Re: Fragile
I am still trying to figure out what happened. TV is out. Radio is repeating same stuff. CNN site didn't work, last I tried it. CBC.ca is repeating CBC Radio. Anyone outside the zone of collapse with better data? I wrote: but the authorities were absolutely useless. The height of the stupidity, in this region of the collapse, was when some clown named Bruce Campbell (representing Ontario's Independent Market Operators) held a 10 second press conference and said that it may take a couple days -- and then didn't say where it would take a couple days, why it would take a couple days, or what the hell he was talking about. Avril Benoit, on CBC Radio 1, almost gasped when she heard this from a reporter. As did I. Because there was nothing else to explain the blackout or the reason for it taking a couple days. No gas stations, no stores, no bank machines. Should one travel? Should one store water? Aside from being fired as communications stooge for the IMO, I also support any effort by the Campbell Clan to summarily execute him at the next highland games. Ken. -- Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad. -- Diogenes the Cynic (perhaps aptly so-called)
Re: Fragile
Yeah, I botched Mr. Morrison's lyrics. Shows you how rattled I was. There's danger on the edge of town, Ride the king's highway. Weird scenes inside the goldmine; ride the king's highway west, baby. Lemme tell ya, I was more than ready to ride the highway west, baby. But, then, friends in Windsor were saying they had no power either. And I don't want to keep going past that and live in California if they are going to elect Arnold. Thanks for the input, Jurriaan. Ken. -- If you give this man a ride, Sweet Emily will die. Riders on the storm. -- Jim Morrison
Re: Fragile
You are one helluva good man, Euble. I appear to have missed it, or be caught between the replay and conference. I will check it out on replay, though. Many, many thanks. Ken. -- He took a face from the ancient gallery, And he walked on down the hall. -- Jim Morrison
Re: The Road to Serfdom
Anders wrote (in reply to many thoughts): Maybe I'm not reading carefully enough, but did you answered Doug's question about what your alternative would be? You say what you would not advise them to do, but that's really not an answer. I'm sure they could come up all by themselves lots of reasons why what their approach has serious problems, but if you can't tell them what they might do instead, they aren't any better off. Better off is at the heart of it. While one can claim pedigree by citing Marxist reason for not offering alternative... if there is no alternative, there is no hope for improvement. Aldo M. touched upon this early in my involvement in this list. It remains true. What is the replacement? Ken.
Politics and Futures -- Part 2
Bush Impeached? Wanna Bet? By Leander Kahney Wired.com 02:00 AM Aug. 04, 2003 PT Though there was an outcry over the Pentagon's terrorism futures market, a similar online exchange is in the works to predict what the U.S. government is up to. The American Action Market will offer various Washington futures that can be bet upon and traded. Examples include: Which country will the White House threaten next? Who will be the next foreign leader to move off the CIA payroll and onto the White House's most wanted list? Which corporation with close ties to the White House will be the next cloaked in scandal? The AAM will begin registering traders in September and plans to open for business Oct. 1 -- the same launch date proposed for the Pentagon's terrorism market, until it was shelved. Like the Pentagon's scrapped Policy Analysis Market, the AAM lets traders bet on future events by buying and selling futures as though they were stocks. The higher the price, the more likely the market believes the event will occur. But instead of predicting terrorist strikes, the AAM will predict things like the next White House staffer to quit. The idea is to answer some of the most pressing questions in the world: What will the White House do next? said one of the founders, Andrew Geiger, an American programmer living in Paris. The AAM market is the brainchild of a half-dozen academics from various colleges, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, New York University and the University of Montreal. Most, however, are keeping their identities quiet until they get an institutional go-ahead. The market was organized on Nettime, a politics and culture mailing list. It's quite amazing, the Pentagon and the White House are very fertile imaginative fields these days, Geiger said. (The AAM project) sounds humorous, but that just shows how far things have gone. We've entered the realm of fiction. Things really are Dr. Strangelove. The AAM project complements another academic project, the Government Information Awareness project. The GIA was built in response to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Terrorism Information Awareness program. Its organizers hope the market will attract academics, politicians, civil servants and other insiders to provide accurate predictions of White House behavior. Geiger said even those who read the newspapers are qualified to be traders. Our goal is to have people with insight into how the White House works, said Geiger. There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time thinking about what's going on in the world these days. A lot of that thought could be transferred into the system, giving you trading data that will tell you what's really going on. Geiger added, Who knows whether it will reveal stuff? Anyway, it will be engaging. The public, he noted, will be able to follow trades on the market's website. David Pennock, a senior research scientist at Overture Services, said futures markets have proven to be very good predictors of many different kinds of events, from the weather to election outcomes. It's one of the best, if not the best, way to predict the future, he said. It's a good, well-known method for getting information that's distributed around the world. Bob Forsythe, a University of Iowa professor who helped organize the Iowa Electronic Markets, which speculate on election results, agreed that futures are reliable indicators of what's going to happen next -- if the traders are knowledgeable. You have to have informed traders or they don't work very well, he said. Who are the informed traders in an assassination market, for example? The same's true for predicting the White House.
Poindexter's future
I would have bought futures on Poindexter getting axed after announcing a futures market. Ken. -- In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular. -- Laurence J. Peter --- cut here --- Poindexter to Leave Pentagon Research Job Project to Create Futures Market on Events in Middle East Caused Controversy By Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 1, 2003; Page A01 John M. Poindexter, the retired rear admiral involved in the Pentagon's ill-fated plan to launch an online futures market for betting on Middle Eastern developments, will be leaving his job with a Defense Department research agency, a senior defense official said yesterday. The departure had been demanded by lawmakers outraged over the notion that the Pentagon should set up a system enabling people to profit from predictions of terrorist attacks and other events. Poindexter, who has not spoken publicly about the initiative since it sparked a political firestorm Monday, has headed the office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) responsible for developing the trading program. Since joining DARPA in January 2002, Poindexter also has been embroiled in controversy over a computerized surveillance project to collect information about potential terrorist threats by scouring financial, travel, medical and other databases. After critics blasted the project for potential invasions of privacy, lawmakers and the Defense Department placed limits on it. The official said that Poindexter had not been asked to resign, but added that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior aides had agreed the onetime national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan -- and a central figure then in the Iran-contra scandal -- had become too much of a political lightning rod. Poindexter is working through the details of his resignation and expects to offer it within a few weeks, the official said. He realizes that it's become difficult for projects he's involved in to get a dispassionate hearing, the official said. While Poindexter had supervisory responsibility for the futures project, others at the Defense Department also played important roles in shaping or approving it. But there was no word yesterday on their fate -- or the future of the Information Awareness Office that Poindexter has headed. News of Poindexter's resignation was first reported in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. The problem is more than the fact that Admiral Poindexter was put in charge of these projects, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said yesterday in a statement suggesting lawmakers may not be content to let the matter rest. The problem is that these projects were just fine with the administration until the public found out about them. But several involved with the futures trading plan defended it vigorously in interviews, saying the project's purpose has been distorted by critics and abandoned too quickly by top Pentagon officials unprepared to explain its value and nature. Sponsors saw it as a method of collecting information and insights useful to the Defense Department The project, known as the Policy Analysis Market, was conceived by Michael Foster, a math and computer science specialist who joined DARPA in 2000 as a program manager, on temporary assignment from the National Science Foundation, according to several people familiar with the project's history. One of his models for creating a market that could help the Pentagon predict events was the political futures market at the University of Iowa, which has proven better than pollsters and pundits in predicting the outcome of presidential elections. DARPA is a relatively entrepreneurial organization, said Robin Hanson, an assistant professor of economics at George Mason University, whose work on futures markets also helped inspire Foster. They give program managers a lot of discretion and a lot of ability to create new concepts, and then reward them heavily based on how they do. According to a chronology prepared by the Pentagon, the go-ahead for the project came in the spring of 2001 from an unidentified official in the Defense Research and Engineering office. After inviting proposals in May 2001, DARPA awarded initial design contracts to two small firms -- Neoteric Technologies of Huntsville, Ala., and Net Exchange of San Diego, a 10-person business started in the early 1990s by economist John Ledyard, Hanson's thesis adviser at the California Institute of Technology. While Neoteric took a comparatively conservative approach, Net Exchange decided on a more ambitious one, both in terms of technology and scope. Its original plan was to create a market that would try to anticipate major events not just in the Middle East but Southwest and Central Asia as well. The market also would be limited to intelligence analysts and others in the U.S. government. But the idea of setting up an internal market ran into legal prohibitions against moving money among agencies funded
Lyndon Johnson heard this...
New Top General Tells Legislators U.S. Will Probably Need a Larger Army By THOM SHANKER New York Times WASHINGTON, July 29 The former Special Operations commander called from retirement to be Army chief of staff said today that the Army is likely to need more troops to meet its worldwide commitments. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, appearing at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, said that he has not yet formally reached conclusions on a number of critical questions facing the Army, among them required numbers of personnel and the fate of some weapons systems. But I'm going to take a little risk here and I'm going to tell you that, you know, intuitively I think we need more people, General Schoomaker said with far more candor than usually is on display at confirmation hearings. I mean, it's that simple. But he said that if he is confirmed by the full Senate as the Army's senior general, he will first review how soldiers and assignments are divided between the active-duty force and the reserves before making any recommendations about increasing the size of the nation's largest armed service. General Schoomaker, who retired from the Army in 2000, was asked several times about reports that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had a tense working relationship with Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the previous Army chief. Indeed, the two clashed over Mr. Rumsfeld's decision to cancel a new artillery piece, called Crusader, and over General Shinseki's estimate of the number of ground troops that might be required to stabilize Iraq. Since the Secretary of Defense is the one that asked me to do this, that was one of the first things we discussed, General Schoomaker said. And I'm convinced, through our discussions and our subsequent dealings, that we have an open and candid dialogue and that we have come to an arrangement where we can agree to disagree and at the same time understand what the chain of command is. General Schoomaker's use of the phrase, chain of command, was a reference to Constitutional provisions for civilian control of the military. Mr. Rumsfeld has repeatedly stated that he wants the entire military, and especially the Army, to be speedier and deadlier, the hallmark of the Special Operations forces. It was General Schoomaker's credentials in that area, especially his time as chief of the United States Special Operations Command from 1997 to 2000, that brought him to Mr. Rumsfeld's attention. General Schoomaker gained insight into the terrorist threat long before the Sept. 11 attacks, serving on the team that investigated the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. He also has served with conventional forces, including infantry and armored cavalry units, before moving to Special Operations. As Army chief of staff, General Schoomaker said, his job would be to think worst-case about the length of deployments to Iraq. I have to think about how we plan and think through sustaining a long-term commitment there, he added, even if allies contribute troops to diminish the American commitment. Currently, 16 of the Army's 33 active duty combat brigades are committed to Iraq. The general also said he plans to look at how the Army organizes its combat forces to see if greater efficiencies can be found in moving from command by large division headquarters to planning based around smaller military units. Also appearing for his confirmation hearing today was Lt. Gen. Bryan D. Brown of the Army, nominated to be the next chief of the Special Operations Command, which has been ordered by Mr. Rumsfeld to take a more active role against terrorism. General Brown, who currently serves as deputy at the command, said that those forces are to grow by 5,100 people by 2009, above the current 47,000-strong Special Operations force drawn from the Air Force, Army and Navy. Special Operations can manage its current load, he said, noting that civil affairs troops and Army Special Forces are stretched the most.
