbert's peak Ted Winslow wrote: Like the sadism to which they are closely linked, envy and insatiable greed are protean. Marx points to them as the psychological basis of crude communism. General envy constituting itself as a power is the disguise in which greed re-establishes itself and satisfies itself, only in another way. The thought of every piece of private property as such is at least turned against wealthier private property in the form of envy and the urge to reduce things to a common level, so that this envy and urge even constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of this envy and of this levelling-down proceeding from the preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited standard. How little this annulment of private property is really an appropriation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and crude man who has few needs and who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet even
Re: OPEC Has Already Turned to the Euro
Title: OPEC Has Already Turned to the Euro This looks potentially enormously important. Once data like this is in front of the eyes of international oil traders and governments, they cannot ignore it, however casual and tactful they may appear in their comments and over their business dinners. It would explain a remark I caught on a CNN business programme from an executive of a major finance company, that global business already functions in what I think he described as "world money". I presumed this to be not so much directly defined, as a notional shifting basket of exchange values against which the biggest capitalist concerns of course seek to stabilise themselves. I have a working premise that the nature of inter-imperialist rivalry is such that the other imperialist blocs will avoid directly confronting the USA, but will do it covertly. This apparently purely technical data is ideal for this purpose. The other implication I draw from this item is that in terms of impact on the domestic economy, the rise in the dollar price of oil will hit the US economy disproportionately hard compared to the European economy. (As of course it should. Why should the citizens of the US have a free lunch at the expense of the world, just to help Bush get re-elected?) Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Funke Jayson J To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 5:56 PM Subject: [PEN-L] OPEC Has Already Turned to the Euro OPEC Has Already Turned to the Euro As the dollar's rate of exchange continues to fall against the world's major currencies, there has been much speculation about the likely knock-on effect. One area receiving a lot of attention is crude oil in general, and OPEC in particular. It has been suggested that OPEC may begin pricing crude oil in terms of the euro, and further, that OPEC may actually begin invoicing its crude oil exports in terms of euros. This latter step would require shifting out of dollars, with OPEC receiving euros in payment. These possibilities have been scoffed at by many whose interests are tied to the fate of the dollar, but it seems that OPEC has already taken the first step - it appears to be pricing crude oil in terms of the euro. This conclusion is apparent from the following table. The import data is from the Department of Commerce report entitled U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services. The source for the euro exchange rate is the Federal Reserve, and I have calculated the euro's average exchange rate to the dollar for each year based on daily data. Full at: http://goldmoney.com/en/commentary/2004-02-18.html Jayson Funke The information contained in this e-mail may be confidential and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorized. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator.(B)
economic warfare spreads to Saudi Arabia
It is clear that the attack in Khobar is part of a new pattern. These are not mainly excitatory terrorist activity (although dragging the dead Brit's body through the streets for a couple of miles before putting it on display, is clearly for political purposes). It is economic warfare. The authorities will not be giving publicity to the rational strategy of the insurgents: it is to attack oil installations owned by foreign, especially US companies. The Saudi regime has said the investment of foreign capital is essential. It has had to send in helicopters with elite troops, but it is likely there will be substantial deaths of hostages as well as of the insurgents. It has captured one of the leaders and can torture him, and the Yanbu attack last month ended arguably in victory for the regime. But this is now a war on Saudi territory which the insurgents may not lose in the longer term. The lack of democratic consensus and the unemployment in Saudi Arabia are not good omens for the Saui Royal family. The truce with radical islamist within the country has broken down, which allowed them to organise for 9/11. The war is now at home. Although the islamic insurgents are almost certainly motivated by ideas of martyrdom and are willing to attack civilians with terroristic methods, the intention is more than to be politically excitatory. It is therefore arguable they should be called insurgents rather than terrorists, and we should consider that a guerrilla war has now broken out of insurgents within Saudi Arabia itself, one that will not be easily stamped out. Its vulnerable targets are economic. US and UK governments may well have to instruct all their civilian citizens to leave the country. This is a war for control of Saudi Arabian oil supplies. Judging from the response of the UK government to the bombing of the crucial capitalist institution of the Baltic Exchange by the IRA in the 1990's, the Saudi Arabian regime will have to compromise. US capital may lose direct ownership of Saudi Oil. That has enormous global strategic significance for the hegemony of US imperialism over the world capitalist economy. Especially since the Islamic insurgents can probably deny Iraqi oil to the west for several years to come. The insurgents are backed by substantial capital resources and infrastructure. This is a war of global dimensions of a new form between rival capitalisms. In terms of its footsoldiers it is a war between the haves and the Islamic have nots. The latter are more determined, and more likely to win, at least some concessions. Their leadership are shrewd enough clearly to be thinking strategically as well as tactically in terms of organisation. This is perhaps the third world war, of a form very different from the first and second. I suggest... Chris Burford London
Re: FW: Racist book The Arab Mind used to train military , but best use is as a doorstop.
Title: Message Can I raise onPEN-L an article which I was uneasy to find forwarded to me by a liberal professional colleague in the USA THE AGENDA OF ISLAM - A WAR BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONSby Professor Moshe Sharon Itappears to be circulating extensively in some quarters on the internetand to appear on some pretty debatable websites. See Google link. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22A+WAR+BETWEEN+CIVILIZATIONS%22+%22Moshe+Sharon%22ie=UTF-8hl=enbtnG=Google+Searchmeta= The element of truth is that this monotheistic religion was an aggressive and militarist political programme at a time of divided polytheistic tribal society. To apply that today in the absence of a historical materialist understanding of the changed economic conditions of later imperialismcould be used for fascistic purposes to promote worse divisions among ordinary people. Chris Burford London
Re: Quality of Iraqi intelligence
Guardian Wed 26 Two Britons killed on Monday when their armoured car was targeted by a rocket grenade near coalition headquarters were yesterday named by the Foreign Office as Bob Morgan, 63, and Mark Carman, 38. Morgan was an FO-funded adviser and had been seconded to work with the Coalition Provisional Authority on the reconstruction of the Iraqi oil sector. Carman, a former soldier, worked for Control Risks Group, a private contractor that provides security and risk assessments. The company said he had been working for a team providing security to the Foreign Office. A third British civilian was understood to have been injured in the blast. Apart from the fact that British authorities decided to be more open than I had expected, perhaps to diffuse the potential of this story, the details are as I supposed. In terms of a guerrilla war, if you consider a guerrilla war a lawful and honourable response to an invasion of your country not approved by the United Nations, (a matter on which opinion may be divided) this appears to have been a very effective and audacious attack. One which the British authorities will have to take very seriously in terms of any countermeasures. I cannot imagine they have any effective answers as the intelligence of the insurgency if anything is likely to improve relative to the intelligence available to the British authorities. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 12:12 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Quality of Iraqi intelligence This evening BBC tv carried reports of two British civilians killed by an rpg in a car just as it was about to enter the Green Zone in Baghdad which is the centre of coalition forces. One of the reports said it was partially armoured. But the individuals were civilians. No other explanation was given of their identity. It was described as audacious. The use of a single rpg in the centre of Baghdad just a short distance away from US troops. A US soldier suggested it looked a targeted job. And there are not many British deaths in Iraq, and still less in Baghdad. To my mind this suggests that the targets could well have been key figures in British security. I suspect we will hear little more of the identity of the victims, but I could be wrong. Besides if the attack was that audacious, why waste it on a couple of clergymen from the Church of England? Tonight the BBC website says The Foreign Office later confirmed that one of the Britons who died was working for international business risk consultancy Control Risks Group. It notes Since July 2003 12 [only!]British civilians have been killed in Iraq, the Foreign Office said. On Tuesday security worker Andrew Harries, 33, from south Wales, was shot when a gunman ambushed his car. We know that the resistance is well planned. The key document on the strategy for the resistance dated January 2003 was attributed to Iraqi security sources. There may be many thousands of them still in the country, highly motivated to bring down the present regime. They will know how to mingle with the crowd, and to take advantage of relationships among Iraqis. They have learned how the coalition allies work. In the coming months their intelligence is likely to get better. That of the hegemonic power, worse. Another factor in the shifting balance of forces. Chris Burford PS the website of Control Risks Group I see from Google claims about Iraq We are currently providing project security management services in Iraq for a number of government departments, companies and NGOs, and have security managers permanently deployed in Iraq for these clients. Our office has been set up to co-ordinate these activities and provide on-the-ground advice. Control Risks Group has established a project office in Iraq to assist organisations operating or planning to operate in the country. Its presence means that we are well placed to provide accurate, up-to-date information on the situation in-country and are available to help clients to understand the uncertainties and volatility that affect activities in the region, to mitigate the risks involved and to successfully manage the security of their assets and staff. BBC website again Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the deaths were shocking and showed the risks civilians had to take in Iraq. - and the British government it would appear. This may be just a taster for what will intensify after June 30.
Bush's weakness at the UN
This morning the BBC analyses the confidential initial debate at the Security Council about the future regime in Iraq from June 30, as one in which Bush is so weak the US has had to signal it is sure there will be a resolution passed. In other words it will agree to any substantive text laid in front of it. That is a reflection of the extent to which unilateral imperialism has surrendered to multi-lateral imperialism. Look for the fine print about who controls Iraq's oil supplies. (At present vast numbers of Iraqi oil smugglers - which is probably as it should be) What a reversal of power compared to fifteen months ago. This is about the disempowerment of the most powerful armed forces in human history. Chris Burford London
Quality of Iraqi intelligence
This evening BBC tv carried reports of two British civilians killed by an rpg in a car just as it was about to enter the Green Zone in Baghdad which is the centre of coalition forces. One of the reports said it was partially armoured. But the individuals were civilians. No other explanation was given of their identity. It was described as audacious. The use of a single rpg in the centre of Baghdad just a short distance away from US troops. A US soldier suggested it looked a targeted job. And there are not many British deaths in Iraq, and still less in Baghdad. To my mind this suggests that the targets could well have been key figures in British security. I suspect we will hear little more of the identity of the victims, but I could be wrong. Besides if the attack was that audacious, why waste it on a couple of clergymen from the Church of England? Tonight the BBC website says The Foreign Office later confirmed that one of the Britons who died was working for international business risk consultancy Control Risks Group. It notes Since July 2003 12 [only!]British civilians have been killed in Iraq, the Foreign Office said. On Tuesday security worker Andrew Harries, 33, from south Wales, was shot when a gunman ambushed his car. We know that the resistance is well planned. The key document on the strategy for the resistance dated January 2003 was attributed to Iraqi security sources. There may be many thousands of them still in the country, highly motivated to bring down the present regime. They will know how to mingle with the crowd, and to take advantage of relationships among Iraqis. They have learned how the coalition allies work. In the coming months their intelligence is likely to get better. That of the hegemonic power, worse. Another factor in the shifting balance of forces. Chris Burford PS the website of Control Risks Group I see from Google claims about Iraq We are currently providing project security management services in Iraq for a number of government departments, companies and NGOs, and have security managers permanently deployed in Iraq for these clients. Our office has been set up to co-ordinate these activities and provide on-the-ground advice. Control Risks Group has established a project office in Iraq to assist organisations operating or planning to operate in the country. Its presence means that we are well placed to provide accurate, up-to-date information on the situation in-country and are available to help clients to understand the uncertainties and volatility that affect activities in the region, to mitigate the risks involved and to successfully manage the security of their assets and staff. BBC website again Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the deaths were shocking and showed the risks civilians had to take in Iraq. - and the British government it would appear. This may be just a taster for what will intensify after June 30.
the great economic disparity
Also from The conservative web site http://www.marginalrevolution.com/ Top of their list of recommended books The Power of Productivity: Wealth, Poverty, and the Threat to Global Stability by William W. Lewis List Price: $28.00 Price: $19.60 6 used new from $14.00 Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Lewis, founding director of the McKinsey Global Institute and former partner at McKinsey Company, offers a detailed look at the local economies in several parts of the world including the U.S., Japan, India and Brazil. Based on the Institute's 12-year survey and analysis, Lewis concludes that the great economic disparity between rich and poor countries will ultimately have a negative impact on all nations. But the review does not suggest how conservative reformists would narrow the great economic disparity between rich and poor countries - perhaps because it arises from the unequal accumulation of capital on a world scale? Or should I buy the book??? Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2004 3:41 AM Subject: [PEN-L] nasty stuff The conservative web site http://www.marginalrevolution.com/ actually has some interesting stuff.
