[PEN-L:9535] My Ideologies

[Louis Proyect]

Brad DeLong:
>Does this mean that unfreedom at the periphery is functional for 
>capitalism at the core? I would say clearly not. The OECD gains 
>enormously more from trade with high-wage Taiwan than with low-wage 
>Vietnam, even though the rate of surplus-value is much higher in the 
>latter (with all of the apparatus of the Communist Party of Vietnam 
>to act as proxy gang boss). 

This is just Orwellian. The whole purpose of US foreign policy has been to
prop up dictatorships that jail, murder or torture trade unionists so wages
will remain low. Every single country in Latin America is involved in
sending export crops to the US, from bananas to coffee. The entire history
of the past 100 years has been one of the marines, or the CIA or gorillas
we fund and organize, going in and breaking heads for United Fruit Company
et al. 

All this is fresh in my mind because I have been reading about Colombia.
Coffee became a major commodity in the US following the civil war and
reached a high point in the 1920s, when it began to ebb off due to a
saturated market. This put powerful American companies such as A&P on a
collision course with the suppliers of coffee. The urgent need was to
reduce wages, since under conditions of a saturated market this was the
only way to increase profits. (Later on, public relations and advertising
firms created an enhanced need for caffeine, to increase market demand.)
The governments of country after country from El Salvador to Brazil
massacred tens of thousands of plantations hands and peasants who refused
to become even more impoverished than they already were. Under capitalism,
there are winners and losers. Many more losers than winners based on the
UN's latest development statistics. The early history of core-periphery
relations that Brad alluded to never came to an end. When Americans and
Brits stop in at a Starbucks, there is a class relation embodied in that
transaction. Starbuck shareholders do well, while people in Brazil,
Colombia and Uganda get treated like dirt. When they protest, they get a
bullet in the head, courtesy of Anglo-American imperialism.

Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)

[PEN-L:9534] Re: Re: My Ideologies

[Jim Devine]

Brad writes: >It was Schumpeter I think (and also Norman Angell) who first
pointed out the severe disjunction between the thoughts of generals and
diplomats (who saw political control over territory and resources as the
source of wealth, prosperity, and power) and traders and industrialists
(who saw productivity, comparative advantage, and open markets--the ability
to trade what is cheap here for what is cheap there--as the sources of
wealth, prosperity, and power). <

US industrialists (like other industrial capitalists around the world) do
not value productivity, comparative advantage, and open markets. Instead,
they value _their own_ business' productivity -- but as part of the
constant struggle for rents, technological or otherwise, wish to undermine
the productivity of other businesses. They don't value open markets,
because each one struggles to attain a new monopoly and/or protect an old
one, by all means necessary (but following the calculus of cost and
benefit). I would guess that industrialists are generally ignorant of the
concept of comparative advantage (treating it as a concept from academic
cloud-cuckoo land) and instead focus on their own _competitive_ advantage,
to use Michael Porter's term. 

But what about "free trade"? In the 19th century and a lot of the 20th,
i.e., from the beginning of the Civil War until the Smoot-Hawley tariff,
industrialists opposed free trade, favoring instead what was later called
"import-substituting industrialization." Charles Kindleberger quotes
Schumpeter as saying that tariffs were "the household remedy" of the
Republican party, at that time _the_ party of business and also the main
party ruling the US after 1860 until 1932. It's no surprise that Angus
Maddison dubs the U.S. in the early 20th century a "heavy protectionist"
country. This strategy of import-substitution was of course successful in
insulating US business from British competition, allowing them to overtake
and exceed Britain (partly for reasons beyond the scope of this note).
Then, with the US on top of the world in terms of manufacturing
productivity, military power, and financial clout, and with policy elites
learning from the 1930s problem of tariff-retaliation, US industry turned
to pushing free trade on the rest of the world. Even then, US
industrialists push for the _implementation_ of free trade that benefits
them. Note the US efforts to prevent free trade in anti-AIDS drugs with
South Africa; if free trade were truly valued, the drug companies' monopoly
positions would be abolished. Or if Brad is right about industrialists
favoring free trade, they would voluntarily abolish their own monopoly
positions. 

(This is not new. The first free-trade nation, Holland, was also on top of
the heap when it pushed this line. Then England became the "workshop to the
world," holding the productivity advantage, and so pushed free trade on
others, especially when it could mean the bankruptcy of "native" industries
in their colonies.)

Merchants don't really value free trade, except rhetorically. Instead, what
they want is to be able to buy low and sell high. Free trade means that the
special advantages that allow such profits disappear, leaving only what
economists term "normal" profits. They continually strive to do better than
that, lobbying and bribing politicians, launching law-suits, hiring
strike-breakers, employing dishonest advertising, etc., etc. and once and
while improving a product. 

If it's Schumpeter who pointed to the disjunction, he was pointing in
error. Instead, he should have pointed to the disjunction between the
thoughts of generals and diplomats and those of economists in
currently-dominant countries, especially the elite ones at the US Treasury
Department and Fed, or the US-sponsored World Bank and IMF. (In poor and
dependent countries, economists look at "free trade" with more of a
jaundiced eye, unless they're under the US/World Bank/IMF thumbs.) He may
have been confused by the spiritual unity which seems to exist between
economists and industrials and merchants, so that he projected the
economists' idealized vision of business onto the latter. 

In addition, it ignores the importance of the generals' and diplomats'
concern with political control over territory and resources as the source
of power to _business_. In an earlier era (and currently in many places
around the world), the line between the generals and diplomats on the one
hand, and the industrialists and merchants on the other, was thin or
non-existent. Gaining control over land and resources (stealing it from the
"natives" or from rival mercantilists or imperialists) can allow generals
and diplomats (or their near relatives and close friends) _to become_
landed gentry, slave-owners, mine-owners, monopoly merchants, or
industrialists. 

Even in the "modern" era, it's been traditional, for example, for US
business operating overseas, especially in the poor and dependent
countries, to work hand in glove with the US 

[PEN-L:9533] Re: My Ideologies

[Brad De Long]

> >the deaths in Indonesia need to be attributed to liberal U. S. capitalism.
>
>Which is the political economy analogue of the point I was making the
>other day about the bourgeois subject: the prosperous "freedom" of
>the BS and the imperial hegemon thrive on marginalization and
>oppression elsewhere.
>
>Doug

No one can dispute that strong capitalist economic growth at the 
world economy's industrial core structures domination and oppression 
at the periphery. Before the rise of the Netherlands and its strong 
demand for grain, it just wasn't worthwhile for Polish nobles to 
chase down peasants and enserf them. Before the rise of strong 
British demand for the high-value mind-altering products--coffee, 
tobacco, sugar--of the Americas, it just wasn't worth the trouble to 
buy guns, sail to Africa, sell the guns for slaves, take the slaves 
back across the Atlantic, whip them, and set them to work.

Strong external demand for the things that an elite's subjects can 
make is one of the principal things that can make the elite turn up 
the screws of exploitation--and make life a living (or dying) hell 
for the people they rule, conquer, or enslave.

Does this mean that unfreedom at the periphery is functional for 
capitalism at the core? I would say clearly not. The OECD gains 
enormously more from trade with high-wage Taiwan than with low-wage 
Vietnam, even though the rate of surplus-value is much higher in the 
latter (with all of the apparatus of the Communist Party of Vietnam 
to act as proxy gang boss). A bunch of the surplus extracted by the 
CPVN is consumed in the industrial core--but the imperial hegemon 
would thrive even more if there were less marginalization and 
oppression. Generated by, yes; functional for, no.

Do the "deaths in Indonesia need to be attributed to liberal U.S. 
capitalism"? To the U.S. national security state, perhaps. But even 
there you have to construct a counterfactual picture of what the 
succession to Sukarno would have been like: rule by the PKI is scary 
to think about. And don't overestimate how much control the imperial 
center has over its clients: it's not fair to attribute to Leonid 
Brezhnev responsibility for the crimes of the Dergue in Ethiopia, or 
for the ethnic cleansing conducted against Vietnamese citizens of 
Chinese descent in the late 1970s.

It was Schumpeter I think (and also Norman Angell) who first pointed 
out the severe disjunction between the thoughts of generals and 
diplomats (who saw political control over territory and resources as 
the source of wealth, prosperity, and power) and traders and 
industrialists (who saw productivity, comparative advantage, and open 
markets--the ability to trade what is cheap here for what is cheap 
there--as the sources of wealth, prosperity, and power). The profits 
of American corporations today are no higher because hundreds of 
thousands of inhabitants of East Timor have been slaughtered over the 
past quarter century.


Brad DeLong

[PEN-L:9532] RE: Rummel et al

[Brad De Long]

>
>
>I think this war over terminology --
>was it genocide, or what -- is political in an
>unconstructive sense.  Calling the treatment of
>native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide"
>is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois
>demoratic capitalism (BDC) at its root.  That doesn't
>mean the term is inappropriate
>
>mbs

Let me disagree with Comrade Max: it is not inappropriate and not 
unconstructive to call the treatment of native Americans by 
English-speaking immigrants from Europe "genocide." I do think that 
we need another, different word for the Middle Passage because its 
point was not to destroy whole populations but to enslave them (or, 
rather, to enslve the half that survived given the "economically 
efficient" mode of transportation that was used). I don't know what 
that word is, but we need to give it the same emotional loading that 
"genocide" carries. And I don't think that anyone can understand 
America today without grasping the crimes committed by followers of 
the Patriarchal-Master-Race brand of democracy that was America's. 
Claims of "genocide" are a useful rhetorical instrument.

And they have the additional advantage of telling the history like it 
really happened...


Brad DeLolng

[PEN-L:9531] RE: Re: RE: Re: Shades of Summers

[Max Sawicky]

[off-list, because I've already said too much . . .]

Max Sawicky wrote:
>  
> ...In the U.S., if we universalized a system where health
> care was "free," we would see greater increases in the
> share of GDP devoted to health care.

If that were so our non-free health care would be less expensive, per
capita, than the free health care vended out by countries with
nationalized health care.  It's not; according to the last figures I saw
the U.S. spends 13% of GNP on health care, as compared with 10.5% or so
for second place.  
>>

The question is how other countries exercise a budget
constraint.  By "free" I meant the lack of any such
constraint, something a lot of lefts, present company
excepted, appear to think is feasible and desirable.

>>
The U.S. has the most expensive health care in the whole world.  But
despite that, even selecting out the social classes which enjoy any
health care at all, U.S. life expectancy is not the highest in the
world.  (I guess it's, um, "unfair," to compare mortality among foreign
citizens with national health care to mortality among the uninsured U.S.
citizens; all those poor people dying young make our figures look bad,
besides nobody wants to hear about them anyway, they're a downer.)
>>

I don't know who you're arguing with here.  It's not me.

>>
You say that if health care were free, consumers of it would use it
more, which is true; but it appears, by international comparisons, that
the greater expense of increased use of health services would be more
than countered by the elimination of the incredible windfall profits of
the U.S.'s private health industry. >>

In the long run I agree that a public system will cost
less, depending on the above-mentioned budget constraint.
I do not think profit is the biggest factor, quantitatively,
in cost increases, either previous or prospective.

>>
Besides, the restructuring of the
health insurance industry, which consumes about 15% of the U.S. health
care budget, would free up something like two percent of the GNP.  If
you could somehow magically institute national health care overnight in
the U.S., you'd also create quite an economic problem, an overnight
unemployment crisis, by those hundreds of thousands of insurance company
employees who would suddenly be out of work.
>>

Obviously if you eliminate an industry there would be 
disruptions of this sort.

mbs

[PEN-L:9530] RE: Pol Pot and Shades of Summers

[Craven, Jim]

-Original Message-
From: Macdonald Stainsby [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 1999 2:08 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Pol Pot and Shades of Summers





> > From: Craven, Jim
> > Yes, some of the propaganda about the "Killing Fields" is exactly
> > that--propaganda. Yes Pol Pot was a serious revolutionary deeply
>committed
> > throughout his life to the liberation of Khampuchea. Yes, "revolutionary
> > excesses" were committed prompted partly by machinations from the 
>outside
> > and deep-seated contradictions inside. Yes, neither sins or
>accomplishments
> > can be laid at the feet of any one person no matter how influencial. But
>we
> > should also call a spade a spade: real crimes were indeed committed and
>some
> > real innocents needlessly suffered and were killed.
>
>It's worth noting that these crimes were exposed by genuine
>revolutionaries, and that Pol Pot allied to imperialism to oppose them.
>
>'Yes Pol Pot was a serious revolutionary deeply committed throughout his
>life to the liberation of Khampuchea.' is a simply grotesque statement,
>exhibiting the willful blindness that kept Stalinism dominant in the
>workers' movement for so long in so many states outside the Soviet Union.
>This blindness played into the hands of reaction far worse than the
>occasional Stalinophobic excesses of Trotskyism.  There are good reasons
>why imperialism was able to steal the mantle of democracy, and the
>inability of so many Marxists to recognise what is unacceptable, and to
>reject the indefensible, was one of them.

One day I get the premature feeling that "finger pointing" is coming to an 
end so we can start to build in unity  Then, out of nowhere, Trotskyism vs. 
Stalinism actually enters into a debate on the historical experience of Pol 
Pot! On this point, I think we can all safely assume that Jim isn't planning

a revival of Pol Potism, but is pointing out that even this gotesque picture

should not be allowed to be painted by reactionary press script. Pol Pot DID

overthrow a regime that was a comprador of the US, and indeed does anyone 
believe that all of the starvation totals had nothing to do with the 
American blockade? Is it really all that more "honest" to say "I'm a red, 
but I'm an anti-Pol Pot type, so it doesn't concern me to look deep into the

history of it..."
>
>Alan Bradley
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Macdonald


__
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

Let me try again to explain my position and try to be clearer than I have
been.

I have a friend named Pocho (I hope he is still alive). I knew him in 1974
and was involved in hiding him and others in Canada from the RCMP and from
DINA agents who had been allowed into Canada by RCMP to conduct special
surveillance, harassment, intimidation against Chilean dissidents and former
prisoners of the Pinochet regime. Pocho had been an engineering student in
Santiago and on the day of the overthrow of the Allende regime, Pocho was an
engineering student with liberal leanings but not active. In a firefight at
a copper mine outside Santiago, he picked up a gun to defend himself. He was
captured and the DINA thought he was an activist. As part of his
interrogation, they brought his wife in (she ran a cultural centre in
Santiago) and ten scum gang raped her in front of him and then decapitated
her with piano wire before his eyes. He was put in a camp and not killed
because they thought he was a MIR leader--he wasn't at the time. They cut
off two of his fingers during one interrogation and only a physician in the
camp who sewed up his stumps with horsehair saved him from bleeding to
death. He got TB and a Swiss representative of the Red Cross finally got him
out and to Canada where he suffered even more repression and harassment.

Now Pocho had a lot of rage and for good reason. Yet he kept it together and
became a dedicated MIRista. I'm sure if he were back in Chile his treatment
of former DINA would not be too gentle if that ever came to pass. 

In all revolutions, people who have been subject to some of the worst
horrors imaginable turn their rage to representatives of the old order and
often against innocents they wrongly believe to be representatives of the
old order. Mob rule and mob psychology often takes place. Frustration from
delay and setback in constructing a new order takes place. Old family feuds
are settled under the banners of politics, ferreting out
counterrevolutionaries etc takes place. And the imperialists do consciously
promote dissention, divide-and-rule, justified paranoia, economic/political
destabilization, famines, ethnic rivalries etc specifically in order to
destabilize, destroy and in order to engineer the kinds of conditions in
which anarchy and repression will invariably take place in order to engineer
and manufacture the "evidence" that any new socialist system must be/will be
anti-demoncratic and repressive and "ineffi

[PEN-L:9529] U.S Health Care

[Rod Hay]

Sorry, for my ignorance, but would someone explain how the US health care 
system works. And please spell out the names of organizations, the initials 
are meaningless to us outsiders.



Rod Hay
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The History of Economic Thought Archives
http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html
Batoche Books
http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html
http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/





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[PEN-L:9528] RE: RE: RE: Rummel et al

[Max Sawicky]

>> Max wrote:
I think this war over terminology --
was it genocide, or what -- is political in an
unconstructive sense.  Calling the treatment of
native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide"
is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois
demoratic capitalism (BDC) at its root.  That doesn't
mean the term is inappropriate; it does mean that
its political context often -- especially on PEN-L --
makes its use tendentious.  People are not arguing
about history for its own sake -- they are trying to
prop up problematic arguments and political precepts,
and doing it in a way, I might add, that has zero
political impact from any left political standpoint
you care to espouse.

