Agreed.

Every time that I present a Marxist critique of capitalism to my Introduction to Politics course (we go through different political theorists from Hobbes through  something approaching contemporary questions), they end up agreeing with the analysis.

They've seen what rampant, rabid capitalism can do to a society. The question is how much to reform of the bad without taking from the good of capitalism.

As always, the devil's in the details.

Independent: Murder in Moscow: The shooting of Anna Politkovskaya

A body found slumped in a Moscow lift. A discarded pistol and four spent shells. A mysterious thin man in a black baseball cap. The murder yesterday of Anna Politkovskaya, the most famous reporter in Russia, is a story as sinister as anything she investigated in her fearless, award-winning career.

The 48-year-old, lauded by journalists and writers around the world for her exposés in Chechnya, appears to have been assassinated. Her most powerful enemy was President Vladimir Putin. The murder came two days before she was due to publish an exposé of the Chechnyan Prime Minister.

The gun found near her apartment block in central Moscow was a 9mm Makarov, known as the weapon of choice for Russian hitmen. Police said they were searching for a man in his twenties dressed in a black cap, seen just before neighbours discovered her body in the lift.

Amnesty International said that it was "shocked, saddened and deeply angered" at the death of Politkovskaya, who had won its international media award in 2002. A spokesman said: "Russia has lost a great human- rights defender."

Hat tip to Far Easterner for breaking this yesterday.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

The Guardian:

Cancer patients sacked illegally, survey finds

Cancer patients suffer discrimination and unfair dismissal at work despite recent legislation to protect their rights, disability experts said today.

An investigation by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) found that many cancer patients were discriminated against because their employers were not aware of their legal responsibilities.

The commission said its helpline had dealt with, on average, two calls a week from women with breast cancer complaining of unfair treatment at work since Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) was amended in December to give protection to people with cancer.

Straw blamed for 'racist' backlash

Guardian: Tea for two as Brown and Blair woo Murdoch

It must be tiresome, at times, having the two most important men in British politics pleading for your affections. But when you are Rupert Murdoch, being constantly pestered to drop round for tea with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is all part of the job - even if it is, as he says 'sometimes very inconvenient'.

In an interview with John Cassidy for New Yorker magazine, available from tomorrow in Britain, Murdoch gives his frankest assessment yet of the British political scene, describing Blair as a 'lame duck' ever since he announced he would not serve a full third term, and also disclosing that the rivalry between Blair and Brown is so great that he cannot meet one unless he also sees the other.

There will be groans in Downing Street at the way the media tycoon characterises his relationship with New Labour, portraying its two senior figures as vying for his attention.

Murdoch said Margaret Thatcher did not go out of her way to develop a personal relationship with him as premier, but that he had been courted tirelessly by the current administration.

'Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, whenever I'm in town they say, "Can't you come over for a cup of tea?" When you're invited by the Prime Minister to have a cup of tea, you have a cup of tea. It's sometimes very inconvenient - if you're only there two days and you have a month's work to do. And you have to be careful to have a cup of tea with them both, or they are very suspicious that you are lining up with the other one.'

IHT: Latvia's coalition government takes majority in parliamentary elections

RIGA, Latvia Latvia's ruling coalition narrowly managed to win enough seats to form a majority government in the Baltic state's general elections, the Central Election Commission said Sunday.

Led by Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis, the three-party coalition won 51 seats in the Saeima, or parliament -- six more seats than it currently has. It is the first time in Latvia that a sitting government has maintained its grip on power since the country broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Latvia has had 12 governments in 15 years of independence.

The fractured opposition took the remaining 49 seats, with the right-wing New Era party, a bitter rival of Kalvitis' People's Party, mustering 18 seats, and the Harmony Center, a left-wing force that represents Latvia's large ethnic Russian minority, received 17 seats.

The election was the country's first since joining the European Union and NATO in 2004.

With all votes counted, the center-right three-party coalition gathered 44.8 percent, according to results posted on the electoral commission's Web site.

Kalvitis' People's Party finished first with 19.5 percent of the vote, ahead of coalition partner the Greens and Farmers Union with 16.7 percent. The third coalition party, Latvia's First, was in fifth place with 8.6 percent, the results showed.

