Re: query: bio & chem weapons

[Michael Eisenscher]

Does Bayer make asprin?

At 11:35 AM 2/12/98 -0800, James Devine wrote:
>Does the US currently have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons,
>as far as anyone knows?
>
>in pen-l solidarity,
>
>
>Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
>http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
>"A society is rich when material goods, including capital, are cheap, and
>human beings dear."  -- R.H. Tawney.
>
>
>

[Fwd: dsanet: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE]

[Gar W. Lipow]

This message is from: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


---
02-10-98
ACLU Action Update

Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: ACLU Action Owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

MEMORANDUM

TO: ACLU Action Network
FR: Bob Kearney, Field Coordinator
RE: House to Vote THIS WEEK on Voter Suppression Bill
DT: February 10, 1998

SUMMARY: Congress is trying to push through -- with no warning -- a bill
that would allow intimidation of ethnic and minority voters, create a
"Big Brother" national voter data base and repeal some protections on
the Privacy Act of 1974.  The House leadership is pushing this directly
to the House floor, with no committee consideration, for a vote TOMORROW
or THURSDAY.

We need to take action TODAY!  Please go to the "In Washington" section
of the ACLU Website at www.alcu.org/congress/congress.html and link
directly into a letter to Congress.  Or, call the Congressional
switchboard at 202-225-3121 and ask for your House member's office. 
Urge them to vote NO on HR 1428, the so-called "Voter Eligibility
Verification Act."

BACKGROUND:  The Voter Eligibility Verification Act, HR 1428, would
undermine the Motor Voter law, erect new barriers to voting, and
suppress voting by members of ethnic and racial minority groups and
people with disabilities.  It would infringe on the privacy rights of
all voters by establishing a Big Brother national voter database and
partially repeal protections of the Privacy Act of 1974. (More
information on the bill is available at
http://www.aclu.org/congress/lg021098a.html.)

WHEN: Although the bill was not considered or voted on by any committee,
it has tentatively been scheduled for consideration on the House floor
on Thursday, February 12. 

TALKING POINTS

H.R. 1428 is Unnecessary: People who apply to register to vote must
already swear under penalty of perjury that they meet voting eligibility
requirements, including citizenship.  Under current law, voting by
non-citizens is an action punishable by deportation.

H.R. 1428 Would Suppress the Votes of Minorities: This bill would give
election officials discretion to determine which voters' eligibility
they will seek to verify, leaving open the possibility for local
registrars to discriminatorily subject members of minority groups to
voter verification disproportionately.  If there is even a 1 percent
error in the verification process, this translates to the suppression of
hundreds of thousands of votes!

HR 1428 Threatens Voter Privacy: There is no national database of U.S.
citizens, but the requirements of this bill would lead to the creation
of a new database to serve the verification system.  This database would
not only include all registered voters, but also their Social Security
Numbers -- the key that unlocks the door to our personal information! 
H.R.  1428 amends the Privacy Act to allow all states to require voters
to submit their SSN when they register without requiring that the states
ensure the privacy of these numbers.  This means that the voter database
would link voter name, address and Social Security number in state
registration files which are often publicly available.


ONLINE RESOURCES FROM THE ACLU NATIONAL OFFICE

ACLU Freedom Network Web Page: http://www.aclu.org.  
America Online users should check out our live chats, auditorium events,
*very* active message boards, and complete news on civil liberties, at
keyword ACLU.


ACLU Action Update

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-

Re: 17 nanograms of fame

[Thomas Kruse]

I've heard more in the last 24 hours about the
>> contents of a snowboard champ's urine than I'll ever hear about the
>> magnitude of bad debt held by Japanese banks (recently estimated at US $620
>> billion).

What is this a reference to?  I appreciate the sentiment; I don't get the
reference.  Is Clinton snowboarding or something? (If it's bodily functoins,
I figuer it's probably got to do with 1600 Penn. Ave.).

Tom

Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia
Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Henwood's CPI

[Doug Henwood]

Max B. Sawicky wrote:

>DH had a note a couple of weeks ago to the effect
>that despite the apparent defeat to the Boskin
>commission's recommendation to reduce the CPI
>by a full percentage point, the BLS had apparently
>found reasons to adjust it to that extent in any event.
>
>This troubled me and I checked w/our CPI Guru,
>Dean Baker, who tells me there has been an adjustment
>of about 1/4 of a percentage point which had been fully
>expected (plans for it predated the Boskin Commission),
>and that besides that there have only been a couple of
>changes in the neighborhood of a few hundredth's of
>a percentage point.
>
>Doug, if you reiterate what you said I will relay it to
>Dean and we can clear this up.

I was referring to an item from the BLS Daily Report that was looking
forward to the use of a geometric mean index. That, plus the revisions
already accomplished, would bring the markdown to pretty close to a full
point, if I'm remembering right.

Doug

Henwood's CPI

[Max B. Sawicky]

DH had a note a couple of weeks ago to the effect
that despite the apparent defeat to the Boskin
commission's recommendation to reduce the CPI
by a full percentage point, the BLS had apparently
found reasons to adjust it to that extent in any event.

This troubled me and I checked w/our CPI Guru,
Dean Baker, who tells me there has been an adjustment
of about 1/4 of a percentage point which had been fully
expected (plans for it predated the Boskin Commission),
and that besides that there have only been a couple of
changes in the neighborhood of a few hundredth's of
a percentage point.

Doug, if you reiterate what you said I will relay it to
Dean and we can clear this up.

Cheers,

Max

Re: query: bio & chem weapons

[MScoleman]

In a message dated 98-02-12 14:48:58 EST, you write:

<< Does the US currently have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons,
 as far as anyone knows?
 
 in pen-l solidarity,
 
 
 Jim Devine  >>

Definitely.  In fact, they are becoming a real problem because the housing for
many of these weapons is deteriorating and there is not enough budget to
'safely' dispose of them.  Several areas out in those underpopulated states
(Dakotas, Montana) are living under the threat of being destroyed by
deteriorating stock piles of weapons.  

maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED]

RE: query: bio & chem weapons

[john gulick]

At 03:43 PM 2/12/98 -0500, Jeff Fellows wrote:

>The Tooella incinerator is 40 miles west of Salt
>Lake City. Just west of the city is a magnesium plant that puts out more
>tons of particulate material each year than all the industries in
>California (130 million tons to 99 million tons).

It's "Tooele" (but pronounced too-ELL-uh). Where did you get those stats
on that magnesium plant? Hard to believe. About ten years ago I remember
that SLC was on the verge of being swamped by a rising Great Salt Lake.
That magnesium plant is within a stone's throw of the lake's shoreline,
with a huge pile of slag and tailings beside it. Also hard for me to
believe that the GSL isn't contaminated by that pile.

