RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: WSJ - "Is This A Great Country?"
>Money does not cause happiness, but it sure as hell is often necessary >for the conditions within which _other_ things can bring about >happiness. Didn't Lou Reed say "Money can't buy you love, but it can get you a Cadillac to go look for it"? Tom ---------- Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 Cochabamba BOLIVIA Tel/Fax: (591-4) 424-8242 eFax: (413) 280-5234 [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] --
RE: Re: economics question
UNCTAD's report is very good on flows, actors, rules; also, look at the World Bank's annual Global Development Finance; much on FDI there. Both can be had in pdf from their respective websites. For Lat Am, CEPAL in Chile does the same analysis for the region. ------ Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 Cochabamba BOLIVIA Tel/Fax: (591-4) 424-8242 eFax: (413) 280-5234 [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Anthony D'Costa Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 4:01 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:36055] Re: economics question Try UNCTAD's World Investment Reports (annual)--with various themes each year. xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor Comparative International Development University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx On Mon, 24 Mar 2003, Ellen Frank wrote: > Can anyone point me to a good book, article or > other source for data illustrating the extent/increase in > economic globalization. I'm not looking for trade data > (which is easy enough to find) but things like FDI, percent > of MNC sales/revenues/profits earned abroad, etc. I > figure someone has put together some figures like this! > Thanks for any help. > > Ellen Frank > >
NO TO WAR in Cochabamba, Bolivia
Title: PK on deficit fears Just got back from our rally and march. A great group of about 400 people, highschoolers, retired workers, nuns and anarchists gathered at noon in the central plaza, did a couple of rounds, and then marched to the US Consulate’s office in a fancy office building some 10 blocks away. (Also in that building is Duke Energy, who generates the power I am at this moment consuming, and TransRedes, the Shell/Enron affiliate, that pipes “Bolivian” carries gas and oil to buyers.) All along the way we received supportive waves, honks, cheers. Arriving at the US Consulate’s office, we did all kinds of chanting, singing, and general carrying-on. The nuns led a rousing rendition of Leon Gieco’s “Solo le pido a dios”, now a standard anti-war number, made famous up there by Mercedes Sosa. Not to be outdone, the radical students stared chanting for parts of Bush’s genitalia. I was next to the nun contingent, and was delighted to see some of them chanting along, and when the chant died down, cracking up over their public transgressions. What an awful day; what a great day. -- Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 Cochabamba BOLIVIA Tel/Fax: (591-4) 424-8242 eFax: (413) 280-5234 [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] --
RE: fascism?
Jim D notes, ... but pen-l is the right place for quibbling. If I remember correctly, the words "corporation" and "corporate" had a different meaning for Mussolini than it does today. He was referring to tripartite organizations of capital, labor, and government designed to smooth over social conflicts, etc. (which somehow always served capital and the government and suppressed labor interests). The current "merger of state and corporate power" in the U.S. is very different. Comment: Exactly. There is a wide and deep vein of analysis on Lat Am "corporativismos" that explores these tripartite organizations. Sometimes they were only bi-partite, given weak private sectors and-or the State acting as general capitalist (eg Bolivian mining). And a note: when the contradiction between accumulation and legitimation under these corporatisms reached crises, in different places and times it spawned formidable independent labor or social movements. Thus did "corporatized" (then illegalizaed) labor serve as the basis for ousting dictator Banzer in the late 70s here. A great treatment of the subject, with a very creative gendered focus, can be found in: Molyneux, Maxine. 2000. Twentieth Century State Formation in Latin America. In Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, edited by E. Dore and M. Molyneux. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Tom -- Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 Cochabamba BOLIVIA Tel/Fax: (591-4) 424-8242 eFax: (413) 280-5234 [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Devine, James Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 12:20 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: [PEN-L:35281] fascism? [was: RE: [PEN-L:35276] Rick Mercer says, Sorry America] W.R. Needham's message ends with a quote: "Fascism should be more properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." Benito Mussolini Just a couple of days ago, I had a conversation with my son's fencing instructor. He said that the US is moving toward "Italian-style fascism, not German-style fascism." I nodded sympathetically, since it was the wrong place for quibbling... Jim
RE: Re: [Fwd: ROBERT K. MERTON, SOCIOLOGICAL GIANTON WHOSE SHOULDER WE ALL STAND]
I had a fruitful brush with Merton about 3 years ago. I was doing factory ethnography here, exploring power on the shop floor, the wage relation as a practical matter (the practices of paying, paying less than stipulated, paying late, sometimes not paying at all) and how workers accommodate and resist. These were small Bolivian shops, pretty despotic. I found a fascinating Merton´s work on the sociology of time. A passage in Bourdieu's Pascalian Meditations tipped me off to this work; B was talking about how the state exercises an excruciating, intimate form of power by making people wait. I checked out Merton; and noted that around me in the shops bosses were making people wait, and in the waiting the secured powerful leverage. In thinking this through Merton's notion of "socially expected durations" -- as social construct -- was very helpful. The idea that what we are willing to tolerate in terms of when something ought to come to pass is delicately negotiated balance; and over time, when institutionalized, those balances can become social facts themselves. ---------- Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 Cochabamba BOLIVIA Tel/Fax: (591-4) 424-8242 eFax: (413) 280-5234 [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Hoover Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 5:49 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:35056] Re: [Fwd: ROBERT K. MERTON, SOCIOLOGICAL GIANTON WHOSE SHOULDER WE ALL STAND] >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/25/03 08:20AM >>> Original Message Robert Merton was the co-founder (with his graduate advisor Talcott Parsons) of American structural-functionalism, the central strand of US sociology -- a tireless institution-builder who helped anchor sociology in US academe and public life and establish its international hegemony. <<<>>> leo lowenthal wrote somewhere - maybe in _an unmastered past_ - that merton told him that german social and philosophical thinking was incompatible with u.s. methodology...ll later become research director of voice of america before heading off to berkeley... influence of merton on political science indicated by both pluralist and elitist theories, each is derivation of structural-functionalism...sf theory attempts to explain how societies survive as systems, concern is with examining how societies adapt and change to maintain long-term stability...underlying assumption is that societies persist as long as members share consensus on fundamental social, political, economic values... stable social system can be explained in terms of functional adaptability of its institutions and shared values of its people, social systems decline or are destroyed either by institutional inflexibility/unsuitability or by persistent/severe internal conflict...consensus and gradual change are 'functional', conflict and institutional rigidity/weakness are 'dysfunctional'... pluralist and elitist theories are two sides of same functionalist coin, former assumes that capitalism and liberal democracy are values consciously and spontaneously shared by most americans and that system of dispersed political power, limited gov't, incremental political change keeps society going...latter sees same shared values as outgrowth of 'power elite' manipulation/indoctrination, elites have means - including force - to hold system together... michael hoover
benign war
