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226 [lbo-talk] Blixa Bargeld Reads Hornbach -- rank: 1000

Sex Pistols? Head and shoulders above their nearest rivals (the Clash, I suppose). It was odd that they were any good, since both McLaren and Rotten were horrid toads, but good they were. They soaked up the moment and spat it back. McLaren, Rotten and the rest of the band seemed to have a keen understanding that they had to be more than a rock band, and something more like a provocation, or a situationist performance, in which the public's reaction was one of the instruments they played. That is ...

Document Size:	7663
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 26 12:56:12 PDT 2010

227 [lbo-talk] What is socialism? -- rank: 1000

Is the state socialist? ------------ British defence budget cuts could damage NATO alliance, Hillary Clinton warns Asked during a trip to Brussels for a NATO meeting whether the cuts in defence, specifically in Britain, worried her, she said: "Yes. The reason it does is because I think we do have to have an alliance where there is a commitment to the common defence." ... Emphasising the concern felt in Washington about a drop in European military spending, US Defence Secretary Robert G ...

Document Size:	5663
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Oct 15 00:10:43 PDT 2010

228 [lbo-talk] Why Semiotext(e) Are Reactionary Douchebags -- rank: 1000

'Because they publish the reactionary neo-liberal "philosopher" Peter Sloterdijk' writes Angelus Novis Still, I enjoyed his Critique of Cynical Reason...

Document Size:	4806
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 14 12:22:09 PDT 2010

229 [lbo-talk] What is socialism? -- rank: 1000

Eric Beck: 'Trying to escape it, however futile and delusional the effort might be, makes a hell of a lot of sense.' Futile, delusional and making a lot of sense? Is that dialectical, or just plain contradictory? Ricky Page: 'Actually most anthropologist would agree that pessant economics is, because of direct access to food, is more secure than industrial workers- this was esp. true in the earlier periods of capitalist production.' Yup - anthropologists (the epitome of aboriginal tourism) agre ...

Document Size:	7040
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 14 10:44:04 PDT 2010

230 [lbo-talk] what government spending? -- rank: 1000

Doug: 'I really don't get where you're going with this. You think the U.S. should follow the Cameron way and cut spending savagely? ' Why do I have to be going anywhere? Mr Krugman was cited as saying that govt spending was inconsequential, and that turned out to be not quite the truth. That seems like something one ought to know. As to what I think of increased government spending, I think that it is indicative of the problem - what Lenin sums up as Imperialism, or moribund capitalism, or as Ma ...

Document Size:	5981
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 12 11:25:36 PDT 2010

231 [lbo-talk] what government spending? -- rank: 1000

'Yet, the self-styled state-hating lefties like James Heartfield have no qualms of disseminating this right wing propaganda as long as it fits their anti-state ideology. Shame on you.' Keep your hair on, Wojtek, I did not disseminate, I asked 'can this be right'? And according to original cite Paul Krugman's second post in the NYT, spending is 36 per cent of GDP, rather more than the 20 per cent that you raise up as the correction to the wicked website (that seemed to be using the same numbers a ...

Document Size:	5125
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 12 10:43:20 PDT 2010

232 [lbo-talk] spending as a percentage of GDP ... -- rank: 1000

Jordan writes 'Krugman making the same point today: Special Bulletin: Fractions Have Denominators http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/special-bulletin-fractions-have-denominators/ ' So it's only another thousand billion then, or an increase of 25 per cent, so that's alright.

Document Size:	5010
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 12 10:35:44 PDT 2010

233 [lbo-talk] what government spending? -- rank: 1000

SocialismorBarbarism (and let's honour the recently passed Claude Lefort) wrote "*something* has to cover that collapse in the private share of GDP" - here in Britain, we have another idea: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3175128/Virtual-reality-high-street.html and yes, I agree with your approach - public spending is a compensation for the failure of private accumulation. But to me that says that it is itself a bad thing, not a good thing, that society relies on the state to ...

Document Size:	5333
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 12 02:21:57 PDT 2010

234 [lbo-talk] what government spending? -- rank: 1000

What government spending? According to this website, http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/charts.html#copypaste it has grown to 43 per cent of GDP. Can that be right? USGDP$ billion Spend $ billion 1995 7414.7 2634.87 = 35.5 per cent 1996 7838.5 2719.43 1997 8332.4 2813.59 1998 8793.5 2923.39 1999 9353.5 3053.51 2000 9951.5 3240.18 2001 10286.2 3434.00 2002 10642.3 3697.75 2003 11142.1 3930.63 2004 11867.8 4127.66 2005 12638.4 4397.46 2006 13398.9 ...

Document Size:	5213
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 12 00:02:13 PDT 2010

235 [lbo-talk] Forests resurgent -- rank: 1000

Britain's forest cover is greater than it has been for 250 years - not quite up to the world level of 29 per cent forest cover, or Europe's 44 per cent, but still quite an improvement http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/8039667/Forest-levels-booming-as-UK-woodland-returns-to-highest-level-in-more-than-250-years.html

Document Size:	4952
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Oct 4 00:05:05 PDT 2010

236 [lbo-talk] highly entertaining, if lacking in redeeming social content -- rank: 1000

On the Duke U. student's 'f*** list', I was amazed at how sanctimonious the comments were. Every single one was full of pity for the poor guys who had been so 'humiliated'. I thought it was pretty funny, really.

Document Size:	5016
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Oct 1 13:14:50 PDT 2010

237 [lbo-talk] Beck: Rupert Murdoch part of Marxist conspiracy -- rank: 1000

Legend has it that he had a bust of Lenin on his mantlepiece in his university digs

Document Size:	4676
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Nov 18 06:16:00 PST 2010

238 [lbo-talk] Imperial Chickens coming home to roost -- rank: 1000

Chuck: 'what was going on in the art itself was the replacement of explicit narrative, for a diffused sense of mood or states. This is what linked AE [abstract expressionisn] up with music, particular the jazz of the period and some of the film.' Which is true, but in my view very depressing. I grew up in a household where abstract expressionism was reviled as a return to cave art, by people who were still amazed that paint dripped off the end of the brush. It was, quite apart from the CIA fund ...

Document Size:	5446
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Nov 13 05:02:59 PST 2010

239 [lbo-talk] ruins of Detroit -- rank: 1000

I don't know if this doc. has been shown in the US yet, but it is very good. The only strange thing about it is that the director (art-punk Julien Temple) has put loads of music in, but almost no motown. Requiem for Detroit? 2nd December 2009 Films of Record, a Ten Alps company, has been commissioned by BBC Two to produce Requiem for Detroit? (1x75'), a documentary that will tell the roller coaster story of the city's automotive industry through the testimony of the people who lived through it. ...

Document Size:	5062
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun May 23 07:31:05 PDT 2010

240 [lbo-talk] the far left in the UK elections -- rank: 1000

LABOUR'S LEFT OVERS The General Election campaign was a rendez-vous with reality for the far left, writes James Heartfield 'The desire for a real alternative did shine through in the election. A larger proportion of people voted for alternative candidates than ever before. Above all a space has opened for a radical new party.' That was Socialist Worker on the election in May . 2005. Five years later the picture was a little different. 'Candidates to the left of Labour generally suffered'' report ...

Document Size:	14914
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun May 23 07:18:38 PDT 2010