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1276 [lbo-talk] Chomsky v Marko -- rank: 1000

No doubt we will all be reading Marko Hoare when Noam Chomsky is long forgotten. Marko writes of "the Clinton-Major policy of appeasing Milosevic's Serbia ", but between March 24th and June 8th 1999, Nato forces, backed by President Clinton bombed Belgrade every night, in a campaign aimed at Slobodan Milosevic. (And so we are clear, myself, I would not call that genocide, even though most of the people who were killed were Serb.) In May of that year, Clinton backed the decision by the ...

Document Size:	5587
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Nov 19 12:31:30 PST 2005

1277 [lbo-talk] Guardian grovels -- rank: 1000

Michael Pugliese references: "Chomsky/Herman/Johnstone on the Balkan conflicts" with a reference to Marko Attila Hoare's (son of Quintin Hoare and Branka Magas, I believe) piece on the 'left revisionists', and its conclusion "The bitterness of the left-revisionist campaign to deny the genocide in the former Yugoslavia carried out by Milosevic and the Serb nationalists reflects a neo-Stalinist determination to champion Europe's last 'socialist' dictatorship against all the overwhel ...

Document Size:	6687
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Nov 18 09:08:14 PST 2005

1278 [lbo-talk] War on Car drivers -- rank: 1000

Tom Walker writes "Spurred by reports that anti-car activists are avid followers of Pol Pot and that mass transit is a Nazi extermination camp plot, the Sandwichman has been inspired to examine the proposition: did bicycle fanatics crucify Jesus Christ?" But I find sarcasm carries rather poorly over the internet, though that was before I saw this witty parody of environmental activism: http://www.worklessparty.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=54

Document Size:	5143
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Nov 16 12:04:15 PST 2005

1279 [lbo-talk] The war on the car-driver -- rank: 1000

Tom Walker trumpets: "Unlike Mr. Heartfield, I actually have written technical reports on transit expansion and so I at least know enough not to confuse capacity with ridership and not to equate journeys by car with journeys by rail." My point was exactly that one cannot equate train journeys with car journeys. More specifically, the train will never substitute for the car. There just is no way that it could multiply its ridership by eight times, even if the rail lines were going to th ...

Document Size:	5730
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Nov 16 10:07:39 PST 2005

1280 [lbo-talk] War on the car-driver -- rank: 1000

Doug writes: "Well of course. This [my argument that we are substantially dependent on motorisation] is hardly news to anyone, even the most avid car-hater. But that's not to address the point whether being so car-centered makes for a good society, or is ecologically sustainable." These are just idle speculations, it seems to me. If you really think that the car is a problem, then the obligation is on you to propose how we might live without it. And to address that challenge seriously, ...

Document Size:	7773
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Nov 16 04:21:03 PST 2005

1281 [lbo-talk] The War on the Car-driver -- rank: 1000

Sandwichman writes: "Almost every thing in you local store has traveled thousands of miles by truck, plane and/or container ship. And the fuel to ship it with has been massively subsidized." And that is a good thing, isn't it? Without those subsidies, the 260 million Americans, and 377 M west Europeans would for the most part, starve. It is just sheer utopianism to think that you could take the internal combustion engine out of the food chain without substantially reducing its output. ...

Document Size:	6638
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Nov 14 11:45:34 PST 2005

1282 [lbo-talk] The War on the Car -- rank: 1000

Doug writes [the WSJ editpage is normally a nutty place, but this one stands out even by its standards] I can't agree. The article seemed very sensible to me, it was the students who were nutty. Far from being a means of destruction, the internal combustion engine is a condition for the reproduction of western societies. Consider this, almost every single thing that you will buy from your local store or supermarket was delivered by van or lorry. The agricultural output that sustains the US and E ...

