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1126 Tobin tax relevance? -- rank: 1000

At 04:27 PM 10/25/98 +0000, Mark wrote: >Chris Burford wrote: > >> Mark Jones has challenged me again on the Tobin tax, this time on Louis >> Proyect's list. I am therefore copying this post there. > >Gimme a break. If I challenged you on the Tobin Tax you either wouldn't >even realise your head was off until it fell to the ground, You did just challenge me. But you seem to be as unaware of the fact, as I am unaware that my head has hit the ground. Where is your head? ...

Document Size:	10948
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Oct 25 16:05:16 PST 1998

1127 Tobin tax relevance? -- rank: 1000

Mark Jones has challenged me again on the Tobin tax, this time on Louis Proyect's list. I am therefore copying this post there. On 23rd August Mark had forwarded a report to LBO-talk on the depth of the recession in Hong Kong with the title "Tobin or not Tobin? It's just plain irrelevant..." When I replied arguing the relevance of Hong Kong in the confrontation that has occurred this year with the substantial defeat of laissez faire neo-liberal doctrines, Mark replied At 12:33 AM 8/24/ ...

Document Size:	14181
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Oct 25 01:51:41 PST 1998

1128 Gay bashing and laws -- rank: 1000

At 01:36 AM 10/23/98 +0100, you wrote: >In message <3.0.2.32.19981023002247.0102f06c at pop.gn.apc.org>, Chris >Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> writes > >>As far as (bourgeois) democratic rights are concerned we should not >>absolutise them, but decide which ones to support and campaign for >>according to the context and the balance of advantage for working people. >>No platform for homophobia! I really am surprised at the extent of the >>defen ...

Document Size:	7088
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Oct 23 16:01:22 PDT 1998

1129 Gay sex stats by class -- rank: 1000

I thought I would check the excellent demographic survey of "Sexual Behaviour in Britain" 1994, Penguin. Wellings, Field, Johnson, Wadsworth (all women). Total sample size 18,000 plus. Stratified by class etc. Of whom 8,300 plus were men, of whom only 6% admitted to any sexual experience with other men. 88% of this subgroup, at the time of interview, being in heterosexual relationships. The main weakness is that their figures for homosexual encounters, as they say, should be taken as t ...

Document Size:	5613
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Oct 23 00:36:44 PDT 1998

1130 Gay bashing and laws -- rank: 1000

Well I seem to be losing this argument at least in terms of the several people who have criticised my position in a reasoned way, for which I thank them. It is not a very good argument and I am sure not persuasive for me to reply that I think you all do over-estimate in an absolutist way the idea of legal rights. Justin for example refering to thousands of years. I was trying to do something more than disparage legal rights when I referred to them repeatedly as bourgeois. I was trying to develop ...

Document Size:	9032
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Oct 22 16:22:47 PDT 1998

1131 Gay bashing and laws -- rank: 1000

What Sean describes here from Kansas is clearly progressive action in difficult conditions. It is unwise of him to assume I am naive to imagine that the cops in Kansas will enforce hate speech prohibition. I am writing by analogy with laws against racial hatred in a country where the police are starting to admit at the highest level that they are racist. Their record of investigating racist murders is very poor and even suggests collusion with covering up justice. In marxist terms the state stil ...

Document Size:	13212
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Oct 22 00:08:28 PDT 1998

1132 The role of the state -- rank: 1000

At 07:12 PM 10/21/98 -0400, Michael Hoover wrote: a contribution about how Marx discussed the state. He argued also "is a stateless society as utopian as many have been led to believe?...no, because it would mean transformation from a bureaucratic society to a participatory one...active participation and dialogue - not simply voting for political representativves - would mark the determination of basic goals, short and long range planning, and responsibility for their achievement..." I ...

Document Size:	6339
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Oct 21 23:58:24 PDT 1998

1133 gay bashing and laws -- rank: 1000

At 09:09 PM 10/20/98 -0500, Joseph Noonan wrote: >I >will assume that your are in favor of making "Aids cures fags" >placards illegal. They most assuredly are offensive, but they are >not, nor should they be, illegal. I find this an odd argument. This placard sounds about as acceptable as one that might say "Jews make good lampshades". It is a flagrant psychological attack that legitimises humiliating an enemy even to the point of joking about his death. It is a ...

