Re: Extra Credit Assignment

[tom wood]

>I believe it was Jonathan Edwards, the Boston-area folkie (not
>colonial-era preacher) who penned a song about Jack Johnson and the
>Titanic.  If I remember correctly, there were some nasty lines about Jews
>in the song, but on that I could be wrong.  Otherwise, it was a catchy
>song.
>
>Robert Saute
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, J Cullen wrote:
>
>> I believe there was a blues/gospel song about the sinking of the Titanic.
>> Supposedly Jack Johnson was refused a fare on the Titanic by the owner who
>> said "This ship doesn't haul coal."
>>
>> >One important aspect of the Titanic disaster not mentioned in the film
>> >or on the list:
>> >
>> >The White Star Line made a particular point of not hiring any Black
>> >workers, even porters or coal stokers, who were common on other
>> >steamships.  The sinking was celebrated in African-American communities
>> >as an act of  retribution, probably one of the first examples of what
>> >now might been called the "O.J. Simpson phenomenon."


there was an old song by Leadbelly, and a more recent one by Sparky Rucker.
Neither mentioned Jews, as far as I can recall.  Also, the White Star Line
wouldn't hire Catholics to work on constructing the ship, even though it
was built in Dublin.
Tom Wood

union density in u.s.

[Mike Yates]

Friends,

I just read something on union density in the U.S. for 1997, but I cannot
remember where.  Can anyone help me out?

michael yates

A Revealing Krugmanism

[Steven S. Zahniser]

Dear PEN-Lers:

I thought I would emphasize one sentence from Paul Krugman, "Algorithms:
Probing the vice president's thought processes," SLATE magazine, posted
Thursday, Feb. 12, 1998: 

"I have all the leading introductory texts on my shelf (I'm writing
one myself and am trying to steal my competitors' ideas)" 

Have a good Saturday!

Steven Zahniser
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

MAPE: ART: French artists challenge judges over drugs law

[valis]

> First MAI gets the boot, and now this.  When France gets frisky
  everybody benefits.  The constipated virgin in the AG's chair 
  is unlikely to be moved, however.  Well, there are earlier French
  precedents for that problem, too!
   valis


Subj: French artists challenge judges over drugs law
Date: Friday, 27 February 1998

Source:The Independent (UK)
Contact:   1. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  2. The Independent
  1 Canada Square,
   Canary Wharf,
   London E14 5DL 
   England

-
The Independent (UK)
Friday, 27 February 1998

French artists challenge judges over drugs law

MORE than 100 French artists and intellectuals have signed a petition
admitting to taking soft drugs and offering themselves for prosecution,
WRITES JOHN LICHFIELD in Paris. 

The intention is partly to embarrass the government of Lionel Jospin, but
mostly to embarrass the judiciary, which has brought a number of legal
cases against high-profile campaigners for the legalisation of cannabis and
other drugs. 

The signatories of the "petition of 111" include the 1960s Franco-German
political activist, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the film director Patrice Chereau,
the fashion designer and president of Paris Opera, Pierre Berge, and the
actress Marina Vlady. The petitioners state: "At one moment or other of my
life, I have consumed stupefying drugs. I know that in admitting publicly
that I am a drug user, I can be prosecuted. This is a risk I am ready to
take." 

The motive is to draw attention to the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of
government policy and the application of the French anti-drugs law. Public
admission to drugs-taking can be prosecuted in France as an incitement to
use by others.

The president of Act-Up, a group campaigning for the legalisation of soft
drugs, appeared in court this week for distributing a tract called "I like
ecstasy". A counter-culture newspaper, L'Elephant Rose was forced into
bankruptcy recently after being prosecuted under the same law. No action
was taken, however, against others like the pop singer Johnny Hallyday and
the Justice Minister Elisabeth Guignou, who have also spoken frankly about
drugs. 

Mr Jospin said he favoured the decriminalisation of cannabis during the
election campaign last May. His government has stepped back from that
position but measures are expected soon to allow experimental use of
cannabis in hospitals.

--

EMU

[Doug Henwood]

I've been reading up on European monetary union, which is just 10 months
away, and my impression is that no one is really prepared for just how big
a deal it could be. Am I wrong?

