Freddie and Fannie

[Sabri Oncu]

COMMENT: Keeping Fannie and Freddie's houses in order
By Gregory Mankiw
Financial Times; Feb 24, 2004



Congressional moves to reform the supervision of the
US home mortgage market are gathering pace. Alan
Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman, is scheduled to
testify before the Senate Banking Committee today on
the regulation of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the
Federal Home Loan Bank system, the
government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that underpin
the market. Further hearings are to be held tomorrow.

The issue of GSE reform goes well beyond the role of
housing in the economy. It has far-reaching
implications for the entire US financial system.

The GSEs were created decades ago to ensure adequate
supply of funds for mortgages. Although designed to
serve a public purpose, they are private enterprises.
Fannie and Freddie are owned by their private
shareholders and the Federal Home Loan Banks are owned
by their members, mainly financial institutions. Since
their creation, their activities - notably their
portfolio investments - have expanded greatly.

By charter, the housing GSEs enjoy privileges
including exemption from state and local income taxes
and from Securities and Exchange Commission
registration and disclosure requirements. The US
Treasury is authorised to extend limited credit to
them and some of their directors are appointed by the
president. The direct monetary benefit from these
privileges is modest but their symbolic value is
significant.

The privileges feed a market perception that GSE debt
is backed by the US government. This is inaccurate -
the charters do not require the federal government to
bail out a troubled GSE. Yet, given the perception,
investors are willing to accept a lower yield on GSE
debt than on that of other private companies. A recent
study by Fed staff estimated that the interest rate on
the debt of Fannie and Freddie averaged 40 basis
points below that on comparable securities. In
financial markets, such a funding advantage is
enormous.

Most observers believe the GSEs pass some of their
implicit subsidy along to homeowners through lower
mortgage interest rates. The Fed study estimated that
the subsidy lowers mortgage rates by 7 basis points,
with the rest of the subsidy going to executive
compensation and shareholder profits.

This situation raises concerns over fairness, because
the subsidy puts other financial institutions at a
disadvantage, but the larger issue is that the subsidy
creates a source of systemic risk for the US financial
system. The risk arises because the subsidy has
allowed the GSEs to become gigantic. Since 1996, the
debt issued by the housing GSEs has more than tripled,
reaching a reported $2,400bn by September 2003. To put
this in perspective, the privately held debt of the
federal government is $3,300bn.

The housing GSEs have used the proceeds from issuing
debt to amass enormous portfolios of mortgages and
mortgage-backed securities. The value of such assets
is highly sensitive to swings in interest rates or
refinancing activity. The GSEs engage in a variety of
hedging activities to reduce this sensitivity, but
even the best minds in financial management cannot
entirely eliminate risk. Further, the belief in a
government bailout if things go wrong creates an
incentive for a company to take on risk and enjoy the
associated increase in return. The savings and loan
crisis of the 1980s illustrates the dangers of
government guarantees.

Because the housing GSEs are so large, the risk they
face is important for the entire financial system. GSE
debt is widely held by other financial institutions.
Even a small mistake in GSE risk management could have
ripple effects throughout the economy.

Although there is no way to eliminate the underlying
risk, it is possible to reduce it by ensuring that the
housing GSEs are overseen by an effective regulator.
This should have authority to set both risk-based and
minimum capital standards for GSEs; to review and, if
appropriate, reject new GSE activities; and to wind
down the affairs of a troubled GSE through
receivership. Instead of relying on the congressional
appropriations process, it should be granted a
permanent funding mechanism by allowing it to assess
the GSEs under its purview.

The reform effort should also re-evaluate GSEs'
privileges. A useful step would be to remove
presidential directors from the boards of Fannie and
Freddie.

The US financial system has been a source of strength
throughout the recent recession and recovery. But we
must not take this strength for granted. To protect
its long-term health, we must provide our world- class
housing finance sector with a world-class regulator.

The writer is chairman of President George W. Bush's
Council of Economic Advisers

new and improved moral hazard

[Eubulides]

[Just what I've always wanted, a mortgage on my mortgage]



[New York Times]
February 25, 2004
Fed Chief Warns of a Risk to Taxpayers
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 - Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve,
warned on Tuesday that the nation's two big government-sponsored mortgage
institutions pose a "systemic risk" that could cost taxpayers dearly.

Mr. Greenspan said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy up and
repackage billions of dollars' worth of mortgages every year, have grown
so rapidly and accumulated so much debt that they cannot adequately hedge
against the risks of financial crises.

The Fed chairman said both companies, which hold about $2 trillion worth
of obligations tied to home mortgages, have grown much faster than their
competitors because investors think the federal government will bail them
out in a crisis.

Mr. Greenspan said this "implied subsidy" has been a boon to the
companies' shareholders but provided only modest benefits to homebuyers in
the form of lower mortgage rates.

The danger, he said, is that the companies are using this implicit federal
backstop to assume more risk and finance their expansion through increased
debt.

"There is a general belief in the marketplace that these securities are
backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government," Mr.
Greenspan testified at a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee.

Even though the federal government does not guarantee the securities of
Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, Mr. Greenspan suggested that their special
status as "government-sponsored enterprises" and their huge size would
make it difficult for Congress to avoid a bailout in the event of a
financial calamity. "It's basically creating an abnormality, which the
system cannot close around, and the potential of that is a systemic risk
in - sometime in the future, if they continue to increase at the rate at
which they are."

Shares of both companies dropped after Mr. Greenspan's testimony. Fannie
Mae shares fell $2.65, to $76.25. Freddie Mac slid $1.81, to $62.12.

Fannie Mae executives quickly lashed back at Mr. Greenspan, complaining
that many of his criticisms were based on a Fed study that it called
seriously flawed.

"We, of course, disagree with most of his conclusions," said Jayne
Shontell, Fannie Mae's senior vice president for investor relations. "We
believe that the testimony does not appreciate the role of our mortgage
portfolio and the impact of his proposal."

Mr. Greenspan's lengthy and blunt criticisms are likely to provide new
impetus for legislative proposals aimed at tightening the regulatory
control over both companies.

Though Mr. Greenspan has criticized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the
past, he expressed a greater degree of alarm about the potential risks
posed by the companies, and he was insistent that Congress act "sooner
rather than later."

Both companies have been under fire for more than a year, in part because
both have admitted to a wide variety of questionable accounting practices.

Freddie Mac executives admitted in November that the company had
understated earnings by $5 billion, a move they hoped would smooth out the
company's long-term earnings trend and thus assuage investors. In October,
Fannie Mae was forced to correct what it said were $1 billion in errors in
its recent financial results.

Critics have complained for years that the two companies have been far
less transparent in their financial reporting than ordinary financial
institutions. But the larger concern voiced by Mr. Greenspan is that the
companies may represent a huge and hidden financial liability that could
at some point lead to a heavy costs for taxpayers.

The Bush administration has proposed transferring regulatory
responsibility for the companies to the Treasury Department, which might
then set new restrictions on their ability to issue debt or their
requirements to keep larger amounts of capital in reserve.

Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee are trying to
draw up a bipartisan plan that would create an independent regulatory
group, overseen by top officials at the Treasury, the Fed and the
Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Originally chartered by Congress, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created
to expand the pool of money for home mortgages at a time when few banks or
savings institutions operated nationwide.

The two companies essentially buy up mortgages from local lenders and
bundle the loans into large securities, which they then resell on
financial markets. Today, Mr. Greenspan said, the companies stand behind
about $4 trillion worth of mortgages - about three-quarters of all
single-family mortgages in the United States.

Mr. Greenspan emphasized that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had done a good
job of managing their risk thus far. But he said their total volume of
outstanding debt could soon exceed the debt of the federal government
itself. That would make it hard for the government t

science in the corporate interest; yet another iteration

[Eubulides]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16954

In Science in the Private Interest, a strongly argued polemic against the commercial 
conditions in
which scientific research currently operates, he shows how universities have become 
little more than
instruments of wealth. This shift in the mission of academia, Krimsky claims, works 
against the
public interest. Universities have sacrificed their larger social responsibilities to 
accommodate a
new purpose-the privatization of knowledge-by engaging in multimillion-dollar 
contracts with
industries that demand the rights to negotiate licenses from any subsequent discovery 
(as Novartis
did, Krimsky reports, in a $25 million deal with the University of California at 
Berkeley).

AG on Fannie and Freddie

[Eubulides]

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2004/20040224/default.htm

Testimony of Chairman Alan Greenspan
Government-sponsored enterprises
Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate
February 24, 2004

Gay Divorce (Join me in supporting marriage equality!)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 16:29:34 -0800
From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] [Fwd: Join me in supporting marriage equality!]
while I was working out, it was a pleasure to watch Comedy Central's
"Daily Show" with John Stewart. "Senior Moral Authority" Stephen
Colbert said he opposed gay marriages. In fact, he and his current
wife "got married because it was something that gays couldn't do."
Now that gays were getting married, it takes the meaning out of his
marriage and his two previous ones. When asked if this meant he was
in favor of a constitutional amendment banning adultery, he said
"get your jack-boots out of my bedrooms!"
How about a constitutional amendment banning divorce and Cole Porter?  :->

*   Iowa judge takes heat for granting gay divorce
Conservatives file legal challenge to dissolution of civil union
By JOE CREA
Friday, December 26, 2003
Socially conservative state lawmakers and religious officials are
challenging an Iowa judge's decision to dissolve a lesbian couple's
civil union by appealing to the state's Supreme Court.
The divorce, between Kimberly Brown, 31, and Jennifer Perez, 26, has
caught the attention of gay rights opponents who say the ruling could
open the door to Iowa recognizing same-sex marriages. Gay groups
assert the ruling will not pose a challenge to the state's existing
laws that have banned gay marriage since 1997.
"The extremist right would like to portray this as the back door to
marriage - it is not," said David Buckel, an attorney with Lambda
Legal Defense & Education Fund. "We are going through the front door,
with our heads held high, insisting on equality.
"A dissolution does not equal recognition," said Buckel.

