Re: [PEN-L] in hock to the Chinese

[Max B. Sawicky]

Marty's comments are all well-taken, but I think
he understates a tad the Chinese advantage.

Yes the Chinese need to sell into the U.S., but
in this vein they are riding the wave of free-
trade policy originating in the U.S., plus the
U.S. appetite for imports.  At the
same time they can diddle with their holdings
and purchases of U.S. Gov bonds under no
restrictions.  I would say in this way they
have fingertip control of interest rate
deviations.

They don't have to cause any large change or
suffer from it.  All they have to do is jiggle
the table a bit to neutralize any annoying U.S.
overtures.

Between this and North Korea, it looks like
they have Bush by the short hairs.

mbs


-Original Message-
From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Martin
Hart-Landsberg
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 6:57 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] in hock to the Chinese

>

Re: [PEN-L] overwork for gamers

[Marvin Gandall]

Carrol Cox wrote:

> This is a vivid illustration of why I get so damned pissed off at
> leftists (and particularly leftists self-identified as marxists) who
> continually refer to the "middle class" and/or use the phrase "working
> class" only in reference to those who are in some sense "manual
> workers." It's a careless habit that endlessly stands in the way of
> understanding what is going on in the u.s. today.
-
It is ironic that some who want to liberate the workers don't even recognize
who they are-- that they are all around them, in their neighbourhoods, their
workplaces, their families, and that in most cases, as wage or salary
earners themselves, they are also part of "them". But the narrow
identification of the working class with manual workers is more than a
"careless habit"; intellectuals  have generally romanticized manual labour,
and some of those on the left have an idealized view of the working class
drawn from the period when it was mostly industrial, highly-unionized and
often militant, circa. 1880-1945. It is easier for them to imaginatively
dwell in that period and to superimpose it on the present, than to confront
the reality of a largely white collar and retail working class which is
thinly unionized and politically passive, with a large part of the old
industrial workforce in the depressed mine and mill towns having becoming
lumpenized and socially reactionary.

The post WWII change in class structure, and the related decline in its
class and political consciousness, has forced the major part of the left in
the capitalist democracies to adjust its expectations of what is possible in
these circumstances -- the foremost reason it has abandoned the pre-war
effort to build independent working-class parties. It now mostly functions
as a left wing within liberal parties firmly committed to capitalism -- even
the mass social-democratic and Communist parties have acquired that
character -- where the locus of activity is in the electoral arena rather
than the workplace or the streets. The minority of leftists who find this
kind of activity personally and politically distasteful have refused to
follow suit, and are largely concentrated on the campuses or in solidarity
movements where the changed composition and consciousness of the working
class doesn't really have to be addressed or their socialist principles
compromised.

This seems to me to constitute the material underpinnings of the bitter
differences which surfaced most recently within the US left during the
election, including on PEN-L and other lists.

MG

Re: [PEN-L] overwork for gamers

[Louis Proyect]

Marvin Gandall wrote:
The post WWII change in class structure, and the related decline in its
class and political consciousness, has forced the major part of the left in
the capitalist democracies to adjust its expectations of what is possible in
these circumstances -- the foremost reason it has abandoned the pre-war
effort to build independent working-class parties. It now mostly functions
as a left wing within liberal parties firmly committed to capitalism -- even
the mass social-democratic and Communist parties have acquired that
character -- where the locus of activity is in the electoral arena rather
than the workplace or the streets.
I wasn't aware that "the major part of the left" had a perspective of
building independent working-class parties prior to WWII.
The CPUSA tied its fate to the Democratic Party, as did the Socialist
Party, during the height of the New Deal.
In Harvey Klehr's useful--at least from a documentary standpoint--book
on the "secret world" of American Communism, we learn that FDR was
"particularly pleased" with the battle of New Jersey Communists against
a left-wing Labor Party formation there. He was happy that the CPUSA had
been able to unite various factions of the Democratic Party against the
left-wing electoral opposition and render it ineffectual.
Meanwhile, the anti-Communist left was conducting itself along the same
lines.
Sidney Hillman (1887-1946)
Sidney Hillman was born in Zagare, Lithuania, on March 22, 1887. His
father Samuel, a merchant, focused on his religious studies and left
the support of the family to his mother, Judith Paiken, who ran the
family grocery.
Hillman responded to the economic severity of the Great Depression by
trying to work with the government. Continuing his intense support of
FDR, Hillman helped establish Labor's Non-Partisan League and the
American Labor Party to support FDR's 1936 campaign. In 1940, FDR
appointed him labor representative to the National Defense Advisory
Commission and associate director general of the Office of Production
Management. By mid-1942, union leaders criticized him for his
reluctance to confront business and he unjustly bore the brunt of a
procurement scandal.  His devotion to FDR created one of the most
pronounced rumors of the 1944 campaign -- in which FDR was alleged to
have to made key decisions by saying "clear it with Sydney."
full: http://www.nps.gov/elro/glossary/hillman-sidney.htm
The minority of leftists who find this
kind of activity personally and politically distasteful have refused to
follow suit, and are largely concentrated on the campuses or in solidarity
movements where the changed composition and consciousness of the working
class doesn't really have to be addressed or their socialist principles
compromised.
You really need to familiarize yourself with some of the more effective
efforts of the left in the US labor movement. The same "state
capitalist" activists who urged a vote for Nader in the last election
were largely responsible for reform of the Teamsters Union. My article
on this development, which owes much to Dan LaBotz's "Rank and File
Rebellion" can be read at:
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/labor/ups.htm
This seems to me to constitute the material underpinnings of the bitter
differences which surfaced most recently within the US left during the
election, including on PEN-L and other lists.
No, the differences have nothing to do with that. Malcolm X earned the
same kind of wrath from the black establishment that Nader earned from
the liberal establishment this year for challenging the 2-party system
and the sort of piecemeal reformism epitomized by Bayard Rustin. But the
social base in the black community was heavily proletarian in the
Fordist sense.
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: [PEN-L] overwork for gamers

[Marvin Gandall]

Louis Proyect wrote:

> I wasn't aware that "the major part of the left" had a perspective of
> building independent working-class parties prior to WWII.
>
> The CPUSA tied its fate to the Democratic Party, as did the Socialist
> Party, during the height of the New Deal.

It's true that CP and SP in the US, both much weaker than their overseas
counterparts, were politically active in or around the Democratic Party
during the New Deal.

But this doesn't contradict that each in its own way was trying to build
their own party to replace the Democrats, whom the workers then favoured,
any more than the entry of the SWP into the Socialist Party was an
indication that American Trotskyists had abandoned their perspective of
building their own party around their own program.

