Young Master Smeet
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http://www.juancole.com/2015/12/defeating-campaign-talking.htmlSeems the West are winning:
Quote:Ramadi fell to Daesh last spring, soon after the Iraqi government took Tikrit, a large Sunni city north of Baghdad with a population before 2014 of some 500,000, away from the radicals. Ramadi is capital of largely Sunni Arabi al-Anbar province. Most people in Ramadi have by now fled the city, leaving behind perhaps some 15,000 trapped there by 1,000 Daesh fighters. The Iraqi military and its Shiite militia allies surrounded Ramadi and have largely cut Daesh off from resupply of arms and ammunition.[…]But it is being reported that the lead in Ramadi is being taken by US-trained regular Iraqi troops supported by both Shiite militias and some Sunni clansmen.If this continues, IS will be greatly diminished in Iraq, and piossibly cut off from Syria. Now, as Cole notes, a political solution is necessary, Fallujah has been pacified three times, and is basically in IS hands (or hands of IS allies).
Quote:To do that, we need a state that invests. We need an entrepreneurial, nimble state that neither wages war with markets nor bows in their presence, but shapes them. It is the rules set out by the state that allows markets to flourish.This means we can shape competitive markets and shape the goods they produce, so that we can all start making the right choices for our future. We need carbon budgeting to be the centrepiece of trade and commerce, taking the planet back to sustainable levels of CO2 emissions.But governments should not be the only actors on the stage; they cannot achieve this world alone. All of us must remake the material world, together. We must be confident in the technology we have and the technology we can invent. We must get organised, harnessing the extraordinary powers of connectivity humanity has developed for itself. Third, governments must not only commit public investment to cleaner energy and infrastructure, but channel private trillions too. They must use a range of policy levers to direct investment and shape markets.Corbyn in the Times today (paywall) http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4635914.eceThis is just warmed up social democracy of the 19320's, the state promoting microeconomic efficiency, to produce growth. Not only has this been tried before, and failed, but it's clear that this approach cannot eliminate inequality and poverty, which are essential features of the market system. 'Designed markets' sound like a cunning way of getting business onside, but the need for profitability will always trump the designed ends.
Quote:The Hiwi in our study population initiated first peaceful contact with Venezuelan nationals in 196o…Despite this rather bleak situation, we discovered, through systematic interviews, that mortality rates had been even higher in the precontact period.Data on individuals were ascertained by repeated census and reproductive-history interviews from September 1985 to January 1992Year of birth is known for all children born after 1983. Year of birth before 1983 was derived from a calendar of dated events (46 dated events between 1957 and 1992) that could be matched with each birth or by using the age-chain method. All individuals who were born before 1957 were assigned year of birth based on their place in the relative-age list, the age-chain year of birth, or the year of birth determined for individuals born at about the same time (see Hill and Hurtado, 1996). The age-chain was constructed using interviews with informants who reported having been the same developmental size as a 12-year-old when an individual of known year of birth was born. Such reports allowed us to assign probable year of birth to the older individual in the pair, and then we repeated the process back through time until all living individuals were assigned a year of birth. Small adjustments (a year or two in either direction for older individuals) were made in the age-chain when there were discrepancies between it and the relative-age list we had constructed. This method produced age estimates with likely error of less than 5 years for adults, as in our prior Ache study (for verification of birthdates obtained by this method, see Hill and Hurtado, 1996). Ages at death (and thus year of death) in the precontact period were assigned by matching the person's appearance at time of death to an individual in the living population of known age.Basically, they asked them.
jondwhite wrote:I don't get it. Governments paying for the building, then paying for maintenance is two payments even if they borrow the money for one.So, while they are still paying the debts, they are making a second payment for amortisation (maintenance), this doubles the strain on current finances. If, say, the government had saved up the cash in advance (which they can't), they'd only have the amortisation to pay.So, taking, say, council housing, if the government borrows to expand housing, it will end up with the cost of repayment and maintenance. If the repayment period is longer than the time it takes to fully turnover the full cost of purchase (i.e. 60 years on a building that will last 30) then a government can be left with stray debts without assets to back them up, and without the capacity to pay for replacement buildings or keeping up with maintenance, never mind expansion of provision.Yes, growth wikll diminish the relative size of those repayments in relation to tax receipts (and inflation), but only so long as the econonomy is growing.Another way of saying this, is that debt. cannot replace taxation, and state provision is limited by the capacity of the market to generate wealth: also that repayment of debt will take precedence over curent expenditure on services.
