date:20030317

Title: RE: [PEN-L:35639] farewell, long run...





the "long run" never did exist, except in the NC imagination. (In this fevered vision, the LR referred to a unique equilibrium that existed independent of current conditions or actions or perceptions. It would be achieved eventually, if there were no "shocks" or bad government policies... It's a bit like heaven.) 


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine




> -Original Message-
> From: Ian Murray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2003 10:15 PM
> To: pen-l
> Subject: [PEN-L:35639] farewell, long run...
> 
> 
> >From bombs to beggar-my-neighbour
> 
> Larry Elliott
> Monday March 17, 2003
> The Guardian
> 
> As the world's financial markets showed with startling 
> clarity last week,
> the long term has ceased to exist. The short-term is the next 
> nano second,
> the medium term is the next minute and the long term is what might be
> happening on the other side of lunchtime.
> 
> The antics of dealers last week would have kept the psychoanalysts in
> learned articles for many a year, with abundant evidence of all the
> classic textbook disorders: manic depressive mood swings, denial, id
> impulses, more denial, the lot.
> 
> Forecasting what the world will look like after the war is, therefore,
> nigh-on impossible. To the extent that anybody has given it 
> thought, the
> feeling is that an easy military campaign will be followed by 
> a longer and
> more expensive period of reconstruction, but that the costs 
> will be worth
> it because the threat of Baghdad-sponsored terrorism will have been
> diminished and the boil on the face of the global economy 
> will have been
> lanced.
> 
> This may well be the outcome. Yet contingency planning would 
> suggest that
> policy makers had best be prepared for a less than perfect 
> scenario, in
> which the gyrations of the stock market are not just the result of war
> jitters - although they obviously are to an extent - but are 
> symptomatic
> of a more serious problem that will be exacerbated by the 
> sundering of the
> global community over Iraq. George Bush is making positive 
> noises about
> the need for a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle 
> East, which
> raises hope that the US has not given up on multilateralism, but the
> insults that have been flying across the Atlantic and the 
> English Channel
> in recent days suggests that multilateralism may have been 
> holed below the
> waterline. The sour mood threatens everything from 
> coordinated action on
> debt relief to expansion of the European Union to the east, 
> taking in the
> global trade talks and Britain's relationship with Europe en route.
> 
> Less confident
> 
> This would be serious stuff even if the immediate economic 
> outlook were
> bright, but it does not take a great feat of imagination to envisage a
> scenario in which the markets enjoy a Saddam rally only to 
> wake up at the
> beginning of May to a world that has not fundamentally changed. Recent
> data have suggested that weaker consumer sentiment in the US 
> is having an
> impact on spending. Likewise, there appears to be evidence 
> that the boom
> in retail sales in Britain is waning. Europe's domestic 
> demand has been
> poor and so has Japan's.
> 
> John Llewellyn of Lehman Brothers concludes: "At root, people are less
> confident that the economy will be performing satisfactorily 
> a year or two
> ahead. Consumers, uncertain that they will have a job, spend 
> a bit less
> and save a bit more. Firms, expecting reduced sales, do 
> likewise. Private
> sector savings rates rise. The result: a self-fulfilling 
> slowdown with a
> crashing stock market."
> 
> Consumer caution is wholly justified, given the destruction of wealth
> caused by the equity bear market. Take Britain; Simon Rubinsohn, chief
> economist at the City firm Gerrard, estimates that the net 
> wealth of the
> household sector stood at £3,397bn in the first quarter of 
> 2002, down from
> £4,019bn in the fourth quarter of 2002 and a peak of close to 
> £4,400bn in
> 2000.
> 
> The size of the fall is modest in relation to the halving of 
> share prices,
> but is explained by the simultaneous increase in house 
> prices. Over the
> past three years, the bear market in shares has almost - but 
> not quite -
> been balanced by the bubble in property.
> 
> Why then has consumer spending been so strong? Largely, 
> because rises in
> house prices are much more visible and - in a sense - more 
> visceral than
> the decline in value of their financial assets. It is the feeling that
> bricks and mortar are rising in value that has made people 
> willing to take
> on more debt, or perhaps forget what is happening to their 
> pension funds
> and endowment policies. A large chunk of the debt that has 
> been taken on
> by consumers has been to service existing debts, which is just about
> sustainable so long as interest rates are

RE: Pilger article

Title: RE: [PEN-L:35625] Pilger article





Pilger writes:>... Vladimir Slipchenko, one of the world's leading military analysts, says the
testing of new weapons is a "main purpose" of the attack on Iraq. "Nobody
is saying anything about it," he said last month. "In May 2001, in his
first presidential address, Bush spoke about the need for preparation for
future wars. He emphasised that the armed forces needed to be completely
high-tech, capable of conducting hostilities by the no-contact method<


My mom has told me many times that during the Spanish Civil War, the Nazis and the Italian Fascists tested new weapons, tactics, etc., as part of the preparation for what became World War II.

Jim

World Champions 1908

> Yes, and the Chicago Cubs are going to win the World Series this year.Ian
That a promise? It's about time! jksDo you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online

Re: maxim rodinson on edward said

 
 soula avramidis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

when maxim rodinson was asked what he thought of edward said in a very recent interview on aljazeera he said. 
I never liked from the beginning. he does not know the arab world and pretends he does.his thought is bourgeois and he is an idealist. up until this moment he has no sound theoretical or practical positions I think. his ideas about islam are shallow yet he makes use of these in his literary work, he is a bourgeois. he belongs to a field that i do not like the field of literary philosophy. in my opinion these people do not know one thing very well. 
by the by, there is a lot of truth in this. 
* * * 
Truth in what, that people in "literary philosophy: do not know one thing very well? It's true that there's an immense amount of ignorance and foolishness in literary theory. But it's dumb to diss someone because of his field in general. Rodinson's field of area studies is largely composed of ideological hacks, guns for hire. And Said is way out of the norm. His scholarship is not merely unquestionable, it sets the standard for the field. As whether he's "bourgrois," I assume that R says this because S is not a Marxist. Well, that's the cross we non-Marxist rads have to bear. We're bourgeois. There are worse things to be. I don't know enough about Islam to say whether S's grasp of Islam is shallow. I'd be surprised it that were true, though. jksDo you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online

RE: World Champions 1908




 > > Yes, and the Chicago Cubs are 
going to win the World Series this year. 
> That a promise? It's about 
time! jks 
 
and the 
Messiah is coming soon.
Jim

Re: Re: maxim rodinson on edward said


- Original Message -
From: "andie nachgeborenen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> Truth in what, that people in "literary philosophy: do not know one
thing very well? It's true that there's an immense amount of ignorance and
foolishness in literary theory. But it's dumb to diss someone because of
his field in general. Rodinson's field of area studies is largely composed
of ideological hacks, guns for hire. And Said is way out of the norm. His
scholarship is not merely unquestionable, it sets the standard for the
field. As whether he's "bourgrois," I assume that R says this because S is
not a Marxist. Well, that's the cross we non-Marxist rads have to bear.
We're bourgeois. There are worse things to be. I don't know enough about
Islam to say whether S's grasp of Islam is shallow. I'd be surprised it
that were true, though. jks
>

=

The politics of naming is a pisser, ain't it?

"Mommy, they're calling me names!"


Ian

FW: Lewis Carroll for President

Title: FW:  Lewis Carroll for President





Read by the author/commentator on the March 13, 2003 edition of All Things 
Considered on U.S.  National Public Radio





All right.  Let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly:


We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam 
Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored.


We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war.


The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously--and 
if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by God, we 
will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend.


Am I getting this right?


Further: if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the
democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that, too, 
because democracy, as WE define it, is too important to be stopped by a 
little thing like democracy as THEY define it.


Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot
afford dissension among ourselves.  We must speak with one voice against
Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard.


We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point
that "might does not make right," as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. 
And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us 
oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition.


We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people.  And if
our people--and people elsewhere in the world--fail to understand that, then 
we have no choice but to ignore them.


Listen.  Don't misunderstand.  I think it is a good thing that the members 
of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis
Carroll.  I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland" and 
"Through the Looking-Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and 
illogic and on the strangeness of things--not templates for foreign policy.


It is amusing for The Mad Hatter to say something like "We must make war on 
him because he is a threat to peace," but not amusing for someone who
actually commands an army to say that.  As a collector of laughable
arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know--we 
all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a
freak, circular-reasoning accident.




Peter Freundlich is  free-lance journalist in New York.


jd

Re: FW: Lewis Carroll for President

Hey, as the Red Queen says, you have to believe at least six impossible things before breakfast.
And, alas, the movement is running as fast as it can to stay in the same place.
Carroll is not constitutionally eligible to be Prez, as he is (a) dead, (b) Britis, and (c) not born here. But we can nominate Carrol . . .
jks
"Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Read by the author/commentator on the March 13, 2003 edition of All Things Considered on U.S. National Public Radio

All right. Let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly:
We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored.
We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war.
The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously--and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by God, we will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend.
Am I getting this right?
Further: if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that, too, because democracy, as WE define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as THEY define it.
Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard.
We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that "might does not make right," as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition.
We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people--and people elsewhere in the world--fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.
Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things--not templates for foreign policy.
It is amusing for The Mad Hatter to say something like "We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace," but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that. As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular-reasoning accident.
Peter Freundlich is free-lance journalist in New York.
jd Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online

re: Lewis Carroll for President

Title: re: [PEN-L:35660] Lewis Carroll for President





 
also, he had an unhealty preference for young girls, which seems beyond
anything Clinton did. 


though Bush shows that personal morality may be much less important than
public morality.


jim 
end the war now!


-Original Message-
From: andie nachgeborenen
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 3/17/2003 9:49 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:35660] Re: FW:  Lewis Carroll for President


Hey, as the Red Queen says, you have to believe at least six impossible
things before breakfast. 


And, alas, the movement is running as fast as it can to stay in the same
place.


Carroll is not constitutionally eligible to be Prez, as he is (a) dead,
(b) Britis, and (c) not born here. But we can nominate Carrol . . . 


jks


  



 "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 



Read by the author/commentator on the March 13, 2003 edition of All
Things 
Considered on U.S.  National Public Radio 


 


All right.  Let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly: 


We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to
Saddam 
Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. 


We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. 


The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be taken
seriously--and 
if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by God, we 
will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. 


Am I getting this right? 


Further: if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the 
democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that,
too, 
because democracy, as WE define it, is too important to be stopped by a 
little thing like democracy as THEY define it. 


Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot 
afford dissension among ourselves.  We must speak with one voice against


Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard. 


We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point 
that "might does not make right," as Saddam Hussein seems to think it
does. 
And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us


oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition. 


We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people.  And if 
our people--and people elsewhere in the world--fail to understand that,
then 
we have no choice but to ignore them. 


Listen.  Don't misunderstand.  I think it is a good thing that the
members 
of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis 
Carroll.  I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland"
and 
"Through the Looking-Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and 
illogic and on the strangeness of things--not templates for foreign
policy. 


It is amusing for The Mad Hatter to say something like "We must make war
on 
him because he is a threat to peace," but not amusing for someone who 
actually commands an army to say that.  As a collector of laughable 
arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I
know--we 
all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a 
freak, circular-reasoning accident. 


 
 
Peter Freundlich is  free-lance journalist in New York. 


jd 





  _  


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  - establish your business online

US Marines under UK command?

I had the idea that the US constitution did not allow for US troops to be
under any but US command. Is that a myth?

Cheers, Ken Hanly


http://www.drudgereport.com/command.htm

Re: Re: Lewis Carroll for President

2003-03-17 Thread Bill Lear

On Monday, March 17, 2003 at 09:58:25 (-0800) Devine, James writes:
> 
>also, he had an unhealty preference for young girls, which seems beyond
>anything Clinton did. 
>...

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol18/issue06/arts.lcarroll.html

Examining the Looking-Glass Life of Lewis Carroll
The Man Who Loved Little Girls

by Ada Calhoun

We live in paranoid times. Maybe it's the millennium, maybe it's
political correctness, maybe it's the bleak techno-industrial
landscape, but motives are forever suspect, conspiracies forever
assumed. Lewis Carroll, an unmarried and eccentric man from the
Victorian era whose life revolved around the entertainment and
portrayal of little girls tends, therefore, to make people nervous. At
the same time, Alice in Wonderland is one of the most quoted books in
the western world, and Carroll has been called one of the best
photographers of children in his century. ...

[...]

So why does this sense of Carroll as pedophile persist? According to
Morton Cohen, it has a lot to do with the suspicious era in which we
live. It's simply assumed these days that if an old man likes spending
time reading to, playing with, and photographing little girls that he
must be a sick human being. But Britain in the mid-19th century is a
far cry from contemporary America, and there and then such things were
not seen in the same light. It's important to remember that Carroll
entered the scene on the heels of Blake, Dickens, Coleridge, and
Tennyson, all of whom in one way or another helped replace the
18th-century idea of the sinful child with a 19th-century
glorification of the child as a symbol of purity and
innocence. Children, once thought of as merely little adults, fully
capable of sin and factory work, were suddenly revered as
angels. Romanticism idealized children, especially girls, as symbols
of virtue, innocence, and purity. If mankind was pure before the Fall,
girls were pure before they were "besmirched" by sex and
marriage. With his sensitive aesthetic sense, Carroll the artist was
drawn to the radiantly non-sexual beauty he saw in children.

[...]

Bill

Re: US Marines under UK command?

Yes. jks
 
 k hanly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I had the idea that the US constitution did not allow for US troops to beunder any but US command. Is that a myth?Cheers, Ken Hanlyhttp://www.drudgereport.com/command.htmDo you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online

remove

2003-03-17 Thread Currier, Joseph

take me off this fucking list

-Original Message-
From: Bill Lear [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 10:21 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:35663] Re: Re: Lewis Carroll for President

On Monday, March 17, 2003 at 09:58:25 (-0800) Devine, James writes:
> 
>also, he had an unhealty preference for young girls, which seems beyond
>anything Clinton did. 
>...

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol18/issue06/arts.lcarroll.html

Examining the Looking-Glass Life of Lewis Carroll
The Man Who Loved Little Girls

by Ada Calhoun

We live in paranoid times. Maybe it's the millennium, maybe it's
political correctness, maybe it's the bleak techno-industrial
landscape, but motives are forever suspect, conspiracies forever
assumed. Lewis Carroll, an unmarried and eccentric man from the
Victorian era whose life revolved around the entertainment and
portrayal of little girls tends, therefore, to make people nervous. At
the same time, Alice in Wonderland is one of the most quoted books in
the western world, and Carroll has been called one of the best
photographers of children in his century. ...

[...]

So why does this sense of Carroll as pedophile persist? According to
Morton Cohen, it has a lot to do with the suspicious era in which we
live. It's simply assumed these days that if an old man likes spending
time reading to, playing with, and photographing little girls that he
must be a sick human being. But Britain in the mid-19th century is a
far cry from contemporary America, and there and then such things were
not seen in the same light. It's important to remember that Carroll
entered the scene on the heels of Blake, Dickens, Coleridge, and
Tennyson, all of whom in one way or another helped replace the
18th-century idea of the sinful child with a 19th-century
glorification of the child as a symbol of purity and
innocence. Children, once thought of as merely little adults, fully
capable of sin and factory work, were suddenly revered as
angels. Romanticism idealized children, especially girls, as symbols
of virtue, innocence, and purity. If mankind was pure before the Fall,
girls were pure before they were "besmirched" by sex and
marriage. With his sensitive aesthetic sense, Carroll the artist was
drawn to the radiantly non-sexual beauty he saw in children.

[...]

Bill

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Re: remove

2003-03-17 Thread Louis Proyect

We just got the same idiotic complaint from Currier, a Paine-Webber 
thief, over on Marxmail. Perhaps he has too much time on his hands now 
that the average American has given up on Wall Street 3-card monte 
games. It is impossible to get on PEN-L or Marxmail without responding 
positively to a confirmation request. Perhaps somebody has been screwing 
around with Currier's computer when he isn't looking, but the source of 
the problem is over at Paine-Webber and nowhere else.

Currier, Joseph wrote:
take me off this fucking list
--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Re: US Marines under UK command?

Better tell that to the vice president of the Phillippines and numerous
others..

Cheers, Ken Hanly

US mulls placing troops
under RP command: Guingona
Posted: 1:14 PM (Manila Time) | Feb. 07, 2002
By INQ7.net


VICE President Teofisto Guingona on Thursday said the United States
government is still considering whether to allow the Armed Forces of the
Philippines to have full authority over its troops in Mindanao.

Guingona told a Senate hearing that under the US Constitution, American
troops couldn't fall under the command of a foreign nation. One of the
provisions in the Terms of Reference for the Balikatan joint military
drills, however, states that the AFP would have authority over the US
soldiers who are being deployed in Mindanao.


Guingona who is also the Foreign Affairs Secretary said the contention stems
from the differences in definition between the terms "command" and
"authority".

At the same time, Guingona said American soldiers would not get involved in
any military operations local troops would conduct against their arch
nemesis, the Abu Sayyaf.

Guingona insisted that authority issues would be resolved after he meets
with US counterparts to review the guidelines for the military training
exercises.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes said that the approval for the
Terms of Reference is behind schedule because officials are being "careful"
amid the protests raised against the presence of US troops in the country.


- Original Message -
From: andie nachgeborenen
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 12:28 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:35664] Re: US Marines under UK command?


Yes. jks

 k hanly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I had the idea that the US constitution did not allow for US troops to be
under any but US command. Is that a myth?

Cheers, Ken Hanly


http://www.drudgereport.com/command.htm





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Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online

Re: Lewis Carroll for President

At 12:20 PM -0600 3/17/03, Bill Lear wrote:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol18/issue06/arts.lcarroll.html

Examining the Looking-Glass Life of Lewis Carroll
The Man Who Loved Little Girls
by Ada Calhoun

We live in paranoid times.

But Britain in the mid-19th century is a far cry from contemporary 
America, and there and then such things were not seen in the same 
light. It's important to remember that Carroll entered the scene on 
the heels of Blake, Dickens, Coleridge, and Tennyson, all of whom in 
one way or another helped replace the 18th-century idea of the 
sinful child with a 19th-century glorification of the child as a 
symbol of purity and innocence. Children, once thought of as merely 
little adults, fully capable of sin and factory work, were suddenly 
revered as angels. Romanticism idealized children, especially girls, 
as symbols of virtue, innocence, and purity.
It is the very glorification of the child as a symbol of purity and 
innocence that feeds both perversion and paranoia about it, though.

Also, men in Britain in the 19th century were definitely aware of 
availability of child prostitution.  Here's an excerpt from _My 
Secret Life_, a sexual autobiography which, scholars say, was written 
in the 1880s:

*   "I'll get you half a dozen little ones without hair, but they 
all know as much as I do about fucking." -- That offer I declined, 
for I knew there were plenty like that about the streets, whom I 
could get without her assistance. -- "A virgin, a virgin, and with no 
hair on her cunt, or nothing."

(Anonymous, _My Secret Life_, Chapter XXXI, edited by James Kincaid, 
Penguin, 1996)   *

Children as sexual objects clearly existed in Victorian Britain, both 
in ideas and practice.
--
Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: 

* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity:

Re: Re: Re: US Marines under UK command?

There is nothing textual in the Const that speaks expressly to the question. The Const makes the Prez C in C, Art II s 2  cl 1, but the Prez can delegate his authority. I am not aware of any case law on the question, or indeed any statutory law. I wouldn't treat the VP of the Philippines as an expert on US constitutional law. Not that I know much about this obscure corner either. jks
 k hanly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Better tell that to the vice president of the Phillippines and numerousothers..Cheers, Ken HanlyUS mulls placing troopsunder RP command: GuingonaPosted: 1:14 PM (Manila Time) | Feb. 07, 2002By INQ7.netVICE President Teofisto Guingona on Thursday said the United Statesgovernment is still considering whether to allow the Armed Forces of thePhilippines to have full authority over its troops in Mindanao.Guingona told a Senate hearing that under the US Constitution, Americantroops couldn't fall under the command of a foreign nation. One of theprovisions in the Terms of Reference for the Balikatan joint militarydrills, however, states that the AFP would have authority over the USsoldiers who are being deployed in Mindanao.Guingona who is also the Foreign Affairs Secretary said the contention stemsfrom th!
e differences in definition between the terms "command" and"authority".At the same time, Guingona said American soldiers would not get involved inany military operations local troops would conduct against their archnemesis, the Abu Sayyaf.Guingona insisted that authority issues would be resolved after he meetswith US counterparts to review the guidelines for the military trainingexercises.Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes said that the approval for theTerms of Reference is behind schedule because officials are being "careful"amid the protests raised against the presence of US troops in the country.- Original Message -From: andie nachgeborenenTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 12:28 PMSubject: [PEN-L:35664] Re: US Marines under UK command?Yes. jksk hanly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:I had the idea that the US constitution did not allo!
w for US troops to beunder any but US command. Is that a myth?Cheers, Ken Hanlyhttp://www.drudgereport.com/command.htmDo you Yahoo!?Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business onlineDo you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!

