Re: The IMF and deflation
On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Michael Perelman wrote: > Does anybody have any thoughts on the critique of the IMF by Stiglitz > and Sachs -- that the IMF is creating a deflationary economy to save the > banks? There is still faith in the Keynesian panacea? Rakesh
The End of Prostitution?
I don't know about the rest of you, but the arguments seem to be recycling. Susan's belated mention of gender was the only new thread. Should we put this one to bed? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
schmoozing
The Sacramento Bee had an article about a recent Labor Dep't study showing that schmoozing added significantly to productivity. The article did not give much of a lead as to the source and I could not discover any traces on the Dep't of Labor web site. Does anybody know of this report? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The story behind the massacre in Chiapas
NUEVO AMANECER PRESS - EUROPA Darrin Wood, Director. [EMAIL PROTECTED] We now have the aforementioned article from PROCESO magazine about the use of paramilitaries in the low-intensity war against the EZLN. And all of this with the help of a graduate of the U.S. School of the Americas, General Jose Ruben Rivas Pena (SOA - 1980 "Commando and General Staff"). Cheers to Carlos Marin of PROCESO for his excellent work. [PROCESO, 1105] To censure the media, control the organizations of the masses, secretly co-opt civil sectors. Plan of the Army in Chiapas, since 1994: create paramilitary groups, displace the population, destroy the support bases of the EZLN Carlos Marin The Acteal massacre comes as a result of a precise counter- insurgency strategy designed in October 1994 by the Secretary of National Defense to be applied by the 7th Military Region with headquarters in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas. The head of Sedena (Secretary of National Defense) was General Antonio Riviello Bazan, and the commander of the 7th Region, the current federal representative Miguel Angel Godinez. KEY OBJECTIVE: " To break the support relationship that exists between the population and the transgressors of the law." The military intelligence services should "secretly organize certain sectors of the civilian population; including ranchers, small business owners and individuals characterized by a high sense of patriotic duty, who will be employed in support of our operations." In the hands of Army instructors were left "the advising and support of the self-defense forces or other paramilitary groups." The need to implement these dispositions are contained in the "Chiapas '94 Campaign Plan". The increasing action in Chiapas of paramilitary groups fits within the line of action that was set back then. In military logic, the absence of conditions for forming those armed anti-Zapatista groups should be overcome: "In case self-defense forces do not exist it is necessary to create them". This ingredient of the military strategy in Chiapas - denounced with insistence by Subcommander Marcos, the diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas and non-govermental human rights defense organizations, and repeatedly denied by the governments of Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo - plays such a decisive role that considers, as well, the displacement of the civil bases of the guerrillas (a drama that currently almost 5,000 indigenous people are experiencing in various areas): The concentration of those bases of support to other areas would leave the Zapatistas without those essential elements and would lower the morale of the subversives, taking them away from their family. The director of Sedena (Secretary of National Defense) remarked: " The offensive tactical operations should be continued, with the end purpose of eliminating the tactical forces of the transgressors and their support bases." A general stationed at the Rancho Nuevo headquarters (31st Military Zone), Jose Ruben Rivas Pena, elaborated for his part a historical, sociological, economic, political and religious analysis of the conflict in which he diagnosed: ...An infant Chiapas, that begins to live or to confront socio-political problems possibly equivalent to, within the historical chronology of Mexico, the War for Reform and, in an optimistic manner, to the Mexican Revolution. January 1, 1994, it could be accepted, was the painful fall of the first tooth of a state of the Federation that is called Chiapas. In its Campaign Plan, Sedena looked without suspicion at the local political bosses: That the friendly population defend what is theirs, and this is especially valid for ranchers and small business owners. The recruitment - according to the National Attorney General's Office - for forming the RED MASK group - the one that is being held responsible for the homicide of 45 people in Chenalho, according to the EZLN's accusation - was done from among the friendly population, natural clients of authority: sympathizers and militants of the PRI and the Frente Cardenista. In early 1997, in Santa Martha and Pechiquil; in Yaxjemel, Los Chorros and Puebla - all these in the region of Chenalho - training camps for this type of self-defense organizations began to function. Some other goals that were outlined four years ago by the Army strategists were: the elimination of the urban commandos and the disintegration or control of the organizations of the masses. At the heart of the plan, the objective of the psychological operations is to destroy the EZLN's will to fight the EZLN and win the civilian population's support for the government. Like Red Mask, organizations such as Peace and Justice (the one responsible for the failed attempt on the life of Bishop Samuel Ruiz), the Chinch
Corporate Takeover of CA University Tech delayed/Jan 6thhearings
The Micro$oft Monitor $$ Published by NetAction Issue No. 21 January 8,1998 Repost where appropriate. Copyright and subscription info at end of message. $$ Questions Delay Corporate Takeover of Cal State University Technology NetAction Project Director Nathan Newman was one of several witnesses who testified before the California Legislature on January 6, 1998, regarding plans for a corporate takeover of California State University's technology systems by Microsoft, GTE, Fujitsu and Hughes. The hearings were called after NetAction, along with student and faculty activists, criticized the California Education Technology Initiative (CETI), a plan for private management of technology at the 23-campus California State University system through a for-profit corporation. NetAction and other critics of the plan pointed out the dangers of handing Microsoft and its corporate allies a monopoly over technology in the schools that are training the high-tech workforce of the future. The hearing was sponsored jointly by the Assembly Higher Education Committee, the Assembly Budget Committee on Education, and the Senate Budget Committee on Education. Legislators opened the hearing with a long list of questions about the CETI deal, including what the ultimate cost will be to taxpayers, and what effect a ten-year technology contract with Microsoft and GTE will have on innovation. At the conclusion of the hearing, the legislators reiterated their concerns about CETI and announced plans for more hearings to continue the investigation into whether CETI threatens the public interest. Under pressure, the California State University administration announced that it would delay signing a contract with the CETI corporate partners until at least March, 1998. This represents a real victory for activists, since the CSU administration's goal had been to sign the contract in December, 1997. After students, faculty and staff representatives were asked to speak about the CETI initiative, NetAction's Nathan Newman testified about the public interest implications of granting this technology monopoly. What follows is the written draft of Newman's testimony. $$ Comments to the California Legislature By Nathan Newman, NetAction Project Director January 6, 1998 Hello, my name is Nathan Newman and I am speaking here as Program Director for NetAction, a public interest advocacy group committed to democratic use of technology and open computing standards. We strongly oppose the CETI proposal and hope the state legislature will block its implementation. While our organization has strong concerns about the technological and anti-trust implications of the CETI consortium, I would like to start my presentation with our worries about its financial implications, since the supposed "savings" of this plan are the main reason given for its adoption. CETI is being sold as a "free lunch" where the California State University will get upwards of $300 million in technology upgrades with, according to the CSU administration, no cost or loss of control by students, staff or faculty. Now, any time one hears about a free lunch, you should generally suspect that you are being taken for a ride. But you don't have to have a suspicious mind in the case of CETI; the CETI partners themselves have made clear that they expect to make not only a healthy profit but to gain strategic advantages for each of their corporations. Up front, the consortium expects to be making a profit within four years. This is on top of the profits each individual company will get from being the nearly exclusive technology supplier to both the consortium and to students, faculty and staff. For a modest up front investment in technology, most of whose ownership will be retained by the consortia in any case, the CETI partners are being given a monopoly worth billions of dollars. Worse, these profits will be paid for by limiting the technological choices of students and faculty. In section 9.5.2 of their August proposal, the CETI partners made it clear that their cost savings are based on promoting a narrow set of technologies supplied by GTE, Microsoft, Hughes and Fujitsu. In their words, "Support for non-mainstream products which are anticipated to be low in volume will not allow the cost savings forecasted for the mainstream products like the standard PC." Other cost savings and, coincidentally more profits for the partners, will come from giving tech support only for chosen software technology such as Microsoft Windows and Microsoft's Office applications, which the partners note will lead to "minimizing the training required to bring everyone to a minimum proficiency level." An explicit provision of the CETI proposal is that "the CSU system will work
FC: Governments want to change Net architecture, from Comm Daily
> Here's the story from Comm Daily, Dec. 17 > > 'Optimistic and Damned Silly' > > INTERNET CHANGE FOCUS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ENFORCEMENT > > Law enforcement officials of U.S. and 7 other industrialized > countries want to make fundamental changes in Internet technology > in order to aid in their ability to track and catch criminals, > Justice Dept. sources said. > > Program to consider changes in Internet architectures comes as > part of agreement announced last week by Attorney Gen. Janet Reno > and Justice ministers from around world after meeting in Washington > (CD Dec 11 p10). However, one leading Internet authority, MCI > Senior Vp Vinton Cerf, said international group's plan wouldn't > work. > > Justice ministers are considering approach similar to that of > Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) program in > U.S., which would make traffic from advanced telecom networks more > accessible to law enforcement entities. Representatives of Canada, > France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and U.K., as well as U.S., > agreed as part of "statement of principles" issued in communique > following 2-day session that: "To the extent practicable, > information and telecommunications systems should be designed to > help prevent and detect network abuse, and should also facilitate > the tracing of criminals and the collection of evidence." Several > items on "action plan" issued in support of those principles refer > to working with new technologies to collect critical evidence, > developing standards for authenticating electronic data for use in > investigations and encouraging standards-making bodies to provide > public and private sectors "with standards for reliable and secure > telecommunications and data processing technologies." > > DoJ officials said Dept. may want to talk later with telephone > industry on trap and trace issues, but it's premature to involve > them now in follow-up to international summit. Instead, they said, > they are looking at broader picture of telecom networks that > haven't worked as closely with law enforcement as they could, and > have begun thinking about Internet protocols. Internet operates > globally with common protocols, currently Internet Protocol version > 4. Internet engineers are working on next iteration, version IPv6 > (Internet Protocol version 6 -- 5 was experimental attempt that was > dropped). Justice official said that one problem now is that it's > easy to send and receive e-mail with false address, called > "spoofing." > > It would be helpful to law enforcement if information sent > over Internet were tagged, and packets would transmit information > reliably as to where they came from, including user and service > provider, officials said. Loose analogy would be to compare e-mail > messages to tagging of explosives, so law enforcement can track > explosive material to its source. DoJ said new protocols could be > designed to make it easier to authenticate messages and to make > system more reliable. Law enforcement wants to work with industry > to accomplish goal, saying it would help "keep people who are > abusing information technologies from continuing to do it." > > There will be substantial obstacles to law enforcement > concept, however. Not least of them is that IPv6 will include > sophisticated encryption capabilities as part of protocols. Such > security isn't built in to Internet now, one of reasons why > electronic commerce has yet to take off, said Mark McFadden, > communications dir. for Commercial Internet eXchange Assn. (CIX). > That feature will make it harder for law enforcement to gain access > to information, he said. > > Cerf, co-inventor of Internet protocols, said in interview > that law enforcement's concept of tagging e-mail messages wouldn't > work: "To imagine that we would instantly create the > infrastructure for that throughout the entire Internet strikes me > as optimistic and damned silly, at least in the short term. Anyone > who anticipates using tools to guarantee that everything will be > traceable is not going to have a successful outcome." Technically, > such project could be accomplished, Cerf said, but having > administrative infrastructure to administer it is quite different > issue. > > It's possible to have digital signature for every packet of > data, but it would take "an enormous amount of processing, and it's > not clear we have any network computers and routers that could do > that and maintain the traffic flow that's required," Cerf said. It > also would require that each sender affix digital signature to each > piece of mail, idea that Cerf said couldn't be enforced: "Frankly, > the idea of trying to guarantee traceability of that kind is far > from implementable." He said he didn't want to be misunderstood > that his objections were "an argument in favor of criminality." > But Cerf said he worries that "someone relies on
Re: Drawing a Line