Re: New Imperialism and beyond
Of the various reasons given for the likely failure of the new US imperialism the economic analysis is relatively long term and independent of particular politics:- Fourthly, as suggested by world-systems analysis, new imperialist direct rule is too expensive and forceful economic exploitation is an inefficient form of economic appropriation. Imperialist wars and excessive military spending in combination with unhealthy military-Keynesianism -i.e. a policy that utilizes military spending as a counter-cyclical tool against economic recession- increase the federal public debt of the United States. When military spending is combined with taxation policies offering tax-cuts to the rich, whose increased income is not necessarily channeled into growth- creating consumption, and to the costly effects of the ageing population, it is easy to understand that these policies are not economically viable in the middle and long term. However, it is the middle and long term negative development of public and private debt that is believed to expose the US economy to a major corrective adjustment. Moreover, this is in line with the more general downward trend of the US position in the world-economy, as suggested by the WSA. As for the rest of the world being able to punish the USA, I am sceptical that this would be done openly, whatever schadenfreude there may be over USA's problems. I think the objective reason for this is that late finance capitalism is too interdependent to promote national blocs. The subjective reason is that all these government officials are conscientious opportunists by conviction and methodology. In terms of the dollar losing its place and all the benefits of being accepted as world money, I would have thought the most likely path of least resistance would be some sort of accounting device based on a basket of currencies, and a formula for issuing IMF special drawing rights. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2004 3:50 PM Subject: [PEN-L] New Imperialism and beyond (This article contains some interesting insights, but lapses into reformist illusions about old Europe and multilateralism in the conclusion.) New Imperialism and beyond. Why the New Imperialism will fail and unseat the Bush Administration? Petri Minkkinen After the shock of S-11-2001 terrorist attacks the administration of George W. Bush launched a full scale global military operation supposedly to deter and root out international terrorism. Peoples around the world were shaken by the scale and arrogance of the attacks and by the equally arrogant nature of the counter-attack of the Bush administration. Immediately after the terror attacks many began to pose irritating questions and observations on the nature of attacks[1]. It seemed obvious that things were not necessarily as self-evident as supposed by the mainstream media and political pundits. It also became evident that a terror operation of this magnitude required a level of skill, resources and planning no ordinary terrorist organization could have possessed. Therefore some kind of backing by a state level actor was evidently involved. Two possibilities emerged out of this presupposition: either the act was backed and/or ordered by an 'unfriendly' state supporting terrorist activities, or the US government itself was or some 'friendly' states were involved in one way or another. The Bush administration acted on the mixed state-terrorist organization assumption: the attacks were executed by a dangerous and skillful terrorist organization -al-Qaida run and financed by Osama bin Laden- and one or several states hostile to US interests supported the terrorists. There is also another possibility: Bush administration or its ideologues preaching for the US global supremacy knew about these attacks and did not act accordingly to stop them. A more damaging, dangerous and demoralizing version of this alternative -or subversive, if you wish- line of thought is that the government, its ideological backers, some 'friendly' state or some other actors connected to them were more directly involved with these cruel acts. Be it as it may, this is the central question related to the attacks and the world political events following them. The article at hand does not try to resolve this still unanswered question. Interesting as it is, the arguments presented here are independent of this crucial question. They rest upon the assumption that irrespective of the Bush administrations relationship to the attacks proper, the New Right ideologues of The Project for the New American Century (PNAC)[2] and its predecessors had planned for a heavy militarization program and for the maintenance and enhancement of US world supremacy -militarily, if necessary- well before the sad events of S-11-2001. Interestingly enough, in a report published a year before
Re: Saving India's economy
This looks like a wonderful solution for the objective interests of capitalism. As reported in the UK, Singh will particularly ensure that Indian Pakistani economic cooperation continues and will reassure the Indian stock exchange. Meanwhile with the help of Sonia Ghandi in the background, some minor compromises will be made to win the assent of the impoverished masses who have not taken part in the shining middle class revolution. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: ravi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 6:39 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Saving India's economy Louis Proyect wrote: NY Times, May 20, 2004 Sikh Who Saved India's Economy Is Named Premier By AMY WALDMAN NEW DELHI, May 19 - Manmohan Singh, the gentlemanly Oxford-educated economist who saved India from economic collapse in 1991 and began the liberalization of its economy, has been appointed the country's next prime minister, ending a week of high political drama. while singh deserves the credit for the economic liberalization, was it not p.chidambaram who began the process? --ravi
Re: Mirowski on Nash's paranoia
Many thanks. Much as people rightly admire John Nash for his recovery, without drugs, from a long standing psychotic illness, I have to say that the comments below could also fit. ie the disorder could be seen as an _expression_ in turn of psychosocial factors on the individual. Even that there is an interaction, a synergy, between the ideology of the society and the ideology of the individual in this case. I have just checked "Madness Explained" by Richard Bentall (2003) which among other things sums up a generation of experimentalstudies in the UK by psychologists. The core of his model of paranoia is based on studies of attribution theory. Just as the depressive person tends to over attrribute the causes of their misfortunes to internatl personal failings, the person with a tendency to paranoia tends to make external attibutions in excess of probably the reality and the psychological norm. This could fit with formulations below that it was important for this proud, attractive and talented man, in a highly competitive environment, to have a sense of integrity of his own identity and to regard interaction from outside as potentially threatening. If there is some truth in this connection, Nash cured himself by gradually mellowing psychologically, perhaps helped by the care of his estranged wife. But I am writing in because I think the observations below are not in fact disrespectful of his courage and other qualities, and to provide a contribution for thinking further about the psychological values of mid-late capitalist ideology. Regards Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Ted Winslow To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 8:54 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Mirowski on Nash's "brilliant insight" From the section (pp. 335-49) in Philip Mirowski's *Machine Dreams* on "what has come in retrospect to be regarded the signal mathematical development in game theory in the 1950s, the event most consequential for the subsequent history of *economics*, the invention of the 'Nash equilibrium' concept." p. 331 "The Nash equilibrium is the embodiment of the idea that the economic agents are rational; that they simultaneously act to maximize their utility; Nash equilibrium embodies the most important and fundamental idea in economics" (Robert Aumann, quoted by Mirowski on p. 343)"by the mid-1950s things started going seriously wrong. In his [Nash's] own words: 'the staff at my university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and later all of Boston were behaving strangely towards me. ... I started to see crypto-communists everywhere. ... I started to think I was a man of great religious importance, and to hear voices all the time. I began to hear something like telephone calls in my head, from people opposed to my ideas. ... The delirium was like a dream from which I never seemed to awake.' "In the spring of 1959 Nash was committed to McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic." p. 338 "what Nash himself was aiming at [was] a definition of rationality in game play so transparent and unassailable that everyone would voluntarily acknowledge its salience and conform to its dictates, entirely independent of any external interpersonal considerations. We shall dissect the Nash equilibrium in detail, but, for starters, it will suffice to define 'Nash equilibrium' as the personal best strategic reply to an opponent (i.e., a constrained maximum) who is himself trying to discern your best strategic option and deploy his own best response, where the two desiderata coincide. It is clearly an attempt to extend constrained optimization of something which behaves very much like expected utility to contexts of interdependent payoffs. Nash himself described it as 'an n-tuple such that each player's mixed strategy maximizes his payoff if the strategies of the others are held fixed. Thus each player's strategy is optimal against those of the others' (1996, p. 23). It all sounds so simple, except when you pick up diverse game theory texts and find they rarely tender the same explanation of the meaning of this 'rationality' from one instance to the next."In this volume, we shall treat the Nash equilibrium as the next logical extension of the Walrasian general equilibrium tradition into the Cold War context." pp. 339-40"the notion of rationality encapsulated in the Nash formalism ... [is] omniscient and all encompassing of all possible worlds" p. 340"Nash agents are inflicted with terminal paranoia" p. 340"It would be a dire mistake to let the mathematics obscure the very real emotional content of the Nash solution concept, for that would leave us bereft of an appreciation for the nature of its ap
Re: Rumsfeld and Abu Ghraib by S.Hersch
Enormously important tactically and strategically. The most secret officers of the state have split and leaked the information about the whole global counter-terrorist programme. Strategically Osama bin Laden has won. US hegemonism will never be able to rule the same way again. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: k hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 16, 2004 2:26 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Rumsfeld and Abu Ghraib by S.Hersch THE GRAY ZONE by SEYMOUR M. HERSH How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.
Anti-Government Mirror Editor Sacked
Yesterday the editor of the Mirror was summarily sacked in an amazing coup for the government. Now three media leaders have been forced to resign, the chair and CEO of the BBC and the Editor of the Mirror for mishandling the exposure of government activities around the Iraq war. Alistair Campbell slipped away more quietly but these latest events suggest that government management of public issues is now lower profile but can be perhaps even more effective. From there point of view they did not put a foot wrong over the dramatic picture, and they clearly made many effective moves behind the scenes. I attach my cautious post of May 3 in case people think I may have overstated the case more than a year ago for possible defeat of the hegemonic invasion of Iraq. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 9:23 PM Subject: [PEN-L] water sports for British troops in Iraq Presumably most people are aware that just after the publication of the pictures of American troops torturing Iraqi prisoners, the Daily Mirror in the UK published pictures of UK soldiers urinating on Iraqi captives, Saturday morning. http://www.mirror.co.uk/frontpages/ The definition of the pictures was extremely good it struck me, with every drop of urine twinkling in the flashlight. By Saturday evening there were strong hints from UK military and establishment sources that their authenticity was in question. Certain details of the uniform were not, it was said, customary for that regiment, the clothing looked too clean etc. This morning the Mirror stands by the overall story but shades its world exclusive by saying that the soldiers who provided the pictures say they are authentic and emphasising a beating. My guess is that this leaves the Mirror, which was a passionate opponent of the war, convinced that there is a real story here, but keeping open the possibility that the picture was a re-enactment by disgusted members of the regiment of something that actually happened. Even though the imperialist philosophy of the British contingent to the Coalition, is that they are much better at peacekeeping than the Yanks, two bits of evidence make me believe the stories. 1. A couple of years ago I met a man in his thirties on a language course whose job involved preparing British armed forces to withstand torture. So they had to bark humiliating orders at them and keep them awake a long time and cold etc. One of the techniques was to to mock them sexually. I remember thinking at the time that presumably this was regarded as psychologically very stressful and intrusive but would not cause actual injury. 2. A few weeks ago a group of half a dozen British detainees were released from Guantanamo and told their stories. A very credible mature islamic prisoner described how female prostututes were used to masturbate younger male prisoners, who appeared to be very disturbed by this abuse of their religious principles and sense of personal identity. The older prisoners would joke about this, but to the younger prisoners it was actually rape. These bits of evidence suggest that within the British army and the US army, rape and sexual humiliation in its various forms is considered not really torture but a softening up process particularly suitable for muslims, who are considered to be rather backward sexually. It leaves out of the picture what the military intelligence actually do to prisoners, once they have encouraged the squaddies to have a little bit of fun with them. It seems entirely credible that within certain sections of the British army photographs of a similar nature have been circulated. This probably provides a cover for more serious torture. Either way it is a disastrous imperialist strategy in the 21st century. Chris Burford London
Re: tipping point?