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: Global Warming

[Mark Jones]

There is an abundance of sources on the Web on climate change.
I shall post a selection later today. A good one is Jay Hanson's website:
http://www.dieoff.org/page1.htm
(he has around 200 pages). A similar debate is going on at Pen-L
where the subject of tradable emissions permits is being debated. I am
therefore posting this to Pen-L too. I am strongly of the opinion that 
'tradable permits' is not just a corporate scam or a way of getting 
the US off the greenhouse hook by 'selling' its pollution 'rights' to 
countries like Russia which has now experienced the 'benefits' of becoming 
a wholly post-industrial society. There is a moral issue: creating 
markets out of pollution, especially planet-wrecking greenhouse emissions, 
is intrinsically wrong. I have the same feeling about the 'valuing natural 
capital' theoreticians. Putting a price on nature is not going to save it. 
It is just another way of eternising (or anyway, giving another lease of 
life to) capitalism. It is capitalism that is the problem.

There has been a very full debate on the issues, focussing on the hard
science, on Marxism-International, and prompted by the presence on the 
list of Living Marxism supporters. LM are global-warming denialists, 
fond of quoting the likes of Fred Singer and other eco-nihilists.

I very much appreciated Adam Webb's posting 'Misunderstanding the
enemy'. World capitalism as a social order is buttressed by large masses
of what used to be called the petty-bourgeoisie, and by a metropolitan
proletariat which is both cowed and corrupted. These are decisive facts
of the era. It is simply useless to suppose that some kind of educative
process is going to change these people; it is not. In any case, the
education is all in the opposite direction. Large numbers of people in 
these social groups actually consider themselves to be Greens, but they
have no conception of what the issues involved really are, and will go into
denial when they do begin to understand. Because it is simply useless to
imagine that 'sustainability' is an option. What has happened to Russia
must happen throughout the west, ie, industrial capitalism must be
destroyed. Perverse as it seems, only major socio-economic collapse can 
save the planet now. It's that simple.

As Peter Grimes properly says, the fate of the planet has
very possibly already been decided by changes to the ocean conveyor,
which are likely to trigger self-amplifying feedback mechanisms so that
even if we don't get runaway warming (which is more possible than many
suppose) we are still likely to have wrecked the climate ireversibly in
other ways. I shall post more data on these issues, and I thank Peter
and Tom for raising it now.

When climatologists began to home in on the the fact that global warming
will manifest itself chiefly in the form of intensified and more exteme
weather events, making it necessary to construct regional as well as
global climate models, understanding of the whole issue and the dangers
global warming presents moved on a notch. But the downside to
this more refined understanding is that it has taken the focus away from
the longer-term but more dangerous effects of anthropogenic
climate-forcing on the world climate as a whole and the biosphere as a
whole.

In particular, this localising of focus has enabled the strategists of
capital to focus on the possibility of local, partial solutions (now
they've tacitly accepted that it will happen). And the greens, who lack
a coherent politics, are following in their footsteps. Greenpeace in
the UK at least is now firmly in bed with big corporate partners
like Shell, BP, Dow, ICI etc.

The first truly GLOBAL effect of global warming is not going to show up
in the climate, but in the aggravated and multiform crises which are now
already deepening the chaos and disarray into which whole regions are
sinking. The population of the earth has increased by one billion since
1982, and most of them live in ecologically-vulnerable regions, coastal
floodplains and the like.

War or revolution? Disease, famine, or militant, disciplined socialism,
fought for in the form of peoples' wars and popular risings? Organising
the masses and seizing state power in the disintegrating peripheries, or
succumbing to US fascism? Those are the issues. 

The metaphor of the frog boiling is a common one, and it has a social
as well as ecological significance. The triumphalism of hurrah-
capitalism is tinged with despair. Who now even remembers the optimism
surrounding decolonialisation and development of half a century ago?

Then the air was full of talk about the Non-aligned movement,
development in the ex-colonies and the like. It is hard to recall the
atmosphere in the UK of optimism (as well as pain among imperial
sentimentalists), that attended decolonisation when almost every week
the queen watched the flag come down for the last time over some new
corner of empire.