Document Size:	6582
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Oct 21 13:56:17 PDT 1998

1134 gay bashing and class -- rank: 1000

At 07:08 PM 10/20/98 -0500, you wrote: >>I do not see the argument against laws restricting freedom of speech to >>stir up sexuality hatred, like race hatred. The latter have certainly >>helped in the UK. > >Is that your sense of things, Chris, or do you have some hard stats? > >Niles There will be no hard stats about this, and I do not know the soft stats. But civil liberty has been restricted on this point for years now in the UK, and it is very widely accepted to ...

Document Size:	5495
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Oct 21 00:22:50 PDT 1998

1135 gay bashing and class -- rank: 1000

This is a challenging thread and a contrast to the discussion of the global crisis of capitalism. I agree with the implication that we need to be able to discuss such a wide range of issues. I agree with the implications that it is unmarxist just to dismiss the gay-bashers as lumpen. They may well not in the educated strata of the work force, but I would assume the majority of them are working class. I do not see the argument against laws restricting freedom of speech to stir up sexuality hatred ...

Document Size:	9394
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Oct 20 16:26:50 PDT 1998

1136 FW: in 1998 Karl Marx came back -- rank: 1000

At 01:52 PM 10/20/98 -0400, you wrote: >Guardian (London) Tuesday October 20, 1998 > >MARKETS, MELTDOWN AND MARX > >For more than a decade there seemed only one viable economic system - >unfettered capitalism. Now it is destroying Russia, failing in Asia >and widening inequalities in the West. So why is new Labour still >wedded to it? Eric Hobsbawm, Britain's foremost Marxist thinker, says >it is time for Blair to go back to the basics of socia ...

Document Size:	9328
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Oct 20 15:22:53 PDT 1998

1137 good news? -- rank: 1000

At 08:55 AM 10/19/98 -0400, you wrote: >>Like others, I of course welcome this move, but I repeat this is nothing to >>do with tailing. Let us for example at the same time condemn the way the >>USA has attempted to block the setting up of the International Court. >> >>Yes this is about the enforcement of bourgeois right globally. But there >>are contradictions in that. We should in concrete cases try to show the >>limitations of bourgeois right, and argu ...

Document Size:	8496
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Oct 20 00:03:57 PDT 1998

1138 good news? -- rank: 1000

At 05:51 PM 10/18/98 +0100, James wrote: >The question is how [who] is meting out this >justice. Is it a progressive step that Noriega was imprisoned by the US? >Would it be if Saddam were seized or assassinated by NATO forces? >Certainly most Iraqi oppositionists would applaud such a move, and the >Panamanian intelligentsia did also. But such actions only reinforce the >power of Western imperialism, the very force that put Pinochet into >power. I take the logic of your poli ...

Document Size:	5740
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Oct 19 00:17:05 PDT 1998

1139 Nigerian fire -- rank: 1000

The death of at least 300 in a fire in Nigeria after an oil pipeline was ruptured, is being reported by the media in a way that does not conceal the drama of imperialist oppression. Of course, like most tragedies, there will be a mass of small detail of how the unexpected change of events started and then accelerated, but the overall picture is a political and economic obscenity, comparable surely to Bhopal. So what if crime was involved? That there is such an energy shortage in one of the world ...

Document Size:	5456
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Oct 19 00:11:03 PDT 1998

1140 good news? -- rank: 1000

At 10:28 PM 10/17/98 +0100, James H wrote: >Will Britain go ahead? It seems extraordinary, but Foreign Secretary >Robin Cook's recently floated 'humanitarian foreign policy' has already >opened him up to demands that a more traditionally Tory incumbent would >have faced down. > >Is it a good thing that British and Spanish Imperialism should act as >judge of the Dictator that they supported in his heyday? That's another >question. Turning their own former allies like Nori ...

Document Size:	11093
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Oct 18 02:17:28 PDT 1998