I didn't say social contract, but truce. The US constitution contains the hidden hand of Shay's rebellion, the role of slaves who joined the British during the War of Independence, etc. The British state contains laws demanded by the workers movement. The US did conquer groups like the Navajo Empire, who were themselves busy expanding over other trabal groups (and remain the Native American Nation today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_reservation).The idea of reservations shows the quasi truce like nature of legal systems, since these legal entities now shape a relationship that has underlying force. As I recall, in many instances, the state in the US lagged behind the private enterprise of the settlers (indeed, in some senses, the British intention to recognise the Native Borders and stop expandsion was a proximate cause of the War of Independence).Agency is not a one way street. A 'selective invented tradition' means appropriation and recuperation of culture by the hegemonic elite, but also implie that there is a dialogue and something like a common language.
I think here are significant differences to 'tradiotnal state formation', whilst primary accumulation (i.e. extraction of raw surplus) is an inherent part, most states emerge from within a wider culture, hence the formulation of 'selective inventive tradition', myth of the Norman Yolk not withstanding. This is important, because most states have some element of buy-in from the local population, and as they develop, there is the element of the state as the terms of the class truce.With regard to Empire and Colonialism, don't forget that the European empires were outgrowths of free enetrprise, i.e. that there were classes of people outside the state who did the slave trading and primary accumulation (albeit with the backing of the state).IS aren't looking for buy-in, and their membersdon't have private enterprises (AFAICS) outside that organisation. Their plundering is more akin to the Spanish Conquistadors, more direct and naked (and, thus, weaker). IS is more akin to an imposed culture (and it hasn't been round long enough to see what sway the apparent allegiance of the tribes will have).
Yes, it's mostly by interview with existing Hiwi, and cross referencing (in case someone 'forgot' an infant death).
Quote:Data on individuals were ascertained by repeated census and reproductive-history interviews from September 1985 to January 1992. We completed six field sessions during this time for a total of 16 months with the Mahünemuthu group of Hiwi. Although KH and AMH became reasonably fluent in the Hiwi language during the course of fieldwork, all data were collected with the assistance of a bilingual informant (Hiwi-Spanish) to ensure accuracy. We used our linguistic proficiency to verify that questions and answers were interpreted correctly. Data on 779 individuals were entered into our demographic database during this period; 427 of those individuals had died by January 1992, and 17% of the reported deaths were from causes unknown to our informants. Because another small percentage could not be assigned an accurate year of death, we were left with 722 individuals, whose age, sex, and year of death were reported.Causes of death were tabulated by reported symptoms rather than cultural interpretations of cause (e.g., we ignored witchcraft, etc., and focused on manifest symptoms). These were aggregated into categories and then assigned to one of four major classes: disease, degenerative/congenital problem, accident, and violence. Disease included infectious disease (respiratory infection, skin infection, microbial-caused blindness, tetanus, measles, systemic infection, diarrhea and vomiting, gastrointestinal infections, malaria, fever and headache, general lethargy, and miscellaneous “illness”), organic and pathological conditions (heart problems, liver problems, body swellings, cancer, hemorrhoids, “swallowed tongue”), nutritional deficiencies (skinny, “ate dirt”), and mental illness. Degenerative/congenital problems included biologically based causes not due to pathogen exposure and deaths related to childbirth or old age. This category consisted of newborn death due to birth trauma, prematurity and early failure to thrive, death in childbirth, death due to mother's inability to produce milk, and death from old age. Deaths from old age are ultimately caused by some undetected pathology (e.g., cancer, stroke, heart attack), but we have no further information about these deaths. Accidents included outcomes associated with environmental hazards (drowning, falling, burns, animal-caused trauma, insect-caused trauma, choking, lost) and human-caused accidental deaths (self-stabbing, hunting accident, suffocated, poisoned, killed when playing or sleeping, accidents while intoxicated). Violent deaths consisted of intentional Hiwi-caused mortality (suicide, infanticide, child homicide, adult homicide, warfare) and “criollo”-caused deaths (murders and massacres).Hmmm.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248406002193
