alanjjohnstone
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Another related movement
https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/09/the-two-parties-have-failed-us-but-the-people-can-succeed/
The Two Parties Have Failed Us, But The People Can Succeed.
Lesser evil voting has driven a race to the bottom in the quality of the candidates because as long as people are voting out of fear, it doesn’t matter who the candidate is or what they stand for.
The Green Pope
“Our constant demand for growth and an endless cycle of production and consumption are exhausting the natural world,” he said. “Forests are leached, topsoil erodes, fields fail, deserts advance, seas acidify, and storms intensify. Creation is groaning!”
“Policy, legislation, and investment must be focused on the common good and guarantee that global social and environmental goals are met,” he said.
In the latest military display of power two U.S Air Force B-1B bombers took off from Guam and made a low-level pass over the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its escorting fleet, which was exercising nearby in the Philippines Sea.
Since late January, American B-1B and B-52 bombers, usually operating in pairs, have flown about 20 missions over key waterways, including the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan.
These missions, military analysts say, are designed to send a crystal-clear signal: The United States can threaten China’s fleet and Chinese land targets at any time, from distant bases, without having to move America’s aircraft carriers and other expensive surface warships within range of Beijing’s massive arsenal of missiles.
“A single B-1 can deliver the same ordnance payload as an entire carrier battle group in a day,” said David Deptula, dean of the Washington-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General. “Depending on where they are, ships can take weeks to get in place,” said Deptula. “But by using bombers, they can respond in a matter of hours,” he adds.
With the combination of bombers and long-range missiles, the United States is trying to turn the tables on the PLA. Over more than two decades, China has assembled a force of ground, sea and air-launched missiles that would make it deadly for warships of the U.S. Navy and its allies to approach the Chinese coast in a conflict. This Chinese strategy is specifically tailored to threaten U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups and the network of bases that form the backbone of American power in Asia.
In an earlier show of force, Chinese fighter jets crossed the mid-line of the Taiwan Strait in only the third such incursion across the median line since 2016 while U.S. Secretary for Health, Alex Azar, was visiting Taipei on Aug. 10.
The PLA launched one of its so-called carrier-killer missiles, the DF-26, in an exercise in the South China Sea following the deployment in July of two U.S. aircraft carriers to the area, China’s official military media reported in early August. And a U.S. defense official told Reuters that on Aug. 26, China launched four medium-range ballistic missiles that hit the South China Sea between Hainan Island and the Paracel Islands.
So is the new Peoples Party going to be viable?
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/09/01/new-peoples-party-rises-amid-grim-election-options
“I blame the Left for eroding that, via indiscriminate Welfarism.”
I think this is where we diverge, Headbutt.
I think such an expression as welfarism reflects the Republican talking-point of dependency of the individual on the State.
The welfare state is the bandaid solution to the inherent poverty caused by the operation of capitalism and we can accept that it has many faults. But the capitalist class do require to apply first aid for the casualties of the system and it would be callous of us to deny the relatively miserly benefits that are offered to our fellow-workers by the employing class. We take what we can without any gratitude for the hand-outs.
Actually the arguments for UBI is that “free money” without conditions to recipients does not increase dependency.
You can see our attitude to UBI in this extraordinary long topic thread
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/left-and-right-unite-for-the-ubi-fight/
There was a historical debate that reformism should be opposed because it strengthens the ruling class and so we should reject reforms offered to us. A bit like cutting of our noses to spite our faces.
“…and have seen more lived and globally beneficial socialism outside of the Western political philosophy. I’ve seen it in every agrarian subsistence village, in multi-generational family compounds throughout Asia…”
Headbutt, we should not under-estimate the existence and extent of mutual aid which is vital among the poor to survive.
I recall from my childhood living on a scheme (projects to Americans) and when someone died, there was the white-sheet street collection, neighbours tossing whatever cash they could spare on to the sheet.
I was reminded of that when my wife died and my work-place did a collection. I had no life insurance for funeral costs but they never knew that so it didn’t matter even if i had. They were following the custom of our work-place.
And where i live now, the custom is again for the local community to contribute to the funeral costs with voluntary donations, also helping out with the expenses of house building and weddings by giving what they can afford.
I have referred to the rise of co-ops in rural America and i have seen a few documentaries depicting the tradition of barn-raising. People are naturally cooperative and collaborative even when the ruling ideology is claimed to be individualist.