BBC: Shots fired amid Korean tension

South Korean troops have fired warning shots at soldiers from the North amid rising tension over North Korean plans to test a nuclear weapon.
Early reports suggest that about 40 shots were fired when soldiers crossed into the demilitarised zone.

Meanwhile, South Korea has welcomed a statement by the United Nations Security Council urging North Korea to abandon plans to test a nuclear weapon.

Seoul joined in calling on the North to return to six-party talks.

Some observers have warned that a nuclear test could come as early as this weekend.

After intruding some 30 metres (yards), the Northern troops returned to their side of the military demarcation line, it added.

One Southern military source, speaking anonymously to The Associated Press, said it was unclear whether the intrusion was "intentional or whether it was to catch fish".

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

Chicago Tribune: Jailed for 34 days, Tribune reporter writes: What I saw in Darfur

Humanitarian catastrophe poised to grow worse in weeks ahead

By Paul Salopek
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published October 8, 2006

One cloudless Sunday morning in early August, while traveling on a desert road in the remote Darfur region of western Sudan, a teenager sporting dreadlocks and an AK-47 rifle stopped my vehicle. My translator, Suleiman Abakar Moussa, stepped out and offered the youth a cigarette--standard etiquette in African war zones. But Moussa immediately returned to the car, frowning.

In this incidental way, I learned that we had just lost our freedom.

The young gunman belonged to a pro-government militia. And his patrol, after beating us and stealing our car and equipment, handed us over to Sudanese military intelligence. Moussa, my driver, Idriss Abdulrahman Anu, and I spent the next 34 days behind bars in Darfur, ending up hostage to a regime accused of mass murder. The government in Khartoum charged us with espionage, spreading "false news" and entering Africa's latest killing field without a visa.

It was hard not to feel, however, that our real crime was unspoken: reporting on a humanitarian catastrophe that is largely invisible to the outside world, and that is poised to grow worse in the weeks ahead.

Thousands of villagers will likely die soon in Darfur, the arid homeland of millions of farmers and herders who have been targeted in a ruthless civil war that some call genocide. Their torched huts, seen from the air, look like cigarette burns on a torture victim's skin.

Currently, a peace deal between the government and a major insurgent group is coming unglued. With the advent of the dry season, the Sudanese army and the fractious Darfur rebels are primed for a new military showdown. And, paradoxically, negotiators on the ground worry that a well-intentioned human-rights campaign, launched by Western activists on behalf of Darfur's civilians, may actually be locking in the violence. With Khartoum tarred as the bully, there is scant hope for any last-minute dialogue before the offensives begin.

Ironically, I wasn't focused exclusively on the Darfur tragedy when I crossed the desolate border separating Sudan and Chad on Aug. 6.

My Chadian colleagues and I were working on a much broader freelance assignment for National Geographic on the Sahel, the immense and turbulent band of savanna that runs across northern Africa, home to some 90 million struggling people.

Darfur was a side trip. Other journalists and aid workers had described how some Darfur refugees in Chad were drifting back to their ruined villages to rebuild their homes. It seemed a rare chance to profile civilians clinging to life in an intractable war zone. With our arrest, we unwittingly became part of that survival story.

For years, foreign correspondents have covered the Darfur crisis by slipping into rebel-held territory from Chad. Sudanese officials in Khartoum are stingy with journalist visas. Thus, much of what the world knows about a conflict that has killed at least 200,000 people comes from quick reportorial forays into the beautiful, lawless, corrugated plains and rocky escarpments controlled by Darfur's half-starved rebels.

Unfortunately for us, those insurgents can no longer be relied upon to guarantee our safety.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

New York Times: Raise the Gasoline Tax?  Funny, It doesn't sound Republican

Mr. Greenspan was hardly a proponent of raising taxes on energy to encourage conservation, a policy prescription generally associated with the politicians and economists of the left.