John Gulick

RE: query: bio & chem weapons

[Fellows, Jeffrey]

Chemical weapons are held in Umatilla, Oregon and Tooella (sp?), Utah.
In both places the US Army are going to use incinerators to "dispose" of
them. I believe the Utah incinerator is on-line, and exposing about
600,000 Utahns to risk. The Tooella incinerator is 40 miles west of Salt
Lake City. Just west of the city is a magnesium plant that puts out more
tons of particulate material each year than all the industries in
California (130 million tons to 99 million tons). The Umatilla
incinerator is still in the planning stages (I am not up to date on the
political discussion there). The Umatilla depot is about 30 miles west
of Pendleton (60-70K population) and 100 miles east of Portland, Oregon.
Both incinerators are based on a Philippines plant design that has been
questioned.

Jeff Fellows
 --
From: James Devine
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: query: bio & chem weapons
Date: Thursday, February 12, 1998 2:35PM

Does the US currently have stockpiles of chemical and biological
weapons,
as far as anyone knows?

in pen-l solidarity,


Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"A society is rich when material goods, including capital, are cheap,
and
human beings dear."  -- R.H. Tawney.

Re: query: bio & chem weapons

[William S. Lear]

On Thu, February 12, 1998 at 11:35:29 (-0800) James Devine writes:
>Does the US currently have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons,
>as far as anyone knows?

You might try the folks at CAQ.  Their back-issues page from their
website (http://www.caq.com/CAQ/CAQBackIssues.html) has the following
entry:

No.43(Winter 1992-93) Chemical and biological war: Zimbabwe,
So. Africa, and anthrax; Gulf War Syndrome; Agent Orange; Scientific
racism; Yellow Rain & Wall Street Journal; Plus: Yugoslavia
destabilization; U.S. Religious Right; Somalia.


Bill

Re: query: bio & chem weapons

[Doug Henwood]

jf noonan wrote:

>Biological, I
>think, are officially denied and I know of no reportage to the
>contrary.

So, according to Claud Cockburn's law ("Never believe anything until it's
been officially denied") then the answer is yes.

Doug

Re: Said on US-Iraq

[James Heartfield]

In message , valis
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>The period of imitation of the West, both in social norms and ideology,
>is over and widely discredited, which is why Islam is resurgent.
>This old-new cycle will have to play itself out first; if autarky becomes
>a serious part of the Islamic agenda, the cycle will be aggravated by
>force and threats of force from the West. 

I think this view grants more initiative to 'resurgent Islam' than it
really enjoys. The 'autarkic' tendencies in modern islamic states and
movements, are much more a consequence of the anti-arabic current in
Western policy than they are a purely indigenous development.

It should be remembered that the US covertly backed Islamic movements in
Afghanistan and Palestine as an alternative to Communist influence. The
fact that these have survived and flourished is much more to do with the
diminished capacity of the left to articulate a sustained opposition to
imperialism. Since 1979 Iran has been a more vocal critic of Western
intervention than any other world power. It is hardly surprising that
arabs clothe their hostility to the West in Islamic colours.

Those arab leaders whose authority can be traced back to the left-
nationalist movements of the sixties (however much they represent in
fact a reversal of that movement), as in Algeria and Egypt, were
severely destablised by their support for the operation desert Storm.
Both countries have suffered from popular 'fundamentalist' oppositions.
On the BBC this morning, Tim Llewelyn reports that there are more
posters of Saddam Hussein on the West Bank than there are of Arafat. The
older movements of the sixties are pretty much discredited.

So-called 'Islamic fundamentalism' is a far from monolithic movement,
that in large part simply expresses the disaffection of Arabs from the
West. I don't know if the previous period could be described as
'imitation of the West', or that arabs today do not aspire to Western
living standards and development. The point is more that whenever they
come close to them, as Iraq did in the period prior to the Gulf war, the
West bombs them back into what one UN report described as 'pre-
industrial' conditions.

What is particular sick in all of this, is that a nation that has been
effectivly reduced to destitution, should be described as a 'threat'
when it is a threat to no one, while the countries that are provoking a
war in the Gulf, the US and Britain, are allowed to gather weapons of
mass destruction without a challenge.

fraternally
-- 
James Heartfield

Re: query: bio & chem weapons

[Interhemispheric Resouce Center]

This is excerpted from a Foreign Policy In Focus brief on Chemical and
Biological Weapons written by Martin Calhoun, senior research analyst for
the Center for Defense Information. If people would like a copy of the
entire article (4 pages printed) please let me know.

Three recent events-the extensive use of chemical weapons during the
Iran-lraq war  (1983-88), the March 1995 sarin nerve gas attack by
terrorists in the Tokyo subway, and  the uncovering by the U.N. Special
Commission (UNSCOM) of the extent of Iraq's  chemical and biological
weapons programs-have reminded nations of the danger posed  by CBWs and the
need to control their spread. Currently, as many as 25 countries are
believed to already have or to be interested in acquiring chemical weapons
programs,  while 10-12 countries are suspected to have or be interested in
acquiring biological  weapons programs. Only three nations-the U.S. (with
31,000 tons of chemical warfare  agents), Russia (with 40,000 tons), and
Iraq (with several hundred tons)-have openly  acknowledged possessing
chemical weapons arsenals. No countries admit to having  currently active,
offensive biological weapons programs yet revelations indicate that both
Iraq and Russia have recently maintained such programs. The U.S.
unilaterally renounced  biological methods of warfare in 1969 and
subsequently destroyed its biological weapons  arsenal.


Foreign Policy In Focus is a joint project of the
Interhemipsheric Resource Center (IRC) and the Institute for
Policy Studies (IPS). In Focus briefs document the problems
of current U.S. foreign policy and offer recommendations for
alternative policy directions that would make the United
States a more responsible global partner.

To order Foreign Policy In Focus, call (505) 842-8288 or visit
our website for ordering information at: http://www.zianet.com/infocus.

To subscribe to the New U.S. Foreign Policy discussion list, send
a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Inside the body of the
message write:  Join newusfp [Your Email Address].
*

Re: 17 nanograms of fame

[valis]

Quoth our incomparable Tom Walker:
> By this morning, I'd heard the phrase "17 nanograms" enough times to recall
> it without looking it up. I've heard more in the last 24 hours about the
> contents of a snowboard champ's urine than I'll ever hear about the
> magnitude of bad debt held by Japanese banks (recently estimated at US $620
> billion).
> 
> This is not mere disproportionality, it's information inversion. To help
> gauge the severity of the inversion, I've constructed the Piss/Debt index
> which currently stands at $36.5 billion per nanogram.

Quite aside from all of which, it seems that the affective testimony of
the entire indulging world and the static tenor of official opprobrium 
hold precisely that pot is the very antithesis of performance-enhancing,
unless the IOC is talking about the performance of nothing. 
I suspect that the gentlemen of Davos anticipate a re-run of the Sixties
and are nervously fashioning a rather sloppily conceived barricade.

valis

Re: oil

[Doug Henwood]

john gulick wrote:

>I don't know him personally nor how to get in touch w/him, but you might
>consideration Michael Tanzer, who has written books for _MR_ press (and
>articles in _MR_) on natural resources and imperialism.