Tom Walker wrote that he (and Max) want to hear more about accounting. I missed Max' post somehow and am only responding to Tom's desire to find the >>missing link that >>I'll call "labour accounting within capitalism". Tom take a look at an old book, JM Clark's "Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs." This addresses the issue of accounting from different directions and includes a chapter titled "Labor as an Overhead Cost." Clark was trying to come to grips with accounting while also trying to get to a dynamic micro. You might find it interesting. Gene Coyle >Max Sawicky wrote, > >>I'd like to hear more >>on the substance of the accounting issues, which >>really get my juices flowing. > >I'd like to hear more, too. It seems to me that there is a missing link that >I'll call "labour accounting within capitalism". Having done a literature >scan on accounting information and collective bargaining, I have a sense of >what the missing pieces are but the task of pulling the loose threads >together is huge. I could write an article or even a book, but I have a >sense there is an entire missing sub-discipline here. > >The usual level of analysis for accounting is the enterprise (the precise >meaning of "enterprise" is flexible). The tools that accountants have >developed are for analyzing the performance of enterprises. Even without any >intent, this perspective privileges the well-being of the enterprise above >all else. In lay terms, this translates into "your job depends on the >profitability of the company." What they *really* means is, "*from the >perspective of the enterprise* your job depends on the profitibility of the >company." In other words, it's a circular argument dictated by the chosen >level of analysis. > >What I've said above implies that there is a potential "other" accounting. >Call it non-enterprise accounting or collectivity accounting or even invent >a new word: "oeccounting". I suspect this is easier said than done. An >alternative is neither a critique nor a caricature. > >ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT POINTS IN THE WHOLE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY > >To further provoke the sense of an absence, I'd like to quote from the >Marxist-Leninist classics on accounting. Engels, in his introduction to the >1891 edition of Marx's Wage Labour and Capital stressed the importance of >the distinction that Marx subsequently made (years after writing WL&C) >between "labour" and "labour power". Engels called this distinction, "one of >the most important points in the whole of political economy." > >How does Engels set the stage for his discussion of this "most important >point"? He does so with a discussion of the relationship between political >economy and book-keeping: > >"Classical political economy took over from industrial practice the current >conception of the manufacturer, that he buys and pays for the *labour* of >his workers. This conception had been quite adequate for the business needs, >the book-keeping and price calculations of the manufacturer. But, naively >transferred to political economy, it produced there really wondrous errors >and confusions." > >Since my purpose in citing these classics is to tantalize thought rather >than to enshrine doctrine, I'll now leap to Lenin, on the eve of the Russian >Revolution (State and Revolution), discussing the socialization of industry >during the revolutionary period: > >"The accounting and control necessary for this have been simplified by >capitalism to the utmost, till they have become the extraordinarily simple >operations of watching, recording and issuing receipts, within the reach of >anybody who can read and write and knows the first four rules of arithmetic." > >Note that in a mere 26 years, capitalist bookkeeping had progressed from >"producing wondrous errors and confusions" in political economy to being >wholly adequate for the socialist transformation. Incredible advance! > >Fast forward another three-quarters of a century. Did Oskar Lange give an >adequate response to von Mises' critique of the "impossibility of economic >accounting" under socialism? Did mathematics supersede accounting? Are these >questions rhetorical? Where does this leave the questions of: > >1. socialist accounting; and >2. accounting counter-discourse within capitalism? > >There are suggestive fragments all over the place. I've come across papers >that look at the accounting issues arising from privitization in Poland and >the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. In an earlier post, I >mentioned Fogarty's paper on accountants' construction of the industrial >relations arena. There's a review of the literature on accounting and >collective bargaining and a paper on the use of accounting in wage >determination in the U.K. coal industry. > >But the literature that exists is almost exclusively critique (and that >which isn't critique is, alas, caricature). As I said before, an alternative >is neither a critique nor a caricature. If -- as Engels
Re: marriage and prostitution
On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Fleck_S wrote: > prostitution and marriage are the two most common occupations of women - Even in the poorest countries in the world surely the first part of this claim is untrue (assuming something close to a conventional definition of prostitution). Bill Burgess
Is monopoly "natural" in telecom
The Los Angeles Times Friday, November 14, 1997 Don't Call Us, We'll Call You Communications: Lack of competition in local phone service suggests that a monopoly may be the natural order. By A. Michael Noll The Telecommunications Act of 1996 hasn't stimulated competition among local telephone service providers. There are two reasons for this. One is that the provision of local service really is a natural monopoly and competition doesn't make economic sense. The other is that the local telephone companies are skirting the intent of the law by using their monopoly and local lobbying powers to stifle potential competition. The goal of the act was to increase competition among providers of telecommunication and video services. At the local level, it was premised on the expectation that CATV companies would compete with local telephone companies in the provision of telephone service and that local telephone companies would compete with CATV companies in the provision of video services. But this has not happened. This year, many CATV companies have halted their interactive trials and acknowledged that they will not be providing local telephone service over their coaxial cables in the foreseeable future. Another possible source of local competition would be from the long- distance companies, but AT&T and MCI have stated recently that providing local telephone service would be much more costly and difficult than they originally had anticipated. There are tremendous barriers to entering the local telephone business. Considerable investment in the installation of physical facilities is required, for example, the copper wires of the local loop along with the people, trucks and warehouses to maintain the facilities. Another barrier to entry are all the state and local regulatory bodies from which approval must be obtained. Local telephone companies have a tradition of considerable influence with their state regulators, and some regulators all too frequently appear more interested in protecting the regulated. Since telecommunication is interstate, the rationale for state regulation of the industry is very weak; the regulation of telecommunication should probably be done solely at the federal level by the Federal Communications Commission. The local Baby Bell telephone companies lobbied to be allowed into the provision of long-distance service, and the Telecommunications Act allowed that only if they opened their local business to competition. But they do not like the rules set by the FCC for competitive interconnection at the local level and have been dragging their feet. These delaying tactics might be because the local telephone companies have discovered that their local monopoly is far more profitable than long- distance, and they no longer want to lose their monopoly just to market long-distance services. The local telephone companies were very profitable last year; the 1996 after-tax profit margin for SBC Communications was 15.1%, for Bell Atlantic, 14.4%, and for NYNEX, which struggled with single-digit profit margins for years, 10.9%. Some of the parties appear to be having a love fest. Incestuous mergers between the Baby Bells are occurring, and rumors circulated that the former parent, AT&T, wanted to marry one of its babies. The old Bell system that was broken up more than a decade ago is coalescing with the acquisitions of Pacific Telesis by SBC and of NYNEX by Bell Atlantic. As if on the surface of a sphere, while moving apart, the entities of the old Bell System are also coming back together. And very recently, WorldCom (the No. 4 long-distance company) is in the process of acquiring MCI (the No. 2 long-distance company). What all these mergers suggest is that the operation of the telecommunication network is a natural monopoly and that the forces of this monopoly are causing the industry to coalesce. In the new landscape that might evolve, the network infrastructure might be provided by a single entity, but the marketing of services would be provided in a competitive environment by many parties. While fear of the unknown is understandable, the solution is not to impede the forces of coalescence but rather to allow them to occur to create a new telecommunication landscape, whatever might evolve. - A. Michael Noll is a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the USC. He is author of "Highway of Dreams" (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997)
Re: M-I: The Sokal Affair, round two
Doug Henwood: >Lou, you were talking just the other day about the wisdom of the shaman. >Whatever the status of that wisdom, it's probably not compatible with >"universal scientific standards." Meera's debunking of reactionary Hindu >nationalism has a lot in common with the classical Marxian notions of >Enlightenment and Progress that you've been calling into question for the >last couple of weeks. I plan to cover this in quite some depth when I post my final piece on Marxism and American Indians, but here are some points that I plan to explore: The enemy is capitalism, not the Enlightenment or Progress. The threat to the Yanomami is not science, but multinational corporations and lumpen gold-miners. First world science and Yanomami shamanism can learn from each other, but this does not mean blind acceptance of animism, etc., as if this were in the offing. We are interested more in the value-system of such peoples than, for example, how they thought the world was created. That being said, there is knowledge in such societies that is in danger of being lost. This means that traditional societies should be protected from assault. Shamans have an understanding of where beneficial herbs are found, but if they are killed this knowledge will be lost. The problem with people like Bruce Robbins is that they pay lip-service to the survival of indigenous peoples, but would remove the one weapon in our arsenal that can protect them: unrelenting class struggle. Postmodernism is deadly because it weakens the class struggle. >As I said here a few weeks ago, the Sokal affair has had the unfortunate >effect of just confirming pre-existing prejudices rather than leading to a >genuine conversation. Sokal himself seems to know very little of the people >he purports to criticize, aside from a pastiche of silly quotes he >assembled; he doesn't seem to entertain any critique of the role of science >as an instrument of social discipline. And Robbins is better? Raising red-herrings about Abner Louima? Using the term imperialism in a completely boneheaded and unscientific (I mean this literally) manner? Arguing that scientific research into what makes homo sapiens fall in love is as bad as Charles Murray's eugenics? As far as science studies is concerned, this sounds like a completely harmless enterprise and I wouldn't want to dissuade anybody from pursuing it as an academic career. But with the all the problems that beset us in the class struggle, it seems rather inconsequential. If I had any influence on somebody entering college today, I'd urge them to major in a science, not science studies. Take a major in agronomy or engineering, and a minor in political science and take courses given by Marxists, preferably those who organized Vietnam antiwar demonstrations.. Louis Proyect
BLACK WOMEN ABOLITIONISTS _&_ ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE U.S. SOUTH (fwd)
> --- Forwarded from [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- > > Date: 6 Jan 1998 00:01:14 GMT > From: David Silver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > BLACK WOMEN ABOLITIONISTS, A STUDY IN ACTIVISM, 1828-1860 > BY SHIRLEY J. YEE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE KNOXVILLE 1992 > > ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE 20TH CENTURY SOUTH > > EDITED BY ROBERT H. ZIEGER UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE PRESS 1991 > reviewed by Dave Silver > > "Black Women" provides an excellent resource on the lives and > strugg les of lesser known Black Women Abolitionists in addition to > Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. Among the other Abolitionist are > Anna Murray Douglass, Mary Ann Shad Cary, Sarah Parker Remond, Frances > Harper, Sarah Mapps Douglass, Eliza Dixon Day and Sarah Forten. The > author explores how race, sex and class came together to create a > complex experience for these militant activists Some women, especially > former slaves were motivated by their own experience to "devote their > lives to the cause o f freedom." > > The author analyses this experience by showing that "economic > circumstances, kinship and friendship ties, marriage and education led > women toward personal definitions of their goal as activists." Yee > also notes the secondary status of Blacks in the broader Abolition > movement.In addition she documents the problems that these Black women > had in the white feminist movement which "succumbed to racist fears > and abandoned the possibility of forging a biracial feminist > alliance." > > Several common themes emerge from Black women's oral and written work: > As Yee notes that "slavery was especially difficult for slave > mothers who often saw their children taken away from them and their > writings examined the breakup of the slave family and the sexual > exploitation of slave women." > > The contribution made by these Black women to full Emancipation becomes > even more astonishing when one realizes that they found themselves > caught between the sexism of the anti-slavery movement on one hand and > the racism of the white women's movement. > > "Organized Labor" explores the significant role that trade unionism > played in shaping the industrail, political, economic and social life > of the 20th Century South.It depicts the centrality of race and the > essays try to come to grips with the question of how distinctive as > well as what similarities existed in the southern working class and and > southern patterns of labor relations. Rich sources both oral and > archival are tapped such as the oral history collections at the > University of North Carolina and the Southern Labor Archives in > Atlanta. > > Among the themes explored are Labor Espionage, Textile Workers > struggles to unionize, the 1922 Railroad Shopmen's Strike, the struggl > e for racial justice and Industrial Unionism in Memphis, interracial > unionism among Fort Worth's Packinghouse Workers and the struggle > against anti-union sentiment in Arkansas and Florida. > > There are vivid descriptions of the role of such heroines as > "Mother" Jones in the coal mining areas of the South in the 1910's > and early twenties and Ella May Wiggins songstress and martyr of the > Gastonia strike in 1922 Although the contributions of such groups as > the Southern Conference Educational Fund and the Communist Party > deserved greater documentation, this volume is an important guide to > understanding the rich labor history of the South. >
STOP THE WAR IN CHIAPAS!-INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION JANUARY
> Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 12:48:25 -0800 (PST)
> From: National Commission for Democracy in Mexico <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: STOP THE WAR IN CHIAPAS!-INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION JANUARY
> 12TH
>
> ACTION ALERT!!
>
> INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION- JANUARY 12, 1998
> STOP THE WAR IN CHIAPAS!
> STOP U.S. MILITARY AID TO MEXICO!
> Demonstrations to be held in Mexico, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland,
> Canada and more than 24 cities in the U.S.
>
>
> Outrage over the massacre of 45 children, women and men on December 22nd in
> Chiapas, Mexico has erupted worldwide in the last two weeks. More than 20
> cities here in the United States staged demonstrations on January 2nd at the
> Mexican Consulates, while in Europe and Mexico similar actions have taken
> place. Following the incursion of the Mexican military into the Zapatista
> communities of La Realidad, Morelia and others on January 3rd, the Zapatista
> Front of National Liberation (FZLN) shut down the Mexican stock market for
> several hours, while simultaneously taking over two radio stations in Mexico
> City on January 5th. Groups worldwide have pledged to continue to increase
> the levels of organization, mobilization and action until the war is stopped
> in Chiapas.
>
> An International Day of Action on January 12th has been called for by the
> Zapatistas and the FZLN in response to the massacre in Chiapas. The
> complicity of Mexican state and federal authorities in the killings remains
> unresolved. The illegal incursions of the Mexican military has resulted in
> beatings, harassment, widespread terror and the displacement of Zapatista
> communities. Yet they continue unabated in spite of the resignations of
> highly placed PRI officials. These facts signal a continuation of the
> policies which led to the massacre. Most disturbing are concerns about the
> ease with which US military aid is being used for counter-insurgency efforts
> in Mexico. As one commentator from MSNBC noted in reference to the massacre
> and continuing violence in Chiapas, "the CIA has left its footprints-again
> allying itself with questionable elements within a foreign country's
> military." ("Planning the CIA's Next Secret War," Michael Moran, MSNBC)
>
> The severity of the war in Mexico has elicited a powerful response. Now,
> the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico (NCDM), in conjunction with
> the EZLN and FZLN ask all people of conscience to undertake and intensify
> efforts being made to prevent the outbreak of full scale war in Chiapas. We
> ask the following:
> 1. Join one of the 24 demonstrations taking place in US cities nationwide,
> and others worldwide on January 12th. If there is not a demonstration
> planned in your area, we ask that you organize one at the nearest Mexican
> Consulate, Federal Building, Drug Enforcement Agency, military office or
> base, etc. Important announcements in regards to national campaigns will
> also be announced including a divestment strategy and an approach to
> Congressional representatives. Please contact the NCDM for more information.
