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1201 [lbo-talk] False accusations -- rank: 1000

Joanna writes "One of the reasons why it's so difficult for women to protect themselves from rape is because 99% of the time, it is their word against their accuser." That is certainly one of life's cruelties. But to take the step from acknowledging that to suspending the dictum innocent until proved guilty is wrong. False accusations are made - Nadine Milroy-Sloan was jailed for her brazenly false allegations against Neil Hamilton, another man here was jailed for three years until his ...

Document Size:	5903
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Oct 21 02:08:42 PDT 2006

1202 [lbo-talk] defend Aptheker, reject his politics -- rank: 1000

Jesse thinks the question 'should I believe a rape allegation made against you?' is unfair. But of course it is fair. The weight of what Jesse says is that we should believe Bettina Aptheker's miraculously 'recovered' memories of abuse by Herbert A. some 47 years earlier. But why should we believe Bettina? Because she says so? Is Jesse really saying that no false accusations are ever laid? That is absurd. People accuse other people of things that they did not do all the time. That is why we have ...

Document Size:	6919
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Oct 20 16:00:29 PDT 2006

1203 [lbo-talk] Defend Herbert Aptheker - reject his politics! -- rank: 1000

It is quite monstrous that Herbert Aptheker's memory should be subjected to these unsupported allegations. Bettina Aptheker makes these charges knowing that he cannot defend himself from beyond the grave. Just because she says it is true, does not mean that it is - no more than any allegations of molestation or rape are true. Of course we cannot exclude the possibility that it did happen. But possibility alone is not reason to destroy his reputation. His death puts the issue beyond the law. But ...

Document Size:	6747
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Oct 20 09:23:25 PDT 2006

1204 [lbo-talk] Dispiriting suburbs -- rank: 1000

Andy F: 'Seriously. Tweak "working class aspirations" to "market forces" and this stuff is indistinguishable from Julian Simon.' Well yes, if 'market forces' were interchangeable with 'market forces' you might have a point. But since they are at odds, then your point is not pertinent. WS: 'So I reckon all you want is more affordable housing for a few million Brits. That is fine, but thousands of developers have already been working on it. They did their math...' Your faith ...

Document Size:	5999
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 19 16:38:15 PDT 2006

1205 [lbo-talk] Dispiriting Suburbs? -- rank: 1000

WS: "I think you missed my point entirely, James. I did not ask you to do the math for a few disgruntled Londoners who cannot afford living in the city. I asked you to do the math for nearly 7 billion people on this planet, most of whom do not give a flying fuck about housing problems that Londoners face. If you are a true socialist, as you seem to claim, you should also be concerned how the Chinese or the Indians live, no?" Who's missing the point, here? Sixty million people live i ...

Document Size:	5632
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 19 07:14:23 PDT 2006

1206 [lbo-talk] Cramped apartments, was Dispiriting Suburbs? -- rank: 1000

Joanna writes: "What I was saying -- more in response to James -- is that owning a house is not worthy of dreams....and I was also trying to suggest the many ways in which home ownership works against 1) human survival and 2) revolutionary consciousness" But I think the responses to your comment were pertinent. Suburban living is no more alienated than urban living. (As I recall, the theory of alienation was developed as an account of urbanisation.) It is - in my opinion, anyway - daft ...

Document Size:	6034
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 19 01:35:00 PDT 2006

1207 [lbo-talk] two or three planets? -- rank: 1000

"Of course they'd need a lot of nonresidential space to support their lifestyles. Isn't that the point of those calculations that show that if everyone lived like me we'd need 2 or 3 planets?" Well, that depends how you live, Doug. If you live like a Londoner, Herbert Girardet says three planets, but if you live like an American, I suppose that might mean a bit more. Myself, I think that the calculation is fallacious, since he only considers human outputs as waste, not as positive inpu ...

Document Size:	6518
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 19 00:15:31 PDT 2006

1208 [lbo-talk] Dispiriting Suburbs? -- rank: 1000

Wojtek asks me to do the maths. I have done the maths for the UK, though not yet for the world. This is how it comes out. The Office for National Statistics Land Use survey puts the built up part of the UK at ten per cent of all land. Farming accounts for three-quarters of all land. Because of increasing yields, around a third of the farm land is surplus to requirement, leading to wholesale land retirement (usually effected by having it re-designated national park, green belt or something simila ...

