The ambassador

I used to talk in the sauna with a Kurdish man.  He was very supportive
of the invasion.  I told him that I thought that the Kurds would get
screwed in the end.

I had not seen him for awhile.  When he saw me in the locker room, he
gave me a funny look.  I asked how his family was doing.  He said that
they were doing fine.  I responded that they were probably in the only
safe region in the country.  He said that he'd had just come back from
Baghdad, where he had been for six months.  I asked if he thought
anything good come from the invasion.  He said, "eventually."  Then he
told me that he was now the ambassador to Canada.  I left the
conversation dropped.

I hope that you all have a wonderful new year.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

Re: Stars and Stripes: "The whole city, from every side, was fighting"

At 10:26 AM -0500 12/31/04, Doug Henwood wrote:
>if a majority of Iraqis didn't want immediate withdrawal

It's only the polls sponsored by firms from the occupying nations
that said that "a majority of Iraqis didn't want immediate
withdrawal," and even those polls didn't say that Iraqis would want
to have their nation occupied longer than one or two years.  The Iraq
War will see its second anniversary on March 20, 2005.

In any case, the most important point is that, with the possible
exception of the Kurdish militia, few Iraqis are committed to
fighting for the continuing foreign occupation of Iraq.

At 4:06 PM +0000 12/31/04, Daniel Davies wrote:
>I doubt that the Viet Cong could have won an election in Southern
>Vietnam, but there were just about enough of them to make the US
>occupation unsustainable in the long term.

Politically, Vietnam and Iraq are not comparable (at least not yet).

"It was generally conceded that had an election been held, Ho Chi
Minh would have been elected Premier." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Mandate for Change, 1953-1956,
<http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/vietnam/55election.htm>
--
Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* "Proud of Britain": <http://www.proudofbritain.net/ > and
<http://www.proud-of-britain.org.uk/>

Universal interventionism

I am not sure whether the UN plan published a couple of months ago for 
a much more interventionist role, got discussed on this list and I 
missed it. However it came soon after Tony Blair had spoken more 
frankly than ever before about interventionism, without any repentance 
for the intervention with the US in Iraq. I suggest that the tide of 
politics and economics is strongly in the direction of 
interventionism, and the conflict is more about HOW it is done, than 
whether it is done. EG Europe (including in this case Britain) thinks 
it has a cleverer strategy towards Iran than the US (but also takes 
advantage of the fact that the US has shown its willingness to 
intervene next door in Iraq).

The marxist approach of assuming that history is fundamentally 
influenced by factors that may not always be conscious in the minds of 
the principal actors, but represent an aggregate of unconscious or 
unarticulated pressures, seems to be less and less controversial, and 
more a part of mainstream analysis whether it is economic, political 
or social. In this sense the marxist perspectives of historical 
materialism, that in the last instance (judgement) the economic 
factors determine, remains a powerful explanatory model, even if it 
has to be interpreted in a probabilistic rather than a rigidly 
deterministic way.

In that sense, it remains powerfully explanatory that in an era of 
globalised finance capitalism, the social, economic and political 
momentum is towards a globalised economic, and yes, ultimately a 
globalised political system.

Typically, the US is having arrogant arguments with the UN again over 
the response to the tsunami. But the inevitable effects of the modes 

Electoral cretinism

(Although it is sometimes hard to figure out exactly what the social 
democrats at In These Times magazine are trying to say, this amounts to an 
endorsement of tying the antiwar movement to the Democratic 
Party--especially since it gazes fondly on Carl Davidson's efforts in 
Chicago. Davidson was one of the most outspoken ABB'ers last year, wrapping 
his reformist proposals in warmed-over Maoist formulations.)

In These Times, December 30, 2004
Antiwar Action: Back to the ‘60s?
By Jeff Epton

Antiwar groups have to face the fact that occupation continues and that 
2003’s unprecedented worldwide peace mobilization did little to slow the 
drive to war.

The antiwar groups originally formed to oppose the invasion of Iraq took a 
variety of different positions during this election year. Some condemned 
both major parties as two sides of the same war party, but urged members to 
vote anyway. Others, sharing some of the same reservations about the major 
candidates, were more ambitious, running their own voter registration and 
get-out-the-vote campaigns. Either way, antiwar groups have to face the 
fact that the occupation continues and that 2003’s unprecedented worldwide 
peace mobilization did little to slow the drive to war.

Chicagoans Against War and Injustice (CAWI) has big plans for next steps. 
CAWI co-chairs Marilyn Katz and Carl Davidson recently wrote “The Road 
Ahead After 2004,” a document aimed at guiding discussion of political 
strategy (http://www.noiraqwar-chicago.org).

CAWI “deputized and trained nearly 1,000 registrars in Chicago and the 

Jared Diamond

-clip-
Diamond's downplaying of culture plays a good role, too: it suggests that it
wasn't any kind of "cultural superiority" (or racial superiority) that led
to the European conquest of most of the world or any kind of "cultural
inferiority" (or racial inferiority) that led to the American Indians (etc.)
being conquered.  Compare this to C. Northcote Parkinson's "East and West,"
in which the inherent superiority of the "West" plays a major theoretical
role. Talk about Eurocentrism!

JD

^^^^^^

CB: I'm a Euro-peripheralist. I think you gotta leave culture in there, and
say that it was European culture's moral _inferiority_ ( not superiority)
coupled with the unfortunate coincidence  of technological, and derivatively
military, superiority that led to Europeans conquering the Western
Hemisphere and the rest of the world , essentially. Diamond's approach
sounds a little too much like "The Environment made the Europeans do it",
i.e. conquer the world. Recall, as I am sure Diamond does, that the Chinese
had gunpowder first , and for culturally superior reasons did not set about
to militarily conquer the world.

