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11536 [lbo-talk] more on the psychology of money -- rank: 1000

On Jun 30, 2007, at 7:51 PM, boddi satva wrote: > Surely you're not suggesting that the rattling and stacking of gold > coins is the same exercise as modern finance? Nope. But why did Steve Schwarzman need another $2 billion from the Blackstone IPO? He already had $4 billion, and lunched regularly on $400 stone crabs. Why the need for more? Always more? Schwarzman's need for more is shaped by American capitalism, for sure, but his need for more - every deal Blackstone has done has affe ...

Document Size:	5206
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Jul 1 07:01:49 PDT 2007

11537 [lbo-talk] Anthems, National and Post-national -- rank: 1000

On Jun 30, 2007, at 8:11 PM, dredmond at efn.org wrote: > On the other hand, the anthem of that friendly neighborhood > superpower, > the European Union, is the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's 9th symphony > - one > of the supreme incarnations of melody. Not that Beethoven was known for melody. As every Adorno student knows, he was all about development. But what about that Turkish military march in the middle of an ode to joy? Doug

Document Size:	5142
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Jul 1 06:50:07 PDT 2007

11538 [lbo-talk] Vista -- rank: 1000

A question for the geeks out there. In a review of Vista <http:// www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/17992/page2/>, Erika Jonietz writes: > My efforts to get Media Center working highlighted two big problems > with Vista. First, it's a memory hog. The hundreds of new features > jammed into it have made it a prime example of software bloat, > perhaps the quintessence of programmer Niklaus Wirth's law that > software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster (for more on > ...

Document Size:	6045
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 18:47:53 PST 2007

11539 [lbo-talk] Bond on Nairobi WSF -- rank: 1000

<http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-02/01bond.cfm> February 01, 2007 From WSF 'NGO trade fair' to left politics? By Patrick Bond A mixed message - combining celebration and autocritique - is in order, in the wake of the Nairobi World Social Forum. From January 20-25, the 60,000 registered participants heard triumphalist radical rhetoric and yet, too, witnessed persistent defeats for social justice causes - especially within the WSF's own processes. * Kenya Social Forum coordin ...

Document Size:	18323
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 18:30:00 PST 2007

11540 [lbo-talk] Essay Linking Liberal Jews and Anti-Semitism Sparks a Furor -- rank: 1000

On Jan 31, 2007, at 8:04 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > The American Jewish Committee's foolish attack on the liberal Jewish > Americans whose genuine concern for Israelis as well as Palestinians > has led them to criticize Tel Aviv's policy is a good sign, a sign > that dogmatic Zionism no longer enjoys unchallenged hegemony in > political discourse. -- Yoshie Thanks. Meant to post this & forgot. They're sounding a little panick- y, no? Doug

Document Size:	5366
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 17:20:27 PST 2007

11541 [lbo-talk] MySQL to go public -- rank: 1000

On Jan 31, 2007, at 7:22 PM, Chuck wrote: > By the way, we were talking last week about how shitty employers > are in terms of responding to applicants. This employer has already > sent me a postcard thanking me for my application. No employer does > that! The biz press and the Federal Reserve's beige book is full of anecdotes about how skilled labor is in short supply. Enjoy it while it lasts! Doug

Document Size:	4967
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 16:34:50 PST 2007

11542 [lbo-talk] SEIU & health care -- rank: 1000

On Jan 30, 2007, at 9:14 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > But here's what I don't understand: How could single-payer be won > without a radical defeat of insurance interests? And are not > "insurance > interests" radically entangled with almost every other major > element of > u.s. capital? Well yeah, but: 1) the big holders of financial assets are life insurance companies, not health insurance companies; there's overlap, but they're not identical; 2) insurance is big, but i ...

