Fwd: [stop-imf] Ending Global Apartheid: Teach In for Action on the World Bank and IMF

[Chris Burford]

Quite right that following Genoa, there should be an intensified 
theoretical criticisms of global capitalism.

But although there is the argument for reparations to Africa, including for 
apartheid and the wars that apartheid South Africa caused over half the 
continent, but does anyone know how the organisers of this teach in, extend 
the concept of apartheid to talk of "global apartheid"?

Chris Burford

London


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>Subject: [stop-imf] Ending Global Apartheid: Teach In for Action on the 
>World Bank and
>  IMF
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>Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 13:10:52 -0400 (EDT)
>
>ENDING GLOBAL APARTHEID:
>TEACH IN FOR ACTION ON THE WORLD BANK AND IMF
>Washington, DC, Sept. 27-29, 2001
>http://www.essentialaction.org/wbimf/
>
>During the Joint Annual Meetings of the World Bank and International
>Monetary Fund (IMF) this September, tens of thousands of people will
>converge in Washington, DC to be a part of the growing Global
>Justice Movement. They will be calling for an end to the policies
>and practices of the IMF and World Bank that have caused  widespread
>poverty, inequality, and suffering among the world's peoples and
>damage to the world's environment.
>
>As part of this movement, Fifty Years is Enough, Jobs with Justice,
>Global Exchange, Essential Action and World Bank Bonds
>Boycott/Center for Economic Justice are organizing a Teach In on the
>global impact of the World Bank and IMF.
>
>Thursday, Sept. 27, 7 pm, Opening Event, National Baptist Memorial
>Church, 16th St and Columbia. Sept. 28 and 29, Plenaries all day, at
>National Baptist and Casa del Pueblo Methodist Church, 1459 Columbia
>Rd., NW, Washington, DC
>
>Plenary sessions will address the true global impact of the World
>Bank and IMF (on labor, environment, debt, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and
>more). The Teach In will also discuss active national and
>international campaigns against these institutions. Speakers will be
>primarily from the Global South to discuss their experiences and
>campaigns first hand in countries such as India, the Philippines,
>South Africa, Senegal, Brazil, and many more.
>
>Tickets: Thursday evening opening Event: $10; Friday and Saturday:
>$25; Three day ticket: $30
>
>For latest information, schedules, speakers lists and to buy tickets
>please visit www.essentialaction.org or contact Monica Wilson at
>202-387-8030.
>
>
>
>___
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A long way to go still.......

[Ian Murray]

[Financial Times]
[Contact info at the bottom...]

A poor case for globalisation
The world's leaders are failing to address legitimate questions raised
by protesters about the effects of global capitalism
Published: August 16 2001 18:46GMT | Last Updated: August 16 2001
18:53GMT



The protesters are winning. They are winning on the streets. Before
too long they will be winning the argument. Globalisation is fast
becoming a cause without credible champions.

This week we saw the Washington consensus make way for Washington's
retreat. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are
scaling back the annual jamboree at their headquarters in the US
capital. It seems that the US has had its fill of angry protests a few
blocks from the White House.

It's a nice irony. The US can count itself author, architect and
principal beneficiary of globalisation. Guided by the US Treasury, the
IMF sets the rules of the multilateral game. Now both are bowing
before the critics of liberal capitalism.

Sure, no great harm will come of the IMF's decision to meet over two
days rather than a week. The opulence of the event has always jarred.
Happily, a tight timetable should deflate a few egos and shorten the
speeches. We shall not miss the save-the-world rhetoric of all those
finance ministers. Who cares if the champagne stays corked, the
canapes uneaten?

It is, though, more serious than that. The organised uproar and
violence that the anti-globalisation protests brought to Seattle back
in the autumn of 1999 have now become a permanent backdrop. The
numbers of protesters have swollen. Italy has still to recover from
the - albeit mostly self-inflicted - wounds of the Group of Eight
summit in Genoa. Belgium, the current president of the European Union,
fears similar chaos at December's Laaken summit of EU leaders. The
political kudos that once came with playing host to such gatherings
has been replaced by the fear that all they bring now is a bad press.

Yet the response to the protests has been largely one of spluttering
indignation. Instead of listening, even learning, the politicians have
lectured. The knee-jerk response has been to tar all the critics with
the brush of thuggery. The tone is hectoring. Liberal markets are good
for us, all of us. Anyone who says otherwise is a subversive or a
fool. Free trade is an unalloyed blessing, for poor countries as well
as rich. The multinational behemoths bring precious investment to
developing nations.

There are important truths in all these propositions. It is obvious,
too, that the counter case is often shot through with confusions and
contradictions. These are people, after all, who are waging a global
war against globalisation. The anarchists have no need of consistency.
But the broader coalition often seems just as inchoate.

Non-governmental organisations want the multinationals tamed.
Governments must reclaim the sovereignty lost to unaccountable and
unscrupulous business executives. The IMF, the World Trade
Organisation and the rest are agents of a new imperialism. And yet
then we hear the protesters call for new global rules to protect the
environment and prevent exploitation of labour. Self-interested trade
unions stand with self-proclaimed idealists in demanding that rich
nations protect jobs by imposing their own labour standards on poor
ones. Somewhere in all this there is a cry for a different set of
values. It is often hard to find.

But it is there. And it explains why the protesters are winning. Their
constituency stretches well beyond the mostly young activists we see
on the streets. Many who abhor their tactics share their unease.
Globalisation is unsettling, for the comfortable middle classes as
much as for the politically disaffected. The threats, real and
imagined, to national and local cultures are widely felt. So, too, are
the unnerving shifts in the boundaries between governments, business
and multilateral institutions. As consumers we are stronger; as
citizens, weaker.

International economic integration does generate wealth. It also
redistributes it. There are losers as well as winners. In good times,
unfettered capital markets funnel rich-nation finance to the poor
countries that need it. In bad times they carry the curse of
contagion. Shareholder value is a fine concept for those who own those
giant corporations. But what of those who merely toil for them? As
Stanley Fischer, the thoughtful, though soon-to-depart, deputy
managing director of the IMF, has said, free trade can indeed make
everyone better off. But that does not mean that everyone is made
better off.

What it does mean is that it is not enough for political leaders to
dust off the economic textbooks, recite a few mantras about
comparative advantage and the division of labour and expect the rest
of us to applaud. The case for liberal markets is not self-evident.

What is required from advanced nations is a mixture of humility and
leadership. (These two, incidentally, are not mutually 

Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[Ian Murray]

> > When Harry Truman ordered the Atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan,
I don't
> > think he "desired" that Japanese people die, but he knew as
certain as the
> > sun rises in the morning that people would die.  In the historical
court of
> > moral inquiry, we can characterize Truman's conduct as anything
from heroic
> > to mass murder, but a determination that Truman did not commit
mass murder
> > cannot turn simply on whether or not Truman "desired" that anybody
die as
> > opposed to merely knowing that people would die -- his guilt or
innocence is
> > determined by the legitimacy of the justification for the act.
Similarly,
> > whether or not Stalin is guilty of the mass murder of Ukrainians
cannot
> > simply turn on whether he "desired" that people die, but whether:
(1) he
> > knew or should have known the consequences of his actions, and (2)
there was
> > no overriding justification for his actions.
> >
> > David Shemano
=
For an excellent exploration of ethics dilemmas at the boundaries of
professional roles or institutionally sanctioned offices, see "Ethics
for Adversaries: The Morality of Roles in Public and Professional
Life" by Arthur Applebaum. Legitimacy of justification sounds
redundant and on the edge of a regress argument.

Ian

Re: RE: Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[Michael Perelman]

You make a good point.

On Thu, Aug 16, 2001 at 10:10:43PM -0700, David Shemano wrote:
> Michael --
> 
> You are being extremely defensive.  I will not and cannot argue about how
> many people Stalin killed, because I don't know and agree with you that such
> a discussion is likely to produce more heat than light.  What I am
> interested in is why Prof. Rosser distinguishes the deaths of people that
> Stalin indisputably "desired" to kill, and the deaths of people that Stalin
> indisputably knew would die as a result from the enaction of his directives.
> It is an entirely different question and, I would presume, apolitical.  If
> you, or Prof. Rosser, think there are political implications of the
> distinction, that is very interesting and I would like to hear it.
> 
> When Harry Truman ordered the Atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan, I don't
> think he "desired" that Japanese people die, but he knew as certain as the
> sun rises in the morning that people would die.  In the historical court of
> moral inquiry, we can characterize Truman's conduct as anything from heroic
> to mass murder, but a determination that Truman did not commit mass murder
> cannot turn simply on whether or not Truman "desired" that anybody die as
> opposed to merely knowing that people would die -- his guilt or innocence is
> determined by the legitimacy of the justification for the act.  Similarly,
> whether or not Stalin is guilty of the mass murder of Ukrainians cannot
> simply turn on whether he "desired" that people die, but whether: (1) he
> knew or should have known the consequences of his actions, and (2) there was
> no overriding justification for his actions.
> 
> David Shemano
> 
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael Perelman
> Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 9:30 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:15958] Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?
> 
> 
> David, have been over this many times here.  "Death accounting" is a very
> subjective game.  Suppose that I were to count all the people "killed" by
> the
> US.  Poverty kills.  Pollution kills.  Unsafe working conditions kill.
> Besides
> the domestic quota of such deaths, you could include all the deaths created
> abroad by the US promoting war and terror in Angola, East Timor, Vietnam
> .
> Greenspan raising interest rates causes deaths.
> 
> We could go on and on defending and criticising all of these sources of
> death.
> Those of us in the US are in a fair position to debate such matters since we
> have some knowledge about them.
> 
> In the case of Soviet "death accounting," we are not experts.  We can only
> rely
> on contentious secondary sources.  So the debates here on this subject have
> been
> more heat than light.  For that reason, I don't think that it serves any
> useful
> purpose.
> 
> David Shemano wrote:
> 
> > Prof. Rosser responded:
> >
> > << >   Guess you did not read what I wrote very
> > carefully (this is why Michael Perelman did not
> > want this thread to start).
> >I was clearly exonerating (more or less) the
> > Communist leaders of "intending" the deaths of
> > those who died in the famines.  I did note that
> > some have accused Stalin of desiring the deaths
> > of some of those (Ukrainian kulaks) who died in
> > the collectivization famine of the early 1930s.  I did
> > not pass judgment on whether or not he actually did.
> > This seems to be a matter of dispute, and those who
> > have most vigorously made that claim have been
> > right-wing Ukrainian nationalists.
> >  Bottom line is that the leaders clearly desired the
> > deaths of those who were executed.  Therefore they
> > are guilty of those deaths.  Their guilt in the matter of
> > those who died in the famines is much less in my mind,
> > although arguably not totally nonexistent.
> > Barkley Rosser>>>
> >
> > I read very carefully what you wrote.  I am simply trying to understand
> your
> > ethical reasoning.  You are taking the position that it is more morally
> > reprehensible to cause a death if you "desire" to cause the death as
> opposed
> > to being indifferent to the fact that you know death will result from your
> > actions.  In fact, you now go so far at to characterize the level of guilt
> > as "arguably not totally nonexistent," which I suppose can be redefined as
> > "mostly nonexistent" or "hardly existent."
> >
> > I, in turn, responded that the common law does not distinguish the two for
> > purposes of legal culpability.  Now, notwithstanding that I am a lawyer, I
> > understand that legal definitions do not define morality.  However, there
> is
> > wisdom in the common law definition, for precisely the reason under
> > discussion.  Neither you nor I can no for certain what was going on in
> > Stalin's head -- all we can do is look at his actions, the consequences of
> > his actions, and then make a judgment.
> >
> > So I ask again, why do you believe the deaths sho

RE: Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[David Shemano]

Michael --

You are being extremely defensive.  I will not and cannot argue about how
many people Stalin killed, because I don't know and agree with you that such
a discussion is likely to produce more heat than light.  What I am
interested in is why Prof. Rosser distinguishes the deaths of people that
Stalin indisputably "desired" to kill, and the deaths of people that Stalin
indisputably knew would die as a result from the enaction of his directives.
It is an entirely different question and, I would presume, apolitical.  If
you, or Prof. Rosser, think there are political implications of the
distinction, that is very interesting and I would like to hear it.

When Harry Truman ordered the Atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan, I don't
think he "desired" that Japanese people die, but he knew as certain as the
sun rises in the morning that people would die.  In the historical court of
moral inquiry, we can characterize Truman's conduct as anything from heroic
to mass murder, but a determination that Truman did not commit mass murder
cannot turn simply on whether or not Truman "desired" that anybody die as
opposed to merely knowing that people would die -- his guilt or innocence is
determined by the legitimacy of the justification for the act.  Similarly,
whether or not Stalin is guilty of the mass murder of Ukrainians cannot
simply turn on whether he "desired" that people die, but whether: (1) he
knew or should have known the consequences of his actions, and (2) there was
no overriding justification for his actions.

David Shemano



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael Perelman
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 9:30 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:15958] Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?


David, have been over this many times here.  "Death accounting" is a very
subjective game.  Suppose that I were to count all the people "killed" by
the
US.  Poverty kills.  Pollution kills.  Unsafe working conditions kill.
Besides
the domestic quota of such deaths, you could include all the deaths created
abroad by the US promoting war and terror in Angola, East Timor, Vietnam
.
Greenspan raising interest rates causes deaths.

We could go on and on defending and criticising all of these sources of
death.
Those of us in the US are in a fair position to debate such matters since we
have some knowledge about them.

In the case of Soviet "death accounting," we are not experts.  We can only
rely
on contentious secondary sources.  So the debates here on this subject have
been
more heat than light.  For that reason, I don't think that it serves any
useful
purpose.

David Shemano wrote:

> Prof. Rosser responded:
>
> <<   Guess you did not read what I wrote very
> carefully (this is why Michael Perelman did not
> want this thread to start).
>I was clearly exonerating (more or less) the
> Communist leaders of "intending" the deaths of
> those who died in the famines.  I did note that
> some have accused Stalin of desiring the deaths
> of some of those (Ukrainian kulaks) who died in
> the collectivization famine of the early 1930s.  I did
> not pass judgment on whether or not he actually did.
> This seems to be a matter of dispute, and those who
> have most vigorously made that claim have been
> right-wing Ukrainian nationalists.
>  Bottom line is that the leaders clearly desired the
> deaths of those who were executed.  Therefore they
> are guilty of those deaths.  Their guilt in the matter of
> those who died in the famines is much less in my mind,
> although arguably not totally nonexistent.
> Barkley Rosser>>>
>
> I read very carefully what you wrote.  I am simply trying to understand
your
> ethical reasoning.  You are taking the position that it is more morally
> reprehensible to cause a death if you "desire" to cause the death as
opposed
> to being indifferent to the fact that you know death will result from your
> actions.  In fact, you now go so far at to characterize the level of guilt
> as "arguably not totally nonexistent," which I suppose can be redefined as
> "mostly nonexistent" or "hardly existent."
>
> I, in turn, responded that the common law does not distinguish the two for
> purposes of legal culpability.  Now, notwithstanding that I am a lawyer, I
> understand that legal definitions do not define morality.  However, there
is
> wisdom in the common law definition, for precisely the reason under
> discussion.  Neither you nor I can no for certain what was going on in
> Stalin's head -- all we can do is look at his actions, the consequences of
> his actions, and then make a judgment.
>
> So I ask again, why do you believe the deaths should be treated
differently?
>
> David Shemano

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the Free Trade Area of the Americas

[Michael Perelman]

>From the Electronic Frontier Foundation

 While Russian graduate student Dmitry Sklyarov potentially faces
five
   years in prison under the first criminal prosecution of a
   controversial new US law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA)
   passed at the request of Hollywood in 1998, its backers are
now busily
   exporting overseas its dangerous legal theories of excessive
copyright
   protection at the price of civil liberties. Worldwide public
   intervention is immediately necessary to restore freedom of
speech as
   a value promoted by free societies.

   The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) treaty process,
which is
   under executive power, works to establish trade agreements
between 34
   countries in the Western hemisphere including the US. FTAA
   nation-signatories pass legislation in each of their national
forums
   that conforms with the treaty's principles. Currently the
group is
   negotiating language to include in an international treaty
between the
   34 countries that deals with enacting new copyright rules,
among other
   issues. The FTAA organization is considering treaty language
that
   mandates nations pass anti-circumvention provisions similar to
the
   DMCA, except the FTAA treaty grants even greater control to
publishers
   than the DMCA.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Re: Inquiry on Roy Prosterman,U.S. G. "land reform" expert

[Michael Perelman]

I recall that he was part of the strategic hamlet policy.

Michael Pugliese wrote:

>The Mueller land reform list cite madfe me remember, Prosterman. He was a
> US Embassy land reform expert in S. Vietnam in the 60's. Went on to do the
> same in El Salvador in the 80's with
> USG $ funneled through NED and AIFLD.
> Any stories to tell? I think Perelman mentioned him once here.
> Michael Pugliese
>
> CLICK THE CACHED COPY! Kewl, Java enabled Social Network Diagram...
> http://www.google.com/search?q=Prosterman+PIR+
> Roy L Prosterman
> ... The names below are mentioned on the listed pages
> with the name PROSTERMAN ROY L. ... PROSTERMAN ROY L. ...
> www.pir.org/main4/Roy_L_Prosterman.html - 31k - Cached - Similar pages

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[Michael Perelman]

David, have been over this many times here.  "Death accounting" is a very
subjective game.  Suppose that I were to count all the people "killed" by the
US.  Poverty kills.  Pollution kills.  Unsafe working conditions kill.  Besides
the domestic quota of such deaths, you could include all the deaths created
abroad by the US promoting war and terror in Angola, East Timor, Vietnam .
Greenspan raising interest rates causes deaths.

We could go on and on defending and criticising all of these sources of death.
Those of us in the US are in a fair position to debate such matters since we
have some knowledge about them.

In the case of Soviet "death accounting," we are not experts.  We can only rely
on contentious secondary sources.  So the debates here on this subject have been
more heat than light.  For that reason, I don't think that it serves any useful
purpose.

David Shemano wrote:

> Prof. Rosser responded:
>
> <<   Guess you did not read what I wrote very
> carefully (this is why Michael Perelman did not
> want this thread to start).
>I was clearly exonerating (more or less) the
> Communist leaders of "intending" the deaths of
> those who died in the famines.  I did note that
> some have accused Stalin of desiring the deaths
> of some of those (Ukrainian kulaks) who died in
> the collectivization famine of the early 1930s.  I did
> not pass judgment on whether or not he actually did.
> This seems to be a matter of dispute, and those who
> have most vigorously made that claim have been
> right-wing Ukrainian nationalists.
>  Bottom line is that the leaders clearly desired the
> deaths of those who were executed.  Therefore they
> are guilty of those deaths.  Their guilt in the matter of
> those who died in the famines is much less in my mind,
> although arguably not totally nonexistent.
> Barkley Rosser>>>
>
> I read very carefully what you wrote.  I am simply trying to understand your
> ethical reasoning.  You are taking the position that it is more morally
> reprehensible to cause a death if you "desire" to cause the death as opposed
> to being indifferent to the fact that you know death will result from your
> actions.  In fact, you now go so far at to characterize the level of guilt
> as "arguably not totally nonexistent," which I suppose can be redefined as
> "mostly nonexistent" or "hardly existent."
>
> I, in turn, responded that the common law does not distinguish the two for
> purposes of legal culpability.  Now, notwithstanding that I am a lawyer, I
> understand that legal definitions do not define morality.  However, there is
> wisdom in the common law definition, for precisely the reason under
> discussion.  Neither you nor I can no for certain what was going on in
> Stalin's head -- all we can do is look at his actions, the consequences of
> his actions, and then make a judgment.
>
> So I ask again, why do you believe the deaths should be treated differently?
>
> David Shemano

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

NYT on Marxist Journal Shutdown...

[Stephen E Philion]

NYT
AUG 16, 2001
Chinese Censors Shut Down Marxist Journal Critical of Jiang
By ERIK ECKHOLM

BEIJING, Aug. 15 — Censors have shut down a small but influential Marxist journal for 
attacking President Jiang Zemin's plan to bring capitalists into the Communist Party, 
a sign that Mr. Jiang will brook little dissent from any quarter as he tries to cement 
his place in the pantheon of great leaders.

The closing in recent weeks of "Pursuit of Truth," was Mr. Jiang's most open move yet 
against hard- line Marxists, many of them elderly revolutionary veterans, who question 
his plan to broaden a party that by its Constitution is the "vanguard of the working 
class."

Late next year, Mr. Jiang is expected to give up his post as general secretary of the 
Communist Party and, in 2003, his term as president of China expires.

As the transition approaches, party insiders say, Mr. Jiang is trying both to define 
his place in history and to adapt the increasingly clumsy methods of Communism to a 
world of social and technological complexity.

In a series of speeches over the last year, Mr. Jiang has laid out what the official 
media describe as a major new advance in Marxist theory, building on the core 
principles of Marx as amended by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

His theory, called the "three represents," asserts that the party must represent 
"advanced productive forces, advanced Chinese culture and the fundamental interests of 
the majority."

Mr. Jiang made the practical meaning clear in a speech on July 1, when he announced 
that newly prominent groups such as private-company owners, high-tech innovators and 
managers in foreign businesses were helping to build Chinese socialism, and so should 
be welcomed into the party.

Mr. Jiang and his supporters plan to incorporate the new theory into the party 
constitution over the coming year, one party official said, "so public criticism is 
especially unwelcome now."

For many ordinary Chinese, who pay little heed to ideology, the debate seems academic. 
They know that many party members are already involved in business and that for years, 
successful entrepreneurs in some regions have been invited into the party, even if 
this was not official policy.

Now, Mr. Jiang argues that if the party does not find a systematic way to embrace 
diverse and powerful new groups, potent opposition forces may emerge. But some 
true-believing Marxists have cringed, calling this a betrayal of socialism.

Debate has bubbled quietly, even as officials and the media have been instructed to 
study and laud Mr. Jiang's thought.

Up to now, Mr. Jiang has usually tolerated such criticism, both because of the status 
of the old guard and because it provided a useful foil against unwelcome liberal ideas.

But "Pursuit of Truth" carried exceptionally blunt attacks on Mr. Jiang's ideas, an 
editor at a party magazine said today.

It is one of a handful of periodicals run by the so-called leftists, who argue that 
rampant private enterprise will lead to more corruption and the exploitation of 
workers and farmers. Established in 1990, it is edited by Yu Quanyu, a retired 
propaganda official.

Despite the unease in some circles about Mr. Jiang's direction, the editor at a party 
magazine said today, "The decisions have already been made, and opposition is futile."

XP?

[Tom Walker]

Doesn't the "XP" stand for Windows eXPires?

Tom Walker
Bowen Island, BC
604 947 2213

Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[William S. Lear]

On Thursday, August 16, 2001 at 16:59:36 (-0400) J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. writes:
>  Well, I certainly do not wish to get into this
>appalling numbers game.  But, since I started
>this with that forward, I guess I'll add a comment.
>The main one I would note is that the really big
>numbers one sees in places like Le Livre Noir
>de Communisme come from the famine deaths,
>especially those in the USSR in the early 1920s
>and 1930s, along with those in the GLF in China,
>which alone amount to around 30 million by most
>recent accounts (give or take several million).
>...

This from Noam Chomsky, adding as usual sound observations:

Writing in the early 1980s, Sen observed that India had suffered no
such famine. He attributed the India-China difference to India's
"political system of adversarial journalism and opposition," while in
contrast, China's totalitarian regime suffered from "misinformation"
that undercut a serious response, and there was "little political
pressure" from opposition groups and an informed public (Jean Dreze
and Amartya Sen, _Hunger and Public Action_, 1989; they estimate
deaths at 16.5 to 29.5 million). The example stands as a dramatic
"criminal indictment" of totalitarian Communism, exactly as Ryan
writes. But before closing the book on the indictment we might want to
turn to the other half of Sen's India-China comparison, which somehow
never seems to surface despite the emphasis Sen placed on it. He
observes that India and China had "similarities that were quite
striking" when development planning began 50 years ago, including
death rates. "But there is little doubt that as far as morbidity,
mortality and longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive
lead over India" (in education and other social indicators as
well). He estimates the excess of mortality in India over China to be
close to 4 million a year: "India seems to manage to fill its cupboard
with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its
years of shame," 1958-1961 (Dreze and Sen). In both cases, the
outcomes have to do with the "ideological predispositions" of the
political systems: for China, relatively equitable distribution of
medical resources, including rural health services, and public
distribution of food, all lacking in India. This was before 1979, when
"the downward trend in mortality [in China] has been at least halted,
and possibly reversed," thanks to the market reforms instituted that
year.

Overcoming amnesia, suppose we now apply the methodology of the _Black
Book_ and its reviewers to the full story, not just the doctrinally
acceptable half. We therefore conclude that in India the democratic
capitalist "experiment" since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the
entire history of the "colossal, wholly failed...experiment" of
Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, tens
of millions more since, in India alone.


Bill

Inquiry on Roy Prosterman, U.S. G. "land reform" expert

[Michael Pugliese]

   The Mueller land reform list cite madfe me remember, Prosterman. He was a
US Embassy land reform expert in S. Vietnam in the 60's. Went on to do the
same in El Salvador in the 80's with
USG $ funneled through NED and AIFLD.
Any stories to tell? I think Perelman mentioned him once here.
Michael Pugliese

CLICK THE CACHED COPY! Kewl, Java enabled Social Network Diagram...
http://www.google.com/search?q=Prosterman+PIR+
Roy L Prosterman
... The names below are mentioned on the listed pages
with the name PROSTERMAN ROY L. ... PROSTERMAN ROY L. ...
www.pir.org/main4/Roy_L_Prosterman.html - 31k - Cached - Similar pages

Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[David Shemano]

Prof. Rosser responded:

<<>>

I read very carefully what you wrote.  I am simply trying to understand your
ethical reasoning.  You are taking the position that it is more morally
reprehensible to cause a death if you "desire" to cause the death as opposed
to being indifferent to the fact that you know death will result from your
actions.  In fact, you now go so far at to characterize the level of guilt
as "arguably not totally nonexistent," which I suppose can be redefined as
"mostly nonexistent" or "hardly existent."

I, in turn, responded that the common law does not distinguish the two for
purposes of legal culpability.  Now, notwithstanding that I am a lawyer, I
understand that legal definitions do not define morality.  However, there is
wisdom in the common law definition, for precisely the reason under
discussion.  Neither you nor I can no for certain what was going on in
Stalin's head -- all we can do is look at his actions, the consequences of
his actions, and then make a judgment.

So I ask again, why do you believe the deaths should be treated differently?

David Shemano

Re: Spinoza on international government

[Ian Murray]

> Stuart Hampshire: Spinoza - An Introduction to his Philosophical
Thought:
>
> The argument by which Spinoza justifies obedience to civil or state
> authority as reasonable is essentially the same argument as that by
which
> in this century obedience to international authority is generally
> recommended; it is the familiar argument of 'collective security',
which is
> an appeal to enlightened self-interest.
>
> The only method of avoiding war, whether between individuals or
nations, is
> to gather a group of individuals or of nations which will in fact
possess
> sufficient force to deter any potential aggressor.
>
> The interantionalists who used this argument assumed that all
nations in
> fact pursue the indefinite extension of their own power and freedom
of
> action; their starting-point was the same as Spinoza's.
>
> It is in the interest of any nation to accept the decisions of the
> international authority, even if this involves some sacrifice of
national
> soverignty and independence, in order to avoid the great loss of
power and
> freedom which is involved in war and in the fear of war.
>
> Therefore the first aim of a rational foreign policy must be to ally
> oneself with that group of nations which is powerful enough, if
acting
> together, to constitute an international authority; and generally
one must
> uphold its decisions, even when, considered individually and on
their
> merits, its decisions are repugnant; for anything is better than a
relapse
> into war and the fear of war.
>
> It is irrational to resist the edicts of the international
authority, even
> when they involve some limitation of purely national soverighty,
except in
> the extreme case of these edicts threatening the very survival of
the nation.
>
> This familiar and respectable argument is pure Spinozism, applied to
> international society instead of to civil society."
>
> page 141, Penguin Books, 1951, revised 1962 and 1988.
===

Hhhhmmm, how gender blind. Also, didn't Grotius hail from the same
parts as Spinoza a generation or two b4 ?

