Re: Early rationale for Iraq war

[Mike Ballard]

--- k hanly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35472-2004Mar6?language=printer
>
> The True Rationale? It's a Decade Old

Capitalist imperialism?

What else could it be?

Best to all,
Mike B)

=

Beers fall into two broad categories:
Those that are produced by
top-fermenting yeasts (ales)
and those that are made with
bottom-fermenting yeasts (lagers).

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you’re looking for faster
http://search.yahoo.com

a mild case of imperial overstretch

[Eubulides]

Foreign Crises Stretch U.S. In Election Year
By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 8, 2004; Page A01


With Haiti's drama and the flare-up of violence in Iraq, the United States
faces an overload of crises that Republicans and Democrats agree will be
even more difficult to deal with now that the presidential campaign is in
full swing.

Rarely has Washington had such a large and diverse array of foreign policy
problems to juggle as leaders of both parties hit the campaign trail. And
rarely have those crises been so central to an election, evident in the
scathing volleys between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.)
over the past week.

In the first presidential election since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,
the Bush administration finds its foreign policy initiatives to defend the
United States from the new threats becoming hot election issues -- and
liabilities. "It's fighting three wars: Iraq, Afghanistan and the global
war on terror. It has to deal with everything from Colombia to Haiti, the
Palestinians to North Korea, the World Trade Organization. If someone is
arguing the administration has a lot on its plate and it is stretched,
they've got a point," said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on
Foreign Relations and a top foreign policy planning official in both Bush
administrations.

But the broader question is whether the confluence of crises -- and the
intense election debate they have spawned -- will crimp U.S. willingness
or ability to focus on new problems or opportunities, leaving Washington
instead reacting and on the defensive. Some Republican insiders have
adopted a crisis-avoidance mantra for the election season: "No war in
'04."

"It's a very challenging time," said James B. Steinberg, Brookings
Institution director of foreign policy studies and deputy national
security adviser for the Clinton administration. "There's a real
temptation to play defense rather than to take these things on. But when
you do that, you risk becoming a hostage of current fortunes and, rather
than shaping the environment, you allow other people to drive the agenda
and set the pace."

There are already signs that the Bush administration may be reluctant to
tackle new hot spots, which Republicans and Democrats say is what happened
during the uprising against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's
controversial but democratically elected leader.

Washington resisted getting embroiled until the final days of the
confrontation, despite long-brewing signs of trouble, because of "time and
resources and focus and energy," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). With so
many troops tied down in Iraq and elsewhere, "the last thing we need is
another problem. So we try to get out on the cheap," he said.

The United States is guilty of outright neglect for its failure to act
earlier, Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) told Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell at a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week. "This was
not an overnight crisis, and could we not have better supported the
democracy in Haiti if we had been more generous with our assistance?"
Serrano said.

Haiti is symptomatic of the dilemmas during an election season after 21/2
years of ambitious but controversial interventions in Afghanistan and
Iraq. The next eight months is not a time for "discretionary commitments"
that are "politically ambitious and costly entanglements," Haass said.
"Iraq is a war of choice. It is hard to imagine more wars of choice in the
foreseeable future."

White House officials deny that the administration is stretched thin or
overburdened.

"This White House is the most calm that I've worked in. I was struck by
this [at the end of February] as we were wrapping up six-party talks on
North Korea and had Haiti and Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law. The
phones were ringing off the hook, but there was no sense of crisis in the
White House. No one starts running a fever if there's a crisis," said a
senior administration official who has worked in top positions for several
 administrations.

Political strategist Karl Rove is not urging Bush to kick problems down
the road to avoid tough choices, said William Kristol, editor of the
Weekly Standard and Vice President Dan Quayle's chief of staff.

"Bush understands that it's riskier in many cases to endlessly put off
dealing with problems -- and that they'll come back to bite you at a time
not of your choosing," Kristol said. "Bush needs to go to the country on
the basis of his foreign policy. That's risky and some won't like it. But
he can't say, 'Elect me because of my foreign policy,' but then, this
year, put everything on hold."

This White House also remembers the recent past. The first Bush
administration adopted a "keep things calm" strategy in the 1992
campaign -- and voters decided it wasn't needed to keep around to handle
foreign policy, Kristol added.

Yet Republicans and Democrats note signs that crisis overload and campaign
reali

Early rationale for Iraq war

[k hanly]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35472-2004Mar6?language=printer

The True Rationale? It's a Decade Old

By James Mann
Sunday, March 7, 2004; Page B02


The Bush administration has offered a series of shifting justifications for
the war in Iraq. Each has been quite specific: The war was to uncover Saddam
Hussein's weapons of mass destruction; to dislodge a brutal dictator; to
combat Iraq's support for terrorism; to deal with what President Bush called
a "grave and gathering threat."



Which was the real one? That's the overarching question that has dominated
public debate in recent months. But the question is too narrow. The
underlying rationale was both broader and more abstract: The war was carried
out in pursuit of a larger vision of using America's overwhelming military
superiority to shape the future.

The outlines of that vision were first sketched more than a decade ago,
immediately after the Soviet Union collapsed. Some of the most important and
bitterly debated aspects of the war in Iraq -- including the
administration's willingness to engage in preemptive military action -- can
be traced to discussions and documents from the early 1990s, when Pentagon
officials, under then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and then-Undersecretary
of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, led the way in forging a new, post-Cold War
military strategy for the United States.

The gist of the strategy they formulated was that the United States should
be the world's dominant superpower -- not merely today, or 10 years from
now, or when a rival such as China appears, but permanently. The elements of
this vision were couched in bland-sounding phrases: The United States should
"preserve its strategic depth" and should act overseas to "shape the
security environment." What could potentially flow from those vague words
was, however, anything but bland: The recent war in Iraq was, above all, an
effort to shape the security environment of the Middle East.

This account of how that strategy was developed -- and how it has influenced
the policies of the current Bush administration -- is based on documents and
interviews with many of those involved in the discussions 12 years ago,
during what turned out to be the final year of the first Bush
administration. Early in 1992, officials in the Pentagon began putting
together a document called the Defense Planning Guidance. This statement of
America's military strategy, prepared every two years, serves as the
blueprint for upcoming defense budgets. As the first since the Soviet
collapse, the '92 version took on special significance.

An early draft of the document was leaked to reporters, and has been the
stuff of legend ever since. A mostly fictional version of that event has
been passed down over the years, and it goes like this: Wolfowitz, the
undersecretary of defense, had drafted a version of American military
strategy in which the United States would move to block any rival power in
Europe, Asia or the Middle East. After the leaked document caused a furor,
the first Bush administration retreated. The document was toned down and its
key ideas were abandoned.

But interviews with participants show that this version is wrong in several
important respects. Wolfowitz didn't write the original draft. While the
draft was rewritten, it was not really toned down. Indeed, in subtle ways,
using careful terminology and euphemisms, the vision of an American
superpower was actually made more sweeping. And although Wolfowitz and his
staff played key roles, the ultimate sponsor of the new strategy was Cheney.

It all began two years earlier. The Berlin Wall came down in November 1989,
effectively ending the Cold War and prompting the Pentagon to undertake a
search for a new set of principles, in part to prevent Congress, then
controlled by the Democrats, from slashing the defense budget. The key
participants were Cheney, Wolfowitz and Colin L. Powell, then chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. While Powell sometimes disagreed with the two
civilian leaders on other issues (including the events of 1990 and '91
leading up to the Persian Gulf War), the three men worked closely together
on forestalling cutbacks. The Soviet Union's collapse added new urgency to
their task. "What we were afraid of was people who would say, ' . . . Let's
bring all of the troops home, and let's abandon our position in Europe,' "
recalled Wolfowitz in an interview.

The job of writing a new Defense Planning Guidance was assigned to Zalmay
Khalilzad, then a Wolfowitz aide and now U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
Khalilzad produced a draft that stressed the need to prevent the emergence
of any rival power, particularly among the "advanced industrialized
nations." (It is largely forgotten now, but at the time, there were fears
that Japan and Germany, two of America's closest allies in the Cold War,
would eventually become post-Cold War competitors.) Khalilzad's draft also
suggested that in this new environment, the United States 

Jagdish Bhagwati

[Eubulides]

Americans manage to convince themselves they are underdogs
Jagdish Bhagwati
Monday March 8, 2004
The Guardian

A free trader's work is never done, especially in the United States. The
historians of free trade in Great Britain since the repeal of the corn
laws in mid-19th century have argued that politicians in strong economies
embrace free trade because they expect their countries to win in the
Darwinian struggle in the marketplace. But the US, despite having emerged
at the end of the second world war as the top dog on the block, has
repeatedly descended into paranoia on trade.

