As Drudge put it, "Merry Communist Christmas"
I don't know how I feel about this, but it certainly seems hypocritical for a company so wedded to Republican, free market values. Either way, it's just one more reason to stay away. 70% of Wal Mart goods are made in China, according to the article--I'm sure they have great labor conditions and sweet retirement and health care for their workers as well.
Wal-Mart's China inventory to hit US$18b this year: "Xu Jun, Wal-Mart China's director of external affairs, ruled out the rumour, saying the CEO has never visited that or any other site for a warehouse.
Nevertheless, he said China is Wal-Mart's most important supplier in the world. The overseas procurement home office in Shenzhen, a city of South China's Guangdong Province, has played a key role in the firm's global purchasing business.
...
'If Wal-Mart were an individual economy, it would rank as China's eighth-biggest trading partner, ahead of Russia, Australia and Canada,' Xu said. "
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Putinism On the March (washingtonpost.com)
A rare article in which I agree almost totally with George Will on this. I am glad that the Ukranian elections are getting some press here and I hope that it will help us to adjust our understanding of Putin as a leader. For years we have supported his iron fist in Chechnya because he said it was necessary. Then we tacitly supported his subversions of democracy--via control over press, and political intimidation--in his recent election and consolidation of power bacause, again, it was necessary ("this is a new kind of threat.") His only recent error was being more interested in Iraqi oil contracts gained through bribes instead of bombs (our message: bombs are always better.) Now we seem to be moving in a different direction as we realize that perhaps he might be up to something else. Just because you don't call it a dictatorship or fascism, doesn't make it so.
A rare article in which I agree almost totally with George Will on this. I am glad that the Ukranian elections are getting some press here and I hope that it will help us to adjust our understanding of Putin as a leader. For years we have supported his iron fist in Chechnya because he said it was necessary. Then we tacitly supported his subversions of democracy--via control over press, and political intimidation--in his recent election and consolidation of power bacause, again, it was necessary ("this is a new kind of threat.") His only recent error was being more interested in Iraqi oil contracts gained through bribes instead of bombs (our message: bombs are always better.) Now we seem to be moving in a different direction as we realize that perhaps he might be up to something else. Just because you don't call it a dictatorship or fascism, doesn't make it so.
On seeing FahrenHype 9/11...
It is so good to see Michael Moore's film de-bunked. For almost 0.2 seconds I had a sliver of a doubt that governments don't always do the very best thing for their people, that power corrupts, and that George W. Bush wasn't the Lord Almighty's gift to the world. It was scary to have any doubt at all and I have struggled with how to keep my faith in the face of so many facts and alternative opinions. I try to watch FOX news everyday to keep me informed so that I can fight with treasonous liberals and know what to say to counter their "facts." Thankfully, this film clears up about four mistakes in Moore's film (see below)and then makes me feel that, if I didn't believe all was well with the 2000 election, with Bush and the war on Iraq, if I didn't side completely with the president, that I would, indeed, be unpatriotic. Thank God for this film. Now I can sleep at night again!
No really, the film has some interesting points, but it is even more shamelessly propagandistic than the film it criticizes. And Ron Silver, who narrates, is even more annoying than Michael Mooore. Clearly the first film had some factual errors, but the bulk of these do nothing to counter Moore's main argument.
1. Recount: claims that the recount was settled in Florida. This is not really the case. The independent audit by several newspapers after the fact, was mostly inconclusive. the issue that both the Florida Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court said was most important was that they hadn't established a uniform method for counting the votes. The US said that, in that case, they should just stop. The Audit done by five or six major news organizations came up with several different scenarios, depending on whether overvotes and undervotes were counted. I forget all the different ways that they would have counted the votes and in which one Bush definitely won, but basically, if they had applied the same guidelines that Bush had recommended in Texas when he was governor, he would have lost. Make of that what you will. Obviously we've moved on and the bigger problem today is that the most recent election still had severe voting irregularities, compunded by the relentless gerrymandering on both sides that makes elections closer and closer. Big problems. The film doesn't talk about any of them, doesn't at all address the serious problem of African American populations being systematically disenfranchised or the scandalously inept process of purging the Florida voter rolls. As Ron Silver says in the film, there is nothing there. Stop thinking about it. (He sounds pretty serious too; I wouldn't mess with him.) Needless to say, the film is misleading here and doesn't prove anything to counter Moore's film.
2. The Pentograph--this is obviously a flop. Moore inflated a headline from a letter to the editor to make it look like a front page headline. This is probably the only really damning thing the film has to offer. But the headline was about the election in 2000 and, on balance, isn't wholly off the mark based on the evidence. It is like what Moore did in the last film, adding text to a 1988 campaign commercial: the text wasn't authentic, but it still represented a fairly true, or at least arguable statement. Here the tactics of the film maker are certainly questionable. But, as even this film points out, it was for about 10 seconds of footage.
3. Clinton is to blame for terrorism. Okay. Fine. Clinton is the Second worst president of the past decade. You win.
4. Islamofascists, yadda, yadda, yada. Okay we know. there are some serious folks out there who can hurt us. Isn't our real concern how well we're doing at fighting them? Were many of them in Iraq? (crickets, silence) Most of this segment is the ideologue gallery, with the balance of the conversation being that anyone who doesn't agree with Bush therefore doesn't believe that there are bad people and therefore (watch for jump in logic) is unpatriotic, a dope or both.
5. Saudi Arabia: as Hiedegger points out, Moore is taking most of his arguments from Unger (just like he took most of his arguments in _Columbine_ from Barry Glassner's _Culture of Fear_.) This is such a fast portion of the video it is almost laughable. There is very little substantive investigation, mostly blanket condemnations and oversimplifications. There are obviously powerful Bush supporters in the Carlyle group and there have been some suspicious relationships between them and the Suadis. The film denies anything is going on and, like the election, encourages us to dismiss these claims point blank. For a more recent Carlyle Group scandal: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041101&s=klein
As for the denial about the Afghan pipline, that is also bullshit and Moore connects it to Clinton just as readily. Here ideology and talking points basically win out over any close examination of one of the most factually rich and densely argued (if not overly so) of Moore's film. I am sure the latter made lots of mistakes and oversimplifications since that is his MO, but looking at those would require actually admitting the ones he's right about, something this film is unwilling to do. Instead it throws up all these canards about how John Kerry, George Soros and Move ON are actually more invested in Carlyle. This is presented as hypothesis, stretching logic beyond possibility, but it stands in the film as if there is some factual basis to it, making clear what the film is intended to do.
6. Bush didn't take very much vacation. And when he was on vacation, it wasn't really a vacation. Again, this is one of the places where they have probably got Moore for hyperbole. But it is hardly a damning correction and anyone who was awake during that time, found Bush's oft vacationing ways a bit unsettling. He was in Crawford, TX for all of August and HE said he was on vacation; Moore shoudl be able to call it a vacation if the president does--it's one of the few points they agree on.
7. Oregon Coast: the film points out that, contrary to Moore's assertion, the Oregon State Troopers aren't responsible for patrolling the Oregon Coast--that's the coast guard. However, it doesn't tell us if he is wrong about there being only one trooper patrolling the stretch of highway along the Oregon Coast and it implies that federal funds for homeland security wouldn't be well used in having first responders staffed to the full. this is a continuing problem and the film seems content to say that Moore stretched the truth than to examine the more substantive underlying problem.
SIDE NOTE: This is also the first time that the film makes use of the easily explicable, but key production flaw in Moore's film: He didn't shoot all of it nor was he even there for the whole thing. He bought a good deal of his footage, e.g the interview with the Trooper, interviews w/ injured soldiers at Walter Reed, footage from Iraq. The implication of this segment and every other segment that relies on this problem, is that Michael Moore, by buying existing footage rather than shooting it himself is somehow lying or misleading us. This is a total bullshit argument meant to make him look dishonest when it is standard documentary practice. All those people interviewed signed releases; the footage was owned by someone and sold to Moore. There may be ethical problems with this, but it is not Moore who is making these standards, they exist already.
