Re: apocalypse
What has Calcutta got to do with anything? Or is this valisspeak? xx Anthony P. D'Costa (Upto December 12, 1997) Associate Professor Senior Fellow Comparative International Development Department of Economics University of WashingtonNational University of Singapore 1900 Commerce Street10 Kent Ridge Crescent Tacoma, WA 98402-3100 USA Singapore 119260 Ph: (253) 692-4462 FAX: (65) 775-2646 Fax: (253) 692-5612 Ph: (65) 874-6009 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] E-mail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] xx On Sat, 29 Nov 1997, valis wrote: On Sat, 29 Nov 1997, Doug Henwood wrote: Speaking of apocalypse, there's actually an apocalypse index on the web, at http://www.novia.net/~todd/rap2.html [] and the slide in gold prices (perhaps God's way of telling us of the fleetingness of earthly riches). If Calcutta and the pyro-defoliation of Indonesia aren't enough, then God has a strategy problem. valis
Re: Chossudovsky Award
Date sent: Sat, 29 Nov 1997 13:06:38 + From: maxsaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Chossudovsky Award To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] First prize for citing Tom Lehrer first goes to E. Dannin. Honorable mention to Prof Rosenberg for tracing the reference one layer back, and also because I'm not certain, given his extra-hemispheric location, whether he was first or not. Well done Ellen. I guess my consolation prize in lieu of a drink is this honary title of "Prof". Mind you, I don't know what this hemisphere-chauvinist view of the world is. If you consult the time zones in your atlas, you'll see that New Zealand is first in the world for everything! BTW Bill, Maxine said hello back. Her talk was well received, though ten minutes before its close the long hand of neo-liberalism conspired to empty our building with a false-alarm fire drill. Thanks for passing this on. Bill
Re: apocalypse
Doug wrote: There's myth and there's myth. While I absolutely understand and sympathize with Marx's critique of utopianism, I also think that the loss of any dream of utopia has had terrible effects on real politics - we just can't imagine anything fundamentally different from what exists now. So the construction of some imaginary utopia is a nourishing kind of mythmaking, as long as we realize the constructedness of the myth, and the complexities of making even part of it real. What bothers me about myth, though, is the capacity for self-deception On utopias. Here my world is populated with those who formerly held a pretty clear (we thought) utopia in our heads, and tried to act accordingly. In these new times, the "terrible effects" here are all to real. As we speak the exemplary labor organization of Latin America (Bolivia's Central Obrera Boliviana) continues it's torturous self destruction. Membership is off, and the more honest leaders admit they really have no idea who there constituency is/has become. Eduardo Galeano wrote recently of the necessity for utopias, as horizons towards which we point more than a plans to be complied with. One way his article can be understood as a pitch against the reduction of "agency" to consuming. Bear in mind that for much of Latin America "consumerism" (as a way of understanding oneself in the world, before the economy, state, others, etc., and regardless [almost] of who is consuming and how much) is a relatively new phenomenon. (On his return from a trip to the US I once commented to a Nicaraguan friend how much shopping he had done. His response was quick and to the point: "F**k you: first you [the first world] have a party for half a century, then you call on us to be frugal ") We have started (modestly) to look into the world of work here, through the "new labor"/informal sector, many of whom are recipients of microcredit loans. The most prominent micro-credit lender here is BancoSol (the sol is for "solidario" -- solidarity), often referred to at international conferences as a "success", and second in renown perhaps only to the Grameen Bank. It is also one of the -- if not *the* -- most profitable banks in Bolivia. In one of their glossy promotional brochures, the bank brags about how a certain borrower, "empowered" by having received 3 small loans now, is a dynamic merchant, working 12-14 hours per day in her very going concern, and able to support her husband's vocational training. This is "success" -- though some questions arise. Why shouldn't she have the access to education? Note that she is a merchant (reseller -- as are significant majority of recipients of BancoSol micro-loans) -- then what of production, value added, and all that? (Though here I admit that -- as Doug suggested in a recent email invitation to reflection -- a deconstruction of the productive/unproductive labor binary could fruitfully shed some light on this discussion). And getting back to where this missive started: what kind of life is a 12-14 hour work day? And at the end of it, how much energy is left for envisioning horizons, contemplating utopias, etc? And herein, perhaps, part of the explanation of the massive spread of evangelical sects: they do meet that "need" -- just add water, makes it's own sauce, with all the attendant self-deception Doug alluded to. (Note: the Catholic Church here is on the counter-attack: they recently held a huge Jesus pep-rally at the football stadium in Cochabamba, in an effort to seize some of the energy and flash back from the "evangelicos". Pobrecitos: they sweated their backsides off under the midday sun in full priestly regalia...) Tom "Identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves in, the narratives of the past." Stuart Hall Tom Kruse / Casilla 5869 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: apocalypse