News junkies by myself can waste a great deal of time wondering whether each next turn is a tipping point. There were reasons for believing it last week, but there are always powerful forces trying to rebalance. Indeed perhaps balance is what as individuals we all try to maintain and that contributes to the relative stability of the system. As Engels wrote in his profound letter to Bloch Setp 21 1890 there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant - the historical event. This may itself be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole, *unconsciously* and without volition. For what each individual wills, is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed. So relative to the post below, Rumsfeld did not resign. But this morning there is news suggesting major shifts precisely in an effort to restabilize. They imply overall the ascendancy of the multi-lateral imperialists over the uni-lateral imperialists. 1. The US military has gone ahead announcing that certain cooercive interrogation techniques will no longer be permitted under any conditions in Iraq. This puts distance between the military and Rumsfeld. It suggests that people were unimpressed by Wolfowitz's weak testimony last week. 2. Powell and Jack Shaw have announced in the context of the G8 meeting that the US, UK Italy and Japan will withdraw from Iraq if the interim administration requests it. This gamble makes it much easier for the UK government to keep troops in Iraq, and shifts the whole power issue into one coerced not by armed military might but by armed finance - is it in the interests of the Iraqi's to have a settlement guided over them by the benign hand of international finance capital. It suggests that militarily the hegemons will try to keep a low profile if they can in places like Basra and Najaf, even at the risk of ceding ground to local militias, and they will instead play off the different Iraqi interest groups against one another realy with bribes, (wrapped up as development and resonstruction initiatives). Whether the intelligent Iraqi people want to bargain over this they might wish to decide after they have inspected the results of such pax capitalis in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. 3. The UK governments media coup over the Mirror suggests that British troops have all along been more moderate than US troops in Iraq, and will increase consent in the UK for continued voluntary peace keeping activities if accepted by the provisional Iraqi government. This strengthens the case for the UK rather than the US being at the core of the good troops of multi-lateral imperialism. 4. No doubt partly with Blair's consent, the deputy PM, Prescott, has spoken openly about the rift between Blair and Brown, early in the history of the New Labour government and allegedly better now, and discussion about who would take over from Blair. This could lance the tension over the issue, and allow Blair to strengthen his position while supporters of rival contenders eye each other guardedly. It is a high risk stategy, but Blair is nimble about reframing questions, and dancing over a new rebalancing of countervailing forces. Conclusion: No really senior figures have yet fallen, but what is more important is that the multi-lateralist imperialist camp has pulled decisively ahead of the uni-lateralist neo-cons. That is what has tipped this week. Unconsciously and objectively the agenda is being shaped by the contradiction between the long term intestests of finance capital and the working people of the world. That is the slope of this stage of world history on which each puny actor plays their part to the best of their ability. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 7:23 AM Subject: [PEN-L] tipping point? Most political efforts try to maintain the status quo, to re-balance, and continue. Even a change of personnel is not the same thing as a change of policy, still less a change of social system of exploitation. However the BBC reports this morning that the Army Times, widely available on the bases, is complaining that US soldiers are saying why should they take the blame if people at the top do not resign? The Guardian reports that senior US military are expressing lack of confidence in Rumsfeld. And the BBC reports that George Bush has said he will personally view the sadistic pornographic images. I doubt if he has the strength of personality and psychological insight to sit through all this without being profoundly disturbed. This may just be the moment when if Rumsfeld loyally places his resignation on the table Bush runs out of reasons to persuade him not to. So why should Rumsfeld lay his resignation loyally on the table? Particularly perhaps if this crisis has set up reverberations among the neo-cons, and someone
A Few Bad Men - Weekly Standard
The torture of the porgnographic SM images appears to have been mainly in the humiliation of showing them to the victims. These appear to be methods made widespread by the Resistance to Interrogation R2I methods taught in the UK and the US to special forces and pilots to teach them to withstand severe torture, without leaving too many marks on them. Devised and supervised by non clinical psychologists. Their spread appears to have been accelerated by the neo-con policy of using private agencies for a number of task in Iraq, including preparing people for the attentions of Military Intelligence. As private contactors they have recruited free-lance retired members of these special forces, who are in a grey area legally where it is very unclear whether they can be held accountable under US, Iraqi or international law for their abuse of people. However the story reported by the BBC in todays New York Times of torture of Al Qaeda leaders is consistent with the Neo-Cons links with and support for muscular Israeli use of torture in crushing the Palestinian resistance. It is clear that the neo-cons tacitly or somewhere explicitly, have favoured a policy of torture in imposing US hegemony despite their editorial of the issue of May 17 A Few Bad Men, stating we were made uneasy by the indiscriminate orgy of outrage in Washington last week - interesting in terms of English style how the orgy at Abu Ghraib has slipped into being an orgy in Washington. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/066zpubb.asp Torture is counterproductive for the USA's hegemonic purposes, but that is another question. Chris Burford
Communist success in Kerala and Bengal
Success for the communists again in Kerala and Bengal, is to be welcomed from outside India as a sign of the continued existence of large, influential bodies of people committed to social production controlled by social foresight, even though within India there is no doubt much to be argued about. No doubt in some eyes the Communist parties are heavily marked by reformist and revisionist tendencies but that is part of the continuing internal argument. Also to be welcomed, the low vote for the BJP in Gujerat, is a rejection of communalism and a reversion to the idea of the unity of working people. Provided the capitalist forces in India remain strong enough to continue the peace approaches to Pakistan in the interests of a common market to fight for some economic future in a world dominated by western imperialism, then an electoral vote rejecting divisions among ordinary people and pressing for justice for workers, is very much to be welcomed. That is a different question hopefully from instilling illusions in any one reformist party, or of just being engrossed in the tactics of inter-party fighting, which reflect the balance of economic and social forces as much as create them. Justice for working people in India is inseparable from justice on a world scale. Chris Burford
tipping point?
Most political efforts try to maintain the status quo, to re-balance, and continue. Even a change of personnel is not the same thing as a change of policy, still less a change of social system of exploitation. However the BBC reports this morning that the Army Times, widely available on the bases, is complaining that US soldiers are saying why should they take the blame if people at the top do not resign? The Guardian reports that senior US military are expressing lack of confidence in Rumsfeld. And the BBC reports that George Bush has said he will personally view the sadistic pornographic images. I doubt if he has the strength of personality and psychological insight to sit through all this without being profoundly disturbed. This may just be the moment when if Rumsfeld loyally places his resignation on the table Bush runs out of reasons to persuade him not to. So why should Rumsfeld lay his resignation loyally on the table? Particularly perhaps if this crisis has set up reverberations among the neo-cons, and someone like Wolfowitz decides it is in their interests to go rather than to hang on for worse catastrophes eg that ironically Colin Powell is the best guarantee against the *total* collapse of the neo-con project in the near and middle east. Chris Burford
Reparations!
The demand by the Iraqis, and the offer by Rumsfeld, of compensation for the victims of hegemonic abuse is an interesting precedent in the fast developing scenario.Its not just half a dozen cases. Writing a letter on an e-mail list will not change the world, but I continue to think that the demand for reparations provides an important framework to try to aim towards to promote truth and reconiciliation on a global scale in which capital has such powerfully centripetal tendencies and the imperialists continue to assume intellectual hegemony. We, the human race, workers by hand or brain, need a strategy that demands control over global funding for development, welfare and the care of the environment, under social control. Even if the hegemonic armed forces scurry out of Iraq as fast as they did out of Somalia, their secret plan is to control access to funding in the shattered Iraq. We need to counterpose a perspective that promotes peace, stabilizing the livelihood of ordinary people and rational development from the bottom up not the top down. With everything that has happened what could be fairer than to pose a massive fund for reparations - for repair - of the violence and destruction to Iraq and indeed the whole of the near/mid east. Just as there should be another fund for Africa on account of the apartheid wars, and apartheid and colonialism itself. After all Saddam Hussein was just a particularly nasty, but by no means entirely negative head of a national bourgeois regime. The West not only has an apology to make for what are more than half a dozen cases of death and torture, but to ensure real repair of a major part of global human society. Reparations! Chris Burford London
Re: Cut and Run... Freud and the ghost of Woodrow Wilson
Sigmund Freud's comments on Woodrow Wilson are interesting in the context of this article (below) As a German speaking European Freud did not appreciate being rescued by Wilson, and mistrusted his naive messianic meddling. From Freud's introduction to Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study by Sigmund Freud and William Bullitt 1966 and 1999 ... When an author publishes his opinion of a historical personage, he seldom neglects to assure his readers at the outset that he has endeavoured to keep himself free from bias and prejudice, that he has worked sine ira et studio, as the beautiful classic phrase expresses it. I must, however, commence my contribution to this psychological study of Thomas Woodrow Wilson with the confession that the figure of the American President, as it rose above the horizon of Europeans, was from the beginning unsympathetic to me, and that this aversion increased in the course of years the more I learned about him and the more severely we suffered from the consequences of his intrusion into our destiny. ISBN 0-7658-0426-3 page xi Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: k hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, May 08, 2004 10:24 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Cut and Run... Globe and MailCoomment Saturday, May 8, 2004 - Page A23 Cut and run, and do it now To hell with Wilsonian crusades -- the U.S. must get out of Iraq. The longer it stays, the worse things will get for everyone By John MacArthur Not long before U.S. soldiers made news with their sadistic, co-ed photo shoot of Iraqi prisoners, I dined with a small group of pedigreed New York liberals -- the ones known as Bush-haters -- and a ghost. The conversation was following a predictable course -- contempt for the President pouring forth as freely as the wine -- so I didn't think twice about proposing a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. troops, the very opposite of saving face, and a strategy already labelled cut and run by Karl Rove. All the living beings at the table were old enough to remember the crazy rhetoric of Vietnam troop escalation, as well as the cruelly absurd policies of de-escalation, Vietnamization and peace with honour, so why the awkward silence when I had finished? Suddenly the ghost spoke -- through the medium of a law school professor, who informed me that America had a moral obligation to remain in Iraq. Before the medium could go on, his socially astute wife aborted the seance, and we moved on to safer topics. The ghost was Woodrow Wilson. Sadly, every debate on Iraq is dominated by his notion of moral obligation, not by George W. Bush's lies about atomic-bomb threats; not by the mounting corpses; not by the foolish distraction from tracking al-Qaeda; not by the war profiteering by Mr. Bush's friends and patrons; not by the violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention; not by the waste of money that could rebuild the United States's degraded public school system; not by the lessons from Vietnam. The Democratic opposition carps, but its presidential candidate suggests escalation -- more troops (some in different uniforms) to stabilize a situation that cannot be stabilized. Mr. Bush and his friends from Halliburton are busy looting Iraq to enrich their temporal bank accounts, but Wilsonian liberals remain preoccupied with their immortal souls. The high-spirited U.S. volunteer army builds pyramids out of terrified, naked detainees, and John Kerry insists that we cannot let the actions of a few overshadow the tremendous good work that thousands of soldiers are doing every day in Iraq and all over the world. What will people say about us if we pull out? Last week, a Democratic congressman too young to remember Vietnam even told me that U.S. credibility is at stake in Iraq, that we can't leave . . . can't cut and run. Who says we can't leave? Sir Woodrow of the 14 points, that's who. Liberals rarely invoke Mr. Wilson by name, yet I can always hear the pious, self-righteous and intolerant intellectual from Virginia creeping into their voices. If ever there was a time to argue against Mr. Wilson's faith-based ideology, it's now, before too many more people die guarding gas stations and oil-field contractors. Mainstream historians typically attribute Mr. Wilson's simplistic, Manichean view of the world to his fervent Presbyterian beliefs -- what political historian Walter Karp summarized as Wilson's tendency to regard himself as an instrument of Providence and to define personal greatness as some messianic act of salvation. Mr. Wilson's relentless perversion of Enlightenment ideals struck a chord in predominantly Protestant America, this country having been formed partly on a Calvinist idea of an elect people. At the same time, he sought to impose Rousseau's and Paine's rights of man on the non-elect peoples of the world, whether or not these noble savages wanted any part of them. The world must
Can an imperial army die of shame?