Until now. In late September, as he spoke to a group of business executives in Massachusetts, a question was posed as to whether he'd like to see an increase in the federal gasoline tax, which has stood at 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993. "Yes, I would," Mr. Greenspan responded with atypical clarity. "That's the way to get consumption down. It's a national security issue."

...

N. Gregory Mankiw, the Harvard economist who served as chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005, favored a higher gas tax before going to Washington, and has been banging the drum loudly for it since he left.

...

The roster of what Mr. Mankiw calls "economists and pundits with the good sense to have publicly advocated higher Pigovian taxes, such as gasoline taxes or carbon taxes," includes some of the usual suspects --  Paul Krugman, a columnist for The New York Times, and Al Gore, for example -- as well as unusual suspects like Gary S. Becker, the economics professor and Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago.

Andrew A. Samwick, chief economist on the Council of Economic Advisers from July 2003 to June 2004, and a professor of economics at Dartmouth, is a member in good standing. So is Martin S. Feldstein, the intellectual godfather of a generation of Republican economists.

...

But as much as Republican-leaning economists like Messrs. Greenspan, Mankiw and Samwick may think that it's a good idea, the Republican politicians who control the levers of power in Washington think that it's an awfully bad one, even though gas taxes in the United States are far lower than those in other industrialized countries.

...

... because President Bush and his top political advisers are known to be adamantly opposed to any increase in the gas tax, economic advisers haven't pushed it much. ...

THIS highlights a professional hazard faced by academic economists who serve in presidential administrations. They must act as team players who value the overall success of the administration -- even if they don't agree with all of its policies. As a result, economists must often stow some of their policy ideas in an intellectual coat check at the White House gates, where they can be reclaimed upon return to private life.

Or did anyone slip these guys a copy of Energize America?

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Daily Yomiuri Online: Inpex deal not end of the road

Inpex decided to reduce its interests in the development of Azadegan oil field [in Iran] --believed to have the largest reserves in the Middle East--from the current 75 percent to around 10 percent. The decision comes as a number of countries consider implementing economic sanctions on Iran as a means of pressuring it to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

...

conforming to international pressure means that Japan has now been forced to give up most of its stake in a national project to develop its own source of oil--a goal it has been pursuing for many years.

... However, ... Katsujiro Kida, executive senior vice president of Inpex, was quick to insist that the decision was unrelated to the international situation.

"The reason is simply a delay in removing land mines," Kida said. "It was a business judgment made as a private company."

... Progress in Iran's removal of land mines in the Azadegan area was undercutting the main Japanese excuse for stalling.

...

Observers also note that even if sanctions [against Iran] are averted, it would be difficult for Japan to go ahead with development as long as the United States maintains its hard-line stance toward Iran.

...

If sanctions are put in place, China and India will also likely hesitate in developing oil fields in Iran. Oil industry experts therefore believe that Iran was pressing Japan for an early start to development to tie it into the project ahead of sanctions and prevent delays for other, similar projects.

With the Japanese side refusing to be hurried by Iran's repeated demands, the Iranians appear to have decided it was better to restart the negotiations with another party by recovering the Japanese stake, than continue with negotiations indefinitely.

Question for those more knowledgeable about these things:

If sanctions are put in place, China and India will also likely hesitate in developing oil fields in Iran.

And yet this article claims that

the Iranians appear to have decided it was better to restart the negotiations with another party by recovering the Japanese stake

But if the Chinese and Indians would "hesitate" to work with Iran, who else would be a candidate for this "another party"?

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

WaPo: Advocates Say Illegal Workers Suffer After 9/11 Cleanup

Jose Moncada watched the World Trade Center towers tumble, and, like so many Americans, felt a patriotic urge to help rescue survivors and rebuild after Sept. 11. "It was my time to put my hand on my heart," he said. "It was my time to help somebody."

It did not matter to him that he was an illegal immigrant from Honduras. And that did not seem to matter to supervisors who oversaw the retrieval of human remains and the removal of toxic debris at Ground Zero. They welcomed Moncada and thousands of other illegal immigrants, no questions asked.

