alanjjohnstone
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I sometimes use Puerto Rico’s status permitting unfettered immigration to the mainland USA as evidence that open borders would not result in the mass migration of the poor, lower-paid but would only be the viable option for the desperate.
https://apnews.com/article/politics-puerto-rico-caribbean-congress-392e89b3d50ae00e3c647e58886b27f3
“Everyone, even congress people themselves, know that the possibilities of this becoming law are minimal and maybe non-existent, but it doesn’t stop being important,” former Puerto Rico governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá told The Associated Press.
Luis Herrero, a political consultant, said during the hearing that even if enough people support statehood, there are not enough votes in the Senate to make Puerto Rico a state: “Not today, not yesterday, not tomorrow. Since 1898, Puerto Rican statehood has been a mirage, lip service to score cheap political points or to raise a few dollars for a campaign.”
As you say, ALB. The Labour Party is now unashamedly the party of the red white and blue
An interesting but long article on the propaganda war to ensure a consensus of opinion is imposed upon the media.
Declared false facts:
1) that there was a U.S.-backed coup in 2014
2) that neo-Nazism is a significant force in Ukraine.Hardly a day passes by without an exchange of fire and shelling between the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters, and Turkish forces and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition gunmen.
Analysts say Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is taking advantage of the war in Ukraine to push his own goals in neighboring Syria. Turkey’s leader says he’s planning a major military operation to push back Syrian Kurdish fighters and create a long sought-after buffer zone in the border area.
Weapons sent to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in February will end up in the global hidden economy and in the hands of criminals, the head of Interpol has said.
Jürgen Stock says once the conflict ends, a wave of guns and heavy arms will flood the international market…
The Republican party is building a grassroots “army” to target and potentially overturn election results in Democratic precincts, the Politico website reported
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/01/republicans-plan-overturn-election-results-report
If the Eurovision Song Contest was anything to go by, they might as well award the World Cup to Ukraine now and do away with all the formalities.
The cost in soldiers
Zelenskiy said: “we’re losing 60-100 soldiers per day as killed in action and something around 500 people as wounded in action.”
About 15,000 Russian troops have been killed and 40,000 wounded since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, western officials have estimated.
If we say its been a 100 days of conflict, Russian casualties per day isn’t very much higher than the Ukrainian
TM, I once long ago submitted an article on pet ownership for the Standard which was rejected by the editors. Too controversial with its criticism of it, I believe was the reason given.
The carbon paw-print of cats and dogs is as detrimental to the planet as livestock farming. You can Google the facts.
What do we do with cats and dogs?
I am not suggesting a mass extermination cull but that the custom of keeping pets is discouraged. You know all about the cruelty of puppy-farming for profit, not to mention the ill-health of many pedigree designer breeds of dogs, satisfying fads and fashions.
I have suggested that rather than unsustainable meat-eating pets (yes, I know we now have vegan-diet dogs nowadays), for the psychological and emotional attachment pets offer humans in terms of companionship, vegetarian pets such as rabbits and guinea-pigs can replace them if need be. And I had a friend who swore by keeping a budgie.
I speculate that because today loneliness and isolation are real social problems, however, socialism fosters increased community, we can perhaps foresee less reliance on dogs as man’s best friend. Same with the reason we can expect the many elderly “cat-women” that exist under capitalism will dwindle.
I live in a country where some vets are better equipped with diagnostic and treatment technology than many local health clinics. And the money vets make is not in the welfare of farm animals but pampered pets.
When I was a lad, a vet was not shy about saying the cost of keeping a sick animal alive was not worth it, but with the growth in insurance pet plans, I myself was offered weekly kidney dialysis for an elderly dog. (I had no insurance, however, and I think a parallel can be made with private dentist practices now replacing NHS because of the insurance industry)
Disclaimer. I have two dogs and one cat presently
>>>I’m not sure why you chose to highlight this Jacobin piece<<< I posted to add a bit of diversity to the forum, DJP. You may have noticed that other than my own topic posts and MS's replies, more or less only two threads have recently dominated the forum exchanges. Of the article itself, the suggestion that the Jewish Question should be studied was one I thought was helpful, because of the fact that it is regularly subject to accusations of Marx's anti-semitism rather than being part of a broader philosophical discussion within the Young Hegelians wing. I know a few members are already engaged in a Marx study group (Capital Vol 3) and it may have spurred their interest.
Some regular visitors will recall critical posts of mine concerning the keeping of pets.
Pet cats may be killing up to 270 million animals as prey every year in the UK alone, according to a new study from the University of Reading.
Behind a paywall unfortunately
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/uk-news/pet-cats-uk-animals-killing-b2091199.html
Israel provided pretext for attack?
Thousands of Israeli nationalists, some of them chanting “Death to Arabs,” paraded through the heart of the main Palestinian thoroughfare in Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday, in a show of force…
https://apnews.com/article/politics-middle-east-jerusalem-israel-0a6080b491cebc2aa830986029816976