Since several people have mentioned Mike's name, I should say that I just
talked to him and he doesn't follow oil much anymore, and he couldn't think
of too many people who did. The only name he could come up with was Sid's
nominee, Ed Shaffer of Vancouver.

Maybe this lack of attention suggests that Mark Jones is right, and an oil
crisis is around the ocrner.

Doug

Re: query: bio & chem weapons

[valis]

Jim Devine asks:

> Does the US currently have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons,
> as far as anyone knows?

Despite Nixon's executive order in 1972?
Is the Pope Catholic?
  valis

   

Re: query: bio & chem weapons

[jf noonan]

On Thu, 12 Feb 1998, James Devine wrote:

> Does the US currently have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons,
> as far as anyone knows?

Chemical, definitely.  Including a bunch that they are slowly trying
to destroy and are a major hazard just sitting there.  Biological, I
think, are officially denied and I know of no reportage to the
contrary. 

> 
> in pen-l solidarity,
> 
> 
> Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
> http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
> "A society is rich when material goods, including capital, are cheap, and
> human beings dear."  -- R.H. Tawney.
> 
> 
> 


--

Joseph Noonan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


"[There] is looming up a new and dark power;
  the enterprises of the country are aggregating
  vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital,
  boldly marching, not for economical conquests only,
  but for political power. The question will arise
  and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in mine,
  which shall rule - wealth or man; which shall lead -
  money or intellect; who shall fill public stations -
  educated and patriotic freemen, or the feudal serfs of
  corporate capital"

-- Edward G. Ryan, Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court,
   in an address to the 1873 graduating class
   of the University of Wisconsin Law School

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1998

RELEASED TODAY: The number of major work stoppages dropped to a record
low in 1997.  Other measures of work stoppage activity were low by
historical standards, although the number of workers idled by stoppages
increased from a year ago ….

Wage gains remained moderate last year, with the all-industries median
first-year wage increase under contracts negotiated in 1997 coming in at
3 percent, which was identical to the 1996 advance, according to data
compiled by the Bureau of National Affairs.  Second and third year
median wage increases also were unchanged at 3 percent.  The year-end
report shows that 56 percent of contracts reported in 1997 called for
first-year raises in the more than 2 to 4 percent range, 21 percent
called for increases of more than 4 percent, 12 percent called for
increases of up to 2 percent.  Ten percent specified wage freezes
….(Daily Labor Report, page D-1).

The Wall Street Journal (page A2) reports on the coming of globalization
to a Southern town and indicates that it brings worry, despite a robust
economy ….Even during a boom, there's growth and retrenchment, hiring
and firing, optimism and fear - all at the same time ….Nationwide, the
unemployment rate was a low 4.7 percent in January.  Yet layoffs are on
the rise.  Fed chairman Alan Greenspan told the Senate Budget Committee
last month that 300,000 jobs are lost each week in the U.S. even as more
are created, a "very major set of churning forces," he said.  American
workers can be confident they'll find some job, but they can't be sure
how long they'll keep it ….

Business Week (Feb. 16, page 26) says that "until recently, it looked as
if the huge wave of  downsizing that roiled U.S. labor markets in the
1990s was finally receding" ….Now, in spite of tight labor markets, it
appears that the pace of downsizing is on the upswing again.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., which tracks corporate layoff plans,
says that job cut announcements in the fourth quarter of last year, at
152,854, were up 33 percent over their year-earlier level, and the
just-released January 1998 total of 72,193 was the highest monthly
number in two years ….  

DUE OUT TOMORROW: U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes - January 1998


 application/ms-tnef

RE: Said on US-Iraq II

[valis]

john gulick muses:
> >I think it is possible that opposition to intervention
> >will come from the right as well as the left.
> 
> Pat Buchanan was last seen on a Sunday windbag pundit show inveighing
> against a U.S. missile strike, going so far as to claim that the evidence
> wasn't clear that Saddam ever used mustard gas against the Kurds. (Now
> that I think about it, there are some similarities between Ba'athism
> and right-wing populism).

You're smack on target there, John.  It's a case of one dark interior
calling out to another, and one more argument for thinking up 
a new set of ideological turn signals.
  valis

Re: oil

[valis]

> I'm rather urgently looking for someone of leftish sensibilities who
> understands the oil market to yak on the radio. Any volunteers/nominees?

Robert Engler, last seen alive in the same establishment that 
shelters Aronowitz.
  valis

oil

[Doug Henwood]

I'm rather urgently looking for someone of leftish sensibilities who
understands the oil market to yak on the radio. Any volunteers/nominees?

Doug

--

Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
250 W 85 St
New York NY 10024-3217 USA
+1-212-874-4020 voice  +1-212-874-3137 fax
email: 
web: 

Re: query: bio & chem weapons

[michael]

Yes we do.

Didn't Jesse Helms object to signing the chemical weapons treaty because
he objected to UN inspectors coming on US bases?

We are supposedly dismantling the chem weapons by burning them, putting
Utahians [is that a word?] at risk.

I believe that we are still developing new chem and bio weapons.  The new
chem weapons are binary, meaning that the consist of two parts, each of
which is "benign" separately.
 > 
> Does the US currently have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons,
> as far as anyone knows?
> 
> in pen-l solidarity,
> 
> 
> Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
> http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
> "A society is rich when material goods, including capital, are cheap, and
> human beings dear."  -- R.H. Tawney.
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

query: bio & chem weapons

[James Devine]

Does the US currently have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons,
as far as anyone knows?

in pen-l solidarity,


Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"A society is rich when material goods, including capital, are cheap, and
human beings dear."  -- R.H. Tawney.

Re: oil

[john gulick]

At 12:08 PM 2/12/98 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:

>I'm rather urgently looking for someone of leftish sensibilities who
>understands the oil market to yak on the radio. Any volunteers/nominees?

I don't know him personally nor how to get in touch w/him, but you might
consideration Michael Tanzer, who has written books for _MR_ press (and
articles in _MR_) on natural resources and imperialism.

John Gulick

RE: Said on US-Iraq

[john gulick]

At 10:02 PM 2/11/98 -0500, Max Sawicky wrote:

>I think it is possible that opposition to intervention
>will come from the right as well as the left.
>
>MBS

Pat Buchanan was last seen on a Sunday windbag pundit show inveighing
against a U.S. missile strike, going so far as to claim that the evidence
wasn't clear that Saddam ever used mustard gas against the Kurds. (Now
that I think about it, there are some similarities between Ba'athism
and right-wing populism).
John Gulick
Ph. D. Candidate
Sociology Graduate Program
University of California-Santa Cruz
(415) 643-8568
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: oil

[Sid Shniad]

Doug, there's a good, left economist here in Vancouver named Ed Shaffer
who's written rather extensively on the subject.

Sid
> 
> I'm rather urgently looking for someone of leftish sensibilities who
> understands the oil market to yak on the radio. Any volunteers/nominees?
> 
> Doug
> 
> --
> 
> Doug Henwood
> Left Business Observer
> 250 W 85 St
> New York NY 10024-3217 USA
> +1-212-874-4020 voice  +1-212-874-3137 fax
> email: 
> web: 
> 
> 
> 

For the record (continued)

[Sid Shniad]

In addition to making it clear that the Canadian government is not
following the advice of retired general MacKenzie re: Iraq, it should be
noted that Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopf is saying much the same thing.