You may disagree with the political accomodations made by these parties
during the 30s, and some did then and since, but it doesn't follow that they
represented an effort by the CP and SP to dissolve their organizations into
the Democratic party. The CP, in particular, conducted much useful political
activity under its own banner in the unions, and in the unemployed and other
depression-era movements, as did the SP and the smaller SWP to a lesser
extent.

MG

Re: [PEN-L] overwork for gamers

[Louis Proyect]

Marvin Gandall wrote:
But this doesn't contradict that each in its own way was trying to build
their own party to replace the Democrats, whom the workers then favoured,
any more than the entry of the SWP into the Socialist Party was an
indication that American Trotskyists had abandoned their perspective of
building their own party around their own program.
It depends on how you define "trying". After all, Browder proposed that
the CPUSA be transformed into the Communist Political Association in the
same sort of magnanimous gesture as David Cobb's offer not to get in the
way of Democratic Party ambitions. My idea of trying has more to do with
the abolitionists of the 1850s and Malcolm X, but then again, I don't
mind swimming against the stream. As far as the SWP's entry into the SP
is concerned, I think it was a huge sectarian mistake. They should have
never left the SP and went off on their own. An SP with a powerful and
vibrant left wing could have made a difference in the postwar period,
but the Trotskyists preferred to be pure.
You may disagree with the political accomodations made by these parties
during the 30s, and some did then and since, but it doesn't follow that they
represented an effort by the CP and SP to dissolve their organizations into
the Democratic party. The CP, in particular, conducted much useful political
activity under its own banner in the unions, and in the unemployed and other
depression-era movements, as did the SP and the smaller SWP to a lesser
extent.
The CP did useful work in the unions. Their usefulness, however, was
always qualified by the overarching need to maintain the "popular
front". This meant attacking A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington,
backing a no-strike pledge during WWII, etc.
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

[PEN-L] The value of victims

[Bill Lear]

The New York Times today reports that the payout for the 2,973 people
killed in the 9/11 attacks is about $7 billion.  That's roughly
$2,354,524 per person killed.

Since the invasion of Iraq, The United States government has killed,
surely conservatively, about 100,000 Iraqis, I wonder where we are
going to get the $235,452,404,978 to pay their families?  Or if we
consider the sanctions and the war to have killed ten times that, how
are we going to set aside the $2.35 trillion necessary to compensate
them?  I think we should start saving right away.

To look at it another way, for each person killed in the 9/11 attacks,
we have killed about 33 Iraqis since the invasion.


Bill

[PEN-L] 'Music Is Not a Loaf of Bread'

[Louis Proyect]

'Music Is Not a Loaf of Bread'
By Xeni Jardin
wired.com, 02:00 AM Nov. 15, 2004 PT
Giving away an album online isn't the way most artists end up with gold
records. But it worked out that way for Wilco.
After being dropped from Reprise Records in 2001 over creative conflicts
surrounding Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the Chicago-based band committed what
some thought would be suicide -- they streamed it online for free.
The album's subsequent release on Nonesuch debuted higher on the charts
than any of their prior releases. That success gave both band and label
confidence to try new internet forays: the first-ever MPEG-4 webcast
with Apple, as well as more free online offerings of live shows and an
EP's worth of fresh tracks. The band's 2004 release, A Ghost Is Born,
hit No. 8 on the Billboard charts -- their highest position to date.
By conventional industry logic, file sharing hurts the odds for
commercial success. Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy disagrees. Wired News
caught up with him during his current tour to find out just what makes
Wilco so wired.
Wired News: What sparked the idea of offering your music online for free?
Jeff Tweedy: Being dropped from Reprise in 2001. They weren't going to
put out Yankee Hotel Foxtrot the way we'd created it. They wanted
changes; we weren't willing to do that, so they rushed a contract
through their legal department to let us go. It was the fastest I'd ever
seen a record company work. Once they let us go, we were free to do with
the album what we chose.
We'd been noticing how much more important the internet had become --
once information is out there in the world now, anyone can get it. Since
that was beginning to happen with the record anyway, we figured, OK,
let's just stream it for free ourselves.
WN: Did you minimize the quality of the files you offered online, so
that people would be encouraged to pay for a higher-quality "real thing"
when you signed to a new record label?
Tweedy: We didn't go out of our way to make it sound low-res. MP3s are
poorer quality anyway. That's part of why the record industry's argument
against file sharing is so ridiculous -- nothing out there on P2P
networks sounds as good as the original CD or vinyl record.
WN: Did the free online release make it hard for you to find a new label
home?
Tweedy: That's why we ended up with Nonesuch. They weren't intimidated
by the fact that hundreds of thousands had already downloaded it.
WN: What was your reaction when copies of A Ghost Is Born started
showing up online this year, before the official release?
Tweedy: Something interesting happened. We were contacted by fans who
were excited about the fact that they found it on P2P networks, but
wanted to give something back in good faith. They wanted to send money
to express solidarity with the fact that we'd embraced the downloading
community. We couldn't take the money ourselves, so they asked if we
could pick a charity instead -- we pointed them to Doctors Without
Borders, and they ended up receiving about $15,000.
WN: What are your thoughts on the RIAA's ongoing lawsuits against
individual file sharers?
Tweedy: We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If
people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet
is like radio for us.
WN: You don't agree with the argument that file sharing hurts musicians'
ability to earn a living?
Tweedy: I don't believe every download is a lost sale.
WN: What if the efforts to stop unauthorized music file sharing are
successful? How would that change culture?
Tweedy: If they succeed, it will damage the culture and industry they
say they're trying to save.
What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book
publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are
reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for
the elite who can afford them.
Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be
branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a
look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those
lawsuits can't be cheap, either.
full: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65688,00.html
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: [PEN-L] overwork for gamers

[Marvin Gandall]

Of course, Browder was subsequently purged for being a "liquidationist". :)
I'm familiar with the criticism of the CP tactics which you describe, but
you apparently see them as more than tactical errors, as a strategy designed
to permanently fold the party into the Democrats and end its public
existence. I don't think the history of the US left supports that
interpretation. Moreover, even the temporary interruption of an
organization's independent status doesn't mean that it has dropped its
objective to become the dominant party; so-called "entryism" can also be
described as a tactic forced on organizations in a period when their size
(the Trotskyists) or state repression (some mass CPs) required it. Anyway,
this is starting to border on the arcane, so I'll let it stand as my last
word on the subject.