Ian

Spinoza on international government

[Chris Burford]

Stuart Hampshire: Spinoza - An Introduction to his Philosophical Thought:

The argument by which Spinoza justifies obedience to civil or state 
authority as reasonable is essentially the same argument as that by which 
in this century obedience to international authority is generally 
recommended; it is the familiar argument of 'collective security', which is 
an appeal to enlightened self-interest.

The only method of avoiding war, whether between individuals or nations, is 
to gather a group of individuals or of nations which will in fact possess 
sufficient force to deter any potential aggressor.

The interantionalists who used this argument assumed that all nations in 
fact pursue the indefinite extension of their own power and freedom of 
action; their starting-point was the same as Spinoza's.

It is in the interest of any nation to accept the decisions of the 
international authority, even if this involves some sacrifice of national 
soverignty and independence, in order to avoid the great loss of power and 
freedom which is involved in war and in the fear of war.

Therefore the first aim of a rational foreign policy must be to ally 
oneself with that group of nations which is powerful enough, if acting 
together, to constitute an international authority; and generally one must 
uphold its decisions, even when, considered individually and on their 
merits, its decisions are repugnant; for anything is better than a relapse 
into war and the fear of war.

It is irrational to resist the edicts of the international authority, even 
when they involve some limitation of purely national soverighty, except in 
the extreme case of these edicts threatening the very survival of the nation.

This familiar and respectable argument is pure Spinozism, applied to 
international society instead of to civil society."

page 141, Penguin Books, 1951, revised 1962 and 1988.

RE: Re: Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[David Shemano]

Prof. Rosser writes:


<<<  But, I do think that these deaths must be viewed
in a very different light from the kind brought about
by people being shot for political heresy.  There
was a much lower level of "intendness" by the
leaders about them, although some claim that Stalin
wanted many Ukrainian kulaks to die in the early
1930s both for nationalistic as well as class reasons,
than was involved in the outright executions.  Indeed,
Mao actually did engage in a public "self-criticism"
for the "errors" of the GLF.  It was a huge bungle, a
very huge one.


The following is from the the Second Restatement of Torts, Section 8A:

"The word 'intent' is used throughout the Restatement of this Subject to
denote that the actor desires to cause consequences of his act, or that he
believes that the consequences are substantially certain to result from it."

In other words, with respect to legal culpability under the common law,
there is no distinction between "desiring" the death of political opponents,
as opposed to simply being indifferent to the inevitable results of your
policies.

Not that you are required to agree with the common law, but why, exactly,
must the deaths be viewed differently?

David Shemano

Re: The right to read ... may be slipping away

[Tom Walker]

Yesterday, I bought a new notebook computer and today I am ecstatic --
because I took the damned thing back for a full refund! The totalitarian
impulse of Microsoft is hideous, vile and unrelenting. Yesterday, I was
grousing with the clerk in the software department about the MS's outrageous
bundling, forced obsolescence and obscene pricing and the clerk offered to
make me a copy of his StarOffice Suite for free. He also observed that sales
of Office XP were not doing well. Reportedly MS Office accounts for
somewhere between 30% and 40% of MS revenues. The least we can do is boycott
this tyranny.

  We are rapidly moving towards the scenario described
  in RMS' [Richard Stallman, originator of the Gnu
  free software movement] short-story Right to Read.
  But RMS was an optimist. The real world is moving
  both more quickly and much more aggressively. Here
  is a quote from the Microsoft Surveilance System:

Tom Walker
Bowen Island, BC
604 947 2213

Oil/Sudan

[Ian Murray]

Rebels Hit Once-Invincible Sudan Oil Fields


By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 16, 2001; Page A18


NAIROBI, Aug. 15 -- Rebels staged a hit-and-run raid in the heart of
operations in southern Sudan's oil fields last week. The attack lasted
for just 30 minutes and apparently did little physical damage, but
dented the veneer of invulnerability around the sprawling
installation, which has become a focal point of Sudan's 18-year civil
war.

Oil field officials and diplomats described the predawn attack, on
Aug. 5, as little more than a harassing fire. The officials said a
commando team of perhaps 20 rebels lobbed mortar shells at the field
headquarters for a half-hour without hitting structures or people. The
flow of Nile Blend crude oil was interrupted for only the 12 hours
technicians needed to ascertain that no serious damage had been done,
according to the officials, who asked not to be identified.

However, rebel leader John Garang, chairman of the Sudan People's
Liberation Army, described a far more forceful attack involving 1,500
men and 150-pound rockets that he said damaged the oil fields'
electrical generating station. "This is the first time that we have
attacked Heglig itself," Garang said in an interview in his Nairobi
office, referring to the name of the installation. "We have the
capacity to sustain this kind of attack in the future."

Oil has been a crucial issue in Sudan since before the civil war began
in 1983. For centuries, the country's Arabic-speaking Muslim rulers
have exploited the black African south, and when oil was discovered in
the southern zone, the northern government tried to redraw the
national map to shift the discoveries into the north. When
marginalized southerners took up arms, an attack in 1984 killed three
foreign oil workers, prompting Chevron to leave the country.

The Heglig fields remained dormant until two years ago, when a
consortium of Canadian, Sudanese, Malaysian and Chinese companies
began pumping oil. The fields now produce 200,000 barrels a day. The
Sudanese government's share of the income has significantly boosted
its war chest, and public condemnation of the government's brutal
conduct of the war has spread to Talisman Energy Inc., the Calgary,
Alberta, company that owns 25 percent of Greater Nile Petroleum, the
consortium that holds the Heglig concession.

Critics point to tens of thousands of civilians who have been driven
by fighting off land leased to Greater Nile and other companies.

In June, the House of Representatives voted 422 to 2 to ban oil
companies doing business in Sudan from selling shares on U.S. stock
exchanges, a vote that prompted Talisman to move toward spinning off
its Sudan holdings. The Bush administration, saying the provision
would establish a dangerous precedent, strongly supports the version
of the Sudan Peace Act without the stock market ban that passed the
Senate.

Whatever the specifics of last week's attack -- Western diplomats
called the oil officials' account more credible -- the raid showed the
rebels have extended their reach. Earlier raids had targeted
operations on the outer reaches of the huge oil fields, one against a
convoy, another against a drilling derrick. To reach Heglig, the
rebels had to cross three rivers and traverse an open savanna that was
heavily guarded by Sudanese government troops manning roadside
checkpoints every three miles, in some cases with tanks and other
armor.

"Even if they did not destroy the installation, the fact that they
were able to get there, attack it and get away, is something they
haven't done before," said John Ryle, a Sudan specialist based in
London. "It isn't just a question of the military success, it's a
question of the psychological vulnerability of the oil companies and
oil workers."

The Heglig facility doubles as a government garrison. Troops and armor
ring the compound of prefabricated buildings that house sleeping
quarters and offices for foreign and Sudanese oil workers. An airfield
stands just across the road, and a few hundred yards away looms the
southern terminus of the buried pipeline that extends 900 miles
northeast, to the Red Sea harbor of Port Sudan.

Beside the pumping station stands the electrical generating plant that
Garang said was damaged. "We don't target people," the rebel leader
said. "We're targeting installations."

Rylesaid that even if that is so, the impact of any strike might be
widely felt.

Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.]

  I believe that he actually edits a journal, or used to,
called the Anti-Monopoly Review.  When he appeared
on pkt he engaged in a great deal of flamethrowing and
was ultimately tossed off the list.  I was one who really
annoyed him because I challenged him to support some
of his more egregious claims.  One of his specialties, on
display in this forward, is a sort of neo-McCarthyite
"outing" of alleged Marxists.  Thus, he declared that John
Kenneth Galbraith is a Marxist (and certainly a "pro-
monopolist").  I said this was ridiculous, that he is a
left-liberal institutionalist Post Keynesian, or something
along those lines.  Of course this made me a Marxist
absolutely, which I have claimed to be during certain periods
of my life, although not for some time.  I do still harbor
considerable respect for and interest in the old boy's
works though.  If that makes me a Marxist, so be it.
  I would agree with Michael Perelman's characterization
of Mueller's views.
Barkley Rosser
- Original Message -
From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 9:16 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:15917] Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?


> Charles Meuller is a vigorous proponent of anti-monopoly.  He believes
that
> competition can cure all ills.  He used to be active on the post keynesian
list.
>
>
>
> "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote:
>
> > - Original Message -
> > From: "Charles Mueller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 6:30 PM
> > Subject: The Fall of 'Challenge'?
> >
> > > I've mentioned earlier that one of my favorite 'economic' journals is
one
> > > called 'CHALLENGE,' published by M.E. Sharp, Inc. of Armond, N.Y.  It
has
> > > always been a 'liberal' publication (6 issues per year) but, under its
> > > current editor (Jeff Madrick), it has become distinctively 'leftist.'
> > >
> > > Consider its latest issue, 124 pages (March-April 2001).  Two articles
> > > convey the flavor now.  The first--'Inequality and Underground
> > Economies'--
> > > was written by a husband/wife team teaching 'economics' at James
Madison
> > > University, to wit, J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. and Marina Vcherashnaya
Rosser.
> > > I encountered the male half--'J. Barkley'--on another discussion list
and
> > > came away with the feeling that he's a certifiable fruitcake, a
loquacious
> > > Marxist but one who wants to remain in the Marxist 'closet.'
> > >
> > > Example:  When I mentioned on that other list the conventional
> > > 'body-count' of 20th century communism, 70 million killed (some 30
million
> > > by Stalin, another 30 million by Mao, the rest by Pol Pot, Noriega,
> > Castro,
> > > et al), Rosser freaked out and demanded, in effect, that I produce the
> > > bodies.  His wife's name--Vcherashnaya--suggests a possible source of
his
> > > idiocy here.  (Their article, by the way, has no discernible point.
It's
> > > intellectually senseless.)
> > >
> > > Then there's a second article in this particular issue of 'Challenge'
> > > magazine that seems almost as surreal as the Rosser garbage.  This
one, by
> > > an economics prof at Cal State (Chico), Michael Perelman, is called
> > > 'Competition:  The Hidden Costs of the Invisible Hand.'  An editorial
> > > introduction to this sophomoric piece asks:  'Can there simply be too
much
> > > competition at times?' Its thesis is that competition CAUSES
RECESSIONS!
> > >
> > > The tale told here is that capitalist depressions occur about every 50
> > > years.  Ordinarily, capitalist governments keep economic competition
at a
> > > healthy MINIMUM, according to Perelman.  After a half-century of being
> > > governmentally-suppressed, though, competition tends to rear its ugly
> > head:
> > >  'With each outbreak of intense competition, the economy falls into a
> > > depression, bringing ruin in its wake.'  (Id., p. 108.)
> > >
> > > 'When competitive forces build up enough momentum to reduce
> > > x-inefficiencies significantly, they threaten to collapse the entire
> > > economy into a depression.'  (Id., 119.)  And:  'Unleashing
competition...
> > > could set off a DEPRESSION unless some preventive measures accompany
that
> > > policy...' (Id., 121.)
> > >
> > > National depressions are caused by 'too much' competition?!
> > >
> > > These two articles--the Marxist mumblings of the two Rossers and the
> > > Perelman silliness--have to be two of the dumbest articles ever
published
> > > in a previously reputable economics journal.  'Challenge' is badly in
need
> > > of a new editor.
> > >
> > > Charles
> > > Charles Mueller, Moderator
> > > Mueller's Poverty of Nations List
> > > ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> > > ___
> > > Mueller's Land-Reform List
> > > ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> > >   ___
> > > Mueller's Antimonopoly List
> > > ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> > >  ___
> > > UNsubscribe:  Add 'un' to above addresses
> > >

Re: Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.]

  Well, I certainly do not wish to get into this
appalling numbers game.  But, since I started
this with that forward, I guess I'll add a comment.
The main one I would note is that the really big
numbers one sees in places like Le Livre Noir
de Communisme come from the famine deaths,
especially those in the USSR in the early 1920s
and 1930s, along with those in the GLF in China,
which alone amount to around 30 million by most
recent accounts (give or take several million).
  Now, one might wish to blame these on the
"system of communism."  But then there have
been plenty of famines under capitalism, quite
a few with millions dead, although none on the
scale of the Chinese GLF to my knowledge.
  But, I do think that these deaths must be viewed
in a very different light from the kind brought about
by people being shot for political heresy.  There
was a much lower level of "intendness" by the
leaders about them, although some claim that Stalin
wanted many Ukrainian kulaks to die in the early
1930s both for nationalistic as well as class reasons,
than was involved in the outright executions.  Indeed,
Mao actually did engage in a public "self-criticism"
for the "errors" of the GLF.  It was a huge bungle, a
very huge one.
  Certainly there were millions killed by outright
execution, enough to be completely appalled.  But
the kinds of numbers that get tossed around in some
of these books really do distort things, especially in
light of some of the labels and accompanying commentary
that are provided along with them.
Barkley Rosser
- Original Message -
From: "Michael Pugliese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 12:41 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:15933] Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?