>From institutional investors at Citigroup: - In terms of overall strategy, global equity markets remain in a sort of 'twilight zone' of enormous uncertainty ahead of a potential US conflict with Iraq. However, emerging markets continue to outperform developed markets. - If our expectation for a quick, successful and benign war with Iraq proves correct, oil prices should fall sharply and we would expect a strong rebound in emerging markets. This should be supported by around May/June by the start of a new upturn in the annual G7 leading indicator series. ---------- Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 Cochabamba BOLIVIA Tel/Fax: (591-4) 424-8242 eFax: (413) 280-5234 [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] --
[PEN-L:4356] Re: civil society
I see a problem in the discussions of "civil society" out there: the term is used by indiscriminatley by authors, pundits, etc. descriptively, prescriptively, and normatively. As description, I see no problem coining a term to refer to non-state. Marx did; and as I understood it he meant the realm of necessity, commerce, bourgoise society. Nowadays, though, it often alludes to non-state AND non-commercial ... without specifying how one can reasonalby be non-commercial (one can, of course, relatively speaking, but one still has to specify HOW if the description is to hold). But as a discription this is about as perniciously ideological as "non-governmental organization", behind which all manner of shit goes down. As normative statement about how society oughta be ... fine, but I'll leave the withering away of the state discussion for another day. As prescription, I've seen it called from from the south (Latin America) from Hernando de Soto free enterpriser types, and principled leftists struggling post-dictatorship, Gramsci in mind, to build bulwarks against the return of facisms. Thus, the comment: >'The contemporary obsession with "civil society" began with the attempt of dissident East European intellectuals to develop a credible theoretical grounding in the early 1980s.< is terribly ignorant of other sources of political practice, debate, innovation, ideas. The point here is we need to separate the wheat from the chaff. In the mid to late 1970s thre emerged in Bolivia an amazing amalgamation of human rights, left parties, peasant and labor organiztaions, all figthing under the banner of a return to democracy; to get Banzer out. And they did! Want to call that "civil society"? OK. They did, to some degree. Nowadays I steer clear of the term ALWAYS. Like "development" -- which in the US might well refer to 300 linear meters of strip commercial real estate -- using the term ususal hides more than it reveals. And ususally, I find, there is a better way to talk about whe I mean anyway. For exmaple, here I'm not interested in civil society per se (Lion's Club?); rather, certain kinds of "actors of civil society" who carry a progressive vision of how things ought to be, and work on it daily. Like (many) unions, rights organizations, etc. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4239] Re: Re: Colombia
Hi Mike; glad to see you're still there. On your note: >Friends, > >Louis's post on Columbia, NACLA, etc. is very interesting. The msot >recent Lingua Franca has an article on Roberto Unger, Brazilian legal >scholar turned political agitator. Unger has certain leftist ideas but >these are mixed with a love of the market and sharp criticism of Marxism. >A good recipe for going nowhere. > >michael yates Lou's post was very good; yes there has been a remarkable sea chagne in people in the US and their positions on movements in Latin America. A comments on Lou's note from my perspective. The Colombian situation is very complicated, but one thing is not: the US's role in financing violence there. Regardless of how you feel about the FARC, calling for an immedaite end to financing counter-insurgency (under the aegis of attacking "narco-guerillas") seems like a no-brainer. See the WOLA website at www.wola.org: they have done great analysis, reporting, follow up on the dirty wars being fought there in the name of drug warring. Last note: trade unionists ahve taken a horrific beating in the dirty war there; I don't have the numbers handy, but hundreds have been killed for exercising thier right ot organize in the last years. I was with some Colombian compañeros in trades recently, and they tell of living under constant death threats, etc. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4203] Eric Wolfricardo_calla@megalink.com, lagos@albatros.cnb.net
Dear PEN-L: I just heard that Eric Wolf, whose work I and Proyect have cited a couple of times in the last week, has just died of cancer. We have just lost a formidable intellect, and fine human being. For those of you who'd like it from a more authoritative source, here is Eric Hobsbawm on Wolf's _Europe and the People Without History_ (University of California, 1983): Europe and the People Without History is a the work of a powerful theoretical intelligence, but one informed by a lived sense of social realities. Behind Wolf's analysis, subdued in style but expressed with a notable gift for concise and lucid exposition, there lies a personal and intellectual trajectory which has taken the author from Vienna and the North Bohemian working-class communities devastated by the Great Slump, to the United States and the plantations and peasants of the thrid world. Like all good anthropologists, he is a "participant observer" -- in this case of the world history which is his subject. This book could only have been written by a "son of the shaking earth", to quote the title of one of Wolf's own works. It is an important book, which will be widely discussed. The centenary of Marx's death is not over yet, but it may be doubted whether a more oiginal work exemplifiying the living influence of that great thinker will have been published in the course of it. Essay reprinted in Hobsbawm, _On History_, New York: New Press, 1997, p. 177. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4189] Re: Re: Trailers
At 07:12 PM 5/03/99 -0500, you wrote: >> Anyone have any idea of the number of Americans who live in trailers >> a/k/a manufactured homes? >> Tom L. > >1 in 16 people nationally, 1 in 6 out west (there are Nevada counties >where manufactured housing comprises more than 50% of housing stock)... >manufactured housing increased 230% between 1970s and 1990s... >currently, 1 out of every 3 new home purchases is manufactured >housing, up from 1 out of 4 15 yrs ago...Michael Hoover Question: does "manufactured housing" always mean on wheels? Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4137] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Illuminaughtiness
On conspiracy: The cases you all note involves some measure of illegality (Iran-contra was an end-run around the Boland amendment, etc.). But in terms of the portagonists' attitudes, proclivities, practices, etc., how is what we're talking about so different from, say, the design of advertising campaigns? Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4117] Re: Political Economy Texts
Bits of Cypher and Dietz's The Process of Economic Develpoment might be useful. At 03:19 PM 3/03/99 +, you wrote: >We are planning to introduce a new interdisciplinary program in >"Global Political Economy". Among other things, it involves >introducing one term intermediate theory courses in political economy >to replace the regular mainstream micro-macro courses now being >offered. The problem is, are their any appropriate theory texts that >could be used for two such courses. I welcome suggestions. > >Paul Phillips, >Economics, >University of Manitoba > > Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4083] RAND documents
I just got the 1998 RAND documents catalogs. Two items of interest: 1. The Zapatista "Social Netwar" in Mexico. (MR-994) RAND takes a look at the internet front of the EZLN struggle. "...offers a thoughtful analysis of a seminal case of "social netwar" ... The Mexican government's reponse to the insurgency aroused activists to "swarm" -- electronically and physically -- from around the world into Mexico. Thus what began as a violetn insurgency in an isolated region mutated inot a nonviolent though no less disruptive "social netwar" that engaged activists from far and wide and had sweeping repercussions for Mexico." Hell, one thing is to hear it from techno-topians; another is from RAND. If they write it up, you MUST be doing something right! 2. Universal Access to Email: Feasibilty and Social Implications. (MR-650) Aruges that "Diverging trends in access based on income and education are placing large groups of US citizens at a significant disadvantage." (www.rand.org) Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4081] Re: Re: secret societies and the originsofcapitalist sociability