Re: one army
Beautiful. Thanks, Dan. There are so many ways to use media to create powerful propaganda -- the latter being defined as propagation of message, not the sometimes more common definition of manipulation. This is one. I don't know the organization behind it. But I like the site name and the attitude to the subject. The media are not monolithic and you can fight control of message through intelligent and artful use of it. Way back when, when I was a starry-eyed idealist, I always used a sig that summed up what I had hoped would be the promise of the Internet, and other decentralized media. I include it here. Still as true as ever. Ken. -- Don't HATE the media... | beCOME the media! --*-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - J. Biafra | . . . . cum grano salis
Re: Support of open-source software by business
I think Doug hits the point of why this is a bigger news media story... the inherent hypocrisy of it. Get fired. Go to school... get your degree... be part of the American Dream... and get fired again. Ken. -- You never know if you've got a happy ending [to your life] until you finally die. I guess _nobody's_ life has a happy ending if you look at it that way. -- Patty Hearst, 1982
Montreal WTO protests
Quebec has a great (and recent) tradition of social unity and defiance -- notably back to the asbestos strikes of the 1950s. That, married to the general youthful opposition to Premier Duplessis and the government collusion with the Roman Catholic Church, led to the development of a mass cultural revolution (sometimes called the Quiet Revolution) and a powerful generation of political leaders from the province -- including Rene Lévesque, and the Three Wise Men who came to the Liberal party in the early 1960s (Trudeau, Pelletier and Marchand). That influence is still powerfully felt across the country. (Montreal is also known for over-zealous police response, unfortunately.) Ken. --- cut here --- More than 200 arrested after WTO protests By TU THANH HA From Tuesday's Globe and Mail Tuesday, Jul. 29, 2003 Montreal More than 200 people were led into custody in a massive police sweep Monday after demonstrators stormed through the streets of downtown Montreal in a protest marred by vandalism. Some demonstrators who had come to protest against a ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization, toppled dumpsters and mailboxes, and spray-painted or smashed the windows of big-chain clothing stores, fast-food outlets or fancy cars that got in their way. Others bemoaned how the reckless violence of the few would obscure the message of the majority. After several hours, police had trailed, encircled and arrested more than 200 people - most of whom had not taken part in the vandalism - as they convened near an alternative bookstore for food and debate. Most were charged with participating in an illegal demonstration. Left behind were besieged merchants too wary to speak to the media, and protest organizers vowing that they would try again this morning to disturb the meeting of the 26 trade ministers. For some, such as Marc Stamos, a onetime Bay-Street-bound lawyer who has become an activist, or Rachel Engler-Stinger, a doctoral student in nutrition from Saskatchewan, it was their first time to be cornered by baton-wielding riot police, cuffed with plastic ties, have their mug-shots taken and be detained. For others, like the grey-haired, 77-year-old protester who joked of being ticklish when police frisked him, it probably wasn't the first time. The police argued that, since vandalism broke out during the march, it became an illegal event. When demonstrators didn't disperse after two warnings delivered on loudspeakers, the police considered it fair game to nab nearly half of the 400 to 500 people who earlier had tried to protest against the WTO gathering. Many protesters and reporters at the scene did not hear the warnings. There were no warnings. They didn't give us the opportunity to disperse, said Ms. Engler-Stinger, who was among those encircled and gradually penned in by phalanxes of riot police. It was her first arrest, but as soon as I can protest against the WTO again, I will, she said. Social activist Jaggi Singh was arrested a few blocks away from the march and charged with breaching court conditions that he stay away from demonstrations. Demonstrators had gathered around 6:30 a.m., some dumping vinegar onto towels to use as masks in case tear gas was fired. Organizer Stefan Christoff urged participants to be disciplined; be responsible. The march meandered around, in an effort to make the police's work harder. But each time the protesters got close to the meeting, the path was blocked by police in riot gear, some wielding tear-gas canisters and pepper-spray bottles. Several police vehicles, including minibuses full of riot officers followed the marchers. Hardcore protesters, younger men with faces hidden by bandannas, began stripping construction sites of metal gates and lumber and tossing them in the path of police. Eventually, they toppled metal garbage cans, dumpsters and mailboxes on the streets. They daubed anarchist logos onto a BMW sports-utility vehicle. Two Radio-Canada vehicles were attacked and a cameraman had his earset yanked away and his camera lenses spray-painted. The destruction was unleashed mainly by a dozen to two dozen protesters, who targeted stores from corporations such as the Gap, Burger King or the Bank of Montreal. The windows of a Canadian Forces recruitment centre were smashed as well. One store owner confronted protesters as they were about to break the store windows, driving them away. Later, when a journalist visited him, he claimed nothing had happened, but now had two security guards keeping watch. One man saw his Porsche windshield get smashed. He grabbed one attacker by the neck but several others knocked him to the ground. There was little sympathy for him. There are people who are dying of hunger, one told him. You can buy yourself another, another said. Some of the vandals had come prepared to make trouble, bringing along hammers to attack store fronts. Many protesters made no efforts to temper their more volatile colleagues, with
Re: futures market military intelligence
Traditional intelligence services remain rather poor at what they do -- at least relative to the mythology Hollywood and the conspiracy buffs have created around them. It's not uncommon for them to miss things that seemed obvious to non-professionals. (Iran in 1979 is an obvious and recent one; Iraq right now is another.) The concept of using the Internet -- viz., networking bodies of collective knowledge -- as a primary intelligence source has been bandied about quite a bit in intelligence circles. I first saw a serious attempt at promoting it back in 1992-3, with Open Source Solutions (Robert Steele, if I remember his name, I interviewed him a couple times). A futures market is like that early concept. Like Michael, I find this venture fascinating in that regards -- that the Pentagon is willing to fund such a thing. I doubt the intelligence community itself is overly thrilled with the idea, as it does to them what has been done to other industries -- removes the layer of administrative and collective functions from the process (job loss). But this won't fly, not in _this_ open a manner. It is sets a precedent for non-Yanqui countries/corporations to do the same. That would never stand because American politicians would cringe at being listed as assassination odds. (It's sort of similar, I suppose, as to why the U.S. shuns all concept of international courts -- because they know their imperial policies would make them regularly on the Most Wanted List.) The very prospect of talking in non-emotional, business-profit manner (American-style business ethics) about those things -- Is Powell a better target than Cheney? What's the pay-off? What's Jimmy The Greek say in Vegas? -- would probably increase the interest of many disgruntled parties out there to help the market along. Of course, the mob would probably finally get some belated cash pay-off for JFK. Ken. -- From a distance these things, these Movements take on a charm that they do not have close up -- I assure you. -- Marcel Duchamp, 1921 --- cut here --- Michael wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/politics/29TERR.html Both Pacifica News and the New York Times have stories about using the futures market to predict terrorist activities. I find the story fascinating in one respect. Futures markets should predict future activities given certain assumptions, including that the participants have adequate access to information. If the futures market participants have good enough information, then United States could just dismantle its intelligence agencies and rely on the futures market. It also suggests that the typical American -- or at least herds of typical Americans -- have information virtually equivalent to the government. Quite an admission on the part of the Pentagon.
Re: futures market military intelligence
Awww... they killed it. I was looking forward to buying futures on Bush dying in a snack-related mishap. Ken. -- Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save. -- Will Rogers --- cut here --- Pentagon Folds Hand in Online Terrorism Futures Scheme By Roy Mark Internet.com July 29, 2003 WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has agreed to stop a new program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to predict terrorist events through the online selling of futures in terrorist attacks. Sen. John Warner (R.-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, said during a Tuesday morning hearing he had contacted the program's director and the Pentagon had agreed to scuttle the program that had ignited a firestorm of criticism. U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) first brought attention to the program in a late Monday press conference. The Policy Analysis Market (PAM), the first phase of the project, is already online with funding from a federal grant and was scheduled to begin a beta testing on Friday. The Defense Department had also requested $8 million for its Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP) initiative, which would expand on the Policy Analysis Market's terror-wagering scheme. Analysts often use prices from various markets as indicators of potential events. The use of petroleum futures contract prices by analysts of the Middle East is a classic example, the site's concept overview states. PAM refines this approach by trading futures contracts that deal with underlying fundamentals of relevance to the Middle East. According to site, PAM will initially focus on the economic, civil, and military futures of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey and the impact of U.S. involvement with each. Spending taxpayer dollars to create terrorism betting parlors is as wasteful as it is repugnant. The American people want the Federal government to use its resources enhancing our security, not gambling on it, the senators wrote in a letter to Dr. John Poindexter, who heads DARPA. PAM is a joint venture between DARPA; the Economist Intelligence Unit, the business information arm of The Economist Group, publisher of The Economist; and Net Exchange, which is responsible for design, development and operation of the PAM trading system. PAM and the FutureMAP program would work much like other financial markets, with investors buying futures in events they think are likely to happen, and selling off futures as they believe events become less likely to happen. Some of the possibilities the PAM website offers for sale are the overthrow of the King of Jordan, the assassination of Yasser Arafat, and a missile attack by North Korea. Bidders would profit if the events for which they hold futures -- including government coups, assassinations and missile attacks -- occur. This is an appalling waste of taxpayers' money, Dorgan said at a Monday afternoon press conference. We need to focus our resources on responsible intelligence gathering, on real terrorist threats. Spending millions of dollars on some kind of fantasy league terror game is absurd and, frankly, ought to make every American angry. What on Earth were they thinking? PAM is scheduled to begin registration for potential investors onFriday, and its website offers examples of policy experts making trades in the system. However, the website states an intention to eventually include thousands of traders who only have to pick a username and password to participate. Additionally, the Policy Analysis Market website assures potential investors that DARPA will not have access to their identities or funds. According to Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Dorgan, a member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, this promise creates the possibility that terrorists themselves could drive up the market for an event they are planning and profit from an attack, or even make false bets to mislead intelligence authorities. Just last week the 9/11 report proved that the basics of communication and follow-through ought to be our primary weapons against the terrorist threat, said Wyden. Make-believe markets trading in possibilities that turn the stomach hardly seem like a sensible next step to take with taxpayer money in the war on terror. Wyden has also led the criticism of another DARPA project, the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, which has since been renamed as Terrorist Information Awareness. It is a project of the Information Awareness Office (IAO), which is under DARPA. The data mining project's stated mission is to imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness useful for preemption; national security warning;
RIAA demonstrates scarcity maintenance business practice in an info economy
SPOTLIGHT PERSPECTIVES Excerpted from article: Consumer side: What I think they're going to do is start suing moms and dads and families across America. They could lose their house or lose their ability to send their kids to college. That is not the intent of copyright statutes, to bankrupt a middle-class family. Industry side: We won't win any popularity contests. We don't really care what people think, except we want them to know that it (file-sharing) is illegal. It's unpopular, it's not pretty, but it's the right thing to do for all the people involved in the music industry. --- cut here --- Advice to avoid copyright litigation Experts sharing tips to help defend against file-sharing lawsuits Benny Evangelista San Francisco Chronicle July 28, 2003 As the recording industry tries in unprecedented fashion to enforce copyright laws against individual consumers, legal experts say people can take several steps to try to avoid costly litigation. For starters, legal experts advise file-sharers to stop sharing any unauthorized files. That action could, though not necessarily, eliminate the need for more costly legal steps if a file-sharer learns he or she has been caught in the Recording Industry Association of America's copyright infringement dragnet. It's possible the courts could one day rule file-sharing is legal or a consumer backlash could force Congress to change current copyright laws. Before that happens, however, the legal costs for an individual battling the powerful RIAA could be devastating. What I think they're going to do is start suing moms and dads and families across America, said San Rafael attorney Ira Rothken. They could lose their house or lose their ability to send their kids to college. That is not the intent of copyright statutes, to bankrupt a middle-class family. The RIAA, the Washington trade group that represents the world's biggest record labels, has filed more than 900 subpoenas since June 26 to gather information to file civil lawsuits against hundreds of users of file-sharing programs. Legal experts say this is the first time copyright law has been used to crack down on average consumers. Previously, copyright battles have typically pitted companies against other businesses, or against people who have intentionally tried to make money pirating copyright-protected material. Millions of people around the world use programs like Kazaa, Grokster, Limewire or eDonkey to swap free copies of entertainment files via the Internet, including songs and movies. Surveys have estimated about 60 million Americans have downloaded music into their computers. Proponents of file-sharing defend the practice, arguing a greedy music industry is ignoring its own customers and not taking advantage of a lucrative new revenue source. But the $14 billion U.S. recording industry labels file-sharing as theft and blames the practice for a 14 percent drop in CD sales in the past three years. File-sharing programs enable the transfer of audio or video files between users' computers. Each file sharer is supposed to offer a list of shared files available for upload. Those lists become part of a huge database for other file-share users to search and pick which file they want to download. The RIAA, unable to find an effective way to stop people from downloading or to shut down the companies that distribute file-sharing software, is now threatening legal action to halt the spread of files offered for uploading. On June 25, the RIAA announced plans to sue individual consumers who were offering a substantial number of copyright-protected songs. The RIAA said it would start filing the suits in eight to 10 weeks, sometime toward the end of August or early September when schools reopen after summer vacation. The suits would seek civil penalties ranging from $750 to $150,000 per song. The RIAA will not say what it considers substantial, but legal experts say the larger the number of files, the more likely the file-sharer will be sued. Proponents of file-sharing argue that the act of making a song available for someone else to download for free is legal under fair use provisions of copyright law because it's like sharing a CD with a family member or friend so they can enjoy listening to a new song. But copyright law expert Evan Cox, a partner at Covington Burling in San Francisco, said the law gives copyright owners like the record labels the exclusive right to distribute their work, which makes it illegal to offer a song for distribution on a file-sharing network without authorization. So the first thing you should do if you want to be off (the RIAA's) radar is to stop uploading, said Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual property attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The San Francisco digital-rights advocacy group's Web site, www.eff.org, includes a new page that offers tips on how not to get sued by the RIAA for file sharing. Among those tips are
