From rkmoore@iol.ie Mon Nov 9 14:10:20 1998 Mon, 9 Nov 1998 21:09:51 GMT Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 21:09:51 GMT To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu (world-system network) From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: (1/3) Chapter 1: Evolution of Western Power Dear wsn, I would like to thank those of you who have been sending in comments on my book in progress. My feedback folder now has 233 messages in it, and many of those have been very helpful. Feedback on analysis would be appreciated. all the best, rkm http://cyberjournal.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Chapter 1, Part 1 of 3] Achieving a Livable World a common sense response to globalization Chapter 1 - draft 2 Copyright 1998 by Richard K. Moore Latest update: 7 November 1998 - 7730 words comments to: editor@cyberjournal.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part I - Corporate rule and global ruin: understanding the dynamics of today's world ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 1 - Evolution of Western power: from national rivalries to collective imperialism, by way of American hegemony ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- World power today ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ World power today is concentrated in what is called the West. This terminology of West, Middle East, Far East, etc., came into use during the era of the British Empire, and reflects world geography as seen from London. These terms have lost their original geographic sense, and the West now generally refers to Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. The West is unified by a common culture, relatively speaking, and it collectively participates in world leadership. The United States is today the clearly acknowledged leader of the West, and of the world generally, with the four major European nations -- Britain, Germany, France, and Italy -- working closely with the US as junior partners in leadership. These five nations are the core powers of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and three of them (US, Britain, France) are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The five, together with Japan and Canada, make up the G7 group of nations, whose leaders meet regularly to set the general framework of global policies. The same five nations also dominate the powerful institutions that manage the process of globalization -- the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the World Bank, the WTO (World Trade Organization), and the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). As the European Union begins to speak with a united voice from Brussels, it does so with the close cooperation of the United States, and under the domination of the same four European powers. Besides leading the many formal institutions mentioned above, the West also dominates international banking and financial markets. As was demonstrated with the recent collapse of Asian currencies, these markets have themselves become a major power in the world, able to make and break whole national economies as funds fly this way and that over largely unregulated electronic trading networks. The United States, although it usually acts in close collaboration with its Western partners, nonetheless plays on its own a powerful role on the world stage. With its satellites, nuclear arsenal, combat aircraft, submarine and carrier fleets, electronic stealth weaponry, and cruise missiles, the US by itself dominates the world militarily. The US controls the seven seas, has intelligence networks active worldwide, is a leading exporter of armaments, and has close ties with militaries in every part of the world. The US defines its strategic interests broadly and has an announced policy of being prepared to fight three major wars simultaneously, if necessary, in different parts of the globe. From the Middle East to the Balkans to the China Sea, and everywhere in between, US military power is decisive and can be rapidly deployed. In economic matters the US is no less a singular super power. With a huge domestic market, the world's largest economy, and as the largest exporter of grains, the US is able to wield awesome economic power in pursuit of its perceived interests. In 198x, for example, the Japanese company Toshiba was selling super-silent submarine propeller blades to the Soviet Union, contrary to US wishes. The US banned Toshiba from the US market, and the Soviet contracts were promptly cancelled. The strength of the US economy attracts funds to American banks, and the US frequently twists arms, as they say, by freezing the assets of those whom it desires to influence. In the Gulf War, strong economic pressure was used to entice allies to the US side in the conflict. With such military and economic power, and with an obvious willingness to step forward and take the initiative, it is no wonder that the US today plays the leading diplomatic role on the world stage. Wherever conflict arises, whether it be in the Middle East, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, or the Korean peninsula, the world looks to the US to provide the trouble shooters, the shuttle diplomats, and the very legitimacy of the problem-solving process. If the US stays away from a situation, then it is said that the international community is undecided; if the US acts, then the international community, so called, typically rallies behind. When the US President appears on global television screens, he speaks with all but the authority of a world emperor. The US rose to preeminence as a consequence of World War II. All other major nations were devastated by the war, with their industrial bases and economies left in shambles. The US emerged from the war with considerable prestige, a very strong economy, its industries intact, and with its military might stretched around the world. It enjoyed a nuclear monopoly and a greatly expanded role in Middle East oil fields. Based on this immense power, America assumed an assertive leadership role in the postwar world. With the Marshall Plan, the creation of numerous treaty organizations, frequent military interventions, and other energetic activity, the US guided the development of postwar international institutions, presided over the Cold War, and launched the world onto its current globalization course. Imperialism and the rise of the West ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The West rose to world power over several centuries, beginning with the discovery of America in 1492, and continuing with the establishment of European colonial empires throughout most of the world. In the nineteenth century Britain emerged as the dominant world power, but it did not have the kind of military hegemony that America has today. France, Germany, Austria, the US, and others had their own independent agendas, and there were no unifying global institutions. In the centuries leading up to 1945 the world system was one of competing, sovereign, imperial powers. It was an anarchistic system, with major powers vying for spheres of influence. Wars between such nations were frequent, with minor powers being buffeted in the imperial clashes. The technology of weaponry evolved rapidly under the pressure of these conflicts, especially after industrialization, and the West developed formidable fleets and armies with which it dominated the globe and its trading routes. Imperialism took a variety of forms. In India, for example, it began as a private affair. The British East India Company, with its own funds and arms, managed to dominate portions of India, take control of resources, and compel advantageous trading terms. When Britain was later persuaded to take over administrative responsibilities, some provinces were administrated directly by Britain, while others were left in the hands of native princes. When Britain established her American colonies, they were considered to be investment projects, and were essentially left to govern themselves. The entire colony of Pennsylvania was a single corporation, owned by a London family. European imperialism was usually colonial. Citizens from Europe were shipped to the conquered land where they set up communities (colonies) and become a local ruling elite. In America and Australia, the natives were considered a nuisance and were gradually exterminated or else pushed further and further into the hinterlands. Elsewhere the local economy was converted into one more profitable to the governing power, and the natives were compelled to work under conditions and for wages that were determined by the colonizers. Local resources were seized by force, and conditions of trade were imposed that were highly favorable to the ruling nation. In India a healthy, productive economy was destroyed in order to create markets for British goods. When the US gained independence, it was in some sense already an imperial power. It was in a position to push westward, seize land from the natives, and carry on with the imperial development of the continent -- a prerogative which it had, so to speak, inherited from Britain. It purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, and in 1846 it provoked a war with Mexico and seized what was to become the American Southwest, largely completing its claim to its continental territories. Vast farmlands came under cultivation and immense riches in resources were discovered and developed. Westward expansion provided the US with the same kind of economic growth and industrial development that imperialism was providing to European powers at the same time. America also competed in overseas imperialism, but with typical Yankee ingenuity, it did so in a uniquely highly-leveraged style. In 1821, when Mexico and other Spanish colonies declared their independence, the US seized on the chance to obtain imperial rights to Latin America. In 1823, US President James Monroe declared the Monroe Doctrine, warning European nations not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere. Enforcement would have been problematic, if challenged, and British colonies remained in the hemisphere -- but by and large the Monroe Doctrine achieved its purpose. The US was left with more or less a free hand in Latin America as the sole major power in the hemisphere. With a simple declaration, a measure of brashness, and good timing, the US accomplished what would normally have required the deployment of fleets and the winning of battles. Similarly, when it came to the business of imperialism, the US got right down to the bottom line. The point of imperialism, after all, is to make money. Why colonize Chile if you can succeed by less costly means in seizing control of the copper mines? Instead of establishing colonies, the US "created the conditions" which permitted private US businesses to acquire assets and operate profitably in Latin America. This turned out to be a very flexible, high-leverage approach to imperialism. A common pattern would be to promote a coup by some military faction, immediately recognize the legitimacy of the new government, and then offer it US support. By such means, local elites were put in power throughout much of Latin America. Those local elites were frequently unpopular and dependent on US support to stay in power. There also always loomed the possibility of a subsequent engineered coup, bringing a different faction into power. In addition, local elites were encouraged to engage in corruption, giving them a share of the spoils from exploitive economic operations, and encouraging them to launch public projects beneficial to US interests. Overall, the US was able to exert considerable control over Latin American affairs with a minimum of troop deployment and administrative overhead. The business side of Western imperialism consisted of trade and development. Trade was largely a private enterprise, and the advantages of trade under imperialism led to the accumulation of large fortunes. Colonies were developed, along with plantations, mines, roads, harbors, and other infrastructures. Funding was needed for these projects, and funding was necessary to finance wars and trading operations. Capitalism, nationalism, and Western imperialism thus evolved together. Imperialism provided an ever-growing demand for funds, and opportunity for profit. Capital investment arose as one of the primary means by which those funds were obtained. Industrialists, bankers, and investors all benefited as empires were expanded, defended, and developed. As empires grew, capitalist fortunes grew. Government and business leaders encouraged patriotic nationalism, generating the popular support necessary to continue the imperialist system. >From the perspective of capitalism, an empire is an investment realm, a safe space in which economic empires can be built. Wherever the national flag was planted, private development of resources was never far behind. The British East India Company, the Hudsons Bay Company, and later Standard Oil and others developed their economic empires largely under the protection of national banners. This era of competitive Western imperialism can be seen as a partnership between capitalism and nationalism. Expansion of empire was of direct benefit to capitalist interests. Similarly, capitalist industry became the backbone of national strength, and nineteenth century industrialization led to awesome weaponry and an intensification of imperialism. The late nineteenth century brought an explosive growth of industrialization, capitalism, and imperialism. Britain and France expanded their conquests, and in 1898 the US seized Cuba and the Philippines from Spain. Germany grew rapidly in industrial power, but its imperial opportunities were limited given that most available territories had already been seized by others. Nationalist and capitalist interests in Germany combined to build pressure for expansionist policies. Such sentiment was naturally viewed as a threat to established imperial arrangements. "It cannot be too clearly stated, it is the most important fact in the history of the last half century, that the German people was methodically indoctrinated with the idea of a German world-predominance based on might, and with the theory that war was a necessary thing in life." - H.G. Wells, 1920(1) Besides the tension caused by German ambitions, instability was fueled by the collapse of the Ottoman empire, which had for centuries blocked Western expansion into its dominions. New territories were becoming vulnerable to Western colonization, and Germany was eager to obtain a share of the spoils. World War I (1914-1918) arose almost inevitably out of these circumstances, and once the war started Germany set out to balance the relationship between industrial and imperial power. While German artillery dueled in Europe with French, British, and Russian artillery, Germany and its Austrian ally rushed to acquire territory in Africa, Turkey, and the Balkans. The war was lost by Germany, but a balance between industry and empire was nonetheless achieved -- by the destruction of the German military and economy (Treaty of Versailles) rather than by the expansion of its empire. But German ambitions were not to be so easily crushed, and the essential tensions leading up to the first Great War remained unresolved. Additional tension was building in the Far East, where an ambitious and newly industrialized Japan had routed Russian naval forces in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5). [continued...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From rkmoore@iol.ie Mon Nov 9 14:10:39 1998 Mon, 9 Nov 1998 21:10:12 GMT Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 21:10:12 GMT To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu (world-system network) From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: (2/3) Chapter 1: Evolution of Western Power ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Chapter 1, Part 2 of 3] The inter-war years: 1918-1939 - capitalism in crisis ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ After more than a century of collaboration between the forces of nationalism and capitalism, the distinction between capitalist interests and government policies had become increasingly blurred throughout the West. The systems of finance, government, industry, imperialism, and foreign policy were all intertwined. Other political forces existed, but certainly by 1918 it could be said that the leading Western nations were capitalist-dominated societies. The interwar years brought a host of challenges to Western capitalism, and the response of Western governments to these crises reflected primarily the interests of the capitalist system. Nineteenth century industrialization, under capitalism, had created social dislocation and unrest in its wake. Previous social and economic arrangements were disrupted, and working conditions in the new factories and mines were often dismal, dangerous, and poorly paid. Labor movements arose, along with socialist ideas and anti-capitalist sentiment. In 1848 Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto which articulated a radical critique of capitalism and called for an international workers' revolution. In the chaos of wartime Russia, a marxist-inspired revolution succeeded (1918) and the world's largest nation, the new Soviet Union, came into the world with an explicit anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist agenda. Socialist and anarchist movements gained strength throughout the West in the years following the end of the war. These movements were encouraged by the success of the Soviet revolution, by the continuing conditions of labor unrest, and by a pacifist, internationalist sentiment which arose out the horrors of the war -- a war which had been frequently referred to as the war to end all wars. In 192x an uprising in Bavaria led to a socialist takeover which was brutally suppressed. In 192x, hundreds of leaders and members of the Socialist Party in America were arrested in the infamous Palmer Raids. In 1926 a general strike in Britain was quelled by an energetic government response after it had shut down the nation's mines and transport for twelve days. In Italy, Spain, and Germany, socialist, anarchist, and communist movements were gaining a considerable popular following. In 1929, there was a general collapse of the international capitalist economy, affecting nearly all parts of the world with the exception of the Soviet Union. The Great Depression put millions out of work and added fuel to labor unrest in the West generally. The thirties were depression years, economies generally remained in the doldrums, and unrest grew. The war had temporarily stabilized imperialist arrangements, but capitalism in the West was now faced by threats of a different kind. The Soviet Union was getting on its feet as a society, offering a long-term threat to imperial domination of world affairs, while labor and socialist unrest was threatening capitalist domination of political agendas within the West itself. Communism in the Soviet Union, and socialist movements on the domestic front, could only be perceived by capitalist-dominated Western governments as dire threats to Western stability. Fascism arose in Italy, Spain, and Germany in the twenties and offered a nationalist alternative, something besides socialism as a radical solution to societal problems. This was an alternative which was much more acceptable to capitalist interests. This was very clear in Italy, where fascism was openly promoted as an explicit partnership between government and capitalism -- a way to get the trains running on time. In Germany the link between Hitler and capitalism was not so explicit, but it was just as real. "Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there." - William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937(2) As Hitler built the strength of the Nazi party, he became more and more friendly with German leaders and industrialists. One of Hitler's most enthusiastic backers was Krupp, the most prominent of German industrialists. After listening to a campaign speech, tears came to his eyes and he said "This is the man that can lead Germany."(3) The party gained political victories, and in 1933 Hitler became Chancellor. Soon after that all other parties were crushed, and Hitler's reign as Der Fuhrer began. He preached a doctrine of racist nationalism, of revenge for the humiliation at Versailles, and of German expansionism. Hitler's hatred of communism was deep, dating at least from his experiences in Bavaria during the socialist uprising. Mein Kampf, which Hitler wrote in 1923 during a brief imprisonment, outlined in considerable detail Hitler's expansionist ambitions. He said that the Slavic people were an inferior race, and that Germany's destiny was to conquer and enslave Russia, providing Germany with needed lebensraum (living space). This was in fact the agenda that Hitler systematically pursued once he was in power. To German capitalists, Hitler's lebensraum agenda offered the imperial expansion that they had sought in the war, and on a grander scale. Hitler's repressive policies had also brought an end to labor strife and to socialist movements. In Hitler, German capital saw the opportunity for a prosperous future, with a fair share of imperialist spoils. The Treaty of Versailles clearly required that Germany's armaments were to remain strictly limited, and Western governments generally continued to pay lip service to that provision. Without armaments Hitler's expansionist yearnings could remain only empty words. But the other Western powers did allow Germany to rearm, and to understand why, we need to review the overall crisis being faced by capitalism at that time, particularly from the perspective of the United States. Reactions to Hitler in Britain and France were mixed. Many were shocked by his policies and frightened by his racism and militarist ambitions. But there were also fascist sympathies present in both countries, particularly in the British royal family. In capitalist circles there was relief that socialism had been squashed in Germany, and there was support for Hitler's anti-Soviet agenda. Policy toward Germany vacillated right up to the outbreak of World War II, when appeasement was finally abandoned. The United States was remote from the turmoil going on in Europe and had its own domestic economic troubles to deal with. The US was also concerned with developments in Asia, where Japan was becoming a formidable power and a threat to America's imperial outposts and ambitions. Throughout most of the thirties official US foreign policy remained neutral and isolationist. On the surface it appeared that the US wasn't greatly concerned with how things turned out in Europe or Asia. The US didn't enter World War II until attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor, years after the war had begun in Europe, and long after Japan had embarked on an expansionist invasion of Asia. It seemed that the US was a foolish sleeping giant during the thirties, living in blissful ignorance while the world was falling apart around it. The giant stumbled, apparently, into its role in World War II, and only through good fortune emerged afterwards in a globally dominant position. But in reviewing the record of US actions during this period, we will find that sleeping giant is the wrong metaphor. More appropriate would be the tale of Jack the Giant Killer, with Uncle Sam in the role of clever Jack. In that tale, we find Jack asleep in a tree. While he sleeps, two giants sit down beneath his tree. On waking Jack is faced with the problem of saving himself, but being clever, he soon comes up with a plan. He tosses a stone down on the first giant, who assumes his fellow giant is the culprit. After a few more carefully placed stones, the two giants soon begin to battle, kill each other, and Jack escapes with his life and loot from the giants. Just as Jack was temporarily safe in his tree, unseen by the giants, so was Uncle Sam safe in America, separated by wide oceans from trouble and strife. But like Jack, the US was in fact endangered. In a world where Germany controlled Russia, and Japan controlled Asia, the established imperial order would be utterly transformed, and much to the disadvantage of America. Like Jack, Uncle Sam followed a clever strategy, a strategy that got others to do most of the work necessary to for him to achieve his own goals. Instead of opposing the rise of Japan and Germany, which self-interest would have indicated, the US did just the opposite. The US did not act to stop German rearmament under Hitler, but instead the US invested heavily in Germany, and provided it with technologies and materials for use in building its war machine. It was in a General Motors plant, which operated in Germany before and during the war, that the bombers were built which raided London during the blitz. Similarly, the US invested in Japan and provided it with steel and the other materials of war. In the short term, the US benefitted economically from the trade with Germany and Japan, and it also benefitted, at least from the capitalist perspective, from the Nazi-supported suppression of the Spanish Republic. In the longer term, the arming of Japan and Germany had the same effect as the stones Jack threw: it encouraged giants to battle among themselves. World War II and collective imperialism ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "If we see that Germany is winning we should help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible . . ." - Harry S. Truman, 1941(4) Seen from the perspective of Jack's tree, so to speak, the major events of World War II make up a battle scenario worthy of a Hollywood thriller. What basically happened is that Germany and Russia clobbered one another, while Japan got itself embroiled throughout Asia. The US, after first arming Germany and Japan, then switched its support to Russia and China. While the rest of the world was becoming engulfed in war, the US made profits in turn from both sides and engineered remotely the balance of power. Finally, after the German advance had peaked, and when Japan's expansion had reached alarming proportions, Jack came down from his tree. The US froze all Japanese assets, cutting off their oil supply, and making prompt US entry into the war inevitable. The US had access to good intelligence regarding Japanese plans and deployments. The British, with their phenomenal wartime decryption advances, had broken "unbreakable" Japanese (and German) codes. Whether President Roosevelt knew the exact day and hour of the planned raid on Pearl Harbor may be open to question, but he knew the attack was coming, he had nonetheless asked advance observation posts on Kauai to stand down, and he knew enough about the timing to make sure the strategically critical aircraft carriers were safe at sea when the attack occurred. December 7, 1941 was indeed a day of infamy, but who's infamy? The first phase of US battle strategy was to contain Japan in the Pacific, while concentrating US forces in Britain and North Africa. Despite the successful raid in Hawaii, Japan posed no immediate threat to the US mainland. US bombing raids of German-occupied territories joined those of Britain, but the US delayed landing troops in Europe until the most advantageous moment -- when the Soviets had begun their advance toward Germany. In January, 1944, the Soviets kicked the Germans out of Leningrad and Allied forces landed in Italy the same month. By Spring, Germany had been mostly pushed out of Soviet territory, and on D-Day, June 6, Allied forces landed in France -- the race to Berlin was on. Even after the Allies began their drive toward Germany, there were four German divisions on the Eastern front for every one in the West. The German giant was still facing the Russian giant, while attempting to hold off the Allies with a rear-guard action. Unlike Jack, Uncle Sam had to do considerable fighting himself in Europe, or at least American soldiers did, but as with Jack, the main battles were among others. American timing was nearly perfect. Only the unexpectedly rapid advance of Soviet forces prevented US troops from being the first to reach Berlin. Berlin had been bombed continually, but the most intense raids of the war were carried out over Berlin after Soviet troops were advancing into Germany, the objective being, apparently, to slow Soviet progress by flooding the highways with refugees. The US then turned its attention toward Japan. Although America suffered terrible casualties in fierce island warfare in the Pacific, the US situation was immeasurably improved by the fact that Japanese forces were spread out on the Asian continent and in Asian waters, entangled with giant China. All in all, when the war was over, the giant-killer American strategy had worked out brilliantly. US casualties were miniscule compared to the tens of millions lost by Germany, the Soviets, and the Chinese. And while the war devastated every other major nation, for the US it was one of the most economically profitable undertakings in world history. From the depths of the Great Depression in the mid thirties, the US emerged in 1945 with 4x% of the world's wealth and industrial capacity, and with all of its infrastructures intact. In terms of competitive imperialism, the US had pulled off a major coup. The US had made inroads into the oil-rich Middle East, and was well poised to push its advantage as an imperial power in the postwar era. The US controlled the seas, and no other major power was in an economic position to exploit the many opportunities made available by the general global disruption. But the US had other plans -- its full strategy was yet to be played out. Instead of punishing the vanquished, as the victors had done at Versailles, the US encouraged the rebuilding of Germany and Japan -- but with nationalism and militarism taken out of the school curricula and government policy. And instead of pressing its imperial advantage relative to its Western rivals, the US launched the Marshall Plan. Billions of dollars of aid was given -- not loaned -- to Europe to ensure its rapid reconstruction. The UN was established, providing for the first time a global institution for dealing with international conflicts and problems. Regional treaty organizations such as NATO (North Atlantic) and SEATO (Southeast Asia) were set up to maintain stability, and to provide the US with an excuse to keep its forces deployed at strategic points around the world. In 1948, under US leadership, the Bretton Woods agreements were signed. These agreements fixed exchange rates among major currencies. Since the value of the dollar was pegged to gold at $32 per ounce, all major currencies would now be stabilized, and the currency collapses that plagued the inter-war years could not recur. Part of the Bretton Woods package was GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), which proclaimed a general global policy of open markets. In addition, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were established. These institutions pooled Western investment funds and provided a systematic means of financing imperialist development projects. Although the rhetoric of the new world system was about the end of imperialism, and the triumph of democracy, the reality was otherwise. The US encouraged the gradual dismantlement of traditional European empires, but imperialism was to continue on a collective basis, using the high-leverage American model. As the US had done for decades in Latin America, the new international institutions were designed to create the conditions favorable to the continued exploitation of traditional Western imperial territories. The business of imperialism had always been about trade and development, on terms favorable to the West. The mission of the IMF and World bank was specifically to support trade and development -- and these institutions were under firm Western control. In 194x President Truman declared(5) that the West's former imperial territories were now the underdeveloped world, and the stage was set for a new global system of collective Western imperialism. Creating the conditions for collective imperialism required more than Western-controlled financial institutions, however. There was also a need for selective military interventions, the arranging of coups, and all those other high-leverage techniques that had supported American-style imperialism in Latin America. The US solution to this problem was for America to extend globally its practice of these techniques. The Central Intelligence Agency was formed, and in 1953 it carried out its first coup. On May 1, 1951, Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran had nationalized the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC)(6). Iran was certainly within its rights -- Britain had recently nationalized several of its own domestic industries, and the British government was the major owner of the AIOC. But the nationalization was contrary to Western imperial advantage. The CIA, in collaboration with British intelligence, put into motion a series of covert actions, and on August 19, 1953, Mossadegh was forced to yield power to the Shah. In the same style as decades of Latin American tin-horn dictators before him, the Shah became for the next 25 years America's staunchest ally in what was to be frequently referred to as the third world. Iran, which bordered the Soviet Union, was made available as an American intelligence outpost. A new oil contract was signed which ended exclusive British access, and gave a 40% share to an American consortium. This was how collective imperialism was to work. The US was to provide the covert and military support, while the economic spoils were to be distributed on a more or less equitable basis among Western powers. In William Blum's Killing Hope, US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, there are 55 chapters. Each chapter chronicles a comparable episode of imperial management, though many are on a vaster scale. As of this writing, the latest episode is taking place in the Serbian province of Kosovo, where US and German-funded Albanian mercenaries were sent in to stage a phony civil war, with the apparent objective of separating Serbia from Kosovo's mineral wealth. If things run true to pattern, one can expect the faction that comes to power in Kosovo to be very friendly to Western development interests. [continued...