8. The patriot Act: again, the balance of this is just that there are never any problems: it's a good thing; don't worry about it. The problems that Moore's film points out aren't addressed, such as the Peace activists in CA that are infiltrated by a local sherrif. Ann Coulter, however, does brag about all the "terrorists" being rounded up by Bush's administration, noting that it "isn't public knowledge" but failing to note, as one poster has already, that they have about a 0 to 5000 conviction rate. None of their evidence will hold up in court: this isn't a problem with the courts, who are just enforcing the constitution, but with the unconstitutional methods being employed to arrest people. Perhaps some folks see this as a good thing--then the terrorists don't win! But the truth is, if we're abandoning the constitution to do this, they've already won.
9. Saddam/Iraq: Here the film almost competely leaves Moore's text to speak to general arguments about the war. The most interesting argument, and probably the only one that has anything more than ideological support for it, is that France, Germany, and Russia had oil deals with Iraq. I am sure this is true. But the argument is a bit like little Billy beating the shit out of some kid on the street and then saying that the reason he did it was that none of the other kids would help him beat up this kid because this kid had bribed them not to agree to beat them up. The question of whether the kid should have been beat up in the first place is gently overlooked. This is done by dividing the problem into two halves. France, Germany, etc., wanted to lift the sanctions on Iraq and didn't want to go to war to disarm him because they had something to gain. Therefore we couldn't go through the UN to disarm him. Okay, fine. But then jump ahead in the film...Bill Morris is asking Ed Koch--great foreign policy expert that he is--if we should have gone to war even though there were no weapons. This of course leads to all the diatribes on how bad Saddam was. (Telling quote here: Koch says that they've found 300K bodies in mass graves, "they expect ot find one million--we can't walk away from that anymore." Anymore? Yes. Anymore--like we did when he did it in the early 90s. well, Koch doesn't say this, but let's just pretend he did.) Anyway, on balance, the argument is that Saddam is the equivalent to some copperheads Zell Miller found under a rock in his garden. They are a threat and he shouldn't have to ask the city council or even his wife before he goes in there and chops their heads off with his hoe. Beautiful. Ann Coulter says that, even if everything Moore and "liberals" say is true, Iraq was "a purely Humanitarian war." Leaving aside the fact that these are basically the things we've all heard before and it presents absolutely nothing new in the way of facts or voices, the glaring gaping hole in this segment is that everything after the france-germany-russia bit basically admits that there were no weapons and we knew there weren't any weapons. So why shoudl we fault France-Russia-Germany for not supporting our resolution to disarm him of weapons he didn't have: because we're right, dammit!
The only other fact pointed out in this segment is that Clinton signed some policy that said Iraq regime change was US policy. Here's the deal, for all you republicans who think this is about you: Bush is taknig the heat because he's in the white house. But most of us don't find Clinton to have been any gift to humanity. He bombed Iraq incessantly; His secratary of state Albright sid that the lives of 500K children who starved or died because of the sanctions we're "worth the cost" of keeping Saddam isolated. The NAFTA and WTO, both Clinton brain children, were a gift to corporations and plenty has been written on his economic policies: check out Contours of Decent by Robert Pollin. Clinton is an asshole too. He was just nicer about it. Moore gave him plenty of shit in the last movie he made when he connected Columbine to the largest bombing day in Kosovo. The problem is that the people who made this movie think that Republicans=patriotic americans and therefore anyone who critiques the government (especially while republicans are in charge of it), must not be a patriotic American and, since you're either with us or against us, you must be a democrat aka unpatriotic aka terrorist. This is a brilliant way to make any argument you make criticizing the government actions easily dismissed. This is basically the perspective that the film is coming from; one speaker even says that "Terrorists count on people like Moore to make his films this way."
And that is basically the thrust of the film. The last section of the film begins with calling Moore a propagandist. This is, in a way, fair game, since it is the same sort of tactic Moore himself uses. Except this time, instead of using footage from the press, speeches by the president or quotes by government officials to back up these sentiments (something that Moore did well--by reminding us just how over the top the press was about the war) they use footage from Hitler's propagandists and explicitly say that Moore is working to help the terrorists win. This is basically ridiculous for anyone who has seen the film, as is the claim that Moore doesn't respect the military or the ethos of "America" (remember, that means "war" "support the president" "Republican.") Though Moore is just as ridiculous in the last part of his film, this one is almost denying that that segment even exists. It critiques of Moore's depiction of US soldiers have no factual basis and totally depend on your perspective. It is also difficult to tell if these people even saw the film. That is okay because these filmmakers have made this film for everyone who didn't risk seeing the original and has just been waiting for something to rebut its arguments. Then they can simply deny Moore's legitimacy, overlook any substance to his argument, and go on believing what they did in the beginning.
Finally, before anyone claims that this film won't be premiered because of a liberal bias I will say this: if this film doesn't appear in theatres it is not because the people who own the movie distributors or movie theatres don't agree with it. It will be because this film is surprisingly dull and is basically just fodder for anyone who vehemently wants a quick way to deny anything critical about the past four years. Unlike F 9/11 which makes pains to be funny and use pacing and the interweaving of clips and quotes to keep things moving, this film is basically an extended chant or mantra. Though Moore definitely had a point and his humor might be lost on those who disagreed with him, at least he tried to make it entertaining. This film is just dull by comparison. And dull, ideological mantras don't fill the theatre seats.
It is so good to see Michael Moore's film de-bunked. For almost 0.2 seconds I had a sliver of a doubt that governments don't always do the very best thing for their people, that power corrupts, and that George W. Bush wasn't the Lord Almighty's gift to the world. It was scary to have any doubt at all and I have struggled with how to keep my faith in the face of so many facts and alternative opinions. I try to watch FOX news everyday to keep me informed so that I can fight with treasonous liberals and know what to say to counter their "facts." Thankfully, this film clears up about four mistakes in Moore's film (see below)and then makes me feel that, if I didn't believe all was well with the 2000 election, with Bush and the war on Iraq, if I didn't side completely with the president, that I would, indeed, be unpatriotic. Thank God for this film. Now I can sleep at night again!
No really, the film has some interesting points, but it is even more shamelessly propagandistic than the film it criticizes. And Ron Silver, who narrates, is even more annoying than Michael Mooore. Clearly the first film had some factual errors, but the bulk of these do nothing to counter Moore's main argument.
1. Recount: claims that the recount was settled in Florida. This is not really the case. The independent audit by several newspapers after the fact, was mostly inconclusive. the issue that both the Florida Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court said was most important was that they hadn't established a uniform method for counting the votes. The US said that, in that case, they should just stop. The Audit done by five or six major news organizations came up with several different scenarios, depending on whether overvotes and undervotes were counted. I forget all the different ways that they would have counted the votes and in which one Bush definitely won, but basically, if they had applied the same guidelines that Bush had recommended in Texas when he was governor, he would have lost. Make of that what you will. Obviously we've moved on and the bigger problem today is that the most recent election still had severe voting irregularities, compunded by the relentless gerrymandering on both sides that makes elections closer and closer. Big problems. The film doesn't talk about any of them, doesn't at all address the serious problem of African American populations being systematically disenfranchised or the scandalously inept process of purging the Florida voter rolls. As Ron Silver says in the film, there is nothing there. Stop thinking about it. (He sounds pretty serious too; I wouldn't mess with him.) Needless to say, the film is misleading here and doesn't prove anything to counter Moore's film.
2. The Pentograph--this is obviously a flop. Moore inflated a headline from a letter to the editor to make it look like a front page headline. This is probably the only really damning thing the film has to offer. But the headline was about the election in 2000 and, on balance, isn't wholly off the mark based on the evidence. It is like what Moore did in the last film, adding text to a 1988 campaign commercial: the text wasn't authentic, but it still represented a fairly true, or at least arguable statement. Here the tactics of the film maker are certainly questionable. But, as even this film points out, it was for about 10 seconds of footage.
3. Clinton is to blame for terrorism. Okay. Fine. Clinton is the Second worst president of the past decade. You win.
4. Islamofascists, yadda, yadda, yada. Okay we know. there are some serious folks out there who can hurt us. Isn't our real concern how well we're doing at fighting them? Were many of them in Iraq? (crickets, silence) Most of this segment is the ideologue gallery, with the balance of the conversation being that anyone who doesn't agree with Bush therefore doesn't believe that there are bad people and therefore (watch for jump in logic) is unpatriotic, a dope or both.