Document Size:	5236
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 16:17:35 PST 2007

11543 [lbo-talk] wtf mortgages? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 31, 2007, at 6:31 PM, bitch at pulpculture.org wrote: > my son was told by his bank that they could get him a loan for a > house for $245k. he makes $13.50/hr. WTF? > > ARe these people completely off their rocker? Jordan will tell us no. Deliquency rates for "subprime" mortgages are rising, and several subprime lenders have gone to the wall in recent months. But with the Fed on hold and mortgage rates behaving, the animal spirits are returning...

Document Size:	5011
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 15:46:16 PST 2007

11544 [lbo-talk] MySQL to go public -- rank: 1000

On Jan 31, 2007, at 5:15 PM, Colin Brace wrote: > [In an earlier thread Doug questioned the economic viability of the > open-source model. The mySQL database is ubiquitous; anyone can > download and install it from numerous repositories, no strings > attached. Yet the Swedish company has on the order of 10,000 paying > customers.] Web 2.0 has come with Bubble 2.0. It's a lot less dramatic than the first, but no one still has any damned idea how YouTube is going to make a buck. D ...

Document Size:	5011
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 14:30:56 PST 2007

11545 [lbo-talk] Germany orders arrest of CIA agents -- rank: 1000

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6316369.stm> Germany issues CIA arrest orders Germany has ordered the arrest of 13 suspected CIA agents over the alleged kidnapping of one of its citizens. Munich prosecutors confirmed that the warrants were linked to the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German national of Lebanese descent. Mr Masri says he was seized in Macedonia, flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan and mistreated there. He says he was released in Albania five months later when the Ame ...

Document Size:	7703
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 12:19:36 PST 2007

11546 [lbo-talk] Question for Woj or anybody else on Poland -- rank: 1000

On Jan 31, 2007, at 1:23 PM, Chris Doss wrote: > He also thinks that in a few years there will be > fascist torch marches all through the eastern half of > the EU. Directed against whom? Certainly not the Reds. The core EU states as bloodsucking imperialists? Doug

Document Size:	4991
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 10:51:42 PST 2007

11547 [lbo-talk] Against a pre-emptive holocaust -- rank: 1000

Jerusalem Post - January 27, 2007 <http://static.jpost.com/images/2002/site/pixel.gif> Rattling the Cage: Against a preemptive Holocaust Larry Derfner Almost imperceptibly, the debate in Israel over what to do about Iran's nuclear development has gone over the edge. The unthinkable is now not only thinkable, it's speakable, it's writeable, it's doable. In the last few weeks or so, it has become acceptable, legitimate, to argue for an Israeli nuclear first strike to knock out Iran's nuc ...

Document Size:	13359
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 09:06:40 PST 2007

11548 [lbo-talk] flirting with deadlines -- rank: 1000

<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238&page=3> For the first time, Sen. Obama proposed "setting a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq," reports the Washington Post's Shailagh Murray. LINK "Obama's legislation . . . would remove all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008." "New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is the only other prominent Democrat in the field to set a withdrawal timetable, declaring that troops 'can and should' be bro ...

Document Size:	5460
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 09:02:00 PST 2007

11549 [lbo-talk] Cole: Iranian public very friendly towards US -- rank: 1000

On Jan 31, 2007, at 9:06 AM, Marvin Gandall wrote: > I don't think > it's the case, as suggested above and elsewhere, that Capital was > at one > with the neocons in launching the invasion of Iraq For what it's worth, an economist for PFC Energy said on my radio show several years ago that the oil industry did not agitate for the invasion of Iraq. Doug

Document Size:	5126
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 06:36:11 PST 2007

11550 [lbo-talk] The problem, Benny Morris, is Zionism -- rank: 1000

[it's impossible to imagine this appearing in a US newspaper] Jerusalem Post - January 29, 2007 The problem, Benny Morris, is Zionism Yakov M. Rabkin Benny Morris is an honest man. He was one of the first to expose the history of Zionist dispossession and expulsion of the Palestinians. He later honestly regretted that the ethnic cleansing had not been radical enough: The United States had done a better job in cleansing the country of its previous inhabitants. Recently he published a heart-re ...

Document Size:	10652
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jan 31 06:01:50 PST 2007