Post-independence leaders like Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah had vast and

Re: Wallerstein's view of wages

[Brian Green]

I also can understand Wallerstein's argument...No doubt de-ruralization is
driving wages up to a certain extent. However, I think the following should
be taken into consideration.
1) The impact of de-ruralization could in fact be misleading, as far as
living standards are concerned. Certainly waged work (largely though not
exclusively in urban centres) drives up the dollar figures earned by these
workers; but we also need to consider the fact that rural workers and
campesinos have/had some ability to produce their own means of subsistence.
And as these people increasingly take on waged work, less time is devoted to
the subsistence farming etc. that previously accounted for some portion of
their livelihood. So, it is concievable that the shift to waged work drives
incomes up, while living standards either drop or remain constant.
2) If we take as a given that de-ruralization is indeed driving wages up, we
also need to consider the negative impact of capital mobility, austerity
programs etc. on wages, ie. as (often unionized) work is contracted out to
the lowest bidder. What then is the impact of this downward pressure on the
overall picture for wages worldwide?
(Note: I in no way mean to suggest that "globalization" [for lack of a
better word] is a one-way street victimizing workers worldwide. There is
indeed alot to be said for the active -- and often successful -- struggle of
workers to resist core aspects of capital's restructuring process. But
that's another discussion altogether.)

Nonetheless, I think this is an interesting thread, and it would be great to
hear from folks who have studied the global wage picture in some depth.


>>While I am sympathetic to the point W's trying to make, I'm wondering 
>>what folks on this list think of his argument that 1) there is a secular
>trend 
>>toward an increase in the average price of labour worldwide and 2) that 
>>there is a secular trend for the average rate of profit to decrease as a
>result.
>>
>>Sid Shniad
>
>Maybe David Laibman can speak to this. He gave a presentation based on his
>new book at the Brecht Forum last year and made an identical point about
>rising wages that I also found startling. I suspect that Dave is
>incommunicado for the next couple of days at the big International
>Conference on Value Theory at the Crowne Royal hotel in NYC. I heard from
>sombody that they finally solved that gosh-darned transformation and have a
>news conference scheduled for Monday morning when they will announce the
>solution to the world.
>
>Louis Proyect
>
>
>
-
Brian Green|  
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Another Activist Assassinated in Colombia

[Dennis Grammenos]

-- Forwarded message --
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 10:01:16 -0600
From: Colombia Support Network <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Another Activist Assassinated in Colombia

Another assassination of a human rights activist in Colombia.
How much blood must be spilled, how many lives must be extinguished
before Peace and Justice find Colombia?



  Activist Fatally Shot in Colombia

  By Frank Bajak
  Associated Press Writer

  BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Gunmen burst into an office
  Friday and shot to death a leading human rights
  activist who had accused the army and top politicians
  of sponsoring death squads.

  Jesus Maria Valle Jaramillo, 53, was slain in the
  frugal downtown Medellin office where he practiced law,
  police and colleagues said.

  One of the few Colombian human rights workers bold
  enough to publicly accuse the military and top regional
  politicians of sponsoring paramilitary groups
  responsible for thousands of killings over the past
  decade, Valle had casually remarked in an interview
  with The Associated Press last October that he expected
  to be killed soon.

  "My days are numbered," Valle said with a resigned
  smile in his book-lined office. "I've had a good
  life."

  The country's leading human rights organization, The
  Colombian Commission of Jurists, said it suspected
  landowner-backed paramilitary groups in the killing.

  Valle was the most prominent Colombian activist slain
  since the May 19 slaying of Elsa Alvarado and her
  husband, Mario, in Bogota.

  "This is a death that should really shake up the
  country," said Ricardo Mejia, an activist and friend
  of Valle reached by telephone at the slain lawyer's
  office in the capital of Antioquia state, one of
  Colombia's most violent.

  Defense Minister Gilberto Echeverri deplored the
  slaying and called Valle a "champion of peace."

  But Mejia said no local politicians had publicly
  lamented the death. Valle was especially critical of
  Antioquia's former governor, Alvaro Uribe Velez, for
  allowing what he called the proliferation of citizen
  vigilante groups.

  A founder of Antioquia's Human Rights Commission, Valle
  alleged that "a part of the military is in cahoots
  with drug traffickers and paramilitaries." His
  allegations were backed by prosecutors in recent months
  who say military commanders turned a blind eye to a
  series of massacres by paramilitary gunmen that they
  could have stopped.

  More than a dozen leading Medellin human rights
  activists were slain in the late 1980s and early 1990s
  and Valle was one of a few who continued to maintain a
  high public profile.

