alanjjohnstone
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Indeed it would be…A definition of anti-Semitism includes the demonizing of Israel and denial of its right to exist. But many nations right to exist is challenged…Wasn't the right of Scotland to be a sovereign nation denied by many. And many nations wiped from the map was celebrated…USSR, YugoslaviaI came across this article which claims to be how to be pro-Palestinian without being anti-semitic http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-to-be-pro-palestinian-on-campus-without-being-an-antisemite/For sure it makes some valid observations but one elephant in the room never addressed – the occupation by Israel and the cause of the present deadly repression – the right to return for Palestinian families expelled during the Nakba.I also came across a new termZionophobia – anti-zionism
And the Guardian….doesn't even ask the question…how many UK troops are fighting in Syria that we don't know of…a dismal newspaper
Just commence my daily trawl of the media websites and what do i find, a skewed home page for the UK Guardian.Is the lead story, unarmed demonstrators killed by Israel? – NoIs the lead story, the UK soldier who was killed in Syria, a country the government has never revealed that UK troops are deployed on the ground? – NoInstead, we have the prominence given to the diplomatic spat with RussiaSame with the Guardian's other editions except the International edition that does lead with the Palestinian killings which, however, has the sub-headline"Israeli military dismisses demonstration as Hamas ploy to ‘carry out terror attacks’ "Shameful journalism and reporting.
Hell does not exist. In the afterlife, the souls of unrepentant sinners are not punished – they simply disappear, the head of the Catholic church is alleged to have said. Pope Francis is quoted as saying in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica: “Hell doesn’t exist, the disappearance of the souls of sinners exists. They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and go among the ranks of the souls who contemplate him. But those who do not repent, and therefore cannot be forgiven, disappear.”The Vatican has disputed the version of events offered by Mr Scalfari and should not be read as an accurate record of the Pope’s words, but the author’s own “reconstruction”, according to the Holy See.https://inews.co.uk/news/world/pope-francis-allegedly-told-a-journalist-hell-does-not-exist/
"Are we Bolsheviks? "Marcos, we are invisible…Surely, a socialist standard, should be unfurled wherever we attempt to have a physical presence to distribute our leaflets and literature
Capitalism to the rescue.http://news.trust.org/item/20180329181240-v9pc1/
Quote:Sir Ronald Cohen, the founder and chair of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment, which works to accelerate the movement around the world, often says that impact investment is "an evolution in thought and a revolution in means". This is an unstoppable movement and we are on the winning side of history… the impact investment thesis is values-based: capital has a higher purpose. Capital must be used to create positive social or environmental impact alongside financial returns. Impact can drive profitability and need not impair it…This "impact" movement is still about bourgeois vs. proletariat – just in a different avatar. Not on the battlefield, but in the financial markets. This revolution is not about guns and arms, but considers if the invisible hand of the markets can be guided by the invisible heart."A punishment that is not open to hope is not Christian and not human," said Francis during his sermon to the prisoners. "That is why the death penalty is neither human nor Christian."http://www.dw.com/en/pope-francis-death-penalty-is-neither-human-nor-christian/a-43191232
Ireland's referendum on abortion will be held on Friday 25 May.I would expect every socialist with a vote to use it to end of the Irish Constitution's restrictions on abortion. As the Standard wrote:
Quote:"…ultimately it is for the individuals themselves to decide…."So regardless of a member's individual view, they should support the repeal of the law to permit that exercise of that individual responsibility.
But not everyone is in favour of UBI…other people propose other schemes – the Federal Job Guarantee – a minimum annual wage of $24,600 plus benefits, and an average expected wage of $32,500—a figure at least three times the highest proposed universal basic income.https://www.alternet.org/economy/red-and-blue-voters-alike-could-rally-around-radical-job-growth-idea
Germany in 2016 recorded its highest fertility rate since 197 but women in Germany are still not having enough babies to ensure the total population stays constant. http://www.dw.com/en/germanys-fertility-rate-hits-43-year-high/a-43163756
In a recent opinion piece in The Washington Post titled “Here’s how block-chain can reduce inequality”, Nicolas Berggruen wrote bridging inequality in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) will require rewiring how we currently allocate capital. Meaning, governments should change their focus from redistributing wealth to “pre-distributing” capital.The emphasis hence should not be on “universal basic income,” but “universal basic capital.” In Berggruen’s own words, “Why not give a share of everything to everyone within a society? For example, imagine a society in which a third of its goods are owned by society itself, a third is owned by workers and a third is owned by capital — so that everyone has a share of everything.” And of course he believes “blockchain” is the game-changing, self-regulating technology that can make this possible.https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2018/03/350206/capitalism-age-ai
Yet another story of the lost villages of Englandhttps://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/27/anglo-saxon-settlement-and-roman-army-camp-found-in-a14-bypass-dig
Quote:Much of it is now flat and rather featureless farmland, but the excavations have revealed how densely populated it was in the past, with scores of village sites, burial mounds, henges, trackways, industrial sites including pottery kilns…the most likely explanation for its abandonment was that they lost the use of their woods when they were enclosed as a royal forest,” said Emma Jeffery, senior archaeologist from Mola Headland Infrastructure, who has been working on the site. “At a stroke they lost their grazing, foraging and bark for uses such as tanning leather, so the economic justification for the village was gone.”Once again, we are finding out that previously thought unsettled lands actually was home to a teeming population.https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/27/lost-amazon-villages-uncovered-by-archaeologists
Quote:Once people thought the Amazon was a near-uninhabited rainforest before the Europeans turned up, but researchers say they have found new evidence that it was, in fact, a hive of human activity and home to millions of people…“The idea that the Amazon was a pristine forest, untouched by humans, home to scattered nomadic populations … we already knew that was not true,” said Dr Jonas Gregorio de Souza, first author of the study from the University of Exeter. “The big debate is how populations were distributed in pre-Columbian times in the Amazon.”..the southern rim of the Amazon alone could have been home to between 500,000 and one million people…the arrival of Europeans quickly took its toll. “We know that diseases travelled much faster than people and probably this population was already weakened by diseases brought by Europeans even before the Europeans set foot on the area,” he said.
