alanjjohnstone
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What I am, Paula, is an informed debunker of those who believe in all the conspiracy claims that Oswald did not act alone or was even innocent and framed as a patsy. I’ve heard them all over the years.
Matt, knowing me, you know I like to rattle the bars of the cages so to upset many I say – “LHO Did It. JFK Deserved It”
And Dylan appeared to be once sympathetic to that view.
Four Palestinians were recently shot dead by Israeli troops as they protested against the theft of more than five acres of their land, which was previously used for the cultivation of olives, for the construction of the illegal Israeli settlement of Evyatar. 50 prefabricated settler homes at Mount Sabih were illegally have been built on private Palestinian land.
Israeli governments have offered economic and political support for the settler movement including turning a blind eye to illegal outposts. The settlers in Evyatar refusing to evacuate, but they are planning to build another 70 settler homes, a synagogue, daycare centre and a school.
The military’s civil administration unit ruled have ruled that their activities were destabilising security in the area. Zvi Sukkot, one of the leaders of Evyatar said, “To drive Jews out of their homes because of Arab riots can only be called surrender to terrorism. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
The reason they are changing the law?
Four demonstrators who formed a blockade outside a London arms fair have had their convictions quashed by the supreme court, in what has been hailed as an affirmation of the right to protest.
Lord Hamblen and Lord Stephens said: “There should be a certain degree of tolerance to disruption to ordinary life, including disruption of traffic, caused by the exercise of the right to freedom of expression or freedom of peaceful assembly …
“Political views, unlike ‘vapid tittle-tattle’ are particularly worthy of protection … The district judge took into account that the appellants were not a group of people who randomly chose to attend this event hoping to cause trouble. We consider that the peaceful intentions of the appellants were appropriate matters to be considered in an evaluation of proportionality.”
USA arms its allies and has approved the potential sale of F-16 fighter jets, as well as Sidewinder and Harpoon missiles, to the Philippines in three separate deals with a combined value of more than $2.5 billion
Eric Sayers, a visiting fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said, “The package is a serious step that will certainly get Beijing’s attention,”
An interesting essay by Jonathan Cook on how the lesser evil proponents have divided the left.
What happened to Glenn Greenwald? Trump happened – and put the left’s priorities to the test
If Trump poses a unique danger to democracy, then to avoid any recurrence:
We are obligated to rally uncritically, or at least very much less critically, behind whoever was selected to be his opponent. Following Trump’s defeat, we are dutybound to restrain our criticisms of the winner, Joe Biden, however poor his performance, in case it opens the door to Trump, or someone like Trump, standing for the presidency in four years’ time.
We must curb free speech and limit the free-for-all of social media in case it contributed to the original surge of support for Trump, or created the more febrile political environment in which Trump flourished.
We must eradicate all signs of populism, whether on the right or the left, because we cannot be sure that in a battle of populisms the left will defeat the right, or that leftwing populism cannot be easily flipped into rightwing populism.
And most importantly, we must learn to distrust “the masses” – those who elected Trump – because they have demonstrated that they are too easily swayed by emotion, prejudice and charisma. Instead, we must think in more traditional liberal terms, of rule by technocrats and “experts” who can be trusted to run our societies largely in secret but provide a stability that should keep any Trumps out of power.
Who is running the USA? Democrats or Republicans?
From Biden’s infrastructure budget of $2.25 Trillion down to $953 billion.
Matthew, there are so many issues and questions that can go to a referendum such as they do in Switzerland and in some US states. It may be impractical to take a Party position on them all and in some cases, there will be dissenting Party voices, so it is as ALB says, we will leave much of it to the individual to choose.
On extending the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds specifically, I don’t believe Party members would object. They raised no objections in Scotland when they got the vote.
Nor was there any objection to non-UK citizens getting a say in if Scotland should get independence or not. Residence was sufficient criteria. (I read there is now a debate for Scottish ex-pats to be able to vote in the next independence referendum.)
But I pose another question. There is some talk of raising the age of marriage consent to 18 from 16. If they held a referendum on that, I think members would as individuals be more divided on their opinion.
We can go down a rabbit hole to a warren of questions on what and why our attitude could or should be.
This brings us to the big question of how decision-making inside socialism will work out in practice.