Somehow he doesn't seem to be getting as much air play for this position
as he did when he was in charge of Desert Storm.

Sid Shniad

Re: CGIAR Calls for IPR Moratorium on Designated Germplasm

[Sid Shniad]

> CGIAR PRESS RELEASE
> 
> CGIAR Secretariat  .  Mailing Address: 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington,
> D.C. 20433, U.S.A.  .  Office Location: 701 18th Street, N.W.
> Tel: (1-202) 473-8951  .  Cable Address: INTBAFRAD  .  Fax: (1-202)
> 473-8110  .  E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
>   For immediate release
>   Contact:
>   Shirley Geer, CGIAR Secretariat, Washington,DC
>   (1-202) 473-8930
>   Ruth Raymond, IPGRI, Rome, Italy
>   (39-6)  51892215
> 
> 
> CGIAR Urges Halt to Granting of Intellectual Property Rights
> for Designated Plant Germplasm
> 
> 
>   The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
> (CGIAR) has called for a moratorium on the granting of intellectual
> property rights on designated plant germplasm held in the collections of
> CGIAR agricultural research centers around the world.
> 
>   Designated germplasm refers to plant accessions which the CGIAR
> Centers have placed under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture
> Organization of the United Nations (FAO). These accessions are held "in
> trust for the benefit of the international community, in particular the
> developing countries." As such, they are subject to terms and conditions
> contained in agreements signed between the Centers and FAO in 1994.
> Designated germplasm includes farmers' varieties and landraces, obsolete
> varieties, modern varieties, advanced lines, genetic stocks and wild
> species.
> 
>   The CGIAR holds the world's largest international ex situ
> collection of plant genetic resources -- more than 500 000 accessions that
> are vital for crop improvement world-wide. In announcing the call for the
> moratorium, CGIAR Chairman Dr. Ismail Serageldin reiterated the CGIAR's
> "strong and unequivocal support" for the 1994 agreements, which seek to
> guarantee that access to these resources will not be restricted.
> 
>   "The CGIAR is deeply committed to the conservation, sustainable
> use, and stewardship of genetic resources," Dr. Serageldin said.  "Calling
> for this moratorium is the strongest signal the CGIAR can send governments
> to ensure that these issues be resolved and the materials in the CGIAR
> collections remain in the public domain."
> 
>   Recently, research by the Rural Advancement Foundation
> International (RAFI) has revealed that a small number of organizations have
> sought intellectual property rights on materials obtained directly from the
> CGIAR Centers. The agreements with FAO specify that neither Centers nor
> subsequent recipients of designated germplasm will seek any intellectual
> property rights over that germplasm or related information.
> 
>   "The moratorium will provide governments with the time to carefully
> consider and resolve issues related to the in-trust collections that have
> been brought into sharp focus in recent weeks," said Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin,
> Director General of the Rome-based International Plant Genetic Resources
> Institute, one of the CGIAR Centers. "It will also allow for a considered
> approach to some of the issues that will arise as the details of a
> multilateral system for genetic resources exchange are discussed in
> international fora." The status of plant genetic resources of agricultural
> species is currently being negotiated by the intergovernmental FAO
> Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
> 
>   CGIAR Centers routinely distribute germplasm to plant breeders
> through Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs), which enjoin the recipient
> from applying for intellectual property rights on the materials. However,
> recipients who obtained materials prior to 1994, when the MTAs came into
> use, are not legally bound by these restrictions.
> 
>   Dr. Serageldin called upon all recipients of designated material to
> honor the spirit of the agreements with FAO and to refrain from applying
> for intellectual property rights, regardless of the date the material was
> received. "We are grateful to RAFI for bringing to our attention reports
> that some organizations are claiming rights to designated germplasm from
> CGIAR Centers," he said.
> 
>   Efforts are also underway within the CGIAR system to analyse the
> issues, in particular with a view to ensuring appropriate and consistent
> MTAs and other instruments designed to ensure full compliance with the
> terms of the FAO/CGIAR Agreements.
> 
>   The CGIAR is an informal association of 57 public and private
> sector members that exists to mobilize the best in agricultural science on
> behalf of the world's poor and hungry. The CGIAR's cutting-edge research
> has made a major contribution to global food security, helped farmers meet
> the increasingly complex challenges of keeping the environment healthy and
> their farming sustainable, and leveraged resear

Re: the loafing class, Part II

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 07:44 AM 2/12/98 -0800, Anders Schneiderman wrote:
>No sooner do I finish reading my email than Salon magazine handily provides
>Exhibit A of my case. -- Anders
>
>P.S.  This is also an example of how useful complexity theory can be in the
>real world; you can use it to make lots of money as a business guru...
>


--snip 

Interesting, but nihil novi sub solem  As far as the recorded history
goes, the ruling class always kept pundits on the retainer to manufacture
glorious hagiographies and myths extolling the ruling class virtues.

As Doug Henwood aptly observed, the function of economic 'theories' in
modern business world is not to explain or predict anything (in that
respect, one would be better off picking random numbers that relying on
these 'theories') but to homogenize and reproduce the ruling class'
ideology and lingua franca.  That is hardly a trivial matter.  People
entrusted with that task might be more or less dangerous enemies, but they
cannot be dismissed as "the loafing class."