5. Saudi Arabia: as Hiedegger points out, Moore is taking most of his arguments from Unger (just like he took most of his arguments in _Columbine_ from Barry Glassner's _Culture of Fear_.) This is such a fast portion of the video it is almost laughable. There is very little substantive investigation, mostly blanket condemnations and oversimplifications. There are obviously powerful Bush supporters in the Carlyle group and there have been some suspicious relationships between them and the Suadis. The film denies anything is going on and, like the election, encourages us to dismiss these claims point blank. For a more recent Carlyle Group scandal: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041101&s=klein
As for the denial about the Afghan pipline, that is also bullshit and Moore connects it to Clinton just as readily. Here ideology and talking points basically win out over any close examination of one of the most factually rich and densely argued (if not overly so) of Moore's film. I am sure the latter made lots of mistakes and oversimplifications since that is his MO, but looking at those would require actually admitting the ones he's right about, something this film is unwilling to do. Instead it throws up all these canards about how John Kerry, George Soros and Move ON are actually more invested in Carlyle. This is presented as hypothesis, stretching logic beyond possibility, but it stands in the film as if there is some factual basis to it, making clear what the film is intended to do.
6. Bush didn't take very much vacation. And when he was on vacation, it wasn't really a vacation. Again, this is one of the places where they have probably got Moore for hyperbole. But it is hardly a damning correction and anyone who was awake during that time, found Bush's oft vacationing ways a bit unsettling. He was in Crawford, TX for all of August and HE said he was on vacation; Moore shoudl be able to call it a vacation if the president does--it's one of the few points they agree on.
7. Oregon Coast: the film points out that, contrary to Moore's assertion, the Oregon State Troopers aren't responsible for patrolling the Oregon Coast--that's the coast guard. However, it doesn't tell us if he is wrong about there being only one trooper patrolling the stretch of highway along the Oregon Coast and it implies that federal funds for homeland security wouldn't be well used in having first responders staffed to the full. this is a continuing problem and the film seems content to say that Moore stretched the truth than to examine the more substantive underlying problem.
SIDE NOTE: This is also the first time that the film makes use of the easily explicable, but key production flaw in Moore's film: He didn't shoot all of it nor was he even there for the whole thing. He bought a good deal of his footage, e.g the interview with the Trooper, interviews w/ injured soldiers at Walter Reed, footage from Iraq. The implication of this segment and every other segment that relies on this problem, is that Michael Moore, by buying existing footage rather than shooting it himself is somehow lying or misleading us. This is a total bullshit argument meant to make him look dishonest when it is standard documentary practice. All those people interviewed signed releases; the footage was owned by someone and sold to Moore. There may be ethical problems with this, but it is not Moore who is making these standards, they exist already.
8. The patriot Act: again, the balance of this is just that there are never any problems: it's a good thing; don't worry about it. The problems that Moore's film points out aren't addressed, such as the Peace activists in CA that are infiltrated by a local sherrif. Ann Coulter, however, does brag about all the "terrorists" being rounded up by Bush's administration, noting that it "isn't public knowledge" but failing to note, as one poster has already, that they have about a 0 to 5000 conviction rate. None of their evidence will hold up in court: this isn't a problem with the courts, who are just enforcing the constitution, but with the unconstitutional methods being employed to arrest people. Perhaps some folks see this as a good thing--then the terrorists don't win! But the truth is, if we're abandoning the constitution to do this, they've already won.
9. Saddam/Iraq: Here the film almost competely leaves Moore's text to speak to general arguments about the war. The most interesting argument, and probably the only one that has anything more than ideological support for it, is that France, Germany, and Russia had oil deals with Iraq. I am sure this is true. But the argument is a bit like little Billy beating the shit out of some kid on the street and then saying that the reason he did it was that none of the other kids would help him beat up this kid because this kid had bribed them not to agree to beat them up. The question of whether the kid should have been beat up in the first place is gently overlooked. This is done by dividing the problem into two halves. France, Germany, etc., wanted to lift the sanctions on Iraq and didn't want to go to war to disarm him because they had something to gain. Therefore we couldn't go through the UN to disarm him. Okay, fine. But then jump ahead in the film...Bill Morris is asking Ed Koch--great foreign policy expert that he is--if we should have gone to war even though there were no weapons. This of course leads to all the diatribes on how bad Saddam was. (Telling quote here: Koch says that they've found 300K bodies in mass graves, "they expect ot find one million--we can't walk away from that anymore." Anymore? Yes. Anymore--like we did when he did it in the early 90s. well, Koch doesn't say this, but let's just pretend he did.) Anyway, on balance, the argument is that Saddam is the equivalent to some copperheads Zell Miller found under a rock in his garden. They are a threat and he shouldn't have to ask the city council or even his wife before he goes in there and chops their heads off with his hoe. Beautiful. Ann Coulter says that, even if everything Moore and "liberals" say is true, Iraq was "a purely Humanitarian war." Leaving aside the fact that these are basically the things we've all heard before and it presents absolutely nothing new in the way of facts or voices, the glaring gaping hole in this segment is that everything after the france-germany-russia bit basically admits that there were no weapons and we knew there weren't any weapons. So why shoudl we fault France-Russia-Germany for not supporting our resolution to disarm him of weapons he didn't have: because we're right, dammit!
The only other fact pointed out in this segment is that Clinton signed some policy that said Iraq regime change was US policy. Here's the deal, for all you republicans who think this is about you: Bush is taknig the heat because he's in the white house. But most of us don't find Clinton to have been any gift to humanity. He bombed Iraq incessantly; His secratary of state Albright sid that the lives of 500K children who starved or died because of the sanctions we're "worth the cost" of keeping Saddam isolated. The NAFTA and WTO, both Clinton brain children, were a gift to corporations and plenty has been written on his economic policies: check out Contours of Decent by Robert Pollin. Clinton is an asshole too. He was just nicer about it. Moore gave him plenty of shit in the last movie he made when he connected Columbine to the largest bombing day in Kosovo. The problem is that the people who made this movie think that Republicans=patriotic americans and therefore anyone who critiques the government (especially while republicans are in charge of it), must not be a patriotic American and, since you're either with us or against us, you must be a democrat aka unpatriotic aka terrorist. This is a brilliant way to make any argument you make criticizing the government actions easily dismissed. This is basically the perspective that the film is coming from; one speaker even says that "Terrorists count on people like Moore to make his films this way."
And that is basically the thrust of the film. The last section of the film begins with calling Moore a propagandist. This is, in a way, fair game, since it is the same sort of tactic Moore himself uses. Except this time, instead of using footage from the press, speeches by the president or quotes by government officials to back up these sentiments (something that Moore did well--by reminding us just how over the top the press was about the war) they use footage from Hitler's propagandists and explicitly say that Moore is working to help the terrorists win. This is basically ridiculous for anyone who has seen the film, as is the claim that Moore doesn't respect the military or the ethos of "America" (remember, that means "war" "support the president" "Republican.") Though Moore is just as ridiculous in the last part of his film, this one is almost denying that that segment even exists. It critiques of Moore's depiction of US soldiers have no factual basis and totally depend on your perspective. It is also difficult to tell if these people even saw the film. That is okay because these filmmakers have made this film for everyone who didn't risk seeing the original and has just been waiting for something to rebut its arguments. Then they can simply deny Moore's legitimacy, overlook any substance to his argument, and go on believing what they did in the beginning.
Finally, before anyone claims that this film won't be premiered because of a liberal bias I will say this: if this film doesn't appear in theatres it is not because the people who own the movie distributors or movie theatres don't agree with it. It will be because this film is surprisingly dull and is basically just fodder for anyone who vehemently wants a quick way to deny anything critical about the past four years. Unlike F 9/11 which makes pains to be funny and use pacing and the interweaving of clips and quotes to keep things moving, this film is basically an extended chant or mantra. Though Moore definitely had a point and his humor might be lost on those who disagreed with him, at least he tried to make it entertaining. This film is just dull by comparison. And dull, ideological mantras don't fill the theatre seats.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
The book would be better titled the structural transformations... as it is really about a couple of different movements in the socio-structural totality and the way that the public sphere fits into them. The final couple of chapters provide a nice overview of the changes that happened most recently, but all of them are somewhat related. His basic argument is that the public sphere isn't just an incedental attribute of modern bourgeois society (here "bourgeois" as the translator indicates, is often synonymous with "civic" or "civil" society, but since the German doesn't have a precise translation into English, he uses this to be safe) Actually this ambivalent terminology is somewhat central to his argument. Several of the pivotal terms in his social history are important precisely in the way that they change in their meaning over time. "Public opinion" is the most central but "publicity" and "representative power" are also extremely important in his account of the movement from Feudal society through the various bourgeois revolutions and the formation of liberal society to the "interventionism" of the welfare state. And, of course, the relationship between the terms "public" and "Private" is central to his argument.
