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646 [lbo-talk] Defend Suzanne Breen -- rank: 1000

Suzanne Breen has covered the conflict in northern Ireland for many years, challenging the official view and covering the opposition to the official 'peace process'. She is being strong-armed by the security forces to reveal her sources. Sign this petition to register you disapproval. http://www.petitiononline.com/SupSuzB/petition.html

Document Size:	4911
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed May 13 13:25:57 PDT 2009

647 [lbo-talk] happy 191st -- rank: 1000

Alan 'I'm with Mike. It seems to me that there are only "stages" if there's some sort of teleological history - and Marx certainly stressed potential, opportunity, and contingency more than a singular historical trajectory.' That seems ok, but you can go too far with this point. Marx plainly thought that there were indeed stages in human development, and that there was progress in human development. He did not think that this was preordained, but rather an empirically perceptible traj ...

Document Size:	6565
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri May 8 09:24:55 PDT 2009

648 [lbo-talk] I like rightists -- rank: 1000

Before Mao vouchsafing for Nixon, there was Stalin on the Nazi party: 'Don't you think Neumann, that if the nationalists came to power in Germany they would be so exclusively concerned with the western powers that we would be free to build socialism in peace?' Stalin to Heinz Neumann, November 1931 Epoliticus writes: 'Condemn the post-Civil War Mao if you wish. It would also be productive, however, to appreciate his insights.' Mao's turn to the peasantry was an attempt to make a virtue out of t ...

Document Size:	5785
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed May 6 06:28:45 PDT 2009

649 [lbo-talk] How many worlds? -- rank: 1000

WD wrote: "eco-propaganda has been a major part of the curriculum in American public schools for at least the better part of the last two decades, but it's wholly compatible with consumer capitalism." Never a truer word... Patrick wrote: "So James, you are confronted with lots of changed evidence. None of it is disputable." Well, if nothing is disputable, it does not really make any sense to discuss it, does it? But you forgot to say what is it that you think is indisputable: ...

Document Size:	6190
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun May 3 02:14:54 PDT 2009

650 [lbo-talk] how many earths? -- rank: 1000

Miles writes "I don't construe the "global footprint" as primarily about land use. It's about the finite resources" Well, that seems reasonable, except that it is expressed in hectares (although the fine print explains that these are not real hectares at all, but notional ones). Moreover, the original concept of the global footprint was definitely about land use (as in the works of Herbert Girardet etc.). But those people predicted that the economy would demand more land, and ...

Document Size:	5241
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat May 2 17:25:16 PDT 2009

651 [lbo-talk] How many earths -- rank: 1000

"James, it's not just about farming. It's about other resource use, too - like energy, water, air, and waste disposal. Cars, airplanes, computers, loads of laundry, paper towels, etc. etc. " I hear what you say, but the reason that I single out farming is because that is the largest land use there is. There is forestry and mining, too, and as much as 0.2 per cent of the world's land surface is covered in homes and factories. But it is hard to get away from the fact that the total land ...

Document Size:	6048
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat May 2 04:52:48 PDT 2009

652 [lbo-talk] How many earths -- rank: 1000

Joseph, this really does not stand up. I said that it did not make sense that the world's ("humanity's" is better) ecological footprint was larger than the world. You objected 'It's only "extraordinary" if you assume that a population is incapable of (temporarily) exceeding its own carrying capacity, which would be erroneous.' But what does 'carrying capacity' mean? Willam Allan, who coined the phrase said 'to every area of land there is a population limit. This limit may be ...

Document Size:	6116
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat May 2 03:48:29 PDT 2009

653 [lbo-talk] How many earths? -- rank: 1000

Dwayne wrote: <quote> So what you're saying, magic footprint calculator, is ... that it would still take more Earths than we currently have to support my not terribly extravagant (by Western standards) "lifestyle"? ... So the question is, what would it take to get the meter down to one Earth? .... As with all software, the results manifest programmatically encapsulated assumptions. It's those assumptions I'm now eager to dissect like a middle school lab worm. <unquote> D ...

Document Size:	7212
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat May 2 02:14:14 PDT 2009

654 [lbo-talk] 35-cent ice cream and anarchist theory -- rank: 1000

Joseph Catron: "mainstream ecology would hold that the Earth cannot support anything close to six billion people with lifestyles remotely approaching that of the average Western worker" Yes, it is convenient that science keeps coming up with reason why non-Europeans must be kept in poverty. In 1845 political economists told us that the Irish famine was a natural necessity; in 1932 the International Eugenic Conference assured us that it made sense to curb the non-white races; in the 196 ...

Document Size:	5920
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri May 1 12:58:31 PDT 2009

655 [lbo-talk] 35-cent ice cream and anarchist theory -- rank: 1000

Alan: "Neither you nor your daughters seem to be aware..." no, but happily we have you to explain it to us!

Document Size:	4746
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri May 1 11:39:47 PDT 2009

656 [lbo-talk] 35-cent ice cream and anarchist theory -- rank: 1000

Alan writes "if you read my post, I never said anything about self-denial, penurious thrift or the limitation of births" and I never said you did. All I said was that if you do not like the idea that working class demands are for more (or the whole product of their labour, as they used to say) when it comes from Gompers' mouth, maybe you would like it better from Connolly's or Pankhurst's. (It just happens that when she wrote it, Pankhurst was replying to a birth-control enthusiast - a ...

Document Size:	6178
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri May 1 09:51:58 PDT 2009

657 [lbo-talk] 35 cent ice cream and anarchist propaganda -- rank: 1000

WD writes: "There is also the environmental route: All this stuff, which we don't need, eventually ends up in a landfill;, we need to cut down trees and produce tons of toxic chemicals to make it; and the plastic stuff is all made out of oil. And oil, well... " That is difficult for me, because I spend most of my time trying to deprogram my daughters after each day's eco-propaganda session. The schools here (and there, too, I bet) are as big on the environment as they were on God when ...

Document Size:	5263
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri May 1 07:55:42 PDT 2009

658 [lbo-talk] 35-cent ice cream and anarchist theory -- rank: 1000

Doug and Alan take issue with my lauding of Gompers. If his trade union demands are too downmarket and grasping, will the Irish Revolutionary James Connolly and original socialist feminist Sylvia Pankhurst's claims do instead? 'Our demands most moderate are,' sang James Connolly, 'we only want the earth' 'We do not call for limitation of births, for penurious thrift, and self-denial', Sylvia Pankhurst wrote. 'We call for a great production that will supply all, and more than all the people can c ...

Document Size:	5084
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri May 1 07:51:03 PDT 2009

659 [lbo-talk] 35-cent ice cream and anarchist theory -- rank: 1000

I have to say that I read Said Sayrafiezadeh's memoir (referred to by Sheldon, clipped below) when it was in Granta, too (my dad gave it to me), and laughed like a drain. He is a very funny writer, and it is an excellent story. When he says "I don't need society to be dismantled. I don't want to feel guilty about the things I have. I have a 32-inch high-def flat-screen TV. I fucking love that thing, man" That strikes me as not a wholly wicked sentiment. Since when did Socialism come to ...

Document Size:	6052
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri May 1 01:07:55 PDT 2009

660 [lbo-talk] 35 cent Ice Cream -- rank: 1000

You have to get to enjoy being a Grinch when fending off your children's pester power - not that I can claim any great success a turning back the tide of plastic crap that my two daughters demand as tribute/proof of our undying love for them. Saying no is the civilising moment, when you bang some restraining taboos onto their little ids, to make them into proper egos. I like to say, 'I am broke' (usually accompanied with a turning out of dust-filled pockets: just as well they don't understand cr ...

Document Size:	5989
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri May 1 00:03:35 PDT 2009