Goldsmith on the Legality of Iraq War

Goldsmith's reading of the law is the stuff of Monty Python skits. He is
running for the title of legal beagle for Bush to complement Blair his
lapdog.

If the former resolutions made action legal why on earth was a new
resolution introduced? Why all the arm-twisting and bribes to  get a totally
unnecessary resolution passed? Only when it fails is  it discovered it is
unrequired legally!

Goldsmith ignores these facts among others. The UN security council in 1441
remained "seized of the matter" and hence it was up to the UN to make a
final decision not some member or members on the basis of the earlier
resolutions. Also, 1441 passed unaminously precisely because it did not
authorise war but serious consequences.  The UK and US empahsised this to
bring along doubters. Now they say the opposite. Even some media have gone
along in their sloppiness and said  that
"serious consequences" is diplomatic jargon for force or war. Not so.




Cheers, Ken Hanly
- Original Message -
From: "richardbyrne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "CASI discussion list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Andrew
Goreing" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 9:53 AM
Subject: [casi] Government spin on legality of war


> Story on Sky news
>
> WAR ON IRAQ IS 'LEGAL'
>
> War on Iraq is legal, according to the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith.
>
>
> He said the combined effect of United Nations Security Council resolutions
> 678, 687 and 1441 gave the US and Britain the right to attack Iraq.
>
> The UN now has just hours to decide if it will back a US-led invasion.
>
> Meanwhile Prime Minister Tony Blair will hold an emergency Cabinet meeting
> at 4pm and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is also expected to address the
> House of Commons at 7pm.
>
> America, the UK and Spain have so far failed to gain support for a second
> resolution backing military action.
>
> Earlier President George W Bush said the world is facing a "moment of
truth"
> over Iraq.
>
> Bush said the 15-member Security Council had to agree in the next 24 hours
> on a resolution laying the groundwork for war.
>
> He left no doubt that the United States and its allies would otherwise
move
> to invade Iraq without explicit UN backing.
>
> And with France, Germany, Russia and China insisting they will vote
against
> a resolution, Mr Blair insisted: "We are going to hold firm to the cause
we
> have set out, we have made it clear."
>
> French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin argued: "France cannot
accept
> the resolution that is on the table in New York... which poses an
ultimatum
> and which envisages an automatic use of force."
>
> Meanwhile Britain and the US, who have a 250,000-strong force in or around
> the Gulf, advised their civilians to leave Kuwait, which is the likely
> launch pad for an invasion of Iraq.
>
> UN observers, who have monitored the Iraq-Kuwait border since the 1991
Gulf
> War, stopped operations in the demilitarised zone, which invasion forces
> would have to cross.
>
> Iraqi President Saddam Hussein told his military commanders that if Iraq
> were attacked, it would take the battle anywhere in the world "wherever
> there is sky, land or water".
>
>
>
>
> Last Updated: 10:17 UK, Monday March 17, 2003
>
>
>
> - Original Message -
> From: Andrew Goreing <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: peter kiernan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 11:37 AM
> Subject: Re: [casi] UNSC resolutions
>
>
> > Hallo List
> >
> > I too would be interested in seeing further info on this...
> >
> > on 18/3/03 12:29 am, peter kiernan at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > > Does any-one know of any legal opinion or analysis of the pretty
> misleading
> > > claims made that a war against Iraq, even without authorisation from a
> > > further UNSC resolution, is legal on the grounds that it is enforcing
> the
> > > term of ceasefire as laid out in UNSC resolution 687 of April 1991?
> >
> > Today Lord Goldsmith is meant to be publishing (a portion of) the legal
> > advice he has given to the UK government. He has indicated that it gives
> > what government ministers call "a legal basis" for the attack on Iraq. I
> > suspect it will revolve around exactly this issue Peter Kiernan refers
to,
> > the "revival" of the authorisation to use force in SCR 678, by means of
an
> > alleged violation of the ceasefire resolution, 687.
> >
> > The government has been using this manoeuvre for some time. In November
> 1998
> > I wrote to the Foreign Office enquiring what exactly was the "clear
legal
> > basis" that the government claimed to have for the (impending) Desert
Fox
> > assault. After four months I eventually received an answer; the
operative
> > part read as follows:--
> >
> > "There was a clear legal basis in existing Security Council Resolutions
> for
> > the action we took last December. Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1154
> > made clear that any violation by Iraq of its obligations to allow UNSCOM
> and
> > IAEA unrestricted access would have th

Turkey Caves?

Turkey Signals It May Be Ready to Assist U.S.
Mon March 17, 2003 03:32 PM ET

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey signaled on Monday that it may be ready to take
urgent steps to assist its NATO ally the United States in any war on
neighboring Iraq.
Turkey's prime minister, president and military chief met for talks that the
defense minister said might satisfy urgent U.S. demands to use Turkish
airspace and ground bases. "Turkey has decided to take urgent steps to
preserve its national interests," presidential spokesman Tacan Ildem told
reporters after the meeting.

He gave no details but the steps would be in accordance with recommendations
of the influential National Security Council, a partly military body which
in late January urged the government to take military measures to safeguard
Turkey's interests.

Canada not willing....nor able either...

As usual Chretien is all over the place and doesnt make much sense but at
least he is not participating. Rather strange since he agrees that
unilateral war is legal and that too is strange given that he went to all
sorts of trouble to try and get a compromise UN resolution. At one point he
also noted that the aim of regime change is not legitimate.

Cheers, ken hanly

PS. Isnt it strange that at the same time as the US suggests that Hussein
should be tried for war crimes it is willing to be forgiving angel if he
will just spare them the trouble of an invasion and go into exile?

Canada will not participate in war: PM

Globe and Mail Update with Canadian Press



- Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said Monday that Canada would not participate
in any war on Iraq without UN approval.

"We have always maintained that we need UN approval [to act]," he said,
adding that this has always been Canada's position.

The Prime Minister made the statement in the House of Commons in Question
Period, and it was greeted with thunderous applause from Liberal MPs.

"If military action proceeds without a new resolution of the Security
Council, Canada will not participate," Mr. Chrétien said.

His comments came after the United States, Britain and Spain announced they
had decided not to put a UN Security Council resolution authorizing force to
a vote because of threats it would be vetoed by France.

Three Canadian navy ships are in the Arabian Gulf conducting escort and
surveillance in the war on terrorism, unconnected to the Iraq operation, and
the Prime Minister said they would stay on their current mission.

Canadian Alliance Leader Stephen Harper asked the Prime Minister whether
Canadian troops currently serving with American and British units on
exchange would stay at their posts, even if they may be participating in an
attack on Iraq.

Mr. Chrétien said those troops will remain where they are. He that there is
only a small number, involved in such things as surveillance. They have made
a commitment to their allied forces, he said, and they will respect this
commitment.

The Prime Minister also told the House that if there is a war, Canada will
help Iraq and the victims of war, providing aid and reconstruction.

Earlier Monday, a spokesman for Mr. Chrétien said that Canada was
"disappointed" that diplomacy appeared to have failed to resolve the Iraq
crisis.

"We're obviously disappointed that diplomacy hasn't worked and that new
timelines weren't given ... for the inspectors to do their work," chief
spokesman Jim Munson told Canadian Press.

"There appears to be no avenue now for a diplomatic route," Mr. Munson said.
"Those routes seem to have been shut down."

Canada's efforts at the United Nations to find a compromise resolution on
Iraq appeared quashed.

The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1441 on Nov. 8, ordering Iraq to
surrender its chemical and other weapons of mass destruction and submit to
inspections or face "serious consequences."

And while balking at full Canadian military involvement, Mr. Chrétien has
consistently agreed with the Americans and British that, while preferable, a
second Security Council resolution was not necessary to sanction war.

Through UN Ambassador Paul Heinbecker, Mr. Chrétien sought a compromise
deadline of March 28. But the British came back with their own U.S.-backed
compromise resolution that failed to go anywhere.

In an American television interview March 9, Mr. Chrétien contended U.S.
President George W. Bush had already won the war, saying the mere presence
of a quarter million American and British troops had forced Iraqi
compliance.

A Duty to Disobey All Unlawful Orders

It is no longer appropriate to say simply, "Support Our Troops, Bring 
Them Home."  It is time to call on all US soldiers -- and US 
civilians as well -- to uphold a duty to disobey all unlawful orders.

*   electronicIraq.net

INTERNATIONAL LAW
A duty to disobey all unlawful orders
Lawrence Mosqueda, Ph.D., A list of legal guidelines

9 March 2003

DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

As the United States government under George Bush gets closer to 
attacking the people of Iraq, there are several things that the men 
and women of the U.S. armed forces need to know and bear in mind as 
they are given orders from the Bush administration. This information 
is provided for the use of the members of the armed forces, their 
families, friends and supporters, and all who are concerned about the 
current direction of U.S. policy toward Iraq.

The military oath taken at the time of induction reads:

"I,, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support 
and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, 
foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to 
the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the 
United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, 
according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military 
Justice. So help me God"

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809.ART.90 (20), makes it 
clear that military personnel need to obey the "lawful command of his 
superior officer," 891.ART.91 (2), the "lawful order of a warrant 
officer", 892.ART.92 (1) the "lawful general order", 892.ART.92 (2) 
"lawful order". In each case, military personnel have an obligation 
and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation 
to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do 
not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the 
U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, 
especially if those orders are in direct violation of the 
Constitution and the UCMJ.

