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14191 [lbo-talk] ruling class -- rank: 1000

joanna wrote: >Carrol Cox wrote: > >> >>Julio Huato wrote: >> >> >>> >>>Massad's critique of M&W's paper misses the main points: that the >>>policies the U.S. follows in the Middle East, whether or not >>>determined by the influence of the Israel lobby, *contradict* the >>>interest of the U.S. capitalists taken as a whole, >>> >>> >> >>This is little short of a claim to divine inspiration ...

Document Size:	6085
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Mar 27 05:58:53 PST 2006

14192 [lbo-talk] Re: Blaming the lobby -- rank: 1000

Carrol Cox wrote: >Hence the lobby can have great influence (defeating Finley -- who >incidentally probably was anti-semitic), but it would lose that >influence were it not supported by the cultural and political power of >the u.s. ruling class. Exactly. There's a weird unstated assumption among the hijack crowd - "Congress is Israeli-occupied territory," etc. - that US foreign policy would be humane and decent if The Lobby hadn't bullied and tricked Washington into pursuin ...

Document Size:	5119
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Mar 27 05:46:46 PST 2006

14193 [lbo-talk] Why there's no strategy to end this war -- rank: 1000

Nathan Newman wrote: >And the mass immigration rights rallies in the last few days show that the >problem is not that people won't show up in massive numbers for a cause. That turnout is really inspiring. But it's a different demographic from the antiwar crowd, no? Doug

Document Size:	4945
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Mar 27 05:12:56 PST 2006

14194 [lbo-talk] S. Africa's flimsy economy -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond wrote: >----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> >>I'm pretty sure the constant rand figures are just what the SA >>government gives them. > >Well, we know Pretoria tortures the data until they confess. There >have been umpteen data revisions (largely to pick 'informal sector' >activity), including the erasure of a recession in late 1998 - >without correcting the historical data series. Caveat emptor. The ...

Document Size:	5383
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Mar 27 05:09:09 PST 2006

14195 [lbo-talk] Fwd: [PEN-L] Blaming the lobby -- rank: 1000

Julio Huato wrote: >Massad's critique of M&W's paper misses the main points: that the >policies the U.S. follows in the Middle East, whether or not >determined by the influence of the Israel lobby, *contradict* the >interest of the U.S. capitalists taken as a whole, that the cost of >this influence has mounted and become impossibly onerous. These >propositions have merit. But this would suggest that 2% of the US pop can outweigh the influence of the US capitalists taken as ...

Document Size:	5112
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Mar 26 21:26:03 PST 2006

14196 [lbo-talk] S. Africa's flimsy economy -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond wrote: >----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" dhenwood at panix.com >>Here's what the World Bank's World Development Indicators database >>has to say. Average annual growth rate in per capita GDP for SA, >>1994-2004, in constant rand: 1.2%. If you use 1990 as the base >>year, the performance is much worse: 0.3%. Since 1990 and 1994 - >>base year doesn't matter much here - investment has averaged under >>17% of GDP; for Chi ...

Document Size:	5739
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Mar 26 21:23:35 PST 2006

14197 [lbo-talk] US public getting nervous about climate - but no energy taxes please! -- rank: 1000

[full release, with graphics and detaled Q&A, should be at <http://abcnews.go.com/US/PollVault/>, but not yet] ABC NEWS/TIME/STANFORD POLL: GLOBAL WARMING - 3/14/06 EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE AFTER 9 a.m. Sunday, March 26, 2006 Intensity Spikes in Concern on Warming; Many See a Change in Weather Patterns The intensity of public concern about global warming has spiked sharply over the last decade, along with a change in personal experience: Half of Americans say weather patterns have grown m ...