Document Size:	6011
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Oct 18 16:04:10 PDT 2006

1209 [lbo-talk] Dispiriting Suburbs? -- rank: 1000

"according to most recent surveys, that the vast majority of Americans -- upward of 80% -- still prefer single-family homes over apartments, while no more than 10% to 15% want to live near the central core. Unless there is some sort of cultural revolution, most people, particularly families, are likely to continue migrating to places where they can acquire a spot of land and a little privacy. And despite the much ballyhooed "return to the city" by aging boomers, most experts sugg ...

Document Size:	5969
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Oct 18 13:14:23 PDT 2006

1210 [lbo-talk] Dispiriting suburbs? Was Let's Build -- rank: 1000

If the US is more suburbanised than Europe, and if the suburbs are as vile and dispiriting as people say should that not mean that Americans are more dissatisfied with their lives than Europeans? But - lo and behold - 64 per cent of Americans are satisfied with their own lives, compared to just 57 per cent of the French, 54 per cent of Britons, 53 of Italians and 49 of Germans. http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=165 It seems to me that those who live in the Suburbs might not s ...

Document Size:	5600
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Oct 18 02:34:34 PDT 2006

1211 [lbo-talk] People like what they're used to, was Let's Build -- rank: 1000

correlation is not cause. Since a majority of Americans have been living in the Suburbs since the - what - 1960s, the argument suburbanisation = republicanism means radical politics is pointless .... which is pretty much what Kevin Philips.01 meant it to mean. Rather like those Maoists who wanted an economic crisis to force people into poverty so that they would fight back - except of course that poverty is not radicalising, but demoralising. The only reason that the argument that suburbanisatio ...

Document Size:	6335
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 17 14:36:02 PDT 2006

1212 [lbo-talk] People like what they're used to, was Let's Build -- rank: 1000

Doug, what means: "And population density correlates with voting patterns: the thinner the population, the more Republican" ? What would the causal links be to explain this correlation? Is it that low density causes republicanism? That would seem to be a spatial determinism as crass as the genetic determinsm that causes Europeans to huddle together. (Maybe the cause is the other way around: voting republican makes you unpopular and people don't want to live near to you.) I believe the ...

Document Size:	6360
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 17 13:44:28 PDT 2006

1213 [lbo-talk] Oh dear, LBO patronises Europe again (was Let's Build) -- rank: 1000

This is a familiar saw for long-term readers of LBO. An imaginary continent called 'Europe' (no less!) is lauded, for no other reason than to pour scorn on the perceived flaws in American society. On the housing question, this is doubly bizarre, since most Europeans - insofar as one can aggregate those disparate societies, and social strata - are of the opinion that their own housing market is dysfuntional, that house prices are out of control, that Europe has too great a rented sector in compar ...

Document Size:	7933
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 17 11:41:14 PDT 2006

1214 [lbo-talk] Kingdom Come -- rank: 1000

My review of George Monbiot's book "Heat" A secular version of Kingdom Come Environmental polemicist George Monbiot's new book asks why people do not act on their fears of climate change. Good question. .... To George Monbiot, this sounds like hypocrisy, and he is right. But he misunderstands the relationship between ecological thought and consumption. That climate change threatens the planet is not a belief that leads to a restriction in consumption. On the contrary, one could state a ...

Document Size:	5853
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Oct 16 10:38:45 PDT 2006

1215 [lbo-talk] Let's Build -- rank: 1000

Mike B: "How about dispersal of the means of production and rationally planned production for use and need with a view towards beauty while "living in harmony with the Earth". Salmon in the Thames!" Marx, Engels, Wm. Morris, Kautsky, Lenin, Trotsky all agreed, the socialist policy on towns and countryside is the abolition of the antagonism between them. The town would become more like the country - interspersed with wide open spaces, and the country would become more like t ...

Document Size:	5756
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Oct 16 09:25:49 PDT 2006