Paul Cates, director of public education for the American Civil
Liberties Union, agreed, saying that the divorce was not a challenge
to the state's Defense of Marriage Act "but merely "recognizing a
need for a court to get a gay couple out of a relationship."
Brown and Perez, both of Sioux City, entered into a civil union in
Vermont in March 2002. Their divorce was granted Nov. 14 in Woodbury
County District Court. Their attorney, Dennis Ringgenberg, did not
return Blade calls seeking comment.
Chuck Hurley, president of the Iowa Family Policy Center, questioned
whether Judge Jeffrey Neary "fulfilled his duty" by granting the
divorce. . . .
"I'm not out here crusading for anything or anybody. I'm dealing with
the legal problem," Neary said. "I don't make decisions about social
agendas or morality issues; it just wouldn't be fair to the multitude
of people I serve."
Neary did not return Blade calls.

The Iowa Liberty & Justice Center, the legal arm of the Iowa Family
Policy Center, filed an appeal on behalf of six Iowa legislators, two
state religious leaders and U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). The
parties are arguing "couples who are civilly united are not married
under Iowa law" and that Vermont law defines "marriage as the legally
recognized union of one man and one woman."
Dwight Dinkla, executive director of the Iowa Bar Association, said
his organization does not comment on pending legislation but said he
was unaware if the writ had been served.
Calls to the Iowa Supreme Court were not returned.

Civil unions vs. gay marriage

Hurley said that he felt "fairly confident" about the appeal citing
the case of Susan Freer, a Georgia lesbian who lost custody of her
children in January 2001 when her ex-husband accused her of violating
a consent decree signed during their 1998 divorce as a legal
precedent. Under the voluntary decree, both husband and wife agreed
not to visit their children "during any time where [one] cohabits
with or has overnight stays with any adult" to whom they are not
legally married. Freer thought she was legally protected through her
Vermont civil union with her female partner. Both a Floyd County
Superior Court and the Georgia Court of Appeals disagreed.
A few other states are also seeing similar legal challenges to civil
unions performed out of state. An Indiana lesbian couple is facing
the end of their Vermont-based civil union. And similar cases are
cropping up in Connecticut, Texas and West Virginia.
Activists say that because of the legal ambiguities that come with
civil unions, such a case underscores the need for gay men and
lesbians to fight for marriage rights.
"Civil unions don't come close to being what marriage is," Buckel
said. "If we are going to have integrity as citizens of this country,
we must proceed with clarity that we must have the options that
heterosexuals have. Civil unions, domestic partnerships - they all
should be on the table. Marriage does not knock the others out." . . .
   *

*   Gay Divorce Under DOMA
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: October 16, 2003 11:18 a.m. ET
(Spokane, Washington)  Can a state that has legislation barring the
recognition of same-sex couples impose 'community property' rules 

Re: Matt Gonzalez: Until When?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Lots of people don't, it seems. Utrice Leid, who ran WBAI during the
Pacifica "coup," started out an interview with Nader by asking "as a
Jew" what he thought of Israeli policy.
Doug
Nader is well known in Japan also, but until I came to the States I
didn't know that he had Lebanese immigrant parents.  Most
Arab-Americans, however, seem to know that.
More than his Arab heritage, which Nader has never made much of, it
is the Green Party's Middle East policy that has gotten Arab
Americans' attention -- e.g.:
   Synthesis/Regeneration 30   (Winter 2003)

Greens/Green Party USA
Resolution on Divestment of State Funds from Israel
The following resolution was submitted to the Green Party USA
gathering in Bar Harbor, Maine on June 13-17, 2002 by the Brooklyn
Greens, and was approved by the Green Congress as G/GPUSA policy. It
was written primarily by Seth Farber, with help from Avi Bornstein,
Mitchel Cohen, William Pleasant, Afrime Derti and Kellie Gasink, with
major revisions from the Brooklyn Greens (the entire local reviewed
the document in detail) and members of the Manhattan Greens.
[Editor's Note: Contents have been edited for style, grammar and
length.]
The Greens/Green Party USA joins the movement, initiated by students
at the University of California at Berkeley, calling for divestment
of funds from Israel. The Greens/Green Party USA joins with this
campaign encouraging local, state and federal governments to suspend
all bank credits and divest all funds (including State Pension
Funds), investments and loans to Israel, unless or until Israel
conforms to international conventions of human rights, and complies
with the following conditions:
* Immediately ends the military occupation of the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip;
* Ceases building new settlements and begins vacating existing
settlements in the occupied territories, in accord with the Fourth
Geneva Convention;
* Accepts the recommendations of the UN Committee Against Torture
Report 2001 and ends the use of "legal" torture;
* Adheres to international law, including the 4th and 23rd Geneva
Conventions, which ban armies from using starvation and prevention of
medical attention as weapons of war; and,
* Resumes negotiations with the representatives of the Palestinian
people based upon an acceptance of previous United Nations
resolutions, including UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338,
which mandate the withdrawal of both Israeli armed forces and
civilians from territories which were illegally occupied during the
war in 1967, and UN Security Council Resolution 194 which stipulates
that all refugees should be allowed to return to their former lands.
Greens/Green Party USA Resolution on the Middle East

The Green Party USA supports secular democratic governments in the
Middle East region. It condemns Israel's ongoing attacks on
Palestinians in the West Bank.
No peace can come to the region until Palestinians have the "right to
return" and Israel's policy of installing settlements in the occupied
territories come to an end.
The escalation of the conflict is a consequence of the lack of
effective international response to the Palestinians' pleas and the
Israeli government's refusal to implement any of the numerous UN
resolutions calling for the end of its occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza. The Green Party USA advocates the following:
* Send financial assistance and political support for the
international resistance to the Occupation, including the more than
1,000 soldiers within the Israeli military who are refusing to serve
in Palestine and the hundreds of International Solidarity Movement
volunteers serving as "human shields."
* Immediate withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the Occupied Territories.
* An end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and
vacating of all settlements.
* Immediate cessation of all US military aid to Israel.
* Immediate cessation of all sales of US weapons (including
biological and chemical) to the entire region.
* Cut-off all economic aid to Israel until the Occupation is
ended and equality of aid to Palestine if it is resumed.
* Prosecution of Israeli and US officials for war crimes and
crimes against humanity, including torture, arbitrary detention and
assassination.
* End the ecological terror created by the use of land mines,
cutting off of access to water and food, and the destruction of olive
trees and farms.
* Elimination of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the region.
[The following rationale was accepted by The Greens/Green Party USA gathering.]

Let us be clear, the Greens/Green Party USA does not condone the
ghastly "suicide bombings" against innocent Israeli citizens.
However, the gruesome deeds of desperate individuals do not justify
the actions of the state of Israel which, as with other "democratic"
countries, is obligated by numerous treaties (not to mention its
self-proclaimed commitment to the Judeo-Christian moral code) to

Re: [Fwd: Join me in supporting marriage equality!]

[Devine, James]

while I was working out, it was a pleasure to watch Comedy Central's  "Daily Show" 
with John Stewart. "Senior Moral Authority" Stephen Colbert said he opposed gay 
marriages. In fact, he and his current wife "got married because it was something that 
gays couldn't do." Now that gays were getting married, it takes the meaning out of his 
marriage and his two previous ones. When asked if this meant he was in favor of a 
constitutional amendment banning adultery, he said "get your jack-boots out of my 
bedrooms!"


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




> -Original Message-
> From: joanna bujes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 4:17 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L] [Fwd: Join me in supporting marriage equality!]
> 
> 
>  Original Message 
> Subject: Join me in supporting marriage equality!
> Date: 24 Feb 2004 23:41:38 -
> From: Jill Parker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
> 
> Dear Friend,
> 
> I believe that ALL Americans, including gays and lesbians,
> deserve the rights, responsibilities, and
> privileges that come with marriage. And right now, we have an
> unprecedented opportunity to make that
> dream a reality. Please, join me in adding your voice to a
> million voices raised in support of civil
> marriage for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender couples at
> www.MillionForMarriage.org .
> 
> This week, it's especially important that we reach 200,000
> signatures - right-wing extremists are lobbying Congress right
> now during their so-called "Marriage Protection Week." Please,
> help drown out their anti-GLBT voices!
> 
> http://www.millionformarriage.org
> 
> Please speak out!
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/millionformarriage?rk=
EdatydS1hqJEW

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Nader: Why I am running

[Louis Proyect]

Counterpunch, February 24, 2004

Another Front Against Political Corruption
Why I'm Running for President
By RALPH NADER
The following is the text of a news conference with Ralph Nader at the
National Press Club in Washington, D.C., as transcribed by Federal News
Service Inc.
Today I enter the 2004 elections as an independent candidate for the
presidency of the United States, to join with all Americans who wish to
declare their independence from corporate rule and its domination. The
exercised sovereignty of the people in our history has brought forth
solutions to the people, the justice they created and the futures they
desired for their children.
In times past, the naysayers were organized commercial powers, whose
unbridled greed and authoritarian structures were denounced by Jefferson,
Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in
quite memorable statements.
It took a strengthened populace against the malefactors of great wealth to
overcome these corporate naysayers and abolish slavery, open the vote to
women, the unions to workers, the cooperatives to farmers,
to temper the large mine owners, industrialists, railroads and bankers. In
this manner, American history surged forward and upward.
Today there is a compelling necessity for a new strengthening of the people
to reform and recover their public elections from the grip of private
financing, to rescue our public authorities from the corporate government
of big business that prevails today in Washington, D.C.
These mass concentrations of power, privilege, wealth, technology and
corporate immunity have placed their rampaging global quest for maximum
profits in the way of progress, justice and opportunity for the very
millions of American workers who made possible these corporate profits but
who are falling behind, both excluded and expendable. Their labors have
gone unrequited as these unpatriotic corporations abandon our country and
shift industries abroad -- along with what is left of their allegiance to
our country and our community.
The dreaded supremacy of corporatism over civil institutions, stomping both
conservative and liberal values alike, has broken through any remaining
barriers by the two major political parties, the two-party duopolies.
Corporatism has turned federal and state departments and agencies into
indentured servants for taxpayer funded subsidies, budget-busting contracts
of great lucrative scope, and dwindling law and order against the widely
publicized corporate crime wave. This resistant corporate crime wave has
looted and drained trillions of dollars from millions of workers, their
pensions, and from small investors. There has been ample media publicity
and documentation of such crimes, abuses and frauds of these unprecedented
self-enrichments of top executives at the expense of their fiduciary duties
to both their own companies and their shareholder owners. Has the president
supplied the required law enforcement resources for action? Scarcely. He
has, as in so many other domestic matters, otherwise preoccupied -- very
few of these corporate bosses have been brought to justice and jailed.
Lincoln's new birth of freedom and government of the people by the people
for the people, in his memorable Gettysburg Address, must indeed not perish
from this land. Only an organized, self-confident people lifting their
expectation levels and applying their time, energy and talent can achieve
Lincoln's foreshadowed horizons, where freedom from fear, shift of power
and just solutions can become realities in everyday life for Americans.
Comparing the Republican Lincoln's assurance in a period of great peril and
daily destruction in those years in the 1860s -- contrast with the costly
politics of fear peddled daily by the obsessive Republican incumbent of
today, George W. Bush, playing politics with national security.
Elections should place aspirations in motion.