Max,

I'm sorry but it really hurts to see something like this. Genocide is indeed
a present not just past reality all over the world for Indigenous Peoples. I
use the term genocide on the basis of the definition of genocidal acts
contained in Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide:
>>

Jim,
NOWHERE do I assert that any particular genocide anyone
cares to describe is not a reality.  (Note my phrase,
"that doesn't mean the term is inappropriate") What
is "problematic," (meaning not *necessarily* untrue)
in my words, is ascription of genocide to capitalism,
just as it would be for socialism or communism.  The
reality is one thing, and the ways it is used are
another.  I was addressing the latter, specifically
with reference to what I see as an overbroad indictment
of capitalism and bourgeois democracy in the context of
discussions of genocide.

I do not dismiss Stalin and Mao because they were
communists.  I dismiss them because they appear to have
been personally responsible for killing a lot of innocent
people.  I reject communism in its likely forms for other
reasons.

>> . . .
So as someone who lives daily in Indian Country, I can say without
equivocation or duplicity that GENOCIDE is the only appropriate term for the
past and present-day realities of Indigenous Peoples throughout the world
and it is not a rhetorical device or even rhetoric in the classical sense
(persuasion) to use that term when applied to Indigenous Peoples and
African-Americans in the US.
>>

Just as Jews have exploited the European holocaust
for the sake of advancing the interests of Israel,
with the best of intentions in many cases, I would
reiterate that the bloody shirt of genocides is
waved to debunk capitalism.  It's not that the shirt
isn't bloody or the intentions are always suspect.
It is the extrapolation that is in my view fallacious
and politically inexpedient.  Or as H. Kissinger would
say, it has the dual disadvantages of being untrue and
not useful.  That's why I stay out of the genocide
accounting debates, per Perelman's remark, aside
from the fact that I'm not a historian.

>>
Take care, Ni-Kso-Ko-Wa (We are all related)
Jim
>>

Same to you.
Max

[PEN-L:9527] RE: RE: Rummel et al

[Craven, Jim]

Max wrote:

I think this war over terminology --
was it genocide, or what -- is political in an
unconstructive sense.  Calling the treatment of
native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide"
is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois
demoratic capitalism (BDC) at its root.  That doesn't
mean the term is inappropriate; it does mean that
its political context often -- especially on PEN-L --
makes its use tendentious.  People are not arguing
about history for its own sake -- they are trying to
prop up problematic arguments and political precepts,
and doing it in a way, I might add, that has zero
political impact from any left political standpoint
you care to espouse.

Max,

I'm sorry but it really hurts to see something like this. Genocide is indeed
a present not just past reality all over the world for Indigenous Peoples. I
use the term genocide on the basis of the definition of genocidal acts
contained in Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide:

Article II

"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing seerious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transfering children of the group to another group.

All of the above and a lot more have been done and are being done on
systematic, calculated and mass levels to Indigenous Peoples all over the
world. Indeed Indigenous People have been systematically murdered with
intent to destroy whole peoples by various versions of Einsatzgruppen
(execution squads) specifically commissioned to hunt down and execute
Indigenous Peoples in order to destroy whole peoples. Indeed, Indigenous
Peoples have been subject to bacteriological and chemical agents designed to
destroy them as peoples (e.g. smallpoz infected blankets, putting children
without TB next to children with TB). Indeed Indigenous Peoples have been
used for medical experimentation including by "former" nazi doctors (Canada
and US are several documented cases). Indeed Indigenous Peoples are subject
to special racial identification/certification by non-Indigenous Agencies of
Governments that have shown themselves intent on destroying Indigenous
Peoples. Indeed Indigenous Peoples have been subject to wholesale rape,
slavery, use by sexual predators and use by conquering soldiers.

The term Genocide when used in reference to Indigenous Peoples and
African-Americans is hardly a rhetorical device unless the term genocide has
no meaning in which case it does not apply to Jews, Gypsies, Slavic Peoples
or others either; which of course it most certainly does. The US Government
is still not a full signatory to the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide which it
did not sign until 1988 and then with a Lugar/Helms/Hatch "Sovereignty
Amendment" (that said US Law trumps International Law and Conventions which
says if genocide is an American thing, US law trumps--exactly what the nazis
said). In fact my own research and that of Ward Churchill and others shows
Senate and House debates in which it was repeatedly mentioned that Jim Crow
Laws and past/present-day treatment of Indians would make the US liable
under the 1948 UN Convention and therefore the US should not sign it.

Just like you Max, my blood boils when I see Historical Revisionsts attempt
to deny the reality, the full magnitude, nature and clear intentions of the
nazi genocide/murders against Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Disabled Peoples,
POWs, Slavic Peoples, Communists, Socialists, "Righteous Gentiles" and all
those targeted by the nazis. In fact, as some of my signature trailers have
noted, according to John Toland, Hitler's concepts for lebensraum and
systematic expermination (as revealed in the infamous Hossbach Memorandum)
came from the British camps for Boers in South Africa and from the US
experience in dealing with Indians. Further, as one of my other signature
trailers noted, from a leaked document from the BIA, the BIA put in the 25%
blood quantum rule specifically to eliminate the "Indian Problem" by letting
redefinition (by non-Indians), Intermarriage and early deaths take care of
the "Indian Problem" by eliminating Indians. If that isn't intent to destroy
a People as a People I don't know what is.

So as someone who lives daily in Indian Country, I can say without
equivocation or duplicity that GENOCIDE is the only appropriate term for the
past and present-day realities of Indigenous Peoples throughout the world
and it is not a rhetorical device or even rhetoric in the classical sense
(persuasion) to use that term when applied to Indigenous Peoples and
African-Americans in the US.  

Take care, Ni-Kso-Ko-Wa (We are all related)

Jim

[PEN-L:9526] Credibility, II

[Max Sawicky]

What CB says I said:

"since he blithely ( and I do mean lightly) dismisses the Native American
and African American Genocides as " ha(ving) has zero political impact from
any left political standpoint you care to espouse "

What I really said:

"Calling the treatment of native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide"
is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois demoratic capitalism
(BDC) at its root.  That doesn't mean the term is inappropriate; it does
mean that
its political context often -- especially on PEN-L -- makes its use
tendentious.  People are not arguing about history for its own sake -- they
are trying to prop up problematic arguments and political precepts, and
doing it in a way, I might add, that has zero political impact from any left
political standpoint you care to espouse."

mbs

[PEN-L:9525] Re: Re: Re: Re: Shades of Summers

[Ellen Frank]

Doug writes:
>
>
>When I interviewed Steffie Woolhandler, one of the authors of that 
>study (which appeared originally in the Journal of the American 
>Medical Association), she said that nonprofit HMOs are increasingly 
>behaving like for-profit ones.

I interviewed David Himmelstein a couple of years ago for a D&S piece and
he also noted that the non-profits are being forced to merge/purge and
otherwise behave exactly as for-profits, simply to avoid being
merged/purged
by corporate predators.  Boston, where I live, is still almost entirely 
not-for-profit, but it is increasingly corporate.  
I asked Himmelstein, by the way, what difference it made for consumers
whether Harvard or HCA owned their hospital, given the history of
arrogant elitism and money-grubbing "cash-endectomies" as someone 
put it, in the non-profit sector.  His response was that non-profits, to 
the extent that they represent the local elites, have an interest in 
local quality of life, at least of the elites.  So they are less likely to 
close down facilties, to want state-of-the-art surgical suites, even
if these aren't profitable.  
A very interesting guy.

Ellen



















 







>

[PEN-L:9524] Re: Re: Re: Shades of Summers

[Eugene Coyle]

There are good studies in electric power that show that ownership does
matter.  The municipally-owned systems deliver at a lower cost than the
investor-owned, after controlling for all the things the Investor-owned
throw out to refute this.

Gene Coyle

Jim Devine wrote:

> Max wrote:
> >The problem remains, however, that under a non-profit
> >system, public agencies, non-profit organizations, and
> >health care providers of various sorts could still
> >have incentives to over- or mis-prescribe, since
> >their compensation or general well-being is likely
> >to have something to do with their volume, and/or
> >the extent to which they employ expensive equipment.
> >
> >Which again points up the superficiality or limited
> >import of ownership per se in how economic stuff happens.
>
> what about the recent study (reported in the LAT) that indicates that
> not-for-profit HMOs do a much better job than for-profit ones?
>
> (one down, one to go.)
>
> Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
> http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html

[PEN-L:9523] RE: Rummel et al

[Charles Brown]

The consistent fallacy in Max's argumentation on these issues is made clear by the 
inconsistency of his two statements copied below. That fallacy is that his position 
and arguments are not ideological or "political in an unconstructive sense", as he 
puts it, but his opponents' are. The accurate position is that all postions and 
arguments are ideological and political. There is no neutral science in 
politicaleconomy. 

 In the below he openly exonorates his ideology, which is much friendlier to bourgeois 
ideology/liberalism than that of those he criticizes, from scrutiny and criticism for 
its world historic crimes. This approach includes the well known nonsense of declaring 
himself objective and not ideological.

The term "genocide" came out of an assessment of World War II. European mass suicidal 
war finally forced a breakthrough in European consciousness that had applicability to 
the long history of slavery and colonialism. 

Max wants to leave out a major fraction of the history of capitalism in assessing its 
potential for reform. He suggests we start our comparisons of actual historical 
capitalism and actual historical socialism only at about 1925. This is patently 
anti-scientific, anti-historical anti-objective (rigging data) and ideologically 
motivated, not to mention grossly racist , since he blithely ( and I do mean lightly) 
dismisses the Native American and African American Genocides as " ha(ving) has zero
political impact from any left political standpoint
you care to espouse " (!!!). Excuse me. That is one of the most racist things I 
have heard uttered on these lists. Such a conception is death to the left, such as it 
is. 

Not that even comparisons from 1925 don't make capitalism more genocidal and 
warmongering than socialism. If we are going to be antihistorical, lets start with 
1990.  The holocausts of liberal capitalism out weigh those of socialism by far since 
then.

Max's "leftism" is demogogic.

Charles Brown




>>> Max Sawicky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 07/22/99 11:56AM >>>
* whatever the machinations of imperialism, it is
undeniable that stalin, mao, pol pot, and their cronies
were personally responsible
for enough deaths and murders to exempt them and their
"thoughts" from my list of plausible guides to
revolutionary change.  It doesn't much matter whether
Stalin killed ten million or one hundred million,
since they will all stay dead in any case.  Ten
million is quite enough for me to come to a negative
judgement.


-clip-

I think this war over terminology --
was it genocide, or what -- is political in an
unconstructive sense.  Calling the treatment of
native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide"
is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois
demoratic capitalism (BDC) at its root.  That doesn't
mean the term is inappropriate; it does mean that
its political context often -- especially on PEN-L --
makes its use tendentious.  People are not arguing
about history for its own sake -- they are trying to
prop up problematic arguments and political precepts,
and doing it in a way, I might add, that has zero
political impact from any left political standpoint
you care to espouse.

[PEN-L:9522] RE: Re: Social Security quote?

[Max Sawicky]

>>
Nadler - who was rated by Roll Call a few years ago as the second 
most left-wing member of Congress, after Maxine Waters, and who's 
also probably one of the smarter members of that esteemed body - is 
drawing on polls and focus groups done by the AFL-CIO. They found 
that people are so convinced of the crisis that you lose all 
credibility trying to argue to the contrary.
Doug
>>

The kernal of truth in this is that lobbying Members of
Congress is not very constructive.  Conditions on the
ground -- what the public thinks, and how they are
organized to press their views -- have to change.
Hence the relevance of the Labor Party & New Party.

Paradoxically enough, from what I've seen, the position
of the ADA is to the left of the LP or NP on fiscal
policy, not so much because the latter have the wrong
view, but because they neglect the issue or talk
opportunistically about the SS Trust Fund being
"stolen."

mbs

[PEN-L:9521] Re: Re: Re: Shades of Summers

[Doug Henwood]

Jim Devine wrote:

>what about the recent study (reported in the LAT) that indicates that
>not-for-profit HMOs do a much better job than for-profit ones?

When I interviewed Steffie Woolhandler, one of the authors of that 
study (which appeared originally in the Journal of the American 
Medical Association), she said that nonprofit HMOs are increasingly 
behaving like for-profit ones. Kaiser, for example, responding to 
complaints from its corporate paymasters, recently wrote to its 
doctors saying that they weren't getting people back to work fast 
enough. Steffie says the industry standard is that a woman with a 
radical mastectomy should be back at work in a week.

Doug

[PEN-L:9520] RE: Re: Re: Shades of Summers

[Max Sawicky]

>
>Which again points up the superficiality or limited
>import of ownership per se in how economic stuff happens.

what about the recent study (reported in the LAT) that indicates that
not-for-profit HMOs do a much better job than for-profit ones?

(one down, one to go.)
>>

I did say 'limited' import, not zero import.

The question for a non-profit more generally,
with respect to cost trends, is what sort of
budget constraint it will be subject to.

mbs

[PEN-L:9519] RE: You commuter programmer

[Max Sawicky]

>>
I have had my honor besmirched.  Why, I'm nothing but a commuter
programmer!
>>

You mean you're responsible for all of our traffic jams?

mbs

[PEN-L:9518] Re: RE: Rummel et al

[michael]

Let's drop this holocaust accounting debate.  It is going nowhere.
> 
> Max:
> >I have a unique escape from these tedious debates on how many
> >zillions were cruelly exterminated at the hands of fascism,
> >communism, or imperialism.  I simply disclaim support for
> >any of them and try to live different.  It's not that hard,
> >actually.
> 
> LP:  It depends on whose ox has been gored. . . .
> >>
> 
> mbs: Nobody can be an expert on everything.  Otherwise
> we all adopt rules of thumb to form judgements on things.
> As it happens I've done some reading on the European
> holocaust, very little on the others.  So here's my
> simple guide to mass murder:
> 
> * anyone who says less than 6 million Jews were murdered
> is a fucking asshole.
> 
> * any Jew who denies that millions of slavs, gypsies, gays,
> etc. were murdered is a putz.
> 
> * whatever the machinations of imperialism, it is
> undeniable that stalin, mao, pol pot, and their cronies
> were personally responsible
> for enough deaths and murders to exempt them and their
> "thoughts" from my list of plausible guides to
> revolutionary change.  It doesn't much matter whether
> Stalin killed ten million or one hundred million,
> since they will all stay dead in any case.  Ten
> million is quite enough for me to come to a negative
> judgement.
> 
> * whatever the magnitude of imperialism's crimes, the
> roles of organized labor, social-democracy, liberalism-
> post-FDR, and democratic socialism are sufficiently
> removed (not entirely removed) to keep them on the list
> of plausible forces for positive change.  For instance,
> I don't have to get mired in arguments about how many
> native Americans have been victims of capitalism to
> have and pursue ideas about responding as best I can.
> I'm not indifferent to whatever the true number is.
> It's simply that the number has no practical bearing
> for me.
> 
> I think this war over terminology --
> was it genocide, or what -- is political in an
> unconstructive sense.  Calling the treatment of
> native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide"
> is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois
> demoratic capitalism (BDC) at its root.  That doesn't
> mean the term is inappropriate; it does mean that
> its political context often -- especially on PEN-L --
> makes its use tendentious.  People are not arguing
> about history for its own sake -- they are trying to
> prop up problematic arguments and political precepts,
> and doing it in a way, I might add, that has zero
> political impact from any left political standpoint
> you care to espouse.
> 
> >>
> . . . 
> All these things are related politically. The Reagan counter-revolution,
> which was actually initiated by Jimmy Carter and continued with Bush and
> Clinton, involves cooperation with neo-fascists. . . .
> >>
> 
> This is especially strange coming from you.  The
> U.S. government has *always* cooperated in one way
> or another with neo-fascists, if not fascists.  How
> much, at different points in time, and to what end
> is another matter.  Presently, I would acknowledge
> that Clinton is cooperating with neo-fascists, or
> at the least some very unsavory characters.  So
> has the PRC, and so did the Soviets.  To me that
> has little bearing on the big system question
> (is BDC amenable to reform) or the big political
> question (are reformist movements feasible and
> effective at a relevant level).
> 
> mbs
> 
> 
> 
> 


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

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

[PEN-L:9517] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: My Ideologies

[Charles Brown]

The generalization that Doug is making is what I mean when I say that 
racism/colonialism are as necessary and definitional of the relations of production of 
the capitalist mode of production as wage-labor. Except that I would add that the 
marginalization and oppression is not only "elsewhere" but 
also "right here".  A major structure in the infrastructure of capitalism, a major 
division in the division of labor in capitalism is a many forms of specially oppressed 
and marginalized labor.

