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526 [lbo-talk] Baby thoughts -- rank: 1000

I can't agree with Alan Rudy, when he writes "the impossibility of an inductive and objectively naturalistic science - it is a social relation sometimes tragically and sometimes farcically practiced under conditions direction found and transmitted from the past" Of course the practice of science is a social activity, but collective humanity confronts nature, which is outside of man, as a singular subject. To be bewitched by the interactions between men in their deliberations is to miss ...

Document Size:	5727
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Sep 2 10:37:05 PDT 2009

527 [lbo-talk] class and classical music -- rank: 1000

Matthias wrote about ... a just-so story about the origins of music,.. I think that George Thomson and Christopher Caudwell did write a number of speculative essays on early song and poems. They put more stress on songs of work and their elaboration. Caudwell was something of a Jack of all Trades, but Thomson was well-steeped in classics

Document Size:	4934
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Sep 1 14:07:47 PDT 2009

528 [lbo-talk] do people still read post-structuralism? -- rank: 1000

"Life is about the interaction of forces, and people only matter as indexes to those interactions." A good demonstration of the meandering rubbish that was post-structuralism. People only matter as the indexes of the interaction of forces? What forces, exactly, if not the forces that people put into train? To be really radical is to get to the root, Marx said, and the root is man. Any theory that dissipate human history to an interplay of - what, parallelograms - of force is merely han ...

Document Size:	6283
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Oct 30 15:59:05 PDT 2009

529 [lbo-talk] The madness that is Ukrainian politics -- rank: 1000

The article states that many were involved in the abuse ring, including: 'officials from Artek, a popular children's camp on the Crimean peninsula' My wife went to Artek with the Woodcraft Folk in the 1970s, but there was no abuse ring there then, she says. Mind you, this picture she took there looks pretty suspicious (could that be a well-hung Vladimir Putin at the front?): http://www.facebook.com/heartfield#/photo.php?pid=1414607&id=756513153

Document Size:	5167
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Oct 19 15:09:49 PDT 2009

530 [lbo-talk] re. Heartfield channels Rush Limbaugh -- rank: 1000

Shane Mage writes... ...whatever

Document Size:	4683
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 13 13:03:54 PDT 2009

531 [lbo-talk] Reminder: seminar on the crisis and a book launch of CAPITAL AS POWER -- rank: 1000

>Jonthan Nitzan writes: >capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape - or reorder - their society. >[His book] examines the evolution of Marxist thinking on accumulation and the state. And it articulates an innovative theory of "capital as po ...

Document Size:	7723
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 13 11:39:45 PDT 2009

532 [lbo-talk] negawatts instead of megawatts -- rank: 1000

'Somebody' rightly asks why the left should insist on paying the 'true' cost of electricity (actually, the monpolistically hiked cost due to the government-imposed restriction of supply), to which Shane replies 'It's called the Law Of Value.' Well, all bow down before the holy law of value! Wages low? It's the law of value. You can't buck the market, says Shane. Except of course the high price of electricity is not an act of God (sorry, the law of value). It is not even the price that the market ...

Document Size:	5899
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Oct 12 23:59:45 PDT 2009

533 [lbo-talk] Negawatts instead of megawatts -- rank: 1000

Shane does not seem to understand that if you increase people's incomes without increasing output to meet demand, all that will happen is that the price of the electricity will increase. The projected increase in utility bills reflects the government target of reducing CO2 emissions, of which the shelving of the Kingsnorth plant is a practical manifestation. If you make less of something, there is less of it to go around. It is not rocket science.

Document Size:	5101
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Oct 12 16:58:40 PDT 2009

534 [lbo-talk] negawatts instead of megawatts -- rank: 1000

Alan Rudy and Shane Mage seem reluctant to accept that environmental protestors wanted to shut down Britain's power stations. But the protestors themselves welcome the decision that the industry regulators assume will lead to £2000 utility bills. Bibi Van Der Zee writes 'What a day, what a weekend, what a week for climate protesters! First E.ON gives up on building the proposed coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth.' http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/oct/12/climate-activists-campa ...

Document Size:	6062
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Oct 12 14:47:00 PDT 2009

535 [lbo-talk] negwatts instead of megawatts -- rank: 1000

Shane Mage writes that the calculation that UK energy bills will rise to 2000 pounds sterling is nobody's fault: 'why blame ecologists, or anyone at all, for electricity costs rising to their real value (taking account of the external diseconomies of generating electricity by polluting fossil fuel and grossly subsidized nuclear plants)?' Maybe Shane did not look at the exchange rates. An annual utility bill of 2000 pounds sterling would be 3196.61 in dollars. Is that the right price? I just did ...

Document Size:	5956
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Oct 10 12:37:31 PDT 2009

536 [lbo-talk] negawatts instead of megawatts -- rank: 1000

It is news to Matthias that Al Gore opposes power stations, but it is not news to the protestors who are trying to stop the Kingsnorth power station being built (otherwise known as Turkeys for Christmas). They quote Gore's endorsement on all their literature: Al Gore says "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants." (August 2007)

Document Size:	4989
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Oct 10 11:34:31 PDT 2009

537 [lbo-talk] negawatts instead of megawatts -- rank: 1000

This is what happens when you let anti-power station protestors influence your energy policy, 2000 pounds sterling a year energy bills http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/1632000-annual-fuel-bills-loom-to-fund-new-power-stations-1800570.html Thanks, Al Gore.

Document Size:	4957
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Oct 10 11:13:21 PDT 2009

538 [lbo-talk] Race and class -- rank: 1000

"Despite this analysis, Spivak doesn't lapse into stupidities about while privilege or male privilege." I once made the mistake of querying Gayatri Spivak on the difference between scepticism and reason, quoting Francis Bacon. The upshot of her reply was that Bacon was a racist imperialist, and so was I for quoting him. Overall, I am afraid to say, Spivak came across like a bi-polar bag-lady. She read at furious speed from a well-thumbed (curling in fact) A4 exercise book dense pssages ...

Document Size:	5250
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 8 07:15:03 PDT 2009

539 [lbo-talk] demobilising the nation state -- rank: 1000

My paper on the decline of sovereignty in western Europe, 'demobilising the nation state' http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ip/journal/v46/n6/index.html (or available from me on request)

Document Size:	4829
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Oct 7 16:37:21 PDT 2009

540 [lbo-talk] words of The Wise -- rank: 1000

Alan Rudy seeks to recuperate 'the anti-racist impetus behind multiculturalism' from its critics.I see it differently. It is not that multiculturalism has a rational anti-racist kernel. The relationship between anti-racism and multiculturalism is rather different. Multiculturalism is the subversion of anti-racism, its involution into something quite different. Throughout the twentieth century many have taken up the fight against racial discrimination and oppression, and demanded equality. Multic ...

Document Size:	5779
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Oct 7 13:28:06 PDT 2009