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38356 Powell's workers ask for help -- rank: 1000

We are writing to ask for your help. Working together, Powell's Books employees and managers in Portland, Oregon have created the finest bookstore in the world. In order to maintain a voice in their working conditions, Powell's employees are exercising their legal right to unionize. On Friday, March 12th, after five months of hard work, they will file for a union election. Please join us in asking Michael Powell to agree to a fast, fair union election. Fast: The Powell's Organizing Committee ...

Document Size:	8206
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Mar 11 07:04:29 PST 1999

38357 Banks, Bucks and Bolsheviks -- rank: 1000

Dennis R Redmond wrote: >Not so awful right now, at the peak of the business cycle, but overall >investment rates in the 1990s are noticeably lower in the US compared to >the EU or East Asian countries. Which isn't the same thing as prospering, >of course -- Thailand and South Korea had 35% investment rates in the >mid-Nineties and got clobbered for their pains. Also, much of that >investment is hideously toxic to people and the planet. In the total >system, you're damn if y ...

Document Size:	5162
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Mar 10 14:55:27 PST 1999

38358 technology (Re: Horowitz's center) -- rank: 1000

Carl Remick wrote: >Then why are the values and customs of traditional societies typically >so quickly obliterated when these societies come into contact with >advanced technologies, even if there is substantial resistance to such >cultural pollution? People often talk about technology as if its development and adoption weren't driven by money and competitive capitalist markets. For conservative critics of capitalist society, who often speak of "globalization" and "tec ...

Document Size:	5515
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Mar 10 13:32:00 PST 1999

38359 Gray/Demos/Polanyi -- rank: 1000

Jacob Segal wrote: > I imagine his critique >of globalism has to do with the creation of a universal or Americanized >world society. Bingo. But he also said that Americans should probably stick with their indigenous culture of market-driven individualism rather than importing Euromodels. His notion of culture seems rather static and unitary. Doug

Document Size:	4728
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Mar 10 13:12:14 PST 1999

38360 Crimes of Unreason -- rank: 1000

Max Sawicky wrote: >Alternatively, if a boss >runs a factory with a positive fatality rate from industrial accidents, I >would not automatically consider that a capital crime; it would depend on >the details. So a boss who does cost-benefit calculations and thereby decides that a production technique that costs one worker death to same $1m in profit, or 40 cases of cancer in the surrounding neighborhood - what's your judgment on that boss? Is the logic, in the words of Pritchett/Summ ...

Document Size:	4901
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Mar 10 09:14:15 PST 1999

38361 Horowitz's center -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >As for Doug's apologia for innovation it is almost >determined entirely by the needs of the system Damn, Rakesh, I'd expect that from Lou Proyect, not you. I'm trying to preserve a distinction between capitalist science and the liberatory potential of a socialist science, and to preserve the traditional Marxist ambivalence towards capitalist innovation. The critique of innovation in itself that Carl Remick was citing is a species of romantic anticapitalism that Marx ...

Document Size:	5064
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Mar 10 09:10:59 PST 1999

38362 Steinem on CIA -- rank: 1000

Tom Waters wrote: >On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Richard Gibson wrote: > >> The folks in the former Redstockings collective, > >If I'm not mistaken, Redstockings still exists. Yes. This thread started when I posted a quote from Steinem that's in the Redstockings' suppressed chapter on her. I used to have a copy of the chapter, but it somehow disappeared (Gloria's agents rifling my files?), so I ordered a replacement copy. Lots of their classic stuff is still available. They've got an add ...

Document Size:	4938
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Mar 10 08:37:03 PST 1999

38363 Crimes of Unreason -- rank: 1000

Max Sawicky wrote: >There's nobody like that here. I be surprized to learn of anybody on this >list with any partiality towards capital punishment who has devoted the >slightest bit of time to that cause, other than e-mail speculations, whereas >the entirety of my time is about the other stuff, for the past 30 years. In >fact, I wouldn't even be going on about this, but for the fact that goofy >equations between depraved murders, factory owners, and the Mayor of New >York ...

Document Size:	6254
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Mar 10 07:43:35 PST 1999

38364 Horowitz's center -- rank: 1000

Carl Remick wrote: >Sam, I think that technological advance itself can pose an enormous >danger to society, irrespective of whether capitalists or socialists >"control" technological advance. I thoroughly agree with Jacques Ellul >(The Technological Society, 1954) that "technique" -- i.e., "the >totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency >(for a given state of development) in every field of human activity" -- >thre ...

Document Size:	5424
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Mar 10 07:06:55 PST 1999

38365 Gray/Demos/Polanyi -- rank: 1000

A copy of John Gray's False Dawn, just published by the New Press, arrived in the mail today. Does anyone know the rap on him? He seems a slightly higher brow version of Soros (whom he quotes, thanks, and is blurbed by), with vague calls for restraints on The Market, more enamored of "culture" and "place" and "tradition" and "indigenous values" than Soros, very anti-Marxist (part of the whole Enlightenment delusion), full of references to Demos and the Soc ...

Document Size:	4937
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Mar 9 20:37:30 PST 1999

38366 Banks, Bucks and Bolsheviks -- rank: 1000

D. L. wrote: >How stocks were in 1922, 1872, >or even 1972 seems not to be terribly relevant to me. Once again I think a >net-present-value calculation on the profitability of the major averages >over 10 to 20 years might be a better figure to work with than dividends >which don't reflect profitability equally across industries. So you can divine the future better than you can understand the past? Is that what makes you the enlightened one? Doug

Document Size:	4931
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Mar 9 19:11:34 PST 1999

38367 Sahlins -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >i wish i were an economist No, Rakesh. Come to your senses! Doug

Document Size:	4335
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Mar 9 17:54:30 PST 1999

38368 Xena ungodly -- rank: 1000

for all you Xena fans out there, from another list.... >============================= >"Xena" Protested by NZ Hindus >============================= > >NewsPlanet, March 2, 1999 > >Hindu groups in several different nations called for the latest >edition of "Xena: Warrior Princess" (produced in New Zealand) to be >kept off the air, perceiving it to show Lord Krishna "helping Xena >save her lesbian lover." (In fact the relationship between ...

Document Size:	5482
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Mar 9 11:48:44 PST 1999

38369 more market madness -- rank: 1000

from Herb Greenberg's column in TheStreet.com: "Market milestones: At some point yesterday (thanks Eric VDP for the heads up) eBay's (EBAY:Nasdaq) market value for the first time passed Amazon.com's (AMZN:Nasdaq) ($20.7 bil vs. $19.7 bil). Its auction site also competes with the newspaper classified sections of the likes of Gannett (GCI:NYSE) ($18.8 billion), Tribune Co. (TRB:NYSE) ($7.9 bil) and Knight-Ridder (KRI:NYSE) ($3.9 bil)." Additional market cap comparison: Barnes & Noble ...

Document Size:	4831
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Mar 9 10:53:04 PST 1999

38370 Graham on secrecy -- rank: 1000

[Speaking of the CIA & the media, this just came into my inbox. Graham was an early investor in Ms.] "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." - Washington Post owner Katharine Graham said in a 1988 speech to CIA officials at the agency's headquarte ...

Document Size:	4826
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Mar 9 10:02:16 PST 1999