Re: quotation du jour
Jim wrote: I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Great quote, sir. Americans are never foreign in their own eyes any more. Even their leaders of foreign policy are never foreign. They are always right there... wherever they are when they vote to save the world from tyranny when they vote. (Under 45% vote, right?) Originally, the U.S. policy (G. Washington) was to shun the world for fear of accepting their politics... now that the U.S. is Rome and powerful and the policy is to... well... shun the world for fear of accepting their politics... Ken. -- As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness. -- William O. Douglas
Re: Back to slavery
David Shemano wrote: If we didn't add value, why would we be hired? I think I answered that already. Mafia. Ken. -- ... the fear of facing the world, including its works of literature, without an intellectual narcotic at hand. -- Frederick Crews
Re: Back to slavery
Jim wrote: That said, I don't think lawyers are totally unproductive; I agree. The collision of individual interests has to be resolved in some manner. No matter the system. There will be costs. The current system, commercially, is based on getting a commercial lawyer to check-off your deal. Otherwise, they, or their kin, will sue you latter to decrease the transaction cost of their own client. Why not? System allows it... but is it factored in anywhere? Any accountants out their? trashing lawyers is a major indoor sport in the US I disagree. Lawyers are just like economists... eggheads who some how control the political life of citizens. And don't talk in full language (Jim is obviously accepted). However, lawyers are just more sensitive to the criticism since they are on TV more. Perry Mason never did have a kindred soul from economics on TV. Your honor, I contend the witness inflated the GDP numbers to cover up the failure of the auto industry and the increase in transaction costs off shore! Gasp from court room On the other hand, lawyers often seem to create demand for each other: I need a lawyer because the other guy has one, so their efforts cancel out. They do not always cancel out. I would like to see some numbers on the actual costs after ruling. But those sorts of things, like data on security breaches, are not available... Ken. -- The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. -- Samuel Johnson
Re: Back to slavery
David Shemano wrote: I am corporate bankruptcy attorney, which is primarily transactional ... We need those a fair bit today, no? ... But, more respectfully, what is the value you provide outside the parametres for business collection upon failure (and how is that different than Repo Men)? Aren't bankruptcy lawyers merely administrators in a system? That is, no productive value? Merely moving money around, like a bank teller? Just asking for some personal reasons... Ken. -- Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. -- Henry Kissinger
Re: Back to slavery
Michael wrote: Do lawyers really limit transactions costs. I thought that they maximized billable hours. They _do_ limit transaction costs... if you count resultant contractual law suits as part of transaction costs. It's a kind of mafia protection racket... Let me vet your contract, so that I don't help the other party sue you after the fact. But that's just one way of looking at it... Ken. -- The Bible is probably the most genocidal book in our entire canon. -- Noam Chomsky
Re: John Nichols on James Weinstein on Oscar Wilde and the Left
Michael wrote: I think that we need to have a vision of what socialism can offer -- not just lower unemployment or lower taxes or some other modification of what we have today. If utopianism is the creation of such a vision then it can be very important in building socialism. It is not the sum total of what we need. I agree with this. Hope counts in politics. Tis very human. And, right now, a vision of hopeful socialism (utopianism) is positive. All politics are based on improving the lot of the individual. Without a vision, even them realistic commies remain but a braukellar Marxist cadre trying to enlist disgruntled technocrats for a future world of technocrats removed from utopia. A vision/hope is important to a mass movement (mass movement being translated as Lots of people). Ken. -- The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow. -- Shelley
Re: moneyball
Carrol wrote: How much money do the TV networks, the advertisers, and the makers of the products advertised make off of them. Which is why I say we boycott baseball. (What a stupid waste of money, anyway. They ain't neighborhood heroes anymore.) In terms of another sport, hockey, I agree with Ted Lindsay's 1957 or so struggles against the Red Wings, for unionization, and stopping the flushing of marginal players down the shitter. Likewise, Andy Messerschmidt's free agency case is fine by me, too. Also... I agree with the concept that the top players are only produced through a long process of labor, in which many souls are discarded... But if you are suggesting that the farm players who never make it, and their collective wasted years, should then accrue to the back-up second baseman on a team getting $2.5 million... can't see that. Ken. -- C'mon all you big strong men Uncle Sam needs your help again Got himself in a terrible jam Way down yonder in Iraqistan! Put down your books and pick up a gun! We are going to have a whole lot of fun! -- Country Joe
Re: moneyball
Denise wrote: Rickey Henderson is playing left field for the Newark, New Jersey, Bears, a minor league team that is unaffiliated with any major league team. Good for him. (If that is true.) Rickey was the most Satchel of all the other Paiges in the book of baseball. Ken. -- And it's 1-2-3-4 What are we fighting for!? Don't ask me I don't give a damn Next stop is Iran-istan! -- Country Joe
Marxism Today: Editor interview
I have been following Chris Burford's comments on New Labor and related discussion sites. He mentioned Marxism Today. I long wondered about Marxism Today, who was behind it, where did the money come from. It appeared in mainstream book store magazine sections in Toronto in the early-mid 90s. I didn't read it much, but it was striking (from a journalistic layout perspective) because it was glossy thing and had some very eye catching design. It jumped out at you from the magazine rack shelf. Martin Jacques was the editor. He has an interview with Tribune at www.tribune.atfreeweb.com/mj.htm Here's a snippet (dated 9th October 1998): On Your Marx: Martin Jacques Interview MARXISM Today, the Euro-Communist journal that sought to persuade Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair to ditch traditional socialist principles, is back next week for one special issue. Editor Martin Jacques fears New Labour has lurched too far towards Thatcherism and neo- liberal economics and will use the journal to argue the Left still has ideas Blair should listen to. I've tried to give a generous berth to New Labour because I felt an empathy with Blair and got to know him quite well in the early nineties, explains Jacques. I felt that traditional Labour culture was exhausted, that it needed to be transcended, and I recognised in Blair someone who understood that. I thought he would disorganise the Tories in many ways because they wouldn't know where exactly he was coming from, he says. But now the Blair project, as Marxism Today will call it, is more rhetoric than substance. I feel a sense of disappointment. New Labour had a great historic opportunity in 1997 to offer a really radical alternative because the Tories had imploded, and Labour had won a landslide victory. Instead I think that far from doing something with it, Blair has inherited most of the Thatcherite framework. He wouldn't put it like that of course but, predominantly, that is what has happened. [...] But after 1989, Marxism was no longer partisan. It was liberated from being the weapon of one side. That's why the New Yorker magazine, in its issue about the next decade, declared that Marx will be the most important thinker over the next 10 years. Jacques warms to this theme: There are certain things that Marx argued which still make him the best writer on capitalism. That the system is inherently unstable. That it is a system which has an inexorable tendency towards expansion across the globe. Now that Marx isn't trapped in the Cold War, his work should be released for everyone to appreciate and enjoy. I mean, he said without the means of subsistence you cannot engage in anything else, such as art. Now, that is a commonplace, but then it wasn't. So, I return in a sense feeling happier about the title of the magazine than I did when I left eight years ago. If McRobbie (in the article Chris posted, from openDemocracy) isn't exaggerating when she writes that the publishers/editors of MT prided themselves on taking risks with left orthodoxies, guided by a belief that a failure to engage with the lives and desires of ordinary people was making the left more marginalised than ever -- then fine by me! As long as one knows one is doing that... And not reinventing the wheel. Ken. -- The point that makes me upset is that most of those dictators in the last 25 or 30 years were put in place by the Americans. As long as they sell oil and they obey the American position, then they are OK. -- Benoît Serré, Liberal MP, Canada January 2003
Marxism Today and The Blair Witch Project
SIDE COMMENT: I find it curious that Jacques, in the interview from Tribune in the previous post (Marxism Today), refers to the last special issue of MT as dealing with Blair's performance to date (the interview is posted as 9th October 1998): But now the Blair project, as Marxism Today will call it, is more rhetoric than substance. I feel a sense of disappointment. New Labour had a great historic opportunity in 1997 to offer a really radical alternative because the Tories had imploded, and Labour had won a landslide victory. I never saw this issue. (Never saw most of the issues.) But what an interesting choice of words for their final issue on Blair: The Blair Project. Of course, that sounds rather like The Blair Witch Project. (A surprise hit indie movie horror flick.) I thought this was a deliberate allusion, but I checked a movie site and found The Blair Witch Project Release Date: July 16th, 1999 (27 theaters in 16 markets...); July 30th, 1999 (expanding into 1000 theaters); August 6th, 1999 (adding 1000 more theaters) Spooky! Jacques was prescient... And, really, after all, don't both Blair Projects end rather similarly? The makers of the story are dramatically and horrifically destroyed by invisible but elemental forces... right before our very eyes! Spooky. Ken. -- It is enough nowadays to declare yourself an artist and then to declare some artifact in the vast world of found objects to be _your_ work of art. -- Thomas M. Disch
Re: Saving the advertising industry in a fractured media-verse? Biz 2.0
Tom Walker wrote: Science World here in Vancouver runs a continuous loop of the 1987 Fischli and Weiss film The Way Things Go. The borrowings of the Honda ad from the film are obvious to anyone who has viewed both. I didn't know that. But not surprising. It's an ad -- and people in advertising borrow everything. Everything is a twist on some recognizable existent piece of communication. As to the nature of advertising, itself: That's their job. I've known many of them over the years. Sit around, getting bombed by lunch, looking at the world around them, and coming up with twists on themes that already have a lot of brand/recognition value out there. That allows them to, more or less, rip off the recognition value of something else. It makes 30 second spots or whatever more powerful. It's the same thing Chomsky talks about in his news media model. People with divergent opinions on politics are not necessarily cut from the talking head circuit because there is a conspiracy of right wing ideologues trying to silence them -- sure, there are those out there, but it's not in every situation. Rather, those spouting conventional wisdoms are able to be more easily understood in the small space of time they will get on camera. On the other hand, try to go on and say something positive about Cuba, you will have to set the table to make your comments coherent to the audience -- and that process of setting the table eats into your air time. In the crunch of the editing room, believe me, you often get cut if there is no operative sound bite. It's structural. Ken. -- If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner. -- Tallulah Bankhead
Re: Saving the advertising industry in a fractured media-verse? Biz 2.0
I wrote: Rather, those spouting conventional wisdoms are able to be more easily understood in the small space of time they will get on camera. Tom Wrote: Or, to cite the Far-Sighted Manifesto by Francis Picabia, worn by Andr Breton on a sandwichboard: POUR QUE VOUS AIMIEZ QUELQUE CHOSE IL FAUT QUE VOUS L'AYEZ VU et ENTENDU DEPUIS LONGTEMPS tas D'IDIOTS Grin. That's another rather more direct way to put it. Of course, the targets of the criticism are different, in some respects, I suppose. Consumers of political debate through the commercial news media, with its structure of time slots and fill between ad breaks, they often have no choice. What propaganda can awaken them to the fraud around them? (Personally, I believe it's to be found in mixing cultural conventions, usually in a humorous way, so as the lessen the raw impact but still keeping them engaged.) Dada was an attempt to reflect a shattered world -- and shatter hegemony. The stuff out of Germany didn't have to reflect broken human beings in any allegorical sense. Broken human beings were all over the place -- literally broken, missing limbs, missing homes, missing lives, missing futures. And there was a complete failure of political ideologies. What a time that was... Ken. -- You got to be a spirit, Bulworth. You can't be no ghost. -- playwright Amiri Baraka in Bulworth, 1998
Re: the Hulk
Jim has been taking in some advanced US art. The Hulk was kind of creator Stan Lee's Freudian extreme example of the general way he made Marvel Comics a serious competitor against DC Comics. As I recall, Marvel arose around 1961 or so. It was far distant in revenues. Lee built on a trend in other media to make characters more complex. So he used his own pop psychology, relaying on Freudian ideas. Marvel's Spiderman (Peter Parker) was like the first neurotic superhero. He had personal problems, things readers could identify with. DC's Superman was that sort of cardboard cut out character. Really uninteresting. (The administration guys that you saw taking the news conference microphone during the Iraq war.) But Marvel became dominant after a while. It was just more fun. And creative people tend to be Democrats. (As I non-American, I can state this with obviously totally objective observer status.) Surely someone in the US must have opined that DC Comics line-up of heroes represents Republican cultural norms and Marvel line-up of heroes represented Democratic cultural norms. :-) Marvel was funny, fucked-up, and pushed social boundaries. Bill Clinton is clearly a Marvel Comics creation. DC was tight-assed, unquestioning of self, and rarely dared cross social boundaries. George Jr. is clearly a DC creation. Ken. -- With enough courage, you can do without a reputation. -- Ret Butler
Re: Fw: Humphrey McQueen
Michael writes: I haven't gone into it much farther since I read Michael Lewis's Moneyball yesterday. Although it deals with the management of the Oakland Athletics, it actually contains some very interesting material about market inefficiencies -- how a very cash-poor team was able to buy relatively good players at cut rate prices. Do tell. I believe the Blue Jays have your old General Manager. J.P. Whatshisname. To this city's surprise, here.. the Jays actually don't stink for the first time in 10 years. Way beyond the GM's predictions. Bill James did a _lot_ for statistical analysis of baseball in the 1908s, which disproved/created/changed all sorts of field manager strategy. Maybe Michael Perelman can do the same for general manager strategy by importing ideas from market inefficiency analysis. If nothing else, there are elements of the more intelligent sports media here who would like to hear it. Ken. -- The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided. -- Casey Stengel
Re: moneyball
Very interesting. I recall (and this is all from memory, so forgive errors on exact stats) the most interesting financial conclusion James came to was about trade value -- and how lesser lights in the front office were continually taken on the market. In particular, statistical analysis of the value of field players (not pitchers and catchers who have a whole different thing going on) showed that most topped out at age 27. That is, there actual performance peaked in that year. Yet, that was usually around the time they ended their (relative) poverty years. Jesse Barfield comes to mind. Those kind of players who rise fast then fall fast... But, as your quote seems to be showing, the market value actually is in reverse. Barfield got terrible wages for worth in approaching age 27 -- then, when hitting the age of expected peak, he was at, ironically, his highest market value. (I think he went to the Yankees.) James also did another form of that study, showing performance value based on when a player got the big contract. It might be related to the age study, maybe not. Applies a lot more to pitchers, who are more age resistant. I betcha JP read that stuff. Ken. -- Age is a question of mind over matter. If you dont mind, it doesnt matter. -- Satchel Paige
Re: moneyball
Sorry Michael -- I wrote too fast in this second last paragraph: James also did another form of that study, showing performance value based on when a player got the big contract. It might be related to the age study, maybe not. Applies a lot more to pitchers, who are more age resistant. I meant that James did a study on the performance of players AFTER a fat contract. Did it reduce their performance? Since they tended to get the fat contract after peak performance age 27, that could skew the stat analysis based simply on awarding of too much money. But, with pitchers (who are not as age susceptible because theirs is a more cerebral job), there was some evidence that the fat contract year did not tend to result in the big performance year. In other words, the big reward might attract the player but did not actually then get the same performance. (My guess is that other things did, shortly thereafter -- sports ego, media pressure to focus, etc.) One wonders how similar that is to the silly wages paid to CEOs and actual company performance... Ken. -- Aint no man can avoid being born average, but there aint no man got to be common. -- Satchel Paige
