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886 [lbo-talk] Nader: not the only one to say Uncle Tom -- rank: 1000

And John Thornton, who thinks it unacceptable to use the phrase Uncle Tom, chides us not to waste time arguing with Shane Mage when he calls Sarah Palin 'Pit Bull Bitch' http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20080922/015434.html Jim Davis recommends that we denounce Palin as 'the whore of Babylon http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20080929/015866.html (just as a joke, you understand). Andie ruminates cheerfully:"Hillary as a sex object is person ...

Document Size:	6652
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Nov 6 13:55:32 PST 2008

887 [lbo-talk] Nader: not the only one to use the phrase 'Uncle Tom' -- rank: 1000

Those leaping to defend Barack Obama from racial epithets seem to have let the same slip by when it came to Condoleezza Rice, who was called a 'House Negro' on this list http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2005/2005-September/019971.html and a 'Black American Princess' http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2002/2002-December/028191.html Marvin Gandall defended the use of 'Uncle Tom' to describe establishment blacks here http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2006/2006-May/008881.html and Doug called Juan Williams 'Uncle To ...

Document Size:	5690
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Nov 6 12:54:48 PST 2008

888 [lbo-talk] Nader: Obama an Uncle Tom -- rank: 1000

Since Nader is Arab-American, maybe you should ask him whether Uncle Tom is what he meant to say. I read in the papers today that Obama was often taunted as an Uncle Tom, or a 'white man in black face' by African Americans when he was in the state senate in Illinois. It is not an argument I would make (because it never struck me that there was anything about being black that made anyone more correct), but it is a part of the political discourse.

Document Size:	4980
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Nov 6 12:22:16 PST 2008

889 [lbo-talk] Progress -- rank: 1000

Doug writes "If it weren't for such "Progress" you'd be dead by now, right?" Or more likely, never have been born. In 1750 there were 800 million humans on the planet, today there are 6 billion. Without improvements on agricultural and industrial output that go under then name 'progress' more than five sixths of us would never have been born.

Document Size:	4742
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Nov 6 11:22:23 PST 2008

890 [lbo-talk] Ralph: Obama an Uncle Tom -- rank: 1000

John Thornton writes: "Are you joking or clueless? Perhaps as a Brit you don't realize that calling Obama an Uncle Tom is hugely ugly? Maybe it has different social baggage in the UK? Not as bad a ni**er but not too far off either." Perhaps it is just that I am not victim to the peculiarly American belief that it is words, not sticks and stones that hurt you. I appreciate that the accepted view on your side of the water is that oppression is an outgrowth of language, but that is your m ...

Document Size:	5374
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Nov 6 10:54:17 PST 2008

891 [lbo-talk] Obama picks Rahm Emanuel, free trade fanatic & welfare -- rank: 1000

Michael is mistaken in thinking that Marx did not write about the relationship between progress and working class consumption - it is pretty much the subject of Capital, especially the first volume. Coal miners in early nineteenth century England were often worse off than their granparents who worked on farms, but their grandchildren were very much better off - and this much is largely anticipated in Marx's theory of capital accumulation They were worse off, because, as Marx explains, early capi ...

Document Size:	8807
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Nov 6 10:38:19 PST 2008

892 [lbo-talk] Ralph: Obama an Uncle Tom? -- rank: 1000

It wasn't that bad a choice of words, and a reasonable political point. Uncle Tom to the corporations that run the system, he said. It might sound like race-baiting, if you are of a mind to read it that way, but I don't think it was.

Document Size:	4757
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Nov 5 16:00:00 PST 2008

893 [lbo-talk] What an Obama victory would mean? -- rank: 1000

Wouldn't it mean that white guilt was a stronger sentiment in the US than white supremacy?

Document Size:	4757
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Nov 4 01:40:41 PST 2008

894 [lbo-talk] negative freedoms -- rank: 1000

Rayrena's points on David Harvey are well made. Negative freedoms at least have the virtue of creating the room for you to do what you want to do, whereas 'positive freedoms' seem too often to entail the freedom to do what someone else thinks that you should do. Or as the New Labour officialdom is fond of saying these days, 'its informed choice that counts' - meaning if you choose to do what we think you should, then that is the well informed choice, but if you smoke, or bottlefeed your baby, th ...

Document Size:	5234
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri May 16 14:15:24 PDT 2008

895 [lbo-talk] CPI up only 0.2 per cent -- rank: 1000

"Tame Inflation? Tell That To People Buying Gasoline" I thought the consensus on lbo was that higher gas prices were a good thing

Document Size:	4711
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed May 14 15:47:06 PDT 2008

896 [lbo-talk] BHO & working-class whites -- rank: 1000

Max: "I've got $20 says Obama wins Pennsylvania in November." Yes, from over here you have to say that it is remarkable that Obama has got as far as he has. Not wishing to downplay the important struggle against prejudice that his candidacy raises, but still, who would have thought it was possible, even two years ago? And an America with a black president? That would be some powerful moral authority in the world, to whatever ends it was put. I could not support Obama because of his pol ...

Document Size:	5337
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed May 14 04:45:15 PDT 2008

897 [lbo-talk] Getting some business that Magic Barry ain't -- rank: 1000

Chris Doss wrote: "They're still dead." Woody Allen said that he did not want to live on in people's memories, he wanted to live on in his apartment. --- Jenny Brown <jbrown72073 at cs.com> wrote: more likely it's > that dead loved ones > aren't really dead in some way. Which of course > they aren't, they're > living in your memory. > > Jenny Brown >

Document Size:	5179
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon May 12 01:40:27 PDT 2008

898 [lbo-talk] US civil War (was US elections) -- rank: 1000

Karl Marx had a few things to day about the American civil war, indeed. As well as his published articles on the matter, he drafted this resolution which was passed by the International Working Men's Association 28 January 1865 (I quote the concluding paragraph, read it in full at http://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm) "The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle ...

Document Size:	5616
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu May 8 05:30:49 PDT 2008

899 [lbo-talk] taxation on labour or capital? -- rank: 1000

Doug "Anwar Shaikh would counter that taxes on capital are ultimately paid by labor. I don't buy it, but that's what he says." I think Marx said sort of the opposite "If all taxes which bear on the working class were abolished root and branch, the necessary consequence would be the reduction of wages by the whole amount of taxes which goes into them. Either the employers' profit would rise as a direct consequence by the same quantity, or else no more than an alteration in the form ...

Document Size:	5792
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu May 8 02:41:03 PDT 2008

900 [lbo-talk] US elections -- rank: 1000

So, listers, help out someone who is looking in from outside the US If I understand it right, Obama's appeal is a kind of Blairite (or even Clintonite) transcendence of the 'old politics'. His core base is black and young, but to show that he is of a different stripe, he has to distance himself from race politics. Hillary hoped to play up her experience, but that has been boxed in to an appeal to older voters against younger, and to white working class voters, afraid of change. Is that right? An ...

Document Size:	5135
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed May 7 09:10:41 PDT 2008