Working on the pile for 10 days, Moncada breathed in thick dust, grainy asbestos and foul-smelling gases driven by an angry downtown wind. Now, five years later, he suffers from a hacking cough, nosebleeds, wheezing breath and life-threatening respiratory illnesses that also trouble thousands of legal U.S. residents who worked there.

No one knows how many illegal immigrants worked at Ground Zero in the days after Sept. 11. Immigration advocates claim it was thousands.

[... more horror stories ... ]

In 2004, an advocacy group called Beyond Ground Zero noticed more and more immigrants getting sick. The advocates approached Bellevue Hospital and asked for help. The hospital started an unfunded program that provided care to patients, and last year the American Red Cross donated money to expand the program.

This month, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R) pledged $16 million over five years to expand the initiative further. Within two weeks, the occupational safety committee received more than 350 calls from immigrants, Calderón said. Newton said 500 people had been screened for medical examinations by her organization, and 700 people were waiting.

But the assistance may have come too late for illegal immigrants who have gone home since working at Ground Zero, advocates and workers said.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

New York Times: Death Squad Fears Again Haunt Argentina

A crucial witness in the trial of a notorious human rights abuser has been missing for nearly three weeks, and authorities and rights groups here say they fear he may have been abducted and killed in a new campaign to intimidate prosecutors, judges and witnesses in cases that have not yet gone to court.

Mr. López vanished Sept. 18, one day before Miguel Etchecolatz, who was the police commissioner in Buenos Aires Province during the right-wing military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, was sentenced to life in prison.

The disappearance of Jorge Julio López, 77, a retired construction worker and former political prisoner, has awakened a host of old fears among Argentines. Some worry that it is a signal of a return of right-wing death squads that were thought to be extinct, precisely at the moment when the leaders of those groups are belatedly being summoned to justice. "They are sending a message, that they can still threaten, kidnap and kill," said Nilda Eloy of the Association of Former Detainees and the Disappeared, referring to former members of the police, security and military forces that were responsible for the forced disappearance of as many as 30,000 people. "There is a great deal of fear." Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, is awash in posters with Mr. López's name and image, some urging anyone with potential clues or leads to call a hot line, and others proclaiming "We are looking for truth, justice, Julio." The government has offered a $65,000 reward for information that can establish his whereabouts or fate, and on Friday night an estimated 100,000 people marched to the main plaza here to call for Mr. Lopez's reappearance. ... Leaders of some rights groups said they had even returned home from meetings to discuss the López case only to find that they had been surreptitiously recorded, and that messages on their phone machines played back their own words. ... "The past has not been defeated or overcome," Mr. Kirchner said last month in reference to Mr. López's disappearance, also warning against those who "want to sow fear." "Let's stay on the alert, Argentines, we can't allow this past to repeat itself," he said. The government has offered bodyguards to some rights leaders and potential witnesses who may be having second thoughts about testifying in the coming trials. But some former victims, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were reluctant to accept that offer because the protection would come from members of the same police forces that were under suspicion in Mr. López's disappearance.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Wall Street Journal: Tax Tidal Wave (Friday 2006/10/06)

Another round of Laffer Curve debunking in the pipeline?

... the government will soon report that the federal budget deficit for the just-completed 2006 fiscal year fell to about $260 billion.

...

The main cause of the deficit decline -- 90% of it, says White House budget director Rob Portman -- is a tidal wave of tax revenue. Tax collections have increased by $521 billion in the last two fiscal years, the largest two-year revenue increase -- even after adjusting for inflation -- in American history.

...

One place it has come from are corporations, whose tax collections have climbed by 76% over the past two years thanks to greater profitability. Personal income tax payments are up by 30.3% since 2004 too, despite the fact that the highest tax rate is down to 35% from 39.6%.

...

More good news is that dividend-tax payments appear to be up as well, even though the tax rate was lowered to 15% from as high as 39.6%. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that "after a continuous decline in dividend payments over more than two decades, total regular dividends have grown by nearly 20%" and that this reversal happened at "precisely the point at which the lower tax rate was proposed and subsequently applied retroactively." There hasn't been a purer validation of the Laffer Curve since Ronald Reagan rode off into the sunset.

