alanjjohnstone
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I agree with Gnome. We should have a variety of videos to post and link to.None on their own will be perfect nor present all the aspects of the socialist case so we should be prepared to accept some short-comings. We aren't professionals and have to expect some technical flaws until we are prepared to pay several hundreds (thousands) of pounds in their making. Hopefully, a wide range of different videos will add up to a better and fuller understanding of what we are trying to communicate.i particularly like the distinctive accent in the voice-over and would suggest we use regional accents from all over the UK as long as it is spoken clearly.
Another article about Syria from my favourite ME war correspondent Robert Fiskhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syrian-civil-war-five-years-on-2011-bashar-al-assad-isis-iran-conflict-a6929186.html
I'm still 'addicted' to watching Coronation St, ALB, from sitting at my mammy's feet watching it from episode 1…Maybe that is what is meant.
A contribution to the debate http://www.remarxpub.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Animal-rights.pdf
Quote:Medicine assumes that human life has supreme value. When my patient has pneumonia, I try to destroy the invading microorganism. I do not grant the HIV virus the same right to live as a human being. Survival demands that we value human life over non-human life. That does not mean that animals must be cruelly treated. However, it does mean that they cannot have equal rights…..The fate of the animal world is inextricably tied to our own. As long as some people are allowed to exploit other people, animals will also be abused. Replacing capitalism with a cooperative socialist society will effectively end profit madness and all the human and animal suffering that goes with it…I think members should make an effort to attend so to continue nurturing our comradeship with Andrew Kliman and his friends. It is important to build a network of those who might not agree 100% on everything but still share much the same perspective on many other aspects of the socialist case.
What is more frightening if Trump wins , is Trump losing to Ted Cruzhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0_KKg6Wh3QSOYMB blog has posted on Cruzhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2016/03/cruzing-for-bruising.html
Quote:In any way, that is not the issue.My post was in reply to ALB's message #281, and not part of the exchange you are having with John Oswald
Watch a clip from this video on accountability …which shows two members of a committee delivering their annual report to an empty room and sticking steadfast to procedural rules. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3saU5racsGE
I watched it and i agree that Neil made a slick non-aggressive cross-examination which left Downing floundering. It demonstrates that it takes someone very media savvy and experienced such as Galloway or Brand to steer an interview with someone as skilled as Neil at interviewing. The Labourite certainly was more correct in his depiction of the Labour Party than Downing's picture of it. Everything Downing said is being said by the Democrats to delegitimise any third party such as the Greens….
I'm no expert on anthropology but it seems to me that early settlements were by the rivers or by the sea. Most likely for transportation ease but also i would hazard a guess, the abundance of available food from the water. We have raw fish – sushi…is there an effect on the teeth from eating that?…What about the bugs and snails that is eaten as part of a regular diet? Yes i go with the theory that as a scavenger species and probably not hunters, we were omnivores…In the US some even pride themselves still on eating road-kill.
Another thoughtful article that is worth a readhttp://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/09/on-their-own-terms-animal-liberation-for-the-21st-century/
Quote:A liberatory theory ought to call for the neutering of cats or to prevent dogs from mating, given that we’ve already manipulated the reproductive processes of these animals by selective breeding, so they lack the ability to reproduce and raise their young on their terms.This article may interest some folk and thehorrific film it links to http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/09/violence-on-the-factory-farm-how-not-to-feed-the-world/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLNijMgVK1U
Quote:In 1965, 10 billion livestock animals were slaughtered each year. That number is now over 55 billion…It is commonly claimed that we need to massively increase the amount of food we produce to feed a growing world population. Another claim is that chemical-intensive (GM) agriculture and factory farming is the only way to do this. These claims are erroneous. The world already produces enough food to feed the anticipated increase in global population, and various official high-level reports state that small-scale/family farms using ecologically friendly methods are better placed to feed a growing population if adequately invested in…if as a species we were to cut down on meat consumption or even eradicate it from our diet, we could feed the world more easily…One last point should be made about the one billion cattle currently alive and the manure produced. In traditional, sustainable systems of agriculture, manure is part of a holistic cycle: it’s fertiliser. But in modern factory farms, this waste is not cycled through the farm because there’s just too much of it. Instead, waste is stored in manure ‘lagoons’, which emit methane and, even worse for the environment and climate, nitrous oxide.Quote:Lenin had a theory that under socialism gold could be used, maybe, to make doorknobs for public lavatories, and things like that.Nor do i think there are many modern-day Leninists who would support building toilets with the gold, eitherhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/nov/05.htm
