Tuesday, February 03, 2004

Bush and the future. Posted here Tuesday, February 03, 2004 at 9:21:30 PM     I've been reading Johnson's Napoleon, and thinking about how Bush likes to identify with Churchill, who led, so Bush will lead. Find a cause and push on. Militarize the US and spend the surplus. Bush might then ruin himself and the country. Is this the outlines of the story that future historians will tell? ********

More consumers as the answer? Posted here Tuesday, February 03, 2004 at 6:02:40 PM     More from the Atlantic. The way to solve the economic problem is by creating more middle class consumers... but in reality corporations want to sell to each other, the environment is at risk,  and there is a world wide surplus of many products, like cars. Also at stake is the image of life: is consumerism to be the driver of the future in a crowded world? How to escape this predicament? The United States cannot, of course, undo its debtor position overnight. But there are steps that it can take to keep the current-account deficit from getting worse, and to begin to wean our economy from its unhealthy relationship with Asian exporters. Essentially, we must begin to reverse the pattern of overconsumption by Americans and underconsumption by Asians that now characterizes the U.S.-Asian relationship. The first step, if we want to stop accumulating international debt, is to begin producing more than we consume—and to do that we must increase our national levels of saving and investment. But that in itself could cause a global economic crisis: if American consumers stop buying, the world economy might sputter and collapse. Thus we must also encourage other societies to consume more, particularly more U.S. goods and services. There are inherent limits to how much the aging societies of Europe and Japan will be able to absorb from American producers, so the fastest route to decreasing the current-account deficit while growing the global economy lies in building a middle class of consumers in the emerging economies of Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. The way to do this is to encourage Europe and Japan to invest their surplus savings in countries such as South Korea, China, Taiwan, Brazil, Malaysia, Turkey, and Mexico. Such an influx of investment would allow those emerging economies to both consume more and invest more, helping to produce what might be called middle-class-oriented development. ********

China holds us debt.. Posted here Tuesday, February 03, 2004 at 3:21:01 PM     More from the Atlantic State of the Union Simply by dumping U.S. Treasury bills and other dollar-denominated assets, China—which holds more federal U.S. debt than any other country—could cause the value of the dollar to plummet, leading to a major crisis for the U.S. economy. China and Japan wouldn't have to be consciously hostile to wreak havoc; they could create a currency crisis by accident, through either bad policy decisions or instability in their own economies. Both countries have weak banking systems that are burdened by bad loans that will never be repaid. Economists have long warned that the collapse of Japan's banking system could devastate the United States. A Chinese banking crisis could cause equally severe problems. ********

On WMD - no support from the Intelligence Community Posted here Tuesday, February 03, 2004 at 3:13:28 PM     From tomorrow's Independent Intelligence chief's bombshell: 'We were overruled on dossier' By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor 04 February 2004 The intelligence official whose revelations stunned the Hutton inquiry into the death of government scientist David Kelly has suggested that not a single defence intelligence expert backed Tony Blair's most contentious claims on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. As Mr Blair yesterday set up an inquiry into intelligence failures before the war, Brian Jones, the former leading expert on WMD in the Ministry of Defence, declared that Downing Street's dossier, a key plank in convincing the public of the case for war, was "misleading" about Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological capability. Writing in today's Independent, Dr Jones, who was head of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of the Defence Intelligence Staff until he retired last year, reveals that the experts failed in their efforts to have their views reflected. Dr Jones says: "In my view, the expert intelligence analysts of the DIS were overruled in the preparation of the dossier back in September 2002, resulting in a presentation that was misleading about Iraq's capabilities." He calls on the Prime Minister to publish the intelligence behind the Government's claims that Iraq was actively producing chemical weapons and could launch an attack within 45 minutes of an order to do so. He is "extremely doubtful" that anyone with chemical and biological weapons expertise had seen the raw intelligence reports and if they were made public, it would prove just how right he and his colleagues were to be concerned about the claims. Downing Street was triumphant last week when Lord Hutton ruled that Andrew Gilligan's claims that the dossier was "sexed up" were "unfounded". But Dr Jones's comments are bound to boost the wider case of the BBC and others that the dossier failed to take into account worries of intelligence officials. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, revealed for the first time yesterday that he would not have supported military action against Baghdad if he had known that Iraq lacked weapons of mass destruction. Acutely aware of the American inquiry into the war, Mr Blair said that a committee of inquiry would investigate "intelligence gathering, evaluation and use" in the UK before the conflict in Iraq. Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former cabinet secretary, will chair the five-strong committee which will meet in private. The Liberal Democrats refused to support the inquiry because its remit was not wide enough. ********