MG

- Original Message -
From: "Louis Proyect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 10:19 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] overwork for gamers


> Marvin Gandall wrote:
> > But this doesn't contradict that each in its own way was trying to build
> > their own party to replace the Democrats, whom the workers then
favoured,
> > any more than the entry of the SWP into the Socialist Party was an
> > indication that American Trotskyists had abandoned their perspective of
> > building their own party around their own program.
>
> It depends on how you define "trying". After all, Browder proposed that
> the CPUSA be transformed into the Communist Political Association in the
> same sort of magnanimous gesture as David Cobb's offer not to get in the
> way of Democratic Party ambitions. My idea of trying has more to do with
> the abolitionists of the 1850s and Malcolm X, but then again, I don't
> mind swimming against the stream. As far as the SWP's entry into the SP
> is concerned, I think it was a huge sectarian mistake. They should have
> never left the SP and went off on their own. An SP with a powerful and
> vibrant left wing could have made a difference in the postwar period,
> but the Trotskyists preferred to be pure.
>
> > You may disagree with the political accomodations made by these parties
> > during the 30s, and some did then and since, but it doesn't follow that
they
> > represented an effort by the CP and SP to dissolve their organizations
into
> > the Democratic party. The CP, in particular, conducted much useful
political
> > activity under its own banner in the unions, and in the unemployed and
other
> > depression-era movements, as did the SP and the smaller SWP to a lesser
> > extent.
>
> The CP did useful work in the unions. Their usefulness, however, was
> always qualified by the overarching need to maintain the "popular
> front". This meant attacking A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington,
> backing a no-strike pledge during WWII, etc.
>
>
> --
>
> The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: [PEN-L] The value of victims

[Eugene Coyle]

A lot of the New York area victims were high income folks.  You need to
adjust your calculations for the correct value of a human life.
   Of course your ratio at the end is expressed in human beings rather
than dollars, so that's ok.  Except you left out [fill in blank with
country names.]
Gene Coyle
Bill Lear wrote:
The New York Times today reports that the payout for the 2,973 people
killed in the 9/11 attacks is about $7 billion.  That's roughly
$2,354,524 per person killed.
Since the invasion of Iraq, The United States government has killed,
surely conservatively, about 100,000 Iraqis, I wonder where we are
going to get the $235,452,404,978 to pay their families?  Or if we
consider the sanctions and the war to have killed ten times that, how
are we going to set aside the $2.35 trillion necessary to compensate
them?  I think we should start saving right away.
To look at it another way, for each person killed in the 9/11 attacks,
we have killed about 33 Iraqis since the invasion.
Bill

Re: [PEN-L] The value of victims

[Devine, James]

Bill wrote:
> To look at it another way, for each person killed in the 9/11
attacks, we have killed about 33 Iraqis since the invasion.<

I know Bill knows this, but I feel obligated to point out that those 33
were in the wrong country.
JD

Re: [PEN-L] "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"

[Carl Remick]

From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
... Melville in the 19th century, who lashed out at military injustice in
"Billy Budd," ...
Melville's cousin Guert Gansevoort was a key figure in a naval scandal that
helped to inspire Billy Budd.  Gansevoort, a navy lieutenant, was first
officer of the training ship USS Somers.  On an 1842 cruise to Africa,
Gansevoort got wind of a supposed plot by a midshipman, Philip Spencer, to
seize the Somers and turn it into a pirate ship.  Gansevoort told the
Somers' captain, who subsequently arrested Spencer and two supposed
co-conspirators, then hanged them at sea without trial.  This caused quite a
hullaballoo when the Somers returned to the US -- not the least because the
late Philip Spencer was the son of John C. Spencer, then US Secretary of
War.  Quite a story.  Details at 
Carl

Re: [PEN-L] Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

[Patrick Bond]

Smedley Butler, Meet John Perkins
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Remember Smedley Butler?

He was perhaps the most decorated Major General in Marine Corps history.

In the early part of this century, he fought and killed for the United
States around the world.

Butler was awarded two Congressional Medals of Honor.

Then, when he returned to the United States he wrote a book titled “War
is a Racket” which opens with the memorable lines: “War is a racket. It
always has been.”

“I was a high class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and for
the Bankers,” Butler said. “In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for
capitalism.”

In a speech in 1933, Butler said the following:

“I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil
interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the
National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping
of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall
Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua
for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I
brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in
1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way
unmolested.”

Smedley Butler, meet John Perkins.

Perkins has just written a book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
(Barrett Koehler, 2004).

It is the War is A Racket for our times.

Some of it is hard to believe.

You be the judge.

In 1968, after graduating from Boston University, Perkins joined the
Peace Corps and was sent to Ecuador. There, he was recruited by the
National Security Agency (NSA) and hired by an international consulting
firm, Chas. T. Main in Boston.

Soon after beginning his job in Boston, “I was contacted by a woman
named Claudine who became my trainer as an economic hit man.”

Perkins assumed the woman worked for the NSA.

“She said she was sent to help me and to train me,” Perkins said. “She
is extremely beautiful, sensual, seductive, intelligent. Her job was to
convince me to become an economic hit man, holding out these three drugs
–- sex, drugs and money. And then she wanted to let me know that I was
getting into a dirty business. And I shouldn’t go off on my first
assignment, which was going to be Indonesia, and start doing this unless
I knew that I was going to continue doing it, and once I was in I was in
for life.”

Perkins worked for Main from 1970 to 1980.

His job was to convince the governments of the third world countries and
the banks to make deals where huge loans were given to these countries
to develop infrastructure projects.

And a condition of the loan was that a large share of the money went
back to the big construction companies in the USA – the Bechtels and
Halliburtons.

The loans would plunge the countries into debts that would be impossible
to pay off.

“The system is set up such that the countries are so deep in debt that
they can’t repay their debt,” Perkins said. “When the U.S. government
wants favors from them, like votes in the United Nations or troops in
Iraq, or in many, many cases, their resources – their oil, their canal,
in the case of Panama, we go to them and say – look, you can’t pay off
your debts, therefore sell your oil at a very low price to our oil
companies. Today, tremendous pressure is being put on Ecuador, for
example, to sell off its Amazonian rainforest -– very precious, very
fragile places, inhabited by indigenous people whose cultures are being
destroyed by the oil companies.”

When a leader of a country refuses to cooperate with economic hit men
like Perkins, the jackals from the CIA are called in.

Perkins said that both Omar Torrijos of Panama and Jaime Boldos of
Ecuador -– both men he worked with – refused to play the game with the
U.S. and both were cut down by the CIA -– Torrijos when his airplane
blew up, and Roldos when his helicopter exploded, within three months of
each other in 1981.