As for the budget deficit, at $260 billion it is now about 2% of our $13 trillion economy, well below the 2.7% average of the last 40 years. Most states and localities are also afloat in tax collections, and including their revenue surpluses brings the total U.S. public sector borrowing down to roughly 1.5% of GDP.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

BBC: Web sale for Bridget Jones' pants

A pair of outsized underpants from the film Bridget Jones's Diary are to be sold on the internet, weeks after they fetched £2,000 at a charity auction.

The pants, which have been signed by actor Hugh Grant with the message "Hello Mummy! Lots of love and kisses", were first auctioned on 14 September.

The sale took place in central London to benefit The Royal Parks Foundation.

Winning bidder Anna Mann said she decided to re-auction the pants on eBay to raise more money for the charity.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

ABS-CBN:

US recalls ground beef over E.coli worries

- A US meat processing firm is recalling some 2,360 kilograms of ground beef possibly tainted by E. coli bacteria, health officials said, just weeks after several people died from contaminated fresh spinach.

The US Food Safety and Inspection Service announced Friday that the Harlan, Iowa firm Jim's Market and Locker was voluntarily calling back the ground beef shipped to seven midwest states.

"The problem was discovered through microbiological testing. FSIS has received no reports of illnesses associated with consumption of this product," the agency said in a statement.

Reminder: the particularly virulent strain of E. Coli that recently turned spinach into a killer comes from the over-acid intestines of cattle fed grain-based concentrates and insufficient hay and grass in industrial intensive farming.

New York Times: Cat Lovers Lining Up for No-Sneeze Kitties

Jerome, if ever one of those kittens gets lost for good, something to consider...

A small California biotech company says it is ready to deliver the Holy Grail of the $35 billion pet industry: a hypoallergenic cat.

Two cats with a mutant gene that produces a modified protein far less likely to induce allergies.

At the start of next year, the first kittens -- which the company calls "lifestyle pets" -- will go home to eager owners who have been carefully screened and have been on a waiting list for more than two years.

Since it announced the project in October 2004, the company, Allerca, of San Diego, says it has received inquiries from people in 85 countries seeking to buy a cat bred so that its glands do not produce the protein responsible for most human cat allergies.

Cats ordered now will take 12 to 15 months for delivery in the United States, 15 to 18 months in Europe. Cost: $4,000. And owners must pass Allerca's finicky screening tests.

Prospective buyers are interviewed for motivation and warmth, approved as if they were adopting a child. Will they punish if kitty has an accident on the floor or scratches the furniture? Their families and their homes -- from carpets to curtains -- must also be evaluated for allergies and allergens.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Ma as an essential ingredient for all life. Hmmmmm - that is a new one. I wonder what the other indespensible components of the Life Recipe are?

You can't be me, I'm taken

But thanks for the heads up! You caught me at a bad moment - the weekend had kicked in and I resolved to let the brains have some necessary rest and dedicate myself to some strenuous handy work as cutting wood and cooking (on electricity. Not on wood.). But - and this may seem the appropriate moment - when walking the dog yesterday, I amusedly wondered whether I should lift up your string of comments into a diary, title it "Solving the Mysteries of Science on a Friday Afternoon" and use it as a platform to ditch in all kind of new comments and discoveries. It's always a pleasure when you start digging into a subject - something new pops up every time.

I am working, mentally, on a reply, but I also need to get a source right first. Alternatively, have you read Bill Bryson's "A short history of nearly everything"?

Alexei Sayle is a icon in the British left wing alternative comedy scene. Superb political satire. (He's a Marxist as far as I know).

In fact, it was a book on the rise of the alternative comedy scene in the UK which I read through the night without stopping at about aged 14, that made me realise the that I was living in a white, middle class, Daily Mail reading version of hell.  It completely opened my eyes to politics and I've never looked back.

I don't know who Jeff Foxworthy is though.

Ad astra per aspera

Alexei Sayle: Brilliant British "Marxist comedian".  Was on the classic TV show "The Young Ones."

Jeff Foxworthy: Idiot Red State "redneck comedian".  Famous for dumb "You might be a redneck if..." jokes.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire