[L-I] Hawaii Educators' Strike - Your Help Is Needed

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 15:55:44 -1000 (HST)
>From: Stephen E Philion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [PEN-L:10253] Hawaii Educators' Strike - Your Help Is Needed
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>Folks on PEN, feel free to circulate this important message to other
>lists. It's now day 8 of the strike and negotiations have not made that
>much progress. I'm part of an effort to get students on the picket lines
>to show support for the faculty union here. It's a story that hasn't
>gotten much play, but lots of students are actively walking on the picket
>lines with their profs here for many hot hours.
>The entire state's public schools are shut down. Imagine all the public
>schools in NY State shutting down at once, you've got a sense of the
>intensity of this strike
>
>Do send letters, emails, phone calls,...Steve
>
>
>Hawaii Teachers Need Your Help
>
>[Message from Andrea Feeser, a former CUNY student and now a Hawaii
>teacher, to her CUNY professor Stanley Aronowitz. Please re-post this
>message and call the Hawaii Governor's office to express your
>solidarity.]
>
>
>We desperately need your help. Since Thursday April 5, the University of
>Hawaii Professional Assembly (affiliated to the NEA), our Faculty Union,
>and the public school teachers organized by the Hawaii State Teachers
>Association have  been on strike against the State of Hawaii, and
>there's no end in sight.
>
>The faculty here have been without a contract for the last two years
>because of the intransigence of Governor Ben Cayetano, who has refused
>to bargain with the union in good faith and threatened to reduce faculty
>benefits and health coverage by 25%. During the last two and a half
>years we have received no pay increases, effectively cutting our pay
>already. Until the end of last week, his negotiator Davis Yogi refused
>to meet at all with  union representatives, and then offered to LOWER
>the pay of part-timers employed as Lecturers at the university to $900 a
>credit hour!
>
>It seems clear that Cayetano plans to break the Faculty union,
>demoralize the faculty and clear the ground for what Davis Yogi himself
>has called an "entrepreneurial university." I don't need to decode this
>for you.
>
>Cayetano is strangling the life out of this university, he is betraying
>the school-children of the state, especially those who can't afford to
>go to more expensive mainland schools, and he's dealing a fatal blow to
>the labor movement in Hawaii. He's also destroying the Democratic party
>here and paving the way for a Republican party takeover of the state.(I
>kid you not, when Republicans start shaking hands on picket lines,
>something very peculiar is afoot!)
>
>Cayetano's actions and policies have deliberately provoked the first
>Education General Strike in American history! All public education in
>Hawaii is at a standstill. Support here is strong. The strike was
>authorized by 99% of public school teachers and 91% of university and
>community college faculty. And the local community here has been behind
>the striking teachers so far, isolating Cayetano but failing to do more
>than force him into the appearance of negotiation.
>
>We must have national attention and support and we must have it NOW! Can
>you please forward this email to as many colleagues and friends as you
>can.
>
>Can you please organize expressions of support through your own
>institutions, faculty organizations, professional associations or
>unions. These can be sent to us at www.uhpa.org.
>
>Can you please organize official and personal expressions of protest
>directed at the Governor of the state, letting him know how damaging
>this strike will be to higher education in Hawaii, and to the prosperity
>of the Hawaiian economy.
>
>Amazing things have happened so far! For a start, we have proved that
>professors can organize pickets, and turn out en masse to support a
>strike like this. But we need all the help we can get, if we are to have
>any chance of winning this strike.
>
>Here is the Governor's address and phone number:
>
>Governor Benjamin Cayetano
>Governor's Residence
>Washington Place
>Honolulu, Hawaii 96813
>
>Tel # (808) 587-2598 (Residence)
>   (808) 586-0034 (Office)
>
>
>Thanks,
>Andrea Feeser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


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[L-I] America Gets Candid About What Colombia Needs

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

New York Times 25 February 2001

FACING FACTS

America Gets Candid About What Colombia Needs

By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

WASHINGTON -- For nearly a year now, American officials have been
trying to tell voters why they should care about Colombia.  But this
month, one architect of that campaign, the recently retired Gen.
Barry R. McCaffrey, dramatically changed the argument.  He warned
that the whole of Colombia was dying.  If Americans stood idle, he
said, they would be like the neighbors of Kitty Genovese, the 1964
murder victim in New York whose screams went unanswered.

"This isn't North Korea, for cripe's sake," General McCaffrey said at
a conference in Miami attended by dozens of current and former
officials who have helped draw up Colombia policy.  "We like these
people.  They live next door to us.  And they're in trouble."

Eight months ago, when Congress approved a $1.3 billion package of
mostly military aid, it was presented as another effort to stem the
flow of drugs.  Now, it is morphing into a rescue operation for a
failing state.

American officials recognized early on that any effort to stop the
drug trade in Colombia would also have to deal with the reasons drug
lords there have so much power: the country's government is weak, its
army has a terrible reputation for human rights abuses, leftist
guerrillas who have long controlled much of the countryside have cast
their lot with the drug trade in order to finance their rebellion,
and right-wing militias fighting the leftists also get money from the
drug trade.  Still, the Clinton administration, in which General
McCaffrey was drug czar, thought it could mobilize Americans around a
drug-focused strategy for managing the crisis, rather than an
all-encompassing approach.

Now, as President Bush prepares to meet Colombia's president, Andrés
Pastrana, in Washington on Tuesday, Colombia's problems are only
getting worse.  So Americans can expect to hear more about how
complex the problems are - about how solving Colombia's drug problem
may involve rebuilding the nation.

That argument evokes a problem that has bedeviled American policy
ever since the Vietnam War: How can any administration approach a
difficult and potentially engulfing problem overseas in a way that
gets Americans behind long-term, full-hearted support?

In this case, President Bush is trying to sell an investment that the
General Accounting Office says will not show results for years.  Will
it also embroil American policy makers - and perhaps American
advisers or combat soldiers - in a war that Mr. Pastrana now concedes
is unwinnable?  And, perhaps most critically, will the need to tailor
such a program around American distaste for overseas involvements
hamstring it from the start?

Whatever the answers to those questions, the effort is under way, and
the new administration is at least being candid about the scope of
the problem.

In his news conference last week, President Bush said American
military support should be limited to training Colombian forces.  "I
share the concern of those who are worried that at some point in time
the United States might become militarily engaged," he said.  On the
same day, American officials acknowledged that guerrillas had fired
on a State Department helicopter last Sunday as it carried American
contract workers trying to rescue Colombian policemen.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is preparing to make the case not
only for a sustained project in Colombia but for vastly increasing
aid to its neighbors, officials say.  This is needed, the logic goes,
because as military pressure builds in Colombia, the war could spill
over and destabilize the region.

"This is very scary," said Max Manwaring, a professor of military
strategy at the United States Army War College.  "Because of our own
internal political problems and fear of regenerating another Vietnam
we've just concentrated on the drug thing and hoped the other
problems would go away."

In fact, Colombia today is threatened not only by the many actors in
its wars.  Its society is also fractured by class, geography, weak
civic institutions and a historic tolerance for frightening levels of
violence.

The problems are interwoven, leaving strategists stumped over where
to begin.  Colombians can't affect the drug flow until they pacify
the country.  They can't get a peace deal with the guerrillas until
they have a development strategy.  They can't undertake public works
in a war zone.  Mr. Pastrana has submitted a $7.5 billion strategy to
tackle it all, but resources are scant and his authority is in doubt.

All this in a country located between Venezuela's oil fields and the
Panama Canal.  Given those interests, almost no one argues that
Americans can look away.

For years the drug war served to unite domestic concerns and foreign
policy aims.  But now a broader strategy is required, said
Representative Mark Souder, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of
the Committee on Government Reform.  "Every

[L-I] Socialism and Democracy: Call for Papers

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY is an interdisciplinary journal of Marxist social
>and political analysis. we are looking for articles which deal with the
>political, economic and cultural dimensions of contemporary capitalism.
>articles may focus on either  the global, regional or national levels of
>analysis. however, articles must  break some new theoretical ground.
>journalistic accounts are not what we are looking for.
>
>if you have a completed article ready for submission or an idea for an
>article you would like to discuss, I can be reached at
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>George Snedeker


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[L-I] New Campaign against New US Base in Okinawa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

- Original Message -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 5:03 AM
Subject: New Campaign against New US Base in Okinawa


Dear friends,

The following is an information and appeal on Japanese campaign 
against a new US base construction in Okinawa.  This is an initiative 
suggested by Japan Peace Conference in Okinawa (Nov. 30 - Dec. 3, 
Okinawa).  We would be grateful if you send us your support & message.

Thank you.

In solidarity.

Tadaaki Kawata (Japan Peace Committee)

**  Please take note of my new e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

===

Solidarity & Signature Campaign
"Save Dugong and Peace !
No to a new U.S. Base in Okinawa !"
10 March - 28 April, 2000

Peace movements and trade unions of Japan together with Okinawan 
people will organize a nation-wide campaign, from 10 March to 28 
April, 2000, against the construction of a new U.S. marine base at an 
offshore area of Nago City, Okinawa (southern islands of Japan).

One of the main actions of the campaign is a "Peace Caravan" (a peace 
march) starting from Nago City on March 10, traveling many cities 
covering all prefectures of Japan, reaching Tokyo on April 28. 
Various actions will be held in the cities where "Peace Caravan" will 
visit.

We would like to promote this campaign with broad international 
support and solidarity.  In the starting rally of the campaign in 
Nago, March 10, we are going to receive delegates from Republic of 
Korea (Maehyang-ri, U.S. bombing range) and Puerto Rico (Vieques). 
At the same time, we are going to carry out signature campaign both 
domestically and internationally.

We are opposed to this plan, because:

- An offshore area of Nago City of Okinawa is habitats of precious 
species and treasures of living things including Dugong, 
internationally protected sea mammal.  International Union for the 
Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) advised in its 
world assembly in Jordan last October that careful environment 
assessment should be carried on the planned construction area and all 
necessary measures be taken to protect Dugong.

- It would be another burden of Okinawan people, who have for long 
time since the end of WOW been suffering serious problems and damages 
caused by U.S. bases and military, such as crimes (rapes, murder, 
etc), accidents, noise, pollution and so on.  Okinawan people is 
eager to eradicate them and to remove all these bases.

- It would be a real threat to peace and security of Asia as well as 
of the world.  This plan is consistent with a policy of the U.S. to 
secure Okinawa as a stable foothold for military interference and 
intervention into the Asia-Pacific region well into the 21st century 
and after.  It would also integrate more deeply Japan into U.S. 
military operation.

We call upon you to support this campaign and to send us signatures 
and message of yours as well as of your colleagues and friends.

Looking forward to your active response.

With best regards.

Secretariat of the Campaign
c/o Japan Peace Committee
Shiba 1-4-9, Minato-ku, 105-0014
+81-3-3451-6378 (tel) / +81-3-3451-6277 (fax)
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (office)

Tadaaki Kawata (resp. international contact)
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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[L-I] Re: The legacy...part 1

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Forgot to mention that Leys think it is hard to speak of dependency or
>imperialism in subsaharan Africa when there is very little foreign
>economic penetration or activity. As for Brenner, reading him I've
>wondered if the world only consisted of four countries: USA, Germany and
>Japan.
>
>Sam

Imperial nations have invested in one another far more massively than 
in the periphery in general (including but not limited to Africa) at 
least since the end of the Second World War.  That's no reason to 
argue that there exists no dependency or imperialism, though.

I think it's best to define imperialism broadly as what is necessary 
to ensure the continued reproduction of capitalism, subjecting all to 
the discipline of the world market (which may _de-industrialize_ 
large parts of the world, depending on its systemic needs), instead 
of focusing quantitatively on the relative volumes of foreign 
investments in this or that nation or region on the periphery as Leys 
seems to do.

Yoshie

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[L-I] AIDS, Drugs, Patents, & the Empire

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

The New York Times
January 28, 2001, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 6; Page 26; Column 1; Magazine Desk
HEADLINE: Look at Brazil

BYLINE:  By Tina Rosenberg...

...Until a year ago, the triple therapy that has made AIDS a 
manageable disease in wealthy nations was considered realistic only 
for those who could afford to pay $10,000 to $15,000 a year or lived 
in societies that could.  The most that poor countries could hope to 
do was prevent new cases of AIDS through educational programs and 
condom promotion or to cut mother-to-child transmission and, if they 
were very lucky, treat some of AIDS's opportunistic infections.  But 
the 32.5 million people with H.I.V. in the developing world had 
little hope of survival.

This was the conventional wisdom.  Today, all of these statements are false

...Since 1997, virtually every AIDS patient in Brazil for whom it is 
medically indicated gets, free, the same triple cocktails that keep 
rich Americans healthy.  (In Western Europe, no one who needs AIDS 
treatment is denied it because of cost.  This is true in some 
American states, but not all.)  Brazil has shredded all the excuses 
about why poor countries cannot treat AIDS.  Health system too 
fragile?  On the shaky foundation of its public health service, 
Brazil built a well-run network of AIDS clinics.  Uneducated people 
can't stick to the complicated regime of pills?  Brazilian AIDS 
patients have proved just as able to take their medicine on time as 
patients in the United States.

Ah, but treating AIDS is too expensive!  In fact, Brazil's program 
almost certainly pays for itself.  It has halved the death rate from 
AIDS, prevented hundreds of thousands of new hospitalizations, cut 
the transmission rate, helped to stabilize the epidemic and improved 
the overall state of public health in Brazil.

Brazil can afford to treat AIDS because it does not pay market prices 
for antiretroviral drugs -- the most controversial aspect of the 
country's plan.  In 1998, the government began making copies of 
brand-name drugs, and the price of those medicines has fallen by an 
average of 79 percent.  Brazil now produces some triple therapy for 
$3,000 a year and expects to do much better, and the price could 
potentially drop to $700 a year or even less.

Brazil is showing that no one who dies of AIDS dies of natural 
causes.  Those who die have been failed -- by feckless leaders who 
see weapons as more alluring purchases than medicines, by wealthy 
countries (notably the United States) that have threatened the 
livelihood of poor nations who seek to manufacture cheap medicine and 
by the multinational drug companies who have kept the price of 
antiretroviral drugs needlessly out of reach of the vast majority of 
the world's population

In other words, the debate about whether poor countries can treat 
AIDS is over. The question is how

The drug companies are wrong...on how to make AIDS drugs affordable. 
Their solution -- limited, negotiated price cuts -- is slow, grudging 
and piecemeal.  Brazil, by defying the pharmaceutical companies and 
threatening to break patents, among other actions, has made drugs 
available to everyone who needs them.  Its experience shows that 
doing this requires something radical: an alteration of the basic 
social contract the pharmaceutical companies have enjoyed until now.

By the terms of that contract, manufacturers, in return for the risks 
of developing new drugs, receive a 20-year monopoly to sell them in 
some nations at whatever prices they choose.  The industry has 
thrived under this contractPoor countries, it is now clear, must 
violate this contract if they are to save their people from AIDS.

Brazil has been able to treat AIDS because it had what everyone 
agrees is the single most important requirement for doing so: 
political commitment.  At the beginning of 1999, Brazil's economy was 
skidding into crisis.  President Fernando Henrique Cardoso was under 
great pressure to cut the budget by abandoning the AIDS program.  He 
rejected that advice, deciding that treating AIDS was a priority.

Such commitment has its roots in the gay community.  Although AIDS is 
now a disease of the poor in Brazil, the first Brazilians infected 
were gay men.  In a country famously open about matters sexual, gays 
were much more activist and better organized than in most other 
nations, and AIDS carried less of the stigma that has elsewhere led 
people simply to deny its existence.

Then the movement found an unlikely ally in Jose Sarney, Brazil's 
first civilian president after the country emerged from military rule 
in 1985 and a conservative who led a pro-military party during the 
dictatorship.  In 1996, scientists at the world AIDS conference in 
Vancouver announced that triple therapy with a protease inhibitor 
could reduce viral load to undetectable levels.  Finally, there was a 
treatment for AIDS.  "A doctor friend informed me about what was 
going

[L-I] Re: Sacher-Masoch in the Age of Shock Therapy

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Masochism seems like an appropriate psychological accompaniment for 
>the transition from communism to capitalism in Russia and the 
>Ukraine. The citizens are being screwed so best that they like it 
>and continue under the whip of the oligarchs, and receive 
>shock-treatment by following the policies of western neo-liberal 
>advisers et al..
>  Cheers, Ken  Hanly

Judith Butler writes:

*   And how do we account for _attachment_ to precisely the kind 
of state-linked individuality that reconsolidates the juridical law? 
To what extent has the disciplinary apparatus that attempts to 
produce and totalize identity become an abiding object of passionate 
attachment?...In particular, how are we to understand, not merely the 
disciplinary production of the subject, but the disciplinary 
cultivation of _an attachment to subjection_?   (Judith Butler, _The 
Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection_, Stanford, CA: 
Stanford UP, 1997, p. 102)   *

Butler's conservative answer is that it is the very attachment to 
subjection that produces individuality in the first place & therefore 
that we should look to the "re-formation" of the subject through "the 
possibilities of resignification": "I am led to embrace the terms 
that injure me because they constitute me socially.  The 
self-colonizing trajectory of certain forms of identity politics are 
symptomatic of this paradoxical embrace of the injurious terms.  As a 
further paradox, then, only by occupying -- being occupied by -- that 
injurious term can I resist and oppose it, recasting the power that 
constitutes me as the power I oppose...This is not the same as saying 
that such an identity will remain always and forever rooted in its 
injury as long as it remains an identity, but it does imply that the 
possibilities of resignification will rework and unsettle the 
passionate attachment to subjection without which subject formation 
-- and re-formation -- cannot succeed" (104).  This is, in essence, 
the path toward a post-modern turn to secular religion (= a symbolic 
solution to an imaginary understanding of a real problem).

However, there is no reason to accept her answer & to eternalize a 
historically specific cultural response to a historically specific 
political defeat (e.g., the collapse of the USSR).  There is no 
reason that we should be forever stuck with masochism, ressentiment, 
moralism, etc. (political mobilizations of which tend to express 
yearnings, at the periphery, for spiritual renewals of nations &, 
more disturbingly at the core, for the Progressive Empire).

Butler gives a fitting subtitle to her book: "Theories in 
Subjection."  One of the most important -- if little recognized -- 
duties of today's intellectuals on the Left may be to emancipate 
theories from demoralizing experiences of political defeats, as well 
as from mass-produced cynicism that "Marxism" reduced to the 
bureaucratic jargon produced in the minds of the masses under the 
then actually existing socialism in the Eastern bloc.

*   World Politics 51.3 (1999) 323-358

Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses, and Problems of Russian Democracy

Judith S. Kullberg and William Zimmerman *

Strong showings and outright victories by antireform and conservative 
parties in several elections in Russia--most notably the 1993 and 
1995 Duma elections--and in other postcommunist East European 
countries in the early and mid-1990s raised concerns about the 
long-term prospects for democracy in the region. Western analyses 
have largely explained these election outcomes as popular reactions 
to short-term economic costs arising from reform of 
command-administrative economies 1 or as protests against radical 
restructuring by voters preferring a more moderate pace of reform. 2 
Such interpretations are essentially optimistic in that they do not 
question the commitment of postcommunist publics to democracy: they 
suggest that with improvement in economic conditions, support for 
communists and nationalists will evaporate.

In contrast to the general optimism of Western assessments, much of 
the commentary in the East has been more pessimistic. East European 
analysts have been inclined to interpret the victory of antireform 
parties as the explicit rejection by mass publics of the liberal 
ideology and leadership of westernizing, reformist elites. 3 Such 
interpretations suggest that the dissatisfaction of publics with 
liberalism and the emergent postcommunist political order is indeed 
deep, too deep to be generated merely by short-term economic decline 
or opposition to reform policy.

Evidence presented in this paper from parallel Russian elite and mass 
opinion surveys, conducted at the end of 1992/early 1993 and from 
late 1995 through the summer of 1996, is consistent with the 
contention that an elite/mass ideological divide exists in certain 
postcommunist societies. In the survey data we find evidence of a 
considerable gap between elite and mass worldvie

[L-I] Sacher-Masoch in the Age of Shock Therapy

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*   New York Times  27 January 2001

Masochism Finally Gets Even

By SARAH BOXER

Masochism means never having to say "Stop!  Stop!  Enough!"

At the Modern Language Association's annual meeting last month, three
hours were devoted to masochism.  And that isn't counting the
lectures and seminars on the cruelty of theory and the uses of
perversity.

You may think that sadism and masochism are equals.  But among
scholars they are not.  As the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze
wrote in his work on masochism, "Coldness and Cruelty," sadism has
been widely studied by literary critics and psychoanalysts, but
masochism "has suffered from unfair neglect."

But masochism is getting even, if the last Modern Language
Association meeting is any indication.  Now masochism has feminist
interpreters and gay interpreters.  It has even become a matter of
national pride.  The Ukrainians and Russians are fighting over which
country is the true home of masochism.

The term masochist first appeared in the 1886 book "Psychopathia
Sexualis" by the German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, who
used it to describe people who enjoy being abused or humiliated.  He
named the condition after Leopold von Sacher- Masoch, who wrote
"Venus im Pelz" or "Venus in Furs" (1869), a novella (probably based
on Sacher-Masoch's life) about the adventures and fantasies of
Severin, a man who loved being whipped.

According to Vitaly A. Chernetsky, an assistant professor of Slavic
languages at Columbia University, both Russia and Ukraine are now
claiming to be masochism's homeland.  In Ukraine, there is a movement
to name a street after Sacher-Masoch.  Meanwhile the Russians,
Professor Chernetsky said, are trying to prove that they are "the
original masochists."

Ukraine apparently has the better claim.  Sacher-Masoch, as Mr.
Chernetsky said, may be Galicia's best- known native son.  He was
born in Lemberg, in eastern Galicia, which is now in Ukraine.  At the
time that he wrote, Galicia was ruled by Austria.  He wrote in
German.  And, as Mr. Chernetsky said, "he considered himself a
Galician Ukrainian in terms of identity and recalled with fondness
his Ukrainian wet nurse."

But now, Mr. Chernetsky said, Russia wants to claim masochism.
Sacher-Masoch's works, which were banned in that region of Eastern
Europe for much of the century, began to be published in Russian
after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Then, in 1995, Aleksandr
Etkind, the author of a well-known history of Russian psychoanalysis,
published "a historical sociology of Sacher-Masoch and his Russian
readers."  There Mr. Etkind suggested that the name Severin has
Russian roots and that "Sacher-Masoch may have learned the pleasures
of flagellation from the Russian sect of khlysty," or flagellants.
In other words, Mr. Chernetsky said, Mr. Etkind was arguing that "the
Russians are the original masochists."

Part of the confusion may stem from the fact that some Galicians,
including Sacher-Masoch, called themselves "Little Russians" or
"Ruthenians" (both of which are sometimes translated as "Russian"),
but Mr. Chernetsky suggested that something more bizarre was at work.
He called the Russian impulse to take credit for masochism a
"tortured, post-imperialist, melancholic" fantasy.

While Russia and Ukraine are fighting over masochism's provenance,
American scholars are arguing over Sacher-Masoch's message.  "Venus
in Furs" begins with the narrator (not Severin) dreaming of a statue
of Venus.  As he dreams, the hand of Venus is transformed into the
hand of a Cossack servant shaking him awake.  He gets up and visits
Severin, a man who gives him a manuscript titled "Confessions of a
Suprasensual Man."

The manuscript is Severin's account of his slavish relationship with
a woman who wears a fur jacket and whips him.  Her name is Wanda.
Severin signs a contract to become Wanda's slave, and they travel
abroad.  In the penultimate scene, Wanda's lover, known as the Greek,
whips Severin, too, and the couple leave him a bloody mess.  Severin
smiles and says: "The therapy was cruel but radical.  The main thing
is: I am healed."  The end

[The full article is at
.]
*

The penultimate scene serves as a fitting allegory for "shock
therapy" administered by the Progress of the Empire.  The periphery
"signs a contract" to become a slave to Wanda (who, together with
Venus, symbolically stands for a dream of conspicuous consumption in
the imperial style; conspicuous consumption is naturally figured as
"feminine" & "feminizing" in sexist literary imagination), whose
lover (= the IMF with its racially integrated "experts" to serve
capital, guarded by racially integrated "peace-keepers" when
necessary) leaves it "a bloody mess."  The periphery is supposed to
smile & say, "The therapy was cruel but radical.  The main thing is:
I am healed."

While Sade (1740-1814) inspired generations of modernists on the
(_very_ broadly defined

[L-I] "the steeper the grade of social inequality, the more risk forHIV"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

A Conversation with Paul Farmer

TAPS Seminar
Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, March 21, 2000
Hosted by Dan Ciccarone, MD, MPH,
Post-doctoral fellow at CAPS

...PF:...So it's not enough to say, "It's poverty, man."  It is, but 
it's also poverty cheek and jowl by wealth -- or lack of poverty.  In 
other words, the steeper the grade of social inequality, the more 
risk for HIV.  Now, when we started writing about this in the 80's it 
struck people -- I have witnesses in the room -- it struck people as 
peculiar.  In fact, we were talking about -- and this gets back to 
the question about sub groups in San Francisco -- I made this 
hypothesis publicly on a number of occasions.  If you could remove 
gender inequality and social inequality from a sexual relationship, 
you significantly diminish HIV risks.  And of course that hypothesis 
leads to all sorts of social commentary about arrangements and sexual 
union.  Now it doesn't remove HIV risk, but it allows the possibility 
of the introduction of effective preventive techniques that we know 
are virtually 99 per cent effective, and almost 100 per cent 
effective, if they can be used properly.  And the point of my last 
talk here was: but they can't and they aren't and they won't be. The 
technologies that we have are men centered.  They're used by men. 
And the central part of the problem here is gender inequality and 
poverty and social inequality, all three of them conspiring together 
to increase risk



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[L-I] Infections and Inequalities: HIV

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Paul Farmer, _Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues_, 
Berkeley: U of California P, 1999

Paul Farmer, MD, Ph.D
Associate Professor of Social Medicine, Harvard University

[Paul Farmer is a physician and anthropologist.  In addition to his 
book, _Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues_ Farmer is 
also co-editor of _Women, Poverty, and AIDS_, and author of _The Uses 
of Haiti_, and _AIDS and Accusation_.  In 1993 he was awarded the 
MacArthur Foundation "genius award" for his work.]

Chapter 2: Rethinking "Emerging infectious Diseases"

...GOING WHERE? THE CASE OF HIV

To grasp the complexity of the issues -- medical, social, and 
communicational -- that surround the emergence of a disease into 
public view, consider AIDS.  In the early 1980s health officials 
informed the public AIDS had probably emerged from Haiti.  As Chapter 
4 describes, speculation proved incorrect, but not before doing 
significant damage to Haiti's tourist industry and economy.  The 
result: more desperate poverty, and a yet steeper slope of inequality 
and vulnerability to disease, including AIDS.  The label "AIDS 
vector" was also a heavy burden for the million or so Haitians living 
elsewhere in the Americas and certainly hampered public health 
efforts among them.40

HIV disease has since become the most spectacularly studied infection 
in human history.  But some questions have been much better studied 
than others, and among those too well studied are a number of utter 
dead ends.  Nonetheless, error is worth studying, too.  Careful 
investigation of the mechanisms used to propagate immodest claims is 
an important part of a critical epistemology of emerging infectious 
diseases.  As regards Haiti and AIDS, these mechanisms included the 
"exoticization" of Haiti, the existence of influential folk models 
about Haitians and Africans, and the conflation of poverty and 
cultural difference.  Critical epidemic studies might well reveal 
such folk models and half-baked cultural generalizations as 
unfortunate co-factors in the disease's spread.

HIV may not have come from Haiti, but it certainly went to Haiti.  A 
critical reexamination of the Caribbean AIDS pandemic reveals that 
distribution of HIV disease does not follow the outlines of 
nation-states but rather matches the contours of a transnational 
socioeconomic order.  As Chapter 4 shows, much of the spread of HIV 
in the 1970s and 1908s moved along international "fault lines," 
tracking along steep gradients of inequality, which are also the 
paths of labor migration and sexual commerce.41

Also lacking, then, are considerations of the multiple dynamics of 
AIDS.  In an important overview of the pandemic's first decade, Mann, 
Tarantola, and Netter observe that its course "within and through 
global society is not being affected -- in any serious manner -- by 
the actions taken at the national or international level.42  HIV has 
emerged, but where is it going?  Why, how, and how fast?  The 
Institute of Medicine catalog lists several factors facilitating the 
emergence of HIV: "urbanization; changes in lifestyles/mores; 
increased intravenous drug abuse; international travel; medical 
technology."43  Much more could be said. HIV has spread across the 
globe, often wildly but never randomly.  Like tuberculosis, HIV is 
entrenching itself in the ranks of the poor and marginalized.

Take, as an example, the rapid increase in AIDS incidence among 
women.  In a 1992 report, the United Nations observed that "for most 
women, the major risk factor for HIV infection is being married."44 
It is not marriage per se, however, that places young women at risk. 
Throughout the world, most women with HIV infection, married or not, 
are living in poverty.  The means by which confluent social forces -- 
here, gender inequality and poverty -- come to be embodied as risk 
for infection with this emerging pathogen have been neglected in the 
biomedical, epidemiologic, and even social science literature on 
AIDS.  As recently as October 1994 -- fifteen years into an 
ever-emerging pandemic -- editorialists writing in Lancet could 
comment concerning a new study: "We are not aware of other 
investigators who have considered the influence of socioeconomic 
status on mortality in HIV-infected individuals."45  Thus AIDS 
follows the general rule that the effects of certain types of social 
forces on health outcomes are less likely to be studied.

Yet AIDS has always been a strikingly patterned pandemic.  Despite 
the message of public health slogans -- "AIDS Is for Everyone" -- 
some groups are at high risk of HIV infection, whereas others clearly 
are shielded from risk.  Furthermore, although the terminal events 
have been grimly similar across the board, the course of HIV disease 
has been highly variable.  These disparities have sparked the search 
for hundreds of cofactors, from Mycoplasma and ulcerating genital 
lesions to voodoo rites and psychological predispositions. 

[L-I] Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Paul Farmer, _Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues_, 
Berkeley: U of California P, 1999

Paul Farmer, MD, Ph.D
Associate Professor of Social Medicine, Harvard University

[Paul Farmer is a physician and anthropologist.  In addition to his 
book, _Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues_ Farmer is 
also co-editor of _Women, Poverty, and AIDS_, and author of _The Uses 
of Haiti_, and _AIDS and Accusation_.  In 1993 he was awarded the 
MacArthur Foundation "genius award" for his work.]

Chapter 2: Rethinking "Emerging infectious Diseases"

However secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, 
bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, 
and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when 
neglect, poverty, famine, or war lets down the defenses.  And even in 
normal times they prey on the weak, the very young and the very old, 
living along with us, in mysterious obscurity, waiting their 
opportunities.  -- HANS ZINSSER, 1934

The microbe is nothing; the terrain, everything.  -- LOUIS PASTEUR, 1822-1895

AIDS.  Ebola.  Flesh-eating bacteria.  With newspaper and television 
reports rife with references to mysterious and lethal outbreaks 
caused by new (or newly virulent) pathogens, perhaps it's safe to 
conclude that we're living in a time of unprecedented popular 
interest in infectious diseases.  Yet medical historians might be 
quick to discern, in this most recent wave of hysteria and genuine 
interest, but a small peak in the jagged line charting the course of 
popular concern with epidemic disease

That's not to say that there's nothing new under the sun.  This most 
cent surge of interest comes at a time when novel technologies can 
reveal a level of detail -- about both pathogens and hosts -- 
unimagined by our recent forebears.  And this past decade has surely 
been one of the most eventful in the long history of the study of 
infectious diseases.  There are multiple indices of these events, and 
also of the rate at which our knowledge base has grown.  We have only 
to follow, for example, the sheer number of relevant publications to 
perceive the explosive growth in this knowledge base.  We have 
developed new methods of monitoring antimicrobial resistance 
patterns.  And we have new ways to promote rapid sharing of 
information (and also, unfortunately, speculation and misinformation) 
through means such as the Internet that barely existed even ten years 
ago.

Then there are the microbes themselves.  One of the most significant 
events of the past ten or fifteen years, and perhaps the most 
remarked upon, is the explosion of "emerging infectious diseases." 
Some of the disorders -- such as AIDS and Brazilian purpuric fever -- 
can be regarded as genuinely new.  Others were clinically identified 
some time ago but have newly identified etiologic agents or have 
again burst onto the scene in dramatic fashion.  For example, the 
syndromes caused by Hanta viruses have been known in Asia for 
centuries, but they now seem to spreading beyond that continent as a 
result of ecological and economic transformations that increase 
contact between humans and rodents.  The phenomenology of 
neuroborreliosis had been tackled long before monikers "Lyme disease" 
and Borrelia burgdoferi were coined, and before suburban 
reforestation and golf courses complicated the equation by creating 
an environment agreeable to both ticks and affluent humans. 
Hemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola, were described long ago, and 
their ecologic agents were in many cases identified in previous 
decades.  Still other diseases grouped under the "emerging" rubric 
are ancient and were known foes that have somehow changed, either in 
pathogenicity or distribution.  Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and 
invasive or necrotiz Group A streptococcal infection -- the 
"flesh-eating bacteria" of the popular press -- are cases in point.

Popularizing the concept of "emerging infectious diseases" has helped 
to marshal a sense of urgency, notoriously difficult to arouse in 
large bureaucracies.  Funds have been channeled, conferences 
convened, articles written, and a dedicated journal founded.  The 
research and action programs elaborated in response to the perceived 
emergence of new infections have, by and large, been sound.

But the concept also carries complex symbolic burdens -- as do some 
of the diseases most commonly associated with it.  Such burdens have 
certainly complicated and, in some instances, hampered the laying 
down of new knowledge.  If certain populations have long been 
afflicted by these disorders, why are the diseases considered "new" 
or "emerging"?  Is it simply because they have come to affect more 
visible -- read, more "valuable" persons?  This would seem to be an 
obvious question from the perspective of the Haitian or African poor.

In the emerging literature on emerging infectious diseases, some 
questions are posed while others are not.  A subtle

[L-I] Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses, and Problems of RussianDemocracy

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

There is hope yet.   Yoshie

*   World Politics 51.3 (1999) 323-358

Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses, and Problems of Russian Democracy

Judith S. Kullberg and William Zimmerman *

Strong showings and outright victories by antireform and conservative 
parties in several elections in Russia--most notably the 1993 and 
1995 Duma elections--and in other postcommunist East European 
countries in the early and mid-1990s raised concerns about the 
long-term prospects for democracy in the region. Western analyses 
have largely explained these election outcomes as popular reactions 
to short-term economic costs arising from reform of 
command-administrative economies 1 or as protests against radical 
restructuring by voters preferring a more moderate pace of reform. 2 
Such interpretations are essentially optimistic in that they do not 
question the commitment of postcommunist publics to democracy: they 
suggest that with improvement in economic conditions, support for 
communists and nationalists will evaporate.

In contrast to the general optimism of Western assessments, much of 
the commentary in the East has been more pessimistic. East European 
analysts have been inclined to interpret the victory of antireform 
parties as the explicit rejection by mass publics of the liberal 
ideology and leadership of westernizing, reformist elites. 3 Such 
interpretations suggest that the dissatisfaction of publics with 
liberalism and the emergent postcommunist political order is indeed 
deep, too deep to be generated merely by short-term economic decline 
or opposition to reform policy.

