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931 Euro-ka! -- rank: 1000

From this morning a unified currency has taken over from 11 different currencies in eleven different countries, with a combined population of over 300 million. Until removed from circulation, a Mark, a Franc, a Lira are now permanently worth only the fraction of a Euro they held last night. They have been abolished in all but name as a store of value and as a universal measure of value. Soon they will be abolished as a means of circulating payment too. This is a tremendously progressive developm ...

Document Size:	5902
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Jan 1 02:22:46 PST 1999

932 Hitchens on intimacy -- rank: 1000

At 20:27 28/02/99 -0500, you wrote: >Peter Kilander quoted Christopher Hitchens: > >>Need he have reminded me of the time >>when I could dash off a mocking letter to the likes of himself, and had not >>reached the state of decrepitude when only women would even consider going >>to bed with me? > >Can someone parse that for me? > >Doug I generally agree with the range of issues Rob has mentioned on the different national and class uses of irony. I too got ...

Document Size:	6032
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Feb 28 23:30:33 PST 1999

933 World FSF v chaos -- rank: 1000

>From the Economist's weekly summary:- The GROUP OF SEVEN finance ministers and central-bank bosses met in Bonn. They agreed to create a "financial stability forum", a pool of experts who will try to foresee (and even forestall) problems in the world financial system. This "FSF" will struggle to study and to predict. It will have to use computers to aid financial modelling, and will create an irrestistible political pressure for computers as large as those used to try to m ...

Document Size:	6180
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Feb 28 22:33:25 PST 1999

934 Slouching towards Europe -- rank: 1000

The (London) Observer carries a main story linking the activities of pro-Europe Conservatives to a "Tory plot to topple Hague". >The pro-Euro Conservatives, led by two deselected Tory MEPs, John Stevens and Brendan Donnelly, think it will be possible to run a highly centralised campaign because the June contest will be the first UK national election to use proportional representation - eradicating the need for a big party membership on the ground targeting key marginal seats. < & ...

Document Size:	8888
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Feb 28 11:39:36 PST 1999

935 Euro: prepare and decide -- rank: 1000

Blair has made his statement that the British government will prepare to take Britain fully into the Euro within three years of a referendum. The government trailer carefully briefed that it marked no change in the government's policy of "prepare and decide". What a contrast though, to "wait and see" - essentially the policy of the Conservative government. Tonight, most significantly the Murdoch press has come out with a long editorial in the Times, and the Sun, for the Sun, ...

Document Size:	5094
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Feb 23 15:41:57 PST 1999

936 cooperation and competition (was Linux) -- rank: 1000

At 19:40 22/02/99 -0600, Bill, "William S. Lear" <rael at zopyra.com> wrote: >I disagree. Competition usually produces immense energies spent in >going noplace --- as Dave Noble called it, our society is a dynamic >one which goes nowhere. > >The critical issue here is to examine the ways in which competition is >padded with subsidies while cooperation (outside of corporations) is >left to its own devices, often horribly underfunded. When compared on >equ ...

Document Size:	5511
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Feb 23 15:22:05 PST 1999

937 Linux -- rank: 1000

At 11:34 22/02/99 -0800, you wrote: >On Mon, 22 Feb 1999, Seth Gordon wrote: > >> I find the whole "open-source software" movement (of which Linux is the most >> visible part) very intriguing; I'd love to see analyses of it by more people >> who are clueful about economics. The Conference of Socialist Economists (in the UK) last year organised a meeting by a speaker who argued convincingly that the internet was an arena where the economics of cooperation were mo ...

Document Size:	6399
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Feb 22 15:41:58 PST 1999

938 Nowell article on tobacco -- rank: 1000

>February 22, 1999 > > > >Post Mortem > > >Impeachment appeared futile, but it was rooted in sound political strategy > > > >By Gregory P. Nowell > Impresssively nuanced for an article that needs to get read by a readership not open to more simplistic interpretations. Packed with detail evidencing the complexity of the skirmishing. Most striking "statistic": > Pro-impeachment >Democrats averaged eight times more tobacco money than did the &g ...