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From rkmoore@iol.ie Mon Nov 9 14:11:01 1998 Mon, 9 Nov 1998 21:10:32 GMT Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 21:10:32 GMT To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu (world-system network) From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: (3/3) Chapter 1: Evolution of Western Power ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Chapter 1, Part 3 of 3] >From Cold War to kultur-kampf: evolution of the new world order ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Part of the US role, in making the world safe for collective imperialism, was the containment of Soviet influence. In 1946, Winston Churchill declared that an "Iron Curtain" separated the West from the communist bloc. "Mother Russia", which had been heralded as the West's staunch ally against fascism, suddenly became the "Red Menace", and the Cold War was on. There began a decades-long propaganda campaign in Western media which demonized the Soviet Union, and later Communist China. The Nazi intelligence network which operated throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was kept intact, and was incorporated into the new CIA. Covert destabilization operations against the communist bloc were an ongoing part of the Cold War. The threat of additional marxist revolutions, in most cases unfounded, was frequently used to justify military interventions whose actual purpose was the management of empire. The communist-threat propaganda was very effective, and it enabled the US to maintain astronomical military budgets. The US always remained several steps ahead of the Soviets in strategic military capability, while the Soviet attempts to catch up were always characterized as threatening -- and so the arms race cycle continued throughout the Cold War. The vast global military machine the US built, allegedly to defend against Soviet expansionism, enabled the US to easily carry out its role as imperial manager in the third world. While imperialist development of the third world proceeded, with minimal interference from the communist bloc, various tactics were employed to gradually wear down and destabilize the Soviet Union. Anti-communist propaganda was distributed by leaflet and by airwaves in Eastern Europe, and uprisings were encouraged in Hungary and other Soviet-controlled countries. Communist forces were drawn into expensive conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, where the borders of the "free world" had been in dispute. The CIA stirred up civil wars in Angola and Afghanistan, and these proved very costly for the Soviets. It was the arms race itself which ultimately bankrupted the Soviets. Russia was always, by American standards, a very poor country. For it to compete on a head-to-head basis with US military might called for expenditures far beyond its means. Within the context of the capitalist system, military expenditures for the US were just one more form of economic growth. But for the Soviets they were a fatal drain on economic resources. In 1990, after a sequence of events that seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, the Soviet Union collapsed. Boris Yeltsin pulled Russia out of the Union, with Western backing, and became the chosen Western stooge, in the tradition of the Shah, Noriega, Marcos, et al. Yeltsin shelled his own parliament building, in a haunting replay of a similar action by Lenin over 70 years before, and assured his own dictatorial reign for most of the decade. He kow-towed to Western demands on every occasion and imperialist exploitation of the of the former Soviet domains began. Funds were made available to Russia by the West, but never enough to hold things together in the crumbling economy. The conditions of the loans required Russia to dismantle its existing economic infrastructures, without any plan in place for a smooth transition to a free-market system. The result of Western policy, which was easily predictable from the nature of that policy, was the complete and utter destabilization of Russian society. Russian and East European assets became available to Western buyers at rock-bottom prices, and billions of dollars were smuggled out of Russia by corrupt officials. As of this writing, the downward spiral has still not stabilized. The people of the former Soviet bloc, who initially welcomed capitalism as if it were Santa Claus, now yearn for the good old days of Soviet rule. As the Romans ground Carthage into the dust, so has the West humbled the former super power. Hitler must have smiled in his grave as his lebensraum vision was finally realized. The proper conditions had at last been created, and the subsequent capitalist invasion of the former Soviet bloc was as devastating as had been the earlier invasion by Hitler's Panzer divisions. Even if Russia manages yet to install a representative government, it has almost no chance of ever becoming again a serious threat to Western power. It has been successfully reduced to third-world status, and the former Soviet realms offer vast opportunities for imperialist development and enrichment. The postwar relationship between the West and China proceeded down a different path. When the People's Republic first came to power in China, it was aligned closely with the Soviets, and the Western policy toward the entire bloc was to isolate and contain it. When China split from the Soviets, Western policy became more flexible, and the communist rift was encouraged to widen. In the early seventies the West decided that isolating China no longer made sense, and in 1971 China was allowed to replace Taiwan in the UN. In 1972 President Nixon paid a state visit to China and trade channels were then soon re-opened. Chinese products began to enter global markets, and China's huge population created a major market for Western exports. Trade increased and the Chinese economy grew rapidly. Foreign corporations were allowed to build plants in China, provided they included Chinese partners. Ideology, communist or otherwise, seemed to have little relevance to China's relationship with the West. China was behaving like a competing capitalist power, striving to establish a strong role for itself in the world economy and in Asia. As China began to assume the stature of a major power, it became a potential challenge to Western hegemony and the established system of collective imperialism. China has said that its "natural role" is to be dominant in Asia(7), as said Japan in the years leading up to World War II. The US, meanwhile, has stated that such hegemony would be "contrary to US strategic interests", and reminds us that the US has fought three major Asian wars in this century to maintain its "strategic interests". Today's US policy makers articulate two competing approaches to China: engagement, and confrontation. The goal of engagement is to seduce China into subservience to the US-managed global system, while the goal of confrontation is to accomplish the same result through the use of economic pressure, and if necessary, military force. Both China and the US are now embarked on aggressive weapons-development programs, each aimed at assuring the ability to control the outcome of this final episode of major national competition. China, already a nuclear power, is investing heavily in military technology and is hoping to achieve a breakthrough that will enable it to neutralize the effectiveness of America's premiere weapons system, the carrier task force. The US, meanwhile, is rapidly upgrading its hi-tech electronic warfare systems. In Desert Storm, the US managed to achieve control of theater. With electronic and stealth technology it was able to neutralize Iraq military capability, and was then able to strike at will anywhere in Iraq. If the US can be assured of a similar capability with respect to China, and if the US permits itself the use of tactical nuclear warheads, then it has the basis of a strategy for defeating China in the event a confrontation arises. In a pre-emptive strike it could take out China's strategic missiles. It could then, with control of theater, savage Chinese military and industrial installations as it did those of Iraq. "The world is in the early stages of a new military revolution... the revolution in military affairs revolves around three advances. The first is in gathering intelligence. Sensors in satellites, aircraft or unmanned aircraft can monitor virtually everything going on in an area. The second is in processing intelligence. Advanced command, control, communication and computing systems, known as C4, make sense of the data gathered by the sensors and display it on screen. They can then assign particular targets to missiles, tanks or whatever. The third is in acting on all this intelligence in particular, by using long-range precision strikes to destroy targets. Cruise missiles, guided by satellite, can hit an individual building many hundreds of miles away... "The Pentagon already has, or is developing, most of the technologies required for space weapons. For instance it has just awarded a $l.l billion contract for an airborne laser to hit ballistic missiles. if that technology works, it could be adapted for a satellite..."(8) As China begins to operate aggressively in global markets, and as its economic and military power grow, the China Question will not go away. How this question will be resolved cannot be precisely predicted, but there can be little doubt about the ultimate outcome. It is inconceivable that the US would allow China to reverse the direction of the collective Western system and to return the world to the era of major-power rivalries. With the Soviet Union dismantled, Western planners are already architecting and implementing a new regime of world order. The Cold War regime operated at two levels. At one level, the US was acting to maintain Western advantage in the imperial system. At another level, the one of public rhetoric, the US was acting to contain the communist threat. The imperial basis of US policy will continue, but the end of the Cold War requires a new line of public rhetoric. Drugs and terrorism have provided an ad-hoc solution to this problem, but a more systematic solution is in the works. The new system of world order has been articulated in some detail by a darling of the US policy establishment, Samuel P. Huntington, in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order(9). Huntington divides the world into eight "civilizations", or regions, and provides a detailed description of the dynamics planned for the new regime. Within regions there are to be core states, which are to have a special role in maintaining order within "their" region. As the US "authorizes" Turkish incursions into Iraq, we can see Turkey beginning to assume a core-state role. Between regions we are to expect perpetual "fault-line conflicts", which are to be resolved through the auspices of "non primary level participants. This is what has been happening in Bosnia, where allegedly neutral NATO is "resolving" the fault-line conflict between the Muslim and Christian "civilizations". "The Clash of Civilisations, the book by Harvard professor Sam Huntington, may not have hit the bestseller lists, but its dire warning of a 21st century rivalry between the liberal white folk and the Yellow Peril -- sorry, the Confucian cultures -- is underpinning the formation of a new political environment. "To adapt one of Mao's subtler metaphors, Huntington's Kultur-kampf is becoming, with stunning speed, the conceptual sea in which Washington's policy-making fish now swim."(10) Huntington is a member of and spokesman for The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). I will have more to say about the CFR in Chapter 2, and its central role in elite planning. Suffice it to say for now that ideas published by CFR frequently show up as US Government policy in subsequent administrations. Policy makers are indeed swimming in the sea articulated by Huntington, and we can see the evidence "on the ground". When the US Embassy was recently bombed in Nairobi, the US did not try to retaliate against the specific terrorist groups involved. Instead it defined whole nations (Sudan, Afghanistan) as the targets of its reprisals, and launched cruise-missile attacks against targets in those nations. President Bill Clinton said "The countries that persistently host terrorism have no right to be safe havens."(11) Under the kultur-kampf regime, terrorism and reprisal become acts of war across fault-line rifts. Huntington's core states are nothing really new, but are simply a renaming of what have been traditionally called "Western client" states. Managing "fault line conflicts" becomes the excuse for intervention, in place of "defending strategic interests," but maintaining collective Western domination continues to be the underlying agenda. The "civilization paradigm" provides a philosophical rationalization for Western powers to engage more openly in their ongoing business of collective domination. Under this regional regime there is no danger of armageddon, nor is there any hope of a final peace. Ongoing managed conflict is to be the order of things, providing dynamic stability, with the price in suffering to be paid by the people of the non-Western "civilizations". Under this scheme the postwar myth of universal democratization is being explicitly abandoned. Instead each region is expected to exhibit its own "cultural norms", which "unlike the West" do not necessarily include a concern for human rights or democracy. The Western-serving, oppressive Third World regimes which have long been the embarrassment of the "free world", are now to be accepted as "normal" for "those parts of the world". Huntington's civilizational paradigm thus provides an ideal philosophical basis for a stable Western-imperial global system. It gives Western nations a plausible justification for acting collectively in their self interest on the world stage, namely that they are simply playing their natural role as one of the contending civilizations. It gives Western forces a "right" to intervene, as "disinterested parties" adjudicating "fault-line" conflicts or "disciplining" core states. It is disastrous in terms of human rights and democracy, but it is an effective strategy for maintaining Western hegemony under globalization into the new millennium. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [references still incomplete] (1) H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, 1920, Garden City Publishing, Garden City, New York, p. 1005 (2) George Seldes, Facts and Fascism, p. 122; Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy, p. 167 (3) William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp (4) newspaper report, Independence Mo.? (5) (to be researched) (6) William Blum, Killing Hope, Common Courage Press, Monroe Maine, 1995, pp. 64-72 (7) "The China Threat, A Debate", Foreign Affairs, March/April 1997 (8) "The Future of Warfare", The Economist, March 8, 1997 (9) Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order", Simon and Schuster, 1997 (10) Martin Walker, "China preys on American minds -- The US this week", Guardian Weekly, April 6, 1997 (11) "US declares war on terrorism", Guardian Weekly, August 30, 1998, p. 1 [End Chapter 1] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From chriscd@jhu.edu Wed Nov 11 14:18:25 1998 Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 16:17:55 -0500 From: christopher chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: FWD: End the silence: U.S. should bring Pinochet to justice (fwd)] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu This is a multi-part message in MIME format. Tue, 10 Nov 1998 22:40:31 -0400 (EDT) 10 Nov 1998 19:40:16 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 19:40:15 -0800 (PST) From: Maurice Zeitlin Subject: FWD: End the silence: U.S. should bring Pinochet to justice (fwd) To: Susan Eva Eckstein , David Lopez Cesar Ayala , Christopher Chase-Dunn , Bill Ketter , Baruch Kimmerling , Lucy Komisar , Clarence Lo , "Emanuel A. Schegloff" , Cherilyn Parsons , Ian Roxborough , Joanne Fox Przeworski , Iris Roncarati , Melody Steffey , Judith Stepan-Norris , Office of the Americas Teresa and Blase Bonpane , Ericka Verba , Victor Wallis , Jean Whitworth , Maurice Zeitlin , Bob Brenner , Pablo Sanchez Leon FYI Maurice Zeitlin Professor Department of Sociology 264 Haines Hall Box 951551 University of California Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551 (310) 825-1313 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 19:17:07 -0500 (EST) To: zeitlin@soc.ucla.edu Subject: FWD: End the silence: U.S. should bring Pinochet to justice This story was forwarded to you from www.sunspot.net, Maryland's Online Community. To view this story on the web go to http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/editorial/story.cgi?storyid=900000231234 It was sent with the following comments: "" ------------------------------------------------------ Headline: End the silence: U.S. should bring Pinochet to justice Subhead: For three years before Pinochet's coup began, the Nixon administration turned over every rock trying to find a general willing to overthrow Chile's government. Maurice Zeitlin THE WAR of Chile's armed forces against their elected government was almost a week old on Sept. 17, 1973, when the broken and bullet-riddled body of the Rev. Juan Alsina, a 29-year-old Spanish priest, was found on a bridge in Santiago. Earlier in the day, an army officer and five soldiers had taken Alsina from the hospital where he served as chaplain. He was beaten, tortured and shot 10 times as he "tried to escape." The Spanish embassy claimed his body and returned it home for burial. Alsina was one of many Spanish citizens and other foreigners, including Americans, and more than 15,000 Chileans who were summarily executed or "disappeared" by the military as part of the bloody coup and its aftermath led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Now, at last, Chile's ex-dictator and self-appointed "senator for life," is under police guard in London, after an extradition request from Spain, for the murder of Alsina and of many other Spanish citizens in Chile. Eleven judges on Spain's National Court have ruled unanimously that under international law, Spain has the legal right to bring charges against Mr. Pinochet for crimes against humanity and to seek his extradition from Britain. This contradicts a ruling by the high court in London that he is immune from prosecution as a former head of state. But the court ordered that he remain in detention, pending an appeal to the House of Lords. If Spain's exemplary effort to extradite Mr. Pinochet and try him for murder succeeds, it will be the first judge and jury that Mr. Pinochet or any member of the junta has faced for the crimes they committed during a 17-year reign of terror. Both the immediate post-dictatorship president, Patricio Aylwin, and current president, Eduardo Frei, have been afraid even to investigate let alone bring charges against them. The government is still vulnerable to pressure and threats by the unreconstructed military. The crimes Mr. Pinochet would be charged with would certainly include the murder of three young Americans: Charles Horman, Frank Teruggi Jr. and Ronnie Karpen Moffit. No refuge to be found On that September day in 1973, while fighting was still raging in Santiago, Charles Horman went to the U.S. Embassy to request protection for his wife, Joyce, and himself. Embassy officials turned him away, saying they couldn't help him. That evening he was arrested by soldiers and taken to the National Stadium, where thousands of other prisoners rounded up by the military were concentrated. He subsequently "disappeared." On Oct. 5, his father, Edmund Horman, came to Chile, and, with Joyce, sought help from embassy officials. But as Frank Teruggi Sr. was also to experience months later, they were subject instead to evasions and indifference. They were forced to conduct their own investigation; and, on Oct. 18, were informed by the embassy that Chilean investigators had found Horman's body. He had been tortured and shot in the stadium, and buried in the wall of the National Cemetery. Frank Teruggi Jr., an economics student at the University of Chile, and his roommate, David Hathaway, were arrested on Sept. 20, 1973, and taken to National Stadium. Somehow the two were separated. Mr. Hathaway was later released, as the result of the intervention of a Chilean businessman, a family friend. Mr. Hathaway never saw his friend alive again. Frank Teruggi's body was found days later at the morgue in Santiago. He had been tortured and shot 17 times. These facts were disclosed and confirmed only in February 1974, as the result of an independent investigation in Chile by Teruggi's father, and a Chicago commission of inquiry. Car bomb attack Ronnie Moffit was killed in Washington in 1976 by a car bomb planted by a Chilean hit squad. She was a passenger in the car of their target, Orlando Letelier, a former minister in the government of Salvador Allende, who was also murdered. In this case, at least, a Justice Department investigation led to the imprisonment, in 1995, of Manuel Contreras, head of Chile's feared secret police, and his deputy. But for none of these murders of U.S. citizens, and the incarceration and brutal beating or torture of at least eight other Americans in Chile -- including two Maryknoll priests and two of my own then-graduate students at the University of Wisconsin -- has the U.S. government sought to call Mr. Pinochet to account. The U.S. government was complicit with Mr. Pinochet and his ilk in destroying Chile's constitutional government. For three years before Mr. Pinochet's coup began, the Nixon administration turned over every rock trying to find a general willing to betray the constitution and overthrow Allende, Chile's freely elected socialist president. The CIA, in a shadowy alliance with U.S. corporations, carried out "massive covert operations within a democratic state," as Sen. Frank Church, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, concluded in 1975 "with the ultimate effect of overthrowing [the] duly elected government." A quarter of a century later, the U.S. government must acknowledge its responsibility for what happened in Chile by filing its own request for the extradition of Mr. Pinochet, to stand trial here for the murder of U.S. citizens. Maurice Zeitlin, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles, and a member of the advisory board of the Latin American Center, has lived in Chile and is the author of many articles and two books on that country, including "The Civil Wars in Chile" (Princeton University Press). ------------------------------------------------------ To view this story on the web go to http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/editorial/story.cgi?storyid=900000231234 From chriscd@jhu.edu Wed Nov 11 15:14:46 1998 Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 17:14:02 -0500 From: christopher chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: call for papers] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------5C8D8D00D2F8898FEB5C76D1 --------------5C8D8D00D2F8898FEB5C76D1 chriscd@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (ORCPT rfc822;chriscd@jhu.edu); Wed, Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:53:20 +0100 (MET) From: Volker Bornschier Subject: call for papers To: chriscd@jhu.edu Dear Chris - here is a call for paper of interest to the world-system studies community. May I ask you to be helpful in distributing it among interested colleagues in North America. Would it be possible to posit it also on the world-system archives? Thank you very much for your help. Yours - Volker -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ESA 4th European Conference of Sociology of the European Sociological Association, 1999, 18-21. August, Amsterdam, the Netherlands - Conference under the general theme "Will Europe Work?" Call for papers for the stream on EUROPE'S WORKING IN THE WORLD co-convenors Volker Bornschier, University of Zurich, Sociological Institute, Raemistr. 69, CH-8001 Zurich/Switzerland, Fax: 0041/1/634-49-89, e-mail: vobo@soziologie.unizh.ch Nikolai Genov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Sociology, 13A, Moskovska Str., 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria, Fax: 0035/9/2280-37-91, e-mail: NBGEN.MOST.RISK@datacom.bg While the other streams at the conference rather focus on analyses of processes, structures and institutions "in" Europe in a perspective from within the stream EUROPE'S WORKING IN THE WORLD puts emphasis on analyses "of" Europe in a comparative as well as world system perspective. For these sessions we invite abstracts of proposed papers that examine the diverse phenomena implied by such a comparative and world system perspective, such as: *European integration: A model for the world society? *Europe in global politics; Europe and the future of hegemonic rivalry *European institutions in comparative perspective (especially in the triad - Western Europe, USA, Japan) *Europe in the process of globalisation and its position in the world economy (technological competition, work organisation, migration, markets) *Europe's extending borders, Europe's new boundaries (enlargment, differenciation or fragmentation of the European Union) *European colonial heritage and development policies Please forward this call for paper also to interested colleagues and submit abstracts of proposed papers to both co-convenors as early as possible but not later than 15. January 1999. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- ------------------------------------ Volker Bornschier University of Zurich, Sociological Institute Raemistrasse 69 CH-8001 Zurich, Switzerland Tel. ++41/01/634 21 50 (office) Fax. ++41/01/634 49 89 (office) E-mail: vobo@soziologie.unizh.ch Web sites: www.unizh.ch/wsf/bornschier.html www.unizh.ch/suz/bornschier.html ------------------------------------ --------------5C8D8D00D2F8898FEB5C76D1-- From chriscd@jhu.edu Thu Nov 12 08:41:36 1998 Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 10:43:06 -0500 From: christopher chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: [Fwd: Recent South Africa events]] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------6EBBDF60C081F20ABB22D15E --------------6EBBDF60C081F20ABB22D15E (original mail from casabaltimor@igc.org) for chriscd@jhu.edu; Thu, 12 Nov 1998 00:32:56 -0400 (EDT) Thu, 12 Nov 1998 00:32:23 -0400 (EDT) 12 Nov 1998 00:31:29 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 00:31:39 -0500 From: Barbara Larcom Subject: [Fwd: Recent South Africa events] To: Chris CD , Carl , Peter , Howard , Denis This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --Boundary_(ID_q8Oa8YmcY/cOroYHXu7zRQ) --Boundary_(ID_q8Oa8YmcY/cOroYHXu7zRQ) 11 Nov 1998 20:59:56 -0800 (PST) 12 Nov 1998 07:01:58 +0200 (GMT+0200) Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 07:00:45 +0000 From: "Patrick Bond" Subject: Recent South Africa events In-reply-to: <2.2.16.19981111150507.521f251e@pop.igc.org> Sender: owner-50-years@igc.apc.org To: 50-years@igc.org, inkworks@igc.org, brutusd@FPC.edu, peace.freedom@wilpf.org, Njoki Njoroge Njehu Reply-to: pbond@wn.apc.org Just to let friends/colleagues/comrades know of exciting developments in South Africa... Last Thursday-Saturday, the Jubilee 2000 launch occurred in Cape Town, and Njoki has already provided you evidence of excellent news coverage. One of the country's lead papers ran a half-page colour photo of Archbishop Ndungane and 50 Years stalwart Dennis Brutus wrapped in chains, symbolising Dennis' time on Robbin Island (where he broke stones with Mandela) and the fact that even with apartheid formally gone, the country remains chained. The event was extraordinarily upbeat, and a sense of a more rapid, durable reconstitution of progressive processes and ideology is now palpable. On Monday, the top finance department bureaucrat felt sufficiently threatened by all of this activity to release a statement and generate media publicity around the specious argument that SA's foreign debt (now about $25 billion for private and public sector combined) is not a problem; our dispute with her is intensifying about whether we consider loans from NY/London/German/Swiss banks to SA banks and firms prior to the 1994 elections -- loans which were effectively guaranteed by the then apartheid government, which gained access to the hard currency associated with those loans -- as part of the apartheid debt that we consider "odious". More campaigning handles around this issue are being developed with German colleagues in the days ahead, so let me or Brian Ashley (J2000 organising secretary) (aidc@iafrica.com, http:\\www.aidc.org.za) or George Dor (J2000 publicity secretary) (george@wn.apc.org) know if you have any ideas or solidarity for us. On Tuesday the Jubilee 2000 Johannesburg branch -- with 30 serious activists, led by Rev Molefe Tsele, who is chair of SA's J2000 -- began planning the March 1999 South-South workshop. Much more information about that is on the way. Yesterday Samir Amin, the Dakar-based coordinator of Forum for World Alternatives (a network of networks of progressive social movements and intellectuals, he calls it) gave two talks in Johannesburg to activists and academics that drew nearly packed houses; his arguments about the global overproduction and financial speculation crises were very well received, and it seems that confidence is growing amongst the key democratic movement strategists to challenge the country's demonstrably ineffectual economic policies. Later today I'll post a recent ANC/SACP/union analysis of the global crisis. It is surprisingly radical -- like Amin, stressing the ingrained *capitalist* character of the overproduction/speculation phenomenon. However, macroeconomic policy remains overwhelmingly the stuff of the Washington Consensus. era. Several of us -- inspired by Ben Fine of the University of London -- are quite concerned about the drift towards an unthinking endorsement of post-WC without clarifying lines of argument and dispute. Is this a scenario others are facing in different settings? I'll also post some thoughts on this matter that I have, assuming I have your tolerance! Yours, P. --Boundary_(ID_q8Oa8YmcY/cOroYHXu7zRQ)-- --------------6EBBDF60C081F20ABB22D15E-- From timber@ksu.edu Thu Nov 12 13:53:23 1998 Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 14:53:13 -0600 (CST) From: Michael F Timberlake To: world system network Subject: call for papers I am organizing a session on Comparative Urbanization for the 1999 American Sociological Association annual meeting in Chicago. The meeting will be held in August. The session is one of two offered by the Community and Urban Sociology Section of ASA. Consideration will be given to papers dealing with any number of issues related to urban processes and urban structures of particular non-U.S. cities, or comparing such processes and structures across a few or a great many other countries, and/or across time. Send me your papers by January 1. ====================================================== Michael Timberlake Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Kansas State University Manhattan, KS 66506 (785) 532-4956 FAX: (785) 532-6978 ======================================================= From jsommers@lynx.dac.neu.edu Thu Nov 12 19:02:21 1998 Thu, 12 Nov 1998 21:00:13 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 09:13:20 +0000 From: Jeffrey Sommers Reply-To: jsommers@lynx.dac.neu.edu To: announce@h-net.msu.edu, h-asia@h-net.msu.edu, H-grad@h-net.msu.edu, H-latam@h-net.msu.edu, H-teach@h-net.msu.edu, H-w-civ@h-net.msu.edu, emmer@augustana.ab.ca, EH.Teach@eh.net, EH.Res@eh.net, EH.News@eh.net, EH.Macro@eh.net, EH.Disc@eh.net, H-NET List for World History , "leninist-international@buo319b.econ.utah.edu" , "lists@eh.net" , fairbank@fas.harvard.edu, H-world@h-net.msu.edu, TBOS@social-sci.ss.emory.edu, wsn@csf.colorado.edu, bosnet@mit.edu, centasia@fas.harvard.edu, central-asia-studies-l@postbox.anu.edu.au, ner-wha@lynx.dac.neu.edu, lbo-talk@lists.panix.com, listproc@galaxy.csuchico.edu, histgrad@lynx.dac.neu.edu Subject: Gunder Frank and David Landes debate --------------11F5A1A469684D17FF5AE30B David Landes and Andre Gunder Frank debate "ReOrient" vs. "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" -- Two views of the World Economy in History The World History Seminar at Northeastern University, with co-sponsorship by the NU Department of Economics, presents a debate between David Landes (Harvard University) and Andre Gunder Frank (University of Amsterdam, emeritus) Wednesday, Dec. 2nd 3:00-4:30 p.m. 450 Dodge Hall Northeastern University Event is free and open to the public. Teachers are encouraged to bring their students. for information contact World History Center Co-ordinator, Jeff Sommers ph. 617-373-3676 email: or see our web page http://www.whc.neu.edu ReORIENT HISTORY, THEORY AND POLICY? DEBATING THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF LANDES AND FRANK Of Landes' work, J.K.GALBRAITH says "Truly wonderful. No question that this will establish David Landes as preeminent in his field and in his time." ALBERT BERGESEN contends that Gunder Frank's ReOrient is "absolutely essential to understanding world history." LANDES maintains that Max Weber was right about the RISE OF THE WESTí in the past, Francis Fukuyama is right about THE END OF HISTORYí and Harvard colleague SAMUEL HUNTINGTON is right about the coming CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONSí between THE WEST AND THE RESTí. For Landes and them, the key to the Westís success has been the exceptionalism of its values and institutions, that were and still are lacking in the Rest. Thus, Landes refers to China as a culturally and intellectually homeostatic society that had indifference to technology, lacked institutions for finding and learning, abhorred mercantile success, showed deliberate introversion, isolationism, risk aversion, irrationality, xenophobia, arrogance, haughtiness, stunned submissiveness, self-defeating escapism and so on. FRANK retorts that Weber got it all wrong, and Marx, Polanyi, Parsons, Rostow, Braudel , Wallerstein and Frank [Mark I] too. Landes himself already got it wrong in his 1969 book UNBOUND PROMETHIUS AND, and his neglect or dismissal of the intervening 30 years of scholarship make him still more wrong now. Received social theory, developed and uncritically accepted by all of the above and most other historians, economists and social scientists is vitiated by the ingrained EUROCENTRISM of historiography and social theory that concentrate their inquiry under the European American streetlight, which blacks out the evidence from the rest of the world and distorts that of the West itself. This triumphalist not to mention racist ideology masquerading as history and even science neglects or altogether rejects holistic historical analysis of the global economy and society , which shows that not Europe but instead Asia, and particularly Middle Kingdom China, remained predominant in the world until at 1800. The subsequent Decline of the East and the shift of the center of gravity to the West were more globally than locally determined temporary processes that have run their historical course and are already coming full circle with the contemporary renewed rise of East Asia and particularly of China. Therefore, it is high time to ReORIENT our historiography, social theory and political policy as well, all the more so in view of the reiteration of and accolades for the poverty of Landesí empirically mistaken historyí and theoretically unfounded analysis, which also dovetail with the equally unfounded and socio-politically dangerous propaganda about End of Historyî and Clash of Civilizationsî. ReORIENT blurbs refer to the fundamental rethinking by the iconoclast Frank who challenges virtually all other significant scholarship about the historical origins of the contemporary world in a benchmark study for the millennium that is absolutely essential for understanding world history. LANDES retorts that Frank and his echoes are a magnet for fallacies and fantasies [and] the invention of folklore. Bad history. --------------11F5A1A469684D17FF5AE30B David Landes and Andre Gunder Frank
                                   debate
"ReOrient" vs.
"The Wealth and Poverty of Nations"
-- Two views of the World Economy in History

