Re: Re: Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION

[Tim Bousquet]

I see I posted while you and Micheal were posting. My
understanding-- again, around here-- is that a fire
won't really harm the trees at all, unless a lot of
"fuel"-- brush-- is left to grow because fires are put
out. A fire every few years serves to thin out the
brush, and the trees become a little more hardy. Let
the brush build up, though, and the fire burns hotter,
getting well past the charred bark of the mature
trees. This is the basis for the salvage logging
rider, written by our local Congresman Wally Herger
(alas, jumping on the "Quincy Library Group's"
so-called "compromise") and signed into law by
Clinton-- the fires have burned so hot that the trees
are damaged (at least in theory) and so they have to
be removed in order to "restore the health of the
forest", or some such nonsense.

tim
--- Ken Hanly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Well maybe I am losing my memory but I have driven
> through areas of Manitoba
> where forest fires have gone through and there is
> virtually nothing but
> charred stumps but it a few years new growth is
> evident, deciduous trees
> such as birch and aspen growing up first. Perhaps it
> depends upon the type
> of  forest.  There may be some forests where some
> mature established trees
> survive. I will see if I can find something on
> this..
> 
> Cheers, Ken Hanly
> 
> - Original Message -
> From: Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 12:36 AM
> Subject: [PEN-L:13924] Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF
> DEFORESTATION
> 
> 
> > Ken, natural forest fires typically leave older
> established trees
> > standing, unlike clear cutting.
> > --
> > Michael Perelman
> > Economics Department
> > California State University
> > Chico, CA 95929
> >
> > Tel. 530-898-5321
> > E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> 


=
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Effects of Wildfires The non Tabula rasa version

[Ken Hanly]

Sorry for the extra post..

Cheers, Ken Hanly

WILDFIRE EFFECTS

Wildfires can damage lands and resources. Timber is burned, although some
may be salvageable. Existing forage, for livestock and wildlife, is
destroyed. The reduced vegetation can increase erosion; in severe
situations, such as southern California, the result can be mudslides when
the wet season returns. And burned areas are not pretty.

The damages of wildfires on lands and resources are often overstated, for
two reasons. First, fires are patchy, leaving unburned areas within the fire
perimeter. Thus, reports of acres burned, typically calculated from the
perimeter, overstate the actual acres burned by 10 to 50 percent, depending
on the local vegetative, weather, and other conditions.

Damages are also usually overstated, because fires do not destroy every
living thing within the burned areas. Mature conifers often survive even
when their entire crowns are scorched; a few species, notably lodgepole pine
and jack pine, are serotinous -- their cones will only open and spread their
seeds when they have been exposed to the heat of a wildfire. Grasses and
other plants are often benefitted by wildfire, because fire quickly
decomposes organic matter into its mineral components (a process that, in
the arid West, may require years or decades without fire), and the flush of
nutrients accelerates plant growth for a few growing seasons. Few animals
are killed by even the most severe wildfires; rather, many animals seek out
burned sites for the newly available minerals and for the flush of plant
growth. And erosion is typically far worse along the fire control lines than
from the broad burned areas. The recognition of these ecological benefits
from fire was a major factor in the end of the 10-acre and 10:00 a.m.
policies and their replacement with fuel management and prescribed fire
(natural and otherwise).

Nonetheless, the net damages from wildfires are generally greater when fires
burn more intensely. Thus, lower fuel loadings may reduce the net damages
caused by wildfires. Proponents argue that forest health activities to
reduce fuel loadings also reduce wildfire damages. Again, this assertion is
logical, and is supported by some anecdotal evidence, but there appears to
be very little research documenting widespread reduction in wildfire damages
from fuel treatment. Such evidence is critical, however, to justify of
forest health activities from lower fire damages.

Finally, it should be noted that emergency rehabilitation occurs on many of
the large, severe wildfires. While emergency activities can prove
beneficial, especially for erosion control, they may inhibit the restoration
of natural ecological processes. In particular, grasses are often seeded in
severely burned areas. However, the quick-growing grasses typically used may
not be native to the area, and some grasses suppress tree seedling
establishment and growth. Thus, while solving some environmental problems,
emergency rehabilitation may cause other problems.

Wildfire Effects

[Ken Hanly]

Experiments restoring narrow strips of forest destroyed by pipelines etc.
indicate that plantings are inferior to just leaving the area untouched
after replacing the soil cover!
Cheers, Ken Hanly

Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION

[Tim Bousquet]

Ken,

I'm not understanding the geography of your area.

Here, in northern California, the forested areas are
up on the Sierra, while the valley floor was
grassland. In between is manzanita bushes, high deer
concentration.

The sugar pine forest of the eastern Sierra around
Chico was completely clearcut between 1873 and about
1901. In 1877 a 40-mile long flume was built down the
mountain, connecting the sawmills around the sugarpine
forests with Chico, which became the lumbering center
of northern California. The flume caused an economic
boom that year--1877-- and caused the population of
Chico to swell to about 7,000, but the flume
fundamentally changed the lumber industry such that an
oversupply depressed prices, and there was a boom/bust
cycle every few years. Chico population dropped down
to about 3,000 until well into the 20th century.

(It's beside the point, but the flume company brought
Chinese workers to work the sash and door factory
associated with their flume, and the local white
population took umbrage, eventually forming a secret
society that was dedicated to murdering them outright.
The Chico mass murders of 1877 so revolted eastern
society that anti-Chinese sentiment in Congress was
off-set for a while, and the anti-immigration mesures
were probably set a decade or two back.)

The forested areas east of town eventually were bought
by the Diamond Match company, which still maintains a
large tree farm in the area. 

I have a different take on the fire situation. Maybe
the canyons are steeper here, but creeks have never
served as a firebreak, fire just jumps right over
them. During the Depression a roadway called
"Ponderosa Way" was cut just about right at the area
where the manzanita land meets the forests-- the
purpose of the road was to serve as a firebreak. This
road stretches from Sacramento all the way to Mount
Shasta--maybe 200 miles. It's not that the fire would
run up the hill and just stop at the road, but rather
that the road allowed access for CCC fire crews, which
could back burn so that the fire couldn't move further
up into the forest. I assume that this was a taxpayer
financed protection of corporate-owned tree farms up
the ridge.

Incidentally, I've found quite a few accounts from the
1860s when the Yahi and Yana--really the only two
Indian nations resisting white encroachment-- set fire
to the grasslands and manzanita lands of the lower
foothills, with the expressed purpose of destroying
cattle grazing opportunities for the whites. But those
fires never caused any real damage to the forest
further up.

In short, there's far less forest around these parts
than before colonization, or rather "settlement," as
it's called here. As far as I can determine, there
isn't any single tree at all in this area that's more
than 130 years old, with two exceptions: a stand in
the town limits of Paradise, which sits along a
stretch of the Feather River that was too steep to log
until helicopters were introduced last year (up until
then I had seen logging trucks carrying thirty or
forty logs; last year for the first time I saw I truck
carrying a single thirty-foot diameter tree). The
second exception was up in Deer Creek Canyon, in a
roadless area of the national forest; thanks to the
Clinton "salvage-logging" rider, however, that is now
gone.

I don't know if this speaks to your observation.

tim


--- Ken Hanly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My understanding is though that in Western Canada
> settlement had the result
> of increasing not decreasing forested areas in many
> areas. Many wooded areas
> were burned in periodic grassfires on the plainsm
> and before settlement only
> natural barries such as streams stopped the fires.
> With settlement there
> were section roads that acted as firebreaks and this
> meant that many
> woodlots grew up in areas that previously did not
> support forests. Actually
> around here marginal grain land is being returned to
> pasture and woodlot.
> Louis will be glad to know that even the buffalo is
> making a comeback. Just
> five miles down the road the buffalo roam on a
> couple of sections. Of course
> an electric fence confines their movements and they
> are destined to be
> buffaloburgers. Maybe not what Louis had in mind.
> Treed areas coexist with
> the pasture in the buffalo compound.
>  Also, deforestation may eventually result in
> reforestation. Forest fires
> clear very large areas just as much as clear
> cutting. The forests eventually
> regenerate through a progressive series of plant and
> tree species. Traveling
> through a newly burned out area is just as much or
> more a scene of
> devastation as seeing a clear cut area but over time
> shrubs appear certain
> species such as birch and as in time the original
> type of cover..
> 
> 
> 
> Cheers, Ken Hanly
> 
> Mark Jones wrote:
> . A similar process of
> the pioneer hacking out a life for himself and
> family in the forest occurred
> in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia.
> In Au

Re: John Zerzan: Future Primitive (was Re: Currentimplications for South Africa)

[Doyle Saylor]

Hello Economists,
I was talking to a physicist friend about microwaving energy from space
where it is collected from solar radiation.  Terra watt bursts stored in H20
reservoirs.  What is technically impossible about building that?  If someone
wants I can ask my friend to provide technical details.