During the Iran-Contra hearings of 1987, Senator Daniel Inouye of 
Hawaii, a decorated World War II veteran and hero, told Lt. Col. 
Oliver North that North was breaking his oath when he blindly 
followed the commands of Ronald Reagan. As Inouye stated, "The 
uniform code makes it abundantly clear that it must be the Lawful 
orders of a superior officer. In fact it says, 'Members of the 
military have an obligation to disobey unlawful orders.' This 
principle was considered so important that we-we, the government of 
the United States, proposed that it be internationally applied in the 
Nuremberg trials." (Bill Moyers, "The Secret Government", Seven Locks 
Press; also in the PBS 1987 documentary, "The Secret Government: The 
Constitution in Crisis")

Senator Inouye was referring to the Nuremberg trials in the post WW 
II era, when the U.S. tried Nazi war criminals and did not allow them 
to use the reason or excuse that they were only "following orders" as 
a defense for their war crimes which resulted in the deaths of 
millions of innocent men, women, and children. "In 1953, the 
Department of Defense adopted the principles of the Nuremberg Code as 
official policy" of the United States. (Hasting Center Report, 
March-April 1991)

Over the past year there have been literally thousands of articles 
written about the impact of the coming war with Iraq. Many are based 
on politics and the wisdom of engaging in an international war 
against a country that has not attacked the U.S. and the legality of 
engaging in what Bush and Rumsfield call "preemptive war." World 
opinion at the highest levels, and among the general population, is 
that a U.S. first strike on Iraq would be wrong, both politically and 
morally. There is also considerable evidence that Bush's plans are 
fundamentally illegal, from both an international and domestic 
perspective. If the war is indeed illegal, members of the armed 
forces have a legal and moral obligation to resist illegal orders, 
according to their oath of induction.

The evidence from an international perspective is overwhelming. The 
United States Constitution makes treaties that are signed by the 
government equivalent to the "law of the land" itself, Article VI, 
para. 2. Among the international laws and treaties that a U.S. 
pre-emptive attack on Iraq may violate are:

The Hague Convention on Land Warfare of 1899, which was reaffirmed by 
the U.S. at the 1946 Nuremberg International Military Tribunals; . 
Resolution on the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons and Prevention of 
Nuclear War, adopted UN General Assembly, Dec 12, 1980; . Convention 
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; December 
9, 1948, Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the UN General 
Assembly; . Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian 
Persons in Time of War, Adopted on August 12, 1949 by the Diplomatic 
Conference for the Establishment of International Conventions for

An Open Letter To Present and Future U.S. Troops

Drawing the Line:
An Open Letter To Present and Future U.S. Troops
by S. Brian Willson, a Vietnam Veteran
December 2002
The United States government has admitted that in 2002 it has placed 
military forces at one time or another in at least 180 of the world's 
210 nations, and articulated its intentions to place ground, air, and 
marine forces in virtually every land, air and sea space in the 
world. Thus, it is incumbent upon men and women in the armed forces, 
or those interested in joining same, to be well trained in 
international and U.S. Constitutional law, and versed in the history 
and customs of local people around the world whom you will be 
encountering.

From my personal experience as an air force ground officer in 
Vietnam's Mekong Delta in 1969, and from talking to numerous veterans 
from various wars over the years, there is a consensus that we were 
not sufficiently briefed on the laws of war or the cultural 
circumstances into which we were placed. Because we were located in 
and around civilian communities, we were subjected to numerous 
situations in which we personally aided or participated in prohibited 
war crimes (murder or ill-treatment of civilians and prisoners of 
war, plunder of public or private property, etc.), crimes against 
peace (planning, preparation, initiation or waging a war of 
aggression or conspiracy to do the same), and crimes against humanity 
(murder or general abuse of civilians carried out in execution of 
crimes against peace or war crimes). The above three categories 
comprise the essence of the Nuremberg Principles. One of the 
regretful aspects to living in a relatively isolated culture that 
takes pride in its "manifest destiny" is that our citizenry often 
simply cannot readily understand the thoughts, history, and mores of 
people living in other lands. You will discover this to be a 
disadvantage when exposed to other populations.

Furthermore, we were promised that any wounds or illnesses suffered 
during our military service would be fully treated and cured if 
possible. Many U.S. veterans have left the military suffering from a 
myriad of serious wounds and debilitating illnesses: thousands of 
Atomic veterans; an unknown number subjected to chemical and 
biological warfare testing with others subjected to CIA mind control 
experiments; two or three million Vietnam veterans exposed to 
chemical warfare Agents Orange, Blue and White; and several hundred 
thousand Gulf War I veterans suffering from what is called Gulf War 
syndrome. Although many of these veterans have received adequate 
medical care, a surprising number to this day have in fact not been 
acknowledged or properly cared for.

For example, to date nearly 10,000 Gulf War I veterans have already 
died. Over 250,000 of the 696,000 U.S. troops in Iraq during Gulf War 
I, or 36 percent, have sought medical treatment for disabilities 
related to their experiences. The VA finally granted 160,000 claims 
for "Gulf War Syndrome" as of May 2002, but has refused many other 
complaints denying their connection to military service. Many 
ex-soldiers attribute their illnesses to untested vaccinations 
ostensibly given them by the military for prevention of potential 
sickness, and from exposure to the 320 tons of depleted (half) 
uranium (D-U or U-238) utilized in Iraq which emits primarily alpha 
radiation that possesses a half-life of 4.5 billion years, while 
producing a toxic heavy metal dust in the form of uranium oxide that 
is wind- and water-carried in the air and soil. A British Parliament 
report using alleged U.S. data suggests that the U.S. is prepared to 
use 1,500 tons of D-U in Iraq in Gulf War II. Medical reports from 
southern Iraq since Gulf War I suggest that the staggering rise in 
cancers, leukemia among children, and birth defects, among other 
illnesses, is caused by exposure to D-U. This does not bode well for 
any persons exposed to D-U. Because of its indiscriminate, continuing 
lethal effects on non-combatants (as well as ex-combatants), i.e., a 
weapon of mass destruction, the U.N Human Rights Commission and a 
number of scientists and lawyers have identified it as a prohibited 
weapon in defiance of international law.

A blow was dealt to veterans on November 19, 2002, when a federal 
appeals court ruled that the government does not owe free lifetime 
medical care to a number of World War II and Korean War veterans 
despite promises made by recruiters. And earlier in 2002 U. S. 
Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Anthony J. Principi, ordered VA 
medical facilities to discontinue active marketing of health-care 
enrollment to the veterans population due to lack of adequate 
Congressional appropriations. That the government expects plenty of 
casualties in the impending war in Iraq and perhaps elsewhere is 
highlighted by the fact that it recently placed a massive order for 
all available refrigerated containers for shipping bodies of dead 
soldiers home from the Middle East.

I

Germany-Thatcherization?

Germany faces a Thatcherite conversion

David Gow doesn't think Germany should be put through the kind of radical
economic restructuring that the UK underwent in the 1980s

Monday March 17, 2003
The Guardian


Hans-Olaf Henkel, the former head of Germany's most powerful business
lobby group, the BDI, has spent years trying to drum up support for a
radical dose of Thatcherism in what remains Europe's biggest economy.

But the resistance to stripping unions of their power, as well as
deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation of markets, has been
ferocious, not least among businesses themselves.

Germany once resolved conflicts violently; now it seeks consensus in
everything.

The whole society and economy is built on consensus and company executives
have seen great strengths in the system of co-determination, not least the
ability to plan for the medium to long term and avoid upheaval in the form
of strikes.

But in recent years, this consensual system has degenerated into a form of
stasis. Last Friday's speech by the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder,
unveiling a set of long-delayed and overdue structural reforms, was
designed to kickstart a new beginning for an economy that has become the
sick man of Europe with the lowest growth record.

Superficially, the Schröder package amounts to a pretty radical set of
measures, particularly for a man of the social democratic left. He has
already enraged the main union body, the DGB, with his proposals and faces
an uphill struggle to convince his own party, many of whose Bundestag
deputies are themselves trade unionists.

Companies will, for instance, be allowed to opt out of centralised
collective pay bargaining if they are not making enough profits. If
employers and unions fail to make bargaining more flexible, the government
will force them to through legislation.

In fact, unions like IG Metall already turn a blind eye to breaches of
national pay deals, especially if a company is in trouble and could be
forced to lay off its entire staff. But this is a much more comprehensive
approach.

The re-elected Schröder government is also doing the unthinkable: making
it easier to sack workers, particularly in small businesses with more than
five employees. Staff are given the choice between legal action and
redundancy money. Regulations obliging firms to sack younger workers
before older employees will also amended.

Full unemployment benefit - giving 67% of former pay to people with
children and 60% to the childless - will be available for only 12 months,
not 32, for those aged under 55 and for 18 months for those older than
that. Unemployment aid, at 57% of the old wage, now cuts in after
unemployment benefit has lapsed; henceforth it will be merged with
means-tested social welfare benefits.

Taken with a 15bn euro (£10.2bn) economic stimulus package and
well-trailed reforms to the health and pension systems to reduce their
spiralling costs, this could be interpreted as a Thatcherite conversion.
Certainly, Berlin seems to have acknowledged the need for structural
reforms rather than the traditional response of throwing money at a
problem.

But, as we have seen with the Hartz programme for combating unemployment,
the government is good on promises, short on delivery. It is also far from
certain whether it can get the necessary parliamentary - and party -
support for the package.

Already, the bill raising taxes to meet the deficit target set out in the
EU stability and growth pact has been blocked in the Bundesrat or upper
house controlled by the Christian Democratic Union opposition and its
Bavarian allies in the Christian Social Union. This latest package could
be blocked equally easily.

Inevitably, the package has already been lambasted by the DGB as bitterly
disappointing and a breach of Schröder's election pledges but the union
body has become ultra-conservative in its thinking, refusing to accept any
changes that could dent unemployment as it approaches an official 5
million.

Analysts believe, naturally, that the reforms fall short of what is really
required. Modern Germany, however, is not cut out for Thatcherism (nor was
the UK really) and is not about to embark on an experiment in social and
economic engineering that could undo all the genuine benefits of the
post-war consensual system.

Schröder, the ultimate pragmatist, knows he has to act to get the economy
out of the doldrums but it will come as no surprise if, in a few months'
time, the package has become smaller and far less radical.

· David Gow is the Guardian's industrial editor

the Saddam market

http://www.newyorker.com
THE FINANCIAL PAGE
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
by James Surowiecki
Issue of 2003-03-24
Posted 2003-03-17

For months, traders on the world's stock and commodity exchanges have been
preoccupied with one issue: war with Iraq. If you think that war will be
over quickly, you buy stocks. If you believe that it will drag on, you
sell them. And if you think that the Middle East will be plunged into
chaos you buy gold. For speculators on the New York Merc or the
International Petroleum Exchange, every trade is like a wager on what will
happen, and when, to Saddam Hussein.