The Europeans did not conquer the world over the last 500 years because of
the unique characteristics in their struggle with the _natural_ environment
of Northwest Asia prior to 1400.

Jared Diamond's limitations

In today's NY Times, there's a lengthy op-ed piece by Jared Diamond that
makes the same basic arguments found in his newly published book
""Collapse: How Societies Choose or Fail to Succeed."

Here's an excerpt that really highlights what's wrong with his basic approach:

"Consider Japan. In the 1600's, the country faced its own crisis of
deforestation, paradoxically brought on by the peace and prosperity
following the Tokugawa shoguns' military triumph that ended 150 years of
civil war. The subsequent explosion of Japan's population and economy set
off rampant logging for construction of palaces and cities, and for fuel
and fertilizer.

"The shoguns responded with both negative and positive measures. They
reduced wood consumption by turning to light-timbered construction, to
fuel-efficient stoves and heaters, and to coal as a source of energy. At
the same time, they increased wood production by developing and carefully
managing plantation forests. Both the shoguns and the Japanese peasants
took a long-term view: the former expected to pass on their power to their
children, and the latter expected to pass on their land. In addition,
Japan's isolation at the time made it obvious that the country would have
to depend on its own resources and couldn't meet its needs by pillaging
other countries. Today, despite having the highest human population density
of any large developed country, Japan is more than 70 percent forested."

This reveals a basic flaw in Diamond's methodology, which is to regard a
given society as a kind of self-contained experiment with mother nature
that succeeds or fails to the extent that it respects ecological
principles. Unfortunately, when you define a society like an isolated case
study, you miss the connections that are all-important, namely the reliance

Catastrophic decline of Baghdad under US occupation

Re: Jared Diamond's limitations

I think Lou stretches and misses the obvious. Diamond does not recognize
the unity of imperialism and capitalism, so he has to find other
interpretations of the disasters rooted in modern capitalism. This does
not necessarily, however, distort his interpretations of specific
(pre-capitalist) disasters, and it is pointless to find such analyses
exhibiting any "basic flaw." Significantly, Lou has nothing whatever to
say concretely about the quoted analysis of Japan in the 1600s, in which
Diamond, incidentally, specifically points out that imperialist plunder
was not available as a solution: "In addition, Japan's isolation at the
time made it obvious that the country would have to depend on its own
resources and couldn't meet its needs by pillaging other countries."
Nothing in the whole paragraph quoted, then, gives any basis for seeing
it as evidence of a "basic flaw" in Diamond.

Louis Proyect wrote:

> [clip]Here's an excerpt that really highlights what's wrong with his basic approach:
>
> "Consider Japan. In the 1600's, the country faced its own crisis of
[clip]
>
> "The shoguns responded with both negative and positive measures. They
> reduced wood consumption by turning to light-timbered construction, to
> fuel-efficient stoves and heaters, and to coal as a source of energy. At [clip]

> This reveals a basic flaw in Diamond's methodology, which is to regard a
> given society as a kind of self-contained experiment with mother nature [clip]

Perhaps Lou is correct in respect to Diamond's "basic flaw," but he
can't base that on the passage quoted, simply because (unless Lou has
evidence to the contrary) Japan WAS "self-contained" at that time, AND
(in the passage quoted, Diamond very definitely _does_ recognize pillage
of other societies as a possible 'solution' to such a crisis.

Marxists at the present time have to depend on capitalist scholars and
journalists for much of the information about the world (past and
present) that we operate with. It is not useful either to swallow such
sources whole OR to waste time and energy proving the obvious: that
non-marxists don't offer marxist analyses. What else is new. Diamond's
account of Japan doesn't help us, it would seem, in understanding
England -- which was NOT isolated.

But the "whole world," as even petty bourgeois greens never tire of
pointing out, IS isolated, and pillage of other societies (planets) is
not available. So it is at least possible (nothing in Lou's post is
relevant to affirming or denying this) that the case of Japan in the
1600s, at a relevant level of abstraction, is of interest.

        JAPAN 1600S             EXHAUSTION OF WOOD
        -----------     =       ------------------
        WORLD 2000              EXHAUSTION OF GLOBAL ENERGY RESOURCES

I'm not arguing this ratio; I'm just saying that if we want to agree or
disagree with Diamond on Japan we can't do it by talking about Diamond
on England.

We need specific analysis of specific parts of Diamond; not leaps to
identifying his "basic flaw."

Carrol

Re: Jared Diamond's limitations

Carrol:
>exhibiting any "basic flaw." Significantly, Lou has nothing whatever to
>say concretely about the quoted analysis of Japan in the 1600s, in which
>Diamond, incidentally, specifically points out that imperialist plunder
>was not available as a solution: "In addition, Japan's isolation at the
>time made it obvious that the country would have to depend on its own
>resources and couldn't meet its needs by pillaging other countries."
>Nothing in the whole paragraph quoted, then, gives any basis for seeing
>it as evidence of a "basic flaw" in Diamond.

I am really no expert on Japan in the 1600s, but I was really addressing
this statement by Jared Diamond:

"Today, despite having the highest human population density of any large
developed country, Japan is more than 70 percent forested."

This implies that Japan is self-sufficient. Obviously this is false. If
Japan was prevented from buying timber in Indonesia, the percentage would
be far lower.

Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Jared Diamond's limitations

Regarding what Lou wrote, the 70% forestation is significant despite
imports, suggesting that Japan has done a better job against sprawl. 

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA
95929

I am really no expert on Japan in the 1600s, but I was really addressing
this statement by Jared Diamond:

"Today, despite having the highest human population density of any large
developed country, Japan is more than 70 percent forested."

This implies that Japan is self-sufficient. Obviously this is false. If
Japan was prevented from buying timber in Indonesia, the percentage
would
be far lower.

Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org