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406 [lbo-talk] uh-oh! too much regulation!! -- rank: 1000

Doug 'Oh really? Then wouldn't big business and big finance be lobbying for more of it?' Sorry, I didn't realise that America was in fact a socialist state, in which the working class had imposed overwhelming restrictions on big business. In my naivety, I was under the impression that America, like Britain and the rest of Europe, was a country where business interests were dominant in the formulation of policy. The statue books are jam-packed full of regulations on business whose origin is not p ...

Document Size:	8000
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Feb 3 01:33:39 PST 2010

407 [lbo-talk] uh-oh! too much regulation!! -- rank: 1000

Doug posts 'Americans Leery of Too Much Gov't Regulation of Business Republicans in particular are worried about too much government regulation' I guess this is supposed to garner the response, how silly of them, of course business must be regulated. That's not my view. Capitalism is a terrible thing. Capitalist government and bureaucracy. even worse. Regulation of business does nothing to enhance the lives of working people. On the contrary, it only serves to reinforce the status quo. I'm not ...

Document Size:	6484
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Feb 2 16:46:36 PST 2010

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

Doug 'What's disturbing is the way Chris regurgitates prejudices as if they were somehow natural and not in the least problematic.' I don't know if I am the right person to stick up for Chris, but it is always worth knowing what IS the case, as well as what OUGHT to be the case (to use Hume's distinction). It is worth knowing that for most of the time ideas of national identity were, in a largely unreflective way, seen as synonymous with racial identity, and that in many parts of the world, and ...

Document Size:	5118
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Feb 2 09:42:09 PST 2010

409 [lbo-talk] Prospects and consequences of a devalued USD -- rank: 1000

A few years ago I was asked by the University of Delaware's London program to give a talk on the dollar, to explain to the visiting students why their dollars were not buying very many goods in over-priced London. I hoped to catch their attention at the start of the talk, by tearing up a dollar bill .... I have never lost an audience so quickly or completely. Isn't the standard account of the course of the dollar that Americans bought too many foreign goods with their artificially high dollar, s ...

Document Size:	5664
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Feb 2 05:12:40 PST 2010

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

When Lenin asked Trotsky to lead the Red Army, Trotsky was at first unwilling, fearing that Russian (and others) would not follow a Jew. Lenin's answer was that if the Red Army was so beholden to anti-semitic prejudice then it would fail anyway. The Red Army did pretty well under Trotsky, as it turned out. Later, as the initial successes ran into the ground, Stalin and other Soviet leaders played the patriotic Russian chauvinst card to rally a defence against Hitler. Also, as Trotsky argued at t ...

Document Size:	6150
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Feb 2 03:30:07 PST 2010

411 [lbo-talk] Guardian stabs Assange in the back -- rank: 1000

I must admit I had some doubts about the lionisation of Julian Assange in the pages of the Guardian newspaper over the last month's publication of his London Embassy leaks - but still it is shocking that they have stabbed him in the back by publishing the leaked allegations of rape against him. Talk about building someone up to knock him down. Don't these people have any sense of loyalty? He has been writing the larger part of their newspaper for the last five weeks.

Document Size:	5101
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Dec 23 00:13:16 PST 2010

412 [lbo-talk] Progressives for Immigration Reform? -- rank: 1000

Anyone come across this crew before? Their boss seems to be one Leah Durant http://www.progressivesforimmigrationreform.org/

Document Size:	4745
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Dec 7 08:54:47 PST 2010

413 [lbo-talk] Middle East in the Second World War -- rank: 1000

Does anyone know of a good history of the Arab middle east in the Second World War? I am thinking in particular of the conflicts with the Lebanese and the French in Lebanon, the Iraq revolt of 1941 and any accounts of the Desert War from the Arab point of view. Histories or memoirs would be good.

Document Size:	4854
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Aug 31 16:03:43 PDT 2010

414 [lbo-talk] Tea Partiers -- rank: 1000

Sean Collins, for Spiked: The Tea Party? Get over it already In their discussion of the Tea Party as 'delirious' and 'unhinged', liberals like Bill Clinton are exposing their own snobbery. ...there has always been an anti-party, anti-politics strain to the Tea Party. It is ironic that the group has 'party' in its name, since it is clearly not a party, and is arguably anti-party. The incoherence of views beyond the anti-tax message, the generational differences, the calls for 'taking back our cou ...

Document Size:	6200
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 30 07:24:13 PDT 2010

415 [lbo-talk] Fred Halliday has passed away -- rank: 1000

My recollection is that he was one of those who, after the end of the Cold War, identified the International Community as represented by the United Nations as the engine of positive social change (as per Hella Pick, for example). So, in Marxism Today, Halliday supported the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, back in 1990.

Document Size:	4826
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Apr 26 23:27:40 PDT 2010

416 [lbo-talk] Quick question on U.S. hate crime stats by state -- rank: 1000

Julio writes > I get the following ranking by state. The top (NJ) has the highest > incidence of reported hate crimes in the U.S. AL the lowest. UK comparison: in the UK, the differential rates of hate crimes listed are almost entirely due to the different policies of the recording authority (i.e. police authority) towards hate crimes. Hence those police authorities that prioritise hate crimes report them more assiduously than those that do not. Over time, attitudes towards hate crimes ha ...

Document Size:	6279
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Apr 24 14:06:15 PDT 2010

417 [lbo-talk] How Zac Goldsmith bough the Green Movement -- rank: 1000

Irish website Forth makes an offer to SpinProfiles.org http://forth.ie/index.php/content/article/beware_of_tory_heir_tax_dodgers_bearing_chequebooks/20100423/ Beware of Tory heir tax exiles bearing chequebooks Fri 23 Apr, 2010 Media crusaders SpinWatch are missing a page for Zac Goldsmith on their web site. Helpfully forth has one they can copy and paste. Zac Goldsmith Zac Goldsmith is theTory millionaire who funds SpinProfiles, SpinWatch and scores of other green front organisations. Goldsmith, ...

Document Size:	6827
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Apr 24 00:36:22 PDT 2010

418 [lbo-talk] agricultural productivity -- rank: 1000

Ted: 'I interpret Marx's claim that the "material forces of production" "are organs of the human brain' Yes, and in this, you are in error.

Document Size:	4585
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 23 12:49:18 PDT 2010

419 [lbo-talk] agricultural productivity -- rank: 1000

Ted, your problem is that you see history as the realisation of a preconceived scheme, the self-actualisation of mind. But Marx sees it differently. He does not say that mankind strives to develop mind. He says that 'in the social production of their existence, men enter into definite relations which are independent of their will, namely the relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of the material forces of production'. (Contribution to the Critique of Political Ec ...

Document Size:	7961
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 23 08:36:41 PDT 2010

420 [lbo-talk] agricultural productivity -- rank: 1000

Ted, that's the trouble with your category Mind: it is everything. Football is mind, eating a good meal is mind the development of the productive forces is mind. Nothing remains from the all-conquering imperialism of mind. But at just the moment that you had subsumed everything into the void of mind, then, you, Ted, snap back into the role of policeman excluding those things that you think are unworthy of mind. So when I say that you cannot prescribe the content of freedom, you say, oh no, that' ...

Document Size:	5673
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 23 02:22:03 PDT 2010