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826 [lbo-talk] Powell and Obama -- rank: 1000

Sean Collins Why the crisis-rattled elite is banking on Obama The endorsement of Obama by every liberal's favourite Republican, Colin Powell, springs from disarray and desperation in DC circles. ... Powell's endorsement is important. Its real significance is that it highlights a broader movement among the American establishment in abandoning McCain and moving towards Obama. Through his endorsement, Powell has become the highest- profile figure to join the 'Obamacans' (that is, Republican for Oba ...

Document Size:	5788
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 21 04:03:41 PDT 2008

827 [lbo-talk] Is Fox news equating Obama with socialism, or worse yet...Marxism? -- rank: 1000

Hey, we're all Marxists, now, aren't we? At least the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury thinks so: Face it: Marx was partly right about capitalism, writes Rowan Williams in The Spectator http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/the-magazine/features/2172131/face-it-marx-was-partly-right-about-capitalism.thtml Meanwhile Channel 4 News' Krishnan Guru-Murthy had the people at the Economist in stitches when he told them 'they've sent Jon [Snow, his co-anchor] to America to laugh at the collapse of capitalism' http: ...

Document Size:	6372
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Oct 17 12:23:54 PDT 2008

828 [lbo-talk] Kondratieff cycles -- rank: 1000

Ira Glazer quotes Immanuel Wallerstein saying something about "The Kondratieff cycles". Somehow, I was always put off by the 'Kondratieff Cycles' - they seemed to me to be an argument that reality should subordinate itself to a theory, rather than a theory that captured real laws of social development - but maybe I was wrong. Does anyone understand the method behind the Kondratieff cycle?

Document Size:	4901
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 16 08:53:55 PDT 2008

829 [lbo-talk] On the Guardian newspaper -- rank: 1000

My letter in today's Guardian: Black History Month might be a good time to confront the Guardian's record of supporting the confederacy's "self determination" in the American civil war. The Manchester Guardian repeated confederate propaganda against the liberator Abraham Lincoln, writing that "it was an evil day both for America and the world when he was chosen President of the United States" (October 10 1862). Even on the news that Lincoln had been assassinated, the Manchest ...

Document Size:	5857
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 16 06:41:10 PDT 2008

830 [lbo-talk] 'John McCain was not tortured', says guard -- rank: 1000

James Heartfield wrote: > Well, forgive me, but I do doubt the inmates at Guantanamo To which John Thornton replied >Then why not show the same reluctance to cast doubt on McCain's story But I am *not* reluctant to cast doubt on the inmates at Guantanamo. I doubt their story, Let me say it again, I doubt the prisoners accounts of torture in Guantanamo. That's what you should do with any account. By the same token, you doubt the Vietnamese prison guard? But for reasons I cannot understand, ...

Document Size:	5372
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 14 16:10:38 PDT 2008

831 [lbo-talk] Was John McCain tortured? -- rank: 1000

John Thornton writes 'this is nonsense' at the report of the interview with John McCain's jailer saying that McCain was not tortured. Strictly speaking, no, it is not nonsense, it is a report of an interview with a man who was John McCain's jailer. Whether one believes it or not depends on a whole range of things (what you think of the man, the story, the circumstances, and so on). But whether you believe it or not, that is up to you, and whether I believe it or not is up to me. One thing that w ...

Document Size:	6105
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 14 13:18:10 PDT 2008

832 [lbo-talk] Stanislav Lem -- rank: 1000

I am glad that Lem has found his lost satirical masterpiece, I seem to remember liking is SF, too. But the limited circulation of this attack on Stalin rather undercuts the courage involved. Would it be unfair to say that this is a bit like that circle of 14 Belgian resistance poets, who produced their work in small print runs ... of 14. Or as the surrealist painter Marcel Marien said, 'Ah yes, the Belgian resistance: that was after the war.'

