alanjjohnstone
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
To clarify fuller he further tweets, two times
For those determined to miss the point, I deplore the idea of a eugenic policy. I simply said deploring it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work. Just as we breed cows to yield more milk, we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher. But heaven forbid that we should do it.A eugenic policy would be bad. I’m combating the illogical step from “X would be bad” to “So X is impossible”. It would work in the same sense as it works for cows. Let’s fight it on moral grounds. Deny obvious scientific facts & we lose – or at best derail – the argument.Who needs cash?
Self-checkout machine (SCO) are points of sale where customers scan their own products and pay themselves, without the need for a human cashier. As of late 2019, there were 117,000 SCOs in Europe.
In the UK, self-checkouts account for one out of every six points of sale in the grocery sector as a whole, with an even higher ratio in major supermarkets.
https://www.dw.com/en/will-german-supermarkets-ever-embrace-self-checkouts/a-54873539
Matt, my comment was not yourself, but the author of the Counterpunch article. We all know how Chavez and Madura were and still are hailed as saints by the Left. I was also merely indicating that Gadaffi was much like Bashir Assad and even Saddam Hussein, in that they countered the splintering of their countries and tried to avoid civil war
I agree with you Marcos that the US has an identity problem and it is not a new thing, merely the same age-old problem re-labeled. Nativist V. Immigrant.
In his earlier years even Eugene Debs expressed the racist views of the Know-Nothing Party. Nor can we ignore the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow which means that its effects don’t miraculously end with emancipation or a Civil Rights law. The wealth of one community remains in the negative because of such a simple thing as red-lining when it comes to Federal aid in home-ownership.
In all those countries you refer to, there does appear to be a hidden racism, (even in Cuba), where skin tone, darker or lighter, determine status with mestizo being on the higher rung of the social ladder with the indigenous at the very bottom, hence the need for the Zapatista movement to challenge the divide in Mexico. i once encountered English-speaking historically Caribbean blacks in Costa Rica who seemed to me to be the equivalent of the Roma in that country.
And talking of the Roma, do we deny them their history by insisting they assume the nationality of the country they live in?
Is assimilation and multiculturalism (or should that read monoculturalism, the McDonaldisation of cultures), really a solution socialists seek for the diversity of peoples?
Are we hoping to be color-blind when it comes to discrimination and prejudice? How do we say that in the America police brutality targets “human beings” when proportionately it is aimed at People of Color (i’m going to run with that word for now)
In the UK we say BAME – Black Asian Minority Ethnic…and it makes meaningless if we substitute a recent news headline with “Human Beings have lost trust in the Police”
In an earlier exchange with myself ALB brings up the France’s constitution which forbids any reference to ethnic origins for French nationals. Does that help the French Arabs or French Africans who are now statistically invisible and living with higher levels of poverty and unemployment because of the effects of institutional racism? Have not the suburbs of Paris become de facto ghettoised but because of a law we cannot identify or define it as so?
We have numerous social problems which cross over from the racial to class divisions. Our task is not to deny that race (or religion elsewhere in the world) is not part of the reason for inequality but to show that the fight for socialism is the solution, not a re-arrangement and re-alignment of various oppressions (or disadvantages, if you prefer)
We tend to forget that Gaddafi although a dictator was very much a stabilising factor in the region, making a deal with the EU and with a booming economy it could incorporate the many African migrants trying to make their way to Europe, rather than lock them up inside inhuman detention camps.
Another aspect is the ecological progress he was making to irrigate vast parts of desert which has stalled when Libya degenerated into civil war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River
https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/libya-has-worlds-largest-irrigation-project
But we should be wary of too much left-wing praise bestowed upon Gadaffi.
Democratic Party tries to bar the Green Party from the election
https://apnews.com/b9b6c55254bfbf9a2bd0d45ad3ecc4e9
Democrats had contended that the Green Party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees did not properly submit candidate affidavits in August to go with paperwork containing voter signatures to get on the ballot. As a result, Democrats argued, both must be barred from the ballot. Commonwealth Court Judge Drew Crompton, a Republican, disagreed, and dismissed arguments that the presidential nominee, Howie Hawkins, should be barred from the ballot. But Green Party’s vice presidential nominee should be barred, he said.
It seems as the UK is about to become a rogue outlaw state
The harsh truth of the matter, is if they deserved it, then indeed Trump is also a deserving nominee.
An organisation can be nominated
All nominations from heads of state or politicians serving at a national level are accepted. University professors, directors of foreign policy institutes, past recipients of a Nobel Prize and members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are also among those deemed qualified to submit a nomination for the prize. The nominations require no invitation and as long they are entered before 1 February of the qualifying year, they will be accepted. For the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize there are 318 candidates.
Surely we can find a friendly academic to nominate us. We too can gain some publicity from being nominated.
But should we associate ourselves with those others?
Yes, it is a political tradition that Zionists wish not to be known.
They will tell us that it was the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel which were the nails in the coffin for the Bund.
But the Bund arguments are once again gaining ground as the majority of Jewish people in the diaspora reject migration to Israel, that anti-semitism is no longer a widely held prejudice, and Israeli government policy alienates the traditional liberalism of the Jewish community.
For those who wish to engage in related discussions, don’t forget our own contribution to link to
Biden has not said whether he would, if elected in November, support the project, known officially as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent. The project has bipartisan support in Congress.
The total bill is expected to approach $1.2 trillion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/adolph-reed-controversy.html
He planned to argue that the left’s intense focus on the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on Black people undermined multiracial organizing, which he sees as key to health and economic justice.
The Biden promises that energy corporations believe they cannot deliver
Just how many of Trump’s policies will Biden retain?
When it comes to voting, is “fellow human beings” a helpful way of differentiating voting intentions of various communities and who politicians are appeal to.
White Evangelical Christians support for Trump is not 100% accurate but in terms of explaining the political separation and division in the US, it is appropriate.
I have had the same problem of what term for African-Americans which i use now, since negro, coloured (and even black sometimes) are no longer PC.
Another article questioning the social value of the meat industry
Just 50 enormous abattoirs account for 98% of cows killed in the US
“Mass-produced meat is a historical aberration that emerged within capitalism and must end with it – for the reversal of the drive to find new profit in every facet of human and animal life means that some of nature must be left unworked. Rather than being rivals, socialists, trade unionists, animal-liberation activists, public health officials and environmentalists should recognise their shared aim of abolishing relentless meat production.”