Tom Kruse: And herein, perhaps, part of the explanation of the massive spread of evangelical sects: they do meet that "need" -- just add water, makes it's own sauce, with all the attendant self-deception Doug alluded to. (Note: the Catholic Church here is on the counter-attack: they recently held a huge Jesus pep-rally at the football stadium in Cochabamba, in an effort to seize some of the energy and flash back from the "evangelicos". Pobrecitos: they sweated their backsides off under the midday sun in full priestly regalia...) Tom's post is filled with enough material to start a dozen excellent threads!! There has been far too little attention paid to the social role of the evangelist sects today in the United States. I like to surf the radio dial to find little nuggets of authentic speech and sentiment. One that I share with Doug is NYC's WFMU, an "alternative" rock station that consciously eschews "product". You will never hear U2 there. My favorites also include WFAN, an all sports talk station: "Here's Vinnie from the Bronx. Go ahead, Vinnie." "Lookit, the Knicks won't win nuthin' until John Starks stops actin' like a head trip." But for me the most interesting slice of life type station is WMCA, Christian all-talk radio. On most evenings, James Dobson from the Focus on the Family group, which is the real power behind "Promise Keepers", holds forth on problems facing Christian families. One of these problems is exactly the same problem that Juliet Schor wrote about: overworked Americans. If you have a husband and wife working 50 hours a week, the strains will undermine family life. For these right-wing Christians to have credibility with the ordinary, working-class members of their sects, they have to at least speak about this problem. I am troubled by the word "utopia". This reminds me too much of the sort of efforts that leftists have come up with in recent years to describe a socialism that will work, with the emphasis on work. Perhaps what we need is not utopian models of a future socialism, but better answers how people can have all they really need without being drones in an office or factory. I suspect that most of the world's wealth represents waste, as in the use of the words in J.W. Smith's "The World's Wasted Wealth." This includes advertising, insurance, marketing, finance, duplicated efforts for 25 different brand of deoderant, etc. We don't really need utopias. We need plain language to describe a world where people can work 10 to 20 hours a week producing a basket of goods that can satisfy all but those addicted to shopping. What would go with this is a clean and healthy environment, better health both physical and mental, an end to racism or national oppression, and peace. Louis Proyect
MAI email discussion list (fwd)
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 10:47:35 -0500 Sender: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Sam Lanfranco [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: MAI email discussion list To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] There is an email discussion group, called [EMAIL PROTECTED], that has been discussing how Canadians can get info and respond to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. The discussion group is "owned" by OPIRG-Carleton, a student group at Carleton Univeristy in Ottawa. For MAI-not subscription information, posting guidelines and links to other MAI sites please see http://www.flora.org/mai-not/ MAI-NOT DISCUSSION GROUP HOW TO SUBSCRIBE If you just wish to read the conference, not contribute, and remain anonymous, you do not need to subscribe. Do so only if you wish to have messages you post automatically approved for the conference. To subscribe send an email message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Leave the subject line blank and type the appropriate selection below in the BODY of your message. Remove any other text (auto signatures, for example). subscribe mai-not-mail ...You receive a copy of each posting to the group via email. subscribe mai-not-digest ...You receive (approximately daily) a digest of messages. subscribe mai-not ...Just allows you to post. You will not receive postings from the group. Intended for people who will participate through the Web or Newsgroup forms of this group. ==
Internet Beginners Guide (fwd)