> 2. Contact your local city council and Congressional representatives,
> arrange visits in order to express your concern over the following: A)the
> status of the investigation into the massacre of the 45 Tzotzil Indians in
> Chiapas and allegations concerning the Mexican state and federal authorities
> and military's complicity in the killings. B) the illegal incursions of the
> Mexican army on January 3rd into the Zapatista communities of La Realidad,
> Morelia, Yaltchilpic, San Caralampio, 10th of April and Aldama. These
> incursions are a direct violation of the Federal Law for Dialogue,
> Conciliation and a Peace with Dignity in Chiapas (March 11, 1195) which
> prohibits the persecution of members and sympathizers of the EZLN. C) that
> the Mexican government has sent a strong signal of its desire for war with
> the violation of the March 1995 and the build-up of Federal Army troops
> around Zapatista communities D) that as a result of the army's movements and
> the continuing presence of paramilitary groups, there are currently more
> than 7,000 refugees in Chiapas. E) that full-scale war seems imminent due to
> the provocations of the Mexican military and paramilitary groups F) to
> prevent war and further bloodshed the Mexican government must demilitarize
> the Indigenous communities, implement the San Andres Agreements on
> Indigenous Rights and Culture, and meet the minimal five conditions set by
> the EZLN for a renewal of meaningful dialogue and negotiations with the
> Mexican government in a peaceful and non-violent context.
> 3. We ask that you also raise your concerns about US military involvement in
> Mexico by asking your Congressional representative to: A) attend a briefing
> for the Congressional Human Rights Caucus regarding the situation in
> Chiapas. It is being organized by Congressman Tom Lantos's office on
> January 15th at 11am in Washingt
Re: M-I: The Sokal Affair, round two
>Louis Proyect: >Odd, I thought the debate was over the appropriateness of "sciences" or >"local knowledge" versus universal scientific standards. Meera Nanda's >debunking of reactionary Hindu nationalist "science" seems useful. The >debate also seemed to be over the sort of obscurantism and bullshit that >Social Text has been responsible for and which discredits Marxism, either >classical such as my own, or the Frankfurt School variety that Stanley >Aronowitz claims informs the journal. Lou, you were talking just the other day about the wisdom of the shaman. Whatever the status of that wisdom, it's probably not compatible with "universal scientific standards." Meera's debunking of reactionary Hindu nationalism has a lot in common with the classical Marxian notions of Enlightenment and Progress that you've been calling into question for the last couple of weeks. I'd prefer we not equate Stanley Aronowitz with the Frankfurt School. For one, Adorno would never have claimed that scientific medicine has done more harm than good in the 20th century. >Bruce Robbins: >The postmodern project of de-naturalizing, or the making conscious of >unconscious assumptions, might want to show, for example, how the "fact" >that a cathedral was built in 1612 (Terry Eagleton's example) includes >assumptions about the value of knowing and dating origins, as opposed to >knowing something else about the cathedral. But as this example suggests, >it would not necessarily mean critiquing such assumptions in the strong >sense, or throwing them out: "no more dates!". In the same way, showing >that science draws on "sources" from its culture, as Darwin for example >drew on political economy for his theory of natural selection, does not >necessarily take anything away from the power of what science does with >those sources. > >Louis Proyect: >This is incomprehensible. I wish I knew how to write like this. Then maybe >I'd get published in those high-toned journals that nobody reads. Robbins is first saying that an obsession with something like saying a cathedral was built in 1612 betrays a certain set of biases about what's important. This is the kind of history beloved of canon-defenders. Of more interest to most of us might be the role of religion in the society that built the cathedral, who built it and how, how the priests were chosen, who the congregation was, how the meaning of that cathedral might have changed over time, etc. On the other hand, Robbins argues, showing that Darwin's science reflected certain notions of political economy prevalent in his day does not demean or neutralize evolutionary science. Next to Lacan, this passage reads like Basic English. As I said here a few weeks ago, the Sokal affair has had the unfortunate effect of just confirming pre-existing prejudices rather than leading to a genuine conversation. Sokal himself seems to know very little of the people he purports to criticize, aside from a pastiche of silly quotes he assembled; he doesn't seem to entertain any critique of the role of science as an instrument of social discipline. The invocation of "science," to take a nonrandom example, is one of the ways in which neoclassical economists try to sell their snake oil. Just because Aronowitz & Co. are silly science critics doesn't discredit the whole enterprise; science studies are too important to be left to Stanley. Doug
afl-cio civil rights conference (fwd)
> Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 07:32:11 -0800 (PST) > Subject: aflcio civil rights conference (fwd) > > announced on > back page of this months > America@work, the AFL-CIO monthly magazine > > > > AFL-CIO civil rights conference > "Economic justice and organizing for the 21st century" > sponsors: > APRI, APALA, CBTU, CLUW, LCLAA, and PAW > > (A. Philip Randolph Institute, Asian-Pacific American Labor > Alliance, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Coalition of > Labor Union Women, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, > and Pride At Work) > > > March 27-29, 1998 > Los Angeles > Wyndham Hotel (airport location) > > for info call > 202-637-5180 >
Trade union represion in El Salvador (fwd)
> ASTTEL union > Dear comrades, > > With this letter we bring you very bad news! > > Today, January 2nd 1998, all trade union leaders of the new CTE company > were amde redundant (as the first step of the privatised > telecommunications company). > > Not only ASTTEL but also the other three trade union organisations have > been affected by this decission, resulting in the almost complete > disappearance of trade unionism in the telecommunications sector (70 > trade unionists have been sacked). > > The same day, company sites were guarded by police and the army, so the > comrades could not do anything. > > We will continue the struggle, but we need urgent international > solidarity. > Find below a model letter of protest. We urge you to take the following > actions: > > 1. To circultae this message to different unions so that they send > letters of protest > 2. To send copies of any protest messages to our union ASTTEL > 3. To post this message as widely as possible in the Internet. > > We hope to get the reinstatement of all workers. We will try to get the > union recognised (as the company has changed with the privatisation, the > union has been effectively de-recognised). We are having a press > conference today and are already preparing tough actions for next week. > > Fraternal greetings from ASTTEL > Adalberto Flores, > Secretary > -- > Model protest letter: > > TO: > Dr. Arnaldo Calderon Sol > Presidente de la Republica de El Salvador > Fax: + 503 271 0950 > email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ESDO > > Dear Sir, > We have received with great surprise the news of the sacking of several > trade union leaders in the telecommunications sector in El Salvador. This > is even more surprising because when you go abroad to other countries, > you boast about the fact that El Salvador advances to a real democracy > but in practice you maintain repression against trade unions. These are > the kind of attitudes that led El Salvador to a 12 year war. > We demand the immediate reinstatement of all sacked trade unionists to > the new CTE company. > > Yours, > > copies to: > > Dr Juan Jose Daboub > President of the CTE SA de CV > fax: + 503 281 0017 > > Lic Carlos Medina Novelino > Gerente General de ANTEL > Fax: + 503 221 2122 > > and to the union: > ASTTEL > fax: + 503 271 80 56 > email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Translated by La Red Obrera/LabourNet > www.labournet.org.uk >
Lite n' UP!!!
In a message dated 98-01-08 11:02:29 EST, you write: << Robert Saute of CUNY Grad Center says: > If you're interested in dissing rock 'n roll check out Monthly Review's > most recent socialist-realist critique of do it yourself music. Its major > finding is that the popular music industry is an integral part of class > society and that we can't all grow up to be rock 'n roll stars. >> Sometimes rock n' roll is just - rock n'roll!!! I'm getting sick and tired of all this analysis-paralysis trip!! Look I enjoy debating the schemes of reproduction and listening to "Good Times Bad Times" (for those of you who don't know John Bonham - he redefined the use of the Ludwig Speedking bass drum pedal on this single song!!!). Learning how to play rock n'roll can raise one's class consciousness because it usually forces one to explore the historical context of rock, jazz, and most profoundly - the Blues. You begin to make connections, and from there, you become pre-disposed to questioning authority, and it doesn't take much to get to Marx, Gramsci, etc... Jason
Re: M-I: The Sokal Affair, round two
Louis Proyect wrote: >And Robbins is better? Raising red-herrings about Abner Louima? I thought that was rhetorical overkill. But if Sokal uses the metaphor of a police investigation to describe science, then that should, as they say, be interrogated. Anyone who takes word choice seriously couldn't let this slide. It'd almost be irresistible to read it as the author's unconscious admission that maybe there was something to the postie critique of science after all. Doug
Dissing Rock n' Roll: Battle of the Pen-L Drummers
In a message dated 98-01-07 23:47:15 EST, you write: << So we've dis'd sex, we've dis'd durgs - who's up for rock n roll? >> Is everybody really bored with this "Nina Thread?" How about something really interesting! Alright here's my challenge: I challenge any Pen-ler to a battle of the Radical drummers I'll get my old double-bass Ludwig drum set (a Ginger Baker copy) out of my parent's basement in Queens, and set 'em up in the Monthly Review offices. We'll set a date, and I'll challenge any Pen-ler to a drum battle!!! Any takers Jason
Re: prostitution
At 11:43 AM 1/8/98 +, Jim Craven wrote: >I'm getting it now. Sorry I'm so slow. It is not the sexual acts >that prostitutes typically engage in that are exploitative and >degrading, only the fact that such acts take place under capitalist >conditions of exploitation, degradation of labor and alienation of >surplus value. If the sexual acts are seen as degrading by either >prostitutes or non-prostitutes, it is only because they are hung-up >with puritan, Judeo-Christian [or Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh etc] >morality and if only they would take themselves off this plane of >lower-order bourgeois or puritanical morality and >rise to the higher value system and absolute truths of the secular >sexual libertine, they wouldn't experience any degradation or >brutalization from the sexual acts per se. Brutalization from sexual acts can occur in non-commodified sex as well. I would go even further and say that there is a better chance a woman being brutalized by someone with whom she is in non-commodified relationship (a boyfriend or a husband) than by a 'john' in the commodified sexual act. That, again, calls for analytic separation between sexual practices in general and commodified sex as a form of work. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Re: Drawing a Line
Max Sawicky wrote, >I'd like to hear more >on the substance of the accounting issues, which >really get my juices flowing. I'd like to hear more, too. It seems to me that there is a missing link that I'll call "labour accounting within capitalism". Having done a literature scan on accounting information and collective bargaining, I have a sense of what the missing pieces are but the task of pulling the loose threads together is huge. I could write an article or even a book, but I have a sense there is an entire missing sub-discipline here. The usual level of analysis for accounting is the enterprise (the precise meaning of "enterprise" is flexible). The tools that accountants have developed are for analyzing the performance of enterprises. Even without any intent, this perspective privileges the well-being of the enterprise above all else. In lay terms, this translates into "your job depends on the profitability of the company." What they *really* means is, "*from the perspective of the enterprise* your job depends on the profitibility of the company." In other words, it's a circular argument dictated by the chosen level of analysis. What I've said above implies that there is a potential "other" accounting. Call it non-enterprise accounting or collectivity accounting or even invent a new word: "oeccounting". I suspect this is easier said than done. An alternative is neither a critique nor a caricature. ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT POINTS IN THE WHOLE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY To further provoke the sense of an absence, I'd like to quote from the Marxist-Leninist classics on accounting. Engels, in his introduction to the 1891 edition of Marx's Wage Labour and Capital stressed the importance of the distinction that Marx subsequently made (years after writing WL&C) between "labour" and "labour power". Engels called this distinction, "one of the most important points in the whole of political economy." How does Engels set the stage for his discussion of this "most important point"? He does so with a discussion of the relationship between political economy and book-keeping: "Classical political economy took over from industrial practice the current conception of the manufacturer, that he buys and pays for the *labour* of his workers. This conception had been quite adequate for the business needs, the book-keeping and price calculations of the manufacturer. But, naively transferred to political economy, it produced there really wondrous errors and confusions." Since my purpose in citing these classics is to tantalize thought rather than to enshrine doctrine, I'll now leap to Lenin, on the eve of the Russian Revolution (State and Revolution), discussing the socialization of industry during the revolutionary period: "The accounting and control necessary for this have been simplified by capitalism to the utmost, till they have become the extraordinarily simple operations of watching, recording and issuing receipts, within the reach of anybody who can read and write and knows the first four rules of arithmetic." Note that in a mere 26 years, capitalist bookkeeping had progressed from "producing wondrous errors and confusions" in political economy to being wholly adequate for the socialist transformation. Incredible advance! Fast forward another three-quarters of a century. Did Oskar Lange give an adequate response to von Mises' critique of the "impossibility of economic accounting" under socialism? Did mathematics supersede accounting? Are these questions rhetorical? Where does this leave the questions of: 1. socialist accounting; and 2. accounting counter-discourse within capitalism? There are suggestive fragments all over the place. I've come across papers that look at the accounting issues arising from privitization in Poland and the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. In an earlier post, I mentioned Fogarty's paper on accountants' construction of the industrial relations arena. There's a review of the literature on accounting and collective bargaining and a paper on the use of accounting in wage determination in the U.K. coal industry. But the literature that exists is almost exclusively critique (and that which isn't critique is, alas, caricature). As I said before, an alternative is neither a critique nor a caricature. If -- as Engels claimed over a century ago -- the distinction between labour and labour power is "one of the most important points in the whole of political economy", then what has prevented this *most important point* from being articulated in an accounting discourse? I can anticipate and reject one answer, which is that the labour theory of value doesn't provide an objective foundation for accounting calculation. My rejection of this is that the calculation doesn't need an "objective foundation." After all, the perspective of the enterprise is subjective. Berry, Maureen. "The Accounting Function in Socialist Economies." International Journa
Re: prostitution
At 12:00 PM 1/8/98 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: >Jim Craven's frustration is with other people's inability to understand the >reality he has seen with his own eyes. I can understand this myself. Much >of the discussion that pervades PEN-L and the Spoons lists seems detached >from the day-to-day brutality of the Third World, or of America's internal >colonies. Everybody who makes a living as a professor and who continues to >identify in some way with social and economic transformation owes it to >themselves to travel to places like South Africa, Nicaragua, the >Philippines, etc. It would seem to me that it is almost necessary to do >one's "Progressive Economics" in a professional manner, since it rounds out >one's perception of the world. An excellent point indeed, however, Jim is not entirely without the blame for that misunderstanding because of how he argues his point. In the same vein, "pro-lifers" claim they defend "life" yet their opposition, if any, to death penalty is not nearly as aggressive as their reaction to abortion. That makes one wonder what is the real target here: degradation or sex? I do NOT question Jim's integrity by comparing him to "pro-lifers" - all I am suggesting is that, whether he likes it or not, his argument can be read as the same genre as the attacks of sex launched by moral entrepreneurs of the Christian Right. As far as burtality of the Third world countries is concerned, we must be careful not to confuse their apparent lack of technology and consumer goods with degradation. I heard ad nauseam the "toilet-papaper-and-towel" stories from Americans traveling to Eastern Europe who erroneously assumed that the absence of certain consumer goods available in the US makes the living standards and human conditions in general in those societies worse than those in the US, and the people living of those conditions somewhat less human, that is, deprived of agency, than people in the US. To reiterate I am not saying that poverty is virtuous, all I am suggesting is to view it in the proper social context, and do not apply the American standard equating consumerism with human progress to societies different than ours. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
RE: Critiques of NC risk analysis
Yes, there is a very good book by Peter Dorman from Cambridge University Press, entitled _Markets and Mortality: Economics, Dangerous Work, and the Value of Human Life_. Gil Skillman >Pen-l'ers: > >Does anyone know of a good radical critique of NC risk analysis? I am >particularly interested in applications to health care, including >questions related to estimating risks of illness and injury. > >Jeff Fellows >Nat Center for Injury Prevention and Control >Atlanta, Georgia >(770) 488-1529 >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >
Re: Research -- Yeah, right!
