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1126 [lbo-talk] Monbiot on truth and 9/11 conspiracy -- rank: 1000

Monbiot is on to something, but he fails to understand that he is the biggest conspiracy merchant out there. Ever week he writes the same article about business interests hiding behind ever social question. Which no doubt bears some relation to the truth, but it is not much of a revelation. He does hint that there is something about the movements that he is involved in - the anti war and the environmental - that predisposes them to conspiracy theories. That is a worthwhile investigation. He shou ...

Document Size:	5319
Author:	heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Date:	Wed Feb 21 15:32:51 PST 2007

1127 [lbo-talk] Social housing in the UK -- rank: 1000

Just another brick in the wall? Lynsey Hanley's book Estates: An Intimate History titillates the Guardian-reading class's fascination with a poor and excluded 'underclass', writes James Heartfield http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2871/

Document Size:	4881
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 19 08:11:13 PST 2007

1128 [lbo-talk] British Empire (was US Imperialism) -- rank: 1000

Robert Wood writes "hate to sound like broken record, but one of the most significant reasons was that the working classes were no longer willing to support its continued enforcement. I think its significant that Churchill is not reelected near the end of WWII. " Well, I am sympathetic to that, because the working class were by no means as sold on the Empire as has been made out subsequently. However, I think a lot of Kenyans, Irishmen, Tanganyikans, Singaporeans and Malay Chinese wou ...

Document Size:	5784
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Feb 8 07:08:58 PST 2007

1129 [lbo-talk] The Fall, Buzzcocks promote Mitsubishi SUVs -- rank: 1000

Maybe I am missing something, but I don't remember these punk bands being hostile to debauched excess, Iggy Pop is about the age range that Carnival Cruise is aiming at, and Marc Bolan's commitment to the revolution was pretty tongue in cheek - indeed John Peel made him the archetype of a sell out in his memoirs. We are all getting older. Jim and Wendy wrote: > IMO the use of the > famous Buzzcocks' song for an AARP is not quite as over the top > as Carnival Cruise's use of Iggy Pop's & ...

Document Size:	5437
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Feb 7 13:47:21 PST 2007

1130 [lbo-talk] UK end of Empire, was US Imperialism -- rank: 1000

Doug asks "By the way, how'd the Brit ruling class come to understand that the empire was cooked?" It's a big question, and it comes in various stages. The zenith of Empire proper was the Edwardian era, when you get a lot of presentiments of collapse. Social Darwinism was very popular as a bullish assertion of racial aristocracy was attractive to an elite that sensed its political control was at its height/most stretched. At the same time you got a lot of decadence - Oscar Wilde, Aubre ...

Document Size:	6984
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Feb 7 03:07:07 PST 2007

1131 [lbo-talk] even SC Republicans believe global warming is a -- rank: 1000

"even SC Republicans believe global warming is a problem", writes Doug, adding [well, there's still James Heartfield!] to which I say, I would rather not change my mind because the Republican Party says I should. Conceding that my scepticism is not widely shared, would listers not accept that the US government's ginger steps towards action on Global Warming, and Prime Minister Blair's more strident ones are a convenient diplomatic distraction from their more practical problems in Iraq. ...

Document Size:	5203
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Feb 6 11:42:04 PST 2007

1132 [lbo-talk] climate change denial -- rank: 1000

Dennis Claxton: "that Einstein thought the theory "incomplete" is something of a misrepresentation." Einstein: Quantum mechanics is 'an incomplete representation of real things', (quoted in Gillott and Kumar, Science and the Retreat from Reason, Merlin, p 88) Einstein refused the Copenhagen interpretation on the grounds that 'it is basic for physics that one assumes a real world existing independently from any act of perception' (Ibid.). This was a view that led many physici ...

Document Size:	5156
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 11 18:11:09 PDT 2007

1133 [lbo-talk] climate change denial -- rank: 1000

> The results [on general relativity] still aren't in. Yes, that's why Einstein called it a theory. In fact he thought its inconsistencies were a sign of being incomplete.

Document Size:	4718
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 11 17:33:55 PDT 2007

1134 [lbo-talk] capitalism and collapse -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond writes "So a major stock market 'correction' which devalorises vast sums (was it $7 trillion for the dot.com 'crisis') would represent such a state. [i.e. a crisis]" Well, if that was a crisis, it did not seem so bad. On Patrick's/Cox's definition of crisis as the moment when a major intervention from outside the system is needed, I would have thought on the Marx-Lenin-Mattick definition, the system has been addicted to outside interventions to sustain accumulation for mor ...

Document Size:	5209
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 11 05:57:40 PDT 2007

1135 [lbo-talk] climate change denial -- rank: 1000

"Lenin's tomb" dimisses the errors of the climate change models as if it did not reflect on them. Then says the negative effects carbon emissions are already measurable. I beg to disagree. More to the point, the positive effects of carbon emissions, the increase in quality of life consequent on fossil fuels over the last century is abundantly clear. But given that the case for action on global warming was first made by the British Prime Minster in 1990, and by the US vice president aro ...

Document Size:	5338
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 11 03:43:43 PDT 2007

1136 [lbo-talk] climate change denial -- rank: 1000

Lenin's tomb, substituting rhetoric for argument "This is absolutely typical, and absolute nonsense. The empirical validation for the basic thesis (that the man-made increase in carbon emissions is causing an unsustainable increase in global temperatures) is overwhelming." But this statement is the nonsensical one. Since the event you describe is in the future, it cannot be verified, only estimated. The estimates vary. 'Sustainability' is not a scientific but an ideological category. ...

Document Size:	5987
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 11 01:36:06 PDT 2007

1137 [lbo-talk] climate change denial -- rank: 1000

Gar Lipow, lazily, "And if that is the basis for Heartfield's beliefs..." but it isn't the basis for my beliefs, it was an aside, pointing out the ad hominem character of Doug's dismissal of Cockburn.

Document Size:	4706
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 11 01:23:21 PDT 2007

1138 [lbo-talk] climate change denial -- rank: 1000

Doug writes: "The war on terror wasn't worked out by scientists, but by frightening politicians." I think if you look back and reconstruct the timeline, you will see that the 'consensus' on global warming was worked out by frightening politicians, not scientists. The political activity on climate change goes back to the eighties, in Germany and the UK (Nigel Lawson recalls Margaret Thatcher saying that there was big money on the table for any scientist that could demonstrate the link). ...

Document Size:	8363
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Aug 10 23:50:11 PDT 2007

1139 [lbo-talk] climate change denial -- rank: 1000

Doug asks "James, you've always struck me as a rational person ...So how is it that you're so at odds with "mainstream science" ... on this one?" To which I have to reply, first, is that a rhetorical question, or are you really asking? (I don't think I've ever tried to hide my views on this, after all.) (And also, since I am off to France on the 13th, I wouldn't want to be accused of 'leaving the room' once I provoked a disagreement.) Second, "mainstream science" is ...

Document Size:	8814
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Aug 10 15:38:12 PDT 2007

1140 [lbo-talk] climate change denial -- rank: 1000

Doug: "Ok James, you've given up on rational argument and you're just making tendentious lists instead? The faith must be wavering...." I didn't make the list, it is in the posted Newsweek article. Sorry to disturb your faith.

Document Size:	4732
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Aug 10 08:01:20 PDT 2007