The Society of Professional Journalists, St. Louis Professional Chapter have a web site that provides basic instruction on email, email programs, Netscape, internet lingo and lots of other stuff. Its at: http://www.ccrc.wustl.edu/spj/surf/surf.html#begin Check it out and then you can refer people to it when they need help. Or, you can download the instructions and give them to people who have not yet learned how to do that.! Here is what you find at: http://www.ccrc.wustl.edu/spj/surf/surf.html#begin == Surf the Net with SPJ A Journalist's Guide to the Internet Notes from workshops to be presented by the Society of Professional Journalists, St. Louis Professional Chapter, May 11, 1996 * Beginners Workshop * Advanced Workshop * Extra! --- Beginners Workshop Introduction to the Internet * What is the Internet? Internet Services * Introduction * Electronic Mail * Usenet News * Mailing Lists * Telnet * FTP * Gopher * WWW * Internet Lingo Electronic Mail Readers Eudora and Pine are two of the most popular electronic mail readers * Using Eudora * Eudora Technical Support * Getting Started With Pine Browsing the Web * Using Netscape to Browse the World Wide Web * How to Find Information on the Web * Online Resources for Journalists * Surfing the Net: A Tip Sheet for Reporters * Using the Web: A Journalism Example Play Time * Treasure Hunt Advanced Workshop Advanced Searching Techniques * Advanced Netscape Skills * Surfing the Net: A Tip Sheet for Reporters * Beyond Yahoo Case Studies * Repetitive Strain Injury * Laurence Meyer * Alanis Morrisette * Olympics * School Bus Violence * Does Speed Kill? -- Extra! Internet Guides * Newbees (New to the Internet) * Accessing the Internet By E-Mail Create Your Own Web Pages * A Beginner's Guide to HTML Design Your Own Newspaper * CReAte Your Own Newspaper - fill out a form and create your own daily newspaper Online Articles * Chicago Tribune Series on the Internet: Orbiting On-line * StarTribune Special Report: On the Edge of the Digital Age * TIME Special Issue, Spring 1995: Welcome to Cyberspace * The Economist's Survey of the Internet: The accidental superhighway -- Bob Olsen Toronto [EMAIL PROTECTED] :-)
utopias and plain language
At 12:11 30/11/97 -0500, you wrote: We don't really need utopias. We need plain language to describe a world where people can work 10 to 20 hours a week producing a basket of goods that can satisfy all but those addicted to shopping. What would go with this is a clean and healthy environment, better health both physical and mental, an end to racism or national oppression, and peace. Louis Proyect I agree in part. Here, for example, the labor movement doesn't even really have a vocabulary to describe their predicament. Thus there *is* a pressing need for giving things names in plain language, so as to be able to act on them. On the other hand, I would insist that a "utopia" (in the broad [Galeano] sense I mentioned in my last post) IS a necessity for doing politics "as long as we realize the constructedness of the myth, and the complexities of making even part of it real" (Doug). Lurking behind "plain language" is of course a version of how the world *should* be, which, I maintain, is an articulation of one way of organizing our hopes. So we're back to talking about utopias. Which is not a pointless exercise, and in which nowadays I find more nourishment in poetry than most anything else. (My favorite for the moment is Neruda's "Hombre Invisible", a sort of preface to his _Odas Elementales_, now out in an excellent bi-lingual edition). Concluding, please pardon a self-referencing here. Below a piece of a previous post of mine, which touched on the organization of hope: Often they (my students) have not even engaged/articulated what, at root, they might hope for in the world, much less how to act on it. In _Animal Dreams_, a book dedicated to the memory of Benjamin Linder (killed by contras in Nicaragua in 1987), novelist/poet Barbara Kingsolver put it this way, in the words of Hallie, her protagonist off to Nicaragua to defend the revolution: "The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers or the destroyed. That's about it. Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallways and touching the walls on both sides." Tom Tom Kruse / Casilla 5869 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
A thought
I wonder whether the collapse in Malaysia and South Korea will stimulate Buddhist revivals. There are likely a lot of yuppies in those lands ready for a new/old way of looking at life. Papa Karl, though long dead, may handily pull off what the Aum cult absurdly tried to achieve in Japan with nerve gas. Progress or not? valis
Journals of Value to Labor Activists Educators
The labor movement is undergoing important, even potentially profound changes while confronting daunting challenges. As we grapple with both change and challenge and grope toward some as yet uncertain future, the need for thoughtful, creative, and provocative analysis becomes ever more urgent. Three journals deserve attention by those who hope to serve as pathfinders within and with the labor movement. The September/October issue of _New Left Review_ (No. 225, thematically entitled "Confronting Globalization") offers a number of articles that deserve both consideration and debate. Linda Weiss leads off with "Globalization and the Myth of the Powerless State," in which she questions both the newness of globalization and the purported previous power of the state to control its economic fate. She argues that governments do have considerable opportunities to develop 'state capacities' in ways that give them control over social and economic policy, but only if their policies directly discipline the accumulation process and sponsor new forms of productive organization. Her essay, like those of Doug Henwood and others, helps to counter the notion that globalization is some inexorable and inevitable force against which both workers and governments are powerless. A suitable companion piece is "Towards an International Social-Movement Unionism" by Kim Moody, taken from his new