As I said above, the title would be better as "transformations" because it moves through these various permutations. It is also deceptive for it to pretend its focus is solely on the "structural" level. For throughout he adopts a very nice dialectical understanding of the mutual constitution of various formations at both the structural and subject level. In fact, though the social structure is very important, he is very vehement about the importance of the stance of the individual and the state of mind it inspires. He is also very careful to speak to both of these levels and any in between throughout the process.
Though he has a much longer account of how this happened, he basically has a few important levels on which he stops to account for these changes, not really giving any determinant primacy ( so far as I can tell) to any one level. To start, he begins looking at the level of the absolutist state and its monarchical authority. The public at this point would be anyone not in the monarchy, all of the subjects of the kingdom (subject here being another pivotal term). the Private sphere as such was something that was left only to the monarch. This was not only because of the lack of the notion of private property or the inability of anyone other than the powerful to claim any private sphere. Power was assumed to be legitimate by some higher authority or simply based on the control of the state. PUBLICITY at this point was basically the REPRESENTATION of that power in a public forum. Likewise, representation was simply a matter of portraying this power BEFORE the people rather than FOR the people.
In a complex and decades long transformation, based largely on the expansion of the bourgeoisie--both in itself and across the globe via merchantilism--this gradually began to change. This change was not only based on the rough economics that most discussants stop with but had as much to do with more cultural and social factors. In terms of ideology, the bourgeois notions of the family and the rise of the practice of letter writing and the interiority of the individual. The rise of letters also aided in the distribution of news and information--especially in the very physical locales of the coffeehouse and the solon. The rise of the novel--which, incedentally, began in the European tradition in an epistolary form (this is my addition; might be wrong, but its what I remember, especially in the rise of the American Novel)--also inspired a sort of critical discussion about cultural affairs. Here it is important to note that it isn't so much the substance of these letters--whether in the form of newsletters or belles lettres--but the critical subjectivity of the interaction around them. In turn, this interaction is only made possible by the individuation of the new bourgeois family (this, he notes is also reflected in its architecture.)
The development of both this consciousness as well as the interactions that they helped to constitute in either the coffeehouses or in the salon led this newly formed public sphere to begin to demand more of power, namely the notion that this rational critical debate and the formation of a public consensus was the best way of establishing a general norm. Thus the idea of a "law" based on something other than absolutist decree was becoming more prominent.
I find this a very important point because it makes clear the goal of this public sphere was precisely to have an effect on the way that power worked. Moreover, it was in this context that the notions of bourgeois liberalism were formed and thus all of our constitutional norms and forms of government are based on this notion of the way that civil society and the state should function. This is important because it is not only a problem of the transformation of the way that the state works, or the relationship between the state and civil society, but the interactions of civil society are paramount in and of themselves, interactions which are founded on a certain notion of the private individual and the preferred stance they should have. The media certainly play a role in this process as the dominant modes of publicity and the mediation between the spheres of civil society and the state, but the transformation is far from being only located at that interaction alone. This, perhaps, shows the way that Habermas is very much rooted in the Frankfurt School tradition which takes the psychological stance of the individual as a very important jumping off point.
In this case, Habermas focuses on what he calls the "ambivalence of the privatized individual" as both a Bourgeoisie (citizen, owner of goods) and a homme (one human being among others). The former was more related to the male realm of the public sphere, mainly in the political journalism and coffeehouse tradition in which they would debate as owners in the political realm concerning the regulation of their private sphere. Habermas readily admits that, though this was a more open dialogue than before women were traditionally (and perhaps even legally) excluded from this dicsussion. On the the other hand, women and even other non-property owners such as apprentices and servants, took part in the discussion and debate over the world of letters in salons etc. And, although Habermas says that these dual roles, were each equally important and not necessarily separate, this is certainly one of the places that he is roundly dismissed, especially by feminists.
It is also clearly based on a notion of class that excludes a large portion of the population, a contracition that Habermas highlights in section 11. In between, he looks at the development of the PS in various different contexts and points to the ways that civil society in Britain, France, and Germany insisted on both the publicity of the government and the legitimation of public authority and laws through some sort of deliberative process, often mediated by (oppositional) political journalism. Here he works up to the moment of the institution of the bourgeois consitutional state in its various contexts and its relationship to the understanding of the market economy, which basically limited the ability of the state have dominance over anyone without their consent.
Though it may not be accurate in historical terms (I'm not sure--it does seem to match the ideological history as I understand it but I'm not sure if that means it's necessarily false) I like his understanding of this process because it firmly places the agency of this change in the formation of legitimacy in the hands of the civil society. Unlike other theorists, like Foucault, who seem to make no distinction between the absolutist monarchy and the rising bourgeois except from the perspective of the style of legitimacy "power" uses under each regime. Habermas sees the uniqueness of the challenge provided by liberalism and eventually explains its "refeudalization" as the logical conclusion of its own philosophy and its attempt to overcome the inherently "contradictory institutionalization of the public sphere in the bourgeois constitutional state."
The contradiction is multifaceted, but it can roughly be summed up in the already mentioned ambivalence of the citizen/human individual of civil society and the presumption that the rational critical discussion of that civil society would be more legitimate than absolutist domination. This understanding of power, as Habermas tells it, was an extension of the belief in the self-regulating functions of market competition which assumed that no one would be able to enact any form of coercion or domination via the market. Leaving aside the faulty assumptions of this underpinning, the point was that, according to Habermas
The first problem is that there would have to be some form of power enacted via this public sphere to have an effect on the current system meaning that it would have some form of domination in that regard (82-83). But, "nowhere did the constitutional establishment of a public sphere in the political realm [. . . .] betray its chracter as an order of domination more than in its central article stating that all power came from the people"(84). This is, for Habermas, because there was obviously a large number of people who were disenfranchised in this process so that it wasn't really all of the people
The book would be better titled the structural transformations... as it is really about a couple of different movements in the socio-structural totality and the way that the public sphere fits into them. The final couple of chapters provide a nice overview of the changes that happened most recently, but all of them are somewhat related. His basic argument is that the public sphere isn't just an incedental attribute of modern bourgeois society (here "bourgeois" as the translator indicates, is often synonymous with "civic" or "civil" society, but since the German doesn't have a precise translation into English, he uses this to be safe) Actually this ambivalent terminology is somewhat central to his argument. Several of the pivotal terms in his social history are important precisely in the way that they change in their meaning over time. "Public opinion" is the most central but "publicity" and "representative power" are also extremely important in his account of the movement from Feudal society through the various bourgeois revolutions and the formation of liberal society to the "interventionism" of the welfare state. And, of course, the relationship between the terms "public" and "Private" is central to his argument.
As I said above, the title would be better as "transformations" because it moves through these various permutations. It is also deceptive for it to pretend its focus is solely on the "structural" level. For throughout he adopts a very nice dialectical understanding of the mutual constitution of various formations at both the structural and subject level. In fact, though the social structure is very important, he is very vehement about the importance of the stance of the individual and the state of mind it inspires. He is also very careful to speak to both of these levels and any in between throughout the process.
Though he has a much longer account of how this happened, he basically has a few important levels on which he stops to account for these changes, not really giving any determinant primacy ( so far as I can tell) to any one level. To start, he begins looking at the level of the absolutist state and its monarchical authority. The public at this point would be anyone not in the monarchy, all of the subjects of the kingdom (subject here being another pivotal term). the Private sphere as such was something that was left only to the monarch. This was not only because of the lack of the notion of private property or the inability of anyone other than the powerful to claim any private sphere. Power was assumed to be legitimate by some higher authority or simply based on the control of the state. PUBLICITY at this point was basically the REPRESENTATION of that power in a public forum. Likewise, representation was simply a matter of portraying this power BEFORE the people rather than FOR the people.