Only in this way will they have meaning for people's lives. Movements for
change come from more voices and choices, more debates and proposals, more
organizing and more respect for the voters in the electoral arena, so they
have a broader opportunity to vote for whom they choose to vote for.
At the same time, there ought to be higher levels of responsibility by
voters themselves for their own governments. The civil liberties and their
exercise by a pluralistic, not a duopolistic, system of political parties
and candidates, regenerate, reanimate a passive electorate accustomed to
betrayal and in large numbers not even voting.
Movements for change also come from the perceived neglected necessities of
the American people in a land of skewed plenty, where the rich have so much
and the rest of America is denied the just rewards for their labors.
These movements embrace the long overdue abolition of cruel poverty in
America; the provision of genuine, efficient, honest health care; the
illumination of civically inspired education; and the shift in the burden
and

Re: Matt Gonzalez: Until When?

[Doug Henwood]

Lots of people don't, it seems. Utrice Leid, who ran WBAI during the
Pacifica "coup," started out an interview with Nader by asking "as a
Jew" what he thought of Israeli policy.
Doug

joanna bujes wrote:

I don't think most people know that.

Joanna

Devine, James wrote:

In 2000, Nader/Greens did relatively well among Arab-Americans<

does it help that Nader is Arab-American?
Jim D.

Re: Matt Gonzalez: Until When?

[joanna bujes]

I don't think most people know that.

Joanna

Devine, James wrote:

In 2000, Nader/Greens did relatively well among Arab-Americans<


does it help that Nader is Arab-American?
Jim D.

[Fwd: Join me in supporting marriage equality!]

[joanna bujes]

 Original Message 
Subject: Join me in supporting marriage equality!
Date: 24 Feb 2004 23:41:38 -
From: Jill Parker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Dear Friend,

I believe that ALL Americans, including gays and lesbians,
deserve the rights, responsibilities, and
privileges that come with marriage. And right now, we have an
unprecedented opportunity to make that
dream a reality. Please, join me in adding your voice to a
million voices raised in support of civil
marriage for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender couples at
www.MillionForMarriage.org .
This week, it's especially important that we reach 200,000
signatures - right-wing extremists are lobbying Congress right
now during their so-called "Marriage Protection Week." Please,
help drown out their anti-GLBT voices!
http://www.millionformarriage.org

Please speak out!



http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/millionformarriage?rk=EdatydS1hqJEW

***
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Re: Matt Gonzalez: Until When?

[Devine, James]

>In 2000, Nader/Greens did relatively well among Arab-Americans<

does it help that Nader is Arab-American?
Jim D.

Re: Matt Gonzalez: Until When?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

 >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/24/04 05:18PM >>>
*   UNTIL WHEN?
Democrats ask the Greens to delay party building -- but for how long?
By Matt Gonzalez
For the last three years we've heard it over and over: the Green
Party spoiled the election for Al Gore and helped elect George W.
Bush. But the question that rarely gets asked is what have the
Democrats done about it? You'd think that since Bush won all of the
electoral votes in Florida without winning a majority of votes cast,
that the Democrats would have spent the last three years pushing for
majority elections so that what happened in Florida couldn't be
repeated. But they haven't.
Yoshie
<>
dems dirty little secret re. florida is that about 250,000
registered dems voted for bush in 2000...  michael hoover (who, for
what it's worth, doesn't see greens becoming viable electoral
force/option much less mass party)
If the Green Party can overcome its association with whiteness and
wonkiness -- two big negatives that are hard to overcome -- it will
probably do better than it has.
In 2000, Nader/Greens did relatively well among Arab-Americans:

*   2000 Arab American Vote*

  PartyCongressional   Presidential
  Affiliation  VoteVote
Democrat 40%  43.5%38% (Gore)
Republican   38%  44%  45.5% (Bush)
Independent  22%   6.5%13.5% (Nader)
   *

The Green Party, however, has a big Black deficit:

*   The Democratic share of the black vote in 2000 increased from
its already high level in 1996. Vice-President Gore's share of the
black vote was 90 percent in 2000, up from President Clinton's 84
percent in 1996. Governor Bush's eight percent of the black vote was
less than Senator Bob Dole's 12 percent in 1996. Ralph Nader received
one percent of the black vote, considerably less than the four
percent Ross Perot received in 1996.
All segments among black voters gave Gore similar levels of support,
except when distinguished by gender. Black women gave Gore a higher
level of support (94 percent) than black men (85 percent). Since
black women were also a larger share of the electorate (six percent)
than black men (four percent), their greater support for Gore meant
that their contribution to Gore's total vote (11.8 percent of the
national total) was significantly higher than black men's
contribution (7.1 percent) (see Table 3).
In the states where most African Americans live, Gore generally
received a higher percentage of the black vote in 2000 than did
President Clinton in 1996 (see Table 4). With the exceptions of
Arkansas (Clinton's home state), Louisiana, and Maryland, Gore in
2000 received the same or a higher share of the black vote than
Clinton in 1996. Unfortunately for Gore, in many of the states where
the black vote represented a large percentage of his total, he lost
because support among many white voters was low. In Alabama, Georgia,
and Louisiana, more than half of Gore's votes were cast by African
Americans, yet he lost those states, as he did his home state of
Tennessee, where the black share of his vote increased from 24
percent in 1996 to 35 percent.
(David A. Bositis, "The Black Vote in 2000: A Preliminary Analysis,"
December 2000,
)
*
The Green Party must remedy it, or it will get nowhere.

Regardless, I'll do my share to give Greens a chance on the electoral
front, unless something better begins to happen.
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

Re: Matt Gonzalez: Until When?

[Michael Hoover]

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/24/04 05:18PM >>>
*   UNTIL WHEN?
Democrats ask the Greens to delay party building -- but for how long?
By Matt Gonzalez
For the last three years we've heard it over and over: the Green
Party spoiled the election for Al Gore and helped elect George W. Bush.
But the question that rarely gets asked is what have the Democrats done
about it? You'd think that since Bush won all of the electoral votes in
Florida without winning a majority of votes cast, that the Democrats
would have spent the last three years pushing for majority elections so
that what happened in Florida couldn't be repeated. But they haven't.
Yoshie
<>

dems dirty little secret re. florida is that about 250,000 registered
dems voted for bush in 2000...  michael hoover (who, for what it's
worth, doesn't see greens becoming viable electoral force/option much
less mass party)

Re: Import-led development as a source of economic growth ?

[Michael Perelman]

please don't overpost.y


On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 12:02:10PM +0100, Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
> > The heart of the matter for me is that if men stopped paying women for
> > sex, the entire problem of prostitution would disappear.  What would it
> > take for men to do that? I don't know; taking themselves and their
> > passions seriously? That would be a good start.
>
> Yes I can see that, but that is a demand-side analysis of prostitution. In
> the political economy of prostitution, an objective scientific analysis must
> acknowledge there is both a demand-side and a supply-side, and understand
> their interconnection. And then of course a Marxian analysis seeks to go
> beyond vulgar neo-classical platitudes in this regard and develop an
> analysis of the value relations involved in prostitution, not merely prices.
>
> You can of course always say, men should do this and this, or women should
> do this and this. As I said, ultimately feminism tends to boil that to that
> sort of thing, but that is a moralistic analysis and not empirical ethics,
> and for empirical (experiential) ethics, it is necessary to examine the
> exact relationship between men and women quantitatively and qualitatively
> with regard to paid sex work.
>
> As Marx says, "people make their own history, but not under conditions they
> have chosen, rather under conditions directly transmitted from the past" and
> from this, it follows there are both "push" and "pull" factors involved in
> the prostitution business, i.e. both coercive and voluntary relations which
> are socially, spiritually and biologically determined.
>
> Involvement in prostitution can be due to a position of strength or one of
> weakness, but it would be more correct to say probably, that it is the
> overall result of an imbalanced combination of weaknesses and strengths in
> the human personality, which, in turn, is the result of the imbalanced
> development of capitalist class societies (the uneven and combined
> development of world capitalism, and ultimately the uneven and combined
> development of world history; this terminology in English may not however be
> really satisfactory in farty postmodernist times).
>
> You could easily posit as a general societal law that increase in social
> inequality = increase in prostitution.
>
> Women will blame it on men, men will blame it on women, but that is a
> moralistic analysis which doesn't really get us anywhere in solving that
> problem. In Marxian analysis, this is a topic in the critical examination of
> the political economy of consumption (the project which Marx specifies in
> his introduction to the Grundrisse covers production, distribution,
> circulation and consumption, and he didn't get around to a lot of topics in
> detail).
>
> I repeat, generalities will not suffice here, a specific analysis must be
> made of the different forms and relations of prostitution, and this cannot
> be done in abstraction from the existence of social classes which define
> those prostitutive relations. There is a big difference between the pauper
> prostitute, the proletarian prostitute, the peasant prostitute, the
> pettybourgeois prostitute and the bourgeois prostitute. I do not claim to
> have a complete solution to the controversy; I aim to resolve this by going
> to Thailand some time and think it through more carefully as a scientific
> problem (not because I am particularly interested in sex tourism
> personally - what is attractive about Thailand is the philosophy of love,
> and interestingly, Thailand is one of the few countries in the world that
> has never been taken over militarily or politically as far as I remember).
>
> Typically the analysis of prostitution is moralistic rather than scientific,
> and doesn't have correct regard for the existence of social classes and
> social inequalities, thus no solution of that problem, insofar as it is a
> problem of human development, results. For that solution, you require an
> empirical ethics, combining moral reasoning with genuine and systematic
> empirical inquiry).
>
> Jurriaan

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

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: Uganda's northern rebellion

[Mike Ballard]

--- Diane Monaco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> BBC News
> 23 feb, 2004

> The rebels are led by the mysterious Joseph Kony,
> who was part of a
> previous rebel force in northern Uganda.
>
> He has said that he wants to rule Uganda according
> to the Biblical Ten
> Commandments.
>
> But the rebel practice of abducting schoolchildren,
> forcing the girls
> to be sex slaves and the boys to be brutal killers
> flies in the face of
> Christian teachings.