At 09:35 3/03/99 -0500, you wrote: >Tom, is that Taussig , Mick ? I just realized it probably is as you are in Bolivia - _The Devil and Commodity Fetishism_ Yup. Many -- myself included -- have major problems with his interpretaion of the Bolivian materials in the book. Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4066] the crisis
>From today's NYT: "Monetary policy in the next few months will necessarily have to be characterized by a restrictive slant so long as the transitory effects of the devaluation have not disappeared," Fraga said on Friday. He warned that "the next few months are going to be difficult," with unemployment likely to rise and businesses to go bankrupt. Arminio Fraga, president-designate of the central bank of Brasil Here in Bolivia the Chamber of Eastern Agriculture (CAO), responsible for about 40% of the country's export earnings, have called for drastic emergency measures including restructuring their debts and using the military to make sure contraband Brazilian goods don't sneak across the border -- not "free trade" but a trade free buffer zone. I don't suppose it'll be done, but given this government's propensity to find military solutions to all manner of problems, you never know. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4065] Re: Re: practical question
Thanks to all for suggestions on used books. A note: I don't use Amazon.com because their overseas shipping system is prohibitively expensive, while the Seminary Coop (see them at www.semcoop.com) are cheap, independent, and a cooperative. Interestingly, their international email sales are booming, with lots going to Brazil, I'm told. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4055] practical question
Dear Friends: I need to get used copies of out-of-print books (like Buroway's Politics of Production) sent down to Bolivia. I do my book buying through email with the Seminary Co-op in Chicago, but they don't deal in used books. Any suggestions? Many thanks- Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4054] Re: circularities (and class)
Gar wrote: >Actually I would say that treating classism as just another >factor to be considered along with racism, sexism, disability rights etc. >is not a bad idea. A more formal way to put it is that oppression occurs >along certain axis. Class is one. Kinship is another (including gender, >homophobia, cross-gender, transgender ect. ). Culture is another (i.e. >race, nation, etc.). Why automatically assume that class oppression is >the base, ... Jim Devine responds: >This framework (which sounds like it's straight out of Z mag) works okay to >figure out the facts at a given moment; I don't reject it as being totally >wrong. It's a first approximation. > >However, it is radically incomplete. Crucially, it ignores the basis of >"classism," the larger institution of the capitalist mode of production. >Capitalism uses its class system (the subjection or subsumption of labor by >capital) to finance aggressive accumulation of capital, the basis for the >metastasizing of capitalism to dynamically impinge on all the other >institutions, sometimes transforming, abolishing, or subordinating them, >depending on the internal resilience of those institutions. > >I don't like the base/superstructure metaphor. Better would be an emphasis >on _relative degrees_ of importance in the process of human history I don't agree, in terms of proceedure. If I understand you Jim, it seems you're moving towards building classificatory sytems instead of trying to understand processes. For me, the key question is how mode of production and mode of life (experience under capitalism in the broadest sense) are articulated, while, as you note, dumping the base/superstructure stuff. On that problem, and sounding a good bit like Karl himself, Biernacki notes in a study of German vs. British class construction in factory practices: "Material constraints assume their social effectivity only as the are encoded in culture; culture operates only as it is materialized in the concrete media at hand. The two forces are different moments in the same social process." (202) Who is doing this kind of analysis? Well, Biernecki in his tome _The Fabrication of Labor_, and others doing good labor histories. Here's one such historian, Don Kalb, on his approach. After asserting the DESPERATE need to get good, anthropological accounts of workworlds and class processes, he cuts back to the big picture: the EQUALLY DESPERATE need to not "lose" capitalism as system in explaining how stuff works, and suggesting what to do about it. I really like his approach because it takes your comment, Jim: >But how these laws work out in practice depend on the other key >part of capitalism: the resistance (or lack thereof) by those that >capitalism tries to subject.) and builds it a whole voacabulary of ways to tackle the issues (clarly standing on the shoulders of Raymond Williams), while being quite critical of the Frenchies Lou loves to villify. In his book _Expanding Class: Power and Everyday Politics in Industrial Communities, the Netherlands, 1850-1950_, he writes: "Thus, while a micro-perspective may register these scattered fragments of cultural power all over the spheres and spots of daily life, a relational concept of class may suggest their common base in the shifting social balances of industrial capitalism as a mode of production, accumulation, and everyday life. These shifting relational balances should be thought of as possessing a force and directionality of their own. They develop a momentum that is felt throughout the whole chain of interdependent actors, setting limits and exerting pressures on the motives and actions of widely scattered sets of people who can often hardly be aware of the origins and implications of the process, nor of their actual interdependencies, or are aware of them in thoroughly different terms. In combination, then, hegemony and class amount to a radical deinstitutionalizing and dynamizing of the concept of power. However, they do so without granting it the transcendental and sui generis character it has acquired through the work of Michel Foucault and other radical post-structuralists such as Jacques Derrida. Power is never simply anywhere. It is embodied in the specific interdependencies between sets of people as described by the concept of class, and derives its direction and impact therefrom. Power, in my view, becomes fully internal to the dynamic study of culture only when it is wedded to the expanded study of class and class formation." Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4053] Re: secret societies and the origins of capitalist sociability
On secret societies Henry wrote: >All this is small time compared to the Free Masons. And Charles notes: >Masons are a sort of a proletarian class even in ancient times, like miners, no? A bit of class-ish analysis. Margaret Jacob, in a fascinating article titled "Money, equality, fraternity: freemasonry and the social order in eighteenth centruy Europe," suggests by the late 1700s, these frat boys had a big hand in creating the political/market culture attendant and amenable to emerging capitalism. In their world some of the things that are now "common sense" got a dress rehersal, like the silly idea we can be politically equal under capitalism. She notes: "... this essay examines the majar secular form of the new sociability, the Masonic lodges of the 18th century, in realtion to what they tell us about the earliest experience of living an imagined "equal" in a social context, in this instance voluntarily created, dominated by money and hence the market" (102) An early template, if you will, for burgerliche gesellschaft. And a fascinating note on the "secrets" of these societies as an outgrowth of thier bougeois-ification. Initially, she asserts, the "secrets" "refer to the traditional skills of craftsmen as well as th signs and words used by properly initiated guild masons to ssignal to one another thier status, and hence their right to work [in skilled trades]." But with the autumn of guilds and the advent of capitalsm, such forms of work -- and status structures of workerws -- were emptied of a "material" referent: no longer tied to work/skills, they became frat houses, with ever more elaborate ceremonies, initiation rights, etc. She suggests the mumbo jumbo (secrets) came later, when lodges came to be dominated by "gentlemen and merchants", who decisivley displaced the (elite) skilled worker types. (Repeat: the bourgies invented that shit. Nouveau tribalism? Like getting all tatooed and pierced up nowadays?) Originally, the guilds had been kinda counter-cultural, tempering the power of merchants and burghers in city life, "more protectionist and collective than ... individual and purely market." Then the burghers and