  (c) Copyright 1998 The Associated Press
-

* COLOMBIA SUPPORT NETWORK: To join CSN-L send request to  *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] SUB CSN-L Firstname Lastname*
* (Direct questions or comments about CSN-L to [EMAIL PROTECTED])   *
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The Legal Assault on Workers' Rights (fwd)

[Sid Shniad]

> Thursday, February 26, 1998
> 
> COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
> 
> Will a Tsunami of Suits Sink Dockworkers?
> 
> The Pacific Maritime Assn. is targeting union locals and picket
> sympathizers to break solidarity.
> 
> By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
> 
> Jack Heyman, a member of Local 10 of the International Longshore and
> Warehouse Union in San Francisco, faces the possibility of being fined
> hundreds of thousands, maybe millions in damages because he honored a
> picket line. He's also threatened with being permanently barred from doing
> his job. Members of the Laney College Labor Studies Club in Oakland face
> the same financial sanction because the club's banner was seen at the same
> picket line. The Peace and Freedom Party faces such fines for similar
> reasons.
> 
> All these people and groups are also being harassed to name all
> participants in the protest and to reveal all their past political and
> union associations.
> 
> What provoked this assault?
> 
> In the fall of 1997, there was a protest in the port of Oakland against a
> container ship called the Neptune Jade chartered by a Singapore company.
> The reason for the protest was the ship's British cargo. Back in 1995, the
> Mersey Docks and Harbor company in Liverpool fired 500 men when they
> refused to cross a picket line set up by their work mates, some of whom had
> been fired earlier for having tried to fight employers' attempts to
> sabotage a labor agreement. Liverpool was at the time the last organized
> port in the Britain with a collective bargaining agreement. The fight
> sparked a big response by dockworkers all over the world. There were
> pickets from Vancouver south to Long Beach and across the Pacific to Japan
> and Australia. Unable to discharge its cargo in Oakland, the Neptune Jade
> traveled to Vancouver, then Yokohama, then Kobe. At each stop, the dockers
> said no.
> 
> It was a reaction that might surprise some in this era when organized labor
> has been so much on the defensive. But worldwide, even in these dour times,
> the dockworkers have had a huge political effect. When Nelson Mandela
> visited the United States in 1991, he made a particular point of thanking
> ILWU workers for solidarity actions in the 1970s and 1980s--refusing to
> handle South African cargo, for example--which he said had been crucial in
> "reigniting" the spark of anti-apartheid action in the U.S.
> 
> While in theory the men in charge of the employers' Pacific Maritime Assn.
> might be against apartheid, they were, and are, even more fiercely opposed
> to anything that inhibits their capacity to move cargo as swiftly and
> cheaply as possible. Such is the logic of business that prefers casual
> dockers to union workers, or cowed union workers to organized folk standing
> up for their rights. In the wake of the Neptune Jade protest, the PMA has
> brought lawsuits against the ILWU and the picketers, designed to send a
> simple message: Acts of worker solidarity will not be tolerated. Again and
> again, the PMA has gone to court in a program of intimidation in the form
> of multimillion-dollar damage suits and associated legal maneuvers against
> individual workers and sympathetic outsiders as well as the unions.
> 
> The drive-them-to-the-wall strategy of the PMA is the work of Joseph
> Miniace, who came two years ago from outside the industry--from the health
> care sector. Miniace tells the Journal of Commerce that all he wants is the
> unions to be "accountable." He talks about "win-win" situations in
> reorganizing the dispatch halls in the interests of competition and
> efficiency.
> 
> If there's one thing workers have learned these last 20 years when most
> workers' wages have remained static, it is that a win-win plan from
> management means a sure loss for workers. The Longshore workers, precisely
> because they're tough and well-organized, make good money--though not
> nearly as good as Miniace's.
> 
> The PMA continues to seek damages for a 1995 coast-wide strike in support
> of two Seattle officials of the ILWU who, the union says, were unfairly
> disciplined on the job. The PMA has already won a federal injunction
> forcing the union in the Port of Oakland to cross solidarity picket lines.
> And the PMA is readying McCarthy-style probes against anyone who might defy
> them.
> 
> Part of the bedrock of freedom is the right to strike, though the right to
> honor a picket line was eroded as long ago as the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.
> Nonetheless, the dockworkers have always found ways to act in support of
> causes such as fighting apartheid. But if the PMA's lawsuits stick, the
> union will be busted, which is Miniace's obvious aim. Unless all workers
> see the importance of this struggle, the right to set up and honor picket
> lines, the very survival of the labor movement is at stake.
> 
> - - -
> 
> Alexander Cockburn Writes for the Nation and Other Publications
> 
> Copyright Los Angeles Times
>