Virus and power Posted here Tuesday, February 03, 2004 at 10:35:37 AM     The compariosn between human and computer virus. And the pressure for security. Look at the solution.. One route is to hire Web hosting firms specializing in defending against such attacks. If all else fails, companies have little option but to pull the site from the Web. But with viruses increasingly well-hidden, Hypponen said the responsibility for protection ultimately will come down to technology firms because people have proven they cannot resist clicking on mysterious attachments. "I've lost my faith in education. It never helps, people will never learn... They will click on everything," he said. "We really have to take security to a higher level, and take the responsibility away from the users... (People) have to be automatically secured by someone else," he said. The drive for security and the loss of hope in life seem to go together. The demogogues will use the security problem as an opportunity to seize the systems: democractic or technical.   ********

Asian flu dynamics Posted here Tuesday, February 03, 2004 at 9:36:58 AM     The great problem of asian flu, and that is the tendency of larg populations of humans to be dependent on large populations of very stressed anaimals. Culling measures now must be looked at in a different way since chickens are a very important source of protein in the region," Stöhr said. "The balance must be struck between ensuring human health against the virus while making sure we do not undermine these countries in other ways." While the avian disease outbreak does not technically fall under the authority of the World Health Organization, the agency has been watching with great concern as migratory birds appear to carry the disease across borders. "One of the more likely scenarios is that the distribution of the virus around Asia may have occurred through migratory birds," Stöhr said. "A dead falcon was found to be excreting H5N1 ten days ago on the shores of Hong Kong." If migratory birds are indeed spreading the disease, then avian flu could potentially spread to chickens in Europe. . "There are migratory bird routes connecting Siberia with Europe, but I don't dare to speculate," Stöhr said. "It is certainly true that migratory birds play a role, but we have not completely divined which one." . International Herald Tribune With avian influenza showing no sign of slowing its spread across Asia, officials at the World Health Organization are warning that the danger to human health is increasing daily. . "The human outbreak is completely dependent in dynamic and scope on the avian influenza outbreak," said Klaus Stöhr, the World Health Organization's top influenza expert. "We have the potential for a real global health emergency." On Tuesday, Indonesia joined Cambodia, China, Japan, Laos and South Korea in reporting that forms of the H5N1 avian virus have hit poultry farms, while Taiwan and Pakistan have reported the presence of a different avian influenza. Tens of millions of chickens have been slaughtered by governments across the region in a mass culling intended to contain the flu. So far the human death toll from the species-jumping disease stands at 12, after Vietnam and Thailand on Monday reported a death each from the virus. . Most cases have been traced to direct contact with sick birds, but there has been one unconfirmed case of human-to-human transmission in Vietnam. Although number of human victims of the bird flu outbreak is still modest in comparison with the number of people infected with SARS in the epidemic that struck Asia last year, the World Health Organization warns that a strain of avian influenza adapted to humans would present a much greater danger. . "So far we only have a handful of cases, so from one perspective it is a relatively low concern," Stöhr said. "On the other hand, we could face a full-blown pandemic if the virus began circulating among humans." Such a pandemic would make the roughly 8,000 infections and 800 deaths attributed to SARS last year seem very small in scale. . "Major influenza pandemics of the last century infected anywhere from 10 percent up to 40 percent of the world's population," Stöhr said. "In one pandemic an estimated 40 to 50 million people died when the world population was one-third of where it stood now," he added, referring to the pandemic of Spanish flu in 1918. Influenza greatly outstrips SARS in its ability to infect, spread and mutate. . SARS baffled scientists at the outset with its ability to jump across borders, but the spread quickly came under control after the World Health Organization issued a travel warning. Testing for fever, a symptom of SARS, almost entirely stopped its spread through airports. . Limiting the spread of the SARS in a highly contaminated hospital setting, such as Hong Kong's Prince of Wales Hospital, proved almost impossible at the outset. But by the end of the outbreak, once scientists determined that most transmission took place through a cough or a sneeze, hospitals maintained control by resurrecting old-fashioned barrier nursing techniques. . In contrast with SARS, which requires close personal contact for infection, an influenza virus can float across a room and still infect. . Also, while scientists feared SARS would mutate into a more virulent form, the disease remained stable; the ability of influenza to mutate is one of its chief dangers. . "The avian influenza is changing significantly," Stöhr said. "It is swapping genes with other forms of other H5 virus and other viruses and has indicated a propensity to cause a public health hazard as well as agricultural problems." The danger in swapping genes with other strains of influenza is that the strain could become more virulent or contagious. The most worrying aspect of the avian influenza so far, however, has been its ability to spread among chickens across Asia. . "We have never seen an outbreak of avian influenza that has spread to so many countries in such a short period of time and affected such a large area," Stöhr said. "The scale brings things to a whole different level when you look for solutions." The influenza currently spreading among chickens in Asia, the H5N1 strain, first jumped to humans in Hong Kong in 1997. Brought under control in the past by slaughtering millions of birds in a matter of days, such solutions are increasingly difficult. . "Culling measures now must be looked at in a different way since chickens are a very important source of protein in the region," Stöhr said. "The balance must be struck between ensuring human health against the virus while making sure we do not undermine these countries in other ways." ********

