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Sabri Oncu | 1 Jul 2007 01:50
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Re: Sicko: Heavily Doctored?

Paul:

> Almost all of the problems can be traced back to the
> first half of the 1990s when neoliberal governments at
> both national and provincial levels cut funding drastically
> for the healthcare system to reduce government deficits and
> cut taxes as deficits ballooned in the deep recession of the
> early 1990s.

I had lived in Edmonton, Alberta from September 1986 to April 1993. The
Canadian healthcare system in that period was beyond imagination. The
University of Alberta Hospital felt like it somehow travelled back in time from
the 23rd century. You paid 18 Canadian dollars per month and you were covered
for almost everything. The dental coverage was not perfect maybe but even that
was fine. All for 18 Canadian dollars per month.

My brother came one year after me and in the first week while we were playing
football (not the US wrestling, the real one) he broke his ankle. At the time
he did not have the insurance because he had been there for only a few days and
did not have the time to get it. Yet, all of his expenses were paid
retroactively, although he got the insurance after the accident.

Best,

Sabri

____________________________________________________________________________________
Get the free Yahoo! toolbar and rest assured with the added security of spyware protection.
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Stuart Elliott | 1 Jul 2007 02:36
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China Labour Bulletin on the New Labor Law

http://iso.china-labour.org.hk/public/contents/news?revision%5fid=46449&item%5fid=46445
National People's Congress approves new Labour Contract Law

China Labour Bulletin welcomes the new law, but cautions that without
determined enforcement, labour abuses are unlikely to decline.

The Labour Contract Law approved by the Standing Committee of the National
People's Congress today is a laudable attempt to protect the rights of
individual workers. The majority of workers in the private sector
(especially migrant workers) do not have any kind of contract with their
employer and as such are subject to whatever terms and conditions the
employer imposes. Management regularly (in violation of the existing Labour
Law) withholds wages, demands excessive overtime, and can dismiss workers
almost with impunity.

A great many migrant workers are not officially employed by the enterprise
they work for and only have contracts, valid for a few months, with a labour
supply or labour service company (see The True Story of Migrant Workers at
Dongfeng Auto). Although these workers will remain formally employed by the
labour service company, the new law seeks to limit abusive practices by
eliminating short term contracts and giving supplied workers basically the
same rights as regular workers, including the right to join or organize a
trade union at their place of work.

The new law confirms that all individual workers have the right to negotiate
their own written employment contract with their employer, specifying terms,
conditions and benefits. It enhances specific individual rights by
establishing a statutory probationary period for a fixed term contract,
improving heath and safety regulations, requiring redundancy payments to be
made after the termination of a contract, and generally making it more
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Paul Zarembka | 1 Jul 2007 13:53
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Re: exchange on venezuela

The same Gregory Wilpert has the lead article in the issue of RESEARCH IN
POLITICAL ECONOMY just published: TRANSITIONS IN LATIN AMERICA AND IN
POLAND AND SYRIA.  In this article Wilpert is rather more circumspect about
Chavez.

The May-June issue of NACLA has an interview focusing on Chavez with
prominent Venezuelan Margarita Lopez Maya.  She sees Bolivia as more ground
up than the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela and notes the possibility that
it may have more long-run strength.

In any case, I would not criticize how Wilpert debated a representative of
the oligarchy in Venezuela.

Paul

************************************************************************
(Vol.23) THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF 9-11-2001  "a benchmark in 9/11 research"
(Vol.24) TRANSITIONS IN LATIN AMERICA AND IN POLAND AND SYRIA
         Research in Political Economy, P.Zarembka,ed, Elsevier hardback
********************* http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka

> Date:    Sat, 30 Jun 2007 10:20:11 -0700
> From:    "michael a. lebowitz" <mlebowit@...>
> Subject: exchange on venezuela
>
> --=====================_774921828==.ALT
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
>
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Julio Huato | 1 Jul 2007 13:56
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Pride parade in Mexico City

Massive.  Look at the photo in the front page of La Jornada:

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/07/01/index.php
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Louis Proyect | 1 Jul 2007 14:05
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Re: exchange on venezuela

Paul Zarembka wrote:
> The May-June issue of NACLA has an interview focusing on Chavez with
> prominent Venezuelan Margarita Lopez Maya.  She sees Bolivia as more ground
> up than the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela and notes the possibility that
> it may have more long-run strength.

Maya wrote: This business of changing the Constitution to allow for 
indefinite reelection has to do with this cultivation of his personal 
rule, and reflects the political conception of the "maximum leader." So 
far, this is all we know about Chávez's socialism of the 21st century.

Isn't it clear at this point that NACLA is a counter-revolutionary cesspool?
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Seth Sandronsky | 1 Jul 2007 15:26
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Re: Sicko: Heavily Doctored?

Honduran doctors and medical students who practice in public hospitals have
been on strike against a dozen Cuban doctors practicing medicine in Honduras
the past few months. The reason why is the Cuban doctors licensing and
professional requirement are less than those of the Honduran medical
establishment. The other side of this story is predictable. Low-income
Hondurans who lack health care warmly welcome the Cuban doctors. I got my
info from two sources: a Honduran journalist and a U.S. activist.

Economist Dean Baker makes a case to standardize licensing and professional
requirements for physicians. The American Medical Association opposes that.
Such a policy would cut the earnings of U.S. doctors shielded from global
competition. Meanwhile, some  800,000 U.S. doctors earn double and more
versus their European counterparts. If the licensing and professional
barriers to foreign doctors practicing stateside ended, U.S. health care
would become more affordable for those with low and middle incomes. (The
United States Since 1980 by Dean Baker (Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Pages 31-32.).