For speculators on web sites like TradeSports and NewsFutures.com, though,
every trade actually is a wager on Saddam. At each of these sites, markets
have been set up where, by buying and selling futures contracts, you can
bet on such questions as when war will begin and when Saddam will fall.
(The market for "Saddam futures" on TradeSports says that there's a
seventy-nine-per-cent chance he'll be gone by the end of April.) There is,
perhaps, something ghoulish about gambling on war. (Think of Adam Trask,
in John Steinbeck's novel "East of Eden," rejecting as tainted the money
his son Cal made speculating on bean futures during the First World War.)
But in a sense the NewsFutures traders are only trying to do what op-ed
writers, TV pundits, and presidential advisers attempt to do every day:
predict the future. The big difference is that the betting markets are far
more likely to be right.

The market in Saddam futures is the latest version of what are sometimes
called "decision markets." They've been around for more than a decade, and
in that time their track record in forecasting events has been
exceptional. The best-known example is the Iowa Electronic Markets. The
I.E.M., which was founded in 1988 and is open to all comers, allows people
to buy and sell shares based on the percentage of the vote that they think
candidates will get in upcoming elections. At any moment, the price of a
candidate's shares reflects the market's collective judgment of how well
he'll do. If George W. Bush's shares are trading at 56.4, the market is
anticipating that he'd get 56.4 per cent of the vote.

The I.E.M. routinely outperforms major national polls. In the last four
presidential elections, for instance, almost six hundred different polls
were conducted, and the I.E.M.'s market price on the day each of them was
released turned out to be closer to the election results seventy-five per
cent of the time. And the I.E.M.'s election-eve predictions in those four
contests were off by an average of just 1.37 per cent.

The Hollywood Stock Exchange, which allows people to speculate on
box-office returns, opening-weekend performance, and the Oscars, has also
been prescient. Traders' predictions of opening-weekend returns are more
accurate than the movie industry's forecasts, and the Exchange has done a
good job of foreseeing nominations as well. Last year, its traders
correctly predicted thirty-five of the forty Oscar nominees in the top
eight categories. And then there's the eerily accurate Foresight Exchange,
where speculators can gamble on a wide variety of topics-say, whether
Catholic priests will be allowed to marry by 2005, or when physicists will
discover a Higgs boson.

Why do decision markets work so well? They are extremely efficient at
aggregating information and tapping into the collective wisdom of a group
of traders, and groups are almost always smarter than the smartest people
in them. As in financial markets, the incentive to get the better of
others (whether the reward is profit or mere satisfaction) causes traders
to seek out good information. The absence of hierarchy-markets don't have
vice-presidents-insures that no single person has too much influence and
that diverse viewpoints don't get shut out.

Decision markets also skirt the political and personal issues that so
often clog the flow of information within organizations. Because people
are rewarded only for being right, they have no incentive to hide
information, pursue agendas, or go along with the crowd. Of course, an
organization can't rely on such prophecies unless it is run by leaders who
don't claim to have a monopoly on wisdom. Leaders like that are hard to
come by, which may be why decision markets have been ignored, for the most
part, by corporations and governments.

That may be changing, though. Hewlett-Packard has used artificial markets
for sales forecasts. Essentially, H.-P. employees bought and sold shares
depending on what they thought sales in a particular month would be. The
number of people participating was small-never more than twenty-six-and
each market ran for only a week, but in the course of three years the
markets outperformed the company's official forecasts seventy-five per
cent of the time.

And then there's the Defense Department, which recently set up something
called the FutureMAP program, to investigate and experiment with decision
markets. Two c

Re: The arrogant empire

2003-03-17 Thread Waistline2

The growing movement for peace captures a moment in the consciousness of the people of the United States. People are angry about what the Bush administration is doing, not only in cahoots with the Republican Party, but also with the Democratic Party's seal of approval.

It's well-documented that the Republican Party today is not a friend of labor. Unlike the Democrats they don't pretend to be so. Every year it becomes clearer and clearer that the only program that the Democrats stand for is the program of the Republican Party, and together with them, the ruling class of this country. Among other things the Democrats helped slash the safety net by passing welfare reform in 1996, they refuse to provide real answers to the health care crisis, and they have shown almost total support for the Bush Administration's war program at home and abroad. And all so a handful of billionaires can consolidate their political and economic plans to run the world in their class interests.

So yes, the time is overdue for us to break away from the Democrats. But the question is: Where do we go?

Looking back in history

This is not the first time that the American people have found themselves at an historical juncture, where the two-party system symbolizing the democratic process in this country is totally discredited and those betrayed ask themselves where do we go?

It happened over 150 years ago in the decades leading up to the Civil War. New changes in the means of production had given birth to the industrial revolution. This new way of producing goods brought about the collision of the two fledging societies in the United States, the industrial wage-labor North and the agricultural slaveholding South. The existing political parties crashed on the rocks of this "irrepressible conflict" and the Republican Party emerged as the representative of the new industrial order that could not advance in the face of Southern political domination. This struggle could not have been sustained without a moral vision that inspired those who fought the slave power. Henry Mayer, in his book All on Fire, shows how the Republican Party relied heavily on the Abolitionists' political agitation to rally and fuse a movement together that was capable of enduring the terrible sacrifices demanded through the long years of the Civil War.

What we face today

The crisis today has been set in motion by the new changes in the means of production, just as it was over 150 years ago.

Only today, the economic revolution in electronic technology holds the promise to rid the world of hunger, poverty, want and scarcity forever.

Yet under capitalism this promise cannot be fulfilled. Electronic technology is labor replacing technology. The application of electronics into every aspect of production is driving workers from the job market and destroying the American Dream. The social contract -- which included jobs and a social safety net -- has been shredded. In the hands of the capitalists the harvest of the electronic revolution will only be distributed to the few that can afford to pay. That is why we see poverty and hunger everywhere from the homeless woman huddled in the doorway, too frozen to even beg for money, to the neighbor next door who just came home with a pink slip in his hand.

And there are other signs: The increasing numbers of bankruptcies, skyrocketing consumer debt and foreclosures, families with $75,000 incomes who are unable to have decent health care, (not to mention the millions who have no health care insurance) and a bottomless pit of job losses.

America is on a collision course with the interests of capital. This is the historical juncture at which America finds itself. Yet this time, the battle is not over free labor or slave, but for the freedom once and for all from want, poverty, and destruction. It is about a world in which the workers can no longer find any common ground with any section of capital. Reform, in any real sense, is no longer possible. The final outcome of this struggle will determine whether the vast majority will enjoy a society based on human need and not profit or a society of total destitution and hunger, protected by the electronic hand of fascism.

Breaking with the old

There's no doubt we need to regroup and we need to regroup fast, but under what program? Donna Dewitt, president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, a long time member of the Democratic Party and the first woman to be chairperson of the Democratic Party in her county, knows what to do. Dewitt broke with the Democratic Party and joined the Labor Party in 1999. "My main reason for not being part of the Democratic Party is the lack of the grassroots efforts...the lack of leadership...I became disillusioned with the Democratic Party," she explained when interviewed at the Labor Party's 2nd Constitutional Convention in 2002.

In 1996, individual activists and 1,400 delegates from hundreds of local and international unions and workers' orga

UNSUBSCRIBE

2003-03-17 Thread Lisa

UNSUBSCRIBE ME  I HAVE RECEIVED 50 PEN-L EMAILS SINCE I WAS TOLD I HAD
BEEN UNSUBSCRIBED.

Re: UNSUBSCRIBE

> UNSUBSCRIBE ME  I HAVE RECEIVED 50 PEN-L 
> EMAILS SINCE I WAS TOLD I HAD BEEN UNSUBSCRIBED.  

Dear Lisa,

To unsubcribe from PEN-L, send a message to

<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

In the body of the message, type the following command: 

unsubscribe PEN-L

With my deepest love,

Sabri Oncu

Personal reminiscences of Rachel Corrie from Peter Bohmer

2003-03-17 Thread michael perelman

Peter Bohmer sent this.  What awful times we live in.

I wanted to share this with you. feel free topass it on and post it,
Peter

In memory of  Rachel Corrie, March 17, 2003

Rachel Corrie was an incredibly good person. I mourn and am very
saddened by her murder yesterday, March 16th, 2003. She was killed by a
bulldozer as the Israeli military ran over her as she was protesting the

destruction of Palestinian homes in Rafah in the  Gaza Strip. Rachel,
who was 23,   grew up in Olympia, Washington.  I originally met her when

she was a student in the Options program at Lincoln Elementary school
in1989.  She was a friend of my son and played on the same YMCA
basketball team as my daughter. Rachel and I talked a lot the last two
years and marched together at various demonstrations, for example, May
Day 2002.  Rachel was a totally caring and gentle person who loved life
and was outraged by oppression wherever it took place and had become
very active working for social justice and peace. Rachel was a very
modest, courageous and responsible person who was the heart and soul of
the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, a group she had originally
begun working with as part of her study in the Local Knowledge program
taught by Anne Fischel and Lin Nelson at the Evergreen State College.
Rachel was very active in opposing the U.S. "war against terror" and
U.S. militarism.  One project she threw her mind and body into was a
September 11th, 2002 day against the U.S. war in Afghanistan and against

repression in the United States at Percival Landing in downtown
Olympia.  She got a lot of elementary school kids and classes to
participate. So it is very fitting that the vigil last night, Sunday,
March 16th, against the war in Iraq and to honor and mourn Rachel, was
at Percival Landing. Close to 1000 people attended.

Rachel was a very reflective person who constantly thought about how to
link together various groups working for justice, e.g., the labor
movement and the peace movement. She volunteered at the Evergreen State
College Labor Education and Research Center and played a major role in
organizing a conference dealing with networking and strategies for
justice and peace last spring, 2002. Another major concern of hers was
to involve the local Olympia community that was not connected to
Evergreen to the anti-war and economic and social justice issues and
groups.   Besides going to the Evergreen State College, Rachel also
worked at BHR, a local mental health clinic and was active in her union,

1199, a part of SEIU.

Justice for the Palestinian people was one of many issues Rachel felt
deeply about. She strongly opposed the Israeli occupation and supported
a Palestinian state.  For Rachel, feeling deeply always meant also doing

something about her concerns.  She had studied Arabic at Evergreen and
decided to go to the Gaza strip in occupied Palestine for winter
quarter. Part of her reasoning was that it was important to have
international observers there as Israeli aggression was likely to
increase when the U.S. attacked, bombed and invaded Iraq. She strongly
opposed the U.S. war against Iraq. Rachel was aware of the dangers and
risks of going to Gaza. She left Olympia on January 18th of this year,
went to the West Bank and then Gaza, threw herself fully into human
rights  activism and solidarity with the Palestinian people. She
volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement, people from
around the world who have been witnesses to Israeli attacks on
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and involve themselves in
non-violent protest against the Israeli occupation.  Rachel  had planned

to return to Evergreen State College for spring quarter to finish her
studies.

Rachel Corrie will not be coming back to Olympia but let us all take a
moment to reflect on what each of us can do to carry on  her legacy by
doing a little more to oppose the U.S. war against Iraq, and further
justice, equality and peace in the Middle East, around the world and in
the U.S. Rachel Corrie was an ordinary and an extraordinary person.

Peter Bohmer
faculty member, the Evergreen State College,  Olympia, WA
360 867-6431





--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Re: centralizaton

2003-03-17 Thread Michael Perelman

This article seems to relate to the material Nomi has been sending.  Small
banks earn from the interest rate differentials; presumably, large banks
from fees.  But why would banks pay a premium for the small banks?  What
sort of fees would they generate?
 -- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Death of Herbert Aptheker

*   Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 22:45:20 -0500
From: Alan Wald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Death of Herbert Apthecker
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: mlg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Dear Friends,

Wanted to let you know that Herbert Aptheker passed away this 
morning, surrounded by family and friends; he would have celebrated 
his 88th birthday this summer.

Herbert's health had been fragile for some time--especially for the 
last couple of years--and he'd been in and out of the hospital a 
number of times since last August, with a series of incidents (from 
falls, to a minor heart attack and, more recently, some minor 
strokes).  Last week, as he seemed again to weaken dramatically, 
Herbert and the family decided to forego any further medical 
interventions, and to focus on making Herbert as comfortable as 
possible.

He was at many points remarkably lucid these last few days, 
periodically speaking of--and with pleasure listening to conversation 
about--some of the matters closest to his heart, including 
African-American history, politics, and culture; hopes and chances 
for peace; and Major League Baseball.

When plans are made for a memorial service in the Bay Area, I'll 
forward that information to you.

Always,

Rob

--

Alan Wald, Director, Program in American Culture, University of Michigan.
Mailing address: 3700 Haven Hall, Ann Arbor, Mi.  48109-1045.
Office address: Room 3703 Haven Hall.
Office phone: 734-763-1460.
Home phone: 734-995-1499.
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Faxes can be received at AC office: 734-936-1967   *
--
Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: 

* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity:

Re: Re: UNSUBSCRIBE

Lisa is probably a bot...You should lovingly program her so she can
unsubscribe..:)



Cheers, Ken Hanly


- Original Message -
From: "Sabri Oncu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "PEN-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 9:48 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:35682] Re: UNSUBSCRIBE


> > UNSUBSCRIBE ME  I HAVE RECEIVED 50 PEN-L
> > EMAILS SINCE I WAS TOLD I HAD BEEN UNSUBSCRIBED.
>
> Dear Lisa,
>
> To unsubcribe from PEN-L, send a message to
>
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> In the body of the message, type the following command:
>
> unsubscribe PEN-L
>
> With my deepest love,
>
> Sabri Oncu
>
>

Rachel's parents

2003-03-17 Thread Dan Scanlan

International release, March 17, 2003

 "I am allowed to go see the ocean" Rachel Corrie wrote to her family

[We forward the sad but courageous statement of the parents of Rachel 
Corrie, followed by a moving "letter from Palestine" which she sent 
them on Feb. 7, 2003, two weeks after her arrival in the Gaza Strip.]

--- Forwarded message follows --- Date sent: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 
01:27:48 + (GMT) From: ism rafah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: 
Statement from Rachel Corrie's parents

March 16, 2003

"We are now in a period of grieving and still finding out the details 
behind the death of Rachel in the Gaza Strip. We have raised all our 
children to appreciate the beauty of the global community and family 
and are proud that Rachel was able to live her convictions. Rachel 
was filled with love and a sense of duty to her fellow man, wherever 
they lived. And, she gave her life trying to protect those that are 
unable to protect themselves. Rachel wrote to us from the Gaza Strip 
and we would like to release to the media her experience in her own 
words at this time.

Thank you. Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie

-- Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel on February 7, 2003.

I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still 
have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for 
me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back 
to the United States--something about the virtual portal into luxury. 
I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without 
tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army 
surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although 
I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children 
understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old 
was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, 
and many of the children murmur his name to me, "Ali"--or point at 
the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to 
practice my limited Arabic by asking me "Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" 
and they laugh when I say "Bush Majnoon" "Sharon Majnoon" back in my 
limited Arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is 
crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I believe, and some of the 
adults who have the English correct me: Bush mish Majnoon... Bush is 
a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say "Bush is a tool", but I 
don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are 
eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global 
power structure than I was just a few years ago--at least regarding 
Israel.

Nevertheless, I think about the fact that no amount of reading, 
attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth 
could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You 
just can't imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always 
well aware that your experience is not at all the reality: what with 
the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed 
US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the 
army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact that I have the option 
of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, 
by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my 
hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. Ostensibly 
it is still quite difficult for me to be held for months or years on 
end without a trial (this because I am a white US citizen, as opposed 
to so many others). When I leave for school or work I can be 
relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier 
waiting half way between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a 
checkpoint-a soldier with the power to decide whether I can go about 
my business, and whether I can get home again when I'm done. So, if I 
feel outrage at arriving and entering briefly and incompletely into 
the world in which these children exist, I wonder conversely about 
how it would be for them to arrive in my world.

They know that children in the United States don't usually have their 
parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But 
once you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water 
is taken for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and 
once you have spent an evening when you haven't wondered if the walls 
of your home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, 
and once you've met people who have never lost anyone-- once you have 
experienced the reality of a world that isn't surrounded by murderous 
towers, tanks, armed "settlements" and now a giant metal wall, I 
wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your 
childhood spent existing--just existing--in resistance to the 
constant stranglehold of the world's fourth largest military--backed 
by the world's only superpower--in it's attempt to erase you from 
your home. That is so

peace action

2003-03-17 Thread Dan Scanlan

UNITED EMERGENCY ACTION PLAN: This Week

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19:
No Business as Usual!
No War on Iraq!
NATIONAL CALL TO ACTION
Tuesday, March 18:
Emergency Convergence in New York City
in Union Square at 5 pm
George W. Bush has promised to unleash an all-out war against Iraq, 
possibly as soon as Wednesday, March 19. We join with peace-loving 
people all over the world in challenging this 48 hour war ultimatum. 
At this critical moment, we urge all people of conscience to oppose 
this illegal war of aggression by participating in the following 
actions:

1) Tuesday, March 18, 5 p.m. Emergency New York City convergence at 
Union Square

2) Wednesday, March 19: Walkout! No Business as Usual! Converge and 
demonstrate on the day of the Bush ultimatum.

*New York City, March 19: Converge at 12 noon at Union Square. March 
and converge at Times Square at 5 p.m.

*Washington DC, March 19: Converge at 12 noon on the north side of 
the White House and stay there all day until a march at 5 p.m.

*San Francisco, March 19: Gather at 5 p.m. at Powell and Market

*and at central locations in cities and towns around the country

3) Saturday, March 22: New York City march, 11:30 a.m. Assemble at 
Broadway, between 41st and 36th St.

If war has begun, there will also be a March 22 regional demo at the 
White House in Washington DC at 12 noon, San Francisco, Los Angeles 
and in other cities around the country.

If war is launched, no business as usual that day. Converge at 12 
noon and into the night.



Initial Endorsers:
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
The Greens/Green Party USA
Not In Our Name Project
NYC Forum of Concerned Religious Leaders
New York City Labor Against the War
All other organizations and coalitions are invited to join this call!



Email circulated by:
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
http://www.InternationalANSWER.org
http://www.VoteNoWar.org
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
New York 212-633-6646
Washington 202-544-3389
Los Angeles 213-487-2368
San Francisco 415-821-6545
To make a tax-deductible donation, go to
http://www.internationalanswer.org/donate.html
Sign up to receive updates (low volume):
http://www.internationalanswer.org/subscribelist.html
--
Send replies to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This is the IAC activist announcement
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To unsubscribe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
--
--
Drop Bush, Not Bombs!
--

"During times of universal deceit,
telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
-

END OF THE TRAIL SALOON
Live music, comedy, call-in radio-oke
Alternate Sundays, 6am GMT (10pm PDT)
http://www.kvmr.org


"I uke, therefore I am." -- Cool Hand Uke
"I log on, therefore I seem to be." -- Rodd Gnawkin
Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube:
 http://www.oro.net/~dscanlan

A new phrase for Orwell

>From MSNBC news..

Hmma peaceful entry of force...

and a blissful retirement for Hussein who lives in peaceful retirement
cherishing family values...etc.etc. with maybe a murder or two but all
within the family...


Cheers, Ken Hanly



   "I think that time is now over. He's had his chance," Powell said.
"He's had many chances over the last 12 years, and he's blown every one of
those chances."
   NBC's Andrea Mitchell noted that Powell said there would be a
"peaceful entry of force" in the event that Saddam stepped down, suggesting
that the U.S. military would be deployed in the country no matter what
happened.

Re: A new phrase for Orwell

with time, all the while, playing 3rd person passive voice.






- Original Message -
From: "k hanly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "pen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 9:35 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:35690] A new phrase for Orwell


> >From MSNBC news..
>
> Hmma peaceful entry of force...
>
> and a blissful retirement for Hussein who lives in peaceful retirement
> cherishing family values...etc.etc. with maybe a murder or two but all
> within the family...
>
>
> Cheers, Ken Hanly
>
>
>
>"I think that time is now over. He's had his chance," Powell
said.
> "He's had many chances over the last 12 years, and he's blown every one
of
> those chances."
>NBC's Andrea Mitchell noted that Powell said there would be a
> "peaceful entry of force" in the event that Saddam stepped down,
suggesting
> that the U.S. military would be deployed in the country no matter what
> happened.
>

shoppers slump

Catalog, Eddie Bauer retailer files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Associated Press

Published March 18, 2003 RUPT18

CHICAGO -- Spiegel Inc. on Monday became the latest retailer to file for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a victim of falling sales at its catalog
business and its Eddie Bauer stores.

Spiegel lined up $400 million in bankruptcy financing and said its stores
and catalog operations will remain open as usual as it begins a bankruptcy
process it expects to last six months to a year. Officials said the
process should be seamless to customers.

Analysts said the parent of Eddie Bauer and Newport News fashions and the
Spiegel Catalog must make swift improvements in bankruptcy and might put
the Eddie Bauer stores and other assets up for sale to raise cash.

After seeing an increase in annual sales as recently as 2000, Spiegel's
overall sales sank 9 percent in 2001 and 18 percent to $2.3 billion in
2002. At the same time, it was experiencing a growing problem with unpaid
credit-card bills that analysts said resulted from both the economy's
slump and Spiegel's failed gamble on faster credit growth.

DU

2003-03-17 Thread phillp2

From:   "John Ryan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:Du
Date sent:  Sun, 16 Mar 2003 15:38:32 -0600

DU

 #124aECONEWS SPECIAL ISSUE  FEBRUARY 2003 

 DEPLETED URANIUM 

  It's dirty, and it's deadly. 
  When you coat a shell with it, it slices through armoured 
plating as
  if it was cheese, turning tanks, buildings and bomb shelters into
  exploding incinerators. It causes cancer among people who 
breathe
  its dust, or touch it. It causes horrible birth defects among the
  babies of pregnant women who breathe it or touch it. It causes 
a
  host of chronic ailments and sicknesses among returning 
troops. 

  It was used by the US army in Iraq, in Kosovo, and 
Afghanistan. The
  United Nations wants a worldwide ban on it. The US plans to 
use it
  again, in its war on Iraq. 

  What is it? It's a waste product that arises during the 
production
  of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and reactors. It's 
called
  depleted uranium. 

  It has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years. The Earth is
  4.5 billion years old. This means that the cities, battlefields, 
and
  locations where depleted uranium is used will be radioactive 
and
  remain radioactive for the next 4.5 billion years. 

  That's as long as the Earth has existed. 
  That's twice as long as the entire evolution of life on Earth.
  Seventy times longer than the time since the dinosaurs became
  extinct. 

  Depleted uranium is extremely dense; that's what  makes it 
capable
  of slicing into heavily armoured vehicles. That's why the 
American
  military likes it. 

  In the Gulf War, in 1991, the US army fired off a million rounds 
of
  depleted uranium, totalling 300 tons. In Baghdad, where they 
thought
  they were attacking a secret bunker, they sliced into it with
  depleted uranium and incinerated 800 women and children who 
were
  hiding in a shelter. Along the "highway of death", outside 
Basra, in
  southern Iraq, they incinerated every tank, every soldier. 

  Along that road, the shell-holes in the blown-up tanks are 1000
  times more radioactive than the background. The desert near 
the
  vehicles is 100 times more radioactive. 

  70% of the uranium burns on impact, turning into as a fine 
ceramic
  dust of depleted uranium oxide particles which gets blown on 
the
  wind, and washed into the groundwater. In the Basra region, 
there
  has been a 100-fold increase in uranium in the groundwater. 

  And then there's the birth defects. 

  Children born with fingers missing. 
  Children born with legs missing. 
  Children born with parts of their face missing. 
  Children born with their eyes missing. 
  Children born with grossly deformed skulls. 
  Children born with enormous distended bellies. 
  Children born with no hands. 
  Children born with no genitals. 
  Children born with no skin over their bellies. 
  Children born with open holes in their backs. 
  Children born whose bodies are beyond words, in their pitiful
  awfulness. 

  There has been a 10-fold increase in such birth defects in the 
Basra
  region since 1988. I have seen the photos of these children. 
You can
  see them for yourself at
  http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html. But be 
warned
  - these photos are not for the squeamish, and may give some 
people
  nightmares.  They are also at
  http://www.ngwrc.org/Dulink/du_link.htm 

  There has also been a 17-fold increase in cancer in southern 
Iraq
  since 1988, and a sudden increase in childhood leukemia. 

  That was Iraq. Then there was Afghanistan. 

  The data is still sketchy, but tests on residents in Jalalabad 
have
  found a level of uranium in the urine of residents that is 400% to
  2000% higher than normal. The contamination is also present in
  Kabul. 

  A scientific team from the Uranium Medical Research Centre 
that went
  to Kabul in September 2002 found that people who had been 
exposed to
  debris from the US/British precision bombing were reporting 
pains in
  their joints, back and kidney pain, muscle weakness, memory
  problems, confusion, and disorientation. Members of the team 
began
  to complain of the same symptoms. They found that 25% of 
new-born
  infants were suffering from congenital and post-natal health
  problems that appeared to be associated with uranium 
contamination. 

  So what happened to the US and British troops who were 
exposed to
  the same dust? 

  It's hard to sort out, because the troops who served in the Gulf
  were exposed to a cocktail of injections and chemical and 
biological
  hazards, as well as depleted uranium. But the symptoms are 
telling.

Re: UNSUBSCRIBE

> Lisa is probably a bot...You should lovingly
> program her so she can unsubscribe..:)

Well! Michael told me that she is gone but what the heck does
this "bot" mean? I am too tired to look it up in the dictionary.
In the mean time, check what the word Pust (this "s" is with a
hook under it; phonetic spelling is Pusht) means in a
Turkish/English dictionary. This is what I started to call Bush
these days, thanks to a friend.

Best,

Sabri

Mark Twain & Young Girls Re: Lewis Carroll for President

Apropos of nothing in particular:

*   A Presidential Candidate

By Mark Twain

New York Evening Post (June 9, 1879).

I have pretty much made up my mind to run for President. What the 
country wants is a candidate who cannot be injured by investigation 
of his past history, so that the enemies of the party will be unable 
to rake up anything against him that nobody ever heard of before. If 
you know the worst about a candidate, to begin with, every attempt to 
spring things on him will be checkmated. Now I am going to enter the 
field with an open record. I am going to own up in advance to all the 
wickedness I have done, and if any Congressional committee is 
disposed to prowl around my biography in the hope of discovering any 
dark and deadly deed that I have secreted, why -- let it prowl

[The full article is available at 
.] 
*

Well, Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll had one thing in common: fondness 
for young girls.

*   _Angelfish_

Nickname for girls whom Mark Twain admitted to his private "Aquarium 
Club."  After turning 70, he sought to fill his need for 
grandchildren by forming friendships with young girls whom he later 
called "Angelfish," after a beautiful fish he had seen in BERMUDA. 
From 1906 until he died, he admitted more than a dozen girls to his 
informal club; he corresponded with them frequently and often had one 
or two girls -- and their mothers -- as houseguests.  His first 
Angelfish was a 14-year-old English girl, Dorothy Butes, who often 
visited him in NEW YORK CITY in 1906.  During his 1907 trip to 
ENGLAND, he added Frances NUNNALLY and Dorothy QUICK to his group.

By April 1908, Mark Twain counted 10 "angelfishes."  When he moved to 
REDDING several months later, he organized his club more formally by 
writing rules declaring himself its "admiral" and setting such 
membership qualifications as sincerity, good disposition, 
intelligence and "school-girl age" -- a critical requirement.  His 
rules also declared that the chief purpose of his new house -- which 
he then called "INNOCENCE AT HOME" -- was to accommodate club 
members.  He made his BIlLIARD room the club's official headquarters 
and gave various parts of the house piscine nicknames, such as "the 
Fish-Market."  Hungry for correspondence, Mark Twain threatened to 
suspend any girl who went three months without writing to him.  Three 
hundred of the letters that he exchanged with girls are in _Mark 
Twain's Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens Angelfish Correspondence, 
1905-1910_ (1991), edited by John Cooley.

While Mark Twain's correspondence and activities with Angelfish girls 
appear to have been entirely chaste, any elderly man pursuing pretty 
little girls gives the appearance of impropriety.  When Clara Clemens 
returned from Europe in September 1908, she disapproved of the 
Angelfish and forced her father to cut back his contacts with them. 
Shortly before he died, Mark Twain was rumored to have behaved 
improperly with a girl in Bermuda named Helen Allen, but evidence for 
this is inconclusive.  After his death, Clara discouraged publication 
of anything concerning the Angelfish.  On her behalf, A. B. PAINE 
asked Elizabeth Wallace not to publish any "affectionate" photographs 
of Mark Twain with young girls in her book about Mark Twain in 
Bermuda.

(R. Kent Rasmussen, _Mark Twain A-Z: The Essential Reference to His 
Life and Writings_, NY: Oxford UP, 1995, p. 14)   *

*   New book looks at Mark Twain's feminine side

Nov. 12, 2001

KALAMAZOO -- Two women forced to marry one another?

Does it seem possible that the beloved author Mark Twain, who gave 
the world the epitome of boyhood in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, 
would spin such a scandalous tale?

As a matter of fact he did, and produced 11 other tales of 
unconventional young women that have been unearthed and published in 
a new book by Dr. John Cooley, a Western Michigan University 
Professor of English.

In the book, "How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson and Other Tales 
of Rebellious Girls and Daring Young Women," published by the 
University of Nebraska Press, Cooley, a noted expert on Twain, has 
collected 12 stories by Twain that share two common traits: the 
protagonists are female and behave in ways that flagrantly violate 
Victorian convention.

"While Twain had an interest in writing stories about young girls and 
women during his whole writing career, it intensified between 1895 
and 1908," explains Cooley. "He wrote many of these 'girl stories' as 
the world was evolving from the Victorian virtues of gentleness, 
innocence and purity to the 'New Woman' movement that focused on 
women's rights.

"The heroines of these stories are all young, unmarried and assume 
personality traits and behaviors that Twain and his society typically 
reserved for young males."

While most of Twain's girl stories were published in such 
publications of the day as Cosmopolita

Re: Re: maxim rodinson on edward said

2003-03-17 Thread soula avramidis

 
 At least the Moufti next door thinks that said knows little about Islam, not to mention he is a christian. but just maybe a quick reading on the formation of a culture of resistance under colonialism will tell where he came from.
but i think rodinson is entitled to his opinion, no harm done, marxist or otherwise.
Truth in what, that people in "literary philosophy: do not know one thing very well? It's true that there's an immense amount of ignorance and foolishness in literary theory. But it's dumb to diss someone because of his field in general. Rodinson's field of area studies is largely composed of ideological hacks, guns for hire. And Said is way out of the norm. His scholarship is not merely unquestionable, it sets the standard for the field. As whether he's "bourgrois," I assume that R says this because S is not a Marxist. Well, that's the cross we non-Marxist rads have to bear. We're bourgeois. There are worse things to be. I don't know enough about Islam to say whether S's grasp of Islam is shallow. I'd be surprised it that were true, though. jks



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Re: Iskenderun actions

2003-03-17 Thread soula avramidis

I am sure you know that they are 1938 arabs in antioch and iskendarun.
 Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Anti-U.S. Demonstrations Continues Non-stop in Iskenderun HarbourTwo demonstrations took place today in Iskenderun Harbour that was recently rented by the U.S. for military deployment in Turkey. Greenpeace activists blocked the entrance of the harbour with a truck carrying the sign written 'No To War, U.S. Go Home' in two languages; two of the activists chained themselves onto the truck while four others to the wheels. Meanwhile two activists opened a sign written 'No To War'. The activists had damaged the truck to make it unmovable and to block the traffic around the harbour. The 15 activists resisted police detainment for a long time. During the same hours 20 EMEP (Labour`s Party) members were not let in the harbour area. EMEP members urged U.S. soldiers to leave Turkey after they chanted slogans in front of the harbour. Police attacked a !
march of 45 KESK, TMMOB and DISK (some labour and occupation organisations) members in Nusaybin. The activists - many of who were injured - were taken into custody. Medical doctors in Istanbul and Diyarbakir - with white aprons - walked against war preparations on 14th of March. War resisters with torches gathered yester-night in Izmit.http://istanbul.indymedia.org/-- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.orgDo you Yahoo!?
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Re: Iskenderun actions

soula avramidis:

> I am sure you know that they are 1938 arabs in
> antioch and iskendarun.

I don't know what antioch is and your spelling of Iskenderun is
wrong but surely, from early 1920s until 1938, Iskenderun had
been an independent state. But the participants there in
Iskenderun actions a few days ago were not just Arabs. There were
Kurds, Turks, Arabs and possibly a few "Pontis".

Sabri

Iskenderun actions

2003-03-17 Thread Louis Proyect

Anti-U.S. Demonstrations Continues Non-stop in Iskenderun Harbour
Two demonstrations took place today in Iskenderun Harbour that was 
recently rented by the U.S. for military deployment in Turkey. 
Greenpeace activists blocked the entrance of the harbour with a truck 
carrying the sign written 'No To War, U.S. Go Home' in two languages; 
two of the activists chained themselves onto the truck while four others 
to the wheels. Meanwhile two activists opened a sign written 'No To 
War'. The activists had damaged the truck to make it unmovable and to 
block the traffic around the harbour. The 15 activists resisted police 
detainment for a long time. During the same hours 20 EMEP (Labour`s 
Party) members were not let in the harbour area. EMEP members urged U.S. 
soldiers to leave Turkey after they chanted slogans in front of the 
harbour. Police attacked a march of 45 KESK, TMMOB and DISK (some labour 
and occupation organisations) members in Nusaybin. The activists - many 
of who were injured - were taken into custody. Medical doctors in 
Istanbul and Diyarbakir - with white aprons - walked against war 
preparations on 14th of March. War resisters with torches gathered 
yester-night in Izmit.

http://istanbul.indymedia.org/

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

In that Turkey

"In that Turkey, there is a place for all the peoples of the
world. There is a place for dignity, freedom, and solidarity."

Thank you Emrah,

Sabri

+++

Turkey's Imperial Troops:
How George Bush's War Is Threatening Democracy in Turkey
By Emrah Göker

March 17, 2003 -- 10:48 am EST

When the Turkish Grand Assembly rejected the joint resolution
which would allow U.S. troops in the country and send Turkish
troops to Northern Iraq two weeks ago, antiwar groups all around
the world cheered and applauded the recognition of the will of
the citizens by their most senior representative body. However,
being more able (than most of the U.S. and European spectators)
to decode the complex dynamics of the political field in Turkey,
antiwar activists from within immediately recommended caution
along with rightful joy and hope.

After two weeks, by March 15, it turned out that we were right 
Turkey's minority of warmongers, the local arm of the imperial
troops, quickly initiated an offensive campaign of lies,
intimidation, mud-throwing, red-baiting and doublespeak to
counter the glimpse of democracy and accountability in our
country.

What happened? And what is at stake at the moment within Turkey,
for the popular-democratic struggle against the war?

The local mercenaries who line up to support the U.S. "war
without end" and who now publicly declare their readiness to
endorse the killing of Iraqi and Turkish Kurds during a possible
conflict in Northern Iraq are not all in complete unison in terms
of their interests and agendas.

Capital

The first group within the enlisted company is made up of
Turkey's leading capitalists and financial speculators, mobilized
by the countrys most powerful class organization, the Turkish
Association of Industrialists and Businessmen (TUSIAD). By March
3, the Turkish corporate leadership was already threatening the
country with another economic crisis unless the promised U.S. war
aid arrived. Business analysts and brokers prophesized that this
"disturbing" development of the rejection of the war resolution
would quickly create one of those mystical "market uncertainties"
and demanded that the state has to resume a strong pro-war
position to "relieve the markets" and pump up the volume of
speculation.

Media

Simultaneously, the second battalion, the Turkish corporate media
cartel, whose ruling ranks have organic ties to TUSIAD, joined
the campaign to ridicule and undermine the decision of the Grand
Assembly. Columnists of leading dailies and TV journalists blamed
the MPs of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) for "working
against our national interests" and declared that this was not a
time to be sentimental about the killing of "Arabs".

Turkey, for these khaki-wearing journalists, had to join with the
"winning camp", and also had to settle in Northern Iraq to defend
Iraqi Turcomans ("our Turkish brothers") and to prevent the
foundation of an autonomous Kurdish state ("by any means
necessary").

During the week of March 3 the citizens of Turkey were told that
"the price of opposition to the war will be paid out of the
peoples pockets", as if the promised war aid would have been
distributed among the poor majority of the country. This
continuing, outrageous blend of anti-Kurdish and anti-Arabic
racism, nationalist populism and blindness to the antiwar will of
the citizens both promotes the interests of TUSIAD and helps the
two or three media monopolies dig their trenches deeper,
maintaining their control over the journalistic field.

Government

The third groups support for the U.S. military plans is most
complicated, not necessarily sharing (but also trying hard not to
conflict with) the agendas of the first two. The ruling AKP is a
neo-Islamist party, or, by their own words, a "conservative
democratic movement" led by Sunni elites who, before they cut
their ties and moved to the center, had been politicized within
the tradition of the more confrontational Islamist movement led
by Necmettin Erbakan. The party leadership's (the bulk of the
cabinet) uncompromising support was already being harshly
criticized by its various provincial organizations, quite a few
of its MPs, and mayors before the vote on the resolution. Yet few
observers predicted that the antiwar opposition within AKP was so
strong that it would lead to a voting down of the resolution.
After the "disturbing" development, the leadership is still
working to convince its MPs, some of which had already declared
that they will vote for the resolution this time.

During the week of March 10, Tayyip Erdogan, AKP's leader, was
elected to the parliament after the repeated elections in the
province of Siirt, became the new Prime Minister, and formed a
new government (leaving a few dissenting ministers out). His hold
on the party was already strong, so it is not likely that this
will end the conflicts within AKP. The antiwar pressure from the
partys Sunni grassroots (including all elements from progressive
ones to th

RE: PETITION: WE WANT TURKEY TO SAY "NO" TO WAR

Friends,

It is getting serious. Some friends with connections in the
Turkish parliement learnt that the government once again will
bring the US troops resolution to the National Assembly, either
tomorrow or Wednesday. We may have to send this petition with
however many signatures we have as early as tonight and follow it
up later with updates. Currently we have about 800 to 1000
signatures. If you have not signed it yet and now go and sign it,
I would be grateful.

Best,

Sabri


-Original Message-
From: Sabri Oncu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 2:54 PM
To: Marxmail; RadGreen; PEN-L; ALIST
Subject: PETITION: WE WANT TURKEY TO SAY "NO" TO WAR


PETITION ACTION ALERT FOR WORLD CITIZENS:

WE WANT TURKEY TO SAY "NO" TO WAR



Peace Initiative/Turkey has launched an online petition campaign
to encourage Turkey to say "no" to war and we invite all world
citizens to join this campaign. The petition is addressed to the
President, the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Parliament, and
the MPs of the Republic of Turkey. To read and sign the petition,
please visit the link below and spread the word as much as you
can. We can stop this war!

http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/turkeysaynotowar

 ***

Peace Initiative/Turkey (USA)

Baris Girisimi/Turkiye (ABD)

www.peace-initiative-turkey.net

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

The arrogant empire

2003-03-17 Thread Louis Proyect

(An extraordinary article since Newsweek is a pillar of mainstream 
opinion and since Fareed Zakaria is a typical inside-the-beltway pundit 
featured on Lehrer Newshour and Sunday morning TV talk shows.)

The Arrogant Empire

America’s unprecedented power scares the world, and the Bush 
administration has only made it worse. How we got here—and what we can 
do about it now

By Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
(clip)

American dominance is not simply military. The U.S. economy is as large 
as the next three--Japan, Germany and Britain--put together. With 5 
percent of the world’s population, this one country accounts for 43 
percent of the world’s economic production, 40 percent of its 
high-technology production and 50 percent of its research and 
development. If you look at the indicators of future growth, all are 
favorable for America. It is more dynamic economically, more youthful 
demographically and more flexible culturally than any other part of the 
world. It is conceivable that America’s lead, especially over an aging 
and sclerotic Europe, will actually increase over the next two decades.

Given this situation, perhaps what is most surprising is that the world 
has not ganged up on America already. Since the beginnings of the state 
system in the 16th century, international politics has seen one clear 
pattern—the formation of balances of power against the strong. Countries 
with immense military and economic might arouse fear and suspicion, and 
soon others coalesce against them. It happened to the Hapsburg Empire in 
the 17th century, France in the late 18th and early 19th century, 
Germany twice in the early 20th century, and the Soviet Union in the 
latter half of the 20th century. At this point, most Americans will 
surely protest: "But we’re different!" Americans--this writer 
included--think of themselves as a nation that has never sought to 
occupy others, and that through the years has been a progressive and 
liberating force. But historians tell us that all dominant powers 
thought they were special. Their very success confirmed for them that 
they were blessed. But as they became ever more powerful, the world saw 
them differently. The English satirist John Dryden described this 
phenomenon in a poem set during the Biblical King David’s reign. "When 
the chosen people grew too strong," he wrote, "The rightful cause at 
length became the wrong."

full: http://www.msnbc.com/news/885222.asp?0cv=KA01

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

RE: PETITION: WE WANT TURKEY TO SAY "NO" TO WAR