Saving the advertising industry in a fractured media-verse? Biz 2.0
More hyperbolic shazbot from Business 2.0. The ad itself is interesting as actual art -- kind of the old game Mousetrap meets the Art Gallery of Ontario -- funded by an auto manufacturer. (www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,50151,00.html) As actual advertising, it is another familiar novelty. It's repeating the same process of novelty that has existed from day one involving the Internet as a medium. It's no different than 1995's thrills at watching a web cam broadcast of a fish tank or coffee machine in some university comp sci department somewhere. (People actually viewed those things back then.) Sure, you have fun showing it to your friends when it is new and there are not so many of them. (This is the point in the cycle of consumption that advertising people get excited.) But, gain, once there are more, the share of that interest that the provider of these things gains in response shrinks -- until the over-abundance them these things results in the viewer/consumer eventually finding it annoying and resorting to evasion of ad intrusion. The only viable form of advertising in a true multiplex of media is sponsorship. Own the event -- like, oh, say, a school department. (For instance, vote for Ian Murray as the Boeing Professor of Public-Private Partnerships in Local Economics. Give him a $150,000 annual expense account and string of Mini Coopers for his children and relatives. Something like that. Then you can't separate the ad/branding from the product/content.) Ken. -- Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. -- George Santayana --- cut here --- Downloading the Future of TV Advertising By John Battelle Business 2.0 July 2003 Issue Through the simple act of releasing a remarkable television commercial onto the Web, the U.K. wing of automobile giant Honda (HMC) has unleashed something of a typhoon in the advertising business. Though it has yet to fully play out, Honda's ad proves the value of content and could stand as a turning point in the history of the television spot -- proof that interactivity won't kill television advertising, as many are now predicting, but may instead be instrumental in saving it. In April 2003, Honda U.K. debuted an extraordinary two-minute television advertisement called Cog. Back in April, Honda U.K. debuted an extraordinary two-minute television advertisement called Cog. Aired only in the United Kingdom, the film -- and that really is the best term for it -- is a Rube Goldbergian ballet, a synchronized dance of 86 distinct parts from a Honda Accord that roll, pirouette, and fly along the floor in a mesmerizing production of meticulously intended consequence. The spot begins with a sequence of three cogs rolling along a plank; one falls to the floor, and a cam shaft rolls, setting an exhaust tube slowly spinning, which knocks three precisely placed grommets down the slope of a hood, and so on. (Download the ad for yourself at Honda UK.) To watch this film is to want to watch it again, which is what I did, repeatedly, after a friend e-mailed me the link. Not only was the work beautiful, but it was advertising -- it functioned in ways that television ads simply weren't intended to function. Cog made me think well of Honda, so the branding was effective. But more interesting was the way I came across it -- through word of mouth -- and the expectations I brought as I downloaded it: I was taking the action to view the message; it was my intent that drove the transaction. This ad was content I wanted, not a sales message I wished to ignore. The experience was peculiar -- this isn't how advertising models for television are supposed to work. But work it has. Since the film made its debut on British television in April, Honda U.K. has been besieged by repeat viewers. As was its custom, Honda had already put the ad on its site; it was instantly blogged and Slashdotted. Every major paper in the United Kingdom wrote it up, noting its painstakingly analog production (filming required more than 600 takes) and unusual length. Traffic to the Honda site quadrupled; in the first few weeks, nearly 1 million people downloaded the film. By mid-May, the number was twice that -- and millions more, no doubt, have seen the film as an e-mail attachment. The Honda marketing folks are clearly tickled by the response. We think this campaign has managed to reposition Honda more toward the quality and sophistication of the European makers, says Nigel Bobs, a marketing executive at Honda U.K. We certainly had no idea it would take off like this. Cog reminds us of the power of great content, and it may well shift the tired debate regarding what many marketers deride as vanity ads, which capture awards rather than results. It proves that great content can be combined with intent-based marketing like direct mail or paid search. Imagine a film like Cog as the payoff to clicking a paid link for Honda or buy car on Google. Or as a
Auto-insurance monopoly and interest-free premium advances
Car insurance signs clear: bumpy road ahead Complex reasons for rising rates THOMAS WALKOM Toronto Star June 21 2003 Ontario's auto insurance system doesn't work. After three governments and almost 15 years of tinkering, that's the sad reality. The obvious problems are well known. Premiums are shooting up and companies are getting stickier about renewing policies. The average Ontario driver pays about 20 per cent more in auto premiums than he did last year. But the more troubling figure is the growing number of drivers refused policies by the province's 164 car insurers. These people and there are roughly 80,000 of them now have been forced into the so-called Facility Association, an insurer of last resort that is owned by the private firms and which charges considerably higher rates. Last year, according to association head Dave Simpson, there were only about 20,000 drivers signed on with the Facility. For the government, this should be the canary in the coal mine, the early-warning signal that something is wrong. The Facility is supposed to insure only the very worst drivers in the province, those whose accident record is so bad that no sensible person would cover them. But when relatively good drivers find themselves forced to pay Facility-style rates, politicians know they are in for a pasting. Some of the problems in the Ontario system are endemic to insurance. In essence, insurance is a kind of legalized pyramid scheme: The insurer agrees to cover all his policyholders if they have car accidents, but he's betting that only a small number will be making claims at any one time. If the cost of servicing those claims rises unexpectedly, the insurer is forced to find the money to cover his bets either by raising premiums or refusing to write policies. Insurers say that's what is happening in Ontario. They complain that the benefits they are shelling out to accident victims particularly for so-called soft-tissue injuries such as whiplash are out of control. George Cooke, president of Dominion of Canada General Insurance Co., cites one comparison the industry likes to use: In 1992, insurers paid out $380 million for rehabilitation and assessment to car-accident victims; by 2002, that number had climbed to $1.5 billion. The other endemic problem involves the stock and bond markets. Insurers don't simply stick their customers' premiums under the mattress. They invest them and either keep the profits or use them to cover some of their claims costs. The amounts involved are not trivial. The Insurance Bureau of Canada, the private industry's trade association, reports that Canadian property and casualty firms (which write auto policies) made $2.2 billion from investments in 2002 money they used to cover the $1.4 billion they lost on underwriting. Insurers like to say that they are subsidizing customers' rates when they do this. In fact, a good case can be made that customers are subsidizing insurers by allowing them to use their premium money interest-free. In any case, when the bond and stock markets falter as they have over the past two years insurers try to compensate by raising the rates they charge customers. In 2002, according to the Insurance Bureau, investment income to property and casualty firms dropped by almost 20 per cent. No wonder then that they responded by raising rates to car drivers by about the same percentage. But the other, more telling, problems with the Ontario system are more specific to this province. Ironically, one is the industry's very competitiveness. There are 164 firms selling auto policies in Ontario. In good times, they compete furiously to lower rates. In bad times, they compete furiously to raise them. The result is a rate instability that many drivers find maddening. Recent history illustrates this. In 1996, Ontario's economy was rebounding from recession. Stock markets were up, which meant insurers were flush with cash. At the same time, the newly elected government of then-premier Mike Harris had just passed a new law that reduced benefits to car accident victims. Insurers scrambled to get customers. The key for many was to gain access to that interest-free premium money that they could then invest profitably in financial markets. And so, with costs down and potential revenues up, they cut premiums. According to Ontario's finance ministry, average premium costs in Ontario fell steadily, from $1,019 in 1996 to $918 in 2000. After that, they started to climb again until, by 2002, according to the government's Financial Services Commission of Ontario, rates were back at 1996 levels. Or, to put it another way, over the last seven years, auto insurance premium increases have averaged less than 3 per cent annually. If all drivers had experienced this, they might be more understanding. But averages do not take into account individual reality. Over seven years, people's circumstances change; they move (which may affect their rates) or buy
EU v NA -- Hegel and frontiers
As to the recent multilateralist tensions... Is there some deeply entrenched reason that North America and Europe (whether the UK ever decides to be in that or not) have different reactions to world events -- including socialist ideas? Maybe a burn out factor, to use a colloquial term? For instance -- in some recent research, BMW clearly stands ahead of NA car companies in trying to find a viable hydrogen car. The explanations of this from the auto makers themselves is humorous PR spin. One non-corporate source put it that Germany (and Europe) has given its auto-industry a helping hand in that it sets up things like take back systems. BMW will have to dispose of all those dead cars. So BMW is given incentive to reduce the cost of that. Hence, BMW (in this limited sense) has more money in RD and may have a much stronger position in the market for cars in a decade (it says a few thousand hydrogen cars will be in production in 6-7 years). It reminded me of something I'd read long time ago... Hegel's dismissing of North America as a serious source of social development until it ran out of frontiers -- which can mean many things, including the crass ability to let Ford dump dead cars in a badlands ditch. (Hegel used his more typical formulations, talking about the USA being spiritually feeble and outside world history -- and the French Revolution only happened because France didn't have a wild west to drain off discontent and mismanagement. Had Germany been a frontier, the pissed off French elements would have crossed the Rhine and built log cabins and the pressure would subside. But since Europe has fewer resources and land to use, it has had to address human political problems much more immediately. I am clearly paraphrasing here.) The basic idea -- denuded of Hegelian flourishes -- always seemed a better explanation for why NA has had less viable socialist-ic parties. I have heard self-proclaimed American Maoists dismiss the entire western working class as decadent -- in other words, their behavior is simply the result of over-consumption. I've also heard some blame mass media. I've heard blame labor bosses for collusion. (There are lots of these theories, and they are usually spouted in an angry-frustrated manner; however, when stripped of outrage, each has a degree of truth, I suppose.) I found that Hegel observation interesting... and wrote it down in my books of quotes and, upon researching BMW, thought of it again... Ken. -- A pallid outline for the real worlds richness. -- William James On over-intellectualism
Re: FW: Scientific socialism: A reply to Joseph Green
In terms of Mr. Bendien's take on history... I could not agree more. Foreground and background are simple painting ideas... But, when used in political/materialist history, it often seem to baffle the religious textualists. (And leave it to French academics to make a complex discipline out of it. :) As to Mr. Mayall's protege, Peter Green, he was a fine contributor to another tradition -- England-style blues, et al. -- that was equally re-translated (and retranslating in the process) each generation. With great success... Ken. -- All politeness is owing to Liberty. We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Men's Understanding. -- Anthony Ashley Cooper Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)
Re: OBL gatecrashes Prince William's 21st
If this is what the guy looked like, one really does have to wonder about security, or perhaps what is meant by fancy dress... http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_792983.html Look... we here in Canada had a heart-stopping moment when a serious assassination attempt was made on our Prime Minister... The assassin actually escaped the notice of the RCMP and got in the official residence. And was only thwarted when the attacker was hit on the head by the PM using an Inuit sculpture from the mantle. (Or maybe Aline, PM wife, did it. They changed story depending on the county in which the body was to be buried.) My guess is that he didn't dress like a Yanqui assassin. Non-U.S. assassins have learned to stop looking like anti-Cuba pamphleteers from New Orleans... Ken. -- If you are going through hell, keep going. -- Winston Churchill
Remotely destroy computers if music pirates persist, Hatch says
I never knew Hatch was such a Renaissance Man... Wonder what the tunes were? $18,000 in 2002 royalties... Poor music industry fighting the Internet... now making allies with Tin Pan Alley Hatch... and becoming a government sanctioned virus propagator. Ken. -- The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man has never worshipped anything but himself. -- Richard F. Burton --- cut here --- Music pirates should face destructive counterattacks, Hatch says WASHINGTON (AP June 18 2003) -- Illegally download copyright music from the Internet once, or even twice, and you get a warning. Do it a third time, and your computer gets destroyed. That's the suggestion made by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at a Tuesday hearing on copyright abuse, reflecting a growing frustration in Congress over failure of the technology and entertainment industries to protect copyrights in a digital age. The surprise statement by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that he favors developing technology to remotely destroy computers used for illegal downloads represents a dramatic escalation in the increasingly contentious rhetoric over pirated music. During a discussion of methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws. ``No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer,'' replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to deliberately download pirated material very slowly so other users can't. ``I'm interested,'' Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer ``may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights.'' The senator, a composer who earned $18,000 last year in song-writing royalties, acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, ``then destroy their computer.'' ``If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that,'' Hatch said. ``If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize'' the seriousness of their actions. ``There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws,'' Hatch said. Some legal experts suggested Hatch's provocative remarks were more likely intended to compel technology and music executives to work faster toward ways to protect copyrights online than to signal forthcoming legislation. ``It's just the frustration of those who are looking at enforcing laws that are proving very hard to enforce,'' said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former Justice Department cybercrimes prosecutor. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's senior Democrat, later said the problem is serious but called Hatch's suggestion too drastic. ``The rights of copyright holders need to be protected, but some Draconian remedies that have been suggested would create more problems than they would solve,'' Leahy said in a statement. ``We need to work together to find the right answers, and this is not one of them.'' Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., urged Hatch to reconsider. Because Hatch is Judiciary chairman, ``we all take those views very seriously,'' he said. But Kerr said Congress was unlikely to approve any bill to enable such remote computer destruction by copyright owners ``because innocent users might be wrongly targeted.'' A spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America, Jonathan Lamy, said Hatch was ``apparently making a metaphorical point that if peer-to-peer networks don't take reasonable steps to prevent massive copyright infringement on the systems they create, Congress may be forced to consider stronger measures.'' The RIAA represents the major music labels. The entertainment industry has gradually escalated its fight against Internet file-traders, targeting the most egregious pirates with civil lawsuits. The RIAA recently won a federal court decision making it significantly easier to identify and track consumers -- even those hiding behind aliases -- using popular Internet file-sharing software.
