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1171 [lbo-talk] another obscure question -- rank: 1000

On the Nazi occultism there is something to it. In so far as they were intellectuals, the Nazis were in the mainstream of German romanticism, which appealed - lightly - to a pre-Christian primordialism. But this is only the equivalent of Britain's nineteenth century celtic revivial, or even the pre-Raphaelites interest in Anglo-Saxonism. There was a good documentary on "Hitler's search for the Holy Grail" on Channel 4 here, though it overstates the case somewhat. Here's a write-up http ...

Document Size:	5990
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 15 02:00:47 PDT 2007

1172 [lbo-talk] Imus -- rank: 1000

J. Tyler wrote: "All human behavior has complex causes and must be viewed in a societal context that imposes conditions, limitations, and pressures on some people that it does not impose on others. " which laudable sentiments somehow had me thinking of this song, from West Side Story: TIGER (spoken) (as Krupke) Yeah, you! Gimme one good reason For not draggin' ya down to the Stationhouse, ya punk. RIFF (sings) Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke, Ya gotta understand-- It's just our bringin' up ...

Document Size:	5572
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 13 14:43:34 PDT 2007

1173 [lbo-talk] Land use in the US -- rank: 1000

John Thornton: 'So 26% is grazing, 20% is cropland, 2.6% Urban, 10% suburb/exurb and 29% forest-use'. No, according to the 'Major Land Use in the US' survey, the ten per cent 'miscellaneous land' is not suburb/exurb, it is "cemeteries; golf courses; mining areas; quarry sites; marshes; swamps; sand dunes; bare rocks; deserts; tundra; rural residential; industrial and commercial sites in rural areas; and other unclassified land."

Document Size:	4932
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Apr 3 05:17:27 PDT 2007

1174 [lbo-talk] Rural depopulation -- rank: 1000

WS speculates: "For example, if you have 100 hectares of arble land divided into 100 subsistence farmers, and then 99 of those farmers sell their land and move to the city, whilke the remaining one guy you bought all that land still cultivates it - you will have a large migration figure and perhaps depopulation of the village, but no depopulation of the land which is still used for farming. " But between 1981 and 1999 the world's grain harvested area has shrunk from 732 million hectare ...

Document Size:	7512
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Apr 3 01:15:27 PDT 2007

1175 [lbo-talk] Rural depopulation -- rank: 1000

Heartfield: > Was I unclear? I was talking about the migration of > rural populations to > towns in the developing world. [WS:] "But that is NOT what he [John Thornton] is arguing" What can I say? John says "Please show me an example of depopulation of the land happening somewhere." and then John talks about "James assertion that "Most developing countries are coping with depopulation of the land", a demonstrable false assertion." And I show that ...

Document Size:	5493
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Apr 2 23:32:03 PDT 2007

1176 [lbo-talk] Rural depopulation (was US land use) -- rank: 1000

John: "James' assertion that "Most developing countries are coping with depopulation of the land", a demonstrable false assertion." "With rural depopulation galloping faster than anywhere in the world, the United Nations estimates over half Africa's 700 million people will live in towns by 2030." http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L17621753.htm Was I unclear? I was talking about the migration of rural populations to towns in the developing world. That is what ...

Document Size:	6015
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Apr 2 17:02:53 PDT 2007

1177 [lbo-talk] Narmada dam -- rank: 1000

Miles finally works out that his position is incoherent: "Ironically, I'm making a blatant moral appeal here ("human misery is bad"), but I consider even this banal moral position a product of the social relations in which I'm embedded; it's not a universal standard by which to judge all societies." Yes, indeed. From your standpoint it is impossible to pass judgement on anything, and yet you do, incessantly. You say "ethnocentrism" meaning something bad, which is a ...