If the CIA jackals don’t do the job, then the U.S. Marines are sent in
–- Butler’s “racketeers for capitalism.”

Perkins also gives lurid details of how he pimped for a Saudi prince in
the 1970s, in an effort to get the Saudi royal family to enter an
elaborate deal in which the U.S. would protect the House of Saud. In
exchange, the Saudis agreed to stabilize oil prices and use their oil
money to purchase Treasury bonds, the interest on which would be used to
pay U.S. construction firms like Bechtel to build Saudi cities.

For years, Perkins wanted to stop being an economic hit man and write a
tell-all book.

He quit Main in 1980, only to be lured back with megabucks as a
consultant. He testified in favor of the Seabrook Nuclear power plant
(“my most infamous assignment”) in the 1980s, but the experience pushed
him out of the business, and he started an alternative energy firm. When
word got out in the 1990s that he was starting to write a tell-all book,
he was approached by the president of Stone & Webster, a big

[PEN-L] is economics a science, revisited

[Eubulides]

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/
Is economics a "science", revisited

I wanted to comment on Brian's excellent past post on this issue.  When
the question is raised it usually bogs down pretty quickly into the
dreariest sort of outdated Popperian philosophy of science (we make
falsifiable claims!  we do empirical tests!).  This has the dual problems
of ignoring the problems with falsificationism as philosophy of science
and ignoring the fact that many economic theories don't seem to be all
that falsifiable.  Anyway, Brian takes the falsification defense apart,
and goes on to press hard on various disciplinary sort spots...poor
predictive track record, generic predictions that are obvious to common
sense psychology, etc. This sort of thing is especially cutting since it
is exactly the sort of dismissiveness (some) economists like to direct at
sociology.

In my experience, when the scientific nature of economics comes up it is
often about justifying various disciplinary privileges relative to other
social sciences.  There undertone is that we *do too* deserve the Council
of Economic Advisors, the Nobel, the higher salaries, the op-ed slots,
etc.  At least more than those other guys.   Well, maybe.  But if so it's
not because economists are better amateur philosophers of science than
people in other social science disciplines, or because we've solved the
science demarcation problem when philosophers really haven't.  It would be
because we produce better explanations.  Sciences ought to produce lots of
true, useful counterfactuals (if you do X, then Y will happen) that aren't
intuitively obvious.  Does economics do a better job of that than
untutored common sense and/or the other social "sciences" and humanities?

This is a different question from how similar economics is to some
idealized science model (e.g. physics).  The accepted hard sciences differ
greatly in methodology (e.g. geology is not a lab science), but one could
argue they are and should be judged more by their predictive success than
anything else.  So I think Brian is right to focus on predictive success.

The truth is that in about a century of development economics has never
been able to get to a really deep, truly reliable level of predictive
accuracy about any economic phenomenon at all.  For a while people thought
that level of accuracy had been reached in theorizing financial arbitrage
(highly reliable predictions could be made about the future value of
certain types of financial instruments), but then some very smart finance
people lost a lot of money and it was back to the drawing board.  But I do
believe economics generates counterfactuals that are true, useful, and an
improvement on common sense alone.  (And an improvement on what other
disciplines would produce if not supplemented by economic insights --
although I'll argue later that other disciplines can improve on economics
taken alone as well).

The question then is what about economics makes it successful in
generating those counterfactuals, and what limits its success in doing
that (perhaps the more interesting question, as it points to the areas of
potential progress).  Framing the question this way gets away from the
project of physics imitation and toward the question of what useful social
theory looks like.

I'm going to start by making a few posts describing what I see are some
major strengths of economics as a predictive discipline.  Then (in a day
or two) I'll post again on what I see as some major weaknesses of the
discipline.

Strength #1) Economics measures things.  I'm not sure people realize how
important economics has been in creating the basic concepts we use to
think about and quantify the economy.  Unemployment rates, inflation
rates, economic growth, GDP, trade balances, productivity measures,
capital measures, predictors of economic growth like inventory measures or
consumer confidence, are all creations of economics and in many cases use
substantial input from economic theory.  (E.g. you can't really understand
the idea of changing costs for a constant standard of living without
thinking about how consumers substitute to different goods when prices
drop, which comes straight from theory).  Different social sciences (e.g.
psychometrics) also have their measures, but I would argue that these are
less fundamental to understanding the phenomena than economic measures
have been.  You can get a decent idea of whether someone is smart without
administering them an IQ test, but modern economies are too large and too
complex to understand without defining and consistently measuring concepts
that reflect their state.   The macro level economy would be in some sense
"unthinkable" -- we would have no common conceptual language to discuss it
in -- if not for the 20th century contributions of economists.  The
discipline realizes this too; I can think of at least three Nobel prizes
given primarily for advances in measurement methods (pure measure
development, not econometr

[PEN-L] on billy bragg...

[Michael Hoover]

Billy Bragg's alternative version of I Vow to Thee My Country, The
Many Not the Few

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2004/11/16/nvow16big.gif;sessionid=P4A4MXETEFQI1QFIQMGCM54AVCBQUJVC),

which he co-wrote with the diligent Battersea MP Martin Linton, poses
a number of questions. As a homage to the Labour party membership
card and some of Tony's more memorable phrases, it certainly hits the
right note. And the Backbencher can't wait to hear it sung at next
year's Labour party conference: a number of delegates refused to join
in the choruses of Jerusalem this year. But Billy has undoubtedly
moved on since his Red Wedge days, when he was still Waiting for the
Great Leap Forwards. "You can be active with the activists/ Or sleep
in with the sleepers/ While you're waiting for the Great Leap
Forwards," sang the young revolutionary. "If no one seems to
understand/ Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman." Not
quite the same sentiment as The Many Not the Few's "We fulfil the
true potential/Of each and every one/ And we achieve more together/
Than we achieve alone.

--
Please Note:
Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to 
or from College employees regarding College business are public records, 
available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail 
communication may be subject to public disclosure.

Re: [PEN-L] Labor Party: AFTER THE ELECTIONS: WHAT NEXT?

[Michael Hoover]

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/17/2004 2:45:57 PM >>>
AFTER THE ELECTIONS: WHAT NEXT?
Mark Dudzic, Labor Party National Organizer
---
i too received this e-mail, here was my reply:
political parties run candidates for office...

--
Please Note:
Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to 
or from College employees regarding College business are public records, 
available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail 
communication may be subject to public disclosure.

Re: [PEN-L] overwork for gamers

[Waistline2]

In a message dated 11/18/2004 8:13:09 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>It is ironic that some who want to liberate the workers don't even recognizewho they are-- that they are all around them, in their neighbourhoods, theirworkplaces, their families, and that in most cases, as wage or salaryearners themselves, they are also part of "them". But the narrowidentification of the working class with manual workers is more than a"careless habit"; intellectuals  have generally romanticized manual labour,and some of those on the left have an idealized view of the working classdrawn from the period when it was mostly industrial, highly-unionized andoften militant, circa. 1880-1945. It is easier for them to imaginativelydwell in that period and to superimpose it on the present, than to confrontthe reality of a largely white collar and retail working class which isthinly unionized and politically passive, with a large part of the oldindustrial workforce in the depressed mine and mill towns having becominglumpenized and socially reactionary.<
 
 
Comment
 
Very difficult subject with considerable disagreements. Politics like love is where you find it. You have to get into the field to find either. 
 
Personally, my read and understanding of our history is that there has never been any significant section of the working class with class consciousness . . . period. The Pullman Strike over a hundred years ago was probably the most political and violent ascertain of workers on behalf of themselves in American history. This strike was lead by Gene Debs and the leaflets issued called on workers not sto simply defend their union but to take up arms and fight for political authority to run things on behalf of the working class. 
 
The workers in most of the country had no connection as such to this political event. The period outlined above from 1880-1945 witnessed a sharp change in the form of unionism and the emergence of industrial unionism, which involved an economically and politically important sector of the working class, but not the working class as a whole. Far to often the communists, socialist and progressive left behaved and described the trade union movement as if it was the labor movement and then lacked a critical vision of the most poverty stricken sector of the working class or "the real proletatiat," that is at the bottom of our huge working class.  
 
It seems to me that the fundamental block to trade union unity and unity of the working class as a whole has been the regional color and wage differentials, as opposed to how various sectarian groups understands our own history. I remember the wave of strikes by the sugar workers in the South, especially the unionized workers based in Louisiana, during the 1980s and into the 1990s. What generally happens is that the industrial unions in the North that are influenced by a section of the left, would generally send a check for $500 as an _expression_ of support. 
 
I really believe that politics is the art of the possible and trying to do what is not possible is a waste of time as organizer of real people. I will take ten with a passion to continue the fight for economic justice and fairness after the election, even if they are hell bent on electing Kerry, rather than the ideologically pure and noble "man." 
 
Ideology and a theoretical tumble in the hay is fine, and then one has to skin the cat as the saying goes. It has not and up until this very day is not possible to unite a very poor paid worker with a highly paid worker. A lot of things are involved and one is the development of the internal trading between regions of the country and wage differentials in various industries. High paid workers know they are high paid workers and simply are not going to go out on strike for say a group of sugarworkers in Mississippi. It is not going to happen because they cannot get better working conditions or a better wage rate and say, "the only thing I am going to get out of such action is fired." 
 
And they are bascially correct. This means learning to do what is possible. 
 
The tech workers are not better or worse than the higher and low paid industrial workers, and many software workers, not just the small "uppity ups" are hitting the wall. Untenured professors are hitting the wall and been hitting the wall. They are subject to the same laws of wages, with a sharp difference from the unionized industrial workers: we get paid for overtime and have union protection. 
 
An autoworker pulling 60-80 hours during a new product launch - "crunch time" is paid time and a half for every hour over 8 in a day and over 40 in a week with double time on Sunday and triple time on holidays. At say $25/hour a 40hour week is $1000.00 plus the benefits.  Then 60 hours is $1750.00 and 80 hours - with say ten on Sunday is about $2500 or bascially what my pension check is after taxes and not including health benefits. 
 
Since 1972 wages have been falling and a "new" c

Re: [PEN-L] in hock to the Chinese

[Chris Burford]

My sense too.
I do not deny the importance of Martin's question
"The issue here is whether Chinese workers are benefiting from this
ongoing
shift to a foreign driven export led growth model."
But in terms of geo-politics this looks like a pivotal moment.
The Chinese have still a unified power system, however you define it
in class terms, and they can coordinate how they deploy the capital at
their disposal on a massive scale.
It is highly debatable, to say the least, that it is even a form of
socialism, but in terms of capital being ultimately a social relation,
this is monopoly finance capital being wielded on a world scale
against the hegemonism of the US, very cunningly. I cannot see how the
US can escape the snare. The Chinese can be quite sophisticated in how
they tweak the noose very occasionally, eg with the sudden absence of
bond buyers in the market, studiously NOT connected with any public
policy comment.
Whether it ultimately provides conditions for a more socialist world
and the overthrow of the power of capital as dead labour, will be
highly contested territory.
Chris Burford
London
- Original Message -
From: "Max B. Sawicky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] in hock to the Chinese

Marty's comments are all well-taken, but I think
he understates a tad the Chinese advantage.
Yes the Chinese need to sell into the U.S., but
in this vein they are riding the wave of free-
trade policy originating in the U.S., plus the
U.S. appetite for imports.  At the
same time they can diddle with their holdings
and purchases of U.S. Gov bonds under no
restrictions.  I would say in this way they
have fingertip control of interest rate
deviations.
They don't have to cause any large change or
suffer from it.  All they have to do is jiggle
the table a bit to neutralize any annoying U.S.
overtures.
Between this and North Korea, it looks like
they have Bush by the short hairs.
mbs
-Original Message-
From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Martin
Hart-Landsberg
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 6:57 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] in hock to the Chinese

[PEN-L] Greens Shame Dems!

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

This just in from _The Black Commentator_.  Standing up for the most
basic of democratic rights is not only the right thing to do -- it
has put both the Green Party and Ralph Nader on the Black political
map like never before:
Greens Shame Dems
"The Confederacy has finally won," declared Dr. Michael Dawson,
Harvard Professor of Government and African American Studies. "Forget
about Red vs. Blue. The states that voted for  President Bush were
the territories and states which allowed slavery (with one or two
small exceptions at the border -- Iowa and Maryland)." Indiana and
Ohio are also "free state" anomalies that don't match the  pre-Civil
War map -- but the Green and Libertarian parties are set for a
recount that just might turn Ohio from Red to Blue, no thanks
whatsoever to the Democratic standard-dropper, John Kerry.
The Greens, who don't stand to win anything except the respect and
admiration of all decent people, raised nearly $150,000 in only four
days to challenge George Bush's unofficial 136,000 vote margin in
each of Ohio's poll precincts. Kerry had the same option and plenty
of cash on hand ($15 million in unspent campaign funds), but took the
Skull and Bones path, fearing a contested outcome might damage the
legitimacy of a system that he values just as dearly as his erstwhile
opponent, George Bush -- Black voters be damned. There is no law
against making a concession speech and getting a recount, but
oligarchs like Kerry treasure stability above all else -- it keeps
them on top.
Dr. Dawson's Confederate analogy is also applicable to the Kerry
campaign and the Democratic National Committee, captives of the
Dixie-born and bred Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Founded in
the mid-Eighties for the sole purpose of retaining white southern
voters by weakening the influence of African Americans and labor, the
DLC has failed miserably in its home region while tightening its
death grip on the national party. Loathing constituencies --
especially the Black base -- the DLC cares not a whit for the morale
of the African American citizens who bore the brunt of Republicans'
Election Day abuse, or for the tens of thousands of volunteers who
worked so hard to overload Bush's theft machinery with votes. Untold
thousands had their rights amputated on November 2, yet Kerry doesn't
even care to locate the missing limbs.
God Save The Greens!
"I don't expect to win Ohio," said Green Party presidential candidate
David Cobb, stating the obvious. "But the Green Party has been
standing up for democracy and the right for all voters to cast their
votes." In addition to the $113,600 filing fee, the Greens and
Libertarians must quickly train and field a small army to unravel
what happened in Ohio's 11,306 precincts. They will confront the
infinitely devious Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who should
by now rival Clarence Thomas as the Black man most hated by African
Americans. Blackwell is employing every trick in the book -- and off
the books - to shrink the 150,000-plus pool of provisional ballots
that he never intended to count, judging by his dismissive comments
on election night. The Greens and Libertarians have demanded that
Blackwell "recuse himself from the recount process."
Less than 10 percent of Ohio's provisional ballots were thrown out in
2000. However, according to the Associated Press, Blackwell's minions
are rejecting 19 percent this time around, and about a third of the
provisional ballots cast in Cuyahoga County, where heavily Black
Cleveland is located.  A majority of all provisional ballots, "came
from the 15 counties Kerry won," the Free Press reported.
Over 90,000 ballots were thrown out on November 2 for "over-vote" or
"under-vote" problems. "This suggests another hanging chad problem,"
said Cobb, the Green. "To simply discard 92,000 votes when only
136,000 votes separate the winner from the loser is problematic at
best."
At the Daily Kos, one of the best nitty-gritty politics sites on the
web, a visiting trial lawyer on Sunday calculated the odds that Kerry
could overcome Bush:
"Let's say only 70% of the provisionals count -- a bit higher than
the 2/3 being reported in Cleveland -- but let's go with it. 70% of
155,000 is 108,500. Let's assume 90% are for Kerry [he claims Gore
got 90 percent of provisional votes in 2000].That would mean 97,650
votes for Kerry and 10,850 votes for Bush, a lead for Kerry of
86,800. Subtracting that from Bush's current lead of 132,000 yields a
Bush lead of 45,200.
"Now we move on to the undervotes. If 90% is too high for the number
to be counted (unlike provos, there is a standard and a history to go
with it), let's use 80% instead, to be conservative (no pun
intended). 80% of 93,000 is 74,400. Use the same percentage (80%) for
Kerry (again, no reason to change here - the ballots are what they
are). 59,520 votes for Kerry, 14,880 for Bush, a net of 44,640. So
now the lead for Bush is 560 votes - gee, isn't that really close to
537? [Bush's 2000 Florida margin.] 

Re: [PEN-L] Labor Party: AFTER THE ELECTIONS: WHAT NEXT?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Michael Hoover sez:
 >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/17/2004 2:45:57 PM >>>
AFTER THE ELECTIONS: WHAT NEXT?
Mark Dudzic, Labor Party National Organizer
---
i too received this e-mail, here was my reply:
political parties run candidates for office...
Precisely, but you know the opprobrium heaped on a political party to
the left of the Democratic Party that _dares_ to run a presidential
candidate!
--
Yoshie
* Critical Montages: 
* Greens for Nader: 
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* OSU-GESO: 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

Re: [PEN-L] Labor Party: AFTER THE ELECTIONS: WHAT NEXT?

[Waistline2]

In a message dated 11/18/2004 2:16:25 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>>>AFTER THE ELECTIONS: WHAT NEXT?Mark Dudzic, Labor Party National Organizer<<<---<>>
 
Comment
 
Valid and very true. "(P)olitical parties run candidates for office" . . . at least in this party of the world. 
 
The Labor Party - which I ideologically support, reminds me of my youngest daughter. 
 
At age 20, she is studying to become a nurse and recently was recently hired as a CNA - Certified Nursing Assistant. She has difficulty getting to work everyday because of transportation and needs a care. She cannot buy a car on her own because she has not worked long enough. When we send money to buy a car it is spent on the rent and clothes to stabilize her life so that she can go to work and make enough to buy a car. 
 
I had suggested to the wife and daughter two years ago that Ebonie get a job in the Casino because she is actually an attractive girl, or rather young lady. I suggested a waitress because they make more than Blackjack dealers. This path of development was rejected and got my face slapped.
 
The Labor Party cannot run candidates for office because it does not have enough infrastructure to conduct a political campaign or host a national candidate. It does not have a big enough infrastructure because it does not have enough organizers to organize people on the basis of building an infrastructure that is big enough to host a national campaign. The people with the real talents to build an infrastructure big enough to grow an infrastructure big enough to host a national campaign are in the main organizers in the unions and/or politically gravitate around unionism in various forms. 
 
It gets tricky and things cannot be solved on the basis of theoretical insight but history and ones understanding of the historical progression and then doing what comes next. The industrial union movement erupted and spilled over as an independent movement from roots in the craft unions and their organizations. 
 
Who was the guy that socked the other guy in the jaw and solidified the spilt in the craft unions and the emergence of the CIO as an independent form of unionism? John L, Lewis? 
 
Although it is theoretically incorrect to say "from nothing comes nothing" n politics it is absolutely correct. In theory - philosophy, "nothing" is that which sits outside of human perception and becomes perceptible on the basis of emergence, since nothing is not perceivable and cannot be anything except "nothing." 
 
In politics, "nothing" - no real Labor Party as an organization that runs candidates, can only become "something" based of the real human material at hand and this material is to be found - located, where? On the Internet? The Internet is a communications form that allows the real human material to interact and coordinate. 
 
At this stage of the social movement - which might change in five or ten years, it is not a flight of fancy to state that the only direction open to the enlargement and real formation of the Labor Party is the acceleration of the split within the trade union movement and a section of them going over to the goals and ideas of the Labor Party.  
 
