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1801 Bjørn Lomborg -- rank: 1000

>From today's Guardian newspaper The environmental Litany and data By Bjørn Lomborg, Ph.D., associate professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark Pls. Note that this is a first (un-edited) version, with references. We are all familiar with the Litany of our ever deteriorating environment.1 This is incessantly repeated doomsday message from the media, as when Time magazine tell us how everyone knows the planet is in bad shape, 2 and when New Scientist title ...

Document Size:	7353
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Aug 15 12:20:10 PDT 2001

1802 PDS on the Berlin Wall - and present walls! -- rank: 1000

In message <4.3.2.7.1.20010814072506.02772780 at pop3.norton.antivirus>, Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> writes >Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the erection of the Berlin wall. > >PDS spokespersons have taken part in a series of debates in Germany. > Carolyn Eisenberg's book Dividing Germany explains that it was the British and Americans who started the drive to divide Germany. -- James Heartfield

Document Size:	5210
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Aug 14 00:37:52 PDT 2001

1803 Boycotting Nestle? -- rank: 1000

The WEEK Ending 12 August 2001 BOYCOTTING NESTLE? The campaign to boycott infant formula makers Nestle gained publicity when comedians Emma Thompson and Rob Newman withdrew from Perrier (owned by Nestle) awards for comedy at the Edinburgh festival. The campaign alleges that infant formula milk is being promoted in the third world despite the threat to children's health. The image of Nestle as a predatory capitalist multi-national is enhanced by its extensive holdings in Africa and Asia, where th ...

Document Size:	7001
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Aug 12 06:43:13 PDT 2001

1804 Brett and Christopher on eco-optimism -- rank: 1000

In message <OFE3CAA86B.47D2F492-ON85256AA4.0050A956 at unica-usa.com>, brettk at unicacorp.com writes > >Hi Jim, > >Good to see you back. Thank you! >Perhaps a quibble, but extinction, by definition, reduces bio-diversity. >It doesn't enhance it. Yes, I was being wilfully argumentative. But species extinction and bio- diversity go hand in hand. Species extinction is just as much part of the law of natural selection as bio-diversity. One without the other would be unworkab ...

Document Size:	8511
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 11 10:31:18 PDT 2001

1805 eco-optomism, capitalism, and food -- rank: 1000

I can agree with Terry when he says that it isn't capitalism, but science that developed high yield grains. Indeed I've always thought it was important to distinguish between those developments that take place under capitalism from the system itself. But it's increased productivity I want to defend, not its limited capitalisitic form. On the theft of land, I would have said that the greater problem that countries like India (or Fiji, where I've just been) suffer from the failure of capitalism to ...

Document Size:	7064
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Aug 10 01:14:22 PDT 2001

1806 Dennis R on eco-optimism -- rank: 1000

In message <Pine.GSU.4.21.0108091743300.5412-100000 at garcia.efn.org>, Dennis Robert Redmond <dredmond at efn.org> writes >On Thu, 9 Aug 2001, James Heartfield wrote: > >> More to the point, 99.9 species that ever existed are now extinct. >> Extinction is a law of nature. > >There's nothing natural about species extinctions nowadays. It would be difficult to imagine that human kind had entirely supplanted a natural law of species extinction with a social one, ...

Document Size:	7120
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Aug 10 01:14:43 PDT 2001

1807 eco-optimism -- rank: 1000

In message <019201c11f8b$8dbbe0e0$0200a8c0 at sttln1.wa.home.com>, Ian Murray <seamus2001 at home.com> writes >That's not fair, Gordon. The whole point of science is to make and >correct errors as quickly as possible. To the extent that folks were >passing off conjectures and models of simulable futures as 'facts' >they definitely weren't speaking as scientists but acting out >anxieties based on the limited models they had at the time. But when I pointed out the conjec ...