merchants took over. "Out of their [the gentlmen/merchants bucking to get into and control lodges] struggle ... emerged a form of genteel sociability that bore little relation to the interests of handworkers or guildsmen. Other interests were to be negotiated in the new lodges, and central to their activities was the effort to mitigate and negotiate the effects of the market, to ameliorate (and obscure) the inherenent inequality of monteary transactions, as well as the vast inequalities of birth and rank endemic in every 18th century European society." "This fraternity of guildsmen has become a "society" of gentlemen and merchants, now styled as master masons, who vote and elect, who possess thier liberty just as craftsmen once possessed thier freedom." (122) And this, in turn, became an important model of civil society: "... elite sociability in the 18th century Masonic from signaled the birth of relative affluence and high literacy as the characteristics of those who made civil society [read: bourgeois society] their own." (130) And in closing: "Rather than finding in it [the lodge at this "late" date] the impulse to level and hence destroy the modern commercial order, we may now find in the rhetoric and practice of socialbility an affirmatio of market principles, an almost mindless celebration of the secular, of the prosperous, and of an imagined equilty that reamns elusive for those without the money needed, then and now, to participate fully in modern civil society." (135) Sound familiar? See the full article in Haskell and Teichgraeber, _The culture of the market: historical essays_. Cambridge University Press, 1993. Tom P.S. Yoshie notes: Charles Brown wrote: >>But if we know all about them, how are they secret ? >It's called an open secret. If nobody knew about them, there would be no >point in joining them. Taussig did a great piece on the role of open secrets in society -- that is, the effects of all acting as if we don't know something we do, knowing that others know and know we know. Like congressmen fucking around, say. I'll try to find the citation. Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4008] Re: Re: Re: Re: Postmodernist Marxism
Regarding: >My feeling is that our task is conceptually easier (and practically harder) >than many of our theorists might think. Knocking down material walls with >the very material action those material walls prevent seems to be the go. I just found this tidbit, that goes a way to justify my current line of work (always nice): "Anthropological training, especially the chaotic experience of all-too-immediate fieldwork, makes it difficult to miss Marx´s point that our own political economy, like that of other peoples, is both made and chosen -- and is thus open to the possibilty of change." (from Marxist Approaches in Economic Anthropology) Now, while you can certainly be "out in the field" and a reactionary schmuck, I rescue from this quote the idea that finding cracks in the wall is done best in "chaotic experience". Tomorrow the Pepsi plant, operated by Peruvian capitalists, is to be shut down here by angry workers, fired up over the firing of a leader yesterday. Their demands? That they be "allowed" to organize (against the 12-14 hour days they're working). We're going to be at the takeover, to see what "very material action" might be afoot. Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4007] Re: Re: Re: Postmodernist Marxism
Maggie writes: >One of the problems with the American Left has been >the slavish following of the writing of different marxists as if they could be >applied outside the material and historical times during which they were >written. "The exmaple of 'labor' strikingly shows how even the most abstract categories ... are a product of historical conditions and retain their validity only for and within the framework of these conditions." Marx, Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie Don Carlos a standpoint epistemologist? Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4001] Re: Re: question on Kapital
At 04:01 PM 1/03/99 -0800, you wrote: >I also find the selection of Marx >and Engels' work on CD rom to be useful. Where/how do I get the CD Rom? I saw it addvertised on the MR Press website, and sent an email to enquire, but they NEVER f$%&king answer email (or faxes, or letters for that matter -- I've tried it all). Anybody know what's up with the business side of MR? Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3992] Re: Re: Why Read Butler?
At 04:29 PM 1/03/99 -0500, you wrote: >> Paris is Burning", an interesting documentary on gay African >> American streetgangs and their fight for their own cultural identity. > >wasn't above about Harlem ball subculture from which Madonna ripped >off voguing?...as I recall, one person in the film did compare the >Houses to street gangs and the balls to gang wars...Michael Hoover Yup, that's the one. A must see. The multiplicity of opresions is palpable. Notable is the class issue: a lot of the problems the guys in the film face is poverty. Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3979] question on Kapital
I need to get a complete Capital in English. Any suggestions on versions, publishers, translations? Thanks! Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3978] Class Action
Anyone read this? Comments? Class Action: Reading Labor, Theory, and Value (Contestations) by William Corlett Cornell University Press, 1998. The publisher, Cornell University Press , August 28, 1998: Class Action attempts to contest capitalist economics and to strengthen workers' organizations while respecting the importance of all members of society. It reveals the numbers of human lives marked for extinction by capitalist ideology and often erased by traditional Marxism. Award-winning author William Corlett looks at the plight of homeless and jobless people as an extreme case of how Americans' sense of self-worth has become entangled with the circulation of money and commodities. Within a theoretical framework that draws from the works of Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and Jacques Derrida, Corlett reinterprets some of Marx's best-known texts and moves toward a plan for direct action. Relocating union organizing and anticapitalist struggle to the least-valued sites in communities can, Corlett argues, encourage people to share resources in mutual support and defense while practicing irredentist maneuvers in the name of a Labor underground. Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3941] oops, sorry
Dear PEN-L: I just sent a note to the whole list that was meant for Mike Yates. Apologies. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3940] anthro. sources
--=_920193057==_ Dear Mike: You sent a note a bit ago asking for references on labor, anthropology and the global economy. Here's my short list. A good, grounded primer on innovation in social analysis from anthro/cultural studies is Renato Rosaldo's Culture and Truth. For your area of interest, see especially the chapters on "Imperialist Nostalgia" and "Border Crossings". To my mind, the best ethnography of labor in the world system is still June Nash's We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us (Columbia U Press), and not just because it's about Bolivia. At the point of production (mines) in a global capitalist system, she looks at work, culture, etc. A MUST read. The Annual Review of Anthropology has excellent "state of the art" articles. Each article usually cites about 100-200 ethnographies and analyses done in the last 10-20 years. I would recommend the articles "Ethnographic Aspects of the World Capitalist System" by June Nash (she was a pioneer in the field), from 1981. There has been a tremendous outpouring of work since her 1981 review, but it is still worth a read. For an update of sorts, see the article "Political Economy" by William Roseberry, in the 1988 Annual Review of Anthropology. "Political Economy" reviews a number of the debates in anthro. regarding global capitalism, culture, etc., that have stirred in the discipline (see below). Roseberry is key contributor. His Annual Review of Anthropology entitled "Marx and Anthropology" is attached, and I highly recommend his book Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture, history and Political Economy (Rutgers Univ. Press, 1991), especially section 2 on political economy. And you might look him up on email; he's at NYU, I think. Nash also did a good article couple of articles that appeared in American Anthropologist, one on the global capitalism and subsistence production/economies; another on local social movement responses to IMF structural adjustment packages in Bolivia. I don't have the references handy, but I'm sure they're easily found in a university library. For a very good