book. Moody both describes and prescribes the emerging labor rebellions based on a new, broader, and more inclusive social agenda that is not confined by national borders. He points to the social movement unionism of the developing South as a model for unions in the developed North as the appropriate response to an era of transnational corporations, capital mobility, and neoliberal political and economic restructuring. Moody warns that an effective global union response, however, must be concerned as well with increasing the extent of union democracy if unions are to play an effective role. In "Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism" Slavoj Zizek argues that multiculturalism, far from opposing the logic of global capitalism, is its perfect expression: an inverted and disvowed racism, through which, as the editors observe, "it can view each separate and exotic 'Other' only as an authentic, self-enclosed community from the point of view of its own empty universality. Valuing only safe, marketable forms of identity, the market smoothly and efficiently destroys culture." Howard Winant, in "Behind Blue Eyes: Whiteness and Contemporary US Racial Politics," tackles the meaning of whiteness and how it has been used to define and judge all other colors from both right and left, analyzing both traditional conservative and New Right variants and their liberal and new abolitionist alternatives. He observes, "It is the problematic of _whiteness_ that has emerged as the principal source of anxiety and conflict in the postwar US Whitness -- visible whiteness, resurgent whiteness, whiteness as a colour, whiteness as _difference_ -- this is what's new, and newly problematic, in US politics. Most centrally, the problem of the meaning of whiteness appears as a direct consequence of the challenge posed in the 1960s to white supremacy." He argues that both the liberals and new abolitionists hold between them part of the key to challenging white supremacy in the U.S. Two new journals also deserve a look. _New Labor Forum_, in its premier issue (Fall 1997), describes itself as "a journal of ideas, analysis and debate." Volume 1 opens with "the New Urban Working Class and Organized Labor" by Robin Kelley, which takes up the theme of a social unionism that reaches beyond the workplace into the community -- beyond wages, hours, and conditions to the entire range of concerns of working and poor people. In doing so, this form of unionism must necessarily make issues of culture, race, gender, and sexual orientation fundamental to its agenda. Kelley offers examples from recent labor struggles of just such unionism, which is cognizant of, but also organizes across identity politics. In "Labor, Liberalism and Racial Politics in 1950s Detroit," Thomas Sugrue examines the roots of blue collar conservatism and "populist" opposition to social programs in the early failure of both New Deal liberalism and organized labor's response to white racism. Three articles discuss labor's involvement in politics. Editor Mark Levitan engages in a wide-ranging interview with Gerald Hudson, Executive VP of 1199 and Political Director of the NY State Democratic Party, including an interesting discussion of Hudson's view of the limitations and potential of the New Party and Labor Party. Dan Cantor and Wade Rathke follow with "A Non-Partisan Party: The New Party Model" and Sean Sweeney concludes with "The Labor Party's Alternative Politics." Those interested in various forms of independent labor political action will find the trio
Re: A thought
On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Anthony P D'Costa wrote: Buddhism in Malaysia? You're right; I meant Thailand. valis
Re: Miscalculation
Michael Perelman wrote: So long as prices remain somewhat linked to values the price system gives capitalists relatively good information about the underlying structure of the system. Over time fictitious capital accumulates and with it, prices lose their relationship with values. When, where, how? We've had plenty of fict val accumulation, but has the price/value relationship gotten out of whack? Doug
good jobs
Friends, Suppose that we took all of the jobs in the U.S. or any similar economy and asked, what fraction of these jobs are "good" jobs. By good I mean not just decent wages and benefits and reasonable hours (no doubt this eliminates a lot of jobs already) but jobs which allow the holder to engage significantly in both the conceptualization of the work and its execution, jobs which require real skill (I know that "skill" is a difficult concept). I do not think that the fraction can be very high. What do others think? Can anyone cite some current references on this subject? (Note: we may have covered this subject in the past, but I've forgotten what waw said!) michael yates
Ecology in the USSR, part 2