In a complex and decades long transformation, based largely on the expansion of the bourgeoisie--both in itself and across the globe via merchantilism--this gradually began to change. This change was not only based on the rough economics that most discussants stop with but had as much to do with more cultural and social factors. In terms of ideology, the bourgeois notions of the family and the rise of the practice of letter writing and the interiority of the individual. The rise of letters also aided in the distribution of news and information--especially in the very physical locales of the coffeehouse and the solon. The rise of the novel--which, incedentally, began in the European tradition in an epistolary form (this is my addition; might be wrong, but its what I remember, especially in the rise of the American Novel)--also inspired a sort of critical discussion about cultural affairs. Here it is important to note that it isn't so much the substance of these letters--whether in the form of newsletters or belles lettres--but the critical subjectivity of the interaction around them. In turn, this interaction is only made possible by the individuation of the new bourgeois family (this, he notes is also reflected in its architecture.)
They formed the public sphere of rational-critical debate in the world of
letters within which the subjectivity originating in the interiority of the
conjugal family, by communicating with itself, attained clarity about itself
(51). [through an "audience oriented privacy]
The development of both this consciousness as well as the interactions that they helped to constitute in either the coffeehouses or in the salon led this newly formed public sphere to begin to demand more of power, namely the notion that this rational critical debate and the formation of a public consensus was the best way of establishing a general norm. Thus the idea of a "law" based on something other than absolutist decree was becoming more prominent.
A political consciousness developed in the public sphere of civil society which,
in oppostion to absolute soveriegnty articulated the concept of and demand for
general and abstract laws which ultimately came to assert itself (i.e. public
opinion) as the only legitimate source of this law. (54)
I find this a very important point because it makes clear the goal of this public sphere was precisely to have an effect on the way that power worked. Moreover, it was in this context that the notions of bourgeois liberalism were formed and thus all of our constitutional norms and forms of government are based on this notion of the way that civil society and the state should function. This is important because it is not only a problem of the transformation of the way that the state works, or the relationship between the state and civil society, but the interactions of civil society are paramount in and of themselves, interactions which are founded on a certain notion of the private individual and the preferred stance they should have. The media certainly play a role in this process as the dominant modes of publicity and the mediation between the spheres of civil society and the state, but the transformation is far from being only located at that interaction alone. This, perhaps, shows the way that Habermas is very much rooted in the Frankfurt School tradition which takes the psychological stance of the individual as a very important jumping off point.
In this case, Habermas focuses on what he calls the "ambivalence of the privatized individual" as both a Bourgeoisie (citizen, owner of goods) and a homme (one human being among others). The former was more related to the male realm of the public sphere, mainly in the political journalism and coffeehouse tradition in which they would debate as owners in the political realm concerning the regulation of their private sphere. Habermas readily admits that, though this was a more open dialogue than before women were traditionally (and perhaps even legally) excluded from this dicsussion. On the the other hand, women and even other non-property owners such as apprentices and servants, took part in the discussion and debate over the world of letters in salons etc. And, although Habermas says that these dual roles, were each equally important and not necessarily separate, this is certainly one of the places that he is roundly dismissed, especially by feminists.
It is also clearly based on a notion of class that excludes a large portion of the population, a contracition that Habermas highlights in section 11. In between, he looks at the development of the PS in various different contexts and points to the ways that civil society in Britain, France, and Germany insisted on both the publicity of the government and the legitimation of public authority and laws through some sort of deliberative process, often mediated by (oppositional) political journalism. Here he works up to the moment of the institution of the bourgeois consitutional state in its various contexts and its relationship to the understanding of the market economy, which basically limited the ability of the state have dominance over anyone without their consent.
Though it may not be accurate in historical terms (I'm not sure--it does seem to match the ideological history as I understand it but I'm not sure if that means it's necessarily false) I like his understanding of this process because it firmly places the agency of this change in the formation of legitimacy in the hands of the civil society. Unlike other theorists, like Foucault, who seem to make no distinction between the absolutist monarchy and the rising bourgeois except from the perspective of the style of legitimacy "power" uses under each regime. Habermas sees the uniqueness of the challenge provided by liberalism and eventually explains its "refeudalization" as the logical conclusion of its own philosophy and its attempt to overcome the inherently "contradictory institutionalization of the public sphere in the bourgeois constitutional state."
The contradiction is multifaceted, but it can roughly be summed up in the already mentioned ambivalence of the citizen/human individual of civil society and the presumption that the rational critical discussion of that civil society would be more legitimate than absolutist domination. This understanding of power, as Habermas tells it, was an extension of the belief in the self-regulating functions of market competition which assumed that no one would be able to enact any form of coercion or domination via the market. Leaving aside the faulty assumptions of this underpinning, the point was that, according to Habermas
The bourgeois idea of the law-based state, namely, the binding of al state
activity to a system of norms legitimated by public opinion (a system that had
no gaps, if possible), already aimed at abolishing the state as an instrument of
domination altogether. Acts of soveriengty were considered apocryphal per
se. [. . . .] The domination of the public, according to its own idea, was an
order in which domination itself was dissolved. (82)
The first problem is that there would have to be some form of power enacted via this public sphere to have an effect on the current system meaning that it would have some form of domination in that regard (82-83). But, "nowhere did the constitutional establishment of a public sphere in the political realm [. . . .] betray its chracter as an order of domination more than in its central article stating that all power came from the people"(84). This is, for Habermas, because there was obviously a large number of people who were disenfranchised in this process so that it wasn't really all of the people
This from an article by Jared Diamond called "why Societies make disasterous decisions." Although he talks about the "tragedy of the commons," which neo-classical and libertatian economists are quick to point out as one of the few important hypothetical scenarios for us to think about in terms of the choice of economic system, he also, below, alludes to the much more widespead problem of what we might call the "fortress society." Market Fundamentalists affinity for the former scenario is that they claim it as evidence for the need to have property rights for all property rather than leaving some property "common" or, heaven forbid (no, they really think it does) creating any sort of communal society. I have spoken a little about this before.
The latter scenario, of the Fortress society, which, in effect, is what Diamond speaks to below, is one that these economists are less likely to find problematic--or at least problematic in a way that the market can't solve on its own. But the truth of the matter is that if problems like these are to be solved, the guilt must be spread evenly, the externalities compensated for by their creators. In this case I have found it very curious that the most publicized public fines have been the indecency fines levied by the FCC. I suppose it makes sense for the media to pay extra attention to the fines being levied against it, but it seems like there is a more public interest in these fines as being something that actually goes after the "bad guys." But does it really make sense for these to be the big fines? Who really believes that Janet Jackson's tit was that damaging? Could it even be proven? Of all the public agencies to stand up and start enforcing the penalties on its books--and even raising the penalties to make them actually punitive, why this one? And if there was any WAY that these penalties could be enforced, why this one? Certainly there are many media conglomerates that could be defined as defying all sorts of ownership rules--why not penalize them for this? Instead, its all about content, a fairly banal measure in material terms but something that makes good press in the red states.
On the one hand, I am glad that a public agency is trying to protect the public from an industry and its externalities; but on the other it seems like there are so many other industries that do far more damage. In the latter case, the difference seems to be that these economists would stand up and oppose that sort of leveling of the playing field or enforcing of penalties for other industries but, for ideological reasons, probably find the FCC fines appropriate. Not only is this contradictory and probably indicative of a deep seeded conflict of interests, but it is yet another example of one of the many ways that our own growing fortress society, which sees the protection of the public as secondary to the protection of a select group--notice I am diffusing the agency of who is making this emphasis possible--as drifting towards the route of "sociteies which make disastrous decisions."
"Failure to solve perceived problems because of conflicts of interest between the elite and the rest of society are much less likely in societies where the elite cannot insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions. For example, the modern country of which the highest proportions of its citizens belong to environmental organizations is the Netherlands. I never understood why until I was visiting the Netherlands a few years ago and raised this question to my Dutch colleagues as were driving through the countryside. My Dutch friends answered, "Just look around you and you will see the reason. The land where we are now is 22 feet below sea level. Like much of the area of Holland it was once a shallow bay of the sea that we Dutch people surrounded by dikes and then drained with pumps to create low-lying land that we call a polder. We have pumps to pump out the water that is continually leaking into our polders through the dikes. If the dikes burst, of course the people in the polder drown. But it is not the case that the rich Dutch live on top of the dikes, while the poor Dutch are living down in the polders. If the dikes burst, everybody drowns, regardless of whether they are rich or poor. That was what happened in the terrible floods of February 1, 1953, when high tides and storms drove water inland over the polders of Zeeland Province and nearly 2000 Dutch people drowned. After that disaster, we all swore, 'Never again!' and spent billions of dollars building reinforced barriers against the water. In the Netherlands the decision-makers know that they cannot insulate themselves from their mistakes, and that they have to make compromise decisions that will be good for as many people as possible."