There is a ceratin feeling of deja vu when approaching the subject of sex work on this list, but I think we need to clarify a few things: 1. From an analitical point of view sex, and _any_ other area human activity involving interaction and exchange between different individuals, can be carried either outside- or through the institution of the market; if latter is the case, sex is work just as any other personal service: hair styling, treatment of illness, child care, teaching, massage, counseling, etc. 2. The only reason to exempt sex form that logic is to claim that sex is a special and unique area, incomparable to any other areas of human activity; examples of such a view can be found, inter alia, in Victorian morality, Romantic (as pertaining to literary style) concept of love, religious beliefs etc. -- in a word, hardly an empirical or analytical position, let alone Marxist. 3. If sex, as any other activity, can be bought and sold in the market, it is subject to variations in the actual arrangements under which that happens -- as it is the case of selling and buying any other services. Just like exchange of other services can range from slavery to workers' cooperatives, the same holds for exchange of sex services. 4. Moreover, the existence of ethically questionable forms of exchange do not mean that all forms of exchange are ethically suspect. The existence of slave labour or sweat-shops does not mean that work is always a degrading experience. It is a degrading experience under those conditions, but it can be gratifying under other conditions of exchange e.g. in a workers' co-op. The same holds for sex. The fact that working conditions in some segments industry are degrading to the workers, does not mean that they are degrading in all segments, or even more importantly, that they _have to_ be degrading. 5. This discussion will certainly benefit from observing the above outlined distinction, and keep the analytical aspect separate from personal feeings. People may have different opinions or feelings about buying and selling sexual services; but that should not preclude them from taking an analytical approach. Personally, I prefer barter to market exchange in that area, not because of any ethical considerations, but because the quality of what I can afford in the market falls well below my expectations or what I can possibly get through barter. For the same reason, I avoid shopping at K-mart. 6. That, however, does not preclude taking an ethical position against degrading working conditions regardless of in what particular service area they occur. An important point is to take that position because of the exploitative working conditions, and _not_ because they involve sex or any other "dirty realm" manufactured by Judeo-Christian-bourgeois ideology. In fact, the preferred Judeo-Christian-bourgeois form of sex exchange, aka marriage, is tantamount to indentured servitude. regards, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Re: prostitution
Jim Craven: > >Just spend some time at the Health Clinic at the Blackfeet >Reservation at Browning. There you will see 12 and 13 and 14 year old >boys and girls with AIDS and other diseases just waiting to die. Now we are getting down to brass tacks. The world of Suzie Bright and Nina Hartley is about as far removed from the Blackfeet Reservation as a computer programmer's is from that of a Malaysian assembly line worker at a NEC plant making 31 cents an hour while breathing toxic fumes. The first group is in the "sex industry" while the second group is in the "information industry." Bright, Hartley et al are not the enemy. I don't think it is very useful to stigmatize them as Jews collaborating with the Nazis. They are a product of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and represent an extension of the sort of leftish entrepreneurism that you will find in the UTNE Reader and Mother Jones. Suzie Bright sells sex as a commodity in the same way that Working Assets or Peter Camejo sell stocks and bonds to leftists with trust funds. These are just sleazy ways to make a living that they rationalize with radical verbiage. Jim Craven's frustration is with other people's inability to understand the reality he has seen with his own eyes. I can understand this myself. Much of the discussion that pervades PEN-L and the Spoons lists seems detached from the day-to-day brutality of the Third World, or of America's internal colonies. Everybody who makes a living as a professor and who continues to identify in some way with social and economic transformation owes it to themselves to travel to places like South Africa, Nicaragua, the Philippines, etc. It would seem to me that it is almost necessary to do one's "Progressive Economics" in a professional manner, since it rounds out one's perception of the world. One organization that is devoted to this mission, and which I send money in to on a fairly regular basis, is Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org). They sponsor "Reality Tours" which are closely related to the sorts of tours that my own group Tecnica organized in Nicaragua during the 1980s. The goal was to open the eyes of middle-class professionals to the reality of third-world life and a revolution that was trying to change this reality. WHAT IS A REALITY TOUR? (from Global Exchange Web Page) Reality Tours are an increasingly popular way to learn about the history and current situation of a country from the people themselves. Reality Tours offer an alternative way to travel and go past what we read in the media and travel beyond hotels and beaches. Meet with community leaders in Haiti, Senegal, or Ireland. Learn Spanish in Cuba, or visit environmentally sustainable farming projects. Meet with artisans at crafts cooperatives in the fair trade movement. Or learn about the arts and religions of Haiti, Thailand, Palestine, and Israel. We also offer an exciting program called Exploring California which examines issues and communities close to home. WHY GO ON A REALITY TOUR WITH GLOBAL EXCHANGE? We set up meetings with people you'd never get to meet on your own, from government figures to grassroots organizers and families in isolated villages. It's an opportunity to learn not only from the country you are visiting but also the people you are with. Trip participants represent a diverse cross-section of the U.S. population in terms of geography, race, occupation and age. WHO CAN PARTICIPATE? Our tours are open to anyone with a genuine interest in learning about the regions visited. We also appreciate participants who are flexible and sensitive to Third World realities. Past tours have students, retirees, industrial workers, teachers, lawyers, social workers, doctors, nurses, church workers, journalists, community organizers, and city officials. HOW TO APPLY: Simply call us at 1.800.497.1994 with your $200 deposit to reserve a space on any delegation. Then complete the application and return it by fax or regular mail. CUSTOM REALITY TOURS If your organization is interested in a specific issue or would like to travel to a particular or different destination, we can tailor a trip for you. Please e-mail Susan Kench with your needs. Louis Proyect
Re: prostitution
James Michael Craven wrote: >Just spend some time at the Health Clinic at the Blackfeet >Reservation at Browning. There you will see 12 and 13 and 14 year old >boys and girls with AIDS and other diseases just waiting to die. >Under bourgoeis theory, the "exchanges" of these "sex workers" with >their "clients" (who were not buying "sex", they were buying >domination with sex as the instrument) were "free" and "mutually" >beneficial--otherwise they presumably would not have taken place. >These children were "free" not to sell themselves, yet they "chose" >to. At the Clinic you will also find Indian women whose husbands used >prostitutes and brought diseases home; their husbands were "free" not >to make the exhanges, but unfortunately due to "asymmetric >information" these women were unfortunately not "free" to choose not >to be infected. The crime here isn't sex, but a couple of centuries of genocide and planned degradation. Neither Bright, Hartley, nor anyone on PEN-L (well there may be a few exceptions lurking here & there) believes in bourgeois concepts of free exchange. Why, in the formulation "domination with sex as the instrument" do you turn most of your fire towards the sex and not the domination? Doug
The Sokal Affair, round two
I got my hands on a paper called "Science, Imperialism, and Love" authored by Bruce Robbins, an English professor at Rugers University, which coincides with round two of the Sokal Affair. It was occasioned by the publication of Sokal's new book in France, written in collaboration with a Belgian physicist, that I have not had occasion to read since it is in written in French. Since I have pretty good English--and a smattering of Yiddish--I will respond to selected points in Robbins' paper. Bruce Robbins: Very schematically, Alan's side wants to insist on an absolute distinction between truth itself and our representations of truth. My side wants to insist that no such distinction can be absolute. But my side also wants to say that in most cases it won't matter much, practically speaking, since there are better representations and worse ones, and the better ones will do most of the work that Alan's side wants out of "the truth" perfectly well. Louis Proyect: Odd, I thought the debate was over the appropriateness of "sciences" or "local knowledge" versus universal scientific standards. Meera Nanda's debunking of reactionary Hindu nationalist "science" seems useful. The debate also seemed to be over the sort of obscurantism and bullshit that Social Text has been responsible for and which discredits Marxism, either classical such as my own, or the Frankfurt School variety that Stanley Aronowitz claims informs the journal. Bruce Robbins: In search of further common ground, my side should admit not only that the objective world exists but also that it intrudes forcibly if complexly into the conclusions we draw about the world. (I have no trouble accepting Lee Smolin's amendment: it's not so much a construction of as a negotiation with the world.) For example, if all European knowledge about the Third World was nothing but racist stereotype and/or projections from the European unconscious, as some critics assume, then imperialism would never have worked as well as it did in dividing and conquering its subjects, keeping them down and plundering them with efficient brutality. More or less reliable information was necessary. Louis Proyect: This is a misrepresentation of history. Imperialism had utterly no use for pure science when it carved up Africa. The 3-part documentary on Cecil Rhodes shown this week on PBS included no scenes with consultating astronomers or biologists, to my knowledge. Now engineers were certainly critical in the conquest of Africa. Mining companies and arms manufacturers would be useless without them. By the same token, more recent imperialist aggressions have used the consulting services of social scientists. Anthropologists had studied the tribesmen of Laos and Cambodia with an eye toward how they may be used as pawns in the Indochina wars. This is not really what the Sokal Affair is about, however. Bruce Robbins: Another analogy the book uses over and over again is scientific methodology as a police investigation. No problem with the literal point about not needing absolute certainty, only to overcome reasonable doubt. But as always, analogies and metaphors carry extra baggage. Here the extra implication is precisely the reverse of the emperor-with-no-clothes: suddenly science is no longer a child looking up at an emperor, but on the contrary the state apparatus looking down from on high at the street, imposing a certain brand of law-and-order. This second metaphor may not reveal the truth, but it certainly reveals a truth about Alan's argument. His stone-kicking epistemology is less like a child, I would suggest--if it were a child, it would be a rather imperious, even an obnoxious child, willing to say that most every philosopher since Kant has been talking nonsense-- and more like the police: the police as represented by Mark Fuhrman and the Abner Louima case, let's say, the police that (as I heard on the radio yesterday) people in Brooklyn find less polite to them than the drug-dealers are. In short, this is an unconscious identification with a disciplinary apparatus that many ordinary citizens have good, rational reasons not to accept at its word. Louis Proyect: I don't have a clue what prompted this disgusting amalgam between Alan Sokal and police brutality. I'm sure he'll supply the context when he gets this email. Bruce Robbins: Alan has said that we need good science against bad science: against the sort of science that (these are my examples, not Alan's) reinvents Original Sin in terms of genetics and seems intent on destroying projects of social amelioration in the name of hypothetical Bell Curves and "neuroticism" genes. But I can't eliminate the theoretical possibility that even what some scientists would call good science-- genetic explanations of falling in love, say--should be fought, and fought on the grounds that no science, good or bad, deserves jurisdiction over topics like this. Louis Proyect: Let me see if I can get this straight. Alan says that eugenics is b
Re: prostitution
On Thu, January 8, 1998 at 11:02:39 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: >William S. Lear wrote: > >>Bright nor Hartley > >Remember that these two women are socialists whose critique of degradation >and exploitation focuses on wage labor, not sex. Yes, quite right. It's easy to get sucked into a pointless debate about sex when the real issue is the larger critique they share in. Good point, Doug. Bill
MR, RR, GD (was Re: Bright responds...)