An empirical or factual review of the actual history of capitalism from the primitive 
accumulation to neo-liberal globalism require that Marx's definition must be modified 
to :
Capitalism = wage labor+racism/colonialism.


Charles Brown

>>> Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 07/22/99 11:23AM >>>
Eugene Coyle wrote:

>Brad misses my point.  My point is that the deaths in Indonesia -- see his own
>quote below -- need to be attributed to liberal U. S. capitalism.

Which is the political economy analogue of the point I was making the 
other day about the bourgeois subject: the propserous "freedom" of 
the BS and the imperial hegemon thrive on marginalization and 
oppression elsewhere.

Doug

[PEN-L:9516] RE: Rummel et al

[Max Sawicky]

Max:
>I have a unique escape from these tedious debates on how many
>zillions were cruelly exterminated at the hands of fascism,
>communism, or imperialism.  I simply disclaim support for
>any of them and try to live different.  It's not that hard,
>actually.

LP:  It depends on whose ox has been gored. . . .
>>

mbs: Nobody can be an expert on everything.  Otherwise
we all adopt rules of thumb to form judgements on things.
As it happens I've done some reading on the European
holocaust, very little on the others.  So here's my
simple guide to mass murder:

* anyone who says less than 6 million Jews were murdered
is a fucking asshole.

* any Jew who denies that millions of slavs, gypsies, gays,
etc. were murdered is a putz.

* whatever the machinations of imperialism, it is
undeniable that stalin, mao, pol pot, and their cronies
were personally responsible
for enough deaths and murders to exempt them and their
"thoughts" from my list of plausible guides to
revolutionary change.  It doesn't much matter whether
Stalin killed ten million or one hundred million,
since they will all stay dead in any case.  Ten
million is quite enough for me to come to a negative
judgement.

* whatever the magnitude of imperialism's crimes, the
roles of organized labor, social-democracy, liberalism-
post-FDR, and democratic socialism are sufficiently
removed (not entirely removed) to keep them on the list
of plausible forces for positive change.  For instance,
I don't have to get mired in arguments about how many
native Americans have been victims of capitalism to
have and pursue ideas about responding as best I can.
I'm not indifferent to whatever the true number is.
It's simply that the number has no practical bearing
for me.

I think this war over terminology --
was it genocide, or what -- is political in an
unconstructive sense.  Calling the treatment of
native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide"
is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois
demoratic capitalism (BDC) at its root.  That doesn't
mean the term is inappropriate; it does mean that
its political context often -- especially on PEN-L --
makes its use tendentious.  People are not arguing
about history for its own sake -- they are trying to
prop up problematic arguments and political precepts,
and doing it in a way, I might add, that has zero
political impact from any left political standpoint
you care to espouse.

>>
.. . . 
All these things are related politically. The Reagan counter-revolution,
which was actually initiated by Jimmy Carter and continued with Bush and
Clinton, involves cooperation with neo-fascists. . . .
>>

This is especially strange coming from you.  The
U.S. government has *always* cooperated in one way
or another with neo-fascists, if not fascists.  How
much, at different points in time, and to what end
is another matter.  Presently, I would acknowledge
that Clinton is cooperating with neo-fascists, or
at the least some very unsavory characters.  So
has the PRC, and so did the Soviets.  To me that
has little bearing on the big system question
(is BDC amenable to reform) or the big political
question (are reformist movements feasible and
effective at a relevant level).

mbs

[PEN-L:9515] Critique of libertarians

[Charles Brown]

This is a letter to a radio talk show host criticizing some frequent libertarian 
callers.

Charles Brown


((




Dear Mildred,

Concerning Inside Detroit today:

Today's discussion demonstrated the fallacies of abstract and absolute interpretation 
of the freedoms of speech and press, which are enshrined in the First Amendment to the 
U.S. Constitution. These rights make sense as a protection for the average person in 
1783 from the tyranny of big government. But today we must take account of the fact 
that big corporations have grown so large that they dominate even big government. So, 
the real danger to the average person's freedoms is from the domination of Big 
Business. Criticism of our government remains an important freedom and valid practice. 
Democracy depends on it. But to pose the issue as only the government and the 
individual leaves out of the picture the biggest player - The Monied Class.

This results in a fantasy version of political reality. Black leaders (who are not 
perfect; but who is ?) can be portrayed as oppressors for leading struggles against 
the "freedom" to advertise. Do we really think that Black leaders are oppressing 
cigarette, gun and alcohol manufacturers ? Suppressing their freedom of speech or 
advertise ?  DOESN'T THE DISCREPANCY IN FUNDS GURANTEE THAT LITTLE PEOPLE CANNOT EVER 
OPPRESS THE TOP HATS ?  

Are giant corporations really the "private individuals" that the First Amendment was 
written to protect ? Only if we make an abstract and cardboard interpretation of the 
idea of freedom of speech. Only if we disrespect the freedom of speech and press by 
making it ridiculous in the face of a changed world from the era of 1783, the American 
Revolution and the writing of the Constitution and its Amendments. The kernel of truth 
in the First Amendment is wasted by the approach of your callers who make 
individualism their number one principle and invisibility of the dominant power of 
money their obvious blindspot.

To put it in technical terms, today's  libertarian ideology makes a fetish of abstract 
bourgeois individualism while winking at the existence of state-monopoly capitalism. 
The result is advocacy of a reactionary utopia.  They are true petit bourgeois , 
ideological servants of the big bourgeoisie. 

A real champion of liberty would fight for a new Bill of Rights that protects the 
working class individual from the oppressions and suppressions of our society's true 
government, the giant companies. How about freedom of speech and protection from 
firing for what an employee says ?


CB

[PEN-L:9514] BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 1999

RELEASED TODAY:  In January through March of 1999, there were 1,484 mass
layoff actions by employers that resulted in the separation of 267,214
workers from their jobs for more than 30 days.  Both the number of layoff
events and the number of separations were higher than in January-March 1998.
  

After adjustment for inflation, the median weekly earnings of U.S. workers
rose 3.3 percent in the second quarter of this year, according to BLS.  The
actual median pay for the approximately 97.6 million workers who said they
usually work full time was $543 a week during the second quarter, which was
5.4 percent higher than a year ago. ...  (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).

The trade deficit in goods and services surged 14.8 percent to a new record
high in May, as the strong U.S. economy continued to pull in imports while
exports of aircraft and autos slumped, the Commerce Department says.
Imports rose 2.2 percent; exports declined 0.8 percent. ...  (Daily Labor
Report, page D-6; Wall Street Journal, page A2)_Almost every month of
late, the U.S. trade deficit has hit a new record, thanks to America's
unflagging appetite for foreign goods. ...  The May report underlined a
phenomenon that is both heartening and worrisome for the U.S. economy:  On
the one hand, Americans are feeling so prosperous that they are buying
ever-rising amounts of imports.  On the other hand, most of American's
trading partners are in such sluggish times that their purchases of U.S.
exports are flat or even falling. ...  (Washington Post, page E1)_The
trade deficit jumped to another record, fueled by rising oil prices and
growing evidence that China is using exports to support its lagging economy.
  (New York Times, page C1).

Federal women are starting to break through the legendary "glass ceiling"
that has slowed or thwarted their advancement in government careers, new
data collected by the Office of Personnel Management suggests.  Preliminary
fiscal 1998 figures, the latest available, show that women held 31 percent
of the supervisor and manager positions and accounted for 22.4 percent of
senior federal executives. ...  Overall, the figures indicate that federal
women are making greater progress than was thought possible. ...  Even
though women seem to be making significant progress, the data, in part,
reaffirms views that parity still will take some time. ...  Downsizing may
have favored gender-equity goals. ...  (Washington Post, page A19). 


 application/ms-tnef

[PEN-L:9513] RE: Re: Re: Shades of Summers

[Max Sawicky]

>Which again points up the superficiality or limited
>import of ownership per se in how economic stuff happens.
>
But I don't see how this follows, Max.  The problem, it seems to 
me, is that under a single payer plan , the means of medical production
are privately owned, but publicly compensated.  State
ownership, as in UK, would utterly transform the problem.
In Canada, which also had to cope with private
entreprenuerial medicine, capitation was the solution and
it was vehemently resisted by physicians and hospital administrators.
>>

Capitation means a binding budget constraint on
the health care provider.  The difference from an
HMO is that we hope public managers will make better
decisions on rationing.  It is indeed the solution.
It's just not an easy one.

>>
Dealing with private ownership and self-interested billing practices
is a major problem in state-financed medical care.  I don't have
a lot of faith in the US government to pull it off.  As a student of
mine once said "I'd be all for a Canadian style system in the US
as long as the Canadian government ran it."
>>

All well-taken.  My recurring proviso is that public
agencies have their own incentives, and they often do
not coincide with whatever you think the public interest
is.  I don't disagree that their results would be an
improvement over what we've got now.

mbs

[PEN-L:9512] Re: Social Security quote?

[Doug Henwood]

DOUG ORR wrote:

>Hopefully this won't get lost in the flood on nonsense that has been flowing
>the past few days.
>
>A month or so ago, someone posted a quote from some congressman who said
>that he knew there was no crisis in Social Security, but he could say
>that publicly because no one would believe him.  I would like to you
>the quote in the paper.  Can someone give me the quote and a cite as to
>where it was printed?

"'The AFL-CIO has had polling done, and they've convinced the unions and
convinced me that the rightwing propaganda has been so successful, if you
say there's no [forthcoming Social Security] crisis, people won't listen to
you,' says Representative Jerry Nadler, a progressive Democrat from New
York, who supports the president's Social Security plan.
   Does that mean the Democrats are backing a plan to fix a problem that
doesn't exist?
   'That's exactly right,' Nadler says. 'The problem is illusory, but you
have to act as if it's real.'"
  - Ruth Conniff, "Will Democrats Abandon Social Security," The Progressive,
March 1999

Nadler - who was rated by Roll Call a few years ago as the second 
most left-wing member of Congress, after Maxine Waters, and who's 
also probably one of the smarter members of that esteemed body - is 
drawing on polls and focus groups done by the AFL-CIO. They found 
that people are so convinced of the crisis that you lose all 
credibility trying to argue to the contrary.

Doug

[PEN-L:9511] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: My Ideologies

[Doug Henwood]

Eugene Coyle wrote:

>Brad misses my point.  My point is that the deaths in Indonesia -- see his own
>quote below -- need to be attributed to liberal U. S. capitalism.

Which is the political economy analogue of the point I was making the 
other day about the bourgeois subject: the propserous "freedom" of 
the BS and the imperial hegemon thrive on marginalization and 
oppression elsewhere.

Doug

[PEN-L:9510] Re: You commuter programmer

[Louis Proyect]

I am perhaps the only person in cyberspace to have met Henry in person, so
I want to share some impressions. Henry is in his sixties and lives on the
upper east side. Like Bill Lear, another enterpreneur, Henry enjoys the
trappings of success in the bourgeois world.

As we shared dinner at his home on the upper east side, I mostly listened
to him explain his political views which can be put in the context of what
Paul Baran calls the "long view". He is philosophical about the problems of
Marxism, which in countries like the US have mostly to do with the
remoteness from actually wielding power. This has led to all sorts of
profound distortions.

While Henry is obviously proud of his professional achievements, what was
clearly his greatest source of pride was his connection to his uncle, a
leader of the Chinese Communist Party who passed away fairly recently. This
man started out as a leader of the youth group and sat on the Central
Committee. Henry leafed through a book published by the Chinese Government
commemorating his uncle's life. It was filled with photographs of his uncle
addressing mass meetings, etc.

When Henry was a teenager, the family would have huge political fights
which more often than not would result in half the table walking away in
anger. For anybody who has spent time working in Nicaragua, this of course
will bring a smile to your face because the scenario described many
households there as well. Left-right divisions went to the very heights of
Nicaraguan society, including the Chamorro family.

One of the reasons I have decided to study Chinese revolutionary history in
depth is that Henry made such a strong impression on me. It was the first
time I had ever encountered an authentic Maoist as opposed to the deranged
American ultraleftists who sprang up in the 1960s. Clearly, Henry's
dedication to communism--despite his remoteness from Chinese society and
his own material advantages--gave testimony to the power of an idea. Mao
remains one of the great revolutionary figures of the 20th century. A
leader who gave the most wretched of the earth the power to stand up and
take their rightful place among nations, especially those who had raped,
murdered and stolen from them for centuries is someone to be reckoned with.
For that matter, the hatred directed toward China since the triumph of Mao
has very deep roots, ones that can even be felt in progressive quarters. At
any rate, Henry will be a guest of honor on Marxist-oriented mailing lists,
starting with the one I moderate.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)

[PEN-L:9509] Re: Re: Shades of Summers

[Jim Devine]

Max wrote:
>The problem remains, however, that under a non-profit
>system, public agencies, non-profit organizations, and
>health care providers of various sorts could still
>have incentives to over- or mis-prescribe, since
>their compensation or general well-being is likely
>to have something to do with their volume, and/or
>the extent to which they employ expensive equipment.
>
>Which again points up the superficiality or limited
>import of ownership per se in how economic stuff happens.

what about the recent study (reported in the LAT) that indicates that
not-for-profit HMOs do a much better job than for-profit ones?

(one down, one to go.)

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html

[PEN-L:9508] Re: Re: Shades of Summers

[Ellen Frank]

Max wrote: 
>
>The problem remains, however, that under a non-profit
>system, public agencies, non-profit organizations, and
>health care providers of various sorts could still
>have incentives to over- or mis-prescribe, since
>their compensation or general well-being is likely
>to have something to do with their volume, and/or
>the extent to which they employ expensive equipment.
>
>Which again points up the superficiality or limited
>import of ownership per se in how economic stuff happens.
>
But I don't see how this follows, Max.  The problem, it seems to 
me, is that under a single payer plan , the means of medical production
are privately owned, but publicly compensated.  State
ownership, as in UK, would utterly transform the problem.
In Canada, which also had to cope with private
entreprenuerial medicine, capitation was the solution and
it was vehemently resisted by physicians and hospital administrators.
Dealing with private ownership and self-interested billing practices
is a major problem in state-financed medical care.  I don't have
a lot of faith in the US government to pull it off.  As a student of
mine once said "I'd be all for a Canadian style system in the US
as long as the Canadian government ran it."
Ellen






















>
>

[PEN-L:9507] Re: You commuter programmer

[Michael Perelman]

Bill, let's try to keep off-line hostilities, off line.  I want to see
us return to more productive discourse.

"William S. Lear" wrote:

> I have had my honor besmirched.  Why, I'm nothing but a commuter
> programmer!
>
> I thought I'd share Henry's last smooches sent to me.  Others should
> share theirs.
>
> Good riddance to the pompous blowhard.
>
> Bill
> --- start of forwarded message ---
>
> William S. (sick) Lear: Typical US perfidy.
> Attack those behind their backs, after they have left.
> Your evil is glaring. You commuter programmer.
>
> "William S. Lear" wrote:
>
> > On 07/21/99 Henry C. "See no evil but thine" K. Liu writes:
> > >I resign.
> >
> > May productive discourse return to PEN-L.
> >
> > Bill
> --- end of forwarded message ---

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

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

[PEN-L:9506] Re: Shades of Summers

[Max Sawicky]

>>
In the mid 1990s there were several interesting radical 
poli-econ arguments about the basis for massive increases 
in healthcare costs/GDP. O'Connor did a great paper that partly 
attributed cost increases to quality increases and longevity; Navarro 
>>

It's obvious that part of the increase is due to new
procedures, drugs, and gadgets that do things that
couldn't be done before, or do them better.

The same goes for longevity, but we should be very
wary of the "aging" story regarding social insurance.
This is positively radioactive because it is being
used as a pretext for austerity and privatization
of social insurance in all of the older, advanced
industrialized countries.  Obviously aging raises
certain public costs, but their magnitude is typically
grossly inflated in public debates by you-know-who.