Evidence presented in this paper from parallel Russian elite and mass 
opinion surveys, conducted at the end of 1992/early 1993 and from 
late 1995 through the summer of 1996, is consistent with the 
contention that an elite/mass ideological divide exists in certain 
postcommunist societies. In the survey data we find evidence of a 
considerable gap between elite and mass worldviews. Whereas elites 
overwhelmingly opt for liberal democracy, the Russian mass public is 
thoroughly divided. Although Boris Yeltsin triumphed in the 1996 
presidential election...it is nevertheless clear that a substantial 
segment of the Russian electorate has not accepted the westernizing 
liberalism of those who led the democratic revolution and has instead 
opted for socialism or authoritarian nationalism and the 
corresponding "red" or "brown" political parties. 4

What accounts for the ideological gap between elites and the mass 
public? We argue that ideological variation--both between elites and 
the masses and within the mass public--is largely the result of 
differences across groups and individuals in the postcommunist 
structure of economic opportunity. Support for liberalism is causally 
related to the ability of individuals to participate in the new 
economic order: those who are "locked out" of the new economy and are 
constrained by circumstances and context from improving their 
conditions will be more likely to express antiliberal values and 
attitudes. Thus, what largely accounts for the elite's embrace of 
liberalism and, conversely, its nonacceptance by a considerable 
proportion of the Russian mass public is not simply economic decline, 
but the differential impact of economic restructuring on 
opportunities and, therefore, long-term material prospects of groups 
and individuals.

While a small segment of the Russian population has benefited 
dramatically from the collapse of the socialist economy, the economic 
position of a majority of the Russian population has been harmed. 
Within that majority, many have suffered extensively. The entry of 
Russia into the global economy resulted in the virtual collapse of 
entire industrial sectors. Individuals attached to these sectors, 
either directly through employment or indirectly through residence in 
regions where the sectors are concentrated, have experienced chronic 
unemployment or underemployment. Furthermore, millions are unable to 
acquire new skills or relocate, trapped by extremely low income and 
dependent upon sporadic distributions of back pay or "payments in 
kind" by employers or regional governments. Thus, poorly positioned 
to participate in the new market economy, many Russian citizens are 
unable to benefit from the emerging economic order. Even though 
aggregate economic growth may produce a general increase in support 
for democracy, 5 major subgroups of the population are likely to 
remain alienated from the democratic order as a result of the 
asymmetrical structure of economic opportunity. This alienation, in 
our view, will pose a long-term challenge to the postcommunist order 
and the legitimacy of Russian democracy

...In emphasizing the effect of changes in income on support for 
democracy during the transition period, the "costs of reform" 
argument obscures the character of the connection between the market 
economy and democracy. A market economy is not de

[L-I] Re: Socialism, Regionalism, & Pan-Africanism (was Learning)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>  > Mark Jones wrote:
>>
>  > > Unfortunately the world just is not and will not be like this 
>pleasant day dream.
>  >
>>  o.k. So?
>>
>>  Carrol
>
>Carrol, that's what we are here discussing. For a long time some of 
>us have been
>discussing fundamental problems buried within the technostructure at 
>the heart of
>the capitalist mode of production. Glad you're here to help.
>
>Mark

At least, Mark's post motivated Carrol to pipe up.  I hope we'll hear 
more from him on the subject, and soon.

Thanks to Pat, Lou, Mark, & Tahir for responding to my posts.  I'll 
be refraining from replying to you on the list for the time being, in 
the interest of seeing more people -- hopefully some lurkers -- post 
on this & related questions.  Take my posts apart, present your own 
analysis, lay out your alternative political vision, whatever.

looking forward to vigorous discussion,

Yoshie (co-moderator)

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[L-I] Yugoslav Economy Today

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

As usual, imperial demands for "reforms" boil down to more
unemployment, erosion of the public sector, fiscal austerity, & tight
monetary policy: "stabilization" programs that destabilize economy
further.   Yoshie

*   The Guardian (London)
December 29, 2000
SECTION: Guardian City Pages, Pg. 21
HEADLINE: Tale of two cities: Glimmerings of hope in the ashes of the
Yugoslav economy: Bank president sees a pointer to a devastated
country's revival
BYLINE: Jean Lemierre

During even the frostiest years of the cold war, Yugoslavia stood out
among socialist countries as the most advanced in terms of living
standards, and the most liberal in terms of market reforms, freedom
of movement and political debate.

All of this changed after its break-up.  Legitimate economic activity
collapsed in the face of wars, international sanctions and
state-sponsored criminality.  Foreign tourists and investors began to
be treated with suspicion, and stayed away.

The victory of Vojislav Kostunica, Yugoslavia's new president, has
initiated a welcome reversal of domestic and foreign policy.  The
choice made by Serbs at the ballot box this week only confirms that a
new era of economic reform and international cooperation is in the
offing.

At face value, the state of the economy is gloomy.  Yugoslavia has a
per capita GDP of around pounds 800, only marginally higher than that
of Albania.  Many full-time workers receive wages of less than pounds
33 a month.  Poverty and unemployment are widespread, and foreign
debt stands at 140% of GDP.

Yet to take only the economic figures is to miss a significant part
of the story.  Forced to struggle from one day to the next, people
learned to cope with adversity.  Many hold down two, even three,
jobs, with those completely disenfranchised from the state system
turning to small private initiatives that have helped build an
informal economy covering as much as 50% of GDP.  While state-owned
enterprises continue to run up large losses and debts, these
privately owned, small enterprises are creating new jobs and
generating profit.

Two towns highlight this point dramatically, bankers from the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have discovered
during recent missions to the country.  In Kragujevac, south of
Belgrade, life revolves around one large state-owned car factory,
Zastava, which produces the Yugo. Seventy thousand people once
counted on Zastava for work.  But production has slowed almost to a
standstill, leaving many jobless and local suppliers with no
business.  Life in Kragujevac is harder still because a large portion
of Serbia's 500,000 refugees, victims of four wars in a decade, are
housed in the town.

Yet just an hour's drive away is Cacak, where the local economy is
based not on heavy industry but a plethora of small and medium-sized
enterprises.  The town has traditionally been more politically and
economically progressive than elsewhere in Yugoslavia, helped largely
by being small enough (population 55,000) to avoid the gaze of
Belgrade.

During elections in 1996, only seven of 70 locally elected seats went
to Milosevic's party.  In 1998 the town established its own
independent radio and television.  Today there are 3,000 local
businesses in Cacak.

For years it has been a tale of two cities and, indeed, two economic
philosophies - one based on large-scale state-owned industry, the
other more laissez faire.  Cacak provides an example to the new
Yugoslavia.  But making sense of the chaotic state of large
state-owned enterprises and banks will require painful and radical
reforms, which means living standards could get even worse before
they get better.

In nearly a decade of helping the ex-communist countries of central
and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union shift to a market
economy, the EBRD has learned a few lessons about why some countries
have been successful and others less so.

It is clear that from the outset, some countries, like Hungary - and
indeed Yugoslavia itself - were more advanced than others.  But what
counts more are the varied paths they have followed since.  Those
that started economic reform early have progressed furthest and
fastest, suggesting that success will rest on good leadership, sound
decision-making and the will of the people.

The most obvious lesson in this is that a credible stabilisation
programme is essential if the conditions for sustained long-term
growth are to be created.  Private investors cannot operate in a
climate of high inflation, exchange-rate instability and fiscal
irresponsibility.

Such a programme will involve painful choices, but experience shows
that the alternative is far worse in the long-term.

Staff from the bank who have been on the ground to determine recent
progress in Yugoslavia sense that the right direction is being taken.

Ownership issues must be clarified early on. No foreign businessman
will dare invest in a company or bank where ownership is unclear.

Long-term growth will never occur in th

[L-I] Socialism, Regionalism, & Pan-Africanism (was Learning)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>My analysis is identical to Davidson's and I have made it repeatedly on the
>Marxism list. Africa's problems today stem from the fact that the colonial
>powers created states that disrespected traditional tribal jurisdictions.
>In the fight for independence, African elites accepted these borderlines
>uncritically. In the face of declining economic conditions, a process of
>Balkanization has made Africa unlivable. Davidson, who was assigned to work
>with Tito during WWII by the British army, argues that the implosion of
>various African states--including the Congo--is no different than what has
>taken place in Yugoslavia.
>
>Louis Proyect

Ideally, socialism in Africa should coincide with pan-Africanism of 
the revolutionary kind, and at the level of short- to medium-term 
goals, movements on the left should aspire to a regionalist program 
of the kind that Samir Amin, Pat Bond, etc. have advocated.  That 
would go toward a solution of the Black Man's Burden that Basil 
Davidson has discussed.  (In the case of Albania & Yugoslavia, calls 
for the Balkan Federation raised a couple of times in the early 
twentieth century, if implemented, might have prevented one seed of 
the present predicament from being sown.)

Here's an excerpt from an article by Pat Bond, with my comments 
interspersed here and there in it:

*   Patrick Bond, "Global Economic Crisis: A View from South 
Africa," _Journal of World-Systems Research_ 5.2 (Summer 1999): 
413-455, at 


...From Africa's leading radical economist, Samir Amin, has come the 
theme of regional delinking:

The response to the challenge of our time imposes what I have 
suggested naming "delinking" ... Delinking is not synonymous with 
autarky, but rather with the subordination of external relations to 
the logic of internal development ... Delinking implies a "popular" 
content, anti-capitalist in the sense of being in conflict with the 
dominant capitalism, but permeated with the multiplicity of divergent 
interests.68

As unrealistic as this appears at first blush, the recent, present 
and forthcoming conditions of global economic crisis appear to both 
demand and supply the material grounds for a profound change in power 
relations.  The ideological hegemony and financial stranglehold that 
neoliberalism and its sponsors have enjoyed are discredited and could 
fast disappear.  Out of nowhere (East Asia!), after all, suddenly 
appeared system-threatening contradictions.  [Yoshie: Now, the USA 
itself is about to contend with the economic fallout of neoliberalism 
that it has worked hard to make globally hegemonic, if California is 
a harbinger of things to come.]

And out of radical social and labour movements come, increasingly, 
demands that can only be met through greater national sovereignty and 
regional political-economic coherence.  [Yoshie: How do we reconcile 
"greater national sovereignty" with "regional political-economic 
coherence"?  A question that no one has answered yet, in theory and 
practice.]  The global scale may one day appear as a likely site of 
struggle (for example, through the United Nations system which at 
least conceptually could be democratised, unlike the Bretton Woods 
institutions).  [Yoshie: I see little hope of democratizing the U.N., 
unless movements on the left are powerful enough to abolish the 
Security Council & make the General Assembly the seat of real power, 
but let it slide for the moment.]  But realistic "alternatives" are 
probably going to have to be fought for and won at national and 
regional scales.69  Such alternatives themselves need to be 
contextualised in power relations that are still to be fought for, 
Canadian labour radical Sam Ginden reminds us:

The real issue of "alternatives" isn't about alternative policies or 
about alternative governments, but about an alternative politics. 
Neither well-meaning policies nor sympathetic governments can 
fundamentally alter our lives unless they are part of a fundamental 
challenge to capital.  That is, making alternatives possible requires 
a movement that is changing political culture (the assumptions we 
bring to how society should work), bringing more people into 
every-day struggles (collective engagement in shaping our lives), and 
deepening the understanding and organisational skills of activists 
along with their commitment to radical change (developing 
socialists).70

That commitment has already begun to take on international 
proportions through New Social Movements, Michael Lowy suggests:

Militant trade-unionists, left-wing socialists, de-Stalinized 
communists, undogmatic Trotskyists, unsectarian anarchists, are 
seeking out the paths to renewal of the proletarian internationalist 
tradition ... Concurrently, new internationalist feelings are 
becoming visible in social movements with a global perspective, like 
feminism and environmentalism, in antiracist movements, i

[L-I] Re: "Democratising" Africa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark says:

>Therefore Heartfield's articles cannot be more than raw material to 
>be worked over
>and used with care, as we do with anything else from the mainstream, 
>be it the NY
>Times, the Guardian, a book by Doug Henwood or anything else. We do not take
>anything for granted. But we rely on the scholarship and witness of 
>*bourgeois*
>academics, thinkers and writers because we are not able to do 
>without it; we simply
>are not. We do not have the resources, and this is simply obvious.

That's the right attitude.

>Since these zones are
>socially destroyed, economically they are wastelands, and 
>politically they have
>mostly already gone down the road to barbarism, it is useless to 
>hope that they will
>be capable of any further serious resistance UNLESS AND UNTIL there is a major
>crisis in the cores themselves.

An interesting development is that in the USA an economic downturn, 
rising energy costs, effects of deregulation, etc. have coincided in 
California.  Not yet the nation- & region-wide crisis of the kind 
that you speak of, but California may be a harbinger of things to 
come.  Neoliberal capitalism has now to contend with its own fallout.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: Learning (was Re: Congo)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Lou writes:

>  >Should we discredit Thomas Deichmann & his article "The Picture that
>>Fooled the World," for instance, because he published it in LM,
>>though he also published it in _NATO in the Balkans_?  Should we also
>>dismiss everything that Jared Israel has said, because he cited the
>>article in LM (e.g.
>>),
>>decried the miscarriage of justice in the libel suit against it (at
>>>though he later criticized LM & Deichmann's legal defense strategies
>>(at )?
>
>That's when they were still the RCP and the magazine was called Living
>Marxism. Ten years ago, in fact. That's sort of where Phil Ferguson is
>today, identifying with positions that the RCP defended a decade ago. But
>time marches on.

As you can see above, the libel suit took place after the 
transformation of Living Marxism into LM, which is no reason not to 
defend it, in Jared Israel's opinion.

Anti-war & anti-imperialist movements can't get off the ground, if 
you try to purify it of non-Marxist or non-revolutionary elements.

>  >Try to keep an open mind.  There is no necessity to dismiss anything
>>& everything published by James Heartfield & LM in order to remain
>>critical of their views on feminism, the environment, etc.  The same
>>goes for any other author or publication.  One culls useful info
>>everywhere it appears, including works by bourgeois journalists,
>>scientists, government employees, etc.
>>
>>Yoshie
>
>This is not about keeping an open mind. It is about how to characterize a
>loosely-knit organization in Great Britain that appears devoted to
>defending the agenda of the most vicious corporations around questions of
>consumer safety, health, etc.

As a co-moderator, I'd welcome L-I posters' comments on Congo, etc., 
instead of "how to characterize a loosely-knit organization in Great 
Britain" or a magazine that had to cease publication due to losing 
the libel suit against it.  The former is surely more important than 
the latter, in itself & for the list.  Why don't you post Basil 
Davidson's analysis of the recent developments in Congo, etc., since 
you recommend it?  Or your own analysis?

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: "Democratising" Africa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>If Yoshie wants to understand Africa, I'd advise her to read Basil
>Davidson--the author of 27 books on the continent and a radical--rather
>than James Heartfield, who writes nothing but puff pieces on LBO-Talk.
>
>Louis Proyect

_The Black Man's Burden_ was published in 1992.  Has Basil Davidson
written about the recent developments in Burundi, Congo, Uganda,
Rwanda, etc.?  I haven't read Davidson's article (in French) cited by
François Ngolet below: Basil Davidson, "Kabila, une chance pour
l'Afrique," _Jeune Afrique_ 14 Mai 1997 & _L'Express_ 22 May 1997.
It seems that Davidson had a rosier view of Kabila than Mark did.

*   Africa Today 47.1 (2000) 65-85
African and American Connivance in Congo-Zaire

François Ngolet

Abstract: Kabila's power takeover has been interpreted by political
analysts as orchestrated by African countries fighting rebel groups
using the Zairian territory as a basis for action.  This regime
change has also been presented as a victory of the United States over
France for the control of the central African region.  This article
will demonstrate that this powershift was a combination of African
countries, intervention on the ground and the action of the US
diplomacy in the international scene.  The African engagement is even
stronger in the second Congolese civil war, but has not eliminated
the US influence.  This influence can still be felt behind the scenes
through its strategic allies and has increased since the bombing of
the two embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Introduction

Kabila's arrival to power has been a source of intense intellectual
speculation.  Many analysts have interpreted this event as a
demonstration of strength by African states in the post-Cold War
period (Leymarie 1997).  Indeed, a coalition of African countries in
concert decided to topple one of the most corrupt and brutal
dictatorships in central Africa.  This new tendency of African
leaders to resolve Africa's own problem has been widely celebrated by
political analysts and is seen as the affirmation of a "new
independence" by African nations (Askins and Collins 1997).  Basil
Davidson, one of the most acclaimed analysts of African affairs saw
Kabila's power conquest as "a chance for Africa" (Davidson 1997).
Davidson's argument is that Kabila represents a symbol of what Africa
can do for itself, meaning its capacity to get its own house in order
before facing challenges in the international scene.  The former
President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere came in support of this African
thesis when he confessed to French journalists that from the
beginning to the end, the transfer of power in Congo-Zaire has solely
been an African matter, and in this process westerners have been
completely powerless (Bassir 1997).

This African thesis is sharply contradicted by other observers who
see Kabila's take-over as a victory of the United States over France
(Leymarie 1998b; Braeckman 1997a; Asteris 1998).  For many analysts,
the victory of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation
of Congo-Zaire (ADFL) would not have been possible without
overwhelming American support of the rebels.  French diplomats
frustrated by this American intrusion in the Congo openly accused the
US of working to dismantle the French influence in central Africa in
general (Leymarie 1998b).  The contenders of this thesis argue that
the US victory was made easier because of France's defense of the
despised regime of Mobutu and its participation in slowing the
democratization process (Leymarie 1996).  This opinion is backed by
American activists who have voiced their concern over seeing
"neo-colonialism made in USA" taking place in the Congo.  This
neo-colonialism is seen as a culmination of a long stated ambition of
American foreign policy, whose ultimate goal is to dismantle the
monopoly of former colonial powers in Africa (IG 1997; Leymarie 1996;
Leymarie 1992; Wauthier 1994).

The objective of this article is to reconcile these two views by
illustrating that Kabila's victory in 1997 was not solely an African
enterprise nor only the result of an American-orchestrated policy,
but a combination of both.  The military presence on the ground of
neighboring Congolese states and the efficiency of the American
diplomacy on the international scene worked well together to topple
23 years of Mobutu regime.  But even though African heads of state
and the United States agreed on the objective, the two parties seemed
to have been following different interests in the Congo.  By fighting
the Mobutu regime, Rwanda, Uganda, and Angola were simply attempting
to stabilize their borders by denying opposition groups in these
countries the use of the Congo to destabilize their respective
regimes.  On the other hand, the US supported the rebellion to extend
its influence in central Africa, to exploit natural resources,
filling the Congolese soil while containing Islamic fundamentalism in
east Africa (Willame 1998).  But this strengthening of both the
Africa

[L-I] Re: Learning (was Re: Congo)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Exactly who on the left has associated
>themselves with this cult other than Doug Henwood?
>
>Louis Proyect

Should we discredit Thomas Deichmann & his article "The Picture that 
Fooled the World," for instance, because he published it in LM, 
though he also published it in _NATO in the Balkans_?  Should we also 
dismiss everything that Jared Israel has said, because he cited the 
article in LM (e.g. 
), 
decried the miscarriage of justice in the libel suit against it (at 
)?

Try to keep an open mind.  There is no necessity to dismiss anything 
& everything published by James Heartfield & LM in order to remain 
critical of their views on feminism, the environment, etc.  The same 
goes for any other author or publication.  One culls useful info 
everywhere it appears, including works by bourgeois journalists, 
scientists, government employees, etc.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Learning (was Re: Congo)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Lou writes:

>  >Well, I know that not everybody on L-I has a liking for Heartfield, and
>yours
>>truly has personally clashed with him on first acquaintance. But this
>posting
>>is at least as enlightening as Patrick's.
>>
>>Never runs smooth the path of true love, or something like that...
>>
>>Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
>>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>On the back of the November 2000 issue of the University of Kent Newsletter
>is a diary item by Frank Füredi--Heartfield's guru--about worries on the
>eve of his appearance on British radio. It reads in part:

I don't recommend the mode of argument -- if you can call it that --
that you are employing here.  In many circles, purist leftists tried
to discredit _everything_ that Michel Chossudovsky wrote because he
cited a couple of right-wing sources in his articles, etc.; _all_
info provided by Jared Israel because of his willingness to share the
podium with Justin Raimondo, etc.; etc.  Your argument is similar to
their tactics.

One should be willing to learn about Z from even those with whom one
disagrees on A-Y; and learning about Z from someone doesn't imply the
acceptance of his or her views on A-Y.  It's as simple as that.
Unfortunately, few Western leftists are capable of doing so.  We have
a long way to go before rebuilding the Left.

Yoshie

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[L-I] "Democratising" Africa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mine says:

>Still, a discussion on Congo is a slight improvement for liberterian
>charecters like J.H however double fucked up his politics is ...

Here's another piece by James Heartfield on Africa:

*   The Week

Ending 22 October 2000

Democratising Africa: 10 years on

In October 1990 the expeditionary force of the Rwandan Patriotic
Front into Rwanda was shattered by the superior forces of President
Juvenal Habyarimana.  The RPF's popular Commanding Officer Fred
Rwigyema was killed early in the fighting, by a stray bullet, or
executed by jealous rivals.  RPF leader Paul Kagame cut short a visit
to Fort Leavenworth in the USA to take command of the forces in the
field.  But in the next 10 years Kagame's RPF not only took power in
Rwanda, but swept across central Africa, overthrowing the ancien
regime in Congo.  Just three years ago, Kagame was feted by the West
as one of a new generation of African leaders including his old
friend, Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni and the newly installed
Congolese president Laurent Kabila.  Just this year, though, the
Kagame regime looked exhausted and threadbare, rent by defections,
condemned by human rights activists and locked in a protracted war of
succession in the Congo, fighting both Kabila and Museveni's forces.

It is unlikely that the RPF and its allies would have enjoyed any
success without the influence of the West.  At the end of the Cold
War, the United States and the former colonial powers of Europe all
reworked their foreign policy with very specific consequences for a
number of African regimes.  As long as the Soviet Union was willing
to provide assistance to radical nationalists, the West backed local
strongmen, like Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko and Rwanda's Juvenal
Habyarimana to stem the nationalist tide.  As the challenge of
radical nationalism ebbed, the West took the opportunity to
destabilise its former allies in a policy euphemistically called
'democratisation'.

In Uganda, the United States already had a useful ally in Yoweri
Museveni, whose rebellion had overthrown the democratically elected
independence leader Milton Obote.  Museveni suspended party politics
in Uganda, but he did know how to play up to the rhetoric of
democratisation.  A large part of Museveni's US-trained officer corps
were exiles from Rwanda, part of the persecuted Tutsi minority.
Rwigyema had been Commander-in-Chief of Museveni's army, Kagame head
of military security.  The RPF was effectively the high command of
the Ugandan army.

Meanwhile in Rwanda, the creaking dictatorship of Habyarimana was put
under massive pressure by its European sponsor, France, to recognise
opposition parties.  At the time social progress in health and
education was being reversed by a collapse in coffee prices, and the
International Monetary Fund offered loans on conditions which
included democratisation.  But democratisation did not include
elections, only 'opposition parties', that owed their influence to
Western sponsorship.  Further, Hayarimana's new cabinet was obliged
to negotiate with the defeated RPF in Arusha, Tanzania, while it was
still raiding across the border.

The destabilisation of Rwanda was all the more pointed given the
ethnic divisions between the different protagonists.  Historically,
Rwanda's Tutsi minority had provided the country's ruling elite (as
it still did in neighbouring Burundi).  But in 1959 the soon to be
independent country launched a 'social revolution' in which the
Tutsis were victimised for their excessive wealth and power.  A
deeply conservative, overwhelmingly catholic one-party state
displaced popular resentment onto the former Tutsi elite, with
successive persecutions.  Now the exiled Tutsis were invading the
country as leaders of the RPF, and the West was demanding that they
be given a leading role in the cabinet.

Habyarimana bought time by letting his imposed cabinet negotiate away
his authority at Arusha, while galvanising opposition to the deal at
home - which meant stirring up hostility to the Tutsi invaders on
ethnic grounds.  Despite the best efforts of the RPF to garner
support from Hutus opposed to Habyarimana, they remained not only
predominantly a Tutsi force, but predominantly an exile army as well.

The RPF kept up the pressure, making ever more extravagant demands in
Arusha - half of the army to be RPF, Kagame to hold the interior
ministry with the president shorn of all powers.  Outside the RPF
broke the ceasefire in March 1991, February 1992 and August 1993
(Prunier 135, 174, 196).  Tanzanian authorities recorded president
Yoweri Museveni commanding the RPF soldiers 'Don't sign the peace
agreement.  I want you back [on the battlefield] immediately'
(Tanzanian newspaper The Mirror, No 126, second issue, May 1994).

The fateful step taken by the RPF was to seek to destabilise the
back-sliding Habyarimana regime.  In neighbouring Burundi, where the
first ever Hutu president Melchior Ndadaye had just been elected,
Tutsi officers allied t

[L-I] Richard Gott, Hugo Chavez, & Venezuela (was Congo)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mac says:

>Gott: Did he not just write on H.Chavez?  Any reviews on the book? 
>I've thought about
>getting a hold of it- I am intrigued to find out more about this new 
>Bolivarist.

I haven't read _In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the 
Transformation of Venezuela_, so I'll welcome reviews of & comments 
on it from L-I posters:

Here's an article by Richard Gott on Chavez:

*   The Guardian (London)
September 12, 2000
SECTION: Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 22
HEADLINE: Comment & Analysis: This man means business: One person 
above all is responsible for the recent oil price hike - President 
Hugo Chavez of Venezuela
BYLINE: Richard Gott

The crisis over petrol prices in Britain and elsewhere is almost 
entirely due to the myopia of governments and markets over the past 
18 months in failing to recognise the emergence of a new star in the 
global political firmament.  The youthful Hugo Chavez, aged 46, 
elected president of Venezuela in December 1998, is the principal 
figure behind the price rise.  Last year he singlehandedly revived 
the moribund organisation of petroleum exporting countries, Opec, by 
calling for and securing a cut in oil production, and this year he 
has singlemindedly persuaded its members to stand firm in defence of 
a reasonable price.

He recently toured all the Opec countries and sought agreement on an 
optimum price of Dollars 25 a barrel.  He will host a great jamboree 
of Opec presidents in Caracas at the end of the month, only the 
second such event ever held.

This man means business.  The west has had plenty of warning of what 
he has been up to, and where he is coming from, but blinded by the 
arrogance of globalisation it has taken no steps to prepare anyone 
for the dramatic developments of recent days.

Although Opec has usually appeared to western eyes as an organisation 
dominated by Arabs, it was actually conceived and founded by 
Venezuela in the heyday of what used to be called the Third World. 
The countries of Opec, for Venezuelans, constitute a large extended 
family.  In the 1990s, when Venezuela was ruled by unpopular 
governments that signed up to the dominant strand of neo-liberalism 
that spread like a plague across the whole of South America, Opec was 
abandoned and ignored.  Venezuela was one of the great cheaters of 
the organisation, ignoring the quotas set, and bringing in foreign 
companies to help increase production through the development of new 
fields.  When the world oil price dropped below Dollars 10 a barrel, 
the west fondly imagined that the exporting countries - many of them 
perceived as "rogue states", like Iran, Iraq and Libya - were 
permanently defeated and that this low price would be the established 
pattern of the future.

Colonel Chavez - for he was originally a military officer - had other 
ideas.  Petroleos de Venezuela, the state oil company nationalised in 
1975, is the country's chief source of wealth.  Chavez needed a 
steady and larger flow of income from the oil wells to finance his 
ambitious plans to transform the country and to satisfy his voters in 
the poorest section of society.  He was well aware that his radical 
rhetoric, avowedly hostile to what he describes as "savage 
neo-liberalism" imposed on Latin America by the US, would do him no 
favours with nervous foreign investors.  He decided to play the oil 
card.

At an Opec meeting in March 1999, his oil minister, Ali Rodriguez 
Araque, was instructed to announce that Venezuela would in future 
respect the cutbacks in production already agreed, and would support 
a further cutback of 4%.  It was "a change of 180 degrees" in the 
policy of previous governments, Chavez proudly announced.  Ali 
Rodriguez is now Opec's president, and the oil price has risen from 
Dollars 10 to over Dollars 30 a barrel.

Although the Latin American military are usually remembered for the 
rightwing dictators that they spawn, Chavez belongs to another 
tradition, that of radical junior officers, in touch with the raw 
conscripts from the peasantry, whose revolutionary politics are 
fuelled by anger at the degenerate state of the nation.  Chavez is 
also an heir to a civilian tradition of rebellion in Latin America, 
that of the leftwing guerrillas of the 1960s inspired by Fidel Castro 
and Che Guevara.  Some of his advisers were once associated with a 
Chinese-oriented split from the Venezuelan Communist Party who went 
on to make lasting contacts with radicals in the Arab world in the 
1970s.  Ali Rodriguez himself was a guerrilla in the 1960s, before 
becoming a labour lawyer and an oil expert for one of the smaller 
radical parties.  One member of that generation, Ilich Ramirez 
Sanchez, "Carlos the Jackal", famous among other things for an armed 
attack on Opec headquarters in Vienna in December 1975, now 
languishes in a French jail.

Chavez is a good friend of Fidel Castro and a frequent visitor to 
Cuba, and his ambitions are as grandiose as those of the Cuban 
le

[L-I] Re: Congo

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark says:

>  > >Most surreal...Richard
>>  >Gott, who republished Guevara's Congo diaries as a blast against Kabila
>>  >at the same time charges him with having 'alienated foreign investors by
>>  >refusing to make payments on the gigantic foreign debt of $14bn incurred
>>  >by his profligate predecessor' (Guardian January 19, 2001).
>
>More surreal still is Hreatfeild pretending to be pro-black Africa. 
>This is the man
>who vocally supported Larry Summers' desire to dump shit there. 
>Richard Gott, per
>contra, is not only a real marxist and revolutionary, and a man who worked
>successfully for the KGB while employed as a journo at the Grauniad, 
>he is also a
>man who put his life where his money is not once but at least twice. 
>Of course, this
>validates nothing in his views about the Congo.

Right.  Stellar revolutionary credentials in the past do not validate 
Gott's opinion in the present that implies the need to pay the 
foreign debt & heed "UN demands" below:

*   The Guardian (London)
January 19, 2001
SECTION: Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 27
HEADLINE: Obituary: Laurent Kabila: His lifelong quest for power in 
Congo was destroyed by ineptitude at home and abroad
BYLINE: Richard Gott

Laurent-Desire Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, 
who has been assassinated aged 61, was a cheerful, rubicund rogue, 
portly in middle age, who spent most of his life in exile, engaged in 
the illegal diamond trade and wild schemes to overthrow the 
dictatorship of Joseph-Desire Mobutu, his immediate predecessor. 
Along the way, he briefly recruited Che Guevara in 1965, and the 
armies of Uganda and Rwanda, which helped bring him to power in 1997.

Kabila's survival skills served him well in exile, but deserted him 
once he had moved into the presidential palace.  He had hoped that 
his wide international contacts would enable him to play the role on 
the wider African stage that the intrinsic size and importance of 
Congo would seem to indicate.  But political errors on the home front 
soon brought internal dissension, arguments with his foreign backers, 
and a return to Congo's endemic civil war.  Soon, he was turning to 
other foreign friends with desperate appeals for military assistance. 
At his death, wide areas of the country were outside his government's 
control.

At the dawn of Congo's independence from Belgium in 1960, Kabila was 
one of the bright young men who might have become a star in his 
country's politics.  Yet after the United Nations intervention and 
the 1961 assassination of the independence leader Patrice Lumumba, 
the cream of the radical Congolese were exiled.  Kabila, who came 
from the secessionist southern province of Katanga, studied briefly 
in Paris and Belgrade, before returning home in 1963.

Briefly an elected assemblyman for North Katanga, when parliament was 
closed down later in the year, he joined with other Lumumbists in 
staging a widely-supported rebellion, backed by both the Chinese and 
the Russians, and half a dozen radical African states.

The rebellion attracted the attention of the United States, then 
panicking about possible Soviet gains in newly-independent Africa. 
Averell Harriman and Cyrus Vance masterminded a plan that involved a 
coup to install a reliable western ally, Moise Tshombe.  As well as 
weapons, the Americans recruited Belgian officers, exiled Cuban 
pilots, and white southern African mercenaries.

Kabila, who had established himself at Albertville (Kalemie), on the 
western shores of Lake Tanganyika, was soon forced by the mercenaries 
to retreat to the borders of Rwanda and Burundi.  In Stanleyville 
(Kisangani), resistance was destroyed by Belgian paratroopers, 
airlifted in by a joint US-European operation in November 1964.

Forced to retreat, Kabila and his friends turned to the Cubans, and 
Che Guevara arrived on the Tanzanian-Congo border with a small 
contingent of guerrilla fighters in April 1965; Guevara recorded that 
Kabila "made an excellent impression", though he subsequently 
reconsidered this view.

Although Kabila appeared "quick and charming" - when he deigned to 
turn up - he was usually engaging in conspiratorial politics in Dar 
es Salaam, or negotiating with China's Chou En-lai or North Korea's 
Kim il-Sung.  When he did meet Guevara, holed up on a bleak 
mountain-top, he came with ample supplies of whisky and bevies of 
attractive women.  After six months, the rebellion petered out, the 
Cubans went home, Mobutu overthrew Tshombe, and Kabila began 30 years 
in the political wilderness.

He moved between Dar and Kampala, and made occasional forays into the 
Kivu region of Congo, re-establishing the "liberated zone" of which 
Guevara had dreamed, and funding his political activities by gold and 
ivory trading.  Later, when finally driven from Congo, he made 
friends with Yoweri Museveni, then preparing to lead a rebel movement 
in Uganda.

Kabila did not reappear on the international stage until May 1997

[L-I] Notes From the Hyena's Belly

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

New York Times 21 January 2001

Fear and Famine

This first-person account of the horrors of Ethiopia interweaves
politics, family history and traditional tales.

By ROB NIXON

Nega Mezlekia's powerful memoir stands as a reminder of how media
images of Africa can never substitute for African stories.
Television has habituated us to an Africa of impersonal disaster
through helicopter shots that hover somewhere between overview and
oversight.  Such news flashes offer viewers in placid, wealthy lands
the option of responding with pity or indifference.  But, unlike
Mezlekia, they cannot take us beneath the skin of experience.  An
Ethiopian who now lives in Canada, Mezlekia doesn't just show us the
spectacle of famine: he reveals how it feels to shuffle across the
desert in a column of 20,000 refugees while Somali militias are
shelling you and your family.

''Notes From the Hyena's Belly'' recounts this ordeal in a manner
that suggests both the challenge and the testimonial value of such a
memoir: ''Apathy in the face of continual violence is something
someone who has never lived through a war cannot understand. . . .
When my family and I were seeking refuge, traveling slowly on the
road to Harar, the heat of midafternoon was broken only by the treble
whirr of falling bombs and the sight of the dead.  People had long
since ceased to huddle under their limbs at the sound. . . . Their
frail limbs could not stop the bombs, their ears could not tell them
where the bombs would fall.  Death was random and continual, and
people simply got on with what was left to them: the long wait in
line for a bucket of water, the preparation of what food there was to
be found.''

Mezlekia's memoir traces the years from his birth in 1958 through his
flight in 1983 to the Netherlands and on to Canada.  Most North
American families would not experience in four generations the scale
of disaster that befalls his Amhara family in two decades.  But the
story that emerges is more than a saga of compressed calamity, for
Mezlekia is as alert to the way the fabulous seeps into the everyday
as he is to his people's quotidian sufferings.