The recent furore over outsourcing fits into a pattern of fear of trade
with the developing countries that goes back to the fierce fights against
Nafta with Mexico, and the furore over the imports of labour-intensive
goods from the Far East and then China (the "yellow peril"). Now we have
the outcry over the imports of (mostly) labour-intensive services online -
what economists sometimes call "long distance" services where the provider
and the user do not have to get together physically - from India (the
"brown peril"). As always, the fear is baseless and based on bad
economics.

The earlier fear was that manufacturing jobs for the working class would
disappear with imports; vice-president Fritz Mondale conjured up a nation
of "hamburger flippers". Now the fear is that the new imports will take
good jobs from the middle class, and the modern-day doomsayers imagine a
nation of "grocery baggers" at the supermarkets as discharged computer
programmers et al struggle for survival at low wages in lower occupations.
The fear is not just exaggerated, it is also false; though, as the Russian
proverb goes, it has big eyes, and a recent poll suggests that more than a
third of the American labour force is in a state of anxiety over jobs.

The difficult job situation in skilled information technology-related
occupations has been heavily overlaid by the dotcom bust and by the
overvaluation of the dollar, both pheonomena which are being reversed. In
fact, according to the bureau of labour statistics, jobs in the very
recent years for IT-related occupations have risen, admittedly slowly, but
they have not fallen.

Moreover IT, like so much other technology but even more so, displaces
unskilled workers and hence low-paying jobs; but it creates demands to
maintain and support the technology, which implies new, higher-paying
jobs. Vast numbers of jobs to support and service hardware (say, PCs), to
maintain the software and to manage the ever-growing new variants and
applications, have emerged and will grow rapidly through the next 10
years, as the BLS projections also underline quantitatively.

Furthermore, many services cannot simply be provided on the wire. In
particular, as the US population ages and the IT revolution gathers speed
and enters senior citizens' lives, many will need not a voice from
Bangalore telling them in incomprehensible technical language what to do
but a technician who will come and do it for them.

These optimistic assessments are clouded in the public domain by a
delusion fostered by mindless commentary in the media. That is illustrated
by the astonishing Lou Dobbs show on CNN which daily lists the firms that
have outsourced jobs. Mr Dobbs forgets that he should also list the jobs
that come in, not just those that go out.

The clinching argument against interfering with outsourcing through
protectionism or its variants such as tax deterrents or opprobrium is
provided by the fact that the US is closely integrated in the world
economy.

In a world that is characterised by intense competition today, small cost
disadvantages can spell the demise of a firm: hence all the clamour about
"unfair trade" by your rivals on the flimsiest grounds.

If US firms lose out to UK firms because the British government is not
joining the protectionist chorus, then they could fold, making the job
loss, and hence the worker adjustment required, manifoldly greater. An
analogy, not recommended for use by politicians, is that of triage: a
lifeboat with a hundred people on board will sink and drown the hundred;
but if 10 are thrown overboard 90 will survive.

So the fears over the job adjustment required thanks to online imports of
services are unwarranted. And if they are succumbed to they will
themselves create serious adjustment problems in their wake.

Will the US ever learn?

· Jagdish Bhagwati, professor at Columbia University and senior fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations, has just published In Defense of
Globalization (Oxford)

Re: Warren Buffett on class warfare

[Eubulides]

Warren Buffett keeps out of the depreciating dollar

David Teather in New York
Monday March 8, 2004
The Guardian

Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest man in the world, continued to bet
against the dollar last year, increasing his company's ownership of
foreign currencies to $12bn.

The figure was disclosed in the eagerly anticipated annual letter from the
"Oracle of Omaha" to shareholders in his Berkshire Hathaway company, in
which he routinely delivers nuggets of his own peculiar brand of homespun
wisdom.

In the 24-page letter, sent out on Saturday, the 73-year-old, returned to
many of his favourite themes. He attacked the Bush administration's tax
cuts and railed against greedy chief executives, corrupt mutual fund
managers and ineffective independent directors.

Thousands will be making the pilgrimage to the company's annual meeting in
Omaha on May 1, known as "Woodstock for capitalists".

Berkshire Hathaway reluctantly entered the foreign currency for the first
time in 2002 and Mr Buffett said it had enlarged its position last year,
increasing its holdings in five unnamed currencies. He put the blame on
the ballooning US trade deficit. He said that in late 2002 foreign
investors began "choking" on the flood of dollars.

"As an American, I hope there is a benign ending to this problem," he
said, though he warned that the situation was unlikely to improve.
"Whether foreign investors like it or not, they will continue to be
flooded with dollars. The consequences of this are anybody's guess. They
could, however, be troublesome - and reach, in fact, well beyond currency
markets."

Mr Buffett, whose commonsense strategy has earned him a legion of fans,
built the company's fortune by canny investments in companies including
American Express, Coca-Cola and Gillette. More recently he has taken to
buying businesses outright as it became more difficult to find undervalued
stocks. Equity holdings are now down to 50% of Berkshire Hathaway's net
worth.

Last year, the company again stayed away from the equities market. Mr
Buffett said Berkshire had bought some shares in the bank Wells Fargo but
otherwise had not changed its position in its top six holdings. "Brokers
don't love us," he said. "We own pieces of excellent businesses but their
current prices reflect their value."

The company, which owns several insurance businesses as well as house
builders, clothing and confectionary firms, reported $8.1bn in profits,
compared with $4.3bn in 2002. The company has $36bn in cash and Mr Buffett
remains on the hunt for further acquisitions. An $8bn investment in junk
bonds during 2002 paid off but he stopped buying last year as prices rose.

He offered stinging criticism of the mutual fund industry, which has
become the latest Wall Street business to find itself under scrutiny for
improper practices. Mr Buffett said the industry had "betrayed the trust"
of millions of shareholders. "Hundreds of industry insiders had to know
what was going on, yet none publicly said a word."

Re: Ceaucescu and Romanian transition

[Sabri Oncu]

> There is no contradiction. Carrol means they are
> competent at power politics, getting underlings to
> do the tough work (exploitation) i.e. political
> economy.
>
> Charles

Hi Charles!

Good to hear from you. I have not seen you around for
quite a while. How have you been?

I don't think there is much point in furthering this
"debate", as it appears to me to be more about what
certain words mean and they don't but let me object
one last time and I will leave this at that.

Getting underlings to the tough work does not take any
competence. The underlings are already prepared to do
the tough work when they join these firms.

The incompetents are us:

I have tried many times to convince my coworkers that
the real power resided with us and if we got organized
and stopped production until we get what we want, the
upper management had nothing to sell and hence no way
to make profits.

But of course I had always failed.

Whenever I made such arguments my coworkers told me
things like this: "It is dangerous to have such ideas
such as organizing against the upper management in the
US. If you do that, they throw you out."

So it is us who are incompetents and competence does
not reside with the upper management either.

It has to be looked for elsewhere.

Best,

Sabri

James' Journey to Jerusalem (Dir. Ra'anan Alexandrowicz)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

_James' Journey to Jerusalem_ (Dir. Ra'anan Alexandrowicz,  2003):
.
*   The New York Times, March 5, 2004
MOVIE REVIEW | 'JAMES' JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM'
For One Earnest Pilgrim, No Land of Milk and Honey
By A. O. SCOTT
It is hard these days to imagine Jerusalem without thinking about the
grim modern realities of political violence and ethnic hatred. But
for the hero of "James' Journey to Jerusalem," a young African
Christian who wants to become a pastor, the city retains its aura of
almost otherworldly holiness.
At the beginning of this touching and insightful film by Ra'anan
Alexandrowicz, the prologue to James's story is related like a folk
tale, accompanied by brightly painted pictures and an ecstatic
African chorus. James (Siyabonga Melongisi Shibe), his open, eager
face framed by short dreadlocks, is an old-fashioned religious
pilgrim and also a kind of holy innocent.
The reality he encounters on his way to the promised land, however,
is thoroughly secular, not to say sinful. Interviewed by a bored
immigration officer, James expresses enthusiasm at meeting one of
God's chosen people, and amazement that he has at last arrived in the
place he has read so much about in the Bible. The officer, however,
informs him that she has heard all that Holy Land business many times
before, and James, denied entry into Israel, is locked in a holding
cell with other illegal immigrants, who have come to the country on
more mundane pilgrimages.
Soon he is bailed out by a businessman named Shimi (Salim Daw), who
keeps a ready supply of illegal laborers in a cramped apartment and
hires them out as construction workers and housecleaners, holding
onto their passports and paying them in cash and humiliation.
What follows is somewhat predictable but nonetheless affecting. James
is good-hearted and guileless, but Israeli society, as depicted by
Mr. Alexandrowicz with a relentlessness that might be offensive
coming from an outsider, is organized around guile. "Don't be a
frayer," advises Shimi's father (Arie Elias), a crusty old Zionist
whose small, cherished garden James tends. The word, one of the
film's touchstones, might be translated as sucker or patsy.
James's innate honesty turns out to be a clever strategy, and before
long he is thriving in the grasping, Darwinian world of the Israeli
informal economy. His rise - he becomes superintendent of the
workers' dormitory and then, behind Shimi's back, a successful broker
in black-market African labor - is both a classic immigrant success
story and a grainy video illustration of Max Weber's "Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism."
Unsurprisingly, James's material ascent, fueled by the glittering
consumer goods displayed in the high-rise shopping mall he visits on
his day off, is also a spiritual fall. He forgets Jerusalem and
spends his money on clothes and cellphones. Once the pride and joy of
his village, he becomes a big shot in the local congregation of
African migrants, donating money and recruiting new workers for his
enterprise.
If he succumbs to temptation, James is also betrayed by the hypocrisy
and petty racism that surround him. Shimi's father takes his
protégé's transformation into the opposite of a frayer - a macher,
perhaps - as a personal affront, and the boundaries of class prove
much harder to cross than national borders. To Shimi and his friends,
James belongs to a limitless, exploitable and renewable group, whose
members can always be shipped back where they came from if they
assert their humanity.
As social criticism - not only of Israel, but of other affluent
countries as well - "James' Journey, which opens today in Manhattan,"
is both potent and a little didactic. Were it not for Mr. Shibe's sly
subtlety, James's smiling naïveté might have slid easily into
caricature. As it is, the contrast between his radiant religiosity
and the grubby materialism of the Israelis seems exaggerated, and the
smudged, shaky video photography feels like a deliberate attempt to
emphasize the ugliness into which James is plunged.
But the film's moral, which goes well beyond the particularities of
its setting, is both clear and hard to shake: it is not so much that
the love of wealth weakens the love of God, but rather that the
pursuit of money, which in our modern societies is a condition not
just of comfort but of survival, undermines the capacity for
friendship and fellow feeling.
JAMES' JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM

Directed by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz; written (in Hebrew, English and
Zulu, with English subtitles) by Mr. Alexandrowicz and Sami Duenias;
director of photography, Shark De-Mayo; edited by Ron Goldman; music
by Ehud Banay, Gil Smetana and Noam Halevi; production designer, Amir
Dov Pick; produced by Amir Harel; released by Zeitgeist Films. At the
Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, South Village. Running time: 87
minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Siyabonga Melongisi Shibe (James), Arie Elias (Sallah) and
Salim Daw (Shimi).

Re: globalizing tax cuts

[Michael Perelman]

If I understand this correctly, then this treaty represents a subsidy to Japanese
transplant manufacturing plants and a subsidy to US intellectual property owners --
more of the same.

On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 05:44:58PM -0800, Eubulides wrote:
> JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
> Speed key to making most of new tax pact
> By YOSHIO NAKAMURA
> The Japan Times: March 8, 2004
>
> On Feb. 27, a new Japanese-U.S. treaty on taxation was finally submitted to the Diet 
> for
> ratification by the legislature. The treaty, if approved, will make dividends and
> royalties earned by U.S. subsidiaries in which the Japanese parent firm has a stake 
> of
> more than 50 percent tax-free, doing away with the current 10-percent tax imposed on 
> such
> payments.
>
> More than 30 years have passed since the current treaty underwent a full-scale 
> revision in
> 1971, and the business community has been calling for a new overhaul for quite some 
> time.
>
> In November 1999, Minoru Makihara, chairman of the Japan-U.S. Business Council, and 
> his
> U.S. counterpart Michael Armstrong submitted a joint petition to Tokyo and Washington
> calling for its revision. Such efforts prompted the two governments to start 
> negotiating a
> new treaty in October 2001. After a basic agreement was reached in June 2003, the new
> treaty was officially signed by the two governments in November and is now awaiting
> ratification by the legislatures of both countries.
>
> The new treaty will have a significant impact. For example, Japan's direct 
> investment in
> the United States far exceeds any such investment that has been made in the opposite
> direction, and Japan now has a large surplus in its net balance of dividend receipts,
> which reached 480.4 billion yen in 2002.
>
> The pending revision will render a large portion of those dividends tax-free, since 
> more
> than 80 percent of Japanese companies' roughly 3,600 American subsidiaries are held 
> by
> stakes of 50 percent or more by the parent firms.
>
> Unlike the dividends, however, Japan has a deficit in terms of royalty receipts.
>
> For example, Japan had a deficit of 253.2 billion yen vis-a-vis the United States 
> and only
> 73.2 billion yen with the rest of the world in 2000. But these figures represent a 
> sharp
> reduction from the deficits of 485.4 billion yen and 279.5 billion yen, 
> respectively, in
> 1997. If, in the future, Japan starts to run a surplus in royalty receipts, the new 
> treaty
> will have a beneficial impact on Japanese firms.
>
> One problem is that the date at which the new treaty can take effect will depend on 
> when
> it is ratified.
>
> The new treaty will take effect on July 1 this year if it is ratified by the end of 
> the
> current fiscal year (March 31), but if ratification is delayed until next fiscal 
> year the
> earliest date at which the treaty can take effect will be Jan. 1, 2005.
>
> Congress is preparing to enter the treaty into force on July 1, and we would 
> strongly like
> to see it ratified by the Diet during the current fiscal year.
>
> Yoshio Nakamura is a senior managing director of the Japan Business Federation 
> (Nippon
> Keidanren).

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

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

globalizing tax cuts

[Eubulides]

JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Speed key to making most of new tax pact
By YOSHIO NAKAMURA
The Japan Times: March 8, 2004

On Feb. 27, a new Japanese-U.S. treaty on taxation was finally submitted to the Diet 
for
ratification by the legislature. The treaty, if approved, will make dividends and
royalties earned by U.S. subsidiaries in which the Japanese parent firm has a stake of
more than 50 percent tax-free, doing away with the current 10-percent tax imposed on 
such
payments.

More than 30 years have passed since the current treaty underwent a full-scale 
revision in
1971, and the business community has been calling for a new overhaul for quite some 
time.

In November 1999, Minoru Makihara, chairman of the Japan-U.S. Business Council, and his
U.S. counterpart Michael Armstrong submitted a joint petition to Tokyo and Washington
calling for its revision. Such efforts prompted the two governments to start 
negotiating a
new treaty in October 2001. After a basic agreement was reached in June 2003, the new
treaty was officially signed by the two governments in November and is now awaiting
ratification by the legislatures of both countries.

The new treaty will have a significant impact. For example, Japan's direct investment 
in
the United States far exceeds any such investment that has been made in the opposite
direction, and Japan now has a large surplus in its net balance of dividend receipts,
which reached 480.4 billion yen in 2002.

The pending revision will render a large portion of those dividends tax-free, since 
more
than 80 percent of Japanese companies' roughly 3,600 American subsidiaries are held by
stakes of 50 percent or more by the parent firms.

Unlike the dividends, however, Japan has a deficit in terms of royalty receipts.

For example, Japan had a deficit of 253.2 billion yen vis-a-vis the United States and 
only
73.2 billion yen with the rest of the world in 2000. But these figures represent a 
sharp
reduction from the deficits of 485.4 billion yen and 279.5 billion yen, respectively, 
in
1997. If, in the future, Japan starts to run a surplus in royalty receipts, the new 
treaty
will have a beneficial impact on Japanese firms.

One problem is that the date at which the new treaty can take effect will depend on 
when
it is ratified.

The new treaty will take effect on July 1 this year if it is ratified by the end of the
current fiscal year (March 31), but if ratification is delayed until next fiscal year 
the
earliest date at which the treaty can take effect will be Jan. 1, 2005.

Congress is preparing to enter the treaty into force on July 1, and we would strongly 
like
to see it ratified by the Diet during the current fiscal year.