>>
argued also I think correctly that the massive overburdening of 
health administrative systems during the 1990s coincided with the 
fragmentation/diversification of private care and the growing role of 
admin-intensive insurance companies/HMOs. I would add that there was 
dramatic overaccumulation of capital, in a very classical marxian 
sense, in the private US health system.
>>

Regarding administrative costs, as elsewhere, one must distinguish
cost levels from rates of growth.  Fragmentation of provision 
certainly ought to increase administrative costs.  Over time,
however, it seems doubtful that these costs grow more rapidly
than, say, GDP.  For that one would have to have constantly
increasing fragmentation costs.  What is more likely is that
over time, we have continual accumulation of innovations which
raise costs and consumption, though not necessarily at the same
rate.  Provider rents matter, as others have noted, though again
one has to ask not only how these affect the level of cost, but
also its rate of growth.

>>
So Max, wouldn't universal health services a) increase health 
costs/GDP due to the O'Connor argument (assuming it made folks live 
longer and gave better quality), but b) reduce it (via single-payer
finance/admin savings) due to the Navarro argument, and reduce costs 
if it allowed a rational (not managed-care type) shakeout of the 
excess capacity that capitalist healthcare has generated?
>>

I agree these forces are mutually offsetting,
but the question gets down to how big each one is.
The forces for increase look stronger to me.

HMO's and managed care have slowed down some
costs, but to some extent this has been done
by denying care.  The nature of this sort of
privatization is to sort out the good risks
from the bad.  The HMO's are trolling for the
good risks, often getting reimbursements
from Medicare at a premium (i.e., above
their costs), and the bad ones will be
herded into the public sector, exacerbating
the strain on public financing in a fragmented
system.

mbs

[PEN-L:9505] You commuter programmer

[William S. Lear]

I have had my honor besmirched.  Why, I'm nothing but a commuter
programmer!

I thought I'd share Henry's last smooches sent to me.  Others should
share theirs.

Good riddance to the pompous blowhard.


Bill
--- start of forwarded message ---

William S. (sick) Lear: Typical US perfidy.
Attack those behind their backs, after they have left.
Your evil is glaring. You commuter programmer.


"William S. Lear" wrote:

> On 07/21/99 Henry C. "See no evil but thine" K. Liu writes:
> >I resign.
>
> May productive discourse return to PEN-L.
>
> Bill
--- end of forwarded message ---

[PEN-L:9504] Re: DeLong's statistics

[Charles Brown]

How many deaths in WWI and who do you blame them on ? WW I is in the 20th Century. 

Charles Brown

>>> Brad De Long <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 07/21/99 07:42PM >>>
>I want to remind PEN-L'ers that DeLong has a tendency to use false figures
>in order to scandalize postcapitalist governments. He really doesn't come
>up with them himself but relies on the work of highly dubious sources such
>as Rudy Rummel. For example, Rummel asserts that the USSR was guilty of
>more mass murders of its own citizens than any country in the 20th century,
>namely 61,911,000...
>
>Louis Proyect


I'm *very* tired of being deliberately lied about by things that I wouldn't
let into the compost heap.

What I said, at:
http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/1998_Draft/five/Slouching2_5genocide.pdf 

...the dictator who won the strugle for power after Lenin's
death--Josef Stalin--was a paranoid psychopath to boot. Stalin
made Lenin's terror look mild and reasonable.

Peasants were shot, died of famine, and were exiled to Siberian
prison labor camps by the millions during the 1930s. Factory
workers were shot or exiled to Siberian labor camps for failing
to meet production targets assigned from above. Intellectuals
were shot or exiled to Siberian labor camps for being
insufficiently pro-Stalin, or for being in favor of the policies that
Stalin had advocated _last_ year and being too slow to switch.

Communist activists, bureaucrats, and secret policemen fared
no better. More than five million government officials and party
members were killed or exiled in the Great Purge of the 1930s
as well. All of Stalin's one-time peers as Lenin's lieutenants were
gone by the late 1930s--save for Leon Trotsky, in exile in Mexico,
who survived until one of Stalin's thugs put an icepick through his
head in 1940.

Of the 1800 delegates to the Communist Party Congress of 1934,
less than half were alive by 1939.

We really do not know how many people died at the hands of the
Communist regime in Russia. We know more about how many cows
and sheep died in the 1930s than about how many of Stalin's opponents,
imagined enemies, and bystanders were killed. R.J. Rummel estimates
62 million dead.

I stand by these paragraphs. They are what I said. They are what I say.


And again:

The table... presents a few estimates from R.J. Rummel's _Death by
Government_--a book that undertakes the grim task of attempting
to roughly count up the violent death toll of the twentieth century.1/
... Since Rummel is the only person to undertake a serious,
comprehensive study of this century's many oceans of blood--any
look at governments in the century as a whole has to start from his
work.

footnote 1/Some of the estimates are solid; some are shaky; some
are wild guesses. I think some estimates are too high, and some
too low. (I suspect that Communist China and Nazi Germany should
be switched on Rummel's list.) But Rummel's estimates are not
without supporting evidence. On average, I believe they are close
enough to correct to serve as a very useful starting point.


I stand by the paragraphs above. Rudy Rummel has worked hard, and has given
it his best shot. I think he is wrong in a bunch of places--he is perhaps
20 million too high for Russia; he is perhaps 20 million too low for
Germany; his "Mexico" estimate is way too high; his "British" estimate (and
his U.S. estimate too) seem to me to be too low. But until someone else
comes up with an alternative set of *comprehensive* estimates, there is
really no other place to start assessing the history of the twentieth
century.

And no piece of rotting carrion has the right to put *any* words into my
mouth for *any* purpose whatsoever.


Brad DeLong

[PEN-L:9503] Re: Shades of Summers

[Max Sawicky]

>>
Max and Brad may not know that, as far as the rest of the world goes, the US
is the land of the three great cashectomies (append-, tonsill- and hyster-).
Since only nutters would volunteer to be opened up and rearranged, this is
doctor-initiated medicine and expense.

Birth by Caesarean section is multiply more common in the US than in
Britain, with no improvement in relative maternal or neonatal morbidity
rates.  Home and midwife-managed delivery is also common in the UK, again
with no apparent bad effects on the patients.  An American NHS need not be
anywhere near as expensive as the present system, if some queuing for
elective and less urgent services was accepted.
JML
>>

Actually I did know that.  At least I think I did.

People are right to note the role of providers in
over-providing.

The problem remains, however, that under a non-profit
system, public agencies, non-profit organizations, and
health care providers of various sorts could still
have incentives to over- or mis-prescribe, since
their compensation or general well-being is likely
to have something to do with their volume, and/or
the extent to which they employ expensive equipment.

Which again points up the superficiality or limited
import of ownership per se in how economic stuff happens.

mbs

[PEN-L:9502] Re: subsidies to cars: (oilfare economics)

[Tom Walker]

In answer to Doug's question, here's a source:

>The International Center for Technology Assessment has recently released a
>study entitled "The Real Price of Gasoline."  It can be downloaded in PDF
>format from
>http://www.icta.org/projects/trans/index.htm
>
>Depending on how you crunch the numbers, the real cost of gasoline is
>between US$5.60 and $15.14 per US gallon (3.785 liters).

Regards,

Tom Walker

[PEN-L:9501] Re: Re: last warning

[William S. Lear]

On 07/21/99 Henry C. "See no evil but thine" K. Liu writes:
>I resign.

May productive discourse return to PEN-L.


Bill

[PEN-L:9500] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Shades of Summers

[Ellen Frank]

The problem with all these health care discussions
is that they equate cost to service and
service to consumer demand.  There seems
a near conspiracy of silence on the 
provider side of the equation.  
A few years back, 
I played around with some stats on this and
found that physician earnings rose 40% on average 
in the 1980s.  They have continued
to rise since then, though not at that fast
a rate, as have drug company profits
and HMO and insurance  company 
earnings. 
 If the US were to switch tomorrow
to a single-payer system, the problem would
not be dealing with hypochondriacs and 
Munchausen-sufferers.  The problem
would be controlling over-billing,
over-prescribing, kickbacks and self-
referral systems.  
These are a huge problems for
both Medicare and Medicaid.  And frankly,
though I am no fan of the insurance industry,
it's a huge problem for them.

Ellen Frank
 

[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>Max:
>> >In the U.S., if we universalized a system where health
>> >care was "free," we would see greater increases in the
>> >share of GDP devoted to health care.  This ought to
>> >raise a concern about whether the foregone output might
>> >have been more worthwhile
>> >Socialists have to ration too.
>> >
>> >mbs
>
>
>In the mid 1990s there were several interesting radical 
>poli-econ arguments about the basis for massive increases 
>in healthcare costs/GDP. O'Connor did a great paper that partly 
>attributed cost increases to quality increases and longevity; Navarro 
>argued also I think correctly that the massive overburdening of 
>health administrative systems during the 1990s coincided with the 
>fragmentation/diversification of private care and the growing role of 
>admin-intensive insurance companies/HMOs. I would add that there was 
>dramatic overaccumulation of capital, in a very classical marxian 
>sense, in the private US health system.
>

[PEN-L:9499] Re: Social Security quote?

[Ellen Frank]

Doug,

The quote was from Nadler (D-NY), quoted in 
The Progressive,  an article by, I believe, Ruth 
Coniff (sp?) about two months back.  
For stats on cars versus bikes, I don't know 
much, but there was an excellent article in In 
These Times a couple of weeks ago by 
Jane Holtz Kay (her book Asphalt Nation is 
also great).  

Ellen Frank
PS - And I second your comment about the 
flood of nonsense.  It seems
that no sooner is an interesting issue 
raised on Pen-l, then it degenerates
into a pissing match between a small group 
of bad apples whose names I won't mention.

[PEN-L:9498] A church incursion into Blackfoot territory

[Louis Proyect]

To Whom It May Concern: The following is quite long but it is important
enough for you to read. It concerns my having to take Aquinas College of
Grand Rapids, MI to court because they are putting claim to some property
that I own in the Blackfoot Nation of North America. This institution and
its employees and Indian followers are attempting to take a log building
away from me for reason known only to them. In this they have the
assistance of a white lawyer by the name of Epstein, who is also the
Glacier County Attorney.  Please read this and respond to me in any way you
desire. 

I would ask that you pass this one world-wide, especially to the news media
and to native peoples and cultural rights groups world-wide. 

* *** ****
****  **


July 8, 1999

Mr. Judy Miller, Court Administrator
Blackfeet Tribal Court  
Browning, Montana 

To Whom It May Concern:

This is to inform the court that I personally believe the motion by
Larry Epstein, attorney for Aquinas College of Grand Rapids, Michigan and
its personnel to be nothing more than a white racist response to avoid the
power and jurisdiction of the Blackfeet Tribal Court and the people of the
Blackfoot Nation.

   I am a busy man and I am trying to make a living but I have not had
the time to read the cases mentioned in the Epstein brief. Therefore I
respectfully request time to read the brief and investigate its meaning
with someone familiar with white man arguments about their not being
subject to the laws and traditions of the Indian people. 

   It was/is my intention to represent myself Pro Se in this CASE NO.
99 CA.102.   But I am not fully aware of the arguments presented in the
Epstein brief and because my occupation is not that of a whiteman trained
attorney. I therefore I am not fully aware of their arguments in the matter
of who has jurisdiction (Indian or White) in such matters. . I only know
and believe them to be, as I said, a white supremacist attitude to get the
three whitemen named (Knopke, Lou and Denty) and their institution off the
hook, as the expression goes, by making the fools argument that a whiteman
and their institutions cannot get justice in a Blackfoot Indian court. 

I have to make the observation and state the obvious. I am a
Blackfoot Indian first and foremost, and, the agent (Denty) of these
whitemen and their institution knew full well we entered into a contractual
agreement that they were clearly dealing with a Blackfoot Indian and that
the place of business was within the Blackfoot (a.k.a. Blackfeet) Indian
Nation. Further, I wrote the contract for them and their attorney to review
before signing, and it clearly indicates they (it) were dealing with an
Indian within the Blackfoot Nation. Of this there is absolutely no doubt.
They knew I am an Indian living and doing business as an Indian within the
confines of the Blackfoot Nation. It is, in fact, known to the whiteman
Larry Epstein and his cohorts that I have NEVER and I mean NEVER have
passed myself off as whiteman. So, the answer to the obvious as well to
Epstein is I have NEVER attempted to pass Aquinas College and its obviously
white employees off as Indians. 

I can say without equivocation that I know Mike Denty to be a
whiteman, who was at one time a monk in the catholic faith. I knew him then
and now to be a whiteman. When I first met his companions in the army of
the Catholic Church I knew them immediately to be white and representatives
of a thoroughly catholic institution looking to educate its students in the
Blackfoot and other Indian cultures within our borders. In fact, Harry
Knopke was tauted to me to be a whiteman who at one time worked with or
among Indian people and that he was very anxious to get Aquinas students
educated in the Indian culture of today. This is the reason he did not
council waiting for the log building to be built so we could undertake a
"Semester in Montana" in 1999 instead of in the Fall of 1998 as we did.

I ask the court to take note of the obvious facts of this case.
Aquinas College, via its officers, Knopke, Lou (after the fact of the
contract signing) and Denty knew full well that a building had to be built
to adequately meet expectations for housing students and conducting
classes, but Harry Knopke waived them. This is why the contract (written by
me) is written the way it is and is not a surprise to any of the Aquinas
officials, most especially Mike Denty, the ex-monk, and Harry Knopke,
formally and presently touted Indian expert, who read and approved the
contract written by me: Long Standing Bear Chief. 

One more obvious thing: Mr. Esptein knows my suit to be a civil
cause of action. The case is numbered with the letters CA in its numbering
system. Mr. Epstein, if he is indeed licensed to practice law in Blackfeet
Tribal Court, knows this and therefore knows I

[PEN-L:9497] Rummel et al

[Louis Proyect]

Max:
>I have a unique escape from these tedious debates on how many
>zillions were cruelly exterminated at the hands of fascism,
>communism, or imperialism.  I simply disclaim support for
>any of them and try to live different.  It's not that hard,
>actually.

It depends on whose ox has been gored. If somebody showed up on PEN-L
claiming that only 3 million Jews died in the Nazi concentration camps, and
that mostly due to harsh conditions rather than through gassing, etc.,
would you have the same bland, philosophical attitude? I doubt it. 

The whole area of genocide demographics has taken on enormous political
consequences in recent years. Ward Churchill's indispensable "A Little
Matter of Genocide" examines the twin phenomena of denying the extent of
the Judeocide and the extermination of American Indians. Unfortunately,
some Jewish holocaust scholars have lent themselves to the cause of those
on the right-wing by denying that there was such a thing as genocide
against the Armenians or the American Indian.

In the course of battling a "leftist" holocaust denier on apst, I ran into
this phenomenon. Activists from Nizkor joined in the fight, and provided
excellent rebuttal against this character, but when it came to a discussion
of persecution of the Palestinians they didn't want to hear of it.

In the middle of this storm, a whole new one broke out over Rudy Rummel's
statistics. There is a troll on this newsgroup who first brought them up in
the context of a red-baiting attack. (This is something that really pisses
me off, by the way. Leftists who live in capitalist society try to find a
forum on the Internet where they won't be bombarded by propaganda, but the
red baiters won't stay away. In a perverse way, this is a testament to the
power of our ideas.)

Rummel's assault on the truth has a political function. It is related to
something that took root during the "Reagan revolution" and became
particularly pronounced during the visit to the Bitburg cemetery where the
American president paid his respect to Nazi murderers. Around this time,
certain German historians wanted to make the Nazi era more respectable. One
of the most important devices for doing this was to exaggerate Stalin's
crimes, so as to make him the great monster of 20th century history rather
than Hitler. This by necessity involves fabricating numbers, as Rummel does.

All these things are related politically. The Reagan counter-revolution,
which was actually initiated by Jimmy Carter and continued with Bush and
Clinton, involves cooperation with neo-fascists. The CIA worked with
Argentinian neo-fascists when it set up the contras in Honduras, then went
on to promote similar groups in Yugoslavia. It also views indigenous
peoples as inconvenient obstacles in the path of corporate profits. While
the press lavished attention on a tragic killing of 3 American indigenous
activists in Colombia, it does not report on the threat of the entire U'wa
people to commit mass suicide if American oil companies continue to
penetrate their homeland.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)

[PEN-L:9496] RE: Social Security quote?