The World History Seminar at Northeastern University, with co-sponsorship by the NU Department of Economics, presents a debate between David Landes (Harvard University) and Andre Gunder Frank  (University of Amsterdam, emeritus)

Wednesday, Dec. 2nd
3:00-4:30 p.m.
450 Dodge Hall
Northeastern University

Event is free and open to the public.
Teachers are encouraged to bring their students.

for information contact World History Center Co-ordinator, Jeff Sommers ph. 617-373-3676 email: <jsommers@lynx.neu.edu> or see our web page http://www.whc.neu.edu
 

ReORIENT  HISTORY, THEORY AND POLICY?
DEBATING THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF LANDES AND FRANK

Of Landes' work, J.K.GALBRAITH says "Truly wonderful.  No question that this will establish David Landes as preeminent in his field and in his time."

ALBERT BERGESEN contends that Gunder Frank's ReOrient is "absolutely essential to understanding world history."
 

LANDES  maintains that Max Weber was right about the RISE OF THE WEST’
in the past, Francis Fukuyama is right about THE END OF HISTORY’  and
Harvard colleague SAMUEL HUNTINGTON is right about the coming CLASH OF
CIVILIZATIONS’  between THE WEST AND THE REST’. For Landes and them,
the key to the West’s success has been the  exceptionalism of its
values and institutions, that were and still are lacking in the Rest.
Thus, Landes refers to China as a culturally and intellectually
homeostatic society that had indifference to technology, lacked
institutions for finding and learning, abhorred mercantile success,
showed deliberate introversion, isolationism, risk aversion,
irrationality, xenophobia, arrogance, haughtiness, stunned
submissiveness, self-defeating escapism and so on.

FRANK retorts that Weber got it all wrong, and Marx, Polanyi, Parsons,
Rostow, Braudel , Wallerstein and Frank [Mark I] too.  Landes himself
already got it wrong  in his 1969 book UNBOUND PROMETHIUS
AND, and his neglect or dismissal of  the intervening 30 years of
scholarship make him still more wrong now.  Received  social theory,
developed and uncritically accepted  by all of  the above and most  other
historians, economists and social scientists is vitiated by the ingrained
EUROCENTRISM  of  historiography and social theory that concentrate their
inquiry under the European American  streetlight,  which blacks out the
evidence from the rest of the world and distorts that of the West itself.
This triumphalist not to mention racist ideology masquerading as history
and even science  neglects or  altogether rejects  holistic historical
analysis of  the global economy and society , which shows  that not
Europe but  instead Asia, and particularly Middle Kingdom China, remained
predominant in the world until at  1800.  The subsequent Decline of the
East and  the shift of the center of gravity to  the West were more
globally than locally determined temporary processes that have run their
historical course and are already coming full circle with the contemporary renewed rise of East Asia and
particularly of China. Therefore, it is high time to ReORIENT our
historiography, social theory and political policy as well, all the
more so  in view of the reiteration of and accolades for the poverty of
Landes’ empirically  mistaken  history’ and theoretically unfounded
analysis, which also dovetail  with the equally unfounded and
socio-politically dangerous  propaganda about End of History”
and Clash of Civilizations”.

ReORIENT blurbs refer to the  fundamental rethinking by the iconoclast
Frank  who challenges virtually all other significant scholarship about the historical origins of the
contemporary world in a benchmark study for the millennium that is  absolutely essential for understanding
world history.