Document Size:	5195
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Apr 2 11:20:27 PDT 2007

1178 [lbo-talk] Land use in the US (was national parks, was Narmada Dam) -- rank: 1000

Forgive me, but further on US land use: "The United States has a total land area of nearly 2.3 billion acres. Major uses in 2002 were forest-use land, 651 million acres (28.8 percent); grassland pasture and range land, 587 million acres (25.9 percent); cropland, 442 million acres (19.5 percent); special uses (primarily parks and wildlife areas), 297 million acres (13.1 percent); miscellaneous other uses, 228 million acres (10.1 percent); and urban land, 60 million acres (2.6 percent)." ...

Document Size:	6263
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Apr 2 02:29:15 PDT 2007

1179 [lbo-talk] growth in National Parks (was Narmada Dam) -- rank: 1000

John Thornton is worried about the encroachment of urban areas on the land, but looking at this survey http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~geograph/Land%20Use%20by%20US%20State%201990%20Ranked%20by%20Urban%20Land%20Share.htm we can see that in only six of 50 states is urban use more than ten per cent of total land use, and in 26 of 50 more than half of all land is neither urban nor farm, but open space. There really is no danger that Americans will concrete over the countryside. Total farmland in 1992 wa ...

Document Size:	6824
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Apr 2 00:24:50 PDT 2007

1180 [lbo-talk] growth in National Parks (was Narmada Dam) -- rank: 1000

John Thornton persists in arguing that wildlife is being encroached upon by developers, when the opposite is happening. Typically land is either built up, farmland or national park. In the UK, for example, ten per cent is built up, 75 per cent farmland (of which about a third is surplus to food needs). For some time now, the general trend has been for a contraction in farmland, at the same time as an increase in farm produce, due to higher yields. There is simply no way that this contraction in ...

Document Size:	9220
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 1 16:19:45 PDT 2007

1181 [lbo-talk] Paraconsistent indeed -- rank: 1000

I read this again and again, but still couldn't understand it "1) Without an exposition of the Absolute [or 'the Absolute'] the claims against relativism [or 'relativism'] fall apart due to a misdecription/misexplanation is to what most comparative historians/ethnographers/political theorists are attempting to do." Graham Priest has a lot to answer for.

Document Size:	4820
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 1 13:44:28 PDT 2007

1182 [lbo-talk] Narmada, damn! -- rank: 1000

John Thornton, not Malthusian, just in error: "If the current rate of bringing land into development and conserving land as wild, as has been practiced over the last 20 years, were projected forward the two lines would never intersect, meaning development will always out pace conservation until 100% of the landmass is consumed." In the thirty years between 1950 and 1981 the grain harvested area globally increased from 587 million hectares to 732 million hectares. Since then, however, t ...

Document Size:	6069
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 1 13:40:33 PDT 2007

1183 [lbo-talk] Narmada Dam (was Arundhati Roy etc.) -- rank: 1000

Heraclitus said, you cannot step in the same river twice, to which Zeno replied, you cannot step into the same river once. Miles' brazen moral relativism (see below) not only makes it impossible to judge other societies, it makes it impossible to judge this society. If judgement implies a standard that transcends the given, which I think it does, not only is that the basis on which we can say that wage slavery is preferable to slavery or that slavery is preferable to cannibalism, but also the ba ...

Document Size:	7139
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 1 11:16:40 PDT 2007

1184 [lbo-talk] 90% of Americans believe in God -- rank: 1000

Ninety per cent of Americans believe in God? That would explain why environmentalism is stronger in Europe: you have less need of an ersatz Day of Judgement, or a Gaia - you have the real thing.

Document Size:	4800
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 1 10:12:45 PDT 2007

1185 [lbo-talk] Marx's critique of neo-classical economics -- rank: 1000

Sean, forgiving my pedantry, asks "Also, do you have a particular work by Amin in mind or just his recent body of work?" Yes, I was thinking of his essays "pure economics" and "the ideology of political economy" in the book Spectres of Capitalism, which are well written (the whole volume is pretty interesting) but in the end do not, I think go beyond Keynes' scepticism towards the grand narrative of the equilibriating market system. It is a case in point, I don't th ...

Document Size:	5403
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 1 10:10:09 PDT 2007