[Max B. Sawicky]

the guy was Gerry Nadler from NYC.  Don't know
where the quote appeared, if anywhere.

mbs

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of DOUG ORR
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 1999 10:29 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:9492] Social Security quote?


Hopefully this won't get lost in the flood on nonsense that has been flowing
the past few days.

A month or so ago, someone posted a quote from some congressman who said
that he knew there was no crisis in Social Security, but he could say
that publicly because no one would believe him.  I would like to you
the quote in the paper.  Can someone give me the quote and a cite as to
where it was printed?

thanks,
doug Orr
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:9495] Re: subsidies to cars?

[frances bolton]

Doug--

Here's the URL for the article from the Chronicle. Hope it helps.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/1999/07/21/MN77987.DTL

Frances

-Original Message-
From: DOUG ORR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, July 22, 1999 12:45 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:9493] subsidies to cars?


>Just when I start deleting msgs instead of saving most of them, I need
>something I deleted!
>
>There is someone who is organizing a protest in SF claiming that cars and
>drivers are being slighted, while bikes and pedestrians get all the
resources.
>I want to write a letter to the Chronicle and would like to use some of the
>stats that peopel were discussing a onth ago about how much car drivers are
>subsidized, and how much urban space is allocated to cars.  Anybody
>got those lying around on your harddrive?
>
>Thanks,
>Doug Orr
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>

[PEN-L:9494] Cambodia

[Michael Keaney]

Good morning to the battle weary

The time difference between UK and US frequently results in the discovery
each morning of a barrage of heavy artillery that has taken place whilst I
have rested and recreated. Thus great efforts are made to catch up with
debates before I am sure that what I would like to say has not already been
said.

I am extremely concerned about the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic
governing much of the debate surrounding the leaders and performance of
supposedly socialist states. The recent "perspectivizing" on the Khmer Rouge
is perhaps the most disquieting. So here are a few thoughts.

The rise to power of the Khmer Rouge was a direct result of the crass
intervention by US forces in SE Asia during the course of the Vietnam
conflict. Pol Pot might have been "Brother Number One", but as one who does
not subscribe to the "Great Man" historiography, I do not ascribe crimes
committed during the Khmer Rouge tenure to him personally. (The same goes
for Stalin et al.) That said, the enthusiastic brown-nosing that we rightly
decry in our own organisations is surely not unique to capitalist societies.
So how do these single individuals achieve such influential prominence in
the first place, that their approval should be so sought by apparatchiks
eager to demonstrate loyalty to the "true Leninist path" or whatever? Any
democratic socialist party must address the structural problems of ensuring
that personality cults and loyalty rituals are not allowed to develop. To my
knowledge, Castro's Cuba is perhaps the most successful at avoiding such
practices. (I also note the distinct lack of charges levelled at him
personally re massacres, killings, etc).

The Khmer Rouge was an ally of the Chinese regime post-Mao, and given the
border conflagrations between Vietnam and China, and the traditional ethnic
antagonisms between Cambodians and Vietnamese, there were frequent
incursions by Khmer Rouge forces over the Vietnamese border. Eventually the
Vietnamese said enough was enough and drove the Khmer Rouge out of Phnom
Penh. They would have been driven into the dustbin of history had it not
been for the active support, during the 1980s, of a seemingly odd collection
of backers, including China, the CIA and Britain. For the latter two, it was
simply a case of opposing the enemy that had the gall to repel US aggression
successfully. For China, it was more a question of the balance of power and
ensuring that Vietnamese military strength did not go unchecked. Thus China
and the US especially have had a mutual shared interest in the emasculation
of Vietnam. The tragedy is that despite the heroic efforts of the Vietnamese
people it looks as though these two hegemonic powers have succeeded in their
aim, although at tremendous cost.

It was under the auspices of the Vietnamese-backed (communist) regime that
evidence of the "killing fields" came out. What Hollywood ( or more
accurately British film-makers) did with that evidence does not reduce its
meaning or impact. And anyone committed to democratic socialism ought to be
doubly critical that such acts could be and were committed in the name of
democracy and socialism. Daniel Singer makes this point very well in "Whose
Millenium?"

I take on board Louis P.'s point about the difficulties of planning any
constructive development whatsoever by non-capitalist regimes under hostile
circumstances. I have acknowledged as much in previous statements re Cuba. I
note that in the case of Vietnam and Cambodia, much of the difficulty faced
by the Vietnamese and post-Khmer regimes has emanated from sources which
extend beyond the more usual suspects/capitalist hegemons, to include the
paradox which we are all striving to make some sense of, namely China. And
this is where simple reasoning of the kind capitalist=bad,
noncapitalist=good simply does not work.

Just my tuppeny.

Michael Keaney

[PEN-L:9491] Re: Re: RE: Re: Shades of Summers

[Patrick Bond]

Max:
> >In the U.S., if we universalized a system where health
> >care was "free," we would see greater increases in the
> >share of GDP devoted to health care.  This ought to
> >raise a concern about whether the foregone output might
> >have been more worthwhile
> >Socialists have to ration too.
> >
> >mbs

Brad: 
> ... I vaguely remember seeing estimates of "medically 
> unnecessary and inappropriate" medical care in the U.S. today that 
> amounted to a quarter of total spending...

In the mid 1990s there were several interesting radical 
poli-econ arguments about the basis for massive increases 
in healthcare costs/GDP. O'Connor did a great paper that partly 
attributed cost increases to quality increases and longevity; Navarro 
argued also I think correctly that the massive overburdening of 
health administrative systems during the 1990s coincided with the 
fragmentation/diversification of private care and the growing role of 
admin-intensive insurance companies/HMOs. I would add that there was 
dramatic overaccumulation of capital, in a very classical marxian 
sense, in the private US health system.

So Max, wouldn't universal health services a) increase health 
costs/GDP due to the O'Connor argument (assuming it made folks live 
longer and gave better quality), but b) reduce it (via single-payer 
finance/admin savings) due to the Navarro argument, and reduce costs 
if it allowed a rational (not managed-care type) shakeout of the 
excess capacity that capitalist healthcare has generated?
Patrick Bond
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED] * phone:  2711-614-8088
home:  51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone:  2711-488-5917 * fax:  2711-484-2729

Re: [PEN-L:9431] RE: Re: RE: Re: Shades of Summers

[John M. Legge]

Max and Brad may not know that, as far as the rest of the world goes, the US
is the land of the three great cashectomies (append-, tonsill- and hyster-).
Since only nutters would volunteer to be opened up and rearranged, this is
doctor-initiated medicine and expense.

Birth by Caesarean section is multiply more common in the US than in
Britain, with no improvement in relative maternal or neonatal morbidity
rates.  Home and midwife-managed delivery is also common in the UK, again
with no apparent bad effects on the patients.  An American NHS need not be
anywhere near as expensive as the present system, if some queuing for
elective and less urgent services was accepted.

JML

- Original Message -
From: Max Sawicky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 1999 6:46 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:9431] RE: Re: RE: Re: Shades of Summers


> >>
> Hmmm... My view was that people hate going to the doctor--it takes a
> lot of time, and it is scary at a pretty deep level--and thus that
> the psychic cost of showing up at the doctor's office was already
> (for most people) more than enough to put worries that free care
> would be unnecessary and wasteful care on the back burner...
>
> On the other hand, I vaguely remember seeing estimates of "medically
> unnecessary and inappropriate" medical care in the U.S. today that
> amounted to a quarter of total spending...
>
> I can't reconcile these two. I'm out of my depth...
> >>
>
> I am too but it never stopped me before.
> A great part of health care costs come in
> the final two years of life, during which
> time I would guess the decision on whether
> to see a doctor or not has already been
> made.  So your two statements are not
> necessarily inconsistent.
>
> "Medically unnecessary" could span a wide
> range, from hypochondriacs who consume
> resources to no purpose whatsoever, to
> those in varying states of health who choose
> treatments with a very low probability of efficacy,
> partly because the decision to elect such treatments
> doesn't cost them anything.
>
> mbs
>

[PEN-L:9445] Re: RE: My Ideologies

[Rob Schaap]

G'day all,

I'd written ever such a clever post at home earlier, but my internet
service non-provider decided it shouldn't go out.  And now I gotta write a
50-minute lecture for the boss with the modest little title 'Darwin, Marx
and Freud' - one I'll obviously have to deliver at chipmunk pace ...

Anyway, I take Chas's point (it had to happen one day) that we're in plunge
mode already (I'd also point out that most of history's ill-starred
socialist revolutions were pretty rational plunges to the desperate sods
who took 'em at the time - 'tis the material being of Brad, Max and I that
inclines us to a more cautious conscousness, I reckon).

Might as well dump the autonomous subject and take a conscious hand in the
plunge - or so would think a bloke who appreciated 'the intellectual
superiority and higher potential upside benefits of a neo-marxian world
view' - the bell tolls for us all, no?

Funny thing, too, that 'the autonomous subject' gets laughed out of every
conversation I have with an economist, though.  I know they gotta make a
quid, but why, methinks, would Brad extol its relative virtues here (it's
'good but wrong') for free?

Might it be the same reason we lefties extol the virtues of some Lukacsian
collective subject?  As Jim points out (I think), that can get wrong pretty
quickly, too.

Blokes like Giddens write whole (unreadable) books about 'structuration'
(we author our structures, which author us etc etc), but wassit mean?  I
mean it sounds right, but how do you use it?

Some poor kid gets into trouble with drugs and shooters and we say it's the
system / Some rich kid flies his brand new bus into the briny and it's his
fault.  Lenin had to let the peasants starve / Stalin was a mass murderer.
Capitalism will bring about its own demise / We will destroy it.  History,
the present, and the future (three biggish categories in the order of
things) all confuse and bemuse if we allow ourselves to be trapped by 'the
subject', I reckon.

So how to get rid of the subject?  Pomos decentre everything to the point
there's no agency anywhere (or so do I read Foucault's *Order Of Things*,
Derrida's *Of Grammatology* and Doug's account of Judy Butler's *PLOP*).
My response to that is: 'No centre = no reason to do anything and nothing
to do that nothing with'.

Habermas reckons 'intersubjectivity' is the go.  It's got a nice feel to
it.  Does it get us away from our antinomy?

Time to push the 'help' button ...

Cheers,
Rob.


>>Brad, for us ignorati could you briefly explain what belief in the
>>"autonomous subject" entails and why you think it is false?
>>
>>
>>Bill
>
>That I have a very hard time believing that my deep opinions, my
>views, my tastes and preferences are in any sense "mine", or
>constitutive of "me" in a strong sense that implies that other people
>ought to pay attention to them.
>
>Instead, they are the result of a whole bunch of forces--society,
>nature, chance--that have molded who I think I am.
>
>Thus when I make choices, who is really doing the choosing? Some
>combination of society, nature, and chance. Not an autonomous agent,
>but instead simply the locus of the effects of a structure of
>structures...
>
>Even worse are those times when I get in the car in the evening to go
>to the grocery store, start thinking about something, and the next
>thing *I* know I'm pulling into the Upper Haste Parking Garage.
>Exactly who has been driving the car?...
>
>
>Brad DeLong
>
>Very Good. Excellent. That is exactly the rationale that Eichmann used at
>trial. It wasn't really me and my own will, I am a product of a Zeitgeist, a
>product of an Order and myriad forces that shaped my temperment, identity,
>"choices"--not really free choices--ideology and even self-deluded notions
>of a "free self." While I was in Palestine learning some Hebrew so that I
>could me a more effective agent in "solving" the Jewish and "Untermenschen"
>problem, I actually met some Jews I personally liked; but alas I was a mere
>product of a whole era and system--a shaped entity programmed to do what was
>ordered and deemed imperative for the "survival" of that Order that shaped
>the "self" in me.
>
>Just like the Summers Memo, underneath it all is the calculus and syntax of
>apologia for a bloody system and its bloody notions of "rationality",
>"efficiency" and "freedom", but also the apologia of opportunism, whoring
>and pimping of imperial ideology and criminality and escape from personal
>responsibility.
>
>Damn, where are the Libertarians when we need their notions of "personal
>responsibility"?
>
>Jim Craven

[PEN-L:9536] Re: Re: Re: Re: Shades of Summers

[ann li]

Gene, that may have been so prior to deregulation, but may not be so in the
so-called new market(s) for electrical power which will marginalize such
municipal arrangements.

Ann


- Original Message -
From: Eugene Coyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 1999 12:40 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:9524] Re: Re: Re: Shades of Summers


> There are good studies in electric power that show that ownership does
> matter.  The municipally-owned systems deliver at a lower cost than the
> investor-owned, after controlling for all the things the Investor-owned
> throw out to refute this.
>
> Gene Coyle
>
> Jim Devine wrote:
>
> > Max wrote:
> > >The problem remains, however, that under a non-profit
> > >system, public agencies, non-profit organizations, and
> > >health care providers of various sorts could still
> > >have incentives to over- or mis-prescribe, since
> > >their compensation or general well-being is likely
> > >to have something to do with their volume, and/or
> > >the extent to which they employ expensive equipment.
> > >
> > >Which again points up the superficiality or limited
> > >import of ownership per se in how economic stuff happens.
> >
> > what about the recent study (reported in the LAT) that indicates that
> > not-for-profit HMOs do a much better job than for-profit ones?
> >
> > (one down, one to go.)
> >
> > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
> > http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
>
>
>

[PEN-L:9537] RE: Rummel et al

[Max Sawicky]

All right.  Just one more.

I said, among other things:
>I think this war over terminology --
>was it genocide, or what -- is political in an
>unconstructive sense.  Calling the treatment of
>native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide"
>is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois
>demoratic capitalism (BDC) at its root.  That doesn't
>mean the term is inappropriate

To which Professor Brad says:

.. . . Let me disagree with Comrade Max: it is not inappropriate and not 
unconstructive to call the treatment of native Americans by 
English-speaking immigrants from Europe "genocide." . . .
>>>

Now am I losing my mind, or does the phrase
"That doesn't mean the term is inappropriate . . . "
where the antecedent for 'the term' is 'genocide'
not mean that I am allowing, in my wishy-washy way,
that the term COULD be appropriate?

I will acknowledge saying that use of the term
tended to be unconstructive in political debates,
and I do think the rest of BDL's response has a
better view, in terms of seeking a way to talk
about what has happened and is happening that
does more to foster constructive discussion.
I am confident that hyperbolic rhetoric, nor
analytical over-reaching (i.e., capitalism =
genocide) are not solutions.

>> I do think that 
we need another, different word for the Middle Passage because its 
point was not to destroy whole populations but to enslave them (or, 
rather, to enslve the half that survived given the "economically 
efficient" mode of transportation that was used). I don't know what 
that word is, but we need to give it the same emotional loading that 
"genocide" carries. And I don't think that anyone can understand 
America today without grasping the crimes committed by followers of 
the Patriarchal-Master-Race brand of democracy that was America's. 
Claims of "genocide" are a useful rhetorical instrument.
>>

mbs

[PEN-L:9541] Re: Re: Re: My Ideologies

[Brad De Long]

>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>Do the "deaths in Indonesia need to be attributed to liberal U.S. 
>>capitalism"? To the U.S. national security state, perhaps. But even 
>>there you have to construct a counterfactual picture of what the 
>>succession to Sukarno would have been like: rule by the PKI is 
>>scary to think about.
>
>But it's in no small part relentless U.S. opposition to even the 
>mildest reformism in the "Third World" that has helped make 
>revolutionary movements more brutal than you or I would like. Who 
>knows how the Cuban revolution would have turned out had the U.S. 
>not tried to smother it in its crib? Who knows what would have 
>happened elsewhere in Latin America & the Caribbean if the Cubans 
>had been allowed to go their way? What would have happened in 
>Nicaragua if Reagan hadn't unleashed the contras? What would have 
>happened in the USSR had the "West" not been hostile for 75 years? 
>What would have.?
>
>Doug

I have never bought the argument that Stalin was the result of 
"Western" hostility toward the Soviet Union. Dzerzhinsky, Vyshinsky, 
Molotov, and Djugashvili himself were who they were. Someone like 
Trotsky seems likely to have started the collectivization of 
agriculture earlier, and to have had a more disciplined and 
permanently militarized view of society than did Djugashvili. The 
people like Bukharin who might have actually made good--and 
democratizing--heads of government seem to me to have been like 
large-mouthed bass thrown into the piranha tank when I think about 
Russia in the 1920s. So I think your case is extremely weak there. 
Primacy of internal politics and all that.