Manitoba to create greenhouse gas exchange
Manitoba to create greenhouse gas exchange Canadian Press Wednesday, Jun. 18, 2003 Manitoba is formally pursuing the creation of a commodities exchange to buy and sell greenhouse gas emission credits. The NDP government has asked Lloyd Axworthy, former Winnipeg MP and foreign affairs minister, to determine the ways and means for a carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange. Manitoba Finance Minister Greg Selinger, who is responsible for the Manitoba Securities Commission, said the province already has expertise in this area as home to Canada's only commodities exchange. However, Selinger noted that to make a CO2 exchange a reality, the Manitoba plan would require significant support from the federal government and its programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We're going to look at the whole process. . . and develop recommendations on how it could happen, said Mr. Selinger. We think we have something to offer in this area. Mr. Axworthy agreed Canada is uniquely positioned to lead the world in this important new market because it's one of the only countries in the western hemisphere to have ratified the Kyoto accord. Under the Kyoto accord, ratified by Parliament late last year, Canada is committed to reduce its emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2012 to six per cent below 1990 levels. The major question for Mr. Axworthy now is whether Manitoba has, or could acquire, the needed personnel and other infrastructure to function as the host of a CO2 exchange. Ideally, we will be trying to establish within Manitoba the elements of a trading system, said Mr. Axworthy. Ever since the establishment of the accord, politicians and business leaders have talked about creating a market to buy and sell emission credits. An exchange would allow governments and countries that emit large amounts of CO2 to pay others to keep their emissions low, thus keeping total emissions lower. Credit trading would also function as an incentive to large polluters to cut back on their emissions. Successful models for this kind of market now exist in the United States for sulfur dioxide. The Chicago Commodities Exchange is also experimenting with CO2 credit trading with a select group of large industrial clients, including Manitoba Hydro. Manitoba Premier Gary Doer, who is expected to make energy a central feature of his second term in office, has previously expressed an interest in taking a lead in emission credit trading. The province has devoted $25,000 to study the creation of an emission credit research centre on the site of the former Atomic Energy of Canada laboratory near Pinawa, Man. While there is general consensus that credits could be bought and sold, there is a shortage of hard data on how to quantify certain kinds of credits. In particular, science has not yet determined how to value so-called carbon sinks - natural vegetation and agricultural lands - which literally clean the air by absorbing greenhouse gases and release oxygen back into the atmosphere. The province has yet to make available the results of the Pinawa feasibility study. A research centre and emission credit exchange were both recommendations of a special task force report on climate change that was chaired by Mr. Axworthy.
Re: Remotely destroy computers if music pirates persist, Hatch says
I wrote: I never knew Hatch was such a Renaissance Man... Wonder what the tunes were? $18,000 in 2002 royalties... And Ian replied, and very very quickly, by the way: http://www.hatchmusic.com/songs.html I do not want to know why you have that URL so close at hand, Ian. The Hatch discography... Give Me Hope, Give Me Faith Our Gracious Lord Common Faith and Fond Emotion Ship of Dreams How His Glory Shines One Gentle Lamb Where the Marble Gardens Grow I Am Happy Climb Inside His Loving Arms Portraits of America Look For the Lord in the Mornin' How His Glory Shines Jesus... When are you Americans going to finish the Civil War and get rid of the Southern Bible Belt and Utah? Ken. -- The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma. -- Abraham Lincoln
Re: Remotely destroy computers if music pirates persist, Hatch says
And Ian replied, and very very quickly, by the way: http://www.hatchmusic.com/songs.html I do not want to know why you have that URL so close at hand, Ian. = Hello, Google, Hello. Uh huh. Suuure, Ian. :) Btw, my college roommate's father used to work for the CIA. In the 60's he and some others went to IBM requesting a Google like technology. I don't doubt that at all. Almost all intelligence is open source intelligence. The covert stuff makes for good novels, but most is out there. You just have to compile and work through it. Ken. -- I always assume that what is in the power of one man to do, is in the power of another. -- Herbert Osbourne Yardley U.S.A. cryptologist The Black Chamber
War on spam
On the one hand, I hate having to wade through 300+ email crap every day. (I have old, Web published, email addresses from media work. Those addresses have been harvested and used by spammers -- as I would imagine many in academia also have a problem with.) It would be nice to only get email from sources/people I would choose. (I actually remember those days... back in 1990. Email was almost entirely signal, no noise.) On the other hand, I don't want to regulate contact through some Microsoft-driven piece of poor legislation (from political allies like Hatch). For instance, in Quebec, there is actually talk of licensing Jehovah Witnesses to stop them from knocking on doors. I can see that as being, as Sir Humphrey Appleby would put it, the thin end of the wedge. Who would _really_ be banned from canvassing? On the other (third) hand, spammers are, in general, that meshugeneh petty bourgeois crew I mentioned before. Nothing is going to stop them, short of death. (Have any of you talked to these guys?) Ken. -- Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. -- Thomas Szasz --- cut here --- Microsoft Sues 15 Groups in Broad Attack on Spam By SAUL HANSELL New York Times June 18, 2003 Microsoft, the world's largest provider of e-mail accounts, filed lawsuits yesterday against 15 groups of individuals and companies that it says collectively sent its clients more than two billion unwanted e-mail messages. Unwanted e-mail, commonly called spam, has been a fast-growing problem for many e-mail users. The Hotmail service from Microsoft, with 140 million users, has been a fat target for spammers. The company estimates that more than 80 percent of the more than 2.5 billion e-mail messages sent each day to Hotmail users are spam. It now blocks most of those spam messages. All of the large Internet service providers, including America Online, Earthlink and Yahoo, have started filing lawsuits against e-mailers that they say are sending spam. Microsoft's suits represent the largest number filed at one time, and reflect Microsoft's willingness to devote some of its considerable resources to fighting spam. It promised more such actions to come. We at Microsoft are ramping up our efforts to combat spam, said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, at a news conference yesterday. But many spam experts say that these suits do little to actually prevent spam. At the end of the day, this is a drop in the bucket, said Ray Everett-Church, the chief privacy officer of the ePrivacyGroup, a consulting company. He said that the several dozen suits against spammers so far have had no noticeable effect in deterring other spammers. Right now the big service providers see spam as a point of differentiation, Mr. Everett-Church said. And these suits are much more of a marketing campaign than an anti-spam campaign. Mr. Smith of Microsoft, however, argued that the lawsuits were an important part of a multipronged approach to fighting spam. In addition to lawsuits, Microsoft has introduced software to filter out spam for its MSN Internet access service and will include similar software in the next release of its Outlook e-mail program. Twelve of the suits filed yesterday were in state court in Washington. They brought claims under both the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and a Washington State anti-spam law. One suit was filed in California state court, and two were filed in Britain. The defendants include many different business involved in e-mail marketing. Email Gold Inc. and NetGold, both of Dayton, Ohio, are accused of using spam to sell tools for other marketers to get into the spam business. VMS Inc. and Proform4life Inc., both of Port Richey, Fla., are accused of trying to sell human growth hormone. RHC Direct of Murray, Utah, is accused of selling videotapes to enhance job hunting skills using misleading subject headers. VMS and Email Gold could not be reached for comment. Robert Caldwell, the president of RHC, denied that his firm was sending spam. All of the recipients of the messages that it sends have requested marketing material, he said. Moreover, all of the messages identify the sender's address and phone number. They could have picked up the phone to call us rather than filing a lawsuit, Mr. Caldwell said, noting that he has not had any discussions about the offending e-mail with Microsoft. All this will do is undermine the ability of legitimate marketers to stand up and say this is what we are doing. In some cases, Microsoft was not able to identify the sender of the spam. It filed several suits against unnamed John Doe defendants. That tactic allows it to use subpoenas and other techniques to try to identify the senders. Over the last nine months, Microsoft has diverted some of its investigators who normally track down software counterfeiters to tracking down spammers. The
Re: Slicing off the top
House Discloses Itself to Be Poorer Sibling of the Senate By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. New York Times WASHINGTON, June 16 Compared with the millionaires' club in the Senate, many leaders in the House of Representatives have wealth more in line with that of successful middle managers, according to their financial disclosure forms. But the disclosure forms released today, for members of the House and the staff of the White House, also show that the upper echelon of the Bush administration includes several millionaires. One of the newest members of Mr. Bush's team, Stephen Friedman, the chairman of the National Economic Council, reported more than $60 million in assets, most of it in cash and cash equivalents. According to the disclosures, other millionaires among Mr. Bush's top advisers include Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; Joshua Bolten, the deputy chief of staff and nominee to become director of the Office of Management and Budget; and I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. The disclosure forms require officials to estimate all of their assets and debts within broad categories, with only a few exceptions, like the officeholder's primary residence and mortgage, and credit-card debt of less than $10,000. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, worked hard at reducing his debts this year, paying off between $165,000 and $400,000 to banks with money apparently raised by selling his stake in an opera house and other properties, according to his financial disclosure form. Mr. Hastert, a former high school wrestling coach, reported a pension from his days as an Illinois state legislator of $28,397. He listed assets as between $253,000 and $595,000, which includes bank accounts and a Bear Stearns mutual fund, and debts of $100,000 to $250,000. The House majority leader, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, listed assets of between $66,000 and $166,000, including $50,000 to $100,000 of ExxonMobil stock. Mr. DeLay also reported owing between $50,000 and $100,000 to Bracewell Patterson, a big Houston law firm that defended him in a civil lawsuit concerning fund-raising tactics that was filed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and dismissed in 2001. Mr. DeLay reported receiving at least $48,900 last year in donations to pay for defense of the lawsuit, including $5,000 each from American Airlines and Reliant Energy. Proportionately fewer lawmakers in the House appear to have wealth that rivals the $10 million-plus fortunes enjoyed by many in the Senate, including Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, who reported family trusts and other assets worth at least $14 million on disclosure forms released on Friday. Yet the Democrats' new leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi of California, owns vineyards, office buildings, resort and golf properties and stocks with her husband that, combined, are valued at more than $20 million and are potentially worth more than $100 million. The disclosure forms allow the value of each asset to be described in wide ranges. For example, Ms. Pelosi listed her husband's stake in the Piatti Restaurant Company in Tiburon, Calif., as worth between $5 million and $25 million. Nearly all of Ms. Pelosi's wealth derives from her husband, a successful investment banker, and the couple would benefit if the tax cut pushed by House Republicans passed, though she has argued against the plan. She voted against it, and she's said in pretty strong language that instead of investing in our kids it indebts them, said her spokesman, Brendan Daly. Like many members of Congress, Mrs. Pelosi also owns stock in companies that could be affected by other major legislation Congress is considering, including between $100,000 and $250,000 in Johnson Johnson, the big pharmaceutical company that has a stake in the outcome of the fight over how to pay for prescription drugs through Medicare. One of the Democrats' biggest earners last year was a freshman representative, Rahm Emanuel of Illinois. Mr. Emanuel, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, reported receiving $9.7 million in deferred and defined compensation from Wasserstein Perella Company, the investment bank he joined after leaving the Clinton administration. Mr. Emanuel and at least three other members of the House Financial Services subcommittee on capital markets, which is planning hearings into the operations and oversight of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, reported owning stock in one or both companies last year. The hearings were called by the subcommittee's chairman, Representative Richard Baker, Republican of Louisiana, after Freddie Mac fired its president for failing to cooperate with an internal accounting probe. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae already faced scrutiny by lawmakers who question whether the two government-sponsored companies are adequately regulated. According to the disclosure forms, Mr. Emanuel earned $27,280 from prior years' exercise of