Lot offered his daughters to a crowd and the crowd
raped them all night and according to one story in the
BIBLE, God sent an angel of death down to Egypt to
kill all the first born children who were living in
housing not painted with sacrificial lamb's blood.

Regards,
Mike B)


=

You can't depend on your eyes when
your imagination is out of focus.
--Mark Twain

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

__
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Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want.
http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools

Matt Gonzalez: Until When?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*   UNTIL WHEN?
Democrats ask the Greens to delay party building -- but for how long?
By Matt Gonzalez
For the last three years we've heard it over and over: the Green
Party spoiled the election for Al Gore and helped elect George W.
Bush. But the question that rarely gets asked is what have the
Democrats done about it? You'd think that since Bush won all of the
electoral votes in Florida without winning a majority of votes cast,
that the Democrats would have spent the last three years pushing for
majority elections so that what happened in Florida couldn't be
repeated. But they haven't.
This is odd given how relatively easy it would be to fix this
problem. In the event that no candidate for President obtains a
majority of the vote, you could have a runoff between the top two
vote getters. Such a runoff could take place a month later (as is
done in state and municipal elections around the country) or it could
take place the same day using new voting technology to implement
instant runoff voting (IRV), also known as "rank choice" voting. By
allowing a person to vote for their first, second, and third choices,
in one trip to the ballot box, you gather their candidate preferences
thus allowing for a same-day runoff, if necessary. IRV has worked to
elect the President of Ireland, the Mayor of London, and for a
variety of offices throughout Australia. But interestingly, the
Democrats haven't pushed this reform.
In fact, the Democratic Party recently opposed Measure 1 in Alaska
that would have called for IRV in all Alaska elections, including the
upcoming presidential election of 2004. Imagine that. Though
Democratic Party leaders complain at every turn that the Greens
spoiled a presidential race for their candidate, they opposed a
measure that if used in Florida, would have likely resulted in a Gore
Presidency. (Ironically, the Republican Party supported Measure 1.
Apparently, they did so because they had been the victims of the
so-called spoiler effect due to the popularity of a conservative
third party in Alaska.)
It appears the only policy solution the Democrats have to the Florida
debacle has been to rev up their rhetoric against the Green Party.
The argument goes like this: "Bush is a terrible President, he's
killing innocent people around the world and is threatening global
stability. We must get him out of office at all costs. Now is not the
time to be building a third party in a national election. Vote
Democrat."
What is missing from this argument is that the Democrats want the
Greens to vote for their candidate now, though we may disagree with
him on fundamental matters like the death penalty and gay marriage,
to avert greater harm. But there is no concomitant promise from the
Democratic Party to push for majority elections so that the spoiler
problem goes away in the future. Greens are left to postpone their
efforts to build the party that truly reflects their beliefs in order
to avoid "spoiling" the election. But delay for how long? The
Democrats set no deadline for themselves in terms of how long Greens
will be asked to renounce their true first choice to avert this
greater evil.
When, exactly, will Green voters be entitled, in the eyes of the
Democratic leadership to vote for the candidate they want to be
elected? In 2008? 2012? One explanation for the Democrats'
unwillingness to address the need for majority vote elections is that
as often as not, it works in Democrats favor: Not so long ago, the
Democrats were the beneficiaries of the presence of a strong third
party candidate in the presidential election. Remember Ross Perot?
Perot won 19% of the vote in the 1992 election, most of it believed
to be from George Bush Sr. Perot was subsequently criticized by
Republicans for having enabled Clinton to win the Presidency by a
non-majority (43% of the vote). Not surprisingly, Democrats were more
welcoming to Perot's candidacy than they were of Nader's.
How do we reconcile this? After all, no one is entitled to my vote.
Sure, Bush is terrible, but lets not forget that Bill Clinton wasn't
averse to some violence for political gain. He bombed the Sudan and
killed many innocent people to get the media attention away from his
impending impeachment crisis. And in the preceding eight years, we've
seen the Democratic Party become increasingly conservative;
abandoning many of the democratic values it once stood for. The most
egregious offenses of the Bush Presidency, the Patriot Act and the
War in Iraq, carried overwhelming Democratic support. Progressives
justly feel abandoned. For them, Republican or Republican Lite is a
dismal choice to make.
Greens want something different. And while I believe there is a
difference between the two major parties, the Democrats can't get me
to keep postponing the society I want to live in without offering an
end to this 18th century voting practice. They need to step up and
commit to fundamental voting reform that will make the whole concept
of spoiling obsolete and they 

Answering Ted Glick

[Louis Proyect]

(I sort of doubt whether Ralph Nader will have the time or the
inclination to answer Ted Glick's questions, but I'd like to take a stab
at them myself.)
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=33&ItemID=5034

Eight Questions for Ralph Nader

by Ted Glick
February 23, 2004
THIRD PARTY

Dear Ralph,

Now that you've now announced your intention to run as an independent
for President this year, and as someone who supported your efforts in
1996 and 2000 and who was open to the possibility of your being the
Green Party's Presidential candidate until about two months ago, I have
a number of questions:
1) You have said repeatedly that you are running to contribute to the
movement to get Bush out of office. Yet you have opposed the position of
many Greens that our Presidential candidate should concentrate campaign
resources in the 35 or 40 states where it is virtually certain that
either Bush or the Democrat is going to win. Have you changed your mind
or do you intend, for example, to actively campaign this fall in likely
battleground states like Florida, Oregon, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania?
REPLY:
Perhaps Nader is responding to Kerry's likely nomination. This is a
candidate who voted for the war on and the occupation of Iraq, the
Patriot Act, NAFTA, "welfare reform" and is a member in good standing of
the DLC. Should the Peace and Freedom Party have worked out a deal with
the Democrats in 1968 to make sure that Hubert Humphrey get elected?
That's really no different from your orientation.
2) If you have not changed your mind, how do you square your stated
desire to help get Bush out of office with that approach?
REPLY:
One other thing. The Democrats rallied around the Mayoral campaign of
Gavin Newsome, who supported Bush in the last election, just in order to
make sure that Green candidate Matt Gonzalez not get elected. Why are we
kowtowing to a party that is trying to destroy every electoral
alternative to its left? You should recall that the witch-hunt was
launched during a Democratic Party administration, largely out of fear
of Progressive Party success.
3) You and those close to you have been saying for at least two months,
and you said again today on Meet the Press, that one of your priority
constituencies for outreach will be, in your words, "conservative and
liberal Republicans, who are becoming furious with George W. Bush's
policies, such as massive deficits, publicized corporate crimes,
subsidies and pornography, civil liberties encroachments,
sovereignty-suppressing trade agreements and outsourcing." Your nephew,
Tarek Milleron, in a widely-publicized column last month, counterposed
what he called, "the small world of progressive politics" to your
"ability to connect with audiences across the ideological spectrum." And
I have yet to see, in anything you have said or are quoted as saying,
that you intend to reach out to communities of color, the lesbian and
gay community, the women's movement or other important progressive
constituencies. Can you please explain what looks to me like a
politically problematic approach that you are taking?
REPLY:
Whatever Nader's failings, he has come out in support of gay marriage.
In contrast, Kerry is opposed.
4) I was glad to see that, when pushed by Tim Russert, you came out in
support of marriage equality. Prior to this I have seen no evidence that
you are raising issues like affirmative action, immigrant rights,
reparations, marriage equality or reproductive rights. Why have you
apparently not done so up to now, and do you plan to do so in the future?
REPLY:
Maybe he hates women and immigrants. Or maybe you are asking something
like "when did you stop beating your wife". Or maybe Nader is not the
perfect candidate. In any case, he is far better than John Kerry whose
problem is not refusing to raise such issues, but raising them in the
context of providing reactionary answers.
"In a blunt break from standard liberal dogma, Sen. John Kerry said last
night that an excessive focus on ineffectual affirmative action programs
has helped foster a culture of dependency among residents of the inner
city and cost the civil rights movement its vital multiracial
consensus." (Boston Globe, 3/31/1992)
5) Many Green Party activists, including many who have been supporters
of you for a long time, have been disappointed by your unwillingness to
participate in that democratic political party's internal process of
caucuses, primaries, conventions, polls and debates leading toward
choosing a candidate. You took this position despite your long record of
advocating democratic reforms within the body politic. You did so even
though, after you announced just before Christmas that "I am
withdraw[ing] my name from consideration as a potential nominee for the
Green Party presidential ticket in 2004," you have been encouraging
Greens in various states to organize draft Nader efforts. Your actions
seem to many Greens to be very problematic. Given that the Green Party,
though s

Saudi oil

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, February 24, 2004
Forecast of Rising Oil Demand Challenges Tired Saudi Fields
By JEFF GERTH
When visitors tour the headquarters of Saudi Arabia's oil empire — a 
sleek glass building rising from the desert in Dhahran near the Persian 
Gulf — they are reminded of its mission in a film projected on a giant 
screen. "We supply what the world demands every day," it declares.

For decades, that has largely been true. Ever since its rich reserves 
were discovered more than a half-century ago, Saudi Arabia has pumped 
the oil needed to keep pace with rising needs, becoming the mainstay of 
the global energy markets.

But the country's oil fields now are in decline, prompting industry and 
government officials to raise serious questions about whether the 
kingdom will be able to satisfy the world's thirst for oil in coming years.

