alanjjohnstone
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But i am sure they will have a fair drouth to quench after their toil. And perhaps there will be hob-nobs availablehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5SUD5wriyw
Quote:Is a party, branch or individual account at risk of breaching our hostility clause by following or retweeting comments from other party, branch or individual members accounts?You are stretching it a bit too much to say you seek a dialogue about the political use of Twitter.
Recently i watched on TV the Thai army holding a special military parade before being deployed to the southern provinces where there is a civil war going on. I watched as Buddhist monks, just as Christan chaplains and Muslim imams do, give a blessing to the troops. Yet another article confirms that despite our critic proclaiming the non-violent nature of the original tenets of Buddhism, social and political conditions are changing its practices.
Quote:Other monks have advocated violence. Apichart Punnajanto, a senior monk at Bangkok's famous Wat Benchamabopit, or Marble Temple, wrote on his Facebook page last year that a mosque should be burned for every Buddhist monk killed in southern Thailand's Muslim insurgency. What stunned some observers more than Apichart's words — with their negation of the Buddha's core principle of non-violence — was the response of the Sangha council: total silence. In the eyes of critics, the council and the Buddhist hierarchy it controls, has neither condemned nor eliminated practices such as calls to violence, corruption among even leading clergy, and outdated feudalistic procedures.http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Thai-Buddhism-s-unholy-mess?page=2
To bolster the article's accuracy rather than the critic's wishful thinking I refer to this recent report in the Economisthttp://www.economist.com/news/asia/21695901-squabble-clergy-widens-thailands-dangerous-divides-men-alms
Being the type of person i am, i was quite happy to let Eddie have the last word since i thought the article answered his criticism. But it should have referred him to these articles in the Standard and SOYMB bloghttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2003/no-1181-january-2003/world-view-tibet-%E2%80%93-feudal-theocracy-market-economhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1998/no-1131-november-1998/world-viewAnd from our bloghttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/05/sunday-sermon-budding-buddhism.html
An interesting comment by First Minister of Wales upon the Port Talbot and its steel works possible closure
Quote:Things at Port Talbot have become tougher of late, due to the global conditions we all understand…I want to be honest and to say there are some things we cannot do. We cannot nationalise the steel industry in Wales. Even if we hard the powers and resources to do it, this isn’t what the trades unions are asking for – they know that this isn’t a reasonable, or sustainable solution for steel in Wales. What we do support, along with the unions, is state intervention at UK level…Some may find this article of interest.A bit too long and a bit out of my depth but others might appreciate its contenthttps://selfcertified.wordpress.com/2016/03/27/the-new-world-in-front-of-us-mason-postcapitalism/
Peter has sadly died now but it must be gratifying for the rest of us that right up to the end he was intent upon contributing to the case for socialism.
I'm pleased that Chomsky is aware of our existence through your intitiative, Tristan, something that pleases me. Another reason to reach out to non-members. I think it also shows that someone of the prominent stature of Chomsky is approachable by a relatively insignificant party as we presently are and thus is also another encouraging sign for my proposal and may widen the pool of prospective contributors. Need any accompanying submission require to have a critical commentary alongside? Could not the content of one particular article be worthy of our full endorsement and the only qualification required being that on other matters, there may well be differences of opinion which need not be gone into in that current issue of the SS, all easily explained in a brief introductory paragraph or two. (Just to be clear, i do not consider Chomsky's views on most aspects of politics to be above rigourous criticism and i don't suggest he is one of those writers who could produce an article that we could unqualifiably agree with without comment)But of my own suggestion, Derek Wall, may well fall into that caveat that ALB added having called us "hateful tossers"…Perhaps we can prove him wrong.
Your message on the Guest Writer #9 was out of order.But you do have a point that the Moderator is not above reproach for the message in his response #5.Tim's main thrust that there was a similarity between re-tweeting and offering space in our journal was pertinent and the mention of Vin's suspension should have passed as an aside and not become a subject of further comment from the moderator on this thread, imho. I think he breached the forum's own rules.But you shouldn't have compounded the crime with your own posting. Two wrongs never make a right…to use a cliche.
Quote:I also think it is one that is going to require us to look at all of these areas in great depth if it is not going to cause us great problems in the future. I have started putting some ideas/proposals together, which members of our Branch have indicated they feel is necessary for an Item for Discussion for ADM and think it is a better idea to examine the whole thing, rather than make adjustments to a system that I think needs overhauling.Tim, probably before you became a regular contributor to the forum but others will tell you that i have been pushing for a special conference to debate and discuss a re-vamp of the whole party image and approach…and willing to re-visit some of our traditional principles even if to just re-affirm , or perhaps elaborate a little more upon them. I made a point that it should be a special conference devoted solely to the topic and not just a few resolutions tagged on to Conference or ADM.I know members of your own branch would like for instance more emphasis on the WSM with perhaps a name change or simply a policy change such as we had when it was decided to use the full "Socialist Party of Great Britain" and "SPGB" less and substitute "Socialist Party" more. So i am in full agreement with your sentiments that we should have a complete over-haul and subject the WSM to a full MOT. This guest writer topic does not preclude such a wider, broader debate, but i am genuinely interested in who we consider to be "comrades" or not. So let's try and list them.
Quote:Why cant all comments and opinions be out and open to scrutiny for all to see? Open democracy. Why not?Linda, there is a time and place for everything.However, it is disrespectful to other forum contributors to purposefully derail and detract from a thread with extraneous comments to the topic. The role of a moderator is to remind members of the forum of that and to take action when his warnings are ignored.