'Straussians' in the news; the world trembles (II)
'Straussians' in the news; the world trembles (II) Clifford Orwin National Post Tuesday, June 17, 2003 In yesterday's column I began to address the allegations that a sinister cabal of Straussians dominates American foreign policy and was responsible for the war against Saddam. Many would have you believe that it's a fundamental principle of this sect to practise deceit against non-members the better to rule over them. Central to the Straussian vision is a docile citizenry, kept uninformed and easy to manipulate through perpetual fear of external attack (Linda McQuaig, The Toronto Star, May 25). Not that Ms. McQuaig has ever read a word of Strauss. It's clear from her column that she hasn't. She's just repeating what other leftish journalists have been saying. But where there's so much smoke, there must be fire, right? Well, don't count on warming your hands over it. Yes, a few figures in the Bush administration once took courses with the late Leo Strauss (1899-1973), whose defence of liberal democracy I discussed yesterday. Of these few, however, only one, Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul D. Wolfowitz, is in a position to make policy, and even he is only in a deputy position to make policy. As Peter Berkowitz has pointed out, this whole scenario of a Straussian takeover of the U.S. government is wildly implausible. It supposes that President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld, and National Security Adviser Rice, non-Straussians by all accounts, are stooges and dupes [of their subordinates]. It's also worth noting that of the supposed Straussians in the administration, Wolfowitz, by far the most influential, is also the least a Straussian. A student of math and science as an undergraduate, he switched to national security studies. While he did take a couple of courses with Strauss, his mentor was the late Albert Wohlstetter, a logician and operations analyst with no connection to Strauss. Wolfowitz is an imposing figure. As even his detractors concede, he combines an incandescent intelligence with great dedication to public service. He has served loyally in five administrations, Democrat and Republican alike. Yes, he has President Bush's ear. He's earned it. But others also have Mr. Bush's ear. Rumours of a coup ( Straussian or otherwise) have been greatly exaggerated. Much of what has appeared in the press is sensationalism pure and simple. I mean not just the accusation that the Bush administration engaged in massive deception in the months prior to the war against Saddam, but the claims that in doing so it was following the teaching of Strauss. The question of whether the administration misled the public, or was itself misled, will doubtless be subject to further scrutiny. It still remains to be shown that it engaged in any deception of anyone. But our present concern is the further assertion that if deception did occur it must have been due to the influence of Strauss. All right, then. Have you ever wondered why politicians aren't completely truthful? Why they always use the truth selectively, in the service of partisan rhetoric, and occasionally misplace it entirely? Well, now you know. They've been corrupted by reading a certain scholar of ancient political philosophy. Well, my goodness, this couldn't have occurred to them on their own, could it? Politicians didn't use to dissemble, did they? As if this weren't dumb enough already, there's another crucial problem with it. There's simply no basis for it in Strauss. When journalists attribute these views to him, they never quote him. They can't. Strauss never argued that democratic leaders should deceive their peoples. The statesmen he admired were ones of impeccable integrity. Yes, Strauss did write about a certain mode of deceit, which he called esoteric writing. Indeed he claimed to have rediscovered this practice after centuries of oblivion. But this kind of prevarication was practised not by rulers on the ruled, but by certain of the ruled on the rulers. Strauss first expounded this theme in his Persecution and the Art of Writing. The art in question was precisely a response to persecution, the resort of the powerless and unconventional (including philosophers, who as such are both of these). It was not a technique of wielding power. A recent example is the Aesopian writing that dissidents practised under Communism. They hid their meaning from the authorities while still conveying it to their more alert readers. Strauss's greatest -- and most disputed -- scholarly claim was that the whole history of Western thought had to be reinterpreted in view of his rediscovery that philosophers had practised this mode of writing. Strauss's enemies mutter about the rule of philosopher kings by means of a noble lie, but these are features of Plato's thought, not Strauss's. There is great irony here, for in fact Strauss broke with conventional scholarship by denying that even Plato intended this as
Re: Susceptibility to Marx
Ellen wrote: I recall reading some poll results where a majority identified the line from each according to his ability to each according to his need as coming from the US Constitution. You might mean a 1987 Boston Globe magazine poll which claimed that about half the American population believes that the U.S. Constitution is the source of Marx's phrase, From each according to his ability, to each according to his need... As to your quote's source beyond Marx and the TV camera (that is, predating them)... I think it traces back to Henri de Saint-Simon and his paper who said something like it: From everyone according to his capacity, to every capacity according to its work. Nothing is created whole cloth. As Michael once put it, Marx nudged it along. Ken. -- Nihil est in intelleectu, nisi prius fuerit insensu. -- Thomas Aquinas
Postmodern Pooh
Sorry to have gone on too long about this book (Postmodern Pooh, Crews)... and talked about postmodernism itself. After this post, I will not mention Pooh again. But I have just finished it... reread it even. I also actually searched for the footnote citations and found every single one. As one reviewer correctly put it, these people are all barking mad. Anyone interested in the nature of criticism, or who just wants to see a few pompous figures skewered on their own prose, please pick it up (40 bucks Canadian, grumble). I was reading it on the weekend with kids on Niagara and later Lake Ontario. It ain't as funny as the Yes, Prime/Minister books BBC released, it's more subtle than that. But I think it should be required reading and testing before another prof gets tenure. Do you see the errors of their writing styles? Failure to comprehend the humor would, of course, mean denial of tenure. Here are my two fave parts... (though Orpheus Bruno's The Importance of Being Portly is also a gem of satire.) First... The seminal paper of Carla Gulag, The Fissured Subject: Historical Problematics, the Absolute Cause, Transcoded Contradictions, and Late-Capitalist Metanarrative (in Pooh) (undoubtedly a piece included in Rethinking Marxism). Carla clearly adores Frederic Jameson -- who is, she says, Christ and Christopher Robin all rolled into one. We can only steel ourselves to wait for the inevitable emergence of a new international proletariat that will be markedly more unified and militant than the last. This will happen, of course; it is Historys plan. As Enrique Dussel points out in a book co-edited by Jameson, The globalizing world-system reaches a limit with the exteriority of the alterity of the Other, a locus of 'resistance from whose affirmation the process of the negation of negation of liberation begins. Thus we must regard Late Capitalism and its cultural offspring, postmodernism, as positive and necessary mutations of the Monopoly Stage. But if so, there is an important corollary to be taken to heart by Marxist cultural workers here and now. We need to stop resisting postmodern corporatism and its packaged pleasures no, better, we need to help them along, secure in our knowledge that we are thereby greasing Historys rails. As you might expect, once again Fred Jameson can be found far ahead of the curve. It is time, he shows, for Marxists to climb down from their rickety barricades and cultivate a specific enjoyment of the potentialities of the material body. Look at the progress he himself has already made: I write as a relatively enthusiastic consumer of postmodernism...: I like the architecture and a lot of the newer visual work, in particular the newer photography. The music is not bad to listen to, or the poetry to read; ... subgeneric nattatives [of the novel] are very good, indeed. ... Food and fashion have also greatly improved, as has the life world generally. As this last sentence implies, its not enough to indulge our eyes and ears; we should also be out there on the front lines buying postmodern merchandise. So much the better if it has been produced by alienated multinational labor, subsistence wages, denuded tropical forests, mergered corporatist cunning, offshore laundered finance, and cross-border ruses of hedged arbitrage and import-duty evasion. All of those practices must gain momentum in prepartion for the coming proletarian explosion. Instead of sitting around reading a tame modernist text like Pooh, then, a good postmodern Marxist might want to log on to the Toys R Us Web site and order a vertically integrated Disney knockoff such as a My Interactive Pooh(TM) or a Bounce Around Tigger(TM). The only stipulation that Fred places on Late Capitalist pleasures is that they be Allegorical: -- that is, able to stand as a figure for the transformation of social relations as a whole. His classic examples set forth in Postmodernism -- is the delight that can be had on the elevators and escalators of a postmodern hotel like the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles. Even a hotel, Fred discovered, can harbor a teasing Political Unconscious that invites us to loosen up and live a little. It had never previously come to my notice that elevators and escalators, those dialectical opposites, as Fred says, zip us back and forth so breathtakingly and even alarmingly that we cant even find the interior boutiques. Thats why and here comes the allegorical part the commercial tenants are in despair and all the merchandise is marked down to bargain prices. Surely that is a foretaste of the coming worldwide crash that will be so gratifying. I propose that you yourselves, instead of rushing off
Sex.com and monopoly
The biggest legal defence to the legendary ineptitude of VeriSign (nee NSI) has been this notion that there is no intellectual property in a domain name. It's a license. I guess that is a way of saying it is a monopoly and not liable for damages for incompetence on the part of the license granter. That is an interesting legal theory. I have followed this case closely from the ground level. I can't believe it went to the US Supreme Court. The implications of the decision would perhaps hurt VeriSign, but, as someone else noted about Boeing, right now, you can't cripple the institution because it carries such a load. Slap wrists but don't whack knee caps. The .com registry is a bit like that. As to the actual damages Kremen was awarded... I doubt they would be that large had Cohen actually showed up. Since he didn't, the judge took whatever accounting hyperbole was at hand to hit back. Ken. -- Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad. -- Diogenes the Cynic (perhaps aptly so-called) --- cut here --- Sex.com finds owner at last Sex.com has proved very lucrative for cyber-squatter BBC News Friday, 13 June, 2003 The long and steamy legal battle over who owns the internet address sex.com has finally come to an end. The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from cyber-squatter Stephen Cohen, who was claiming ownership of the domain name. The ruling is expected to set a precedent about the ownership of website addresses. The court heard that Mr Cohen had obtained the lucrative sex.com address - thought to be worth over $500,000 a month in advertising space alone - illegally from Gary Kremen. Mr Kremen had originally registered the domain name with Verisign, known at the time as Network Solutions. But Mr Cohen allegedly sent a forged letter to Verisign, asking the address to be handed over to him. Online landlords Verisign complied without checking the letter or contacting Mr Kremen. Mr Cohen proceeded to create a multi-million online porn empire using the name. The rejection of Mr Cohen's appeal against a $65m damage award puts an end to six years of legal wrangling. It is seen by legal experts as a landmark case because it holds the .com registry Verisign accountable for allowing the erroneous transfer of ownership to take place. It is also a test case of whether an internet address can be treated as property, with domain owners given legal rights in a similar way to offline landlords. Huge bill Now Mr Kremen faces an uphill struggle to recover his costs because Mr Cohen is a fugitive from justice in Mexico. Forcing Verisign to accept blame for transferring the domain name in the first place could prove equally difficult. Verisign maintains that domain names are not legal property and as such it cannot be held accountable for giving it away. If it loses, as legal experts expect, Verisign would face a huge legal bill and fines of up to £100m.