Document Size:	6862
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Aug 9 11:49:43 PDT 2001

1808 Gar Lipow on eco-optimism -- rank: 1000

In message <3B71F567.BDF57AE9 at sprintmail.com>, Gar Lipow <lipowg at sprintmail.com> writes >Yes undoubtedly a lot (maybe a majority) of green activists have >contempt for working people. (But there are still a hell of a lot who >don't.) I think this blurs the point. There is something in the green philosophy that causes contempt for working people to re-occur as a theme. Green thinking is anti-mass, anti-industrialisation. It is hardly surprising that that tends to merge ...

Document Size:	10046
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Aug 9 11:49:07 PDT 2001

1809 deforestation -- rank: 1000

In message <126.2b0d4d9.28a3858d at aol.com>, Leslilake1 at aol.com writes >You know, I've seen this claim before, about forest acreage increasing, but I >don't quite buy it, based purely on my own experience. The US government recently bought 50 000 acres of sugar cane land in the Everglades for conservation. Pressure is on third world countries to earmark land 'for conservation'. When Gabon declared 1.4 million acres of tropical forest at Minkebe as a protected area for lowland Gor ...

Document Size:	5502
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Aug 9 11:47:18 PDT 2001

1810 Japan Right mobilizes for Yasukuni -- rank: 1000

I'm not sure that the desire to commemorate Japanese losses on Hiroshima day can be dismissed as 'rightism'. Perhaps if there was more awareness in the US of the race-chauvinism that prepared American public opinion for the use of the A Bomb, the right would not be able to get this foothold on Japanese public opinion. In message <4.3.2.7.2.20010807080717.00c2a8a0 at hsoak01a.ebay.sun.com>, Brad Mayer <bradley.mayer at ebay.sun.com> writes >Pardon for the appearance of self-indulge ...

Document Size:	6124
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Aug 9 00:24:24 PDT 2001

1811 eco-optimism -- rank: 1000

In message <005e01c11fe0$92ac8640$2cd5bfa8 at lkrubner>, Lawrence <lawrence at krubner.com> writes > Concentrated human >activity runs the constant risk of destroying the environment. No, concentrated human activity is good for the environment. It makes it a source of human satisfaction. -- James Heartfield

Document Size:	4795
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Aug 8 09:28:37 PDT 2001

1812 eco-optimism -- give me a damn break! -- rank: 1000

In message <001001c1200f$44272960$ef85f7a5 at u9m6p2>, Chris Kromm <ckromm at mindspring.com> writes >James Heartfield is able to blather such nonsense -- with other LBOers >wagging their heads in approval -- because they haven't spent any time in >the trenches with the environmental justice movement, How very rude you are >lead by working class >African Americans and Latinos, especially in the South. Well, even if this were true, which by and large its not (the sociol ...

Document Size:	5550
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Aug 8 09:27:18 PDT 2001

1813 eco-optimism -- rank: 1000

In message <20010807152148.A16684 at panix.com>, Gordon Fitch <gcf at panix.com> writes > The first thing >that comes to mind is that, unlike other leftish concerns, >environmentalism is cool with upper- and middle-class people, >so the bourgeois practice of constantly lying about everything >may have come into play. > I have a book, co-edited with Ian Abley coming out on this very subject, Sustainable Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age, this December, published ...

Document Size:	7139
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Aug 8 01:27:25 PDT 2001

1814 Why isn't Australia more like America? -- rank: 1000

Why isn't Australia more like America? would make just as much, if not more sense. Like the US Australia was built on surplus capital and labour from the old world. Early development was predicated on Pacific trade (whale oil etc) and depended on developments in shipping. But the creation of a large home market is the condition of Australia's take- off. In recent years the country gained by its association with Pacific growth (which it is trying to avoid the downside of now). The reason that we ...

Document Size:	5655
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Aug 6 09:26:52 PDT 2001

1815 Racism, Left Book Club -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 5 August 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism The planned United Nations' conference against racism has been heavily trailed as a contest between former colonial and colonised powers over the demand for compensation. The preparatory committee has clashed over inclusion of slavery in the themes for discussion, and the United States has already blocked inclusion of statements to the effect that 'Zionism is racism'. The very fact of the conference, though, indicates that the West ...

Document Size:	9942
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Aug 5 01:17:35 PDT 2001