Now the people that are going to influence the politics, ideology and goals of the Labor Party are those that are on the ground floor and part of the process. And have the ability to win the vote or the confidence of the members based on their articulations of what people desire and how they think things out. 
 
Now Ebonie cannot get the car she needs to achieve a certain stability because the stability cannot be achieved to get the car and my dough keeps getting spent on the stability instead of the car that she asked for. 
 
(My wife is crazy and along/alone with a generation of women named our daughter "black" . . . can you imagine the Anglo American workers naming their daughters "Ivory." I be laughing my ass off because things be funny. My wife said Ebonie did not mean "just" black, although it means that, because there is no "y" on the end of her name and instead, an "i.e." I agreed because Stalin's article on liguistists did not help me on any level.) 
 
I say to the wife the solution to the Labor Party . . . I mean Ebonie, resides in the widening spilt in the trade union movement because it is the most organized detachment of the working class at this moment in history. 
 
I mean . . . Ebonie is in need of another daddy, with perhaps a tad bit more sugar. This was stated because something to drive a political process and organization you must have something outside of yourself or that that makes you what you are. 
 
I stated this as a metaphor and the wife did not speak to me for a week. She said it was not a metaphor and started hitting me in the back. I say, "why the hell you keep hitting me in the back?" 
 
She says, "because you need something outside of your self

Re: [PEN-L] in hock to the Chinese

[Martin Hart-Landsberg]

Interesting discussion.  I guess the question for me is what is at
stake in this dance between Chinese and U.S. leaders?.
Let us assume that the Chinese can in fact move in and out of the bond
market to give the U.S. a bit of shock treatment.  Given their
development model what do you think that they might use their power to
achieve.   Will they just demand that the U.S. drop its objections to
their dollar peg?  And thus the export-import connection continues
further?   Or said differently, what U.S. policies are now potentially
undermined by this new financial power and in what ways does that
change the political/economic terrain?
Marty
--On Thursday, November 18, 2004 9:37 PM + Chris Burford
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
My sense too.
 I do not deny the importance of Martin's question
"The issue here is whether Chinese workers are benefiting from this
ongoing
shift to a foreign driven export led growth model."
But in terms of geo-politics this looks like a pivotal moment.
The Chinese have still a unified power system, however you define it
in class terms, and they can coordinate how they deploy the capital at
their disposal on a massive scale.
It is highly debatable, to say the least, that it is even a form of
socialism, but in terms of capital being ultimately a social relation,
this is monopoly finance capital being wielded on a world scale
against the hegemonism of the US, very cunningly. I cannot see how the
US can escape the snare. The Chinese can be quite sophisticated in how
they tweak the noose very occasionally, eg with the sudden absence of
bond buyers in the market, studiously NOT connected with any public
policy comment.
Whether it ultimately provides conditions for a more socialist world
and the overthrow of the power of capital as dead labour, will be
highly contested territory.
Chris Burford
London
- Original Message -
From: "Max B. Sawicky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] in hock to the Chinese

Marty's comments are all well-taken, but I think
he understates a tad the Chinese advantage.
Yes the Chinese need to sell into the U.S., but
in this vein they are riding the wave of free-
trade policy originating in the U.S., plus the
U.S. appetite for imports.  At the
same time they can diddle with their holdings
and purchases of U.S. Gov bonds under no
restrictions.  I would say in this way they
have fingertip control of interest rate
deviations.
They don't have to cause any large change or
suffer from it.  All they have to do is jiggle
the table a bit to neutralize any annoying U.S.
overtures.
Between this and North Korea, it looks like
they have Bush by the short hairs.
mbs
-Original Message-
From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Martin
Hart-Landsberg
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 6:57 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] in hock to the Chinese

[PEN-L] Jim wants you to see this.

[Jim Craven]

Jim thought you would like this site.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111904W.shtml

ApplyRefer v2.3

[PEN-L] Clinical & Academic Freedom in Canada

[hari . kumar]

I think this might interest some of you.
Hari Kumar

November 18, 2004 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 THREATS TO ACADEMIC FREEDOM SHOULD WORRY PUBLIC

 The Medical Reform Group of Ontario today
noted the serious implications of a Canadian Association of University Teachers 
(CAUT)
task force report highlighting threats
to academic freedom among clinical faculty
in health Sciences centres, and proposing
solutions.
"When doctors exposing the dangers of drugs
face intimidation and legal action, the
public should be concerned,"
said MRG spokesperson Ahmed Bayoumi.
"When doctors who highlight limitations in
clinical care face loss of hospital privileges,
the public must realize that patient care is threatened."
The CAUT report highlights the increasing threats to the academic freedom of 
doctors working in
university settings. The case of Nancy Olivieri,
who faced persecution not only from the drug
industry but from the University of Toronto
after she identified the dangers of a drug she was
studying, is the most prominent.
The report notes that the CAUT has received an
increasing number of complaints from clinical
faculty who face loss of jobs, income, or opportunities as a result of 
behaviour that
institutions see as threatening to their
interests.
"The report proposes much needed solutions to  these growing problems,"
said another MRG spokes person,
Dr.P.J.Devereaux.
"Doctors who are threatened need arbitration
procedures that protect them. They need
backing and support when attacked by powerful
institutions."
"The five academic physicians and scientists
who authored this report are issuing a wake-up
call," Dr.Bayoui concluded. "When clinical
faculty can't speak out on behalf of their
patients, the public should be worried." _
The Report can be seen on the CAUT website www.caut.ca
 

Re: [PEN-L] in hock to the Chinese

[Eubulides]

- Original Message -
From: "Martin Hart-Landsberg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



Interesting discussion.  I guess the question for me is what is at
stake in this dance between Chinese and U.S. leaders?.

Let us assume that the Chinese can in fact move in and out of the bond
market to give the U.S. a bit of shock treatment.  Given their
development model what do you think that they might use their power to
achieve.   Will they just demand that the U.S. drop its objections to
their dollar peg?  And thus the export-import connection continues
further?   Or said differently, what U.S. policies are now potentially
undermined by this new financial power and in what ways does that
change the political/economic terrain?

Marty


-

I'll wager a trio of guesses:

1) The $ peg must end soon per WTO obligations so China can ignore US
whining until that day. That piece of the discussion has left out the fact
that while China runs a trade surplus with the US, it is running a trade
deficit in toto, which must compound the policy modeling for all the
players paying attention to worst-case scenarios.

The question of the how much of a trade deficit would there be if all the
exports from US firms/subcontracotrs in China switched ledger places on
the accounting books would be an interesting exercise in debunking and
swith attention back to the problems of MNC's and their ability to
manipulate State policies, giving a toehold for breaking up the
Realist-cum-State centric storytelling still in vogue with all it's
attendant problems for conflict escalation.

2) China can tell the US to back off on Intellectual Property enforcement
issues for a decade and calls from the AFL-CIO for independent trade union
rights. They also have greater bargaining chips when it comes to the
transfer of hi-tech know-how which are deemed national [in]security
sensitive in the US.

3) China can effectively block the sale of weaponry to Taiwan, clearing
the way for further economic integration so that Taiwan is just an
eventual Hong Kong type handover on a larger scale/slower timetable. This
will hurt quite a few US firms wanting to make sales who've been lobbying
Congress and the White House since Dubya and his pack of nihilists took
hold of the State in 2000.

Also, see the piece below on China and Iran:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55414-2004Nov16.html
Iran's New Alliance With China Could Cost U.S. Leverage

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 17, 2004; Page A21

TEHRAN -- A major new alliance is emerging between Iran and China that
threatens to undermine U.S. ability to pressure Tehran on its nuclear
program, support for extremist groups and refusal to back Arab-Israeli
peace efforts.

The relationship has grown out of China's soaring energy needs -- crude
oil imports surged nearly 40 percent in the first eight months of this
year, according to state media -- and Iran's growing appetite for consumer
goods for a population that has doubled since the 1979 revolution, Iranian
officials and analysts say.

An oil exporter until 1993, China now produces only for domestic use. Its
proven oil reserves could be depleted in 14 years, oil analysts say, so
the country is aggressively trying to secure future suppliers. Iran is now
China's second-largest source of imported oil.

The economic ties between two of Asia's oldest civilizations, which were
both stops on the ancient Silk Road trade route, have broad political
implications.

Holding a veto at the U.N. Security Council, China has become the key
obstacle to putting international pressure on Iran. During a visit to
Tehran this month, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing signaled that China did
not want the Bush administration to press the council to debate Iran's
nuclear program. U.S. officials have expressed fear that China's veto
power could make Iran more stubborn in the face of U.S. pressure.

The burgeoning relationship is reflected in two huge new oil and gas deals
between the two countries that will deepen the relationship for at least
the next 25 years, analysts here say.

Last month, the two countries signed a preliminary accord worth $70
billion to $100 billion by which China will purchase Iranian oil and gas
and help develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field, near the Iraqi border.
Earlier this year, China agreed to buy $20 billion in liquefied natural
gas from Iran over a quarter-century.

Iran wants trade to grow even further. "Japan is our number one energy
importer for historical reasons . . . but we would like to give preference
to exports to China," Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said this month,
according to China Business Weekly.

In turn, China has become a major exporter of manufactured goods to Iran,
including computer systems, household appliances and cars. "We mutually
complement each other. They have industry and we have energy resources,"
said Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's former representative to the International
Atomic Energy Agency.

C

Re: [PEN-L] China again

[Anthony D'Costa]

Last night I had half composed a message but with the stormy winds I was
repeatedly thrown off my server.  So I will try to recollect what I had
written.  I think both India and China present huge ecological problems.
There is no disagreement on that.  They are already plagued with a variety
of problems.  The question is how much are they willing to tolerate for
the other kinds of gains they are making with growth.  It seems to me
their levels of economic development are such that they willing to pay the
interim price of environmental price.  But it's a familiar issue: capital
accumulation based on industry is going to create these sorts of
disasters, though on a per capita basis and in abolute terms the Indians
and Chinese contribute very little compared to the US and other OECD
economies.
This brings us to the next related issue.  How does one
bring about development for 2 billion plus economies?  From the Chinese
planners' point of view things are looking quite bright despite income
inequality.  Though there is some convergence of incomes around the
urban areas and worsening between coastal urban and rural interior.
This is of course nothing new: rural wages always lag behind urban ones,
given what is produced in the two sectors.  I might also add that today
developing countries have far stringent environmental rules than rich
countries had during their extensive form of industrialization.  In
India the conversion to natural gas is taking place at a rate that is
unthinkable in the US.
On the question of attacks on the "welfare" dimensions of Chinese society,
I agree that the retrenchment of public sector ecmployees, privatisation
of health care etc. are ominous changes.  The older workers are likely to
have a hard time.  But given the high rate of growth a good many workers
will find employment.  I can't speak for China but in India, this is
happening on a lesser scale but happening effectively.  Thus the licensing
of private hospitals and their expansion while little growth on the public
hospitals means the system tends toward privatization.  This is
problematic because it creates a dual system of health care.  But there is
a plus side.  With privatization diagnostic tests, which were either not
available or bureaucratically stifled, are easily accessed today.  Though
expensive for poor people and it is cash based the service is
available.  The paradox is that Indian health care services are good
enough to entice foreign patients to seek treatment.  Here of course
intelligent social policy has a role in cross subsidizing the poor.  Will
the Chinese and Indian governments be thinking of that?  Basic care is
free in India and it's the poor who access public hospitals.  But the
facilties are terrible even if the doctors are good.  Private hospitals
have better facilities with good doctors but they are like leaches, ready
to rob you even before you've entered the exam room!  It's a dilemma to
say the least.
cheers, anthony
xxx
Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor
Comparative International Development
South Asian and International Studies Programs
University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436
1900 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA
Phone: (253) 692-4462
Fax :  (253) 692-5718
xxx
On Wed, 17 Nov 2004, Michael Perelman wrote:
Lester Brown visited our campus yesterday.  He said that he had been asked 
before
Nader to be the Green party candidate in 2000, but he declined.  His statistics 
about
China were frightening.  24,000 villages have been abandoned in the Northeast 
because
of desertification.  The water table at an alarming pace.  I did not catch the 
exact
statistic.  Finally, he suggested that China's rapidly increasing imports of 
grain
have the potential to price poor countries out of the market.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

[PEN-L] a call to the privatize the electoral process!

[Eubulides]

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4046&n=1

U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) called for an end to "big government
overseeing the election of big government."

[snip]

Re: [PEN-L] in hock to the Chinese

[Doug Henwood]

Martin Hart-Landsberg wrote:
Interesting discussion.  I guess the question for me is what is at
stake in this dance between Chinese and U.S. leaders?.
Interesting article in today's NYT about China's growing influence
elsewhere in Asia - some new cross-border class network that's a
potential rival to US linkages. I wonder if & when the US bourgeoisie
will begin worrying about China as a serious rival.
Doug