LANDES retorts that Frank and his echoes are a magnet for fallacies and
fantasies [and] the invention of folklore. Bad history.
  --------------11F5A1A469684D17FF5AE30B-- From albert@u.arizona.edu Fri Nov 13 09:40:54 1998 Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 21:43:30 -0700 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: Albert Bergesen Subject: David Landes/Gunder Frank debate >Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 09:13:42 +0000 >From: Jeffrey Sommers >Reply-To: jsommers@lynx.dac.neu.edu >Organization: World History Center >To: macewan@umbsky.cc.umb.edu, albert@U.Arizona.EDU, denemark@strauss.udel.edu, > CHEWS@axe.humboldt.edu, lhnelson@raven.cc.ukans.edu, > paulo.frank@wanadoo.fr, lynniew@gte.net, > avi chomsky , > Andre Gunder Frank , > Boris Kagarlitsky , dmk@world.std.com, > parker james , > J B Owens , > prasannan parthasarathi , > jagoldstone@ucdavis.edu, platttm@hhsserver.hhs.csus.edu, > kpomeran@benfranklin.hnet.uci.edu, conlon@u.washington.edu, > mlevine@lcsc.edu, schoeber@fas.harvard.edu, tmciolek@coombs.anu.edu.au, > chomsky@mit.edu, CHRISCD@JHUVM.HCF.JHU.EDU, davebuck@csd.uwm.edu, > chriscd@jhu.edu, James Blaut <70671.2032@compuserve.com>, > wilsondk@bc.edu, seckstei@bu.edu, j-grigera@usa.net, pcperdue@mit.edu, > manning@neu.edu, lrsimon@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU, jmcarr@facstaff.wm.edu, > ditmans1@fas.harvard.edu, michael@ecst.csuchico.edu, > gimenez@spot.Colorado.EDU, lsgonick@csupomona.edu, arrom@brandeis.edu, > coatswor@fas.harvard.edu, dlandes@harvard.edu, roupp@csn.net, > whowarth@lynx.dac.neu.edu, Emartin@lynx.dac.neu.edu >Subject: David Landes/Gunder Frank debate > > David Landes and Andre Gunder Frank > debate >"ReOrient" vs. >"The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" >-- Two views of the World Economy in History (University of Amsterdam, >emeritus) Wednesday, Dec. 2nd >3:00-4:30 p.m. >450 Dodge Hall >Northeastern University Event is free and open to the public. >Teachers are encouraged to bring their students. or >see our web page http://www.whc.neu.edu > HISTORY, THEORY AND POLICY? >DEBATING THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF LANDES AND FRANK No question that this >will establish David Landes as preeminent in his field and in his time." >ALBERT BERGESEN contends that Gunder Frank's ReOrient is "absolutely >essential to understanding world history." > maintains that Max Weber was right about the RISE OF THE WEST’ > and >Harvard colleague SAMUEL HUNTINGTON is right about the coming CLASH OF > between THE WEST AND THE REST’. For Landes and them, > exceptionalism of its >values and institutions, that were and still are lacking in the Rest. >Thus, Landes refers to China as a culturally and intellectually >homeostatic society that had indifference to technology, lacked >institutions for finding and learning, abhorred mercantile success, >showed deliberate introversion, isolationism, risk aversion, >irrationality, xenophobia, arrogance, haughtiness, stunned >submissiveness, self-defeating escapism and so on. FRANK retorts that Weber >got it all wrong, and Marx, Polanyi, Parsons, > Landes himself > in his 1969 book UNBOUND PROMETHIUS > the intervening 30 years of > social theory, > other >historians, economists and social scientists is vitiated by the ingrained > historiography and social theory that concentrate their > which blacks out the >evidence from the rest of the world and distorts that of the West itself. >This triumphalist not to mention racist ideology masquerading as history > holistic historical > that not > instead Asia, and particularly Middle Kingdom China, remained > The subsequent Decline of the > the West were more >globally than locally determined temporary processes that have run their >historical course and are already coming full circle with the contemporary >renewed rise of East Asia and >particularly of China. Therefore, it is high time to ReORIENT our >historiography, social theory and political policy as well, all the > in view of the reiteration of and accolades for the poverty of > history’ and theoretically unfounded > with the equally unfounded and > propaganda about End of History” >and Clash of Civilizations”. fundamental rethinking by the iconoclast > who challenges virtually all other significant scholarship about the >historical origins of the > absolutely essential for understanding >world history. LANDES retorts that Frank and his echoes are a magnet for >fallacies and >fantasies [and] the invention of folklore. Bad history. Albert Bergesen Dept. of Sociology Univ. of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 E-MAIL: albert@u.arizona.edu PHONE: (520)621-3303 FAX: (520)621-9875 From umtoewsr@cc.UManitoba.CA Fri Nov 13 12:06:41 1998 From: umtoewsr@cc.UManitoba.CA (umtoewsr@merak.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.16.10]) by ; Fri, 13 Nov 1998 13:06:33 -0600 (CST) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 13:06:33 -0600 (CST) To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: inquiry regarding world history historiography Hello, I just joined the list and I am trying to gain some info regarding a historiographical paper that I have to do. This is my first time on one of these lists so I hope I'm not breaking any listserve taboos by posting an undergrad inquiry. I am a history / political studies student at the University of Manitoba. I have to do a historiographical paper for a historical methods class. As my focus has been world history and global political economy I thought that world history would be an appropriate topic. Allow me to explain ... the purpose of the assignment is to write a historiographical paper on a particular subject. As it is important not to ignore relevant sources, the topic has to be narrowly defined so that the historiography is manageable. Since simply doing a review of the writing of world history is far too broad I have thought of a few ways of narrowing it down. First, I would like to focus on world histories that offer a particular theory for world historical development ie in their interpretation of world history they see particular patterns, processes, dynamics, laws that have a global application as opposed to histories that see world history as nothing more than a collection of distinct local histories. I am also looking for sources whose interpretation would also not be limited to a particular era or region but would encompass all human history. I still haven't figured out exactly how to say this. I hope it makes sense. Some examples. I see Stavrianos's "Lifelines from our past" as relevant as he divides history into three periods, each with its own dynamic. In each epoch, the development of the next epoch becomes necessary as a result of particular historical processes. (I hope I am representing his arguments correctly. I have not read his book in over a year). Francis Fukuyama may also be appropriate as he argues that human history culminates in the triumph of liberal democracy. first year world history texts, with their focus on the histories of different regions and time periods, and with the absence of any unifying/cohesive theory being offered, (a more "factual" approach to world history) would be innappropriate. Gabriel Kolko's anatomy of a war is also innappropriate because although it is a global history of the vietnam war its analysis is specific to a particular period within the twentieth century as a opposed to human history as a whole. I am under the impression that if I choose sources that tackle human history in its entirety, there will be fewer sources that I will have to use. Second, I will only be looking at sources that are after 1989. The reason for this is that I see the Cold War as a turning point and it is an easy way to reduce the material that I will review. How do academics from a vantage point in the post cold war world perceive all prior human history? This distinction may not be a truly legitimate one to make (I'm not in a position to know) but it is a useful one as it reduces the material to review, and it is one I can make an argument for. As I do more reading and gain a better understanding of the approaches that different world historians take I hope to be able to refine and narrow down the focus of the paper further. I have included a bibliography in this email. The bibliography I have included is of sources that may be relevant to my topic. I have not had a chance to go through them all and there are a few on the list that I have already discarded. The questions I would have for you are these, 1) does this topic sound feasible 2) do you have any suggestions about how I may go about doing this, defining my topic more clearly, and narrowing the focus further 3) what sources should I be using that I have not included in my bibliography thanks and sorry for the length, Ryan Toews Bibliography Books Braudel, Fernand, A History of Civilizations, 1993. Chomsky, Noam, World Orders, Old and New, 1996. Costello, Paul, World Historians and Their Goals: Twentieth Century Answers to Modernism, 1993. Chase Dunn, Christopher and Hall Thomas, Rise and Demise; Comparing WOrld Systems. 1997 Frank, Andre Gunder, and Gills, Barry, The World System: Five hundred years or Five Thousand ------ ReOrient 1998 Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man, 1992. Gellner, Ernest, Plough, Sword, and Book: The Structure of Human History, 1989. Goudsblom, Johan, Jones, Eric, Mennell, Stephen, The Course of Human History, Economic Growth, Social Process and Civilization 1996 Gran, Peter, Beyond Eurocentrism: A new view of Modern World History, 1996 Hodgson, Marshall, Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History, 1993 Huntington, Samuel, The Clash Of Civilizations and the Making of a World Order, 1996. Lamb, H.H, Climate, History, and the Modern World, 1995 Matossin, Mary Kilbourne, Shaping World History, 1997. Modelski, George From Leadership to Organization: the evolution of Global Politics McNeill, William A World History, 1998. Prazniak Roxann, Dialogues across Civilization, sketches in world, essays in world History Sanderson, Stephen, Civilizations and World Systems: Studying World-Historical Change, 1995 Snooks, Graeme Donald, The Dynamic Society:Exploring the Sources of Global Change, 1996 Spier, Fred, The structure of Big History Stavrianos, Leften, Lifelines From Our Past, 1989. Thomas, Hugh, World History: the story of mankind from prehistory to present Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World System Articles Amin, Sadir, "The ancient world system versus the modern capitalist world system" in Review, 14, 349-85, 1991 Benton, Lauren, "From the World-Systems Perspective to Institutional World History: Culture and Economy in Global Theory", in The Journal of World History, 1996, 9(2) Burke, Peter, "New Reflections on World History", in Culture and History, 1989 (5):9-18 Frank, Andre Gunder, "A theoretical introduction to 5000 years of World Systems History", in Review, 13:155-248. ------- "A Plea for World Systems History", in Journal of World History, 1991 2(1): 1-28. Geyer, Michael, and Bright, Charles, "World History in a Global Age" in American Historical Review, 1995 100(4): 1034-1060. Green, William "Periodizing World History", in History and Theory, 1995 34(2): 99-111. Hughes, Donald, "Ecology and Development as narrative Themes of World History" in Environmental History Review, 1995 19(1): 1-16. Kirch, Patrick, "Microcosmic Histories: Island Perspectives on 'Global' Change" in American Anthropologist 1997 99(1), 30-42. McNeill, William, "The Fall of Great Powers: An Historical Commentary", in Review, 1994 17(2), 123-143. -------- "The Changing Shape of World History", in History and Theory, 1995 34(2): 8- 26. -------- "World History and The Rise and Fall of the West" in The Journal of World History, 1998 9(2) Muhlberger, Steven, and Paine, Phil, "Democracy's Place in World History" in Journal of World History, 1993 4(1): 23-45. Munroe, Trevor, "The Midst, not the End of History" in Social and Economic Studies, 1993 42(4): 241-262. Neild, Keith, "Liberalism and History: Reflections on the Writing of World Histories", In Culture and History, 1989 (5): 65-92. Rotenstreich, Nathan, "Can There Be an End to History", History and Memory, 1990, 2(2): 136-142. Spier, Frank "Regimes as Structuring Principle for Big History" WHA annual Conference, 1995. From ncfs@islandnet.com Fri Nov 13 15:11:32 1998 Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 12:28:05 -0800 To: chriscd@jhu.edu From: National Centre for Sustainability Subject: Re: [Fwd: FWD: End the silence: U.S. should bring Pinochet to justice (fwd)] "." , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , wsn@csf.colorado.edu, mai-not@flora.org, TOES97@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU In-Reply-To: <3649FF02.20103F36@jhu.edu> Dear Chris: Just a short comment on your post of 16:17 11/11/98 -0500, forwarding Maurice Zeitlin 's call for "End(ing) the silence: U.S. should bring Pinochet to justice . In the name of what should the US be entitled to bring Augusto Pinochet to justice? Why should the US be entitled to that? Why any state, including Britain, Spain etc.. would be authorized to host the court in charge of such an act of justice? What authorizes a State or the government of a nation to judge? Are the United States of America as a Nation represented by its government, innocent of any crimes against humanity to a sufficient degree that the judges would be impartial? Would the UK? Spain? France? other countries? Not that Pinochet should not be called to answer for what he did or condoned. But in the name of what are governments of States which have conducted imperialistic strategies for centuries or decades and often continue along such lines, have a right to judge? Food for thought. All the best, Yves Bajard : >MIME-version: 1.0 > >FYI > >Maurice Zeitlin >Professor >Department of Sociology >264 Haines Hall >Box 951551 >University of California >Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551 > >(310) 825-1313 > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 19:17:07 -0500 (EST) >To: zeitlin@soc.ucla.edu >Subject: FWD: End the silence: U.S. should bring Pinochet to justice > > > >This story was forwarded to you from www.sunspot.net, >Maryland's Online Community. > > To view this story on the web go to >http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/editorial/story.cgi?storyid=900000231234 > >It was sent with the following comments: > "" > >------------------------------------------------------ > >Headline: End the silence: U.S. should bring Pinochet to justice >Subhead: For three years before Pinochet's coup began, the Nixon >administration turned over every rock trying to find a general willing to >overthrow Chile's government. > > Maurice Zeitlin > > THE WAR of Chile's armed forces against their elected government >was almost a week old on Sept. 17, 1973, when the broken and >bullet-riddled body of the Rev. Juan Alsina, a 29-year-old Spanish >priest, was found on a bridge in Santiago. > > Earlier in the day, an army officer and five soldiers had taken >Alsina from the hospital where he served as chaplain. He was >beaten, tortured and shot 10 times as he "tried to escape." >The Spanish embassy claimed his body and returned it home for >burial. > > Alsina was one of many Spanish citizens and other foreigners, >including Americans, and more than 15,000 Chileans who were summarily >executed or "disappeared" by the military as part of >the bloody coup and its aftermath led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. > > >Now, at last, Chile's ex-dictator and self-appointed "senator >for life," is under police guard in London, after an extradition >request from Spain, for the murder of Alsina and of many other >Spanish citizens in Chile. > > Eleven judges on Spain's National Court have ruled unanimously >that under international law, Spain has the legal right to bring >charges against Mr. Pinochet for crimes against humanity and >to seek his extradition from Britain. > > This contradicts a ruling by the high court in London that he >is immune from prosecution as a former head of state. But the >court ordered that he remain in detention, pending an appeal >to the House of Lords. > > If Spain's exemplary effort to extradite Mr. Pinochet and >try him for murder succeeds, it will be the first judge and jury >that Mr. Pinochet or any member of the junta has faced for the >crimes they committed during a 17-year reign of terror. > > Both the immediate post-dictatorship president, Patricio Aylwin, >and current president, Eduardo Frei, have been afraid even to >investigate let alone bring charges against them. The government >is still vulnerable to pressure and threats by the unreconstructed >military. > > The crimes Mr. Pinochet would be charged with would certainly >include the murder of three young Americans: Charles Horman, >Frank Teruggi Jr. and Ronnie Karpen Moffit. > > No refuge to be found > > On that September day in 1973, while fighting was still raging >in Santiago, Charles Horman went to the U.S. Embassy to request >protection for his wife, Joyce, and himself. Embassy officials >turned him away, saying they couldn't help him. > > That evening he was arrested by soldiers and taken to the National >Stadium, where thousands of other prisoners rounded up by the >military were concentrated. He subsequently "disappeared." > > >On Oct. 5, his father, Edmund Horman, came to Chile, and, with >Joyce, sought help from embassy officials. But as Frank Teruggi >Sr. was also to experience months later, they were subject instead >to evasions and indifference. They were forced to conduct their >own investigation; and, on Oct. 18, were informed by the embassy >that Chilean investigators had found Horman's body. He had >been tortured and shot in the stadium, and buried in the wall >of the National Cemetery. > > Frank Teruggi Jr., an economics student at the University of >Chile, and his roommate, David Hathaway, were arrested on Sept. >20, 1973, and taken to National Stadium. Somehow the two were >separated. > > Mr. Hathaway was later released, as the result of the intervention >of a Chilean businessman, a family friend. Mr. Hathaway never >saw his friend alive again. Frank Teruggi's body was found >days later at the morgue in Santiago. He had been tortured and >shot 17 times. > > These facts were disclosed and confirmed only in February 1974, >as the result of an independent investigation in Chile by Teruggi's >father, and a Chicago commission of inquiry. > > Car bomb attack > > Ronnie Moffit was killed in Washington in 1976 by a car bomb >planted by a Chilean hit squad. She was a passenger in the car >of their target, Orlando Letelier, a former minister in the government >of Salvador Allende, who was also murdered. > > In this case, at least, a Justice Department investigation led >to the imprisonment, in 1995, of Manuel Contreras, head of Chile's >feared secret police, and his deputy. > > But for none of these murders of U.S. citizens, and the incarceration >and brutal beating or torture of at least eight other Americans >in Chile -- including two Maryknoll priests and two of my own >then-graduate students at the University of Wisconsin -- has >the U.S. government sought to call Mr. Pinochet to account. > > >The U.S. government was complicit with Mr. Pinochet and his ilk >in destroying Chile's constitutional government. For three >years before Mr. Pinochet's coup began, the Nixon administration >turned over every rock trying to find a general willing to betray >the constitution and overthrow Allende, Chile's freely elected >socialist president. > > The CIA, in a shadowy alliance with U.S. corporations, carried >out "massive covert operations within a democratic state," >as Sen. Frank Church, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence >Committee, concluded in 1975 "with the ultimate effect of >overthrowing [the] duly elected government." > > A quarter of a century later, the U.S. government must acknowledge >its responsibility for what happened in Chile by filing its own >request for the extradition of Mr. Pinochet, to stand trial here >for the murder of U.S. citizens. > > Maurice Zeitlin, a professor of sociology at the University >of California at Los Angeles, and a member of the advisory board >of the Latin American Center, has lived in Chile and is the author >of many articles and two books on that country, including "The >Civil Wars in Chile" (Princeton University Press). > > > > >------------------------------------------------------ > > >To view this story on the web go to >http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/editorial/story.cgi?storyid=900000231234 > > For information about the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the latest developments on Globalization, please see our Web site at http://www.islandnet.com/~ncfs/maisite From krhodes@carbon.cudenver.edu Fri Nov 13 15:34:49 1998 From: "Kharyssa Rhodes" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: A Plea for Help: references re world empires Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 15:13:06 -0700 Hello everyone, I've recently signed onto the list and have been listening to the ongoing conversation with great interest. I have just come upon world-systems in my studies and have a request. I am particularly interested in the utility of this paradigm in studying ancient empires. Specifically, my topic deals with the interaction between the Roman Empire, the Meroitic Kingdom (Sudan) and the Aksumite Kingdom (Ethiopia) from 400BCE to 500CE. Both Meroitic and Aksumite kingdoms can be conceived of as are far-outlying peripheries -- they supplied the Roman core with raw materials from their own territory as well as from interioir Africa, but were (extremely) politically independent. However, their economies were interdependent to such a point that a loss of trade with the Roman Empire led to the Meroitic collapse. As I am just beginning to understand world-systems theory I am in dire need of references. Particularly, I am looking for more information on ancient world-empires, a case study or two, and theoretical critiques of the application of world-systems in archaeology as well as practical on-the-ground methodology. Of course, I've been through CU and internet resources and have had only marginal success. Any help is appreciated ! Kharyssa Rhodes Graduate Student Archaeology Teaching Assistant University of Colorado Department of Anthropology 1380 Lawrence Street #400 Denver, Colorado 80217 From thall@DEPAUW.EDU Fri Nov 13 18:49:40 1998 Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 20:48:29 -0500 (EST) From: "Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU" Subject: Re: A Plea for Help: references re world empires In-reply-to: <009c01be0f52$cb0219c0$990ac284@rhodes> To: Kharyssa Rhodes Kharyssa, At the risk of being self aggrandizing, Rise & Demise: Comparing World-Systems, Westview 1997, Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall [me] is a very good starting point. In addition to being a thorough overview of application of world-systems analysis to precapitalist settings, it has an extensive bibliography. If it generates detailed questions, email me directly. For general questions, keep them on WSN, most of the players read WSN so you'll get more answers. tom Thomas D. [tom] Hall thall@depauw.edu Department of Sociology DePauw University 100 Center Street Greencastle, IN 46135 off:765-658-4519 fax:765-658-4799 dpt:765-658-4516 HOME PAGE: http://www.depauw.edu/~thall/hp1.htm On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, Kharyssa Rhodes wrote: > Hello everyone, > > I've recently signed onto the list and have been listening to the ongoing > conversation with great interest. I have just come upon world-systems in my > studies and have a request. > > I am particularly interested in the utility of this paradigm in studying > ancient empires. Specifically, my topic deals with the interaction between > the Roman Empire, the Meroitic Kingdom (Sudan) and the Aksumite Kingdom > (Ethiopia) from 400BCE to 500CE. Both Meroitic and Aksumite kingdoms can be > conceived of as are far-outlying peripheries -- they supplied the Roman core > with raw materials from their own territory as well as from interioir > Africa, but were (extremely) politically independent. However, their > economies were interdependent to such a point that a loss of trade with the > Roman Empire led to the Meroitic collapse. > > As I am just beginning to understand world-systems theory I am in dire need > of references. Particularly, I am looking for more information on ancient > world-empires, a case study or two, and theoretical critiques of the > application of world-systems in archaeology as well as practical > on-the-ground methodology. Of course, I've been through CU and internet > resources and have had only marginal success. Any help is appreciated ! > > Kharyssa Rhodes > Graduate Student > Archaeology Teaching Assistant > University of Colorado > Department of Anthropology > 1380 Lawrence Street #400 > Denver, Colorado 80217 > > > > From dagmac@jhu.edu Fri Nov 13 18:55:07 1998 by jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (980427.SGI.8.8.8/950213.SGI.AUTOCF) 13 Nov 1998 20:54:54 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 20:54:53 -0500 (EST) From: Dag P Macleod Subject: Re: Condemning Pinochet: a no brainer! In-reply-to: <4.1.19981111231848.0097b100@mail.islandnet.com> To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Yves Bajard's query on why the US, or any country for that matter, should be allowed to bring Pinochet to justice, strikes me as a choice example of the problem with much of the contemporary left. Sure, the hands of the US are as and more bloody than those of any other state in the contemporary world. That fact, then, becomes the excuse for doing nothing with regard to Pinochet? While the right goes out and *does* things -- everything from organizing school boards at the grass roots to engineering coups at the tree tops -- the left finds itself paralyzed by a no-brainer like whether or not to support holding Pinochet accountable for his crimes. I say hang him high! Dag MacLeod Ph.D. Candidate Department of Sociology The Johns Hopkins University dagmac@jhu.edu From thall@DEPAUW.EDU Fri Nov 13 18:56:02 1998 Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 20:55:00 -0500 (EST) From: "Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU" Subject: Re: A Plea for Help: references re world empires In-reply-to: <009c01be0f52$cb0219c0$990ac284@rhodes> To: Kharyssa Rhodes Kharyssa, I should have mentioned Leadership, Production, and Exchange: World-Systems Theory in Practice, edited by P. Nick Kardulias is due out early 99 from Roman and littlefield will have numerous examples and theoretical debates. A good portion of the early drafts were publisned on-line in Journal of world-systems research in 1996: http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr.html last half of that issue. tom Thomas D. [tom] Hall thall@depauw.edu Department of Sociology DePauw University 100 Center Street Greencastle, IN 46135 off:765-658-4519 fax:765-658-4799 dpt:765-658-4516 HOME PAGE: http://www.depauw.edu/~thall/hp1.htm From ms44278@email.csun.edu Fri Nov 13 20:12:46 1998 Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 19:12:22 -0800 (PST) From: mike shupp To: Dag P Macleod Subject: Re: Condemning Pinochet: a no brainer! In-Reply-To: On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, Dag P Macleod wrote: > the left finds itself paralyzed by a no-brainer > like whether or not to support holding Pinochet accountable for his > crimes. I say hang him high! Presumably the truly appropriate outcome of this situation would be for Gen Pinochet to simply vanish and never be mentioned again.... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ms44278@huey.csun.edu Mike Shupp California State University, Northridge Graduate Student, Dept. of Anthropology http://www.csun.edu/~ms44278/index.htm From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Fri Nov 13 20:52:52 1998 Fri, 13 Nov 1998 22:52:41 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 22:52:41 -0500 (EST) From: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Dag P Macleod Subject: Re: Condemning Pinochet: a no brainer! In-Reply-To: Dag, These are my sentiments. Yes, the US is a terrorist state. But at the same time, why not use the US state to whack Pinochet? Andy On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, Dag P Macleod wrote: >Yves Bajard's query on why the US, or any country for that matter, should >be allowed to bring Pinochet to justice, strikes me as a choice example of >the problem with much of the contemporary left. Sure, the hands of the US >are as and more bloody than those of any other state in the contemporary >world. That fact, then, becomes the excuse for doing nothing with regard >to Pinochet? While the right goes out and *does* things -- everything >from organizing school boards at the grass roots to engineering coups >at the tree tops -- the left finds itself paralyzed by a no-brainer >like whether or not to support holding Pinochet accountable for his >crimes. I say hang him high! > >Dag MacLeod >Ph.D. Candidate >Department of Sociology >The Johns Hopkins University >dagmac@jhu.edu > > From ncfs@islandnet.com Sat Nov 14 00:28:19 1998 Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 23:27:50 -0800 To: Maurice Zeitlin From: National Centre for Sustainability Subject: Re: [Fwd: FWD: End the silence: U.S. should bring Pinochet to justice (fwd)] , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , In-Reply-To: No sir, but we could have had the International Court of Justice which your government nicely prevented from existing effectively.... In the meantime, Spain, the UK and a few others have moved ahead of the USA, without having been mixed as intimately in the accession to power by Mr. Pinochet et al. Easy way out for you and unjustified accusation. I do not say taht peoplke cannot demand that their government do a good thing. I am stating taht the government of the USA, even if asked to bring Mr. Pinochet to jsutice, does not avhe the credential to do it impartially. I am also saying taht the governments of countries where imperialist polices ahve or stilla re conducted ar not in the best position to judge, given their own track record. I am not evading issues, but asking questions. All the best, Yves Bajard, Doctor of Science, Secretary, National Centre fro Sustainability. At 14:45 13/11/98 -0800, you wrote: >This set of questions is a recipe for political paralysis. Since our >country's previous governments as well as this one have done bad things, >we cant demand that the government now do a good thing. Nice reasoning. > >Maurice Zeitlin >Professor >Department of Sociology >264 Haines Hall >Box 951551 >University of California >Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551 > >(310) 825-1313 > From rozov@nsu.ru Sat Nov 14 02:23:07 1998 Sat, 14 Nov 1998 15:15:51 +0600 (NOVT) From: "Nikolai S. Rozov " To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu, H-WORLD@h-net.msu.edu Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 16:19:23 +0000 Subject: Macrohistical Dynamics: Chicago 20-22 Nov. Reply-to: rozov@nsu.ru Dear colleagues, those who have interest and possibility, can come to the Annual meeting of Social Science History Association in Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois 60603, November 19-23, where two panels on Macrohistorical Dynamics are organized (see below). A week ago when it became clear for me that there are financial possibilities to go to Chicago, i told it to colleagues, this news was followed by wonderful consolidation (special thanks to Gunder Frank, Randall Collins, Art Sctinchcombe, Chris Chase-Dunn for financial and moral support). as you can imagine i will be rather short in money in Chicago, and if it is possible in Chicago area (to bring me to and back by car) to organize a lecture in philosophical, historical, social sciences or Slavic department 23 or 24 November it would be both a good opportunity for communication and essential aid for me. I leave just now, if a proposal appears please send information directly to Dr.Georgi M. Derluguian with whom i'll be in contact in Chicago. Best wishes, hope to see some of you in Chicago Nikolai Rozov, Professor of Philosophy (Novosibirsk State University, Russia) ********************************************************** 23 or 24 November Nikolai S. Rozov Possible topics for lectures: 1)The Method of Theoretical History (revival of Hempelian logics, typology of cognitive tools, main logical procedures, experience generalization) 2)Towards an Integral Model of Macrohistorical Dynamics (an approach to synthesis of ecological, geopolitical, world-system, civilizational, and evolutionary paradigms) 3)Dynamic Patterns of Russian History, 1550-2050. The overhead for transparences is needed **************************************************************** PANELS the Palmer House Hilton (Chicago) questions to Tom Sugrue and Rick Valelly Registrar 812-855-4661 Macrohistorical Dynamics 1: Theory and Method Friday, Nov. 20, 8-10am Chair: Arthur Stinchcombe (Northwestern University) Discussant: Daniel Chirot (University of Washington) 1) Randall Collins (University of Pennsylavania). Logics of Prediction in Social-Historical Theorizing. 2) Nikolai S. Rozov (Novosibisrk State University, Russia). The Method of Theoretical History. 3) Charles Ragin (Northwestern University). System-Level Comparisons. 4) Andrey Korotayev (Oriental Institute, Moscow, Russia). Driving Forces of Social Evolution: A Reconsideration. Macrohistorical Dynamics 2 : Longue Duree, World-Systems and Modern Globalization. Sunday, Nov. 22, 10:45 am -12:45 pm Chair: Nikolai Rozov (Novosibirsk State University) 1-st discussant: Randall Collins (University of Pennsylavania) 2-nd discutant: Thomas Hall (Depauw University) 1) Arthur Stinchcombe (Northwestern University). Big Structures and Long Duree. 2) Andre Gunder Frank (University of Toronto, Canada). ReORIENT World [System] History 3) Daniel Chirot (University of Washington). Warfare and Other Market Signals: Estimating How Well Societies Work 4) Wolf Schaefer (State University of New York at Stony Brook). Global Civilization and Local Cultures - From World to Global History From p34d3611@jhu.edu Sat Nov 14 22:49:56 1998 by jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (980427.SGI.8.8.8/950213.SGI.AUTOCF) 15 Nov 1998 00:49:35 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 00:49:35 -0500 (EST) From: Peter Grimes Subject: Debt relief for Nicaragua To: WSN Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 11:01:29 From: Njoki Njoroge Njehu Subject: Sign-on for Central America Debt Cancellation RESPOND TO: Support Immediate Debt Cancellation for Honduras and Nicaragua in the Wake of Hurricane Mitch To: Members of the United States Congress Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury Michel Camdessus, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund James Wolfenson, President, World Bank Group With Hurricane Mitch, Honduras and Nicaragua, two of the poorest and most indebted countries in Latin America, have been hit by what may be the worst disaster they have ever faced. In response to the humanitarian emergency, we call for the immediate and unconditional cancellation of the external debt repayment obligations of both countries, and substantial debt reduction for El Salvador and Guatemala, both also severely affected by the hurricane. The disaster has removed the ability of these countries to repay external debt. All available resources should be used address to the needs of the population in this crisis. Recent press reports indicate that the reconstruction effort will cost billions and take many years. Both Honduras and Nicaragua, as heavily indebted poor countries, were supposed be eligible to receive relief on their debt obligations in the future in return for complying with IMF "structural adjustment" economic policies. But debt cancellation should be immediate and unconditional so the countries can use their limited resources for rebuilding their social and physical infrastructure rather than diverting resources to export promotion. The devastation caused by the hurricane is making any delay immoral and inhuman. Honduras and Nicaragua are among the poorest countries in Latin America, with a per capita GDP of less than $700. In both countries, the burden of foreign debt service and structural adjustment has weakened the social infrastructure and contributed to the toll of the disaster. The health and education system in both countries has been in a poor state for more than ten years. A major cause is that more money has been spent on servicing debt than on health or education. In 1997, Honduras spent over $410 million on debt service while allocating only $16 million for the purchase of medical equipment now so urgently needed. In 1996 debt service was 80% of government revenue. Nicaragua is not doing much better, with 51% of government revenue used for foreign debt service. Total debt service for Nicaragua was $221 million in 1996. In 1998, international creditors expect debt service payments of $450 million from Honduras and $300 million from Nicaragua, over $2 million each day. Debts to international financial institutions, including the Inter-American Development Bank, should be canceled immediately. With the International Monetary Fund set to receive $90 billion in new quotas, including $18 billion from the U.S., debt repayments from these devastated countries to international financial institutions would be an obvious misallocation of desperately-needed resources. It would not make sense to send humanitarian relief to these countries while demanding that they pay out more in debt servicing -- over $1 million a day in the case of Honduras and nearly that amount for Nicaragua --than they will receive in aid. The bilateral debt of these countries owed to the United States should also be canceled immediately. Former Presidents Bush and Carter have both called for immediate action on the debt issue in the wake of the crisis. Both France and Cuba have already erased the debts owed them by these countries, and other creditor nations are supporting debt cancellation. But the U.S. has remained silent on the need for debt cancellation. We emphasize that debt cancellation must not be conditioned on compliance with IMF structural adjustment programs or similar demands. Demands for government austerity are surely inappropriate in the face of sudden and massive homelessness, disease, and hunger. More than 25,000 people have now been reported dead or missing. Ten times that number may be in jeopardy from malaria and other diseases. Tens of thousands of survivors are threatened because they cannot easily be reached with food, drinking water and medicine. Two and a half million people are homeless. Rebuilding will cost billions. Honduras and Nicaragua need to build homes for 20-25% of their population. This disaster will take the affected nations, already two of the poorest countries in Latin America, decades to overcome. Half-measures such as debt re- scheduling or a "debt moratorium" would be insufficient. Anything less than cancellation of the monumental, unpayable debt burden would extend and deepen the suffering of the victims. Broad coalitions of social organizations in Honduras and in Nicaragua have called for cancellation of debt. The export base of Honduras and Nicaragua has been devastated, so these countries will lack the foreign currency for repayment of debt. The governments of both countries estimate that reconstruction will take between twenty and forty years. We call for the full cancellation of foreign debts, including both bilateral and multilateral debt, in the face of this overwhelming catastrophe. Thank you for your consideration of our concerns. Nicaragua Network Latin America Emergency Response Network 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice Friends of the Earth Essential Action Preamble Center Jubilee 2000 Afrika Campaign : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : Njoki Njoroge Njehû Director 50 Years Is Enough Network 1247 E Street, SE Washington, DC 20003 - USA Phone: 202/IMF-BANK; 202/544-9355 Fax: 202/544-9359 Email: wb50years@igc.org Web: http://www.50years.org From siegmund@thegrid.net Sun Nov 15 10:17:02 1998 Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 09:17:01 -0700 Subject: Tetworld has a new Introductory Page From: "Mark Siegmund" To: WSN@csf.colorado.edu Dear Listees, Just a brief announcement about the new introductory page at the Tetworld Peace Through Development Game, at: http://members.tripod.com/Tetworld/grid1.html Thanks, Regards, Mark Tetworld Peace Through Development Game http://members.tripod.com/~Tetworld/+index.html ICQ # 22569841 From p34d3611@jhu.edu Sun Nov 15 21:04:42 1998 by jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (980427.SGI.8.8.8/950213.SGI.AUTOCF) 15 Nov 1998 23:04:32 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 23:04:31 -0500 (EST) From: Peter Grimes Subject: Debt Relief for Central America To: WSN All of us at Jonah House long to see a cancellation of debt to Honduras and Nicaragua in consequence of the devastation from Hurrican Mitch. Knowing that global warming is what is responsible for such freak storms, and that the U.S. contributes probably 25% of the emissions that cause global warming, the U.S. is largely responsible for this devastation. Knowing, too, that U.S. based transnational corporations have been responsible for patterns of agriculture in Central America that result in deforestation, we are especially responsible for the terrible mud slides. It is not an act of charity to cancel this debt; it is a necessary act of justice. Elizabeth McAlister Philip Berrigan Jerome Berrigan Frida Berrigan Kathleen Berrigan Sr. Ardeth Platte O.P. Sr. Carol Gilbert O.P. Coretta Warren Gregory Boertje-Obed Michele Naar-Obed Rachel Obed Susan Crane Fr. Steve Kelly S.J. From p34d3611@jhu.edu Sun Nov 15 22:21:08 1998 by jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (980427.SGI.8.8.8/950213.SGI.AUTOCF) 16 Nov 1998 00:20:30 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 00:20:30 -0500 (EST) From: Peter Grimes Subject: World Bank & Global Warming To: WSN Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 19:35:28 -0500 From: Barbara Larcom Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 14:53:25 -0800 (PST) From: Daphne Wysham To: 50-years@igc.org Subject: Guardian article re: Bank's carbon trading ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Friday November 13, 1998   Anger as Bank tries to rule carbon trade By Paul Brown The World Bank plans to take control of the £60 billion international carbon trading market being set up under the Climate Change Convention, even before the 167 countries involved agree how it will be organised. Confidential documents leaked to the Guardian at the climate talks in Buenos Aires show that even the United States treasury is alarmed by the move. It sees a conflict of interest with the bank's other role as a developer of fossil fuels, a role in which the bank has a bad reputation among environmental groups and in the developing world. The World Bank itself fears its move may carry the 'political risk of seeming to get ahead of the convention on emissions trading', but sees rich rewards from controlling a system by which Third World countries can sell their pollution allowance to developed countries in return for cleaner combustion technology. The bank plans to charge 5 per cent commission on all deals. It estimates that the market will be worth £90 billion by 2020, giving a total commission income of £4.5 billion, of which 60 per cent will be 'profit above administration costs'. Rather than opt for expensive fossil-fuel reductions at home, companies can buy cheap carbon credits from developing countries, the bank says. It believes that renewable energy sources like wind and solar power are too expensive, and suggests further investment in fossil fuels. This would involve Western countries building new coal-fired plants to replace inefficient ones in developing countries, and then claiming those countries' carbon credits because of the efficiency gained. The World Bank in its document calls it 'a win-win of collecting low-hanging fruit', but in English it means easy pickings. The leak coincides with a report published yesterday in which the bank is strongly criticised for continuing to build fossil-fuel plants in the developing world. The US Institute for Policy Studies and the International Trade Information Service say this makes the bank unsuitable for any role in the carbon market. The joint report says that since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 the bank has spent 25 times more on supporting fossil-fuel projects than on renewable sources of energy. In the past year it has voted almost £800 million for four massive coal burners in China alone. The bank claims that the new plants are needed to bring electricity to the 2 billion people in the world without it, and much needed economic development. In reality, the report says, almost all the investment goes to existing industrial areas, and large and often dirty industries from the developed world move in to take advantage of cheap power. Only 7 per cent of the power provides electricity to people who previously had none. Daphne Wysham, the author of the report, said: "It is appalling news that the bank plans to try and control carbon trading. It has a terrible track record of wrecking the climate by building coal stations in the developing world without proper environmental controls. Even the US government is alarmed." The US treasury document says the conflict arises from the bank's role as a developer of fossil fuels, a promoter of greenhouse gas reduction, and now a carbon trader. 'The bank has a credibility problem, having long supported fossil-fuels development... having failed to implement its own energy and environment policies,' it says. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daphne Wysham ph: (202)234-9382, X208 Institute for Policy Studies fax: (202)387-7915 733-15th St., NW e: dwysham@igc.apc.org Suite 1020 Washington, DC 20005 http://www.seen.org From chriscd@jhu.edu Mon Nov 16 08:29:42 1998 (original mail from chriscd@jhu.edu) for wsn@csf.colorado.edu; Mon, wsn@csf.colorado.edu; Mon, 16 Nov 1998 10:29:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 10:30:43 -0500 From: christopher chase-dunn Subject: Re: A Plea for Help: references re world empires To: krhodes@carbon.cudenver.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu in C. Chase-Dunn and T.D. Hall, Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems (Westview 1997) see chapters 4,8-10 and in refs see Woolf, Taagepera, and Dyson. For a review of world-systems in archaeology see Hall and Chase-Dunn 1993 in the Journal of Archaeological Research 1,2:121-143. From ncfs@islandnet.com Mon Nov 16 12:38:17 1998 Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 11:37:51 -0800 To: Dion Giles From: National Centre for Sustainability Subject: Re: /YB: Bounced Pinochet item In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19981114134351.484f5c72@central.murdoch.edu.au> Dear Dion: In answer to your post of 13:37 14/11/98 +0800, repeated in full below, all I can say is taht I agree adn did not propose anything else. I racted to the sense of priority for the USA which I eprceived in the frtist mesage. Otehrwise, whoever caqn judge MR Pinochet ina regular ccriminal court is welcome. I said taht I regret and want to repeat it here, that the International Crimial Court of Justice project of the UN was stalled by the USA.. All the ebst, Yves. ===================================Dion's text========== >Dear Yves, > >You queried the right of the US to bring Pinochet to justice, considering >that the US had condoned or masterminded criminal acts itself. Spain's >right to try Pinochet has been queried as the Spanish Government had failed >to punish the Franco thugs. The right of South Africa to try butchers like >P.W. Botha has been questioned because ANC murders may have gone >unpunished. Israel's right to try Eichmann was challenged. The Nuremburg >trials have been dismissed as victors' revenge. > >The real fact is that any totally unblemished people's court with power to >apprehend and punish butchers is a pipe-dream. So is the dream of every >last criminal being caught and punished. Usually they are punished only >when it suits someone to punish them, and when it becomes physically >possible to bring them to justice (e.g. by winning the war in 1945). > >However, it suits all humanity for those who violate our rights to be >punished, and wherever the real-world possibility to do this occurs it is in >our interests to applaud the process and where possible bring to bear >pressure on the agents of punishment to get on with it as in the case of >Pinochet, no matter who the agents are or what they are like, and no matter >what other criminals remain (so far) unpunished. > >Demanding that the British State hand Pinochet over to justice isn't about >the British or Spanish or any other State judging him, it's *us* judging him >and his ilk. > >Regards, Dion >------------------- >Dion Giles >Fremantle, Western Australia >For MAI-not (un)subscription information, posting guidelines and >links to other MAI sites please see http://mai.flora.org/ From kpmoseley@juno.com Mon Nov 16 14:33:56 1998 From: kpmoseley@juno.com To: p34d3611@jhu.edu Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 15:56:46 -0800 Subject: Re: Debt relief for Nicaragua X-Juno-Line-Breaks: 2-4,6-135 Does anone have a handy list of congressmen's names and (email)addresses? Would appreciate your copying it to me (and others to whom it might also be of use). Thanks in advance -- Kay Moseley On Sun, 15 Nov 1998 00:49:35 -0500 (EST) Peter Grimes writes: >Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 11:01:29 >From: Njoki Njoroge Njehu >Subject: Sign-on for Central America Debt Cancellation > >RESPOND TO: > > >Support Immediate Debt Cancellation for Honduras and Nicaragua in >the Wake of Hurricane Mitch > >To: >Members of the United States Congress >Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury >Michel Camdessus, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund >James Wolfenson, President, World Bank Group > >With Hurricane Mitch, Honduras and Nicaragua, two of the poorest >and most indebted countries in Latin America, have been hit by >what may be the worst disaster they have ever faced. In response >to the humanitarian emergency, we call for the immediate and >unconditional cancellation of the external debt repayment >obligations of both countries, and substantial debt reduction for >El Salvador and Guatemala, both also severely affected by the >hurricane. The disaster has removed the ability of these >countries to repay external debt. All available resources should >be used address to the needs of the population in this crisis. >Recent press reports indicate that the reconstruction effort >will cost billions and take many years. > >Both Honduras and Nicaragua, as heavily indebted poor countries, >were supposed be eligible to receive relief on their debt >obligations in the future in return for complying with IMF >"structural adjustment" economic policies. But debt cancellation >should be immediate and unconditional so the countries can use >their limited resources for rebuilding their social and physical >infrastructure rather than diverting resources to export >promotion. The devastation caused by the hurricane is making any >delay immoral and inhuman. Honduras and Nicaragua are among the >poorest countries in Latin America, with a per capita GDP of >less than $700. In both countries, the burden of foreign debt >service and structural adjustment has weakened the social >infrastructure and contributed to the toll of the disaster. The >health and education system in both countries has been in a poor >state for more than ten years. A major cause is that more money >has been spent on servicing debt than on health or education. In >1997, Honduras spent over $410 million on debt service while >allocating only $16 million for the purchase of medical >equipment now so urgently needed. In 1996 debt service was 80% >of government revenue. Nicaragua is not doing much better, with >51% of government revenue used for foreign debt service. Total >debt service for Nicaragua was $221 million in 1996. In 1998, >international creditors expect debt service payments of $450 >million from Honduras and $300 million from Nicaragua, over $2 >million each day. > >Debts to international financial institutions, including the >Inter-American Development Bank, should be canceled immediately. >With the International Monetary Fund set to receive $90 billion >in new quotas, including $18 billion from the U.S., debt >repayments from these devastated countries to international >financial institutions would be an obvious misallocation of >desperately-needed resources. It would not make sense to send >humanitarian relief to these countries while demanding that they >pay out more in debt servicing -- over $1 million a day in the >case of Honduras and nearly that amount for Nicaragua --than >they will receive in aid. > >The bilateral debt of these countries owed to the United States >should also be canceled immediately. Former Presidents Bush and >Carter have both called for immediate action on the debt issue >in the wake of the crisis. Both France and Cuba have already >erased the debts owed them by these countries, and other >creditor nations are supporting debt cancellation. But the U.S. >has remained silent on the need for debt cancellation. We >emphasize that debt cancellation must not be conditioned on >compliance with IMF structural adjustment programs or similar >demands. Demands for government austerity are surely >inappropriate in the face of sudden and massive homelessness, >disease, and hunger. > >More than 25,000 people have now been reported dead or missing. >Ten times that number may be in jeopardy from malaria and other >diseases. Tens of thousands of survivors are threatened because >they cannot easily be reached with food, drinking water and >medicine. Two and a half million people are homeless. Rebuilding >will cost billions. Honduras and Nicaragua need to build homes >for 20-25% of their population. This disaster will take the >affected nations, already two of the poorest countries in Latin >America, decades to overcome. Half-measures such as debt re- >scheduling or a "debt moratorium" would be insufficient. >Anything less than cancellation of the monumental, unpayable >debt burden would extend and deepen the suffering of the >victims. > >Broad coalitions of social organizations in Honduras and in >Nicaragua have called for cancellation of debt. The export base >of Honduras and Nicaragua has been devastated, so these >countries will lack the foreign currency for repayment of debt. >The governments of both countries estimate that reconstruction >will take between twenty and forty years. We call for the full >cancellation of foreign debts, including both bilateral and >multilateral debt, in the face of this overwhelming catastrophe. > >Thank you for your consideration of our concerns. > >Nicaragua Network >Latin America Emergency Response Network >50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice >Friends of the Earth >Essential Action >Preamble Center >Jubilee 2000 Afrika Campaign >: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : > > >Njoki Njoroge Njehû >Director >50 Years Is Enough Network >1247 E Street, SE >Washington, DC 20003 - USA >Phone: 202/IMF-BANK; 202/544-9355 >Fax: 202/544-9359 >Email: wb50years@igc.org >Web: http://www.50years.org > > > > > ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] From ncfs@islandnet.com Mon Nov 16 23:20:17 1998 Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 14:51:26 -0800 To: dagmac@jhu.edu From: National Centre for Sustainability Subject: Re: Thank you very much indeed Was: Condemning Pinochet: a no brainer! In-Reply-To: Dear Mr. McLeod Re yoru message to WSN of 20:54 13/11/98 -0500: >Yves Bajard's query on why the US, or any country for that matter, should >be allowed to bring Pinochet to justice, strikes me as a choice example of >the problem with much of the contemporary left. Sure, the hands of the US >are as and more bloody than those of any other state in the contemporary >world. That fact, then, becomes the excuse for doing nothing with regard >to Pinochet? With all due respect, you read your e-mail toof ast adn bear judegemetns which are not really based on a full interpretation of what I said. Enough has been written on this case. I am also very much in favour of bringing Mr. Pinochet to justice (without pre-empting on the judgement as you seem to do), and regret the stalling of the Intrernational Court of jsutice by your government, plus the fact that your government has much more to answer for, in my opinion, than most ofher governmetns on Earth, at present. My initial point was a raction to the call that the US bring Pinochet to justice, remeber? And I thought at the tiema nd still thinkt at I do nto see why and ain the name fo what the Unitesd States of America should do that and avoid being drawn besides the accused on the bench of infamy. Apart from that, I really resent your labeling me as a