reading of political economy of world systems from the perspective of anthropologists asking "how might this stuff be useful for us?", see Marcus and Fischer's chapter "Taking Account of World Historical Political Economy: Knowable Communities in Larger Systems" in Anthropology as Cultural Critique (Univ. of Chicago Press). A number of ethnographies are mentioned, central among them We Eat the Mine by Nash and Taussig's Devil and commodity Fetishism (see below). Another must read for ANY student of capitalism, history, anthropology (etc.) is Eric Wolf's _Europe and the People Without History. It's a very grounded Marxist/anthro. exploration of colliding modes of production over the last 500+ years. The theoretical section on Marx and modes of production is really excellent: clear, concise, accessible. I would recommend it for all sorts of classes, not just anthropology. Stanley Mintz's Sweetness and Power: the Place of Sugar in Modern History (Penguin, 1985) is also a classic (and only 214 pages long). It's a political-economic and anthropological history of sugar, looked at from both ends of the commodity chain -- both the plantation/slave economy in the Caribbean, and the emerging mass consumer society in Britain, where sugar quickly became an "essential" need. He uses the commodity to trace linkages and the production & transformation of culture. Very readable, great for undergrads. Michael Taussig did a polemical book The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (University of North Carolina Press, 1980) from a reading of Nash's work in Bolivia and his own work in Colombia. See the notes on it in Marcus and Fischer (citation above). Nash didn't like the use of her material, and the Wolf and Mintz school took him to task, which erupted in the Taussig-Mintz debate on history, capitalism and the study of commodities in anthropology. It is was a lively and enlightening debate: the "schools" talked past each other, but stated their business quite well (see it in Critique of Anthropology, vol. 9, no. 1, 1991). >From the more recent po-mo-y school, one of my all time favorites (though rough going and a bit slap-happy at times) is Arjun Appadurai's Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy, reprinted in Bruce Robbins' The Phantom Public Sphere (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1993). The article first appeared in a journal entitled Public Culture. I puruse the journal every time I'm in the US; they publish some real gems of cultural analysis of global capitalism (and a lot of crap too). A number of John Borneman's essays appear in his new book Subversions of International Order (SUNY, 1998). Borneman is unique, perhaps, in "studying up", that is, finding the "savages" of his studies in the global North. This book of essays is wide ranging but always provocative and insightful. In various essays t
[PEN-L:3936] Re: Why Read Butler?ON.EDU>
Dennis writes of Butler: >It's all interesting stuff, at least to me (but then, I'm into the >literary thing). Lots of peole I respect respect Butler (like Dennis, my compañera, and many others). But try as I might, I just can't read more than about 1.6 pages before I get tuckerd out by the lingo. By default, not as a matter of conviction as it is for Lou, I fear I may never read her. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3927] subsumption, again
Dear friends: I just found a great little summary on the subsumption thing ... if you read Spanish. As I've talked around with people here, it appears there was some sustained interest in the topic a while (20+ years) back, as people stuggled with issues of peasantries, artesans, etc., and their relation to the debt-led capitalist development that later led to the "lost decade". Since then, well, neo-lib ideology has regined supreme, and talk of subsumption (etc.) is viewed with derision, along with most things marxist. If anyone wants the article, I can send it on. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3866] Re: The Vietnam War Era and the Sixties
Stephen: Sounds like a good class. How about also tacking on the "vietnam syndrom" on the end, as that thing that had to be overcome so "the US" could once again stand tall, the Central American wars of the 1980s, etc. My comment is prompted by a concern that kids see US military interventions as part of long, sordid history. If you decide to throw in some intervention in Lat Am stuff for good measure, I can help. Tom At 05:24 PM 25/02/99 -0800, you wrote: >I am currently involved in planning an undergraduate "cluster course" ... Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3864] Re: How capitalism corrodes character
I read Richard Sennett's book, and liked it. Very much in the Studs Terkel line of exploring social realtiy, but with a good bit more specuation about the general drift of things. Anecdotal? yes, but we NEED anecdote to suggest "flexibility" is a trap. After all, one person's flexibility is the rigidity demanded by stockholders re: thier rate of return. And the parts on how one has to willy nilly re-furbish and refashion oneself as commodity for fickle labor markets is great. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3783] Re: Bourdieu & class
At 04:12 PM 23/02/99 -0500, you wrote: Charles wrote: "class" is defined by relationship to the means of production; and detailed scientific analysis includes differentiation between owners of very small amounts ... (etc.) Regarding Bourdieu & class: Kevin Yelvington, a white guy from the US academy, went to Trinidad to work in a consumer goods factory for a year as factory floor prole among mostly afro-carribean working women, south asian bosses, and a white factory owner. The result is Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender and Class in a Carribbean Workplace (Temple Univ. Press, 1995). He uses Bourdieu, I think, quite well, to show how "class" and membership in it is a complicated at the level of lived experience, which is central to the problem of classes acting "as classes". He notes Bourdieu's discussion of four types of capital (economic, social, cultural and symbolic) and suggests that "the overall class structure [in the factory context he studied] representes the total amound of capital (of all kinds) possesed by various groups Much class conflict revolves around the marshalling of symbols into ideologies that make a certain congelation of resources (such as captial in its various forms) legitimate." (p. 31) In particular, "social capital" gave him a way into thinking and talking about class, gender and ethnicity together, such as he saw it there. Even better: he goes on through some pretty thick descritpion of factory life to show how this way of thinking about stuff does have powerful pruchase on life as folks there live it. I for one am going to source now, to see what else Pierre has up his sleeve, and whether I agree with Yelvington's read of Bourdieu. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3755] Re: Re: Postmodernist Marxism
Doug notes: >The notion that women maquiladora workers >find something liberating in factory work (amidst the harassment and >exploitation) comes from people who've actually talked to them. And those who do (Tiano, for example, in her book _Patriarchy on the Line_, or Ong in her book on Malaysia, Spirits of Resistance) come back with some complicated answers, suggesitng that for different women the answers are yes, no, yes AND no, sometimes, etc. (This is not ofcourse to suggest that factory work is "liberation", etc. etc.) The cool thing is that they take the problem serioulsy, and really try to understsnd folks on thier own terms. I rescue from these efforts some important on the cultural stuff of class fromation, sort of EP Thompsons of our times. And this is a very real, very useful product of the cultural turn, or pomo, or whatever. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3571] request for info
Dear Friends: A participant on PEN-L during much of 1997-8, I'm off now to concentrate on a project we've started on internationalized capitalism and how it is lived by workers here in one part of Bolivia. At present we are in desperate need of some marxist interpretations/critiques of the what has come to be called the "urban informal sector". We're interested in such critiques on two levels: as economic reality (lots of peculiar little enterprises in a capitalist sea) and ideology (a depiction of things that often obscures more that it reveals). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Please send leads, ideas, etc. to the email address given below. Many thanks! Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1722] H. Zinn on Iraq bombing