Regards,




>--
>
>TRENDY THEORIES OF A "FRICTION-FREE ECONOMY" HIT SOME BUMPS IN THE REAL
>HIGH-TECH WORLD. 
>BY ANDREW LEONARD 
>SALON MAGAZINE
>
>The pitch was seductive: Learn how you, too, can apply Lanchester's Second
>Law of Warfare and the Trafalgar Technique to gain market share and
>ruthlessly crush your enemies. Well, maybe not enemies; "competitors" is
>more accurate. But it's easy to get carried away when the topic of
>discussion is "Business as War" -- when the goal is to master the
>strategies of "Combat in the Friction-Free Economy," to become a modern
>"warrior in the Wired World." 
>
>So, along with about 50 other pilgrims to the heart of Silicon Valley, I
>headed down on Monday to the Stanford World Internet Center -- shouting
>distance from the venture capitalists who swarm along Palo Alto's Sand Hill
>Road -- to hear Dr. Ted Lewis give a lecture based on his 1997 book "The
>Friction-Free Economy: Marketing Strategies for a Wired World." My fellow
>attendees were an intriguing mix of sharp-eyed marketing consultants,
>program managers, independent contractors and other veterans of the vital
>Valley start-up scene -- all looking for an edge in the high-tech
marketplace.
>
>Whether they got one from Lewis' fuzzy presentation is unclear. Although
>Lewis' buzzword-per-nanosecond rate was impressive, the content, boiled
>down, didn't amount to much more than a single imperative: "Market share is
>everything." You see, according to Lewis, in the friction-free economy --
>where, supposedly, the cost of manufacturing and distributing a product
>approaches zero -- "the bottom line is that the only thing that matters is
>market share." 
>
>This is where Lanchester and the Trafalgar Technique come in handy. The
>Trafalgar Technique is a combat strategy adopted from the famous naval
>battle in which the British admiral, Lord Nelson, defeated superior French
>and Spanish forces by targeting a weak point and breaking though the lines.
>Lanchester, an air warfare theoretician in the first half of this century,
>codified the strategy by arguing that you should only target opponents who
>are within your "shooting range" -- that is, who have market-share
>positions similar to or weaker than your own. In this world, David never
>goes after Goliath, but stays busy picking on dwarfs his own size. 
>
>Why is market share so important? Because once you've gotten it -- even if
>that means giving away your product, à la Netscape, or paying exorbitant
>fees to attract customers, à la American Online, or discounting your
>product 40 percent, à la Amazon.com -- you get more. Market share leads to
>"lock-in," and "lock-in" guarantees "increasing returns." 
>
>The term "lock-in" means that your customers are committed to (or stuck
>with) you. As in, once you've started using Microsoft Office 97, all
>remaining roads lead to Redmond -- you can't switch back. Lewis argues that
>the increasingly faddish economic theory of "increasing returns" means,
>essentially, that more is better. For example, if more people buy VHS
>videocassette recorders than Sony Betamax, more video stores will stock VHS
>cassettes, which will encourage more people to buy VHS VCRs, and so on. 
>
>The concept of increasing returns has undeniable value for understanding
>today's high-tech economy. Microsoft is a master of the technique (in fact,
>many people first heard of "the friction-free economy" when Bill Gates
>extolled it in his "The Road Ahead") -- although in the world of Gatesian
>economics, it's hard to tell the difference between "increasing returns"
>and "leveraging monopoly power." 
>
>So, pump up the marketing budget, give away those free diskettes, make the
>"company jewels" available for free downloading, run up those hundreds of
>millions of dollars per quarter losses. And if you can't grab market share
>yourself, then just buy the companies that already have it. This is a
>favorite technique for Silicon Val

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1998

__Productivity in the nation's nonfarm business sector grew by 2 percent
in the fourth quarter of 1997 and 1.7 percent for the year, BLS reports.
The productivity measure was based on output growth of 5.5 percent and
an increase of 3.5 percent in hours worked,  BLS said.  Nonfarm
productivity grew by 1.9 percent in 1996 ….(Daily Labor Report, page
D-1).  
__Rapid economic growth at the end of 1997 was accompanied by sharp
gains in worker productivity ….The brief item is accompanied by a graph
(New York Times, page D3).
__Worker productivity registered another solid gain last year,
buttressing arguments that the 1990s economic boom reflects structural
improvement in the American economy ….(Wall Street Journal, page A2).

An economy operating at high employment levels will raise output, help
move welfare recipients into the workforce, reduce long-term
unemployment, and work to narrow the rich-poor gap, the administration
says in the "1998 "Economic Report of the President" ….The annual report
includes the administration's economic forecast, unveiled earlier in the
fiscal 1999 budget, and a discussion of the economy.  In addition, each
year the report contains a series of analyses on selected topics.  In
this report, the CEA looks at improving the well-being of children; a
review of trends in racial and ethnic economic inequality; environmental
and health issues relating to economic efficiency; initiatives in
antitrust enforcement; and trends in international trade and market
openings ….(Daily Labor Report, page A-1)_The report ticked off the
now-familiar figures for strong economic growth - the rapid rise in
jobs, the drop in unemployment to a 24-year low, and a decline in core
inflation to the lowest level since the mid-1960s ….Growth to slow after
a strong 1997, says CEA ….(Washington Post, page C12)_The White
House sounded a cautious note about the lofty level of stock prices,
even as it extolled the performance of the U.S. economy ….(USA Today,
page 3B).

U.S. workers increasingly are finding the best and highest paying jobs
in a new "office economy" in which highly educated men and increasing
numbers of women are making decisions guiding the nation's move to an
information-based society, the Educational Testing Service reports.
About 53 million office workers comprised 41 percent of the workforce
and accounted for nearly half of worker earnings in 1995, ETS says.  In
contrast, 22 percent of the workforce was located in low-skilled
services and 19 percent in industrial production.  The growth in the new
office economy is paralleled by the fall of the industrial economy, ETS
said ….The study was based on data from the Census Bureau's Current
Population Survey ….(Daily Labor Report, page A-2).

The Department of Health and Human Services releases what it calls the
first comprehensive report on the health and well-being of an estimated
60 million women who are part of the U.S. labor force.  The report
contains statistics ranging from workplace injuries to employer-provided
health education programs ….The report is based on data from HHS, and
the Departments of Labor and Commerce, and the Census Bureau ….Nearly
three fourths of working women cited their employer as the source of
private health insurance, and three-quarters of working women said their
employer or union paid full or part of their private health insurance
….(Daily Labor Report, page A-10).

A Hazelden Foundation survey indicates that, while nearly 80 percent of
employers believe chemical dependency treatment programs are effective
in returning workers to productivity, nearly 30 percent of them
immediately terminate workers who show signs of substance abuse on the
job.  A spokesman for the Center City, Minn.-based foundation said the
findings were surprising and indicate that businesses need to be better
educated about alcohol and drug abuse ….(Daily Labor Report, page A-13).


DUE OUT TOMORROW:  Major Work Stoppages, 1997


 application/ms-tnef

Re: the loafing class

[James Devine]

At 07:34 AM 2/12/98 -0800, Anders wrote:
>At 03:41 PM 2/11/98 -0800, Michael wrote:
>>David Horowitz has a new piece in Salon
>>http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/horo/1998/02/nc_09horo2.html
>>called the loafing class, supposedly attacking Marxist professors, but
>>just directed at S. Aronowitz.
>
>I thought it was a wonderful example of how a Maoist (or whatever wacko
>group DH belonged to) leopard can't change their spots.  Horowitz complains
>that Marxist professors like Aronowitz waste the precious dollars of
>students by sitting around, loafing off, and babbling pinko nonsense.
>You'd think that by now, Horowitz have gotten over the Sixties.  In this
>day and age, spending time carping about how a handful of lefty profs are
>wasting precious resources and corrupting youthful minds is pretty tired.  

David Horowitz was never a Maoist -- and I knew him personally during one
phase of his rightward lunge (and in fact attended one of his weddings). He
was sort of a Trotskyist of the Isaac Deutscher type, writing a revisionist
critique of US foreign policy (THE FREE WORLD COLOSSUS) and a Marxist book
on imperialism (I've fogotten the title) that had some interesting ideas.
He was an editor of RAMPARTS magazine, a leftish mag more exciting that but
akin to MOTHER JONES. He has a reputation for being a total ass, doing
things like assigning topics to journalists and then stealing their
research for his own articles. 