Of course what will really decide how long the hegemonic forces dare stay in Iraq are acts of armed confrontation like the folly of killing 41 Iraqis in order to take the residence of the governor of Najaf from the forces of Al-Sadre, and the success rate of the ambushes on the US supply convoys. But in the sense that what is decisive in war is often the determination and conviction of each side, an army could die of shame, at least being no longer able to function as an army. Last night the BBC showed a copy of the Washington Post front page of a naked Iraqi being dragged along the floor by a waif like looking US female soldier and someone had written Lies on the glass case displaying the paper. Congress is going to have to get itself embroiled in looking at all these photographs of powerful images of eroticised rituals of domination and humiliation that speak more than a thousand words - probably because before written words the human race had had to evolve poweful conventions of domination and submission often experienced through body language, sight and touch, to allow our fragile species to act as a collective. These images are therefore incredibly powerful. So I turned once again to check out the mysterious, obscure, portentous, almost oracular perspectives of Empire. Like others I have disquiet about the lack of reference in this book to working class and the lack of support for a united front against the US and its closest allies. But the opening paragraph of the final chapter seems to me somehow appropriate. Imperial power can no longer resolve the conflict of social forces through mediatory schemata that displace the terms of conflict. The social conflicts that constitute the political confront one another directly, without mediation of any sort. This is the essential novelty of the imperial situation. Empire creates a greater potential for revolution than did the modern regimes of power because it presents us, alongside the machine of command, with an alternative: the set of all the exploited and the subjugated, a multitude that is directly opposed to Empire, with no mediation between them. Perhaps this is saying the only thing between a curious and uncomfortable imperial soldier and Congress, is his or her digital camera? Or have I misread the word them? Chris Burford London
Re: People Say I'm Crazy
I took the liberty of forwarding this to an email list trying to promote psychological approaches to schizophrenia and other psychoses. It is relatively strong in New York and I am sure the film would be of interest to some of the members web addresses http://www.isps-us.org/and internationally http://www.isps.org/ Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 7:57 PM Subject: [PEN-L] People Say I'm Crazy People Say I'm Crazy is a spare but effective documentary about what it means to be a schizophrenic. Dispensing with the kind of melodrama (and dubious medical science) at work in the far more ambitious A Beautiful Mind, it retains the same kind of inspirational value as it tells the story of John Cadigan, a young artist. Like so many others, Madigan experienced his first psychotic break while in college. As an art major at Carnegie-Mellon, he found himself cowering in his room just like John Nash at Princeton. As was the case with Nash, recovery was as much the result of support from friends and family as it was with medication. As it turned out, his sister Katie was a film-maker and she began documenting his struggles at the outset. The film was co-directed by her and John Cadigan and produced by Ira Wohl, who is best-known for the documentary Best Boy, which details the story of his older retarded brother's attempt to adjust to a new group home after the death of his parents. Both films are imbued with a humanitarian spirit that serves to make the most marginal figures in our society less so. With the aid of medication, Cadigan has achieved a certain modicum of self-sufficiency in Berkeley, California where his time is divided between making woodcuts, working in a food pantry for the needy and hanging out with friends who are also afflicted with mental illness. Although it is not well understood by the general population, schizophrenia is not manifested just by psychotic breaks. Even when the sufferer is in a normal state, everyday is an ordeal as black depression and fear threaten to submerge him or her into complete inactivity. For example, when Cadigan is not given a nametag like other volunteers at the food pantry, he immediately begins to think that this is a sign that people hate him. His greatest outlet is his work, which is outstanding by any criterion. (It may be viewed at the film's website at: http://www.peoplesayimcrazy.com.) A few years ago an art show made up of work by people with mental illness was assembled in Washington, DC and Cadigan's work was included. He was also interviewed on NPR's The Morning Edition. This was in a small way the counterpart to John Nash winning the Nobel Prize. Another victory for Cadigan was being accepted into a building designed for people with disabilities in Berkeley, for which, like all such facilities, the demand far exceeds the supply. I was reminded of this in my own building, which is going through a nimby (not in my backyard) outbreak right now. When it was announced that the 3 bedroom apartment down the hall from me was being rented to 5 mentally retarded men with Cerebral Palsy and their two male attendants, a group of tenants began circulating petitions filled with hysterical formulations about the fear factor attached to living in such close quarters to this threat. Eventually I will give the organizers a good piece of my mind. The stigma attached to mental illnesses and retardation is deeply rooted in bourgeois society. It is to the great credit of film-makers like Ira Wohl and Katie Catigan that they attack these prejudices at their heart and make our less fortunate brothers, sisters and neighbors more recognizable. What you will discover in People Say I'm Crazy is a story about the struggle to live a decent life--something we can all identify with. The film is now showing at Cinema Village in NYC. Highly recommended. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Bank of England takes very long view
With its remit to control inflation the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee has raised interest rates 1/4% despite infation at 1.1% being much below the 2% inflation target. The balanced interpretation seems to be that they are influenced indirectly by the renewed rise in house prices, on the grounds that this will increase domestic spending. But also everyone seems to assume that the effect of an interest rate change will only feed through in 18 months time. So the group of experts on the monetary policy committee are assuming they will be judged by bourgeois society on how smoothly they control the fluctuations of the business cycle over a time span of 1-2 years. The intention has become long term sophisticated control in contrast to shorter term political considerations which were dominant when the chancellor had the power to adjust interest rates every month. Chris Burford London
International Criminal Court and Iraq
One of the differences between the UK and the USA as invaders and occupiers of Iraq is that the UK has signed up to the convention on the International Criminal Court at Rome and the USA has not. The reason is that the USA does not want its soldiers vulnerable to accusations of criminal activity for the sort of scandals that have come to light in Iraq. http://www.un.org/law/icc/ This latest scandal as we get it into perspective, is really about what is apparently widespread routine softening up torture by the regular military prior to serious interrogation by military intelligence - of a sort tantamount to psychological rape, and particularly offensive to muslims. This has backfired in a big way. It demonstrates the folly of trying to impose world governance on a dangerous world by arbitrary acts of violence by a hegemonic coalition of the willing. My prediction is that these sharp contradictions will intensify the momentum by international capitalism for global governance based on some sort of international rule of law. If Congress is going to have to investigate soldiers pornographic photographs of violence and humiliation from every theatre of war, it will be cheaper in time and worry to have its armed forces knowing that they are potentially answerable to an international criminal court from the start. With the ubiquity and compact size of digital cameras is any other system safe? Once again we can see the superstructure is highly influenced by the economic base. There is a momentum under way in human history independent of the will of individual men and women. It leads, through contradictory paths, to a communist world. Chris Burford London
Connexity
I was just watching the reports of the rolling Indian elections with their debate about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of exit polls, and thinking how technological developments in the last 20 years had brought into being much more inter-connectedness and a bourgeois civil society at least for some in a subcontinent as large as India. Then I saw the intuitions by Bertold Brecht on the potentials of radio, except that the technological promise of what he imagined is only now coming out with the internet. We are indeed continuing to learn how to use this level of interconnectednss with blogs and Google. I pulled off the shelf an unthumbed paperback on Connexity by Geoff Mulgan, unthumbed because it seemed likely to be be too obvious, too diffuse and too bland. There is indeed no mention of class struggle, about which of course anarchists too are ambivalent. But p17 seems worth a quote: Within a lifetime or two, if the technological futurists are to be believed, there may even be direct connections between people's minds, transcending the idea of separate selves and subjects. At the moment, some of the features of connexity appear to be relevant only for a privileged minority, and it is true that the thickest connections are experienced by only about a billion people, in North America and in Europe, Japan and the tiger economies of East Asia, and in the middle classes of China, India and Latin America. 1998 Vintage What happens when that degree of connectedness spreads to 50% of the world's population? When software keeps us in touch with the thousand people across the world, interdependence and cooperation with whom is most valuable to each of us? Monitoring renewing and refreshing our links on a continuous basis.Exchanging information and demanding transparency about every latest scandal of the ruling classes and every legal breach in the world by armed forces. Chris Burford
Re: Who Will Do the Science of This Millennium?
- Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 2:15 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Who Will Do the Science of This Millennium? A fascinating headline on the front page of the New York Times announces: U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences (William J. Broad, March 3, 2004). Yes this too caught my eye, republished in this morning's International Herald Tribune in London. It is hard to know when a wobble is a tipping point, but this too might be a tipping point of world historical dimensions. Fundamentally it is about the battle between living labour and dead labour, as the means of production develop on a global basis to produce an intelligentsia numbered across the world in hundreds of millions of people. And scientific technology is crucial in capitalist competition to win relative surplus value by reducing the labour content of commodities. In the earlier nineties the US fear was that Japan would master the software of what was then called the fifth generation of computers. In fact US software companies moved ahead and companies like Microsoft and Google are close to global monopolies. Another crucial area is in bioengineering which is heavily dominated by the US in a field of commodity production that will grow in relative size by comparison with the total superfluity of commodities, because to the importance of health options in individual choices. However the simplistic mechanical dream of monopoly powers arising from patenting genes has proved illusory. More fundamentally the massive concentration of capital, of dead labour, in the USA is on the ebb, with the dollar only likely to stabilise at a lower exchange rate than in the 90's relative to other currencies - a very damaging trend which essentially devalues US labour power in the world. The US has no future in trying to undercut the wages of other countries. So it is not surprising to see the statistics in this article that the brain drain to the USA is faltering, as the mass of capital is presumably not massive enough to provide the only pre-eminent highly-paid monopoly centres of good research. And in the battle between living labour and dead labour, living labour is always decisive. Capital has to restabilise always on the basis of living labour not of dead labour, if it is to continue to accumulate. And here we see the massive social capital of the ancient civilisations of Asia coming into its own.(And, yes, Ben Fine and Juriaan Bendian notwithstanding I consider social capital compatible with a marxist analysis of the productive forces). The riches of these societies in their complex human intelligence are now fully engaged with modern global communications. The great majority of the best workers by brain from these countries do not need to travel to the USA to excel. That is the crunch. So yes indeed these phenomena may be a tipping point and not a mere wobble. Civilisations and Empires come to an end through their own contradictions. We may, please God, yet see the old world, for all its own painful contradictions, stepping forward to redress the balance of the new. Revolutions as well as wobbles are the norm in nature. Chris Burford London
water sports for British troops in Iraq
Presumably most people are aware that just after the publication of the pictures of American troops torturing Iraqi prisoners, the Daily Mirror in the UK published pictures of UK soldiers urinating on Iraqi captives, Saturday morning. http://www.mirror.co.uk/frontpages/ The definition of the pictures was extremely good it struck me, with every drop of urine twinkling in the flashlight. By Saturday evening there were strong hints from UK military and establishment sources that their authenticity was in question. Certain details of the uniform were not, it was said, customary for that regiment, the clothing looked too clean etc. This morning the Mirror stands by the overall story but shades its world exclusive by saying that the soldiers who provided the pictures say they are authentic and emphasising a beating. My guess is that this leaves the Mirror, which was a passionate opponent of the war, convinced that there is a real story here, but keeping open the possibility that the picture was a re-enactment by disgusted members of the regiment of something that actually happened. Even though the imperialist philosophy of the British contingent to the Coalition, is that they are much better at peacekeeping than the Yanks, two bits of evidence make me believe the stories. 1. A couple of years ago I met a man in his thirties on a language course whose job involved preparing British armed forces to withstand torture. So they had to bark humiliating orders at them and keep them awake a long time and cold etc. One of the techniques was to to mock them sexually. I remember thinking at the time that presumably this was regarded as psychologically very stressful and intrusive but would not cause actual injury. 2. A few weeks ago a group of half a dozen British detainees were released from Guantanamo and told their stories. A very credible mature islamic prisoner described how female prostututes were used to masturbate younger male prisoners, who appeared to be very disturbed by this abuse of their religious principles and sense of personal identity. The older prisoners would joke about this, but to the younger prisoners it was actually rape. These bits of evidence suggest that within the British army and the US army, rape and sexual humiliation in its various forms is considered not really torture but a softening up process particularly suitable for muslims, who are considered to be rather backward sexually. It leaves out of the picture what the military intelligence actually do to prisoners, once they have encouraged the squaddies to have a little bit of fun with them. It seems entirely credible that within certain sections of the British army photographs of a similar nature have been circulated. This probably provides a cover for more serious torture. Either way it is a disastrous imperialist strategy in the 21st century. Chris Burford London
The Empire Falls Back - Niall Ferguson
Some of this analysis by Niall Ferguson in the new year Issues 2004 special edition of Newsweek, bears re-examination. Chris Burford The U. S. can inflict great damage while sustaining none, and is programmed to rebuild itself, but not others. That's its problem. .. Let's first take a closer look at the fabled $10 trillion U.S. economy. The lion's share of the annual output of the American economy is, in fact, accounted for by private consumption. That share has risen from about 61 percent in 1967 to 70 percent in 2002. As they have consumed more, so Americans have saved ever less: the savings rate averaged about 10 percent between 1973 and 1983; at its low point, in 1999, it touched 1.6 percent, and it has risen only slightly to 3.6 percent in 2003. The only way that the United States has been able to achieve such rapid economic growth in the past decade has been by financing investment with the savings of foreigners. .. Foreign lending also underwrites the American government. Some 46 percent of the total federal debt in public hands is now held by foreigners, and the bulk of the most recent purchases have been made by Asian central banks, particularly the Japanese and the Chinese. The fact that the financial stability of the United States today depends on the central bank of the People's Republic of China is not widely known. Yet the significance is great. .. As has become obvious in Iraq, the United States does not have an especially large pool of combat-effective troops on which it can draw. With about 130,000 personnel required for active service in postwar Iraq, the Pentagon admits that it is at full stretch. .. The paradox of globalization is that as the world becomes more integrated, so power becomes more diffuse. The old monopolies on which power was traditionally based-monopolies of wealth, political office and knowledge-have been in large measure broken up. Unfortunately, thanks to the proliferation of modern means of destruction, the power to inflict violence has also become more evenly distributed-so that a poison dwarf like North Korea can resist the will even of the American giant. .. The United States has the capability to inflict appalling destruction while sustaining only minimal damage to itself. There is no regime it could not terminate if it wanted to-including North Korea. Such a war might leave South Korea in ruins, but the American Terminator would emerge more or less unscathed. What the Terminator is not programmed to do is to rebuild anyone but himself. If, as seems likely, the United States responds to pressure at home and abroad by withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan before their economic reconstruction has been achieved, the scene will not be wholly unfamiliar. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3606145/
Re: Is this Stalingrad?