> www.yale.edu/yup/
> Annals of Communism
>
> Welcome, Guest  Register - Sign In
> marxist · The Marxist List  [ Join This Group! ]
> http://www.egroups.com/message/marxist/1436
> From:  John Lacny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date:  Tue Jun 13, 2000  8:29 pm
> Subject:  Re: [marxist] Re: "Inside the Gulag"
>
>
>  I am pleased that we on this listserv appear to be adopting a
> considered tone when discussing historical questions. As a history major
> myself, I would be the last person to argue that such questions are
> unimportant or not worth discussing. The problem is that so many on the
> left have so attached themselves to one school of thought on particular
> historical questions -- usually a dogmatic "line" of some sort, which is
> passed off as "analysis" -- that line struggle over interpretations of
> historically distant events overwhelms the necessity for both unity and
> honest discussions of political differences in the here and now. If we
were
> to have a debate between anarchists and Marxists on this list, for
example,
> the last thing we would need would be a back-and-forth flame war about the
> Spanish Civil War or Kronstadt.
>
>  So with all of that said, I should give my own take on the discussion
> of the crimes of the Stalin era in the Soviet Union which we have been
> engaged in so far. (Most of the discussion has actually been cross-posts
by
> Michael Pugliese from another list, although Jason Schulman has weighed in
> with his own contribution.) As one can see from the cross-posted article
> from Steve Rosenthal, it is fairly easy to refute the arguments of
> apologists for Stalin. One aspect of the article which I am surprised that
> Jason Schulman did not cease upon is the discussion of the various smaller
> nationalities of Eastern Europe (Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, etc.). Here
> is the relevant paragraph from Rosenthal:
>
>  "Who made up the population of the prison camps?  The majority
> consisted of prisoners of war, not only Germans but soldiers of many other
> Eastern European nationality who fought with the Nazis: Poles,
Lithuanians,
> Latvians, Estonians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Ukranian and Byelo-Russian
> nationalists.  Large fascist organizations existed in all these countries
> in 1939 when Stalin and Hitler signed the pact that provided the Soviets
> with almost two more years to prepare for the Nazi invasion, while
> imperialists sort of fought each other. The Soviets rounded up many of
> these Nazis, killed some of them, and put others in prison.  If that had
> been done elsewhere, the Nazis would not have been welcomed by large
'fifth
> column' forces when they invaded other countries.  But, of course, no
> capitalist country was going to suppress its own fascists."
>
>  Jason Schulman has already demonstrated the specious nature of claims
> that the Nazi-Soviet Pact was far-sighted and purely defensive. But that
> aside, if a historical novice were to take this paragraph from Rosenthal
on
> its surface, it may seem a ruthless yet rational and realistic argument:
in
> order to stave off the horrors of fascism, it was to be expected that the
> Soviets would have to use harsh measures, and therefore we can't blame
them
> fo

The right to read ... may be slipping away

[Charles Brown]

The right to read ... may be slipping away

[Tom Vogt reports on the current state of the battle
over the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DCMA) at the
HAL2001 conference in the Netherlands.

Vogt is an author of the deCSS software, which allows
owners of DVDs to use them without restrictions. The
DCMA is the basis both of the civil suit by the DVD
Copy Control Association against deCSS and the Justice
Department criminal prosecution of Dmitry Sklyarov. In
both cases the offense is *writing software* or even
*publicizing the existence of software* which could be
used to infringe intellectual property. Vogt concludes
pessimistically:

  We are rapidly moving towards the scenario described
  in RMS' [Richard Stallman, originator of the Gnu
  free software movement] short-story Right to Read.
  But RMS was an optimist. The real world is moving
  both more quickly and much more aggressively. Here
  is a quote from the Microsoft Surveilance System:

  "Using technology developed by Microsoft to protect
  its own intellectual property on the Internet, the
  AAP has implemented an aggressive Internet
  surveillance program, which includes an automated,
  intelligent Internet search tool that searches for
  unauthorized distribution of eBook content 24 hours
  a day, seven days a week. The information and
  evidence gathered by this tool can form the
  foundation for subsequent civil and criminal
  enforcement."

Stallman's classic story, below, may be the best
popular exposition of the issues of freedom and
property.  -- psMod]

The Right to Read
by Richard Stallman


This article appeared in the February 1997 issue of
Communications of the ACM (Volume 40, Number 2).

(from "The Road To Tycho", a collection of articles
about the antecedents of the Lunarian Revolution,
published in Luna City in 2096)

For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college--
when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had
broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she
would fail her midterm project. There was no one she
dared ask, except Dan.

This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her--but if
he lent her his computer, she might read his books.
Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for
many years for letting someone else read your books,
the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he
had been taught since elementary school that sharing
books was nasty and wrong--something that only pirates
would do.

And there wasn't much chance that the SPA--the
Software Protection Authority--would fail to catch
him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each
book had a copyright monitor that reported when and
where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing.
(They used this information to catch reading pirates,
but also to sell personal interest profiles to
retailers.) The next time his computer was networked,
Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer
owner, would receive the harshest punishment--for not
taking pains to prevent the crime.

Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read
his books. She might want the computer only to write
her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a middle-class
family and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone
her reading fees. Reading his books might be the only
way she could graduate. He understood this situation;
he himself had had to borrow to pay for all the
research papers he read. (10% of those fees went to
the researchers who wrote the papers; since Dan aimed
for an academic career, he could hope that his own
research papers, if frequently referenced, would bring
in enough to repay this loan.)

Later on, Dan would learn there was a time when anyone
could go to the library and read journal articles, and
even books, without having to pay. There were
independent scholars who read thousands of pages
without government library grants. But in the 1990s,
both commercial and nonprofit journal publishers had
begun charging fees for access. By 2047, libraries
offering free public access to scholarly literature
were a dim memory.

There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and
Central Licensing. They were themselves illegal. Dan
had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who
had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to
skip over the copyright monitor code when reading
books. But he had told too many friends about it, and
one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward
(students deep in debt were easily tempted into
betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for
pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.

Dan would later learn that there was a time when
anyone could have debugging tools. There were even
free debugging tools available on CD or downloadable
over the net. But ordinary users started using them to
bypass copyright monitors, and eventually a judge
ruled that this had become their principal use in
actual practice. 

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

> BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 2001:
> 
> RELEASED TODAY:   The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers
> (CPI-U) declined 0.3 percent in July, before seasonal adjustment, to a
> level of 177.5 (1982-84=100), the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S.
> Department of Labor reported today.  For the 12-month period ended in
> July, the CPI-U increased 2.7 percent.
> 
> Real average weekly earnings increased 0.6 percent from June to July after
> seasonal adjustment, according to preliminary data released today by the
> Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor.  This was due
> to a 0.3 percent increase in average hourly earnings and a 0.3 percent
> decline in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical
> Workers (CPI-W).  Average weekly hours were unchanged.
> 
> Employers likely will continue to scale back retiree health benefits,
> spurred by changes in federal accounting rules, age discrimination rulings
> by federal courts, medical inflation, and potential federal legislation,
> according to an August 15th report by the Employee Benefit Research
> Institute. The EBRI report pointed to a survey of employers with 500 or
> more workers showing that those currently expecting to continue offering
> health benefits to future early retirees declined from 46 percent in 1993
> to 31 percent in 2000.  (Daily Labor Report, pages A6-A7).
> 
> The U.S. industrial sector--comprising manufacturing, mining, and
> utilities--showed a scant 0.1 percent decline in total production during
> July, marking the 10th consecutive monthly decrease, according to figures
> released August 15th by the Federal Reserve.  Weakness in manufacturing
> was less pronounced last month, as factory output was unchanged between
> June and July.  Over the year ending in July, manufacturing output was
> down 3.9 percent, reflecting the sharp drop in durable goods that include
> computers and other business equipment.  (Daily Labor Report, page D1).
> 
> Two economic reports released today showed factory production slowed its
> long slide in July and businesses pared their inventory levels in June,
> both positive signs for the economic outlook"I think we're witnessing
> a trough," said an economist with the National Association of
> Manufacturers. "We should be seeing a return to positive industrial
> production, if not by August, then probably by September."  (The New York
> Times, page C4).
> 
> The dollar's recent slide may prove a boon to the Bush administration,
> which has come under attack from some corporate allies who complain that
> the greenback's strength is hurting business.  A strong dollar makes U.S.
> goods more expensive overseas, makes imports cheaper and reduces the
> dollar value of U.S. companies' overseas earnings.  On the other hand, it
> also keeps inflation and interest rates in check.  (The Wall Street
> Journal, page A2).
> 
> The dollar slid against all major currencies again, falling nearly 2
> percent against the yen and 1 percent against the euro, with the U.S.
> currency still dogged by concerns about the state of the nation's economy
> and the Bush administration's commitment to a strong dollar.  The dollar
> has been hit across the board by concerns that Federal Reserve Chairman
> Alan Greenspan won't be able to engineer a fast turnaround in the U.S.
> economy.  A report Tuesday from the International Monetary Fund, warning
> that the massive U.S. current-account deficit threatens dollar stability,
> added fuel to the dollar sell off.  (The Wall Street Journal, page C4).
> 
> ...as many American workers switch jobs more often--and as more companies
> lay off droves of workers or shut down altogether in this slowing
> economy--many learn that taking their retirement funds with them when they
> go isn't always easy.  Small plans suffer more problems than large ones,
> but rolling over retirement assets can take months, even a year or more,
> whether you change jobs voluntarily or are forced to go.  (The Wall Street
> Journal, page C1).
> 
> The economic slowdown is hitting baby boomers hard.  For some, pink slips
> are obliterating careers that have taken decades to build.  Doors of
> opportunity are being shattered, salaries are slipping, and the generation
> that faced the Vietnam War and civil rights protests is encountering age
> bias for the first time.  That's because boomers are reaching an age that
> typically bears the brunt of economic hard times.  The number of
> unemployed workers age 55 and older has jumped about 23 percent from
> 431,000 in June 2000 to 521,000 in June of this year, according to the
> Department of Labor.  (USA Today, page 1A).
> 
> DUE OUT TOMORROW:  Regional and State Employment and Unemployment:  July
> 2001
> 

 application/ms-tnef

Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.]

Michael,
  Yes, Mueller threatened to contact my university
and inform them of my clearly obnoxious and Marxist
behavior.  I don't think he did so.  Anyway, as of today,
I am the editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and
Organization.
   For anybody interested in submitting the address
of the freshly established editorial office is 
Editorial Office
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
MSC 5505
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807 USA
 BTW, we don't have an email address yet, but
should have one shortly.
Barkley Rosser

- Original Message - 
From: "Michael Keaney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 3:35 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:15921] Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?


> Michael Perelman wrote:
> 
> Charles Meuller is a vigorous proponent of anti-monopoly.  He believes
> that
> competition can cure all ills.  He used to be active on the post
> keynesian list.
> 
> =
> 
> Mueller surfaced on the unmoderated AFEE list about 5 years ago and
> attempted to monopolise list discussion to suit his singular
> predilection of anti-trust. He had, prior to that, attempted to muscle
> in on the IPE list, whose moderator got slagged off elsewhere for
> refusing Mueller freedom to monopolise the discussion there. He also
> relentlessly plugged his journal, earning the response from one peeved
> lister that for obsessive attention to one topic he could be compared
> only to Larry Flynt. This and other humurous put-downs earned some
> listers with the threat from Mueller that he would report them to their
> respective university authorities for abusing the trust placed in them
> with the provision of IT facilities. Eventually he disappeared after
> multiple unsubbings. His one supporter throughout these "debates" ended
> up joining him on his own e-list, only to be ejected later for not
> staying "on message".
> 
> Clearly, things are looking up at Challenge.
> 
> Michael K.
> 
> 

No Subject

[Charles Brown]

Anti-racism Conference Expected to Reach Agreement on
Slavery Compensation: Official

Xinhua News Agency
2001-08-14

Sipho Pityana, director-general of the South African
Foreign Affairs Department, said on Tuesday he was
certain the World Conference Against Racism would find
an agreement on the issue of apology and compensation
for slavery and colonialism.

"The divide between the different parties has been
narrowed substantially," he told reporters in Pretoria,
briefing them on the outcome of the third preparatory
committee meeting recently held in Geneva, Switzerland.

"If we had more time in Geneva, we would probably have
agreed on more issues. On one of the most difficult
issues, that of the reparation and compensation for
slavery, we came very close to an agreement," he said.

The United States earlier threatened it would not
attend the conference if the issue of reparation for
slavery and that of equating Zionism with racism were
put on the agenda.

On the latter issue the preparatory committee had
agreed to abide by a decision of the United Nations not
to equate Zionism with racism, Pityana said.

However, the conference still had to find a way to
reflect on the situation in the Middle East in a way
acceptable to all parties concerned, he added.

According to the director-general, as far as he knew,
the U.S. government was sending a delegation of about
50 people to the Durban conference, which will be held
from August 31 to September 7.

The preparatory committee invited and encouraged all
countries to take part in the conference, but did not
try to persuade anyoneto do so, Pityana said.

Those gathering in Durban had different views which
they could express there. If all agreed, there would be
no need for such a conference, he explained.

At the Geneva meeting, 60 of the 131 paragraphs of the
declaration and 85 of the 106 paragraphs of the program
of action for the conference were adopted. The rest
remained to be resolved,according to Pityana.

But Pityana said the groundwork done so far had laid a
good basis to reach agreement at the conference.

"We are looking forward to a successful conference," he
said.

The two issues dogging the process were that of the
Middle Eastand of slavery and colonialism.

Pityana said there was a reluctance from former
colonial powersto extend an apology for slavery and
colonialism on the grounds ofthe legal implications, as
well as implications for compensation and reparation.

In a so-called non-paper -- a document which could be
withdrawnif agreement is not reached on it -- the
African countries excluded demands for individual
compensation, but elaborated on trans- national
compensation.

The African non-paper played a central role in bringing
partiestogether, Pityana said.