The latter scenario, of the Fortress society, which, in effect, is what Diamond speaks to below, is one that these economists are less likely to find problematic--or at least problematic in a way that the market can't solve on its own. But the truth of the matter is that if problems like these are to be solved, the guilt must be spread evenly, the externalities compensated for by their creators. In this case I have found it very curious that the most publicized public fines have been the indecency fines levied by the FCC. I suppose it makes sense for the media to pay extra attention to the fines being levied against it, but it seems like there is a more public interest in these fines as being something that actually goes after the "bad guys." But does it really make sense for these to be the big fines? Who really believes that Janet Jackson's tit was that damaging? Could it even be proven? Of all the public agencies to stand up and start enforcing the penalties on its books--and even raising the penalties to make them actually punitive, why this one? And if there was any WAY that these penalties could be enforced, why this one? Certainly there are many media conglomerates that could be defined as defying all sorts of ownership rules--why not penalize them for this? Instead, its all about content, a fairly banal measure in material terms but something that makes good press in the red states.
On the one hand, I am glad that a public agency is trying to protect the public from an industry and its externalities; but on the other it seems like there are so many other industries that do far more damage. In the latter case, the difference seems to be that these economists would stand up and oppose that sort of leveling of the playing field or enforcing of penalties for other industries but, for ideological reasons, probably find the FCC fines appropriate. Not only is this contradictory and probably indicative of a deep seeded conflict of interests, but it is yet another example of one of the many ways that our own growing fortress society, which sees the protection of the public as secondary to the protection of a select group--notice I am diffusing the agency of who is making this emphasis possible--as drifting towards the route of "sociteies which make disastrous decisions."
"Failure to solve perceived problems because of conflicts of interest between the elite and the rest of society are much less likely in societies where the elite cannot insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions. For example, the modern country of which the highest proportions of its citizens belong to environmental organizations is the Netherlands. I never understood why until I was visiting the Netherlands a few years ago and raised this question to my Dutch colleagues as were driving through the countryside. My Dutch friends answered, "Just look around you and you will see the reason. The land where we are now is 22 feet below sea level. Like much of the area of Holland it was once a shallow bay of the sea that we Dutch people surrounded by dikes and then drained with pumps to create low-lying land that we call a polder. We have pumps to pump out the water that is continually leaking into our polders through the dikes. If the dikes burst, of course the people in the polder drown. But it is not the case that the rich Dutch live on top of the dikes, while the poor Dutch are living down in the polders. If the dikes burst, everybody drowns, regardless of whether they are rich or poor. That was what happened in the terrible floods of February 1, 1953, when high tides and storms drove water inland over the polders of Zeeland Province and nearly 2000 Dutch people drowned. After that disaster, we all swore, 'Never again!' and spent billions of dollars building reinforced barriers against the water. In the Netherlands the decision-makers know that they cannot insulate themselves from their mistakes, and that they have to make compromise decisions that will be good for as many people as possible."
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Monday, November 15, 2004
Snow Likes His Strong Dollar Weaker
Dan Ackman, 11.15.04, 9:55 AM ET
NEW YORK - Once a year or so we like to check in on the dollar to find out if it is strong. Inevitably it is, but it is strong in different ways each time.
More From Dan Ackman
Four years ago we had a strong dollar that bought about 1.19 euros. Two years later, by mid-2002--around the time that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was later fired, was wondering publicly about the strong dollar policy--the dollar was still strong, and it could buy .91 euros. Today, a dollar buys about .78 euros. Technically, the dollar is "weaker" than is has been in recent years. Officially, though, and as a matter of policy, the dollar is still strong.
Today in Dublin, O'Neill's successor John Snow said, "Our policy on the dollar is well known. We support a strong dollar. A strong dollar is in America's interest." That was the second thing Snow said, according to reporters traveling with him on his European tour. The first thing he said was "I've had a tradition of never commenting on the relative exchange value of the dollar." The second comment seems, in a general way, to contradict the first comment. Next he said currency values should be set in open markets: "Markets are driven by fundamentals...and fundamentals are best determined by the operation of open, competitive markets," he said on Monday.
These are Snow's first remarks on the currency since George W. Bush was re-elected president on Nov. 2. In his statements he essentially repeated what he has said ever since coming into office in January 2003. He is also essentially repeating remarks made by O'Neill, and by President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin, now chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people ), and Lawrence Summers and by Lloyd Bentsen, Clinton's first Treasury Secretary, before that.
While the policy never changes--at least in rhetoric--the value of the dollar against major currencies certainly has. In the last week, the euro hit an all-time high of $1.30 (meaning a dollar bought just 0.77 euros, 35% less than four years ago).
It all seems a tad confusing, but specialists have no trouble deciphering Snow's meaning.
"[The strong dollar policy] is an implicit compact with the market not to say anything unpredictable," says Daniel Katzive, an economist who specializes in foreign exchange strategies at UBS (nyse: UBS - news - people ) in Stamford, Conn. Whenever the dollar weakens, as it has been, Snow "will always say 'strong dollar' because to say anything else would be dangerous."
While the dollar--though forever strong--has been falling, the U.S. trade deficit has continued to get worse. The difference between U.S. exports and imports grew from $380 billion in 2000 to $519 billion in 2003. More remarkable, in recent years, the value of U.S. exports, adjusted for inflation, actually declined, though that trend has reversed itself in recent quarters. (See: "So Long, Don Evans.")
This is a big problem for U.S. manufacturers, and the National Association of Manufacturers is one group that has objected to U.S. dollar policy, saying it has reduced America's international competitiveness and its share of world exports. While the U.S. currency has declined against the euro and, to a lesser extent, the Japanese yen, it has declined much less compared to other Asian currencies, notably China's, which tend to be more "managed." (Some leading exporters like Boeing (nyse: BA - news - people ), Caterpillar (nyse: CAT - news - people ) and Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) have seen their fortunes rise recently, but the share prices of other top multinationals like Coca Cola (nyse: KO - news - people ) and IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) have declined.)
The trade deficit has continued to expand even as the dollar weakened. "The sensitivity of the trade deficit to currency movements is very weak," Katzive says. Though owing to the large and growing deficit, most economists, including UBS, expect the dollar's slide to continue. Thus the strong dollar will be weaker, and Snow will like it just fine.
Dan Ackman, 11.15.04, 9:55 AM ET
NEW YORK - Once a year or so we like to check in on the dollar to find out if it is strong. Inevitably it is, but it is strong in different ways each time.
More From Dan Ackman
Four years ago we had a strong dollar that bought about 1.19 euros. Two years later, by mid-2002--around the time that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was later fired, was wondering publicly about the strong dollar policy--the dollar was still strong, and it could buy .91 euros. Today, a dollar buys about .78 euros. Technically, the dollar is "weaker" than is has been in recent years. Officially, though, and as a matter of policy, the dollar is still strong.
Today in Dublin, O'Neill's successor John Snow said, "Our policy on the dollar is well known. We support a strong dollar. A strong dollar is in America's interest." That was the second thing Snow said, according to reporters traveling with him on his European tour. The first thing he said was "I've had a tradition of never commenting on the relative exchange value of the dollar." The second comment seems, in a general way, to contradict the first comment. Next he said currency values should be set in open markets: "Markets are driven by fundamentals...and fundamentals are best determined by the operation of open, competitive markets," he said on Monday.
These are Snow's first remarks on the currency since George W. Bush was re-elected president on Nov. 2. In his statements he essentially repeated what he has said ever since coming into office in January 2003. He is also essentially repeating remarks made by O'Neill, and by President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin, now chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people ), and Lawrence Summers and by Lloyd Bentsen, Clinton's first Treasury Secretary, before that.
While the policy never changes--at least in rhetoric--the value of the dollar against major currencies certainly has. In the last week, the euro hit an all-time high of $1.30 (meaning a dollar bought just 0.77 euros, 35% less than four years ago).