Dear Jim I think we both agree the more important question is whether it is Stalingrad now. Today it is clear that US forces cannot go into the centre of Fallujah, and tonight cannot go into the centre of Najaf although 6 US troops have just been killed by mortar fire from within Najaf if the reports are accurate. A year ago, like others, I was watching the news closely, and my arguments at the time about the possibility of a US defeat, were I think balanced and actually cautious. They considered several possibilities. I concede that one of them implied that the US might not be able to go into Baghdad within a matter of weeks. That did not come about, but essentially the argument was about the evidence that peoples patriotic dislike of the invasion was not overcome by their dislike of Saddam Hussein's repression - or at least not sufficiently so for the US strategy to be guaranteed success. As of now, I would not under-estimate the extent to which the resistance among the Sunnis is essentially led by Saddamite elements following well laid plans.Ironically the capture of Saddam makes it easier for them to cooperate with radical Shiite groups. Time will tell and we cannot be right about everything all the time, but the way I wrote about the prospects of US defeat over a year ago, I think are consistent with what has happened. My post of Sunday March 23 12.33 UTC *2003* ended as below. I rest my case Regards Chris Burford But having to change the strategy to a long drawn out war could be potentially fatal for the hegemons. The power of tv could turn against them as badly as it did in the Vietnam war. Every blunder by exhausted troops working 16 hours a day without adequate sleep (there are also rumours that 3 British journalists who are missing for 24 hours were also the victims of allied fire) - every blunder adds to the cost of the war versus the gains. The allies may not be able to risk going into the cities. They may be forced to negotiate, and depend on the contemptuously dismissed United Nations to get them out of their hole. The morale of the fighters is fundamental in a war. Within 24 hours the hegemons are having to stare into the face of the probability that the morale of the Iraqi resistance may be much higher than that of their exhausted troops who are not very sure why they are there. Meanwhile those Iraqi fighter will have been strengthened by their sight of all the battles in the United Nations and all the demonstrations around the world. Saddam, vilified as an admirer of Stalin, may have taken a leaf out of Stalin's book: to play the war as a great patriotic united front against the aggressors. And as (Sir) David Frost let slip in his amiable way in an interview this morning, could Saddam be preparing Baghdad as his Stalingrad? There was no answer but it is a good question. Allied communication lines could suddenly look very extended against televised guerilla warfare. This morning suddenly there is at least a 10% chance that the hegemonic bloc will be defeated. It has been caught by its own impatience. If it does not get quick mass surenders soon, it will get bogged down in longer warfare, which has even greater risks for it. That risk of defeat, under the potential democratic impact of global communications, could rise above 10%.
Re: Is this Stalingrad?
see below - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 9:07 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Is this Stalingrad? Chris, you talked about Stalingrad in Iraq a little more than a year ago and that scenario didn't work out. Why was that prediction/understanding wrong? The current Stalingrad seems more plausible, but your overuse of the term pushes me to be skeptical and to wonder it maybe things are better for the US and its junior partner than it seems. Further, we should remember that the coalition forces in Iraq are by and large working class. They're being exploited just like (or more than) factory workers, though at this point there's no surplus-value directly resulting from their labors. There must be some way to oppose the war while supporting the troops. You mean, Jim, like saying, lets bring our boys home, and stop them getting killed or sexually abusing their captives, because it's neither safe nor glorious? - and if some peace keeping forces are necessary under the control of the UN, perhaps it might be cheaper if they come from muslim countries? Thanks for the reminder of the prophetic thread. It was on March 23 2003 I see from our handy archives that I wrote an item with the thread title Baghdad-Stalingrad I ended Since this morning, I put the chances of US defeat up from 10% to 20% As of today, who would put the chances of US victory as high as 80%??? Would you bet on it? It's less than evens. Events have not only passed the tipping point, collapse is a real possibility. At least they were able to resupply readily from the sea in the case of Vietnam. Is the simile really overused? There is a massively powerful army over-extended in territory that is hostile, with a people that has found a way to resist. Russia - Napoleon, Hitler. Iraq - Bush. Everything that is happening is consistent with the strategy of armed resistance attributed to the Iraqi security services in a document of January 2003. The defeat of a massive invading army does not happen overnight. Of course it can smash oppostion at first. Stalingrad occurred not in 1941 but in 1943. The analysis of the underlying contradictions from sources we could all read a year ago was broadly correct. Thank you for the reminder. http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/2003I/msg02442.html Regards Chris
Is this Stalingrad?
The hegemonic coalition forces are not going to get encircled and be forced to surrender, but Fallujah is arguably the Stalingrad of this war - the advanced point that the invaders could not take, the point where they found their logistical, and in this case, particularly their political, lines of communication gravely over extended. They have run out of time and space. How to express it? In practice, ever since Sep 11 2002 everyone on any internet list I have seen has been remarkably self disciplined in what they write. Really it amounts to self-censorship. If one believes that ones own country is an aggressor, and aggressors should be punished, it is hard not to rejoice at a defeat for aggression. But how to express it tactically? Logically until the aggressors withdraw, every extra death of a coalition soldier adds to the pressure for withdrawal, but one cannot celebrate this in the middle of Time Square, without being shall we say, misunderstood. Also defeatism for the hegemons will not automatically mean revolution, though it could dent hegemony internationally very substantially over the next decade. So a progressive policy cannot necessarily be called revolutionary defeatism, and it must not come over that it is a good thing for ordinary soldiers to die in an imperialist war, out of some sort of moralistic blood atonement. I believe Lenin suggested that it is in this sort of situation that the term lesser evil is relevant. So to avoid getting outflanked by enemies, how should polticians like George Galloway in Scotland, or Kucinich in the States, comment on the public record about Iraq's Stalingrad? And how should we? Chris Burford London
Re: Bush, the lesser evil?
Louis Proyect effectively demonstrates how the concept of the lesser evil becomes nonsense, even on the most pragmatic opportunist tactical level, as two bourgeois candidates for President, and their supporters, circle round each other, trying to avoid giving the other side opportunity for attack. I am not sure of the history of the concept of the lesser evil but to me it needs unpacking if it is to continue to be used right up to November. For one thing there is a difference between the day to day jostling for position which is a bit like the day to day fluctuations of supply and demand economically - a process of equilibration around an already existing set point. This is like the bourgeois sociological theoretical comparison of a two party electoral system comparison to ice cream sellers on a beach. If there are two competing ice cream sellers, they will logically position themselves both as near the middle as possible of a long, crowded beach. That is a relatively stable enduring pattern. It risks disruption if a third ice cream seller arrives, and which side this seller will position the new stall is an anxious calculation which both must contemplate. There is however a longer term jostling for position going on underneath the virtually day to day fluctuations of presidential electoral tactics: what are the underlying balance of forces. While bourgeois elections are dominated by bourgeois politics and capitalist funding, nevertheless they provide some opportunity for a shake down to occur over a period of six months. From a really radical, or even revolutionary perspective, no body would want to encourage blind faith in either such candidate. But then if a third candidate arrived, who appeared to be more than a mere lesser evil, would the danger not be even greater of creating illusions in such a candidate? The NYT editorial has now got into Monday's International Herald Tribune and I see it very carefully skirts around the C word - conscription. I read this as a highly tactical editorial, preserving its lofty dignity, guarding against any hint of lack of patriotism, playing to the our brave boys agenda but actually of course revelling in Bush's plight, and taking every opportunity of criticising the fundamental unilateralist strategy of the Neo Cons. They will leave Bush to consider the option of conscription, and then play the our brave boys agenda for what its worth again. Kerry is a bourgeois imperialist politician and so are his backers. The two penultimate paragraphs of the editorial I think illustrate my point: Much of the current trouble could have been avoided if Rumsfeld had not been so determined to disprove the doctrine named for his rival, Secretary of State Colin Powell, which posits that force, if it is to be used at all, should be overwhelming. The United States should have had a much larger military force ready to actually occupy Iraq and restore order. As much as we hope that Bush's very belated agreement to involve the United Nations in Iraq can clear the way for greater international military assistance, it would be folly to count on more than symbolic help in the near future. Any real increase in the military force in Iraq will have to come from the United States. This page felt it was a mistake to invade Iraq without broad international support, and since then we have seen few indications that Bush's notion of establishing a stable democracy there is anything but a dream. Yet leaving Iraq now would create a situation so horrific that the United States is obliged to press forward as long as there seems any hope of making progress. The only possible, but by no means certain, road to a good outcome is to stick with the plan to allow the United Nations to set up an interim Iraqi government, to expand international political support, and to work with moderate Shiite and Sunni leaders to isolate the violent radicals. The Iraqi security forces have to be made into something far better than what they are now. Chris Burford London
Re: Bush, the lesser evil?
