alanjjohnstone
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No relation, BD. Perhaps he was from the Perthshire Johnstons.
But recently on the progressive website Consortium News there were articles from a Caitlin Johnstone and a Diana Johnstone. So perhaps radicalism is in the family blood.
But there is a strong element of Orange Order and Masonic Lodge influence with my uncles, probably arising from the anti-Catholic Irish feeling of the Galloway region, guessing wildly that such existed in the region from Covenanter times.
There was also a prominent CPer called Monty Johnstone who the Party once debated.
I’m afraid that a family tree of my paternal side of the family would not go very far back due to illegitimacy and them being itinerant farm labourers
My father’s nickname at his work was “Tinker” Johnstone if that gives you any clue of the background.
Trump is already inflaming the situation by suggesting that rather than an accident at a chemical store, it may have been a bomb or an attack.
Others will no doubt in time will eventually suggest it was Israeli Mossad sabotage of that storage depot
“About 70 billion land animals are produced globally for food each year, an estimated two-thirds reared in intensive conditions.”
“…through the trees, we spotted the lake. At the same time the smell reached us: an appalling stench, one of the worst smells I have ever encountered in my life. This was no lake. It was an open cesspit, a vast lagoon full of waste from the pig farm. Floating beneath the surface were the bodies of pigs in various stages of decomposition. Through the filth we could see snouts and curly tails. Everywhere was the detritus of factory farming – plastic syringe casings, needles and white clinical gloves – floating in the rancid pool and discarded on adjacent farmland. It was the first time I’d ever stepped on to a factory farm. It was a moment I would never be able to forget….”
“… The whirring of machinery, the clinking of chains, the animal cries, the shouts of workers, the steam, the blood and offal; carcasses swinging on the line. The animals may be stressed, but you wonder also what impact this has on the workers who do this, day in, day out…”
“…In the age of hyper-cheap food you can pick up a whole chicken for a few pounds, and a pint of milk for less than a bottle of water. Yet these prices fail to reflect the true cost of production. The terms dictated by supermarkets and processing companies put too many farmers in the grotesque position of losing money on the foodstuffs they’ve spent weeks, months or years producing.
“…And despite the furore around the spread of megafarms, size isn’t an indicator of the welfare standards they maintain; in fact larger, more modern units are often superior, with hi-tech systems and good veterinary care… But when things go wrong – fires, floods, disease outbreaks, equipment breakdowns, pollution – the bigger the farm, the bigger the consequences…”
Despite what I’ve seen, experience tells me that the majority of livestock farmers are decent, hardworking folk who do their best to make a living in an industry where money doesn’t readily flow down to the small guys, and where margins are often so slim that any unforeseen event can prove catastrophic…Many of these farmers are as much victims of the system as their livestock.”
“…It’s the sheer scale of production, driven by insatiable demand, that is the problem, fuelling bigger farms and more intensive systems – the more animals you can squeeze in, the more food you can produce, the more money there is to be made…this has unavoidably created a system which has turned farm animals into mere commodities. “Meat machines”…industrially produced chickens are no longer referred to as birds but as “crops”, in the same way as you might refer to a field of lettuces or tomatoes. Chicken producers can be referred to as “growers”, not farmers, and it comes as no surprise that they are not paid for individual birds, but for the weight each “crop” of chickens achieves.
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BD, it is true what you say that wealth does pass on through the generations. Not sure who it was but some scholar did research into easily traced surnames and indeed showed that many of todays rich was based on the wealth of the ancestor. The studies on slavery and the Jim Crow aftermath likewise show the opposite – why many African Americans remain poverty-stricken to this day
I had a book by Thomas Johnston, The Noble Families, originally a Red Clydesider, then ILP MP, then Labour Party minister of the crown, who highlighted the origins of many Scottish aristocrats. He then tried to pulp every copy he could lay his hands upon after he climbed the ladder into ‘high society’.
But when it comes to electoral activity which is both expensive in money and members time we have tried to focus on those very few constituencies where we believe we have a foothold in contesting and we forego parachuting in a candidate and campaign volunteers to places we lack a presence
Are we going to adopt the biblical doctrine the sins of our fathers are passed on through the generations?
We have always held back from attacking the employing class as individuals and concentrated our fire on the system as a whole (of course, there has been many exceptions where our disgust and indignation at particular members of the owning class has been very apparent)
We might adopt a more direct language when we discuss our class enemies … “wage-slave masters” instead of merely the technical term “capitalists”, for instance.
Jesus the revolutionary is often the portrait made of him, JohnD, based mostly on his promotion of the “golden rule”, an ethical code that pre-dated him in Judaism and in variously repeated in many other cultures, far and wide.
There is a Gospel of Judas
Appreciate you drawing attention to the song.