Yoshio Nakamura is a senior managing director of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon
Keidanren).

both sides now

[Dan Scanlan]

In Kevin Phillip's American Dynasty, he writes that one reason Baby
Bush's run for governor against Ann Richards was successful was
because Enron gave Ann Richards only half of what it gave family
friend Bush. The corporate scam continues.
Dan Scanlan

---

BUSH RAISING CAMPAIGN FUNDS FROM KERRY'S TOP CONTRIBUTORS

Contact:  Larry Noble or Steven Weiss, 202/857-0044

President Bush begins the head-to-head battle for the White House against
Sen. John Kerry with a $100 million advantage in fund raising. For that,
Bush can thank his incumbent status, his network of fund-raising Pioneers
and Rangers -- and several of the top contributors to the Kerry campaign.
Nearly half of Kerry's biggest financial supporters contributed more money
to Bush than to Kerry himself through Jan. 30 of this year, according to
the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics' study of campaign finance
reports filed this month with the Federal Election Commission.
The finding is one of many examples of Bush's fund-raising dominance, and
it illustrates how much ground Kerry must make up to approach financial
parity with the president. Bush raised a total of $145 million for his
re-election effort in the first 13 months of the election cycle, dwarfing
Kerry's $33 million.
Kerry's third-largest contributor, Citigroup, gave more than $79,000 in
individual and PAC contributions to the presumptive Democratic nominee
through January. Louis Susman, Citigroup's vice-chairman, is one of
Kerry's biggest fund-raisers. But the financial services giant gave more
than $187,000 to the Bush campaign during the same period, good enough for
12th on the president's list of top contributors.
Goldman Sachs contributed nearly $65,000 to Kerry through January, earning
it the No. 6 ranking among Kerry's top givers. But the company's employees
and PAC sent Bush nearly $283,000 -- more than four times the amount it
gave to Kerry. Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson and managing director
George Walker are Bush Pioneers who have raised at least $100,000 for the
campaign.
Even MassMutual, which ranks among the biggest donors to Kerry over the
past 15 years, has contributed more money to Bush than to its home-state
senator in the current election cycle. The insurance conglomerate gave
$69,000 to Bush through January, compared with slightly more than $50,000
to Kerry. MassMutual CEO Robert O'Connell was a Bush Pioneer in
2000.
In all, nine of Kerry's top 20 donors favor Bush with their contributions.
Kerry's top contributor, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, has given
nearly $106,000 to his campaign. But the nation's largest law firm has
contributed an additional $65,000 to the Bush campaign.
Kerry's No. 2 contributor, Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, has been far
more lopsided in its giving. The trial law firm has contributed nearly
$92,000 to Kerry and just $4,000 to Bush. The firm's chairman, Mike
Ciresi, is one of Kerry's top fund-raisers.
Two of Kerry's top donors -- Chicago-based Clifford Law Offices and Hill,
Holliday, the Boston-based ad firm -- have given no money to Bush. Bob
Clifford of the Clifford Law Offices and Hill, Holliday Chairman Jack
Connors are top fund-raisers for Kerry.
Half of Kerry's top contributors through January are law firms. Two-thirds
of Bush's top contributors represent the financial sector. Bush's No. 1
financial supporter, with nearly $458,000 in individual and PAC
contributions, is Merrill Lynch, the financial services firm that has
topped the list of the president's contributors since he began fund
raising last spring. Second among Bush's top donors is
PricewaterhouseCoopers with nearly $430,000 in contributions.
This release, along with relevant links and a chart showing Bush fund
raising among Kerry's top contributors, is available at:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/2004/PresFRJan.asp
Detailed profiles of the presidential candidates, complete with the latest
fund-raising figures, are available at:
http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/
--
---
IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON!
--
ANYBODY BUT BUSH OR KERRY

--

END OF THE TRAIL SALOON
Alternate Sundays
6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT)
http://www.kvmr.org


"I uke, therefore I am." -- Cool Hand Uke
"I log on, therefore I seem to be." -- Rodd Gnawkin
"I claim, therefore you believe." -- Dan Ratherthan
Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube:
 http://www.coolhanduke.com

Re: ketchup, buns and manufacturing

[dmschanoes]

While I disagree with the Gil's analysis of the convergence between
manufacturing and "manufacturing," I am in agreement with what the real
question is-- the motive, the historical purpose for this
reclassification, --and Gil's real answer.

This is not something akin to removing US Steel from the DJ Industrial Index
and replacing it with Intel, reflecting an "evolution" of an economic
specific gravity, but a purely political machination designed to obscure
what is painfully clear to the most casual observer.

dms



> The real question, it seems to me, is thus not whether "manufacturing" is
> involved in such cases, but rather what is the motive underlying the
> proposed switch in classification.  And in this case it seems pretty
> clear:  the statistics on losses in manufacturing (by current definition)
> jobs are pretty damning for Dubya's domestic economic "policy," so a
change
> in definition would be politically convenient.  But necessarily
misleading,
> since fast-food jobs are low-wage jobs (as are 6 other of the top 9 or 10
> fastest growing occupations in the US).
>
> Gil
>

Re: ketchup, buns and manufacturing

[Gil Skillman]

In response to this question from Carrol,

>
> Doesn't Taco Bell manufacture food? If Wonderbread was sold at the
> factory would it cease to be manufacturing and become "service"?
dms answers

The answer to that is: NO Taco Bell does not manufacture food.  Pepsico
manufactures something called food products through its Frito Lay (and other
divisions) but Taco Bell no more manufactures tacos than Col. Saunders
manufactures chicken, or the Starbuck's outlet down the street manufactures
coffee, or the Armani Exchange manufactures clothing.
Supermarkets are not food manufacturing enterprises. The clerks stocking,
pricing, checking out food  at the supermarket are not food manufacturing
workers, and Taco Bells, Starbucks, KFC, and Armani are all markets..
IF Wonderbread were sold at the factory, the bread itself would still be
manufactured, (although we would still have an argument about whether or not
it is actually bread.  I vote for legislated requirements a la the baguette
in France).  The separation that capital develops between production and
sales, is  a division of labor  in fact designed to allow non-manufacturing,
circulation, marketing, the opportunity to keep up with production, to
conversely not draw  away from production time, and limit production to the
simple inventory and requirements of the "factory outlet."
McDonald's contracts and sub-contracts for its potatos (introducing the
Idaho spuds variety into Poland and Russia to get that "authentic"
McDonald's flavor across the Elbe.  I am not making this up), but it does
not manufacture the spuds itself.
It's true that fast-food places don't manufacture their own intermediate
goods (which are, in this case, things like potatoes, hamburger patties,
buns, cheese, and whatever that liquid plastic substance is that makes up
their "superthick" shakes), but then neither does virtually any firm that
everyone would agree *is* in the manufacturing sector.  On the other hand,
in such places labor is certainly applied to these inputs, aided by the use
other intermediate goods in the form of machines, to create products that
didn't exist before (as surely as making Wonderbread is manufacturing, even
if the factory doesn't make the flour, or yeast, or salt, or eggs , or
styrofoam, or whatever else goes into its ingredients).  Not a very
involved manufacturing process, to be sure, but manufacturing in any
case.  What blurs the lines with "services" is that usually fast-food
joints also heat up the food and put it in a convenient carry-away bag for
you.  But that doesn't negate what went on before the bag is handed to
you.  Think of it as a special instance of "just-in-time" production.
The real question, it seems to me, is thus not whether "manufacturing" is
involved in such cases, but rather what is the motive underlying the
proposed switch in classification.  And in this case it seems pretty
clear:  the statistics on losses in manufacturing (by current definition)
jobs are pretty damning for Dubya's domestic economic "policy," so a change
in definition would be politically convenient.  But necessarily misleading,
since fast-food jobs are low-wage jobs (as are 6 other of the top 9 or 10
fastest growing occupations in the US).
Gil

Re: quote of the day

[ertugrul ahmet tonak]

Many thanks..

Gil Skillman wrote:

His 1995 autobiography, _My American Journey_.  Page 148 in the hardcover
edition.
Gil


When and where? I may use it.

Gil Skillman wrote:

That Colin Powell.  What a sense of irony. Gil

"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful well-placed ...
managed to
wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units."
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu



--



E. Ahmet Tonak
Simon's Rock College of Bard
Great Barrington, MA 01230
Phone: 413-528 7488

Homepage: www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak



--

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."

E. Ahmet Tonak
Simon’s Rock College of Bard
Great Barrington, MA 01230
Phone: 413-528 7488

Homepage: www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak

Re: quote of the day

[Gil Skillman]

His 1995 autobiography, _My American Journey_.  Page 148 in the hardcover
edition.
Gil


When and where? I may use it.

Gil Skillman wrote:

That Colin Powell.  What a sense of irony. Gil

"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful well-placed ...
managed to
wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units."
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu


--



E. Ahmet Tonak
Simon's Rock College of Bard
Great Barrington, MA 01230
Phone: 413-528 7488

Homepage: www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak

Re: quote of the day

[Michael Perelman]

Business Week quotes it from his autobiography.

On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 06:42:12PM -0500, ertugrul ahmet tonak wrote:
> When and where? I may use it.
>
> Gil Skillman wrote:
>
> > That Colin Powell.  What a sense of irony. Gil
> >
> >> "I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful well-placed ...
> >> managed to
> >> wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units."
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Michael Perelman
> >> Economics Department
> >> California State University
> >> Chico, CA 95929
> >>
> >> Tel. 530-898-5321
> >> E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
>
>
>
> E. Ahmet Tonak
> Simon’s Rock College of Bard
> Great Barrington, MA 01230
>
> Phone: 413-528 7488
>
> Homepage: www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak

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

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

Re: ketchup, buns and manufacturing

[dmschanoes]

- Original Message -
From: "Carrol Cox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> At one time, manufacturing produced flour, but most produced their own
> bread at home.
>
> At a later date, manufacturing replaced the home as the locus of bread
> production.
>
> Doesn't Taco Bell manufacture food? If Wonderbread was sold at the
> factory would it cease to be manufacturing and become "service"?
>
> Carrol
__

The answer to that is: NO Taco Bell does not manufacture food.  Pepsico
manufactures something called food products through its Frito Lay (and other
divisions) but Taco Bell no more manufactures tacos than Col. Saunders
manufactures chicken, or the Starbuck's outlet down the street manufactures
coffee, or the Armani Exchange manufactures clothing.