- Original Message - From: Mike Ballard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 9:54 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Bush, the lesser evil? Chris, Does this mean that you don't think it mattered whether FDR or one of his Republican opponents became President in the 30s and 40s? Cheers, Mike B) I was mainly making the point that the small manoeuvres between bourgeois, imperialist, candidates are trivial as a lesser evil argument. I did however point out that other aspects of the NYT editorial suggested to me, a strategy to put the skids under Bush's unilateralist war of aggression against Iraq, over a period of months, by studiously not using the word conscription, but bringing the argument up to that point. No I don't know about FDR. The truth is always concrete. But when I listen to some of Paul Robson's songs from that era it seems to me there was a scope for progressive politics that there was not at other times. I have a soft spot for Ken Livingstone, even though he makes alliances with the finance capitalism of the City of London for some of his more socially coherent initiatives. I cannot see from Google that Lenin ever advocated a lesser evil type argument for choosing one bourgeois party over another. He did famously in one concrete political formation call for support as a rope supports a hanging man. I do myself think there are sometimes arguments for supporting the election of one bourgeois party over another provided this is not done in such a way as to promote any faith or illusion in the bourgeois party, but for reasons that actually shift the balance of power in some way towards working people. A far more difficult concrete situation was at the time of the rise of Nazism when in retrospect perhaps all progressives got it wrong. Google brings up the following argument by Trotsky in FOR A WORKERS' UNITED FRONT AGAINST FASCISM by Leon Trotsky Written in exile in Turkey, December 8 1931 IS BRUENING THE LESSER EVIL? The Social Democracy supports Bruening, votes for him, assumes responsibility for him before the masses-on the grounds that the Bruening government is the lesser evil. Die Rote Fahne attempts to ascribe the same view to me-on the grounds that I expressed myself against the stupid and shameful participation of the Communists in the Hitler referendum. But have the German Left Opposition and myself in particular demanded that the Communists vote for and support Bruening? We Marxists regard Bruening and Hitler, Braun included, as component parts of one and the same system. The question as to which one of them is the lesser evil has no sense, for the system we are fighting against needs all these elements. But these elements are momentarily involved in conflicts with one another and the party of the proletariat must take advantage of these conflicts in the interest of the revolution. In my opinion the difference between Kerry and Bush is not of this magnitude. It is a policy difference not a class difference. They are both imperialists and both hegemonic imperialists. But Bush's policy has been to use the massive preponderance of US military might unilaterally to impose its hegemony. Kerry would obviously use this, but appears by his background, his utterances, and his position on Iraq to favour a more multi-lateralist hegemonic position. This may matter more outside the US than within it. Even outside it is a matter of judgement whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for the progressive forces of the world versus international finance capital headed by US capital, to have Empire consolidated under the more complex hegemonic leadership of a Kerry type figure rather than fragmented and dramatised by a Bush type figure. Chris Burford
52 British diplomats publicly criticise Blair
For diplomats, British career diplomats, it is remarkable. They are retired, and they can be amiably dismissed by Blair's supporters as Arabists - people who often had worked in embassies in Arab countries, but the overall picture is severe. It is presented as a policy question but really it comes close to articulating a fault line between two imperialist blocs. Britain (and Europe) has little interest in maintaining Israel as a garrison state in the near and middle east. The USA has domestic political pressures plus regional strategic reasons for doing so. The USA has or had the military and economic power both to arm a garrision state, and to buy off its rivals. Now that the USA has overstretched itself, this is coming into question even within the USA's closest apparent ally, Britain in the most public way - even by elements that by class position would be closer to the British Conservative party. It is remarkable that there should be such a public challenge from within the Establishment to what is normally a given of Brtish foreign policy since the end of the Second World War: however much teeth may be ground in private, it is in Britain's geopolitical interests to be in strategic alliance with the USA. This letter is therefore an unprecedented public attack on Bush by implication. Chris Burford London
Intelligentsia and Empire - in Iraq and the world
of the themes of this thread title: globally I suggest there is little doubt that the growing intelligentsia of the world is interventionist in other countries, provided that intervention is done with discretion (eg that is the position of people like Clare Short and Robin Cook in the UK who opposed the war). Within Iraq, rather than our taking sides between different radical elements, because we do not have the luxury - rather the appalling burden - of our lives being on the front line - of considering which strata and classes objectively and subjectively different political organisations may have their main strength in. For example neither the Iraqi Communist Party not the Workers Communist Party of Iraq are proposing an immediate struggle for socialist revolution, and that implies some degree of compromise with non-socialist forces. But I would suspect that the ICP has somewhat more connections with more privileged members of the intelligentsia with links with old class structures, while people adhering to the WCPI, by its name alone at least, would be more linked with less privileged members of the intelligentsia. Hopefully, however important their differences, they can argue and discuss with one another in practice. The revolutionary intelligentsia is a complicated animal. Remember that Lenin's father was a state bureaucrat who was thereby nominally noble. Remember that the League of Communists who commissioned the Communist Manifesto from Marx, were not so much proletarian, but mainly from a petty bourgeois, artisan, stratum of society that had been thrown onto the defensive by the developments of capitalism. What immediate stance towards developments in Iraq should be taken by the 10% of the intelligentsia of the world, who are radical, revolutionary, or at least progressive, over and against Empire? People's initiative is limited by circumstance, opportunity, and consciousness, but broadly I assume something along the following lines. That the progressive intelligentsia, and progressive class forces, in the hegemonic countries of the US, UK and other members of the coalition, should support broadly anything that gets their troops rapidly out of Iraq, and should support a near and middle east peace settlement. The progressive intelligentsia and class forces within Iraq should try to make alliances which preserve the possibility of national resistance to economic domination at the whims of global, especially US, finance capitalism, and preserves some measure of bourgeois liberal human rights, including in the status of women, and democratic accountability especially of the need for production to resume based on social cooperation and social foresight. That non-violent ways of resolving conflicts should as much as possible of course be employed, and solidarity be promoted, if necessary by a federal structure, to preserve the possibilities of cooperation between the different communities and religious groupings of Iraq. That outside forces should only come by invitation, to complement the bodies of armed force which have the sanction and support of the community, from states that can supply forces sensitive to the culture and values of the local people. That reparations should be paid. Even at the expense of diverting all resources of further capitalist development in the imperialist heartlands of the USA and the UK, towards the near and middle east and particularly Iraq, for the purposes of a democratic reconstruction building up from the bottom by stabilising the immediate lives of ordinary working people. Reparations should be paid. It would not just be a moral gesture to assuage the guilt of liberals in the imperialist heartlands. It would be an important precedent for humankind. Chris Burford London PS Note in concentrating on the intelligentsia I do not intend to ignore billions of people whose class position is clearly that of the working class, the lumpen proletariat, or the lower petty bourgeoisie and peasantry. But the intelligentsia is a particularly crucial and contradictory stratum who articulate political positions, and the radical classes themselves globally are now linked through the radical intelligentsia, as the global anti-capitalist agenda that was running so strongly up to September 2001, showed. Nevertheless I accept there are of course important differences of emphasis, and I look forward to other, contrasting, contributions. - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: The A-List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: PEN-L List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2004 9:15 AM Subject: [A-List] bring back the Ba'ath water!! To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 12:12 PM Subject: [A-List] Iraq: the quagmire deepens LUCY BANNERMAN The Herald, April 23 2004 Also yesterday, US authorities announced that some senior Iraqi officials purged after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would be restored toduties in an overhaul of what had been
Re: Intelligentsia and Empire - in Iraq and the world
hope they will step in. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2004 8:37 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Intelligentsia and Empire - in Iraq and the world Chris Burford wrote: Now in relation to Iraq the strategic dream of the Neo-Cons - themselves defined as a group of the US intelligentsia by an unusual and 'interesting' intellectual trajectory - was that within a new century policed by overwhelming US hegemonic power, a whole Middle East in which oil not only flowed smoothly to lubricate the imperialist forces of production, but there was a bourgeois imperialist civil society across the whole of the Near and Middle East in which the Zionist state is smugly secure, the Palestinian refugees are absorbed as lumpen proletariat in a supposedly expanding global capitalist economy. Crucially that the large intelligentsia stratum of Iraq and Iran, instead of serving state regimes openly and covertly supporting Palestininian suicide bombers (the real axis of terrorism) would be in the service of a liberal middle class largely urban civil society, pre-occupied with cafes and minor features of semi-privileged consumer lifestyles, in a capitalist economic environment ultimately dominated by the largest finance capitalist corporations, especially the US ones. Chris, I can't parse this at all. Can you clarify? Maybe it just needs some extra commas and semicolons... Joanna
bring back the Ba'ath water!!
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 12:12 PM Subject: [A-List] Iraq: the quagmire deepens LUCY BANNERMAN The Herald, April 23 2004 Also yesterday, US authorities announced that some senior Iraqi officials purged after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would be restored toduties in an overhaul of what had been a keystone policy of the occupation. The review could allow some former members of Saddam's Ba'ath party to join an interim Iraqi government. I had heard on the BBC that they were going to allow Ba'ath members who are teachers and academics to return. That presumably was the spin in the press release. Also that the Brits in the Basra area have been retraining Ba'athist officers for the military. But this penetrating analysis in the Herald (once again) makes it clear that the occupiers have had to turn a political corner. This was the weakness of the whole strategy of the invasion of Iraq: that the Ba'ath party for all its repressive dictatorial measures including the use of terror (in tens of thousands at the time that the country was just going to fall apart at the end of the first Iraq war) neverthess was imbedded in a complex society. The neocons actually have no chance of building anything like a liberal bourgeois civil society in Iraq dominated by global finance capital, without relying on the whole generation of intelligentsia who cooperated with and saw their line of advance through Ba'ath membership. The unilateral imperialists have come close to throwing out their baby, instead stoking the flames of muslim reaction. They desperately need Ba'ath water. Chris Burford London
Re: The new ambassador to Iraq
He was reported on the BBC as ambassador to Honduras at the time of the contras but as having been expert at avoiding controversy. In the main he is seen as a part of a shift from the neo-cons in the Pentagon to the influence of the State Department, since he is said to be close to Powell. The BBC also quoted the French ambassador to the UN as welcoming his appointment particularly warmly. I wonder how much all this is true. If so it suggests that Bush is going to try to ride out his defeats in Iraq by switching back to a more multi-laterial imperialist stance. Which of course by no means excludes covering up torture and other civil rights abuses if the US has to finance a repressive puppet regime to keep the lid on Iraq, while attempting to minimise the deaths of US trooops. We may be faced with a propaganda war setting alleged atrocities in Iraq against atrocities in Palestine. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: k hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 8:25 PM Subject: [PEN-L] The new ambassador to Iraq Web Exclusives Editor Matthew Rothschild comments on the news of the day. April 20, 2004 Negroponte, a Torturer's Friend Bush's announcement that he intends to appoint John Negroponte to be the U.S. ambassador to Iraq should appall anyone who respects human rights. Negroponte, currently U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., was U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s and was intimately involved with Reagan's dirty war against the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. Reagan waged much of that illegal contra war from Honduras, and Negroponte was his point man. According to a detailed investigation the Baltimore Sun did in 1995, Negroponte covered up some of the most grotesque human rights abuses imaginable. The CIA organized, trained, and financed an army unit called Battalion 316, the paper said. Its specialty was torture. And it kidnapped, tortured, and killed hundreds of Hondurans, the Sun reported. It used shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves. The U.S. embassy in Honduras knew about the human rights abuses but did not want this embarrassing information to become public, the paper said. Determined to avoid questions in Congress, U.S. officials in Honduras concealed evidence of human rights abuses, the Sun reported. Negroponte has denied involvement, and prior to his confirmation by the Senate for his U.N. post, he testified, I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras. But this is what the Baltimore Sun said: The embassy was aware of numerous kidnappings of leftists. It also said that Negroponte played an active role in whitewashing human rights abuses. Specific examples of brutality by the Honduran military typically never appeared in the human rights reports, prepared by the embassy under the direct supervision of Ambassador Negroponte, the paper wrote. The reports from Honduras were carefully crafted to leave the impression that the Honduran military respected human rights. So this is the man who is going to show the Iraqis the way toward democracy? More likely, as the insurgency increases, this will be the man who will oversee and hush up any brutal repression that may ensue. -- Matthew Rothschild http://www.progressive.org/webex04/wx042004.html
Major US-UK split on Iraq - Telegraph
According to BBC2's Newsnight programme previewing Wednesday papers, the right wing Telegraph on Wednesday has as its main feature on the front page a report of strategic conflict between US and UK on Iraq. The source is US, but coming just before Blair's trip to Bush, one wonders about news management. Official Brit sources will be very careful only to appear loyal. Sometimes however you can hear the gritted teeth grinding. The Telegraph has relatively good links to the UK military and is relatively well informed on foreign affairs. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ Chris Burford
Re: A critique of Paul Sweezy...