sample case of "left" opinions which are a case in point for doing nothing. Your simplistic descripti9on of the action fo the right versus the iacntion of the left bears further analysis,. Thank you very much indeed., Yves Bajard. From p34d3611@jhu.edu Mon Nov 16 23:34:16 1998 by jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (980427.SGI.8.8.8/950213.SGI.AUTOCF) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 01:33:44 -0500 (EST) From: Peter Grimes Subject: Re: Debt relief for Nicaragua In-reply-to: <19981116.163136.6982.1.kpmoseley@juno.com> To: kpmoseley@juno.com Karen & friends, There exists a web site containing the e-mail addresses of the members of congress. It may also have other info as well (I've not checked): 7/1/98 Please note that there is now a web page, created by Jeff Hoffman of Webslinger Z, which lists all available email addresses for Congress. They can find the list at this URL: http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html From arnomd@online.no Tue Nov 17 05:00:49 1998 Tue, 17 Nov 1998 13:00:41 +0100 (MET) From: "Arno Mong Daastøl" To: "World Systems Network (E-mail)" , "MAI-not (E-mail)" , Subject: Letter to the editor, Wall Street Journal Europe, Tuesday Nov. 17th 1998 Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 12:59:37 +0100 Gunnar Tomasson, and I had a letter to the editor printed in this week's collection of letters, in today's edition of the WSJE: (Reproduced below with the original article reacted to below that again) Our title 'Masquerading as economic science' was changed to: Creative destruction gone too far Christopher Wood's point that "credit inflation always breeds deflations" is well taken (Embrace Creative Destruction, WSJ Oct. 21). The rest of his analysis is not. In the first place, "credit inflation" is not a "natural" but man-made phenomenon. Therefore, his embrace of "creative destruction" on behalf of the world's exploited poor and powerless begs the question why the wilful predatory sins of the world's rich and powerful should be visited upon them? Indeed, from Indonesia, Thailand, and Korea, to Russia, the front-line soldiers in Wood's "cleansing process" may rightfully ascribe their predicament to brute-force mentality masquerading as economic science. Specifically, Schumpeter's concept of "creative destruction" concerned entrepreneurial competition where the fate of the world's Microsofts and Netscapes was determined in the market place and not in the courts, nor did it envisage IMF-funded bailouts for phantom capitalists in flight from one disaster area to the next. Secondly, now as in the 1930s, it may be impolitic to ascribe the present crisis to lack of effective demand relative to aggregate world supply capacity. Yet the fact remains that "over investment", "excess capacity" and "overproduction" are all relative to the level of effective demand. It is not rocket science to see that predatory capitalists were the chief beneficiaries of the Third World Debt bonanza of the 1970s, the U.S. S&L craze of the 1980s, and the Asia-Russia-Latin America credit bubble of the 1990s, while the clean-up costs in terms of bank "recapitalization" etc. have been shouldered by the average would-be consumer. Nor is it rocket science to see how this must deflate effective demand. But, then, who cares? Gunnar Tomasson, IMF 1966-1989, Bethesda, Maryland Arno Mong Daastøl, University of Maastricht / of Oslo Wall Street Journal Oct.21st, 1998 Commentary Embrace Creative Destruction By CHRISTOPHER WOOD Global financial markets' exuberant reaction to the Federal Reserve's new bias toward looser monetary policy is understandable given recent turbulence. But it also signals that many investors still operate on the assumption that falling interest rates are self-evidently good news for equities. Thus, bad news has been good news for the past several years on Wall Street: Any evidence of a slowing economy has inspired hopes of lower interest rates, causing share prices to rise. This benign paradox has been the underpinning of the so-called Goldilocks economy. Unfortunately for those investors who put their savings in domestic stocks through mutual funds, this particular game is up. The stock market has finally begun to sniff deflation. Analyst earnings' projections are now being revised down, as the realization grows that profits will disappoint. More and more companies are beset by the key problem facing businesses in a deflationary period: lack of pricing power. Technology, the engine of the Wall Street bull market, will be the at the center of the storm as companies reverse trend and slash their information technology budgets. American investors will take some time to be convinced of the deflationary argument, since it is counterintuitive to baby boomers brought up in the post-World War II inflationary period. The deflationary tide is real, however, and it will overwhelm short-term cyclical blips of the kind still preoccupying mechanistic monetarists on the Federal Reserve Board. Fortunately, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is a student of economic history as well as modern macroeconomic theory. He knows that throughout recorded history, prices have more often trended down rather than up. As a consequence, he has been quicker to lower interest rates in response to deflationary symptoms than the conventional central bankers at the Bank of England and the Bundesbank, who can be relied upon to continue fighting the last war. Mr. Greenspan has been acting more quickly because he understands what should be obvious to anyone who has observed Asia during the past year or Japan for the past eight years. The Asian crisis is not caused by specific factors, such as corruption or cronyism, cited by most of the press and the financial chattering classes who assemble at annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank jamborees. Rather, Asia and emerging markets in general are at the leading edge of a deflation crisis. The root cause of the crisis is excess capacity. Asia has proved the key victim precisely because it was the region where the multinationals and international banks were most willing to invest and lend on account of their unquestioned belief in the never-ending Asian miracle. This is nothing new. Indeed it is the oldest story in capitalism. As students of the Austrian school of economics will understand, credit inflations always breed credit deflations. Financial markets amplify this tendency because they are driven in the short term by herd psychology. Thus, in 1993 emerging markets represented the future of world finance. In 1998 they are written off by the consensus. Socialists would argue that these tendencies require regulation to curb the excesses of the cycle. The Austrian economists held that creative destruction, the cleansing process we are now witnessing (or should be witnessing), is entirely healthy and, indeed, to be welcomed. The most alarming point about Asia today is that excess capacity is not being removed more quickly. Thus, in Korea the political leadership still does not seem to comprehend that closing down capacity is the quickest way to salvation. Likewise, China's collective leadership still does not understand that producing things nobody wants to buy is a complete waste of time. They believe this specious activity is somehow a worthwhile form of human endeavor because it can be described as "manufacturing." But it is not just manufacturing where the excess capacity needs to be removed. Consider Long-Term Capital Management. The shocking leverage commanded by this well-connected hedge fund represents a scale of excess, in the context of the financial services industry, every bit as extreme as the debt taken on by the Koreans to mount their drive into semiconductors. Both excesses need to be expunged, which is not exactly an argument for Fed intervention. Deflation does not have to be a malign force, especially if productivity is rising. But when combined with huge indebtedness and collapsing asset prices, the consequences are not pleasant, as is now clear from the depression engulfing Asia. Prices are already falling at street level in China and Japan. By next year prices should also be falling in Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. If Mr. Greenspan does prove to be reasonably proactive, that should help mitigate the pain. Unfortunately, it does not mean the U.S. can escape a protracted bear market, or indeed a deflationary slowdown in the real economy. Both are now signaled by the inversion of the yield curve. Unfortunately, the unambiguous lesson of history is that it is harder to reactivate deflating economies, via interest rate cuts, than it is to rein in overheating economies through monetary tightening. This is a lesson which the former Bank of Japan governor, Yasushi Mieno, was painfully slow to learn in the early 1990s. This has also been the recent experience of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, who has been behind the curve in recognizing that deflation is now the greatest threat to the mainland economy. Leaders can also wreak havoc by overreacting to the problems brought by deflation. The bear market in the emerging markets will last much longer than necessary if the seductive case for capital controls is not fought much more aggressively. "Hot money" capital flows had nothing to do with the cause of the problem, which is clearly overinvestment. If governments feel the urge to "regulate" something, they should regulate the banks who foolishly lent the money, be it to well-connected cronies or well-connected hedge funds. Finally, none of the above means that emerging markets should be written of as an asset class. Emerging markets are here to stay, if for no other reason than the populations of developing countries have developed a taste for capitalism and consumerism. The sooner creative destruction is allowed to work, the sooner they will emerge on the other side. Mr. Wood is the global emerging market strategist for Santander Investment and author of "The Bubble Economy" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1992). Copyright (c) 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. From ccapellan@jhu.edu Wed Nov 18 14:03:32 1998 by jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (980427.SGI.8.8.8/950213.SGI.AUTOCF) 18 Nov 1998 16:03:16 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 16:03:16 -0500 (EST) From: Carlos M Capellan Subject: JWSR proposal To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Recently, an interesting opportunity crossed our desk at JWSR. We learned of the Amazon.com Associate program, a potentially interesting enhancement to the JWSR web site. In exchange for putting links to buy specific books (such as the ones we review) or just a general link to Amazon's site, we receive a small percentage of sales that directly result. We could definitely use a little extra income to cover our expenses, but the main purpose of this post is to gauge people's opinions as to the appropriateness of this option. Is this suitable for a scholarly journal to be doing? Thanks for your input, Carlos Capellan JWSR Student Assistant From wwagar@binghamton.edu Wed Nov 18 14:24:48 1998 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 16:24:29 -0500 (EST) To: Carlos M Capellan Subject: Re: JWSR proposal In-Reply-To: On Wed, 18 Nov 1998, Carlos M Capellan wrote: > We could definitely use a little extra income to cover our > expenses, but the main purpose of this post is to gauge people's opinions > as to the appropriateness of this option. Is this suitable for a scholarly > journal to be doing? In a word, NO! Warren Wagar > > Thanks for your input, > Carlos Capellan > JWSR Student Assistant > > From dale.wimberley@vt.edu Wed Nov 18 14:49:21 1998 Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 16:50:10 -0500 To: World-System Network From: dale.wimberley@vt.edu (Dale W Wimberley) Subject: Call Wal-Mart Friday, November 20 Hi folks! Please forward this to other organizations and individuals who may want to participate (and pardon any cross-postings). - Dale --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please contact Wal-Mart this Friday, November 20, and ask them to release a list (including addresses) of all their supplying factories worldwide. This is a national call-in day for the 1998 Holiday Season of Conscience to End Sweatshops and Child Labor. Contact info: 1-800-WAL-MART (1-800-925-6278) or 501-273-4000 E-mail cserve@walmart.com Fax 501-273-4894 (caveat: last month they had their fax disconnected) What this campaign is NOT: * It is NOT a boycott * It is NOT an effort to have Wal-Mart "buy American" What this campaign IS: * An effort to make Wal-Mart accountable to us - the consumers of these products - and to make Wal-Mart's own Code of Conduct independently verifiable * An effort to promote a LIVING WAGE for workers in the Third World and in the US - an effort to stop US and overseas workers from being pitted against each other by RAISING the wages and conditions of THIRD WORLD and US sweatshop workers * An effort to create a space in which workers can empower themselves - "Employment yes, but ... with dignity!" The goal of the 1998 Season of Conscience (the People's Right to Know Campaign) is to press Wal-Mart to release the list of all its suppliers worldwide, so that human rights and religious groups can begin to check working conditions at these factories. This would give consumers a way to discern which products were made in factories where workers' human rights were respected. Wal-Mart has a record of contracting with factories that use child labor (for example, 13-year-olds in Honduras and 10- to 12-year-olds in Bangladesh), and with factories where workers are abused verbally, physically, and sexually at jobs paying subliving wages for very long work hours, where unions are repressed. Wal-Mart contracts with suppliers in at least 49 countries. Many other U.S. companies besides Wal-Mart have relied on sweatshops or child labor, but the 1998 Season of Conscience focuses on Wal-Mart because it is the world's largest retailer. If Wal-Mart releases information on its suppliers, it will be easier to get these other companies to follow. Such information is essential to establish a system of independent monitoring of factory conditions - a key to stopping worker abuses. We need AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE to contact Wal-Mart this Friday. PLEASE PASS ON THIS MESSAGE to other individuals and e-mail lists who may want to participate in the campaign. Future Wal-Mart call-ins are scheduled for December 18 and January 29. The People's Right to Know Campaign is spearheaded by the National Labor Committee (NLC), the same organization that successfully pressed Kathie Lee Gifford to act against the child labor used to make her clothing line. The NLC, originally founded in 1981 to support endangered workers in El Salvador, is backed by many labor unions, religious groups, and human rights organizations. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- For general information or for copies of campaign materials, contact: National Labor Committee 275 7th Avenue, 15th floor New York, NY 10001 (212) 242-3002 Fax (212) 242-3821 E-mail natlabcom@aol.com www.nlcnet.org NLC has materials to assist with a wide variety of Wal-Mart actions. Dale Wimberley Sociology, VPI & SU Coalition for Justice, Blacksburg, Virginia From kpmoseley@juno.com Wed Nov 18 15:16:31 1998 From: kpmoseley@juno.com To: ccapellan@jhu.edu Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 17:16:40 -0800 Subject: Re: JWSR proposal X-Juno-Line-Breaks: 1 Why not? Don't journals carry book ads? Aren't they of scholarly interest, just to peruse? kpm ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] From Egypt30592@aol.com Wed Nov 18 15:44:21 1998 From: Egypt30592@aol.com Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 17:43:56 EST To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: JWSR proposal Dear Carlos, As much as the revenue is used to improve the content of the journal and to provide more services to the readership and list subscribers, I feel ok with this idea. Good luck in your projects, Regards, Amr Aljowaily From dagmac@jhu.edu Wed Nov 18 16:01:00 1998 by jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (980427.SGI.8.8.8/950213.SGI.AUTOCF) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 18:00:48 -0500 (EST) From: Dag P Macleod Subject: Re: Pinochet In-reply-to: <4.1.19981113231542.00c2b950@mail.islandnet.com> To: National Centre for Sustainability Perhaps I was too quick to condemn the contemporary left for failing to act. I meant no offense. Nonetheless, it seems that there are times to sit back and consider how intricate and complex the world is, other times when action is called for. As I understood the original posting regarding Pinochet, and I quote: "A quarter of a century later, the U.S. government must acknowledge its responsibility for what happened in Chile by filing its own request for the extradition of Mr. Pinochet, to stand trial here for the murder of U.S. citizens." Again, that seems like a "no brainer" to me. Dag MacLeod Department of Sociology From edtgg@cc.newcastle.edu.au Wed Nov 18 17:09:09 1998 wsn@csf.colorado.edu; Thu, 19 Nov 1998 11:07:58 +1100 Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 11:06:45 +1100 From: Thomas Griffiths & Euridice Charon Cardona Subject: Re: JWSR proposal To: ccapellan@jhu.edu Carlos M Capellan wrote: > We could definitely use a little extra income to cover our > expenses, but the main purpose of this post is to gauge people's opinions > as to the appropriateness of this option. Is this suitable for a scholarly > journal to be doing? Please 'Just Don't Do It' Tom Griffiths Newcastle. From rragland@csir.co.za Wed Nov 18 23:44:23 1998 Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 08:50:36 +0200 From: Richard Ragland To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu, dale.wimberley@vt.edu Subject: "Call Wal-Mart" unwise approach? This to me is really an unwise request from either yourself or some committee. It is only disruptive and intimidating. No business in their right mind would publically give out the names of all their suppliers. The business opposition like vultures would destroy the company in a matter of days. Wal-Mart would come to an end. You put them in a lose-lose situation ! If you want to accomplish the same goal, rather through your intelligencia determine which companies use child labour/sweat shop production methods and who they sell to. Then politely inform the company(s) they sell to that they will have to stop buying from "xyz" company, failing which, you then lead a public campaign against them. There also should be a representative of concerned citizens working with Wal Mart on this issue, not someone trying to lead public emotion with a "let's overthrow the regime" attititude. This is very unprofessional. Why is this group picking on Wal-Mart anyway? What about all the other department stores in the US? It sounds to me as if the opposition is behind this one already ! ! Just my opinion folks ! Rick >>> Dale W Wimberley 11/18 11:50 PM >>> Hi folks! Please forward this to other organizations and individuals who may want to participate (and pardon any cross-postings). - Dale --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please contact Wal-Mart this Friday, November 20, and ask them to release a list (including addresses) of all their supplying factories worldwide. This is a national call-in day for the 1998 Holiday Season of Conscience to End Sweatshops and Child Labor. Contact info: 1-800-WAL-MART (1-800-925-6278) or 501-273-4000 E-mail cserve@walmart.com Fax 501-273-4894 (caveat: last month they had their fax disconnected) What this campaign is NOT: * It is NOT a boycott * It is NOT an effort to have Wal-Mart "buy American" What this campaign IS: * An effort to make Wal-Mart accountable to us - the consumers of these products - and to make Wal-Mart's own Code of Conduct independently verifiable * An effort to promote a LIVING WAGE for workers in the Third World and in the US - an effort to stop US and overseas workers from being pitted against each other by RAISING the wages and conditions of THIRD WORLD and US sweatshop workers * An effort to create a space in which workers can empower themselves - "Employment yes, but ... with dignity!" The goal of the 1998 Season of Conscience (the People's Right to Know Campaign) is to press Wal-Mart to release the list of all its suppliers worldwide, so that human rights and religious groups can begin to check working conditions at these factories. This would give consumers a way to discern which products were made in factories where workers' human rights were respected. Wal-Mart has a record of contracting with factories that use child labor (for example, 13-year-olds in Honduras and 10- to 12-year-olds in Bangladesh), and with factories where workers are abused verbally, physically, and sexually at jobs paying subliving wages for very long work hours, where unions are repressed. Wal-Mart contracts with suppliers in at least 49 countries. Many other U.S. companies besides Wal-Mart have relied on sweatshops or child labor, but the 1998 Season of Conscience focuses on Wal-Mart because it is the world's largest retailer. If Wal-Mart releases information on its suppliers, it will be easier to get these other companies to follow. Such information is essential to establish a system of independent monitoring of factory conditions - a key to stopping worker abuses. We need AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE to contact Wal-Mart this Friday. PLEASE PASS ON THIS MESSAGE to other individuals and e-mail lists who may want to participate in the campaign. Future Wal-Mart call-ins are scheduled for December 18 and January 29. The People's Right to Know Campaign is spearheaded by the National Labor Committee (NLC), the same organization that successfully pressed Kathie Lee Gifford to act against the child labor used to make her clothing line. The NLC, originally founded in 1981 to support endangered workers in El Salvador, is backed by many labor unions, religious groups, and human rights organizations. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- For general information or for copies of campaign materials, contact: National Labor Committee 275 7th Avenue, 15th floor New York, NY 10001 (212) 242-3002 Fax (212) 242-3821 E-mail natlabcom@aol.com www.nlcnet.org NLC has materials to assist with a wide variety of Wal-Mart actions. Dale Wimberley Sociology, VPI & SU Coalition for Justice, Blacksburg, Virginia From aidc@iafrica.com Thu Nov 19 01:15:23 1998 Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 10:10:45 +0200 From: Sibongile Mafilika Reply-To: aidc@iafrica.com To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Web site updated! -- Dear friends, Apology for cross posting The Alternative Information and Development Centre, a non government organisation based in Cape Town South Africa focuses on issues of economic justice, the impact of globalisation, neo-liberalism etc. Our web site has been updated and you will be able to access great material on globalisation, debt and the launch of Jubilee 2000 Campaign, the Apartheid Caused debt Campaign, material on big business' attempt to recolonise the world through the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, new interesting articles on the archives page and much, much more To read more please use this URL: http://aidc.org.za Thank you, Sibongile =please mark Sibongile as on subject box= SIBONGILE RACHEL MAFILIKA ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE(AIDC) 14 JOHN STREET MOWBRAY TEL:(021)6851565/6 FAX NO:(021)6851645 E-MAIL:aidc@iafrica.com HOME PAGE:http://aidc.org.za From dale.wimberley@vt.edu Thu Nov 19 07:58:38 1998 Thu, 19 Nov 1998 09:58:11 -0500 (EST) Thu, 19 Nov 1998 09:58:10 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 09:59:06 -0500 To: World-System Network , rragland@csir.co.za From: dale.wimberley@vt.edu (Dale W Wimberley) Subject: Re: "Call Wal-Mart" unwise approach? Richard, my reponses to your 4 points: 1. >This to me is really an unwise request from either yourself or some >committee. It is only disruptive and intimidating. > >No business in their right mind would publically give out the names of >all their suppliers. The business opposition like vultures would >destroy the company in a matter of days. Wal-Mart would come to an >end. You put them in a lose-lose situation ! Businesses will follow their bottom line. If Wal-Mart's behavior sufficiently damages its image among consumers, Wal-Mart's sales (or Nike's, or Guess', or etc.) will be threatened and they may decide they have to clean up their act. The National Labor Committee (which leads this campaign) has been amazingly successful at getting lots of people to question these corporate images over the past 6 years it has taken this approach. As for Wal-Mart's competitors getting an edge from this information -- Wal-Mart objects to releasing the info on these very grounds you cited. But the truth is that these competitors are already contracting with these same factories anyway. Workers in these factories will show you clothing labels from their factories' runs, and they come from all sorts of brands. Wal-Mart brands, Arizona, Bugle Boy, Levi's, etc., etc. are all made in the same factories. 2. >If you want to accomplish the same goal, rather through your >intelligencia determine which companies use child labour/sweat shop >production methods and who they sell to. Then politely inform the >company(s) they sell to that they will have to stop buying from "xyz" >company, failing which, you then lead a public campaign against them. How do you propose to find out where all these companies' (contractors') factories are? For people living in high-consuming countries of the North, companies like Wal-Mart are the pivotal pressure points in this struggle. Wal-Mart knows where the factories are, Wal-Mart places orders with them and helps make their existence possible, and the consuming public makes Wal-Mart's existence possible. And it's not just one or two contractors that repress and oppress their workers this way -- it is systemic. You've got to undermine the processes of the system, not just a contractor here and there. (And Wal-Mart is just about the biggest actor in the system.) Furthermore, the workers in those factories want their jobs and don't want the plants closed for lack of business; they want the conditions changed. Thus, this slogan of activist sweatshop workers: "Empleo si, pero ... con dignidad!" (Employment yes, but ... with dignity!) This Season of Conscience campaign has to take direction from the sweatshop workers themselves, because we must be in solidarity with them. 3. >There also should be a representative of concerned citizens working >with Wal Mart on this issue, not someone trying to lead public emotion >with a "let's overthrow the regime" attititude. This is very >unprofessional. Several community groups where I live are preparing to do just this with local Wal-Mart management. 