The African bloc, he said, wanted an acknowledgment
that slavery, slave trade and colonialism played an
important part in laying the foundation for the kinds
of racial discrimination stillseen today.

Colonialism, which was often down-played, involved the
take-over of countries, dispossessing and displacing
people and their regimes, segregating communities and
creating inequality among them, he said.

"The legacy of this persists," Pityana noted, adding
that "colonialism was also the take-over of resources
which contributed to the enrichment of the developed
North."

"It is not just about aid; but about altering the
structural relations between Africa and the developed
world," he said.

As it now stood, the former colonial powers were
willing to express themselves in language of regret and
remorse, in what cameclose to an apology, the South
African official said, adding "the debate is whether
that constitutes sufficient apology. That debatewill
continue in Durban."

Another debate is on whether slavery, slave trade and
colonialism can be regarded as crimes against humanity.
Some hold the view that at the time these actions were
committed, they were not regarded as such, but now they
are.

"I am certain we will reach agreement on all of these
issues," Pityana said.

Indonesia

[Ian Murray]

< http://www.feer.com >
INDONESIA
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE
THE INDONESIAN ECONOMY NEEDS MORE THAN JUST A NEW CABINET
By Sadanand Dhume
Issue cover-dated August 23, 2001


The stockmarket may have cheered and the rupiah may have strengthened
to an 11-month high, but it will take more than announcing a new
cabinet to put Indonesia's battered economy back on the rails.

With world oil prices down from last year's highs and growth sluggish
in Indonesia's two biggest export markets--Japan and the United
States--GDP growth is expected to slow to an anaemic 3%. Meanwhile,
political turmoil and a lack of institutions have ensured that
Indonesia continues to haemorrhage money. Credit Suisse First Boston
estimates that last year net capital outflows topped $9 billion.

In an interview with the REVIEW, new economic tsar Dorodjatun
Kuntjoro-Jakti says his immediate goal is to set Indonesia's economy
right before the next general elections, scheduled for 2004. His
priorities: addressing government debt, which at about $154 billion is
more than Indonesia's GDP; creating employment for millions; and
dealing with the economic effects of decentralization.

These challenges, daunting at the best of times, are set against the
backdrop of the world's fourth-most populous country's unruly
transition from dictatorship to democracy. Fortunately for Dorodjatun,
the near term offers more modest targets. Indonesia must jump through
three hoops: restoring a $5 billion IMF-led lending programme;
persuading the Paris Club group of rich donors to roll over debt; and
winning fresh support from the Consultative Group of Indonesia, a
group of bilateral and institutional donors. On the domestic front,
the 2002 budget must be presented to parliament in October.

Repairing relations with the IMF will be the new government's top
priority, says Emil Salim, an economics minister under President
Suharto and one of Megawati's advisers. Since December last year, the
fund has denied Indonesia a $400 million loan tranche and the nod of
approval that goes with it. Both the Paris Club and the CGI look for
the fund's seal of good housekeeping for reassurance that Indonesia's
economy is on the mend.

The IMF's intransigence is likely to end. Japan has long been pressing
it to ease its pressure on Jakarta--especially regarding politically
charged issues such as asset sales by the Indonesian Bank
Restructuring Agency. Now it looks as if the United States may be
willing to let up as well. On August 10, U.S. Trade Representative
Robert Zoellick made an unplanned stopover in Jakarta from New Delhi
to assure President Megawati of American support for her government.
An IMF delegation led by the outgoing deputy director for
Asia-Pacific, Anoop Singh, is expected in Jakarta later this month.

According to a draft version of a new letter of intent negotiated
between the IMF and the outgoing Wahid government--and seen by the
REVIEW--the IMF appears ready to scale back its demands in Indonesia.
The draft agreement contains only 37 clauses, as opposed to 67 in the
one signed with the Indonesian government in September last year. It
retains existing commitments by the Indonesian government, such as the
continuing sale of a 40% stake in Bank Central Asia, once the
country's largest private retail bank. But new language dwells on
achieving broad principles--such as greater transparency at
Ibra--rather than specific targets.

The change in focus is partly a reaction to widespread criticism of
the IMF's penchant for micromanagement. It's also a symbolic retreat
in the face of more pressing brush fires in Argentina and Turkey.

For its part, the new Indonesian economic team is likely to have a
less prickly relationship with the fund than its predecessor. Wahid's
finance minister, Rizal Ramli, delighted in taking potshots at the
IMF. By contrast, Dorodjatun describes the IMF's attitude toward
Indonesia as "very positive." Laksamana Sukardi, whose State
Enterprises Ministry will now look after Ibra, is much more likely to
be sympathetic toward the IMF's calls for greater transparency in
Ibra's dealings with powerful debtors.

But even a honeymoon with the IMF won't be enough to rid Indonesia of
all its headaches. Mari Pangestu, a top economist at Jakarta's Centre
for Strategic and International Studies, points out that some of the
issues facing the new economic team--such as a breakdown in law and
order--are beyond its control. A weak legal system that makes lending
risky and deters foreign investors is another problem that won't
disappear overnight.

Pangestu says the biggest medium-term challenges for the government
lie in bank and corporate-debt restructuring and asset sales. As a
result of a massive bank bailout during the Asian Crisis, Ibra
controls assets estimated at $50 billion, about a third of Indonesia's
GDP. To get rid of them, the agency must navigate its way past
powerful former owners, many still running the companies pledged to
Ibra, and through a young parli

Brazil

[Ian Murray]

 [FT]
Real weakness
In spite of decade of reform, Brazil's economy remains vulnerable,
says Geoff Dyer
Published: August 15 2001 18:33GMT | Last Updated: August 15 2001
18:36GMT



Every time a large developing country suffers an economic crisis,
Brazil feels the effects. It was the case with Mexico in 1995. It
happened during the Asia crisis in 1997 and again when Russia
defaulted in 1998.

Now it is occurring with Argentina, which is in talks with the
International Monetary Fund on an additional loan to prevent its
defaulting on its debt. The fact that the country in question is a
neighbour and trading partner has added to the strains.

This was supposed to be Brazil's year, when it would show it was on
the path to sustainable growth. Instead, the economy has been getting
close to a vicious cycle. A weakening of the real has caused
inflationary pressures, prompting interest rates to rise. The
resulting increase in debt service payments has further weakened the
currency.

The economy is now slowing sharply. Annual growth in gross domestic
product in the second quarter was disclosed on Wednesday to have been
only 0.79 per cent - down from 4.28 per cent in the first quarter.
Fearing the Argentine crisis may aggravate this situation, the IMF has
announced a new $15bn package for Brazil - its second in three years.

Since the early 1990s, Brazil has undergone a series of abrupt
transformations. The economy was opened up to imports and investment
and a monetary reform was introduced that culminated in the launch of
a new currency, the real. The result was low inflation for the first
time in decades and 10m people lifted out of poverty.

But the reforms left two large problems. High inflation had helped
mask the underlying fragility of Brazil's fiscal accounts, which soon
became apparent. Meanwhile, the opening of the economy, while aiding
the battle against inflation, led to large current account deficits.

It is the interaction of these two deficits that has caused the
economy's vulnerability and disappointing growth performance since
1995. In the run-up to Brazil's own currency crisis in 1999, concern
was on the fiscal side. In the minds of most investors, the crisis of
confidence that made the external deficit hard to finance was the
result of the series of large budget deficits.

Now most economists believe the shoe is on the other foot. The root of
the present trouble is in the balance of payments. In the aftermath of
the devaluation, Brazil announced a tough programme of fiscal
austerity - rubber-stamped by the IMF - which it has met in each of
the subsequent quarters. Meanwhile, investment by multinationals
flooded in, covering most of the current account gap.

This bought the country some time to solve its poor export
performance, the main obstacle to achieving sustainable, high growth.
However, this has not happened. In spite of a huge devaluation since
1999, the trade balance is neutral and the current account deficit is
now approaching 5 per cent of GDP.

According to Jose Julio Senna, a former central bank director,
Brazil's external liabilities have risen from 22 per cent of GDP in
1994 to 72 per cent by the end of this year. "There is one point where
Brazil and Argentina are very similar - both have brought inflation
under control but at the cost of external vulnerability," says Mr
Senna, of MCM Consultores.

The turbulence created by Argentina and the global slow-down, which
has caused foreign investment to slump, have exposed this external
weakness. The currency has depreciated by about 20 per cent this year
and interest rates have been raised in each of the last five months to
try to halt the slide.

The balance of payments problems have in turn weakened the fiscal
position. With more than 70 per cent of the debt linked to the dollar
or overnight rates, the interest bill this year will be about 10 per
cent of GDP and the nominal budget deficit close to 7 per cent. The
debt-GDP ratio, which the government had pledged to stabilise, could
surge by 5 percentage points this year to 54 per cent - an
unsustainable rate of increase.

Events at home have further undermined confidence. A mixture of bad
planning and poor rainfall has caused the worst energy crisis in
decades and obliged the government to enforce a stiff regime of
rationing. As a result, economists have reduced forecasts for growth
this year by up to 2 percentage points - a stance reinforced by
yesterday's GDP figures.

On the political front, the four-party coalition that supports the
government has been beset by the infighting and the leftwing
opposition, spearheaded by the Workers party (PT), is well ahead in
the polls for next October's presidential elections. Investors are
trying to work out what a PT victory would mean.

The party has shed some of its more radical proposals, such as a
moratorium on debt and nationalisation of banks. Its principal
economic spokesmen have instead focused their attention on measures to
boost exports. 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[Michael Pugliese]

http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/jun99/msg01982.html
But, I agree with Lou on this one...!!!
Michael

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, August 16, 2001 9:52 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:15935] Re: Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?


Please, the mere mention of body counts and the like can reignite past
flames on this subject.

On Thu, Aug 16, 2001 at 09:41:46AM -0700, Michael Pugliese wrote:
> www.yale.edu/yup/
> Annals of Communism
>
> Welcome, Guest  Register - Sign In
> marxist · The Marxist List  [ Join This Group! ]
> http://www.egroups.com/message/marxist/1436
> From:  John Lacny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date:  Tue Jun 13, 2000  8:29 pm
> Subject:  Re: [marxist] Re: "Inside the Gulag"
>
>
>  I am pleased that we on this listserv appear to be adopting a
> considered tone when discussing historical questions. As a history major
> myself, I would be the last person to argue that such questions are
> unimportant or not worth discussing. The problem is that so many on the
> left have so attached themselves to one school of thought on particular
> historical questions -- usually a dogmatic "line" of some sort, which is
> passed off as "analysis" -- that line struggle over interpretations of
> historically distant events overwhelms the necessity for both unity and
> honest discussions of political differences in the here and now. If we
were
> to have a debate between anarchists and Marxists on this list, for
example,
> the last thing we would need would be a back-and-forth flame war about the
> Spanish Civil War or Kronstadt.
>
>  So with all of that said, I should give my own take on the discussion
> of the crimes of the Stalin era in the Soviet Union which we have been
> engaged in so far. (Most of the discussion has actually been cross-posts
by
> Michael Pugliese from another list, although Jason Schulman has weighed in
> with his own contribution.) As one can see from the cross-posted article
> from Steve Rosenthal, it is fairly easy to refute the arguments of
> apologists for Stalin. One aspect of the article which I am surprised that
> Jason Schulman did not cease upon is the discussion of the various smaller
> nationalities of Eastern Europe (Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, etc.). Here
> is the relevant paragraph from Rosenthal:
>
>  "Who made up the population of the prison camps?  The majority
> consisted of prisoners of war, not only Germans but soldiers of many other
> Eastern European nationality who fought with the Nazis: Poles,
Lithuanians,
> Latvians, Estonians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Ukranian and Byelo-Russian
> nationalists.  Large fascist organizations existed in all these countries
> in 1939 when Stalin and Hitler signed the pact that provided the Soviets
> with almost two more years to prepare for the Nazi invasion, while
> imperialists sort of fought each other. The Soviets rounded up many of
> these Nazis, killed some of them, and put others in prison.  If that had
> been done elsewhere, the Nazis would not have been welcomed by large
'fifth
> column' forces when they invaded other countries.  But, of course, no
> capitalist country was going to suppress its own fascists."
>
>  Jason Schulman has already demonstrated the specious nature of claims
> that the Nazi-Soviet Pact was far-sighted and purely defensive. But that
> aside, if a historical novice were to take this paragraph from Rosenthal
on
> its surface, it may seem a ruthless yet rational and realistic argument:
in
> order to stave off the horrors of fascism, it was to be expected that the
> Soviets would have to use harsh measures, and therefore we can't blame
them
> for it. But at even slightly closer inspection, it's obvious that this
> argument doesn't hold water. Note how Rosenthal subtly switches
timeframes:
> he wants to talk about "prisoners of war" from 1939 afterwards. But what
is
> really at issue is an earlier period of time, specifically, the Purges of
> 1937-38, when the Gulag and the Terror were really at their height. And if
> we study the Purges, we discover that while foreigners were a primary
> target, the kind of people who were victimized were not fascist fifth
> columnists. The largest number of foreign victims were exiled members of
> the Communist Parties of Eastern Europe, thousands upon thousands of whom
> had fled from fascist and other right-wing regimes to what they thought
> would be the safety of the Soviet Union. Instead, they were caught up in
> the xenophobic hysteria which accompanied the Purges. Those who were
> especially suspect were people who had been imprisoned by the fascists:
> instead of being a badge of honor, it became a source of suspicion, on the
> conjecture that the fascists had granted such people their release in
> exchange for engaging in espionage in the Soviet Union. Thousands of
> foreign Communists were shot. The entire Polish Communist Party was
> disbanded on orders from the 

Good News

[Michael Perelman]

"On the Threshold of the Third Globalization: Why Liberal
  Capitalism Might Fail?"

