Date: Wed, 03 Dec 1997 12:00:20 -0800
From: Mark Jones <Jones_M-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: TV Documentary: Against Nature


Heartfield does not like to debate but it is always possible to
juxtapose the facts to his assertions. He denies the reality of global
warming. This is important because if the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, whose conclusions are now being disucssed by world
leaders in Kyoto, is correct then it suggests the existence of a radical
constraint on industrialisation in the Third World, a fact which
completely undermines the politics of LM, and of course of their
spiritual masters, the World Bank, the energy cartels, the Indian
landlords, the clearers of tropical rainforest etc.

To the IPCC Heartfield has produced no beter rebutal than a statement
made by Trotsky about the inevitability of endless industrialisation. It
is unfair to burden Trotsky this way.

When Heartfield and the TV programme Furedi organised talked in elegaic
terms about the Narmada dam, they ignored the facts which are that the
Indian government itself was forced to request that the World Bank
suspend financing the dam. The reason? Not because the Indian government
wanted to stop -- it clearly did not. But because of a mass movement in
India against the dam.  

We can wait forever for Heartfield to come back
on this, but no matter. It is clear that Karl Marx did not applaud the
Highland Clearances or the English Enclosure Movement and was  not a fan
of the English Landed Interest. We can take it as read that Marx would
not be in favour of the genocidal clearance of the First Nations or the
genocidal activities of Latin American Latifundists or the activities of
colonialists in British-ruled Africa, etc ad nauseam. We can take it for
granted that Marx did not applaud the actions of W Nassau Senior when he
hoped for 'at least' a million Irish deaths in the potato famine,
another piece of social engineering designed to decant peasants from the
land and proletarianise them.

But as we see, LM and James Heartfield do not blush to support rape,
murder. police brutality and the forced eviction of oustees in
connection with the Narmada Dam project, because LM believe and
Heartfield believe that any price is worth paying for the 'benefits' of
being proletarianised. You have to admire the sheer effrontery of this
kind of thing, which poses as 'Marxism'. The Narmada Dam is a project of
big Indian finance and agricultural capital and its secret sponsors,
behind the World Bank, are the big US agrichem interests whose scenario
for the next century includes the final proletarianising of the Indian
peasantry and the taking control of, and radical rfeconstruction of,
former peasant agriculture into modern biotech-dominated agribusiness.

You do not have to hanker for rural idiocy to reject this. You could be
a Gandhi supporter and say the village is not idiotic. Or you can always
take the Leninist position that it would be better to fight for
socialism and to make the transition away from the village that way.
Almost anything is better than the nightmarish dystopia now in
preparation for the vast, immiserated landless proletariats of Asia and
China in the next century, harried and hunted from the land and forced
into the bloated megacities like Calcutta, which are in reality
little more than death-camps waiting for the tidal inundations
of the globally-warmed seas (not, I am not exaggerating).

Meanwhile the exponents of Living Marxism raise both hands and shout
hosannas. Actually their position is worse than Nassau Seniors, since
there was some point to optimistic ideas about progress a hundred years
ago or even in Trotsky's day. But there is not today, for anyone that is
who does not practice ostrich-marxism and understands that the
industrialisation of the thrid world ON CAPITALIST LINES  is NO LONGER
AN OPTION.

Having ignored rebuttal on global warming, the crimes of the Narmada Dam
sponsors, Heartfiled now wants to push LM's loopy ideas about population
control down our throats. I was the first to recommend Listees to look
at the transcripts to Furedi's preposterous programmes and I do so again
now. I am looking forward to another staggering display of colossal
ignorance. We shall be told there are not enough humans and that the
Greens blame Third Worlders for breeding too much. The latter statement
is demonstrably not the case. The first statement is - well,
certifiable.

I shall post the evidence of the wel-respected scientific authorities
which Furedi will ignore. Heartfield too will ingore them. But I shall
do it anyway, and you can make your own minds up.



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