Your case is, I think, a little stronger as applied to Cuba. But I 
don't think that it is much stronger: Castro has had enormous running 
room to create the kind of society and polity that he wants; and what 
he wants is for a whole bunch of people to jump instantly and 
instantaneously when he says "frog."

On the other hand, your case is pretty strong as applied to 
Nicaragua. However, the Leninist current seems to have been very hard 
to swim against. And, as Rosa put it, the process begins by ruling in 
the name of the people, then by substituting the judgment of the 
Party for the wishes of the people, then by substituting the 
decisions of the Central Committee for the judgment of the Party, and 
then by substituting the whim of the Dictator for the decisions of 
the Central Committee. I see nothing in early-1980s Nicaragua to 
disrupt this chain of politico-bureaucratic evolution even in the 
absence of the contras...

And your case is overwhelmingly correct as applied to Allende, 
Arbenz, Mossadegh, et cetera...

Brad DeLong

[PEN-L:9542] Re: Re: Re: Re: My Ideologies

[Michael Perelman]

Why, the mere rumor of an imaginary coup by the PKI was so horrifying that
hundreds of thousands of people had to be slaughtered.


Rob Schaap wrote:

> What was so demonstrably brutal about the PKI, anyway?

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

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

[PEN-L:9544] RE:

[Craven, Jim]

Thank you for your comments and insights. Yes I do believe your insights are
worth being considered by others so I am posting them.

Ni-Kso-Ko-Wa

Jim Craven


-Original Message-
From: Macdonald Stainsby [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 1999 4:21 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: 



I have a very similar instinct about such matters to you- as is why 
I felt it neccessay to compliment you on putting things so succinctly. Your 
explanation of both how anti- Marxist it truly is to ascribe the Hollywood 
style individualism to faults within revolutions is a neccessity for us all.

I never once heard Marx say that Blanqui "betrayed" the Commune, although he

was bitterly explicit about his perception of the PC's demerits. 
Commendations to you, for if others are going to say Mao is at fault for 
creating famine in the Great Leap Forward (Mao alone, of course!), why will 
they not hand him the mantle of being the one and only person who created 
the largest scale socialist revolution in history? There are many examples 
of the outcome of this twisted logic. Your clear understanding of 
revolutionary excesses is welcome, especially since I, like yourself, have 
not been directly involved.
  I have noticed that this is, for lack of a better description, a very 
first world and white phenomenon (I am both). It is no accident that these 
who can make no revolutions can actually pretend that they are "above" in 
some kind of "pick and choose" way. It is to socialism as Social democracy 
is to capitalism- an imaginary third way. Of course we must remain critical,

and neither of us wish to "defend" Pol Pot, I assume. But it really takes 
the cake when I hear, for but one example, of how "evil" the Communist Party

Of Peru (aka Shining Path) is. As if they have some magic plan, and want to 
tell the starving Peruvians to wait until they "understand". In fact, the 
whole PCP is very much in line with what you refer to. They are an explosive

reaction to the betrayals, right and left, of all involved within Peru. It 
is hardly surprising that the most impoverished and lied to (not to mention 
repressed) peasants and indigenous people's would react in what they 
perceive as "hard line" and uncompromising a fashion. What is truly 
disgusting is people who can sit about lecturing them from glass houses and 
Ivory Towers.

A much longer rant than I meant, you can repost this if you think it's 
important.

Mac, from the other Vancouver.


__
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

[PEN-L:9546] tiresome debates

[Michael Perelman]

Look, I think that it is settled.  Brad and Max think that the left has
done unspeakable evil, while imperialism has done some rather bad
stuff.  Most of us disagree about the relative enomaties, but what I am
reading is becoming repetitive.

One minor point.  From the standpoint of subjectivity, the slaughter of
the Native Americans was a holocaust.  Many people were intent on wiping
out the indigenous population to make way for "civilization."

Max, or was it Brad, said that slavery was not.  They wanted to get the
work out of the slaves rather than kill them immediately.   I am not
clear about the difference.  I assume that those who got sick on the way
were just cast overboard.  The healthy were to be worked -- just as the
stronger Jews were in the concentration camp factories.

Unfortunately, the word Holocaust is both overused -- as in Kosovo --
and underused -- as in Rawanda.

One more question -- If slavery was not a Holocaust because the
intention was not immediate death -- how could the deaths in China or
the USSR be?  Did Mao or Stalin want to see their own nationality
exterminated?  What reason did they have for such violence.  Were they
merely psychopaths?  Stalin may have been in his later years, but that
was long after the masses of purported deaths occured.  All we hear
about this matters are speculations without too much of a substantial
basis.

It is a fact that the US has worked hard to support some of the most
murderous thugs that could exist.  [In all fairness, Mao joined with the
US in supporting Pinochet and some others.]  Here the intentionality is
clear.  Support the murderous bastards so that we can give our
corporations more  -- always in the name of some humanitarian
motive.  Remember when we saved the medical students in Grenada, who did
not even realize what dangerous conditions they faced.


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

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

[PEN-L:9547] Re: tiresome debates

[Brad De Long]

>
>One more question -- If slavery was not a Holocaust because the
>intention was not immediate death

I said that slavery did not seem to me to be "genocide"--because the 
aim was not to destroy West Africans as a people, but rather to be 
(and remain) in the business of bribing some of them to deliver 
others bound and shackled to the slave ships at the coast. "Genocide" 
seems to me to require that extermination be the end in view: the 
Abenaki people do not live in Westbrook, ME any more.

I also said that we need another word for what happened to West 
Africa and West Africans between 1600 and 1820 that carries an 
equally powerful emotional load, but I don't know what that word is...


Brad DeLong

[PEN-L:9548] RE: tiresome debates

[Craven, Jim]

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 1999 4:55 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Michael Perelman wrote:
One minor point.  From the standpoint of subjectivity, the slaughter of
the Native Americans was a holocaust.  Many people were intent on wiping
out the indigenous population to make way for "civilization."

Michael,

With all due respect to this "minor point" the slaughter of "Native
Americans" IS not only WAS a genocidal holocaust. There are new forms of
"infected blankets" being used but the intention is the same--extermination
of Indians as Indians through "redefinition", blood-quantum rules by BIA,
gross theft and mismanagement of Trust Funds, undervaluation of owed
royalties to Tribes and Nations, underfunded Indian Health Service Clinics,
stolen lands through unconscionable contracts and fraud, murders of Tribal
activists, harassment and murder of activists by FBI and other US Government
Agencies, coerced or deceptive adoptions, forced assimilation in Residential
and Boarding Schools, coerced or deceptive sterilizations of Indian
Children, summary certification of extinction/termination of whole
Tribes/Nations by BIA and cumbersome procedures for recertification, refusal
to move against Tribe/Nation destroying drugs and alcohol by BIA and law
enforcement agencies, rigging Tribal Elections to place sell-out Indians in
Tribal Councils... and on and on and on.

If your in my area and have some time let me take you on a tour of
Reservations that no outsider could ever see unescorted. Genocide IS going
on Right Now; it is not a matter of history and not the present.

take care,

Jim

[PEN-L:9549] Genocide IS going on in US, Canada and elsewhere

[Craven, Jim]

[snip]

So many Indians see these contradicitions and forms of naked 
hypocrisy and see them as simply newer forms of the same old 
shit--slander, desecration, violation of Indian ways and cultures as 
a means for facilitating the progressive extermination of those 
cultures and assimilation of the few Indians who might remain.

Jim Craven


> >  James Craven 
> >  Dept. of Economics,Clark College
> >  1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663
> >  [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Tel: (360) 992-2283 Fax: 992-2863
> >

--
> > "Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality
> > of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and
> > United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in
> > South Africa and for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised
> > to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination--by 
> > starvation and uneven combat--of the 'Red Savages' who could not be
> > tamed by captivity." ("Adolf Hitler" by John Toland, p. 702)
 
[From a leaked BIA document. Note until 1962, the Tribes and Nations were
the sole authority to determine who and what is an Indian. In 1962 the BIA
put in the 25% blood-quantum rule for Federal recognition of enrollment.
This is like asking a Jew to accept a nazi defining who and what is a Jew]

 "Set the blood-quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid
 definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed...and eventually
 Indians will be defined out of existence. When that happens,the
 federal government will finally be freed from its persistent 
 Indian problem." (Patricia Nelson Limerick, "The Legacy of
 Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West" p338)
 
 *My Employer  has no association with My Private and Protected Opinion*
 

[PEN-L:9551] FW: Education of our youth

[Craven, Jim]

-Original Message-
From: James Michael Craven [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 1998 6:53 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Education of our youth


The fight for national sovereignty and self-determination must 
include serious scholarship to deal with the likes of the following 
which sadly is alive and well today in various forms and through 
various media--some slicker than others.

Jim




--- Forwarded Message Follows ---
From:  "James Michael Craven" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization:  Clark College, Vancouver WA, USA
To:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date:  Thu, 3 Sep 1998 13:41:37 PST8PDT
Subject:   [PEN-L:1492] Education of our youth
Reply-to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

>From the World Book Encyclopedia, circa 1920

"What is a Mexican? Mexico had in 1910 a population of about 
15,112,600 people; an accurate census has never been taken because of 
the superstitious fears of the people. When a census taker appears 
they conceal from him as many facts as possible, thinking that he may 
do them harm in some way--at the very least make them pay heavier 
taxes. The people are for the most part very ignorant; this is not 
strange when it is considered that out of the whole population only 
nineteen per cent may be classed as pure whites, while the remaining 
eighty-one percent are Indians or of mixed Indian and white blood. 
The typical Mexican, then, is quite sure to have Indian blood in his 
veins and to have inherited with it most of the superstitions, the 
customs and the vices which his Indian ancestors possessed four 
centuries ago, before the Spanish conquest. See subtitle, Government 
and History.

It is somewhat difficult to give the characteristics which 
distinguish Mexicans, so poorly have the different Indian tribes been 
assimilated; but for the most part it may be said  that, whether 
Indian or half-breed, they are pleasure-loving, fond of ease, 
unreliable and totally incapable of understanding the principles of 
wise and sane living. The wages they earn are all too small, but 
whatever they can save above the bare necessities of life they almost 
invariably spend foolishly. Particularly strong is their love for 
intoxicating liquors, and every festive day serves as an excuse for 
excessive drinking.

Living Conditions. The foreigners, of whom there are about 100,000 in 
the country before the revolutions which began in 1911, have 
introduced so far as possible their own modes of life, and the 
results are notable in the large cities. Here, to some extent, 
European and American methods have been introduced, and it is 
frequently possible for the traveler to find a fairly good hotel with 
electric lights and only a moderate amount of dirt, instead of the 
indescribable lodging houses of the past. The 'native whites', if 
so they may be called, are Spaniards; and many of them live in a 
style which has much of the display if very little of solid comfort.

But the mass of people, the Indians and the half-breeds, live in the 
most squalid poverty. Their little one-story houses of adobe, or 
sun-dried brick, lack all means of comfort and of sanitation, and the 
death rate, especially from filth diseases, is very high. Having 
resisted all progress for centuries, they live to-day on the same 
food which satisfied their ancestors hundreds of years ago, and for 
the most part they cook it in the same way. There are 'tortillas', or 
thin cakes of corn, and 'frijoles', or black beans, cooked with the 
pungent red peppers of which they are so fond; these are the staple 
articles of food the year around. Even such variation of diet as the 
poorest family can hope for in the United States or Canada is unknown 
to these Mexicans. Indeed, it is scarcely fair to compare the present 
Indians of Mexico with those that Cortez found there, for the latter 
were in a more advanced state of civilization.

The official language of Mexico is spanish, but the Indian tribes 
have clung steadfastly to their own languages, which are numerous.

Education. The government of the republic has not neglected the 
question of education, but the task before it is an appalling one. 
Every state has free primary schools, and each has compulsory 
education laws, but in the disordered condition of affairs which has 
prevailed almost without cessation since the founding of the republic 
these have not been enforced, and illiteracy is till widespread. 
Among most of the Indian tribes no progress has been made, for it has 
never been possible to convince them that there could be the 
slightest value in education; two tribes, hoever, the Mixtecas and 
Zapotecas, have been more progressive, and some of the foremost men 
of the nation have come from them.

In addition to primary schools, almost 1,000 in number, which are 
supported in part by the Federal government and in part by the states 
and municipalities, there are a number of secondary schools, normal 
schools and prof

[PEN-L:9552] NAFTA case; Clinton Pursues Fast Track Authority Again

[Michael Eisenscher]

Thursday, July 22, 1999

Obscure Lawsuit Could Alter U.S. Trade Policy
By EVELYN IRITANI, Los Angeles Times

Trade advocates are bracing for a ruling by a federal judge
in Alabama in a little-noticed lawsuit whose outcome could
dramatically alter the way the U.S. has conducted its trade
policy over four decades. Sometime in the next few weeks,
U.S. District Judge Robert Propst is expected to rule in a
labor-backed lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of
the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement. The case
has attracted the attention of some of the nation's top
legal scholars. Although a finding of unconstitutionality
would not undo the 1993 pact, it could make it more
difficult for the United States to commit itself to future
international endeavors and cast doubt on the legitimacy of
a host of other global agreements, according to Bruce
Ackerman, one of the nation's leading constitutional
scholars. "It would destabilize the existing system of
international law," said the Yale University professor. "It
would be difficult to declare NAFTA unconstitutional
without calling into question our commitment to the WTO,
the World Bank and many, many other economic arrangements."
Such a scenario would also put the U.S. in the
uncomfortable position of being committed under
international law to a trade agreement that its own courts
ruled in violation of its founding document.  "This is a
Rod Serling plot," said Robert Stumberg, an international
law expert at Georgetown University's Harrison Institute
for Public Law. "We [would now have] entered the twilight
zone, where an agreement that is binding on the U.S.
vis-a-vis the rest of the world cannot be enforced
internally." The case itself turns on the relatively narrow
question of whether NAFTA, which links the economies of the
U.S., Canada and Mexico in a giant free-trade zone, is a
trade agreement or a treaty.  That question has
historically been decided on a case-by-case basis as legal
scholars and politicians debated when a pact has a broad
enough impact to meet the higher test of a treaty.  During
the first 150 years of U.S. history, most of this country's
major foreign policy commitments were forged through
treaties, according to Ackerman. But after World War II,
when international trade exploded, leaders began relying
more heavily on some form of congressional-executive branch
agreement rather than treaties to facilitate more
commercial growth.  Between 1930 and 1992, the United
States ratified 891 treaties and 13,178 international
agreements, the government said.  The plaintiffs--the Made
in the USA foundation, a coalition of domestic
manufacturers and unions, and the United Steelworkers of
America--argue that NAFTA's scope qualifies it as a treaty
that, under the U.S. Constitution, required ratification by
a two-thirds vote of the Senate, instead of the simple
majority of both houses of Congress that favored it.  The
Clinton administration insists NAFTA is not a treaty but a
congressional executive agreement, a common tool in U.S.
trade policy that requires the approval of a simple
majority of both houses.  The administration maintains that
even if the plaintiffs win their constitutional challenge,
NAFTA would remain in place because the U.S. is bound under
international law to honor its commitments to foreign
governments.  "Under international law, we are not allowed
to say, 'Sorry, Mexico, sorry, Canada, we didn't do this
right,'" Justice Department attorney Martha Rubio argued in
court earlier this year.  Given the stakes, a successful
challenge to NAFTA is likely to be tied up in appeals for
years as it wends its way to the Supreme Court, according
to trade lawyers--and to create a long period of
uncertainty for U.S. trade policy.  This legal skirmish is
just the latest effort by globalization critics to slow the
Clinton administration's campaign to open markets around
the world. With the U.S. trade deficit headed for another
record year, unions and other groups are counting on
lawsuits, shareholder activism and old-fashioned protests
to draw attention to their concerns over job loss and
erosion of national sovereignty. In spite of the robust
U.S. economy and near-record low unemployment, the Clinton
administration has had a tough time convincing voters that
free-trade agreements such as NAFTA are in their best
interests.  The administration gives NAFTA credit for
boosting trade between the U.S. and its NAFTA neighbors by
more than 44% and creating at least 311,000 jobs. But the
Made in the USA Foundation contends the trade agreement has
cost more than 400,000 American jobs.  Last year, fierce
grass-roots resistance forced the White House to abandon an
effort to gain the fast-track authority that would allow
the president to negotiate free-trade agreements more
easily.  The administration is sending its top trade
officials on a domestic roadshow to drum up support for
launching a new round of trade liberalization talks at this
fall's Seattle mi