Document Size:	4923
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 14 08:24:44 PDT 2008

833 [lbo-talk] McCain was not tortured in Vietnam -- rank: 1000

Nguyen Tien Tran said: "We never tortured McCain. On the contrary, we saved his life, curing him with extremely valuable medicines that at times were not available to our own wounded." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/johnmccain/3194087/John-McCain-was-not-tortured-in-Vietnam-prison-guard-claims.html and see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/14/uselections2008-johnmccain

Document Size:	5207
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 14 08:17:14 PDT 2008

834 [lbo-talk] Gordon Brown nationalises the banks -- rank: 1000

The press here are lauding Gordon Brown's far-sighted public purchase of stakes in the major banks, a bailout proportionately greater than Paulson's. Some LBOsters will be impresed that Brown has used the purchase to impose policy on the banks: no bonuses (this year, and reform to the bonus system in the future); a guarantee for inter-bank lending; and an obligation to lend to small business and domestic borrowers at the same rates as last year. As a Briton who sounded off about the US bailout, ...

Document Size:	6024
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 14 02:48:43 PDT 2008

835 [lbo-talk] Bailout -- rank: 1000

Michael Smith writes "But look on the bright side. "We" are no longer enslaved, mentally and otherwise, by a mortgage and the insane fetish of "home" ownership." Sorry, but I am not really following this thought here, are you really saying that it is a good thing that people lose their homes, because that will liberate them? Or that it is good that they are poor, because that makes them free? I know Diogenes thought so - 'I saw a child drink from her hands, and thre ...

Document Size:	5078
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 9 03:21:13 PDT 2008

836 [lbo-talk] "fellow prisoners" -- rank: 1000

"this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners" McCain, addressing Pennsylvania. (Sorry if this is already posted, but it made me laugh)

Document Size:	4641
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 9 03:05:57 PDT 2008

837 [lbo-talk] Taxes and bailout -- rank: 1000

Lenin's tomb wrote "This isn't coming from today's federal budget. It is going to be paid for by increased taxation, mostly on the working class. They call it 'tightening your belt'." I don't know if I am appealing to a common language that we do not share, but in the Marxist tradition, it is not usual to take taxation seriously as a deduction from workers wages, but rather to see gross pay as a legal fiction, and take home pay as the reality. The standpoint of the taxpayer is more t ...

Document Size:	6020
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 9 01:22:32 PDT 2008

838 [lbo-talk] Gallup on bailout -- rank: 1000

On Oct 8, 2008, at 11:09 AM, Lenin's Tomb wrote: > Okay, but it *should* do. This has been a massive expropriation, a > redistribution of wealth from the working class to the rich. I don't really think that is true, not unless you believe the federal budget is truly the property of the people. That would be where I agree with the critics of the critics of the bailout: the whole idea that government spending is robbing the people is an illusion in the independence of the state. As, in its ...

Document Size:	5110
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Oct 8 10:21:00 PDT 2008

839 [lbo-talk] bailout: 'defend private property at all costs!' -- rank: 1000

Yes, and if I remember my history right, there was a lot of capitalist ideologues arguing 'we're all in this together' in 1926, too - just before they set about resolving their crisis at our expense. Lenin's Tomb wrote 'Pithy, yet unenlightening. The sentence immediately following that quoted erases the force your point: "Our interest is to make sure that they don't make us pay the price for it." ' In response to Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote: illustration of my poin ...

Document Size:	5303
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 7 14:45:36 PDT 2008

840 [lbo-talk] bailout: 'defend private property at all costs!' -- rank: 1000

Doug writes "Wait a minute. You think revolutionary socialism has a chance in the current environment? Or if it all falls down it will? Is that your position?" I'm not going to be trapped into some gauche error under cross-examination, Doug. Of couse I don't think that the revolution is going to happen tomorrow. Nor am I celebrating the collapse of capitalism - but insofar as the system is in trouble (and the extent of the problem is, as you know, a debatable question) I don't think yo ...

Document Size:	6112
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 7 13:33:54 PDT 2008