From the early pages, a lively cast of characters tumbles forth, a
cast worthy of Gabriel García Márquez.  We meet a local midwife who
matter-of-factly helps an angel deliver its children ''with wings
intact''; a nun fluent in ''the language of the unborn and the dreams
of the dead''; and the terminally idle Ms. Yetaferu, whose inventive
piety requires her to honor ''263 saints' days, 52 Sundays, 9 other
Christian holidays, 13 Adbar days, 36 Wukabi days . . . and 12 days
to worship her ancestors' spirits.''  We listen to Mezlekia's teacher
as he conducts his lessons seated atop a giant tortoise shell, the
stumps of his amputated legs hidden in a sack.  And we're introduced
to his headmaster, who seems a mere outgrowth of the ''persuader,''
the whip he has fashioned from a bull's penis.

But no human inhabitant of the city of Jijiga, the author's childhood
home, is as memorable as the hyena armies that descend nightly from
the surrounding mountains: ''The streets of my childhood were
deserted after 9 o'clock, with no street dog, beggar or lizard in
sight. It looked as though the entire town was under siege. . . . The
hyenas . . . would devour you, your shoes, bracelets, linen and
anything else you had touched.  Beggars knew this; they might go
hungry, but they always had shelter.''  As Mezlekia's teacher
observes, ''Homelessness is a vivid indication of a shortage of
hyenas.''

Despite the hyena gangs, the persuader's lashings and sundry
low-flying devils, Mezlekia's childhood comes to seem in retrospect a
kind of paradise.  Nothing could prepare either author or reader for
the wreckage to come, as wave after wave of human marauders tears
Ethiopian society apart.  By skillfully interleaving personal
history, politics and Amhara fables, Mezlekia has created a
remarkable account of what it takes (luck, among other things) to
survive the complete shattering of civil society.  To protest the
feudal cruelties of Ethiopia's land tenure system, Mezlekia himself
becomes a teenage warrior.  He joins a guerrilla army of dissident
Somalis only to find his life at risk from his Amhara-hating comrades
in arms.

''Notes From the Hyena's Belly'' may sound like a frontline missive
from a remote society.  However, the story that unfolds has a
considerable amount to do with America.  While Mezlekia shuns
polemics, he shows how the Horn of Africa's appeal to cold war
strategists exacerbated the region's serial calamities.  In a cynical
turn, the Soviets and Americans traded client states, so that in
quick succession the United States was arming Ethiopia against a
Somali dictator's scientific socialist fantasies, then reversing its
support, embracing Somali tyranny against its now Soviet-backed
Ethiopian equivalent.  Between them, the superpowers helped sundry
juntas, dictators and feudal tyrants transform the Horn's poorly
arme

[L-I] Congo

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 16:27:16 +
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>From: James Heartfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>
>The assassination of Congo president Laurent Kabila was greeted with
>ill-disguised glee amongst Western commentators. It was not always thus.
>US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described Kabila as a 'beacon
>of hope' and a 'strong new leader' when he took power from the ageing
>dictator Mobutu in 1997. Then Kabila was supported by the State
>Department's favorite regional dictators Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and
>Yoweri Museveni of Uganda - the three lionised as a new generation of
>African leaders. But since then Kabila, Museveni and Kagame fell out,
>and the Rwandan army that had taken him to power, took arms against him,
>plunging the country into war.
>
>Most surreal of all the comments on Kabila is the bandying about of
>Ernesto 'Che' Guevara's assessment of Kabila's role in the Congo wars of
>the 1960s. Very few present-day politicians would have met the Cuban
>guerilla leader's exacting standards, but Guevara's critical comments on
>Kabila are regularly quoted by newspapers that have no sympathy with
>Guevara's goal of ridding the Congo of imperialism. Indeed, Richard
>Gott, who republished Guevara's Congo diaries as a blast against Kabila
>at the same time charges him with having 'alienated foreign investors by
>refusing to make payments on the gigantic foreign debt of $14bn incurred
>by his profligate predecessor' (Guardian January 19, 2001).
>
>The truth is that the future of the Congo continues to be decided by
>forces outside its borders. On independence, the United Nations' own
>envoy Conor Cruise O'Brien charged the UN with complicity in the murder
>of radical prime minister Patrice Lumumba. The United States backed
>dictator Mobutu's regime as a base for attacks on the radical
>nationalist movement in Angola. Kabila's own rise to power was not
>popular, but simply better supported. His subsequent fall was decided
>not in the Congo, but Washington.
>
>--
>James Heartfield


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[L-I] Re: Zyuganov Interview 11 September 2000: Russian CP LeaderSupports Kremlin, Drops Old Allies

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Nestor wrote:

>In the end, when Hugo Moyano, the union leader in Argentina, claims that his
>CGT is not against De la Rúa, but against the IMF, and that they are ready to
>support the former against the latter, is doing more or less what Zyuganov
>proposes here.

One one hand:

*   Financial Times (London)
January 5, 2001, Friday London Edition 1
SECTION: WORLD NEWS - EUROPE; Pg. 6
HEADLINE: WORLD NEWS - EUROPE: Russia turns its back on western aid:
As its economy starts to come right, Moscow can afford to ignore
international donors, even to the extent of declining to make
repayments.  Andrew Jack reports
BYLINE: By ANDREW JACK

Just as international organisations are seeing Russia achieve the
kind of economic performance they long hoped for, their prospects of
influencing the country's future policy are declining fast.

With growth of 7 per cent last year, a strong trade balance, a
projected budget surplus for this year, the rouble stable and foreign
currency reserves building up, Russia's economy looks stronger than
it has for years.

A compliant parliament, an energetic president and a team of liberal
economic reformers in key government positions ought to be well
placed to implement structural reform - notably in banking and of
natural monopolies - that has long been demanded by bodies such as
the International Monetary Fund.

Yet an IMF mission hoping to agree a new programme left Moscow
empty-handed in late November after unexpected and fundamental
disagreements over issues including the levels of government
expenditure.

Since then, there has been little sign of reconciliation.  Indeed,
the supposedly private meeting in Moscow this weekend between
Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroder and President Vladimir Putin
has taken on a new public importance following hints yesterday that
Russia would not honour repayments this month to the Paris Club of
sovereign creditors.

One reason for Russia's apparent lack of concern over making
repayments is that it does not now need money from foreign donors and
is more confident in dictating its own terms as a result.  "We have
far less leverage than in the past because of the strong financial
situation," says a senior official at one international organisation.

Another factor is that Mr Putin, concerned about Russia's dependence
on the outside world, has sent signals to his administration in
recent months that foreign aid should be reduced in an effort to
establish greater autonomy.

Just as important, however, is that the main foreign lenders are
rethinking their strategies towards Russia and taking a tougher
stance.  Organisations as diverse as the World Bank and the Soros
Foundation have reduced their commitments.

"There was a tremendous urge in the early 1990s to pump a lot of
money into Russia, but the actual results were less than the
expectations," says Tom Graham, a political analyst at the Carnegie
Foundation and former US diplomat.  "Everybody is reassessing what
happened."

Janine Wedel, a US academic, argued in her book Collision and
collusion that western assistance to Russia focused on supporting a
small circle of individuals - the young liberal reformers - rather
than on specific policies.  When these individuals fell out of
favour, so did the foreign sponsors and their programmes.

US Republican congressman Christopher Cox, who last September
produced a scathing report on President Bill Clinton's policy towards
the country during the 1990s, concluded: "Russia today is more
corrupt, more lawless, less democratic, poorer and more unstable than
it was in 1992."

An analysis published this month by the US General Accounting Office
(GAO) examined the Dollars 38bn provided to Russia in the 1990s by
five leading international institutions: the IMF, the World Bank, the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European
Union's Tacis and the US Aid programme.

Albeit couched in more diplomatic language, the report is also
critical, citing studies by the organisations themselves.  It says
that approaches were unco-ordinated, expectations too high, and both
corruption and a lack of Russian political consensus in favour of
reform substantially limited progress.

Mr Graham says that much aid was directed at supporting companies in
the donor countries and "trying to persuade Russians to do things
they didn't want" with little thought to local social and economic
conditions.  The result only helped boost corruption.

Meanwhile the IMF, the largest individual lender, came under
political pressure to offer repeatedly credits in exchange for
promises that never materialised, while apparently turning a blind
eye to less attractive aspects of policy.

If international organisations are reconsidering their approach to
Russia in the wake of the difficulties of the past, the political
environment in which they are operating is also changing.

The fading memory of the collapse of communism, disillusionment over
the slow pace of progress, and re

[L-I] Re: Whither the List?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark:

>  >  we don't want to lose someone like Johannes
>>  from the list, do we?  He's on the side of anti-imperialism.
>>
>>  >ONE part is revolutionary and
>>  >wishes to overthrow capitalism; the other is accommodationist and 
>>has no such
>>  >intention.
>>
>>  The problem is that the CPRF has & will accommodate itself to
>>  Yeltsin, Putin, etc., remaining a "responsible" opposition, to borrow
>>  Zyuganov's own words.
>
>Yoshie, I didn't expel Johannes or ask him to leave, so you're 
>talking to the wrong
>person.

I actually have only myself to blame, for being absent at the crucial 
moment.  I was busy with work & the need to prepare & give a talk on 
East Timor at a local political gathering.

I'd like this list to be a place where different Leninist tendencies 
can co-exist & debate questions of importance, free from personal 
attacks.  The objective as you spelled out at the inception of the 
list.  That means that those like Steve & Owen refrain from becoming 
obsessed with unsavory political aspects on the periphery (they 
should see the beam in their own eyes -- the sorry state of the 
Western Left!) and at the same time those like you & Lou try not to 
react to the former too predictably.  After all, our main job is to 
make Marxism grow where we're at.  As it happens, the tendencies 
represented by Steve & Owen recently are _real problems_ in the 
Western Left, but we can't overcome them if our rhetoric has an 
effect of losing those like Johannes to the other side, so to speak.

>As for the cprf, why is it any more a problem that it is a reformist not a
>revolutionary party than is the case with any mass electoral party anywhere on
>earth?

It is not more of a problem than other outfits of the same character, 
though due to the strategic weight of Russia, I do feel the need to 
pay closer attention to it than similar entities in smaller nations. 
It is, however, much less of a problem than the state of the Left in 
the West

>Russia is a normal capitalist country at least in the sense that there is
>simply no social space nor historical opportunity for a mass 
>revolutionary party
>there. It is simply fantasy to suppose that the kprf could be other 
>than it is, and
>still be permitted to exist. *THAT* is the problem. We do not live 
>in an era of
>revolution. It is useless to waste time excoriating Zyuganov for being what he
>cannot help being. The idea that if Zyuganov was a little more 
>honest, bolshevik,
>revolutionary etc, there would be the insurrectionary overtrhow of 
>capitalism in
>Russia is, I repeat, simply fantasy. The fact that people like 
>Kagarlitsky, who
>should know better, also seem to share this fantasy, changes 
>nothing. But in fact, K
>does know better. He is chasing the kprf for the same reason 
>ultra-left sectarians
>always do this: in order to appear to be on the side of the angels 
>while actually
>NOT doing anything politically, ie, not actually attacking 
>capitalist state, society
>etc etc.

I agree with you on Kagarlitsky, though that doesn't make everything 
he writes irrelevant.

The point is that we are biding time in the un-revolutionary times, 
so we want to clarify our thoughts (both at the level of theory and 
at that of conjunctural analysis) while doing so.  This, I believe, 
is what e-lists like this should focus on.  A ruthless criticism of 
everything existing, an analysis that is as objective as possible.

>Now I'm not so ill and I'm in a mood to try to help the
>list get back on track. What I mean by this is that we should not indulge
>sectarianism here.  But trench warfare is what we don't
>want.  By all means, let us talk about substantive issues.

I agree, except that a bit of occasional trench warfare is most 
likely unavoidable (if it's not Steve & Owen, it will be someone else 
in the future).  It's a nature of the beast (political e-lists).  I 
hope we will increase stellar contributions from thoughtful posters 
-- the only way to minimize a possibility of trench warfare.  I'd 
like you (& of course everyone else here, too) to help the current 
moderation team in our task.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: Russia: CPRF Leader Interviewed - Russia TV

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark:

>Yoshie wrote:
>>  Putin, by co-opting anti-Semitic & anti-liberal rhetoric widespread
>>  in Russia, can coopt the themes of "socialism = the modern form of
>>  Russian patriotism" as well.  The CPRF has only itself to blame,
>>  since it's happy with the role of the loyal opposition.
>
>On the contrary, Putin has been at pains to publicly oppose anti-semitism. For
>example:
>
>BBC MONITORING
>PUTIN CRACKS JEWISH JOKE AT THE OPENING OF COMMUNITY CENTRE
>Source: NTV International, Moscow in Russian 1800 gmt 18 Sep 00

The man's craftier than Zyuganov, I gather.  He has his supporters 
use the anti-Semitic rhetoric, avoiding it himself.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: Zyuganov Interview 11 September 2000: Russian CP LeaderSupports Kremlin, Drops Old Allies

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark:

>  > Zyuganov Interview 11 September 2000
>>
>>  BBC MONITORING
>>  ZYUGANOV INTERVIEW: RUSSIAN COMMUNIST LEADER EXPANDS ON MOVE TO
>>  SUPPORT KREMLIN, DROP OLD ALLIES
>
>but if you read what the man says, is it so unreasonable?

It's a reasonable remark from a reasonable parliamentarian, no?

>  > Russia today is at a crossroads. Either we following the new state
>>  line which takes the national interest as its guide or continue with
>>  the old policy of [acting prime minister in the early nineties Yegor]
>>  Gaydar or rather [Economic Development and Trade Minister German]
>>  Gref. If the choice is in favour of the latter, of liberal reforms
>>  when the land is sold off and they try to finish off the nuclear
>>  missile shield, when the railways are sold off and the last natural
>>  monopolies are eliminated and when even our forests are sold into
>>  private hands then there will be nothing left of Russia.
>>
>>  So we shall do everything we can to ensure that people who understand
>>  how far things have gone and recognize that very little time indeed
>>  is left in which to take decisions gain the upper hand in the
>>  executive structure.
>
>What do you expect him today, lead platoons of pensioners in an assault on the
>Telegraph Office, Kremlin etc?

First of all, Russian leftists need to expand the base for support of 
Communism beyond "platoons of pensioners"!  I don't think they can 
expand it while accommodating themselves to Putin, though.  It seems 
to me that Zyuganov ain't smart or ambitious enough to use Putin for 
his social-democratic purpose.  What's happening is the other way 
around, most likely.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: Russia: CPRF Leader Interviewed - Russia TV

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark:

>>you don't think that the CPRF = Marxism-Leninism, do you?
>No, no and again no, as Vladimir Ilyich might say.

I know where you stand.  The rhetorical question was for the benefit 
of L-I listers whose acquaintance with you doesn't go back very far.

>But so what? Is it the use of the
>name 'communist' which winds people up into such hysterical 
>frenzies? But we have
>had non-communist communist parties for years and decades and people 
>have fogiven
>them their tactless misappropriation of the name (eg, CPUSA, PCF, 
>PCI, Chinese CP
>etc etc). So why single out poor Zyuganov?

I don't mean to single out the poor fellow.  I simply mentioned the 
CPRF since the recent threads had revolved around it.

>  > Russia today, it seems to me, is virtually free from Marxism-Leninism.
>By what test? According to a recent poll, Russians voted Lenin as 
>'man of the 20th
>century' (followed by Stalin) by handsome majorities. There is a well-attested
>yearning for the good old soviet days, which all polls confirm. Even 
>if Kagarlitsky
>is right in rubbishing the kprf, there is no getting away from the 
>fact that the
>Kremlin and its western minders acknowledge *the need* for the kprf, 
>because of the
>huge residual popularity of Communist ideas, values etc.
>
>And I know it's true, because I've spent time there.

I believe you, and I myself have read many reports attesting to the 
existence of the powerful yearning for the good & even bad old Soviet 
days.  The problem for Russian leftists is that there is no Leninist 
party that can catalyze the powerful yearning & channel it into the 
revolutionary direction.  That is probably because the yearning has 
yet to transform itself into a militant mass movement.  I think that 
such transformation will occur one day, but when it happens, I expect 
that Zyuganov & the like will be sidelined.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: Whither the List?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark:

>  > The clarity of revolutionary Leninist politics can't be achieved if
>>  one part of the Left remains trapped in the overblown fear of
>>  Red-Brown alliances on the periphery and the other part falls for the
>>  overestimation of political capacity of whatever party or movement
>>  that claims to be patriotic, socialist, etc. (e.g. the CPRF).
>>
>>  Indeed, we need to raise the level of the debate here!  I ask sober
>>  heads who are still here to post their thoughts.
>
>begs a question. Firstly and IN PRINCIPLE I do not think it is 
>Leninist to accord equal merit to 'one part of the left or another'.

I don't either.  However, we don't want to lose someone like Johannes 
from the list, do we?  He's on the side of anti-imperialism.

>ONE part is revolutionary and
>wishes to overthrow capitalism; the other is accommodationist and has no such
>intention.

The problem is that the CPRF has & will accommodate itself to 
Yeltsin, Putin, etc., remaining a "responsible" opposition, to borrow 
Zyuganov's own words.

I don't, however, question any L-I poster's _desire_ to overthrow 
capitalism, least of all yours.  That posters are filled with 
revolutionary desire doesn't mean, though, that some of us may not 
commit some errors trying achieve our objective.  If this list is to 
amount to anything, it should become a place where comrades can 
correct comrades, without needless outbursts deflecting attention 
from substantial issues.  That's what you wanted yourself, no?

>Second, as Tony properly says, outfits like ISWOR are not part of 
>the left at all,
>they are stooges of imperialism.

It's no secret that I feel very close to Tony's position on 
Yugoslavia, etc.  I admire him for trying to intervene in the debate 
within Solidarity.  I couldn't muster my will to do the same, though 
he invited me to.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: Program, Organization, Conjuncture

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>  > Last year I had my e-mail program crash, so I lost the Crashlist URL,
>>  among other things.  Can you mail the URL to me or post it here?
>>
>>  Yoshie
>
>I'll sub you if you like.
>
>Mark

Thank you.  Go ahead and sub me.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: Russia: CPRF Leader Interviewed - Russia TV

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Yoshie, what is it about this analysis by Kagarlitsky that you find to
>be of merit?   I find the idea that countries of the capitalist
>''periphery" cannot have Social Democratic movements ludicrous. They
>do all the time. Colombia and Mexico have both recently had Social
>Democratic formations playing a prominant role in their political life,
>just to pose two examples. Kagarlitsky says that Russia can't???
>
>Tony Abdo
>
>Kagarlitsky.
>capitalist "centre", where the ruling class is able to make concessions
>to the workers because it controls additional resources on the
>"periphery". Russia is now part of the periphery of world capitalism,
>and for this very reason, efforts to construct western-style social
>democracy here have been doomed to failure.
>So if the KPRF is not being social-democratised, what is happening to
>it?>

On the periphery, you can still have social democratic "movements," 
but you can't have social democratic results on a par with social 
democracy in rich nations.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: Program, Organization, Conjuncture

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark:

>  > A revolutionary organization with a clear program has yet to come
>>  into being in my corner of the planet.  What of yours?  In the
>>  absence of a revolutionary party active within a mass movement, into
>>  what should one assimilate?  We have to build it, first of all.
>>
>>  Now, why don't you lay out your analysis of the present conjuncture,
>  > now that you are here?  That should be a good point of departure.
>
>Ah, I see you are indeed working on the uroborus principle of 
>circularity. You can't
>build a party without a theory, and you can't have a theory without 
>first having a
>party seems to be your position. IMO what you have to do is (a) make 
>some kind of
>analysis of the global conjuncture; (b) persuade other people of it 
>and (c) organise
>around it.

No, we already have a pretty good theory (Marx & Lenin are 
substantially correct); theory isn't the same as an analysis of the 
current conjuncture, though.  What we don't have in our corners of 
the earth (the UK & the USA) is a growing mass movement on the Left 
whose spontaneous militancy is such that we can "persuade other 
people of" & "organize around" a Marxist & Leninist analysis of the 
global conjuncture.

>You have already long ago rejected my version of (a).

You mean your analysis of the environment?

>If you want to know where I think (a) is at, check out the crashlist 
>website and
>archive. There is a good resume of where (a) is,  written by Stan Goff.

Last year I had my e-mail program crash, so I lost the Crashlist URL, 
among other things.  Can you mail the URL to me or post it here?

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: Russia: CPRF Leader Interviewed - Russia TV

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Attempts to equate Marxism-Leninism with the ultra-right are not 
>only not new, they
>are as old as socialism.
>
>Mark

Sure, but you don't think that the CPRF = Marxism-Leninism, do you?

Since your comeback, you have argued for the importance of 
revolutionary theory & the need to debate it on this list.  This may 
as well be our point of departure.

Russia today, it seems to me, is virtually free from Marxism-Leninism.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: Russia: CPRF Leader Interviewed - Russia TV

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>  >Makahov is very famous for these quotes all the time as not just a CC member
>>of the KPRF, but higher than this -
>
>Higher than a Member of the Central Committee?
>What do you mean?
>
>There are millions of Communists in Russia. So what?

It is essential to separate rank-and-file members from officials in 
political analysis of the CPRF.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Zyuganov Interview 11 September 2000: Russian CP Leader SupportsKremlin, Drops Old Allies

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Zyuganov Interview 11 September 2000

BBC MONITORING
ZYUGANOV INTERVIEW: RUSSIAN COMMUNIST LEADER EXPANDS ON MOVE TO 
SUPPORT KREMLIN, DROP OLD ALLIES
Source: Russia TV, Moscow, in Russian, 11 September 2000

Leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennadiy 
Zyuganov has said that he is prepared to back the Kremlin provided 
Putin gets rid of ministers who want to wipe out the natural 
monopolies and privatize the national wealth. Interviewed on Russia 
TV's "Podrobnosti" programme on 11th September, he said he did not 
intend to insist that the government resign but suggested that Putin 
should bring more representatives of the Unity movement into it at 
the expense of the privatizers. He said that the break announced 
today with governors Tuleyev, Rutskoy and Gorbenko had come about 
because the latter had chosen to go their own way and predicted that 
his party would score major successes in the governor elections 
without them. The following are excerpts from the interview. 
Subheadings have been inserted editorially.

[Pashkov] Gennadiy Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the 
Russian Federation, said today that he is ready to support the 
executive authority in every way which corresponds with Russia's 
national interests, that the State Duma's progovernment Unity faction 
will very soon split and that this will be connected with the 
activities of former State Duma deputy Boris Berezovskiy and, 
finally, that the CPRF will refuse to support governors Rutskoy, 
Tuleyev and Gorbenko in the forthcoming elections for governor. Our 
guest on "Podrobnosti" today is CPRF leader Gennadiy Zyuganov...

Conditions for supporting Kremlin

Let's get down to the main issues straight away. Is the CPRF faction 
really ready this time to support the executive authority, the 
Kremlin?

[Zyuganov] We have always worked energetically with people who are 
interested in the rebirth of our country and in the creation of 
normal conditions for people to work and live in.

Russia today is at a crossroads. Either we following the new state 
line which takes the national interest as its guide or continue with 
the old policy of [acting prime minister in the early nineties Yegor] 
Gaydar or rather [Economic Development and Trade Minister German] 
Gref. If the choice is in favour of the latter, of liberal reforms 
when the land is sold off and they try to finish off the nuclear 
missile shield, when the railways are sold off and the last natural 
monopolies are eliminated and when even our forests are sold into 
private hands then there will be nothing left of Russia.

So we shall do everything we can to ensure that people who understand 
how far things have gone and recognize that very little time indeed 
is left in which to take decisions gain the upper hand in the 
executive structure.

Just lately Berezovskiy has been kicking up a big rumpus and putting 
on a public display with just one aim in mind: he wants to distract 
the public's attention from the main thing. The government is 
currently developing one policy to revive the homeland and another 
which is promoted by the same group which has tortured the country 
for ten years and which seeks to sell off all the natural monopolies, 
including our forests. We will work with those who support our 
national interests.

[Q] And so, there is a sort of duality, a two-sidedness in your 
relations with the Kremlin, the government, the presidential 
administration and the president himself. You say you will support 
those who support the national interests of Russia, Can you name some 
names for us please.

[Zyuganov] Indeed I can. There is a real fight going on right now. 
There are two groups: one is the continuation of the family [Yeltsin 
clan], Berezovskiy, [energy chief Anatoliy] Chubays and Gref. This 
group is now doing everything it can to divide the railways into 17 
sectors and privatize them. That would spell the end of Russia as a 
single unit. Let's say [Deputy Prime Minister Viktor] Khristenko and 
his team have prepared a programme for selling off our forests into 
private hands. Sixty-nine per cent of the territory of Russia is 
forest. It is our national wealth... Putin instructs him to stop 
destroying the industry. But they have already sold the pulp and 
paper industry and stopped timber processing. So instead of doing 
what he's told, Khristenko summons and sacks all those who are 
investigating and tries to have the forests destroyed by some other 
mafia. So there's a few names for you from the group which is now 
ruthlessly and quickly trying to - [words lost as presenter 
interrupts]

[Q] But you are naming people with whom the CPRF and you personally 
have had poor relations for a pretty long time already. There is 
nothing new about that -

[Zyuganov] Hang on a minute Serezha. For now there is no Putin 
government. There is no [Prime Minister Mikhail] Kasyanov government 
either. There are these groups, one is the family [Yeltsi

[L-I] Re: Russia: CPRF Leader Interviewed - Russia TV

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Lou wrote:

>The real issue
>is not anti-Semitism or fascism, but the stubborn refusal of some radicals
>to get on board the hate Yugoslavia campaign. Now that this is a dead
>issue, the demagogues have turned their attention to Russia. Anybody who
>does not take an oath of allegiance against the Communist Party of the
>Russian Federation is once again tarred with the brush of the ultraright.

_Both_ are real issues (& in fact they are _dialectical twins_), in 
that anti-Semitism in Russia -- socialism of fools -- is an index of 
political limitation, just as the failure of the Western Left to 
sustain anti-imperialism is.  While there is no reason to promote an 
overblown fear of so-called Red-Brown alliances on the periphery, 
dismissing anti-Semitism as "not a real issue" doesn't help defend 
nations on the periphery from imperialist attacks, first of all 
because we can't win many to an anti-imperialist politics by 
dismissing the question just like that, instead of analyzing it.  On 
the contrary, we end up losing anti-imperialist leftists like 
Johannes.

(I myself refused to get on board with the "hate Yugoslavia" 
campaign, but that doesn't mean I agreed with Jared on his analysis, 
tactic, etc. either.  Jared helped a lot by disseminating some useful 
info, and I thank him for it, but his glosses on info were sometimes 
counter-productive, in my opinion.)

Skepticism about the political capacity & orientation of the CPRF, 
the Socialist Party of Yugoslavia, etc. is not at all the same as 
demagogic portrayals of Jared or anyone else.

What we need is a cool-headed, judicious analysis, without which we 
can hardly make Marxism grow in influence in places where we find 
ourselves.

As a co-moderator, I ask you & everyone else here to provide an 
analysis _free from wishful-thinking_.  Also, I urge all to _separate 
the political from the personal_.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: Russia: CPRF Leader Interviewed - Russia TV

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Personally, I am not pleased with
>calling the Zyuganov bunch "linked with the working class". They are 
>not like the SPS
>or the PDS. They did not exist from 91- 93. Their reappearance was 
>to deliberately
>hi-jack what was left of the workers movement, to my view. But I 
>haven't done the
>homework. My impression comes from people like Kagarlitsky, and from the
>mealy-mouthed rhetoric they have been speaking (depending on the day 
>of the week).
>
>Macdonald

I don't care for Boris Kagarlitsky's politics very much, but he's no 
fool, and his analysis of the KPRF has something to recommend itself:

*   Five years of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation

By Boris Kagarlitsky

MOSCOW -- In February the Communist Party of the Russian Federation 
(KPRF) celebrated its fifth anniversary.  In their commentaries on 
this event, Moscow's right-wing newspapers showed a striking 
unanimity: all were full of praise for party leader Gennady Zyuganov 
and his close associates.  In the view of the newspaper Segodnya, the 
KPRF under Zyuganov had ceased to be communist and had become a 
social democratic organisation, respecting the new social order and 
devoted to private property.

Western-style social democracy, however, requires a flourishing 
western capitalism.  Social democracy first arose in western Europe 
under conditions that included developed democratic institutions, a 
strong labour movement and extensive room for capital to manoeuvre.

Obviously, social democracy is possible only in the countries of the 
capitalist "centre", where the ruling class is able to make 
concessions to the workers because it controls additional resources 
on the "periphery".  Russia is now part of the periphery of world 
capitalism, and for this very reason, efforts to construct 
western-style social democracy here have been doomed to failure.

So if the KPRF is not being social-democratised, what is happening to it?

When Zyuganov was elected leader in 1993, most observers were 
inclined to think that the party would shift abruptly to conservative 
and nationalist positions.  But the congress delegates who voted for 
Zyuganov saw him as a decisive, combative leader, capable of doing 
what the other candidate -- the moderate, sober-minded Valentin 
Kuptsov -- was not.

The rank-and-file party members wanted action and struggle.  The 
degree to which they were themselves ready to take part in struggle 
was another question -- most of the registered members were of 
pensionable age.

Zyuganov and Kuptsov managed not only to restore the party's 
organisational apparatus, but also to sideline rivals who stood to 
their right and left.  The main victims were the radical Russian 
Communist Workers Party (RKRP) of Viktor Anpilov, and Lyudmila 
Vartazarova's moderate Socialist Party of Workers (SPT).  The RKRP 
lost many of its activists, and the SPT a mass of passive pensioners.

With these additional supporters, the KPRF became able to wage a 
credible struggle for power.

Zyuganov's strength was thus his "will to power". It was this that 
united the fragments of the communist movement around him.  But 
behind the striving for power there was neither a clear program, nor 
theory, nor a mass movement capable of taking power and effecting 
change spontaneously.

Perhaps sincerely believing that he was saving the party, Zyuganov in 
October 1993 took his distance from the armed defenders of the 
Supreme Soviet building.  To be sure, he saved the party.  What he 
saved it for is another question.

While the authorities stopped short of forcing the Communist Party 
underground, they made quite clear that it would have to respect the 
new rules of the game.

Other left organisations were subjected to much more serious 
victimisation, and the more radical groups were forced out of legal 
politics.

The radicals, however, lacked the boldness, the cadres and the 
resources for illegal struggle.  There were not even serious acts of 
civil disobedience following the bombardment of the parliament 
building on October 4, 1993.  The leaders of the radical opposition 
saved their lives and freedom, but at the price of political death.

Failing to win seats in the State Duma, and losing their positions in 
the trade unions and the organs of local self-government, the radical 
left organisations finished up out of the game.

Meanwhile, Zyuganov's fraction voted for the government's 1994 
budget, showed no particular interest in the miners' strikes that 
broke out in the spring of 1994 and, in short, acted as a loyal "His 
Majesty's opposition".  The authorities, in turn, relaxed their 
pressure.

Most workers in Russia are now disorganised and dependent on 
management, and many of them have been sent on forced leave. 
Consequently, speaking of a labour movement and even of a working 
class is possible only with serious reservations.

The social base of the KPRF consists not of workers, but of 
pensioners, managers of former collective

[L-I] Re: Whither the List?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark wrote:

>On
>the one hand, it's fine that people are talking more militantly; but 
>on the other,
>it makes it all the more important that we don't let these people, who are our
>political enemies, drown out the real message about what is a real 
>revolutionary,
>leninist politics.

The clarity of revolutionary Leninist politics can't be achieved if 
one part of the Left remains trapped in the overblown fear of 
Red-Brown alliances on the periphery and the other part falls for the 
overestimation of political capacity of whatever party or movement 
that claims to be patriotic, socialist, etc. (e.g. the CPRF).

Indeed, we need to raise the level of the debate here!  I ask sober 
heads who are still here to post their thoughts.

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will!

Yoshie Furuhashi, co-moderator

P.S.  Johannes, come back.  We ought to debate this important question.

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[L-I] Re: Russia: CPRF Leader Interviewed - Russia TV

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>  >I do not know whether General Makashov was a CPRF CC member, but he was
>>elected on the CPRF slate to the Duma. Unfortunately it will be rather easy
>>to find more antisemitic quotes from leading CPRF members.
>>
>>Johannes
>
>Just as you will find antisemitic quotes from leaders of the German
>Communist Party in the 1920s, including Ruth Fischer who was herself of
>Jewish origin. When a society is in deep crisis, there is a tendency to
>find scapegoats. Jews have traditionally played that role in Russia and
>Germany. In the USA, it is blacks who fill that role. The real question,
>however, is not what racist comments are uttered by one or another official
>of the CPRF, but what economic measures can resolve the crisis and relieve
>the tensions that give birth to racial demagogy. From that standpoint,
>there can be little doubt that the CPRF's program is what Russia needs.
>While making all sorts of concessions to "free market" orthodoxy, it is an
>attempt to reverse the course set by Yeltsin and continued now by Putin.
>Unfortunately, the people in charge of the CPRF are steeped in bureaucratic
>modes of functioning that prevent them from mobilizing the power of Russian
>workers to dislodge the gang in power right now. They have much in common
>with Milosevic, who can also be faulted for using "business as usual"
>methods at a time of deep crisis. If Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
>Union can not generate true communists, then the situation will continue to
>deteriorate with all the resultant woes of xenophobia, suicide, alcoholism,
>dope addiction, prostitution, etc.
>
>Louis Proyect

The CPRF's program, such as it is, can never be achieved by the 
CPRF's means.  I'm afraid that the anti-Semitic rhetoric employed by 
some officials of the CPRF is not just a reflection of "a society in 
deep crisis" but also rooted in the CPRF's social democratic 
orientation, easily harnessed by someone like Putin.  Anti-Semitism 
is an index of the very limited criticism of capitalism (e.g., a 
criticism of finance & "foreign" profiteers, with no readiness to 
reject capitalism wholesale); it's a "socialism of fools."  Not 
surprisingly, Putin is _not at all_ afraid of the CPRF:

*   THE HINDU
December 4, 2000
HEADLINE: Communists call for Putin's resignation

MOSCOW, DEC. 3. The Russian Communist leader, Mr. Gennady Zyuganov, 
has accused the President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, of failing to deliver 
on his election promises and called for "irreconcilable opposition" 
to his regime.

Speaking at the opening of a Communist Party congress in Moscow, Mr. 
Zyuganov called for the resignation of Mr. Putin's Government, which 
he said, had blindly followed economic reforms prescribed by the 
International Monetary Fund.  The Communist leader said the party was 
forming a shadow government that would suggest alternative policies 
in all spheres of life, especially economics.

"The party remains a responsible and irreconcilable opposition," Mr. 
Zyuganov said.

Interestingly, Mr. Putin sent a congratulatory message to the 
Communists' congress, expressing the hope that the party "will firmly 
adhere to the principles of constructive dialogue and reasonable 
compromise in its work.

"I believe that national interests, stability and civil peace in 
Russia will continue to be unconditional priorities for the Russian 
Communist Party," the message said.

Mr. Zyuganov said his party's top priority was establishing a 
"Soviet-type democracy" and building a socialist society in Russia. 
"Socialism is the modern form of Russian patriotism," he said.

He said the party had more than 500,000 members and was steadily 
increasing its ranks.

The Communist Party is the biggest single party in Russia's lower 
House of Parliament, though it lost many seats during last December's 
elections.   *

Putin got Zyuganov's number: "national interests, stability and civil peace."