During Lenin's reign, the USSR initiated the most audacious nature conservancy program in the 20th century. Soviet agencies set aside vast portions of the country where commercial development, including tourism, would be banned. These "zapovedniki", or natural preserves, were intended for nothing but ecological study. Scientists sought to understand natural biological processes better through these living laboratories. This would serve pure science and it could also have some ultimate value for Soviet society's ability to interact with nature in a rational manner. For example, natural pest elimination processes researched in the zapovedniki could be adapted to agriculture elsewhere. After Lenin's death, there were all sorts of pressures on the Soviet Union to adapt to the norms of the capitalist system that surrounded and hounded it, and begin to produce for profit rather than human need. This would have included measures to remove the protected status of the zapovedniki. Surprisingly, the Soviet agencies responsible for them managed to withstand such pressures and even extended their acreage through the 1920s. One of the crown jewels was the Askania-Nova zapovednik in the Ukranian steppes. The scientists in charge successfully resisted repeated bids by local commissars to extend agriculture into the area through the end of the 1920s. Scientists still enjoyed a lot of prestige in the Soviet republic, despite a growing move to make science cost-justify itself. Although pure science would eventually be considered "bourgeois", the way it was in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it could defend itself for the time being. The head administrator of Askania-Nova was Vladimir Stanchinksi, a biologist who sought to make the study of ecology an exact science through the use of quantitative methods, including mathematics and statistics. He identified with scientists in the West who had been studying predator-prey and parasite-host relationships using laws drawn from physics and chemistry. (In this he was actually displaying an affinity with Karl Marx, who also devoted a number of years to the study of agriculture using the latest theoretical breakthroughs in the physical sciences and agronomy. Marx's study led him to believe that capitalist agriculture is detrimental to sound agricultural practices.) Stanchinski adopted a novel approach to ecology. He thought that "the quantity of living matter in the biosphere is directly dependent on the amount of solar energy that is transformed by autotrophic plants." Such plants were the "economic base of the living world." He invoked the Second Law of Thermodynamics to explain the variations in mass between flora and fauna at the top, middle and bottom of the biosphere. Energy was lost as each rung in the ladder was scaled, since more and more work was necessary to procure food. The whole purpose of the Askania-Nova was to allow scientists to observe such processes without interference from politicians or commerce. Unfortunately, there were already powerful forces being unleashed in Russian politics that would undermine these efforts. They came from two sources which tended to reinforce one another. One was the sheer need to compete in a hostile capitalist world. This meant that everything was ultimately judged on whether it could be bought or sold. The other hostile force was the Soviet science establishment itself that Stalin was reorienting toward a more "utilitarian" view of nature. Stalin had very little use for theoretical science. On the 12th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, he said, "All the objections raised by 'science' against the possibility and expediency of organizing great grain factories of forty to fifty thousand hectares have collapsed and crumbled to dust. Practice has refuted the objections of 'science,' and has once again shown that not only has practice to learn from 'science,' but that 'science' also would do well to learn from practice." (Of course, Stalin never examined the environmental consequences of such grain factories. The dubious lessons of such models are coming under scrutiny today as soil and water are exhausted or poisoned by agribusiness, just as Marx predicted they would in the 1860s.) Eventually, Stalin and his minions began to view all pure scientists as nuisances at best and counter-revolutionaries at worst. He sneered that they enjoyed the sort of "protected" status that the ecologists had achieved for the zapovedniki. "During the twelve years of revolution, the scholars of the USSR lived as if in a fastidiously protected zapovednik. In this All-Union zapovednik for the Endangered Species of Bourgeois Scientists, they found cozy corners for themselves...far out of sight of Soviet public opinion." Stalin adapted a crude version of Marxism based on a "productivist" reading of the Communist Manifesto. Gone was any attempt to view society and nature as in harmony. Instead, man would conquer and tame nature like a
Metternich/Kissinger/Suharto
Counter-revolution has its limits as a development strategy. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: apocalypse
Michael Perelman wrote: One of my students dates the beginning of the U.S. decline to Roe vs. Wade. Of course, Roe v. Wade basically restored the pre-AMA standard of a century earlier. Doug
Child Poverty: Chretien Liberals' Double Standards (Canada)