We socialists simply wish to generalise these relationships and run our world on those principles of sharing and caring.
As Eugene Debs answered that question in scripture, we are indeed “our brother’s keeper ”
And we do honor our fathers and mothers, finding fault with a society that farms out the elderly and infirm to care homes then deprive them of any pandemic protection.
(apologies to all for being too biblical)
Just an example from today of the continuing popularity of co-ops as a solution to all our woes and troubles.
https://truthout.org/articles/co-ops-can-lay-a-path-to-just-economies-amid-the-covid-crisis/
Robbo is really saying is that we should pull our punches when it comes to cooperatives because they do have a popular sympathy with our fellow workers . No doubt employee co-ownership is indeed popular – don’t we even prefer to shop at the Co-op and get their divvy or go to John Lewis because of the best buy promise.
I don’t know how many times i have read articles of Mondragon being depicted as a future business model for progressives
Regards Bolivia read our blog explaining a bit about their background and how even USAID promoted them and how it has now completely back-fired.
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2016/09/a-story-of-co-operative-failure.html
Yes, some co-ops have been successful. One is often totally ignored and was only brought to my attention in a online exchange – The American telephone and internet providers in parts of the United States. The mainstream providers – the telephone companies in the early days – saw no profit in connecting up large parts of rural America so small businesses and consumers had to do so themselves and when broadband arrived it was incorporated.
And of course the other success story are those small individual producers held up as an example of individualism but couldn’t survive without being a part of co-operatives – the small farmers who built machinery sharing and marketing co-op networks around the world.
So now a right-winger is a victim of a shooting, this time in Portland.
Will this develop into tit-for-tat revenge killings?
Something i didn’t know – Hinduism has 33 MILLION gods. Not sure if it right or not.
https://countercurrents.org/2020/08/nirmala-sitharamans-economics-as-an-act-of-god-in-india/
Some Hindus even government ministers are claiming the pandemic is karma
The red-baiting Republican smear the Democrats as socialist strategy
The postal vote seems to be a very artificial conflict between Biden and Trump.
If either is serious that COVID-19 will impact upon voter turn-out why not simply extend polling day. Open the voting booths on Monday and Wednesday as well as Tuesday. But they need differences , don’t they to justify the two-party system.
We may disparage a vote for Biden as a wasted vote but we do not say voting itself is a waste. Many agree contrary to the anarchists
https://apnews.com/966d59c440ca8741d972d37e446507a1
At the commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom also gave way to one central message: Vote and demand change at the ballot box in November.
“As Black people, a lot of the people who look like us died for us to be able to sit in public, to vote, to go to school and to be able to walk around freely and live our lives,” the 31-year-old Moreland said. “Every election is an opportunity, so how dare we not vote after our ancestors fought for us to be here?”
“If we do not vote in numbers that we’ve never ever seen before and allow this administration to continue what it is doing, we are headed on a course for serious destruction,” Martin Luther King III told The Associated Press
speakers implored attendees to “vote as if our lives depend on it,”
Rev. Al Sharpton said. “Our vote is dipped in blood. We’re going to vote for a nation that stops the George Floyds, that stops the Breonna Taylors.”
“We are about reminding people and educating people on how important it is to translate the power of protest into the power of politics and public policy change,” said Morial, who spoke Friday. “So we want to be deliberate about making the connection between protesting and voting.”
“I don’t necessarily see elections as achieving justice per se because I view the existing system itself as being fundamentally unjust in many ways and it is the existing system that we are trying to fundamentally transform,” said Bree Newsome Bass, an activist and civil rights organizer, during the convention’s panel about electoral justice. “I do think voting and recognizing what an election should be is a way to kind of exercise that muscle.”
Michael Moore who predicted Trump’s 2016 victory forecasts he will do it again
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/29/michael-moore-donald-trump-repeat-2016-warning
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/08/28/strategic-case-animal-liberation
“Plenty of leftists, myself included, have made extensive ethical arguments why socialists and progressives should embrace animal liberation. It’s pretty straightforward: many animals think, they feel, they struggle. To commodify and discard them is needlessly cruel, oppression at mass scale. If the climate movement does not embrace some version of animal liberation, we will have missed an opportunity to make the world a kinder and more beautiful place.”