Re: Runaway help desks
Sabri wrote: Today, I went to Home Depot to buy some halogen lamps. After I picked up the lamps, I proceeded to the check out area and came across this automated cashier there: You scan your own items, swipe your credit card and all. What will happen to the human cashiers if one of these days these automated ones replace them? Seth wrote in reply: The Home Depot example you mention is striking. I noticed it a month or so ago in Sacramento. We are seeing the rise of dead labor (machinery) and the demise of living labor (people). I first saw this last Yule season, at the Loblaws (Ontario grocery chain) at a downtown Toronto superstore. Big open area to scan. The store designers placed it in full view of the main entrance/exit. My kids (under 10) were with me -- they gave it a thumbs up. They got to scan and bag the items. As we were doing it, there were many perplexed folks arriving/exiting -- and looking on. I would hear them whispering to each other, trying to figure it out. Then, inevitably, realizing it was self scanning. In terms of what will happen to the human element of ringing in and bagging... I suppose it will replicate what bank machines did to bank tellers. Reduce their number. I don't see that as bad, of itself. But, in the context of a world in which that saving of mundane human labor is usually squandered into unemployment insurance stints, desperation, and other wastes of life and energy... it won't help anybody in this lifetime. But nothing wrong with losing the cashiers and bagboys of the nation. They can't be relocated to Indonesia. Ken. -- It is a principle that shines impartially on the just and the unjust that once you have a point of view all history will back you up. -- Van Wyck Brooks America's Coming of Age, 1915
Slicing off the top
Walking thru the Art Gallery of Ontario with a friend, she commented on the wall of contributors as we were leaving. I said, off-handedly, it was a wall of people with too much money. She said it was _because_ of these people that we had just enjoyed a couple hours. I said that was technically true, but, if we just took all that wealth off them, we could give it to ourselves and use that wall for something else. She laughed, and we headed for lunch. It was just an impromptu aside as we left. But, through lunch, I was wondering what the flow of funds would mean in straight fiscal terms, both in terms of squandered excess and misdirected investment. (A tiny group, they would not be missed in any social sense -- they prefer invisibility anyway.) If that toppermost wealthy elite were packed off on an ice-floe (Canadian tradition with elders) and the economic function they had previously provided were simply thrown into some (for immediate email purposes) vaguely-defined pool that was equally-vaguely controlled by some lever of elected body... Would life be any better? Ken. -- An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous. -- Henry Ford
'Straussians' in the news; the world trembles
'Straussians' in the news; the world trembles (I) Why not blame the war on a sinister clique which has duped the public and even the President? Clifford Orwin National Post Monday, June 16, 2003 Hardly a day passes now when I don't wake up to read about myself in the papers. I've become one of the hottest topics in journalism. In European, American and even Canadian newspapers, the articles proliferate. The world continues prostrate in awe or rage toward the Straussian legions who allegedly control American foreign policy and brought us the war against Saddam. The Straussians, c'est moi. True, unlike my friends in the Bush administration, I just belong to the academic wing of our outfit. My idea of wielding power is to force my classes at the university to meet for more hours than are listed in the calendar. We spend those hours poring over old works of political philosophy, often ones written in ancient Greek. No women throw themselves at me, seduced by the scent of power. (A few might find it cute that I'm so earnest about teaching the classics.) As for the ambitious, whether male or female, they're off studying commerce and finance. Yet if you believe what you've been reading lately, my friends in the administration and I are all part of the same vast conspiracy. We're out to subvert American democracy (and, by implication, Canadian). According to this scenario, the division of labour is as follows: I teach subversion and they practise it. While their roles in government are nominally advisory, in fact they're in charge, having hoodwinked their superiors including Mr. Bush himself. It's got to be the most successful conspiracy going today. With the possible exception of the Elders of Zion -- but there's an overlap, since many Straussians are Jews. Straussians haven't entirely escaped the attention of journalists in the past. But the current obsession with them is novel. It reflects exasperation on the left over the Bush administration's continued popularity following the war in Iraq. And it takes advantage of the failure so far to find the anticipated weapons of mass destruction. Hey, why not blame the war on a sinister clique, who have duped the American public and maybe even the President himself? Why not cast the war as a defeat for democracy rather than a victory for it? But how do Straussians come in? Who are they and what's the basis for pinning such stuff on them? Straussians are admirers of Leo Strauss (1899-1973). A German Jew, Strauss emigrated in 1932 and taught in the United States from 1938 until his death. He deeply impressed many of his students, who went on to impress many of theirs, and so on through the intellectual generations of which we have now reached the fifth. This enterprise just keeps going and growing. But it doesn't dominate the world, or even the universities. From day one, Strauss attracted not only admiration but intense antagonism, which has persisted until the present day. Much of this hostility arises from the fact that Straussians are reputed conservatives. Indeed, according to their enemies, Straussians are anti-liberal, which is to say they may just as well be fascists. Straussians, following Strauss himself, are indeed conservative in a certain sense, but what they're trying to conserve is liberal democracy, on the one hand, and a Socratic approach to philosophy, on the other. As a young Jew in Weimar Germany, Strauss foresaw the disaster looming over Germany and its Jews. In his youth he was an active Zionist, and remained a lifelong supporter of Israel. He was personally acquainted with Martin Heidegger, whom he admired as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. But Heidegger was a Nazi, and Strauss understood his thought too well to dismiss his Nazism as accidental. To him, Heidegger's uncanny combination of theoretical greatness and moral evil confirmed the fundamental immoderation that lay at the core of modern thought. Modernity, Strauss went on to argue, had always combined a political project with an intellectual one. Indeed it had redefined theory itself as something practical. Modern thinkers had aspired from the beginning to transform the conditions of human life so radically as to bring into being a whole new world. The premise of this project was that a vast increase of human power would lead to a proportionate increase in happiness. In politics, as in every realm of human life, this project was by definition boundless. This fostered excessive hopefulness, and with it moral fanaticism culminating in tyranny (and worse than tyranny). Marxism and fascism were thus typical in their very extremism. Heidegger's new thinking not only swept pre-war Germany but has remained the dominant mode of Western thought ever since. It underlies all forms of what calls itself postmodernity. In response to it Strauss offered an amazing suggestion. He raised the possibility that premodern thinkers, whether of the classical or biblical tradition, had
Kids and Uncle Karl
In thread [PEN-L] economics and sociology JKS wrote: My 10 yr old son asked me yesterday, What kind of scientist was Karl Marx? We had been talking about Galileo, Newton, etc. And German idealism (They sort of believe the world is like the Matrix, right, Dad?) (He made me insert the word like into that sentence just now.) I toild him the question about Marx was a good hard question, and after some reflection the best approximate answer was that he was a social scientist whose interests ranged across all the disciplines in social science as wel call them today, and some. We have a strange household. My 9-year-old girl has been gently introduced to Marx through her own developing idea of fairness. (I don't particularly care what label Marx is given, scientist or not. As to children, labels are tools to a direct goal.) Fair is transformed continually with each age... but, as she is defining it for herself at the moment. I'll stick with a positivist spin on what fair means. In terms of the actual explanation of Marx as a person (or influence), the first real explanation I offered involved a globe and the bombing of a place that a few of her friends in her class that happened to be from the country bombed. The globe spinning and pointing out Iraq didn't really register, nor talk of oil reserves, nor power and influence... But oppression did. (I didn't use that word, but she grasped it.) My fave story about Karl's personal life involve his attempts to explain to his girls what he was writing about all the time for newspapers. Politics. Eleanor talked about dad talks about Poland and Ireland -- and her own understanding of the unfairness of it. (The poor Poles.) In the end, that is really what it comes down to: Why do some children grow up with privilege and others do not? I could tell she thought about it. We are all born into a world not of our own making... so who made it this way? And who keeps it this way? I hope she keeps thinking about it. Economists help answer the latter. Marx dealt with the former. Answering the latter without the former is a real desolate place to be for a kid... (you end up with something like postmodernism -- endless nervous chatter, signifying nothing.) Ken. -- Psychoanalysis, under the guise of curing people of mental ailments, has been essentially a movement that replicates itself and whose central purpose is to replicate itself. Or as I once put it, it produces more converts than cures. -- Frederick Crews UCB Globetrotter, 1999
Re: Kids and Uncle Karl
JKS wrote: Years ago I was stuck in traffic due to roadwork with my daughter, then aged about 4 I am going to report you for child exploitation... doing roadwork with your daughter. No wonder you are a rightwingsexistbigotoppressordupe. Ken. -- From the contagion of the world's slow stain he is secure. -- Shelley
Re: frontline: home | PBS
Michael writes: pbs apparently has policy prohibiting persons being interviewed for broadcast from using terms 'capitalist' and 'capitalism', reference to 'business elite' is ok, info comes from michael zweig who was recently subjected to said policy... Assuming that is true (and I have no experiential reason to doubt the policy, I have seen it before), THAT is a far better reason to understand the lacklustre response of the North American working class in late capitalism than some postmodern internalizing about changing your mind sets or if you can just find the right way to 'view' Pooh. I can see just fine. Right now, media are the same thing as machines. Production from people. And there is an overseer, in most cases, telling you what to say. It ain't psychology, just control. Ken. -- In the Beginning, there was Nothing; Then God said, Let Their Be Light. And there was still Nothing, Only you's could see It. -- Dave Thomas, Sermonette
Re: Runaway help desks
Hi Sabri -- I have nothing against the emancipation of humans from mundane tasks Ken but the fact that the cashiers and bagboys of the nation can't be relocated to Indonesia is a problem, is it not? Yes it is a problem. A good problem. So what now? should be the slogan of every non-Yanqui party. But there is really nothing. Not an offer of anything... The Yanquis could be the richest nation on the planet. But it is the stupidest... in median. How will they survive in a society which is not willing to offer them an alternative? They can't. I think that was my point... without retraining... and that is not going to happen without control of what? Funny as it seems, self-interest is at the heart of labor... Ken. -- The truth is this: the march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope. -- Robert E. Lee Letter to son
The -ation Nation
Michael Perelman wrote: I forgot about the Poole speech. It sounded dramatic, then everyone poo-pooed it [is that ok, Ken] so I forgot about it. Your sub-contextualization of a previous concretization of thought in relation to the Pooh-ization of post-modernization is a micro-critical subalternalization of empirical class disenfrancisation macro-ized relative to the hegemonic destabilization of the deeply-rooted teddy bear-fixation (the sublimation of a projected cathartic syblingization of all sorts of internal-externalization) inherent in the aspiration of the pseudo-liberalization of the pan-classization of educationalization such that the only rectification would be the reclamation of the idolization of innocence against the neo-machinations of fascist-supplication in the politicization of basic human gyration when removed from the disimperialization-implication of de-masculinization of the power player determination of gender realization in the school yard of anti-co-creative-humanization (viz., anti-monad-determination) when the substantiation of the objectification is, after all, really only the penultimatization, though not the ultimatization, of political nullification. So, yes. It is okay. You spelled poo without an h. Ken. -- The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the cracks in the tea cup opens A lane to the land of the dead. -- W.H. Auden As I Walked Out One Evening
Re: Waiting for Lenin