It all seems a tad confusing, but specialists have no trouble deciphering Snow's meaning.
"[The strong dollar policy] is an implicit compact with the market not to say anything unpredictable," says Daniel Katzive, an economist who specializes in foreign exchange strategies at UBS (nyse: UBS - news - people ) in Stamford, Conn. Whenever the dollar weakens, as it has been, Snow "will always say 'strong dollar' because to say anything else would be dangerous."
While the dollar--though forever strong--has been falling, the U.S. trade deficit has continued to get worse. The difference between U.S. exports and imports grew from $380 billion in 2000 to $519 billion in 2003. More remarkable, in recent years, the value of U.S. exports, adjusted for inflation, actually declined, though that trend has reversed itself in recent quarters. (See: "So Long, Don Evans.")
This is a big problem for U.S. manufacturers, and the National Association of Manufacturers is one group that has objected to U.S. dollar policy, saying it has reduced America's international competitiveness and its share of world exports. While the U.S. currency has declined against the euro and, to a lesser extent, the Japanese yen, it has declined much less compared to other Asian currencies, notably China's, which tend to be more "managed." (Some leading exporters like Boeing (nyse: BA - news - people ), Caterpillar (nyse: CAT - news - people ) and Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) have seen their fortunes rise recently, but the share prices of other top multinationals like Coca Cola (nyse: KO - news - people ) and IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) have declined.)
The trade deficit has continued to expand even as the dollar weakened. "The sensitivity of the trade deficit to currency movements is very weak," Katzive says. Though owing to the large and growing deficit, most economists, including UBS, expect the dollar's slide to continue. Thus the strong dollar will be weaker, and Snow will like it just fine.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Thursday, November 04, 2004
http://www.adamyoshida.com/2004/11/four-more-years-aka-take-that-you-sons.html
http://www.adamyoshida.com/2004/11/four-more-years-aka-take-that-you-sons.html
This is certainly a super sentiment. I am not sure whether I am more disturbed by this:
"If anyone needs to work to “bring the country together” it’s those on the left who have divided it so badly. Those who sought to destroy this great man should get down upon their knees and beg the victors for mercy. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll let a few of them linger on for the simple reason that they amuse us. My life’s goal is to see the Democratic Party virtually obliterated and left as a rump of people like Stephanie Herseth who both mostly agree with us anyways and are easy on the eyes.
That’s the future of the Democratic Party: providing Republicans with a number of cute (but not that bright) comfort women."
or this:
"Let’s face a hard truth: this was the bitterest Presidential campaign in living memory. The Democrats and their allies staked everything on the defeat of this President. All of the resources they had accumulated over a generation of struggle were thrown into this battle: and they have failed. Despite all of their tricks, despite all of their lies, the people have rejected them. They mean nothing. They are worth nothing. There’s no point in trying to reach out to them because they won’t be reached out to. We’ve got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and out boot above their head. Now’s the time to curb-stomp the bastards."
nope, no fascism here. Just a joyous celebration of democracy in action. god bless america.
This is really quite scary and it seems to me that, despite all the rhetoric of the neoliberal cohort in the administration, there is a vast number of people in the country who could care less about foriegn policy and are perfectly happy with good old fashioned bigotry as the main motivation behind their electoral outlooks. This oversight seems to be a continuation of the misunderstanding much of the rest of the country has about what is important to all those folks in the red states--and what they are willing to support to get it. Perhaps not explicitly "curb stomping" but certainly its political equivalent.
The Republican party is mostly attempting to be both a forward looking party based on a re-articulation of liberalism (at least where it is convenient) and a conservative party, hell bent on restricting liberty wherever it doesn't fit with their values. Aside from our own organizing, it seems that the best thing that can happen in the next four years is that this deep division, this fundamental internal contradiction, will encounter its own dialectical implosion and the Dems can truly take hold of liberalism as a value (a moral value even) and begin to peel off more of the Republicans that don't want the constitution replaced by the bible (assuming there are some). In the long run, it may be very good that Arnold won in CA because it is only that contingency of Repubs which gives the party its "moderate" appeal--and who have any hope of winning in the next four years.
This is, of course, assuming that American society on the whole doesn't drift any further to the right. This depends on what we should only understand as a hegemonic struggle to keep whatever shred of Enlightenment rationality and traditional liberalism alive as ideologies in themselves. At this point, the left has to understand that all of their beliefs are ultimately founded on those premises. The problems we have with them are almost all based on what we take for granted as "rational" meaning that form of rationality that we inherited from the Enlightenment and is every day being challenged when it doesn't gel with Evangelical interpretations of the bible. In order for a claim that these theocrats are irrational, we must keep the ground we stand on, problematic as it is, logocentric as it is, from being pulled out from under us. Otherwise, we are just party to our own extinction and the next fifty years may very well be a clash of fundamentalisms reminescent of the crusades. I have no doubt which class of society will get the boot first and it isn't the anti-intellectuals.
This is true not only for our own country, but for countries around the world up against their own forms of fundamentalist fascism. As we halt the retrenchment on enlightenment rationality in our own country, we should simultaneously be looking for similar traditions in those that face much more entrenched foes in their own cultures.
Polanyi predicted/observed that the double movement that society would make would be economic in character in response to the ascendency of the free market liberalism. But this attempted defense, he proposed, wasn't really about economics. The free market, in many ways, provided some material benefits in the long run. The protections were there to keep the market from overrunning society and wreaking destruction on established cultures. He considered fascism, isolationism and nationalism to be the final consequences of a scientific brand of economics that couldn't account for labor, land or money as anything more than common commodities. Going off gold was part of the same movement that ultimately produced WWII and the rise of fascism of one form or another in, according to him, many countries around the world in which it is not normally considered, namely, the US where FDR attempted to take complete control over the economy and its social role.
The conjuncture we seem to be at, though mostly very different, seems to have produced a sort of double movement, but this time society doesn't see the economy as the main culprit of the production of cultural and social degradation thus their cures don't include labor rights challenges to the free market system. These ideologies seem too ingrained and reified to be contested on any large scale. On the other hand, religion is a powerful force and has always been able to get people to overlook their material oppression or degradation to find a more visible object of scorn. Perhaps the only difference here is that, I assume, inlike in past mass xenophobia, this "other" doesn't have a readily available visual signifier. Thus part of the fear is that not only does one not understand it or agree with it, but it is difficult to know where it might be lurking (one of the Oklahoma candidates for the senate Tom Coburn was quoted as saying: lesbianism is “so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom.”) This kind of fear-mongering is hard to understand for those of us who aren't afraid. But if it is seen by evangelicals (who, incedentally, are only as common in the red states as they aren't in the blue ones which is to say that they are just present in opposite proportions rather than monolithic--this consideration is more to show that I am at least trying not to make too many generalizations) as the main threat, a sort of metonym or synecdoche or good old fashioned scapegoat for the problem they might have otherwise. Thus if there is a double movement in this context, it is inspired not to change the economic policies but to protect itself from what is perceived as the gathering threat which cannot be overlooked. And, more importantly, the threat is ultimately something that is mostly unknown as opposed to mostly reified as a way of life.
This would be an important corrective to Polanyi and somewhat expose the way that, although he is certainly critical of Marxism, his outlook is still heavily influenced by that set of assumptions. The double movement thesis may certainly be true, but the character of the double movement is very much influenced by the available ideologies of the time. The nineteenth century was not only the water that marxism swam in, as foucault said, but its powerful presence in the water at the time affected the water itself. Or, in less moronoic, metaphoric terms, it was a powerful ideology in that context which meant that, when people were looking for some sort of answer to helping their social and cultural envoronment, it was readily avialable. To update that theory for today, the dominance of evangelical, fundamentalist religion in these social environments make it a logical answer to altering their reality--or halting what is perceived to be a cultural degradation. It should also be noted that this is almost the identical process that has taken place in contexts where radical islam has taken hold. this is not just about identity or its disintegration. it is about a fundamental understanding of the world and a process of gathering social legitimacy that enlightenment rationality has all but abandoned simply because it assumed it had won. Though the latter assumption was powerful for a while and postcolonial, postmodern, and poststructural critics find themselves in rare agreement with its oversights and atrocities, scrapping it altogether without something built up in its place could very well bring us back to a world where the arguments are more akin to the dark ages--only with the scientific advances of the enlightenment (i.e. nukes) to help move things along.