4. >Why is this group picking on Wal-Mart anyway? What about all the >other department stores in the US? It sounds to me as if the >opposition is behind this one already ! ! As I said in the original message, Wal-Mart is hardly the only offender. But you get results by focusing your efforts. > >Just my opinion folks ! > >Rick > > >>>> Dale W Wimberley 11/18 11:50 PM >>> >Hi folks! Please forward this to other organizations and individuals >who >may want to participate (and pardon any cross-postings). - Dale >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Please contact Wal-Mart this Friday, November 20, and ask them to >release a >list (including addresses) of all their supplying factories worldwide. >This is a national call-in day for the 1998 Holiday Season of >Conscience to >End Sweatshops and Child Labor. > >Contact info: 1-800-WAL-MART (1-800-925-6278) or 501-273-4000 > E-mail cserve@walmart.com > Fax 501-273-4894 (caveat: last month they had their fax > disconnected) > ---------------------------------------------------------------- Many little people in many little places making many little steps will change the world. - Brigitte Hauschild, Nicaragua (If you can translate this sentence into languages other than Spanish, German, French, or Russion, please contact Brigitte at cwalter@nicarao.apc.org.ni) Dale W. Wimberley Department of Sociology Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University From dale.wimberley@vt.edu Thu Nov 19 08:16:53 1998 Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 10:17:40 -0500 To: World-System Network From: dale.wimberley@vt.edu (Dale W Wimberley) Subject: JWSR proposal The income certainly would be nice, and as K P Moseley indicated, scholarly journals do carry ads for books all the time. I'm inclined to support it IF the ads were rather muted; I don't want flashy Amazon.com ads jumping about the screen when I read JWSR. > > Recently, an interesting opportunity crossed our desk at JWSR. We >learned of the Amazon.com Associate program, a potentially interesting >enhancement to the JWSR web site. In exchange for putting links to buy >specific books (such as the ones we review) or just a general link to >Amazon's site, we receive a small percentage of sales that directly >result. > > We could definitely use a little extra income to cover our >expenses, but the main purpose of this post is to gauge people's opinions >as to the appropriateness of this option. Is this suitable for a scholarly >journal to be doing? > >Thanks for your input, >Carlos Capellan >JWSR Student Assistant > ---------------------------------------------------------------- Many little people in many little places making many little steps will change the world. - Brigitte Hauschild, Nicaragua (If you can translate this sentence into languages other than Spanish, German, French, or Russion, please contact Brigitte at cwalter@nicarao.apc.org.ni) Dale W. Wimberley Department of Sociology Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University From iwaller@binghamton.edu Thu Nov 19 08:28:42 1998 Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 10:26:52 -0500 To: ccapellan@jhu.edu, WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: immanuel wallerstein Subject: Re: JWSR proposal In-Reply-To: nov. 18, 1998 dear jwsr, bad principle. next we'll have amazon on library computers. suppose barnes and noble then asked to do the same? does amazon insist on exclusivity? do we really think in any case that we will make significant amounts of money? yours/immanuel wallerstein At 04:03 PM 11/18/98 -0500, Carlos M Capellan wrote: > Recently, an interesting opportunity crossed our desk at JWSR. We >learned of the Amazon.com Associate program, a potentially interesting >enhancement to the JWSR web site. In exchange for putting links to buy >specific books (such as the ones we review) or just a general link to >Amazon's site, we receive a small percentage of sales that directly >result. > > We could definitely use a little extra income to cover our >expenses, but the main purpose of this post is to gauge people's opinions >as to the appropriateness of this option. Is this suitable for a scholarly >journal to be doing? > >Thanks for your input, >Carlos Capellan >JWSR Student Assistant > Prof. Immanuel Wallerstein Fernand Braudel Center Binghamton University Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 USA Tel: 1-607-777-4924 FAX: 1-607-777-4315 Email: Web: From gimenez@csf.Colorado.EDU Thu Nov 19 08:49:35 1998 Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 08:49:31 -0700 (MST) From: Martha Gimenez Reply-To: Martha Gimenez To: wsn@CSF.colorado.edu Subject: JWSR proposal I support the idea. Unlike the print journals, ejournals are free and, with exceptions, produced by largely unpaid labor generously donated to promote heterodox thought. But there are limits to what can be accomplished on good will and very small budgets so, unless we are all willing to contribute once in a while, we should welcome the possibility of some regular income for the journal. Best, Martha ********************************************** * Martha E. Gimenez * * Department of Sociology * * University of Colorado at Boulder * * http://csf.colorado.edu/gimenez/ * ********************************************** From wwagar@binghamton.edu Thu Nov 19 10:15:51 1998 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 12:15:37 -0500 (EST) To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: JWSR proposal In-Reply-To: I am incredulous that so many people are willing to shackle JWSR to Amazon.Com. Let the nose of the corporate camel into your tent, and you will suffer the consequences. This is an absolutely unacceptable proposal. If JWSR needs money, then we must all be asked to "subscribe" to the Journal, with a sliding scale of contributions based on personal or family income. In my department at Binghamton, we raise an annual hosting fund in just this way. Professors pay $100, Associate Professors $75, and so on down the line. 90% of the faculty pay up, most without grumbling. The people united will never be defeated. W. Warren Wagar History Department SUNY Binghamton From 6500jk@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu Thu Nov 19 10:41:47 1998 Thu, 19 Nov 1998 09:41:29 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 09:41:29 -0800 (PST) From: Judi Kessler <6500jk@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu> To: Richard Ragland Subject: Re: "Call Wal-Mart" unwise approach? In-Reply-To: Just forwarding something I received - I make no judgment on its efficacy. Best to contact those who are actually involved in the campaign. FYI, this is my academic area of expertise - I understand your reservations completely. jk On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, Richard Ragland wrote: > This to me is really an unwise request from either yourself or some > committee. It is only disruptive and intimidating. > > No business in their right mind would publically give out the names of > all their suppliers. The business opposition like vultures would > destroy the company in a matter of days. Wal-Mart would come to an > end. You put them in a lose-lose situation ! > > If you want to accomplish the same goal, rather through your > intelligencia determine which companies use child labour/sweat shop > production methods and who they sell to. Then politely inform the > company(s) they sell to that they will have to stop buying from "xyz" > company, failing which, you then lead a public campaign against them. > > There also should be a representative of concerned citizens working > with Wal Mart on this issue, not someone trying to lead public emotion > with a "let's overthrow the regime" attititude. This is very > unprofessional. > > Why is this group picking on Wal-Mart anyway? What about all the > other department stores in the US? It sounds to me as if the > opposition is behind this one already ! ! > > Just my opinion folks ! > > Rick > > > >>> Dale W Wimberley 11/18 11:50 PM >>> > Hi folks! Please forward this to other organizations and individuals > who > may want to participate (and pardon any cross-postings). - Dale > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Please contact Wal-Mart this Friday, November 20, and ask them to > release a > list (including addresses) of all their supplying factories worldwide. > This is a national call-in day for the 1998 Holiday Season of > Conscience to > End Sweatshops and Child Labor. > > Contact info: 1-800-WAL-MART (1-800-925-6278) or 501-273-4000 > E-mail cserve@walmart.com > Fax 501-273-4894 (caveat: last month they had their fax > disconnected) > > What this campaign is NOT: > * It is NOT a boycott > * It is NOT an effort to have Wal-Mart "buy American" > > What this campaign IS: > * An effort to make Wal-Mart accountable to us - the consumers of > these products - and to make Wal-Mart's own Code of Conduct > independently verifiable > * An effort to promote a LIVING WAGE for workers in the Third World > and > in the US - an effort to stop US and overseas workers from being > pitted > against each other by RAISING the wages and conditions of THIRD > WORLD > and US sweatshop workers > * An effort to create a space in which workers can empower themselves > - "Employment yes, but ... with dignity!" > > The goal of the 1998 Season of Conscience (the People's Right to Know > Campaign) is to press Wal-Mart to release the list of all its > suppliers > worldwide, so that human rights and religious groups can begin to > check > working conditions at these factories. This would give consumers a > way to > discern which products were made in factories where workers' human > rights > were respected. Wal-Mart has a record of contracting with factories > that > use child labor (for example, 13-year-olds in Honduras and 10- to > 12-year-olds in Bangladesh), and with factories where workers are > abused > verbally, physically, and sexually at jobs paying subliving wages for > very > long work hours, where unions are repressed. Wal-Mart contracts with > suppliers in at least 49 countries. > > Many other U.S. companies besides Wal-Mart have relied on sweatshops > or > child labor, but the 1998 Season of Conscience focuses on Wal-Mart > because > it is the world's largest retailer. If Wal-Mart releases information > on > its suppliers, it will be easier to get these other companies to > follow. > Such information is essential to establish a system of independent > monitoring of factory conditions - a key to stopping worker abuses. > > We need AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE to contact Wal-Mart this Friday. > PLEASE > PASS ON THIS MESSAGE to other individuals and e-mail lists who may > want to > participate in the campaign. Future Wal-Mart call-ins are scheduled > for > December 18 and January 29. > > The People's Right to Know Campaign is spearheaded by the National > Labor > Committee (NLC), the same organization that successfully pressed > Kathie Lee > Gifford to act against the child labor used to make her clothing line. > The > NLC, originally founded in 1981 to support endangered workers in El > Salvador, is backed by many labor unions, religious groups, and human > rights organizations. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For general information or for copies of campaign materials, contact: > > National Labor Committee > 275 7th Avenue, 15th floor > New York, NY 10001 > (212) 242-3002 > Fax (212) 242-3821 > E-mail natlabcom@aol.com > www.nlcnet.org > > NLC has materials to assist with a wide variety of Wal-Mart actions. > > > Dale Wimberley > Sociology, VPI & SU > Coalition for Justice, Blacksburg, Virginia > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ***************************** Judi A. Kessler Department of Sociology University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Office: Institute for Social, Behavioral & Economic Research (805) 893-5427 6500jk@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu ***************************** From dgrammen@prairienet.org Thu Nov 19 11:00:04 1998 Thu, 19 Nov 1998 11:59:54 -0600 (CST) Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 11:59:54 -0600 (CST) From: Dennis Grammenos Subject: Re: JWSR proposal To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK In-Reply-To: What's next? Life-insurance? :-) Dennis Grammenos From br00727@binghamton.edu Thu Nov 19 12:11:49 1998 Subject: Re: JWSR proposal Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 14:11:40 -0500 From: "Eric W. Titolo" To: Greetings- As resident web geek in the sociology department at Binghamton, I too considered the possibility of becoming an "associate" to on-line bookstores at our site . After talking it over (and rethinking the implications), the department came to the conclusion that it would not be in our interest to have any such ties to commercial sites. While I shop at Amazon frequently and find their prices for texts significantly lower than the Campus Bookstore (Barnes & Noble), I cannot support the use of commercial links for any educational institution. It is imperative that we remember that Amazon is just another multinational corporation. Their stock is at 167 13/16...One of the highest traded Internet stocks around. Does JWSR really want to endorse this multinational? There are a number of other on-line bookstores and local booksellers who are competing for market share against Amazon. Does JWSR really want to contribute to Amazon becoming the Microsoft of on-line bookstores? I suggest providing all the bibliographic information on each text (including ISBN and Call Numbers). If the visitor to the site wants to buy or check the book out from the library, I think that s/he is more than able to do this on their own. eric +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Eric W. Titolo | Fax - 607-777-4917 | | Department of Sociology | email - br00727@binghamton.edu | | Binghamton University | | | State University of New York | http://sociology.binghamton.edu | | Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 | | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ From dredmond@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Thu Nov 19 13:53:09 1998 Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 12:53:01 -0800 (PST) From: Dennis R Redmond Subject: Re: "Call Wal-Mart" unwise approach? In-reply-to: To: Richard Ragland On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, Richard Ragland wrote: > Why is this group picking on Wal-Mart anyway? What about all the > other department stores in the US? Walmart is in a class by itself. They employ 835,000 people, had sales of $118 billion last year and pre-tax profits of somewhere in the neighborhood of five to six billion smackeroos (stats gleaned from Walmart's epistle to cyber-tinsel at www.wal-mart.com). And unlike most other department stores, sales and profits continue to grow at 20% rates. Who pays the price for this? Workers do, of course (see http://www.walmartsucks.com/index3.html for the glories of the Southeast Asian labor market). Which is why all these morality campaigns, while nice things in themselves, also need to be part of a thriving labor movement, both here and abroad (e.g. http://www.corpwatch.org/corner/worldnews/other/other19.html). -- Dennis From upf@upf.org Thu Nov 19 14:31:58 1998 Thu, 19 Nov 1998 15:29:57 -0600 (CST) Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 15:29:50 -0600 From: UPF To: kpmoseley@juno.com, WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: JWSR proposal kpmoseley@juno.com wrote: > Why not? Don't journals carry book ads? Aren't they of scholarly > interest, just to peruse? kpm It seems that all of the messages I have seen so far, in response to the original posting have been either yes do it and then why we should, or they have been no don't do it with no reason why we shouldn't. It bothers me that the NOs are not giving any reasons why not to do it. Yet, those who say YES, are giving reasons why. This leads me to believe that the NOs are just spouting unsubstantiated knee-jerk responses (with a couple exceptions). Any comments on this? For the record, it doesn't bother me whether we do it or not. :) -- Your Friend in Peace, Glen Nuttall UPF http://www.upf.org upf@upf.org "Courageous Knowledgeable People, United Compassionate World, Committed Responsible Future" "Out of Respect for Diversity comes Recognition of Fundamental Freedoms, Individual Rights, and Legitimate Responsibilities" "In the common interest of a Lasting World Peace through a Unified Planetary Assembly" From dale.wimberley@vt.edu Fri Nov 20 07:39:03 1998 Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 09:39:49 -0500 To: World-System Network From: dale.wimberley@vt.edu (Dale W Wimberley) Subject: Correction of Wal-Mart e-mail address I goofed with the e-mail address I sent you to ask Wal-Mart to release a list of all its factories worldwide (my e-mail of Wednesday, Nov. 18), part of the Holiday Season of Conscience campaign. This e-mail will work (I tested it this time!): letters@wal-mart.com The 800-WAL-MART number works fine, tho. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Many little people in many little places making many little steps will change the world. - Brigitte Hauschild, Nicaragua (If you can translate this sentence into languages other than Spanish, German, French, or Russion, please contact Brigitte at cwalter@nicarao.apc.org.ni) Dale W. Wimberley Department of Sociology Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University From mrenner@u.washington.edu Fri Nov 20 12:38:47 1998 Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 11:38:25 -0800 (PST) From: Mark Renner To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK , "D. Reed" , Michael Manahan Subject: [INDONEWS] SiaR--> OPEN LETTER OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE INDONESIAN (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 11:28:43 -0800 (PST) From: Mark Renner To: ethnoids@u.washington.edu, Ter Ellingson , S. Dudley , shmitty@u.washington.edu, SCDV@aol.com, jody@gamelan.org, Lani Blazer , Eric Renner Subject: [INDONEWS] SiaR--> OPEN LETTER OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE INDONESIAN (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 08:59:40 -0700 From: "INDONews (a)" To: IndoNews@INDO-NEWS.COM Subject: [INDONEWS] SiaR--> OPEN LETTER OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE INDONESIAN ---------------------------------------------------------- Visit Indonesia Daily News Online HomePage: http://www.indo-news.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------- > From : "gn gartenberg" > Date : Thu, 19 Nov 1998 13:37:01 PST OPEN LETTER OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE INDONESIAN PRO-DEMOCRACY STUDENT MOVEMENT 19 November 1998 We wish to express our sorrow and condolences to the victims of violent Indonesian military repression carried out in the name of economic stability and "democracy" by the present transitional regime of President Habibie. Shooting and beating unarmed, non-violent demonstrators cannot be blithely categorized as a side effect of a transition to a more open Indonesian society. A number of people were killed and hundreds more, are in, or have required treatment at Jakarta hospitals. University and high school students are among the dead, and among the hundreds of injured, a six year old girl is reported to be in critical condition after being shot in the head by a "stray" bullet. Given the present climate of discontent and violent fragmentation, it is unfortunate that Indonesia has been prevented by remnants of the old regime from creating a provisional consortium of popular leadership to gently ease a transition to free and fair elections. Post Suharto invocations of the Indonesian Constitution have largely involved thinly veiled efforts to maintain power and engineer the future to accord as closely as possible to the familiar New Order shape. The employment of repressive force on an insecure, embattled, and impoverished populace is an inappropriate response to legitimate demands for representative government. The restorationist fantasies of a small group of Suharto era elite figures are endangering the future of the Indonesian Republic. Terror and intimidation tactics are not the tools of democratic governance. How can democracy grow in a climate of fear? The Habibie/Wiranto led Indonesian state apparatus must be held accountable for their actions. Thus, in solidarity, we join other members of the world academic community, and the public at large, in giving full support to the Indonesian student movement. We are in full accord with Indonesian student demands for total reform of the Indonesian state by ending the military's dual-function role in socio-political affairs. Specifically, we unequivocally support, and call on others to echo and advance, the following Indonesian student demands: 1. Formation of a Transitional Ruling Presidium composed of popular leaders and influential figures to guide Indonesia to the peaceful establishment of a demilitarized, civil democracy. 2. Establishment of standards of clean governance and accountable, transparent leadership that are responsive to, and advance, the aspirations of the Indonesian public. 3. An immediate end to the socio-political role of the Indonesian military, or dwifungsi ABRI, and an immediate halt to Indonesian military operations in Timor, Aceh, and Irian Jaya. 4. Immediate release of all political prisoners held by the Indonesian government including, but not limited to, Budiman Sudjatmiko, Dita Sari and Xanana Gusmao. Immediate repeal of the political laws of 1985. 5. Opposition to all attempts to foment chaos and influence Indonesian public opinion through violence, racism, ethnocentrism, or religious intolerance. 6. Lifting of the ban on all publications outlawed for political reasons under the Suharto dictatorship. 7. Immediate recognition of the people of Timor Loro Sae's rights of self determination Thank you, 1. Gary Nathan Gartenberg, PhD Candidate Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies University of California at Berkeley 2. Ray Chandrasekara, PhD Candidate Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies University of California at Berkeley 3. Julie Shackford-Bradley, PhD Candidate Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies University of California at Berkeley 4. Kevin Dixon, Graduate Student Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies University of California at Berkeley 5. Brandon Spars, Graduate Student Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies University of California at Berkeley 6. Juliet Lee, PhD Candidate Department of Anthropology University of Virginia 7. Professor Peter Dale Scott (Emeritus) Department of English University of California at Berkeley 8. Professor R. P. Goldman Sarah Kailath Professor in India Studies Professor of Sanskrit and Chairman,Center for South Asia Studies Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies University of California at Berkeley 9. Professor Charles Schwartz (Emeritus) Department of Physics University of California, Berkeley 10. Edith Turner Lecturer in Anthropology University of Virginia 11. Ben Abel Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY 12. Professor Rita Smith Kipp Department of Anthropology Kenyon College 13. Professor Joseph Errington Anthropology and East Asian Languages & Literatures Yale University 14. Professor Jeffrey A. Winters Department of Politics Northwestern University 15. Gert de Jong Marine Biologist and former researcher in Indonesia Amsterdam, the Netherlands 16. Dr. Jim Hagen Population Research Institute Penn State University 17. David Zimmerman Independent Anthropologist Former Volunteers in Asia teacher in Vietnam 18. Syed Faiz Ali PhD candidate, Department of Sociology University of Virginia 19. Patricia B. Henry, Associate Professor Indonesian Language & Literature Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures Northern Illinois University 19. Lisa Brooten, Graduate Student School of Telecommunications Ohio University 20. Emily Jindra, Undergraduate student Ohio University Free Burma Coalition 21. Professor Elizabeth Fuller Collins Department of Philosophy and Southeast Asian Studies Program Ohio University 22. Naoko Yamada, Graduate Student Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Ohio University 23. Dr. William Collins Acting President Center For Advanced Study Phnom Penh, Cambodia 24. Ben Wirtz Student/ Photojournalist Ohio University 25. Dr. Daniel T. Sicular Alumni, Department of Geography University of California, Berkeley 26. Elna Brunckhorst, M.A. Alumni, Department of Geography University of California, Berkeley 27. Cheryl Fralick Alumni, Virginia Polytechnical and State University 28. Dildar Gartenberg, M.L.S. Alumni, Department of Library Sciences University of California, Berkeley 29. Robert H. Sicular Jr. Actor, Berkeley, California 30. Mary Letterii, Consultant San Francisco, CA 31. Professor Rene T.A. Lysloff Department of Music (Ethnomusicology) University of California, Riverside 32. Professor Martino Traxler Visiting Professor in Philosophy Ohio University 33. Medea Benjamin Co-Director, Global Exchange 2017 Mission St., Rm. 303 San Francisco, CA 94110 34. Professor Frederick H. Damon Department of Anthropology University of Virginia 35. Patience Epps Graduate student, Department of Anthropology University of Virginia 36. John Herrmann PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology University of Virginia 37. Joseph Lipten Ph D candidate Department of Anthropology University of Virginia 38. Professor Teju Olaniyan Department of English University of Virginia 39. Naznin Karim Director, Hallpoint Ltd. Student at Kingston University, Surrey, UK 40. Dr. Judith Becker, Professor of Musicology, School of Music University of Michigan 41. Elizabeth Chandra, Student Department of Asian Studies Cornell University 42. A. Made Tony Supriatma Graduate Student Department of Government Cornell University Ithaca, NY 43. Professor John Roosa U. of Wisconsin Instructor in Asian History 45. Professor Ellen Contini-Morava Department of Anthropology University of Virginia 46. William H. Lockhart Instructor and Graduate Student Department of Sociology University of Virginia 47. Kathryn S. Quick, Graduate Student University of California, Berkeley 48. Eveline Ferretti Albert R. Mann Library Cornell University 49. Mercedes Chavez, Graduate Student City and Regional Planning Cornell University 50. Larry Chavis, M.A. Alumni, Southeast Asia Program Cornell University 51. Professor Martin Hatch Department of Music and Department of Asian Studies Cornell University 52. Scott Kennedy, PhD Candidate Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences Harvard University 53. Mark Renner Graduate student, Ethnomusicology University of Washington, Seattle * Please distribute this open statement of condolences, concern and solidarity with the Indonesian Student's Pro-Democracy Movement to any and all concerned parties. Government representatives, members of the world mass media, scholars, NGO's, and the general public are all invited to sign, publish and distribute this letter. If you wish to sign your name to the list circulating on the internet just add your name to the bottom and forward it on to all individuals and organizations who are, or should be, concerned by the present crisis of legitimacy in Indonesia. **This letter was drafted collectively and agreed to via internet by scholars at U.C. Berkeley and elsewhere who are deeply concerned by the current state of affairs in Indonesia. *** This formal, unrestricted version of this letter dated and sent after 12:45 pm PST, 19 November 1998, and signed electronically by 52 people, corrects, supersedes, and negates all past draft versions which have been circulated informally on the internet. **** Sent and distributed by by SiaR Nes Agency mailing List 20 November 1998 ---------- SiaR WEBSITE: http://apchr.murdoch.edu.au/minihub/siarlist/maillist.html ---------- SiaR WEBSITE: http://apchr.murdoch.edu.au/minihub/siarlist/maillist.html ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Didistribusikan tgl. 20 Nov 1998 jam 16:54:52 GMT+1 oleh: Indonesia Daily News Online http://www.Indo-News.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From chriscd@jhu.edu Fri Nov 20 13:22:03 1998 Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 15:23:06 -0500 From: christopher chase-dunn Subject: amazon and jwsr To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu forwarded from terry boswell: Concerning Amazon books: Links to buy reviewed books would be inappropriate, compromising the integrity of the review, if nothing else, by association. However, adverts for a range of books targeted at our audience are fine, maybe even useful. As a bookstore rather than a publisher, Amazon could offer something of a service in providing access to the books found on the reading and teaching lists frequently asked for on WSN and elsewhere. TBos From esm@jhu.edu Sat Nov 21 00:45:09 1998 From: "Susan Manning" To: Subject: Announcement: JWSR Fall issue available Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 00:42:29 -0500 boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0019_01BE14E7.D1495EC0" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0019_01BE14E7.D1495EC0 The Fall 1998 issue of the Journal of World-System Research is now = posted at http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr.html (follow the links = to Volume 4, Number 2). The table of contents is attached below. =20 Please note that we have improved the web site by removing frames from = the articles, making them easier to read on-line. =20 Susan Manning Assistant Editor, JWSR Journal of World-Systems Research Volume 4, Number 2 (Fall 1998) Daniel J. Whiteneck: Creating British Global Leadership: The Liberal Trading Community = from 1750 to 1792 Torry D. Dickinson: Preparing to Understand Feminism in the Twenty-First Century: = Global Social Change, Women's=20 Work, and Women's Movements Thomas Schott: Ties between Center and Periphery in the Scientific World-System: = Accumulation of Rewards,=20 Dominance and Self-Reliance in the Center Gernot K=F6hler: The Structure of Global Money and World Tables of Unequal Exchange Alf Hornborg: Ecosystems and World Systems: Accumulation as an Ecological Process Book Reviews ------=_NextPart_000_0019_01BE14E7.D1495EC0 http-equiv=3DContent-Type>

