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661 Further PDS advances in Berlin -- rank: 1000

Although the SPD did not receive losses as severe as expected, the latest round of elections in the east has brought further advances for the PDS. Although Berlin is only 2/5 "east", in the eastern boroughs as a whole, it won almost 40% of the vote. In Hohenschoenhausen it got over 45% of the vote. Even in the central borough, Mitte, where demographic changes after the fall of the wall might have caused its vote to fall, the PDS increased from over 40% to over 42%. These are absolutely ...

Document Size:	8697
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Oct 11 13:20:42 PDT 1999

662 UN gets Netaid -- rank: 1000

At 10:49 10/10/99 -0400, Yoshie wrote: >Hi Elena: >>As to linking CRY men to poor women, the www.as.org and other free >>advertisers have had a pretty good record (though they do discriminate >>against poor men in third world countries). >>Where is Kelley, and Angela, and Yoshie, anyway??? > >Can't speak for Kelley & Angela, but I have trouble taking Chris B >seriously. Whenever he hears about 'international' something (be it >'peacekeepers,' the IMF, ...

Document Size:	5561
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Oct 10 16:32:09 PDT 1999

663 UN gets Netaid -- rank: 1000

At 14:37 10/10/99 +0300, you wrote: >Dear Chris, > > >>This is a eureka moment. > >Are you being serious, posting this, or were you ironising? Yes. Revolutionary cynicism is not very revolutionary and actually rather boring. Anyway I thought marxists were supposed to be optimistic, to believe in historical materialism, and to believe in qualitative steps sometimes leading to qualitative ones. This is a qualitative step that happened yesterday. If you do not agree, wait anoth ...

Document Size:	4941
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Oct 10 05:34:34 PDT 1999

664 UN gets Netaid -- rank: 1000

The touchstone to our minds and hearts. The voice - the word. The beat of drum. >From the anguish of slaves, to the songs of protest, music is the force to be reckoned with. It cannot be silenced. Now in this age of disorientation - alienation and isolation, we can take this opportunity to use technology for a higher purpose. Link up and communicate - we all want to make a difference. Music has been the messenger from ages past. -Eurythmics So the words, the Eurythmics chose to linked with th ...

Document Size:	8211
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Oct 10 00:23:08 PDT 1999

665 Call to renationalize UK rail service -- rank: 1000

Inquiries usually expose embarrassing details about how most systems manage at the margin of efficiency. That is what capitalism has to do to compete profitably. Latest revelations: 1) that some of the carriages in the express train had also been in the fatal Southall rail crash a couple of years ago, had been patched up and put into circulation again. Even if this had no direct effect on any deaths this week everyone can see from the television pictures that these trains are as good as travelli ...

Document Size:	5934
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Oct 9 09:37:08 PDT 1999

666 Clinton apologizes - over Northern Ireland -- rank: 1000

At 21:25 08/10/99 -0400, you wrote: >[It looks like he was referring to this, delivered about 10 AM: "I >spent an enormous amount of time trying to help the people in the >land of my forbears in Northern Ireland get over 600 years of >religious fights. And every time they make an agreement to do it, >they're like a couple of drunks walking out of the bar for the last >time -- when they get to the swinging door they turn around and go >back in and say, I just can't quite ...

Document Size:	6797
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Oct 9 00:30:17 PDT 1999

667 100,000 EU troops -- rank: 1000

Yesterday the new British head of NATO, Robertson, pledged 100,00 European troops to support EU policy. He was responding to a speech by Strobe Talbot, criticising the Europeans for not shouldering more of the "defence" burden for situations like Kosovo. The force is explicitly to be available to work outside the countries of the EU. Presumably in due course a country like Chechnya may be a case in point. But at the moment the EU has merely offered mediation, to which the Russians have ...

Document Size:	4827
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Oct 8 15:54:25 PDT 1999

668 Call to renationalize UK rail service -- rank: 1000

Well spotted. Risk is one of the achilles heels of capitalism. Insurance gets increasingly complex and the sense that somehow the state or the collective should ensure basic human safety is widespread across many strata. So this letter from the Daily Telegraph of all papers is an interesting straw in the wind. The privatisation of rail has not been totally illogical if it is a way of promoting a culture of individual responsibility in individual teams. By contrast the challenge in state centrali ...

Document Size:	9102
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Oct 7 15:32:15 PDT 1999

669 Re Smooth growth - for the USA -- rank: 1000

Rob Schaap Thu, 7 Oct 1999 08:07:06 +1000 >So communications technology has helped control US inventories and consumer >spending has been supporting the US economy. And perhaps an economy so >dominant that it can export much of the globe's volatility to other >economies through its finance sector... Indeed >But globalism cuts both ways, and the list of thinkable scenarios by which >interest rates could hit the credit sector or foreign money could leave US >markets, or e-comm ...

Document Size:	7897
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Oct 7 12:35:51 PDT 1999

670 Timor death count appears lower than initial estimates -- rank: 1000

At 14:55 05/10/99 +1000, Angela wrote: >Chris wrote: > >> I do not think this action can be analysed as directly in the service of >imperialism even though imperialism will want a docile colony, and will >patronise the East Timorese as much as NATO does the Albanians in Kosovo.< > >well, if you keep trying to use the model of global US imperialism it isn't >directly instrumental. there is, however, another way of looking at what >has been happening: as the comp ...

Document Size:	7273
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Oct 5 00:26:54 PDT 1999

671 Timor death count appears lower than initial estimates -- rank: 1000

At 23:41 03/10/99 -0700, you wrote: > > >Chris Burford wrote: > >> This is not surprising, I suggest. Death counts in Kosovo seem to be much >> less than the worst feared, although they are at least in 4 figures ie >> between 1000 and 10,000. > >Your lack of surprise and your assessment are a bit premature, I think, Chris. Yes, and we have to take political positions without all the information present, otherwise we are just philosophers analysing the world. I ...

Document Size:	9239
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Oct 4 14:13:46 PDT 1999

672 ..... vs Malaysia -- rank: 1000

At 12:05 04/10/99 -0400, Doug wrote: >>Mahathir had a tradition of national capital behind him and of teaching the >>British an economic lesson. > >Also, didn't the multinationals doing business in Malaysia - and >there are lots of them - quietly approve Mahathir's capital controls? That sounds an interesting story. Multinationals are essentially monopolistic in character and do not necessarily object to planning and control of the market so long as it is in their interest. ...

Document Size:	7009
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Oct 4 13:47:35 PDT 1999

673 East Timor vs Somalia vs SA -- rank: 1000

At 07:09 03/10/99 +0200, Patrick Bond wrote: >On 2 Oct 99, at 20:37, Chris Burford wrote: >> How could any post apartheid regime have bucked the >> power of the international bond traders? Do your think that the progressive >> economic policy promoted by some left wing economists as an option before >> the election, could ever have worked against the power of international >> finance capital? I think not... > >Too easy Chris. Explain away Mahathir's succes ...

Document Size:	9246
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Oct 3 15:32:21 PDT 1999

674 Timor death count appears lower than initial estimates -- rank: 1000

At 03:13 03/10/99 -0400, you wrote: > > Timor death count appears lower than initial estimates > > Copyright © 1999 Nando Media > Copyright © 1999Associated Press > > By ELLEN KNICKMEYER This is not surprising, I suggest. Death counts in Kosovo seem to be much less than the worst feared, although they are at least in 4 figures ie between 1000 and 10,000. Although sadism and brutality may be used, what was happening in Kosovo and in East Timor was a rational policy of ...

Document Size:	6415
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Oct 3 04:07:46 PDT 1999

675 East Timor vs Somalia -- rank: 1000

At 11:03 02/10/99 +0200, Russell Grinker wrote presumably from South Africa. Let me comment first that there are now decades of internationalist discussions which have learned that the progressive forces inside a country naturally have tasks and priorities that are different to those of the progressive forces outside that country. Russell may well be right about certain targets of internal struggle. But from a world stage, those of us in places like the USA and England need to recognise that Sou ...

Document Size:	14131
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Oct 2 12:37:26 PDT 1999