So there is some rambling thoughts on that...the last point I would like to remember is that this must be something that we understand in a very global sense because in the same way that Islam is helping to define the middle east, evangelical religion is a powerful force in latin america. the results of that coalition could be quite devastating.
http://www.adamyoshida.com/2004/11/four-more-years-aka-take-that-you-sons.html
This is certainly a super sentiment. I am not sure whether I am more disturbed by this:
"If anyone needs to work to “bring the country together” it’s those on the left who have divided it so badly. Those who sought to destroy this great man should get down upon their knees and beg the victors for mercy. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll let a few of them linger on for the simple reason that they amuse us. My life’s goal is to see the Democratic Party virtually obliterated and left as a rump of people like Stephanie Herseth who both mostly agree with us anyways and are easy on the eyes.
That’s the future of the Democratic Party: providing Republicans with a number of cute (but not that bright) comfort women."
or this:
"Let’s face a hard truth: this was the bitterest Presidential campaign in living memory. The Democrats and their allies staked everything on the defeat of this President. All of the resources they had accumulated over a generation of struggle were thrown into this battle: and they have failed. Despite all of their tricks, despite all of their lies, the people have rejected them. They mean nothing. They are worth nothing. There’s no point in trying to reach out to them because they won’t be reached out to. We’ve got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and out boot above their head. Now’s the time to curb-stomp the bastards."
nope, no fascism here. Just a joyous celebration of democracy in action. god bless america.
This is really quite scary and it seems to me that, despite all the rhetoric of the neoliberal cohort in the administration, there is a vast number of people in the country who could care less about foriegn policy and are perfectly happy with good old fashioned bigotry as the main motivation behind their electoral outlooks. This oversight seems to be a continuation of the misunderstanding much of the rest of the country has about what is important to all those folks in the red states--and what they are willing to support to get it. Perhaps not explicitly "curb stomping" but certainly its political equivalent.
The Republican party is mostly attempting to be both a forward looking party based on a re-articulation of liberalism (at least where it is convenient) and a conservative party, hell bent on restricting liberty wherever it doesn't fit with their values. Aside from our own organizing, it seems that the best thing that can happen in the next four years is that this deep division, this fundamental internal contradiction, will encounter its own dialectical implosion and the Dems can truly take hold of liberalism as a value (a moral value even) and begin to peel off more of the Republicans that don't want the constitution replaced by the bible (assuming there are some). In the long run, it may be very good that Arnold won in CA because it is only that contingency of Repubs which gives the party its "moderate" appeal--and who have any hope of winning in the next four years.
This is, of course, assuming that American society on the whole doesn't drift any further to the right. This depends on what we should only understand as a hegemonic struggle to keep whatever shred of Enlightenment rationality and traditional liberalism alive as ideologies in themselves. At this point, the left has to understand that all of their beliefs are ultimately founded on those premises. The problems we have with them are almost all based on what we take for granted as "rational" meaning that form of rationality that we inherited from the Enlightenment and is every day being challenged when it doesn't gel with Evangelical interpretations of the bible. In order for a claim that these theocrats are irrational, we must keep the ground we stand on, problematic as it is, logocentric as it is, from being pulled out from under us. Otherwise, we are just party to our own extinction and the next fifty years may very well be a clash of fundamentalisms reminescent of the crusades. I have no doubt which class of society will get the boot first and it isn't the anti-intellectuals.
This is true not only for our own country, but for countries around the world up against their own forms of fundamentalist fascism. As we halt the retrenchment on enlightenment rationality in our own country, we should simultaneously be looking for similar traditions in those that face much more entrenched foes in their own cultures.
Polanyi predicted/observed that the double movement that society would make would be economic in character in response to the ascendency of the free market liberalism. But this attempted defense, he proposed, wasn't really about economics. The free market, in many ways, provided some material benefits in the long run. The protections were there to keep the market from overrunning society and wreaking destruction on established cultures. He considered fascism, isolationism and nationalism to be the final consequences of a scientific brand of economics that couldn't account for labor, land or money as anything more than common commodities. Going off gold was part of the same movement that ultimately produced WWII and the rise of fascism of one form or another in, according to him, many countries around the world in which it is not normally considered, namely, the US where FDR attempted to take complete control over the economy and its social role.
The conjuncture we seem to be at, though mostly very different, seems to have produced a sort of double movement, but this time society doesn't see the economy as the main culprit of the production of cultural and social degradation thus their cures don't include labor rights challenges to the free market system. These ideologies seem too ingrained and reified to be contested on any large scale. On the other hand, religion is a powerful force and has always been able to get people to overlook their material oppression or degradation to find a more visible object of scorn. Perhaps the only difference here is that, I assume, inlike in past mass xenophobia, this "other" doesn't have a readily available visual signifier. Thus part of the fear is that not only does one not understand it or agree with it, but it is difficult to know where it might be lurking (one of the Oklahoma candidates for the senate Tom Coburn was quoted as saying: lesbianism is “so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom.”) This kind of fear-mongering is hard to understand for those of us who aren't afraid. But if it is seen by evangelicals (who, incedentally, are only as common in the red states as they aren't in the blue ones which is to say that they are just present in opposite proportions rather than monolithic--this consideration is more to show that I am at least trying not to make too many generalizations) as the main threat, a sort of metonym or synecdoche or good old fashioned scapegoat for the problem they might have otherwise. Thus if there is a double movement in this context, it is inspired not to change the economic policies but to protect itself from what is perceived as the gathering threat which cannot be overlooked. And, more importantly, the threat is ultimately something that is mostly unknown as opposed to mostly reified as a way of life.
This would be an important corrective to Polanyi and somewhat expose the way that, although he is certainly critical of Marxism, his outlook is still heavily influenced by that set of assumptions. The double movement thesis may certainly be true, but the character of the double movement is very much influenced by the available ideologies of the time. The nineteenth century was not only the water that marxism swam in, as foucault said, but its powerful presence in the water at the time affected the water itself. Or, in less moronoic, metaphoric terms, it was a powerful ideology in that context which meant that, when people were looking for some sort of answer to helping their social and cultural envoronment, it was readily avialable. To update that theory for today, the dominance of evangelical, fundamentalist religion in these social environments make it a logical answer to altering their reality--or halting what is perceived to be a cultural degradation. It should also be noted that this is almost the identical process that has taken place in contexts where radical islam has taken hold. this is not just about identity or its disintegration. it is about a fundamental understanding of the world and a process of gathering social legitimacy that enlightenment rationality has all but abandoned simply because it assumed it had won. Though the latter assumption was powerful for a while and postcolonial, postmodern, and poststructural critics find themselves in rare agreement with its oversights and atrocities, scrapping it altogether without something built up in its place could very well bring us back to a world where the arguments are more akin to the dark ages--only with the scientific advances of the enlightenment (i.e. nukes) to help move things along.
So there is some rambling thoughts on that...the last point I would like to remember is that this must be something that we understand in a very global sense because in the same way that Islam is helping to define the middle east, evangelical religion is a powerful force in latin america. the results of that coalition could be quite devastating.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Today sucks. A crushing defeat, not because Kerry lost but because George Bush won. He has lied and denied his way through an outstanding centralization of power and a fundamental reordering of international and domestic policy. I had faith that people would see through this guy even as they accepted Kerry as less than perfect. This is, in hindsight, a difficult position to ask others to take and it is much more palatable to simply expect that the stories of Bush's shortcomings are all politically motivated and vote for the guy who seems to be in charge. But I am not going to waste too much time psychoanalyzing such an inexplicable phenomenon. Bush will be president for four more years. This makes me feel completely defeated and alienated by this country. There may be two Americas, but when a president consistently ignores the one you're a part of, it makes it hard to accept his leadership. There was no way for this election to be anything but divisive. I just didn't expect it to make me feel divided from my formally confident self. The difference between the way I feel today and the way I felt a week ago (after having watched the response to Eminem's new vid--foolish fantasies multiplying) is something I wasn't prepared for. And the gloating of the "other side" is incomprehensible. I can barely be angry at it because I have a hard time understanding how they can truly believe the things that they claim. It was just dirty politics for a while, but now it seems everyone should just admit that most of it was based on lies.
Monday, November 01, 2004
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