*   The Independent (London)
September 11, 2000, Monday
SECTION: FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 10
HEADLINE: MILLION PEOPLE 'INVENTED' FOR RUSSIAN ELECTION
BYLINE: Helen Womack In Moscow

BALLOT PAPERS were burnt, voters bullied and entire electorates 
invented in large-scale fraud perpetrated during Russia's 
presidential election in March, The Moscow Times newspaper has 
claimed.  In its weekend edition, the respected English-language 
daily said its journalists had gathered enough evidence to question 
the legitimacy of the vote that brought Vladimir Putin, an obscure 
former KGB agent, to the pinnacle of power.

The defeated Communist Party candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, complained 
at the time that he had been robbed of the chance to go into a second 
round against Mr Putin.  And observers from the Organisation for 
Security and Cooperation in Europe, while finding the elections on 
the whole "democratic and a step forward for Russia", spoke of 
abuses.  However, the newspaper's inquiry, carried out over the last 
six months, was the most far-reaching and hard-hitt

[L-I] Re: Russia: CPRF Leader Interviewed - Russia TV

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Steve wrote:

>In particular Owen, your description of the KPRF as
>more of a reactionary danger to the Russian working class than even Putin's
>Kremlin, is very factual, considered and well thought out.

The above is a mistaken estimation of the balance of power, 
contradicted by the statement below:

>They do advocate a cleaner, more stable and properly
>functioning capitalist system; but Putin has stolen their thunder in this
>respect with a concerted attempt to stabilise Russian capitalism, with
>certain measures against sections of the oligarchy and a policy of firm
>centralisation, as well as severe measures against the Russian proletariat,
>with a new Labour Code straight out of Tsarist law books.

Yoshie

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Re: [L-I] Re: Russia: CPRF Leader Interviewed - Russia TV

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>  >I do not know whether General Makashov was a CPRF CC member, but he was
>>elected on the CPRF slate to the Duma. Unfortunately it will be rather easy
>>to find more antisemitic quotes from leading CPRF members.
>>
>>Johannes
>
>Just as you will find antisemitic quotes from leaders of the German
>Communist Party in the 1920s, including Ruth Fischer who was herself of
>Jewish origin. When a society is in deep crisis, there is a tendency to
>find scapegoats. Jews have traditionally played that role in Russia and
>Germany. In the USA, it is blacks who fill that role. The real question,
>however, is not what racist comments are uttered by one or another official
>of the CPRF, but what economic measures can resolve the crisis and relieve
>the tensions that give birth to racial demagogy. From that standpoint,
>there can be little doubt that the CPRF's program is what Russia needs.
>While making all sorts of concessions to "free market" orthodoxy, it is an
>attempt to reverse the course set by Yeltsin and continued now by Putin.
>Unfortunately, the people in charge of the CPRF are steeped in bureaucratic
>modes of functioning that prevent them from mobilizing the power of Russian
>workers to dislodge the gang in power right now. They have much in common
>with Milosevic, who can also be faulted for using "business as usual"
>methods at a time of deep crisis. If Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
>Union can not generate true communists, then the situation will continue to
>deteriorate with all the resultant woes of xenophobia, suicide, alcoholism,
>dope addiction, prostitution, etc.
>
>Louis Proyect

The CPRF's program, such as it is, can never be achieved by the 
CPRF's means.  I'm afraid that the anti-Semitic rhetoric employed by 
some officials of the CPRF is not just a reflection of "a society in 
deep crisis" but also rooted in the CPRF's social democratic 
orientation, easily harnessed by someone like Putin.  Anti-Semitism 
is an index of the very limited criticism of capitalism (e.g., a 
criticism of finance & "foreign" profiteers, with no readiness to 
reject capitalism wholesale); it's a "socialism of fools."  Not 
surprisingly, Putin is _not at all_ afraid of the CPRF:

*   THE HINDU
December 4, 2000
HEADLINE: Communists call for Putin's resignation

MOSCOW, DEC. 3. The Russian Communist leader, Mr. Gennady Zyuganov, 
has accused the President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, of failing to deliver 
on his election promises and called for "irreconcilable opposition" 
to his regime.

Speaking at the opening of a Communist Party congress in Moscow, Mr. 
Zyuganov called for the resignation of Mr. Putin's Government, which 
he said, had blindly followed economic reforms prescribed by the 
International Monetary Fund.  The Communist leader said the party was 
forming a shadow government that would suggest alternative policies 
in all spheres of life, especially economics.

"The party remains a responsible and irreconcilable opposition," Mr. 
Zyuganov said.

Interestingly, Mr. Putin sent a congratulatory message to the 
Communists' congress, expressing the hope that the party "will firmly 
adhere to the principles of constructive dialogue and reasonable 
compromise in its work.

"I believe that national interests, stability and civil peace in 
Russia will continue to be unconditional priorities for the Russian 
Communist Party," the message said.

Mr. Zyuganov said his party's top priority was establishing a 
"Soviet-type democracy" and building a socialist society in Russia. 
"Socialism is the modern form of Russian patriotism," he said.

He said the party had more than 500,000 members and was steadily 
increasing its ranks.

The Communist Party is the biggest single party in Russia's lower 
House of Parliament, though it lost many seats during last December's 
elections.   *

Putin got Zyuganov's number: "national interests, stability and civil peace."

*   The Independent (London)
September 11, 2000, Monday
SECTION: FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 10
HEADLINE: MILLION PEOPLE 'INVENTED' FOR RUSSIAN ELECTION
BYLINE: Helen Womack In Moscow

BALLOT PAPERS were burnt, voters bullied and entire electorates 
invented in large-scale fraud perpetrated during Russia's 
presidential election in March, The Moscow Times newspaper has 
claimed.  In its weekend edition, the respected English-language 
daily said its journalists had gathered enough evidence to question 
the legitimacy of the vote that brought Vladimir Putin, an obscure 
former KGB agent, to the pinnacle of power.

The defeated Communist Party candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, complained 
at the time that he had been robbed of the chance to go into a second 
round against Mr Putin.  And observers from the Organisation for 
Security and Cooperation in Europe, while finding the elections on 
the whole "democratic and a step forward for Russia", spoke of 
abuses.  However, the newspaper's inquiry, carried out over the last 
six months, was the most far-reaching and hard-hitt

[L-I] Program, Organization, Conjuncture

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Effacing distinctions in a manner which preserves the 
>*revolutionary* nature of the
>organisation entails submerging pre-existing differences of outlook, 
>social origin,
>location within the division of labour etc, within an *agreed 
>programme* under the
>sign of an *agreed theorisation of the conjuncture*. I see no reason 
>to suppose, to
>judge from her other writings, that such a process of assimilation into a
>revolutionary organisation/process, forms any part of Yoshie's 
>agenda, private or
>public.
>
>Mark

A revolutionary organization with a clear program has yet to come 
into being in my corner of the planet.  What of yours?  In the 
absence of a revolutionary party active within a mass movement, into 
what should one assimilate?  We have to build it, first of all.

Now, why don't you lay out your analysis of the present conjuncture, 
now that you are here?  That should be a good point of departure.

Yoshie

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[L-I] Re: my participation on L-I

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Finally, if L-I is to continue at all (I see little point in this 
>List at present)
>it ought to do what it was set up to do, ie, debate revolutionary theory.

Fire away.

Yoshie

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Re: [L-I] On Centrism Today.

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>  >It is entirely possible, nay necessary, to learn from centrists, especially
>>like the POUM, but does Louis Proyect really want to stay in that mish-mash
>>of political confusion? Or is it just an emotional response to their bravery
>  >and general anti-Stalinist approach to life. Explain yourself comrade.
>
>  >from a self-declared and unashamed centrist, but one who desperately wants
>  >to break out of this morass -
>  >- Steve Myers.
>
>I will tell you the same thing that I told Yoshie Furuhashi on the Marxism
>list. I like what you call the mish-mash, but I prefer to call it a swamp.
>All sorts of lovely, green things grown in the swamp. Have you ever seen an
>orchid? Or an Snowy Egret stretching her wings? Or bearded oaks? Or
>magnolias? It's enough to make a grown man cry.
>
>Louis Proyect

*   It is only natural to expect that for a Social-Democrat whose 
conception of the political struggle coincides with the conception of 
the "economic struggle against the employers and the government", the 
"organisation of revolutionaries" will more or less coincide with the 
"organisation of workers".  This, in fact, is what actually happens; 
so that when we speak of organisation, we literally speak in 
different tongues.  I vividly recall, for example, a conversation I 
once had with a fairly consistent Economist, with whom I had not been 
previously acquainted.  We were discussing the pamphlet, Who Will 
Bring About the Political Revolution? and were soon of a mind that 
its principal defect was its ignoring of the question of 
organisation.  We had begun to assume full agreement between us; but, 
as the conversation proceeded, it became evident that we were talking 
of different things.  My interlocutor accused the author of ignoring 
strike funds, mutual benefit societies, etc., whereas I had in mind 
an organisation of revolutionaries as an essential factor in 
"bringing about" the political revolution.  As soon as the 
disagreement became clear, there was hardly, as I remember, a single 
question of principle upon which I was in agreement with the 
Economist!

What was the source of our disagreement?  It was the fact that on 
questions both of organisation and of politics the Economists are 
forever lapsing from Social-Democracy into trade-unionism.  The 
political struggle of Social-Democracy is far more extensive and 
complex than the economic struggle of the workers against the 
employers and the government.  Similarly (indeed for that reason), 
the organisation of the revolutionary Social-Democratic Party must 
inevitably be of a kind different from the organisation of the 
workers designed for this struggle.  The workers' organisation must 
in the first place be a trade union organisation; secondly, it must 
be as broad as possible; and thirdly, it must be as public as 
conditions will allow  On the other hand, the organisation of the 
revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make 
revolutionary activity their profession (for which reason I speak of 
the organisation of revolutionaries, meaning revolutionary 
Social-Democrats).  In view of this common characteristic of the 
members of such an organisation, all distinctions as between workers 
and intellectuals, not to speak of distinctions of trade and 
profession, in both categories, must be effaced

In countries where political liberty exists the distinction between a 
trade union and a political organisation is clear enough, as is the 
distinction between trade unions and Social-Democracy.  The relations 
between the latter and the former will naturally vary in each country 
according to historical, legal, and other conditions; they may be 
more or less close, complex, etc. (in our opinion they should be as 
close and as little complicated as possible); but there can be no 
question in free countries of the organisation of trade unions 
coinciding with the organisation of the Social-Democratic Party 
(Lenin, _What Is to be Done?_, at 
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/what-itd/ch04.htm#04_C> 
*

Lenin's criticism of Economism (socialism conflated with 
trade-unionism) still stands, and if the criticism of Economism is 
what Lou means by "centrism," a "swamp," etc., I cannot agree more. 
I like Lenin's remark on effacing "all distinctions as between 
workers and intellectuals, not to speak of distinctions of trade and 
profession" in "the organization of revolutionaries" as well. 
However, Lenin also made a distinction between an organization of 
revolutionaries & an organization of workers (& other political 
organizations, I presume -- for instance, women's organizations, 
black people's organizations, indigenous peoples' organizations, 
etc.), & he argued that the latter mu

Re: [L-I] On e-mail language (sorry, moderators!)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Nestor wrote:

>En relación a [L-I] Re: Red Rebel (re: Owen Jones),
>el 22 Dec 00, a las 12:47, Communards dijo:
>
>>  So if Owen would
>>  kindly say, that he agrees that the kind of colloquial speech he
>>used were not
>>  o.k. and if those being the beafeater of tower of correctness would kindly
>>  change the uniforms into normal streetware, we would be much further...
>
>Not being a "beefeater of the tower of correctness" myself (though yes a
>beefeater, being a regular Argie), I would like to stress that "normal
>streetware", in an environment where you do not see the "other
>one's" face, nor
>do you feel the emotion in a message, must be more careful than in everyday
>life. Many on this list, for example, do not have English as our mother
>language. It is very hard for most of us to recognize subtleties and hues of
>expression in everyday English talk, what not of e-mail writing. I would
>suggest the comrades to read the welcome letter again, a letter that has been
>drafted by Mark Jones and yours truly in order to establish some basic rules
>that make communication useful.
>
>Gutters are part of the streets, and sometimes normal streetware
>becomes normal
>gutterware. This is not the idea in L-I.  The idea is that the comrades post
>interesting, pungent, acid and corrosive ideas and informations. Not gutter
>language. We have a duty to, as some Latin American writer said of a deceased
>Nicaraguan poet, raise our language to the highest level, because this will be
>the level at which we shall draft our decrees and laws.
>
>This may sound ridiculous for many, but although the only material audience
>here are the hundred and so maniacs who still struggle for a revolutionary
>Leninist Marxism, in fact we are being observed by centuries of human history.
>Casual speaking yes, but we owe some respect to those centuries (the ones that
>have already passed by and the ones to come).
>
>Sorry, moderators. I know this is _your_ duty, not mine, but I felt I might be
>of help.

I, a co-moderator of L-I, endorse every word spoken by Nestor above.

While I suspended Owen from L-I in the interest of cooling down the
list's temperature, Owen is welcome to re-subscribe to the list,
_provided_ that he pays respect to centuries of class struggles to
which we owe our very presence & that his respect is reflected in the
language he uses.

As for cop-baiting, Staling-baiting, Hitler-baiting, etc., you all
know that they have no business appearing in any part of your post,
even in the midst of an impassioned debate.

Moreover, while L-I moderators have no way of monitoring offlist
notes you might send to one another, please avoid the kind of
language you cannot use on the list in offlist notes to L-I
subscribers as well.  Offlist harassment, provocation, etc. -- if
brought to the list's attention -- should result in suspension.

Yoshie Furuhashi

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Re: [L-I] For the Moderators' Attention

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Reply to [EMAIL PROTECTED], at [EMAIL PROTECTED], who wrote on the
>14/12/2000 11:40:
>
>>  (Also mentioned below is Steve Myers, a known cop and rapist who know
>>  "leads" Workers Fight, a tiny trot group and does alot of "work" with
>>  Russian trots. Peter Manson is a Weekly Worker writer, as is Ian Donavan.
>  > All three have publically defended Liddle from AFA)

Cop-baiting doesn't belong here.  This is the first warning to 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.

I'd like also to take this opportunity to remind L-I posters: while 
news, announcements, & forwarded messages are not unwelcome if there 
is an urgent need to spread the word, L-I was & is meant to be a 
space for _non-sectarian_ political discussion among Leninists. 
Please take your time & post messages _with a view toward initiating 
or expanding discussion_.  Thank you very much in anticipation.

Yoshie Furuhashi, co-moderator

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[L-I] Towards a Seductive Red & Green Synthesis (was Re: GlobalWarming?)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Eli Moskowitz posts:

>John Thornton: "I still don't see how you can consider the work of
>Michaels, Balling, Lindzen, and Idso relatively unbiased."
>
>Ross Gelbspan, "The Heat is On":
>The skeptics are virtually unanimous in accusing their mainstream
>scientific colleagues of exaggerating the magnitude of the climate
>problem in order to perpetuate their own government research funding.
>
>But that argument cuts both ways. While testifying in St. Paul, Pat
>Michaels revealed under oath that he had received more than $165,000
>in industry and private funding over the previous five years'
>funding he had never previously disclosed. Not only did Western
>Fuels fund both his publications, he disclosed, but it provided a
>$63,000 grant for his research. Another $49,000 came to Michaels
>from the German Coal Mining Association. A smaller grant of $15,000
>came from the Edison Electric Institute. Michaels also listed a
>grant of $40,000 from the western mining company Cyprus Minerals.
>Questioned by the assistant attorney general about that grant,
>Michaels responded, "You know, with all due respect, you're going to
>think I'm not telling the truth. I'm trying to remember directly
>what came out of the project. . . I'm sure we were looking at
>regional temperatures in some way."
>
>In fact, Cyprus Minerals was, at the time, the largest single funder
>of the virulently antienvironmentalist Wise Use movement. The
>biggest organizational member of that movement was a group called
>People for the West!, whose largest funder, with at least $100,000
>in donations, was Cyprus Minerals. According to the Clearinghouse in
>Environmental Advocacy and Research, as recently as 1995 Cyprus
>Minerals' director of governmental affairs was a member of the board
>of directors of People for the West!.

At this moment in history, I think leftists -- especially Marxists --
should focus on creative ways of linking Red & Green analyses &
activism, instead of wasting time upon futile "dialogues" with the
productivist leftists who would rather, ostrich-like, bury their
heads in the polluted sands.  Only those who live in leafy prosperous
neighborhoods with little exposure to toxic waste & no shortage of
water, food, fuel, etc. can believe industry-funded "dissident"
scientists (the word "dissident" is fitting, in that it evokes how
the word used to be used in the heyday of anticommunism).

1.  Debunking the myth of "sustainable capitalism."  Green
consumerism, pollution-credit trading, social-clause "fair trade,"
etc. are more problems than solutions.  While the world remains
imprisoned in the capitalist market, it continues to be driven by
M-C-M', and in the absence of socialism it is no wonder most nations
-- with a temporary exception of the rich social democratic ones that
have the power to out-source toxic production overseas -- can see no
alternative to cheap labor & lax environmental regulations in a
desperate attempt to export their way out of peripheral status.  The
debunking of the myth of "sustainable capitalism" should go together
with the historicizing of the "East Asian Miracle."  I don't mean to
deny the spectacular industrial & other developments of Japan, South
Korea, Taiwan, etc.; I mean that the conditions under which East
Asian nations developed their economic powers -- to say nothing of
the industrial development of Euro/American powers -- are
_historically specific_, so they cannot be replicated today.  History
does not repeat itself, not even as a farce, so the developmental
path of East Asian nations cannot serve as a "model" for today's poor
nations.  To drive this lesson home, we need to frame the debunking
of the myth of" sustainable capitalism" & the historicizing of the
"East Asian Miracle" in a theoretical attack on the Hegelian
dialectic & the liberal "History of Progress" (born in the nineteenth
century).  Both the Hegelian dialectic & the liberal "History of
Progress" -- best summarized by the Hegelian husk, as opposed to its
"raional kernel", in Marx's own words -- proclaim that "the country
that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less
developed, the image of its own future" (in the preface to the first
edition of _Capital_, Vol 1).  Not so!  Only by a racist &
Eurocentric denial of *coevalness* of all human beings at any given
time can we hold onto the idea that the so-called European is an
elder brother of the so-called non-European (for more on the denial
of coevalness, see Johannes Fabian, _Time and the Other: How
Anthropology Makes Its Object_, New York: Columbia UP, 1983; David
Spurr, _Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse In Journalism, Travel
Writing, And Imperial Administration_, Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993).

2.  It is a strategic error to tackle the question of global warming
-- or anything else for that matter -- in separation from actually
existing struggles.  It is futile & dangerous to attempt to
synthesize Red & Green analyses at a high level of abstraction, which
I belie

[L-I] Who Really Brought Down Milosevic?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*   New York Times Magazine  26 November 2000

[The full story is available at 
.] 


Who Really Brought Down Milosevic?

By the time of the October revolution [!] the most important battle 
-- for the hearts and minds of average Serbs -- had already been won 
by student activists operating in the countryside.

By ROGER COHEN

...American assistance to Otpor and the 18 parties that ultimately 
ousted Milosevic is still a highly sensitive subject. But Paul B. 
McCarthy, an official with the Washington-based National Endowment 
for Democracy, is ready to divulge some details. McCarthy sits in 
Belgrade's central Moskva Hotel, enjoying the satisfaction of being 
in a country that had long been off limits to him under Milosevic. 
When he and his colleagues first heard of Otpor, he says, "the 
Fascistic look of that flag with the fist scared some of us." But 
these feelings quickly changed.

For those Americans intent on bringing democracy to Serbia, the 
student movement offered several attractions. Its flat organization 
would frustrate the regime's attempts to pick a target to hit or 
compromise; its commitment to enduring arrests and even police 
violence tended to shame the long-squabbling Serbian opposition 
parties into uniting; it looked more effective in breaking fear than 
any other group; it had a clear agenda of ousting Milosevic and 
making Serbia a "normal" European state; and it had the means to sway 
parents while getting out the critical vote of young people.

"And so," McCarthy says, "from August 1999 the dollars started to 
flow to Otpor pretty significantly." Of the almost $3 million spent 
by his group in Serbia since September 1998, he says, "Otpor was 
certainly the largest recipient." The money went into Otpor accounts 
outside Serbia. At the same time, McCarthy held a series of meetings 
with the movement's leaders in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, 
and in Szeged and Budapest in Hungary. Homen, at 28 one of Otpor's 
senior members, was one of McCarthy's interlocutors. "We had a lot of 
financial help from Western nongovernmental organizations," Homen 
says. "And also some Western governmental organizations."

At a June meeting in Berlin, Homen heard Albright say, "We want to 
see Milosevic out of power, out of Serbia and in The Hague," the site 
of the international war crimes tribunal. The Otpor leader would also 
meet with William D. Montgomery, the former American ambassador to 
Croatia, in the American Embassy in Budapest. (Washington had by then 
severed diplomatic relations with Belgrade.) "Milosevic was personal 
for Madeleine Albright, a very high priority," says Montgomery, who 
was yanked out of Croatia in June to head a group of officials 
monitoring Serbia. "She wanted him gone, and Otpor was ready to stand 
up to the regime with a vigor and in a way that others were not. 
Seldom has so much fire, energy, enthusiasm, money -- everything -- 
gone into anything as into Serbia in the months before Milosevic 
went."

Just how much money backed this objective is not clear. The United 
States Agency for International Development says that $25 million was 
appropriated just this year. Several hundred thousand dollars were 
given directly to Otpor for "demonstration-support material, like 
T-shirts and stickers," says Donald L. Pressley, the assistant 
administrator. Otpor leaders intimate they also received a lot of 
covert aid -- a subject on which there is no comment in Washington.

At the International Republican Institute, another nongovernmental 
Washington group financed partly by A.I.D., an official named Daniel 
Calingaert says he met Otpor leaders "7 to 10 times" in Hungary and 
Montenegro, beginning in October 1999. Some of the $1.8 million the 
institute spent in Serbia in the last year was "provided direct to 
Otpor," he says. By this fall, Otpor was no ramshackle students' 
group; it was a well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars 
from the United States.

But other American help was as important as money. Calingaert's 
organization arranged for a seminar at the luxurious Budapest Hilton 
from March 31 to April 3. There a retired United States Army colonel, 
Robert Helvey, instructed more than 20 Otpor leaders in techniques of 
nonviolent resistance. This session appears to have been significant. 
It also suggests a link between the American-influenced opposition 
base in Budapest and the events in Vladicin Han.

It was Aca Radic, one of the students tortured in Vladicin Han, who 
founded the Otpor branch there. His motives were similar to Davorin 
Popovic's. "I just felt, enough of tolerance," he says. "Enough of 
patience." So this good-looking young man -- like Davorin, a student 
of physical education -- made his way up to Belgrade in December 
1999. At the Otpor office there, he was closely questioned and then 
given flyers, leaflets, sprays, posters, Otpor T-shirts and $

[L-I] War Against Civilians (Madison, Wisconsin / Thursday, Dec. 7)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>From: "Gregory Elich" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>Subject: Madison, Wisconsin event: War Against Civilians
>Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 07:10:53 -0500
>
>WAR AGAINST WOMEN AND OTHER CIVILIANS IN
>YUGOSLAVIA AND IRAQ
>
>A Photographic and Eyewitness Report
>
>Thursday, December 7
>7:00 PM
>Pres House
>731 State Street
>Madison, Wisconson
>
>by
>
>GREG ELICH
>Internationally known activist and writer on the war in Yugoslavia. Toured
>Yugoslavia in 1999 and Iraq recently in November 2000.
>
>GEOFF BERNE
>Internet commentator and Kosovo protest leader.
>
>Also with Susan Nossal,  member of U.S. Out Now and the WI Coordinating
>Council on Nicaragua; and Darlene Gakovich, member of the Dane County
>Peace Coalition, born and raised in Belgrade, Yugoslavia
>
>Sponsored by U.S. Out Now
>For more information, call Rae at 608-835-7501

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[L-I] Fwd: Book ANN: The New Rank and File - Lynd & Lynd - Cornell

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 17:11:03 -0500
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Sender: H-Net Labor History Discussion List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: Seth Wigderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject:  Book ANN: The New Rank and File - Lynd & Lynd - Cornell
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>Cornell University Press has just published a book that will interest
>H-Labor subscribers:The New Rank and File  edited by Staughton and
>Alice Lynd, two people who, as William Serrin said, "have devoted
>their lives to making America a better country."  Much has changed
>for workers in the years since their classic Rank and File: Personal
>Histories by Working-Class Organizers was first published in 1973.
>The New Rank and File presents interviews with working-class
>organizers of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s who face the challenges of
>a new economy with the same determination and creativity shown by
>those profiled in the earlier book. Reflecting the increasing
>globalization of labor practices--and problems--The New Rank and File
>contains oral histories of workers in Guatemala, Palestine,
>Nicaragua, Mexico, and Canada, as well as the United States.
>
>Andrea Fleck Clardy
>Special Projects Manager, Cornell University Press
>512 East State Street, Ithaca, NY 14850
>
>voice: 607/277-2338, ext. 230
>fax:607/277-2397
>
>Please visit our website at http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu


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[L-I] Fwd: Nezavisnost and the European Trade Union Confederation

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 12:18:41 -0500
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Nezavisnost and the European Trade Union Confederation
>
>The American SWP, the British SWP and presumably the Australian DSP are all
>feeling rapturous about the emergence of an "independent" trade union
>movement in Serbia called Nezavisnost. What they fail to mention is that
>this outfit is owned and controlled--lock, stock and barrel--by the
>European Trade Union Confederation, an umbrella group for the social
>democratic trade unions of Western Europe. Nezavisnost was "independent" of
>the old system in Yugoslavia as Solidarity was of the Polish government.
>Unlike Solidarity, however, Nezavisnost never seemed to have made much
>headway on its own. It appears to be a satellite of the same imperialist
>power structures that made Yugoslavia cry uncle. If you go to the ETUC
>website, you will find dozens of Nezavisnost press releases, including one
>that opposed demonstrations against NATO bombing by Serb factory workers.
>Beneath are some of the cheerleading for Nezavisnost from the comrades,
>followed by a Financial Times article illustrating the blatantly
>class-collaborationist character of ETUC.
>
>The Militant:
>"The majority of workers at Ikarbus, for example, have quit the old trade
>union, which was tied to the former Milosevic regime, and organized
>themselves into the metalworkers branch of Nezavisnost (Independence), the
>largest trade union federation not linked directly to the former ruling
>party. In the same period, Nezavisnost supporters told us, membership has
>jumped from 200,000 to as much as half a million."
>
>Socialist Worker:
>Cedanka Andric works for the Nezavisnost trade union confederation, which
>was independent from the old regime and faced repression. She explained how
>in areas where the opposition to Milosevic was at its strongest, such as
>the cities of Cacak and Novi Sad, almost all the old directors of major
>workplaces have been forced to resign. Control has not passed to the
>workers. New directors are in place. However, workers have had a taste of
>their power and many crisis boards have not been dismantled.
>
>
>
>Financial Times (London), May 12, 1995, Friday
>
>EU jobs plan from bosses and unions
>
>By ROBERT TAYLOR
>
>BRUSSELS
>
>Europe's main employers' associations and trade unions have reached
>agreement on a joint strategy of economic expansion to reduce mass
>unemployment in the European Union.
>
>In a confidential four-page draft declaration, the two sides of European
>industry call for 'sustained and job-creating growth'.
>
>The draft guidelines will be presented to the European Commission on Monday
>and will be discussed at the next meeting of the EU's finance ministers
>later this month.
>
>The document has been prepared by UNICE, the European employers'
>federation, CEEP, the European public employers' body, and the European
>Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). It is a contribution to the preparations
>of the EU's economic policy guidelines in the aftermath of last December's
>Essen EU heads of government conference which made reducing unemployment a
>priority.
>
>In recent years the employers and trade unions have made common cause on a
>number of issues. But the new document shows that both sides want to
>restore what many see as a loss of momentum from the white paper on growth,
>competitiveness and employment drawn up two years ago by the then president
>of the European Commission, Mr Jacques Delors.
>
>This document committed the EU to halving its unemployment by the year 2000
>and creating 5m new jobs by the end of the century. There are presently
>17.9m unemployed in the EU, according to Eurostat.
>
>The new joint employer/union document says that only 2 per cent, or 3m of
>the 11 per cent unemployed in the EU, will secure jobs in the present
>recovery. 'Reducing significantly the remaining 9 per cent will require
>both turning the recovery into a long lasting investment-led growth process
>and implementing more active and efficient labour market policies,' the
>paper says.
>
>Both sides have agreed, despite some union reservations, that the large
>budget deficits in many EU countries will have to be tackled as 'an
>essential' ingredient in any economic recovery. 'If deficits cannot be
>tackled now, when can they be?' asks the document. 'This is essential to
>preserve the basic social functions of modern states, and to regain the
>room for manoeuvre which has often been lost as a result of high public
>debt burdens.'
>
>Louis Proyect
>Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

At 7:36 PM +0100 10/31/00, Johannes Schneider wrote:
>From: "Johannes Schneider" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Nezavisnost and the European Trade Union Confederation
>Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 19:36:59 +0100
>
>Louis Proyect quoted:
>  > The Militant:
>>  "The majority of workers at Ikarbus, for example, have quit the old trade
>>

[L-I] In Belgrade, Oil Jumped from 15 to 51 Dinars

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Sender: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>IN BELGRADE, OIL JUMPED FROM 15 TO 51 DINARS
>
>"Democracy" will not fill all pockets
>
>In Belgrade, the price of one liter of oil had jumped from 15 to 51 dinars,
>price of bread from 6 to 14 and of sugar from 6 to 45. "Democratic prices",
>mock the consumers, already disappointed. In Kragujevac, trade unionists of
>Zastava are beaten and persecuted. At the same time, the Western financial
>press celebrates "good business in sight." And finally, one US senator
>already threatens Kostunica that NATO will expand to Slovenia. What are the
>connections between these four facts?
>
>Michel Collon
>
>
>
>Our Western media do not speak about Yugoslavia anymore. Still, important
>things are happening there. And revealing...
>
>Before, the government gave subsidizes for the production of basic food
>products. So farmers and merchants still had enough gain, but consumers
>could buy in spite of embargo. Nobody was dying of hunger.
>
>But the DOS opposition had announced, in its "G 17 plus" program, that "the
>new government will immediately suspend all the subsidies, with no regret
>or hesitation, because it will be difficult to apply this measure later".
>Indeed, it didn't take them long at all!
>
>Los Angeles Times of Oct. 15 writes: "When Kostunica supporters forced out
>most managers in state-owned shops and factories and put their own people
>in charge, that system of controls collapsed and prices immediately shot
>up. New directors are moving quickly to make their plants more profitable."
>Problem: consumers are dissatisfied and elections are in two months. So,
>director of G 17, Mladjan Dinkic, is accusing... the Serbian government,
>still run by SPS socialists, of "wanting to create chaos." But this
>argument can’t hold water: the new government is not functioning
>precisely because of the chaos created by DOS, its street-violence and the
>"crisis committees" which forcibly took over the control of all institutions.
>
>We will be able to export to Yugoslavia
>
>Therefore we see already that the "prosperity" announced in election
>promises will not fill all pockets. But whose will it fill? This is
>answered in the Italian financial supplement of International Herald
>Tribune of Oct. 10 (Italy is Yugoslav economic partner No. 2):
>
>"Perspectives seem good and Italian export goods - shoes, textile, food
>products will be the first to profit from the occasion. But privatization
>in Yugoslavia might also attract the interest of foreign investors. Lot of
>public sectors - including energy and airports - can get licenses soon and
>their re-structuring might open space for new foreign capital.
>
>What does it mean to "open space"? On the spot, at the moment of putsch, a
>friend of mine, Radmila, warned me: "Actually, our electricity worked
>really well. Foreign companies would want to put its hands on it. But to
>invest, they would demand substantial profits, which means huge rate
>increases. People do not understand that this G17 program will ruin them!"
>
>About the export of Italian shoes...Having forgotten my moccasin's back
>home, I had to buy a new pair in Belgrade: 1,100 dinars. One third the cost
>of the Italian shoes I usually buy. Maybe somewhat less fashionable, but
>comfortable and well built.
>
>What will happen under the new regime? With their financial power, western
>multinationals will take the control over Yugoslav factories, closing a big
>part of them, and Western products will flood over the local market. Europe
>would be able to get rid of its food-stocks, at unbeatable prices, because
>of European Union subsidies (so there! in this case, it's good to
>subsidize, isn't it?). "Mad cows" and other genetically altered
>food-products can feed the Serbs then, they're too numerous anyway, right?
>But West will throw in some aid, they say..."Aid"? Germany wants absolutely
>to re-open the Danube, so it will provide funds. Gifts? No, loans. To keep
>Yugoslavia "cooperative" while extorting payments like numerous other
>countries forced by spiral of debts to always grant greater concessions. In
>short, Yugoslavia will pay for the bombing damages! Scandalous.
>
>And what will this cleaned Danube serve for? First of all, to flood the
>country with German merchandise, which will eliminate local products from
>the market.
>
>In short, instead of promised prosperity, one New York Times editorial
>(Oct. 15) predicts that "at worst Yugoslavia's economy could follow
>Russia's path, to corruption and decline".
>
>Why are syndicate activists beaten?
>
>In Kragujevac, car factory Zastava trade unionists have been kidnapped and
>beaten by ex-opposition gangs. People responsible for truck department were
>forced to resign. The progressive Italian daily Il Manifesto (which rather
>supported Kostunica) was appalled:
>
>"Union members have been as independent from Milosevic as from the
>opposition. They relayed humanitarian operations of Italian unio

