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41116 California Elections -- rank: 1000

Hank Sims wrote: > The first results indicate that all the worst initiatives are >passing: Prop 226 (the anti-union measure) has a slim lead; Prop 227 >(anti-bilingual education) is a shoo-in. Well, we know now that this news on 226 was premature. A month ago it looked like a sure win, but the unions really flexed their muscle and stopped it, by a 53/47 margin. (There's an LA Times story at <http://latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/POLITICS/ELECT98/ap_prop226.htm>.) Imagine what the union ...

Document Size:	5103
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jun 3 08:37:53 PDT 1998

41117 [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: militia research]] -- rank: 1000

Katha Pollitt wrote: >Do libertarians go in for military forms of organization? >Something wrong with this picture. Yes, if it's a voluntary formation organzied for self-defense, and not one coerced by a state for imperial pursuits. At moments like this, I'm grateful for my freshman year stint in the Party of the Right (for the whole story, including the POR's viewing of "Triumph of the Will," see "I Was A Teenage Reactionary," at <http://eserver.org/bs/36/henwood.ht ...

Document Size:	5177
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jun 3 08:28:20 PDT 1998

41118 [Fwd: militia research] -- rank: 1000

Mathew Forstater wrote: >I don't think so. i would use libertarian. i don't think emma goldman, >kropotkin, the anarcho-communists and anarcho syndicalists are on their >reading lists. anarchism is a serious left political philosophy. i would >not use it for right wing anti-statism. Hey, that's not fair - the left doesn't own title to anarchism. Right-wing anarchism, while it strikes me as nutty & repellent, is still a consistent political philosophy. They see an ideal society ...

Document Size:	5204
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jun 3 08:23:15 PDT 1998

41119 income: DeLong view -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >Bear in mind that these are only preliminary estimates... > >The series come in three flavors. My "preferred" version; a version that >rejects Michael Boskin and company's conclusions about how the invention of >new goods and new types of goods have added to material wealth; and a >series that abandons any attempt to track pre-1500 movements in income per >capita and just assumes that pre-1500 per capita output was constant. [etc.] Where do the ...

Document Size:	5059
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jun 3 07:15:19 PDT 1998

41120 Vietnam's (meager) resources -- rank: 1000

Carrol Cox wrote: >It is devishly difficult to keep a discussion of race going on these lists. I beg to differ. Race & its relation to class seems to have been one of the staples of discussion in lbo-talk's first month of life. Which is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for - the abortion discussion too. Background music - Sleepyhead's "The Communist Love Song": "I'm gonna grow my hair real long and smoke a ton of grass And stay up all night every night discussing rac ...

Document Size:	4980
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 15:52:34 PDT 1998

41121 Debating the militia -- rank: 1000

Mathew Forstater wrote: >What gets me is people want to "reach for their revolver" if someone >mentions the word "culture," but encourage patience and understanding when >it comes to self-identified violent racists. No one has urged patience and understanding in the face of self-identified violent racists. What I'm questioning is the deployment of labels like that without any evidence. There's a lot of continuity between the stuff that "the militias" spout ...

Document Size:	5153
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 14:05:27 PDT 1998

41122 Militias--too glib? -- rank: 1000

Katha Pollitt wrote: >What bothers me with Alex Cockburn is that i think he actually likes >them -- he likes the gun fetishism, the macho Western Wild Man thing, >the rejection of liberal pussyfooting and "pwogwessive" values (his >term). This may be true. Last time I ran into him, Cockburn denounced me as an "urban weenie" who "hates the West." I guess having horses in the backyard makes you more authentically situated in nature. Doug

Document Size:	4868
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 12:40:43 PDT 1998

41123 [Fwd: militia research] -- rank: 1000

Katha Pollitt wrote: > So what are we arguing about exactly? A view of the masses? Liberals are scared that the American masses are an ignorant baying mob, and only the Constitution's paralyzing checks & balances (the Nation was happy for the Senate's structurally obstructive role after the Gingrich takeover, no?) and Morris Dees can keep them in line. (The courts used to serve a similar role, but they went over to the other side.) This doesn't describe you, Katha, but elite liberals fee ...

Document Size:	4916
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 12:02:19 PDT 1998

41124 [Fwd: militia research] -- rank: 1000

Katha Pollitt wrote: >Well, good question. And not just for me -- for all of us. Let's all be >more specific about who we are talking about. I think I'm mostly >thinking about the Aryan Nation and Christian Identity people, Posse >comitatus etc. I don't know if you'd call those Militia people. The >people who are upset about black helicopters, call the US govt the >Zionist Occupation Government, refer to nonwhites as "mud people," love >the "turner Diaries&quo ...

Document Size:	6162
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 11:51:40 PDT 1998

41125 Vietnam's (meager) resources -- rank: 1000

Justin Schwartz wrote: >Why not take the Pentagon's own word that the war aim was about 85% to >save and only about 10% to stop communism? I assume "face" was omitted there. What does "safe face" mean? In this context it means retaining your rep as an imperialist enforcer. Vietnam had to be pummelled or no one would ever take orders from the U.S. again. Stopping Communism and defending imperialism were pretty synonymous for a long time. Doug

Document Size:	4929
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 11:24:19 PDT 1998

41126 militia research -- rank: 1000

Katha Pollitt wrote: >Why not pay these people at least the respect of taking seriously the >beliefs they say they have? You might as well say the nazis weren't >"really" anti-semitic, but were just using that vocabulary to express >their class anger. Who are "the militias" in your mind, and how do you know that they're either professedly or covertly anti-Semitic? Doug

Document Size:	4775
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 11:02:40 PDT 1998

41127 machismo & imperialism -- rank: 1000

This post from Tom Kruse was addressed to owner-lbo-talk at panix.com, so came to me in my proprietary alias. Tom, drop the owner-! Doug ---- There was discussion on this list recently about machismo and imperialism, and it was suggested by many that sheer machismo alone explains little, of, say the US destruction of Vietnam in the 60s and 70s. Perhaps as a explanatory variable machismo doesn't have all that much power, but it certainly descrbes the language of choice that the imperial police/po ...

Document Size:	6500
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 10:51:16 PDT 1998

41128 Tobin tax etc. -- rank: 1000

Chris Burford wrote: >Why with all this accelerated movement of financical assets around the >world's computer terminals is the net result usually zero in terms of >transfer of real assets? That's not true. Sure, the daily trading is vigorous - $1.3 trillion a day on the New York CHIPS wire. And most of that is just furious turnover, with a far smaller net change. But cumulate those nets and pretty soon you're talking about real money. In 1996, Japan had net foreign assets almost 20% of ...

Document Size:	5738
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 10:18:46 PDT 1998

41129 religion -- rank: 1000

Michael Eisenscher wrote: >Perhaps we of the Left might benefit from a bit more ecumenism in our >approach to the religious movements that we have heretofore dismissed as >hopelessly reactionary. I've certainly softened towards religious people over the years - there are lots of fine people doing good stuff politically because they think God told them too. But can we still say that religion is a crock? That it is an invented solace for the pains of the world ("sad men made angels o ...

Document Size:	5131
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 09:46:58 PDT 1998

41130 militias -- rank: 1000

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: >I'm not as sanguin about the militia folks as Wojtek, Justin, Alexander >Cockburn, etc. appear to be, though. None of us who've said a tolerant word about "the militias" endorses their worldview as it stands. The point that these folks, me among them, have made is that it's wrong to paint them as a bunch of Nazis; most people who say these things don't really know much about what the "militia" folks really think, or who they are. What do we real ...

Document Size:	5235
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 09:34:16 PDT 1998