Also in the physicist community it is thought that tokamaks can produce
fusion if the costs of initial investment is about 10 billion or more in the
plant.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor

Re: Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION

[Ken Hanly]

Well maybe I am losing my memory but I have driven through areas of Manitoba
where forest fires have gone through and there is virtually nothing but
charred stumps but it a few years new growth is evident, deciduous trees
such as birch and aspen growing up first. Perhaps it depends upon the type
of  forest.  There may be some forests where some mature established trees
survive. I will see if I can find something on this..

Cheers, Ken Hanly

- Original Message -
From: Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 12:36 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:13924] Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION


> Ken, natural forest fires typically leave older established trees
> standing, unlike clear cutting.
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
>
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>

response to Mark Jones Post

[Ken Hanly]

This is a response to a recent post (included) by Mark that I sent to my
son, an economist with the Saskatchewan government.

Cheers, Ken Hanly

Hi,

  I see that Pen-L has
been having an interesting debate on energy.   However, it is difficult to
understand what Mark Jones is trying to say.  Jones jumps dramatically
between each point that he tries to make.   I have heard of at least some of
what he mentions but he doesn't give any context to most of it so it is
difficult to give him a fair response.

The cause of high prices for energy vary from source to source:

i) for electricity it is mostly a local supply issue.  Prices are high when
local supplies are tight and prices are free to move upward.  e.g.
California, Alberta.They are relatively low where local supplies are not
tight and/or regulated i.e. Manitoba and Quebec, Saskatchewan.
Even in California,  the prices fell in May because the weather was not as
hot as expected and demand was low.  Governor Davis of California got so
nervous at the new low prices, he started to talk about abandoning long-term
contracts at the "great" prices that he had negotiated a few months earlier.
There is no particular reason for a long-term shortage of electricity or
even high prices.

ii) for natural gas, it is a North American issue, supply growth fell behind
demand growth in the previous two years because a little over a year and
half ago natural gas price were at extremely low levels.  In the case of
California, pipeline capacity was also inadequate.  In most parts of the
world there is no particular shortage of natural gas at this time and prices
are low.

iii)  Several years ago growth of new oil supplies was almost non-existent
because prices were in real terms at historical lows.  Shortly after that
OPEC countries acted strategically to control their supply.  Without actions
on the part of OPEC in particular to limit current output and to restrict
investment in their resources, it is doubtful that current prices would be
as high.  Supply responses on the part of non-OPEC countries may in the next
couple of years push down oil prices again.   There are lags in development
of new resources and low prices such as occurred in oil in 1998 and early
1999 had substantial impacts on development of new supplies.   Continued
high prices will accelerate the development of some long-lived resources
such as Alberta's oilsands.  Once oilsand plants begin production they are
unlikely to shut-down unless there is a complete collapse of oil prices.

It might be useful to be more precise what is meant by subsidies.  If  one
is just talking about monetary flows of expenditures and revenues, it is
hard to believe the claims of net subsidies since oil and gas generate huge
revenues for governments.  Over a quarter of the Saskatchewan government
budget comes from oil and gas revenue and Saskatchewan is a relatively
marginal producer.  Countries in the Middle East with low cost resources
generate unbelievable surpluses over costs.   If one wants to look more
closely, at the consumption level governments all over the world generate
massive revenues from gasoline taxes.  Gasoline could represent  user fees
for roads but only the U.S. really uses all of its gas taxes for this
purpose and the U.S has a relatively low gas tax compared to most developed
countries and probably spends the most on roads.Are their external costs
(externalities) from oil and gas production?  The answer of course is yes.
If one is going to claim that externalities represent a large unrepresented
costs then there needs to be some sort of accounting that has some detailed
logic behind it, otherwise, it is impossible to judge.   For one thing,
externalities don't have directly observeable monetary costs in many
instances.  If there is any value in making the claim that "monetized" costs
of externalities are high and oil prices are too low one has to suggest some
sort of indirect measures of externalities.   I think that the OECD has done
some analysis on the question of whether energy resources are subsidized and
there is a paper out on their web-site.   Most people have argued that some
marginal coal mines (e.g. Cape Breton, France and Germany etc.) have been
subsidized but one might claim quite reasonably that these decisions were
made for social purposes which of course are not illegitimate.

Cheers,

David






- Original Message -



>
> - Original Message -
> From: Mark Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 7:50 PM
> Subject: [PEN-L:13854] RE: Re: RE: energy prices
>
>
> > Doug Henwood wrote:
> >
> > > how do you
> > > respond to the statistical point, Mark - that oil prices don't
> > > explain that much about growth rates?
> >
> > Hooker doesn't succeed in arguing that. How could he? Oil prices are
> > arbitrary in any case, since there are huge concealed subsidies to the
oil
> > patch and a huge military investment in securing the 

Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION

[Michael Perelman]

Ken, natural forest fires typically leave older established trees
standing, unlike clear cutting.
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Re: John Zerzan: Future Primitive (was Re: Current implications forSouth Africa)

[Ken Hanly]

I don't hate modern life. I am grateful for it. I would have been long dead
and buried were it not for modern life. I am not even sure that we lack the
capital to give a reasonably curtailed but healthy portion of modern life to
everyone. Is it resources we are short of or equitable sharing and efficient
use of them. Using them to meet basic needs rather than allocating them on
the basis of dollar holdings. Using them to build missile defence systems
against mythical rogue states instead of using them assure safe water
supplies and basic health and education services to the whole world? We use
biotechnology to make plants resistant to a patented herbicide rather than
resistant to drought and capable of serving the needs of areas that are
suffering increased water shortages.
 I grow quite a bit of my own food actually and supplement it with gifts of
wild game etc. But even the aboriginals go out hunting with their 4X4's and
their high tech rifles. Bow hunting is a niche sport for the well-off who
could care less if they get anything to eat from their labors and the bows
are not homemade for sure!..Anyway if this neoprimitive utopia (dystopia) is
to be adopted we will need to ensure a good crop of marijuana to make it
bearable. Maybe the Amish should recruit these people to make sure they get
some new blood lines.
 .


Cheers, Ken Hanly

- Original Message -
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2001 7:32 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:13915] John Zerzan: Future Primitive (was Re: Current
implications forSouth Africa)


> > >Louis Proyect
>
> If the fundamental problem facing the world is that we are running
> out of fossil fuels & that no alternative energy source will ever be
> available due to technical impossibility as Mark argues, it appears
> socialism won't be able to meet even the historically evolved basic
> needs of all in the world, much less doing more than that.  If that's
> really the case, why not turn to John Zerzan?
>
> *
> AAA
> P.O. Box 11331
> Eugene, OR 97440
>
> On the Transition
>
> Postscript to Future Primitve
> by John Zerzan
>
> ...Who doesn't hate modern life?  Can what conditioning that remains
> survive such an explosion of life, one that ruthlessly removes the
> sources of such conditioning?
>
> We are obviously being held hostage by capital and its technology,
> made to feel dependent, even helpless, by the sheer weight of it all,
> the massive inertia of centuries of alienated categories, patterns,
> values.  What could be dispensed with immediately?  Borders,
> governments, hierarchyWhat else?  How fast could more deep-seated
> forms of authority and separation be dissolved, such as that of
> division of labor?  I assert, and not, I hope, in the spirit of
> wishing to derive blueprints from abstract principle, that I can see
> no ultimate freedom or wholeness without the dissolution of the
> inherent power of specialists of every kind.
>
> Many say that millions would die if the present techno-global fealty
> to work and the commodity were scrapped.  But this overlooks many
> potentialities.  For example, consider the vast numbers of people who
> would be freed from manipulative, parasitic, destructive pursuits for
> those of creativity, health, and liberty.  At present, in fact, very
> few contribute in any way to satisfying authentic needs.
>
> Transporting food thousands of miles, not an atypical pursuit today,
> is an instance of pointless activity, as is producing countless tons
> of herbicide and pesticide poisons.  The picture of humanity starving
> if a transformation were attempted may be brought into perspective by
> reference to a few other agricultural specifics, of a more positive
> nature.  It is perfectly feasible, generally speaking, that we grow
> our own food.  There are simple approaches, involving no division of
> labor, to large yields in small spaces.
>
> Agriculture itself must be overcome, as domestication, and because it
> removes more organic matter from the soil than it puts back.
> Permaculture is a technique that seems to attempt an agriculture that
> develops or reproduces itself and thus tends toward nature and away
> from domestication.  It is one example of promising interim ways to
> survive while moving away from civilization.  Cultivation within the
> cities is another aspect of practical transition, and a further step
> toward superseding domestication would be a more or less random
> propagation of plants, a la Johnny Appleseed.
>
> Regarding urban life, any steps toward autonomy and self-help should
> be realized, beginning now, so that cities may be all the more
> quickly abandoned later.  Created out of capital's need to centralize
> control of property transactions, religion, and political domination,
> cities remain as extended life-destroying monuments to the same basic
> needs of capital.  Something on the order of what we know now as
> museums might be a good idea so that p

