alanjjohnstone
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The American military take an oath to be loyal to the constitution, not the head of state
I,do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office to which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Nevertheless, the President is Commander-in-Chief. So the question is has he the authority to order the army to do his bidding?
Whereas those enlisting in the British military swear to be loyal to the Queen.
I, (Insert full name), do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.It is this statement that separates the enlistment of Gurkhas and Fijians and other non-UK citizens from being classed as mercenaries or so i was told.
Before 2024, we have the 2022 midterms and a couple of the Trump clan have shown an interest in creating a political dynasty.
The US political scene has always been polarised and toxic. We recall the stand-offs with the Bundy’s and their allies in the fight against the Federal land agencies.
As often asserted, it is now the accessibility of phones with video cams which are highlighting the tensions and conflicts which have always been there but previously hidden.
Calling right-wing populism and MAGA extremists fascists may be the loose use of the word for some but it reflects the mind-set of many Americans. A blind faith in nationalism, and in particular white nationalism and their constant trust in a leader. I find the whole of the American right difficult to define as much as i do its left-wing.
With such entrenched opposing views, just how can socialists such as ourselves make the socialist message resonate. The Right spurn with a knee-jerk reaction any reference to socialism and the Left still fail to comprehend it as anything more than a mixed economy and FDR.
i don’t think Biden is capable of any reconciliation. If he makes overtures towards the Right it means meeting them on the right. It will be seen as appeasement and embolden the armed militias to repeat their tactics of intimidation. Already pledges on immigration are being deferred to an indeterminate future.
I doubt a civil war will break-out. If it did the liberals are out-gunned and the Right hold the sympathy of law enforcement and the military. The Iron Heel would grind radicals into the ground.
soon there’ll be nothing left to eat.
Potentially a big problem for vegans
Soylent Green?
I don’t know if it is an apocryphal story but i read that Native American men were attracted to women with ample back-sides because in times of shortages a slice of meat could be taken from the fat buttocks.
Words are important …public ownership, social ownership, collective ownership, common ownership. We can split hairs on the understanding of those.
Ursula Le Guin coined the term propertarian to denote those who support private ownership.
How do we communicate what we mean to our fellow-workers when the pro-capitalist media are astute at co-opting words. For example how the free-marketeers usurped the term libertarian from the anarchists.
Just how many of us having explained that socialism equates to communism actually use that term? We know it has negative connotations we wish to avoid. I’m starting to use the phrase cooperative commonwealth as a substitute for socialism but that also is not without problems.
An on-going and never-ending part of our battle of ideas.
Can plants think?
the french bean – may be more sentient than we give it credit for: namely, it may possess intent…it’s anticipatory, goal-directed, flexible behaviour.”
Former Goldman Sachs CFO Marty Chavez thinks that income redistribution via Universal Basic Income (UBI) is the only way to stave off revolution as the wealth gap continues to increase.
“At the same time, I’m a big proponent of a universal basic income. My personal view is that if you’re just being pragmatic and looking at inequality – and not thinking about some abstract concept of justice – you don’t want the inequality to be so extreme that it leads to revolution. So you ought to be prepared to pay to decrease that probability. This is what I say to, you know, friends who you might call ‘oligarchs,’ right? Why it would make sense for everybody to have some baseline income and why we should all pay for it.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/former-goldman-cfo-marty-sachs-calls-universal-basic-income
More Americans voted in 2020 than in any other presidential election in 120 years. About 67% of eligible voters cast ballots this year, but that still means a third did not. That amounts to about 80 million people who stayed home.
Non-voters’ reasons for not voting include:
1. not being registered to vote (29%)
2. not being interested in politics (23%)
3. not liking the candidates (20%)
4. a feeling their vote wouldn’t have made a difference (16%)
5. being undecided on whom to vote for (10%)Voters feel a sense of alienation and apathy. They are generally detached from the news and pessimistic about politics, the survey found. Politics is simply not the way to make change, they said. Two-thirds of nonvoters agree, for example, that voting has little to do with the way that real decisions are made in this country. A majority also said they believe it makes no difference who is elected president and that things will go on just as they did before.
If production and consumption of other meat, milk and eggs would have to fall by half, and large forests of new trees planted, the analysis from the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission charity (FFCC) found UK’s beef herd could be part of a sustainable farming system.
The analysis assessed agroecology, a type of agriculture that includes organic farming and aims to work with nature and ensure fairness to farmers, citizens and future generations. The scenario the analysis produced would see no pesticides or synthetic fertilisers in use in 2050 and almost 10% of today’s farmland freed-up for nature. Net greenhouse gas emissions would fall by about 75%, meaning the remainder would have to be removed by other means to reach the UK’s net zero target.
It presented just one plausible agroecological scenario and that others with even lower livestock numbers would result in greater environmental benefits.
“The socialist, who has a materialist approach to the world in which he lives, has no “beliefs” whatsoever. Either we possess certain knowledge regarding reality, or alternatively we are seeking knowledge, or we lack the knowledge. Beliefs and faith form no part of our quest for scientific data and information.” – The Western Socialist, Winter, 1976
Our SOYMB trying to sum up this debate in 2013 in a long series of posts on religion
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/03/sunday-sermon-life-of-jesus.html
Just to add variety, SOYMB blog on the Taborites as an example of a heresy.
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/05/sunday-sermon-taborites.html
IHRA adoption is still being challenged as a flawed definition of anti-semitism
A group of eminent lawyers, including two former appeal court judges, has accused Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, of “improper interference” with universities’ autonomy and right to free expression.
They say that Williamson’s insistence that universities adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism or face sanctions is “legally and morally wrong”.
“The legally entrenched right to free expression is being undermined by the promotion of an internally incoherent ‘non-legally binding working definition’ of antisemitism. Its promotion by public bodies is leading to the curtailment of debate. Universities and others who reject the instruction … to adopt it should be supported in so doing.”The Democratic Party now have control of the Senate, the House of Representatives and the Presidency. The only institution that remains out of their control is the Supreme Court.
Biden now has little excuse for not passing what some Democrats would call radical progressive policies.
In a way the right-wing assault on the Capitol gives Biden a way out … that he is the president of reconciliation and will try to placate Republicans
Q-Document (Q for quelle, source)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source
Some investigators can study writings and discover certain shared attributes of them and determine that they may well be derived from another. Mark is commonly decided as the earliest and that Matthew and Luke uses it for basic information. But there is speculation of another so far undiscovered work that also forms the basis of the gospel story arising more directly from the oral tradition.
It is a speculative but interesting proposition.
And perhaps older than Mark is the Gospel of Thomas, which is merely a collection of sayings of Jesus the Christ.
I think the recent events at the Capitol, DC, indicate who are the real threat to the US electoral process and it isn’t antifa or BLM.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/06/ftse-100-stock-market-bubble-risk
Jeremy Grantham, the British co-founder of the US investment firm GMO, said in a letter to clients that current investor behaviour bore the hallmarks of the mood in the run-up to the 1929 Wall Street crash.
“Featuring extreme overvaluation, explosive price increases, frenzied issuance, and hysterically speculative investor behaviour, I believe this event will be recorded as one of the great bubbles of financial history, right along with the South Sea bubble, 1929, and 2000… my personal favourite Tesla tidbit is that its market capitalisation, now over $600bn, amounts to over $1.25m per car sold each year versus $9,000 per car for General Motors. What has 1929 got to equal that?”