[PEN-L:9553] Re: U.S Health Care

[Ellen Frank]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>Sorry, for my ignorance, but would someone explain how the US health care 
>system works. And please spell out the names of organizations, the
>initials 
>are meaningless to us outsiders.
>
>Rod Hay
>
What an excellent way to avoid working!  
I.  Providers:

(a) private non-profit and for-profit hospitals plus a few state- or
city-run hospitals. All hospitals are required to treat (or stabilize)
emergency patients, whether or not they can pay.  Many not-for profit
hospitals operate free-care pools, to care for indigent patients.  Some
states operate free-care pools as well and compensate hospitals for care
of indigent patients.
Physicians who staff hospitals are rarely salaried employees of the
hospital.  Except for interns and residents (who are in training at the
hospital), emergency room doctors and department chiefs, US physicians
make  most of their money by directly billing patients and/or their
insurers.  When you are billed by a hospital in the US, the charges are
for room and board, use of surgical and medical equipment, nursing care, 
medications and tests.  Physician charges (except for interns and
residents) are always extra.  
(b) Private physician practices and group practices for outpatient care. 
 These are generally run by physicians, though recently there has been a
move by corporations to buy these up and merge them, the better to
negotiate with insurance companies.  Solo and small group practices are
disappearing in recent years.  Many large group practices are owned by
doctor-investors who are making fortunes this way.
(c)  Specialty clinics and laboratories (for blood tests, X-rays and
other high-tech tests, sleep clinics, clinics to fit orthopedic devices,
etc).  When a patient  goes to a private physician with, say, a bad cough
and needs an x-ray, they will generally be sent to another office run by a
private business that specializes in  performing and interpreting X-rays. 
Similarly, their blood work will be sent out to a laboratory that
specializes in running blood tests.  These clinics are owned, usually, by
doctor-investors (often by radiologists and pathologists) and
self-referral, kickbacks, etc. are a big source of physician income here. 
Recently, larger corporations have taken an interest in these clinics and
there  are companies buying up multiple clinics - like all the MRI clinics
in an area - to monopolize service.  Also vertical integration is going on
here, as hospitals and HMOs (see below) buy up these clinics.  Since
almost all of these clinics were originally formed by doctor-investors,
doctors are the immediate beneficiaries when the clinics are sold, often
realizing huge gains on their investments.
(d)  The drug companies.  Multi-national, Fortune 500 companies.  Need I
say more?  Drug companies have also been buying up specialty clinics in
recent years where they can peddle their own wares.  Fertility clinics,
cancer treatment clinics, and so on.
The Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs).  Some are
non-profit, some for-profit, some doctor owned.  Although most HMOs on the
east coast of the states are really just insurers (below),  HMO’s on the
west coast often maintain outpatient offices and testing equipment. 
Generally, however, the physicians who staff these facilities are
contractors, not salaried employees.  In fact, it is very unusual for
physicians in the US to work on salary.  Few east coast HMO’s own
hospitals, but that is changing.
(f)  Chronic and rehabilitative care facilities.  Most are privately
owned, for-
profit firms, but some are owned by churches and other non-profits. 
Charges at nursing home generally run upwards of $3000 per month and are
not usually covered by insurance.  The industry has a horrific labor
record and faces constant accusations of skimping on or withholding care,
and of over-billing Medicaid patients (below).  For many old folks, there
is nothing so frightening as the prospect of ending up in one of these
“nursing homes.”  Earlier this year, an 80-something year-old woman pulled
out a shotgun and shot her middle-aged daughter, paralyzing her from the
neck down, after overhearing the daughter make plans to place her in a
nursing home.  
Home health care.  Small firms, largely, many are not-for-profit but the
for-
profit segment is rising and is again, owned often by doctor-investors. 
Provides at-home nursing care to acutely and chronically ill patients -
dressing surgical wounds, assisting patients with disabilities or dementia
in daily living tasks. Services are prescribed by physicians and paid for
by whoever (see “payers” below).  
Dental care.  A completely separate sector.  Dentists operate
independently 
of the rest of the health industry, still organized largely in solo and
small-group practices.  Separate payer system also, save for Medicaid
(below).  

(2) THE PAYERS.  In the US, health bills are paid by third parties, unless
the patient is rich or th

[PEN-L:9557] Re: INDONESIA 1965

[Sam Pawlett]

>From "Am I PKI or Non-PKI" by Pipit Kartawidjaja, Indonesia 40, 1985
p37-56.

"Usually the corpses were no longer recognizable as human. Headless.
Stomachs torn open. The smell was unimaginable. To make sure they didn't
sink, the carcasses were deliberately tied to, or impaled on, bamboo
stakes. and the departure of the corpses from the Kediri region down the
Brantas river achieved its golden age when bodies were stacked together
on rafts over which the PKI banner grandly flew"

"Once the purge of Communist elements got under way, clients stopped
coming for sexual satisfaction. The reason: most clients-and
prostitutes- were too frightened, for, hanging up in front of the
whorehouses were a lot of male Communist genitals--like bananas hung out
for sale."

cited in Benedict Anderson *Spectre of Comparisons* p294, Verso,1999.

Sam Pawlett

[PEN-L:9558] Indonesia: More Massacres?

[Sam Pawlett]

ASIET News Updates - July 21, 1999
==

* Top generals laugh off report of deal with Megawati
* Indonesia is preparing for massive post-ballot slaughter
* Indonesia expects Timor poll loss, plans evacuations
* Martial law may be called in Aceh, Irian: Minister

-

Top generals laugh off report of deal with Megawati
===

Straits Times - July 20 1999

Susan Sim, Jakarta -- Indonesia's top generals are laughing off a
report in an international magazine which alleged that they had
cut a deal to support opposition leader Megawati Soekarnoputri
for the presidency.

Business Week, a New York-based magazine, had reported in its
latest issue that at a "commanders call" early this month,
military chief General Wiranto had obtained the support of
certain top generals to put together a coalition government that
would be led by Ms Megawati as President and himself as "the
truly powerful Vice-President".

Of the incumbent's fate under this deal, the magazine said: "He's
out at the end of his term. Wiranto, according to the sources,
even secured the blessing of ex-President Suharto."

Asked about the report, TNI spokesman Brigadier-General Sudrajat
told The Straits Times: "It is false ... misleading, baseless. We
haven't discussed it internally, but at coffee this morning,
everybody was just laughing at it."

The facts, he said, were wrong. The only "commanders call" --
which involves all regional commanders and chiefs of the various
departments and units -- held recently was in early June, when
Gen Wiranto reviewed security preparations for the election and
issued reminders to his subordinates to remain politically
neutral but stay alert to any sign of trouble.

The military chief, he said, did chair weekly routine meetings
involving many of his generals, but the presidential contest had
never been on the agenda.

"In fact, he's told us several times that if any of us were ever
asked by whoever what his stand was regarding his nomination by
certain groups to be President, we were to say that he was not
paying any attention to it, but concentrating on his job of
promoting peace and stability," he said, adding:

"That doesn't mean he has no interest in the presidency, only
that he is not paying any attention to it now because the
publicity will destroy his concentration on security matters."

Two sources in regular contact with Gen Wiranto said that
whatever his inclinations, a key consideration would be President
Habibie's reaction.

"He has to be very careful in dealing with Habibie, because
Habibie can sack him," said one source. "If he has decided to
back Megawati, you can be sure the Islamic groups would have
heard of it by now and ... pressing for his removal."

Indonesia is preparing for massive post-ballot slaughter


CNRT press release - July 20, 1999

Sydney -- Indonesia is preparing for a massive post-ballot
slaughter in East Timor -- exacting retribution in blood on East
Timorese for refusing to bow to the reign of terror and vote for
the integration of their country into Indonesia.

The Head of CNRT (National Council for Timorese Resistance) in
Australia, Joco Carrascalco, said today this is the real meaning
of leaked Indonesian plans for the hurried evacuation of its
public servants and "transmigrasi" from East Timor when East
Timorese vote against integration in the UN-supervised ballot.

"We had news of this about two months ago. We distributed it at
the time, but apart from the media in Portugal, the world took no
notice.

"The important thing is that our people have seen both halves of
the plan. The evacuation is the first half. The second half is
that having cleared Indonesian civilians out of the way, the
Indonesian army and its militia thugs plan to go on the rampage.

"They are planning a massacre of such magnitude that the killings
of the past few months -- in which they have killed hundreds,
perhaps thousands of East Timorese -- will look, like a mere
beginning.

"We have warned before and will warn again now -- Indonesia has
cached huge stocks of weapons within East Timor. Their reinforced
army will be on full combat alert within minutes of the border.

They have put hundreds of Kopassus and army officers and men into
East Timor posing as civilians and police. They have taken direct
control of the militias on the ground. They are actively training
their few supporters to kill and preparing them to bring out
their hidden arms and start shooting immediately Indonesia gives
the order after the ballot."

Mr Carrascalco said the Indonesian claim that they were concerned
about East Timorese revenge against Indonesian nationals was
"complete rubbish; the usual Indonesian disinformation".

"They massacre independence supporters and try to blame the pro-
independence groups for that. They plan a massacre, so t

[PEN-L:9560] RE: Re: NAFTA case; Clinton Pursues Fast Track Authority Again

[Max B. Sawicky]

>>
Michael's information seems very important.  Would other people like to
comment, especially on the speculation that the liberal democrats will
accept the fast track.

In a wierd way, it could help the liberals in the limited objective, by
firing up the red meat repugs, thus making the Shrub's trip to D.C. less
smooth.  Would such a limited objective be enough to let them sell out?  
>>

It's no secret that the Congressional Democrats' wish is for NOTHING
to pass this year that looks remotely like a Republican accomplishment,
including any that are shared with Clinton and Gore.  This goes double
for something they already shot down.

mbs

[PEN-L:9561] Re: RE: Re: NAFTA case; Clinton Pursues Fast Track Authority Again

[michael]

I hope that you are correct.

> 
> It's no secret that the Congressional Democrats' wish is for NOTHING
> to pass this year that looks remotely like a Republican accomplishment,
> including any that are shared with Clinton and Gore.  This goes double
> for something they already shot down.
> 
> mbs
> 
> 


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

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

[PEN-L:9559] Re: NAFTA case; Clinton Pursues Fast Track Authority Again

[michael]

Michael's information seems very important.  Would other people like to
comment, especially on the speculation that the liberal democrats will
accept the fast track.

In a wierd way, it could help the liberals in the limited objective, by
firing up the red meat repugs, thus making the Shrub's trip to D.C. less
smooth.  Would such a limited objective be enough to let them sell out?  
 -- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

[PEN-L:9556] The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tues, 20 July 99 -- 3:56 (#297)

[Paul Kneisel]

__ 

The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 20 July 99
   Vol. 3, Numbers 56 (#297)
__

ANTI-FASCIST ACTION ALERT #86:
   24 JULY ANTI-KKK RALLY IN MARION INDIANA
Artists Against Racism

On July 24, due to the recent election of Indians's first black
sheriff, Otis Archey, city of Marion will be closing down its core will
be closed down for a large KKK Rally, organized due to the recent
election of Indiana's first black sheriff, Otis Archey, of Marion.

This KKK rally, in Marion's small community town of 40,000 is being
supported by the American Civil Liberties Association, and is being
counteracted by groups such as Artists Against Racism who feel there's
a need to demonstrate a clear moral opposition to racism.

In light of the safety of the sheriff, and the recent murders of
minorities by a white supremacist in Chicago, the Littleton minority
murders, last year's lynching of a black man in Jasper, Texas, a huge
counteractive response.

The planned response is a  huge protest that includes:

  - A Rally
  - Postering
  - Placards
  - Violet Ribbons
  - Radio and TV Ads,
  - Huge benefit concert (Peace in the Park) where John Mellencamp is
amongst many who may perform
  - Human rights groups speakers

that will sweep the city as a powerful, educational counteractive.

   - - - - -

Artists Against Racism is a non-profit organization which does
International projects where artists reach out as role models to youth.
Projects include TV & radio ads, Posters, Billboards, School Videos,
CDs, Magazine Ads, and much much more! 

Box 54511, Toronto, Ont. M5M 4N5 Canada  
416-410-5631
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


--

 ANARCHISTS TO BURN CZECH FLAG OUTSIDE EMBASSY
 London Solidarity federation

On Friday 30th July at noon members of the anarcho-syndicalist
Solidarity Federation the British Section of the International Workers
Association (IWA) will mount a protest outside the Czech Embassy in
London. The Protest will highlight the case of Michal Patera, a member
of the FSA, the Czech section of the IWA.

The Solidarity Federation believes Michal has been framed for his
active opposition to fascist and Neo-Nazis activities in the Czech
Republic.

   Ferocious attack

The case stems from an incident which took place in a Prague Club on
Friday 27th November last year. The Club was attacked by neo-nazis,
knocking one person unconscious and injuring another. The ferocity of
this attack (the second on him in 6 months) convinced Michal that its
aim was to kill him. He shot the leading nazi with his legally held
pistol, and escaped. Shortly afterwards, Michal was arrested and
charged with attempted murder. He has recently been released on bail
but still faces up to 15 years imprisonment. None of the neo Nazis have
been charged with any offence. The IWA believe that Michal has been
framed for his political activity, in a country where more than one
third of police officers are members or active sympathisers or neo-
fascist, racist or extremist nationalist organisations. Direct co-
operation between police and neo nazis is well known, as is the Czech
Governments failure to deal with racism and xenophobia: For instance,
the State Citizenship Act, in 1992, effectively made thousands of Roma
people homeless when the Czech and Slovak Republics separated in 1992.

A spokesperson for the Solidarity Federation said: "The horrific
results of such growing ultra-nationalist ideology in post-communist
Europe are currently being witnessed in Kosovo."

Members of the IWA and other libertarian organisations in many
countries around Europe are actively opposing such activities on the
ground, and attempting to create solidarity and peaceful and safe
multi-ethnic communities, while fighting off attacks from neo-nazis. It
is vital that people such as Michal are defended from victimisation
from the state. They added: "On July 30th we will have a Czech Flag
which will be defaced with a swastika and burnt, symbolising the Czech
States collusion with neo-nazis and publicising Michals vicitmisation.
We call on the Czech prosecution service to drop the charges".

Photographs of the demonstration will be available on the day. For more
information, interviews, photographs etc. telephone the Solidarity
Federation 0181 374 5027, leave a message and we will get back to you.
You can also write to North/East London Solidarity federation, PO Box
1681, London N8 7LE Great Britain.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


--

ANTI-FASCIST ACQUITTED
   via David Tu

[PEN-L:9555] Re: Re: My Ideologies

[William S. Lear]

On Thursday, July 22, 1999 at 18:58:47 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes:
>...
>But it's in no small part relentless U.S. opposition to even the 
>mildest reformism in the "Third World" that has helped make 
>revolutionary movements more brutal than you or I would like. Who 
>knows how the Cuban revolution would have turned out had the U.S. not 
>tried to smother it in its crib? Who knows what would have happened 
>elsewhere in Latin America & the Caribbean if the Cubans had been 
>allowed to go their way? What would have happened in Nicaragua if 
>Reagan hadn't unleashed the contras? What would have happened in the 
>USSR had the "West" not been hostile for 75 years? What would 
>have.?

Not to mention the fact that the USSR was never the enemy.  The enemy
has always been the US population, which had to be terrified of a
monstrous enemy, so they would support a repressive state and wouldn't
get crazy ideas about organizing the state to serve the ends of
democracy rather than those of the plutocrats who pull the strings.
We never have had a problem with the most bloodthirsty of governments,
and the USSR was pleasantly serviceable for scare purposes.  Frank
Kofsky, (among many, many others) shows this in brilliant detail in
his wonderful *Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948*.