Energy forecasts call for Saudi Arabia to almost double its output in 
the next decade and after. Oil executives and government officials in 
the United States and Saudi Arabia, however, say capacity will probably 
stall near current levels, potentially creating a significant gap in the 
global energy supply.

Outsiders have not had access to detailed production data from Saudi 
Aramco, the state-owned oil company, for more than 20 years. But 
interviews in recent months with experts on Saudi oil fields provided a 
rare look inside the business and suggested looming problems.

An internal Saudi Aramco plan, the experts said, estimates total 
production capacity in 2011 at 10.15 million barrels a day, about the 
current capacity. But to meet expected world demand, the United States 
Department of Energy's research arm says Saudi Arabia will need to 
produce 13.6 million barrels a day by 2010 and 19.5 million barrels a 
day by 2020.

"In the past, the world has counted on Saudi Arabia," one senior Saudi 
oil executive said. "Now I don't see how long it can be maintained."

Saudi Arabia, the leading exporter for three decades, is not running out 
of oil. Industry officials are finding, however, that it is becoming 
more difficult or expensive to extract it. Today, the country produces 
about eight million barrels a day, roughly one-tenth of the world's 
needs. It is the top foreign supplier to the United States, the world's 
leading energy consumer.

Fears of a future energy gap could, of course, turn out to be unfounded. 
Predictions of oil market behavior have often proved wrong.

But if Saudi production falls short, industry experts say the 
consequences could be significant. Other large producers, like Russia 
and Iraq, do not have Saudi Aramco's huge reserves or excess oil 
capacity to export, and promising new fields elsewhere are not expected 
to deliver enough oil to make up the difference.

As a result, supplies could tighten and oil prices could increase. The 
global economy could feel the ripples; previous spikes in oil prices 
have helped cause recessions, though high oil prices in the last year or 
so have not slowed strong growth.

Saudi Aramco says its dominance in world oil markets will grow because, 
"if required," it can expand its capacity to 12 million barrels a day or 
more by "making necessary investments," according to written responses 
to questions submitted by The New York Times.

But some experts are skeptical. Edward O. Price Jr., a former top Saudi 
Aramco and Chevron executive and a leading United States government 
adviser, says he believes that Saudi Arabia can pump up to 12 million 
barrels a day "for a few years." But "the world should not expect more 
from the Saudis," he said. He expects global oil markets to be in short 
supply by 2015.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/business/24OIL.html

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Uganda's northern rebellion

[Diane Monaco]

BBC News
23 feb, 2004

Uganda's northern rebellion

The attack which left more than 200 people dead in northern Uganda has
been blamed on the brutal Lord's Resistance Army, which has been trying
to overthrow the government for 18 years.
Some one million people have fled their homes and last year a senior
United Nations official said it was the worst humanitarian situation in
the world.

Who are the Lord's Resistance Army?

The rebels are led by the mysterious Joseph Kony, who was part of a
previous rebel force in northern Uganda.

He has said that he wants to rule Uganda according to the Biblical Ten
Commandments.

But the rebel practice of abducting schoolchildren, forcing the girls
to be sex slaves and the boys to be brutal killers flies in the face of
Christian teachings.

He also says he is fighting for the rights of the region's Acholi
people, against percieved discrimination by the government.

However, residents of the north bear the brunt of the fighting and the
LRA does not have much popular support, although many do agree that
they are being ignored.

Why can't the army defeat them?

Guerilla armies are notoriously difficult to completely wipe out - as
even the powerful United States military has found.

Hopes were high that the LRA might be defeated in 2002, when Sudan
allowed the Ugandan army to pursue the LRA across the border, where the
rebels had their rear bases.

But the fighters responded by increasing their attacks in Uganda.


Uganda has recently renewed its accusations that the rebels are being
armed by Sudan.
MPs in the north say army leaders have become corrupt and are using the
war to get rich.

Recently there has been a big scandal of "ghost soldiers" where large
sums of money were reportedly claimed for soldiers who were no longer
on the army pay-roll and an investigation has been opened.

Correspondents say foot soldiers have become demoralised and have lost
the stomach to fight.

Local self-defence militias have been formed but they are not well
armed and there were just 30 of them when 200 rebels attacked at the
weekend.

How much of Uganda is affected?

At first, the LRA confined its attacks to the north but last year, they
spread to parts of the east as well.

More than one million people have fled their homes and every night,
many thousands abandon their villages in rural villages for the
relative safety of big towns.

What is the international community doing to help?

Aid agencies are delivering relief supplies to the displaced but the
camps where they work are increasingly becoming targeted by the LRA.

Last year, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan
Egeland said the humanitarian situation in northern Uganda was worse
than anywhere else in the world.

The government continues to insist that the army can defeat the rebels.

Is anyone trying to find a peaceful solution?

Some northern Ugandan religious leaders are trying to mediate between
the rebels and the government, which has offered an amnesty to fighters
to lay down their arms.

But so far, neither the carrot of the amnesty nor the army stick has
managed to end the misery of those living in the area.

Appeals for international help have borne some fruit though. In
January, after talks with the government, the International Criminal
Court in the Hague announced plans to investigate the LRA for war
crimes.

An Open Letter About Emergency Contraception

[Diane Monaco]

[please forward widely]

"The FDA expert panel recommended overwhelmingly making EC an over the
counter drug (no prescription), but for political reasons the FDA seems
to be hesitating. As disturbing, most women do not know about EC,
confuse it with RU-486 (the abortion pill), have no idea how to obtain
it; many doctors and clinics are unavailable to prescribe on short
notice; and many pharmacies don't stock it."

Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004
From: Katha Pollitt

An Open Letter About Emergency Contraception
by Katha Pollitt and Jennifer Baumgardner


The one thing that activists on every side of the abortion debate
agree on is that we should reduce the number of unwanted
pregnancies.
There are 3 million unintended pregnancies each year in the United
States; around 1.4 million of them end in abortion.

Yet the best tool for reducing unwanted pregnancies has only been
used by 2 percent of all adult women in the United States and only
11
percent of us know enough about it to be able to use it. No, we
aren't talking about abstinence--we mean something that works!

The tool is EC, which stands for Emergency Contraception (and is
also
known as the Morning After Pill).

For thirty years, doctors have dispensed EC "off label" in the form
of a handful of daily birth control pills. Meanwhile, many women
have
taken matters into their own hands by popping a handful themselves
after one of those nights--you know, when the condom broke or the
diaphragm slipped or for whatever reason you had unprotected sex.

Preven (on the market since 1998) and Plan B (approved in 1999), the
dedicated forms of EC, operate essentially as a higher-dose version
of the Pill, compressed into two tablets. The first dose is taken
within 72 hours after unprotected sex, the second pill is taken 12
hours later. EC is at least 75 percent effective in preventing an
unwanted pregnancy after sex by interrupting ovulation,
fertilization, and implantation of the egg.

If you are sexually active, or even if you're not right now, you
should have a dose of EC on hand. It's less anxiety-producing than
waiting around to see if you miss your period; much easier, cheaper
and more pleasant than having to arrange for a surgical abortion if
you end up pregnant and don't want to be.

These websites will help you find an EC provider in your area:

www.backupyourbirthcontrol.org

www.not-2-late.com

ec.princeton.edu/providers/index.html

Don't wait until you're in a crisis. Your doctor may not be able to
see you in time, and other doctors may not want to deal with
walk-ins. Many clinics and doctor's offices are closed on weekends
and holidays--the most likely times for unprotected sex. If you live
in a rural area, the logistical difficulties--finding the doctor,
finding the pharmacy that stocks EC--are compounded. Plan ahead!

Forward this information to anyone you think may not know about
backing up her birth control and print out the info in this e-mail
if
you want to organize as part of the EC campaign (or do your own
thing
and let us know about it). Let's make sure we have access to our own
hard-won sexual and reproductive freedom!

Seven Things You Need to Know About Emergency Contraception

? EC is easy. A woman takes a dose of EC within 72 hours of
unprotected sex, followed by a second dose 12 hours later.

? EC is legal.

? EC is safe. It is FDA-approved and supported by the American
College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical
Women's Association

? EC is not an abortion. The two pills you take are not RU-486,
the abortion pill, which can be taken up to nine weeks into a
pregnancy. EC does not work if you are already pregnant and will not
harm a developing fetus. Anti-choicers who call EC "the abortion
pill" or "chemical abortion" also believe birth control pills, IUDs
and contraceptive injections are abortions.

? EC works. It is at least 75 percent effective in preventing an
unwanted pregnancy after sex, but before either fertilization or
implantation. According to the FDA, EC pills "are not effective if
the woman is pregnant; they act primarily by delaying or inhibiting
ovulation, and/or by altering tubal transport of sperm and/or ova
(thereby inhibiting fertilization), and/or altering the endometrium
(thereby inhibiting implantation)."

? EC has a long shelf life. You can keep your EC on hand for two
years, according to the FDA.

? EC is for women who use birth control. You should back up
your birth control by keeping a dose of EC in your medicine
cabinet or purse.

