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301 [lbo-talk] lefty on futbol -- rank: 1000

"Chomsky doesn't moralize about sports. He points out that the amount of information and analysis that many people apply to sports could result from their being discouraged and repressed in applying similar skills to politics." But what if it was politics that was just sublimated sports-enthusiasm? A Turkish marxist told me once that he had moved to Britain because he had studied the militant tradition of the mineworkers. 'I came because I though the British were supporters [of social ...

Document Size:	4973
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Jul 3 14:56:14 PDT 2010

302 [lbo-talk] When Empire loses it -- rank: 1000

Doug: 'That aside, I meant the effect of imposing austerity - deep recession - on the rest of Europe, and pressing for broader austerity within the G20. Won't that put German exports at risk?' Another thing to consider is that though Europe was important for Germany as a market for the export of 'capital goods', when I looked again at the more recent history, German exports had followed the dynamic of the world economy towards the East, and Europe was of declining significance to its exports (fr ...

Document Size:	5082
Author:	JAMES Heartfield
Date:	Fri Jul 2 06:29:23 PDT 2010

303 [lbo-talk] LRB on RCP->IOI etc -- rank: 1000

Of course some ventures are never held to account, like the London Review of Books for example, which survives on its editor's trust fund 'THE literary magazine, London Review of Books (LRB), has run up mountainous debts of £27m. The fortnightly, whose writers include Alan Bennett, Hilary Mantel and Hanif Kureishi, owes the money to the family trust of its long-standing editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers. 'Wilmers, 71, is an heiress to a fortune made in the fur trade, originally by her Russian Jewish fore ...

Document Size:	5462
Author:	JAMES Heartfield
Date:	Fri Jul 2 04:18:17 PDT 2010

304 [lbo-talk] When Empire loses it -- rank: 1000

Doug: 'what are the forces in Germany pushing austerity? Isn't anyone worried about the hit to German export markets?' I am sure they are, but they are more worried about the European Union's responsibility for its member-states' debts. The old Bundesbank policy of tight money (which, if truth be known, was readily abandoned whenever it suited the politicians, as it was during reunification and again in the early 00's) is something of a pious dogma to Germans, who imagine that they are the only ...

Document Size:	5390
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jul 1 23:27:48 PDT 2010

305 [lbo-talk] RCP->LM->IoI, etc. -- rank: 1000

Doug asks 'any response' to the LRB piece, on what some of my former comrades in the RCP have been up to. I would say that the pay-off line is Jenny Turner's waspish concession that 'Time has shown the RCP's arguments to have been sort of right'. The people around the LRB were mostly enthusiasts of the campaigns that the RCP mocked, like the campaign for 'humanitarian intervention' in Bosnia, or for 'safer sex' amongst teenagers, or against the ballot in the miners' strike. Turner does not like ...

Document Size:	6752
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jul 1 23:18:18 PDT 2010

306 [lbo-talk] when Angelus loses it -- rank: 1000

Angelus Novus writes: 'your bullshit narrative... go back to playing your video games. When you open your mouth about geopolitics, it's cringe-inducing' One role of the revolutionary, perhaps the most important, is to raise the level of debate, which was sadly forgotten here.

Document Size:	4788
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jul 1 00:12:40 PDT 2010

307 [lbo-talk] Steve Bell on the Russian spies -- rank: 1000

Steve Bell on the Russian spies http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=6169763&l=d32469f3f0&id=756513153

Document Size:	4746
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jul 1 00:08:59 PDT 2010

308 [lbo-talk] What to do next -- rank: 1000

[Sorry, I know I am over-posting - deadline avoidance, I guess, but this did strike me as quite important] Shag wrote: 'it's not a skepticism about the leftists per se. it's based on something i've only recently started observing, and I'm not really sure why it goes on. in my observation, the skill of organizing (by which I simply mean, "getting shit done,") is really lacking for most people in general. part of it is lack of self-esteem. part of it is inability or lack of skills in mak ...

Document Size:	6808
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jan 31 09:51:24 PST 2010

309 [lbo-talk] Enough With the China Shtick Already! -- rank: 1000

Marv, I can see where you are coming from, but I don't mean it as an endorsement of the idea of ethnic or racial identity to say that it was largely held to. And it is a big qualifier to say that all kinds of people dealth in lots of different ways with the question of identity, there is no absolute rule. Your example 'In the predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in which I grew up, most immigrants described themselves as not simply as "Jews", but as "Polish Jews", "Russian ...

Document Size:	7400
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jan 31 06:25:35 PST 2010

310 [lbo-talk] Enough With the China Shtick Already! -- rank: 1000

I think Chris is right, most Jews in most of the world for most of the time thought of themselves as distinctively Jewish, and as tolerated minorities among the Gentiles rather than citizens. That they were chosen and that they were descended from Jews were both things that they did not differentiate. That is the case because for most of the time nationality was conceived of as part and parcel of racial identity - it is only in the twentieth century that the America idea of a non-racial national ...

Document Size:	6423
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jan 31 04:11:11 PST 2010

311 [lbo-talk] Enough With the China Shtick Already! -- rank: 1000

Some bits from Mikel Dunham's Buddha's Warriors: The Story of the CIA backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters, Tarcher/Penguin, 2004 Roger E. McCarthy 'The US objective was to destabilise China, and it was for this reason it abandoned diplomatic initiatives in favour of a covert mission' (p 194) Frank Holober, head of the Tibetan Project 'Politically, there was already CIA support in place for the Dalai Lama - personally and for his government. Nobody at the Agency wanted the Dalai Lama to have such dif ...

Document Size:	8028
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jan 31 02:47:20 PST 2010

312 [lbo-talk] Enough With the China Shtick Already! -- rank: 1000

Shane compares the CIA-armed Tibetan guerillas to Roger Casement landing German guns, which might be a fair comparison, on the other hand it could be closer to the case of the Miskito Indians - that ethnic group the Nicaraguan Sandinista government failed to serve properly who were subsequently manipulated by the US; or the marsh arabs, who were used by the US and other western governments to undermine Iraq's sovereignty. Not all national particularisms are progressive. The Bapa Phuntso Wangye e ...

Document Size:	6317
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jan 31 01:59:03 PST 2010

313 [lbo-talk] Enough With the China Shtick Already! -- rank: 1000

Dennis talks up China's green credentials, though I believe that they have often been exaggerated, as Austin Williams reports, here: 'Dongtan: the eco-city that never was' http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7330/

Document Size:	4932
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Jan 30 09:50:38 PST 2010

314 [lbo-talk] Enough With the China Shtick Already! -- rank: 1000

I agree with Dwayne that you can oppose the national chauvinism implied in attacks on China without endorsing it as force for good. When Thomas says 'there's nothing progressive about China', I would agree with him if he means it in the same way that you would say 'there's nothing progressive about America' or 'there's nothing progressive about Britain'. I take that to mean the capitalist ('neo-liberal', if you prefer) model is not solution to the problems of the future. But looked at another w ...

Document Size:	6693
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Jan 30 09:46:13 PST 2010

315 [lbo-talk] Enough With the China Shtick Already! -- rank: 1000

Alan Rudy says 'I haven't heard this argument from lefty environmentalists', of Dwayne's eg of environmentally-worded China bashing. spiked-online keeps a watch on China-bashing which includes many examples of environmentally-inspired China-bashing, here: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/issues/C136/ ALSO Isabel Hilton, veteran leftist, writes monomaniacally on the evils of China's CO2 emission for the Guardian newspaper, and below are just some of the many versions of the same articl ...

Document Size:	6486
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Jan 30 07:17:55 PST 2010