Leon Rosselson has another version
Corruption in Venezuela and the mystery owner of gold in Liechtenstein
https://apnews.com/4261ad628fc4e59518bf7cb6ed2f1f78
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/03/coronavirus-animal-abuse-us-factory-farms
As slaughterhouses across the nation have been forced to close by the virus, gruesome stories have emerged of the mass killing of millions of chickens and pigs who can no longer be brought to market. Chickens have been gassed or smothered with a foam in which they slowly suffocate. Among other methods, pigs – whose cognitive abilities are similar to dogs – have been killed by a method known as ventilator shutdown, in which the airways to a barn are closed off and steam is introduced. A whistleblower’s video shows thousands of pigs dying as they are slowly suffocated and roasted to death overnight.
Although the pandemic has focused attention on these incidents, they represent a tiny fraction of the daily abuses heaped on farmed animals. The billions of animals slaughtered every year in the United States are intelligent, sensitive beings capable of feeling a range of emotions. They are driven to raise their young and form complex social structures, both impossible under the conditions of modern farming. Instead, they live short, painful, disease-ridden lives. Chickens, who make up over 90% of the animals slaughtered every year, suffer the worst. Their deaths are subject to effectively no federal regulation, meaning the birds are frequently frozen, boiled, drowned or suffocated to death.
When i lived in South India i got on friendly terms with one of the locals who had the misfortune to have three daughters. The state i lived in did not practice infanticide of females as in some other parts of India
His eldest was getting married and he had to provide the dowry which he had to take a loan out for. I asked when will he be able to pay it back. His answer was never. And he still had two more daughters.
Another case i knew of was the father buying a car for his prospective new son-in-law, they were urban professionals.
The house i rented was owned by a widow and it was going to be part of her only child’s dowry when the daughter eventually married.
Dowry is illegal but no matter whether Hindu, Muslim or Christian the custom still prevails. There are a few marital websites which are dowry-free but they are the exception.
Never witnessed or heard about sati, but I did hear from reliable sources stories that when the promised dowry never materialised, the bride was sometimes murdered in an “accident”, usually in the kitchen with cooking oil and often it was the mother-in-law who was the culprit.
A few adivasi, tribal peoples, in the hills near me practiced polyandry and the divorce process was simple…all the husband’s shoes were placed outside the house as a sign he was no longer welcome in the home.
I have just gone through the local custom where i live with my step-daughter who just got engaged. The two families meet up and agree a dowry price for the male to pay, not the female…a down-payment now and the final sum upon the marriage proper. It makes the pre-marital sex and cohabitation socially acceptable.
Surplus Value
The merchant calls it profits
And he winks the other eye;
The banker calls it interest
And heaves a cheerful sigh.
The landlord calls it rent,
As he tucks it in his bag,
But the honest old burglar,
He simply calls it swag.Indians love gold. Over centuries, households – as well as temples – have hoarded the precious metal.
According to a World Gold Council estimate from last year, total gold reserves across Indian homes were about 25,000 tonnes – the largest in any country.
Having effectively banned Huawei and its technology and legally harassed its CEO, Trump now attacks Tik Tok on what many consider spurious grounds
The Hong Kong government has postponed its upcoming elections for one year, citing the growing coronavirus outbreak in the territory but sparking immediate accusations that the pandemic was being used as a pretext to suppress democracy.
Trump appears to be trying to follow the Chinese game-play (or other way around)
The author is not an employee of Al Jazeera, AFAIK, but a freelance journalist and political commentator from South Africa who also writes for the Huffington Post outlet
As for suppressing the role of Arabs or Africans i’m sure he could as a critic of contemporary African politics and tribalism he could write a critique.
From another of his articles
“Where our ancestors crossed the Atlantic Ocean bound in chains and wallowing in dreadful, inhumane conditions, today men, youths, women and young children from across the length and breadth of Africa elect to embark on similar journeys across the Mediterranean — and, as they did 400 years ago, many will perish at sea, all at the hands of “slave masters” of all hues.”
But the point of the article was to highlight the selective theme of the BBC by purposefully “spreading” the blame and ignoring another relevant family source.
For Sudan’s slavery and the persistence to modern day of racism Arab anti-black racism, see here
https://socialistbanner.blogspot.com/2020/07/sudan-slavery-and-racism.html
(ironically taken from the BBC website)
“I regret the behavior of the Arabs… They brought African children to North Africa, they made them slaves, they sold them like animals, and they took them as slaves and traded them in a shameful way. I regret and I am ashamed when we remember these practices. I apologize for this.” – Gaddafi, 2010
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade#Historical_and_geographical_context
As an aside, on the other topic, Mexico and Marx, there is an interesting reference to the fact that Marx and Engels supported Texas independence and the American in the Mexico invasion ignoring that it meant the spread of slavery. This despite many Chartists understood the situation directly from Frederic Douglass lectures.
https://louisproyect.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/1-marx-i-racism.pdf
China will not recognise the British national (overseas) passport as a legal travel document, raising the prospect that the 3 million Hong Kong citizens eligible for the passport will be banned from leaving Hong Kong by the Chinese government.
The refusal to recognise the BNO passport in theory raises the prospect of tens of thousands of Hong Kong citizens being trapped in the city or being refused re-entry if they leave the country andtry to return, although there was some confusion over the practical impact of the policy, since Hong Kong residents say they can leave and re-enter Hong Kong without showing a BNO passport. An ID card is normally sufficient to pass through immigration.