Though his sexism and elitism might have tagged him as rightist even in the
1960s, he started his rightward shift in earnest when he started supporting
the Black Panther Party at a time when most of the Left in the San
Francisco Bay Area was moving away from them as they slowly returned to
their thuggish ways. A friend of DH's did their accounting -- and ended up
at the bottom of SF Bay, presumably because she found that the Panthers
were engaging in hanky-panky. 

The "god" then failed DH. In the L.A. TIMES forum on the COMMUNIST
MANIFESTO that was led by the Eric Hobsbawm article I mentioned, DH had a
short piece that basically said that the CM should be seen as equivalent to
MEIN KAMPF. He also worked hard to get a right-wing Black radio personality
(Larry Elder) back on the radio. I saw one of his TV commercials for
reinstating Elder: it seemed like an inversion of 1960s New Left rhetoric.
(DH succeeded in that task, so Mr. Elder can go back to blaming Blacks for
their own poverty and the like.) 

When I first met him, at a picnic in Berkeley in the early 1980s, I
mentioned to him that the beer he was drinking was made by Coors. His
response was to say that Coors was better than the Teamsters. He later told
me that I'd need to have something like a personality change to understand
his point of view, as if he'd had such a change. No: his personality
doesn't seem to have changed at all. DH was a leftist ass, now he's a
rightist ass.

DH isn't reacting simply to the 1960s. He's reacting to his mother, who was
an important organizer for the Communist Party in New York. 

in pen-l solidarity,

Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.

Alternatives to Microsoft in the browser wars

[R. Anders Schneiderman]

Dear Penlrs,

For the most part, it's hard to escape the ubiquity of Microsoft.  If
you're working with other folks, odds are you're stuck using MS Office.
And unless you want inflict upon yourself the pain and suffering of Unix
(as some of our Linux enthusiasts have suggested on Penl), you're probably
stuck with Windows95.  But when it comes to surfing the Net, I just found a
really neat browser that you might want to check out.

It's called Opera, and it's available at http://www.operasoftware.com.
It's very, very  small--1.7 megs--it's very zippy, and, once you turn off
some of the clutter, it's very easy to use.  It was developed by a small
company in Norway, who seem to provide really great support.  Right now,
it's only available for PCs, but it'll run quite happily on a 386 with 8MB
of RAM, and they seem to be promising they'll have a Mac version out this
year.  The only drawback is that it doesn't support Java and that you can
only use it for free for 30 days (after that, you need to shell out $30).
If you mostly use the Net for reading text, it's sooo much nicer than
Netscape or Explorer.  So the next time you're feeling pissy at Microsoft,
check it out.

Anders Schneiderman
Progressive Communications

17 nanograms of fame

[Tom Walker]

By this morning, I'd heard the phrase "17 nanograms" enough times to recall
it without looking it up. I've heard more in the last 24 hours about the
contents of a snowboard champ's urine than I'll ever hear about the
magnitude of bad debt held by Japanese banks (recently estimated at US $620
billion).

This is not mere disproportionality, it's information inversion. To help
gauge the severity of the inversion, I've constructed the Piss/Debt index
which currently stands at $36.5 billion per nanogram.

One doesn't have to be paranoid to notice that the International Olympic
Committee and the International Monetary Fund both begin with the SAME WORD!
Coincidence? Does the IMF ask bankers to pee into a paper cup?


Regards, 

Tom Walker
^^^
Know Ware Communications
Vancouver, B.C., CANADA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(604) 688-8296 
^^^
The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/

And now, the fun starts

[R. Anders Schneiderman]

b l o w B a c k  PUNDITS WHO HAVE BEEN PONTIFICATING ABOUT PRESIDENT
CLINTON'S ALLEGED ADULTERY MAY SOON FIND THEIR OWN MORALS COMING UNDER
SCRUTINY.

BY JONATHAN BRODER 
SALON MAGAZINE

WASHINGTON -- The next tasty treat in the media's feeding frenzy over
President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky may be the media themselves. But it
may make some of them, especially those who have taken to flights of moral
outrage, gag on their own punditry. 

Maureen Dowd, moralizer-in-chief at the New York Times, is already having
very bad dreams about the possibility. Warning of a "sexual Armageddon,"
she told readers in her column on Wednesday to be prepared for the
spotlight to be turned on the illicit behavior of some of her colleagues.
The White House, she avers, echoing rumors floated by former Clinton
strategist George Stephanopoulos, "is considering the 'explosive' strategy
of opening up every sexual closet in the city -- congressmen, reporters,
pundits." 

If that were to happen, who might be among the first to feel some heat on
the matter? How about Newsweek columnist and ABC-TV commentator George
Will? In a recent column on the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, Will wrote: 

"Having vulgarians like the Clintons conspicuous in government must further
coarsen American life. This is already apparent in the emergence of a
significant portion of the public that almost preens about supporting the
Clintons because of the vulgarity beneath their pantomime of domesticity." 

Will adds: "He [Clinton] has caused a pain he does not feel: The sense
millions of Americans have that something precious has been vandalized. The
question is, Who should come next to scrub from a revered institution the
stain of the vulgarians?" 

If Dowd's fears are correct, then the "oppo research" department at the
White House has probably already unearthed the January 1987 issue of
Washingtonian magazine that described Will's "off again, on again"
relationship with his then-wife, Madeleine. At the time, there was
considerable gossip in media circles about the matter. A subsequent issue
of Washingtonian reported that a pile of Will's belongings appeared one day
in front of his Chevy Chase, Md., home with a sign on top that read, "Take
it somewhere else, buster." 

Salon attempted to contact Will about the story, leaving a message with his
secretary, but Will did not return the call. However, Amnon Dankner, a
former Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz, who lived
near the Wills, told Salon that he saw both the pile of belongings and the
sign. Soon after the alleged incident, Will and his wife separated, then
later divorced. 

Of course it's Will's right to remain silent on such a personal matter, a
right that he grants the embattled president -- up to a point. "Clinton has
been guided by the rule that silence is a difficult argument to refute."
But Will also cautions that "staying silent, like invoking the Fifth
Amendment against self-incrimination ... invites an invidious reference."

Others argue that it is wrong to compare members of the press to
politicans, the elected custodians of the national trust. But much of the
press, especially in Washington, has become a virtual arm of government.
Some, like Will, have openly crossed back and forth between being a moral
commentator and a partisan political advisor. 

In the take-no-prisoners atmosphere that has descended on the capital,
questions might well be raised about Will in this latter role. As was
reported widely at the time, in practice sessions for the 1980 presidential
debates, Will secretly prepared Republican candidate Ronald Reagan, using a
stolen copy of President Jimmy Carter's debate briefing book. That Will saw
himself more as a partisan Republican than a journalist who should have
reported on the theft may be defensible: The lines between punditry and
partisanship have been blurred since the days of Walter Lippmann. 

What is a little harder to justify ethically is what Will did after the
debate was over: Concealing the fact that he had prepped Reagan, Will, in
his role as an ABC commentator, joined the network's televised post-mortem
of the debate. Pretending he had heard Reagan's answers for the first time,
Will declared him the winner. 