There is an application called “collaborative filtering”, a technology where people can navigate huge numbers of options. It starts off by collecting data on an individual’s preferences, extrapolates patterns from this and then produces recommendations based on that person’s likes and dislikes. With suitable modification, this technology could be of use to socialism – not only to help people decide what to consume but which matters of policy to get involved in. A person’s tastes, interests, skills, and academic achievements, rather than their shopping traits, could be put through the CF process and matched to appropriate areas of policy in the resulting list of recommendations. A farmer, for example, maybe recommended to vote upon matters which affect him/her, and members of the local community, directly, or of which s/he is likely to have some knowledge, such as increasing yields of a particular crop or the use of GM technology. The technology would also put them in touch with other people of similar interests so that issues can be thrashed out more fully, and may even inform them that ‘People who voted on this issue also voted on…’
We are all still on a learning curve and can only speculate for just now.
As the Democratic Party liberals and leftists call for defunding the police, Biden unveils a plan that includes funding more police.
Biden’s crime-fighting strategy calls for curtailing rogue gun dealers and firearms trafficking by adding more police officers, even beyond pre-pandemic levels.
For the 29th year, the members of the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution demanding an end to the 60-year U.S. economic blockade on Cuba.
184 nations voted for the resolution, while the U.S. and Israel voted against it. (Three nations — Brazil, Colombia, and Ukraine abstained.)
Biden newly declared foreign policy called “rules-based order” actually means the United States-based order.
Whether she is or not, and it is clear from her palliatives that she isn’t but can we say it is a degree of progress that she is willing to publicly declare herself as socialist in the USA and that not all the people are shifting right.
“We are looking forward to doing things differently…My plan is to put our resources into community, into neighborhoods, and govern in a deeply democratic way, that the people who are governed have a say over the decision-making process and how resources are deployed in our community…”
Walton’s platform outlines plans to tackle a local affordable housing crisis and declare Buffalo a sanctuary city for immigrants, which limits a local jurisdiction’s cooperation with federal enforcement o f immigration law. And also the intention to convert the city’s fleet of public vehicles to electric cars in an effort to address climate change.
One of her key proposals foreshadows sweeping reforms to “public safety”, focusing on harm prevention, restorative justice and the root causes of crime instead of punitive action, according to her campaign platform.
Under her watch, police will no longer respond to most mental health calls and will stop enforcing low-level drug possession offenses. She also intends to require unpaid leave for officers under investigation for police brutality, among other measures.
29 potentially habitable planets are well-positioned to witness an Earth transit and eavesdrop on human radio and television transmissions
I think we have confirmed that what they would see is very good reason not to make contact with ourselves
Matthew, our position is that ideas are social and not necessarily gender-based.
If we had taken your stance, wouldn’t it have meant that we should not have founded the SPGB in 1904?
The Party has no age-bar on membership just as we never had a gender-bar but does that mean we discount the ideas of the female under-29s (which was their first age rule), under-21s, then the under-18s (Scotland permits 16-year-olds and up to vote albeit in not general elections)
“We aren’t seeing the fight and the grit that gives us the full hope,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director of WildEarth Guardians. “There’s something to be said about posturing and sending the message that you are for real, these aren’t just words, that these are values, and they are going to fight for them and build the right level of support to get things across the finish line.”
“Really we want to see something that strikes at the heart of the fossil fuel industry and makes clear this administration does not view the fossil fuel industry as any kind of a friend.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/22/biden-climate-change-plan-environment
Darren’s sterling efforts to place online old Socialist Standard articles led to me noting this quote. It could be posted on several topic threads on the forum with claim and counterclaim being made.
“… we protest against atrocities and brutality, but we do so not as an expedient according to circumstances but against atrocities and brutality wherever and whenever they occur. It is for the working class of the whole world to see as it really is the cynical and hypocritical use made, by the capitalist class of atrocities, and not to let themselves be divided by capitalist propaganda directed against first one and then another foreign nation…”
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2021/06/atrocitiescynical-ruling-class-attitude.html
An argument would be if the Republicans are shifting further right-wards, then it is dragging the Democrats and their political spectrum to the right as well. Recent criticism of AOC and the Squad is that they have assimilated into the Democratic Party machine.
And we have to compare it with American history. There was Huey Long, there was Father Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh and Joseph McCarthy.
How do they rate alongside the 3-Percenters, the Proud Boys and Ammon Bundy and all the other militias?
In numbers probably just as prevalent but I’m guessing.
I do think Cockburn’s point that the American political scene has a very different history from other countries is valid and has unique elements which make it even double-important to use appropriate language and not use throwaway terms as fascist.