IRAQ BOMBING "ANOTHER LIE," SAYS HISTORIAN ZINN [Immediately after President Clinton announced the bombing of Iraq today, Mother Jones called Boston University historian HOWARD ZINN and asked for his take. After a few minutes, he e-mailed this forceful accusation:] President Clinton has just told another lie, this time not about the relatively trivial matter of his sexual activities, but about matters of life and death. In explaining his decision to bomb Baghdad, he said that other nations besides Iraq have weapons of mass destruction, but Iraq alone has used them. He could only say this to a population deprived of history. The United States has supplied Turkey, Israel, and Indonesia with such weapons and they have used them against civilian populations. But the nation most guilty is our own. No nation in the world possesses greater weapons of mass destruction than we do, and none has used them more often, or with greater loss of civilian life. In Hiroshima hundreds of thousands died, in Korea and Vietnam millions died as a result of our use of such weapons. Our economic sanctions are also weapons of mass destruction, having resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. Saddam Hussein may well have weapons of mass destruction, he may indeed be inclined to use them, but only the United States is actually using them, and at this very moment, people are dying in Iraq as a result. However evil Saddam Hussein is, whatever potential danger he may represent, he is not, as the president said tonight (telling another lie) a "clear and present danger" to the peace of the world. We are. And, as the president said, if there is a clear and present danger we must act against it. It is a time for protest. We are living in times of madness, when men in suits and ties, and yes, a woman secretary of state, can solemnly defend the use, in the present, of indiscriminate violence -- they do not know what they are bombing! -- against a tyrant who may use violence, in the future. The phrase "clear and present danger" has therefore lost its meaning. The phrase "weapons of mass destruction" too has lost its meaning when a nation which possesses more such weapons, and has used them more often, than any other, uses those words to justify the killing of civilians "to send a message." We who are offended by this should send our own message to our demented leaders. Howard Zinn is professor emeritus of history at Boston University, and author of _A People's History of the United States_. Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1684] Re: Re: Re: Social Democracy and Utopia
Brad writes: >feeling that we today owe a pretty big debt to Harry S Truman... Mccarthysim? NSC 68 and it's legacy? Nope; I don't buy it. Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1683] Drug Smuggling by U.S. Marines
In the DoD budget presentations on the DoD role in the "war on drugs" there's always a big line item of prevention; that is, to prevent soldiers from getting stoned and trafficking drugs. See below, from The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue #71: 5. MEDIA SPOTLIGHT: Drug Smuggling by U.S. Marines a Growing Problem Last Sunday (12/13) the Los Angeles Times reported that more than fifty members of the U.S. military have been investigated for drug smuggling in recent years. The piece highlights the realities of prohibition enforcement and the fact that even the world's strongest military is not immune from corruption. This was a concern that was voiced strongly by numerous military leaders during the debate, in the 1980's, over whether or not America's military ought to be deployed in service to the Drug War. You can find the Los Angeles Times article online at <http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/STATE/UPDATES/lat_marines1213.htm>. Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1675] Re: craven, pinochet and iraq
Micheal laments: >All the while, we remain unorganized Many of us on this list are taechers, and I imagine many of you, like me, fancy that every once in a while something happens in a student, something important, on the basis of the learning opportunites we structure. Not organizing, I know, but a bit-o-something to hold onto in the cold winter months. Here's my story from this semester's study abroad program here in Bolivia: It has been my experience that if you don't do your teaching job well, you hear about it immediately and vociferously from dissatisfied "customers". On the other hand, if you do alright, or even great, you might get a word or two at semester end, perhaps even a small gift (I got New York maple syrup this semester). At the risk of sounding whiney, the acknowledgement is seldom commensurate with the effort, concern, creativity, even love we put into our study abroad programs. But then, every once in a long while, and often quite unintentionally, acknowledgment comes, and with a power that makes even our best efforts seem small. Such was the case this semester, and Tito Tricot's (Chile AD) essay "Pinochet Must Pay For His Crimes -- It's Something Personal" and one young man's courage were the central elements. (I should mention that we spent some time looking at the Pinochet arrest this semester. The current president of Bolivia, Gen. Hugo Banzer, was a brutal dictator in the 70s and collaborated with Pinochet in hunting down, repatriating, torturing and killing people, a program know as "Operation Condor". Thus, when Pinochet was arrested, a lot of past history Banzer wants buried became daily front-page news.) The acknowledgement came in the introduction to a student's independent study project. The project was based on interviews and participant observation in the gay community of Cochabamba. The student took a long time to choose the subject; at first he wanted to look at problems of water and irrigation in neighboring arid valleys. Clearly he was struggling with whether to do something so close to his own feelings, sense of self, and in the context of study abroad group dynamics which can be intense. Once decided, he initially intended to do portraits of gay cochabambinos in order to give young gay people references in their own processes of coming out and being gay in Cochabamba. However, he found the context and material gathered did not lend itself to that format, and instead used the information gathered to write an introductory, accessible text on the experience and struggle of feeling gay, coming out, and being gay in Cochabamba today. It is meant as a support text for gay men in Cochabamba, and it is very well done, with lots of good quotes. In addition he did an accompanying paper explaining objectives, methods, and results of the process. The following is from the Introduction to the accompanying paper. --- Introduction >From my personal journal, October 26th, 1998: "Though in general I've made it a rule to not write in retrospect, I think I should record the way I felt in Sucre Saturday night ... Sometimes those things that inspire us, that hurt us, that really make us think come in the most unexpected places. After a discussion of the Pinochet arrest, Tom read us an email from one of his Chilean friends [Tito's essay]. In chilling prose, it detailed the torture the man had endured during the Pinochet dictatorship. At first I felt disconnected and guilty. My life, it seemed, never had and never would feel such pain. Then I thought of Matthew Shepard, the gay man murdered recently in Wyoming, his tortured body lashed to a split rail fence. At that moment I felt a surge of fear and pride. At that moment, I realized that, like it or not, I too am part of a struggle. For some time now, I've fought, even rejected, my gay identity. To do so is to disgrace Matthew Shepard, in fact, to disgrace anyone who has ever felt the pain of oppression however big or small. As tears poured down my face, I realized the fight before me" After struggling with the decision of whether or not to do this project for weeks, now I ask myself how I could not. This is for Tom's friend in Chile, for Matthew Shepard, for my gay friends here in Bolivian and my friends back home. This is for every man and every woman who has ever lived in a society that chose to oppress them for whatever reason, be it the color of their skin or political ideology or for simply loving the wrong person. Most importantly, this is for me. It is an affirmation of who I am and who I am to become. I am part of a struggle. A struggle that doesn't end a the gates of my university or even at the borders of my own country. Though I am painfully aware that this project is only a small contribution to gay Bolivia's struggle for recognition and can not co
[PEN-L:1573] Re: BLS Daily report