Quote:When we are victorious on a world scale I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities of the world. This would be the most “just” and most educational way of utilising gold for the benefit of these generations which have not forgotten how, for the sake of gold, ten million men were killed and thirty million maimed in the “great war for freedom”, the war of 1914-18, the war that was waged to decide the great question of which peace was the worst, that of Brest or that of Versailles; and how, for the sake of this same gold, they certainly intend to kill twenty million men and to maim sixty million in a war, say, in 1925, or 1928, between, say, Japan and the U.S.A., or between Britain and the U.S.A., or something like that.But however “just”, useful, or humane it would be to utilise gold for this purpose, we nevertheless say that we must work for another decade or two with the same intensity and with the same success as in the 1917-21 period, only in a much wider field, in order to reach this state. Meanwhile, we must save the gold in the R.S.F.S.R., sell it at the highest price, buy goods with it at the lowest price. When you live among wolves, you must howl like a wolf, while as for exterminating all the wolves, as should be done in a rational human society, we shall act up to the wise Russian proverb: “Boast not before but after the battle”.But i bet it is a better way of commemorating the sacrifice of workers than dreary old war memorials and annual poppy wreaths…
Since we are not adherents of the Great Men in history theory, we shouldn’t be too condemnatory that they wish to discuss some lesser mortals.I often use James Cannon when replying to Trotskyists and their mistaken ideas on socilaism:Q: Is it true that there is communism in the Soviet Union?A: No there isn’t any communism in the Soviet Union.Q: Is there socialism in the Soviet Union?A: No —well I would like to clarify that now. Socialism and communism are more or less interchangeable terms in the Marxist movement. Some make a distinction between them in this respect; for example, Lenin used the expression socialism as the first stage of communism, but I haven’t found any other authority for that use. I think that is Lenin’s own particular idea. I, for example, consider the terms socialism and communism interchangeable, and they relate to the classless society based on planned production for use as distinct from a system of capitalism based on private property and production for profit.”https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch02.htmLike our own comrade DannyL who makes use of the analogy of the family and by extension the human family to describe socialism, Cannon also does similar.Although gradualist and transitional Cannon explains:“ Emerging from capitalism, the transitional society, will carry over some capitalist methods of accounting, incentives, and rewards. People first will work for wages. They will be paid in money, backed by the gold in Fort Knox, for the amount of work performed. But after a certain period, where there is abundance and even superabundance, the absurdity of strict wage regulation will become apparent. Then the gold will be taken out of Fort Knox and put to some more useful purpose, if such can be found.When people will have no further use for money, they will wonder what to do with all this gold, which has cost so much human labour and agony. Lenin had a theory that under socialism gold could be used, maybe, to make doorknobs for public lavatories, and things like that. But no Marxist authority would admit that in the socialist future men will dig in the earth for such a useless metal.The accounting arrangements automatically registered by money wages based on gold will at a certain stage be replaced by labour certificates or coupons, like tickets to the theatre. But even that, eventually, will pass away. Even that kind of accounting, which would take up useless labour and be absolutely purposeless, will be eliminated. There will be no money, and there will not even be any bookkeeping transactions or coupons to regulate how much one works and how much he gets.Does that sound “visionary”? Here again, one must make an effort to lift himself out of the framework of the present society, and not consider this conception absurd or “impractical”. The contrary would be absurd. For in the socialist society, when there is plenty and abundance for all, what will be the point in keeping account of each one’s share, any more than in the distribution of food at a well-supplied family table? You don’t keep books as to who eats how many pancakes for breakfast or how many pieces of bread for dinner. Nobody grabs when the table is laden. If you have a guest, you don’t seize the first piece of meat for yourself, you pass the plate and ask him to help himself first.When you visualise society as a “groaning board” on which there is plenty for all, what purpose would be served in keeping accounts of what each one gets to eat and to wear? There would be no need for compulsion or forcible allotment of material means. “Wages” will become a term of obsolete significance, which only students of ancient history will know about. “Speaking frankly”—said Trotsky—“I think it would be pretty dullwitted to consider such a really modest perspective 'utopian’.” ”https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1953/socialistamer.htmUseful quotes to have in your armoury
Whether you or i are fully qualified to determine the efficiency of those experiments with dogs, this book disputes it. The book claims it was impossible to accurately mimic human heart defects in a dog’s heart and researchers devised the successful operation without the use of animals. Vivisection actually delayed medical progress. Because of the difference between human anatomy and physiology and animal anatomy and physiology, the results of animal tests are unhelpful – and at time misleading – for human medical progress.https://books.google.co.th/books?id=XAxYur9IzCsC&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=Vivien+Thomas+vivisection&source=bl&ots=0-QHPa7iIq&sig=BVJohunX-Ng8fkKTpqe7AgzhDwU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiu587nk7DLAhULTo4KHeijBFAQ6AEIQDAF#v=onepage&q=Vivien%20Thomas%20vivisection&f=false