Supermarkets are not food manufacturing enterprises. The clerks stocking,
pricing, checking out food  at the supermarket are not food manufacturing
workers, and Taco Bells, Starbucks, KFC, and Armani are all markets..

IF Wonderbread were sold at the factory, the bread itself would still be
manufactured, (although we would still have an argument about whether or not
it is actually bread.  I vote for legislated requirements a la the baguette
in France).  The separation that capital develops between production and
sales, is  a division of labor  in fact designed to allow non-manufacturing,
circulation, marketing, the opportunity to keep up with production, to
conversely not draw  away from production time, and limit production to the
simple inventory and requirements of the "factory outlet."

McDonald's contracts and sub-contracts for its potatos (introducing the
Idaho spuds variety into Poland and Russia to get that "authentic"
McDonald's flavor across the Elbe.  I am not making this up), but it does
not manufacture the spuds itself.

dms

Re: He does have a point

[Michael Hoover]

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/06/04 6:29 PM >>>
I think it is up to the Green Party to build its own membership and
political strength, so that it can put someone like Nader to its use.
If Nader isn't a party man yet, make him a party man.

If the Green Party nominates David Cobb (see Cobb's "Green Party 2004
Presidential Strategy" at
) rather than Nader and
runs Cobb on a Green ticket against Nader running as an independent
this year, the party will do numerically worse than in 2000 and put
itself on a path away from political independence from the Democratic
Party.

Given a choice between Nader and Cobb, the Green Party should choose
Nader.
--
Yoshie
<>

re. gp building its own membership and political strength, of course,
ain't nobody else gonna do it for gp (and historic junctures making
quantitative leaps possible are rare)...

re. above choice, doesn't look like much of one, greens very likely to
do numerically worse either way...   michael hoover (who, admittedly,
has never been on gp bandwagon)...

Re: quote of the day

[ertugrul ahmet tonak]

When and where? I may use it.

Gil Skillman wrote:

That Colin Powell.  What a sense of irony. Gil

"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful well-placed ...
managed to
wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units."
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu



--



E. Ahmet Tonak
Simon’s Rock College of Bard
Great Barrington, MA 01230
Phone: 413-528 7488

Homepage: www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak

Re: quote of the day

[Gil Skillman]

That Colin Powell.  What a sense of irony. Gil

"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful well-placed ...
managed to
wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units."
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: ketchup, buns and manufacturing

[Carrol Cox]

Eubulides wrote:
>
> Leahy Hits Administration's Credibility On The Loss Of U.S.
> Manufacturing Jobs Redefining Taco Bells As Manufacturers Is
> Administration's Poor Idea Of 'Thinking Outside The Bun'
>

At one time, manufacturing produced flour, but most produced their own
bread at home.

At a later date, manufacturing replaced the home as the locus of bread
production.

Doesn't Taco Bell manufacture food? If Wonderbread was sold at the
factory would it cease to be manufacturing and become "service"?

Carrol

ketchup, buns and manufacturing

[Eubulides]

Leahy Hits Administration's Credibility On The Loss Of U.S.
Manufacturing Jobs Redefining Taco Bells As Manufacturers Is
Administration's Poor Idea Of 'Thinking Outside The Bun'

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200403/030204.html

---
Two decades ago, another administration wanted to start calling ketchup
a vegetable for the purposes of the school lunch program. Redefining
ketchup as a vegetable did nothing for the nutrition of our kids, and
redefining every Taco Bell as a manufacturing factory would do nothing
for American workers and real American manufacturers. If that is this
Administration's idea of thinking outside the bun, then this
Administration has a lot more thinking to do.

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200403/0302a.html

quote of the day

[Michael Perelman]

"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful well-placed ... managed to
wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units."


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

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

US Bankruptcy 'reform' could punish elderly

[Devine, James]

Bankruptcy 'reform' could punish elderly

 

Big banks are pushing for tough revisions to bankruptcy laws. That would be painful 
for many older Americans who are already struggling with debt.

 

By Scott Burns

 

Talk to lenders about excessive credit card debt and our somber friends in the wingtip 
shoes will paint a picture of irresponsible young nitwits. Young people want 
everything. And they want it now. Unlike mature, hardworking Americans, the lenders 
will tell us, the record 1,662,000 debtors who headed for bankruptcy court last year 
are goofballs who borrow with no intention of paying the money back.

 

So they should be punished.

 

That's why the immensely profitable financial services industry -- which now accounts 
for more of the Standard and Poor's 500 index than any other industry -- has struggled 
to pass a major revision of the bankruptcy laws.

 

Fortunately, passage of the revision has been stymied for several years. Until now. 
Your money, fast.

File your taxes online.

 

It's easy at H&R Block.

 

 As this is written, a tough revision to the bankruptcy laws is close to becoming law. 
Deceptively titled "The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 
2003" (HR 975), one expert describes it as a "one-sided contract."

 

"This bill has gotten surprisingly little coverage, which is exactly what Congress 
wants," Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren commented recently. "(It's) no 
coincidence the House passed the bill during the week of the Super Bowl, the New 
Hampshire primaries and Mars exploration (news), when no one was watching."

 

Alarming indicator of stress 

 

Warren sees the rising rate of personal bankruptcy as an alarming indicator of social 
and economic stress. It is the result, she believes, of failing health insurance and 
rising job instability. Her case is detailed in her book, "The Two-Income Trap: Why 
Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke." 

 

She isn't alone.

 

Teresa Sullivan -- graduate dean and professor of sociology at the University of Texas 
at Austin, and one of the authors of "The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt" -- 
told me in late 2001 that there was a mismatch between the increasing risks in 
American daily life and our financial behavior. And Robert Manning, author of "Credit 
Card Nation" describes the marketing practices of the finance industry as "predatory 
plastic."

 

If you are inclined to think this is some kind of pinko-liberal cabal rather than the 
conclusion of serious researchers, I have two suggestions for you.

 

First, read the latest "important notice" from your credit card company detailing the 
terms of use for your card. I read mine, from Bank One, and found a bunch of nasty 
fees and a long list of ways it could immediately increase its interest charges to 
25%. In the Burns household, we pay all balances monthly and don't pay any interest, 
but the fine print shows how much can be extracted very quickly when you run out of 
money before you run out of month.

 

Older Americans in crisis

 

Second, read a new report from Demos, a New York-based public policy research group. 
It found a frightening increase in credit card debt among older Americans.

 

"Conventional wisdom suggests that this segment of the population -- with lifetimes of 
financial experience, an over 80% homeownership rate and a generational ethos of 
thrift -- would be immune to the record debt increases of the 1990s," the report notes.

 

In fact, older Americans are equally in danger of being run over by debt.

 

"Retiring in the Red," available on the Demos Web site, found that self-reported 
credit card debt among seniors had nearly doubled from 1992 to 2001, reaching an 
average of $4,041. An earlier report, "Borrowing to Make Ends Meet," noted that 
self-reported credit card debt may understate actual debt because it is only one-third 
the level reported by the Federal Reserve.

 

The new report also found: 

 

*ÂThat credit card debt for those 65 to 69 had risen a stunning 217% over the same 
period, to $5,844.

  

*That about 20% of households over 65 are in "debt hardship," with at least 40% of 
their income committed to debt payments.

  

*That having medical insurance -- or not having it -- made a major difference in 
credit card debt. Families in the 55 to 64 age range, for instance, had seen a credit 
card debt increase of 169% if they had no health insurance, but only 37% if they had 
health insurance.

 

I could go on, but you get the idea. You might also suggest to your representative and 
senator that they should do some reading before voting for the bankers. It wouldn't 
hurt to note, at the same time, that banks may be big political givers, but they don't 
have the right to vote.

 

JD 

 

Re: Ceaucescu and Romanian transition

[Michael Perelman]

Was that before or after he became rich?

On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 02:09:07PM +0300, "Chris Doss"  wrote:
> He's an associate member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Gusinsky was a theater 
> director.
>

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

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

Ceaucescu and Romanian transition

[Charles Brown]

There is no contradiction. Carrol means they are competent at power
politics, getting underlings to do the tough work (exploitation) i.e.
political economy.