Robert Saute of CUNY Grad Center says: > If you're interested in dissing rock 'n roll check out Monthly Review's > most recent socialist-realist critique of do it yourself music. Its major > finding is that the popular music industry is an integral part of class > society and that we can't all grow up to be rock 'n roll stars. Well, a firm grasp of the obvious _can_ be virtuous, if not valuable. MR may simply be showing its age here. > There is an interesting screed within a screed against alcohol. > Apparently, no one at MR has ever done any good drugs. Maybe, but we don't really know. Loads of people have done drug trips that were affectively sublime, aesthetically glorious and/or spiritually elevating, without ever being able to usefully integrate these experiences into everyday life. This developmental hiatus was largely the force behind the cult boom of the late '70s and '80s. Drug issues, in particular the real reasons behind the state's draconian legal and moral postures, should be more than just incidental backwash in this forum. The power entity that ran millions of young Americans through the meatgrinder of Vietnam over a ten-year period is scared to death of drugs, but - gimme a break - not because of the personal damage they can do. valis
Indian Struggles in Canada and Alaska
1) HISTORIC INJUSTICES ADDRESSED IN CANADA January 8, 1998 Indigenous Tribes in Canada Receive Formal Apology By ANTHONY DePALMA OTTAWA -- For the first time, the Canadian government has formally apologized to its 1.3 million indigenous people for 150 years of paternalistic assistance programs and racist residential schools that devastated Indian communities as thoroughly as any war or disease. Along with the formal apology the government promised Wednesday to establish a $245 million "healing fund" for the thousands of Indians who were taken from their homes and forced to attend the schools where they were sometimes physically and sexually abused. Some social and economic development programs were also outlined. The government was responding to a report last year that condemned its treatment of indigenous people, but fell far short of fulfilling the report's recommendations. Indian leaders have long demanded an apology but federal officials refused to give one until now because of fears of setting a legal precedent. Just as soon as the apology was read, the apology exposed a rift among Indians. Some leaders called it a historic step but others invited to the ceremony in the Parliament Building here Wednesday said the apology and the offer of compensation did not go far enough. "The federal government is insulting aboriginal people with this response," said Marilyn Buffalo, president of the Native Women's Association of Canada. Leaders representing the Inuit people were upset that forced relocations of their people were not mentioned. And the Metis, people of mixed Indian and European ancestry, said the government's actions were insincere. Indian leaders also pointed out that the total of the compensation package is less than the $350 million that the government acknowledged it wasted when it canceled a fleet of rescue helicopters. On Monday they reordered essentially the same helicopters. Prime Minister Jean Chretien, a former minister of Indian affairs who has not made Indian affairs a priority in his government, was criticized for not having personally endorsed the apology by signing it. Still, the formal "Statement of Reconciliation," represents a significant reversal and a difficult acknowledgment for a government that prides itself on its reputation for compassion. Speaking after an elaborate ceremony punctuated by drumbeats and traditional dances, Phil Fontaine, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, referred to the officials present at the ceremony as partners. His conciliatory attitude is thought to have played an essential part in getting the government to act. He said it took courage for officials to take a "historic step to break with the past and to apologize for the historic wrongs and injustices" committed against Indian people. Jane Stewart, the minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, who also is considered a moderate voice in Indian affairs, said, "History cannot be changed." She said, however, that "it must be understood in a way that reflects that people today are living out the legacy of decisions made in a different time." Indigenous people are among the poorest and least healthy of Canadians. Rates of infant mortality, youth suicide and unemployment are significantly higher than those for other Canadians, and most live below the official poverty line. The apology, read by Ms. Stewart, specifically mentions abuses that took place at the residential schools. The system began in 1849 but was most active earlier this century. The government took thousands of youths from their families and forced them to attend schools where they could not speak their languages or practice their customs or beliefs. "To those of you who suffered this tragedy at residential schools, we are deeply sorry," the statement said. Several religious orders that ran the schools have already apologized for abuses, and a number of individuals who were victimized during the 1950s, in the waning years of the schools, have filed lawsuits. Residential schools were also operated in the United States, and similar abuses took place. The closest the U.S. government came to apologizing was a 1969 Senate investigation, initiated by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, that documented abuses. In addressing the broader pattern of historic injustices and prejudices here, the Canadian government seems to have managed to avoid inviting new claims for reparations by expressing regret rather than admitting guilt: "The government of Canada formally expresses to all Aboriginal people in Canada our profound regret for past actions of the federal government which have contributed to these difficult pages in the history of our relationship together." The government also tried to reverse an emotional source of tension involving Louis Riel, the Metis leader of a rebellion who was hanged for treason in 1885. The statement of reconciliation pledges the government to "look for ways of affirmin
Re: Bright responds to Valis & Craven
Quoth Doug: > valis wrote: > > >all those other awful LSD-smoking '70s lefties >^^^* > Smoking LSD does sound unusual, if not awful. > > So we've dis'd sex, we've dis'd drugs - who's up for rock n roll? *That was only a dissonant gag, like lefties at Salon. valis "I know I am among civilized men because they are fighting so savagely." -- Voltaire
Sex and the Left
Here is an observation re. the recently re-emerged on this list sex debate. When I have a conversation with the "mainstream folks" and I want to avoid arguments and controversies - sex is one of the few topics available, as anything from politics, to social issues, to education, taxes, cars, or crime (I do not know much about sports or pop-culture) is bound to end in an argument. Judging from debates on this list -- the opposite holds for the Left: politics is usually a safe subject for a small talk, while sex seems to invariably stir controversy. What does it tell us, if anything, about the Left? wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Re: Mexico and the IMF
Yesterday Martin Hart-Landsberg wrote: > I have recently learned that many progressives in South Korea are > seriously misinformed about the Mexican currency crisis in 94/95 both in > terms of how the Mexican government responded to it and the impact of the > IMF structural adjustment program on the Mexican economy and living and > working conditions. Believe it or not there is a feeling among some labor > activists in South Korea that the Mexican government coordinated a > national dialogue resulting in a social agreement including labor that > helped protect working class interests leading to a speedy recovery from > the crisis. > > > If you have recommendations on some readings that would be useful for > activists there to read to better understand what happened and is > continuing to happen in Mexico I would greatly appreciate you sending > them to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > I will collect them and forward them to my contacts in South Korea. At this critical juncture the sort of pipelining you propose is highly susceptible to cumulative error; the South Korean unions should send some rank-and-file investigators to Mexico for a direct experience of the current reality there, along with a student film crew from a left-leaning communications department. valis "A community will evolve only when the people control their means of communication." -- Frantz Fanon
Re: prostitution
On Wed, January 7, 1998 at 22:45:13 (-0800) [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >> Perhaps given the best opportunities people will choose to work in the >> sex industry. Perhaps given a better world, people will freely trade >> sex in whatever democratic utopia we create. >> >> >"freely trading" does not sound like prostitution to me. Of course not, why should it? My question was (you didn't answer my other ones --- why not?), why is it so unreasonable to assume that sex work is just as good as any other in principle? Why should it be deprecated any more than any other work done under conditions of legal exploitation? If the working conditions are safe, if the work is as "freely" chosen as any other within our society, why should we care? Bill
Re: prostitution
G'day Penners, William Lear asks: >Why should it be deprecated any more than any other work done under >conditions of legal exploitation? If the working conditions are safe, >if the work is as "freely" chosen as any other within our society, why >should we care? It occurs to me that the 'self-employed' prostitute (and I recognise the range of possible experiences for such people is enormous) is essentially escaping the dominant mode of exploitation of our time. There is no surplus value produced is there? No capitalist and no proletarian! Sure, most alienations emanating from the commodity form (and, typically but not necessarily, most effects of differential wealth-determined power relations) prevail, but can we argue that we have in this prostitute a model for least-possible-alienated-worker under capitalism? An Adam-Smithian ideal type, perhaps? Theoretically at least, we have here the possibility of prostitution presenting some with a career choice that is tenable/optimal from both economically rationalist and politically socialist points of view. Cheers, Rob. Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia. Phone: 02-6201 2194 (BH) Fax:02-6201 5119 'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.'(John Stuart Mill) "The separation of public works from the state, and their migration into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in the form of capital."(Karl Marx)
Re: Bright responds to Valis & Craven
If you're interested in dissing rock 'n roll check out Monthly Review's most recent socialist-realist critique of do it yourself music. Its major finding is that the popular music industry is an integral part of class society and that we can't all grow up to be rock 'n roll stars. There is an interesting screed within a screed against alcohol. Apparently, no one at MR has ever done any good drugs. Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Doug Henwood wrote: > valis wrote: > > >all those other awful LSD-smoking '70s lefties > > Smoking LSD does sound unusual, if not awful. > > So we've dis'd sex, we've dis'd durgs - who's up for rock n roll? > > Doug > > > >
Re: prostitution
William S. Lear wrote: >Bright nor Hartley Remember that these two women are socialists whose critique of degradation and exploitation focuses on wage labor, not sex. Doug
Re: prostitution
At 08:23 AM 1/8/98 +, Jim Craven wrote: >Just spend some time at the Health Clinic at the Blackfeet >Reservation at Browning. There you will see 12 and 13 and 14 year old >boys and girls with AIDS and other diseases just waiting to die. >Under bourgoeis theory, the "exchanges" of these "sex workers" with >their "clients" (who were not buying "sex", they were buying >domination with sex as the instrument) My comment (WS): It is an interesting point, indeed: what is actually being bought and sold on the market? Tangible goods & services or fetishized commodity? Jim seems to oppose sex industry because of fetishization of sex rerlationship (that embodies the relationship of domination) - but the same can hold, in principle and reality, for any other commodity. As one vacuuum cleaner peddler once told me: "I do not sell vacuum cleaners, I sell clean houses" (his pep talk indeed was designed to create an impresion that the house was "dirty" unless the owner bought his vacuum). Thus fetishization is not unique for commodified sex. were "free" and "mutually" >beneficial--otherwise they presumably would not have taken place. >These children were "free" not to sell themselves, yet they "chose" >to. At the Clinic you will also find Indian women whose husbands used >prostitutes and brought diseases home; their husbands were "free" not >to make the exhanges, but unfortunately due to "asymmetric >information" these women were unfortunately not "free" to choose not >to be infected. > Two pints are due here. First, is the element of risk that is present in any employment - a nuclear plant worker exposes his/her family to the risk of contamination by the virtue of living close to the plant. Moreover, the risk does not result from commodification but from "information asymmtery" -- not commodified sex (i.e. where no money changes hands) can be equally risky if partners do not have sufficient knowledge of each other's history. SEcond is the element of transmitting the risk to persons not directly involved in the transaction. That transmission is due to indentured servitude nature of "traditional" marriage rather than to commodified sex. A person can trnasmit that risk even in the absence of commodified sex, ie. when he/she contracts AIDS through blood transfusion or intravenuous drug use. I think that Jim's position falls dangerously close to that of Judeo-Christian morality holding that that there is an actual physical risk by not following its norms, so to make that morality appear as the "law of nature." Following the same "logic" AIDS is a consequence of violation nature-like norm of Judeo-Christian morality prohibiting intercourse between same-sex partners. I think that the problem of degradation of people forced to sell sex (and other services) by their dire living conditions can be addressed without linking it to behavior that has been the traditional scapegoat of Judeo-Christian warlock. Regards, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Re: prostitution
James Michael Craven wrote: >I'm sure that the few rich Jews of Hungry had rationalized away or >insulated themselves from knowing exactly what fate awaited the other >Jews that they helped to identify, register, collect and have >deported. Am I the only one who finds this analogy offensive? To compare sex workers - who are in the business for a very wide variety of reasons, ranging from dire necessity to conscious free choice - with the victims of genocide? It both insults the former (by denying them any agency) and trivializes the latter. Doug
Re: prostitution
On Thu, January 8, 1998 at 11:02:39 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: >William S. Lear wrote: > >>Bright nor Hartley > >Remember that these two women are socialists whose critique of degradation >and exploitation focuses on wage labor, not sex. Yes, quite right. It's easy to get sucked into a pointless debate about sex when the real issue is the larger critique they share in. Good point, Doug. Bill On what basis do you assert that these women are "socialists"? Because they know about the difference between labor-power, labor, wages and the value of the product of labor and surplus value? Because they are using some of the right rhetoric and terms? Are they involved in other struggles besides the so-called "sex worker" struggles? Perhaps they are I don't know them. So there is nothing inherently "degrading" about the "sex" that is sold in the typical exchange? So there is nothing inherently "degrading" about having some stranger huffing and puffing over you while his penis is in your mouth, up your anus or in your vagina? If one just gets over some puritanical hang-ups, there is nothing degrading that will remain? Really? Have either of you guys tried it or is this just theory disarticulated from practice? Well I haven't tried it, but in all of the prostitutes with whom I have ever spoken to about this subject, and my work in Puerto Rico led me to speak with literally hundreds, not one expressed the view that they were receiving any kind of personal sexual satisfaction from the acts. Literally every one said they try to get a high price and try to get over on the tricks because they found the work and the tricks degrading and wanted to get more than chump change for the conditions of work, risks and degradation they felt they suffered in their work. But I must admit, my sample is limited and not having participated in the activities personally I just may be a bit too theoretical and limited in my imagination. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: prostitution
James Michael Craven wrote: >I'm sure that the few rich Jews of Hungry had rationalized away or >insulated themselves from knowing exactly what fate awaited the other >Jews that they helped to identify, register, collect and have >deported. Am I the only one who finds this analogy offensive? To compare sex workers - who are in the business for a very wide variety of reasons, ranging from dire necessity to conscious free choice - with the victims of genocide? It both insults the former (by denying them any agency) and trivializes the latter. Doug Response: Well then we are even because I find the few with any kind of real "agency" or "free choice", glossing over some very ugly realities (after of course giving the usual caveats "yes there are abused prostitutes and I do feel their pain") also denies lack of real "agency" and "free choice" under the surface of nominally "free exchanges" (the essence of capitalism) and it also trivializes the victimization of the many from the contrived extrapolations from rare conditions of the few. Just spend some time at the Health Clinic at the Blackfeet Reservation at Browning. There you will see 12 and 13 and 14 year old boys and girls with AIDS and other diseases just waiting to die. Under bourgoeis theory, the "exchanges" of these "sex workers" with their "clients" (who were not buying "sex", they were buying domination with sex as the instrument) were "free" and "mutually" beneficial--otherwise they presumably would not have taken place. These children were "free" not to sell themselves, yet they "chose" to. At the Clinic you will also find Indian women whose husbands used prostitutes and brought diseases home; their husbands were "free" not to make the exhanges, but unfortunately due to "asymmetric information" these women were unfortunately not "free" to choose not to be infected. So obviously we all come from different experiences and perspectives such that one person's analogy is offensive and trivializing to another. So be it. I just find capitalism and the fetishizing of ugly realities and brutal relations under the veneer of "free choice" and "free, equal and mutually beneficial exchanges" to be far more offensive and trivializing. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
RE: Critiques of NC risk analysis
Pen-l'ers: Does anyone know of a good radical critique of NC risk analysis? I am particularly interested in applications to health care, including questions related to estimating risks of illness and injury. Jeff Fellows Nat Center for Injury Prevention and Control Atlanta, Georgia (770) 488-1529 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
marriage and prostitution
I have been skimming the amazingly prolific discussion of prostitution on pen-l and am interested to see how most contributors talk about class issues but don't mention gender. Gender inequality fuels prostitution and promotes another phenomenon (which i have not seen anyone discuss yet) of marriage 'markets' - third world women advertising themselves as wives for the first world males looking for 'docile' and 'traditional' wives to serve them (read sex for financial security). The power trip that northern men get from buying 'docile' southern brides is not something that can be explained merely in terms of class, although international inequality does make a 'northern man' a relatively better choice for a poor southern woman than a 'southern man' from her own country. Gender inequality is based on economic, social, and political conditions that allow men to control women's sexuality, body, and many other life choices. Women's oppression is not limited to market exchange. A woman's ability to have control over her life, her job, and her body depends on her finding a good job with good pay. That is why prostitution and marriage are the two most common occupations of women - they pay better than most jobs. The argument that divorce has risen in the U.S. because women have more access to better jobs (I believe McCrate puts this theory forward) is a convincing one for me. What's different between prostitution and many marriage contracts? 1.prostitution is sex for direct payment of money, marriage is sex for indirect payment of money/financial security. 2.prostitution is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face relatively lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job discrimination against women marriage is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face relativley lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job discrimination against women. 3.prostitutes are at risk of STDs because of multiple partners, wives are at risk of STDs because spouses have multiple partners. 4.prostitutes are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older, wives are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older. There's not much difference between the two professions, if you ask me. High risk, relatively higher pay than other jobs. We need more and better jobs for women (with affordable reliable childcare, of course). Susan Fleck [EMAIL PROTECTED] W (202)-606-5654, ext 415 H (301)-270-1486 My views are private and do not reflect those of my employer.
David Card's response
Some time ago (a year?) someone posted (Doug?) a response by David Card to the critique that two other economists had given to _Myth and Measurement_. Unfortunately, I did not save the response and now I have need of it to counter claims by a neo-right critique of minimum wages who is claiming that Card and Krueger's work has been discredited. I have tried going back into the Pen-l archives but haven't been able to find it. a. does anyone have it who could e-mail it to me? or b. does anyone remember exactly when it was posted or how I can find it in the Pen-l archives? Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Peace delegation to Chiapas
> From: AFSC San Diego <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > for immediate release > > EMERGENCY DELEGATION FOR PEACE IN CHIAPAS > Wednesday, January 7, 1998 > San Cristobal De Las Casas > > In a wide ranging discussion with Bishop Samuel Ruiz, the Emergency > Delegation for Peace in Chiapas, began its investigation into the escalating > crisis in this southeastern Mexican state. > > "We run the risk of becoming complacent once the violence stops," was Bishop > Ruiz's warning to the delegation. "However this puts us in danger of > forgetting the underlying causes which gave rise to the conflict." > > On Thursday, January 8, 1998, the Emergency Delegation for Peace in Chiapas > will visit Acteal, site of the December 22, massacre of 45 men, women and > children and deliver humanitarian to the massive refuge centers where > survivors of Acteal and indigenous of similar attacks have fled. > > "Acteal was only the 25th attack." Ruiz told the delegation. "There are 24 > other attacks that must also be remembered and taken into account." > > Today we will see with our own eyes the Mayan victims of the violence > sweeping Chiapas, explained delegation leader Peter Brown. This emergency > delegation is the first of a series of high profile investigations to find > the truth and seek solutions to the crisis in Chiapas." > > > For additional information in the U.S. Call Leticia Jimenez (619)233-4114 > in San Cristobal Peter Brown may be contacted until January 10th, at > 011967-80920 > >
Unalawyer?
Headline: UNABOMBER SUSPECT TO UNDERGO PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING TO BE OWN LAWYER. Would that be the Psy-Bar Exam? 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: marriage and prostitution
At 04:01 PM 1/8/98 -0500, Susan Fleck wrote: >What's different between prostitution and many marriage contracts? >1.prostitution is sex for direct payment of money, marriage is sex for indirect payment of money/financial security. Response: Marriage is or equals sex for indirect payment of money/financial security or marriage may or even often involves indirect payment? If marriage is or equals sex for indirect payments/financial security, then are all the married women on pen-l whores (or what do you call someone who trades sex in kind--a sex serf or sex peon versus a sex worker who sells commodified sex?) and should all the men who are married go home and help to create alternatives to liberate their sex peon/serf wives? >2.prostitution is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face >relatively lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job >discrimination against women > marriage is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face relativley >lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job >discrimination against women. Response: And many women (sex workers as well as sex serfs producing tribute in kind for their husbands) face the "constrained choices" of not less food but no food, not less money but no money, not less shelter but no shelter for themselves and their children as an alternative to sex for money or as tribute. >3.prostitutes are at risk of STDs because of multiple partners, > wives are at risk of STDs because spouses have multiple partners. Response: I've been converted, the notion that multiple partners or visiting sex workers has something to do with risk of STDs focuses on the multiple partners rather than the true cause--asymmetric information. With proper information, then having multiple partners (the more the merrier) should be no problem as long as one gives up certain bougeois puritanical hang-ups about monogomy, commitment etc because in reality it is only an illusion as ALL marriages are just barter arrangements masquerading as something else. >4.prostitutes are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older, > wives are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older. Response: And even males are also often considered undesirable once they get older unless they have a fat wallet to lure some sex peon/serf to produce tribute in return for the protection and security for the Lord and his manor or if the Lord can turn into a sex capitalist finding a sex worker whom he can use when and as he pleases without the burdensome obligations of taking care of an old sex slave or providing commons for the sex peon/serf--capturing a portion of the difference between wages of labor-power of the sex worker versus the value created by the sex worker. >There's not much difference between the two professions, if you ask me. >High risk, relatively higher pay than other jobs. We need more and >better jobs for women (with affordable reliable childcare, of course). Response: Who is to say better or worse? This is just all puritanism and bourgeois morality. Some people sell sex, some people sell capacity to work as a teacher or a computer programmer, just different commodities being sold. Let the free market, dollar votes, and the "free and mutually beneficial exchanges" of the market decide. And childcare? Is it possible that concern for children also serves to turn people into sex workers or to keep them paying tribute as sex peon/serfs? Is it possible that these "constrained choices" are even more "constrained" than nominally apparent? ;-( (Absolutely Gender inequality has a whole lot to do with it) Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Asian economic crisis & the US
>X-From_: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thu Jan 08 01:18:29 1998 >Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 00:06:26 -0600 >Reply-To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sender: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >From: Kim Scipes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Asian economic crisis & the US >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >January 7, 1998 > >Folks-- > >Over the last couple of days, there has been a number of articles/stories >in the US media focusing on Clinton's desire to extend the age of medicare >as well as the possiblity of having a balanced budget in this fiscal (1998) >year--a balanced budget would be the first in the US since 1969. > >Now I hate to sound like a conspiracy freak, which I am not, but I find it >EXTREMELY interesting that these issues are gaining so much attention, when >it is becoming clearer that the economic crisis in Asia is not being >controlled by the IMF and, in fact, is getting worse. Please excuse me for >a longish message, but having just returned from Europe where this crisis >is getting extensive coverage, at least in the English-language press >(unfortunately, English is all I speak), I thought I'd pass on some nuggets >from press reports there. And for those of you who are not understanding >the emphasis on the United States, keep in mind that much of the world >economic growth since 1992 has been fueled by the US economy--so changes >here will reverberate throughout the world. > >The for-public line from US officials and most of the US news media is that >this will not effect the US economy, but no one who knows anything about >this really believes this horse-hooky. In fact, the IMF itself has changed >its official estimation for global economic growth this year: where it >predicted in September 1997 that world economic growth would be 4.3% in >1998, it lowered that in December, saying growth would only expand 3.5%; in >fact, Vicki Barnett, writing in a front page story in the "Financial >Times," says, "...the Fund admitted yesterday that it had previously been >too optimistic and that its new estimate COULD TURN OUT TO BE TOO HIGH IF >JAPAN'S ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN WORSENED" (emphasis added) (FT, "IMF says Asian >Crisis will cut back world growth", December 22, 1997: 1). In the same >story, a chart based on IMF data, shows that the IMF now expects the US >economy to decline a further .2% below its earlier projection. In another >story the same day, Vicki Barnett reports that the US trade deficit is now >projected by the IMF to expand by over $50 billion to $230 billion (Vicki >Barnett, "IMF World Economic Outlook: Trade patterns set for big shift", >FT, Dec 22, 1997: 3). > >Another story on the trade problems for the US: "The near certainly that >the US trade deficit will be driven sharply higher by the economic crisis >sweeping through Asia has profound economic and political implications. >[para] Some US workers could lose their jobs, and employers could feel >pressure to hold down wages. The profits of multinational corporations >have already been put under pressure by the downturn in Asia, unnerving >investors and analysts are forecasting more bad earnings news. *** [para] >The Asian crisis is already altering trade patterns. In South Korea, for >example, US goods are nearly twice as expensive, when bought with the >country's devalued currency, as they were at the beginning of the year. >That is squeezing US exporters ranging from auto-part makers to farmers and >could imperil the jobs those exports support. [para] A survey last week >by the National Association of Manufacturers found that four out of five >manufacturing executives anticipated significantly lower exports next year >because of the problems in Asia and the resulting currency fluctuations. >Among the industries that the association expects to be particularly >hard-hit are electronics, telecommunications equipment and capital goods." >Richard W. Stevenson and David E. Sanger, "Ghosts of Deficits Past: >America Relives the Fear--Flood of Asian Imports Set to Swell Trade Gap", >International Herald Tribune, Dec 22, 1997: 11. > >In a story about the US trade deficit in October, there is an interesting >paragraph: "But in an ominous sign, the US deficit with Japan soared to >the highest level in two and a half years. Analysts are forecasting >increased deficits with all Asian countries as the US economy feels the >effects of the financial turmoil that has engulfed the region." And >further, "Economists are predicting an even bigger deficit for 1998 as >Asian imports flood the country, made suddenly cheaper because of the sharp >currency devaluations that have occurred in Asia. A rising US trade >deficit is expected to be the main adverse impact felt in the United States >by the economic turmoil that has forced South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand >to run to the International Monetary Fund for huge loan guanantees to >stabilize their countries. Forecasters say Asia's proble
Re: prostitution
On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: > there is a better chance a woman being > brutalized by someone with whom she is in non-commodified relationship (a > boyfriend or a husband) than by a 'john' in the commodified sexual act. > This is not only too much faith in the equality of buyer and seller in the market, it is too bleak a view of most (physical and emotional) relations between men and women to be taken seriously. There is a very good reason for the 'socialist moralism' regarding prostitution - it reflects the plebian horror of falling into poverty, privation, dependency, lumpenization, etc. The middle class can afford a more 'objective'view, and a more romantic one. Bill Burgess
Corporate Takeover of CA University Tech delayed/Jan 6th hearings
The Micro$oft Monitor $$ Published by NetAction Issue No. 21 January 8,1998 Repost where appropriate. Copyright and subscription info at end of message. $$ Questions Delay Corporate Takeover of Cal State University Technology NetAction Project Director Nathan Newman was one of several witnesses who testified before the California Legislature on January 6, 1998, regarding plans for a corporate takeover of California State University's technology systems by Microsoft, GTE, Fujitsu and Hughes. The hearings were called after NetAction, along with student and faculty activists, criticized the California Education Technology Initiative (CETI), a plan for private management of technology at the 23-campus California State University system through a for-profit corporation. NetAction and other critics of the plan pointed out the dangers of handing Microsoft and its corporate allies a monopoly over technology in the schools that are training the high-tech workforce of the future. The hearing was sponsored jointly by the Assembly Higher Education Committee, the Assembly Budget Committee on Education, and the Senate Budget Committee on Education. Legislators opened the hearing with a long list of questions about the CETI deal, including what the ultimate cost will be to taxpayers, and what effect a ten-year technology contract with Microsoft and GTE will have on innovation. At the conclusion of the hearing, the legislators reiterated their concerns about CETI and announced plans for more hearings to continue the investigation into whether CETI threatens the public interest. Under pressure, the California State University administration announced that it would delay signing a contract with the CETI corporate partners until at least March, 1998. This represents a real victory for activists, since the CSU administration's goal had been to sign the contract in December, 1997. After students, faculty and staff representatives were asked to speak about the CETI initiative, NetAction's Nathan Newman testified about the public interest implications of granting this technology monopoly. What follows is the written draft of Newman's testimony. $$ Comments to the California Legislature By Nathan Newman, NetAction Project Director January 6, 1998 Hello, my name is Nathan Newman and I am speaking here as Program Director for NetAction, a public interest advocacy group committed to democratic use of technology and open computing standards. We strongly oppose the CETI proposal and hope the state legislature will block its implementation. While our organization has strong concerns about the technological and anti-trust implications of the CETI consortium, I would like to start my presentation with our worries about its financial implications, since the supposed "savings" of this plan are the main reason given for its adoption. CETI is being sold as a "free lunch" where the California State University will get upwards of $300 million in technology upgrades with, according to the CSU administration, no cost or loss of control by students, staff or faculty. Now, any time one hears about a free lunch, you should generally suspect that you are being taken for a ride. But you don't have to have a suspicious mind in the case of CETI; the CETI partners themselves have made clear that they expect to make not only a healthy profit but to gain strategic advantages for each of their corporations. Up front, the consortium expects to be making a profit within four years. This is on top of the profits each individual company will get from being the nearly exclusive technology supplier to both the consortium and to students, faculty and staff. For a modest up front investment in technology, most of whose ownership will be retained by the consortia in any case, the CETI partners are being given a monopoly worth billions of dollars. Worse, these profits will be paid for by limiting the technological choices of students and faculty. In section 9.5.2 of their August proposal, the CETI partners made it clear that their cost savings are based on promoting a narrow set of technologies supplied by GTE, Microsoft, Hughes and Fujitsu. In their words, "Support for non-mainstream products which are anticipated to be low in volume will not allow the cost savings forecasted for the mainstream products like the standard PC." Other cost savings and, coincidentally more profits for the partners, will come from giving tech support only for chosen software technology such as Microsoft Windows and Microsoft's Office applications, which the partners note will lead to "minimizing the training required to bring everyone to a minimum proficiency level." An explicit provision of the CETI proposal is that "the CSU system
Re: Corporate Takeover of CA University Tech delayed/Jan 6th hearings
Nathan deserves a great deal of the credit for derailing this monstrosity. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Fwd) Mumia Abu-Jamal on Chiapas Massacre (fwd)
> _ > > MEXICAN MASSACRE IN ACTEAL: HOW MANY MORE? > _ > > By Mumia Abu-Jamal > Column Written 12/31/1997 > Source: Mumia, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Tuesday, 6 January 1998 > > * > > In a vicious attack that lasted up to four hours at least 45 > of Mexico's indigenous people (men, women and children) were > massacred in the county of San Pedro de Chenalno, in Chiapas > State, several days before Christmas, 1997. New accounts were > generally sketchy, and rarely tried to make sense of the evil, > savage event. > > The names of over two score dead were not worthy of > reporting, and the fleeting references to the Zapatista Rebel > Army (EZLN) only left many in a ball of confusion. > > One hears of this long, drawn-out premeditated massacre, and > wonders: Why? If the reader is at all like the writer, s/he saw > or heard nothing at all like an explanation for this planned > explosion of death. The writer had to turn to the informative > alternative to the establishment press, which, in this instance, > meant the Nuevo Amanecer Press, which offered what the > establishment media could not -- context. > > N.A.P., noted, in a communique issued weeks before the > massacre by the Zapatista Central Command, that the indigenous > people have been suffering for months at the hands of > paramilitary bands and state police, under the auspices and > protection of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). > Indeed, the area of the massacre, San Pedro de Chenalno, was a > place where thousands of Indians were congregated, poor, ragged, > hungry and ill, refugees from villages in the Chiapan Highlands, > under PRI guns. > > In a December 12th, 1997, communique, Zapatista Subcommander > Marcos wrote of the repression waged against the indigenous > people, especially local (Chenalno) Zapatista activists: > > "The state and federal governments and the Institutional > Revolutionary Party, far from stopping their wave of aggressions, > are trying to avoid solving the main problem of Chenalno, which > is the eradication of their paramilitary groups and the return of > the displaced people to their communities. While it pretends to > establish a dialogue, Chiapanecan PRI followers are undertaking > the plunder and destruction of the evicted's property. Coffee, > cattle, clothes, and domestic utensils are being distributed > among the paramilitary as the bounty of a war which, up until > now, has only seen shooting coming from one of the sides, that is > the government and its political party" (NAP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > 12/16/97) > > These paramilitary groups, whose war cry was "An end to the > Zapatista seed" have waged an insidious campaign against Indian > communities in the Southeast, of theft, robbery, brutality, rape, > arson, murders and then, mass murders. > > Subcommander Marcos' warning (of Dec. 12th, 1997) was all > but ignored, and ten days later (on Dec, 22nd, 1997) Chiapas was > marked by an unholy massacre. According to Subcommander Marcos, > "The direct responsibility for these bloody events fall upon > Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon and the Justice Ministry, who, two > days ago, gave a green light to the counterinsurgency project > presented by the Federal Army." (NC for DM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > 12/15/97). > > Nine men, 21 women and 15 children: These people, nameless, > invisible, and dead, could very well be alive if the warnings had > been heeded. But they were Indians. Indigenous people, Indigenes. > > What if 45 whites were killed in a four hour long > paramilitary massacre? Their faces, their names, their lives, and > their loves would be daily fare of newspapers, magazines and > television. But they weren't white. They were red. And just as > the Zapatista warnings were ignored the brutal lives and deaths > at the hands of the PRIistas are fast on the way of being > forgotten. UNTIL NEXT TIME. > > Copyright 1997 Mumia Abu-Jamal. All Rights Reserved. >
The IMF and deflation
Does anybody have any thoughts on the critique of the IMF by Stiglitz and Sachs -- that the IMF is creating a deflationary economy to save the banks? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: The IMF and deflation
At 07:49 PM 1/8/98 -0800, Michael Perelman wrote: >Does anybody have any thoughts on the critique of the IMF by Stiglitz >and Sachs -- that the IMF is creating a deflationary economy to save the >banks? It is hard to comment without knowing the specifics (could you provide the citations or a summary?). Did this emerge in Chicago? It sounds like this is one of the periodic re-openings of the difference in perspective between the World Bank-types and the IMF-types (Sachs and Stiglitz being so long linked to the Bank). The differences were open and strong in the 70's and early 80's and were no different than the usual Central Bank\Finance Ministry conflicts (how much primacy to low inflation and financial concerns vs. developmentalist\industrialist real sector concerns). Much as the differences sound intriguing, operationally I never saw much emerge. Partly, this is may be because the way heads were banged (by the US et. al.) at the beginning of the Latin American debt crisis in the '80s. There is a vague constitutional primacy given to the IMF and starting around '83 it became near universal that the Fund Program had to be negotiated first. Even at the intellectual level the challenges that emerged such as Sach's and Summer's over Russia were largely kept to "inside baseball" (although I remember it emerging a bit at the early '90's New Orleans AEA).
Re: prostitution
> > > On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: > > > there is a better chance a woman being > > brutalized by someone with whom she is in non-commodified relationship (a > > boyfriend or a husband) than by a 'john' in the commodified sexual act. > > > This is not only too much faith in the equality of buyer and seller in the > market, it is too bleak a view of most (physical and emotional) relations > between men and women to be taken seriously. > > There is a very good reason for the 'socialist moralism' regarding > prostitution - it reflects the plebian horror of falling into poverty, > privation, dependency, lumpenization, etc. The middle class can afford a > more 'objective'view, and a more romantic one. > > Bill Burgess > Response: No Bill, you just don't understand, the theoreticians, backed up with data/theory mining and anecdotes from some of the "high class" and "educated" sex workers (proletarians) have it all figured out. Young boys and girls in Thailand being used in brothels until their AIDs shows up are really "qualitatively" in no different a situation than workers in Nike plants; they are just producing different commodities in the course of selling their labor power. Further, if these young kids might be suffering some hang-ups over having sex with twenty to twenty-five creatures per day, they need to just get rid of their Buddhist hang-ups and realize that whether your producing shoes or providing an anus/vagina/mouth for use it is just different commodities being produced and what really matters is that there is a gap between the value of your labor-power and the value of the product of your labor. For those who are sex slaves, well Feudalism is objectively progressive relative to slavery and they have the hope of becoming sex serfs/peons; and since Capitalism is objectively progressive relative to Feudalism, they can hope to become sex workers; and since Socialism is objectively progressive relative to Capitalism, they can hope to become sex proletarians totally in control over their means of production and the full-value of the product of their labor (that is unless they live in some puritanical socialist society like China or Cuba used to be where commodification of sex was seen as an ugly remnant of the past and a weed in the garden (leading to ideas, practices and power relations that inhibited the development of socialism) of socialism in which case they will have to assert their revolutionary rights to screw as much as possible for money or in accordance with the national plan quotas because they individually can decide the types of services most necessary for socialist construction and servicing strangers is just as socially necessary and important for those who don't have bougeois and puritanical hang- ups. By the way, since most sex involves kissing as well as--as Alex in Clockwork Orange put it--the "old in and out", and since AIDS can be spread through kissing (sores and bleeding gums), and since the sex workers with perfect as opposed to asymmetric information practice safe sex and do not engage in kissing generally, shouldn't the "high- class" sex workers really be called "partial or quasi sex workers" or "specialized sex workers"? And what about Gay "marriages" are they also essentially tribute/krypto prostitution arrangements with one of the partners acting as a sex serf/peon and paying tribute to the Lord of the house in return for financial and other forms of security? And what is going on in those marriages in which the women are making more than the males and are the financial providers--the serf becoming the Lord and giving some payback? I'm just struggling through all this theory and new vocabulary for me. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: marriage and prostitution
Fleck_S wrote: >What's different between prostitution and many marriage contracts? >1.prostitution is sex for direct payment of money, > marriage is sex for indirect payment of money/financial security. I should say that Susie Bright made exactly this point in her radio interview with me. Doug
Volunteer Opportunities in Mexico (fwd)
> Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 15:09:15 -0800 (PST)
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Volunteer Opportunities in Mexico
>
> PLEASE POST WIDELY
>
> ***Volunteer Opportunities in Mexico***
>
> The Global Exchange Mexico Program is seeking short- and long-term* volunteers
>interested in working on human rights issues in southern Mexico and Mexico City. If
>you or someone you know is interested in the various opportunities described below,
>please
see the contact information at the end of this message.
>
> Our project in Chiapas is based at the International Peace Center in San Cristóbal
>de las Casas which hosts human rights delegations to the area and serves as a
>resource for international volunteers and people interested in learning about
>Chiapas. In ad
dition to participating in the work of the Peace Center, volunteers work in Peace
Camps under the guidance of the human rights organization Fray Bartolomé de las Casas
to participate in observing and documenting local conditions.
>
> Volunteers play two principle roles: to help deter human rights abuses and to
>provide credible, carefully gathered information for use by the international
>community as a basis for news updates and human rights urgent action alerts.
>International human
rights support is particularly important in light of the ongoing violence in Chiapas
that has cost hundreds of lives over the last two years-including the recent massacre
of 45 civilians in the village of Acteal.
>
> In some cases, volunteers provide accompaniment to individuals and organizations
>whose safety is threatened. We also arrange a limited number of placements in
>internships with human rights organizations in Mexico City.
>
> *Short-term means 6-8 weeks minimum; we place short-term volunteers only in Chiapas.
>Long-term means 6 months or more.
>
> In 1998 we are extending our volunteer program beyond Chiapas and Mexico City. We
>recently began placing volunteers in Guerrero and Oaxaca under the guidance of the
>Red Nacional de Derechos Humanos "Todos los Derechos para Todos" and one of several
>of i
ts member human rights organizations in Oaxaca and Guerrero including: (in Oaxaca) the
Centro de Derechos Humanos "Los Principios" and the Centro de Derechos Indígenas "Flor
y Canto" in Oaxaca City, and Nuú Ji Kandíí ("Tierra del Sol") in Tlaxiaco; (in Gu
errero) the Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montaña in Tlapa, the Comisión de
Derechos Humanos "La Voz de los Sin Voz" in Coyuca de Benítez, and the Instituto
Guerrerense de Derechos Humanos in Chilpancingo.
