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121 [lbo-talk] DCJ: Murdoch, Inc. has a negative 46% tax rate: We pay him -- rank: 1000

Murdoch is a vile capitalist, and the News of the World was a hysterical rag, but the anti-Murdoch campaign here is quite bonkers. The proposals being floated for press regulation are more than alarming, and the MPs are definitely getting their own back for the way the press dumped the expenses scandal on them a few years ago. Back then, I thought that the attacks on MPs were over the top. Now I would say that the attacks on the press have gone too far.

Document Size:	5359
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jul 12 22:21:31 PDT 2011

122 [lbo-talk] Me, on the Aborigines' Protection Society, 1836-1909, this Thursday, Brighton, England -- rank: 1000

Joe, Mike thanks for the interest. I would love to get to America (and Canada, I have a chapter on Canada and Louis Riel s rebellion) Australia and New Zealand, to talk about the Aborigines Protection Society book, but as yet have no funds for it. I am definitely interested in invitations, especially from colleges, as I could use those to make a case for funding here. In the meantime, Bhaskar has got me to write up a piece for the next Jacobin outlining the argument, and you can get the book ...

Document Size:	5543
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jul 12 22:15:02 PDT 2011

123 [lbo-talk] Me, on the Aborigines' Protection Society, 1836-1909, this Thursday, Brighton, England -- rank: 1000

Anyone who is in Brighton, England this Thursday is welcome to come along to a talk on the history of the Aborigines Protection Society. Details Here: http://www.thebrightonsalon.com/ This is the book, I am talking about: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aborigines-Protection-Society-Humanitarian-Imperialism/dp/1849041202 And this is the blurb: For more than 70 years, the Aborigines Protection Society, a select group of the great and the good, fought for the natives of the British Empire and against th ...

Document Size:	6840
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jul 12 04:11:38 PDT 2011

124 [lbo-talk] Krugman: "The question then is why." -- rank: 1000

The question, Krugman asks, is why would the President of the United States refuse to believe us economists who keep on telling him that he must employ more economists. Maybe, having been bamboozled into gifting billions of dollars to the very richest people on earth under the TARP, the President has become a bit less willing to be so gulled. More likely, he is just making the usual ideological appeal to balanced budgets that all high-spending governments make.

Document Size:	5157
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Jul 8 14:50:50 PDT 2011

125 [lbo-talk] "Sell Your Islands, You Bankrupt Greeks!" -- rank: 1000

Yes, I agree, it is a rather good pamphlet. Maybe I was mean-spirited on Die Linke

Document Size:	4803
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Jul 8 08:54:12 PDT 2011

126 [lbo-talk] Adorno and Horkheimer -- rank: 1000

Horkheimer 'in the 1950s he rejected the Algerian struggle for liberation, and in the 1960s he rejected criticism of the war in Vietnam' Rold Viggerhaus, The Frankfurt School . 472 Douglas Kellner also makes the point that Adorno also backed America's war in Vietnam. Adorno wrote for the CIA-backed 'Monad magazine

Document Size:	4778
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jul 7 17:51:56 PDT 2011

127 [lbo-talk] Adorno and Horkheimer - was Response to MG -- Was Poll.... -- rank: 1000

Michael, just as well you called me out, as I see I slightly elaborated from memory. Peter Marcuse s preface to the first volume of Herbert Marcuse s collected papers, London, Routledge, 1998, p x The Institute in America was in high class enclaves of the well-to-do. the lifestyle was formal, with servants. Children visiting were expected to be (when they were brought along at all) quiet and inconspicuous. . Members siezt each other, addressed each other with the formal you although they ha ...

Document Size:	6784
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jul 7 10:44:44 PDT 2011

128 [lbo-talk] Response to MG -- Was Poll.... -- rank: 1000

Marv is right to scoff at Horkheimer s quote about banquets and offices and so on. Horkheimer was maybe thinking of Adorno, who used to have a butler meet you at the door, and have you wait while he announced you to the great man (so it says in the Marcuse Collected Papers).