What You Can Do to Help

Forward this e-mail to everyone you know. Post it on lists,
especially those with lots of women and girls. Print out this
information, photocopy it to make instant 

B&ESI 2004 / Greek Island of Rhodes / announcement

[Helen Kantarelis]

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS SOCIETY
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

July 19-22, 2004
ISLAND OF RHODES / GREECE
Rodos Palace Hotel

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS / PAPERS. The 2004 Business & Economics
Society International (B&ESI) Conference will be held in the island of
Rhodes / Greece, July 19-22, at the Rodos Palace Hotel. You may participate
as panel organizer, presenter of one or two papers, chair, moderator,
discussant, or observer. The deadline for abstract submission and participation
is March 15, 2004. All papers will pass a blind peer review process for
publication
consideration in an anthology of selected papers from the Conference
titled 'GLOBAL BUSINESS & ECONOMICS REVIEW - ANTHOLOGY 2004'. For more
information, please contact Helen Kantarelis / B&ESI through regular mail,
telephone, e-mail or the web:

Helen Kantarelis
Business & Economics Society International
64 Holden Street
Worcester, MA 01605-3109
USA

Telephone: (508) 595-0089
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web Site: http://www.besiweb.com

**

Henry on the future

[Jurriaan Bendien]

(I could not resist communicating this conclusion of Henry's most recent
story in the Asia Times, it's worth reading - JB)

The stock market recovery in 2003, with the DJIA rising by 25 percent from
its low in March, and the Nasdaq rising a phenomenal 50 percent, and the S&P
500 rising 26 percent and the Russell 2000 rising 45 percent, fits into the
PECT, even though it is a jobless recovery. The rise in equity prices is
tempered by the dollar falling 20 percent against the euro, 10 percent
against the yen, despite Bank of Japan intervention, and a whopping 34
percent against the Australian dollar. When a dollar buys less stock, it is
not viewed as inflation by the Fed because higher equity prices can support
more debt, which in turn causes the dollar to buy even less stock, which
causes equity prices to rise even more. Yet no one seems to be worried about
this bubble. The market takes comfort in Greenspan's recent claim that the
Fed correctly focuses policies on trying to mitigate probable damage after
the eventual bursting of a bubble of stock-market speculation rather than
taking measures to prevent the bubble itself. Irrational exuberance is now
the name of the game and the rule of the game is that markets can stay
irrationally exuberant longer than investors can afford to stay liquid on
the sideline.

The Bush tax cut and the Iraq war have led to a huge and rising fiscal
deficit projected by the Congressional Budget Office to be $477 billion in
fiscal 2004, which ends in September, less than two months before the
election. The accumulative deficit for the next decade may total $1.9
trillion, or 20 percent of GDP. If the recovery stalls, the 2004 deficit may
reach $600 billion. Deficits are not necessarily harmful if they finance
productive investments. Alas, war, speculative profits and debt-driven
consumption can hardly be categorized as such.

Whoever is president after the coming election, the first two years of his
term will likely be consumed with the need for harsh measures to deal with a
falling dollar, a runaway budget deficit, a reinflated debt bubble, a
jobless recovery and a fiscal black hole in the "war on terrorism". The
monkey will be on the back of the winner of the White House in November in
the Year of the Monkey.

Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group.

Complete story at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FB24Aa02.html

Re: Why U.S. Labor Law Has Become a Paper Tiger

[Jurriaan Bendien]

I didn't realise that he had become a legal specialist in Iowa. I admire his
work at lot, even as I struggle with financial problems. The transition from
economics to law happens to quite a number of economists and I often wonder
what exactly motivates that, since, if you are an economist (which I am not,
my Master's was in education) then one would think that there are more
economically efficient methods for the administration of social justice than
legal stuff. But there does seem to be something in human nature as we know
it, which places limits on that. Michael Camdessus opined once that
economics is in our genes (jeans ?) but in fact, even in the investigation
of paid sex work, it is clear that human emotions do not truly have some
kind of "economy", at most an "ecology".

Bit of blog. I am personally inclined to the view that arbitrary violations
of legal rules are not desirable. But in my somewhat klutzy Forrest
Gump/Fight Club-type state I do engage in a bit of arbitrary behaviour, and
I got to curb that. Main criticisms I had were too much false alarm, too
much provocation, too much advertising. Sometimes it seems better not to
share insights for the sake of one's responsibility to fellow citizens so as
not to increase the volume of disappointment, which is ecologically
preferable.

Main thing about being more successful, is to get rid of past hurts and
grievances as quickly as one can, change behaviour to fit with new
circumstances, and just be kind, interesting and friendly to people and to
yourself. But it ain't easy, at least not for me, I have to somehow tear
myself out of past grief. Sociologically, Frederick Engels remarked upon the
historic memory and persistence of oppressed nationalities which causes the
struggle for justice by a people to continue for a very long time. But of
course it could be made into a happier kind of struggle (?). I had a woman
say of me once "he still thinks he has to struggle", but I really felt there
was not much depth of insight there :-) I got to get another job to pay the
bills and get to where I want to go... economics still on my mind.

There is no depression in New Zealand
There are no sheep on our farms
There's no depression in New Zealand
We can all keep perfectly calm

- "There's no depression in New Zealand", by Blam Blam Blam

J.

Re: dems, etc

[Michael Perelman]

Watch the rhetoric.


On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 12:49:30PM +0100, Robert Scott Gassler wrote:
> Are you nuts? When has that kind of reverse strategy ever worked?
>
> The Vietnam War was started when the draft was in place and ended after the
> draft was abolished, which mitigates (though admittedly does not demolish)
> the argument that the draft fueled the antiwar movement.
>
> When Nixon was elected, some people said that that would expose the evils
> of the right and radicalize the population. So who was the radical
> president? Ford? Carter? Reagan?
>
> People said the same thing about Reagan, and we got W.
>
> Hello. It doesn't work.
>
> At 19:30 23/02/04 -0500, dmschanoes wrote:
> >- Original Message -
> >From: "Peter Hollings" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:30 AM
> >Subject: Re: [PEN-L] dems, etc
> >
> >
> >The mandatory service bill is a poison pill.  It will make unjustified war
> >unpopular and unsustainable.
> >
> >Peter Hollings
> >
> >And that is the single best reason for supporting reinstatement of the
> >draft.
> >
> >dms
>
> Robert Scott Gassler
> Professor of Economics
> Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
> Pleinlaan 2
> B-1050 Brussels
> Belgium
>
> 32.2.629.27.15

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

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Water & a Color Line

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*   The New York Times
February 17, 2004
Ohio Town's Water at Last Runs Past a Color Line
By JAMES DAO
ZANESVILLE, Ohio - In January, a strange thing happened when people
along Coal Run Road turned on their taps. Drinking water came out.
Not the sulfur-tinged, bug-infested stuff that collected in their
cisterns or swirled in their wells. Cool, clean,
straight-from-the-pumping-station city water.
For most of their lives, residents of this tiny hollow on the edge of
town lived a bit like frontiersmen, keeping drinking water in jugs,
collecting rainwater in barrels, even occasionally melting snow from
their yards, all because they did not have city water service.
"I never thought I'd live to see it," said Helen McCuen, an
89-year-old widow who has lived in the hollow for 57 years.
The story of how they got that water, and were for years denied it,
seems anachronistic in 21st-century America. But it speaks volumes,
the residents contend, about disparities in living standards that are
related to the color of one's skin.
For years, decades really, residents of the hollow had been asking
local officials to extend water lines down their narrow, twisting
roads. Not enough water pressure, they were told. Too expensive. Too
hilly.
Yet just up the hill, not 200 yards away, homeowners have had running
municipal water for years. One new homeowner even installed a hot tub
and routinely sprinkled his lawn, something residents of the hollow
could never do with their 1,000-gallon cisterns, which were
constantly running dry.
Almost all the people living at the top of the hill are white. Almost
all the people in the hollow are racially mixed: white, black and
American Indian. And it increasingly seemed to residents of the
hollow that this had something to do with their plight.
"The water stopped where the black folks started," said Saundra
McCuen, 49, one of Helen McCuen's seven children. "I don't want to
use the race thing, but what else could it be?"
In 2002, two dozen residents filed a complaint with the Ohio Civil
Rights Commission, asserting that they had been denied water service
because of racial discrimination. Last summer, the commission agreed.
The commission found that on Coal Run Road, none of the 17 black or
mixed-race homes had city water service, while two white homes did.
On nearby Langan Lane, all of the 18 white homes on top of the hill
had city water, while five of the eight black or mixed-race homes in
the hollow did not. (The other three families had connected to the
municipal lines by themselves.)
The commission concluded there was probable cause to believe that the
city, county and local water authority had "failed to provide the
complainants with access to public water service because of their
race."
One month after the report was released, Muskingum County announced
it had found enough money to issue a $730,000 contract to extend
water lines into the hollow. (Officials had used a much higher
estimate - $2 million - when they told hollow residents a few years
ago that it was too expensive to connect them to the water system,
residents said.)
Government officials say race had nothing to do with the lack of
water service in the hollow. But they have also begun blaming one
another.
City officials contend that a now-defunct water authority removed the
hollow from its service area many years ago, leaving responsibility
for water to the city. But Zanesville, a city of 28,000 people,
decided it could not extend lines into the hollow because it lies
just outside the city limits, said Scott Hillis, the city's law
director. The city assumed that the county would provide the water.
But Muskingum County officials contend they did not become aware of
the hollow's situation until two years ago. (Zanesville officials
said they told the county of the hollow's requests at least eight
years ago.)
County officials also contend they have not had enough money to meet
the county's needs, since about half of its residents - most of whom
live in remote rural areas - do not have running water.
"As far as I'm concerned the suit is ludicrous," said Dorothy
Montgomery, a Muskingum County commissioner. "There is nothing done
by the commissioners that is based on black or white."
Zanesville, 60 miles east of Columbus, was founded 200 years ago as a
way station for migrants moving from Virginia to Kentucky. It became
famous for its clay pottery and Y-shaped concrete bridge over the
Muskingum and Licking Rivers, but fell on hard times after World War
II as many of its kilns and mills closed.
Before the Civil War, the underground railroad ran through the city.
But city businesses remained segregated until the late 1950's,
residents said. And the Ku Klux Klan has been active for decades,
holding small rallies in the region as recently as the late 1990's.
The denial of water service "wasn't in-your-face racism," said
Vincent Curry, executive director of Fair Housing Advocates
Association, a group based in Akron that helped the resid

Re: demo fervor

[Devine, James]

bad cop/good cop routine...
JD

-Original Message- 
From: Dan Scanlan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Mon 2/23/2004 8:27 PM 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor



I have often wondered if the difference between a Republican
politician and a Democratic politician wasn't something like this:
The Republican says under his breath, "Screw you," and the Democrat
says, "Sorry fella" as they pass by the hitch-hiker in the desert.
Glee versus guilt at someone else's misfortune.

Dan Scanlan

Re: Why U.S. Labor Law Has Become a Paper Tiger

[Doug Henwood]

Yes, and his stuff on time is great - overtime, break time, etc.
"Moments are the elements of profit," as one of his titles says. I've
got a couple of interviews with him up at
.
Doug

Michael Perelman wrote:

yes.  he does wonderful stuff.  I especially like Linder, Marc and
Ingrid Nygaard. 1998. .Void Where Prohibited: Rest Breaks and the Right
to Urinate on Company Time. (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press).
On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 11:34:55PM -0500, Max B. Sawicky wrote:
 Anybody ever read Marc Linder?