Document Size:	20077
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Mar 26 07:10:23 PST 2006

14198 [lbo-talk] S. Africa plans second nuclear power plant -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond wrote: >Growth is not 'rapid' (since 1994 it barely exceeded the population >growth rate, itself decimated by AIDS); neoliberalism here meant >virtually no investments/upgrading by parastatals or other state >agencies. If anyone wants data, let me know. Here's what the World Bank's World Development Indicators database has to say. Average annual growth rate in per capita GDP for SA, 1994-2004, in constant rand: 1.2%. If you use 1990 as the base year, the performance is m ...

Document Size:	5505
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Mar 26 07:01:33 PST 2006

14199 [lbo-talk] minimum wage polling -- rank: 1000

Someone asked me offlist for some more info on US public opinion on the minimum wage. I know I've seen more detailed stuff in the past (incl indexing the minwage for inflation), but here's what I come up with on the fly. <http://typology.people-press.org/data/index.php?QuestionID=25> An increase in the minimum wage, from $5.15 an hour to $6.45 an hour 86% support 12% oppose (and broadly across almost all their demographic typologies) ======== <http://www.highroadnow.org/high_road/high_w ...

Document Size:	9794
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Mar 25 12:48:25 PST 2006

14200 [lbo-talk] doom -- rank: 1000

Carrol Cox wrote: >A question. Minimum wage is one of the areas where an incremental >approach has meant a steady _lowering_ of the minimum wage over time. >The cost of living goes up (arbitrary not real figures) 2%, the minimum >wage goes up 1% (to much boasting from DP supporters), and meanwhile the >cost of living has gone up another 1/2%. Total cut of 1.5% in minimum >wage. (And this, of course, constitutes a drag on the entire wage >structure: it is a transfer of wealth ...

Document Size:	5296
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Mar 25 10:54:58 PST 2006

14201 [lbo-talk] doom -- rank: 1000

Nathan Newman wrote: >Why people can have the ahistorical delusion that universal health care can >ignore that pattern is beyond me? Incremental changes in health care have often made things worse. The insane patchwork of programs - public & private, state & local, out-of-pocket & third-party - conspire to make things more expensive and more complicated than they have to be. Whatever little change might make sense in itself males less than no sense at the level of the whole. Th ...

Document Size:	5099
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Mar 25 09:36:32 PST 2006

14202 [lbo-talk] birthdays -- rank: 1000

What a power trio of (gay-themed) birthdays today: according to Tom Heald's daily pridelets email, today is the 66th of Anita Bryant, the 59th of Elton John, and the 48th of Susie Bright. Doug

Document Size:	4558
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Mar 25 09:16:42 PST 2006

14203 [lbo-talk] scritti politi -- rank: 1000

Jim Devine wrote: >is this related to the (faux?) Russian spy agency reports that were so >notoriously inaccurate during the early stages of the U.S. Heroic >Conquest of Iraq three years ago? Yeah I wondered that too. But maybe the real Russian spies were giving the Iraqis real satellite info. This inspired me to look in on <http://iraqwar.ru>. The domain is for sale, but for the moment, it's hawking \/|/\gra. Doug

Document Size:	4887
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Mar 25 09:13:31 PST 2006

14204 [lbo-talk] Massad: Blaming The Lobby -- rank: 1000

Al-Ahram Weekly - March 23-29, 2006 <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/787/op35.htm> Blaming the lobby Joseph Massad In the last 25 years, many Palestinians and other Arabs, in the United States and in the Arab world, have been so awed by the power of the US pro-Israel lobby that any study, book, or journalistic article that exposes the inner workings, the substantial influence, and the financial and political power of this lobby have been greeted with ecstatic sighs of relief that Americans ...

Document Size:	20527
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Mar 25 08:03:51 PST 2006

14205 [lbo-talk] To Doug re Medvedev -- rank: 1000

Chris Doss wrote: >Have you thought of interviewing Medvedev on your >show? I think he speaks English. I have no idea of how >you would contact him, however. You could get him through his publisher. If he speaks good English, I'd be very interested in interviewing him.

Document Size:	4744
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Mar 24 14:42:49 PST 2006