[L-I] Moments of Shocked Silence About Biotech

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 23:49:58 -0700
>From: MichaelP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (by way of Connie Fogal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
>Subject: Moments of Shocked Silence About Biotech
>
>http://iisd.ca/pcdf/meadows/trinity.html
>
>Donella Meadows' The Global Citizen*, March 16, 2000
>* A bi-weekly column by Donella H. Meadows, director of the
>Sustainability Institute and an adjunct professor of environmental
>studies at Dartmouth College.
>
>Moments of Shocked Silence About Biotech
>
>Biotech stocks plummeted this week as President Clinton and British Prime
>Minister Tony Blair requested that companies make their data on the human
>genome public.
>
>Private firms are racing madly to read and patent the genetic code that
>makes you you and me me. They are trying to beat publicly funded labs,
>which are required as a condition of their grants to publish the gene
>sequences they unravel. One company, Celera Genomics, is funded by drug
>companies with the understanding that the funders will see the code before
>anyone else does.
>
>If it strikes you as alarming that private investors can patent and keep
>secret and sell something that sits within every cell of your body, you
>ought to pay much closer attention to the new, jaw-dropping biotech
>industry. I have just spent several weeks with my students listening to
>biotech enthusiasts, critics, and a lot of folks in between. There were
>three particular moments I'd like to tell you about, all of them moments
>of stunned silence.
>
>The first came when we heard from an ecologist who sits on a USDA panel
>that approves the release of genetically engineered crop plants. Of the 71
>applications currently pending, one is for the implantation of the gene by
>which scorpions make their toxin. Splice that gene into a plant, and
>anything that nibbles on a leaf, from woodchucks to bugs, falls down dead.
>Of course people who eat the plant fall down dead too, so there must also
>be a package of genes to turn the scorpion gene on and off. Turn it on in
>the roots and leaves and stems, turn it off in the flower and fruit.
>
>But what happens to the poison, the students asked, when roots or leaves
>decompose in the soil? What happens if the turn-off gene doesn't work
>infallibly? Would we have to check every fruit or grain for traces of
>scorpion poison?
>
>Don't know, said the ecologist.
>
>Silence.
>
>The second moment came when a geneticist described a new rice with a
>pasted-in gene that allows the plant to make and store beta-carotene, the
>yellow pigment from which our bodies make vitamin A. Thousands of poor
>children in Asia, who eat little but rice, go blind or die for lack of
>vitamin A. The "golden rice" could solve that problem.
>
>A hand went up, and one of the students asked, "Why not just splice the
>beta-carotene gene into the child?"
>
>Silence. Finally another visiting expert said, "Within five years that
>could be possible. Fasten your seat belts."
>
>More silence. I guess everyone's mind was racing as mine was. I was
>picturing golden children. Then I thought, why not splice in the gene for
>chlorophyll while we're at it, and just send the kids out in the sun to
>photosynthesize their lunch? Gold-green children.
>
>Moment number three came when I showed the students a documentary called
>"The Day After Trinity." It's the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the
>developer of the atomic bomb, told through interviews with some of the
>great physicists who worked with him at Los Alamos during the Second World
>War.
>
>The cause was compelling: to stop Hitler. The science was thrilling. The
>effort was tremendous. The bomb was nearing completion when Hitler
>surrendered in May, 1945.
>
>That surrender did not cause any slowdown in the work at Los Alamos. There
>was too much excitement. It was nearly time for the first test, called
>Trinity, which took place at Alamagordo, New Mexico, on July 16. The
>scientists said that on that day, as they watched the first atom bomb
>explosion in history, their reaction was joyous. "It worked!"
>
>Less than a month later, when a similar bomb incinerated 100,000 people at
>Hiroshima, one scientist said his first thought was, "Thank goodness it
>wasn't a dud." His second thought was, "Oh my God, what have we done?"
>
>The film ends with Oppenheimer testifying in Washington two decades later.
>When asked by a senator how to contain the nuclear arms race, Oppenheimer
>answered, "It's 20 years too late. We should have done it the day after
>Trinity."
>
>I turned on the lights. The students just sat there. Didn't move. Didn't
>say a word. I couldn't either.
>
>Geneticists are already cloning sheep and cows and mice and pigs. They can
>pick out a trait from almost any creature and paste it into any other, and
>they are on the verge of being able to turn a gene on or off at will. We
>already plant gene-spliced crops on tens of millions of acres. We can
>order genes from catalogs. Within a few years we will be able to read the
>code for our very

[L-I] Stop Biopiracy in Mexico

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>From: "Mexico Solidarity Network" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Stop Biopiracy in Mexico
>Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 11:34:34 -0500
>
>This message forwarded as a service of the Mexico Solidarity Network
>Tel: 773-583-7728
>email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>"Stop Biopiracy in Mexico!"
>Indigenous Peoples' Organizations from Chiapas Demand Immediate Moratorium
>Mexican Government Says No to Bioprospecting Permits
>
>Over one year ago, eleven indigenous peoples' organizations under the
>umbrella of the Council of Traditional Indigenous Doctors and Midwives from
>Chiapas (Consejo de Medicos y Parteras Indigenas Tradicionales de Chiapas)
>demanded the suspension of the International Collaborative Biodiversity
>Group-Maya (ICBG-Maya) - a US government-funded project aimed at the
>bioprospecting of their medicinal plants and traditional knowledge. After
>one year of fruitless talks with the ICBG-Maya and Mexican authorities, the
>Council held a press conference on September 12, 2000 to again demand the
>termination of the project.
>
>The Council believes that indigenous people have been manipulated both by
>the Mexican authorities and the ICBG-Maya project leaders - the University
>of Georgia and ECOSUR in Chiapas. Along with the suspension of this
>particular project, the Council is demanding an immediate moratorium on ALL
>bioprospecting projects in Mexico. The moratorium should only be lifted
>once the indigenous people and Mexican society have had the opportunity to
>evaluate the impact of these projects, and once appropriate laws protecting
>genetic resources and traditional knowledge are in place. The Council's
>demands were supported by over 100 indigenous peoples', farmers' and other
>civil society organizations attending the seminar "Bioprospecting or
>Biopiracy?" held 14-15 September in Mexico City.
>
>In late September the Council learned that the Mexican Government has
>denied the ICBG-Maya permission to conduct bio-assays (that is, analysis of
>active compounds) on plants collected in Chiapas. For RAFI, the clear
>opposition of local indigenous groups to this project is ample reason for
>the research team to withdraw from the state of Chiapas. Now that the
>Mexican government has denied the ICBG permission to conduct bio-assays,
>the ICBG has even more reason to terminate the project. When will ICBG go
>home?
>
>After two years of intense local opposition, the ICBG Maya has failed to
>win the confidence of local indigenous groups or regulatory approval from
>the Mexican government. There is no consensus among the peoples of Chiapas
>that the Project should proceed. The ICBG-Maya, including the University of
>Georgia, ECOSUR and Molecular Nature should give immediate attention to an
>exit strategy and termination of the Project.
>
>
>*  *   *
>
>
>For additional background information on the Chiapas "Bioprospecting" ICBG
>Project, please see the following documents on RAFI's web site:
>http://www.rafi.org
>
>"Biopiracy Project in Chiapas, Mexico Denounced by Mayan Indigenous
>Groups," 1 December 1999.
>
>"Messages from the Chiapas 'Bioprospecting' Dispute," 22 December 1999.
>
>"Biopiracy - RAFI's Sixth Annual Update," RAFI Communique, May/June, 2000.
>
>For additional information contact:
>
>Silvia Ribeiro, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Julie Delahanty, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Pat Mooney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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[L-I] Nestor M. Gorojovsky on the alert declared at Punta Arenas, Chile

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

17 Oct 2000 14:15:45 -0300
LA NACION LINE - Science / Health: No extreme risk due to thinner ozone layer.

On the alert declared at Punta Arenas, Chile

Local experts in Ushuaia, denied that the situation is more serious 
than on previous years. "There is no alert in Ushuaia. The population 
has been informed on the levels of UV radiation, and they were 
recommended not to expose themselves to sunlight between 11 AM and 3 
PM, and to do so only with the adequate protection before and after 
that time," The voice of Dr. Mónica Calot, local representative for 
Tierra del Fuego for the Argentinian Dermatological Association, 
sounds serene and convincing. Her version of facts does not coincide 
with the alarming information generated in Chile, according to which 
Health Authorities in the neighboring country have declared an 
"orange alert" (second most dangerous level in the scale) in the 
trans-Andean town of Punta Arenas. Chilean authorities indicated that 
only seven minutes of unprotected exposure to sunlight might cause 
severe burnings on the skin. "Also us in Ushuaia know that people who 
do not use sunlight shields (skin protective creams or lotions)or 
adequate clothing -which includes hats, added Dr. Calot- might suffer 
severe burnings, depending on the time of exposure and the kind of 
skin.  But we are not living through unexpected situations."

Sun as on the beach

Dr. Rosa Compagnucci, at the Atmospheric Sciences Department in the 
Faculty of Natural and Exact Sciences and researcher at the Conicet 
(Arg. national scientific research system), pointed out that "Every 
year, at this time, the same advice is issued, particularly in the 
South. There is no greater risk this year than preceding years." 
Although the experts admit that the so-called "ozone hole" began 
earlier than usual, and reached record size, "it has begun to be 
smaller than on October last year", said Licenciada Paula 
Vigliarollo, on a scholarship of the CADIC (Southern Center for 
Scientific Research, which depends on CoNICET).  Engineer Susana Díaz 
leads there the UV radiation and ozone Laboratory there. Lic. 
Vigliarollo, in absence of Eng. Díaz, commented to _La Nación_ that 
the situation in this town and in Punta Arenas are comparable, 
because they are very near.  Ushuaia, in fact, si further South. 
"According to research by Eng. Díaz", said Vigliarollo, "radiation 
levels observed here in the Summer are not higher than those 
registered at Northernmost latitudes, such as Buenos Aires and the 
Atlantic coast, for example." Gabriela Navarra Copyright =A9 2000 La 
Naci=F3n | Todos los derechos reservados

*My comments: most probably, there is zero risk for the health of 
people living in the South. But, remember, animals (plankton, e.g.) 
tend to shun scarves and hats. On the other side, the actually 
alarming sign is not that there might be a rise in skin cancer 
incidence (which is quite unlikely, basically because I can´t imagine 
anyone basking in the Sun in the Magellan Strait region, at least not 
in Spring nor, may I add, in Summer), but the idea that the levels of 
radiation on the surface of the Earth at the 55th parallel are now 
equivalent to those at the 35th! This is very serious indeed, for 
example because most heat transmitted to the oceans and the 
atmosphere comes from solar radiation on the surface of the planet. 
If the balance of solar radiation is drastically modified, then we 
must expect equally drastic and dramatic change in weather!

How can a scientist miss THIS side of the problem, will remain a secret to me.

Néstor M. Gorojovsky

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[L-I] Change in the L-I Moderation Team

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On behalf of my fellow moderators, I, Yoshie Furuhashi, hereby 
announce the change in the composition of the Leninist-International 
moderation team.  Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky has been the guiding 
spirit of this list, always helping participants to clarify our 
respective political positions, teaching us to shun both sectarianism 
and opportunism.  Nestor, however, must now leave the moderation 
team, in order to concentrate his time & energy on urgent political 
work in Argentina which requires his undivided attention.  In place 
of Nestor, Mine Aysen Doyran has joined the team, bringing to the 
list her boundless energy, deep concern for the state of oppressed 
peoples, unshakable commitment to class struggles and 
anti-imperialism -- all the qualities necessary in a moderator who 
replaces Nestor if Leninist-International is to live up to its name, 
as it has under Nestor as a co-moderator.

With Nestor resigning the moderation team & Mine taking his place, 
now the moderation team consists of Macdonald Stainsby; Johannes 
Schneider; Mine Aysen Doyran; and Yoshie Furuhashi.  The principles 
that govern discussion on this list, however, remain the same.  Allow 
me to re-post the gist of the welcome letter here:

*   This is an open, militant, non-sectarian mailing list.  Its 
political orientation is Marxist and its inspiration is the life, 
work and writings of V I Lenin.

The List has subscribers in all continents and more than thirty 
countries.  Contributions in languages other than English are very 
welcome, though we are not in a condition to provide a translation 
service.  Listers hail from all political affiliations on the Left, 
and from none.

The List provides them with a platform for the exchange of news, 
background analysis, and for theoretical discussion and debate.  You 
don't have to be  a university academic to contribute to L-I, but you 
don't have to be a manual worker or a heterosexual male either.  What 
you do have to do is be tolerant of alternative viewpoints, respect 
the normal standards of reasoned debate, avoid flaming and pointless 
repetition, and try to make your contributions concise, thoughtful, 
relevant and interesting.

The moderators' policies try to foster these attitudes, and to 
provide a clear field for debate.  Strong argument is promoted, but 
ill-willed chicanery or lengthy, repetitive postings on issues of 
little or no interest meet fast unsubbing.

There are no limits on the number of postings, but if you feel the 
need to post more than three times a day it's probably because you 
should have spent more time preparing your contribution to cover all 
the bases better.

There is no limit on the length of contributions (some people have 
even posted whole books) but the Mailman software will not accept 
postings bigger than 40kb. If your posting is more than 40kb, break 
it into several smaller pieces.  And please remember that many 
Listers hail from non-western countries and sometimes suffer from 
poor, slow and expensive connections.  The list is particularly 
interested in keeping these listers on its ranks.

Moderators   *

Please follow the guidelines described above, and help this new 
moderation team make Leninist-International the best of the Marxist 
discussion fora.

Yoshie Furuhashi, co-moderator

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[L-I] Virtual Book Seminar on MARX'S ECOLOGY

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 13:59:48 -0600 (MDT)
>From: Martha Gimenez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
>socy dept faculty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>Sociology Graduate Students <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Virtual Book Seminar on MARX'S ECOLOGY
>Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>PSN,  Progressive Sociologists Network (http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/)
>and Monthly Review Press are pleased to announce a virtual seminar on:
>
>Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature by John Bellamy Foster
>that will run from November 11-18, 2000
>
>To participate, please send an empty message to:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>For more information on "Marx's Ecology," or how to order, please visit:
>http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/seminars/marx-ecology
>
>Richard Levins on Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature:
>"In the best tradition of Marxist scholarship, John Bellamy Foster uses the
>history of ideas not as a courtesy to the past but as an integral part of
>current issues. He demonstrates the centrality of ecology for a materialist
>conception of history, and of historical materialism for an 
>ecological movement."
>
>Progress requires the conquest of nature. Or does it?
>In "Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature" author John Bellamy 
>Foster overturns
>conventional interpretations of Marx and in the process outlines a 
>more rational
>approach to the current environmental crisis.
>
>Marx it is often assumed, cared only about industrial growth and the 
>development
>of economic forces. In "Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature," John Bellamy
>Foster examines Marx's neglected writings on capitalist agriculture and soil
>ecology, philosophical naturalism and evolutionary theory. He shows that Marx
>was deeply concerned with the changing human relationship to nature.
>
>"The argument of this book is based on a very simple premise: that in order to
>understand the origins of ecology, it is necessary to comprehend the new views
>of nature that arose with the development of of materialism and 
>science from the
>seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Moreover, rather than simply
>picturing materialism and science as the enemies of earlier and supposedly
>preferable conceptions of nature, as is common in contemporary green 
>theory, the
>emphasis here is on how the development of both materialism and science
>promoted-indeed made possible-ecological ways of thinking...
>
>Although there is a long history of denouncing Marx for a lack of ecological
>concern, it is now abundantly clear, after decades of debate, that 
>this view does
>not at all fit with the evidence. On the contrary, as the Italian geographer
>Massimo Quaini has observed, 'Marx ... denounced the spoilation of 
>nature before
>a modern bourgeois ecological conscience was born.' From the start, 
>Marx's notion
>of the alienation of human labor was connected to an understanding of the
>alienation of human beings from nature. It was this twofold alienation which,
>above all, needed to be explained historically."
>
>--From the Introduction to "Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature"
>
>John Bellamy Foster  is professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and
>is co-editor of the journals Monthly Review and Organization and Environment.
>He is the author of The Vulnerable Planet (1999, 2nd Ed.) and 
>co-editor of Hungry
>for Profit (2000), Capitalism and the Information Age (1998), and In 
>Defense of
>History (1996).


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[L-I] Gramsci, Terror, & Thermidor (was Re: Gramsci Redux)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Leo Casey enlists Gramsci for Laclau & Mouffe:

>Secondly, when Gramsci invokes the Jacobin tradition in his discussions of
>the political party, this is not a simple adoption of the more extreme
>moments of the French Revolution, an incorporation of the politics of the
>"Reign of Terror." To the contrary, Gramsci is interested in a very
>particular aspect of the Jacobin tradition -- its organization of what he
>calls the national-popular will. That is, he is interested in how the
>Jacobins articulated a particular set of class interests as the expression of
>the national interest. He is arguing that only when a working class party can
>do the same will it be able to exercise hegemony and rule.

Gramsci (SPN: 115): "restoration becomes the first policy whereby 
social struggles find sufficiently elastic frameworks to allow the 
bourgeoisie to gain power without dramatic upheavals, without the 
French machinery of terror.  The old feudal classes are demoted from 
their dominant position to a 'governing' one, but are not eliminated, 
nor is there any attempt to liquidate them as an organic whole; 
instead of a class they become a 'caste' with specific cultural and 
psychological characteristics, but no longer with predominant 
economic functions.  Can this 'model' for the creation of the modern 
states be repeated in other conditions?"  [For more on Gramsci's 
thoughts on Jacobinism vs. Passive Revolution, see "Carl Cuneo's 
Notes on Gramsci's Concepts of Passive Revolution" at 
.]

Gramsci did _not_ think of the Jacobin Terror as senseless & 
excessive violence (though moments of excess certainly did exist 
during the period of Jacobinism).  He thought of Terror as the use of 
force against the Counter-Revolution.  Further, he suggests above 
that the absence of "dramatic upheavals...the French machinery of 
terror" in countries (including England, America, and other nations 
that underwent bourgeois "revolutions") other than France meant that 
modernization in them was regrettably initiated through "passive 
revolution," the policy of restoration in which the "old feudal 
classes are demoted from their dominant position to a 'governing' 
one, but are not eliminated, nor is there any attempt to liquidate 
them as an organic whole."  This failure to liquidate the old feudal 
classes as an organic whole (big landlords, etc., especially in the 
South) created economic, political, & cultural backwardness that laid 
the groundwork for fascism (itself a kind of "passive revolution") in 
Italy & elsewhere.  The same _failure to liquidate the slave owners_ 
in the American South at the moment of independence eventually 
necessitated the bloody Civil War in the mid-19th century (contrast 
this sorry dithering in the USA with the decisively more democratic 
French & Haitian Revolutions); and with the Counter-Revolution 
against Black Reconstruction (removal of the federal troops & 
reconciliation with ex-slave owners in the South), racial oppression 
& economic backwardness became perpetuated, only transformed into the 
form of share-cropping.

As for the Terror in France, excessive or otherwise, it dialectically 
emerged from the violent struggles waged by the sans-culottes, which 
were sublated (negated & incorporated at the same time) by the 
Jacobins:

*   Lecture 13

The French Revolution: The Radical Stage, 1792-1794

Inflamed by their poverty and hatred of wealth, the sans-culottes 
insisted that it was the duty of the government to guarantee them the 
right to existence.  Such a policy ran counter to the bourgeois 
aspirations of the National Assembly.  The sans-culottes demanded 
that the revolutionary government immediately increase wages, fix 
prices, end food shortages, punish hoarders and most important, deal 
with the existence of counter-revolutionaries.  In terms of social 
ideals the sans-culottes wanted laws to prevent extremes of both 
wealth and property.  Their vision was of a nation of small 
shopkeepers and small farmers.  They favored a democratic republic in 
which the voice of the common man could be heardIn other words, 
and this is important to grasp, the social and economic ideas of the 
sans-culottes were politicized by the Revolution itself.

On August 10, 1792, enraged Parisian men and women attacked the 
king's palace and killed several hundred Guards.  The result of this 
journee was the radicalization of the Revolution.  By September, 
Paris was in turmoil.  Fearing counter-revolution, the sans-culottes 
destroyed prisons because they believed they were secretly sheltering 
conspirators.  More than one thousand people were killed.  Street 
fights broke out everywhere and barricades were set up in various 
quarters of the city.  All this was done in order to consolidate the 
Revolution - to keep it moving forward.  On September 21st and 22nd, 
1792, the monarchy was officially abolished and a republic 

[L-I] Yugoslavs & Palestinians (was Re: Chomsky and Zinn on theOverthrow of Workers States)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > When Mr. Marx said "I at least am not a Marxist" he had in mind 
>those who see
> > the qwuotation of the proper texts as a sign of virtue, instead 
>of relying on
> > FACTS and ANALYSES of the current real world,  Thus thw writer avoids the
> > most obvious of facts: that the CHomsky who totally opposed  the 
>Vietnam war
> > (and realized the doves were false opponents) was a whole different Chomsky
> > from the one who justifies US intervention in case after case 
>today. (ALways
> > for humanitarian or democratic - and now even socialist - reasons!)
> >
> > The Chomsky of today apologies for Imperial rule.  That would be true, even
> > if he added appropriate quotations from texts, Marxist, Talmudic, or Hindu.
> > Only one thing defines one's relation to the world, and that thing is: what
> > one says and does in relation to the world.
> >
> > To quote a text: "previous philosphers have talked about the 
>world; the point
> > is to change it."  To quote another text: "Men can be distinguished from
> > animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They
> > themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon 
>as they begin
> > to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their
> > physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are
> > indirectly producing their actual material life."
> >
> > And similarly, poltiical actors define themselves by how they act to alter
> > the world - not by what they said thirty years ago, but what they 
>say and do
> > as regards the issues of the day.
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Jared
>
>This is particularly true when one is not in power, or even near the 
>prospect of
>gaining power. Thus the basis for ideological compromise is 
>nonexistence, because
>there is no deal to be made.  Power corrupts, no doubt, but to allow 
>corruption
>of spirit without the compensatory benefit of power is simply idiocy.
>
>Henry C.K. Liu

I agree with both Jared & Henry on the importance of facts & 
analyses, as well as of not making idiotic compromises.  I've been 
thinking, though, that facts & analyses alone, even irrefutably 
correct ones, have never persuaded many.  We have to think about how 
best to present our case, to whom, where, etc.; how to create bridges 
among different communities of activists; etc.  In Columbus, Ohio 
where I'm at, we have a very strong Arab-American community, and 
we've had good & militant demos here against Israeli and/or U.S. 
governments on issues such as Iraq & Palestine.  However, none of 
them has ever come out for anti-NATO protests & other activities with 
regard to Yugoslavia.  In other words, we have been quite 
unsuccessful at showing the connection between attacks on 
Palestinians & those on Yugoslavia.  (On the other hand, a few 
Serb-Americans have gotten somewhat politicized, and they have taken 
interest & participated in activities that were not explicitly about 
Yugoslavia -- though such Serb-Americans have been, to repeat, very 
few.)  I don't know if Jared & Henry have had the same difficulties. 
If so, I'd like Jared & Henry (and of course others, too) to discuss 
this question.

Yoshie


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[L-I] After the Autumn of the Patriarch: Part 3 (was Re: Milosevic out?)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky wrote:

>En relación a [PEN-L:2763] Re: Re: Milosevic out?,
>el 7 Oct 00, a las 11:16, [EMAIL PROTECTED] dijo:
>
> > At 6:05 AM +0800 7/10/00, Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky wrote:
> >
> > >In Belgrade we have had a rehearsal of the "out wih Ferdinand Marcos"
> > >play, where a good fraction of the petty bourgeoisie, with the
> > >company of diverse fractions of lower classes, seems to have tilted
> > >the balance in the Yugo armed forces against Milosevic. This is not a
> >
> > And so, the progressives in the Philippines should have supported
> > Marcos, because Washington had turned against him and Aquino had
> > become the preferred one?
> >
> > kj khoo
>
>Not my position (but I am not shunning the issue, please read the
>para after next).
>
>The only thing I said is that the situation in Belgrade resembled
>that of Manila, "technically" speaking, too much. And that this was
>still another proof that the whole "democratic" opposition in
>Yugoslavia was "democratic" in the sense we in Latin America sadly
>know too well: compliant with US imperialism. It is not necessary for
>the actors to be aware of the play they are working at. What's more,
>most of them realize that they have been used up and thrown away as a
>condom, but when they do, it is too late.
>
>As to the F. Marcos issue, I am no one to delve into the intricacies
>of Phillipino poltiics. I have some general ideas, however, and one
>of them is that if the USA media backs some political movement in a
>Third World country, this is ALWAYS to the detriment of the masses in
>that country. There IS an Empire, "imperialism" is not an abstract
>system of blind forces. There exist collective subjects at the core
>countries, the imperialist bourgeoisies, who have clear goals and
>need to have these goals fulfilled.

*   Global Economic Crisis, Neoliberal Solutions, and the Philippines
by Kim Scipes

Monthly Review 51.7

...Post-Marcos

But what has happened since the overthrow of the dictator? Marcos' 
successors -- Corazon Aquino (1986-1992), Fidel Ramos (1992-1998), 
and Joseph Estrada (1998-2004) -- have continued to follow an EOI 
[export-oriented industrialization] strategy. Aquino committed her 
government to repaying all foreign debts, including the ones that 
only benefited Marcos and/or his "cronies," and Ramos and Estrada 
have followed suit.

One Filipino researcher, Pedro Salgado, put the debt into perspective 
early in Aquino's administration. He pointed out that the 28.2 
billion dollar debt in 1987 was equal to about P564 billion, 4.4 
times the national budget (or 81 percent of the projected GNP for the 
entire year). He then goes on to say, "If a person were to drop a 
P100 bill into a pit every second, it will take 179 years to drop 
P564 billion worth of bills into the pit!"

Researchers have detailed how recent presidents have gone along with 
the World Bank and the IMF machinations in exchange for loans. This 
was true under Marcos, and it has remained true since. Why? I think 
Temario Rivera is correct when he suggests that there is a larger 
reason: the ability to obtain foreign loans, no matter how bad for 
the country, allows political "leaders" to ignore the key issue in 
the country -- political power based on land ownership. And, courtesy 
of the World Bank and the IMF, foreign loans have been available. 
Philippine national debt (which was 275 million dollars in 1962 and 
was approximately 27.2 billion dollars in 1986), was 35.5 billion 
dollars in 1993, and 45.5 billion dollars in 1997, according to data 
from the Central Bank of the Philippines.

At the same time, the shift from traditional agricultural exports to 
nontraditional, labor-intensive manufacturing exports, particularly 
in garments and electronics, has continued. By the early 1990s, over 
70 percent of total exports were in these nontraditional 
manufacturers. However, despite this shift (supposedly the key to 
Philippine economic development), the balance of trade worsened 
between 1987 and 1996. The trade balance in goods was -1.017 billion 
dollars in 1987, -8.160 billion dollars in November 1995, and -11.342 
billion dollars at the end of 1996. Note that these figures are all 
from before the crisis.

The GNP of the country has generally grown, albeit unevenly: it grew 
5.9 percent in 1987, 6.6 percent in 1988, 5.7 percent in 1989, and 
3.0 percent in 1990. It declined .05 percent in 1991. The GNP 
increased 1.56 percent in 1992, 2.02 percent in 1993, 5.1 percent in 
1994, 5.7 percent in 1995, 5.8 percent in 1996, and 5.2 percent in 
1997.

The neoliberal economic program has made things worse for the large 
majority of Filipinos. By November 1992, while evaluating President 
Ramos' first one hundred days in office, IBON Databank, a 
Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that focuses on the economy, 
estimated that the number of Filipinos living under the Filipino 
poverty line had increased from 70 percent to 75 percent, and noted 
t

[L-I] After the Autumn of the Patriarch: Part 2 (was Re: Milosevic out?)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky wrote:

>En relación a [PEN-L:2763] Re: Re: Milosevic out?,
>el 7 Oct 00, a las 11:16, [EMAIL PROTECTED] dijo:
>
> > At 6:05 AM +0800 7/10/00, Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky wrote:
> >
> > >In Belgrade we have had a rehearsal of the "out wih Ferdinand Marcos"
> > >play, where a good fraction of the petty bourgeoisie, with the
> > >company of diverse fractions of lower classes, seems to have tilted
> > >the balance in the Yugo armed forces against Milosevic. This is not a
> >
> > And so, the progressives in the Philippines should have supported
> > Marcos, because Washington had turned against him and Aquino had
> > become the preferred one?
> >
> > kj khoo
>
>Not my position (but I am not shunning the issue, please read the
>para after next).
>
>The only thing I said is that the situation in Belgrade resembled
>that of Manila, "technically" speaking, too much. And that this was
>still another proof that the whole "democratic" opposition in
>Yugoslavia was "democratic" in the sense we in Latin America sadly
>know too well: compliant with US imperialism. It is not necessary for
>the actors to be aware of the play they are working at. What's more,
>most of them realize that they have been used up and thrown away as a
>condom, but when they do, it is too late.
>
>As to the F. Marcos issue, I am no one to delve into the intricacies
>of Phillipino poltiics. I have some general ideas, however, and one
>of them is that if the USA media backs some political movement in a
>Third World country, this is ALWAYS to the detriment of the masses in
>that country. There IS an Empire, "imperialism" is not an abstract
>system of blind forces. There exist collective subjects at the core
>countries, the imperialist bourgeoisies, who have clear goals and
>need to have these goals fulfilled.

*   Global Economic Crisis, Neoliberal Solutions, and the Philippines
by Kim Scipes

Monthly Review 51.7

...Post-Marcos

But what has happened since the overthrow of the dictator? Marcos' 
successors -- Corazon Aquino (1986-1992), Fidel Ramos (1992-1998), 
and Joseph Estrada (1998-2004) -- have continued to follow an EOI 
[export-oriented industrialization] strategy. Aquino committed her 
government to repaying all foreign debts, including the ones that 
only benefited Marcos and/or his "cronies," and Ramos and Estrada 
have followed suit.

One Filipino researcher, Pedro Salgado, put the debt into perspective 
early in Aquino's administration. He pointed out that the 28.2 
billion dollar debt in 1987 was equal to about P564 billion, 4.4 
times the national budget (or 81 percent of the projected GNP for the 
entire year). He then goes on to say, "If a person were to drop a 
P100 bill into a pit every second, it will take 179 years to drop 
P564 billion worth of bills into the pit!"

Researchers have detailed how recent presidents have gone along with 
the World Bank and the IMF machinations in exchange for loans. This 
was true under Marcos, and it has remained true since. Why? I think 
Temario Rivera is correct when he suggests that there is a larger 
reason: the ability to obtain foreign loans, no matter how bad for 
the country, allows political "leaders" to ignore the key issue in 
the country -- political power based on land ownership. And, courtesy 
of the World Bank and the IMF, foreign loans have been available. 
Philippine national debt (which was 275 million dollars in 1962 and 
was approximately 27.2 billion dollars in 1986), was 35.5 billion 
dollars in 1993, and 45.5 billion dollars in 1997, according to data 
from the Central Bank of the Philippines.

At the same time, the shift from traditional agricultural exports to 
nontraditional, labor-intensive manufacturing exports, particularly 
in garments and electronics, has continued. By the early 1990s, over 
70 percent of total exports were in these nontraditional 
manufacturers. However, despite this shift (supposedly the key to 
Philippine economic development), the balance of trade worsened 
between 1987 and 1996. The trade balance in goods was -1.017 billion 
dollars in 1987, -8.160 billion dollars in November 1995, and -11.342 
billion dollars at the end of 1996. Note that these figures are all 
from before the crisis.

The GNP of the country has generally grown, albeit unevenly: it grew 
5.9 percent in 1987, 6.6 percent in 1988, 5.7 percent in 1989, and 
3.0 percent in 1990. It declined .05 percent in 1991. The GNP 
increased 1.56 percent in 1992, 2.02 percent in 1993, 5.1 percent in 
1994, 5.7 percent in 1995, 5.8 percent in 1996, and 5.2 percent in 
1997.

The neoliberal economic program has made things worse for the large 
majority of Filipinos. By November 1992, while evaluating President 
Ramos' first one hundred days in office, IBON Databank, a 
Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that focuses on the economy, 
estimated that the number of Filipinos living under the Filipino 
poverty line had increased from 70 percent to 75 percent, and noted 
t

[L-I] After the Autumn of the Patriarch: Part 2 (was Re: everything'sreally ok)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Those of you who don't subscribe to Brad de Long's list missed this:
>
>>A couple of years ago everyone seemed to agree that the 
>>international financial institutions needed major reform--even 
>>though half of critics (the Jeffrey Sachs-Joseph Stiglitz wing) 
>>believed the institutions were too scrooge-like, and the other half 
>>(the Ralph Nader-Wall Street Journal wing) believed the 
>>institutions were too generous and liberal. The IMF was forcing 
>>countries into deflationary policies that caused severe 
>>depressions, or the IMF's generosity had encouraged overlending and 
>>overproduction that had caused widespread crisis. But even though 
>>the directions of the proposed reforms were directly opposed, 
>>everyone seemed to agree that such major reforms were absolutely 
>>necessary: all agreed that, in the words of William Greider of the 
>>Nation, "the usual financial remedies [would] lead only to failure."
>>
>>Yet here we are. So what went right?
>>
>>What went right was that our global institutions did a much better 
>>job of handling the crises of the 1990s than the folk wisdom holds.
>
>How blissful it is to live in this best of all possible worlds.
>
>Doug

I missed this -- perhaps I should subscribe to Brad's list.  Brad's 
wrong to imply that we live in the "best of all possible worlds," and 
he's further wrong in minor details of the kind that Seth pointed out 
(we know these errors of his already, though).  It does, however, 
seem to me to be true that the recent direction of the Bretton Woods 
institutions has been an unholy synthesis (= an un-Hegelian synthesis 
of partial untruths, ignoring partial truths in implementation) 
between two reformist camps ("be nice to the poor, make micro-loans, 
remember the Grameen Banks, women & development, women in 
development, blah, blah, blah" & "no more money to corrupt dictators, 
crony capitalists, moral hazards, blah, blah, blah") in the endgame 
of the nation states on the periphery.  There have been few Left 
critiques of this unholy synthesis, aside from the libertarian duos 
of Henwood (critique of the idea of "new economy") & Heartfield 
(critique of post-modern "leftists" glosses on the idea of "new 
economy").

At 10:57 AM -0400 10/14/00, Patrick Bond wrote:
>From: "Patrick Bond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2000 10:56:59 +2
>Subject: RE: everything's really ok (nation-state)
>
> > From:  Peter van Heusden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > I hope not, but I fear you're right. Luckily, there are forces beyond
> > NGOs, church leaders, etc. in the current mix of international protest -
> > because any attempt to follow the Keynesian model of national capital *as
> > a solution* would merely reinforce the role of the NGOs, etc. as the moral
> > guardians of capitalism.
>
>*Solution*? No comrade, no one wants to stop there, be sure! The
>futility of *solving* capitalism's local and global overaccumulation
>crisis at the scale of the nation-state is where we in the marxian
>camp logically depart from the Keynesians. It's just that the
>nation-state is the most logical line of defense under current
>circumstances (given how badly arrayed the balance of forces are at
>the global scale). The nation-state is where most Transitional
>Demands are made. Isn't capital controls just such a demand?
>Likewise, isn't delinking from WTO rules a necessary if insufficient
>basis for setting up a more radical developmental project? Or
>alternatively do you want rich white South Africans to continue
>taking their apartheid wealth out of here? And international traders
>to undermine any attempt at economic planning?...

I sympathize with Pat Bond, but he's swimming against the current: 
the post-nationalist structure of feelings dominant in our epoch 
(_after_ the Autumn of the Patriarch), in which much of the 
Cosmopolitan Left (in the USA, the UK, Germany, etc.) has been 
ideologically de-linked from reality (see Kenneth MacKendrick).  To 
grasp the virtues of Transitional Demands, you need to have your feet 
planted on the planet earth.

Yoshie


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[L-I] Re: Kostunica gives away the store

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>CNN reports that Serbian television is telling the people that they will have
>to "admit" to the (lies) about atrocities at Srebrenica and Kosovo to be
>REALLY AND TRULY accepted into the International Community.  It would appear
>that Kostunica has called for a referndum on independence for Montenegro
>(independence means no Yugoslavia means all the many billions of Yugo
>property and frozen assets is gone and also means no Kosovo since UN
>resilution 1244 was signed between YUGO not Serbia and the Un.  He also
>apparently said he accepted the UN running Kosovo.
>
>In one day and given;' away the store.
>
>Now the debate we had over Chomsky's vioew (which is Kostunica's practice)
>will be had all over Yugoslaiva.  Meanwhile the KLA just got caught buying 5
>million worth of grenades in...Geneva, city of peace.
>
>Kostunica has called for dissolving the Serbian parliament cause it "aint
>democartic" (?)
>
>Jared

Both Chomsky and Kostunica are fools if they think that what the 
Serbs have to say about Kosovo, Srebrenica, etc. will change the 
West's Balkan policy one way or another.  Well, maybe it's only 
Chomsky that's foolish, in that Kostunica may have intended to do the 
"velvet divorce" with Kosovo & Montenegro all along, in hopes of 
currying favor with the West.  His remark on the parliament, once 
again, reminds us of a Yestsin.