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Ken Hanly]

- Original Message -
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2001 7:26 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:13914] Re: Current implications for South Africa


> >  >).  What's
> >>fundamentally preventing us from providing people with means to meet
> >>their basic needs -- capitalism & imperialism or natural constraints?
> >
> >Imperialism, but ecological imperialism to be more exact.
> >
> >>If the former, socialism is the answer.  If the latter, socialism is
> >>not only not the answer but may exacerbate the environmental problem,
> >>in that under capitalism the poor can be simply priced out of the
> >>market (as they have been) but under socialism all are entitled to
> >>the satisfaction of basic needs (at the very least), the fulfillment
> >>of which may make more demands upon natural resources (at least in
> >>the short term) than today, even if global socialism eliminates such
> >>sources of waste as production of weapons.
> >
> >Look, Yoshie. If we are serious about these questions, the first thing we
> >have to stop doing is bullshiting about fast food being a "gain" for the
> >working class. I know it is very groovily "transgressive" to talk up
> >MacDonalds in leftwing circles, but it goes against the grain of what
Marx
> >took seriously. This issue is not about morality but political economy.
> >Socialists have to explain to working people that their lifestyle is not
> >only *unhealthy* in the terms that Ralph Nader talked about, but that it
> >rests on fucking over peasants in places like Honduras and Nicaragua
where
> >fast food beef comes from. When all the water and all the soil has been
> >exhausted in places like these, DelMonte and MacDonalds and Swift will go
> >somewhere else and do the same thing until the planet looks like Haiti.
> >
> >Louis Proyect
>
> Let's forget about fast food as it is merely red herring in this
> thread.  Is it possible to provide all human beings with food, clean
> water, sanitation, shelter, energy, medicine, education,
> transportation, etc. that are necessary to meet historically
> developed minimum needs (setting aside other needs & desires for the
> time being) under socialism?  Or is it impossible since we are
> running out of fossil fuels & clean water soon & the population is
> exploding, as Mark says?
>
> Yoshie
>

Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION

[Ken Hanly]

My understanding is though that in Western Canada settlement had the result
of increasing not decreasing forested areas in many areas. Many wooded areas
were burned in periodic grassfires on the plainsm and before settlement only
natural barries such as streams stopped the fires. With settlement there
were section roads that acted as firebreaks and this meant that many
woodlots grew up in areas that previously did not support forests. Actually
around here marginal grain land is being returned to pasture and woodlot.
Louis will be glad to know that even the buffalo is making a comeback. Just
five miles down the road the buffalo roam on a couple of sections. Of course
an electric fence confines their movements and they are destined to be
buffaloburgers. Maybe not what Louis had in mind. Treed areas coexist with
the pasture in the buffalo compound.
 Also, deforestation may eventually result in reforestation. Forest fires
clear very large areas just as much as clear cutting. The forests eventually
regenerate through a progressive series of plant and tree species. Traveling
through a newly burned out area is just as much or more a scene of
devastation as seeing a clear cut area but over time shrubs appear certain
species such as birch and as in time the original type of cover..



Cheers, Ken Hanly

Mark Jones wrote:
. A similar process of
the pioneer hacking out a life for himself and family in the forest occurred
in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. In Aus-tralia, for
example, nearly 400,000 sq km of the southeastern forests and sparse
woodland were cleared by the early twentieth century.

China's black market in Women

[Ian Murray]

< http://www.nytimes.com >
June 25, 2001
Harsh Chinese Reality Feeds a Black Market in Women
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

GAOSHI, China - When a man offered Feng Chenyun temporary work in
another city, she jumped at the chance. Barely literate and
desperately poor, Ms. Feng had two children, 10 and 16, and it was
nearly impossible to scrape together school fees from her small plot
of rice and rape seed.

Her husband was working as a migrant laborer 1,000 miles away, in
Guangdong Province. At 37, she had never left her county in Sichaun
Province and was feeling restless.

"I went with him because he was offering me work," she said,
recounting from her small dark home the start of a tale that still
brings tears three years later. "I just wanted to get out and earn a
bit of money."

Instead, Ms. Feng was kidnapped, drugged, placed on a train and sold
for about $1,500 as a bride to a brick maker in faraway Xinjiang
Province - becoming one of the tens if not hundreds of thousands of
poor Chinese women who are sold on a black market each year.

Since last year, the government has been waging a harsh campaign
against trafficking in women, featuring highly publicized arrests,
death sentences, rescues and the like. But the trade, though
significantly damped, still thrives in rural areas because it arises
from the mathematics of gender in rural China, reflected in the
equations of supply and demand:

¶In rural China, there are more than 120 boys for every 100 girls
because rural couples, who favor sons, abort fetuses and abandon
newborns that are female.

¶In much of rural China, it is considered culturally and economically
essential that 100 percent of the men find brides and produce heirs.

¶Net sum: For every 100 rural men who marry, 20 others must resort to
extraordinary measures to find brides, like buying women kidnapped
from urban areas.

The trade also reflects the extremely low social status of rural
women. Rural girls get inferior schooling, training and medical
attention when compared with boys. Not surprisingly, they grow up with
little hope or confidence. Most kidnappings occur when uneducated
young women leave their hometowns looking for jobs.

"Abduction is a very serious problem for these women," said Xie Lihua,
editor of Rural Women Knowing All, a self-help magazine. "They have
few resources to draw on. They are desperate for work, but don't know
what is suitable or how to find it. So they can be easily tricked,
then forced to work as prostitutes or sold to poor men who can't find
wives."

It is unclear exactly how big the problem is, although reports in the
state press say that as of 1999, the police were rescuing 10,000 women
a year, clearly representing only a fraction of those kidnapped. That
year, before the current crackdown started, abductions of women were
rising 30 percent a year, the state press reported. Abductions of
children, generally young boys bought by heirless families, were
rising 15.3 percent a year.

The densely populated, hardscrabble mountain villages of Sichuan
province, like Gaoshi, have become a principal source of women for
sale.

In Sichaun's capital, Chengdu, the dirt lot around the vast concrete
Nine Eye Bridge Labor Market, the city's largest, is dotted with young
country girls in loose shifts and plastic sandals. "Do you need a
worker?" they hopefully ask each visitor who enters.

"So many are abducted from this place," said Zhu Wenguang, a private
detective who rescues abducted women, noting that the city government
recently moved the labor market from a bridge to the edge of town to
try to cut down on the trafficking.

In April, a court in Sichuan sentenced Zhou Legui, a trafficker, to
death for selling more than 100 women to other provinces, many of whom
were abducted from this labor market, press reports said.

"In villages, there is a long tradition of prizing males and looking
down on females," Mr. Zhu explained. "So the best local women from the
countryside can hope for is to get away, to look for work elsewhere -
and that leaves them very vulnerable."

Mr. Zhu said most of the women are sold to remote places that are even
poorer than rural Sichuan or where the ratio of men to women is even
more lopsided. Studies have found that in some villages it is over 140
to 100.

In such places, the scarcity of women has already dramatically altered
the economics of marriage: young men must pay the families of their
brides-to-be huge sums, "bride prices," dowries in reverse.

Bride prices in some areas can run over $4,000. "But you can get an
abducted wife on the black market for a quarter of that," Mr. Zhu
said. "So that fuels the trade."

Once the girls have left Sichuan, locating them and bringing them home
is costly and time-consuming, since relatives most often have no idea
where they have gone. Police campaigns have focused mostly on breaking
smuggling rings and bringing traffickers to justice.

