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886 John-John, We Hardly Knew Ye -- rank: 1000

At 16:05 19/07/99 -0500, Steve Perry wrote: > >When he was just three years old, he stepped from a crowd and saluted >his father's passing casket in front of national television cameras. >Thirty-five anticlimactic years followed. Mother anxious that he should not fly to protect him from the curse. He waited until her death from cancer to take up flying, including on moonless nights. Yes, the ingredients are there, as with Diana, for a sort of sexualised angst - is there some theme of ...

Document Size:	5593
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Jul 18 23:35:03 PDT 1999

887 Observer retrospective on Kosovo -- rank: 1000

This lead in the Observer sums up the most rational pressure for intevention in Kosovo. It is not bomb happy. It is of course imperialist, but calls next time for "a lighter footed system of policing within a new international authority." It does not draw the conclusion from an article in its sister paper, the Guardian, yesterday, that it was the combination of KLA ground troops plus tactical bombing that broke the Yugoslav army at the village of Planeja. It does not answer what would ...

Document Size:	8333
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Jul 18 15:56:32 PDT 1999

888 NATO surrounding Russia -- rank: 1000

At 11:43 17/07/99 -0400, Doug wrote: Re: Baltics: NATO membership "inevitable" >[From Johnson's Russia list. The Russians wouldn't be feeling >surrounded, would they?] Yes they would. However the article shows an interesting management of the process of struggle and unity. It is not just sabre-rattling. >"The challenge for many years to come is going to be to manage the >disagreements and maintain total clarity about the (alliance's) >driving principles, one of whic ...

Document Size:	11069
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Jul 18 00:46:22 PDT 1999

889 Rwanda/Intervention -- rank: 1000

Philosphers have interpreted the world in various ways. In their minds, subjectivist democrats are entirely free to tell the world's oppressors to screw themselves. The point however is to change it. >From: "Joe Kaplinsky" <jkaplinsky at hotmail.com> >Chris, > >You make a very simple question very complicated. > >The west says to Rwanda and Yugoslavia: > >"You are savages who are clearly incapable of living together without >murdering each other. I ...

Document Size:	12192
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Jul 17 02:58:30 PDT 1999

890 Definition of crisis -- rank: 1000

At 11:52 14/07/99 -0400, Doug wrote: >I agree with most of what you say, Chris, except for a couple of reservations. > >Chris Burford wrote: > >>I see this as the US managers cleverly ensuring that when "a" mass of >>productive forces needed to be destroyed, it was Asian, especially >>Japanese. There was some destruction in the imperialist heartland but very >>little. > >Considering that Japan is routinely spoken of as being in some kind >of ...

Document Size:	8242
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Jul 16 00:08:23 PDT 1999

891 Rwanda/Intervention -- rank: 1000

At 12:52 15/07/99 -0600, you wrote: >Joe K. wrote: > >>The west says to Rwanda and Yugoslavia: >> >>"You are savages who are clearly incapable of living together without >>murdering each other. If we leave you to your own business then you will >>carry on in this way for generations to come. [...] > >Well it's odd to single out Rwanda as example of Western interventionism, >since the West's outrageous behavior during the Rwanda genocide was >p ...

Document Size:	9149
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Jul 15 14:36:26 PDT 1999

892 Definition of crisis -- rank: 1000

At 20:43 13/07/99 -0400, you wrote: >> I see this as the US managers cleverly ensuring that when "a" mass of >> productive forces needed to be destroyed, it was Asian, especially >> Japanese. There was some destruction in the imperialist heartland but very >> little. > >Chris, ever heard of Gary, Indiana? There was massive destruction of >American based capital in the mass production consumer goods industries. No I haven't. But I am not surprised to le ...

Document Size:	12132
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Jul 15 00:13:17 PDT 1999

893 Caldwell on war -- rank: 1000

At 12:19 13/07/99 BST, Joe Kaplinsky wrote: >The courts that are being set up are not the second best thing to "perfect >abstract justice". They are show trials. Their purpose is to assert that the >"civilised" West has the authority to judge the rest of the world. In this >sense it does not matter who they find guilty and who they do not. It is a >point of moral authority which is at issue. Just because Clinton and Blair >claim to be acting in the name of h ...

Document Size:	8410
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Jul 13 23:27:05 PDT 1999

894 Einstein on Marx -- rank: 1000

At 14:02 13/07/99 -0400, Fabian Balardini wrote: > >I just got done re-reading Einstein's famous "Why Socialism" which can be found at: > >http://proxy-mail.mailcity.lycos.com/bin/redirector.cgi?http://come.to/luta I could not find it there in English but I see the 1949 edition published by Monthly Review is at http://webmap.missouri.edu/htmlized/einstein.html >In so far as the labor contract is "free," what the worker receives is determined not by the real val ...

Document Size:	5355
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Jul 13 15:43:31 PDT 1999

895 Definition of crisis -- rank: 1000

"And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of old ones. " CM Part I More specifically Doug argued: >State managers, from >central bankers to armed men, have done a rather masterful job of >keeping the system from flying off the rails. For a while it looked >like they'd met their match in the Asian crisis of 199 ...

Document Size:	8324
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Jul 13 15:16:26 PDT 1999

896 "Capitalism" in China's constitution -- rank: 1000

The following story has been posted by CNN based on Reuters and APP, heavily editing and contextualising a Xinhua report. The Xinhua website is not very accessible when I tried it this morning. Can anyone get the original because this is a situation where western reports are likely to be heavily slanted. Most obviously, "Private enterprise", which presumably here includes the large town and village cooperative sector, is translated as capitalism. We also need context from a Marxist poi ...

Document Size:	8181
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Jan 30 23:42:08 PST 1999

897 tobacco institute query -- rank: 1000

At 14:10 30/01/99 -0500, you wrote: >Greg Nowell wrote: > >>Burford raised a question about the Tobacco Institute. >>Its closure was a specifically negotiated component of >>the 44-state settlement. It should be observed with >>the4 degree of industry concentration in tobacco the >>political effect is minimal. -gn > >It means LBO loses an institutional subscription. Former Tobacco Institute >PR guy Fred Panzer subscribed long ago, and chatted me u ...

Document Size:	5500
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Jan 30 22:55:33 PST 1999

898 Tobacco Institute closed -- rank: 1000

I just caught the end of a news item. The Tobacco Institute, which has become too controversial with anti-tobacco campaigners to serve its purpose, has been closed. Has anyone more details on the story? Chris Burford London

Document Size:	4768
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Jan 29 23:25:56 PST 1999

899 sex and videotape -- rank: 1000

At 12:58 27/01/99 -0800, you wrote: >Chris wrote: "Clinton will survive this ritual psycho-social degradation in >a way the moral majority Republicans cannot understand: because he is more >in touch with the needs of capitalism as a whole to manage a modern >imperialist consumer economy." > >I guess that's why the big brain bought Republican policies wholesale. Even >Clinton, in private, has said, reportedly, that he is, in essence, a >Republican. > >That' ...

Document Size:	6390
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Jan 27 15:38:03 PST 1999

900 Sex and videotape -- rank: 1000

I see from the CNN web-site this morning that the compromise the senators have got to make, will involve videotapes of the witnesses. Talking about sex obviously. There is something very technologically modern and something very ancient about the form this political struggle takes. When the contradictions are too severe to be contained within the established social order, the personal space is invaded, and especially in the area of intimate sexual relations where part or all of the body is expos ...

Document Size:	6470
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Jan 26 23:31:16 PST 1999