Yoshie


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[L-I] Re: American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Building Protests in Support of The Palestinians-
>
>This forward is to the Action Alert page for the AAADC,, which is
>beginning to list the demonstrations being built around the United
>States. In addition, one should feel free to contact the mosques
>in your community, to find out if other protests are being planned that
>have not yet been added to this list.
>
>Hopefully Raph Nader will break his silence on foreign afffairs and will
>speak out against this new wave of US supported Israeli terrorism. The
>local Green Party should be pressured to mobilize their activists for
>these protests, also. As should all activist Left groups.
>
>Tony Abdo
>
>X-URL-Title: American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee
>
>http://www.adc.org/action/2000/02october2000.htm

Yesterday (Fri., Oct. 6), we had a demonstration in Columbus, Ohio 
against the Israeli massacre & repression of Palestinians.  The demo 
was organized by a local group Coalition for Palestine, and about 200 
people came.  The anger and frustration of diasporic Palestinians 
(against Israel, against the U.S. government, against the unjust 
compromise made by the Palestinian Authority, against the local 
police) boiled over, and the protest was very militant (the local 
news programs, however, gave only 5-10 seconds to the event).

Any news of protests elsewhere?

Yoshie


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[L-I] Help! (Need a Welcome Letter in Russian!)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 13:47:40 -0300
>Sender: Gorojovsky Nestor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: ngoro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>We need to have a version of our welcome letter and homepage information in
>Russian. Could the comrades at left.ru get in touch with any of the moderators
>in order to generate that version.
>
>Néstor M. Gorojovsky


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[L-I] Underdevelopment of Kosovo (was The Yugoslav Election)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Owen writes:

> > Nobody here has said any such thing.  Behind the discontent of
> > Albanians in Kosovo, there had been their poverty and
> > under-development.
>
>The reason Kosovo is impoverished and underdeveloped is because it was an
>oppressed nation. You fail to see the forest for the trees. In the post-war
>period, Kosovo suffered the lowest growth rate in Yugoslavia. Kosovar Serbs
>were in terms of per capita measurements a privileged nation compared to
>Albanians.

Not so simple.  Regional disparities were a great problem in 
Yugoslavia, the problem that cannot be reduced to a facile comparison 
between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, much less to the idea that the 
cause of the underdevelopment of Kosovo was the Serbs acting as an 
"oppressor nation."  Allow me to reproduce a post by Paul Phillips, 
Professor of Economics at University of Manitoba:

*   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:10:19 -0500
Subject: [PEN-L:21897] Re: Yugoslavia


...Yoshie's question about inequality breaks down to two issues: 
regional and gender though to some extent they are related.  The 
first general point is that, according to studies by an economist at 
York University (I can't remember his name at the moment and my 
copies of his paper on the subject are hidden in the mounds of 
shredded trees that line my office), Yugoslavia had one of the most 
equal distribution of incomes in the world, particularly 
intra-enterprise.  However, between enterprises the income 
distribution was much more unequal though I believe (if I remember 
correctly) it was still less unequal than in the USSR and other 
eastern bloc countries.  The real inequalities were between regions 
(i.e. republics) where the ratio of GDPs between top and bottom 
(Slovenia vs Kosovo) ranged up to 15 times.  However, this is 
somewhat misleading in that the areas such as Kosovo, Macedonia, 
southern Serbia including Montenegro and Bosnia had a much higher 
percentage of virtually peasant agriculture and a huge grey economy 
plus Kosovo in particular (Albanians) had a high percentage of "guest 
workers" in the more developed republics and in the north generally 
who remitted monies to their home families.  I.e. there was a 
structure not unlike the Sicilian families. Almost all the fruit and 
vegetable stands, pastry shops, and many of the bars in Slovenia, for 
instance, were owned and run by young Albanians who remitted profits 
to their families, mainly located in Kosovo.  Thus, measured GDP 
considerably understated the income and wealth in these areas and 
over estimated the disparities between republics.  In any case, these 
disparities all predated the market socialist period and narrowed 
during that period only to increase again when contractual socialism 
replaced market socialism.

However, the major problem with regional disparities was the move to 
"wither away the state" through decentralization to the republic 
level leaving the central government with little or no power to 
redistribute income or investment or indeed to implement any 
macroeconomic development policy.  The one remaining method was the 
Fund for the Faster Growth of the Less Developed Republics and 
Autonomous Provinces which was, essentially, a tax on Slovenia and 
Croatia, to make payments to the governments of the poorer republics 
and provinces.  What irked the Slovenes most was that the money was 
not being used for economic development but for conspicuous spending 
on cultural monuments.  For example, just before I first went there, 
Kosovo had used the money to build and enourmous, (and beautiful) 
library in Pristina largely devoted, I am told, to Albanian culture 
and literature.  At the same time, Kosovo was unable to invest in 
industrial capacity because it lacked skilled engineers, 
tradespeople, economists, technical skills, i.e. it could not absorb 
the available capital.  Yet at the same time, I was told by an 
economist at the University of Skopje that 80 % of the students at 
the University in Pristina were studying Albanian language, history 
and culture.  As a result, the level of unemployment of university 
grads was staggering.  These unemployed youths, mainly men of course, 
became the recruits for the independence movement.  Generally 
speaking again, the status of women also had a regional and 
rural/urban dimension.  In the cities in the developed republics, 
women's status was generally quite high and there was a high degree 
of gender equality in wages and employment opportunities.  The 
situation was very "European" although the participation rate of 
women, particularly in full-time work, was very high by European 
standards (I think it was around 80% in Slovenia in the late 80s). 
The situation in the south and, in particular in the Albanian Muslim 
areas, however, was very different. I was repeatedly told the story 
of a female Albanian factory worker who was elected to the workers' 
council in her 

Re: [L-I] Part Three: DHKC Document on Fascism

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Dear Steve:

>Well Mine, cao ni made translated directly  of course  is, as Hnery  wrote
>'fuck your mothetr'.  But actually the correct tranlsatoin  into English
>is "Fuck you', since  Enlish speakers  don't use the phrase 'fuck your
>mother'...So  I would say  you  have received  an icorrect translation,
>unless of course we are to  trust  word for word translations  as
>reliable. Sometimes this phrase can also be translated as 'fuck all' or
>'god-damnit'Chinese do not receive this phrase as 'fuck your mother'',
>they receive it as 'fuck you'...or 'fuck all', or 'damnit...'
>
>direct tranlsation   only confuses  things.

Look, my dear Steve, much as I love you, I just don't see any point 
in arguing over the translations of "fuck you" from Chinese to 
English.  I'd rather see you post your discussion of the current 
Chinese politics, economy, culture, etc.

And to everyone: when you reply, please reproduce _only_ the relevant 
portions of the post to which you reply.

Yoshie


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[L-I] Re: The Yugoslav Election

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Dear Owen:

>It is a complete abandonment of Marxism to suggest that two million
>Albanians staged an armed revolt for the hell of it.

Nobody here has said any such thing.  Behind the discontent of 
Albanians in Kosovo, there had been their poverty and 
under-development.  Albanian nationalist ideologues in Kosovo (be 
they the KLA or Rugova's Republic of Kosovo or previous generations 
of nationalists), however, have consistently advocated the course of 
action not in the interest of the Albanian masses.

The saddest irony is that, in the process of the fragmentation of 
Yugoslavia (which started _long_ before the revocation of autonomy 
for Kosovo), nationalists in the poorer regions, for instance 
Macedonians & Kosovo Albanians, ended up advocating the very 
political program that would only benefit the rich in the richer 
republics like Slovenia *at the expense* of the poor in the poor 
regions: "The expected alignment on economic grounds, however, did 
not materialize.  Slovenian and Croatian liberals were able to 
exploit fears of Greater Serbian chauvinism and woo southern 
liberals, who were partial to devolution and greater reliance on 
market mechanisms in the economy.  Thus, although economic interest 
had traditionally linked the Macedonians to Serbia's centralist 
program, at least in the postwar period, the Macedonians were, for 
primarily political reasons, drawn to Croatia's sideThe Croats 
and Slovenes transformed economic issues -- decentralization of 
economic decision making, dismantling of central planning, and 
curtailment of aid to unprofitable enterprises in the south -- into 
political issues -- opposition to Serbian hegemony and support of 
'liberalization'" (Sabrina P. Ramet, _Nationalism and Federalism in 
Yugoslavia, 1962-1991_, 2nd ed., Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana 
UP, 1992, , p. 17).

I strongly recommend to you Sabrina Ramet's book cited above.  This 
book shouldn't be difficult to find, but should you be unable to 
obtain it, write me offlist, and I'll make a copy to you.  It's a 
sober & scholarly book -- full of detailed information on politics 
and economy of Yugoslavia.

Yoshie


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[L-I] Re: The Yugoslav Election

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Dear Owen:

I'm glad that you say that the KLA doesn't receive your support. 
(Nobody on the Left now supports them, though, so that's neither here 
nor there.)

>No doubt she will pledge her support for the right of Irish national
>self-determination, as I myself staunchly do, regardless of the fact in two
>inter-imperialist wars, they received aid from German imperialism - and yes,
>that means the Nazis in WWII. No doubt she would have been a staunch
>supporter of the Yugoslav Partisans who led the Revolution there despite the
>fact they were provided with aid from British imperialism, both with arms
>and funds. But by such logic, these are all tools of imperialism, and since
>they have "prostituted" themselves to imperialism, we immediately replace
>the imperialists' 1 with a 0 and oppose the Irish national struggle and the
>leaders of the Yugoslav Revolution. Hey, Yoshie, the Soviet Union was
>actually allied and fought alongside British and American imperialism -
>thereby, death to the pro-imperialist Soviet Union!

I humbly submit that constant analogies to the WW2 context 
(explicitly, as in the paragraph above, or implicitly, in the use of 
such words as genocide, fascism, etc.) whenever the subject of 
Yugoslavia turns up on the Left (and in the mass media for that 
matter) obscure the current conjuncture.  We are *not* in the middle 
of an inter-imperialist war, are we?  If we had been, all sides of 
the Yugoslav civil wars would have behaved in a different fashion 
than they actually did, and so would we on the Left in rich nations.

Yoshie


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Re: [L-I] The Yugoslav Election

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Tony wrote:

>It is clear that the Yugoslav government of Milosevic has been backed
>into the same corner that the Sandinistas found themselves in,  in 1990.
>They called elections in the midst of a war with the United States.
>
>In addition, it appears that both leaderships misread their own
>populations dominant sentiment of being desirous above all else, of
>avoiding any continued military conflict with a vastly superior, US led
>force.  The elections were seen by the Yugoslav population, as an
>opportunity to try to bailout of being further bashed, in a conflict
>where victory would be impossible to achieve.It is as simple as
>that.
>
>Unfortunately, now we have to listen to the imperialist propaganda that
>will maintain that the vote was a 'free' outpouring of sentiment against
>those that spoke up for national independence and autonomy.  Like it
>could really be possible to achieve any true democracy  in a situation
>of a dominant power terrorizing a much smaller nation.
>
>Just like with the Nicaraguan
> elections, US money was pumped into the coffers of 'opposition'
>candidates. And the threat of a renewed, and enlarged war, more
>impoverishing yet than the previous bloodshed, was held over the heads
>of an entire nation.  This hallmark of a brutish, bullying
>super-power using its brute military power to terrorize, is now standard
>US policy throughout the world. Ask the Colombians, Palestinians,
>and the Iraqis.
>
>And thus closes this latest chapter, in a misguided Left effort to
>support something it called, 'self determination' in The Balkans. A
>truly ugly picture emerges of this reformist pseudo- reform 'socialism',
>allied with NGOs of dubious financing from imperialist coffers.
>Together, they prepped the way for imperialist intervention, without
>significant home opposition.  The intellectual leaders of this
>trend, were all busy analyzing the defects of the official enemy.
>
>An oppostion to further US state terrorism has to be built on the basis
>of directly confronting the current solid worker support for the US
>military.  It is a mistake to just go about our business in the
>imperialist countries, until maybe, just maybe, somewhere else outside
>our national boundaries, a strong enough Movement can be built to defeat
>militarily, all alone, our governments' armed forces.
>
>Activists must mobilize a vanguard current, that can build a movement
>that will initially be totally unpopular amongst our own national
>working classes.  The Green parties won't do it, the Social
>Democratic 'labor' parties won't do it, and quite frankly, the majority
>of the Anarchist and Communist parties won't do it either. Yet it
>must be done.  The world working class demands it of us.

I agree with you on the first five paragraphs, especially on the 
misguided Left effort to support something called 
"self-determination" when the Left can't distinguish reactionary from 
progressive nationalisms.  Also, I don't think the Left did a very 
good job clarifying the nature of internal Serbian "oppositions" 
(their programs, internal compositions, financial backings, etc.)

That said, the last two paragraphs sound like an embryonic proposal 
(I don't know if it's correct or viable).  Care to elaborate?

Yoshie


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Re: [L-I] The Yugoslav Election

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Though as far as I know at 9am central European time on 9.25th the results of
>the ,Y,yugoslav elections are not yet definite yo are certainly 
>right as far as
>your conclusions on what to do are concerned except however for one point: the
>defense of the right to national sdelfedetermination of all the oppressed
>nations (the Serbs oppressed by imperialism now, the Albanians oppressed up to
>the recent past by Serbia and now by NATO-imperialism  -although 
>they might not
>yet have fully grasped this reality)is a necessary part of 
>mobilizing the masses
>and the working class in particular both in the Balkans and the imperialist
>countries against the imperialists and their local collaborators. 
>When you keep
>on rejecting the right of the Albanians to selfdetermination (which has by the
>way nothing to do with claiming that a new Albanian state in today's 
>world would
>be a real solution to any of the plights of the Albanian masses) you will find
>yourself not so much in the camp of Milosevic and his henchemen but 
>- even worse
>- in the camp of his 'democratic' competitors, the 
>arch-Serb-chauvinist Kosunica
>in the first place. At least for the immediate future this would mean being in
>the imperialist camp. We should point to the fact that the democratic right of
>national selfdetermination while far from being sufficient to solve any of the
>peoples' real problems is in fact not even truelly accepted by imperialism and
>has to be fought for therefore against both the local oppressors as 
>the world's
>major oppressor imperialism.
>A.Holberg

_If_ an Albanian movement for self-determination worthy of the 
support of the masses of people in the world arose, we would know it 
by its becoming America's official enemy.  As of now, such a movement 
doesn't seem to exist.

Yoshie


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[L-I] new Yugo war?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 14:42:20 -0400
>To: lbo-talk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: new Yugo war?
>
>Business Week - September 25, 2000
>
>Why NATO Is Bracing for Another War in Yugoslavia
>
>Slobodan Milosevic is backed into the tightest corner he has seen in 
>years. The wily Yugoslav leader has presided over the disintegration 
>of his country, lost four wars, isolated his people internationally, 
>seen himself indicted as a war criminal, provoked last year's 
>devastating NATO bombings for his brutal repression in Kosovo, and 
>through it all, managed to survive. But now he faces a surprisingly 
>strong challenge in a presidential election scheduled for Sept. 24. 
>The opposition's Vojislav Kostunica, a 56-year-old lawyer and member 
>of parliament, leads Milosevic by 20 points in independent polls.
>
>Yet only a few optimists think Milosevic is on his way out. Instead, 
>most political observers see the election as a potentially dangerous 
>catalyst for a new Balkan crisis that could involve the U.S. and its 
>allies in another violent confrontation with the Serbs.
>
>Milosevic called the vote after ramming through constitutional 
>amendments in July. The new law allows him to run for reelection in 
>a direct vote rather than retire by 2001, as the old rules required. 
>But now, to win, it appears that Milosevic will have to commit 
>massive fraud. That could spark public protests in Serbia--the 
>larger of two republics remaining in the Yugoslav federation--and a 
>brutal crackdown on the opposition in response.
>
>''CRITICAL PERIOD.'' Just as bad, Milosevic may be tempted to 
>provoke a conflict with Montenegro, the tiny Yugoslav republic that 
>has defied Belgrade by introducing democratic reforms and opposing 
>Serbia's war in Kosovo. Civil strife inside Montenegro, where a 
>third of the population still backs Milosevic, or a skirmish on the 
>Serb-Montenegrin border could give Milosevic a reason to declare a 
>state of emergency and postpone the elections.
>
>The Montenegrins are bracing for a confrontation. Even if Milosevic 
>does not provoke an incident, Montenegro President Milo Djukanovic 
>has called on his citizens to boycott the election because 
>Milosevic's constitutional amendments diminish Montenegro's power in 
>the federation. ''We will not accept the results'' if Milosevic 
>wins, says Montenegrin Foreign Affairs Minister Branko Lukovac. ''We 
>will certainly enter the critical period of confronting Milosevic.'' 
>Lukovac fears Milosevic will order the army to seal Montenegro's 
>border to keep it from importing essential goods. If that happens, 
>Lukovac says, Montenegro's 12,000-strong police force--equipped with 
>armored personnel carriers, helicopters, and light weapons--will 
>fight. While they're no match in firepower, Djukanovic's forces may 
>have an edge in Montenegro's mountainous terrain.
>
>CORNERED. Such a conflict could easily spread into a broader Balkan 
>war, a worrying prospect for the U.S. A senior Clinton 
>Administration official says the U.S. and NATO allies have consulted 
>about possible responses to a Milosevic move. NATO has 40,000 troops 
>stationed in Kosovo. And the U.S. Navy is planning exercises in the 
>Adriatic Sea the weekend of Yugoslavia's election. ''The fear is 
>that Milosevic will move to strengthen his hand at home, in the 
>belief that he can do so because the U.S. is preoccupied with its 
>own elections,'' says Ivo H. Daalder, senior fellow at the Brookings 
>Institution.
>
>Because of his indictment in The Hague for war crimes, Milosevic has 
>few options but to hold on to power. He has told supporters that he 
>must win more than 50% of the vote on Sept. 24, so he can avoid a 
>run-off. It will be up to the Serbian people to decide whether or 
>not they accept the result.
>
>By Christopher Condon in Budapest, with bureau reports


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[L-I] Overtime Rises, Making Fatigue a Labor Issue

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

New York Times 17 September 2000

Overtime Rises, Making Fatigue a Labor Issue

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

In his last two and a half days of life, Brent Churchill slept a 
total of five hours. The rest of the time he was working.

Mr. Churchill, a lineman on call one stormy weekend for Central Maine 
Power, worked two back-to-back shifts on Friday, went to bed at 10:30 
p.m., was called back at 1 a.m. Saturday, caught a quick nap around 
dawn and went back to his job clambering up and down poles for almost 
24 hours straight. Taking a break for breakfast on Sunday morning, he 
got yet another call.

At about noon, he climbed a 30-foot pole, hooked on his safety straps 
and reached for a 7,200-volt cable without first putting on his 
insulating gloves. There was a flash, and Mr. Churchill was hanging 
motionless by his straps. His father, arriving before the 
ladder-truck did and thinking his son might still be alive, stood at 
the foot of the pole for more than an hour begging for somebody to 
bring his boy down.

The death of a 30-year-old lineman from remote Industry, Me., might 
have gone unnoticed beyond family, friends and the woman he had 
planned to marry in June, but for a coincidence: Mr. Churchill 
happened to die at a time of heightened public concern about the 
expanding workweek - a time, in fact, when the Maine legislature had 
been debating whether to cap the amount of mandatory overtime allowed 
in the state.

The bill was not exactly a clarion call for worker ease, placing the 
overtime limit at 96 hours within any three-week period. The governor 
had already vetoed two versions, and there had not been enough votes 
in the Senate to override him. But the outcry over Mr. Churchill's 
death lent new momentum to efforts to cap overtime. The lawmakers 
compromised on a cap of 80 hours in any two-week period, and in May, 
Maine became the first state in the nation to limit the number of 
hours an employee can be required to work.

But it is not the first to recognize the problem of physical 
exhaustion on the job in the tightest labor market in almost half a 
century. Although Maine faced an especially stark catalyst in Mr. 
Churchill's case, elsewhere around the nation, in courthouses and 
state legislatures, on picket lines and at negotiating tables, a 
backlash is building against the new economy's voracious appetite for 
Americans' time.

West Virginia and Pennsylvania recently debated but deferred action 
on bills that would allow workers to refuse overtime without being 
punished. Washington State lawmakers considered a Maine-style 
overtime cap earlier this year but it died in committee.

New Jersey legislators had greater success with a narrower bill, 
voting in June to ban mandatory overtime in hospitals; the bill now 
awaits Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's signature. California started 
counting overtime after an eight-hour day, rather than a 40-hour 
week, though lawmakers there are now being bombarded with calls to 
exempt ski lodges, hospitals, construction sites and many other 
workplaces.

The expanding workweek has become a flashpoint for some unions, 
though not all. Studies show that most employees who qualify for 
overtime premiums still want the extra hours. This lack of consensus 
on whether the workweek is too long or too short is one reason most 
state efforts to cap overtime have faltered.

The labor groups now taking a stand on the workweek tend to be those 
representing either workers with safety issues, like pilots and 
firefighters, or large numbers of women, who often feel the work-time 
pinch more acutely.

A strike by telephone workers against Verizon this summer was 
motivated in large part by overtime issues; women in the company's 
calling centers complained that they could not break free from work 
early enough to pick up their children or make dinner for their 
families. Firefighters in Connecticut recently challenged the 
constitutionality of mandatory overtime, arguing unsuccessfully that 
it violated the 13th Amendment ban on slavery. Nurses in several New 
York hospitals now sign protest statements when they start their 
shifts, creating a paper trail of their mandatory workloads.

Congress has also been grappling with the issue of the expanding 
workweek, though much of its effort is aimed not at workers but at 
helping employers who seek to reduce the associated labor costs. 
Several attachments to the pending minimum-wage legislation would 
disqualify technology workers, sales personnel and others from 
receiving overtime pay. Another provision would allow businesses to 
reduce overtime payments to virtually all qualifying employees.

Labor's fight for relief from onerous working hours dates back more 
than a century - and its victories have been hard won. From 1886, 
when a potent eight-hour movement exploded in street violence in the 
Chicago Haymarket, it took 52 years for American society to agree on 
a 40-hour workweek with the passage of the Fair La

[L-I] The Mahogany King's Brief Reign (behind the Fiji Coup)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

New York Times 14 September 2000

The Mahogany King's Brief Reign

By JOSEPH KAHN

SUVA, Fiji - This South Pacific archipelago is best known for its 
fine-grained white beaches and cloudless vistas of cobalt sea. But a 
cockscomb range of steep-sided mountains divides the main island of 
Viti Levu, and nothing looks the same on the far side.

The rains come two days out of three in the southeast, dumping 10 
feet a year. Suva's hills have a rain-forest coat of green - bamboo, 
palm, cocoa, eucalyptus and, most temptingly and troubling for Fiji, 
more than a hundred thousand acres of high-grade mahogany, worth 
hundreds of millions of dollars.

A coup here a few months ago toppled the government. For a relatively 
bloodless political uprising in a small island nation of 830,000, the 
event attracted some attention. Many accounts told of how ethnic 
tension involving Fiji's natives, ethnic Melanesians, had once again 
exploded into a public confrontation with Indo-Fijians, who trace 
their roots to indentured laborers the British brought here from 
India a century ago, when both India and Fiji were crown colonies.

But behind the cries for ethnic solidarity and native Fijian 
supremacy was a struggle over land, money and mahogany, a competition 
that involved American and British as well as local business 
interests.

Like diamonds in Sierra Leone and oil in Nigeria, Fiji's mahogany 
helped prompt a struggle for political power, inflicting damage to 
the nation's economy and political system well in excess of the 
riches the commodity once promised.

Fiji's struggle began with two men, who each searched for a pot of 
gold and wound up stirring a cauldron of ethnic discontent.

Marshall W. Pettit, a Seattle-area real-estate developer drawn three 
years ago to Fiji by its forests rather than its resorts, said that 
he aspired to transform the way developing nations manage their 
forests - and make a tidy profit. He also plunged into Fijian 
politics to fight the former government's opposition to his plans, 
though there is no evidence he backed the coup.

Mr. Pettit did, however, have ties to the Fijian who led the revolt, 
an American-educated, bald-headed former government forest manager 
named George Speight. The two men had once worked together to shake 
up the local timber industry - and were so close that Fiji police are 
investigating whether Mr. Pettit paid bribes to Mr. Speight. Both men 
deny the allegations, saying the payments were for legitimate 
business expenses.

When Mr. Speight stormed the parliament building and overthrew the 
elected government last May, he carried not only an AK-47 rifle but 
his own blueprint for becoming Fiji's timber king.

"Some people used the mahogany issue to raise the emotions of 
landowners and as an excuse to topple the government," said Anup 
Kumar, who was ousted as minister of commerce in the coup. "They 
thought they could get rich from green gold."

Mr. Pettit, 57, is tall and silver- haired, with courtly manners and 
a tendency to talk in 15-minute spurts, like a salesman wary of 
letting a customer interrupt him. He has spent most of his career 
financing real estate projects in California, Texas and Washington 
State.

He says that it was a missionary impulse, more than money, that 
prompted him to search for timber investments abroad. He wanted to 
provide poor nations with the capital and the technology to make the 
most of their forests, reducing their reliance on multinational 
companies that do not have their best interests in mind.

"Our big companies tend to take the resources of developing countries 
without giving them any value," Mr. Pettit said in a breakfast 
interview near his Seattle home. "It's the last vestige of 
colonialism in my opinion."

The `Laboratory' Landowner Ire

Finds an Audience

Mr. Pettit said he had explored doing business in Russia and Africa. 
But when a group of Fijian landowners contacted him in 1996 through a 
mutual friend, he found what he called the perfect laboratory: a poor 
but seemingly stable nation with little foreign investment, a place 
where a small American businessman could make a big splash.

But as he weighed in, Mr. Pettit found that his prospective partners 
were drawing him deeply into a domestic struggle over land rights. 
The landowners wanted to buy out government leases on their ancestral 
lands, letting them harvest the timber and get rich turning it into 
veneer and furniture.

Nearly all the land in Fiji belongs to familial groups of indigenous, 
ethnic Melanesians, much as crown property in England belongs to the 
queen. Though land is often leased long-term for public and private 
uses, the holdings are a birthright of native Fijians, a situation 
that sets them apart even from multigeneration Indo-Fijians, who 
represent half the population and who dominate Fiji's commercial 
sector.

In the 1950's and 60's, the British colonial administration leased 
land to plant trees, including pine, w

[L-I] Re: Women & Industrialization (was Re: capitalist patriarchy)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Given that we all have limited time, I assume,  it
>might be much nicer to be informed in advance about what the issue is at
>stake.
>
>Mine

What motivated my original post is my dissatisfaction with a widely 
accepted narrative of labor history, which posits white male workers 
in rich nations as central protagonists.  To repeat what I said in my 
posts, a more accurate historical knowledge of women workers in the 
process of industrialization challenges a commonly accepted notion 
that "the working class used to be predominantly male [& white], and 
female [& colored] workers were brought in to keep male workers' 
wages down."  The working class [or employed sections of it] became 
predominantly male only in the course of industrial development & 
working-class struggles within it.  What were short-term achievements 
for the survival of working-class families -- "family wages" for men, 
"protective" legislations for women, etc. -- in the long run 
undermined the formation of solidaristic, not gender-hierarchic, 
working-class culture & movement.  I think this is an important 
issue, especially in an age when protectionist sentiments are on the 
rise in organized labor in rich nations (recall, for instance, 
American trade unions' hostile reaction to China's entry into the 
WTO).

Those who replied to me on various lists, however, may have other 
issues in their minds.  What is at stake in labor history depends 
upon your political persuasion.

Yoshie


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[L-I] Re: Women & Industrialization (was Re: capitalist patriarchy)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Jim Heartfield wrote:

>In message <v04210100b5e4154c9b46@[140.254.114.95]>, Yoshie Furuhashi
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> >Typical faces of industrial workers changed from female & colored to
> >male & white to female & colored.  The prevalence of the nuclear
> >family idealized by conservatives now -- male breadwinner, female
> >housewife, & biological children -- was merely a blip in history that
> >coincided with the post-WW2 economic boom (say, from the Korean War
> >to the Vietnam War & oil shock).
>
>Certainly the evidence in the UK appears to be that the family wage has
>been abolished, and the nuclear family itself is difficult to sustain in
>its absence. Having more or less campaigned for the abolition of the
>family for twenty years I ought to be celebrating, but the conditions
>under which families are under attack - which is to say the triumph of
>capitalism over organised labour - don't lend themselves to a positive
>outcome.
>
>In the first instance, women have been drawn into the labour market in
>equal numbers but on unequal terms (predominantly on part time pay). At
>the same time men have systematically lost high-paying jobs. High
>divorce rates indicate that marriage for life is pretty unsustainable
>when, as the pundits boast 'there is no job for life'. Not that there is
>necessarily anything wrong with a high divorce rate - except that single
>mothers are more often impoverished and unemployed.

Especially given that the virtual end of the family wage for many 
male workers was soon followed by the attacks on social programs for 
single mothers, there is no reason to simply celebrate our 
contemporary family conditions.  Writers such as Stephanie Coontz, 
Judith Stacey, etc., however, caution against nostalgia for the 
mid-twentieth-century heyday of the proverbial nuclear family 
(enabled by the _exceptional_ material & ideological conditions of 
the post-WW2 economic boom, the Cold War, & social democratic 
preemptive strike against socialism).  Coontz, for instance, writes 
in "Working-Class Families, 1870-1890," _American Families: A 
Multicultural Reader_, NY: Routledge, 1999:

*   Adopting domesticity [for the working-class] was in some 
ways, then, a defensive maneuver with long-run disadvantages [Yoshie: 
notice Coontz's subtle formulation here].  It was a response partly 
to the deterioration of working conditions for women, partly to the 
threat of industrialization to skilled craftsmen, and partly to the 
failure of middle-class women to address the special needs of women 
workers.  As [Martha] May [in "Bread Before Roses: American 
Workingmen, Labor Unions and the Family Wage," in Ruth Milkman, ed. 
_Women, Work and Protest_, Boston, 1985] points out, 'the family-wage 
ultimately...worked against the interests of working-class men, women 
and families, by accepting and deepening a sexual double standard in 
the labor market.'  The double standard allowed the state to 
forestall union demands by granting charity to women without 
'providers' and employers in order to hold down women's wages on the 
grounds that they worked for 'pin money.'  It also gave some women an 
incentive to act as strikebreakers or non-union workers.  Finally, 
the double standard closed off opportunities to explore alternative 
family and gender roles within the industrial working-class that 
might have strengthened working-class solidarity [a line of thinking 
suggested earlier by Alexandra Kollontai].  Indeed, by the early 
twentieth century,

Middle-class social reformers and activists came to embrace the 
family wage as a means of restoring social stability, while some 
employers recognized its possibilities as a means to control and 
divide labor.  At the same time, within the ranks of organized labor, 
the family wage increasingly became a defense of gender privilege. 
Defense of gender privilege, in turn, was closely connected to a 
craft exclusiveness that hampered male organizing as well as female 
[just as white privilege was]. [36]


[36]  May, 'Bread Before Roses,' pp. 7, 8; Elizabeth Jameson, 
'Imperfect Unions: Class and Gender in Cripple Creek, 1894-1904,' in 
Cantor and Laurie, _Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker_; Andrew Dawson, 
'The parameters of Class Consciousness: The Social Outlook of the 
Skilled Worker, 1890-1920,' in Hoerder, _American Labor and 
Immigration History_.   *

Organized labor to a certain extent has already learned this 
historical lesson -- hence its advocacy of the "living wage," not 
"family wage," I believe.  Also, from another direction, "civil 
unions," "gay marriages," and finally in the Netherlands the right of 
non-heterosexuals to enjoy the full benefits of marri

[L-I] Re: Women & Industrialization (was Re: capitalist patriarchy)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Michael Perelman wrote:
>Yoshie, I knew that a good many of the early workers in textiles were
>women, but mining, comes as a surprise.

*   ...For example, in Japan women's work in the coal mines was 
affected by recession after World War I, when more women became 
redundant than men. Protective legislation introduced after World War 
I left women working above ground. However, in 1939 these labour laws 
were set aside because of the intense demand for labour and women 
again worked underground. The prohibition of women's work in the 
mines was restored in 1947 but they continued to sift the coal until 
mechanization of this process in the 1960s. In this example the 
interplay of political, economic and cultural factors can be seen 
technology has an effect but within a specific social context 
(Mathias, 1993: pp. 101-105; Saso, 1990: pp. 25-26)

Mathias, Regina (1993), 'Female Labour in the Japanese Coal-mining 
Industry', in Janet Hunter (ed.), Japanese Women Working, London and 
New York, Routledge.

Saso, Mary (1990), Women in the Japanese Workplace, London, Hilary Shipman Ltd.

   *

Some, though not all, Japanese socialists (as well as women miners, 
of course) fought against the exclusion of women from underground 
mining.

Michael wrote:
>Were women miners common in Europe?
And Mine Aysen Doyran wrote:
>It may be true for Japan as it may be for other late capitalist
>developers. I don't think that Tsurimi's analysis applies to advanced
>capitalist countries though.

As a non-specialist in labor history, I have not been able to 
undertake an exhaustive study, but I believe women miners (and women 
industrial workers in general) were common in England & France before 
the rise of "protective" legislations.

*   3.3 The situation of miners and coal heavers at the end of 
the 18thcentury

The working conditions of the colliers in the 18th century

(All page numbers refer to Flinn/Stoker's "History of the British 
Coal Industry, Vol.2")...

... 3.3.2.2 Women in mines (p. 334/335)

There is evidence that like the men women mostly worked underground. 
They were active as bearers transporting the coal their husbands had 
cut. Working as a bearer was very hard and unhealthy. Later, even the 
owners of mines tried to abolish women's underground labour. They 
argued that these working-conditions transformed soft women into 
"beasts of burthen". In 1842 they abolished women's work in mines.

Women's work was harder than men'sCompared to the men, who worked 
ten hours daily, females had to work fifteen hours a day. They had to 
carry heavy baskets filled with coal and transport them to the 
surface on their backs. Therefore, they had to climb the stairs 
innumerable times (p. 88-92/115)

   *

*   ...[T]he campaign to regulate female and child labour in the 
coal mines...resulted in the 1842 Coal Mines Act, banning women and 
boys under ten from working underground 
 
*

*   ...Zola [1840-1902] also described [in Germinal] the 
brutalising effects of women and children being employed underground, 
to haul away the coal as the men dug it out. He was moved by the 
plight of pit ponies who lived permanently in the dark tunnels down 
the mine

...The impact of the novel

With 'Germinal', Zola succeeded in making the impact he had planned. 
He know that a dramatic novel would get polite society talking, where 
boring reports of distant strikes in newspapers were just ignored. 
Some critics were shocked at his brutish portrayal of the miners, and 
deplored their morals - they "deserved what they got". Others said it 
was an "old story" - things were no longer so bad. The novel was set 
in the 1860s. By the 1880s when it was written, socialism and strikes 
were a political force and had made some advances. Employing women 
down mines was forbidden in 1874, though children of 12 still worked 
a 12-hour day until the 1890s. Unions were legalised in 1884 
 
*

Beginning from 1919, the ILO advocated "protective" _& exclusionary_ 
policies such as "the prohibition of night work and certain 
industrial processes that could endanger women's health in respect of 
their role as mothers (work in salt or lead mines)" 
. 
"The difficulty of denouncing antiquated conventions has, however, 
posed problems for a number of ILO member countries, including 
Sweden. It has denounced only a few, where the consequences of 
continued ratification have been considered to be extremely serious 
from a practical point of view or as a matter of principle. For 
instance, Sweden denounced the convention prohibiting all underground 
work by women in mines (No. 45) when it became a serio

[L-I] Women & Industrialization (was Re: capitalist patriarchy)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Doug wrote:
>
>>Like I said yesterday, the relation between sex/gender oppression 
>>and capitalism is extremely complicated, with capitalism 
>>destabilizing received gender hierarchies as much as it thrives on 
>>them. The entry of women into waged labor profoundly transforms 
>>societies in the early phases of capitalist development. 
>>Recognizing this is one of the things that distinguishes a Marxist 
>>feminism from other kinds.
>
>Doug I agree and this is a step in the right direction but it is 
>still of the "add gender and stir" kind of recognizing.  Women were 
>present during all the transformations that occurred throughout 
>history.  All of these processes must be analyzed from a more 
>feminist perspective for deeper insights into the problems and 
>solutions.
>
>Diane

Feminist contributions to labor history tell us that the first wage 
laborers at the beginning of the "industrial revolution" in the most 
crucial industry were often predominantly female, not male, textile 
workers.  (Even mining was not the all male or predominantly male 
industry either.)  For instance, see E. Patricia Tsurumi, _Factory 
Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan_, Princeton: New 
Jersey: Princeton UP, 1990:

*   Begun initially as largely government enterprises that 
received government support and encouragement after they were in 
private hands, the machine silk-reeling and cotton-spinning 
industries of Meiji were the first in Japan to develop extensive 
factory production.  Their work forces, heavily female, formed a 
large proportion of the labor force during the first period of 
Japan's industrialization.  This pattern would remain long after the 
Meiji era had ended.

Although throughout the Meiji period some cotton-mill hands came from 
urban homes, the vast majority of the silk-reeling and 
cotton-spinning operatives were women and girls from a rural 
background.  During the first decade of the new era, daughters of 
debt-free and even well-to-do farming families went to work in the 
new silk mills, but thereafter the female workers in both silk and 
cotton plants tended to be from poor peasant families.  By the turn 
of the century these kojo [factory girls] came from some of the 
poorest tenant-farmer villages in the entire country.  The women and 
girls who became textile factory workers, including those from 
independent cultivator or prosperous farming homes, were no strangers 
to hard work.  They knew that many generations of country women had 
contributed to the well-being of their families by laboring both at 
home and away from home.  Like their mothers and grandmothers before 
them in pre-Meiji times, they had routinely seen female as well as 
male offspring of peasant families "going out to work" (dekasegi) in 
a place beyond commuting distance

During the Edo era (1600-1867), female offspring of peasant families 
were sent away to labor as dekasegi workers, usually in a local 
village or town.  This immediately reduced the number of mouths that 
had to be fed, and the girls might gain valuable skills and 
experience, eventually bringing in some remuneration.  The ones who 
remained at home were essential workers within the peasant family 
economy, producing and processing food and other items for the family 
subsistence, caring for the young and the incapacitated, and playing 
key roles in the production of marketable commodities, including silk 
and cotton thread.  (9-10)   *

This knowledge challenges a commonly accepted notion that "the 
working class used to be predominantly male, and female workers were 
brought in to keep male workers' wages down."  The working class 
became predominantly male only in the course of industrial 
development & working-class struggles within it.  What were 
short-term achievements for the survival of working-class families -- 
"family wages" for men, "protective" legislations for women, etc. -- 
in the long run undermined the formation of solidaristic, not 
gender-hierarchic, working-class culture & movement.

Why were early industrial workers so often more female than male?  I 
speculate that's in part because more women than men were often 
excluded from inheriting family properties by the law of 
primogeniture (and other laws that govern inheritance in countries 
without primogeniture) & customs.  Here, the residual patriarchal 
practice (the feudal need to prevent excessive parcellization & 
alienation of land -- recall Carrol's comment that in premodern 
societies place determines merit, not vice versa as under capitalism) 
determined the particular gender cast that wage labor took at the 
take-off moment of industrialization.

Typical faces of industrial workers changed from female & colored to 
male & white to female & colored.  The prevalence of the nuclear 
family idealized by conservatives now -- male breadwinner, female 
housewife, & biological children -- was merely a blip in history that 
coincided with the post-WW2 eco

[L-I] Rule Britannia

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Jim Heartfield wrote on LBO-talk:

>'There is a dismal record of failure in Africa'
>
>Or so the British Prime Minister told the United Nations millennial
>summit on 6 September. 'Twenty-one of the 44 countries in sub-Saharan
>Africa are affected by conflict which undermines efforts at
>development', Blair continued, demanding that 'We must be partners in
>the search for change and hope'.
>
>But Britain's record of partnership is not promising; in fact Britain
>has proved to be the major warmonger on the African continent:
>
>Tangier campaigns against the Moors 1661-1684
>Kaffir wars at the Cape 1806/1812/1819
>Sixth Kaffir War 1835
>Seventh Kaffir War 1846-1847
>Eighth Kaffir War 1850-1853
>Abyssinian War 1868
>Ashanti War (West Africa) 1874
>Ninth Kaffir War 1877-1878
>Zulu War 1879
>Transvaal (or First Boer) War 1880-1
>Egyptian War 1882
>First Sudan War 1884-1885
>Ashanti Expedition 1896
>Second Sudan War 1898
>Boer War 1899-1902
>North African campaign, World War Two 1939-1945
>Canal Zone/Egypt 1945-1948
>Gold Coast 1948
>Eritea 1948-1951
>Somaliland 1949-1951
>Kenya 1952-1960
>Suez 1956
>Togoland 1957
>Cameroons 1960
>Zanzibar 1963
>Swaziland 1963-1966
>Zanzibar 1964
>Kenya/Uganda/Tanganyika 1964
>Seychelles 1966
>Libya 1967
>Dhofar 1969-1976
>Zimbabwe-Rhodesia 1979-1980
>Sierra Leone 2000

*   Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 14:46:46 +
Subject: British Massacre in Sierra Leone
From: Owen Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Marxist List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Details are sketchy, but in the name of Britain's holy crusade to 
civilise Africa once more, at least 17 have been killed in this 
British massacre in Sierra Leone. I would not be surprised if the 
women involved were not actually fighters but civilians. I expect 
NATO will be bombing London by the end of next week to punish us.

  
Sunday September 10 8:22 AM ET
UK Troops And Leonean Rebels Injured in Attack

LONDON (Reuters) - British troops and Sierra Leone rebels suffered 
casualties on Sunday as British forces attacked a rebel base and 
freed six of their soldiers who had been taken hostage, the chief of 
Britain's defense staff said.

``There have been a few casualties on our side,'' Sir Charles Guthrie 
told a news conference. He said there had also been a substantial 
number of casualties on the side of the West Side Boys, renegade 
former Sierra Leone soldiers who had taken the British soldiers 
hostage last month.

``The West Side boys were not a pushover. They fought very hard. 
Amongst them they had women who were fighting and I think some of 
them may have been among the casualties,'' Guthrie said.

The British soldiers who were freed were being medically examined on 
board a British ship, he said.

The West Side Boys seized 11 British soldiers and an officer of the 
new Sierra Leone Army on August 25. They subsequently freed five of 
the soldiers.   *

Yoshie


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[L-I] Anti-Jacobin (was anti-Pomo babble)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Hi Jim:

>According to Hal Draper (in one of the volumes of his KARL MARX'S 
>THEORY OF REVOLUTION), Marx himself was anti-Jacobin, since the 
>Jacobins were petty-bourgeois, professionals, or even haute 
>bourgeois. He sided instead with the plebeian  _sans culottes_, and 
>if memory serves me well, with the Hebertistes (sorry but I don't 
>remember the what kind of accents there are on this term) and to 
>some extent with Graccus Babeuf, though Marx did not like the 
>latter's conspiratorial methods after he himself grew out of them. 
>There was not yet a true proletariat of significant size in Paris 
>(the locus of most revolutionary activity).
>
>The CP of France, on the other hand, has always favored the Jacobin 
>side of the 1789 revolution.
>
>This probably doesn't undermine your point, since L & M probably 
>were using "Jacobin" as synonymous with revolutionary.
>
>Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Draper's is a possible interpretation of the Jacobins (as real 
historical actors, not as strawmen of Laclau & Mouffe's making). 
However, Gramsci provides an alternative interpretation.  He argues 
that "The Jacobins strove with determination to ensure a bond between 
town and country" (_Prison Notebooks_ 63) & "made the demands of the 
popular masses one's own" (66).  Of course, the Jacobins did so 
within the limits of the bourgeois revolution & enlightenment 
philosophy (e.g., they maintained the Le Chapelier law, which denied 
the workers the right of combination), but Gramsci says that the 
absence of the Jacobins in Italy created many problems: the Southern 
Question (oppression of peasants in the South by landlordism & 
underdevelopment); the lack of religious reform through 
anti-clericalism; the failure to forge progressive & republican 
national culture; and so forth.  In contrast to France, Italy only 
experienced what he calls "passive revolution,": "restoration becomes 
the first policy whereby social struggles find sufficiently elastic 
frameworks to allow the bourgeoisie to gain power without dramatic 
upheavals, without the French machinery of terror.  The old feudal 
classes are demoted from their dominant position to a 'governing' 
one, but are not eliminated, nor is there any attempt to liquidate 
them as an organic whole; instead of a class they become a 'caste' 
with specific cultural and psychological characteristics, but no 
longer with predominant economic functions" (115).  The absence of 
Jacobinism, in short, left Italy under material & cultural conditions 
vulnerable to the rise of fascism (itself a kind of passive 
revolution).

In other words, Gramsci took strong exception to conservative 
historians' one-sided interpretation of Jacobinism: "If the 
conservative historicists, theorists of the old, are well placed to 
criticise the utopian character of the mummified Jacobin ideologies, 
philosophers of praxis are better placed to appreciate the real and 
not abstract value that Jacobinism had as an element in the creation 
of the new French nation (that is to say as a fact of circumscribed 
activity in specific circumstances and not as something ideolgised) 
and are better placed also to appreciate the historical role of the 
conservatives themselves, who were in reality the shame-faced 
children of the Jacobins, who damned their excesses while carefully 
administering their heritage" (399).

Hailing from Japan (itself a country with no Jacobin tradition, 
modernized through passive revolution & militarism), I am inclined to 
agree with Gramsci.  Japan would have been a better country now if it 
had been led by the Japanese Jacobins into modernity.  At least, we 
would have had a song like La Marseillaise for "national anthem," 
instead of Kimigayo (a praise song for the imperial dynasty!):

*   Kimi ga yo wa
Chiyo ni yachiyo ni
Sazare ishi no iwao to narite
Koko no musu made.
 
Thousands of years of happy reign be time;
Rule on, my lord, till what are pebbles now
By age united to mighty rocks shall grow
Whose venerable sides the moss doth line.

Translated by Basil H. Chamberlain   *

Here's the JCP's view of Kimigayo & Hinomaru: 


Yoshie


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[L-I] Re: CHOMSKY REPLIES TO CRITICISMS

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Jared:

>On Wednesday I wrote an open letter to Noam Chomsky concerning his statements
>that the Serbian government has committed war crimes,  and the effect of
>these attacks, which,  I think, merely parrot media lies, on the potential
>antiwar movement.  This criticism has generated debate on various email
>lists. The debate has been posted widely outside those lists.

My sympathies.  The differences between Chomsky (or non-Marxist 
leftists in general) and Marxists didn't originate with the 
dismantling of Yugoslavia, though.  For instance, recall Chomsky's 
stance upon Afghanistan.  I submit that there are important 
differences between Chomsky and those of us who post on this list 
(here let me temporarily bracket differences that exist on this 
list), which derive from not Chomsky's accepting the media's framing 
of Yugoslavia alone but *more fundamentally* Chomsky's overall 
political framework (a combination of anarchism & Kantian humanism). 
Notice, for instance, Chomsky's fondness for charges of hypocrisy 
("why Yugoslavia, why not Turkey, Rwanda, East Timor, etc."), which 
are dangerous charges to make in this day & age.

We can't rely upon Marxists who reject a "pox on both houses" 
rhetoric alone to generate an anti-war movement; we need Chomsky & 
the Z-net crowd, Greens, religious lefties, etc. for a bigger 
movement, and we can't realistically expect them to change their 
minds through such impersonal media as e-mail debates.  There would 
have to be some other way of going about this.

For Chomsky, *all* state repressions, including repression of 
terrorism & destabilization, are atrocious & inexcusable *crimes*. 
He's not a Machiavellian, and he can't bring himself to thinking that 
repression may be necessary and that necessary repression may involve 
unjust consequences (e.g. innocents may be mistaken for terrorists). 
The day he will change his mind on this will be the day he will cease 
to be an anarchist & Kantian humanist, which is to say, never.

So, what is to be done?

Yoshie


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[L-I] Economy Fuels Unrest in Bosnia

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl5?archive/bcr/bcr_2901_1_eng.txt

Thursday, September 7, 2000

Economy Fuels Unrest in Bosnia

Rampant unemployment, corruption and the worst drought in 50 years 
are fueling social unrest in Bosnia

By Nermina Durmic-Kahrovic in Tuzla (BCR No. 168, 1-Sep-00)

Bosnia-Herzegovina faces an autumn of unrest as trade union leaders 
threaten strikes and warn of social discontent in the face of a 
mounting economic crisis.

"The social and economic state of the majority of the workers in 
Bosnia-Herzegovina is extremely critical, because the economy is on 
the verge of collapse," says union leader Sulejman Hrle.

Unrest is expected to focus on the Tuzla canton in northern 
Bosnia-Herzegovina, the biggest and the most populated canton where 
most of the industry and mines are concentrated. Only about 30 per 
cent of its economically active population is working, and salaries 
can be up to 40 months late.

"How can you expect a worker to support a family on one and a half 
German marks (about 30 pence) a day?" metal workers official Muhamed 
Hadzic recently demanded of the premier of the Tuzla canton. He 
warned that his members were planning to camp out in front of the 
government offices in the city.

James Lyon, manager of the International Crisis Group, ICG, in 
Bosnia-Herzegovina agrees the crisis is growing.

"The biggest problem we have to face is the economy," he said. 
"Things are moving far too slowly. Because Bosnia-Herzegovina is 
dependant on foreign aid, its economical structure is not changing 
and foreign aid may soon be halved."

Industrial production is a little over one third of its 1991 level, 
while national per capita income is below half of what it was in the 
same year. Up to half the economically active population is 
unemployed, the value of imports outstrips exports by four to one, 
foreign debts remain high and bankruptcy is rampant.

"This country does not have an economic policy," says Dr. Kasim 
Begic, professor of economic policy in the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo.

The situation is critical across the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 
which was split into two political and economic entities after the 
1992-1995 war and where about 2.5 million people now live.

The worst drought in almost 50 years is adding to the economic woes, 
with agricultural output down 70 per cent this year in Republika 
Srpska. The situation is no better in Muslim-Croat Federation, where 
officials are calling for the government to declare a natural 
disaster.

In Republika Srpska, the elderly recently took to the streets 
demanding payment of their pensions, which are now often a couple of 
months late. Pensioners in the Muslim-Croat entity have threatened 
similar action.

The average monthly pension in Bosnia-Herzegovina is between 50 and 
150 German marks (16 and 48 pounds). There are also social security 
payments for the poorest, averaging from 40 to 100 German marks (12 
to 32 pounds).

According to the latest data, the basic monthly food bill for a 
family of four in Bosnia-Herzegovina is 468 German marks (146.5 
pounds).

The slow pace of repatriation of refugees forced to leave their homes 
during the war and the gradual curtailment of the humanitarian aid 
they receive is adding to the general dissatisfaction.

"If we could return home, we could plant something, some of which we 
could eat and some we could sell. We could perhaps get a cow, it 
would be easier," says Ramiza Hodzic, who was expelled from Zvornik, 
an eastern city under Serbian control.

Trade Union leaders complain that the process of privatisation, key 
to the regeneration of the country, is also being severely hampered 
by corrupt managers who devalue the assets of state companies in 
order to reduce their market price and buy them off themselves.

Sulejman Hrle says the practice has sparked a wave of strikes in 
Bosnia-Herzegovina, "The workers are indicating that some managers in 
conjunction with local officials are deliberately bankrupting firms 
in order to buy them off as cheaply as possible when they are 
privatised."

Allegations of corruption and links between organised crime and the 
government rock the country almost daily.

"Wars, the breaking of structures of the ex-Yugoslav Federation, 
disorder, absence of authority and lack of democracy have turned the 
region of the west Balkans into one of the major havens for organised 
crime in Europe," says a report from the EU sponsored body, the 
Secretariat For the Fight Against Corruption.

The people of Bosnia-Herzegovina hope for a change after general 
elections, announced for November.

But in the meantime, their suffering continues. A viewer begged 
opposition Social Democrat leader Zlatko Lagumdzija on a recent 
television programme: "Please help, I am hungry, my husband has 
pneumonia and we can not afford the medicine."

Nermina Durmic-Kahrovic is a regular IWPR contributor

© Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Lancaster House, 33 Isli

[L-I] Colony Kosovo (by Christian Parenti)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

_San Francisco Bay Guardian_ August 23, 2000

Colony Kosovo

Where cops, do-gooders, and privateers run the show.

By Christian Parenti

CLOGGED WITH ALMOST 800,000 souls, Pristina, Kosovo, a city of tower 
blocks rising from a parched valley floor, now holds twice the 
population for which it was built. The air reeks of exhaust and 
burning garbage. Ceaseless hot winds blow litter and clouds of gritty 
dust from the huge mountain of mine tailings that lies a dozen miles 
due west. At night one still hears the snap of gunfire and, the next 
day, rumors of another unsolved murder.

Despite the city's modernist aesthetic (the place was rebuilt from 
scratch after an earthquake in 1963), Pristina has no public 
transportation or refuse collection. All the most impressive 
modernist buildings downtown have been reduced to bombed-out relics. 
Throngs of cell phone-wielding crowds and streams of new Mercedes and 
Audis choke the streets below the charred towers. Water and 
electrical services are intermittent, yet several cybercafés and 
brothels operate around the clock.

Welcome to ground zero of NATO's reincarnation as what Secretary of 
State Madeline Albright has called "a force for peace from the Middle 
East to Central Africa." Billed as the greatest humanitarian 
intervention since WWII, the U.N.-NATO occupation of Kosovo doesn't 
look so noble up close. Rather than a multiethnic democracy, Kosovo 
is shaping up to be a violent, corrupt, free-market colony.

'Humanitarian' imperialism

Kosovar Albanians may talk about "their country," but the foreign-aid 
workers in official white SUVs make the real decisions. After NATO's 
78-day bombing, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo(UNMIK) was 
created as an "interim administration." The U.N., in turn, has opened 
Kosovo to a kaleidoscopic jumble of governmental and nongovernmental 
organizations (NGOs) ranging from Oxfam to obscure evangelical 
ministries.

At the apex of it all sits Bernard Krouchner, the Secretary General's 
Special Representative in Kosovo. Founder of Médecins Sans Frontières 
and a former socialist, Krouchner took a sharp right turn in the 
1980s when he championed the use of Western (particularly American) 
military intervention as the path to human rights. Krouchner's 
left-wing critics - who argue that American and European corporate 
power and military aid are the main causes of human rights violations 
internationally - see Krouchner as a Clinton-Blair "third way" 
hypocrite. Meanwhile, many mainstream right-wing commentators see the 
short, thin Frenchman as a publicity-seeking autocrat.

In Kosovo, Krouchner's responsibilities range from censoring the 
local press when it offends him to appointing all local government 
personnel to schmoozing with international donors.

Adding muscle to Krouchner's administrative decisions - such as 
unilaterally ditching the Yugoslavian dinar for the mark - are about 
4,000 so called UNMIK police, many of whom are transplanted American 
cops. For the heavy lifting, Krouchner can count on the 40,000 
international soldiers that make up KFOR, the Kosovo Implementation 
Force.

Along with putting down the occasional ethnic riot, protecting 
convoys of refugees, and guarding the few small Serb enclaves 
remaining in Kosovo, KFOR and the UNMIK police occasionally uncover 
caches of weapons belonging to the officially disarmed Kosovo 
Liberation Army. Such operations are usually followed up with robust 
KFOR statements reaffirming their commitment to "building a 
multiethnic society." Yet, strangely, the ethnic cleansing - this 
time Albanian against Serb and Roma (Gypsy) - never stops.

Violence still

"This place is a shit hole. All the young people I meet, I tell 'em: 
get out! Go to another country," booms Doc Giles, a tanned, muscled 
American cop who speaks in a thick, south-Jersey accent. A longtime 
narc-officer from hyperviolent Camden, N.J., Giles has spent the last 
year working homicide in Pristina with UNMIK. The pack on his bike 
sports a "Daniel Faulkner: fallen not forgotten" button. (Faulkner 
was the cop whom death row inmate and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal may 
or may not have murdered 18 years ago in Philadelphia.)

Giles's maggot's-eye view of interethnic relations is sobering: 
"Look, all the perps are oo-che-kaa," Giles says, using the Albanian 
form for the Kosovo Liberation Army's acronym. "They're fucking 
gangsters. I don't care what anyone says - they're an organized crime 
structure. And all the judges are either scared or pro-KLA. They're 
like: you shot a 89-year-old Serb grandmother? Good for you. Get out 
of jail."

Of the province's 276 judges, only two are Serb, so Albanian hit 
squads operate with near total impunity. Among their favorite targets 
during the last year have been Orthodox churches and monasteries, 
more than 85 of which have been burned, looted, or demolished, 
according to both the U.N. and a detailed report by the Serbian 
Orthodox Church.

After heari

[L-I] Art in the Enemy Camp: Letter from Bohemian Belgrade (byChristian Parenti)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Art in the enemy camp
Letter from bohemian Belgrade.

By Christian Parenti

THE DARK, one-bedroom apartment of Yugoslavian artist Vladimir Peric 
feels like a tricked-out bomb shelter from some mad future. He keeps 
the shades down because it's 100 degrees outside and the sun's 
radiation is, as he reminds me, "very dangerous." Most walls hold 
shelves stuffed with books, technical manuals, electronics gear, or 
fur pelts. Other surfaces are hung with tools, old watches, bird 
wings, and strange metal shapes that look like the letters of a lost 
alphabet.

With more than 30 major shows to his name, Peric is just one alpha 
artist among many in Belgrade's beleaguered but still thriving 
cultural scene. Once considered the hippest metropolis in Central 
Europe, "the white city" has spent the last decade on its knees, 
racked by regional warfare, sanctions, and economic meltdown. As a 
result, artists - who, under Yugoslavian socialism, lived well and 
tended to be apolitical - are now more than ever forced to deal with 
two difficult, intertwined questions: economic survival and politics.

These questions certainly find expression in Peric's art, which 
combines high-tech detritus with found objects from nature. One 
recent piece consists of a series of flat rectangular forms made of 
black chain-link mesh, the bottom halves of which are filled with fur 
that seems to be pressing down or out of the sometimes ruptured 
cages. The stocky, balding artist also makes nonfunctional tools: 
industrial handles are connected to bones or birds' feet instead of 
blades. The combination suggests the handicraft of postapocalyptic 
nomads.

It's fitting that Peric's art should deal with motifs of industrial 
breakdown and environmental crisis: last year his country - in fact 
his immediate neighborhood - was bombed by NATO jets and mildly 
radioactive Tomahawk missiles. Next door to his home and studio sits 
the burnt shell of a former Air Force office. A few kilometers beyond 
that, in a swath of overgrown park, rises a shattered modernist 
office tower, one floor of which housed the administration of Radio 
and Television Serbia. Next to that are the ruins of the Chinese 
embassy. And two blocks away from Peric's pad is the mighty Danube, 
which in April was choked with dead fish and fowl, thanks to a 
massive cyanide spill upstream in Romania.

The last decade has left the 38-year-old artist very pessimistic. 
Like many Yugoslavs, he is haunted by an uncertain future, feeling 
that he lives in a time and place of decline and foreboding. Momcilo 
Milosevic, Peric's young friend and junior collaborator on 
money-making graphics projects, agrees: "I feel like I am always 
catching the end of things. Everyone's leaving or remembering what 
was."

Survival nation

Despite the gloomy talk, the economic landscape in which Peric, 
Momcilo, and the rest of their generation must try to make art and 
money is at first glance bafflingly normal. For a country that's had 
its industrial base smashed and its trade links with the world 
strangled, there is an awful lot of cash around, with very few queues 
or shortages.

Sanctions-busting and "gray market" wheeling and dealing - along with 
a debt-ridden but still robust state sector - manage to keep most 
people busy, get the pensions paid, and even make a few folks rich. 
Somehow the government is finding the capital to rebuild a few 
bombed-out factories and bridges. And though incredibly anxious about 
the future, Belgraders are renovating old homes, adding illegal extra 
floors to apartment buildings, and opening small businesses of all 
sorts.

Ironically, much of this off-the-books boom is the result of a nearly 
collapsed banking system. Since the hyperinflation and financial 
crisis of the early 1990s, most people refuse to trust their hard 
currency to banks for fear they might never get it back. After a 
while the proverbial mattresses get full of deutsche marks, and 
people start investing in real property. So while the big industrial 
firms are hungry for investment, there is a bizarre street-level 
liquidity, and with it a million and one ways to make ends meet.

It's past midnight in Peric's "submarine," and Momcilo sits wedged in 
a corner, bathed in a computer monitor's blue light. On the screen 
float the faces of a dozen angelic German choir boys. Behind Momcilo 
stands Peric blasting away in Serbo-Croat. They're trying to find the 
right font to use on a poster that must be shipped DHL to Germany 
first thing in the morning.

"It's a shit. Stupid pictures! Look what they send us." Exasperated, 
Peric thrusts a thick hand toward the silly-looking choir boys on 
screen, lets loose with a few more intense instructions for his young 
colleague, then returns to the next room, where he is shooting 
portfolio photographs for a local gallery's retrospective catalog. 
The lights are huge and hot and there are dozens more pieces left to 
go. Tomorrow there is another job fr

[L-I] German Greens Call for Professional Army (was Re: Analysis of theU.S. Greens)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Just what is liberal about saving the planet from capitalist greed, and
>trying to create a just, tolerant society where people are valued as
>people, and not classified according to their reproductive status? Marx
>was a ferocious critic of liberal ideology, but he constantly harped on
>the socialist possibilities of liberal reforms (all those quotation from
>the Factory Acts, e.g.).
>
>-- Dennis

Is the professionalization of the military a liberal reform?   Yoshie

*   German Green party calls for professional army
By Ulrich Rippert
24 June 2000

...The lurch to the right by German political parties since the 
Kosovo War is most obvious in the case of the Greens. Only three 
months after the end of the war, the defense spokeswoman of the Green 
parliamentary group, Angelika Beer, presented a 12-page paper 
entitled "Less is More! Proposals for a Security-Policy and 
Technology-Oriented Modernisation of the Bundeswehr [German Army]". 
Up to then, the Greens had always linked their opposition to military 
service to a general rejection of the army. Now they call for the 
abolition of military service and the creation of a powerful 
professional army that can be deployed swiftly and reliably anywhere 
in the world.

In Angelika Beer's opinion, the reform of the German army must be 
oriented toward enabling Germany to make a powerful contribution to 
the creation of an independent European defense identity: "NATO 
defense and crisis management require the restructuring of the German 
army into an army that can deploy suitable, excellently trained and 
adequately equipped forces requiring a low level of mobilization time 
in Europe and its peripheral and neighbouring regions."

Beer calls for armed forces "that are characterized by great 
mobility, technical and operational superiority, leadership-adapted 
discipline and flexible deployment capacity in the context of 
multinational and international operations." Following detailed 
technical proposals aimed at creating "higher performance and more 
cost-efficient armed forces", Beer concludes her paper with a clear 
affirmation of support for national German interests and the warning 
that there is a danger "that we could miss our chance of making a 
German contribution to the change in international relations".

In the introduction to her theses, Beer repeats a few phrases from 
her pacifist past. She has much to say about "strengthening the 
preventive elements in foreign and security policy" and "early 
detection and prevention of conflicts". But, then, so do top military 
leaders like former German Army Chief of Staff Klaus Naumann, who has 
often stressed "the elimination of conflict sources as a central 
aspect of crisis management".

Based on Angelika Beer's paper, the Greens have taken on the role of 
foremost proponent of a heavily armed professional army. They praise 
the report of the Weizsaecker Commission (a commission headed by 
former German President Weizsaecker which recently submitted its 
proposals for a reform of the German army) and criticize the plans 
put forward by Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping (SPD), because these 
plans do not go far enough and continue to call for military service.

The hapless attempts by Green members of parliament to pacify critics 
in their own ranks by claiming that the reduction in the number the 
soldiers, the closure of a few barracks and their demand for the 
abolition of military service are all steps in the direction of 
disarmament are farcical. Nothing can obscure two fundamental facts: 
first, that the restructuring of the German army is linked to a 
gigantic rearmament programme budgeted at 120 billion marks for the 
next 10 years; and second, that the Greens have made a 180-degree 
turnabout in their position on military issues.

As on so many other political issues, the Greens' arguments are 
thoroughly opportunistic. In the debate on military service they take 
a narrow-minded position which approaches the question entirely from 
the standpoint of individuals who would no longer be obliged to do 
military service. The Greens ignore the broader consequences for 
society.

The creation of a professional army does not-as the Greens 
claim-reduce the influence of the military in society. Rather it 
increases it, while reducing the influence of society on the 
military. German history over the past century has amply demonstrated 
how closely linked the creation of a professional army is with the 
danger of a military caste that strives for social recognition and 
political influence, and thus becomes an independent power factor.

But all such issues are of no interest to the Greens. Instead, they 
proclaim that democratic control of the army is secured through 
parliament. They themselves demonstrated what that means in practice. 
With very few exceptions, the members of parliament voted for a war 
in which 15 heavily armed NATO countries bombed an underdeveloped 
country for weeks on end

[L-I] German Green Fiscal Discipline (was Re: Analysis of the U.S.Greens)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Johannes Schneider wrote:

>Lieber Dennis,
>
>exactly, details matter. But lets first look at the big picture. Through the
>auctions of the UMTS cellular phone licenses the finance minister got an
>additional 100 billion Deutschmarks this month. Instead of demanding the
>whole sum is spend for education, environment or social issues it is agreed
>by all the monetarists in government only the interests (5 billion) from
>this amount is to be spent. Some Greens even want to use this money to buy
>back more bonds.
>
>Now for the details: Its mostly social-democrats that want to spend the
>money. Mainly to raise the amount given to families with children.
>Furthermore investing into the rail system and more money for universities
>is demanded.
>
>In the whole discussion its the Greens that have taken the traditional role
>of the FDP demanding 'budget discipline'.

*   Financial Times (London)
July 14, 2000, Friday London Edition 2
SECTION: WORLD NEWS - EUROPE; Pg. 8
HEADLINE: WORLD NEWS - EUROPE: Pensions threaten German budget
BYLINE: By RALPH ATKINS

Germany's failure to reform its expensive state pension system 
threatens to throw off course the budget consolidation plans of Hans 
Eichel, finance minister, according to a paper drawn up by finance 
experts in the Green party, junior members of the Berlin coalition.

The exploding costs of an ageing population mean the sums the federal 
government injects into the pension system will account for almost a 
third of federal tax revenues by 2004, warns Oswald Metzger, finance 
spokesman in the Greens' parliamentary party.

Failure to reform the pension system, or a further watering-down of 
proposals put forward by Walter Riester, labour minister, would force 
the federal government to contribute still greater sums. That could 
dash Mr Eichel's hopes of balancing the federal budget by 2006, Mr 
Metzger argues.

Mr Metzger's paper highlights the costs of failing to reform the 
pay-as-you-go pension system. Mr Riester wants to supplement the 
system by encouraging the young to invest up to 4 per cent of gross 
wages in private or occupational schemes - in addition to paying into 
the state system.

But he has failed so far to win backing from the opposition Christian 
Democrat Union, which wants stronger assurances on future state 
pension levels. CDU support is needed to win parliamentary approval 
for related tax changes.

The stalemate comes despite Mr Riester responding to pressure from 
the CDU and trade unions and pledging that state pensions would not 
fall below 64 per cent of average net wages until at least 2030, 
compared with the present 70 per cent.

The federal government is already contributing more than DM100bn 
(Pounds 32bn) annually to the state pension system. Its contribution 
is intended primarily to accommodate burdens such as the additional 
numbers imposed by German reunification or to supplement pension 
contributions for those with children.

But Mr Metzger points out that the federal injections are growing 
much faster than these additional costs, and are "functioning 
increasingly as a guarantee for the state pension system in the face 
of structural changes in the population"   *

Yoshie


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[L-I] Hegel, Women, Irony (was Re: Pomocanadianism)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Hi Rob:

>This Hutcheon woman makes out that the typically Canadian response to its
>marginalisation manifests as parody and irony (could be - it does so in Oz,
>too,  to my mind - so, fine so far) but then says Canadian women are this
>way because their assigned gender keeps 'em on the sidelines as those
>assigned the 'masculine' tag go about the masculine business of running
>things - of making history.
>
>Now, I reckon this is a case of class before gender.  Not class instead of
>gender, but class first, nevertheless.  Here's why.  Many men (and believe
>me, I'm one of 'em) experience life just like this, and a lot of 'em (I'm
>one of these two - or so I like to think - the Reverend Tom is definitely
>one, and Doug another) respond with a parodic and ironic tone as well.
>Like Hutcheon, we do occasionally get to watch the machinations, mebbe even
>meet one or two of the divine circle as they move in their mysterious ways,
>but we'll never get into that circle - ours is the margin.

I don't intend to defend Hutcheon's generalization.  Hutcheon is not 
known for an astute analysis of class in representation, and I posted 
the excerpt for a lark, mainly.  I'd qualify your comments & add that 
nearly all leftists at this moment in history are masters of irony, 
since we are all marginalized politically.

That said, no less an authority on gender as Hegel -- place a smiley 
mark here -- remarked that womankind is "the everlasting irony in the 
life of the community" (_The Phenomenology of Spirit_, trans. A.V. 
Miller, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977, p.288).  Hegel intended his remark 
to be a way of showing the limited sphere that should be allowed for 
women; women are to be the guardians of the "sacred claims of the 
family," instead of using their intrigue to pervert the higher 
moments of civil society & the state: "[M]an has his actual and 
substantive life in the state, in learning and so forth, as well as 
in labour and struggle with the external worldWoman, on the other 
hand, has her substantive destiny in the family and to be imbued with 
family piety is her ethical frame of mind" (_The Philosophy of 
Right_, trans. T.M. Knox, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1967, #166).  Instead of 
simply criticizing Hegel's sexism, feminists might appropriate 
Hegel's remark to illuminate the ill fit between concrete women & 
rights-bearing abstract persons of the social contract theory; 
womankind is indeed "the everlasting irony in the life of the 
community" -- irony that shows up the limits of liberalism (the kind 
of irony that Jane Austen -- Marquis de Sade's contemporary -- 
highlights through the prices of moral choices imposed on women).

Alternatively, feminists might, like Seyla Benhabib, appropriate the 
remark to critique Hegel's dialectic: "Hegel's Antigone is one 
without a future; her tragedy is also the grave of utopian, 
revolutionary thinking about gender relationsRepeatedly the 
Hegelian system expunges the irony of the dialectic,...[yet, 
ironically]...what remains of the dialectic is what Hegel precisely 
thought he could dispense with: irony, tragedy, and 
contingencyThe vision of Hegelian reconciliation has long ceased 
to convinceWhat women can do today is to restore irony to the 
dialectic, by deflating the pompous march of historical 
necessity...by giving back to the victims of the dialectic...their 
selfhood." ("On Hegel, Women and Irony" in _Feminist Interpretations 
and Political Theory_, eds. Mary Shanley and Carol Pateman, 
Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1991, p. 142-3).

Yoshie


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[L-I] How to Analyze Nature & Reproduction without Becoming aPost-Marxist (was Re: poll)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Charles Brown wrote:
>
>>I think they are of equal importance.
>>
>>People probably write about them less here, because the name of 
>>this list has "Economists" in it.
>
>There's plenty to talk about with respect to the economics of 
>sex/gender, but for some reason that happens in feminist forums, and 
>rarely among "progressive" or "radical" economists. And a lot of 
>feminist economists don't like to talk much about class. This split 
>is bad for both camps.
>
>But progressive/radical economists should also do more to challenge 
>the obscene narrowness of their discipline, which is cut off - often 
>proudly - from sociology, politics, psychology, anthropology, 
>culture, historyyou name it. It's bad enough when mainstreamers 
>do this, when Krugman says something like bad economists are 
>reincarnated as sociologists. I don't see enough evidence that 
>radical economists are taking exception to this disicplinary rule. 
>In fact, the entire sterile apparatus of Marxian value theory is a 
>double of the mainstream's sterility.
>
>Doug

We're not seeing much success in changing the minds of goofy devotees 
of Andrea Dworkin & Catherine MacKinnon on M-Fem, to be sure.  And we 
are unlikely to easily change the minds of radical economists whose 
primary interest is not feminism.

One thing that occurs to me, though, is that when Ricardo posted 
obnoxious remarks on gay men & feminism on PEN-L, a lot of posters 
rose up and criticized the remarks variously.  The same happens on 
M-Fem, which becomes active whenever obnoxious posts of MacDworkin 
varieties get posted.  So, if we have the Devil's Advocates, so to 
speak, we can & do discuss how we may integrate class & gender 
analyses.  The problem is that we only reply to the most idiotic 
negations of class & gender respectively, so our e-list discussion 
seldom rises above affirmations of basic principles ("both class & 
gender matter") & goes on to conduct more sophisticated analyses.

As for Marxian value theory, there is a good reason that it may 
_appear_ to be a "double" of the mainstream variety.  Political 
economy under capitalism functions -- both in theory _& practice_ -- 
as if nothing outside of M-C-M' mattered.  Marx's capital is mindful 
of this "as if" modality which has real effects (which some Marxists 
may have forgotten).  When political economy -- in theory _& 
practice_ -- treats nature & reproduction (of labor power & social 
relations) as if they were externalities, this exclusion has real 
effects, which are contradictory to both capital & labor.  What Jim 
O'Connor calls secondary contradictions affects primary 
contradiction, and vice versa.  Lise Vogel, for instance, writes 
about this dialectical relation with a focus on reproduction.  The 
trick is to analyze the dialectic of primary & secondary 
contradictions without forgetting that political economy -- not just 
in theory but _in practice_ -- functions "as if" nothing outside of 
M-C-M' mattered (if we forget the latter insight on the compulsory 
"as if" modality, then we go down the slippery slope of 
Post-Marxism).  Take a look at criticisms of Alain Lipietz by various 
writers in a recent issue of _Capitalism Nature Socialism_

Yoshie


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Re: [L-I] "Fascism"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>As you will know from my message I agree with you in substance. This is why I
>would like you to explain the 'controversial' point about the 
>special historical
>period a bit more. Do you think that 'fascism' will never retutmn in its
>historical clothes or do you think that the bourgeoisie will not any 
>more need a
>petty bourgeois mass movement in order to smash any independent working class
>organization and to prepare for new interimperialst wars? Or may be you mean
>anything else.Please elaborate.
>
>A.Holberg

Specters of fascism -- real or imaginary -- are & will be used by 
neoliberals to consolidate their hegemony: the Third Way at home & 
humanitarian imperialism abroad (both of which appeal to 
petit-bourgeois moralism).  In other words, future fascists will come 
in anti-fascist guise.  Don't look for Brown Shirts.  Watch out for 
cool outfits, the kind worn by Bernard Kouchner.

Yoshie


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Re: [L-I] Taking over the Trepca mines: Plans and Propaganda

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mac posted:

>I'm afraid we are somewhat on different sides of this debate here. I'll
>back any decision you might make, but I value the material posted by Jared
>and on his website. Diana Johnstone doesn't amount to spamming to me; I
>suggest you both cool off (no more Herr Johannes cracks from Jared will be
>tolerated), nor do I want this thread to stop (Nestor, Yoshie: override with
>glee should you wish).

I second Mac here.  While I believe some may not exactly agree with 
Diana Johnstone's analysis, I think those who take exceptions to her 
views should present their own and explain the grounds of 
disagreement, instead of calling her article "spam."

Now, here's latest news on imperial designs on ex-Yugo resources:

*   Agence France-Presse
August 14, 2000

KFOR TROOPS SEIZE LEAD PLANT, CLASHES ENSUE IN KOSOVO

Kosovska Mitrovica, Yugoslavia, Aug 14 (AFP) - French, British and 
Danish peacekeepers swept Monday into a Serbian area of Kosovo to 
shut down a dangerously polluting lead smelter, provoking clashes in 
this flashpoint town, a KFOR spokesman said.

Around 250 Serbian workers from the Zvecan plant threw stones at 
peacekeepers who had earlier seized control of the plant, located in 
a Serbian area to the north of Mitrovica, Lieutenant Frederic Rose 
told AFP.

Meanwhile, a group of around 30 plant managers refused to meet with 
representatives of Kosovo's UN administration, which had ordered the 
takeover, Rose added.

French and Danish peacekeepers entered the factory at around 4:30 
a.m. (0230 GMT), while British reinforcements drew up a security 
cordon around the area.

By 7:00 a.m., the plant and its immediate surroundings were under 
KFOR control, Rose said.

"We are shutting down the factory temporarily in order to put in 
place a health and safety study and bring it up to standard. There's 
no question of putting the workers on the dole," Rose said.

"It is not a war fighting operation," he continued, "KFOR has been 
asked by the UN mission to take control of the site. Once security 
has been ensured, the United Nations will take over," he added.

Since the Zvecan plant stepped up production in June, the level of 
lead in the surrounding air has reached 200 times the maximum level 
recommended by the World Health Organisation, the UN administration 
said.

On August 1, Alain Richard, the French defence minister, asked 
Bernard Kouchner, head of the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), to 
temporarily close the plant in order to protect French KFOR troops 
stationed in the area.

"The lead levels are very worrying for the workers, but not just for 
the workers, for the surrounding population as well," Kouchner told 
AFP Sunday.

Rose said that just over 200 Serbs work in the Zvecan smelter, which 
is part of the huge Trepca mining conglomerate, comprising 41 
factories and mines in Kosovo and neighbouring Serbia and Montenegro.

Since the end of Kosovo's 1998-1999 civil war, Kosovska Mitrovica has 
become a divided town. The area north of the river Ibar, where Zvecan 
is located, is inhabited mainly by Serbs. The population south of the 
river is now almost entirely ethnic Albanian.

The town is regularly the scene of violent confrontations between the 
two communities or between peacekeepers and local Serbs, who are led 
by Oliver Ivanovic, head of a hardline branch of the Serbian National 
Council.

"It is a very sensitive site, and Zvecan is a symbol," Rose said.

The Trepca firm's mines in Kosovo are thought to account for 
three-quarters of Yugoslavia's potential mineral wealth. Prior to 
1990, managers and workers were mainly ethnic Albanian, but they were 
pushed aside by Serbs loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan 
Milosevic's Belgrade regime after he stripped the province of its 
autonomy.

Since the end of the civil war between ethnic Albanian rebels and 
Yugoslav forces in June last year, and the institution of a UN 
administration in the province, the control of Trepca is once more 
disputed.   *


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[L-I] Convention Demonstrators Are Held on Very High Bail

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

New York Times  August 5, 2000

Convention Demonstrators Are Held on Very High Bail

Lawyers Call Action Preventive Detention

By FRANCIS X. CLINES

PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 4 -- With bail being set as high as $1 million for 
protesters accused of blocking streets during the Republican National 
Convention, defense and civil liberties lawyers today questioned 
whether the city court action was a punitive measure intended to 
discourage the next round of civil disobedience, planned for the 
Democrats' convention in Los Angeles.

The bail of $1 million was set for John Sellers, identified as a 
33-year-old leader of the Ruckus Society of California, which says it 
trains demonstrators in nonviolent civil disobedience. Larry Frankel, 
executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of 
Pennsylvania, said the amount seemed extraordinary since Mr. Sellers 
had been charged only with eight misdemeanors.

Bail for three other defendants whom the police considered 
ringleaders of the street protests was set at $400,000 to $500,000, 
with only one of them, 20-year-old Darby Landy, accused of a felony. 
The charge came after a street fracas with biker police officers led 
by Commissioner John P. Timoney.

Mr. Frankel questioned whether the city's intention was to keep 
protest leaders "in detention until their date of trial" sometime 
after the Democratic National Convention's opening on Aug. 14, rather 
than serving bail's basic purpose of guaranteeing a defendant's 
appearance for trial. Other defense lawyers noted that defendants 
charged with misdemeanors typically were released on their own 
recognizance and that bail as high as $1 million was unprecedented 
for misdemeanors.

In arguing for the high bail, Assistant District Attorney Cindy 
Martelli contended on Thursday that Mr. Sellers was one of the key 
leaders of the illegal street demonstrations Tuesday in which more 
than 200 protesters were arrested.

"He facilitates the more radical elements to accomplish their 
objective of violence and mayhem," Ms. Martelli said.

There were few reports of major property damage or serious personal 
injury in the demonstrations.

In the bail argument, prosecutors referred repeatedly to the coming 
Democratic convention and to street protests earlier in Washington 
and Seattle. Defense lawyers said the simple misdemeanor charges at 
issue were being inflated into ominous-sounding national conspiracies 
to draw the high bail.

"This is Philadelphia, Ala.," said Lawrence S. Krasner, Mr. Sellers's 
defense lawyer, who contended that the city was using bail as a tool 
of preventive detention and punishment.

"Bail of $1 million for a misdemeanor is absolutely ludicrous," Mr. 
Krasner said, adding that he would appeal it on Monday.

After 371 arrests made during the convention week, most on 
misdemeanor charges, only about a third of the defendants were free 
as of this morning, by unofficial count. The police and demonstrators 
accused each other of deliberately slowing the arraignment process. 
Civil liberties lawyers said a number of protesters were refusing to 
cooperate and withholding their identities.

"I'm getting parents calling us up asking if we know what happened to 
their kids," Mr. Frankel said, emphasizing that he was urging 
cooperation and proper identification.

Mr. Sellers was arrested as he engaged in a cell phone conversation 
on the street. Amy Kwasnicki, organizer for the protest group 
Philadelphia Direct Action, accused the police of preemptively 
arresting people they considered protest leaders even though she said 
Mr. Sellers had only trained others in methods of nonviolent civil 
disobedience.

Seventy of the defendants were arrested on Tuesday in a puppet-making 
factory that the police raided with a search warrant, contending they 
would uncover hard evidence of criminal plans to disrupt the city 
during the convention. Demonstrators said the factory contained only 
street-theater puppets and agitprop paraphernalia intended for 
nonviolent civil disobedience.

As defense lawyers awaited details of the evidence that the police 
considered likely to be found, a judge ordered the warrant's contents 
sealed at the request of city prosecutors. "Highly suspicious," said 
Stefan Presser, legal director for the A.C.L.U.

The police denied accusations that the factory raid was a preemptive strike.

"We think we can prove they've engaged in criminal activity," 
Commissioner Timoney said on Thursday.

He raised the question of whether there should be a federal 
investigation into the activities of protest groups moving lately 
from one city to another to stage street demonstrations during major, 
media-heavy conferences. "Somebody's got to look into these groups," 
Mr. Timoney said.

The police were widely praised by Philadelphians for restraint in 
dealing with the demonstrations. But leaders of the protest groups 
said defendants were being abused in jail. The police denied this, 
and Mr. Presser o

[L-I] Civilians Suffer Under Decade-Long Sanctions in Iraq

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>In a message dated 8/5/00 12:10:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
><< August 6 marks the 10th year of the U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq.>>
>
>It's also Hiroshima Day. --jks

In Columbus, Ohio, Columbus Campaign for Arms Control & the 
Interfaith Center for Peace will be holding an annual Hiroshima & 
Nagasaki Remembrance Vigil on Sunday, August 6 (from 7:30 PM to 9:00 
PM at Battelle Riverfront Park [downtown, just north of the Broad 
Street Bridge, on the Scioto River]); this year, we'll be using the 
event to call attention to effects of continued sanctions against 
Iraq, Yugoslavia, etc.; environmental impacts of nuclear, DU, & other 
weapons; protests against U.S. military bases in Okinawa, South 
Korea, Vieques, etc.; & super-exploitation in the Third World made 
safe for profits by imperial military power.  Speakers include Mary 
Hershberger (of SOA Watch); Greg Elich (local activist & journalist); 
Chad Alger (OSU professor); Harvey Wasserman (of Greenpeace); & 
Yoshie Furuhashi.  (For more info, call Connie Hammond at 268-2637 or 
Les Stansbery at 231-6954 or Mark Stansbery at 252-9255.)

We'll be also fundraising for the "Campaign of Conscience for the 
Iraqi People" organized by the American Friends Service Committee & 
the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

*   http://www.forusa.org/Campaign-Iraq/Contributions.html

Campaign of Conscience for the Iraqi People

Participant Form

(Please print this form and mail to the address at the bottom)

Enclosed is my contribution to the Campaign of Conscience for the 
Iraqi People. I understand that these funds will be used for this 
educational campaign and to purchase humanitarian aid and materials 
to repair the civilian infrastructure of Iraq.

I support the American Friends Service Committee and the Fellowship 
of Reconciliation in expressing their moral commitment to respond to 
the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. I understand that AFSC and FOR will 
apply for licenses to ship these goods to the people of Iraq, but if 
denied will ship without a licenses, violating the US Sanctions. My 
contribution might then be interpreted by the US government as a 
violation of US law, which provides for civil fines up to $275, 000 
per violation and criminal penalties up to 1 million and /or 12 years 
in prison.

By my contribution, I am publicly associating with AFSC and FOR's 
effort to end the economic sanctions against the people of Iraq. I 
feel morally obligated to help alleviate the human suffering in Iraq 
which is perpetuated by the destruction of Iraq's civilian 
infrastructure: water purification, sewage treatment, and power 
generation for schools, hospitals and homes.

I understand that a copy of this signed statement will be presented 
by the Campaign of Conscience to the President, the US Ambassador to 
the United Nations, and my US Senators and Representative, and that 
my name may be used in public statements of support for the Campaign 
of Conscience.

Signature*__Date_

Name (Please Print)__

Street Address_City___State___Zip

*Persons under 18 and those with immigrant status may face additional 
legal problems and could contact the Campaign of Conscience before 
signing a participant form or making a contribution.

  

For Campaign of Conscience Use Only

Amount of Contribution
$__PhoneEmail

__Please send me __brochures and/or __organizing packets to help 
organize for the Campaign of Conscience.

__Please list me as a local coordinator for the Campaign of Conscience.

__I will write and/or meet with my US Senators and Representative 
about my participation in the Campaign.

__I will publicize my involvement in the Campaign in my local media.

Please print this participant form and return to:

Campaign of Conscience
c/o AFSC
1501 Cherry Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102

or c/o FOR, P.O. Box 271, Nyack, NY 10960   *

Yoshie


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[L-I] War in Columbia begins to escalate

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

The Associated Press, July 31, 2000

Colombian Rebels Besiege Town

Filed at 11:35 a.m. EDT

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Colombian troops flew in U.S.-made combat 
helicopters to a remote mountain town to battle rebels who attacked a 
police station and claimed to have killed nearly two dozen officers.

Just before dusk Sunday, 150 army troops and national police flew 
into the town of Arboleda aboard Blackhawk and Huey helicopters, said 
national police chief Gen. Ernesto Gilibert. Some troops also arrived 
on foot and clashed with rebels as they approached the town.

Security forces found only three survivors of Arboleda's 25-man 
police contingent, said Alfonso Rodriguez Guerrero, an officer at 
national police headquarters in Bogota, the capital.

The army was looking for the 14 missing police officers, and said 
they had found the bodies of eight officers and at least four 
civilians. They said the death toll was likely to rise as soldiers 
secure the area.

The bodies were found "amid the ruins of their barracks, which was 
totally destroyed," said Army Col. Alberto Ardila, commander of the 
army's Eighth Brigade, which went to the scene of the two-day rebel 
attack.

Troops and police reinforcements, operating in the dark in a chaotic 
situation, were trying to determine the fate of the rest of the 
besieged policemen.

Ardila told local radio that two civilians were killed. Rodriguez 
Guerrero put the number at three.

The attack by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, 
was one of the bloodiest since the United States approved $1.3 
billion in aid to battle leftist rebels and other armed groups who 
are involved in narcotics production.

Controversy has arisen over whether U.S.-supplied combat helicopters, 
which provide security for planes fumigating drug crops in Colombia, 
should be used in counterinsurgency operations.

Gutierrez said radio transmissions from the besieged police officers 
had been cut after midnight, about 15 hours after the attack began 
Saturday morning. Rebels told a local photojournalist who tried to 
enter the town Sunday morning that they had killed 23 police officers.

"Communications with Arboleda have been severed and there is no way 
to verify this information, but we fear the worst," said police Col. 
Norberto Pelaez, police commander of Caldas province, where Arboleda 
is located.

Low cloud cover prevented reinforcements from arriving until late 
Sunday. Troops also spent hours hiking over twisting mountain trails 
to Arboleda, located 90 miles northwest of Bogota.

U.S. Ambassador Curtis W. Kamman said Colombian security forces 
weren't restricted to using the U.S.-made helicopters only in 
anti-drug operations.

"These helicopters can be used ... to defend the police and military 
forces if they are under attack in a zone where there are 
anti-narcotics activities," Kamman was quoted as saying in an 
interview on Saturday with ANCOL, the Colombian government's news 
agency.

However, Arboleda is not believed to be in a region producing cocaine 
or heroin.

Some observers say U.S. policy regarding military aid to Colombia is 
growing increasingly blurry, and can lead to the United States being 
drawn into the South American nation's 35-year civil war. But others 
charge that restrictions on the U.S. support are too tight.

This weekend's attack was similar to one mounted by the FARC on July 
15 on the southwestern town of Roncesvalles. The rebels besieged the 
police station in the town, and after police ran out of ammunition, 
the guerrillas allegedly executed 13 of the officers. The deaths drew 
criticisms -- including in the U.S. Congress -- that the Blackhawks, 
if used, could have saved the policemen.

Under the new U.S. aid package, approved by President Clinton on July 
13, Washington will provide 60 more helicopters, including Blackhawks 
and Hueys, to Colombian security forces.

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[L-I] Re: On Static notions of class, gender, imperialism, etc.

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark:

> > >Let's not forget that both Turkey and Japan were imperialist nations in
> > >their heyday -- I'm getting a little tired of "white feminist" bashing
> > >on the list.
> > >
> > >katha
> >
>
>What she means is "white American patriotic feminist" bashing. Doesn't this
>just illustrate the complete pointlessness of debating people like Pollitt:
>the only question is, how on earth have we collectively sunk so low that
>someone with this kind of abject chauvinist politics and absurd,
>mystificatory "feminism", can cheerfully inhabit a list called 'marxism
>feminism" without any obvious sense of irony or contradiction? But when I
>tried to argue along these lines on m-fem, the only response I got was to be
>told to shut up by the moderators, Carrol Cox and Malgosia Askanas (the
>latter's  connection to Marxism is still more tenuous than Pollitt's).

The point of sharing an e-list with folks like Katha, as I see it, is 
not really to debate them, but to use their remarks as occasions for 
sharing our knowledge with other subscribers who may not be Marxists 
yet but have not been indoctrinated into liberalism either.

>What is the point of these circular discussions? It is a medieval definition
>of Hell, the endless repetition of tasks which have lost all meaning.

You know that we all have to endure the eternal return of the same 
until we win in the real world, not on e-lists!

Yoshie


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[L-I] Re: On Static notions of class, gender, imperialism, etc.

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Let's not forget that both Turkey and Japan were imperialist nations in
>their heyday -- I'm getting a little tired of "white feminist" bashing
>on the list.
>
>katha

Well, Katha, the history of women's active participation in 
imperialism isn't about "white feminist" bashing (whatever you mean 
by this).  Take a look at the following article by Ueno Chizuko, for 
instance.

*
AJWS Vol. 2, pp. 170-191.

"The Making of a History of Feminism in Japan"

Ueno Chizuko
Dept. of Sociology
The University of Tokyo
Tokyo


...The Japanese women's movement was successful in gaining a 
substantial amount of public child-care centers throughout the 
1950's, supported by women's right of motherhood. Within the growing 
economy, it was able to transfer the cost of women's employment from 
the private sector to the public sector. In the end, it was not only 
women workers, but also Japanese corporations who benefited from 
this, and it has been proven to have been a good choice in many ways. 
It keeps the quality of child-care facilities apart from the logic of 
cost and benefit, gives women the freedom of job transfer, since they 
do not depend on on-site child-care, and controls working hours, 
since the child-care regulation is not in the hands of employers. The 
national consensus that motherhood is public made it possible for 
women to be provided with substantial child-care. The women's 
movement contributed to creating this consensus.

On the other hand, the very notion of public motherhood limited 
Japanese feminism. According to Hiratsuka Raiteu, women have the 
right to require public support for child-care because children are 
not private goods, but rather public goods. Her thinking extends to 
eugenics as she proposes that women who are not qualified to be 
mothers should not give birth to children. Takamure Itsue, one of the 
greatest feminist thinkers in pre-war Japan, and a self-proclaimed 
successor of Hiratsuka, proposed the communal concept of "mother 
self," according to which women could step out of the limited concept 
of the individual self. She supported the war enthusiastically 
(Nishikawa, 1982; 1990). Together with Ichikawa Fusae, a great leader 
in the women's suffrage movement in Japan, Hiratsuka and Takamure 
supported the ultra-nationalist regime during the war because they 
were trapped by the idea that women's rights could be achieved 
through women's contribution to the state (Suzuki, 1989).

In the 1980's there was a movement toward self-reflexive women's 
history in Japan, an effort to look back on women's pasts, not only 
as passive victims, but also, as active agents in history. Women were 
guilty of Japan's imperialist invasion, both as feminist leaders 
among the elite and, also, as commoners actively supporting the war. 
As part of this movement, the independent historian Kano Mikiyo 
created the expression, "women's history behind the battle field," 
and tried to trace the ways that women participated actively in the 
war in their everyday lives (Kano, 1987). A people's historian, 
Murakami Nobuhiko, pointed out that the war meant liberation for 
women, since it gave them a space for public activity which, to a 
certain extent, they enjoyed (Murakami, 1978). Looking at the fascist 
past, Japanese women's history has much in common with German women's 
history as described by Claudia Koonz in her Mothers in the 
Fatherland (Koonz, 1987). Recent trends in Italian women's history 
show the same interest in women's responsibility for the war (Kano, 
1995).

However, I do not raise this issue in order to make a comparative 
study of feminism in the former allied countries. The nationalist 
trap of feminism does not belong strictly to fascist countries nor 
strictly to the past. In many countries, women are still fighting for 
their rights primarily by contributing to the state. This leads to a 
situation in which in a conflict of national interests, feminists are 
divided by national borders. For example, in former Yugoslavia, a 
feminist friend of mine recently had an unhappy experience. After the 
nation broke down, many of her friends started to say, "First of all, 
I am Croatian, and then I am a feminist" (Kasic, 1995). In the case 
of the U.S. as well, the decision made by NOW (National Organization 
for Women) during the time of the Gulf War gave us a shock: NOW 
supported the participation of women soldiers in battle in the name 
of "equality," advocating (in effect) that American women die for 
their nation. NOW did not question the violence that the state was 
exercising. How feminism can go beyond nationalism is a very 
contemporary issue.


Kano, Mikiyo (1987), Jugo no Onna(Women behind the Battle Field), 
Chikuma Shobo.

(ed.) (1995), Bosei Fashizumu (Maternalist Fascism: a Temptation from 
the "Nature"), New Feminism Review , Vol. 6., Tokyo: Gakuyo Shobo.

Kasic, Bilyana (1995), "Nationalism and feminist discourse," Japanese 
translation by Kamikawa, Bosei Fashizumu

[L-I] In Iran, More Women Leaving Nest for University

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

New York Times 22 July 22 2000

In Iran, More Women Leaving Nest for University

By SUSAN SACHS

TEHRAN -- When Maryam Barati first left her home in Isfahan three 
years ago to attend college in the capital, she prayed silently as 
each of the 200 miles rolled by.

She prayed that her father, who was at the wheel, would not suddenly 
turn the car around and say that she, like all the women in her 
family for uncounted generations, could leave the family nest only to 
get married.

"He was very reluctant to let me go away to a different city to 
study," recalled Miss Barati, a 23-year-old physical education 
teacher-in-training at Alzahra University in central Tehran. "But he 
finally decided it was all right, and he realized that this has been 
an incredible experience for me. Here we have to learn how to live on 
our own."

Her adventure in independence is being repeated all over Iran, where 
young women now make up nearly 60 percent of all university entrants 
although women represent barely half the school-age population.

In a quiet revolution with wide-ranging implications for political 
and social relations, they are also leaving home as single women in 
historically high numbers, forsaking their conservative villages and 
small towns to seek higher education wherever they can get it.

Their self-assured mobility -- an independence of action that their 
mothers and grandmothers could not even imagine -- represents a grand 
social experiment whose impact is making itself felt on campus and 
off.

"In the last two years, the percentage of women students has jumped 
significantly, and this is a very important signal to our society," 
said Elaheh Koulai, an administrative dean at Tehran University and a 
reformist member of Parliament. "The phenomenon will change the 
country in ways we cannot even predict as they enter the labor market 
and the professions."

One reason that old taboos against higher education for women have 
collapsed is that Iranian universities, under the overall control of 
Muslim religious leaders, offer worried parents strict controls over 
their daughters' lives on campus. Often, the prohibitions are far 
more severe than they would have faced at home.

Their dress, their visitors, even their music and reading materials 
are closely monitored. Still, the women say, they are relishing a 
fresh sense of freedom even as they realize that their newfound 
access to education does not guarantee them jobs commensurate with 
their skills.

In many ways, the educational development of women has been building 
for decades, as overall literacy rates climbed and the poor and 
middle-class gained access to education that was the near-exclusive 
preserve of the urban rich before the Islamic revolution in 1979. The 
women -- and men -- now clamoring for university spaces are the 
children of that revolution, born in a baby boom that began in the 
early 1980's and slowed only in the last few years. Between 1976 and 
1986, the national population grew from 33.7 million to 49.4 million. 
Today it is estimated at 61 million, with 40 percent of the people 
under 15.

The desire of women for university slots skyrocketed. Between 1990 to 
2000, the number of women entering universities tripled as baby 
boomers came of age. In some disciplines, from medicine to social 
sciences, women now far outnumber men.

And while they have not yet broken into the labor force in comparable 
numbers, they have made their expectations and demands a factor in 
politics.

The landslide election in 1997 of President Mohammad Khatami, a 
moderate cleric who pledged wider social freedoms, is widely credited 
to his popularity among young people and especially among young 
women. The failure of conservatives to retain their hold on 
Parliament after elections earlier this year is also widely 
attributed to a backlash from young women against their support for 
hard-line social restrictions.

"I don't think the conservatives as a whole have begun to really 
understand what the impact will be of having so many educated young 
women graduating from our universities," said Mohammad Javad 
Larijani, a veteran hard-line parliamentarian who lost his seat in 
the reformist wave, in an interview after the elections. "These women 
are going to demand that society give value to their skills and their 
degrees."

Women have long been underrepresented in politics and the professions 
in Iran. They make up just 14 percent of the labor force, according 
to a recent United Nations report on human development in Iran. When 
they do find jobs, it is in government, where they hold 23 percent of 
the public sector posts, and in farming. They are overrepresented in 
comparison to men -- by a factor of 2 to 1 -- only in the 
unemployment rolls.

"Many trained and skilled women and girls must stay at home because 
of social and traditional obstacles from their families," said Dr. 
Koulai. "Many men in our society don't want their wives working 

[L-I] Iran's Summer of Unrest

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

From: "Ulhas Joglekar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Iran's Summer of Unrest
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 19:50:53 +0530

Iran's Summer of Unrest
0019 GMT, 000714

Summary

In the midst of a drought and a crippling summer heat wave, Iran is 
wracked by protest and violence. But more than a reaction to the 
weather or the lack of water, Iranians appear to be reacting to unmet 
expectations for progress. President Mohammad Khatami has succeeded 
in clearing the way for limited political expression -- like protest 
-- but he has not yet improved the country's standard of living. For 
the first time, significant numbers of everyday Iranians are aiming 
protests at the reformist president.

Analysis

Two men were stabbed July 11 in a fight over drinking water in Qom. 
The violence in Iranís most revered religious center was shocking but 
not isolated. The stabbing was merely the latest in a string of 
protests and violence in Iran. In the midst of a severe drought and 
summer heat wave, tension is running high in Iranian society.

Increasingly, this tension is manifesting itself in popular 
dissatisfaction with the government of President Mohammad Khatami. 
Khatami has been successful in improving the personal freedoms of 
Iranians, including the freedom to protest. But Khatami's economic 
reforms have not yet taken root, which puts him in a dangerous 
situation.

In the last three weeks, Iranians have taken to the streets in 
significant numbers. Some 4,000 demonstrators blocked a highway south 
of Tehran on June 27 to protest the government's failure to provide 
water, electricity and medical care to their district. A week later, 
at least three people were killed in a riot in Abadan -- a hub of 
Iran's oil industry -- as people demanded clean drinking water, 
according to IRNA, the official Iranian news agency.

And on July 8, a student rally meant to mark the first anniversary of 
pro-democracy rallies was not only directed at conservative political 
factions but at President Khatami himself. Protestors chanted 
"Khatami, Khatami, show your power or resign," and "Khatami, this is 
the final notice," according to reports published in the London-based 
daily, The Guardian.

For the first time, the president himself has been a target of the 
protests. Clearly, the summer weather -- reaching up to 122 degrees 
Fahrenheit during the day -- is aggravating conditions, but Iranians 
are taking to the streets in more significant numbers than ever 
before, just to protest basic living conditions.

Before this year, there was only one major drought protest, in 1995. 
Protestors were severely repressed by security forces, which 
reportedly killed dozens and arrested at least 800. The most recent 
protests were met with force, but the body counts were much lower, as 
police appeared to pull punches.

The protests highlight Khatami's dilemma. His political reforms have 
been relatively successful. Open dissent is grudgingly tolerated, and 
reformist newspapers pop up as fast as conservative factions can 
close them. But the presidentís economic reforms have yet to get off 
the ground. Until this year, a conservative parliament blocked much 
of his economic legislation, and foreign investors have been 
reluctant to set up shop. Officially, unemployment hovers around 15 
percent; unofficial numbers are nearly double that.

Khatami's problem is one of unmet expectations. Iranians elected him 
in 1997 in a landslide, because he promised to open society and fix 
the economy. Last winter, voters gave him a parliamentary majority. 
And the price of oil -- which makes up the lion's share of Iranís GDP 
-- has been more than $25 a barrel since last November.

But the president is unable to meet popular expectations as quickly 
as they rise. Iran still has a crumbling infrastructure and polluted 
waters; in Abadan, people were protesting because the water is too 
salty to drink. The water has always been salty, actually. But now 
the people have the means to express anger.

Khatami is in a tough situation. At the strategic level, conservative 
factions of the clergy, still entrenched in the judiciary and the 
bureaucracy, hamper him. At a tactical level, the president doesn't 
have a good way to pacify the people. Khatami can't simply buy more 
water, the way the United States can buy more oil. Simply suppressing 
the protestors will undermine his credibility. This gives 
conservatives ample opportunity to press the advantage.

Hemmed in by his own ideology, and facing pressure from inside and 
outside the government, Khatami has little choice but to bear down on 
his agenda. He will try to keep oil prices high and increase foreign 
investment, while hoping that his credibility with Iranians does not 
run out. Without a lifting of sanctions and a wave of foreign 
investment, his time is short, and his prospects dim.

© 2000 Stratfor, Inc. All rights reserved.

___
Lenin

[L-I] Americans must leave, says angry Okinawa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

The Independent
July 21, 2000

Americans must leave, says angry Okinawa

Thousands form human chains around US military bases 'where they 
practise killing people every day' as world leaders meet for talks

By Richard Lloyd Parry in Okinawa


Tens of thousands of people on the island of Okinawa formed a human 
chain around Asia's biggest US Air Force base yesterday in a powerful 
demonstration of anti-military sentiment, hours before the arrival of 
President Bill Clinton and the leaders of the Group of Eight nations.

More than 25,000 people linked arms around the 11-mile perimeter of 
the Kadena air base in central Okinawa, carrying banners calling for 
the removal of the massive American presence on the island. "Bases 
are places where they practise killing people every day," read one 
message.

A demonstration organiser, Seshu Sakaihara, said: "Fifty-five years 
ago, Okinawa was the only place in Japan to suffer a land battle.

"In all of Japan we have the greatest experience of suffering this 
way, so we don't want a repeat of this tragic history. If we permit 
the bases to stay we are allowing war."

The G8 summit begins today in a luxury resort in the town of Nago 
against a background of bitter local dissent about the presence of 
the American bases and Okinawa's place in modern Japan.

Until Japan's rapid modernisation began in the last century, the 
islands were an independent kingdom with a distinct dialect, culture 
and cuisine, as much the product of Chinese, as Japanese, 
civilisation.

But since 1945, and the bloody battle of Okinawa which left 237,000 
dead, the island has been dominated by a third great presence - the 
American military.Until 1972, Okinawa was governed by an American 
general, and even after reversion to Japan it is one of the most 
intensively Americanised places in Asia.

About 26,000 American soldiers are based on the island, including the 
largest population of Marines outside the United States. Despite 
occupying less than 1 per cent of Japan's total land area, the 
prefecture is home to three-quarters of the country's American bases. 
On the map they appear as big blobs, almost straddling the narrow 
island and bringing with them traffic congestion, pollution, 
accidents and crime.

Five years ago, the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three 
Marines led to months of protests, and forced the government of Tokyo 
to renegotiate its arrangements with the Americans. After months of 
negotiation, the US agreed to relinquish the Marine base in Futenma - 
a landing pad for helicopters and transporter planes right in the 
middle of a town - but only on condition that it be moved elsewhere.

The town chosen was Nago which - by no coincidence - is the venue for 
this weekend's summit, the first G8 meeting hosted by Japan to be 
held outside Tokyo.

The government is spending £500m onthe three days of meetings and 
related events; the local government hopes it will project the 
island's advantages and bring tourism, investment and jobs into 
Japan's poorest prefecture. But plenty of people in Okinawa regard it 
as little more than a cynical bribe, intended to sugar the bitter 
pill of the US bases.

Masahide Ota, the former governor of Okinawa, under whose leadership 
the anti-base movement achieved its greatest momentum, has spoken 
angrily of an attempt "to buy out [Okinawan] souls with money, rather 
than treat their feelings and aspirations with respect".

Earlier this month, local anger was rekindled by two incidents 
involving US servicemen. In the first, a 19-year-old Marine was 
caught drunkenly snoozing in the bedroom of a terrified 14-year-old 
girl whom he had molested after breaking into her home. In the 
second, an airman was arrested driving away from a man he had hit 
with his car.

President Bill Clinton, who arrives today, will be the first American 
president to have visited the island. His plan to give a speech at a 
great war memorial commemorating the dead of the 1945 battle is 
intended as grand symbolic gesture of appreciation for all that 
Okinawans have endured on America's and Japan's behalf. But for many 
in Okinawa, the suffering will not be over until the US bases are 
gone.

Mr Ota said: "The summit itself is just a two or three-day passing 
event, but the base issue is one that will determine whether 
Okinawans will have a happy life or an unhappy life in the 21st 
century."

___
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