Document Size:	5614
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Nov 14 07:17:12 PST 2005

1283 [lbo-talk] Average hours, etc, was nostalgia -- rank: 1000

John Thornton, pay attention. The statistics cited were in a context. Joanna suggested that her fathers' era was something like a utopia compared to the present. So I looked at the numbers and found that, on the average, people worked shorter hours, their money went further (at least on basics) and lived longer. What do these stastitics show, you rail? They show that the 1960s were not (at least in material terms) better than the present. Tom Walker, like John, takes issue with the evidence that ...

Document Size:	7027
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue May 24 00:05:24 PDT 2005

1284 [lbo-talk] Re: lbo-talk Digest, Vol 17, Issue 219 -- rank: 1000

Chris Doss, fulminating: > Do you actually know anything about the former Soviet Union? Well, I know that it collapsed. If it was as successful as you claim, why didn't Russians lift a finger to defend it?

Document Size:	4817
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon May 23 14:49:05 PDT 2005

1285 [lbo-talk] Nostalgia, was anti-communism -- rank: 1000

> From: joanna <123hop at comcast.net> > > Compared to the present, my father's life in the U.S. 1963-2002, reads > like a socialist fantasy Life expectancy is up from 69.9 in 1963 to 77.3 in 2002.http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_06.pdf OECD statistics are that annual hours worked per American employee have fallen from 2,033 hrs in 1960 to 1,817 hrs in 2003. http://www.ggdc.net/dseries/Data/hours/OECDH05I.xls In 1947 Americans spent 23.8 per cent of their income ...

Document Size:	7323
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon May 23 13:50:52 PDT 2005

1286 [lbo-talk] Nostalgia, was anti-Communism -- rank: 1000

Nostalgia is not specific to the Soviet Union, lots of Americans think that the past was preferable to the present, too. Which good old days? - various age groups' perceptions of past times American Demographics, April, 1996 by Diane Crispell Baby boomers take the rap for the return of "The Brady Bunch" and other signs of the decline of American popular culture. But they're not the only ones bitten by the nostalgia bug. Over half of adults of all ages think that things were better in ...

Document Size:	8127
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon May 23 10:51:44 PDT 2005

1287 [lbo-talk] Anti-communism -- rank: 1000

Chris Doss, intemperately: "I think it more to do with you not knowing what the fuck you're talking about. How the hell do you know what life was like in the USSR?" Sorry, I thought we were talking about the real USSR, not that secret garden of which only Chris Doss has knowledge. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20050523/27557457/attachment.htm>

Document Size:	4961
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon May 23 07:31:36 PDT 2005

1288 [lbo-talk] Galloway -- rank: 1000

Carl: "Aha, if I'm not mistaken, James, your sympathy is for the prophet of an English Jerusalem that never will be" Well, I can only speak for myself. And having seen an entire generation of the British left exhaust itself in the fruitless task of trying to make the welfare state into socialism through the instrument of parliament, along with all the nationalistic chauvinism that entailed, I am not willing to go down that road again. Like I say, Galloway did the right thing in Washing ...

Document Size:	5521
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon May 23 01:58:34 PDT 2005

1289 [lbo-talk] Anti-communism -- rank: 1000

This discussion is daft. A child of six could work out that from 1924 onwards the so-called Soviet Union was as much a Communist society as Rome is the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not possible to make the case for communism without distinguishing it from the dictatorial regime that held sway in the USSR from 1924 to 1989. That society was the literal opposite of communism. Instead of raising the means of production, it squandered them. Instead of liberating people from want and servitude it starved ...

Document Size:	7161
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon May 23 01:21:07 PDT 2005

1290 [lbo-talk] Galloway, Creativity Gap -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 22 May 2005 A DUNDONIAN BRIT IN THE COURT OF KING GEORGE George Galloway, newly elected 'Respect' MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, gave the Senate Committee on Homeland Affairs 'both barrels' this week, winning congratulations around the world. It was an audacious challenge to the stuffed-shirt chairman Senator Norm Coleman, who was, in the words of the New York Post, left 'flat-footed' ('Brit fries senators in oil'). Galloway was right to take the fight to his accusers, having been ...

Document Size:	12049
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun May 22 05:49:11 PDT 2005