The Fall 1998 issue of the Journal = of=20 World-System Research is now posted at http://csf.colorado.e= du/wsystems/jwsr.html=20 (follow the links to Volume 4, Number 2).  The table of contents is = attached below.  
 
Please note that we have improved the web site by = removing=20 frames from the articles, making them easier to read on-line. =20
 
Susan Manning
Assistant Editor, JWSR
 
 
 
Journal of World-Systems = Research
Volume 4, Number 2 (Fall = 1998)
 
     Daniel J.=20 Whiteneck:
     Creating British Global = Leadership: The=20 Liberal Trading Community from 1750 to 1792
     Torry D.=20 Dickinson:
     Preparing to Understand Feminism = in the=20 Twenty-First Century: Global Social Change, Women's =
    =20 Work, and Women's Movements
     Thomas=20 Schott:
     Ties between Center and Periphery in = the=20 Scientific World-System: Accumulation of Rewards, =
    =20 Dominance and Self-Reliance in the Center
     Gernot=20 Köhler:
     The Structure of Global Money = and World=20 Tables of Unequal Exchange
     Alf=20 Hornborg:
     Ecosystems and World Systems: = Accumulation=20 as an Ecological Process
     Book=20 Reviews
 
 
 

 
------=_NextPart_000_0019_01BE14E7.D1495EC0-- From tjelavek@dds.nl Sun Nov 22 08:31:37 1998 Sun, 22 Nov 1998 16:31:29 +0100 (CET) Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1998 16:34:26 +0100 From: Camilo Ramada To: br00727@binghamton.edu Subject: strange reaction. Dear world-system thinkers. I find your reaction to the amazon-proposal a bit strange. I refer to the gut-reaction towards commerce.. Though our system as we know it, has a redistributive system that is exclusive, abusive and frustrating, that is no reason to reject economic interaction per se, is it? Any better system will have that component as well. There are efforts to design better economic systems such as LETS, mutual credit, interest free banking, which seem to be working. Back to Amazon: what is the exact fear? Eric Titolo wrote: While I shop at Amazon frequently and find their prices for texts significantly lower than the Campus Bookstore (Barnes & Noble), I cannot support the use of commercial links for any educational institution. but isn't buying a book there 'the use of commerce for educational purposes'? I have the exact opposite opinion as Eric. I do fully support the use of commerce for education, which is much better than the use of commerce for war, or for blind consumption. greetings, Camilo From laflame@mindspring.com Sun Nov 22 12:11:54 1998 Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1998 13:58:39 -0500 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: pms Subject: amazon.com, Wal-mart, and a working stiff Hi World System folks, My name is Paula. I've been lurking around your list, cause I'm interested in a lot of stuff. I'm a waitress, but I hope to do a little writing before my 50th birthday. Haven't really started yet. Late bloomer. Anyway, I guess I was pointed to this lists home index on the Left Business Observer list, since that's the main place I've hung out during my short net career. I wanted to relate an experience I had with amazon.com, a couple months ago. I'm sorry, I can't find the site in my Right-Wingy-Dingies favorites file. As I recall, it wasn't as wacko as the God Hates Fags site of that horrible church, but it was more out there than say, the Cato Institute, reactionary-wise. Anyway, as I got down one distastful lane, there was amazon.com being a proud associate. It was pretty ugly. Politically, I think health-care is a right and capitalism is being paid for by the wrong people. But I love Wal-mart. I love McFrugal even more. I know they're bad, but the whole thing stinks. Let's attack Nieman-Marcus for selling sweat shop stuff at zillion dollar mark-ups, instead of the places that allow people like me to afford Christmas decorations. The affluent need to see the absurdities of capitalism, the working-class already knows it bullshit. Anyway, I don't think I'm overly politically correct at the expense of reality. Hell, I hate shopping to much. Wal-Mart, Target, and McFrugal are like trips to Disneyland to me. But I would not buy anything from amazon.com. If I run across that site, I'll foward it to ya'll. Enjoy your list. Paula ps. Don't get me wrong. I have boycotted and picketed Coke, here in Atlanta, over South Africa sanctions. I'm not callous or anything. From upf@upf.org Sun Nov 22 15:41:22 1998 Sun, 22 Nov 1998 16:41:15 -0600 (CST) Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1998 16:41:21 -0600 From: UPF To: dgrammen@prairienet.org Subject: Re: JWSR proposal Dennis Grammenos wrote: > What's next? > > Life-insurance? > > :-) > Dennis Grammenos why not? :) -- Your Friend in Peace, Glen Nuttall UPF http://www.upf.org upf@upf.org "Courageous Knowledgeable People, United Compassionate World, Committed Responsible Future" "Out of Respect for Diversity comes Recognition of Fundamental Freedoms, Individual Rights, and Legitimate Responsibilities" "In the common interest of a Lasting World Peace through a Unified Planetary Assembly" From denemark@UDel.Edu Sun Nov 22 21:46:37 1998 Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1998 23:46:23 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Allen Denemark To: world system network Subject: amazon Dear Colleagues; I just listened to an argument about modern art on an NPR interview. The jist of it was that there is no more avant garde. Nobody is really outside the system, because the second someone offers a really interesting critique or counter-movement they are immediately 'signed, packaged, and marketed'. Hence nothing remains truly critical. Should we allow a link with Amazon.com on JWSR? If we were pure, then no. But we are not pure. Many of us work for universities that have or continue to accept money from dubious sources, put it into dubious programs and research, and turn out students with dubious ideas. At this very moment you are reading a message from someone employed by the same univeristy where the government created LSD in the hope of finding a cold war espionage weapon, on a communications medium created and perhaps sustained to facilitate military interaction and defense research. Is that suffienct grounds to reject what I might say? I'm not all that happy about a commercial link for JWSR, but if we judge this based not on its parentage but on possible impact, then it is not so sacrilegous. High-quality (fast and relatively low-priced) access to the full range of publications in our world would seem a progressive, not a regressive, thing. Nor can I imagine a set of circumstances where JWSR would alter anything in order to either keep Amazon happy or gain additionally at our expense as a result of such a link. I trust Chris to cut a good deal (regarding size of the link, etc.) and will treat it as but one more indication of the complexity of the world system and the way struggles against its inequalities unfold -- not as a sell-out. Best, Bob Denemark From sabram@u.washington.edu Mon Nov 23 09:08:53 1998 Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 08:12:27 -0800 From: Scott Abram To: upf@upf.org Subject: Re: JWSR proposal Even Marx needed his Engels, eh? UPF wrote: > Dennis Grammenos wrote: > > > What's next? > > > > Life-insurance? > > > > :-) > > Dennis Grammenos > > why not? > :) > > -- > Your Friend in Peace, > Glen Nuttall > UPF > http://www.upf.org > upf@upf.org > > "Courageous Knowledgeable People, > United Compassionate World, > Committed Responsible Future" > > "Out of Respect for Diversity > comes Recognition of Fundamental Freedoms, > Individual Rights, > and Legitimate Responsibilities" > > "In the common interest of a Lasting World Peace > through a Unified Planetary Assembly" From jsommers@lynx.dac.neu.edu Mon Nov 23 09:31:27 1998 Mon, 23 Nov 1998 11:31:14 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 11:31:14 -0500 (EST) From: Jeffrey W Sommers To: Scott Abram Subject: Re: JWSR proposal In-Reply-To: <3659896B.94D5CC4D@u.washington.edu> To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen..."I knew Fred Engels and Mr. Abram, Amazon.com is no Fred Engels!" :) Jeffrey Sommers Northeastern University World History Center (http://www.whc.neu.edu) On Mon, 23 Nov 1998, Scott Abram wrote: > Even Marx needed his Engels, eh? > > UPF wrote: > > > Dennis Grammenos wrote: > > > > > What's next? > > > > > > Life-insurance? > > > > > > :-) > > > Dennis Grammenos > > > > why not? > > :) > > > > -- > > Your Friend in Peace, > > Glen Nuttall > > UPF > > http://www.upf.org > > upf@upf.org > > > > "Courageous Knowledgeable People, > > United Compassionate World, > > Committed Responsible Future" > > > > "Out of Respect for Diversity > > comes Recognition of Fundamental Freedoms, > > Individual Rights, > > and Legitimate Responsibilities" > > > > "In the common interest of a Lasting World Peace > > through a Unified Planetary Assembly" > From dale.wimberley@vt.edu Mon Nov 23 10:44:02 1998 Mon, 23 Nov 1998 12:43:45 -0500 (EST) Mon, 23 Nov 1998 12:43:44 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 12:44:48 -0500 To: World-System Network , Dennis R Redmond From: dale.wimberley@vt.edu (Dale W Wimberley) Subject: Re: "Call Wal-Mart" unwise approach? Actually, the National Labor Committee (spearheading this campaign) is fairly well linked to the workers already. NLC was formed by AFL-CIO dissidents in the 1980s to oppose US policy in Central America. The boxes of brochures I get from them are mailed by the UNITE! (garment workers' union) office in New York. UNITE! is a key backer of the NLC. When I interviewed Nicaraguan garment worker organizer Pedro Ortega last summer, he had last year's Season of Conscience pamphlet on his bulletin board next to a giant "Modern slavery - the free trade zone" cartoon; NLC activity had helped breathe new life into the union movement there in 1997. NLC could do better at being in contact with the factory workers themselves, but at this moment supporting this effort seems the best way to be in solidarity with the maquila workers I've shared time with over the past couple of years. The larger movement to which this effort belongs is a pretty interesting global network! (Campaign for Labor Rights, etc.) > >Walmart is in a class by itself. They employ 835,000 people, had sales of >$118 billion last year and pre-tax profits of somewhere in the >neighborhood of five to six billion smackeroos (stats gleaned from >Walmart's epistle to cyber-tinsel at www.wal-mart.com). And unlike >most other department stores, sales and profits continue to grow at 20% >rates. > >Who pays the price for this? Workers do, of course >(see http://www.walmartsucks.com/index3.html for the glories of the >Southeast Asian labor market). Which is why all these morality campaigns, >while nice things in themselves, also need to be part of a thriving labor >movement, both here and abroad >(e.g. http://www.corpwatch.org/corner/worldnews/other/other19.html). > >-- Dennis ---------------------------------------------------------------- Many little people in many little places making many little steps will change the world. - Brigitte Hauschild, Nicaragua (If you can translate this sentence into languages other than Spanish, German, French, or Russion, please contact Brigitte at cwalter@nicarao.apc.org.ni) Dale W. Wimberley Department of Sociology Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University From dgildea@gladstone.uoregon.edu Mon Nov 23 14:31:57 1998 Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 13:31:51 -0800 (PST) From: Diana C Gildea To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: JWSR proposal In-Reply-To: Dear friends, It seems to me that a crucial question needs to be posed regarding the proposed Amazon advertising-link to JWSR. Namely, how precisely will the journal's effectiveness be enhanced as a result of advertising? In Solidarity, Jason Jason W. Moore Board of History, UC Santa Cruz (grad student, on leave) Jason W. Moore and Diana C. Gildea 541-684-9671x From gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca Thu Nov 26 09:56:45 1998 Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 11:56:37 -0500 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: Gernot Kohler Subject: world technological rent Professor Cakmak mentions "world technological rent" (see, wsn, working papers, Cakmak). I am wondering how that relates to "gains from unequal exchange" and "global surplus-value". A book by Fred Moseley has measurements of U.S. surplus value, but I have not come across anything similar for "global surplus-value" or "world technological rent". Is anyone aware of literature which may have a definition and/or statistical estimates of "global surplus-value" (as opposed to national surplus-value) or "world technological rent"? The talk about global polarizaion suggests that, possibly, the rates of these quantities may have risen, rather than fallen in the last twenty years (??). From a Keynesian point of view I am also wondering how that would relate to global I and global S. --gk gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca oakville, canada From austria@it.com.pl Thu Nov 26 10:42:10 1998 Reply-To: From: "Austrian Embassy" To: Subject: Publication Proposal Global Capitalism and Liberation Theology Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 18:43:23 +0100 Arno Tausch Counsellor for Labor and Migration Affairs Austrian Embassy Warsaw and Associate Visiting Professor of Political Science, Innsbruck University Dear colleagues We, a fairly passionate discussion circle of economists, social scientists and theologians, exchanging our views and papers, as they progressed, via electronic mail around the world have reached a stage where we now finished a really beautiful collection of essays on „Global Capitalism, Liberation Theology and the Social Sciences. An Analysis of the Contradictions of Modernity at the Turn of the Millennium" The collection of essays on this timely theme of economics, moral philosophy, the social sciences and theology is to be edited by Andreas Müller Director, Missionary Centre of the Order of Saint Francis, Bonn Arno Tausch Associate Visiting Professor, Department of Political Science, Innsbruck University and Paul Michael Zulehner, Chairperson and Professor, Department of Pastoral Theology, Vienna University (Eds) under collaboration of Henry Wickens, Strasbourg The essays from North and South, Christian and non-Christian cultures, were written by the following contributors: List of contributors (original contributions, all written exclusively for the volume) Samir Amin is Director of the Forum du Tiers Monde in Dakar, Senegal, and Porfessor at the Sorbonne in Paris, France Steffen Flechsig lives as a writer and specialist on Latin American affairs in Rostock, Germany. Before German Unification, he was one of the few Latin Americanists in the GDR to write on such issues as the Church, the Christian Democratic Parties, and, above all, the theory of Raul Prebisch. His entire faculty was closed on the 12 of October 1992. Jung Mo Sung is Professor of of Theology and Economics at the Theological Faculty of Nossa Senhora de Assuncao in Sao Paulo, Brasil Alberto Morreira is Professor of Philosophy at Universidade Sao Francisco in Braganca Paulista, Sao Paulo, Brasil Andreas Müller is a Franciscan Friar and Director of the Mission Center of the Order of Saint Francis in Bonn, Germany Mansoob Murshed is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Bradford, UK Kunibert Raffer is Associate Professor of Economics at Vienna University, Austria Severin Renoldner is a social scientist working with the Catholic Church in Linz, Upper Austria, and was a member of Parliament for the Austrian Green Party Robert J. Ross is Professor of Sociology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA Arno Tausch is Associate Visiting Professor of Political Science at Innsbruck University, Austria Krystyna Tausch is a writer, Spanish teacher and specialist on Peruvian affairs, Salzburg, Austria Henry Wickens is a translator and lives in Luxemburg Paul Michael Zulehner is Professor of Theology at Vienna University, Austria The volume - as it is now already on a Word 6.0 and Excel 7.0 Microsoft Windows 95 disc - has the following content: Table of Contents Introduction Andreas Müller, Arno Tausch & Paul M. Zulehner 1 Introduction Towards an ecumenical view of capitalism and the religions 'of the Book' Samir Amin 2 Judaisme, Christianisme, Islam. Reflexions sur leurs specificites reelles ou pretendues; vision d'un non-theologien Formulating a Liberation Theology agenda of the 1990s and beyond Jung Mo Sung 3 Economics and Theology. Reflections on the Market, Globalization, and the Kingdom of God Alberto Moreira 4 Saint Francis and Capitalist Modernity: A View from the South. Krystyna Tausch 5 Feminism in the Country of Liberation Theology Andreas F. Müller OFM 6. Ethical, biblical and theological aspects of the debt burden The lessons of 'critical' development research and the contemporary capitalist world system Steffen Flechsig 7 The Heritage of Raúl Prebisch for a Humane World Arno Tausch 8 Liberation Theology and the Social Sciences: Seven Hypotheses about the World Capitalist System in Our Age Appendix to Chapter 8 Mansoob Murshed 9 Development in the Light of Recent Debates about Development Theory Kunibert Raffer 10 New Forms of Dependency in the World System The challenges of globalization and transnational integration Severin Renoldner 11 Towards a Theology of the Democratization of Europe Robert J. Ross 12 The Race to the Bottom Paul Michael Zulehner 13 New departures. On the social positioning of the Christian Churches before and after communism in Central and Eastern Europe Statistical Appendix - Poverty, Dependency, Human Rights Violations and Economic Growth in the World System Literatur: An Attempt at an Ecumenical and Cross-Cultural Bibliography Translation Jung Mo Sung: A. COSQUER Translation Krystyna Tausch, Andreas Müller: H. WICKENS On November 16th 1989, at the time of optimism connected with what then was perceived to be the end-of-history, created by the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the successful revolutions in Eastern Europe, 5 leading proponents of liberation theology, among them the Jesuit Fathers Ignacio Ellacuria and Juan Luis Segundo Montes, were assassinated in San Salvador together with two Salvadorian employees of their University. Far from participating in the optimism prevailing at that time, Ellacuria even foresaw in his very last article (1989), the ever-larger emergence of contradictions of the capitalist order on a world scale and the necessity of Divinity studies to come to terms with a capitalist system that is a world-wide system. Liberation theology is not a theoretical exercise: as Jon Sobrino so aptly writes in his introduction to the volume Sobrino and Ellacuria, 1993 (second edition 1996): „It is only from amidst oppression, carried to its maximal expression in martyrdom, that the theology of liberation can be understood (.), But what continues to give life to this theology is the pathos of liberation that pervades it, a pathos that not only stands at the origin but also originates the theological reflection." (Sobrino in Sobrino and Ellacuria, 1993/96: x-xi) Even in the secularized countries of the developed world, this pathos is well understood, far beyond the social strata that, in one way or the other, are active in the main ecumenical denominations. The life and death of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero symbolizes the martyrdom of well over a thousand clerics who paid their commitment to the cause of the poor with their life since the Bishop's Conference of Medellin in 1968. With social contradictions rising on a global scale and affecting more and more the so-called developed countries as well, we think the time has come to return once again to liberation theology and the question it posed - to both the social sciences and Divinity studies. Many believed at the time of the demise of communism in Eastern Europe, that dependency theory, liberation theology, and the writings on periphery capitalism, of which they were part, can safely be forgotten. Liberation theology, especially for the development researcher, was and continues to be an interesting meeting place between economics and theology/social philosophy. It reminds the social scientific profession of the origins of economic science in moral philosophy, and it also reminds us that the great issues of the scriptures, like poverty and the struggle of the poor for self-determination, are an ever-more important reality in the contemporary world system. As the dictionary definition will have it, 'Liberation theology: a term covering various theological movements which have developed since the mid-1960s and which are concerned to understand the Christian Gospel in terms of current needs for establishing human freedom. Four areas of oppression particularly treated by these movements are the economic exploitation of the less-developed countries, sexual prejudice against women (.), racial discrimination, and political tyranny. The liberation theologies, which often adopt analyses of social situations from Marxism, interpret redemption as liberation, see Jesus Christ as identified with the oppressed, and challenge the male-dominated concepts of theology and culture' (Hinnells, 1984) Starting with Karl Polanyi in 1944, a number of authors - among them Samir Amin, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Steffen Flechsig, Andre Gunder Frank, Folker Froebel, Juergen Heinrichs, Otto Kreye, Kunibert Raffer and Immanuel Wallerstein - have taken up the challenge of the analysis of capitalism as a world system. While imperialism theories were mainly fixed at the centers, and dependency theories on the peripheries (more often than not, Latin America), the world system school looked at the totality of capitalism on a global scale. Polanyi's reading of the history of capitalism as a single world economy is a continuation of the analysis of capitalism as a world system, inherent in the third volume of Das Kapital; yet Polanyi's social anthropology is definitively post-Marxist, leaving behind much of the pre-totalitarian German philosophy that has daunted the trajectory of Marxism since 1917. Polanyi, in addition, to be sure, was among the early European socialists to re-discover the great spiritual wealth of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and his anthropology assumes - in the moving final chapter of his 'Great Transformation' - the concept of the immortality of the human soul, so central for the Judeo-Christian tradition and the religions of the 'Book' (Polanyi, 1944; Khoury, 1994, Amin's contribution to the present volume). Polanyi was not a human being of books alone - he was among the first to lay the intellectual foundations for the joint resistance of Christians and Socialists against the rising tide of fascism in Europe in the late 1920s and the 1930s, and he deeply believed in a lively worker's democratic movement. A refugee from the totalitarian forms of power of both the extreme left and the right, Polanyi led a 'world's life' that brought him to reflect early on such issues as 'globalization', 'international finance' and the instability of democracy in periphery regions. Polanyi's theory is also much more sensitive to the concerns of the world environment than classical Marxism all too often is; thus overcoming the red/green divide. In the light of a Polanyian anthropology, yes, dependency theory as a critique of developmentalism in the 1960s might indeed be dead, and with it the proper social scientific foundation of classical theologies of liberation, but the contradictions of the world system have even deepened, before, during and after the ominous year 1989. World systems theories can provide a solid, even more encompassing theoretical frame of reference for theology, while contemporary 'critical theology' poses some of the most relevant questions for the social sciences in return. A fruitful, and hopefully long dialogue might be ahead. However valid the reception of the critique of 'developmentalism' in Latin America in the 1960s and early 1970s by dependency theory in the theological discourse of that time might still be, new problems call for new comprehensive theoretical approaches. Surveying some central recent theological publications (Brackley, 1996; Fornet-Betancourt, 1991; Hessel, 1996; Sobrino/Ellacuria, 1994; Schuessler-Fiorenza, 1996), one is led to the conclusion as a social scientist, that the world systems approach as the legitimate successor to dependency studies even ideally fits itself to become the future social scientific basis of 'critical theological writing' in the 1990s, so heavily involved in the debate about feminism, the ecology, inequality, and people empowerment or - if you prefer Brackley's term - the non-violent Divine Revolution. The volume now takes up these issues and develops them in the course of the debate. I'd like to submit this present publication proposal to you all and would like to ask you to respond to me by December 15th at the latest, indicating to me possible publication avenues for that book. Upon request, I'd be prepared to send you the entire book in the next few days by electronic mail Kind regards Yours Arno Tausch Publications Arno Tausch (short list) (1979a) 'Weltweite Armut' in 'Christliche Markierungen' (DOTTER F. et al. (Eds.)) Europa, Vienna: 137-170 (1979b) 'Armut und Abhaengigkeit. Politik und Oekonomie im peripheren Kapitalismus'. Studien zur österreichischen und internationalen Politik, Bd. 2 (Eds. P. GERLICH und A. PELINKA) W. Braumueller, Vienna (1980a, together with O. HÖLL) Austria and the European Periphery in 'European Studies of Development' (J. de BANDT J./MANDI P./SEERS D. (Eds.)) Macmillan, London: 28-37 (1991a) 'Jenseits der Weltgesellschaftstheorien. Sozialtransformationen und der Paradigmenwechsel in der Entwicklungsforschung'. Grenzen und Horizonte (Eds. G. AMMON, H. REINWALD, H.A. STEGER) Eberhard, Muenchen (second printing) (1991b) 'Rußlands Tretmühle. Kapitalistisches Weltsystem, lange Zyklen und die neue Instabilität im Osten'. Eberhard, Muenchen (1993a) 'Produktivkraft soziale Gerechtigkeit? Europa und die Lektionen des pazifischen Modells'. Eberhard, Muenchen (1993b; coauthor: Fred PRAGER) 'Towards a Socio-Liberal Theory of World Development'. Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan/St. Martin's Press (1997) 'Schwierige Heimkehr. Sozialpolitik, Migration, Transformation, und die Osterweiterung der Europaeischen Union' Munich: Eberhard (1998) 'Transnational Integration and National Disintegration' electronic publication at World Systems Electronic Archive (Coordinator: Christopher K. Chase-Dunn, John Hopkins University), http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/archive/papers/tausch.htm Work in progress: Globalization and European Integration The Imperative of Social Transformation (with Elizabeth de Boer, University of Limerick, Ireland) From andrei@rsuh.ru Fri Nov 27 10:44:44 1998 From: "Andrey Korotayev" To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 20:46:28 +0300 Subject: CFP: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE "HIERARCHY AND POWER IN THE HISTOR Reply-to: andrei@rsuh.ru Douglas Raybeck , "\"IHAE - Vladivostok\"" , christopher chase-dunn , chriscd@jhu INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE "HIERARCHY AND POWER IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATIONS" June 2000, Moscow FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS AND PANEL PROPOSALS The Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in co-operation with The Institute of Cultural Anthropology (Russian State University of Humanities, Moscow) is organizing in June 2000 International Conference "HIERARCHY AND POWER IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATIONS". The Conference objective is to discuss the processes of the politogenesis in their regional and temporary variation. This discussion, in its turn, could and should promote the advancement of the understanding of the general trends and mechanisms of sociocultural evolution, the interrelation and interaction of social, cultural and political dimensions in the society, and further development of general methodology for anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, political science &c. Until recently it was considered self-evident that it was the formation of the state which marked the end of the primitive epoch and alternatives to the state did not actually exist. All the stateless societies were considered pre-state ones, standing on the single evolutionary staircase squarely below the states. Nowadays postulates about the state as the only possible form of political and socio-cultural organization of the post-primitive society, about a priori higher level of development of a state society in comparison with any non-state one do not seem so undeniable as a few years ago. It has become evident that the non-state societies are not necessarily less complex and efficient . The problem of existence of non-state but not primitive (i.e. principally non- and not prestate) societies, alternatives to the state as the allegedly inevitable post-primitive form of the sociopolitical organization deserves attention. The example of alternatives to the state reveals that it is possible to achieve the same level of complexity allowing societies to solve similar problems, on essentially differing pathways of evolution which appeared simultaneously with human society and increased in quantity alongside with its social-and-cultural advancement. This fundamental alternativity of social evolution could be observed throughout the whole length of human history from non-egalitarian and egalitarian early primitive associations to the totalitarian and democratic polities of the 20th century and is already found in pre-human _egalitarian_ or _despotic_ primates_ groups . The choice of an evolutionary direction which a society follows is to a considerable extent a result of its all-round adaptation to the environment, not only the natural but sociohistorical one as well. The _type of civilizational development_ seems to be one of the key notions, capable to help to reveal essential backgrounds of societies and systems of them, civilizations. The following two main sections are suggested: 1) "Civilizational Models of the Complex Sociopolitical Organization". Convenors: Dr. Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Prof. Andrey Korotayev 2) "Ethological Basis of Hierarchy and Power in Human Society". Convenor: Prof. Marina L. Butovskaya In addition to the two main sections, we are planning to organize a few panels ("Hierarchy and Power in Pre- colonial Tropical Africa", "Hierarchy and Power among the Nomads", "Socio-Cultural Evolution: Factors and Models" &c). Any new panel proposals are strongly invited. Deadline for panel proposals: September 1, 1999. Deadline for paper proposals (with abstracts [within 300 words] enclosed): December 1, 1999. If you would like to take part in the Conference, please, let us know your full name, title, institutional affiliation, full mail and e-mail addresses, and fax #. Prof. Igor V. Sledzevski, the Conference Convenor Director of the Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Dr. Dmitri M. Bondarenko, the Conference Vice-Convenor Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Mr. Dmitri D. Beliaev, Conference Secretary Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences 30/1 Spiridonovka St. Moscow 103001 RUSSIA FAX: + 7 (095) 202 0786 EMAIL: dbondar@inafr.msk.su Prof. Andrey Korotayev, the Conference Vice-Convenor Prof. Marina Butovskaya, the Conference Vice-Convenor Institute of Cultural Anthropology Russian State University for the Humanities 6 Miusskaya Ploshchad (Korpus 2, Etazh 2) Moscow 125267 RUSSIA FAX: +7 (095) 250 5109 (for Institute of Cultural Anthropology) EMAIL: andrei@rsuh.ru (Dr) Andrey Vitalyevich Korotayev, Head Laboratory of Social and Cultural Anthropology Institute of Cultural Anthropology Russian State University for Humanities 6 Miusskaya Ploshchad Moscow 125267, RUSSIA FAX: +7 (095) 250 5109 (c/o Institute of Cultural Anthropology) EMAIL: andrei@rsuh.ru Seniour Research Fellow Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences 12 Rozhdestvenka, Moscow 103753, Russia FAX: +7 (095) 975 2396 From andrei@rsuh.ru Sat Nov 28 10:44:47 1998 From: "Andrey Korotayev" To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 18:51:49 +0300 Subject: Re: JWSR proposal Reply-to: andrei@rsuh.ru > Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 17:43:56 EST > Reply-to: Egypt30592@aol.com > From: Egypt30592@aol.com > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: Re: JWSR proposal > Dear Carlos, > > As much as the revenue is used to improve the content of the journal and to > provide more services to the readership and list subscribers, I feel ok with > this idea. > > Good luck in your projects, > > Regards, > > Amr Aljowaily > I have the same feeling. AK (Dr) Andrey Vitalyevich Korotayev, Head Laboratory of Social and Cultural Anthropology Institute of Cultural Anthropology Russian State University for Humanities 6 Miusskaya Ploshchad Moscow 125267, RUSSIA FAX: +7 (095) 250 5109 (c/o Institute of Cultural Anthropology) EMAIL: andrei@rsuh.ru Seniour Research Fellow Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences 12 Rozhdestvenka, Moscow 103753, Russia FAX: +7 (095) 975 2396 From siegmund@thegrid.net Sun Nov 29 04:43:04 1998 Received: from smtp.thegrid.net (smtp.thegrid.net [209.162.1.11]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.8.8/8.8.8/ITS-4.2/csf) with SMTP id EAA19143 for ; Sun, 29 Nov 1998 04:43:02 -0700 (MST) Received: (qmail 10720 invoked from network); 29 Nov 1998 11:43:01 -0000 Received: from pop.thegrid.net (209.162.1.5) by smtp.thegrid.net with SMTP; 29 Nov 1998 11:43:01 -0000 Received: from [209.162.34.120] (jot-ts1-h1-34-120.ispmodems.net [209.162.34.120]) by pop.thegrid.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id DAA19906; Sun, 29 Nov 1998 03:42:59 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199811291142.DAA19906@pop.thegrid.net> Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 03:42:30 -0800 Subject: The obsolescence of the "state" From: "Mark Siegmund" To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu CC: siegmund@thegrid.net Mime-version: 1.0 X-Priority: 3 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit WSN members, Professor Korotayev's announcement of the International Conference "Hierarchy and Power in the History of Civilizations" resonated strongly with me. Are hierarchies and the state eternal in the affairs of humankind? An article entitled, "Achieving Peace: A New Paradigm, Part II (Tetrahedron and the Game)", just published in the award winning ezine "21st" says, "not necessarily". To view the article, please go to http://members.tripod.com/Tetworld/grid1.html and click-on the link "Tetrahedron and the Game" Regards, Mark Siegmund Tetworld Peace Through Development Project & Game Introductory Page: http://members.tripod.com/Tetworld/grid1.html Main page: http://members.tripod.com/~Tetworld/+index.html The Tetworld Story: http://members.tripod.com/~Tetworld/index.htm