[lbo-talk] the death penalty: Americans luv it

[Sean Andrews]

On 10/14/07, dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> > Sounds like Mike Davis's _Late Victorian Holocausts_. If
> > so, what do you think of it?
>
> Yes, it's straight from Davis' book, which is quite good. One can always
> quibble with the sources here and there, but the main argument is
> compelling - really, it's an extension of Walter Rodney's insight that
> liberal-era capitalism wrecked the economies of the periphery, which is
> true, to the realm of peasant nutrition.
>
> I constantly harp on it these days because (1) there's a strong tendency
> among Anglo-American intellectuals, myself included, to reduce all human
> evil to the unholy trinity of HSM (Hitler-Stalin-Mao), and (2) a
> corresponding forgetting of the structural violence of US and British
> (neo)colonialism.
>
> -- DRR

Thanks. I've started it and, like in some of his other work, I can
understand the general analysis of power and imperialism, but the
stuff on climate makes the picture a bit murkier. Still it seems an
incredibly relevant work when one considers it against the backdrop of
the climate change today and the people most likely to be first and
most dramatically affected.

I'm trying to make time to read it but I'm stuck in the 17th century
right now (trying to muddle my way through some works on the English
revolution, Locke and Hobbes).   I'm thinking of saving it for
Thanksgiving.  It should make for some good conversations when I go
home to TX for dinner.

s