My impression is that the biographical part is described carefully, respectfully and objectively about the historical, economic, and political processes by which Sweezey came to his position. but perhaps someone like Ahmet Tonak can comment. Without reading all the detailed critique on the falling rate of profit and on whether Marx understimated the monopoly tendencies of capital, I dipped into the beginning of the fourth instalment. The quotes from Monopoly Capital are accurate and in context. My impression is that some of the misunderstanding may have arisen because of Marx's extreme tendency to abstract from the concrete processes, especially in volume 1 of Capital. I would have thought this article is worth a visit by members of this list who have been round these major issues a number of times. Perhaps they can advise whether the Beames review on this site adds anything to previous debates. My impression is that it may, and certainly the writing is careful and respectful. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Mike Ballard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 12, 2004 1:48 AM Subject: [PEN-L] A critique of Paul Sweezy... I received this message from a fellow worker. I thought those interested in progressive economics might find the critique of interest. Regards, Mike B) *** http://www.wsws.org ran a four-part series on the legacy of Paul Sweezy this past week, basically a critique of his ideas from a Marxian perspective, esp his discarding of Marx's crisis theory. Aside from the Trot garbage, some interesting stuff. Jeff = Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny - and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do). - Stephen Jay Gould http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
US has lost militarily
This is the week the US lost the war. The US has no military move to make that will not unite the Iraqi people more against it. It is already dependent on the goodwill of its suddenly no-longer puppet Iraq Governmental Council. The Brits are quietly working to undermine any military solution, which it is in their interest to do. The key question is that the Iraqis have shown the armed men of the Sunnis and Shia will cooperate against the USA. It is therefore false for the UK Guardian editorial today to say that Britain and the US must stay in Iraq to avert civil war. Unless the USA is sufficiently Macchiavellian to hand Saddam Hussein over to the IGC now, to split the Sunnis and the Shia, it has lost. It is in their own imperialist interests to go rapidly. 30 June has become April 11. And the deadline for the withdrawal of US and UK troops must be brought forward far faster than the undefined date pencilled in for long after June 30. This could indeed be a revolutionary situation both in Iraq and for the Middle East, and perhaps even the balance of world power. But it is hard to predict the range of possibilities, and to know which way each progressive should lean. Concentrating on citizens of US and UK the call should be for troops out now. More difficult is how to articulate that the aid, indeed the reparations to which the people of Iraq are entitled, should be cut free of imperialist strings. Even people like Robin Cook will hedge on questions like this. For progressives inside Iraq, not many of whom presumably have time to read this e-mail list, there is indeed a complicated struggle, hopefully non violent, about how to unite all progressive strata in a new state structure that recognises the reality of existing bodies of armed men, regional and religious differences, individual human rights and religious convictions. Liberal materialist democrats in Iraq will be tempted to have dialogue with international financial reconstruction initiatives that are capitalist and imperialist in nature to balance the power of the fundamentalists. It is much harder for anti-imperialists in the imperialists heartlands to define demands for a reconstruction programme that will not impose the requirements of international finance capitalism on the struggling Iraqi people but rather envisage economic and social reconstruction growing up from the lives of the Iraqi people themselves. With a majority of one, this morning, I lean towards a call for a reparations/reconstruction fund as the best way to articulate this. How about an Argentinian presence on the supervisory board? Plus the demand for a Middle East peace settlement. An effective alliance between anti-imperialist islam and progressive forces could in principle over the next year shift the balance of power in the world. There are enough funds to finance this, and enough massive mistrust of the whole Iraq war among progressive strata in the West. It won't happen but it could, and the sharing of imagination is the first step to action. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: dmschanoes [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 10:02 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] one up to al-Sadri Seems that this is the opening moment in a period of great potential for a real social revolutionary movement-- if it can articulate a program addressing the economic distress of the population, demanding de-privatization of oil and other productive resources, reparations from the US and the UN for the embargo, damages from the US/UK for the war, improvements in sanitation, agriculture, equal rights for women--- and a moment of great danger if no such movement with a program does emerge, as religious fundamentalism will strengthen if there is no secular remedy. dms
Re: The Iraq Communist Party and Worker Communist Party of Iraq
These forwards are valuable, and I agree with the cautious way Mike expresses preferences. One of the lessons of internationalism in the 20th century was that whatever your leanings real internationalism requires some due modesty when you youreself are not directly in the front line. The global nature of the internet may momentarily obscure the fact that we write and read from vastly different contexts. Most of us on this list are writing from states that have declared a war that has no legal basis in international law (in fact they were very careful not to declare it) and not from a country that has had an appalling human rights record but also a proud history of standing up to imperialist interference, that has been invaded and occupied in an aggressive war for which massive indemnities should be paid. The roles of international solidarity impose different tasks on different people in terms of immediate objectives. The important message for us in the imperialist heartlands seems to me We repeat the demand of the masses for immediate withdrawal of the US forces from Iraq. We call for transfer of the task of security and stability to a government formed of the representatives of the masses in collaboration with multinational forces, excluding the US and other countries, which participated in the war coalition. However I doubt the practicality of the call that This interim government should disarm all militia forces and ensure security, freedom and the requirements of a decent life and also provide suitable situation to enable people to choose their government freely and consciously. I too somewhat prefer theWCPI statement here but even though there are probably bitter ideological disputes between them it is important to recognise there is some overlap in strategic orientation about what is a demand for basic human rights in the course of the struggle against imperialist domination. Communists have had a terrible time in the face of islamic fundamentalism and have been badly squeezed by the dual contradictory nature of reactionary islamic fundamentalism. This may be progressive against imperialism, it may be reactionary against secular and working class as well as liberal democratic internal forces. Both positions seem to me to have some merit. I suspect that the ICP is in dialogue with some of the broader minded members of the governing council who have insisted on the US at least attempting a cease fire in Fallujah, at the expense of roots in the poorest most working class parts of the population. They probably have their social base among the intelligentsia. One of the outcomes of the actual battle of forces of course may be a state in which among other things women have to wear the veil. Globally that may be progressive if it forces the USA to force Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians on the basis of genuine respect for human rights, but would be one of the dialectical contradictions of history. Those of us outside Iraq need to value the opportunity to be informed. We must hope that different progressive elements within Iraq can keep in some sort of dialogue and formulate a better way forward for the Iraqi people in their struggle against imperialism, for democracy and ultimately for socialism, and a global, classless, communist world which working people together have won, and will protect. Thanks very much for the post. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Mike Ballard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 5:56 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Iraq Communist Party and Worker Communist Party of Iraq This and other items are posted on the Worker Communist Party site: http://www.wpiraq.org/english/ Of the two, I prefer the WCP and their approach to politics and poltical-economy. Regards, Mike B)
one up to al-Sadri
The news in London this evening is that most of the hostages are going to be released and that there will be a cease fire in Falluja. Channel 4 News had an interview with a spokesman of the Iraq Governing Council Hamid Alefey (?) who openly criticised the US, presumably on behalf of the IGC for not seeking a political solution. Alefey stressed that it is important to work on a political solution to avoid influence going in favour of more extreme activities. Meanwhile the leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, Michael Howard, who will have received confidential briefings from the Labour government, called for a strengthening of the UK political representative in Baghdad, and his being made Bremer's formal deputy. The government declined to produce a spokesperson and limited themselves to a written statement that Richmond(?) is a good diplomatic and has good relations with Paul Bremer. Again the general implication is that that it is already suddenly past June 30 and the US freedom of action must be at the discretion of the IGC not the other way round. Interveners on the IGC, perhaps including the Iraq Communist Party, have clawed some influence. and al Sadri has succeeded in building links in action with the Sunni forces holding out in Falluhah. Within the range of Iraqi forces there has been some accommodation in line with the resultant of forces and a united front against arbitrary US action. Al Sadri's stock must have risen and his organisation will strengthen, but there is some alliance with liberal democratic elements. This is probably the best that the US could hope for an exit strategy. Any more thrashing around could make the situation worse for it. (At least that's my guess) Chris Burford London
Re: Marching on Karbala
The most thought provoking comment in the UK today suggested that there are close links between Hezbollah and al-Sadri. Hezobollah among other things used hostage taking in their successful campaign to get Israel out of southern Lebanaon. This would fit with the hidden connection between the issue of Iraq and terrorism - the terroristic methods of the Palestinian resistance which Saddam Hussein supported by giving pensions to the families suicide bombers. This is the only logical reason, why Bush, who of course is not as stupid as he sounds to European ears, would have gone looking for Iraq immediately after the Al-Qaeda attack on 9-11. It would be part of the Neo-Con strategic appraisal of the Middle East, that Israel must be supported in crushing the intafada and that required crushing all radical islam in the Middle East especially Iraq. Other evidence I would submit is that the one significant point in which the UK's dodgy dossier was tampered with from the original doctoral theses, was where it altered the accusation that Saddam Hussein supported opposition groups in other countries to that he supported terrorist groups. (I am writing from memory but I am pretty sure of this). This alteration was never put under the spotlight, but it would only make sense if it was referring to the methods of resistance that the Palestinian intafada felt itself forced to take. Now if Hezbollah is successfully extending the terrain of battle to Iraq this is a new phase in the overall battle for the Middle East, and very bad news for the zionists. My guess is al-Sadri is much better organised than superficial wesgtern reports assume, and that he is organised in ways that slip in with the natural social structure of the country. His observations appear perceptive and well articulated - eg warning Bush that he will lose the election in November if he does not get out of Iraq. The signals of common cause between al-Sadri and the Sunni resistance are too many to be casual and without foundation. Some forces will have planned this all along. Another factor is that with the US having to announce a handing over of sovereignty by June 30, each group is jockying for position. Another factor is that Bush's worst blunder was actually capturing Saddam Hussein. So Shia who are mistrustful of al-Sadri have to be careful not to oppose him. With Saddam Hussein in American hands, there is no major reason for radical Shiites not to make a tactical alliance with Sunni's against the US, particularly if the prize is a united Iraq in which Shias dominate but on a basis proportional to actual strength. What better way to test this out than in a struggle with imperialist invaders? Perhaps Bush's worst blunder of all was actually capturing Saddam Hussein. Now if he were really clever, he would accidentally let him escape. Preferably after handing him over to the Governing Council. Tempo is once again against the US. Its bargaining position weakens because of the situation it is in. Cheney's arrival in Japan is unfortunate cooinciding as it does with the deadline for the burning alive of the Japanese hostages. The Brits too have been quietly and opportunistically undermining Bush. No British government spokesperson came on the news media for about 48 hours after the start of the Marines' onslaught on Falluja. It was clear they disapproved. We had to wait for any statement until lunchtime Friday, when Jack Straw could be interviewed at a moment when a cease fire was declared. He was very careful to obscure any question of the Brits putting pressure on the US. The line was that field commanders must have absolute operational discretion of a tactical nature. He referred to a series of consultations including the Iraq Interim Governing Council. We now know that even though these members depend on US patronage many of them have been furious. Discrete and helpful discussions with the Brits will have provided the Brits with the opportunity to increase their influence over the US. The establishment of the cease fire already shows that political authority is slipping away from the US. The International Herald Tribune had an editorial yesterday entled Friendless in Iraq. It was referring to Iraqi's. But the same could virtually be said internationally. When Tony Blair arrives in the US next Friday, he will once again be careful not to do anything to support Bob Kerry, and will probably appear to shower Bush with praise. But there will be a price and at some stage Bush may have to pay it. Blair will, as always, try to play both sides against the middle. The US may have to beg the UN to give it an exit strategy on its knees. And who knows what further ironies of history may occur? Saddam Hussein in his prison cell may one day learn that Iraqi oil is priced in euros after all. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Marvin Gandall [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 1:41 PM Subject: [PEN-L
Oppositional possibilities in the UK
