Re: [Marxism] Take London-based Poet Stephen Spender...

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony Lawless, "I would be very interested in your opinion, Joaquin, on
whether or not Stephen Spender knew about the CIA money. The reason is that
I think Spender ought to have known in a way that poor old Warsaw-based
scientist Zbigniew Jaworowski is not really required to know. You seem
pretty sure that Zbigniew should. Okay. Then I ask your opinion about
Spender. You must surely have one. Spender's case is a lot clearer. If you
have an opinion in the case of the one, why not the other too?"

I have no opinion on this. I am intrigued by Tony Lawless's insistence that
"you must surely have one." Why? This was one relatively secondary figure in
one relatively minor side of one relatively minor cold-war scandal forty
years ago. 

And it's been many moons since the sun set on the British Empire; the world
does not revolve around the teacups of the English intelligentsia. If you'd
asked me on Saturday who Stephen Spender was, I might have guessed he was a
poet on the basis of some vague recollection from long ago -- perhaps.

Tony's point is that LaRouche is so little known --contrasted to the CIA--
that there would be no reason for a Polish scientist to know anything about
him.

But this is silly. The CIA sponsorship of encounter was covert; LaRouche's
association with 21st Century Science and Technology is loudly proclaimed.
Jaworowski has written article after article for the magazine in keeping
with its editorial outlook. There is no mystery here, no conundrum to be
solved, only the question of why some people on this list insist on denying
the obvious. Jaworowski publishes there because he LIKES the magazine and
what it has to say. 

So, for example, the Google search that Tony proposes, he imagines that it
wouldn't turn up much about LaRouche in POLISH. Why would someone who speaks
English (the articles are in English and there is no mention of a translator
or original polish publication that I've seen) search for information on an
English-language magazine in Polish? Indeed, why would he search AT ALL?
Almost certainly he knows and understands the character of the magazine and
publishes there (at least in the last decade exclusively as far as I could
tell) because he agrees with it. That he does not view the magazine the same
way I do should also be obvious. 

Tony argues that "cult membership or even distant association with what some
people claim to be one is not enough to disprove someone's theory. In fact,
it is not a disproof at all." Like, duh...

But I'd like to note that I did not rely on the character of the magazine as
proof that, on global warming and ice core CO2 science, Jaworowski is a
crackpot. I quoted and referred to various expert critiques, including one
blog that has with extreme care and meticulousness documented its findings
of Jaworowski's distortions, omissions, counterfactual assertions and
misattributions, as well as those of "a giant" in that specific field who
called Jaworowski not just mistaken, but irresponsible.

And the main point of this wasn't Jaworowski but Cockburn. He either knows
perfectly well, or should have made it his business to know, both the
character of the magazine and its sponsor before citing it as an expert
authority in support of his global warming skepticism. That's why the whole
thing about the LaRouche cult came up. 

Saying that 99% of Americans would have no reason to know of LaRouche is
irrelevant. It is Cockburn's job to know such things, and even if perchance
he hadn't known, it was his duty to find out before presenting what's
published in a LaRoucheian rag as authoritative scientific information. He
cites Jaworowski as example number one of the many if not most "real"
climate scientists who are global warming skeptics. This is not a view he
attributes to someone else, but one that Cockburn presents as his own, which
means he was duty-bound to check out Jaworowski's bona-fides. 

Joaquín



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