   BY:  BRANKO MILANOVIC
   World Bank
   Development Research Group

Document:  Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=262176

 Date:  December 1999

  Contact:  BRANKO MILANOVIC
Email:  Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   Postal:  World Bank
Development Research Group
1818 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20433  USA
Phone:  202-473-6968
  Fax:  202-522-1153

ABSTRACT:
  The paper contrast three periods of globalization: the Roman-led
  one of the 2nd-4th century, the British-led one of the 19th
  century, and the current one led the United States. Each of them
  not only had a hegemon country but was associated with a
  specific ideology. However, in reaction to the dominant ideology
  and the effects of globalization (cultural domination,
  increasing awareness of ecoonomic inequities) an alternative
  ideology (in the first case, Christianity, in the second,
  Communism) sprang up. The alternative ideology uses the
  technological means supplied by the globalizers to subvert or
  attack the dominant ideological paradigm.

  Keywords: Globalization, inequality


JEL Classification: N00


--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

Re: Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[Michael Perelman]

Please, the mere mention of body counts and the like can reignite past
flames on this subject.

On Thu, Aug 16, 2001 at 09:41:46AM -0700, Michael Pugliese wrote:
> www.yale.edu/yup/
> Annals of Communism
> 
> Welcome, Guest  Register - Sign In
> marxist · The Marxist List  [ Join This Group! ]
> http://www.egroups.com/message/marxist/1436
> From:  John Lacny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date:  Tue Jun 13, 2000  8:29 pm
> Subject:  Re: [marxist] Re: "Inside the Gulag"
> 
> 
>  I am pleased that we on this listserv appear to be adopting a
> considered tone when discussing historical questions. As a history major
> myself, I would be the last person to argue that such questions are
> unimportant or not worth discussing. The problem is that so many on the
> left have so attached themselves to one school of thought on particular
> historical questions -- usually a dogmatic "line" of some sort, which is
> passed off as "analysis" -- that line struggle over interpretations of
> historically distant events overwhelms the necessity for both unity and
> honest discussions of political differences in the here and now. If we were
> to have a debate between anarchists and Marxists on this list, for example,
> the last thing we would need would be a back-and-forth flame war about the
> Spanish Civil War or Kronstadt.
> 
>  So with all of that said, I should give my own take on the discussion
> of the crimes of the Stalin era in the Soviet Union which we have been
> engaged in so far. (Most of the discussion has actually been cross-posts by
> Michael Pugliese from another list, although Jason Schulman has weighed in
> with his own contribution.) As one can see from the cross-posted article
> from Steve Rosenthal, it is fairly easy to refute the arguments of
> apologists for Stalin. One aspect of the article which I am surprised that
> Jason Schulman did not cease upon is the discussion of the various smaller
> nationalities of Eastern Europe (Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, etc.). Here
> is the relevant paragraph from Rosenthal:
> 
>  "Who made up the population of the prison camps?  The majority
> consisted of prisoners of war, not only Germans but soldiers of many other
> Eastern European nationality who fought with the Nazis: Poles, Lithuanians,
> Latvians, Estonians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Ukranian and Byelo-Russian
> nationalists.  Large fascist organizations existed in all these countries
> in 1939 when Stalin and Hitler signed the pact that provided the Soviets
> with almost two more years to prepare for the Nazi invasion, while
> imperialists sort of fought each other. The Soviets rounded up many of
> these Nazis, killed some of them, and put others in prison.  If that had
> been done elsewhere, the Nazis would not have been welcomed by large 'fifth
> column' forces when they invaded other countries.  But, of course, no
> capitalist country was going to suppress its own fascists."
> 
>  Jason Schulman has already demonstrated the specious nature of claims
> that the Nazi-Soviet Pact was far-sighted and purely defensive. But that
> aside, if a historical novice were to take this paragraph from Rosenthal on
> its surface, it may seem a ruthless yet rational and realistic argument: in
> order to stave off the horrors of fascism, it was to be expected that the
> Soviets would have to use harsh measures, and therefore we can't blame them
> for it. But at even slightly closer inspection, it's obvious that this
> argument doesn't hold water. Note how Rosenthal subtly switches timeframes:
> he wants to talk about "prisoners of war" from 1939 afterwards. But what is
> really at issue is an earlier period of time, specifically, the Purges of
> 1937-38, when the Gulag and the Terror were really at their height. And if
> we study the Purges, we discover that while foreigners were a primary
> target, the kind of people who were victimized were not fascist fifth
> columnists. The largest number of foreign victims were exiled members of
> the Communist Parties of Eastern Europe, thousands upon thousands of whom
> had fled from fascist and other right-wing regimes to what they thought
> would be the safety of the Soviet Union. Instead, they were caught up in
> the xenophobic hysteria which accompanied the Purges. Those who were
> especially suspect were people who had been imprisoned by the fascists:
> instead of being a badge of honor, it became a source of suspicion, on the
> conjecture that the fascists had granted such people their release in
> exchange for engaging in espionage in the Soviet Union. Thousands of
> foreign Communists were shot. The entire Polish Communist Party was
> disbanded on orders from the Comintern on the grounds that it was nothing
> more than an espionage center for the Polish military regime.
> 
>  But as I said, refuting the claims of people like Rosenthal in this
> fashion is extraordinarily easy, and hardly worth the effort. However, some
> of what Rosenthal says contains a grain of t

request from India

[Michael Perelman]

Please respond to Rajiv directly.

Rajiv Gupta Rajiv Gupta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Dear Sir,
>
> My name is Rajiv and I live in India. I am a student of commerce and I am searching 
>for all about energy crises.
>
> I wanted to know What is energy crises and what are the benefits and symptoms of it.
>
> Actually i was searching for Energy Crises on the net and i found ur email address 
>on the site :
> http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2000II/msg03314.html
>
> Sir, I will be greatful to u if u would like to help me out find all about the 
>"Energy Crises".
>
> Thanking you,
> RAJIV

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[Michael Pugliese]

www.yale.edu/yup/
Annals of Communism

Welcome, Guest  Register - Sign In
marxist · The Marxist List  [ Join This Group! ]
http://www.egroups.com/message/marxist/1436
From:  John Lacny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date:  Tue Jun 13, 2000  8:29 pm
Subject:  Re: [marxist] Re: "Inside the Gulag"


 I am pleased that we on this listserv appear to be adopting a
considered tone when discussing historical questions. As a history major
myself, I would be the last person to argue that such questions are
unimportant or not worth discussing. The problem is that so many on the
left have so attached themselves to one school of thought on particular
historical questions -- usually a dogmatic "line" of some sort, which is
passed off as "analysis" -- that line struggle over interpretations of
historically distant events overwhelms the necessity for both unity and
honest discussions of political differences in the here and now. If we were
to have a debate between anarchists and Marxists on this list, for example,
the last thing we would need would be a back-and-forth flame war about the
Spanish Civil War or Kronstadt.

 So with all of that said, I should give my own take on the discussion
of the crimes of the Stalin era in the Soviet Union which we have been
engaged in so far. (Most of the discussion has actually been cross-posts by
Michael Pugliese from another list, although Jason Schulman has weighed in
with his own contribution.) As one can see from the cross-posted article
from Steve Rosenthal, it is fairly easy to refute the arguments of
apologists for Stalin. One aspect of the article which I am surprised that
Jason Schulman did not cease upon is the discussion of the various smaller
nationalities of Eastern Europe (Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, etc.). Here
is the relevant paragraph from Rosenthal:

 "Who made up the population of the prison camps?  The majority
consisted of prisoners of war, not only Germans but soldiers of many other
Eastern European nationality who fought with the Nazis: Poles, Lithuanians,
Latvians, Estonians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Ukranian and Byelo-Russian
nationalists.  Large fascist organizations existed in all these countries
in 1939 when Stalin and Hitler signed the pact that provided the Soviets
with almost two more years to prepare for the Nazi invasion, while
imperialists sort of fought each other. The Soviets rounded up many of
these Nazis, killed some of them, and put others in prison.  If that had
been done elsewhere, the Nazis would not have been welcomed by large 'fifth
column' forces when they invaded other countries.  But, of course, no
capitalist country was going to suppress its own fascists."

 Jason Schulman has already demonstrated the specious nature of claims
that the Nazi-Soviet Pact was far-sighted and purely defensive. But that
aside, if a historical novice were to take this paragraph from Rosenthal on
its surface, it may seem a ruthless yet rational and realistic argument: in
order to stave off the horrors of fascism, it was to be expected that the
Soviets would have to use harsh measures, and therefore we can't blame them
for it. But at even slightly closer inspection, it's obvious that this
argument doesn't hold water. Note how Rosenthal subtly switches timeframes:
he wants to talk about "prisoners of war" from 1939 afterwards. But what is
really at issue is an earlier period of time, specifically, the Purges of
1937-38, when the Gulag and the Terror were really at their height. And if
we study the Purges, we discover that while foreigners were a primary
target, the kind of people who were victimized were not fascist fifth
columnists. The largest number of foreign victims were exiled members of
the Communist Parties of Eastern Europe, thousands upon thousands of whom
had fled from fascist and other right-wing regimes to what they thought
would be the safety of the Soviet Union. Instead, they were caught up in
the xenophobic hysteria which accompanied the Purges. Those who were
especially suspect were people who had been imprisoned by the fascists:
instead of being a badge of honor, it became a source of suspicion, on the
conjecture that the fascists had granted such people their release in
exchange for engaging in espionage in the Soviet Union. Thousands of
foreign Communists were shot. The entire Polish Communist Party was
disbanded on orders from the Comintern on the grounds that it was nothing
more than an espionage center for the Polish military regime.

 But as I said, refuting the claims of people like Rosenthal in this
fashion is extraordinarily easy, and hardly worth the effort. However, some
of what Rosenthal says contains a grain of truth. I will return to this in
a moment, but first I think it would be a good idea to establish some
historical facts. I have culled the following from "Table 5: Secret Police
(GPU, OGPU, NKVD) Arrests and Sentences, 1921-39" in J. Arch Getty's and
Oleg V. Naumov's _The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destructo

Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[Carrol Cox]

"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote:
> 
> - Original Message -
> From: "Charles Mueller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>  When I mentioned on that other list the conventional
> > 'body-count' of 20th century communism

"Conventional 'body-count'" tells it all. Anyone who questions a
conventional count of any kind must be a certifiable fruitcake.

Carrol

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

> BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2001:
> 
> RELEASED TODAY;  A total of 5,915 fatal work injuries were recorded in
> 2000, a decline of about 2 percent for 1999, according to the Census of
> Fatal Occupational Injuries, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
> The decline occurred even though overall employment increased in 2000.
> The number of job-related deaths from highway incidents, the most frequent
> fatal work injury, declined for the first time since the fatality census
> was first conducted in 1992.  Fatalities resulting from electrocutions,
> fires and explosions, and contact with objects or equipment also were down
> in 2000.  Fatal job-related falls and homicides both increased.
> 
> Brisk job growth, one of the South's biggest economic claims to fame
> throughout the 1990s, eased as the U.S. economic slowdown invaded the
> region.  Hit by the tech downturn and the manufacturing slump, Atlanta's
> total job count is expected to grow by only 30,000 this year, or 1.4
> percent, the smallest gain since 1992. according to a First Union
> economist.  Hickory-Morganton-Lenoir, N.C., saw its unemployment rate
> balloon to 6.3 percent during June, from 2.3 percent a year earlier, the
> Bureau of Labor Statistics says.  The increase was the largest among U.S.
> cities, fueled by a triple whammy from layoffs in furniture, textiles and
> fiber optics ("Work Week" feature in The Wall Street Journal, page 1).
> 
> Sales at the nation's retailers were flat in July for the second month in
> a row, as consumers -- worried about their jobs -- shopped selectively.
> The Commerce Department's report showed that much of the lackluster
> performance came from a record drop in sales at gasoline stations,
> reflecting lower prices at the pump.  Sales of automobile dealerships also
> fell. but that masked strength elsewhere including sales of sporting
> goods, health and personal care products, and clothes, which all posted
> healthy gains.  Consumers also ate out more last month.  Tuesday's report
> was a bit better than many analysts were predicting.  They had forecast
> total retail sales would drop by 0.2 percent in July (Jeannine Aversa,
> Associated Press,
> http://www0.mercurycenter.com/breaking/headline2/019709.htm;
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8938-2001Aug14.html.
> 
> Wall Street is suffering through its worst patch in a decade.  Profits are
> plunging, jobs are vanishing, and bonuses are shriveling (for those who
> stay employed).  Analysts who track the securities business stop short of
> predicting that plagues of locusts will ravage Lower Manhattan -- but only
> just.  The New York State comptroller's office estimates that through the
> securities firms provide less than 5 percent of the jobs in the city, they
> pay almost 20 percent of the wages.  Thousands of people who work on Wall
> Street -- perhaps as many as 30,000 -- are facing pink slips, and that
> doesn't include all the barbers, bartenders and bauble-sellers who depend,
> indirectly, on Wall Street.  Its trade group, the Securities Industry
> Association, says that each job supports two in other fields, like law,
> consulting, or printing (The New York Times, page 1).
> 
> Though Federal Reserve policymakers signaled in June that they would quit
> cutting interest rates long before any sign the economy had begun to
> rebound, economists think it now much likelier the Fed will cut another
> quarter-point next Thursday and keep cutting until consumers and
> businesses are confident a recovery is underway (George Hager, USA Today,
> page B2).
> 
> The slowing economy slightly affected employers' recruitment of students
> for internships, co-ops and summer assignments during the 2000-2001
> academic year.  So concludes a study of 177 large and small employers by
> the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a Bethlehem, Pa.,
> organization.  Most of the surveyed employers (76 percent) offered
> internship programs while 55 percent offered co-op programs and 57 percent
> offered summer-hire programs.  The internships and co-ops took place
> during the academic year.  Generally, internships are unpaid and more
> beneficial to the student; co-ops are usually paid positions designed to
> help the company (The Wall Street Journal, page B9).
> 

 application/ms-tnef

Jevons' paradox?