he is next going to fall off. So he converts some of the shock at his outrageousness into sympathy. But history is not made just by one human being. There is a whole stratum around him who learned, mainly I think in the hard school of managing local authorities during the grim times of the Thatcher era, how to handle budgets and expectations in an increasingly consumer orientated society. They use modern techniques which are impossible without computers. Their natural allies are the big liberal finance capitalist corporations. Indeed they are used to running budgets of millions admittedly in not-for profit positions, but it means they merge well with the high technical intelligentsia which finance capitalism now relies on for its real extraction of surplus value. This is a whole layer of modern late capitalist 21st century society some of whom could be interchangeable with members of this and similar lists in class terms and competence, whatever their political leanings. All this has transcended terms of debate about the lesser evil, which seem to me to go back at least half a century, and perhaps a century to an era when a substantial chunk of the working class would consciously and proudly say they are working class and would debate which parliamentary party they would vote for. Now they scramble for commodities that bring a little luxury and a little social status. My gut feeling is that virtually no one in the UK has a vision of a parliamentary road to socialism and there is a lot of disillusion, as Doug picks up. But that may be a good thing and it may help people decide what little they can do. The longer term effect of this is to pressurise the government even more to sort out concerns and pre-empt potential fury. So it reinforces the pressure on New Labour for total social management. But perhaps this is another way of saying that with the advance of capitalism to pretty integrated global finance capitalism an institution like the UK Parliament does not provide a chamber for class conflict, but for revising and adjusting the management of the country. The arena for class struggle is better seen outside the representative assembly, which can only partly respond to it. Which is what we should expect. Regards Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2004 8:41 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Tariq Ali Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: On the other hand, we should take note of the fact that Ali says he would be delighted to see Tony Blair defeated in Britain. I'm sure that the British equivalent of the US Anybody But Bush/Nader crowd are busy lining up support for the Labour Party on the grounds that it's the lesser of two evils. My New Press editor, Colin Robinson, just told me that the UK political scene is even more depressing than the U.S. because there is absolutely no alternative to Blair, drawing an explicit contrast with Kerry v. Bush. Of course, Colin used to be an editor at Verso, and, like Tariq, might be suspected of that creeping NLR liberalism. Doug
Trend towards economic terrorism
The reports this morning of scares on the rail network in Spain and in the USA suggest further developments towards economic terrorism in contrast to the political excitatory terrorism of gestures like 9/11. In the London last Thursday week the underground (tube) system was badly affected. France has been troubled by threats to its rail network. This development need not be very consciously planned to occur partly spontaneously as the authorities and the terrorists each try to anticipate the others next moves. It does suggest to me that sledgehammer New American Century approaches are unlikely to be successful. A lot of international cooperation will be necessary. The interests of finance capitalism demand it as their system is highly socialised despite the ultimate private nature of the ownership of the means of production. Counter-measures require a great deal of social cohesion and consent from the working class and the working people who may well want increasing levels of accountability from those who exercise state power (on behalf of capitalism but in the name of the people). There is a certain historical inevitability in this which will proceed independently of the totally conscious awareness of any protagonist in this fast developing global war. Chris Burford London
Identity cards on agenda in UK
Another example of Blair's conviction in New Labour's competence in total social management. On a day when a minister has just had to resign, he remains master of the political agenda. This is partly conviction. It is partly embracing the whole range of techniques of total management of giant finance capitalism. Identity cards look as inevitable as the dominance of Microsoft on the internet. Identity cards will be introduced more quickly than even we anticipated, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has insisted. He told his monthly news conference the government had won over those who opposed the controversial measure for civil liberties reasons. Practical issues and logistics were the only things stopping the introduction of ID cards, he told reporters. The whole issue of identity cards...are very much on the political agenda here, Mr Blair said. The material base is dictating the ideological superstructure. Marxism in action in the era of finance capitalism. So inevitable, we hardly notice what is going on. Chris Burford
new elite in UK
Wealthy individuals and corporations no longer need representatives in Parliament or government to safeguard their interests and swing votes. A few rich men sit in the Commons, including Archie Norman, the former chairman of Asda supermarkets, and Michael Ancram, heir to the Marquess of Lothian, while the billionaire Lord Sainsbury of Turville (below) is Minister for Science. Yet most can rely on lobbyists and pressure groups to push their cases for reduced taxation, regulation or planning restrictions, while multinational firms hardly need to make the point that if they are not granted special terms they can take their money out of Britain. New Labour is especially mindful of the need to oblige rich individuals as donors. The explosion of personal fortunes has made all parties more dependent on a handful of individuals than on company donations. From a rather impressionistic article in today's Observer by Anthony Sampson, who wrote Anatomy of Britain 40 years ago. This chunk is one of the places where he gets nearer to the new material relationship between global finance capitalism, the modern elite intelligentsia, and the ideological state apparatuses which are transcending the nation state. It suggests why capitalism in Britain can live comfortably with New Labour, whose focus groups can finesse Parliamentary debate. http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,1179373,00.html Chris Burford
The Market as God
Struck by a 5minute BBC radio slot this morning quoting Harvey Cox, Harvard professor of Theology, I searched on Google to find his seminal article was in 1999. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm How much are these ideas being shared, I wonder, and how consciously do they overlap with marxist categories? Adding '2004' to the search terms produced this, from Kansas, with today's date. http://thekansan.com/stories/113099/vie_1130990019.shtml Could these ideas spread??? Chris Burford London
Klinghoffer avenged?
So the wheelchair hostage on the Achille Lauro has been avenged by the death of the wheelchair cleric. Who is blind in Gaza? Chris Burford
Re: human capital again
Although these terms might be thought to be a bit loose by Marxian terminology, their merit is that they draw attention to sources of productive wealth other than finance capital. They therefore pose in lay terms the question of the social wider social framework in which finance capital operates. Also the question of how if finance capital is ultimately based on private ownership despite its highly socialised form, is it to be held socially accountable. The term social capital seemed to me in the exchanges a year ago to be quite compatible with the essence of Marxian formulations, and useful in discussing the social effects of capitalism, despite the strictures of Ben Fine, whom I respect. This list for example is an extremely rich source of social, intellectual and cultural capital. Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 3:45 AM Subject: [PEN-L] human capital again 112-3: They refer to a plethora of capitals -- human capital, cultural capital, and even self-command capital.. Baron, James N. and Michael T. Hannan. 1994. The Impact of Economics on Contemporary Sociology. Journal of Economic Literature, 32: 3 (September): pp. 111-46. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
93 posts Tuesday
I have to confess to Michael that even if there were fewer than 93 posts yesterday I would continue to have difficulty maintaining my regular involvement in this list, which I appreciate. I am devoting quite a lot of energy on the internet to promoting more individual psychological approaches to the treatment of psychotic illness, (see www.isps.org) However I would point out that in trying to guide the house rules of this list, which has to be largely self-regulating, if you forbid any form of characterisation by a list member of a list member, but permit robust characterisation of semi-public people off the list in a way that not only challenges their political position but calls their reputation into disrepute, that is likely to increase the temperature among members of this list, some of whom may or may not share in the estimate of the outside public figure. I do not know the simple answer. Marx and Lenin were also robust in their comments on allegedly left-wing public figures. I merely point to the evidence such as it is, of the problem. Regards Chris
Re: Music 30-35,000 years ago
At the risk of being boringly serious, I think you are almost certainly right that music and dance much predate -30,000 years. It is just that the earliest relics date from that time. Flutes and drums would of course not survive. It sounds right to me that music would be associated with speech which is at least 200,000 years ago. The argument is that language, music and dance evolved at first, perhaps from 2 million years ago first as a way of sharing social information within larger groups of hominids rather than as symbolic language conveying factual information. The alternative hypothesis is that music of any systematic sort was associated with the cultural revolution of -30,000 years ago. There is little evidence that Neanderthals shared in this cultural revolution and indeed were soon extinct. The role of modern music in binding a new global population together is another but related question. Regards Chris - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2004 11:04 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Music 30-35,000 years ago BBC World service this week featured a programme about drums quoting a Paul Barnes saying that the earliest evidence for human music making goes back 30-35 thousand years ago Well you shouldn't believe just any sort of sexed-up English story, you know. There's the serious side of the BBC and then there's the puberal side of it, as anyone knows, that's market forces. Neanderthals were already making music, i.e. probably twice as early as Barnes suggests. Anthropologically, the origin of language and music are very much related in human culture. Cognitively music and math are also closely related. A much better, thoughtprovoking site to consult (if you get bored with dumbdown culture) might be: http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/oct1983/v40-3-criticscorner1.htm Personally I am mostly just concerned with a few pop tunes at the moment, not profound musicological interests (although I have always taken my pop music very seriously; it's just that if music just becomes degraded to functional suck-and-fuck, or a mere sign, well then one just has to reframe music in a different way, for an interesting, enjoyable or creative effect). There is a lot of interesting literature on the use of music in workplaces, wars, and so on, i.e. the uses (and abuses) of music in politics, economics and regimes of accumulation (if I may use that awful term for want of a better word). But that sort of thing is far removed from the Neantherthal phase of musical enjoyment of course. What kind of tonalities are actually conducive to social amelioration in this crumbling postmodernist culture we live in ? It's an interesting question I think, although some idiot would probably trivialise and banalise that also. Jurriaan
Music 30-35,000 years ago
BBC World service this week featured a programme about drums quoting a Paul Barnes saying that the earliest evidence for human music making goes back 30-35 thousand years ago and consists of a series of lithophones - stones in the form of stalacities that would resonate at different frequencies when struck. Also that some studies imply that the areas of greatest decoration in prehistoric caves coincide with where the acoustics are best. As far as I can trace from Google, Paul Barnes is a musician and pianist specialising in the performance of ancient music. Music has considerable importance for creating collective feeling, trust, and intuitive cooperation. All of great economic significance in a pre-capitalist society. It seems likely to me that singing, dancing and other simple musical instruments, were important for many thousands of years before this. Does anyone know of an earlier date for confirmed evidence? Chris Burford London
Mysteries of cricket
A cricket match takes place in Pakistan today between Pakistan and India, two of the most populous countries on the planet, who have been in a state of war or armed hostility for many decades and which have nuclear arms. As the son of a good cricket-player I have never understood the game and always felt doomed to disappoint my lovely father. Nevertheless in order to help the equally ignorant members of this list let me explain that cricket is a grand and appropriately long drawn out ritual of male dominance and submission. It allows teams to compete from different towns, and it allows admiration for the performance of individuals which can transcend team rivalries. It can embrace the class traditions of an English semi-manorial village, and the imperialist and sub-imperialist contradictions of the old British Empire. Now today behind this important ritualised trial lies the context that the national bourgeoisies of India and Pakistan have decided it is in their economic interests to promote a free trade area and some sublimation of the extraordinarily dangerous potential for war. Other sections of national capital have won out over the sections associated with the arms economy. The push is for regional capital and for south Asia to have its place in the sun. So while the culture may have residues of the ango-Indian culture of the old British Empire, the form of the game of cricket is being used to promote a regional economic bloc to resist and compete in a larger US hegemonic Empire. The secret agenda is that probably between them and aided by fairer weather than in England, India and Pakistan have the best cricketers in the world. May there be many Jolly fine shots. They are better than nuclear explosions. And give something to talk about over business lunches between entrepreneurs of the two countries. But don't ask me actually how to play the game. I always went paralytic. Chris Burford London
creeping renationalisation of rail in the UK?
An item well down the news yesterday in the UK was that Network Rail, the not-for-profit company that took over the private companies running the rail network in the UK after a number of disasters, has indicated that the continuing private train companies are not maintaining the fabric of stations adequately because of their interest in short term profits. The suggestion is that this should become the responsibility of Network Rail. It sounds as if there will be little opposition to this stealthy move, which of course is in the interests of the speculative capitalists and finance capitalist companies who continue to invest in the for-profit enterprise part of rail transport services. Quietly it is another example of how finance capital requires rational organisation of complex social economic processes, so long as it permits capital accumulation to continue. Chris Burford London
Government aid for US mortgages
Gordon Brown and the British government have been looking enviably at the US mortgage market where long term fixed mortgages play a part in a mixed economy. Mortages in the UK are almost all short term. Arguably fluctuations in interest rates for national and international economic reasons, have a big impact on a key electoral constituency, and in turn cause short term swings in housing. In the preview of a studiously academic report to be published in London this morning, the BBC commentator noted that of course there is government support in the US for long term mortgages. What is this? and what is its murky economic and political history? Thanks Chris Burford London
Inefficiency of terminal health care provision in US
An article in the latest British Medical Journal on a painful subject reports powerful data that the privatised health care market in the US is not only unfair, it is inefficient, despite the democratic fact that all parents and indeed ourselves must die some time. Indications for more guidance and monitoring of market mechanisms even in the land of freedom of exploitation? Striking variation exists in the utilisation of end of life care among US medical centres with strong national reputations for clinical care. http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/abridged/328/7440/607 Chris Burford London