Families with money hire Mr. Zhu, a former policeman, to help rescue
those

Steel glut steel 'war'

[Ian Murray]

< http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/ >
U.S. begins steel war with Korea

The U.S. government has drawn up battle lines over steel imports from
Korea with its request to state agencies that they launch probes, the
Korea International Trade Association (KITA) said yesterday, calling
for countermeasures from Seoul.
According to a report from KITA's U.S. offices, the U.S. Trade
Representative (USTR) made the formal request Friday to the U.S.
International Trade Commission (USITC) to invoke emergency measures
under Section 201 against steel imports from Korea.

If Korean steel exporters are found guilty of damaging their U.S.
rivals and an import quota is adopted, the nation's steel exports to
America could tumble by as much as 40 percent this year, the KITA
report warned.

Washington's tough action came as mounting steel imports are allegedly
weighing on the finances of U.S. steel producers. Korea, ranking No. 6
in terms of global steel output, was the world's fourth largest steel
exporter to the U.S. market last year, with shipments totaling 2.35
million tons, taking a market share of 7.1 percent.

Steel products covered by the USITC totaled 612 items, including
certain carbon and alloy flat products; some carbon and alloy long
products; certain carbon and alloy pipes and tubes; and stainless
steel and alloy tool steel products. But specialty value-added steel
products used to build ships, oil pipes, stainless steel and plates
made of carbon steel and compound alloys, were excluded from the
investigation.

"Contrary to previous expectations, a relatively small number of steel
products were targeted by the USITC probe. However, a lot of
previously unregulated products have come under investigation,
threatening to hurt Korea's overall U.S. exports," said the KITA
report.

Korea's U.S. steel exports rose from an annual average of $990 million
in the 1995-1997 period to $1.57 billion last year. The U.S. steel
industry has claimed that they are victims of foreign government
intervention in the market, which has given direct financial support
of steel industries.

President George W. Bush had directed the USTR June 5, to begin a
Section 201 investigation into steel products. Section 201 empowers
the U.S. government to restrict, through punitive tariffs or other
means, the import of goods that an independent federal agency has
determined threaten a domestic industry.

Once the ITC formally initiates its investigation, it has 180 days to
report its findings to the President. If the ITC answers in the
affirmative, the President has 60 days to determine what action will
be taken.

"In response, Korean steel makers are requited to submit documents
showing that they did not carry out unfair manufacturing practices,"
said the KITA report. "On a government level, Korea should join forces
with the European Union and other nations, to jointly file suit
against the United States with the WTO."

In addition, a separate study should be launched towards multilateral
talks to discuss the global steel supply glut, it said.

([EMAIL PROTECTED])


By Yoo Cheong-mo Staff reporter

Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Lou says:

>Yoshie:
>>Let's forget about fast food as it is merely red herring in this
>>thread. 
>
>Then why the heck did you and Carrol tell practically argue that opposition
>to MacDonalds is anti-working class? Surely you are aware that I read
>lbo-talk just as Doug reads the Marxism list archives. I found your
>performance around this question deeply troubling.

*   Re: On the important French Fry Question
From: Yoshie Furuhashi ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Date: Sun Jan 21 2001 - 12:41:24 EST

>John Thornton wrote:
>
>>On another note, what the hell are you people doing
>>patronizing McD's? I suppose you shop at WalMart too?
>
>Hmm, so where's it stop? The computer I'm typing on was made a giant
>multinational and assembled in Mexico. There's a stereo next to me
>made by Sony in China. The coffee I'm drinking came from Kenya, a
>country filled with poor and hungry people, and the beans were grown
>and picked under god knows what exploitative conditions. You don't
>really believe that individual consumption choices can clean an
>unclean world, do you?
>
>Doug

By John's criteria, only the rich who can afford _not_ to eat fast 
food, shop at Wal-Mart, etc. can live morally correct lives.  What 
the masses buy is cheap mass products of sweatshop labor; what the 
truly rich buy, in contrast, is expensive products of relatively 
well-paid artisanal labor.  Haute couture & formal dining at 
fashionable restaurants (or better yet, _your own personal cook_, 
well compensated year-around to provide meals _at home_, to your 
taste & convenience) are good examples of the latter.  Morally 
correct consumption is a luxury that only those who don't & can't 
count their own money can afford.

Yoshie

   *

If you agree more with John Thornton than me, that's fine, but I 
think that berating people who patronize fast food joints & shop at 
WalMart & the like, in the absence of requests to boycott them from 
workers who either work for them or produce inputs for their goods, 
is counter-productive.

>  >Is it possible to provide all human beings with food, clean
>>water, sanitation, shelter, energy, medicine, education,
>>transportation, etc. that are necessary to meet historically
>>developed minimum needs (setting aside other needs & desires for the
>>time being) under socialism?
>
>I am pretty sure that we can, but it will require *radical* adjustments
>including:
>
>1. overcoming the city-countryside split as called for in the Communist
>Manifesto.
>2. elimination of the automobile and jet plane except for extraordinary
>reasons.
>3. promotion of bicycles and trains and other forms of environmentally wise
>transportation.
>4. drastic reduction in meat eating.
>5. sharp cutback in fashion, luxury goods like Rolex watches, Mount Blanc
>pens, overseas vacations, fancy restaurants and delicatessens--ie.
>everything that goes into a "yuppie" lifestyle. In exchange for a reduction
>in these kinds of dubious "goodies" we achieve more free time and a sense
>of relief that we are not fucking over the rest of the world.
>6. in general, less is more as Mies van der Rohe put it.

1-6 won't solve the problem, though, if fossil fuels & clean water 
are soon running out & there is no practical alternative energy 
source, as Mark says.  How do you make bicycles & run trains without 
fuels?

Yoshie

Re: Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Carrol Cox]

Louis Proyect wrote:
> 
> Yoshie:
> >Let's forget about fast food as it is merely red herring in this
> >thread.
> 
> Then why the heck did you and Carrol tell practically argue that opposition
> to MacDonalds is anti-working class? Surely you are aware that I read
> lbo-talk just as Doug reads the Marxism list archives. I found your
> performance around this question deeply troubling.

Lou, if I could do it with a wave of my hand, I would wipe MacDonalds
off the face of the earth. The institution of fast food is undoubtedly
vicious. But attacking _people_ rather than the institutions that
exploit them is just politically stupid. I don't really remember very
well the specific thread -- but I have very consistently on LBO attacked
generic attacks on people.

Your misunderstanding here is characteristic, I think, of the way in
which a focus on truth in the abstract can divorce people from political
reality. It leads to Plato's solution: Philosopher Kings.

Carrol

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Louis Proyect]

Yoshie:
>Let's forget about fast food as it is merely red herring in this 
>thread.  

Then why the heck did you and Carrol tell practically argue that opposition
to MacDonalds is anti-working class? Surely you are aware that I read
lbo-talk just as Doug reads the Marxism list archives. I found your
performance around this question deeply troubling.

>Is it possible to provide all human beings with food, clean 
>water, sanitation, shelter, energy, medicine, education, 
>transportation, etc. that are necessary to meet historically 
>developed minimum needs (setting aside other needs & desires for the 
>time being) under socialism? 

I am pretty sure that we can, but it will require *radical* adjustments
including:

1. overcoming the city-countryside split as called for in the Communist
Manifesto.
2. elimination of the automobile and jet plane except for extraordinary
reasons.
3. promotion of bicycles and trains and other forms of environmentally wise
transportation.
4. drastic reduction in meat eating.
5. sharp cutback in fashion, luxury goods like Rolex watches, Mount Blanc
pens, overseas vacations, fancy restaurants and delicatessens--ie.
everything that goes into a "yuppie" lifestyle. In exchange for a reduction
in these kinds of dubious "goodies" we achieve more free time and a sense
of relief that we are not fucking over the rest of the world.
6. in general, less is more as Mies van der Rohe put it.

> Or is it impossible since we are 
>running out of fossil fuels & clean water soon & the population is 
>exploding, as Mark says?

Depends on what you mean by "impossible". Sometimes I get the impression
that your vision of socialism has much more in common with Jim Heartfield's
than my own. We have to smash any such illusion that the lifestyle of a
British or US yuppie is a model for the rest of the world, let alone
ourselves.


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Mark Jones wrote:
>  > It would be more useful to address the issue I am raising, rather 
>than going
>>  into denial,
>
>Mark, If I were chained to a tree, it would do me no good to give my
>attention to the fact that a flood was approaching. My main concern
>would be to unchain myself, and then and only then would it be
>worthwhile to consider whether or not a flood was approaching.
>
>My understanding of capitalism is that it _must_ grow, regardless of
>consequences, and that it simply is not worth considering possibilities
>for constraining growth under capitalism, however desirable or even
>absolutely necessary that may be.
>
>Capitalism's only redeeming feature is that it offers the possibility
>(however remote) -- not certainty, not even probability, simply the
>_possibility_ -- of socialism. And socialism, and only socialism, would
>create the _possibility_ -- not certainty, not even probability -- of
>addressing, _in practice_, the issues you raise.
>
>Until you can link those issues to concrete possibilities of political
>organization for socialism, addressing those issues constitutes a naive
>utopianism, a refusal to face the very facts that you wish us to
>address. To focus on them now would be as absurd as it would have been
>in (say) 1750, to devote all physical research to the development of
>petrochemicals. You want to deflect us from doing anything about the
>concerns that you incessantly raise. YOu want us, instead, to wring our
>hands and scream.
>
>Carrol

The fact of the matter is that socialism won't change the amount of 
oil & other fossil fuels under the earth's surface, so shouting that 
oil production will soon peak & decline due to natural & technical 
constraints (rather than due to the peculiar ensemble of social 
relations called capitalism) won't make anyone turn to socialism.

Yoshie

John Zerzan: Future Primitive (was Re: Current implications forSouth Africa)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Carrol Cox:
>>My understanding of capitalism is that it _must_ grow, regardless of
>>consequences, and that it simply is not worth considering possibilities
>>for constraining growth under capitalism, however desirable or even
>>absolutely necessary that may be.
>
>Right now I am reading "The Last Ranch" by the late Sam Bingham, which
>deals with the disastrous ecological effects of cattle ranching in
>Colorado, including desertification. This is the reality that Marxists have
>to identify to the masses. Saying that MacDonalds fast food is some kind of
>"conquest" of the working class because it makes meat cheap and eliminates
>the need to prepare meals is just the kind of thing that we have no
>business saying. The fact that so many young people associate Marxism with
>this kind of vulgar "modernization" explains why the anti-globalization
>protesters often call themselves anarchists. While anarchism attracts the
>young, we are ending up with a movement that revolves around bizarre sects
>or annual conferences attracting the enlarged prostate brigade. At the last
>Socialist Scholars Conference, the last I'll ever go to, young people got
>up during the discussion period of a talk given by Bogdan Denitch on the
>"future of the left" and told him that he was completely out of touch.
>Denitch's social democratic business-as-usual left-Gompers trade unionism
>is based on the notion that working people in the USA should have a bigger
>slice of the pie, the rest of the world be damned. As long as Marxism is
>perceived in this manner, we are in bad shape. As Marxists, our message is
>not just about "more". It is about equity. Most people in the imperialist
>countries have to understand that the life-style we "enjoy" is
>unsustainable. In exchange for a more modest life-style, we will live in
>world that enjoys peace and respect for the individual. If people in the
>imperialist countries can not rally to this message, then they (we) deserve
>the fate that awaits us: war, urban violence, cancer epidemics, drug
>addiction, alcoholism, FOX TV, and prozac.
>
>Louis Proyect

If the fundamental problem facing the world is that we are running 
out of fossil fuels & that no alternative energy source will ever be 
available due to technical impossibility as Mark argues, it appears 
socialism won't be able to meet even the historically evolved basic 
needs of all in the world, much less doing more than that.  If that's 
really the case, why not turn to John Zerzan?

*  
AAA
P.O. Box 11331
Eugene, OR 97440

On the Transition

Postscript to Future Primitve
by John Zerzan

...Who doesn't hate modern life?  Can what conditioning that remains 
survive such an explosion of life, one that ruthlessly removes the 
sources of such conditioning?

We are obviously being held hostage by capital and its technology, 
made to feel dependent, even helpless, by the sheer weight of it all, 
the massive inertia of centuries of alienated categories, patterns, 
values.  What could be dispensed with immediately?  Borders, 
governments, hierarchyWhat else?  How fast could more deep-seated 
forms of authority and separation be dissolved, such as that of 
division of labor?  I assert, and not, I hope, in the spirit of 
wishing to derive blueprints from abstract principle, that I can see 
no ultimate freedom or wholeness without the dissolution of the 
inherent power of specialists of every kind.

Many say that millions would die if the present techno-global fealty 
to work and the commodity were scrapped.  But this overlooks many 
potentialities.  For example, consider the vast numbers of people who 
would be freed from manipulative, parasitic, destructive pursuits for 
those of creativity, health, and liberty.  At present, in fact, very 
few contribute in any way to satisfying authentic needs.

Transporting food thousands of miles, not an atypical pursuit today, 
is an instance of pointless activity, as is producing countless tons 
of herbicide and pesticide poisons.  The picture of humanity starving 
if a transformation were attempted may be brought into perspective by 
reference to a few other agricultural specifics, of a more positive 
nature.  It is perfectly feasible, generally speaking, that we grow 
our own food.  There are simple approaches, involving no division of 
labor, to large yields in small spaces.

Agriculture itself must be overcome, as domestication, and because it 
removes more organic matter from the soil than it puts back. 
Permaculture is a technique that seems to attempt an agriculture that 
develops or reproduces itself and thus tends toward nature and away 
from domestication.  It is one example of promising interim ways to 
survive while moving away from civilization.  Cultivation within the 
cities is another aspect of practical transition, and a further step 
toward superseding domestication would be a more or less random 
propagation of plants, a la Johnny Appleseed.

Regarding urban life, any steps toward au

Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>  >).  What's
>>fundamentally preventing us from providing people with means to meet
>>their basic needs -- capitalism & imperialism or natural constraints?
>
>Imperialism, but ecological imperialism to be more exact.
>
>>If the former, socialism is the answer.  If the latter, socialism is
>>not only not the answer but may exacerbate the environmental problem,
>>in that under capitalism the poor can be simply priced out of the
>>market (as they have been) but under socialism all are entitled to
>>the satisfaction of basic needs (at the very least), the fulfillment
>>of which may make more demands upon natural resources (at least in
>>the short term) than today, even if global socialism eliminates such
>>sources of waste as production of weapons.
>
>Look, Yoshie. If we are serious about these questions, the first thing we
>have to stop doing is bullshiting about fast food being a "gain" for the
>working class. I know it is very groovily "transgressive" to talk up
>MacDonalds in leftwing circles, but it goes against the grain of what Marx
>took seriously. This issue is not about morality but political economy.
>Socialists have to explain to working people that their lifestyle is not
>only *unhealthy* in the terms that Ralph Nader talked about, but that it
>rests on fucking over peasants in places like Honduras and Nicaragua where
>fast food beef comes from. When all the water and all the soil has been
>exhausted in places like these, DelMonte and MacDonalds and Swift will go
>somewhere else and do the same thing until the planet looks like Haiti.
>
>Louis Proyect

Let's forget about fast food as it is merely red herring in this 
thread.  Is it possible to provide all human beings with food, clean 
water, sanitation, shelter, energy, medicine, education, 
transportation, etc. that are necessary to meet historically 
developed minimum needs (setting aside other needs & desires for the 
time being) under socialism?  Or is it impossible since we are 
running out of fossil fuels & clean water soon & the population is 
exploding, as Mark says?

Yoshie

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Louis Proyect]

>).  What's 
>fundamentally preventing us from providing people with means to meet 
>their basic needs -- capitalism & imperialism or natural constraints?

Imperialism, but ecological imperialism to be more exact.
 
>If the former, socialism is the answer.  If the latter, socialism is 
>not only not the answer but may exacerbate the environmental problem, 
>in that under capitalism the poor can be simply priced out of the 
>market (as they have been) but under socialism all are entitled to 
>the satisfaction of basic needs (at the very least), the fulfillment 
>of which may make more demands upon natural resources (at least in 
>the short term) than today, even if global socialism eliminates such 
>sources of waste as production of weapons.

Look, Yoshie. If we are serious about these questions, the first thing we
have to stop doing is bullshiting about fast food being a "gain" for the
working class. I know it is very groovily "transgressive" to talk up
MacDonalds in leftwing circles, but it goes against the grain of what Marx
took seriously. This issue is not about morality but political economy.
Socialists have to explain to working people that their lifestyle is not
only *unhealthy* in the terms that Ralph Nader talked about, but that it
rests on fucking over peasants in places like Honduras and Nicaragua where
fast food beef comes from. When all the water and all the soil has been
exhausted in places like these, DelMonte and MacDonalds and Swift will go
somewhere else and do the same thing until the planet looks like Haiti. 


 

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>The point about this is not that it is a conceivable future, but that it is
>our actual world, it is the present-day, it is the world in which persons in
>the Indian subcontinent consume one-eightieth of the energy of persons in
>the USA, in which more than half of humankind has never made a phone call
>and where almost a billion remain illiterate. That is still the reality; we
>are living in a world of gated communities and of elemental privation and
>darkness for the majority. The energy famine is not shrinking, it is growing
>and enveloping ever-new areas in darkness. Industrial capitalism has not
>solved even the most elementary problems of public welfare or personal
>security. The absolute numbers of people in abject poverty are increasing.
>Now, what are *you* arguing for? For people to believe that there is capital
>*over*-accumulation? You are pulling their leg.
>
>There is a powerful argument from value theory to show that there is a
>capital famine, not over-accumulation, but before bothering with all that,
>just go out into our world as it really is, and take a look around. What
>capital-shortage means in practice is a great lack of social infrastructure,
>mass poverty and squalor of a kind which would be only too familiar to any
>19th century socialist or revolutionary whose ghost came visiting, but on a
>hitherto-unprecedented scale.
>
>And yes, the answer to this is revolutionary communism, and what we need for
>that is first off, for starters, to get our heads out of the sand and *look
>at* the world as it really as and not as we would wish it to be. And, btw,
>try not scapegoating the messenger just because you don't like the message.
>The answer to the problem is what it always has been: the overthrow of the
>capitalist state, the overthrow of imperialism, and socialism, socialism,
>socialism.
>
>Mark Jones

"UNDP Administrator Gus Speth said Friday an estimated 1.5 to 2.0 
billion people, out of a total world population of 5.8 billion, 
continue to live without electricity.  And about 2.0 billion people 
still use fuel-wood and animal dung for their cooking" (at 
).  "As 
we enter the 21st century, over a billion people are still deprived 
of basic needs.  Of the 4.8 billion people in developing countries, 
nearly three fifths lack basic sanitation.  Almost a third have no 
access to clean water.  A quarter do not have adequate housing and a 
fifth have no access to modern health services.  In less-developed 
regions, a fifth of children do not attend school to grade 5" (at 
).  What's 
fundamentally preventing us from providing people with means to meet 
their basic needs -- capitalism & imperialism or natural constraints? 
If the former, socialism is the answer.  If the latter, socialism is 
not only not the answer but may exacerbate the environmental problem, 
in that under capitalism the poor can be simply priced out of the 
market (as they have been) but under socialism all are entitled to 
the satisfaction of basic needs (at the very least), the fulfillment 
of which may make more demands upon natural resources (at least in 
the short term) than today, even if global socialism eliminates such 
sources of waste as production of weapons.

Yoshie

Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Carrol Cox]

Mark Jones wrote:
> 
> > 
> And yes, the answer to this is revolutionary communism, and what we need for
> that is first off, for starters, to get our heads out of the sand and *look
> at* the world as it really as and not as we would wish it to be. 


I agree. I also think that your description of the present world is
probably more accurate than (say) Doug's. I also think that politically
that description is worthless -- that focusing on it will not bring us
one step closer to _doing_ anything about it. On the contrary,
emphasizing it will interfere with doing anything about it.

Even when it is obvious to everyone that you are correct, when the bulk
of the population of the "first world" is directly experiencing what you
describe, energy will _still_ not be an issue around which mass
mobilization will be possible. You have your head in the sands in
respect to social-political reality.

Disaster on the whole does not contribute to popular anti-capitalist
mobilization.

Carrol

Future of competition policy Euro-style

[Ian Murray]

First salvo in war on the cartels

Oliver Morgan asks whether the prospect of ending up in jail will
deter businessmen from anti-competitive practices

Sunday June 24, 2001
The Observer

'Our competitors are our friends; our customers are the enemy.' In a
nutshell: a cartel. The words sum up what the Government is up against
in its attempt to make the UK a consumer-friendly, productive economic
powerhouse.
They were spoken by a member of a notorious cartel which manipulated
prices in a market with sales of $1.4 billion, overcharging their
customers by as much as $600 million over three years.

The operation involved a feed additive - called lysine - for animals.
The cartel, comprising the world's five leading producers, doubled the
price. It is to defeat this sort of action that the Government last
week launched a fresh drive to crush cartels as part of a package to
enhance British productivity. It is trying to catch up quickly with
the rest of the world.

Until the 1950s, cartels in goods were commonplace in the UK. In 1956,
the Restrictive Trade Practices Act required all agreements between
companies to be registered, and many cartels, such as yarn weavers and
blanket makers, were quashed. In 1976 this was extended to services.

George Simeonidis of Essex University says these laws were in part
responsible for the wave of mergers in UK industry in the 1960s,
reflecting the fact that cartels had allowed inefficient firms to stay
in business at the expense of consumers. Still there were no punitive
measures.

Then came Labour's 1998 Competition Act, which prohibits
anti-competitive agree ments, including cartels and monopolies, as
well as abuse of dominant market positions, and gives the Office of
Fair Trading powers to tackle them. The measures include raiding
company premises and levying fines of up to 10 per cent of UK
turnover, and brought the UK more in line with the EU.

Last week's initiative aims to boost the OFT and the Competition
Commission further - strengthening their legal roles and making them
more investigatory - as well as tidying up the law. This includes over
hauling 'complex monopoly' provisions in the 1973 Fair Trading Act,
which allow investigation of suspicions that businesses are exploiting
their dominant positions - as in the case with supermarkets.

But the aim is to go further than the EU, which imposes civil
sanctions for cartel activities. The most headline-grabbing detail is
a criminal offence for involvement in cartels, with the possibility of
prison sentences. It also proposes specialist competition courts for
individuals to take civil cases to. Consumer groups will be given the
role of 'super complainers,' in effect acting as scouts for the OFT.

The Government's aim is to reach the 'gold standard' of competition
law - the US, where there are tough criminal and civil sanctions. A
Treasury spokesman said: 'We have studied this very carefully and the
general conclusion was that in the US the possibility of criminal
sanctions for operating in a cartel has a significant impact on
people's mindsets.'

Lawyers and consumer groups have welcomed the proposals. Phil Evans,
principal policy adviser at the Consumers Association says: 'If you
are in a cartel you have to be worried about being found out and
fined. That is a business calculation - will the fine outweigh the
benefits? How much worse if you get found out by the OFT and end up in
the clink.'

The globalisation of markets has meant that cracking cartels is seen
as ever-more vital to governments and authorities around the world.
But pursuing them is notoriously difficult.

In a report last year the OECD says the problem of cartels is much
greater than was thought even recently. But it crucially admits: 'The
vast majority of recent and current hard-core cartels have not been
exposed.'

Cartels may be the most flagrant example of anti-competitive
behaviour, but deciding what one is is difficult. Consumers are used
to seeing oil prices legitimately fixed by an international cartel.
They may feel mobile phone deals or computer accessories are priced
the same, but this does not necessarily mean there is a cartel at
work.

Investigation into cartels often focuses on 'intermediate' goods which
consumers don't directly buy - or services, or bidding for government
contracts.

The OFT defines a cartel as an agreement between two or more companies
that involves price fixing, the rigging of bids for contracts, setting
output restrictions or market sharing - in effect carving up business.
A complex monopoly is different - it does not imply collusion - and
different sanctions apply under a different Act.

In the UK there has been some OFT success in dealing with cartels.
There have been seven cases since 1998. OFT officials say that around
eight investigations have been launched since the Competition Act came
in in March, and that dawn raids are coming in at around two a month.

But not everyone agrees that the new powers will help the OF

Re: Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Louis Proyect]

Carrol Cox:
>My understanding of capitalism is that it _must_ grow, regardless of
>consequences, and that it simply is not worth considering possibilities
>for constraining growth under capitalism, however desirable or even
>absolutely necessary that may be.

Right now I am reading "The Last Ranch" by the late Sam Bingham, which
deals with the disastrous ecological effects of cattle ranching in
Colorado, including desertification. This is the reality that Marxists have
to identify to the masses. Saying that MacDonalds fast food is some kind of
"conquest" of the working class because it makes meat cheap and eliminates
the need to prepare meals is just the kind of thing that we have no
business saying. The fact that so many young people associate Marxism with
this kind of vulgar "modernization" explains why the anti-globalization
protesters often call themselves anarchists. While anarchism attracts the
young, we are ending up with a movement that revolves around bizarre sects
or annual conferences attracting the enlarged prostate brigade. At the last
Socialist Scholars Conference, the last I'll ever go to, young people got
up during the discussion period of a talk given by Bogdan Denitch on the
"future of the left" and told him that he was completely out of touch.
Denitch's social democratic business-as-usual left-Gompers trade unionism
is based on the notion that working people in the USA should have a bigger
slice of the pie, the rest of the world be damned. As long as Marxism is
perceived in this manner, we are in bad shape. As Marxists, our message is
not just about "more". It is about equity. Most people in the imperialist
countries have to understand that the life-style we "enjoy" is
unsustainable. In exchange for a more modest life-style, we will live in
world that enjoys peace and respect for the individual. If people in the
imperialist countries can not rally to this message, then they (we) deserve
the fate that awaits us: war, urban violence, cancer epidemics, drug
addiction, alcoholism, FOX TV, and prozac.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Carrol Cox]

Mark Jones wrote:
> 
> > 
> It would be more useful to address the issue I am raising, rather than going
> into denial,

Mark, If I were chained to a tree, it would do me no good to give my
attention to the fact that a flood was approaching. My main concern
would be to unchain myself, and then and only then would it be
worthwhile to consider whether or not a flood was approaching.