Quote:In examining the causes of Hiwi death, we note an important difference from the hunter-gatherer groups most commonly cited in the literature. Despite the postcontact massacres organized by local ranchers, the precontact period was characterized by even higher rates of violence, with 54% of the killings caused by the Hiwi themselves. In total, 36% of all precontact adult deaths were due to warfare and homicide. The Hiwi crude death rate due to warfare/homicide is 1,018 per 100,000 person years lived, six times higher than the hunter-gatherer median reported by Wrangham et al. (2006). The crude death rate from accidental trauma is 297 per 100,000. Indeed, among young adults, the combined death rate from violence and accident in the precontact Hiwi is about 1.1% per year, which is equal to the mean death rate for the Ache, Hadza, and !Kung from all causes combined. We suggest that reported modern African hunter-gatherer rates of violence may be low because of interference by powerful state-level societies prior to demographic study (cf. Blurton Jones et al., 2002), and there is considerable evidence that groups like the Bushmen engaged in much higher levels of violence prior to colonial repression (e.g., Schapera, 1930).http://ourworldindata.org/data/violence-rights/ethnographic-and-archaeological-evidence-on-violent-deaths/Now, this is interesting, although it does raise a lot of questions. One is, how are we definign violent death found in a grave site? Any sign of bone damage whilst likely to be a human weapon, could be a fall, or other accident. Naturally, such data is patchy, due to the number of bones surviving long enough to give us any evidence, and not all violence will leave a trace in the bones.We also need to factor in the smaller populations of such societies. The death of one adult male would be a higher proportion than in a bigger community, so any 'background radiation'' of personal vioelnce would show up as much more significant.
Another interesting map:Note how "State of Aleppo" covers most of what IS now holds; how 'Alwaite State' is more or less what the Syrian Government holds securely (with the addition of Damascus itself). Now, even these lines are likely to be arbitrary, but it does suggest that tehre is a 'constituency' which IS have managed to appeal. to.
Rod,no one seriously disputes the Greenhouse effect, so all we have to demonstrate is that human activity has increased output of greenhouse gasses. Thus:http://climatechangeconnection.org/emissions/world-ghg-emissions-by-source/(see chart). The debate is over the climate models and the speed of change and the nature of its impact.So, the simple question: we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and we know that human caused emissions of CO2 (and other gasses) has increased masively over the past 200 years, how can it not have had an impact?
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-12/01/c_134870766.htmThis is interesting,
Xingua wrote:DAMASCUS, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) — A total of 120 rebels evacuated a western Damascus neighborhood on Monday to rebel-held areas in the northwest of Syria under new deal concluded with the Syrian authorities, a well-informed source told Xinhua.120 rebels evacuated the district of Qudsayah along with their families to rebel-held areas in Idlib province under the UN supervision, Maher Murhej, an opposition activist and head of the Syrian Youth Party, told Xinhua.And a similar deal could end the fighting in Homs. The suggestion is this is an outcome of the Vienna talks. Admittedly, Hawks will say that force, and the hreat of force spurs such deals, but maybe this shows that talks work?
Dave B wrote:The praying five times a day isn’t in the Quran I think and it probably comes from the Zoroastrians. http://heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/worship/ like a lot of religious practice it appears in the supplemental hadiths; I thinkI think it's actually from original practice, although for a while, in Mohammed's time, it was thrice a day, and towards Jeusalem, and then it changed after the Muslims took Mecca. Obviously, it probabkly comes from practicces common among religious groups prior to Mohammed, but I think it is a 'core' thing.
I found that paper here:http://socialistunity.com/how-can-isil-be-defeated/That is a slightly more tendentious 'leave it to Assad and Russia' peice. I don't think that's entirely true, but it is true that britain's financial clout counts for more than military here.
Bit of a lng paper: http://www.securityintransition.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ISIL-JAN-and-the-war-economy-in-Syria1.pdfSeems to be on the right lines, and with a sensible list of action points (on a quick skim).