Document Size:	6319
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Feb 21 23:45:27 PST 1999

939 definitions of capital, centre, periphery -- rank: 1000

I'll try to answer the question. The concept of the centralisation and concentration of capital can be extended from capitalist companies to whole capitalist economies if you take the wider definition of capital, variable as well as constant capital, into account. It is clear that the balance of flows favours the accumulation of this wider definition including an educated workforce with suggicient purchasing power for a mass sophisticated market, in the metropolitan imperialist countries. Does t ...

Document Size:	6249
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Feb 20 07:34:59 PST 1999

940 Blair and capitalism -- rank: 1000

This week Blair appears to have taken decisive steps to align himself with the interests of the most advanced and largest capitalists. The issues are genetically modified food and the euro. A. Today Blair had nailed his colours to the mast on gm food. Despite a crescendo of public and media concern, to which William Hague, Conservative leader has responded by calling for a 3 year moratorium on gm food in Britain, Blair has taken him on on his own ground with an article in the Daily Telegraph, of ...

Document Size:	7416
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Feb 20 12:02:02 PST 1999

941 Max: Yes 'n' No on tobacco -- rank: 1000

At 18:10 19/02/99 -0500, Greg Novell wrote: >Max-- <snip> >Well I'll be interested to see what comments I get from >this list and the general world. I do believe they'll >be putting my email into the biotag. I think the >circulation of Barron's is 300,000. If 10% read the >article and 1% of that 10% decide to send me some kind >of comment (no doubt not all favorable), I'll be >getting 300 emails on this topic. Given the >readership some of them may have qui ...

Document Size:	7683
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Feb 19 23:52:31 PST 1999

942 The Jewish Question: Species Being, Immortality and Barbaric Racial Utopias -- rank: 1000

At 15:09 18/02/99 -0500, Rakesh wrote: > I just wanted to speak to Chris B's and James F's discussion of Marx's "On >The Jewish Question". > >Here's an important part: >"The perfected political state is by its nature the species life of man in >opposition to his material lfie. All the presuppositions of theis egoistic >life continue to exist in civil society outside of the sphere of the state, >but as proper to civil society. . When the political state has ...

Document Size:	8960
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Feb 19 15:02:09 PST 1999

943 Marx supporting the Jewish community -- rank: 1000

In connection with the recent thread, I thought it would be interesting to post the following passage, which appears to be free of all dialectical irony:- Marx to Arnold Ruge, writing from Cologne 13 March 1843: "You have probably already read Bauer's self-defence. In my opinion, he has never before written so well. As far as the Rheinische Zeitung is concerned I would not remain *under any conditions*; it is impossible for me to write under Prussian censorship or to live in the Prussian at ...

Document Size:	5605
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Feb 18 23:40:01 PST 1999

944 definitions -- rank: 1000

At 16:28 18/02/99 -0800, you wrote: >Then Japan is the mother of centers and NY is the mother of the periphery. >A better defintion would that centers are places that benefit more from >capital that passes through it. > >Henry > >Doug Henwood wrote: > >> "By definition, the center is the provider of capital, the periphery the >> recipient." - George Soros, The Crisis of Global Capitalism, p. 120 My understanding is that from a marxist point of view, ...

Document Size:	5199
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Feb 18 23:29:01 PST 1999

945 Marx & the Jewish Question -- rank: 1000

At 14:03 17/02/99 -0500, Jim Farmelant wrote: > >On Wed, 17 Feb 1999 08:02:39 +0000 Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> >writes: >>At 12:39 16/02/99 Greg Nowell wrote: >>>I've been reading Szporluk at the instigation of Rakesh >>>and came across a rather disconcerting paragraph on >>>Marx and the Jewish question. I wonder whether anyone >>>could fill me in a bit more on Marx's views. >> >> >>I regard "On the Jew ...

Document Size:	17552
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Feb 17 23:42:45 PST 1999