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76 US hegemonic decline. -- rank: 1000

Doug Mon Feb 03 2003 quoted >But if all of these be ingredients, there is no doubt that 9/11 was the >significant catalyst, despite its coming more than a year after several of >these economic and financial trends experienced their peaks. In the >aftermath of 9/11 it became apparent to George Bush and the Washington >defense establishment that future conflict would perhaps be not only near >perpetual, but of a nature quite different from Desert Storm over a decade >ago. Whil ...

Document Size:	6303
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Feb 3 00:03:01 PST 2003

77 [lbo-talk] America the omnipotent? -- rank: 1000

>From: Carl Remick (carlremick at hotmail.com) >Date: Sat Apr 26 2003 - 12:01:53 EDT > > >New York Times Week in Review > >April 27, 2003 > >American Power Moves Beyond the Mere Super > >By GREGG EASTERBROOK > ><http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/weekinreview/27EAST.html> >As the global arms race ends with the United States so far ahead >no other nation even tries to be America's rival, the result may be a world >in which Washington has histor ...

Document Size:	6315
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Apr 27 02:44:41 PDT 2003

78 [lbo-talk] Dixie sluts fight on with naked defiance -- rank: 1000

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,943201,00.html >Now the Texas-based Dixie Chicks are fighting back. They have posed for >the cover of next week's Entertainment Weekly cheerfully wearing nothing >but the epithets they have attracted and vowing to continue to speak their >minds.

Document Size:	5103
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Apr 25 00:44:39 PDT 2003

79 [lbo-talk] UK attacks on CEO salaries -- rank: 1000

Although the union, Amicus, is championing criticism of momumental executives fees in the UK, the real impetus for this story is that the association of pension fund managers is demanding accountability. It is asking for evidence of what executives have done to earn their fees, particularly if there are massive severance packages at a time when the share price has fallen drastically. What we are seeing here is the contradicion, exposed at the time of Enron, between finance capital at its most ra ...

Document Size:	6566
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Apr 23 23:43:46 PDT 2003

80 [lbo-talk] Fisk wrong on arsonists? -- rank: 1000

>From: Michael Pollak (mpollak at panix.com) >Date: Thu Apr 17 2003 - 16:31:13 EDT >[lbo-talk] Fisk on torturers and looters In an incandescent moral piece Fisk tears apart the veil of legitimacy over the invasion, including on the issue of torture where it appears to stand most in the right. But I think his analysis is wrong about the fire-setting. (see extract below) He assumes, like the hegemons, that a society that used physical brutality including torture, to ensure social norms mu ...

Document Size:	11202
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Apr 17 23:55:51 PDT 2003

81 [lbo-talk] Tim Robbins speech at National Press Club--quite good -- rank: 1000

>[lbo-talk] Tim Robbins speech at National Press Club--quite good > >From: steve philion (philion at hawaii.edu) >Date: Wed Apr 16 2003 - 22:04:42 EDT http://news.mpr.org/play/audio.php?media=/midday/2003/04/15_midday2 "quite good" I appreciate the lead because movements need personalities, and his persona is quite a suitable one. But what more could he have said? I wonder if it was only "quite good"! It seemed to me to be positive because it tried to build middle ...

Document Size:	7261
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Apr 17 00:51:34 PDT 2003

82 [lbo-talk] Have medical journals helped to justify war? -- rank: 1000

> BMJ -- Press Releases >______________________________ >Releases Saturday 12 April 2003 >(4) HAVE MEDICAL JOURNALS HELPED TO >JUSTIFY WAR? > >(Letter: Medical journals may have had a role in >justifying war) >http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7393/820 > >Medical journals may have played an important part in >providing the political justification for attacking Iraq, >argues a public health expert in this week's BMJ. > >Professor Ian Roberts believ ...