Chris has put forward some ideas. I am not an economist, but I would like to offer some ideas for other areas to cover, or sub-areas. ENVIRO: I didn't see anything about green business policies. I just finished a private sector project on sustainable development. Whatever else one wants to say about it, it is subversive in the sense it undercuts much of the business ethic embraced by the right. First, monetizing carbon emissions puts cost back on coal and the like. Thus, it supports development in alternative energies like wind and solar and small hydro. Poll after poll, year after year, shows the general public wants those energy sources. They are popular. However, the current system, provides hidden subsidies to old energy sources. Second, the inherent definition of sustainable development is subversive in that it connects everything. SD is about the triple bottom line. That is, business cannot merely operate with a traditional single bottom line, it has to account for social and environmental costs. This brings non-business opinion to greater prominence (not dominant, of course). In this regards, it is not surprising to see universities starting to offer combination MBA-Enviro programs. I believe all six law schools in Ontario now offer Enviro-Law programs. MEDIA: Centralization of ownership is already heavy. Canada has a longer history of investigating this, for obvious reasons. It can be a popular issue as well as an educational one. Showing the public how media really works is productive in a political sense. My formal training is broadcast journalism. I always enjoy anything that lets people look behind the curtain at how it works. For instance, after all these years, I still get a smile every time I watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the audience sees its first live reporter -- who, on TV monitors appears to be at the scene; but, being in studio, the audience sees he is actually a few metres away from Stewart, against a blue screen backdrop. Fighting the FCC tendencies permits critique of mass media manipulation. Chris wrote: Labour policies: Completely premature at this end of the 21st century to try to abolish wage slavery as part of an electable programme. They need to redo their focus groups to find out how to achieve consensus between aspirational and disadvantaged workers. By no means impossible because even the aspirational workers all know family members or friends who have suddenly become disadvantaged. Right. E.g., the western IT labor sector is currently a disaster area. It went from aspiration to desperation in five years. It crammed life times of industrial labor reality lessons into a short period. These people are both energized and demoralized at once. Despite the grand pronouncements of the new economy, in the end, nothing was different. The same old rules applied. And, unless these same people want to go through that again, or want their children to go through it, they had better build a better safety net. Likewise, they are very likely to want to see more Waksal's locked up in real prisons. Ken. -- According to UN estimates, the richest fifth of the worlds people consume some 66 times as much as the poorest fifth, including 58 percent of total energy. And they own 87 percent of the world's vehicles, a major source of greenhouse gases. And the two hundred and twenty-five people who comprise the super-rich have a combined wealth of over one trillion US dollars, equivalent to the annual income of the poorest 47 percent of the worlds people. Surely history tells us such imbalances are not sustainable. -- Maurice Strong, 2001
Skewering stilted language and theory: F. Crews
Another thing I think Aldo is right about is language. Write in common parlance. Academia has a terrible tendency to write in a private language that keeps it dissociated from the public. Along that line... Someone suggested that I should read Postmodern Pooh since I like humor that skewers pompous writing styles. (As well as writing which, like Joyce in Ulysses, adopts a style and perspective of the seat of consciousness, the person.) Anyone else read this? It sounds wonderfully and skillfully nasty, at least per the attached review... Here's a couple examples of academic theory in action: Postmodern postcolonial theory and Pooh: If the ravages of imperialism are ever to end -- if the colonising Heffalump one day lies down with the formerly colonised lamb -- history may record that the first tremor of productive change was felt here, today, as we dear friends and scholars recontextualised a mere space of interrogation as a veritable site of intervention and, dare I say it, of contestation as well. A reviewer wrote: And to close proceedings, seminar organiser N. Mack Hobbs (apparently a parody of Stanley Fish) explains how much cleverer he is than everyone else in a paper You Don't Know What Pooh Studies Are About, Do You, And Even If You Did, Do You Think Anyone Would Be Impressed? I think many online Marxists have written variations on that same paper in Marxism lists! :) I've noticed a couple folks herein have roots to Berkeley. Do any of you know this Crews fellow? Any personal thoughts on him? Ken. -- What I like doing best is Nothing. It means just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering. -- Winnie the Pooh The House At Pooh Corner --- cut here --- Pooh's Pendulum Eleven scholars deconstruct the billion-dollar bear. (Oh, bother.) BY TIM APPELO Seattle Weekly Published February 5 - 11, 2003 LIKE BILBO'S RING, Winnie the Pooh empowers or destroys all who touch him. Pooh wrecked the literary career of his creator, A.A. Milne, and so embittered Milne's neglected son, Christopher Robin, that the boy spent most of his life a penniless bookseller, declining dime one of Pooh money and refusing to see his rather nasty parents even when his dad was dying of cancer. Walt Disney was thrilled to acquire rights to Pooh; now his faltering company is addicted to the bear, who generates perhaps one-quarter of Disney's $25 billion annual revenue. Next month, Disney nemesis Bert Fields and O.J. nemesis Daniel Petrocelli square off in a lawsuit against Disney brought by the ex-Broadway showgirl who owns the original Pooh marketing rights. A collateral victim of the fracas is the only great artwork in the post-Pooh canon: the literary-criticism satire of Frederick Crews. In 1963, Berkeley English prof Crews penned the legendary The Pooh Perplex, learned essays by fictitious critics that lampooned academic fads: Marxism, New Criticism, Freudianism. Since then, Crews wrote real scholarship and dazzling popular books that treated Freud and the recovered- memory movement like Godzilla treated Tokyo. Meanwhile, Disney made Pooh central to pop culture, and academic culture went barking mad under the influence of Derrida, de Man, and da rest of the postmoderns. When David Duchovny left Yale's deconstructionist English department to star in The X-Files, he was moving in the direction of normality. Crews faced two hurdles in writing his new Perplex sequel, Postmodern Pooh (North Point Press, $12), the transcript of a panel discussion at an imaginary convention of the Modern Language Association in which fictitious critics debate 2003 fads like Zizekian Lacanianism and Counterhegemonic Post-Gramscian Marxism. For one, authorities forbade Crews to use E.H. Shepard's classic Pooh illustrations--it would be disrespectful to A.A. Milne and Ernest H. Shepard as well as damaging to the brand. This was odd, since Disney's rebranding of Pooh was so distorting that Shepard called it a complete travesty. Could Crews do worse? No matter: The book's parodic prose is colorful enough without Pooh drawings, and the ursine cover image dramatically illustrates what a monster our favorite teddy has become. Crews' second challenge was tougher: to do justice to his satiric targets, modern critics so crazy it's hard for satire to exaggerate their hilariousness. Crews solves the problem by inventing imaginary critics--some based on readily identifiable academic stars--and anchoring their cuckoo lucubrations with quotes and footnotes from actual academic publications. Thus the scholar Das Nuffa Dat (from Calcutta via Eton and Oxford) is Crews' creation, but when Dat cites Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on the post-colonial attempt at the impossible cathexis of place-bound history, it's all too real. Similarly, Carla Gulag, Joe Camel Professor of Child Development at Duke University, is imaginary. But Duke University
Will Saddam sightings rival Elvis?
Saddam paying to have U.S. troops killed: Chalabi Exile leader says Saddam sighted on several occassions NEW YORK (AP - June 10 2003) -- Saddam Hussein has been seen north of Baghdad and is paying a bounty for every American soldier killed, the leader of an Iraqi exile group said today. Saddam has $1.3 billion US ($1.8 billion Cdn) in cash taken from the Central Bank on March 18, is bent on revenge and believes he can ``sit it out and get the Americans going, said Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. In Washington, Pentagon officials said Tuesday they had no information that Saddam was alive and offering bounties for killing U.S. troops. Chalabi said Saddam also bought suicide vests for himself and his secretary April 1 from the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, citing very credible information. The ousted Iraqi leader has been sighted on several recent occasions moving in an arc from Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, around the Tigris River toward his home town of Tikrit and into the Dulaimi areas to the west of the Tigris, Chalabi said. The latest sighting was about two weeks before Chalabi left on his current U.S. trip - and the best sighting was three days old. Now, he's put a price on American soldiers. He will pay bounty for every American soldier killed in Iraq now. This has been spread around in the western part of the country, Chalabi told the Council on Foreign Relations. He said the casualty rate for American soldiers is close to one a day, which is not good. Chalabi, 58, who left Iraq as a teenager, has been mentioned widely as a future Iraqi leader - though he denies any ambitions to lead the country. He also has many critics who are opposed to anyone ruling Iraq after spending so many years abroad and who oppose his business dealings in Jordan. Chalabi was critical of U.S. efforts to restore security and public services. He said the INC asked the United States to train Iraqi military police to go in with American forces to control the country and stop any looting, but this wasn't done. Now, there are between 150,000 and 200,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, including about 55,000 in Baghdad, and there is still high insecurity and lawlessness, he said. The United States has been trying to deal with the killing of U.S. soldiers by putting more troops into areas where they have been attacked, but Chalabi said the Americans were sitting ducks for terrorists. Instead, he said, the United States should move quickly to create an Iraqi security force that is armed, paid and under U.S. command. The ratio should be about one American to 10 Iraqis, he said. This can be done in six weeks with help from community leaders to weed out criminals and members of Saddam's Baath party, Chalabi said. They can actually provide order quickly, he said, and also restore water, electricity and other public services. If the United States establishes an Iraqi security force, Chalabi said, it could then substantially reduce the number of American troops in Iraq. My own view is the United States should stay in Iraq by treaty - have military bases, and keep between 25,000 and 50,000 troops in the country, he said. Chalabi said U.S. troops didn't move quickly and aggressively enough to seek out key scientists involved in weapons programs, and some have left for the Gulf, he said. The weapons of mass destruction are in Iraq, he said. Finding Saddam, his son Qusai and the concealment teams hold the key to finding the weapons, Chalabi said.
Re: Skewering stilted language and theory: F. Crews
JKS wrote: Crews is an English prof at Berkeley, best known to me as as withering, merciless, and brilliant critic of psychoanalysis. Apparantly he is a recovering Freudian,a nd decided to make life hell for the remaining Freudians. I am not sure whether he has radical politics, but he sure is smart! I have since found that. The Berkeley Globetrotter site has an interview with the emeritus prof... he says he taught there 34 years. And it includes many pics of his grandkids... which seem real and not staged, copyright to a daughter of his no doubt. (You can find them there, if you want, I won't provide a link to kid pics.) His politics seem radical for his chosen lot (literature -- forgive him his sins)... The Globetrotter interview shows he has an understanding of Marx well beyond sovietologists... but it is still wrapped up in his Freud thing and reaction to Romanticism. Fair enough. He doesn't strike me as unfair at all. And his grandkids are cute as hell. Ken. -- Some people want to achieve immortality through their works or their descendants. I prefer to achieve immortality through not dying. -- Woody Allen
Re: Fwd: Waiting for Godot
Hi Aldo -- I enjoyed your post. I like the 3 chaps you happened to mention in the opening, so that part wasn't my fave. Aside from that, I agree, and I like the style. I have often thought of the Godot parallel. That was the thing that attracted me most to Mr. Marx, the early idea of his about being part of the world, not commenting on it. I see politics as chess, or any other strategy game in which conditions change. Attack and defense are important. It is not the death matches of Lutheran era religious-political affiliations. I encourage an energized Democratic party as part of the process. I am not a Democrat, but, without them, you get the Republicans stacking the Supreme Court and reducing life to still worse conditions and making anything else impossible short of extreme mismanagement. I can support many things without becoming an -ist of it. On the other hand, Democrats are only energized when there is a mass of support for them. And that isn't there... Right now, there is just nothing in the US. (I'm in Canada, a different subject.) But that doesn't mean it wouldn't change in a flash. Previous geo-politicists have noted that things can change according to meal schedules, for instance. Marxists are, unfortunately, currently very depressing. They are like a braukellar gang crying in their beer about the old days. But Marx himself was inspiring. He was intelligent. cut through media mythology (such as he knew it) and always attached himself to something happening. When he was at the crest of a wave, he was gun-shy, true, he didn't want deaths on his hands. But so what. Movements are not directed by people. They are aided by people. So, I applaud you trying to present real world policies. Only when there are alternatives, are their alternatives. :-) And they can sometimes seep into the public discourse in the oddest of ways... Ken. -- Man will never arrive. Man will always be on the way. -- Carl Sandburg
Re: Fwd: Waiting for Godot
Sabri the anarcho-Sufi-Leninist writes: This is why I call myself an anarcho-Leninist with a touch of Yunus Emre, the sufi humanist That explains where the good humor comes from in your posts. :) We could all use more sufi influence... Ken. -- Fundamentally, there is no more morality in world affairs than there was during the time of Ghengis Khan. Just different factors to be considered. -- Noam Chomsky
Re: FW: The New Economy Remains With Us
Jim D wrote: I'd say that the new economy involved two major sources: 1) government: the Pentagon-created and -subsidized ARPAnet, along with all sorts of other government research subsidies. Absolutely. There is nothing involving the Internet that would have happened without a progression of events: a) the silly idea (based on fear in the ruling class) b) the investment in the silly idea c) the granting of the silly idea to universities (test ground of silly ideas) d) thousands and thousands and thousands of students who were introduced to the silly idea in school and then looked around for it when they left school. The New Economy was entirely based on the creation of demand. There was no free market involvement until demand created it. (As to Point 2, Intellectual property, Jim is right that Microsoft will never allow another Microsoft. Take the lesson from IBM... they never did allow another IBM.) Ken. -- We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys. -- Eric Hoffer
Doug's book
Is that a vanity press? Ken. -- Invest in land. They have stopped making it. -- Mark Twain
Re: Doug's book
Grin... Is that a vanity press? Is that a joke? You got it the first time. :) Or just Canadian provincialism at work? We have provinces! You have states! A second gold star! Ken. -- Negative. We are not in the Eighth Dimension. We are over New Jersey. -- Buckaroo Bonzai
Re: Never Walk Alone
There is a simian-like figure accepting Prozac... and he is arguing with Stanley Kubrick about being the owner of the bone he is about to throw into space... Ken. -- The main figure is a horse's ass, head down, thinking of a drink but afraid of a pretzel.