> Volunteers in Oaxaca and Guerrero work to assist local human rights organizations in
>their effort to establish a base of international communication and support. Other
>activities may include: assisting local human rights organizations with their day-to-
day operations; accompaniment and observation work (depending on the need and
circumstances in a given community); and assisting in the overall effort of national
human rights organizations and networks to systematize the reporting of human rights
abuses.
Volunteers may also be asked to help coordinate occasional international human rights
delegations that visit the region in which they are working.
>
> To participate in one of our volunteer programs you must:
> * be fluent in Spanish
> * have previous experience living or traveling for extended periods abroad
> * have a background in international relations, peacemaking work and/or community
>organizing
> * have a working knowledge of current political, economic and social conditions in
>Mexico and the specific region where you will be working
> * be able to work well in a team
> * be in good physical and mental health
> * be able to support yourself (US$250-300 per month estimated minimum)
>
> For more information about the new additions to our volunteer program or for
>information on volunteering in Chiapas or Mexico City, please direct inquiries to:
> Global Exchange, Attn.: Ted Lewis, 2017 Mission St., Suite 303, San Francisco, CA
>94110; Tel.: (415) 255-7296 ext. 236; Fax: (415) 255-7498
> E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (E-mail users: please include your physical
>address and phone number with inquiries.)
>
> end
>
>
> -
> Global Exchange
> 2017 Mission St., Rm. 303
> San Francisco, CA 94110
> Phone: 415.255.7296 Fax: 415.255.7498
> http://www.globalexchange.org
> __
Re: marriage and prostitution
At 04:01 PM 1/8/98 -0500, Susan Fleck wrote: >What's different between prostitution and many marriage contracts? >1.prostitution is sex for direct payment of money, > marriage is sex for indirect payment of money/financial security. >2.prostitution is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face >relatively lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job >discrimination against women > marriage is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face relativley >lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job >discrimination against women. >3.prostitutes are at risk of STDs because of multiple partners, > wives are at risk of STDs because spouses have multiple partners. >4.prostitutes are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older, > wives are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older. > >There's not much difference between the two professions, if you ask me. >High risk, relatively higher pay than other jobs. We need more and >better jobs for women (with affordable reliable childcare, of course). While I agree with most of what you write, there is one aspect you seem to miss: autonomy. First women in marriage have little autonomy re. their own sexual activities, they are essentially obiliged to perform sexual acts for their husbands or face a divorce. Sex workers, on the other hand, havo choice of whether or not go to work and whether or not have a sex with any particular client. That gives sex workers more autonomy than most women in a marriage (which I compared to indetured servitude in one of my previous postings) and most workers in more convential occupations have. A street walker can refuse taking a job without much explanation. Can you imagine a hairdresser, an automechanic or any other non-professional service employer saying "go elsewhere, I do not feel like taking this job?" BTW, I recognize the fact that in many Third World countries that choice is frequently not available and many poor women are sold into actual slavery; there was an article in The Nation some time ago describing how sex business in Thailand that prospers with generous support of Western countries and Japan uses debt to force poor families to sell their tenage daughters to brothels in Bangkok. But I don't see that as qualitatively different from other forms of Third World slavery practised in the name of free market. As far as international marriage business is concerned, that may look horrible form the US perspective, but from the point of view of foreign women it might look quite differently, slogans advertising docility notwithstanding. In fact, young females who want to marry a first world male might be the only person with "marketable" skills in many backward communities -- which might give them considerable power and prestige. What I am assuming here is that for many immigrants, immigration often does not mean assimilation to the new country, and their "reference group" remains their old community. Another point is that gender inequality is much worse in most Third World countries than in the US or Europe. >From that perspective, a Third world woman marrying a first world man can see herself as better off both socially and financially because she compares herself with women and men in her old community rather than women in the US or Europe. Of course, the extent to which this is the case is an empirical question I am unbale to answer, I am merely pointing out at other possible interpretations. Regards, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
CYBERPOWER FOR PEACE IN CHIAPAS: EMAIL LIST VERSION 1.0
> Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 12:47:53 -0800 (PST) > From: National Commission for Democracy in Mexico <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: CYBERPOWER FOR PEACE IN CHIAPAS: EMAIL LIST VERSION 1.0 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY > > CYBERPOWER FOR PEACE IN CHIAPAS: > EMAIL LIST VERSION 1.0 > > Folks, > > What follows is Version 1.0 of what will become in a massive list of > email addresses to target protest letters aimed at stopping the war in > Chiapas. This contains the Presidents of Mexico and the United States, a > partial list of Mexican Embassies and Consulates, an odd mix of media, > and a list of nations in the United Nations. > > Please help expand this list. We need email addresses for more > consulates and embassies and for financial institutions with investments > in Mexico. As today's protests at the Bolsa in Mexico City show, the > stock exchange is vulnerable to physical protest. Let's make it > vulnerable to virtual protest. If anyone can find email addresses for > Grupo Televisa, Telefonos de Mexico, and Tubos Acero de Mexico that > would be useful. Also good to have would be email addresses for Mutual > Fund Investors in Emerging Markets in Mexico. > > Load your Cc: and Bcc: senders and fire at will. > > - Stefan > > Tell them: STOP THE WAR IN CHIAPAS, HONOR THE ACCORDS, STOP US MILITARY > ASSISTANCE TO MEXICO, and whatever else seems appropriate. > > > MEXICAN PRESIDENT ZEDILLO > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > U.S. PRESIDENT CLINTON > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > MEXICAN CONSULATES AND EMBASSIES (INCOMPLETE) > (Austin, Denver, New York, Sacramento, San Francisco, Canada, Denmark, > Germany, Holland, Norway, South Africa, United Kingdom, Uruguay) > > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > DELEGATION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY IN MEXICO > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS > > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > MEDIA (a mixture, some are old) (use your discretion with these)(might want > to be selective) > > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > Randy Redhawk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],, > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > UNITED NATIONS > > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTE
Re: David Card's response
On Thu, January 8, 1998 at 14:19 (CST) [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >Some time ago (a year?) someone posted (Doug?) a response >by David Card to the critique that two other economists >had given to _Myth and Measurement_. Unfortunately, I did >not save the response and now I have need of it to counter >claims by a neo-right critique of minimum wages who is >claiming that Card and Krueger's work has been discredited. Doug Henwood posted Card's response on Sat, 4 May 1996 for those who are curious. > I have tried going back into the Pen-l archives but >haven't been able to find it. > a. does anyone have it who could e-mail it to me? or > b. does anyone remember exactly when it was posted or >how I can find it in the Pen-l archives? > >Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] I've sent Paul a copy directly. Bill
Re: prostitution
James Michael Craven wrote: >On what basis do you assert that these women are "socialists"? Because they call themselves that, for one. I've never talked to Hartley, but I did a long interview on my radio show the other week with Bright, and we talked, among other things (like left puritanism) about the relation between capitalism and sexual repression. Bright's political career started with a anarcho-red group in her Los Angeles high school, and continued with her membership in the IS (from which she was expelled in the late 1970s for insufficient puritanism). Doug Response: I think I've got it now. You are what you call yourself. So Bill Clinton is a humanist, democrat a progressive etc...Newt Gingrich is an advocate of "family values", cutting-edge theorist... What exactly is an "anarcho-Marxist"? Is that someone who believes in leaping directly from capitalism to communism? Or perhaps someone who believes in each proletarian exercising dictatorship over himself/herself only but not any capitalists seeking to destroy the new to return to the old? I'm getting it now. Sorry I'm so slow. It is not the sexual acts that prostitutes typically engage in that are exploitative and degrading, only the fact that such acts take place under capitalist conditions of exploitation, degradation of labor and alienation of surplus value. If the sexual acts are seen as degrading by either prostitutes or non-prostitutes, it is only because they are hung-up with puritan, Judeo-Christian [or Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh etc] morality and if only they would take themselves off this plane of lower-order bourgeois or puritanical morality and rise to the higher value system and absolute truths of the secular sexual libertine, they wouldn't experience any degradation or brutalization from the sexual acts per se. By the way, What is a "Left Business Observer"? Is that a Leftist who observes business or a businessperson who observes [business opportunities and market niches on] the Left? I'm getting it slowly and I'm always learning. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: prostitution
On Wed, January 7, 1998 at 21:43:21 (PST) James Michael Craven writes: >... >Then some self-professed "sex worker", who on the one hand professes >"solidarity" with other sex workers, while on the other hand >carefully differentiating herself as educated, articulate, free from >puritanism and certainly not like one of those low class "lumpen" >street hookers, purports to generalize from a rare and insulated >experience, levels of "freedom of choice" and "mutually beneficial >exchange" simply not found among the vast majority of women and >young males involved in prostitution. Concern for very real, brutal >and unconscionable forms and conditions of prostitution are summarily >dismissed as "puritanism", "born again virginism", parochialism or >whatever. This is hysterics, plain and simple. She does express obvious and sincere sympathy with degraded workers in her industry, just as I express such for exploited Indian programmers, or any other worker. That I express solidarity with them, while "carefully differentiating" myself by saying I live in better conditions and have better opportunities, in no way minimizes their sufferings. And just what sources are you using for your claims here? How did she "carefully differentiate herself as educated"? Please quote her. [disgusting and gratuitous Nazi references snipped] >So of course a few hookers who attempt to sanitize it all with the >title sex worker as part of the entertainment "industry" can work >under conditions and with protections that few if any prostitutes and >sexual slaves will ever know; it is they who are the truly insulated >and even arrogant ones. I guess you missed the part where she wrote, "Of course there are people being grieveously exploited, used as virtual slaves, disposable humans." >To the extent to which they attempt to >generalize and rationalize from their very limited and privileged >market niches, conditions and sentiments simply not found among the >many involved in prostitution...[more peurile Nazi references snipped] Just how, precisely, in her words (please quote her), did she generalize her experience to others? She makes note of "disposable humans" and says that "no one defends it". I find these points totally irrelevant. Neither Bright nor Hartley distance themselves from those who are abused in the sex industry. To my eyes, they try to clarify what it is like to work in the sex industry (and, from what I can tell, these women are not in fact prostitutes as is so stupidly claimed) and to describe what it is like to have what seems to be a reasonable amount of control over their lives. What I find amazing on a supposedly leftist list is that women who have sexual power are such a threat and elicit such frantic squeals from men who can only distort the opinions of these women and dredge up utterly pointless Nazi horror stories to support their pathetic attacks. We should be learning from these women, not attacking them. Bill
Re: prostitution
James Michael Craven wrote: >On what basis do you assert that these women are "socialists"? Because they call themselves that, for one. I've never talked to Hartley, but I did a long interview on my radio show the other week with Bright, and we talked, among other things (like left puritanism) about the relation between capitalism and sexual repression. Bright's political career started with a anarcho-red group in her Los Angeles high school, and continued with her membership in the IS (from which she was expelled in the late 1970s for insufficient puritanism). Doug
Re: prostitution
William S. Lear wrote: > My question was (you didn't answer my why is it so unreasonable to assume that > sex > work is just as good as any other in principle? > > Why should it be deprecated any more than any other work done under > conditions of legal exploitation? If the working conditions are safe, > if the work is as "freely" chosen as any other within our society, why > should we care? > In general, I agree. I suspect that in many cases, the "freely chosen" descriptor is not appropriate. We are not far apart, are we? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: prostitution (& pornography)
At 06:43 PM 1/8/1998 +1100, < wrote: >G'day Penners, [snip] >It occurs to me that the 'self-employed' prostitute (and I recognise the >range of possible experiences for such people is enormous) is essentially >escaping the dominant mode of exploitation of our time. There is no >surplus value produced is there? No capitalist and no proletarian! Sure, >most alienations emanating from the commodity form (and, typically but not >necessarily, most effects of differential wealth-determined power >relations) prevail, but can we argue that we have in this prostitute a >model for least-possible-alienated-worker under capitalism? An >Adam-Smithian ideal type, perhaps? > >Theoretically at least, we have here the possibility of prostitution >presenting some with a career choice that is tenable/optimal from both >economically rationalist and politically socialist points of view. This begins to loop back to my original query. If the self-employed= prostitute (the "SEP") approaches the Adam-Smithian ideal, then it seems to= me that the self-employed pornographic Web site operator nails it on the= head. The self-employed prostitute, despite his or her autonomy, still= faces what should be unacceptable physical risks and (except for those= prostitutes specializing in Hollywood's A-list or New York's Social= Register) poor social standing. By contrast, a woman who runs her own Web= site featuring nude photos and videos of herself has the same or greater= autonomy as an SEP, faces little or no physical risk, and can if she= chooses be completely anonymous, which largely eliminates the social= standing problem. If she is successful at operating her Web site, she can= choose to no longer be anonymous (not that many site operators are anyway)= and be reasonably confident (at least in the U.S.) that admiration for= entrepreneurial skill will outweigh moral disapproval. The likelihood of a= positive reaction, incidentally, has been increased by the often dramatic= loosening of social mores that has taken over the last 20-30 years. I think that Rob's conclusion is accurate and increasingly less theoretical,= particularly from economically rationalist point of view. The politically= socialist/moralist point of view will take longer (typical for the U.S.),= but certainly is changing. Regards, Fred = Frederick S. Lane III, Publisher, The Journal of Electronic Discovery & Internet Litigation A Publication of Pro Se Computing, Inc., 1 Main Street # 46, Winooski, VT 05404=20 Phone: 802/655-0605 Fax: 617/658-2014 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.pro-se-computing.com =