We read: >BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1998 [snip] >Outflows of foreign direct investment from rich to poor countries are having >only a limited negative impact on employment in source economies, according >to the Bank for International Settlements. ... "Fears that jobs are being >destroyed in the industrialized countries when multinational enterprises >invest in low-wage countries are only in part supported by the evidence," >according to a working paper prepared by the bank. ... The authors point >out that because of the low degree of substitution between employees in >parent companies and their affiliates abroad, even where there may be some >displacement of home-country workers due to Foreign Direct Investment, "such >effects are likely to have been only moderate" ... (Daily Labor Report, >page A-9). Comments anyone? This would seem to really challenge the "exporting manufacturing and other good jobs" thesis of globalization. I suppose we'd first need to know what "only in part" means. And what exaclty does substitution mean? That the overseas worker directly substitutes the US worker? What if in the transfer of the production process innovation occurs, eliminating a one-to-one correpsondence between jobs before in the US and jobs after overseas? Any insights? Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1543] Re: Fwd: Re: Update
Dear friends: Help me with the lingo please: what does it mean to "go postal"? At 12:23 14/12/98 EST, you wrote: >Louis, > >Thanks for this. Since my mail is being read at the College, I guess even at >home I have to point out that the phrase "provocations that would make Mother >Teresa go postal" is simply a metaphor and a bit of hyperbole and is in no way >intended to suggest or threaten that I would ever "go postal." Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1533] email and censorship
Lou writes: >[...] Something tells me that >there are signs of government repression gathering momentum around the use >of email. That is why it is important to fight for free speech on the >Internet. In a time of growing class polarization, one of the few >uncensored mediums will be the Internet and the powers-that-be are >frightened by that. Uncensored? Perhaps, but monitored. This from a friend in Managua: In Nicaragua a USAID worker (US citizen) was expelled recently for sending an email to friends and colleagues urging them to send Hurrican Mitch assistance only through NGO channels, as the govbernment is hoplessly corrupt. The Nicaraguan government apparently intercepted the email, and used it as the basis for expelling the her. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1465] What's up in Chile
will continue to operate regardless of Pinochet's fate. Social organizations, trade unions, human rights' entities, and anti- systemic political parties do not have the necessary strength to change the existing balance of power. Recent opinion polls have shown that people have not changed their voting preferences as a result of the dictator's detention. The tendency is to build a strong abstentionist movement for the 1999 presidential elections. In the meantime, the military chew their impotence, some fanatics sharpen their teeth and the people await an end to this uncertainty. Tito December 98 -- Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1450] Re: pray for impeachment
>What is to be gained from driving an already dangerous >country mad-dog crazy? > valis Just for the record, folks here are astonished & amused with the goings on with this scandal. This combination of gratuitous bombing and fascination with sex causes lots of head scratching. With regard to "what the US will do" lots of people here (a) give up on trying to understand, while (b) assuming the worst. Not a bad approach. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1416] Britain OKs Extradition of Pinochet
Britain OKs Extradition of Pinochet By Mara D. Bellaby Associated Press Writer Wednesday, December 9, 1998; 12:37 p.m. EST LONDON (AP) -- Britain rejected former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's plea to be set free, ruling today that Spain can start extradition proceedings on charges of genocide, torture and kidnapping by his security forces. The decision means that the 83-year-old Pinochet, under armed guard at a mansion outside London, now faces months and possibly years of battles through British courts fighting extradition. ``I find an authority to proceed in respect of Senator Pinochet today. The Spanish request for his extradition will now be considered by the courts,'' Home Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement. Pinochet's lawyers have said they may seek an urgent review before a judge, arguing that Straw would be wrong on legal points to let Spain have the general. Straw had agonized over the decision since Britain's highest court, the House of Lords, said in a 3-2 ruling Nov. 25 that Pinochet has no immunity from arrest under English law. Pinochet, a regular visitor to Britain, was arrested Oct. 16 on a Spanish warrant seeking his extradition on charges of genocide, kidnapping and torture during his 17-year rule. He overthrew an elected Marxist, Salvador Allende, in a 1973 coup. A Chilean government report says 3,197 people were murdered or disappeared at the hands of Pinochet's secret police. Opponents say the number is far higher. Chilean President Eduardo Frei had no immediate comment about Straw's decision, his spokesman said in Brazil, where the leader was attending a trade summit. Chilean officials have traveled to Britain and Spain to press for Pinochet's freedom. Straw's decision delighted human rights groups, victims of the Pinochet years and most rank-and-file legislators in Britain's governing Labor Party. In Santiago, Chile, a leader of a group of relatives of those missing under Pinochet's reign called the decision historic. ``It is not only important for us and our loved ones but for all of mankind,'' said Viviana Diaz, with tears welling in her eyes. The decision dealt a new blow to Britain's already strained relations with Chile, which has waged a diplomatic battle for the general's release because of fears that renewed tensions between his supporters and opponents will threaten the country's new democracy. ``This is yet another expression of Britain's colonialism and punishment for a small country that is struggling to develop,'' said Hernan Briones, president of the Pinochet Foundation, a private organization of Pinochet followers in Chile. The decision also opened the prospect of a long legal fight by an old man living -- and possibly dying -- under arrest in a foreign country. Pinochet remained at a mansion at Wentworth, about 20 miles west of London. He was moved there Dec. 1 after the north London hospital where he spent more than a month said he did not need medical attention. The hospital said he had overstayed his welcome and demanded that he leave. Pinochet, who arrived in September, was arrested in a central London hospital where he had undergone back surgery. He immediately claimed immunity from arrest as a former head of state, and a three-judge panel of England's High Court unanimously found in his favor Oct. 28. It ruled that Britain's 1978 State Immunity Act was so sweeping that it gave all former heads of state immunity from arrest for anything done in office. Overturning the decision, three judges in the House of Lords said that some crimes are heinous beyond immunity. Pinochet's lawyers have complained that a judge who tipped the decision against him, South African-born Lord Justice Leonard Hoffmann, is the director of the fundraising arm of Amnesty International, the British-based human rights group. But Amnesty International insists that neither Hoffmann nor his wife were involved in the group's long campaign to have Pinochet tried in court. © Copyright 1998 The Associated Press Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1309] Re: Re: McDonalds question
Dear subcom: >Busy, busy! Dunno about this one, Tom; if it's a standard McD's you're >moving to deprive Cochabamba's street people of probably the one place >in town where they can eat _and spend a few warm hours_ Warmth is NOT the problem here. And "street people", as you are imagining them, do not exist here either. Otherwise, I agree with everything. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1306] McDonalds question
Dear Listmembers: The frist McDonalds in Cochabamba, Bolivia is to open on Friday. We are preparing a protest of sorts. I am writing for help in putting together info. I have the piece by Liza Featherstonein LBO 86, a couple of list posts, but nothing else. I would greatly appreciate ANY critical infomration on McDs, especially profitability, business and labor practices. Also, I vaguely remember The Economist did a Big Mac index, which compared the cost of Big Macs the world over, as a sort of globalized index of costs/values. Does anyone have the citation? We would like to see where Bolivia stands on the global Big Mac index. Many thanks! Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1242] question on labor econ texts