My understanding of capitalism is that it _must_ grow, regardless of
consequences, and that it simply is not worth considering possibilities
for constraining growth under capitalism, however desirable or even
absolutely necessary that may be.

Capitalism's only redeeming feature is that it offers the possibility
(however remote) -- not certainty, not even probability, simply the
_possibility_ -- of socialism. And socialism, and only socialism, would
create the _possibility_ -- not certainty, not even probability -- of
addressing, _in practice_, the issues you raise.

Until you can link those issues to concrete possibilities of political
organization for socialism, addressing those issues constitutes a naive
utopianism, a refusal to face the very facts that you wish us to
address. To focus on them now would be as absurd as it would have been
in (say) 1750, to devote all physical research to the development of
petrochemicals. You want to deflect us from doing anything about the
concerns that you incessantly raise. YOu want us, instead, to wring our
hands and scream.

Carrol

Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Chris Burford]

At 24/06/01 11:19 +, you wrote:
> > Date:  Sat, 23 Jun 2001 17:52:05 +0100
> > From:  Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > But fundamentally the enemy is not a policy: it is the blind workings of
> > global finance capital. That is why we need regulation not de-regulation.
> > This may not come through the reform of Bretton Woods organisations, 
> but it
> > needs to come from somewhere, of a global economy that is a highly complex
> > social structure, but is privately owned by finance capital.
>
>Chris, the only vague sense I have that "regulation" may be on
>the agenda of international elites is the UN Financing for
>Development conference which Ernesto Zedillo is chairing early next
>year in Mexico, and whose main economic advisor is John Williamson,
>who came up with the term Washington Consensus. So there's absolutely
>no hope there at all.

Your factual knowledge will be better than mine, but I am still reluctant 
to take your depressing word for it.

a) there are contradictions between imperialist powers and between finance 
capitalist companies that tend towards the need for stabilisation of the 
system. If Brazil and Argentina really do crash, that will be unsettling.

b) there remains the global problem of overproduction and limited 
purchasing power

c) the agenda set by the progressive campaigning organisations requires a 
global fund for AIDS management and some alternative to regular cycles of 
debt forgiving.

d) all the finance capitalists need the market in energy managed and 
stabilised.



>Or am I missing something? Even the new Giddens/Hutton book with
>chapters by Soros and Volcker can't come up with anything really
>convincing, that is going to be on the real world agenda.
>
>We've got quite good progressive momentum, by the way, behind the
>argument -- made by Keynes forcefully in that 1933 Yale Review
>article -- that aside from trade finance, we must stick as much as
>possible to local sources of development finance.


I see the argument and it should be a reasonable one. But it does not 
accept, as I do, that there are powerful centripetal forces sucking capital 
in and centralising it in the metropolitan heartlands. There has got to be 
a mechanism for pumping it out. (I thought that was one of the correct 
ideas that Soros had supported.)


>No need, we want to
>posit very strongly, for a WB or IMF given the havoc that they've
>caused, the need for Third World debt repudiation (paid for in part
>by drawing down BWI capital), their refusal to truly reform, and the
>hard/soft currency translation problem. (If you want I'll send you
>the paper offlist.)

  Unfortunately I would not be able to do your paper justice off list.

I think it is very helpful you weighing in on this list, sharing 
information and arguing your corner as effectively as you do, (if not 
always totally convincingly). This helps to stimulate informed debate.

Campaigning for global reforms BTW does not presume that any capitalist 
institution will "truly" reform. It may however give ground.

Chris Burford

London

Competition in drug manufacture

[Chris Burford]

 From the Observer (UK) courtesy of the drugs lobby:


In the past decade, Europe's share of the 
world medicines market has slumped from 32% to 22%. America's is up from 
31% to 43%.

'Our industry is being destroyed,' said Tom McKillop, chief executive of 
the London-based drug giant AstraZeneca. 'The Americans are wiping us out.'

Chris Burford

London

Fwd: Darwin was innocent--but wrong. Debriefing Historical Darwinism

[Lastmanthere]

In a message dated 6/24/2001 4:34:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Nemonemini 
writes:


Subject: Darwin was innocent--but wrong about history. Debriefing Historical 
Darwinism

Comment on article below in Biomednet, "Darwin was innocent"
LINK: http://news.bmn.com/news/story?day=010622&story=1

The Eonic Effect, Debriefing Darwinian Historical Theory

Darwinists just don't get it. The heroic instant replay of the Wilberforce 
debate is getting a bit tiresome, and this genre is running on empty. 
Huxley won the debate, but not the argument. In any case, Huxley changed 
his story on evolution and ethics, later in life. 
Noone is complaining about trying to apply the idea of evolution to social 
science.  But the attempt to carry out this feat in Darwinian terms always 
results in the glaring discrepancies between Darwin's theory and the hard 
reality to be explained. We cannot pretend anymore natural selection is the 
truly significant factor in the complex evolution of man, let alone the 
total explanation. It is not surprising then that social scientists sense 
that something is wrong with this Darwinist idee fixe of trying to fit 
human anthropology into a bed of procrustes. But they are hampered by their 
own methodological assumptions, and the assumption so strictly enforced is 
that the basic theory is correct, which it almost certainly is not. But 
whatever the case with Darwinian accounts in general, they fall out of 
range in the realm of history, and that includes the derivative theories of 
social evolution that are based on Darwin's basic theory. The gung-ho 
'let's take the social sciences' rife in the more cocky sociobiologists is 
simply vacuous.  
The problem is that we have more evidence of social evolution, direct, 
visible evidence, than we do of earlier evolution. (This shouldn't be a 
problem! )The point is to understand it. And noone can produce a theory, 
because the complexity is overwhelming, and doesn't correspond to what 
students of Darwinism expect to find. It is more convincing to make claims 
that noone can refute about unobserved times. Natural selection is visibly 
destructive if not counter-evolutionary in many crucial historical 
instances, where macroevolution must compensate for the destructive force 
of selectionism. The imposition of this wrong thinking has gone on too 
long. Noone seems to suspect just how far off they are. And the result is 
the perfect case of 'bad cultural software', the reason for the resistance 
to this unsound and ultimately dangerous methodology. 

Creationists perhaps have confused the issue. But at least they are aware 
that there is a problem and that they are under no obligation to take the 
theory as established. And they are often an excuse for Darwinists to 
denounce all criticism. No assumptions about transcendentalism are required 
to see that Darwinism doesn't work as an historical theory. 

The mismatch of cultural with biological evolution never seems to dawn on 
anyone in the scientific field. "We've put a man on the moon, how could we 
be complete idiots on the subject of evolution?"   Now sociobiologists are 
bringing their unique form of one-dimensional stupidity to historical 
study, claims about ethics, selection, and the complete mythology of 
game-theory altruism. This view is highly promoted, but fictive, and 
demonstrably so, looking at history. We see the evolution of ethics, for 
example, in direct fashion, and it isn't amenable to natural selection, 
reductionism, numerical models, or economic ideology. 

We should grant that the 'evolution of civilization' as higher culture is 
not easily compared to, say, the 'evolution of dinosaurs'. But the point 
remains,  a theory of cultural evolution must deal with the evidence of 
history, and there we see the evolution of consciousness, values, 
religions, philosophy, the arts, political forms, an  indeed science 
itself, and these have a demonstrable pattern of emergence (higlighted by 
so-called the eonic effect) that does not conform to hypotheses of natural 
selection.  It simply does not. And we have never observed in proper 
fashion at the level of millennia or centuries the fact of natural 
selection in the descent of man able to produce the truly distinct advances 
of brain, intelligence, culture, or consciousness, and certainly not at the 
level of centuries, the latter point is crucial. We can catch a glimpse of 
macroevolution as soon as we have properly mapped the data of real 
transformation at close range, and that doesn't exist before the invention 
of writing. 
The extrapolation of speculative fictions to the descent of man is one of 
the most unjustified steps in the whole of Darwinism, as both Wallace and 
Huxley began to suspect.  The whole Darwin scheme is simply a paradigm out 
of control here. And yet, the point simply fails to register with 
Darwinists. This ostrich regime would be a form of humour if the matter 
were funny. But the reduction of all forms of 

Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark writes:

>This means that chronic energy crisis is
>certain to mutate into energy famine, cruelly frustrating any residual hopes
>entertained by the South African masses.
>
>The problem of debt, which you raise about Zim, is simply a red-herring. In
>context, debt, though not trivial, is symptomatic rather than causal. Your
>hopes about renewables are equally illusory.

What's the point of arguing for revolutionary socialism, if the 
primary problem today is caused not by social relations (which can be 
changed through the transition to socialism) but by dependence of 
industrialization upon fossil fuels (which the transition to 
socialism may not change & in fact may increase for the time being) & 
if renewable energy sources are not practical solutions?  What's 
exactly are you arguing for politically if not radical population 
reduction a la Dave Foreman?  Global deindustrialization?

Yoshie

Fungus

[Ian Murray]

USDA Wheat Disease Reaction Faulted
Growers Say the Spread of Karnal Bunt Fungus Could Be Crippling

By Roxana Hegeman
Associated Press
Sunday, June 24, 2001; Page A02


ANTHONY, Kan. -- Bureaucratic bungling by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture has allowed the spread of a plant disease that could prove
as devastating to wheat exports as foot-and-mouth disease has been to
European livestock, farm groups said.

Wheat growers in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas say the USDA responded too
slowly to an outbreak of Karnal bunt at the southernmost edge of the
nation's wheat belt just as harvest season was getting underway.

Karnal bunt is a fungus that is harmless to people but sours the taste
and smell of flour made from infected kernels. It also slightly cuts
production in infected fields. The disease's main impact is economic:
80 countries ban imports of wheat grown in infected regions.

That could be as crippling for American growers, who last year
produced nearly $6 billion of wheat, as would be the discovery of
foot-and-mouth disease in U.S. livestock, said Brett Myers, executive
vice president of the Kansas Wheat Growers Association.

Europe's foot-and-mouth outbreak has cost millions of dollars for the
slaughter of some 3 million animals and a ban on exports.

The suspected Karnal bunt contamination was first reported to the USDA
on May 25, said Michael Bryant, co-owner of the elevator in Olney,
Tex., that found it.

But it was seven days before the USDA's Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service (APHIS) confirmed the finding, and 15 days passed
before it quarantined the first affected counties.

"Their reaction to the situation was not as timely as we would have
liked," said Kansas Agriculture Secretary Jamie Clover Adams.

Charles P. Schwalbe, deputy director of APHIS's plant protection and
quarantine program, said his agency sent the sample away for testing
at a national lab instead of using a local one to make sure it had
accurate and legally defensible information before taking action.

"The decisions that emerge . . . mean livelihood to people from time
to time," Schwalbe said.

The Karnal bunt found in Throckmorton and Young counties in Texas were
the first confirmed cases in the nation's wheat belt, an area
extending from central Texas to Alberta, Canada.

On June 19, concern grew as the USDA added neighboring Archer County
to the quarantined area, followed by Baylor County the next day. One
elevator has also been quarantined in Fort Worth, about 150 miles
southeast.

Karnal bunt, which originated in India, was first detected in the
United States in 1996 in Arizona and California. It has since spread
to southern Texas and New Mexico.

In Arizona, the amount of land used to grow wheat dropped almost 50
percent after a quarantine was imposed in 1996 in four counties,
according to the Arizona Agricultural Statistics Service.

But Arizona is a minor durum wheat producer, and U.S. wheat growers
have reassured overseas buyers that the disease was far from the
nation's major winter wheat producing region. Winter wheat, which is
planted in the fall and harvested in the spring, accounts for about
two-thirds of U.S. wheat and is used primarily for bread. Durum wheat
is used for pasta.

With half the winter wheat going to the export market, the discovery
of the disease at the southernmost edge of the nation's breadbasket
just as the wheat harvest was moving north sent shock waves through
the wheat belt.

State regulators feared that custom harvesters -- cutters who follow
the ripening wheat harvest from Texas to the Canadian border -- would
spread the fungus.

Oklahoma, just 50 miles from the two Texas counties where the disease
was first discovered, immediately closed its borders and ordered
combines coming into the state to be blocked and inspected. Harvesters
from infected areas without a USDA certification of cleanliness were
turned back.

"We need to preserve our heritage and our wheat industry. The spread
of Karnal bunt in Texas should be considered a threat to Kansas
wheat," said Kansas Gov. Bill Graves (R). Kansas is the nation's
biggest wheat producer, with a $1 billion crop and nearly 10 million
planted acres.

Rep. Frank D. Lucas (R-Okla.) has been pursuing the issue after a
request from growers for a congressional investigation into the USDA's
handling. His office said he has not decided whether to ask for an
inquiry.

Re: Re: capitalism's expansion vs. limits

[Rob Schaap]

Speaking of which, Australians are hitting their credit cards ever harder, are
paying interest rates that beggar belief, are no doubt partly seduced by
desperate marketing but also obliged by necessity (which consideration never
gets a mention in this connection), and are being further helped to discipline
themselves by new cash advance fees (what is to rob a bank, compared to
founding one, eh?).

Anyway, just another datum for the doomwatch ...

Cheers,
Rob.

 Card cash advances hit $10b

*Sunday Herald Sun* 24 June 01

  OUR love affair with credit has reached new
heights with $10 billion withdrawn last year in cash advances on credit
cards.

  Credit card cash advances - despite interest
rates of about 16 per cent - jumped 45 per cent in two years.

  Australians withdrew $809 million in cash
advances on their cards in April, compared with $559 million in April 1998,
according to latest Reserve Bank figures.

  In the year to April, $9.8 billion in cash was
withdrawn on credit cards, up from $6.6 billion in 1998.

  The average cash advance was $263.82 - a sharp rise
of almost 20 per cent in three years from $223 - while the average credit card
purchase was $106.67.

  The rise in credit card advances reflected a
recent surge in credit card spending - fuelled by frequent-flyer programs -
and the familiarity and convenience of ATMs, the director of credit card
information firm MWE consulting, Mr Mike Ebstein said.

  Consumer groups warn that a credit card cash
advance is one of the most expensive ways to get cash and suggest EFTPOS
withdrawals from their bank accounts instead, if these are an option.

  "If you are getting a lot of cash advances out, it
is costing you a lot of money and it is not in your best interests to manage
your finances that way," Australian Consumers' Association finance policy
officer, Ms Louise Petschler, said.

  ANZ last month imposed a 1.5 per cent fee on cash advances.

[exyualista] Fw (en) Autonomia and the Origin of the Black Bloc

[Michael Pugliese]

   For the Hardt/Negri thread.
M.Pugliese
 http://inje.iskon.hr/pipermail/ex-yu-a-lista/2001-June/009505.html

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Patrick Bond]

> Date:  Sat, 23 Jun 2001 17:52:05 +0100
> From:  Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> But fundamentally the enemy is not a policy: it is the blind workings of 
> global finance capital. That is why we need regulation not de-regulation. 
> This may not come through the reform of Bretton Woods organisations, but it 
> needs to come from somewhere, of a global economy that is a highly complex 
> social structure, but is privately owned by finance capital.

Chris, the only vague sense I have that "regulation" may be on 
the agenda of international elites is the UN Financing for 
Development conference which Ernesto Zedillo is chairing early next 
year in Mexico, and whose main economic advisor is John Williamson, 
who came up with the term Washington Consensus. So there's absolutely 
no hope there at all.

Or am I missing something? Even the new Giddens/Hutton book with 
chapters by Soros and Volcker can't come up with anything really 
convincing, that is going to be on the real world agenda.

We've got quite good progressive momentum, by the way, behind the 
argument -- made by Keynes forcefully in that 1933 Yale Review 
article -- that aside from trade finance, we must stick as much as 
possible to local sources of development finance. No need, we want to 
posit very strongly, for a WB or IMF given the havoc that they've 
caused, the need for Third World debt repudiation (paid for in part 
by drawing down BWI capital), their refusal to truly reform, and the 
hard/soft currency translation problem. (If you want I'll send you 
the paper offlist.)