[Seth Sandronsky]

Mark wrote:
Re: Re: more sparks

(clip)

During the California outages electricity consumption decline by 12%, thru 
little more than people showing a little self-control and switching off 
lights and appliances. US energy consumption could fall by half and you'd 
still have a west European standard of life. But this is not good news for 
the US economy, jobs and the like. The problem you have with a vertically 
integrated  highly centralised energy supply system is that you can't cut 
production by half and expect to still have much of the industry left in 5 
or 10 years time. There will be no new oil or gas discovery, no new massive 
investments in electricity grids, refinery capacity, pipelines etc. People 
haven't begun to think thru the implications of this as much as have the 
Houston boardrooms -- and as have Bush and Cheney. Altho the US economy is 
40% more energy efficient than in 1971, it also uses 25% more energy. What 
is beginning to happen now is an *absolute* as well as relative decline in 
energy consumption. That is completely unprecedented in the history of US 
capitalism. How will accumulation continue? Where will the growth come from, 
the New Economy? Don't think so.


Seth responded:

A Jevons' paradox, US-style, emerging first in California?



_
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

> BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, AUGUST 15, 2001:
> 
> Fatal injuries in the United States workplaces dropped by 2 percent from
> 1999 to 2000, falling from 6,023 to 5,915, according to data released by
> the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The number of deaths in 2000 is the
> lowest total since BLS began counting workplace deaths nearly a decade
> ago.  Although the workplace fatality rate declined for most demographic
> groups, it increased among Hispanic workers last year. (Daily Labor
> Report, page AA-1, Text E-1; Leigh Strope, Associated Press, Chicago
> Tribune; http://www.usatoday.com/money/general/2001-08-15-job-deaths.htm).
> 
> The illusion that college is for everyone and that a high-tech future
> requires as many college graduates as possible, is one held by a great
> many adults these days.  Yet the Department of Labor expects only about a
> fourth of future jobs to require college degrees, says Richard Rothstein,
> writing in "Lessons" in The New York Times (page A20).  The authors of
> "The Ambitious Generation:  America's Teenagers, Motivated but
> Directionless" say that many parents want their children to attend college
> even though they may be unsuited for it and may not need a college degree.
> 
> Retail sales were unchanged at $291.7 billion in July, as a slide in
> automobile sales and gasoline prices held down the value of consumers'
> purchases, the Census Bureau reports.  Despite the lack of growth,
> analysts say the report was slightly better than the markets had expected
> (Daily Labor Report, page D-4; Reuters, The New York Times, page C4)..
> 
> Surprisingly firm retail sales last month suggest consumer spending
> continued to prop up an otherwise weak economy as the second half of the
> year began (The Wall Street Journal, page A2).
> 
> Consumers are shopping -- but cautiously -- according to July retail sales
> figures and reports from major retailers.  "There is some spending, but
> consumers are price conscious," says a retailing analyst at Standard &
> Poor's Corp.  Apparel sales have been particularly weak, she noted.
> Discounters such as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. are generally faring better than
> higher priced retailers.
> (The Washington Post, page E1).
> 
> Industrial production at the nation's factories, mines and utilities edged
> down by just 0.1 percent in July, a possible sign that better days may be
> ahead for the beleaguered sector.  While the reduction was smaller than
> the 0.3 percent drop many analysts had forecast, it still marked the 10th
> monthly decline in a row, the Federal Reserve reported Wednesday,  In
> June, output plunged by 0.9 percent, weaker than the Fed estimated a month
> ago (Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press,
> http://www.nypost.com/apstories/business/V2494.htm;
> http://www.nandotimes.com/business/story/61627p-890615c.html). 
> 
> Reflecting sluggish demand for labor as the economic slowdown persists,
> the Wage Trend Indicator points toward modest private industry wage
> increases at least through the end of this year, according to the latest
> Wage Trend Indicator figures released by the Bureau of National Affairs.
> The Wage Trend Indicator's preliminary reading for third quarter 2001 is
> 100.47, down slightly from 100.50 in the second quarter and 100.71 in the
> first quarter (second quarter 1976=100).. "The WTI is suggesting that wage
> inflation will continue just below 4 percent over the next few months,"
> says economist Joel Popkin, whose consulting firm developed the quarterly
> measure for the Bureau of National Affairs (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
> 
> Average annual salary for professors at public colleges and universities
> in the 2000-2001 school year was $59,123, according to a new survey report
> from the College and University Professional Association for Human
> Resources. Salary information from 124,519 faculty members of 366 public
> 4-year colleges and universities was analyzed in the CUPA-HR reported
> titled "2000-2001 National Faculty Salary Survey by Discipline and Rank in
> Public Four-Year Colleges and Universities". (Daily Labor Report, page
> A-3).
> 

 application/ms-tnef

RE: New Labour and the triumph of Cold War liberalism

[Brown, Martin - ARP (NCI)]

When I was in London recently I saw a play called "Feel Good," a ruthless
satire of Blair's Labor Party.  Have you seen it?.  Any thoughts.  If a
similar play about the Clinton Administration had appeared on Broadway it
would not have been obvious if it had been written by an lefty-ADA democrat
or a member of Hillary's right wing conspiracy.

-Original Message-
From: Michael Keaney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 9:16 AM
To: PEN-L (E-mail)
Subject: [PEN-L:15927] New Labour and the triumph of Cold War liberalism


Penners

A few weeks ago Tony Blair presidentially appointed the chairman of the
Labour Party without acknowledging that the post already existed, and
has done for decades. The chair of the party an elected post. But such
is Mr Tony's adherence to the norms of democracy that he saw fit to
override legal protocol and impose his own appointee. The person he
chose, Charles Clarke, was, only a while ago, being written off by such
"insightful" commentators as Andrew Roth as too associated with the
"failed" regime of Neil Kinnock, whose close adviser he was. In an
earlier post Clarke was identified as having been a key figure in the
Labour leadership's efforts to discredit the miners' strike of 1984/5
and having had earlier experience in CIA-backed ICFTU trade unionism.
That his association with the electorally failed regime of Kinnock would
have put an end to his political career is a measure of the inanity that
passes for political journalism in Britain, where there is barely any
acknowledgement of the largely obvious: the vast majority of the Blair
entourage are the beneficiaries of the Kinnock ascendancy. Kinnock
himself is now ensconced as the vice president of the European
Commission, succeeding Leon Brittan in the mission to tailor that august
institution to suit British sensibilities, in line with the British
state's overall determination to integrate further in the European Union
(see earlier posts by Mark Jones). The role of Kinnock and Brittan in
this requires a separate post that may, or may not, materialise.
Whatever, Kinnock has hardly failed and has been well-rewarded by his
backers in the permanent government with his current appointment.

Meanwhile Kinnock's erstwhile deputy, Roy Hattersley, continues to
display a quality that is both endearing and infuriating: political
naivete. In the article below, in which he complains of Clarke's
appointment (whilst making sure not to bad-mouth Clarke himself), he
says: "When I was a member of Labour's national executive, Tony Benn
would make long speeches about the plot to transfer all power from party
members to the parliamentary leadership. Neil Kinnock and I shook our
heads in bewilderment and mumbled about the need for Tony to lie down in
a darkened room. I now realise that, far from being demented, he was
prescient." Nice one, Roy. Now, prescience would imply there being some
element of continuity in the Kinnock "reforms" and the present Blair
autocracy. But that is not a road Roy is either willing or able to
travel down, at least yet.

The truth of the matter is that New Labour is the ultimate triumph of
the "liberal" wing of the CIA and US National Security State. Harold
Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Michael Foot represented an interregnum which
allowed the dangerous emergence of the New Left within the Labour Party,
and which had to be beaten down and out with the full force of the
British secret state, itself assisted by its US allies (hence the
disowning of the miners' strike, support for repressive Thatcherite
employment legislation, the surrender of the BBC and the assiduous
courting of business interests). While the out-and-out reactionaries
like James Angleton believed any kind of socialism equated to Soviet
communism, the liberals used the language of social democracy (via the
Socialist International, the ICFTU, etc.) and nurtured relationships
with certain amenable social democrats (Hugh Gaitskell, Michael Stewart,
Denis Healey, David Owen, Shirley Williams, George Robertson, Peter
Mandelson,  to name but a few) via such tailor made outfits as the
British American Project for a Successor Generation in order to
accomplish exactly what Blair is achieving now. There is a lot of detail
behind all this that requires deeper explanation, but the essence is
just that.

As for Mark's points re the split between the US and the UK, it is quite
possible that slavish adherence to US dictates appeals less than a
leadership role (there could be no other for Great Britain, after all)
in a European counterweight to US hegemony. Fanciful it might be, a long
term ambition it would certainly have to be. Nevertheless, it would be a
strategically logical maneuver for a third-rate imperialist power
desperately punching above its weight. The Conservatives' attachment to
empire (preserved by the punk Thatcherite tendency) is wholly
anachronistic, as it was in 1945. But it was why the "liberal" wing of
the US national securit

New Labour and the triumph of Cold War liberalism

[Michael Keaney]

Penners

A few weeks ago Tony Blair presidentially appointed the chairman of the
Labour Party without acknowledging that the post already existed, and
has done for decades. The chair of the party an elected post. But such
is Mr Tony's adherence to the norms of democracy that he saw fit to
override legal protocol and impose his own appointee. The person he
chose, Charles Clarke, was, only a while ago, being written off by such
"insightful" commentators as Andrew Roth as too associated with the
"failed" regime of Neil Kinnock, whose close adviser he was. In an
earlier post Clarke was identified as having been a key figure in the
Labour leadership's efforts to discredit the miners' strike of 1984/5
and having had earlier experience in CIA-backed ICFTU trade unionism.
That his association with the electorally failed regime of Kinnock would
have put an end to his political career is a measure of the inanity that
passes for political journalism in Britain, where there is barely any
acknowledgement of the largely obvious: the vast majority of the Blair
entourage are the beneficiaries of the Kinnock ascendancy. Kinnock
himself is now ensconced as the vice president of the European
Commission, succeeding Leon Brittan in the mission to tailor that august
institution to suit British sensibilities, in line with the British
state's overall determination to integrate further in the European Union
(see earlier posts by Mark Jones). The role of Kinnock and Brittan in
this requires a separate post that may, or may not, materialise.
Whatever, Kinnock has hardly failed and has been well-rewarded by his
backers in the permanent government with his current appointment.

Meanwhile Kinnock's erstwhile deputy, Roy Hattersley, continues to
display a quality that is both endearing and infuriating: political
naivete. In the article below, in which he complains of Clarke's
appointment (whilst making sure not to bad-mouth Clarke himself), he
says: "When I was a member of Labour's national executive, Tony Benn
would make long speeches about the plot to transfer all power from party
members to the parliamentary leadership. Neil Kinnock and I shook our
heads in bewilderment and mumbled about the need for Tony to lie down in
a darkened room. I now realise that, far from being demented, he was
prescient." Nice one, Roy. Now, prescience would imply there being some
element of continuity in the Kinnock "reforms" and the present Blair
autocracy. But that is not a road Roy is either willing or able to
travel down, at least yet.

The truth of the matter is that New Labour is the ultimate triumph of
the "liberal" wing of the CIA and US National Security State. Harold
Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Michael Foot represented an interregnum which
allowed the dangerous emergence of the New Left within the Labour Party,
and which had to be beaten down and out with the full force of the
British secret state, itself assisted by its US allies (hence the
disowning of the miners' strike, support for repressive Thatcherite
employment legislation, the surrender of the BBC and the assiduous
courting of business interests). While the out-and-out reactionaries
like James Angleton believed any kind of socialism equated to Soviet
communism, the liberals used the language of social democracy (via the
Socialist International, the ICFTU, etc.) and nurtured relationships
with certain amenable social democrats (Hugh Gaitskell, Michael Stewart,
Denis Healey, David Owen, Shirley Williams, George Robertson, Peter
Mandelson,  to name but a few) via such tailor made outfits as the
British American Project for a Successor Generation in order to
accomplish exactly what Blair is achieving now. There is a lot of detail
behind all this that requires deeper explanation, but the essence is
just that.

As for Mark's points re the split between the US and the UK, it is quite
possible that slavish adherence to US dictates appeals less than a
leadership role (there could be no other for Great Britain, after all)
in a European counterweight to US hegemony. Fanciful it might be, a long
term ambition it would certainly have to be. Nevertheless, it would be a
strategically logical maneuver for a third-rate imperialist power
desperately punching above its weight. The Conservatives' attachment to
empire (preserved by the punk Thatcherite tendency) is wholly
anachronistic, as it was in 1945. But it was why the "liberal" wing of
the US national security state preferred to do business with the
Gaitskellites, who could be relied upon not to do anything foolish re
Cold War strategy, but who also "knew their place" in the new
international order dominated by the US. Once the labour movement was
destroyed, including especially the trade union bastions of Communist
Party influence in Britain, the right wing of the Labour Party could be
entrusted with the rudder of state, subject, of course, to the
imprimatur of the permanent government.

Blair mistook his Clarke for a chair 

The PM flouted party rule

Re: crisis watch and labor

[Rob Schaap]

G'day Alex and Michael,
 
> Wouldn't it be fair to say that the United States is on relatively
> thin ice with respect to maintaining both financial stability and> aggregate 
>demand.

What stability, Michael?  We're seeing sustained and careering growth in
credit, but that might just be precisely one half of the instability scenario.
 Sure, a decade or two of consistent growth looks stable, but so does the San
Andreas Fault.

Methinks today's stats might be significant.  They'll show Big Al how much
room for manouvre he'll have, and the futures this morning indicate many
institutions don't think that's gonna be very much.

> Alex comment:
> 
> Another way of looking at it is to think that financial systems are
> inherently unstable (Minsky). 