Marc Bousquet Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers Posted here Tuesday, February 03, 2004 at 9:29:51 AM     A fascinating example of how an academic can touch on very fundamental issues of life and work. From the Minnesota review Changing the managed university (and the "politics of work" therein) requires understanding that the "market fundamentalism" current among university managers has no more purchase on what is and should be than any other system of foundational belief. A humanly-engineered historical emergence of the past three decades, the "managed university" names a global phenomenon: the forced privatization of public higher education; the erosion of faculty, student, and citizen participation in higher education policy, except through academic-capitalist and consumerist practices; and the steady conversion of socially-beneficial activities to the commodity form (Rhoades and Slaughter, Slaughter and Leslie, Martin). As Randy Martin makes clear, these circumstances are not brought about in the North American and European context because the state has "withdrawn" from higher education, but because it "invests itself" ever more aggressively "in promoting an alignment of human initiative with business interest" (7). Globally, the IMF and World Bank have actively promoted a similar "reform agenda" with respect to higher education and used their power to impose involuntary privatization on national higher education systems, especially in Africa, requiring tuition fees, and effectively "recolonizing" cultural and intellectual life throughout the global South, as direct policy intervention combined with neoliberal "constraints" caused universities to "substitute new staff, standardize pedagogical materials and marginalize local knowledges" (Levidow para. 24-36). In the pragmatist-managerial version of "materialism," collective human agencies are conspicuously absent: "markets" are real agents and persons generally are not, except in their acquiescence to market dicta. Miller, for example, writes: "the truth is that the question of who's qualified to teach first-year writing was settled long ago by the market" ("Let's" 99). In a world of systems "governed" by the "arbitrary," the "only possible" human agency becomes something like flexible self-specialization, the continuous re-tooling of self in response to market "demands," a subjectivity that Richard Sennett observes is just as unsatisfying a "corrosion of character" for those who "win" the market game as those who "lose." In this view, persons can only be agents by adopting the arts of corporate domination and by fitting themselves to the demands of the market, "working within a system governed by shifting and arbitrary requirements" (Miller, "Arts" 26). Representing corporate domination as a fact of life, this brand of pragmatism ultimately conceals an historically specific ideological orientation (neoliberalism) behind an aggressive (re)description of "reality," in which "left-wing" bogeymen are sometimes raised as the threats to human agency. (The real threat to human agency is the corporate-bureaucratic limits to human possibility established by the pragmatists themselves.) What most troubles me about managerial pragmatism is the way it seeks to curb the ambitions of our speech and rhetoric. In the managerial account, contemporary realities dictate that all non-market idealisms will be "dismissed as the plaintive bleating of sheep," but corporate-friendly speech "can be heard as reasoned arguments" (Miller, "Arts" 27). More important than such adjectives and analogies, however, are the substructure of assumptions about what rhetoric is for. The implicit scene of speech here is of "pleasing the prince," featuring an all-powerful auditor with values beyond challenge, and a speaker only able to share power by association with the dominating logic of the scene—a speaker whose very humanity depends upon complicity. As a cultural-studies scholar, I understand the lived realities of subjectivity under domination and the need for acts of "complicity." But, this scene of complicity need not be mistaken as the central topos constitutive of human agency, nor should intellectuals committed to transformation mistake the prince—however powerful—as the object of our rhetoric. ********

Translation - Proust from the Atlantic Posted here Tuesday, February 03, 2004 at 9:13:51 AM     An excellent example of the problem of translation, in this case Proust thus commenced in a fault-finding frame of mind. The best plan seemed to be a straight comparison between versions of my favorite passages in Swann's Way. One of these is the description of the loyal but venomous cook Françoise, unacknowledged ruler of the house at Combray. Her vendetta against the hapless and pregnant kitchen maid is one of the minor splendors of the early chapters. Of the unknown and presumably taste-lacking seducer of this foolish, fallen girl Françoise says in the Kilmartin translation, which comes more or less straight from Scott Moncrieff: "Dear, dear, it's just as they used to say in my poor mother's day: 'Frogs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails, And dirty sluts in plenty, Smell sweeter than roses in young men's noses When the heart is one-and-twenty.'" The Davis version puts it like this: "Oh dear! It's just as they used to say in my poor mother's patois: 'Fall in love with a dog's bum, And thou'll think it pretty as a plum.'" Now, the original French is even more pungent, and also (grant Proust this much, for once) more terse: "Qui du cul d'un chien s'amourose, Il lui parait une rose."   And the review there is the kind of paragraph that shows the value of art, the nuanced understanding, full of light and relevance to our dilemmas. Yet Proust is reliably lucid and almost invariably kind. "The struggle of man against power," said Milan Kundera, reprobating amnesia, "is the struggle of memory against forgetting." Ernest Renan earlier took a different view, saying that in order for a nation to exist, it had to agree to remember a certain number of things and also to forget a certain number of things. The almost hypnotic effect of Proust is to make this into a distinction without a difference, and to demonstrate that an apparently self-absorbed individual may yet draw his strength and his insight from a passionate engagement with the interior and exterior lives of others, as well as his own. On him not much was lost. ********