Document Size:	7665
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Apr 11 23:20:06 PDT 2003

83 [lbo-talk] Russian ambassador does get fired on -- rank: 1000

It comes to something when you really only have to add vigilance, and irony, to hit on the truth. On Sun Apr 06 2003 - 07:41:32 EDT I wrote in repsonse to Chris D >concerning the last point, the BBC has just reported, roughly midday GMT, >that a US plane has fired on some Russian "consular" cars heading towards >the Syrian border. > >But as they have just killed some of their special forces working with the >Kurds in northern Iraq, and wounded one of the most prestigi ...

Document Size:	5380
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Apr 7 16:15:20 PDT 2003

84 [lbo-talk] Russian ambassador leaves Iraq - and gets fired on? -- rank: 1000

>From: ChrisD(RJ) (chrisd at russiajournal.com) >Date: Sun Apr 06 2003 - 04:33:35 EDT > > >Russia reduces staff at its Baghdad embassy, ambassador >heads out of Iraq > > MOSCOW (AP) - With the U.S. military closing in on >Baghdad, Russia's ambassador to Iraq is leaving the >country, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday. > > Russian officials had long ago evacuated most of the >embassy's staff, but a core team remained, including the >ambassador. > & ...

Document Size:	6612
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Apr 6 04:41:32 PDT 2003

85 "Ban business funding of politics" -- rank: 1000

The fruits of New Labour's risky but tactical approach to capitalist influence over the electoral process. Could US business get to this point?? Chris Burford London Ban party funding, says CBI chief By Michael Harrison, Business Editor 20 May 2002 Political donations from companies should be banned and replaced by a system of state funding of parties, the leader of British industry said yesterday. Sir John Egan, the new president of the Confederation of British Industry, said it had become too ...

Document Size:	6932
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon May 20 00:02:01 PDT 2002

86 UK Private Finance Initiative criticised in BMJ -- rank: 1000

A detailed critical article in this week's British Medical Journal focusses on private or public management of risk in the high profile area of health care. BMJ 2002;324:1205-1209 ( 18 May ) This is a major issue in the performance of the New Labour government. More generally, the management of health risk, not least the USA, is a major issue for finance capitalism. Here is the editorial comment. The government claims that using the private finance initiative (PFI) to build NHS hospitals offers ...

Document Size:	6909
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun May 19 08:15:36 PDT 2002

87 Merrill Lynch? -- rank: 1000

How big? Just a one off? Just a symptom of how debatable business practices can be brushed over in rising market but get unconvered in one that is not rising? Coupled with Enron, will this weaken the extent to which overseas investors wish to park their cash in the USA? Chris Burford

Document Size:	4671
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue May 14 16:09:55 PDT 2002

88 Us & Israel; alone -- rank: 1000

I hope this reading of the situation is correct. Always difficult to judge since Blair likes to ride two horses at once on principle. Small sign (very small you might think but not in terms of the perceptions of mainstream opinion in the UK): a bishop is giving an Easter Sunday sermon calling for caution about intervention in Iraq. He will have decided and the Archbiship of Canterbury will have decided whether that is going outside the consensus, and presumably they have decided it does not. The ...

Document Size:	6946
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Mar 31 03:19:30 PST 2002

89 The great Whitewater scandal that never was -- rank: 1000

At 23/03/02 11:48 +0200, you wrote: >Another one of those damn conspiracy theories that distract us from the >broad forces of history by putting forth the view that elites can covertly >manipulate events and change history. > >Hakki Kenneth Starr was linked to tobacco capital, was he not? There is a bit of a difference between conspiracism, and class struggle, which includes conspiracies but is not limited to them. Chris Burford London

Document Size:	5108
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Mar 23 08:21:15 PST 2002

90 Texan barbarity thawing? -- rank: 1000

The case of the mother who was put on trial for a possible death penalty after killing her children while patently mentally ill, looks from this side of the Atlantic to be another example of US barbaric, virtually fascist, populist culture. Now that she is not going to be executed but will have to spend 40 (?) years in prison, in the sigh of relief, people may forget how barbaric that is too. Have her actions not punished her enough already? Isn't the danger that she will commit suicide? So I w ...

Document Size:	6534
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Mar 22 00:01:25 PST 2002