But media pundits like Will may not be the only ones caught in the
cross-fire of a war launched by White House attack dogs. Some of those
summoned to sit in judgment on President Clinton, should he be impeached,
will also have cause for concern. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, for example,
may have to explain all over again why he tried to get his first wife to
sign divorce papers as she lay in hospital recovering from cancer. 

A more immediate target is Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., who has publicly raised
the idea of impeaching the president, even before the Lewinsky scandal
broke. A recent profile of Barr in the Washington Post cited a Georgia
newspaper's description of Barr "licking whipped cream from the chests of
two buxom women" at a Leukem

RE: Said on US-Iraq II

[valis]

Prophesy unto the highest heaven if you want, Max, 
but for me all bets are off.  Too many imponderables.
  valis

> I've got a hunch things could unfold, or unravel, differently
> this time.  The U.S. has set an objective criterion for military
> intervention which it is not likely to be able to meet, short
> of full-scale invasion and occupation.  If it can't meet it,
> it being the elimination of weapons of 'mass destruction,'
> one has to ask, especially as casualties start coming in,
> what the point of intervention is.  The U.S. has hit Iraq,
> what .  .  . twice now since the end of the Gulf War? 
> Iraq is not Panama.  Recall the difficulty of 'nabbing'
> Noriega or the Somali warlord in unoccupied territory.
> I also think it is possible that opposition to intervention
> will come from the right as well as the left.

Re: the loafing class, Part II

[R. Anders Schneiderman]

No sooner do I finish reading my email than Salon magazine handily provides
Exhibit A of my case. -- Anders

P.S.  This is also an example of how useful complexity theory can be in the
real world; you can use it to make lots of money as a business guru...

--

TRENDY THEORIES OF A "FRICTION-FREE ECONOMY" HIT SOME BUMPS IN THE REAL
HIGH-TECH WORLD. 
BY ANDREW LEONARD 
SALON MAGAZINE

The pitch was seductive: Learn how you, too, can apply Lanchester's Second
Law of Warfare and the Trafalgar Technique to gain market share and
ruthlessly crush your enemies. Well, maybe not enemies; "competitors" is
more accurate. But it's easy to get carried away when the topic of
discussion is "Business as War" -- when the goal is to master the
strategies of "Combat in the Friction-Free Economy," to become a modern
"warrior in the Wired World." 

So, along with about 50 other pilgrims to the heart of Silicon Valley, I
headed down on Monday to the Stanford World Internet Center -- shouting
distance from the venture capitalists who swarm along Palo Alto's Sand Hill
Road -- to hear Dr. Ted Lewis give a lecture based on his 1997 book "The
Friction-Free Economy: Marketing Strategies for a Wired World." My fellow
attendees were an intriguing mix of sharp-eyed marketing consultants,
program managers, independent contractors and other veterans of the vital
Valley start-up scene -- all looking for an edge in the high-tech marketplace.

Whether they got one from Lewis' fuzzy presentation is unclear. Although
Lewis' buzzword-per-nanosecond rate was impressive, the content, boiled
down, didn't amount to much more than a single imperative: "Market share is
everything." You see, according to Lewis, in the friction-free economy --
where, supposedly, the cost of manufacturing and distributing a product
approaches zero -- "the bottom line is that the only thing that matters is
market share." 

This is where Lanchester and the Trafalgar Technique come in handy. The
Trafalgar Technique is a combat strategy adopted from the famous naval
battle in which the British admiral, Lord Nelson, defeated superior French
and Spanish forces by targeting a weak point and breaking though the lines.
Lanchester, an air warfare theoretician in the first half of this century,
codified the strategy by arguing that you should only target opponents who
are within your "shooting range" -- that is, who have market-share
positions similar to or weaker than your own. In this world, David never
goes after Goliath, but stays busy picking on dwarfs his own size. 

Why is market share so important? Because once you've gotten it -- even if
that means giving away your product, à la Netscape, or paying exorbitant
fees to attract customers, à la American Online, or discounting your
product 40 percent, à la Amazon.com -- you get more. Market share leads to
"lock-in," and "lock-in" guarantees "increasing returns." 

The term "lock-in" means that your customers are committed to (or stuck
with) you. As in, once you've started using Microsoft Office 97, all
remaining roads lead to Redmond -- you can't switch back. Lewis argues that
the increasingly faddish economic theory of "increasing returns" means,
essentially, that more is better. For example, if more people buy VHS
videocassette recorders than Sony Betamax, more video stores will stock VHS
cassettes, which will encourage more people to buy VHS VCRs, and so on. 

The concept of increasing returns has undeniable value for understanding
today's high-tech economy. Microsoft is a master of the technique (in fact,
many people first heard of "the friction-free economy" when Bill Gates
extolled it in his "The Road Ahead") -- although in the world of Gatesian
economics, it's hard to tell the difference between "increasing returns"
and "leveraging monopoly power." 

So, pump up the marketing budget, give away those free diskettes, make the
"company jewels" available for free downloading, run up those hundreds of
millions of dollars per quarter losses. And if you can't grab market share
yourself, then just buy the companies that already have it. This is a
favorite technique for Silicon Valley start-ups who aren't making the
impact in the marketplace that their business plan demands. No better
recent example is available than the Excite search engine company, which
responded to its minuscule stock price and lackluster traffic by exercising
Lanchester's Second Law to perfection: Excite purchased its equally
unimpressive competitors, Magellan and Webcrawler, and today it is
considered one of the big boys, along with Yahoo, Lycos, Infoseek and
AltaVista. 

Such examples explain why Lewis' audience paid close attention. The jargon
may be easily ridiculed, but the reality is no joke. And Lewis -- chairman
of the computer science department at the Naval Postgraduate School in
Monterey, Calif., as well as the owner of Technology Assessment, "a
consulting firm that advises high-tech companies on techno-marketing in the
fricti

Re: the loafing class

[R. Anders Schneiderman]

At 03:41 PM 2/11/98 -0800, Michael wrote:
>David Horowitz has a new piece in Salon
>http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/horo/1998/02/nc_09horo2.html
>called the loafing class, supposedly attacking Marxist professors, but
>just directed at S. Aronowitz.

I thought it was a wonderful example of how a Maoist (or whatever wacko
group DH belonged to) leopard can't change their spots.  Horowitz complains
that Marxist professors like Aronowitz waste the precious dollars of
students by sitting around, loafing off, and babbling pinko nonsense.
You'd think that by now, Horowitz have gotten over the Sixties.  In this
day and age, spending time carping about how a handful of lefty profs are
wasting precious resources and corrupting youthful minds is pretty tired.  

If you were to take a look at your average university and ask, from a
mainstream perspective, who's wasting the most money, the answer wouldn't
be the pinkos.  No matter how hard he tries, Aronowitz will never be in the
same leagues as many business profs who come up with one stupid-ass fad
after another that like viruses wreak havoc on the business world.  Nor
could he manage to waste as much taxpayer dollars as computer science
profs, many of whom do a truly stupifying amount of research that is either
a complete waste of time or, if tried out in practice, waste millions of
dollars.  When I've worked in the corporate world, most folks I met thought
that these kinds of profs were about as useful as lawyers and used car
salesmen.