PrudentBear's Doug Noland quotes the likes of G Haberler and RG Hawtrey to
make the same point.  On their account, the huge credit boom is precisely the
sort of wild swing of which we're shortly going to see the opposite.  Quoth
Hawtrey:  "The upswing of the trade cycle is brought about by an expansion of
credit and lasts so long as the credit expansion goes on or, at least, is not
followed by a credit contraction. A credit expansion is brought about by the
banks through the easing of conditions under which loans are granted to the
customer.Prosperity comes to an end when credit expansion is
discontinued. Since the process of expansion, after it has been allowed to
gain a certain speed, can be stopped only by a jolt, there is always the
danger that expansion will be not merely stopped but reversed, and will be
followed by a process of contraction which is itself cumulative".

Well, all I can say is, if they're the ingredients for instability, the dish
is ready for the table.
 
> And that (perhaps) a way to attenuate
> cyclical crushes of the size and periodicity we are witnessing at> present times 
>would be to allow for a (relative) degree of financial > repression (or at least 
>international co-ordination) and regulation. > (Aggregate demand is necessary anyway, 
>all the time, for an economy, > global or local, to grow).

Yeah, but an institutionalist might point out there's nothing in the mix
(other than the possibility of a depression-inducing credit crunch and
associated public relations disaster, of course) which looks up to threatening
the autonomy of a rampant finance sector.  Every time there's a
people-destroying 'hiccough', it's always because the system ain't deregulated
enough ...

> What Bretton Woods institutions and 
> the like aim at is 'correcting' mismanagement, corruption, etc.; not > necessarily 
>'keeping a tight rein' on (the possibilities for > accumulation of) the 
>financial system (nowadays called 'global   > financial architecture). As a 
>result of these tendencies, governments > are left with less instruments to manage, 
>control, monitor, whatever, > policies. And consequently, the "closure" of the model 
>seems to be   > 'to smash labor' (as Michael put it). Both in times of 'prosperity', 
>> in order to prevent a crisis, and in times of 'instability',
> in order to come out of a crisis.

Agreed again; but there's been a massive public awakening in train for a
couple of years now, and capital ain't about to get its own way with stuff
people can grasp.  Like jobs, wages, and conditions.  Politics is back - and
it's not happy ...

Cheers,
Rob.

UK political realignment?

[Michael Keaney]

Penners

The old ones are the best ones. Just as Old Labour got dished from the
right (via the SDP), now the Conservatives are getting those vague
warnings of a breakaway. No Gang of Three/Four yet, but look out.

=

Duncan Smith win 'could prompt defections' 

Lucy Ward, political correspondent
Thursday August 16, 2001
The Guardian

The former Tory party chairman Sir Jeremy Hanley yesterday launched a
bitter attack on the leadership candidate Iain Duncan
Smith, saying in a letter to the Daily Telegraph that the defence
spokseman had been disloyal in fighting John Major over the
Maastricht treaty. 

"Should we seriously consider rewarding with the leadership a man who
showed more loyalty to a rebellious group in parliament
than to his own party, just when he needed it?" he wrote.

Moderate Conservatives are giving Mr Duncan Smith six months to distance
himself from rightwing allies or risk a walkout under
his leadership, according to a senior Tory.

Senior figures, primarily those who backed Michael Portillo and who
believe the party needs to embrace radical change to recover
electorally, argue that Mr Duncan Smith must swiftly break with
high-profile backers such as Lady Thatcher, Lord Tebbit, Lady
Young and the "compassionate conservatism" of George Bush's Republicans.

One said: "There is no talk of a breakaway party yet and we will wait
and see whether Iain is going to follow a more inclusive
agenda if he wins the contest. But if he doesn't do this, we may have a
case where people will have no choice but to leave [after]
six months."

Lord Tebbit gave Mr Duncan Smith strong endorsement when he announced
his candidacy and Mr Duncan Smith is also
understood to be the favourite of Lady Thatcher.

Talk of resignations came as his rival for the leadership, the former
chancellor Kenneth Clarke, likewise stepped up the effort
yesterday to insist he could unite the party.

Following an early assault from Duncan Smith supporter Michael Ancram,
himself a failed candidate, warning that a Clarke
victory risked "tearing the party apart" over Europe, the Clarke camp
declared that only their candidate could win a general
election.

"Winning is the best glue there is for the party," said one of Mr
Clarke's supporter. "Unity will only come now with success."

As Clarke aides sought to dispel suggestions that he was flagging badly
behind Mr Duncan Smith among the 320,000 party
members voting in the leadership ballot, the Clarke campaign team
published a list of 100 chairmen of Conservative associations
backing his candidacy. 

Full article at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,537563,00.html

Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Schadenfreude

[Michael Keaney]

German lessons 

We delude ourselves if we think that the NHS is uniquely stricken or
that raising spending is a cure. Just look at the
situation in Berlin

David Walker
Thursday August 16, 2001
The Guardian

The health service is dear, unfair and inefficient. But this is not our
health service, it is Germany's. No other country in Europe, it
might be contended, spends as much but gets such bad treatment. 

Even in over-provided Germany where some 100m x-rays are taken each year
without medical justification, some 4,000 women
still die of breast cancer because of misdiagnosis. 

Germany spends more on health than the EU average, towards which Tony
Blair is supposed to be leading the UK. But junior
doctors' hours are still a scandal, ancillary staff are underpaid and
the cost of prescriptions is soaring. Few Germans would argue
that their system delivers value for money. 

We delude ourselves, in other words, if we think the NHS is uniquely
stricken or that raising spending is, in and of itself, a cure.
Germany employs 4.2m people in health care, 12% of the entire workforce,
but still suffers - to judge from political debate there -
from a health crisis.

Unlike here, part of the problem is overprovision - through taxes and
insurance contributions Germans are paying for useless
medicine. Patients consult several different doctors for the same
condition, bumping up costs to little identifiable benefit. 

So, if Alan Milburn has problems, so does Ulla Schmidt, health minister
in Gerhard Schröder's coalition government. Permitting
increases in compulsory contributions to state-regulated health
insurance would be politically difficult; cuts in VAT on
prescriptions - a way to make medicine cheaper - would further upset
fiscal calculations. 

As for social care, one in 20 long-stay residential homes for the
elderly are so bad, the medical service of the health insurance
associations says, that old people's lives are at risk. The head of
Munich's at-home care service says the German system is one
of "social euthanasia". 

Chancellor Schröder's problems do not stop there. On the economic front,
things are going to get worse before they get any
better. Unemployment, shown in the chart, is rising. July showed the
seventh consecutive monthly rise; the latest seasonally
adjusted total is 3.85m, a lot of it concentrated in the grim urban
areas of former east Germany. 

It is possible that by the time the federal elections are due in autumn
2002, unad justed unemployment could be around the 3.5m
mark. That is a magic number in German politics; Mr Schröder promised to
get below it by the time he goes to the polls. Most
economists doubt he will.

The German economy grew above trend at 3% last year. This year growth
could be as low as 0.8% and will struggle to get above
2% next. Increases in food and energy prices earlier this year
obliterated the effect of tax cuts. 

Revenues are down, pushing up the budget deficit. It could go to between
1.9% and 2.1% of GDP, bigger even - a shaming
euroland comparison - than Italy's. 

Yet the political response of the Schröder government has been
remarkable, by Blairite standards. Instead of Gordon Brown's
dash for orthodoxy, the finance minister, Hans Eichel, has kept
spending. The German chancellor has, if anything, moved
leftward. 

No significant changes in German's generous welfare provision are
planned. The Social Democrats will campaign under the
slogan of "security in the context of change". Their focus groups and
polls say Germans reject the "ego society" and value social
solidarity, even at the expense of high taxes - in Germany the average
employee gives two thirds of each deutschmark earned to
the state in direct or indirect taxes. 

In recent interviews Mr Schröder has firmly rejected Blairite
flexibility. "We don't want an American-style labour market because
we believe a higher level of [job] security and certainty is right." 

He created a fuss by saying that the unemployed have no God-given right
to stay on benefit for ever, but also said no to looser
regulations on hire and fire. Flexibility is contrary to German and
European traditions. 

Rejection of Blairite nostrums does not come clearer than that. And,
given the state of the polls, it may prove a winning formula.
That is partly, as in France, because of disarray on the right. 

The German right has a plausible candidate to run against Mr Schröder,
the Bavarian prime minister, Edmund Stoiber. But for all
his enthusiasm for laptops and Lederhosen much of what he has recently
been saying about social justice and jobs chimes with
the consensus. 

The Christian Social Union, in command in Bavaria - though the Munich
government is Social-Democrat-led - has traditionally
been close to the Christian Democrats but lately, in the wake of the
scandals surrounding ex-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, ties have
been frayed. The upshot, for the time being, leaves the SDP sitting
pretty in the polls. 

The German economy may start growi

test ignore

[Mark Jones]

test ignore

Re: Re: more sparks

[Mark Jones]

At 16/08/2001 02:11, Michael wrote:
>You are correct about energy prices.
>
>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > Michael asked the other day what might counteract tendencies toward
> > slump.

A further thought on this. First, as I already argued, temporarily lower 
gas prices are the obvious result of recession, and are not counteracting 
tendencies. Spot price volatility reveals the underlying tightness of 
supply. Oil prices, incidentally, have not slumped despite growing 
recession. This is because non-Opec oil has declined so much that Opec has 
regained the armlock on the market which it lost in the early 1980s. This 
is a hugely important geopolitical fact and much under-discussed. Unless 
huge new non-Opec supplies come on the market, Opec will keep its grip and 
will not lose it again, as it did in the Reagan years. Thus crude will not 
slide to historically low prices ($10bbl) again. And Opec states and their 
social and political realities will come back into public awareness 
(already are).

This fact that recession has not brought down oil spot prices may be an 
indicator that the world oil production peak has already arrived, in 
economic if not physical terms (altho it may have arrived in physical terms 
too).

Second, crucially, price volatility does lend support to the Bush/Cheney 
emphasis on more production as opposed to more conservation. This looks to 
the Greens like the work of Satanic powers whose desire for profit from 
their fossil fuel investments outweighs all other considerations, even 
global warming. But it is more than conspiracy theory which makes the Bush 
administration behave like this. Because the *underlying problem* with the 
world's energy infrastructure is massive, chronic and persisting 
under-investment and this problem is getting worse all the time, not 
better. For all the subsidies and market-breaks fossil gets over 
renewables, there is still way too little investment in the energy supply 
system, which is 95% fossil and only 5% renewables even today. Without 
sharp increases in both upstream and downstream investment, the ongoing 
decline in the oil and gas sector will only accelerate, possibly beyond a 
point of no return. A sign that this is happening is the oil corps 
embarrassment about huge profits which only sit in their bank accounts. The 
WSJ has just been commenting on this: but the problem BP etc face is that 
there is now a dire shortage of new oilfields, new prospects, to invest in. 
The Caspian looks a busted flush. There are no huge new offshore plays like 
N Sea in the 1970s to put the money in. This too is a sign of an industry 
which has gone beyond maturity and is on the threshold of terminal decline.

During the California outages electricity consumption decline by 12%, thru 
little more than people showing a little self-control and switching off 
lights and appliances. US energy consumption could fall by half and you'd 
still have a west European standard of life. But this is not good news for 
the US economy, jobs and the like. The problem you have with a vertically 
integrated  highly centralised energy supply system is that you can't cut 
production by half and expect to still have much of the industry left in 5 
or 10 years time. There will be no new oil or gas discovery, no new massive 
investments in electricity grids, refinery capacity, pipelines etc. People 
haven't begun to think thru the implications of this as much as have the 
Houston boardrooms -- and as have Bush and Cheney. Altho the US economy is 
40% more energy efficient than in 1971, it also uses 25% more energy. What 
is beginning to happen now is an *absolute* as well as relative decline in 
energy consumption. That is completely unprecedented in the history of US 
capitalism. How will accumulation continue? Where will the growth come 
from, the New Economy? Don't think so.

Mark Jones

Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

[Michael Keaney]

Michael Perelman wrote:

Charles Meuller is a vigorous proponent of anti-monopoly.  He believes
that
competition can cure all ills.  He used to be active on the post
keynesian list.

=

Mueller surfaced on the unmoderated AFEE list about 5 years ago and
attempted to monopolise list discussion to suit his singular
predilection of anti-trust. He had, prior to that, attempted to muscle
in on the IPE list, whose moderator got slagged off elsewhere for
refusing Mueller freedom to monopolise the discussion there. He also
relentlessly plugged his journal, earning the response from one peeved
lister that for obsessive attention to one topic he could be compared
only to Larry Flynt. This and other humurous put-downs earned some
listers with the threat from Mueller that he would report them to their
respective university authorities for abusing the trust placed in them
with the provision of IT facilities. Eventually he disappeared after
multiple unsubbings. His one supporter throughout these "debates" ended
up joining him on his own e-list, only to be ejected later for not
staying "on message".

Clearly, things are looking up at Challenge.

Michael K.

Re: more sparks

[Mark Jones]

At 15/08/2001 23:45, Doug wrote:
>Michael asked the other day what might counteract tendencies toward slump. 
>I mentioned U.S. tax rebates and almost 100 central bank easings worldwide 
>since December, with more almost certainly on the way. I could also have 
>mentioned the decline in energy prices. Wellhead prices for natural gas in 
>the U.S. are down 63% from their January peaks. Gasoline prices are off 
>over 20% since spring. This is good news for (nonenergy) demand, if not 
>for Mother Earth.


I wouldn't rush to draw much comfort from the temporary fall in natgas 
prices. It's actually a serious that what is wrong with the underlying 
energy equation is not being put right. Look at supply, where apart from 
(astronomically expensive) Gulf of Mexico deepwater oil (not gas) there is 
accelerated depletion everywhere, and ask yourself whether this kind of 
price volatility will ever get investment into building a pipeline from 
Alaskan stranded gas fields. Without this investment, and almost certainly 
even with this, any serious uptick will have the US economy banging its 
head on the energy ceiling again.

Mark Jones