Document Size:	4889
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jul 7 07:17:10 PDT 2011

129 [lbo-talk] Response to MG -- Was Poll.... -- rank: 1000

SA: The "sense that Keynes meant" was of policy-induced full employment. In fact, Keynes thought full employment was deeply problematic, as he made clear in the Second World War, when he campaigned to have workers wages capped to stop them from taking advantage of the increased demand for their services (this is all in Skidelsky s last volume of biography). David Cameron s measures are not full employment , but he has put in £2500 tax breaks for employers taking on young unemployed.

Document Size:	5104
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jul 7 03:33:03 PDT 2011

130 [lbo-talk] Response to MG -- Was Poll.... -- rank: 1000

SA writes "Outbreak of rhetoric?" Here in the States, Obama is actually trying to cut spending by $4 trillion over the next decade. Oh, and how is he doing so far? I see that spending has gone up from $2.9 to $3.5 to $3.8 billion under his administration. As I understand your constitution he will not be in power in ten years time, so promising deficit reduction then seems a bit convenient. I also hear David Cameron has instituted some policies to rein in spending. and quite a lot of p ...

Document Size:	5541
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jul 7 02:40:31 PDT 2011

131 [lbo-talk] Response to MG -- Was Poll.... -- rank: 1000

Doug: You make it [Keynesian crisis management] sound like that's the dominant bourgeois paradigm. No, I didn t say that, though since you raise it, most governments for the last 15 years have been using public works to keep up demand. That was why Germany supported expansion in the Mediterranean countries for many years, one reason why George Bush spent so much in Iraq, and why President Obama and Gordon Brown were keen to solve the banking crisis through increased government spending, why Pri ...

Document Size:	5265
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jul 7 01:29:29 PDT 2011

132 [lbo-talk] Response to MG -- Was Poll.... -- rank: 1000

Angelus Novus : Those of us who are in organizations like Die Linke, Solidarity, Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste etc etc And weren t these same claims made for Joschka Fischer and the Greens, or for the once far-left Pasok? Have Die Linke really made any programmatic advance on Keynesian crisis management?

Document Size:	4873
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Jul 6 16:49:11 PDT 2011

133 [lbo-talk] Response to MG -- Was Poll.... -- rank: 1000

The problem with the sketch set out by Dissenting Wren ... One key task of leftists is to build an organized left. ... is that it sees the left s problem wholly as one of the most effective deployment of its own people, as if they could simply be used more effectively. In other words, the basic ideas are sound, but they need to be given a proper chance. I fear the problem is more profound. The left s program has not found an echo because it is insufficient to the moment. Statist socialism of ...

Document Size:	5503
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jul 5 22:49:37 PDT 2011

134 [lbo-talk] 'Prosecute all Serbs!' -- rank: 1000

Mladic was not alone Justice in the Balkans must encompass not just war criminals, but their whole communities Nerzuk Curak guardian.co.uk, Sunday 3 July 2011 20.45 BST 'The moral consequences of the crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina are such that, on an ethical and cultural level, they require accountability on the part of the community in whose name they were committed, along with verdicts against those who committed them in the name of that group. ... As things stand, the tribunal wo ...

Document Size:	5507
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jul 4 07:05:19 PDT 2011

135 [lbo-talk] James McMurtry - "We can't make it here"?? -- rank: 1000

I agree with Miles, when he says 'Yes. Putting your arm up a ewe's vagina is just as much a product of social relations as DJing at a NY club or teaching a freshman poetry class or roofing a house. The claim that there is a pure, unmediated nature we need to "get back to" is--ironically--a precipitate of alienation in a capitalist society. The sooner we discard the vapid notion that one set of social relations is more "natural" than another, the better.' But I agree wi ...

Document Size:	5761
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jul 3 23:07:54 PDT 2011