Penners: 1. OK, so there's no good labor econ textbook out there. So what do I do? Is there a good review essay or two on why labor econonics today is in such a pitiful state, with refereces to the real world? 2. I'd like to follow up on Jim D's thread, and suggest ways to make the list more user friendly for non-economists. - Perhaps the tech talk could be opened with a brief statement of the problem and it's relevance; then jump into the details. - Perhaps the politics implicit in the econ arguments could be made more explicit. > ... The text > books all show an upward sloping supply curve of labour and a downward > sloping demand curve for labour. The fact that neither is empirically > correct, nor is there any consideration of the interaction between > wage, participation, work organization, or hours employed in the theory > is a scandal on economics (perhaps not the least scandal). With statements such as these, I need someone to explain the practical and political importance. At a gut level I know there's some bombshells in this for organizers, but I can't figure it out. I fine Pollin's work in the Nation great in this regard; a lot of Devine's posts too. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1234] Re: pen-l questions
Michael Perelman: >I wish that we could work as a service where unions or activist organizations >could throw questions at us. Just for the record, I strongly feel that each time I've thrown a question pen-l's way the reponse has been great. I've gotten articles on hidden unemployment, clearer defintions of maquilas, and a good feeling of solidarity much more real than "virtual". At the same time I understand why non-economists (and others without graduate degrees generally) would drop out. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1171] Re: Human Rights Watch: arrest Castro
Lou: Thanks for the intro comment on Human Rights Watch. In my time here I've dealt with a lot of human rights delegatios who come to survey situations and split. A strage bunch, they are. Lots of indignation, little analysis, and all kinds of bullshit symmetry arguments (the contras are the same as the Sandinistas; Castro the same as Pinochet). And unfailingly loathe to consider economic rights as human rights. A. Cockburn did a good article about 2 years ago, questioning some basic premises of human rights work. He noted that clearly foretelling the carnage in Rwanada did NOTHING to stop it. Then he asked a great qeustion, in typical Cockburn against-the-grain fashion: what good is human right work if it can only chronicle, but not stop, carnage? Liberals might respond: for the record, it's important, etc. Radicals might suggest the point ought to be to stop it, and start looking at the foundations that fund the human rights work, and NOT, say, alternative social justice work. Tom At 14:52 2/12/98 -0500, you wrote: >(Human Rights Watch was one of the outfits that took George Bush at his >word that Iraqi soldiers were murdering Kuwaiti newborns in hospital >nurseries. They whitewash George Bush in this article. This lie helped to >launch the Gulf War. It would be interesting to find out who is exactly >behind this outfit. The latest copy of Ken Silverstein and Alex Cockburn's >Counterpunch reveals that the "Lawyers Committee on Human Rights" has >endorsed a Clinton plan that would allow Nike and similar companies to >maintain sweat shops in Asia. It turns out that some huge and powerful Wall >Street legal firms who counsel these corporations are major funders of the >"Lawyers Committee on Human Rights.") Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1155] Re: US auto Nazis
John Barkley Rosser Jr. notes: > The top story in yesterday's Washington Post was about >a likely class action suit that will be brought against >Ford Motor Co. and also probably against General Motors by >former slave laborers who worked under the Nazis in >factories owned by Ford and GM during World War II. The >suits allege much higher levels of complicity and >cooperation between those companies in terms of helping >with retooling for the German war effort, while resisting >doing so in the US, and receipt of profits from the wartime >activities of those subsidiaries. It might be noted that >both Henry Ford and a high GM official, James Mooney, >received major medals from the Nazis. Hitler apparently >used to keep a life-size photo of Ford in his office. >Barkley Rosser What an intersting season of historical amends-making this is becoming. First Pinochet, now this. I love it when people don't "leave well enough alone"! The precedents set for the future are great: no hiding place for (some) facists; no impunity for (some) capitalists. Optimistic? Golly yes, but do let's enjoy the feeling of possibility, if only for a moment. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1201] Pinochet, the news
Court Rules No Pinochet Immunity Filed at November 25, 1998, 9:20 a.m. EST By The Associated Press LONDON (AP) -- Britain's highest court ruled today that Gen. Augusto Pinochet does not have immunity from arrest, meaning the former Chilean dictator must remain under police guard while Spain seeks his extradition on charges of murder, torture and genocide. The 3-2 majority decision by a five-judge tribunal of the House of Lords, delivered on Pinochet's 83rd birthday, overturned a High Court ruling that Pinochet's arrest Oct. 16 was illegal because he had immunity under English law for actions taken as a foreign former head of state. The Spanish government and Spanish and British prosecutors had appealed the Oct. 28 High Court judgment. A Chilean government report says about 3,000 people were murdered or disappeared during Pinochet's 1973-90 rule after he overthrew Salvador Allende, an elected Marxist. Pinochet now must appear before Bow Street Magistrates' Court in London on Dec. 2, the deadline by which Home Secretary Jack Straw must decide whether extradition proceedings can go ahead. Pinochet's best hope is that Straw will block the Spanish extradition proceedings, which would mean that extradition requests lodged by Switzerland, France and other countries also would likely fall away. If Straw gives the go-ahead, Pinochet faces a long battle through the British courts against extradition. Key issues in the appeal were whether international law and custom -- including trials of Rwanda Hutus for genocide and war crimes, and Britain's 1988 adoption of a U.N. Convention on Torture -- override this country's sweeping State Immunity Act passed in 1978. Prosecutors' lawyers argued that Pinochet's alleged crimes were beyond immunity. Pinochet supporters looked stunned at the judgment, which delighted international human rights organizations and many Chileans both at home and in exile. The general and his wife, Lucia, heard the news -- broadcast live on British television -- in his room at the Grovelands Priory, the north London hospital where he had remained under police guard awaiting news of his fate. Pinochet underwent back surgery Oct. 9 during a regular visit to Britain and was arrested in his bed at another hospital. Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1200] Re: Pinochet
Y E S ! (3 to 2 the House of Lords decided Pinochet does not enjoy immunity, opening the possibility of his extradition to Spain for trial.) Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1199] D-Day for Real
Dear Listmembers: The House of Lords will announce their decision on Pinochet today, 11:00am Buenos Aires time, on this, his 83rd birthday. I can't overstate the importance people here are giving the announcement. The debates on the lists about Pinochet have turned on his utility to the capitalist ruling classes; from there speculating on their handling of the matter. There is another vital level on which this is relevant: the shot in the arm it gives to people and movements here who thought "all that" was a closed chapter. For ASOFAMD, the Association of Families of the Disappeared here in Bolivia, these are the best and worst of times, rife with possibility. Thank you to all of you who took the time to zap off notes to people and agencies in the decision making process. Who knows if it makes a differece; regardless, the gesture is appreciated. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1187] Re: global exchange
Welcome Kevin! At 21:28 23/11/98 -0800, you wrote: >Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange is joining on to pen-l. Perhaps his >presence will help us to become more active in contributing to the >protests vs. sweatshops, the world bank, imf et al. > -- >Michael Perelman Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