Charles

From: Sabri Oncu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Subject: Re:

> > Carrol Cox wrote:

> >

> > Most of them (unfortunately for us) are pretty

> > damn competent, though it's because of their

> > connections that they get to exercise that

> > competence.

>

> If this is the case, I have not seen it in thirty

> years in ANY place I have worked.

I will have to agree with Joanna.

Those in the upper management are there not because

they are more competent than others but generally

because they are better than others in playing power

politics and, putting connections aside, most of the

time the ones who rise to the top are the ones with

the brownest noses. Businesses, at least, big

businesses, are more like military establishments:

there are privates and officers, and while privates do

most of the fighting, they also helplessly watch the

officers fight among themselves to move up in the

hierarchy.

Best,

Sabri

Re: Picking up the thread....

[dmschanoes]

Nothing worries me more than finding myself 
agreeing with others, save the prospect of others actually agreeing with 
me.  Nevertheless, I find JD's exploration and explication of this issue 
very enlightening-- and indeed Marx never completed, even internally, this part 
of his work, expressing "ambivalence" as to the make-up and meaning of 
overproduction i.e.  "under-consumption," "disproportionality," 
"over-accumulation."
 
And capital certainly "deviates" or "manifests" the 
abstract in "imperfect," attenuated, distorted, real 
forms.
 
Still, the centrality of this conflict between the 
abstract "means and relations" gives the clearest method and insight into 
actual analyses of the grim and grimey real forms, i.e the struggle of 
revolution and counterrevolution; property and labor.
 
dms

  - Original Message - 
  From: 
  Devine, James 

  To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 2:44 
PM
  Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Picking up the 
  thread
  
  I agree 
  with David S. that the idea of the clash of the relations of production and 
  the forces of production is central to Marx's theory, even if Marx didn't use 
  that phraseology very often. In his preface to A CONTRIBUTION TO 
  THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, he made it clear that he was 
  presenting only the "guiding principle of my studies" 
  (a heuristic) rather than a finished theory. A lot of the rest of 
  his theory is a development of that idea. 
   
   

Re: Picking up the thread....

[Devine, James]

I agree with 
David S. that the idea of the clash of the relations of production and the 
forces of production is central to Marx's theory, even if Marx didn't use that 
phraseology very often. In his preface to A CONTRIBUTION TO 
THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, he made it clear that he was 
presenting only the "guiding principle of my studies" 
(a heuristic) rather than a finished theory. A lot of the rest of his 
theory is a development of that idea. 
 
It's pretty 
clear that Marx saw  the "capitalist mode of production" as a system of 
"relations of production" having internal contradictions (even if he didn't 
develop this theory completely). Capitalism is a form of commodity production 
involving free wage labor (i.e., labor-power is treated as a commodity). As part 
of its "laws of motion," this generates objective ("material") conditions -- 
associated with the quality and quantity of the forces of production that 
capitalism generates -- that allow the working class to unify (concentration of 
production into factories and the like, urbanization, etc.) and developments 
that reveal the systemic nature of the problem (the centralization of production 
and crisis tendencies). Though Marx didn't develop a very good theory of the 
"subjective factor" (the self-organization of a class-conscious proletariat), 
it's pretty clear that he saw the system as developing conditions that could 
lead to "conflict with the relations of production" and even its downfall. 

 
While this 
theory of internal contradiction is pretty clear (given the unfinished state of 
CAPITAL), it's also very abstract (incomplete). The real world involves 
capitalism's dynamic "articulation" with other modes of production, relations of 
patriarchy, ethnic and racial relations, and the like. Further, the simple story 
of CAPITAL is made more complex as capitalism expanded beyond Western European 
and North American bounds to dominate the rest of the world (imperialism). 

Jim D. 

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

  -Original Message-From: dmschanoes 
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 9:12 
  AMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: [PEN-L] Picking up 
  the thread
  Several days ago Carrol Cox took exception to my 
  references to "the conflict between the means and relations of production" as 
  being essential to Marx's analysis of, and to, capital. 
   
  I answered him offlist to avoid 
  overposting.  
   
  In the attempt to exercise my full ration of 
  bandwidth, I'll reproduce my reply today.  Let's just call it a 
  placeholder...
   
  I promise however not to re-enter the Greenspan 
  discussion...
  -
   
  
  Carrol,
   
  Marx uses that exact phrase sparingly to be sure, 
  but to say that is the extent of Marx's analysis thereof is to miss the point, 
  and entirely, of everything he writes about capital being a contradiction 
  reflected into itself, contradiction in motion, creating the terms, 
  conditions, and actors in its own overthrow.
   
  Everything Marx writes about exchange value is 
  about the social organization of labor and the necessity of that organization 
  to correspond with development, (growth and rational deployment) of the means 
  of production.  Everything he writes about the problems of capital in the 
  areas of expanded reproduction, overproduction, declining  rates of 
  profit, is a reflection of the conflict between the relations of production-- 
  capital, i.e. means of production as private property, and wage-labor, each 
  existing in the organization of the other, and the means of production-- the 
  absolute growth of the fixed asset base, the constant portion, the 
  accummulated dead labor and the necessity of social revolution triggered by 
  this conflict.
   
  I don't know how it is possible to read Capital, 
  Grundrisse, TSV, the notebooks, Contribution to the Critique of Political 
  Economy,  and the Marx-Engels correspondence on the US Civil War, and not 
  see how this central facet permeates every bit of analysis.l
   
  Overproduction is this conflict compressed into 
  one "body" so to speak.  The falling rate of profit is another compressed 
  manifestation of this.
   
  I have written on this extensively and if you're 
  interested I can send some of it to you.  
   
  I do not cite scriptures and in my analysis of 
  oil I pointed out exactly how the oil price marked that ongoing conflict 
  between the means and relations of production.
   
  dms
   

Re: Fear of polarization

[Devine, James]

>The conservative US News and World Report is worried by data showing the
worsening condition of US workers, and the growing prospect of class
polarization threatening corporate America and the Republican party.<

did USN&WR mention that much of that polarization took place during the Clinton era?

Jim D. 

zlatkin letter

[Dan Scanlan]

Title: zlatkin letter


The Zlatkin Letter Commentary by Chuck
Zlatkin


Coronating Kerry: I tip my hat
to the dark side

Excerpted, the entire piece is
at:

http://www.rightiswrong.com/zlatkinletter.php

"...I can
see why some people will embrace the election. They believe that
since Kerry will be somewhat better than Bush it is worth it to buy
the idea of this election having meaning. But the powers-that-be know
that you will vote your wishful-thinking heart time and time again
for the lesser of evil..."


"...Each time
they will offer you one candidate further and further away from your
best interest, and you will vote for the other one who is also
opposed to your best interests as well, but seemingly just a little
bit better. And they will keep moving this equation until you are
living in a fascist country with a military dictatorship that you
voted for by believing that its opponent was worth the vote because
while he was also fascist, he wouldn’t impose a military
dictatorship yet..."

"...Pragmatists, realists, rationalizers and
shape-shifters can all tell me that the only thing that is important
is defeating George W. Bush. I think it is more important to defeat
the people whose interests he actually represents. I don't think that
happens with a John Kerry presidency..."

=

The question is
whether you believe what John Kerry said on Super Tuesday or not. Is
he saying what he thinks you want to hear? Because I'll tell you what
he votes can be far different from what he quotes.


I grew up when Roller Derby and Professional Wrestling first hit
television. They were very popular with the American people and they
both were fake. I loved to watch the Harlem Globetrotters play
basketball when I was a kid even if we knew that the fix was in and
they would always beat the Washington Generals. But then again, that
was the 1950s, we are in a much more sophisticated time where
presidential elections are stolen and no one raises it as an issue
during the campaign for the next election.


Yes, I am Johnny-one-note on this. I believe that the corporatists
who look at the current administration as hired help, feel that since
they also have the most potent war machine that the world has ever
seen and control the most highly developed media mechanism for mind
control, that they shouldn’t have to give up power regardless of
who is president. In other words, I think that John Kerry wants us to
believe that he is Bruno Sammartino and not Killer Kowalski, but
either way he already knows the outcome of the bout.


John Kerry is called liberal or leftist by the opposition. If Kerry
is a liberal or a leftist, what does that make me? Kerry voted for
NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and PMFN trade status for China, the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, Welfare Reform, the 1996
Anti-Terrorism Act, Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and voted to
give George W. Bush total power to wage war in Iraq. Sounds like a
true liberal to me.


I finally have realized the difference between a liberal and a member
of the Democratic Leadership Council. A liberal rings their hands and
even may shed a tear before casting a vote to wage a totally
unjustifiable war. A DLCer just casts the vote without all the
histrionics.


The fact that I went into a neighborhood high school the other
afternoon and voted in the Democratic Party primary for president
really amazes me. I witnessed the theft of the 2000 election in much
the same manner I watched Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963,
live, on network television. I am aware of all the new technological
advancements in voter fraud that are newly in place for this
election, so how the hell do I have the unmitigated naivety to
believe that my vote will be counted?