And really, isn't the proper counter-counter-factual not "Who knows
how the Cuban revolution would have turned out had the U.S. not tried
to smother it in its crib?", but "Who knows how the Cuban revolution
would have turned out had the U.S. aided, as it had every moral
obligation to do, in the overthrow of the monstrous dictatorship that
had strangled Cuban democracy with U.S. help?"


Bill

[PEN-L:9554] New World Order

[Rod Hay]

I am sending the following piece as an indication of how the grand
bourgeoisie is thinking about recent changes in the international
political climate. Like most bourgeois thinking it contains both
progressive elements and non progressive elements. The end of
nationalism (ethnicism, tribalism, etc.), I think is a progressive
thing. The lack of democratic institutions on the international scale is
however regressive. As the democratic governments lose sovereignty and
power, the ability of people to provide a check on the actions of those
in charge is lessened. The progressive political position is, I think,
to demand democratic accountability. Just how international democratic
institutions would emerge and operate, I am less sure.



A new kind of war

   By R. C. Longworth
>From NATO's pointof view, Slobodan Milosevic's attempt to drive
ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was a dangerous
anachronism in a globalizing world.

Right on cue, just as the millennial midnight was about to strike, NATO

entered a new legal and strategic world. The battle for Kosovo was both

the result of global pressures that have been building for a decade
now,
and a precedent for a future that is only dimly perceived.

Like most explorers in a new world, the NATO nations are making this
one up as they go along.

The issue is sovereignty--what does it mean and who has it? Is it
absolute? If not, when can it be violated, and by whom? Who decides?

Czech President Vaclav Havel, talking about the NATO bombing of
Serbia in a speech to the Canadian parliament, said that "blind love
for
one's own country . . . has necessarily become a dangerous anachronism,

a source of conflict, and, in extreme cases, of immense human
suffering."
We live, Havel said, in a new world "in which all of us must begin to
bear
responsibility for everything that occurs."

"In such a world," he said, "the idol of state sovereignty must
inevitably
dissolve. With this transformation, the idea of noninterference--the
notion
that it is none of our business what happens in another country and
whether human rights are violated in that country--should also vanish
down the trapdoor of history."

State sovereignty, enshrined at the Peace of Westphalia more than 350
years ago, became absolute in this century. We recognized foreign
governments when they controlled their own territories, and we granted
them the right to do anything within their own borders as long as they
did
not infringe the borders of their neighbors. Violations of frontiers
were a
cause of war; violations within frontiers were not.

Given the holocausts, pogroms, cultural revolutions, and gulags of the
twentieth century, this doctrine of absolute sovereignty left a lot to
be
desired. But it was what we had, the basis of the international system
and
a useful tool. The Soviet Union rejected any Western criticism of its
regime as "an impermissible interference in the internal affairs of a
sovereign country." Mostly, we went along with this, because the
alternative could upset a nuclear balance that trumped all other
issues,
including human rights.

The effects of globalization
That era ended 10 years ago, and in the past decade the concept of
sovereignty has changed, but the change has never been dramatized as
starkly as last spring. The Balkan war was truly the last
twentieth-century
war.

On one side was Serbia, fighting for territory, frontiers, and
sovereignty in
a globalizing world where such concepts just weren't that important any
more. The Serb cause was powered by the memories of 600-year-old
defeats, of blood grievances against neighbors, of a conviction that
ancestral lands were too important to be shared with tribes speaking a
different language or professing a different religion.

On the other side was NATO, a multinational alliance of 19 nations that

had agreed to share, to a greater or lesser degree, their defenses,
which is
one of the key attributes of national sovereignty. NATO said it fought
for
human rights, or to excise an infection from the European body, or to
protect its own credibility, or out of simple revulsion at the sight of

Europeans being jammed into railway cars 55 years after that sort of
thing
was supposed to have ended forever.

What it was not fighting for was land, or conquest, or oil, or empire.
That
last empire, the Soviet one, is dead, and no one is building another.
In a
globalizing world, brains and communications are important, land is
not.

The globalization of the world, in fact, is the key to what's going on
in the
Balkans. The war, in a way, was an atavism in a world of global markets
and global cooperation, with money and jobs and ideas flying across
frontiers as though they didn't exist. Of the 19 NATO nations, 11 are
consciously submerging their sovereignty--even their currencies--into a
new, borderless economic and political bloc, the European Union.

Even more important is the fact that all the Balkan countries except
Serbia
long to j

[PEN-L:9550] FW: American Indians disproportionately victims of violent crimes

[Craven, Jim]

-Original Message-
From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
Sent: Monday, February 15, 1999 5:52 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: American Indians disproportionately victims of violent crimes


New York Times, February 15, 1999

Study Says Indians Are Violent Crime Victims at Twice National Average

By FOX BUTTERFIELD

American Indians are the victims of violent crimes at more than twice the
national average and, unlike the situation among whites and blacks where
the large majority of crime victims are of the same race as the
perpetrators, 70 percent of those committing crimes against Indians are of
a different race, according to the first comprehensive study of crimes
involving Indians, which was released Sunday by the Justice Department. 

The study found that the nation's 2.3 million Indians were far more likely
to be victims of violent crimes than members of any other racial group, and
that the rate of violent crime experienced by Indian women is nearly 50
percent higher than that by black males. 

A full 60 percent of the perpetrators of violent crimes against Indians
were whites, according to the victims, while 29 percent of the offenders
were other Indians and 10 percent were described as black, the report said.
By contrast, other studies have shown that 69 percent of the perpetrators
of violent crimes against whites are also white, and 81 percent of those
committing violent crimes against blacks are themselves black. 

"This highlights what has been going on out there for 130 years, since the
beginning of the reservation system," said Sidney Harring, a professor of
law at the City University of New York School of Law and an expert on
Indian crime and criminal law. 

Harring said much of the violence against Indians by other racial groups
was attributable to racism and alcohol, "with Indians being victimized by
poor, drunken whites, people on the margins hurting each other." There are
still high levels of prejudice against Indians in the West, where most
Indians live, he said, and a culture that lives on the edges of Indian
reservations "that tolerates this violence," even among law enforcement
officials. 

Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute, an Indians'
rights advocacy group in Washington, took an even more sweeping position,
saying, "This may actually represent a downturn in violence over the
centuries since we first encountered Europeans. 

"At least it's not genocidal," said Ms. Harjo, who is part Cheyenee and
part Muscogee. "Now they are taking Indians out one by one." 

The study was published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the
statistical branch of the Justice Department, using data gathered from 1992
to 1996 by the National Crime Victimization Survey, which asks a sample of
American households each year about crimes they have experienced. The
survey measures the violent crimes of rape, robbery, aggravated assault and
simple assault. To supplement the survey, the justice department added data
on homicides gathered by the FBI from local police reports. 

The victimization survey is considered a reliable measure of crime by
criminologists. 

According to the survey, the average annual rate at which Indians were
victims of crimes -- 124 per 1,000 people, ages 12 or older -- is about two
and a half times the national average of 50 crimes per 1,000 people who are
above the age of 12. The average for whites was 49 per 1,000 people; for
blacks, 61 per 1,000; and for Asians, 29 per 1,000. 

Alcohol played a major part in violent crimes against Indians, both those
committed by Indians against each other and those committed by people of
other racial groups, the report found. Indian victims reported that the
perpetrator had been drinking in 46 percent of violent crimes against them,
the highest of any racial group, while 70 percent of Indians convicted of
violence who were in jail said they had been drinking at the time of their
offense. 

In addition, the survey found that the arrest rate for alcohol-related
offenses among Indians (including drunken driving, liquor law violations
and public drunkenness) was more than double that for the total population
during 1996, though the arrest rate for drug offenses was lower than for
other races.

The four states with the most Indian residents were; Oklahoma, with
252,000, followed by California, Arizona and New Mexico. 

Peter Iverson, a professor of history at Arizona State University, said
that there had been a significant shift in Indian population over the past
20 years, with a majority of Indians now living in urban areas. But those
Indians in cities form a small part of the metropolitan area and do not
live in segregated areas, so they are much more likely to come in contact
with people of other groups. Residential segregation is often part of the
explanation for the tendency of whites to commit violence against whites,
and blacks against other blacks. 

Iverson said that in rural areas bordering Indian re

[PEN-L:9545] INDONESIA 1965

[Louis Proyect]

"Armed with wide-bladed knives called parangs, Moslem bands crept at night
into the homes of communists, killing entire families. ... Travelers ...
tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with
bodies. River transportation has at places been seriously impeded."

Time magazine, December 1965


"Nearly 100 Communists, or suspected Communists, were herded into the
town's botanical garden and mowed down with a machine gun ... the head that
had belonged to the school principal, a P.K.I. [Communist Party] member,
was stuck on a pole and paraded among his former pupils, convened in
special assembly."

New York Times, May 1966

Estimates of the total number of Indonesians murdered over a period of
several years following an aborted coup range from 500,000 to one million.

In the early morning hours of 1 October 1965, a small force of junior
military officers abducted and killed six generals and seized several key
points in the capital city of Jakarta. then went on the air to announce
that their action was being taken to forestall a coup by a "Generals'
Council" scheduled for Army Day, the fifth of October. The putsch, they
said, had been sponsored by the CIA and was aimed at capturing power from
President Sukarno. By the end of the day, however, the rebel officers in
Jakarta had been crushed by the army under the direction of General
Suharto, although some supportive army groups in other cities held out for
a day or two longer.

Suharto--a man who had served both the Dutch colonialists and the Japanese
invaders--and his colleagues charged that the large and influential PKI was
behind the officers' "coup attempt", and that behind the party stood
Communist China. The triumphant armed forces moved in to grab the reins of
government, curb Sukarno's authority (before long he was reduced to little
more than a figurehead), and carry out a bloodbath to eliminate once and
for all the PKI with whom Sukarno had obliged them to share national power
for many years. Here at last was the situation which could legitimate these
long-desired actions.

Anti-Communist organizations and individuals, particularly Muslims, were
encouraged to join in the slaying of anyone suspected of being a PKI
sympathizer. Indonesians of Chinese descent as well fell victim to crazed
zealots. The Indonesian people were stirred up in part by the display of
photographs on television and in the press of the badly decomposed bodies
of the slain generals. The men, the public was told, had been castrated and
their eyes gouged out by Communist women. (The army later made the mistake
of allowing official medical autopsies to be included as evidence in some
of the trials; and the extremely detailed reports of the injuries suffered
mentioned only bullet wounds and some bruises, no eye gougings or castration.)

What ensued was called by the New York Times "one of the most savage mass
slaughters of modern political history." Violence, wrote Life magazine,
"tinged not only with fanaticism but with blood-lust and something like
witchcraft."

Twenty-five years later, American diplomats disclosed that they had
systematically compiled comprehensive lists of "Communist" operatives, from
top echelons down to village cadres, and turned over as many as 5,000 names
to the Indonesian army, which hunted those persons down and killed them.
The Americans would then check off the names of those who had been killed
or captured. Robert Martens, a former member of the US Embassy's political
section in Jakarta, stated in 1990: "It really was a big help to the army.
They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on
my hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike
hard at a decisive moment."

"I know we had a lot more information [about the PKI] than the Indonesians
themselves," said Marshall Green, US Ambassador to Indonesia at the time of
the coup. Martens "told me on a number of occasions that ... the government
did not have very good information on the Communist setup, and he gave me
the impression that this information was superior to anything they had."

"No one cared, as long as they were Communists, that they were being
butchered," said Howard Federspiel, who in 1965 was the Indonesia expert at
the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. "No one was
getting very worked up about it."

Although the former deputy CIA station chief in Indonesia, Joseph Lazarsky,
and former diplomat Edward Masters, who was Martens' boss, confirmed that
CIA agents contributed in drawing up the death lists, the CIA in Langley
categorically denied any involvement.

The massacre put a horrific end to the well-organized PKI national
organization But it did not put to rest the basic questions underlying the
events of 1965, to wit:

Was there in actual fact a Generals' Council aiming to take over the
government within a matter of days? A semi-official account of the whole
affair published in Indonesia in 1968 denie

[PEN-L:9543] RE: Re: Re: My Ideologies

[Craven, Jim]

-Original Message-
From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 1999 3:59 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:9539] Re: Re: My Ideologies


Brad De Long wrote:

>Do the "deaths in Indonesia need to be attributed to liberal U.S. 
>capitalism"? To the U.S. national security state, perhaps. But even 
>there you have to construct a counterfactual picture of what the 
>succession to Sukarno would have been like: rule by the PKI is scary 
>to think about.

But it's in no small part relentless U.S. opposition to even the 
mildest reformism in the "Third World" that has helped make 
revolutionary movements more brutal than you or I would like. Who 
knows how the Cuban revolution would have turned out had the U.S. not 
tried to smother it in its crib? Who knows what would have happened 
elsewhere in Latin America & the Caribbean if the Cubans had been 
allowed to go their way? What would have happened in Nicaragua if 
Reagan hadn't unleashed the contras? What would have happened in the 
USSR had the "West" not been hostile for 75 years? What would 
have.?

Doug

Hi Doug,

Not long ago I saw an interview with an OSS officer who periodically was
dropped into occupied France during World War II. He stated unequivocally
that the OSS not only dropped arms and supplies into areas where the French
Resistance was operating, but also into areas where they were not. He was
asked why they would drop weapons into areas where the French Resistance was
light and he answered that this would cause increased repression and
executions by the Germans thus leading to increased recruitments into the
Resistance.

The infamous Pentagon Papers give chapter and verse on social systems
engineering campaigns in North Vietnam (propaganda, counterfeit currency,
rumors of intended repression of Catholics, embargoes, destruction of crops,
sabotage etc) specifically designed to put a society under seige that would
lead to and justify (in the minds of those engaging in increased repression)
increased repression (e.g. during WWII being at War was used to justify the
internment of Japanese Americans and in the Civil War Lincoln justified
suspending Habeas Corpus under the banner of being under seige) that would
then be used to "confirm" and "prove" the Cold War caricatures of socialist
societies as inherently repressive, inefficient, backward etc versus the
good old capitalist USA portrayed as "progressive", democratic, dynamic,
respectful of human rights etc.

This stuff is done both overtly and covertly. The idea is to push hot
buttons, exacerbate contradictions and traditional rivalries, cultivate
compradors, manipulate traditional levers and centers of power to engineer
economic failures and political repression that can be used as "evidence" of
and attributed to the real nature, intentions and consequences of socialism
while the overt and covert provocations and social systems engineering
machinations and their intended/inexorable effects remain outside of
scrutiny or assignment of any responsibility for their effects.

See "World Without War: American Planning for the Next Vietnams" by Michael
Klare for an excellent synopsis of social systems engineering campaigns. The
same was done in Chile, Indonesia, North Korea, China, USSR etc etc.

Then we get the usual Cold War contrived syllogism/tautology:
China = Socialism
Socialism = Barbarism and Inefficiency
China = Barbarism and Inefficiency

and 
US = "Free" Enterprise
"Free" Enterprise = Personal Freedom, Efficiency, Decency, Max Human Rights
US = Personal Freedom...

Jim Craven
   

[PEN-L:9539] Re: Re: My Ideologies

[Doug Henwood]

Brad De Long wrote:

>Do the "deaths in Indonesia need to be attributed to liberal U.S. 
>capitalism"? To the U.S. national security state, perhaps. But even 
>there you have to construct a counterfactual picture of what the 
>succession to Sukarno would have been like: rule by the PKI is scary 
>to think about.

But it's in no small part relentless U.S. opposition to even the 
mildest reformism in the "Third World" that has helped make 
revolutionary movements more brutal than you or I would like. Who 
knows how the Cuban revolution would have turned out had the U.S. not 
tried to smother it in its crib? Who knows what would have happened 
elsewhere in Latin America & the Caribbean if the Cubans had been 
allowed to go their way? What would have happened in Nicaragua if 
Reagan hadn't unleashed the contras? What would have happened in the 
USSR had the "West" not been hostile for 75 years? What would 
have.?

Doug

[PEN-L:9538] Re: RE: Rummel et al

[Brad De Long]

>Now am I losing my mind, or does the phrase
>"That doesn't mean the term is inappropriate . . . "
>where the antecedent for 'the term' is 'genocide'
>not mean that I am allowing, in my wishy-washy way,
>that the term COULD be appropriate?
> >>
>
>mbs

touché

No, you are not losing your mind...

Brad DeLong