500,000 more children are living in poverty in Canada today than in 1989 - a 58 percent increase. This brings the number of children considered to be living in poverty to a record 1.5 million. The latest information on this was released in a report by Campaign 2000, a coalition of 60 agencies lobbying for an end to child poverty. The report also says that the number of children living in families whose parents are experiencing long-term unemployment is up 47 percent, while those living in families requiring social assistance is up 68 percent. The number of children living in unaffordable rental housing is up 48 percent and the number of families living in families earning less than $20,000 a year has increased 45 percent. According to the report, a child is considered to be living in poverty if its family must spend more than 55 percent of its income on food, shelter and clothing. This is the limit known as the "low-income cutoff." The report says that it would take $7.1 billion to lift Canada's children out of poverty. This is almost 10 times more than the Liberal government has pledged to spend "sometime during its mandate" on its "National Child Benefit Strategy." This is a far cry from the Liberal government's November 1993 pledge to eliminate child poverty by 2000. This report goes a long way to bring out the double-standards and double-dealing of the Chretien government. It has a policy and plan when it comes to eliminating the deficit; it has a "policy objective" which "it is working hard to achieve," when it comes to eliminating child poverty. Canadians know exactly what the Chretien Liberals are all about. Canada has more than enough resources to eliminate child poverty immediately. The issue facing the working class and people is to empower themselves to take over the affairs of government so that they, not the financial oligarchs, can set the priorities. TML DAILY, 11/29/97 Shawgi Tell Graduate School of Education University at Buffalo [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Two, three, many financial crises
On another list (Labor-L) Sam Lanfranco observed, As one who has not specialized in the ups and downs of the Asian economies, these are the observations of an economist who has not specialized in the region, but one who has watched the region for a good 30 years. In my view there are two overlapping economic messes in Asia . It is important to seperate them out since the have slightly different roots and quite different consequences for future stability in the region. One mess involves virtually all of the region except Japan. The other mess involves mainly Japan. I want to focus on Japan so let me say a word or two about the rest of the region. The rest of the countries in trouble consists of economies that have undergone dramatic, rapid and uncontrolled growth. (i.e., no thought of mechanism for worrying about overall consistency and sustainability of strategies). .. . . The Japanese financial system has long thrived on capital-to-capital bailouts. In very simple terms, institutions simply held each others debt and large 'bailout' transfers took place within the financial system - with the explicit blessing and participation of the state. On the surface they looked like "business as usual' and made the Tokyo stock market a darling of foreign mutual fund investors since it seemed like a failsafe investment. .. . . When international capital forced the Japanese state to step back in its support for Japanese capital, long standing problems began to surface. Bad debt 'rot' had been there for a long time. It had just been papered over by (a) state policy, and (b) successes in export markets. With both of these less supportive the depth of the financial cracks became apparent and the consequences less avoidable. Lanfranco's observations offer a useful corrective to the domino or "contagion" (contAsian?) view of global financial crisis. To paraphrase Tolstoy, "All happy financial markets are alike; each unhappy financial market is unique in its unhappiness." Mainstream -- and much radical -- commentary favours hydraulic images of finance. Starting with the "liquidity" of investments, we slosh through a vast reservoir of "waves", "tides", "trickles", "taps", "pipelines", "bailouts(!)" etc. etc. etc. What substance is there to that watery world? If, as Marx says, "all that is solid melts into air", what happens to "all that is liquid"? Plumbers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your galoshes! The uniqueness of each unhappy family doesn't mean that it remains unaffected by the unhappiness of each *other* unhappy family. The unhappiness spreads, not as a fluid contagion but as a cumulation of discrete, discontinuous actions. More often than not, the unhappy link between unhappy families is violence. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien would have us believe there is no direct connection between trade and human rights. This is like saying there is no direct connection between mind and body. The riddle's not in the level of the water, mates, it's in the albatross. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: apocalypse II
On Sat, 29 Nov 1997, Michael Perelman wrote: One of my students dates the beginning of the U.S. decline to Roe vs. Wade. A self-involved quibbler, s/he. I'd put it at the day after the first Thanksgiving dinner. "I grant thee that these darkies can be charming, my wife, but there remains a little matter of souls and salvation." valis
Re: valisalypse
On Sun, 30 Nov 1997, Anthony P D'Costa asserted: What has Calcutta got to do with anything? Or is this valisspeak? No point turning me into an Orwellian bogey. I'm just a humble lurker trying to learn a few things by dawdling over my job, the laundering of hair shirts in the faculty lounge. Calcutta? A better monument to the evanescence of earthly riches and power is hard to imagine. Of course we might live to hear that said of New York and Washington. valis