 I had thought that the powers-that-be, the ruling elite, the
international corporate cabal, had already decided that it was time
to take some pressure off and have the appearance of a regime change
here with the passing of the torch to John Kerry. I assumed that
those on the managerial level of Bush’s operation would fight like
hell to preserve their boy in power. I expected a dirty campaign but
assumed that Kerry would emerge triumphant. Americans would breathe
easier with the illusion that democracy works. Those without jobs or
healthcare would have some faith restored. The American people would
find it easier to swallow when the draft is restored in April of 2005
under a Kerry presidency. But now I’m not so sure.


This spring offensive is really so pervasive that maybe the
powers-that-be has not yet decided which member of Skull and Bones
they want sitting in the oval office come January 2005.

And not that long
ago I was excited by the planned spring offensive of people of
conscience, here is what was on my mind then:

If you believed
that the 2000 election was stolen by the Bush administration and I
just don’t mean that metaphorically, I then ask you how can you
possibly believe that the 2004 el

Re: Rick Wilhelm on John Kerry

[Devine, James]

for what it's worth, a leftist friend of mine found an on-line service at the 
beginning of the US Democratic Party primary season that allowed one to choose a 
Presidential candidate. You first answer a bunch of questions about your own political 
opinions. Then the program ranked the candidates in those terms. After Kucinich and 
Sharpton, Kerry was at the top of his list. Dean was far down the list, though no-one 
was anywhere near Lieberman at the bottom. 

So if Kucinich and Sharpton are excluded (as being utopian and opportunist, 
respectively) Kerry might be the best the DP has to offer. Therefore, the critique 
below has a lot to say about the DP. 

BTW, it would be interesting to look at the web-site that produced this ranking. Does 
anyone know about it?

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




> -Original Message-
> From: Yoshie Furuhashi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 3:12 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L] Rick Wilhelm on John Kerry
> 
> 
> In Columbus, Ohio, at the heart of a swing state, leaders of the
> local DSA chapter are taking a hard line against John Kerry:
> 
> *   Date: Sun, 07 Mar 2004 00:01:02 -0800
> From: Rick Wilhelm
> Subject: [C-JwJ] Strategy
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> **Columbus Jobs with Justice Calendar**
> To post: send to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> According to research, it appears to me Kerry is a far-right
> candidate.  Although many comments have said he has a "liberal"
> record, I see no evidence is offered other than the fact on small
> issues he has better votes than the Republicans, according to some
> liberal groups.  According to key issues, here, he does not:
> , taken from the archives of the
> same liberal groups offered by some as proof he has a good record.
> 
> As a matter of fact, Kerry is so bad, it could be argued he was the
> "greater evil," between Bush and Kerry.  Bush's personality is one of
> pompous privilege, where Kerry's is one of arrogant privilege.
> According to this article and others,
> .  Kerry believes in
> Internationalism and International Intervention in the name of
> maintaining our Empire, and has even wrote about it as an imperative
> goal.  This article reveals a little about Kerry's personality:
> .
> 
> Why could it be argued Kerry may in fact be a "greater evil" than
> Bush?  Because he is smarter, and since he also believes in military
> action to preserve our "values," he may be more successful than Bush
> in implementing the policy of force of Empire.  The policy looks as
> though it will fail under Bush, because of its transparency and
> stupidity.  And foreign policy has been offered as one reason we
> should support Kerry, since their domestic agendas are so similar.
> Kerry voted for the war, welfare reform, the Patriot Act, the China
> Trade Bill (H.R. ), NAFTA, Fast Track and GATT.
> 
> Of course Kerry is on record of supporting a minimum wage increase to
> 6 dollars and 15 cents an hour, while Bush is not.  That is still
> about 2 dollars and 75 cents less than what the minimum wage would be
> had it kept up with inflation, since in 2002 it would have been 8.70
> cents per hour.  I assume 2004 is slightly higher. See:
> . And it is
> no guarantee Kerry would actually keep his word about even the small
> increase to $6.15.  But by voting for just things, his "record"
> appears better, since the AFL-CIO give him the same credit for small
> stuff as key issues.
> 
> So I feel any strategy should be to attack both candidates, and
> attack them now, and keep attacking repeatedly and continually.  The
> same should be done as far as sell-out Democratic Council members and
> the Mayor of Columbus.  I actually sat through a meeting a year or so
> ago organized by JwJ where one council member suggested the Chamber
> of Commerce should be on any "Living Wage" board.
> 
> Rick Wilhelm
> Columbus Jobs with Justice organizes this list but does not
> necessarily endorse all events or postings.
> Contact Columbus JwJ: c/o UFCW 1059
> 4150 E. Main St., 2nd Floor
> Columbus, OH 43215
> Phone: 614-237-8440
> Fax: 614-237-7787
> E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> www.columbusjwj.org
> Meetings 2nd Tuesday of each month
> 
> 
*
--
Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

Re: Warren Buffett on class warfare

[Dan Scanlan]

"Alas, my 'fiddle playing' will not get me to Carnegie Hall -- or even to
a high school recital," Buffett said.
Buffett, from time to time, begins board meetings by playing his ukulele.

Dan Scanlan

--
---
IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON!
--
Purge the White House of mad cowboy disease.

--

END OF THE TRAIL SALOON
Alternate Sundays
6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT)
http://www.kvmr.org


"I uke, therefore I am." -- Cool Hand Uke
"I log on, therefore I seem to be." -- Rodd Gnawkin
"I claim, therefore you believe." -- Dan Ratherthan
Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube:
 http://www.coolhanduke.com

Re: Fear of polarization

[Carrol Cox]

Marvin Gandall wrote:
> 
>
> and the transparently pro-business bias of the Bush administration, and
> the Report fears “populist politics will catch fire” if stoked by the
> Democrats.
>

Which, of course, is why it will remain a fundamental principle of the
DP leadership, far more fundamental than any mere desire to be elected,
that such stoking shall not occur. The DP or even a sizeable sector of
its leadership, will only gingerly step into such territory if a major
sector of the u.s. ruling class decides that only a major shift to the
left can preserve stability.

This is the core of my reason to believe that the future of progressive
politics in the u.s. depends on the destruction of the DP.

Carrol
 
> Article reproduced on www.supportingfacts.com
> 
> Sorry for any cross posting.

Fear of polarization

[Marvin Gandall]

The conservative US News and World Report is worried by data showing the
worsening condition of US workers, and the growing prospect of class
polarization threatening corporate America and the Republican party.

Working class Americans are “living on the edge of a decline very
different from the traditional ebb and flow of the economic cycle”, says
the USNWR. The most visible indication the system is no longer
delivering as before is a shortfall of 8 million jobs from the customary
pattern of previous recoveries.

American families, even with two incomes, have less discretionary income
than a generation ago; are unable to meet soaring health care and
education costs; are worried about outsourcing and job loss; and “more
people this year will end up bankrupt than will suffer a heart attack or
be diagnosed with cancer or graduate from college or file for divorce”,
the USNWR notes.

Add a widespread perception of growing inequality, corporate corruption,
and the transparently pro-business bias of the Bush administration, and
the Report fears “populist politics will catch fire” if stoked by the
Democrats.

Article reproduced on www.supportingfacts.com

Sorry for any cross posting.

Picking up the thread....

[dmschanoes]

Several days ago Carrol Cox took exception to my 
references to "the conflict between the means and relations of production" as 
being essential to Marx's analysis of, and to, capital. 
 
I answered him offlist to avoid overposting.  

 
In the attempt to exercise my full ration of 
bandwidth, I'll reproduce my reply today.  Let's just call it a 
placeholder...
 
I promise however not to re-enter the Greenspan 
discussion...
-
 

Carrol,
 
Marx uses that exact phrase sparingly to be sure, 
but to say that is the extent of Marx's analysis thereof is to miss the point, 
and entirely, of everything he writes about capital being a contradiction 
reflected into itself, contradiction in motion, creating the terms, conditions, 
and actors in its own overthrow.
 
Everything Marx writes about exchange value is 
about the social organization of labor and the necessity of that organization to 
correspond with development, (growth and rational deployment) of the means of 
production.  Everything he writes about the problems of capital in the 
areas of expanded reproduction, overproduction, declining  rates of profit, 
is a reflection of the conflict between the relations of production-- capital, 
i.e. means of production as private property, and wage-labor, each existing in 
the organization of the other, and the means of production-- the absolute growth 
of the fixed asset base, the constant portion, the accummulated dead labor and 
the necessity of social revolution triggered by this conflict.
 