Then again, if your Sugar Daddy is Richard Scaif (sp?), I guess you have to
put out.

Anders Schneiderman
Progressive Communications

Caldera-MS suit rekindled

[valis]

   Caldera takes on Windows 95
   By Dan Goodin
   February 10, 1998, 2:30 p.m. PT
   
   After receiving permission from a federal magistrate judge,
   Caldera has amended its private antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft to
   include evidence concerning Windows 95.
   
   Up to now, the suit has been limited to alleged wrongdoing concerning
   Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS, older versions of Microsoft operating systems
   that slowly are being phased out. The decision means that Caldera can
   add its voice to a growing chorus of critics who claim that Microsoft
   engages in anticompetitive practices when designing and marketing its
   dominant Windows 95 product.
   
   It also could prove to be a significant boon to Caldera's case.
   
   "Until the court allowed us to include Windows 95 in our lawsuit, the
   case we've had has been very historical in nature," said Lyle Ball, a
   spokesman for Caldera. "Now it includes current behavior, so we get to
   use evidence we've gathered post-1995 to also prove our allegations
   against Microsoft."
   
   Caldera alleges that Microsoft illegally tied MS-DOS software to
   Windows and engaged in other anticompetitive practices intended to
   quash DR-DOS, a competing operating system that Caldera acquired from
   Novell. Microsoft has denied the charges.
   
   Two weeks ago, U.S. Magistrate Ronald Boyce of Salt Lake City ruled at
   a hearing that Caldera was free to amend its complaint to include
   allegations that Microsoft illegally tied MS-DOS to Windows 95. In
   addition to providing Caldera with more ammunition to bolster its
   charges, the ruling could allow the closely-held Utah software maker
   to collect substantially higher damages should it succeed in proving
   its case.
   
   At a hearing slated for tomorrow, the court is expected to hear
   Microsoft's request to delay the start of a jury trial scheduled for
   November. Caldera also plans to raise issues concerning the
   fact-finding procedure of the case, known as discovery.
   
   Rich Gray, an antitrust attorney with Bergeson, Eliopoulos, Grady &
   Gray, said that the decision is a clear victory for Caldera because
   the company is now allowed to introduce "potentially explosive"
   evidence to a jury. He warned, however, that Caldera has by no means
   won the war.
   
   "It certainly breathes life into an important lawsuit, but Caldera
   still has a lot of work to do," Gray said. For instance, he added, the
   company will have to demonstrate that there were no technological
   justifications for tying Windows software to MS-DOS. Caldera also must
   demonstrate that, were it not for Microsoft's allegedly
   anticompetitive activities, DR-DOS would have gained significant
   market share. Neither allegation will be easy to prove, Gray said.
   
   Caldera filed its case in July 1996, alleging that Microsoft
   unnecessarily tied MS-DOS to Windows and made false promises, known as
   vaporware announcements, in order to eliminate DR-DOS. The suit is
   just one of a number of actions taking aim at Microsoft's allegedly
   anticompetitive practices.
   
   The Justice Department, for example, has alleged that Microsoft is
   violating the terms of a 1995 consent decree by requiring Internet
   Explorer to be shipped with Windows 95. The DOJ also is in the midst
   of a much broader investigation of Microsoft practices and is
   investigating deals the software giant has made with content companies
   and Net broadcasters.
   
   Additionally, at least 11 states are looking into Microsoft's business
   practices, as are the Senate Judiciary Committee and enforcers of fair
   competition in Japan and Europe.
   
   A Microsoft spokesman said the ruling was little more than procedural
   in nature and would bear no effect on the outcome of the case. "We do
   not believe that this new allegation has any legal or factual
   substance whatsoever, and we look forward to proving that in court,"
   said Microsoft's Jim Cullinan.

   
   Copyright © 1995-98 CNET, Inc. All rights reserved.

Re: Said on US-Iraq

[valis]

Gar Lipow rebuts:
> > As far as making a difference is concerned, a difference in blood,
> > in treasure, but above all in freedom and mutual comprehension,
> > Edward Said is too late; it was too late before he was born, too late
> > a century ago and more.  Islam and the West make a binary of hardwired
> > antagonism like few others; they are like the parallel universes facing
> > some sci-fi figure who can't experience - or even remember - more than
> > one at a time, and the story is exhausted in his efforts to do so.
> 
> Hasn't one major point of Edward Said's work been that Islam and the West 
> do not make a "binary of hardwired antagonism", that there is not an
> unbridgeable gap between Islam and the West, that we could easily
> comprehend one another if we took the trouble to do so?

I didn't mean to confuse Said's views with my own perception.
He may entertain such hope, but likely no longer for his own lifetime.
The period of imitation of the West, both in social norms and ideology,
is over and widely discredited, which is why Islam is resurgent.
This old-new cycle will have to play itself out first; if autarky becomes
a serious part of the Islamic agenda, the cycle will be aggravated by
force and threats of force from the West. 

> I believe that while accepting the tragedy, he denies historical 
> inevitability and irreversibility.   I believe he is right in this, 
> that we can give the dead and living alike a better gift than mourning 
> and learned observations.

This is a fine ideal and I subscribe to it, but the probable future 
is something else. 
 valis

Part-Timers Union Wins at Columbia College

[Dennis Grammenos]

-
The Chronicle of Higher Education

February 13, 1998


Part-Timers Unionize at Columbia College
by Courtney Leatherman


Part-time instructors at Columbia College voted, 299 to 80, to unionize
last week, making the institution the only four-year college in Illinois
with organized adjunct-faculty members.

"This really is the beginning of a movement to insure that the part-time
instructors, the men and women who teach a large and increasing share
of the classes at many Illinois colleges and universities, are fairly
compensated," said Tom Suhrbur, an organizer for the Illinois Education
Association.  "I.E.A. intends to be at the forefront of that movement."

Bert Gall, executive vice-president and provost at Columbia, said he
expected "good-faith bargaining" to begin soon, noting that he did not
expect the college to challenge the vote.  He said he was "disappointed"
but "not surprised" by the outcome.

The instructors voted for representation by the Part-Time Faculty
Association at Columbia, which is affiliated with the state association.
The ballots, cast by 379 out of the 478 eligible voters, were unsealed and
counted before representatives of the union and the administration at the
National Labor Relations Board's regional office in Chicago.

Columbia, which has 200 full-time faculty members, employs about 900
part-timers.  While each adjunct earns $1,500 per course taught, a
professor receives about $5,700 and benefits for the same amount of work,
the union contnds.  The administration notes that full-time professors are
responsible for more than just teaching.  They also advise students and
perform community service.

The union has called for higher wages for adjuncts, including setting
their base pay at $3,000 per course.  The union also wants part-timers to
have health benefits, some job security, and more of a voice in governing
the college.  The administration this academic year raised salaries for
part-timers by 5 per cent, and Columbia allows part-time instructors to
serve as representatives on its governing body, the College Council.

___