 -Original Message-
 From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of andie
 nachgeborenen
 Subject: Fwd: Why U.S. Labor Law Has Become a Paper Tiger
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

The Democrats Had Their Chance (by Howie Hawkins)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

**   Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 23:16:58 -0500
From: Howie Hawkins
Subject: Re Open Letter to Ralph Nader: The Democrats Had Their Chance
The Nation's "Open Letter to Ralph Nader" (Feb. 16) says "this is the
wrong year for [Nader] to run: 2004 is not 2000," as if The Nation
supported Nader in 2000, which it did not.
The Democrats had their chance to oppose Bush's repressive
militarism. But only one Democratic Senator opposed the PATRIOT Act.
Only one Democratic Representative opposed giving Bush unilateral war
powers after 9-11. Only  10 Democratic Representatives voted against
the March 2003 resolution of "unequivocal support" for Bush as he
launched the occupation of Iraq.
The Democrats had their chance to fight for electoral reforms that
would rectify the selection of Bush in 2000 with a minority of the
vote, such as Electoral College abolition, open presidential debates,
instant run-off  voting, and proportional representation. Instead of
pushing for electoral reforms that would enable a multi-party
democracy and end the lesser-evil dilemma our current
single-member-district, winner-take-all system forces voters into,
the Democrats have tried to smash the Green Party from Maine to
California. Maine's Green state representative, John Eder, is
gerrymandered out of his district by Democrats. Democrats in San
Francisco enlist Republicans to unite behind a Democrat, Gavin
Newsome, who supported Bush in 2000, in order to prevent (narrowly)
the election of the Green mayoral candidate, Matt Gonzalez.
The Democrats had their chance to fight Bush's regressive budget
priorities. But no serious Democratic presidential contender opposes
Bush's $500+ billion military budget. The Democratís Senate leader,
Tom Daschle,  declared the passage of Bushís first round of tax cuts
for the rich a "victory" because they were for $1.3 billion instead
of the $1.6 billion Bush first proposed. The logic of supporting the
lesser evil leads to such  self-defeating "victories" as the
Bush/Daschle tax cuts.
You crow about the "passionate volunteerism at the grassroots of the
Democratic Party." The grassroots are passionately committing
political suicide. The grassroots oppose the war in Iraq. But they
have united behind a pro-war candidate, John Kerry, because he is
"electable." Thus, the logic of lesser-evilism leads them to support
the war they started out to oppose. A pathetic example of this is the
puzzled anti-war Kucinich supporters who came out of the Iowa
caucuses wondering why they had voted for the pro-war Edwards on the
instructions of the nominally anti-war Kucinich.
The Democrats might beat Bush, but they are not going to beat the
Bushism to which your Open Letter refers because they have supported
it. As the Democratic performance over the last three years shows,
Bushism is the current manifestation of the ongoing Bipartisan
Consensus around militaristic foreign policies and neoliberal
economic policies of welfare for the rich and austerity for workers
masquerading as the "free market."
The Democrats had their chance. And The Nation wants me to count on
the Democrats to fight Bushism now? No thanks. Run, Ralph, Run.
Howie Hawkins
Syracuse NY*
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

Re: Why U.S. Labor Law Has Become a Paper Tiger

[Max B. Sawicky]

yup.  very prolific guy.


-Original Message-
From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jurriaan
Bendien
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 1:13 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Why U.S. Labor Law Has Become a Paper Tiger


Yep I have (though not all). He's great. Didn't he do that book
Anti-Samuelson ?

J.
- Original Message -
From: "Max B. Sawicky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 5:34 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Why U.S. Labor Law Has Become a Paper Tiger


> Anybody ever read Marc Linder?
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of andie
> nachgeborenen
> Subject: Fwd: Why U.S. Labor Law Has Become a Paper Tiger
>
>

Nader & Democrats on Gay Marriage

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*   MR. RUSSERT:  Civil rights:  Many gay couples believe that
they should be allowed to be married.  You heard Governor
Schwarzenegger say he disagrees with that.  Democrat candidates will
say they're for civil unions but not gay marriage.  Would Ralph Nader
support gay marriage?
MR. NADER:  I support equal rights for same-sex couples.  I think
there's an interesting quote by a lesbian leader in The New York
Times a few days ago when she said, "It's not a matter of labels,
it's a matter of equal rights." However, that can occur by adjusting
state laws or having a federal law.  That is certainly something that
the gay-lesbian community is going to have to work out.
MR. RUSSERT:  But gays should be allowed to be married if they so
choose, according to you.
MR. NADER:  Of course.  Love and commitment is not exactly in surplus
in this country.
   *

*   Vol. VIII Issue 16  Monday, February 23, 2004

John Kerry May Support Constitutional Marriage Amendment
Democratic Candidate Strongly Opposes Same-Sex Marriages
Senator says 'It Depends Entirely on (Amendment's) Language'
By Rex Wockner

Leading Democratic presidential contender Senator John Kerry is not
necessarily opposed to a constitutional amendment to permanently ban
same-sex marriage, he told National Public Radio's All Things
Considered February 9.
Kerry was asked: "I'd like to turn to the subject of gay marriage.
The highest court in your home state of Massachusetts has said that
same-sex couples do have the right to marry. I know you've said that
you oppose gay marriage, but would you support a constitutional
amendment that would define marriage as a heterosexual union?"
He replied: "Well, it depends entirely on the language of whether it
permits civil union and partnership or not. I'm for civil union. I'm
for partnership rights.
"I think what ought to condition this debate is not the term marriage
as much as the rights that people are afforded," Kerry continued.
"Obviously under the Constitution of the United States you need equal
protection under the law. And I think equal protection means the
rights that go with it. I think the word marriage kind of gets in the
way of the whole debate, to be honest with you, because marriage to
many people is obviously what is sanctified by a church. It's
sacramental. Or by a synagogue or by a mosque or by whatever
religious connotation it has. Clearly there's a separation of church
and state here. ... Marriage is a separate institution. I think
marriage is under the church, between a man and a woman, and I think
there's a separate meaning to it."
Kerry said this holds true even for civil marriages that are not
conducted in a house of worship.
"Even for those that aren't, there's still two meanings," he said. "I
mean, the state picked up the concept [of marriage] afterwards. It's
a latecomer to the state."
The day after the NPR interview, Kerry's campaign said he was talking
about amending Massachusetts' constitution not the U.S. Constitution.
On February 4, Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court mandated that
the state offer regular marriage to same-sex couples by May 17, and
some state legislators hope to amend the state constitution to block
that ruling.
"Senator Kerry opposes a federal constitutional amendment, he has
always opposed a federal constitutional amendment on gay marriage,
and if someone listened to an NPR interview and believes otherwise,
then he was reacting to a different question, a question about a
Massachusetts amendment, not a federal constitutional amendment,"
Deputy Campaign Manager Steve Elmendorf said in a telephone call to
this reporter.
Several hours later, the campaign e-mailed this reporter multiple
copies of a new press release quoting Kerry as saying, "I remain
firmly opposed to any federal amendment on this issue."
Asked if it wouldn't be odd of Kerry to oppose amending the U.S.
Constitution but not the Massachusetts Constitution, Elmendorf said:
"The federal Constitution and the state of Massachusetts Constitution
are two different constitutions. The state constitutional amendment
has not been written -- it is a hypothetical -- and we're going to
wait and see what it is. ... The Constitution of the United States of
America is entirely different. He does not think the U.S.
Constitution should be tampered with over an issue like this."
Asked if Kerry thinks the Massachusetts Constitution should be
tampered with over an issue like this, Elmendorf said, "He has not
made that decision yet. ... He would consider it."
NPR spokesperson Laura Gross and All Things Considered host Melissa
Block refused to say whether Block had intended to ask Kerry about
the U.S. Constitution or the Massachusetts Constitution.
"Melissa Block asked a question and Senator Kerry answered the
question the way he interpreted it to be asked," Gross said. "That's
a little confusing. It doesn't matter what she was asking him one way
or the other. That was the question 

Re: dems, etc

[Robert Scott Gassler]

OK, maybe not nuts.

Glad to know you're not falling into the trap I feared.

At 07:06 24/02/04 -0500, you wrote:
Excuse me, re-read your history. The draft was eliminated in two phases, the
first being the draft lottery, the second being outright elimination.  US
personnel were restricted from "direct" combat operations in IndoChina by
the US Congress in 1971.  The war in IndoChina did not end until the army of
North Vietnam captured Saigon in 1975.
Ending the draft, bringing the troops home, Vietnamization etc. etc. did
nothing to end the war. That's what the chronology shows. It did allow the
bourgeoisie to continue the war by proxy.  The "volunteer army"  is another
one of those proxies.
Nobody is arguing to make things worse in order to make them better, but it
is a simple fact that a conscripted army from all of society is more
"responsive" to the social conflicts at the root of war than a professional
guard.
People didn't say the same thing about Reagan and we got W.  People said
absolutely different things about Clinton, and we got W.
Nuts?
dms
- Original Message -
From: "Robert Scott Gassler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 6:49 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] dems, etc
> Are you nuts? When has that kind of reverse strategy ever worked?
>
> The Vietnam War was started when the draft was in place and ended after
the
> draft was abolished, which mitigates (though admittedly does not demolish)
> the argument that the draft fueled the antiwar movement.
>
> When Nixon was elected, some people said that that would expose the evils
> of the right and radicalize the population. So who was the radical
> president? Ford? Carter? Reagan?
>
> People said the same thing about Reagan, and we got W.
>
> Hello. It doesn't work.
>
> At 19:30 23/02/04 -0500, dmschanoes wrote:
> >- Original Message -
> >From: "Peter Hollings" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:30 AM
> >Subject: Re: [PEN-L] dems, etc
> >
> >
> >The mandatory service bill is a poison pill.  It will make unjustified
war
> >unpopular and unsustainable.
> >
> >Peter Hollings
> >
> >And that is the single best reason for supporting reinstatement of the
> >draft.
> >
> >dms
>
> Robert Scott Gassler
> Professor of Economics
> Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
> Pleinlaan 2
> B-1050 Brussels
> Belgium
>
> 32.2.629.27.15
>
Robert Scott Gassler
Professor of Economics
Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Pleinlaan 2
B-1050 Brussels
Belgium
32.2.629.27.15

Re: dems, etc

[dmschanoes]

Excuse me, re-read your history. The draft was eliminated in two phases, the
first being the draft lottery, the second being outright elimination.  US
personnel were restricted from "direct" combat operations in IndoChina by
the US Congress in 1971.  The war in IndoChina did not end until the army of
North Vietnam captured Saigon in 1975.

Ending the draft, bringing the troops home, Vietnamization etc. etc. did
nothing to end the war. That's what the chronology shows. It did allow the
bourgeoisie to continue the war by proxy.  The "volunteer army"  is another
one of those proxies.

Nobody is arguing to make things worse in order to make them better, but it
is a simple fact that a conscripted army from all of society is more
"responsive" to the social conflicts at the root of war than a professional
guard.

People didn't say the same thing about Reagan and we got W.  People said
absolutely different things about Clinton, and we got W.

Nuts?
dms

- Original Message -
From: "Robert Scott Gassler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 6:49 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] dems, etc


> Are you nuts? When has that kind of reverse strategy ever worked?
>
> The Vietnam War was started when the draft was in place and ended after
the
> draft was abolished, which mitigates (though admittedly does not demolish)
> the argument that the draft fueled the antiwar movement.
>
> When Nixon was elected, some people said that that would expose the evils
> of the right and radicalize the population. So who was the radical
> president? Ford? Carter? Reagan?
>
> People said the same thing about Reagan, and we got W.
>
> Hello. It doesn't work.
>
> At 19:30 23/02/04 -0500, dmschanoes wrote:
> >- Original Message -
> >From: "Peter Hollings" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:30 AM
> >Subject: Re: [PEN-L] dems, etc
> >
> >
> >The mandatory service bill is a poison pill.  It will make unjustified
war
> >unpopular and unsustainable.
> >
> >Peter Hollings
> >
> >And that is the single best reason for supporting reinstatement of the
> >draft.
> >
> >dms
>
> Robert Scott Gassler
> Professor of Economics
> Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
> Pleinlaan 2
> B-1050 Brussels
> Belgium
>
> 32.2.629.27.15
>

Re: Import-led development as a source of economic growth ? - addition

[Jurriaan Bendien]

I wrote:

> Involvement in prostitution can be due to a position of strength or one of
> weakness, but it would be more correct to say probably, that it is the
> overall result of an imbalanced combination of weaknesses and strengths in
> the human personality, which, in turn, is the result of the imbalanced
> development of capitalist class societies (the uneven and combined
> development of world capitalism, and ultimately the uneven and combined
> development of world history; this terminology in English may not however
be
> really satisfactory in farty postmodernist times).

Generally speaking, the bourgeois reply to this type of argument is that,
given that human life is finite, therefore the emphasis should be on
"equalisation with a time-frame" for oneself and for others, i.e. human life
should be about getting even. This seems to make a lot of sense, because
after all, we are all limited as individuals in what we can do, and whatever
morality is, it is immoral to expect somebody to do something beyond his
reach (in working out this theme, the question is that what expectations we
are rationally and morally entitled to have, and this is of course also
something which we can project into the future along the same principle of
"live now, pay later").

Then we can work out all sorts of moral positions concerning "what it means
to get even". But the whole significance of this discussion is, that the
bourgeois class order is perpetuated precisely through this morality of
"getting even" - as people struggle for emancipation, fresh capital is
privately accumulated, in other words, the urge and drive of human beings to
liberate themselves from oppressive conditions makes money for businessmen.
Fresh entrepreneurial forces in this sense are continually required to keep
the accumulation process going, and if necessary you import them. It's a
kind of "cohort" theory of capital accumulation.

The moral significance of suicide bombings as I interpret them is
essentially that this temporal-spatial approach to haggling and gamble in
human futures (involving the continual displacement of moral culpability via
impersonal market forces) should be morally rejected, because it is immoral
to haggle and gamble with the future of the human species.

The suicide bomber thus says in effect "if this is human life, if this is
the human future, then I do not want to be in it, and human beings do not
deserve to be in it either, and a random killing makes my point clear". The
question is then whether suicide bombings (large - 9/11 or relatively
small - as in the case of Jaradat) are really conducive to moral learning of
a type which redirects human behaviour into a more healthy direction.

The proponents of the "equalisation as a process" type argument deny this,
the argument here being that even if haggling and gambling in human futures
is morally wrong, suicide bombings destroy the conditions under which a
better morality could emerge or evolve.

This argument has some merit, but it is an almighty tricky one, since there
is of course a sense in which we can "make the argument true" through strong
sanctions against suicide bombings of a type which makes the changing of
human behaviour and circumstances on the basis of moral reasoning, leading
to a better morality, impossible.

Ultimately, the fulcrum of bourgeois competition, national and
international, and class warfare, is the diametric opposition of different
moralities, the clash of moralities which are irreconcilable and therefore
violate in practice the bourgeois-christian theory that in the last instance
morality at the individual level consists in reconciling opposed interests,
i.e. that all partisanship must be forsaken and forgiven for the sake of
peace, a conceptualisation which we could try to build on the love
relationship between a man and a woman for example.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the modern terrorist aims in effect to
sharpen up that moral-political opposition and considers that his or her
actions are his or her contribution to moral clarification for the human
species for all eternity. That is not something that bourgeois morality can
cope with, other than by denying any moral content to the actions of the
terrorist. Hence bourgeois morality seeks to convince people that terrorism
is always wrong under any conditions, and specify the meaning of terrorism
in a way that it is always wrong. "Killing" (homicide) and murder are
jurisprudentially not the same thing, because murder is ex definitione
always morally wrong and punishable, whereas the morality of killing is an
open question.

What is at stake in this issue is a question of moral limits, the problem of
"boundaries" which postmodernist thought is so fascinated with, because it
empowers those who have the greatest flexibility in making (nuanced)
distinctions, those with the greatest semiotic sophistication. And of
course, the making of distinctions is a necessary requisite for the
perpetuation 

Re: dems, etc

[Robert Scott Gassler]

Are you nuts? When has that kind of reverse strategy ever worked?

The Vietnam War was started when the draft was in place and ended after the
draft was abolished, which mitigates (though admittedly does not demolish)
the argument that the draft fueled the antiwar movement.
When Nixon was elected, some people said that that would expose the evils
of the right and radicalize the population. So who was the radical
president? Ford? Carter? Reagan?
People said the same thing about Reagan, and we got W.

Hello. It doesn't work.

At 19:30 23/02/04 -0500, dmschanoes wrote:
- Original Message -
From: "Peter Hollings" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:30 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] dems, etc
The mandatory service bill is a poison pill.  It will make unjustified war
unpopular and unsustainable.
Peter Hollings

And that is the single best reason for supporting reinstatement of the
draft.
dms
Robert Scott Gassler
Professor of Economics
Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Pleinlaan 2
B-1050 Brussels
Belgium
32.2.629.27.15

Re: Import-led development as a source of economic growth ?

[Jurriaan Bendien]

> The heart of the matter for me is that if men stopped paying women for
> sex, the entire problem of prostitution would disappear.  What would it
> take for men to do that? I don't know; taking themselves and their
> passions seriously? That would be a good start.

Yes I can see that, but that is a demand-side analysis of prostitution. In
the political economy of prostitution, an objective scientific analysis must
acknowledge there is both a demand-side and a supply-side, and understand
their interconnection. And then of course a Marxian analysis seeks to go
beyond vulgar neo-classical platitudes in this regard and develop an
analysis of the value relations involved in prostitution, not merely prices.

You can of course always say, men should do this and this, or women should
do this and this. As I said, ultimately feminism tends to boil that to that
sort of thing, but that is a moralistic analysis and not empirical ethics,
and for empirical (experiential) ethics, it is necessary to examine the
exact relationship between men and women quantitatively and qualitatively
with regard to paid sex work.

As Marx says, "people make their own history, but not under conditions they
have chosen, rather under conditions directly transmitted from the past" and
from this, it follows there are both "push" and "pull" factors involved in
the prostitution business, i.e. both coercive and voluntary relations which
are socially, spiritually and biologically determined.

Involvement in prostitution can be due to a position of strength or one of
weakness, but it would be more correct to say probably, that it is the
overall result of an imbalanced combination of weaknesses and strengths in
the human personality, which, in turn, is the result of the imbalanced
development of capitalist class societies (the uneven and combined
development of world capitalism, and ultimately the uneven and combined
development of world history; this terminology in English may not however be
really satisfactory in farty postmodernist times).

You could easily posit as a general societal law that increase in social
inequality = increase in prostitution.

Women will blame it on men, men will blame it on women, but that is a
moralistic analysis which doesn't really get us anywhere in solving that
problem. In Marxian analysis, this is a topic in the critical examination of
the political economy of consumption (the project which Marx specifies in
his introduction to the Grundrisse covers production, distribution,
circulation and consumption, and he didn't get around to a lot of topics in
detail).

I repeat, generalities will not suffice here, a specific analysis must be
made of the different forms and relations of prostitution, and this cannot
be done in abstraction from the existence of social classes which define
those prostitutive relations. There is a big difference between the pauper
prostitute, the proletarian prostitute, the peasant prostitute, the
pettybourgeois prostitute and the bourgeois prostitute. I do not claim to
have a complete solution to the controversy; I aim to resolve this by going
to Thailand some time and think it through more carefully as a scientific
problem (not because I am particularly interested in sex tourism
personally - what is attractive about Thailand is the philosophy of love,
and interestingly, Thailand is one of the few countries in the world that
has never been taken over militarily or politically as far as I remember).

Typically the analysis of prostitution is moralistic rather than scientific,
and doesn't have correct regard for the existence of social classes and
social inequalities, thus no solution of that problem, insofar as it is a
problem of human development, results. For that solution, you require an
empirical ethics, combining moral reasoning with genuine and systematic
empirical inquiry).

Jurriaan