I don't know how it is possible to read Capital, 
Grundrisse, TSV, the notebooks, Contribution to the Critique of Political 
Economy,  and the Marx-Engels correspondence on the US Civil War, and not 
see how this central facet permeates every bit of analysis.l
 
Overproduction is this conflict compressed into one 
"body" so to speak.  The falling rate of profit is another compressed 
manifestation of this.
 
I have written on this extensively and if you're 
interested I can send some of it to you.  
 
I do not cite scriptures and in my analysis of oil 
I pointed out exactly how the oil price marked that ongoing conflict between the 
means and relations of production.
 
dms
 

Re: Ceaucescu and Romanian transition

[dmschanoes]

- Original Message -
From: "Chris Doss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 6:50 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Ceaucescu and Romanian transition


>
> There is a man in a cell in Matrushina Tishina prison who can tell you
that such sell-offs are not a very wise move in contemporary Russia...

EXACTLY>

> Putin and the dread "siloviki" (God do I hate that word) have a
state-dirigiste model of capitalist development. We'll see what happens to
the shares of Yukos that were frozen. I suspect they will either go to the
state or to someone (Abramovich?) who can serve as a proxy for the state.
Yukos will be like an oil Gazprom.

EXACTLY AGAIN
>
>
> Hu? Why? I go to movie theaters all the time.

Bad Joke.  Probably not worth explaining

dms

Re: Ceaucescu and Romanian transition

["Chris Doss"]

>
> There was a very interesting article in the  Financial Times several months
> ago that the only course really open to the current Russian "oligarchs" was
> the sale of "their" corporate assets to international companies.  The
> oligarchs, the FT reported candidly, had obtained their businesses through
> fraud, flim-flam, etc and were not really interested or competent to manage
> these operations.  Thus sale at the current height of the oil-induced
> recovery was the future.

There is a man in a cell in Matrushina Tishina prison who can tell you that such 
sell-offs are not a very wise move in contemporary Russia...

>
> Clearly, Putin represents interests opposed to that future, but his opposing
> interests are no less capitalist, and Putin's power depends on that
> representation and not his ability to "run the country."

Putin and the dread "siloviki" (God do I hate that word) have a state-dirigiste model 
of capitalist development. We'll see what happens to the shares of Yukos that were 
frozen. I suspect they will either go to the state or to someone (Abramovich?) who can 
serve as a proxy for the state. Yukos will be like an oil Gazprom.

>
>  Quick tip to businesspeople enroute to Russia:  When in Moscow, in-room
> movies are the safe entertainment choice.  Avoid theaters.

Hu? Why? I go to movie theaters all the time.

Rick Wilhelm on John Kerry

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

In Columbus, Ohio, at the heart of a swing state, leaders of the
local DSA chapter are taking a hard line against John Kerry:
*   Date: Sun, 07 Mar 2004 00:01:02 -0800
From: Rick Wilhelm
Subject: [C-JwJ] Strategy
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
**Columbus Jobs with Justice Calendar**
To post: send to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
According to research, it appears to me Kerry is a far-right
candidate.  Although many comments have said he has a "liberal"
record, I see no evidence is offered other than the fact on small
issues he has better votes than the Republicans, according to some
liberal groups.  According to key issues, here, he does not:
, taken from the archives of the
same liberal groups offered by some as proof he has a good record.
As a matter of fact, Kerry is so bad, it could be argued he was the
"greater evil," between Bush and Kerry.  Bush's personality is one of
pompous privilege, where Kerry's is one of arrogant privilege.
According to this article and others,
.  Kerry believes in
Internationalism and International Intervention in the name of
maintaining our Empire, and has even wrote about it as an imperative
goal.  This article reveals a little about Kerry's personality:
.
Why could it be argued Kerry may in fact be a "greater evil" than
Bush?  Because he is smarter, and since he also believes in military
action to preserve our "values," he may be more successful than Bush
in implementing the policy of force of Empire.  The policy looks as
though it will fail under Bush, because of its transparency and
stupidity.  And foreign policy has been offered as one reason we
should support Kerry, since their domestic agendas are so similar.
Kerry voted for the war, welfare reform, the Patriot Act, the China
Trade Bill (H.R. ), NAFTA, Fast Track and GATT.
Of course Kerry is on record of supporting a minimum wage increase to
6 dollars and 15 cents an hour, while Bush is not.  That is still
about 2 dollars and 75 cents less than what the minimum wage would be
had it kept up with inflation, since in 2002 it would have been 8.70
cents per hour.  I assume 2004 is slightly higher. See:
. And it is
no guarantee Kerry would actually keep his word about even the small
increase to $6.15.  But by voting for just things, his "record"
appears better, since the AFL-CIO give him the same credit for small
stuff as key issues.
So I feel any strategy should be to attack both candidates, and
attack them now, and keep attacking repeatedly and continually.  The
same should be done as far as sell-out Democratic Council members and
the Mayor of Columbus.  I actually sat through a meeting a year or so
ago organized by JwJ where one council member suggested the Chamber
of Commerce should be on any "Living Wage" board.
Rick Wilhelm
Columbus Jobs with Justice organizes this list but does not
necessarily endorse all events or postings.
Contact Columbus JwJ: c/o UFCW 1059
4150 E. Main St., 2nd Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: 614-237-8440
Fax: 614-237-7787
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.columbusjwj.org
Meetings 2nd Tuesday of each month

*
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

Re: Ceaucescu and Romanian transition

["Chris Doss"]

He's an associate member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Gusinsky was a theater 
director.

>
> Wasn't he a Ph.D. mathematician also?
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 08:40:21PM +0300, "Chris Doss"  wrote:
> > Yes, this goes for Russia as well. Berezovsky sold used cars. Actually all the 
> > oligarchs with a few exceptions (e.g. Khodorkovsky) were lumpens, nobodies.

Re: Ceaucescu and Romanian transition

[Jeff Sommers]

Yep!  Indeed, many oligarchs came from academic backgrounds.  Gregory
Luchansky, who made one of the original Soviet era fortunes by selling
Soviet oil purchased at domestic prices and diverting it to world markets at
global prices, was a Vice-Rector for Administration at the University of
Latvia.  He was removed in 1982 for corruption.  He later went on to found
offshore oil companies run out of Austria, such as Nordex, originally as a
way to launder $ for the KGB to run global intelligence operations.  He then
ran it for immense personal gain and began selling off Russia's  natural
resources, and reputedly tutored Clinton's associate Mark Rich in the
business of creating energy offshores.


Jeffrey Sommers, Assistant Professor
Department of History
North Georgia College & State University
Dahlonega, GA  30597
Ph.: 706-864-1913 or 1903
Fax: 706-864-1873
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Research Associate, World History Center
Northeastern University, Boston
Url: www.whc.neu.edu

Research Associate
Institute of Globalization Studies, Moscow
http://www.iprog.ru/en/
--



on 3/6/04 22:37, Michael Perelman at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Wasn't he a Ph.D. mathematician also?
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 08:40:21PM +0300, "Chris Doss"  wrote:
>> Yes, this goes for Russia as well. Berezovsky sold used cars. Actually all
>> the oligarchs with a few exceptions (e.g. Khodorkovsky) were lumpens,
>> nobodies.
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 09:38:18 -0800
>> Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Ceaucescu and Romanian transition
>>
>>> I don't know much about Eastern Europe, but it seems to me that many of the
>>> rising class of capitalists (and capitalist politicians) there also were
>>> "entrepreneurs" in the illegal markets. I would guess that in Poland, some
>>> of them were corrupt unionists from Solidarnosc.
>>> Jim Devine
>>>
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: "Chris Doss" [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> Sent: Sat 3/6/2004 9:27 AM
>>> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> Cc:
>>> Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Ceaucescu and Romanian transition
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, yeah, but I was just trying to say that the only people who had any
>>> experience with administration in e.g. Poland were former Communists, for
>>> obvious reasons. People running around publishing samizdat aren't usually
>>> experts on city planning.
>>>
>>> Russia's a big exception to this.
>>>
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 07:41:05 -0800
>>> Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Ceaucescu and Romanian transition
>>>
 of course, back when they ran "communist countries," they tried to make
 sure that no-one else _could_ govern unless they'd already proved their
 loyalty...
 Jim D.

 -Original Message-
 From: "Chris Doss" [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Sat 3/6/2004 3:04 AM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Cc:
 Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Ceaucescu and Romanian transition



 I don't know about the Romanian situation in particular, but one reason why
 former "Communist" leaders are in power thruought EE is that they are the
 only ones with experience in actually running a country.

 -Original Message-
 From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 13:46:35 -0800
 Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Ceaucescu and Romanian transition

> given how bad the Rumanian government was before Ceaucescu was overthrown,
> I find the view presented by NPR poet-commentator to be a bit more
> plausible: the same thugs that ruled before the "revolution" ended up in
> power afterwards (with the notable exception of Ceaucescu and his family).
>



>>>
>>>
>>>
>
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
>
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu