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1441 [lbo-talk] Campbell v BBC -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 29 June 2003 COURT POLITICS The Westminster political village has been captivated by the struggle between the Prime Minister's press secretary Alastair Campbell and BBC Correspondent Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan reported that the Prime Minister's office 'sexed-up' a dossier on Iraq's supposed 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' to galvanise the country into war. Summoned to appear before Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee Campbell retaliated by accusing the BBC of bias and false repor ...

Document Size:	7262
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jun 29 01:20:37 PDT 2003

1442 [lbo-talk] Blair, Israel -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 15 June 2003 LITTLE BOY LOST The end of the war in Iraq has exposed the hiatus in policy-making at the heart of Tony Blair's 'New Labour' government. The first sign was the much-discussed debate on whether Britain should join the Euro. The result was undecided. The divisions between the Prime Minister (believed to be in favour) and the Chancellor (believed to be against) only mirror the ambiguity of the decision for Britain. In the end, all economic tests are not tests of the E ...

Document Size:	7787
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jun 15 05:46:28 PDT 2003

1443 [lbo-talk] Empire -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 8 June 2003 THE 'EMPIRE' STRIKES BACK Radicals Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt popularized the notion of 'Empire' - an abstract system of imperial regulation that rises above specific great power interests in their book of the same name. It was a theory that described the emerging pattern of international relations in the 1990s, when world leaders acted through international organizations, like the United Nations, or the International Criminal Court. Since the election of George ...

Document Size:	8449
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jun 8 03:57:36 PDT 2003

1444 [lbo-talk] Water, Iraq, Europe -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 1 June 2003 WATERED-DOWN DEVELOPMENT? Last year World leaders descended on Johannesburg for the World Summit on Sustainable Development. There, they promised to halve the numbers of those without access to water by 2015. British charity WORLDwrite is protesting that the promises are just watered-down development, that will not help the Third World. Hidden in the small print, they promise 'access' to water. But access to water is not the same thing as having water piped into your ...

Document Size:	10136
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jun 1 09:27:35 PDT 2003

1445 [lbo-talk] 'Empire' after Iraq -- rank: 1000

Doug writes, re. My previous mail: 'Hmm, well things aren't going too swimmingly for the Bushies now, and their stubborn unilateralism is part of the problem. So maybe the critique of Empire also needs a rethink.' To which I have to say that I can well believe that US triumphalism did not last (indeed I think it is a prejudice of Euro-chauvinism that sees it much stronger than it is). But I am not so ready to believe that the US's 'stubborn unilateralism' is part of the problem. Bush walked all ...

Document Size:	5453
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jul 29 04:15:20 PDT 2003

1446 [lbo-talk] 'Empire' after Iraq -- rank: 1000

From: Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> writes, replying to my contention that > American workers produce as great a share of the world's goods as they > do its pollution. > "Is this true? If share is defined as "wages paid", maybe, but I have a hard time believing American workers produce 25-50% of the world's goods (that's the percentage range of resource use for various important resources and different types of pollution)." OECD total GDP, 2000 = 25,528 bill ...

Document Size:	5250
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jul 29 03:50:53 PDT 2003

1447 [lbo-talk] 'Empire' after Iraq -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 27 July 2003 'EMPIRE' AFTER IRAQ Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's book 'Empire' (Harvard, 2000) summarised the state of the capitalism for a burgeoning 'anti-capitalist' protest movement. The veteran Italian Marxist and his American academic acolyte drew on the ideas of the '1968' generation of radicals to characterise a new global capitalism. Central to their thesis was the argument that the commercial and military rivalries that characterised the old capitalism had been supers ...

Document Size:	9852
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jul 28 05:03:59 PDT 2003

1448 [lbo-talk] Suicide bomb -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 20 July 2003 SUICIDE BOMB Weapons scientist David Kelly's suicide turned the British government's 'WMD' problem into a full-blown crisis. The former head of microbiology at Britain's Porton Down germ warfare laboratories turned weapons inspector David Kelly is an unlikely martyr, but that is what he has become. So widespread is the cynicism towards government that Kelly's death has drawn accusations that he was driven to it, principally by Number Ten's spin-doctor Alasdair Campbe ...

Document Size:	7989
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jul 20 13:23:37 PDT 2003

1449 [lbo-talk] Them and Us, Roads, Corporate Killing -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 13 July 2003 'US AND THEM' Liverpool's Static art project launches an investigation of 'Us and Them', with its web-published pamphlet http://www.static-ops.org/pamphlet.htm The first issue kicked off with author and lecturer Andrew Calcutt's 'Six Characters in Search of a Role' (subtitled: 'The war on Iraq was a Western identity crisis continued by other means'). The current edition features James Heartfield's 'Hegel Dispirited' a genealogy of the concept of 'the Other' in wester ...

Document Size:	7584
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jul 13 15:14:52 PDT 2003

1450 [lbo-talk] Berlusconi, Hodge -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 6 July 2003 BOGEYMAN Silvio Berlusconi's clumsy jibe at a German Member of the European Parliament (MEP) - 'you could play a good Kapo in a concentration camp film' - drew ostentatious outrage in Brussels and Berlin. Set a deadline to apologise, the right wing Italian prime minister was supposed to have said 'sorry' to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in a phone call - though Berlusconi denied apologising. According to the centre-left MEPs, the affair shows that Berlusconi is ...

Document Size:	8117
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jul 6 02:46:50 PDT 2003

1451 Europe, Islam -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 26 January 2003 OLD AND NEW EUROPE Faced with a blunt opposition to war before the end of the weapons inspection from France and Germany, US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld wrote them off as 'Old Europe' in favour of a 'New Europe' that was more supportive of US goals: 'You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't,' he told reporters. 'I think that's old Europe. If you look at the entire Nato Europe today, the centre of gravity is shifting to the east and there are ...

Document Size:	9389
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jan 26 06:49:35 PST 2003

1452 Euro-sceptics -- rank: 1000

In message <200301192009.PAA10688 at dont.panix.com>, lbo-talk-digest <owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com> writes >Seems to me you're looking a gift horse in the mouth here, James. No doubt >Euro leaders have hidden agendas in raising doubts about the US war drive. >But the longer there's no fighting *for whatever reason* the more >opportunity genuine antiwar activists will have to build public support that >can thwart the cynical forces you see at work. On the ...

Document Size:	6390
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jan 20 10:52:33 PST 2003

1453 The Euro-sceptics -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 19 January 2003 BUSH'S EURO-SCEPTICS It is not scepticism about Union that predominates in Europe, but scepticism towards the American-led campaign against Iraq. The new Euro-sceptics are European leaders, intellectuals and political activists campaigning against the war. But underneath the surface, the differences have less to do with what to do about Iraq, and much more to do with the Great Power pecking-order. US diplomats and journalists are all retailing the same story, of t ...

Document Size:	8551
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jan 19 04:09:04 PST 2003

1454 James Heartfield at Waterstones -- rank: 1000

From: Kevin Robert Dean <qualiall at union.org.za> writes: "While I personaly tend to believe that those who are those "ZPG" folks are ones who tend to think that "Overpopulation" is when people who are not the right color have children, for balance, I'll put this counterpoint from recent Sanford research on this matter:" I agree. All arguments from scarcity tend towards rationing - usually on the basis of some pre-existing moral distinction between the des ...

Document Size:	6096
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jan 13 13:52:52 PST 2003

1455 Fat -- rank: 1000

Joanna blames her car for her extra pounds ...so get a bike. Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes: "You don't have people living on the streets, picking food out of traschcans? We sure do. Malnutrition of various kinds is much more widespread." Well, it does happen, but it is pretty exceptional. The homeless are most likely to be in that invidious position, since welfare benefits - no doubt very mean ones - are available to people with an address. Recent research on rough ...

Document Size:	6441
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jan 13 14:11:12 PST 2003