Seth Sandronsky

To: PEN-L <at> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Sicko: Heavily Doctored?
From: Paul Phillips <phillipsp <at> xxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 14:48:21 -0700
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.4 (Windows/20070604)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Indeed, I was a participant in the "Saskatchewan civil war" when the (or
I should say, some) doctors went on strike against the introduction of
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Leigh Meyers | 1 Jul 2007 16:32
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Gasoline Rationing Finally Comes to Iran - Informed Comment Global Affairs

Sunday, July 01, 2007

IC Global Affairs

Some of us are launching a group blog, Informed Comment: Global Affairs.

Iran expert Farideh Farhi weighs in today on the gasoline station
protests in Iran and their real meaning. Many thanks to her for an
incisive posting!

The problem with keeping up a successful blog is that one has to do an
entry every day or readers forget to come back to you. I found this
out through early experiments at IC, where traffic fell off
dramatically if I missed days, even weekends. Most journalists,
analysts and academics don't have time to blog daily, and therefore
don't blog.

This outcome, of absence from the internet owing to being busy, is
undesirable, since we need more informed commentary in the
blogosphere, and serious analysts need to interact with the public if
our democracy is to be vital.

Some sites, such as Crooked Timber and Wampum, have solved this
problem by essentially forming a blogging cooperative. That way
something goes up every day, but no one person is always responsible
for it.

We'd like to experiment with this form. Readers are always asking for
a wider range of coverage at my site-- Afghanistan, Palestine/Israel
(as if I'm not in enough trouble), Pakistan, etc.
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Doyle Saylor | 1 Jul 2007 18:34
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Gene theory challenge

Greetings Economists,
In an interesting development a study on the large scale by the United
States National Human Genome Research Institute has challenged the
current gene theory of one gene one function.  I.e. the gay gene, the
gene for diabetes, the patented wheat genes, et al. appear to be
scientifically wrong.  A complex network theory, interact, and overlap
in ways not fully understood.  See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/business/yourmoney/01frame.html?
ref=science

Juicy tidbits are these theories have been around for a long time about
networks rather autonomous genes but until it was applied to Humans
there was no mainstream acceptance.

Monsanto and the  rest of the biotech industry bases their patents on
this concept of one gene one function.

quoting the article:  "Known as the Central Dogma of molecular biology,
it stated that each gene in living organisms, from humans to bacteria,
carries the information needed to construct one protein."
thanks,
Doyle Saylor
http://www.flickr.com/photos/doyle_saylor/
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Doyle Saylor | 1 Jul 2007 19:04
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Interesting new book "The Cult of the Amateur"

Greetings Economists,
Andrew Keen silicon valley entrepreneur provides insight into the
destruction of U.S. culture by amateurs.  So-called Web 2.0 is shallow
and incapable of deep analysis.  Shrill opinion rather than considered
judgment.  From his controversial essay in the Weekly Standard last
year, Keen has produced a new book raising alarms about social software
sites like MySpace, and YouTubes 'when ignorance meets egoism meets bad
taste meets mob rule'.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/books/29book.html?
_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

This has to do with the network components of how Web 2.0 works,
somewhat similar in import to the Gene theory debate.  Essentially
producing knowledge via these sites raises automation of the network
process people engage in to create social networks.  So that for
example I have in my base of friends and contacts, people from Senegal,
Sweden, Japan, Argentina, Italy, and so.  I readily participate in Gay
and Straight groups.  And have great freedom to express my work in new
ways that I couldn't before.

I don't see Web 2.0 as particularly progressive.  But it challenges
kinds of capitalist modes of production that were based upon scarcity
concepts of production that were poorly understood about how to
regulate knowledge production.  More to the point in my view than the
legalism of Intellectual Property rights, they are a clash between
network properties in production versus an autonomous 'gene' theory of
human action.  A socialist might recognize some aspects of the concept
of individual autonomy in the theory as historic individual metaphysics
from Locke and Hume, but I think it really rests upon how production
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michael a. lebowitz | 1 Jul 2007 19:06
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Re: exchange on venezuela


         I'm inclined to agree with Louis about 
the trajectory of NACLA which retains credibility 
among some because of ancient history. In the 
case of the particular author in question, she 
has very significant credibility among 
intellectuals outside Venezuela because of her 
past work. Last year, she was, for example, the 
candidate of Atilio Boron to succeed him as head 
of the association of Latin American Social 
Scientists [CLACSO] and lost only after a very 
bitter battle to Emir Sadr of Brazil. She also 
was invited to write about social movements in 
Venezuela for the next Socialist Register.
         Her article will be predictable, given 
her most recent paean (reprinted in aporrea, 
dated 24 June) to the  Venezuelan middle class, 
where she identifies them with political 
democracy (noting their gradualist orientation) 
and bemoans Chavez's courting of the poor, the 
radicalisation of his discourse, the 
polarisation, etc. Distressing and debilitating 
to observe, she confesses--- this process which 
still offers hope to the poor but which goes in 
the direction of the intolerance, 
authoritarianism, inefficiency and corruption of 
the failed socialism of century XX. Marx had a 
few things to say about where she's coming from. 
I'm sure the editors of the Register had no idea 
of where she was going when they commissioned the
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Gmane