alanjjohnstone
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http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/07/why-chimpanzee-testing-in-medicine-must-end/
Quote:A French man died last month and five others in the same clinical trial were hospitalized after they took an experimental drug. The drug had been deemed safe for humans after having been tested on chimpanzees in preclinical trials…. there is no necessity or compelling scientific justification for the use of chimpanzees to study human diseases and treatments and that turning from animal experiments to modern methods would represent genuine progress…Our Blog SOYMB directs attention to another aspect. Doctors surgeries becoming job centres. http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2016/03/gps-to-prescribe-jobs.html
Quote:That was a joke. Jesus Christ, Alan. That has nothing to with this. I said that a month ago. This goes back years This is unlike you Alan, you are changing my opinion of you. You know. Having a laugh. I don't believe it "Scarcely a recommendation" Jesus H ChristALB recently tried some irony and it fell flat because i took it literally. He suggested when someone does make a joke, add an appropriate smiley to highlight it. Irony and sarcasm rarely work on the internet. There is always those like me who won't understand it. So again my apologies for misconstrueing your post.And i have to again cite history, we had members (not you, Vin, i hastily add) with serious mental health issues who would post on the old Spintcom and Spopen lists and as i was the moderator i had to intervene and some saw that as exceeding the role of moderator. Another aspect in this debate is that as a blogger if i do go rogue there are several other members with admin authority to delete and amend any out-of-order post. (Not sure if admins can exclude other admins though) This is a safe-guard built into SOYMB blog. Getting back to the issue if the IC had worries about one person being in charge of a Party Twitter account…or even a branch Twitter account, something similar i think ccoud have been done,…or am i mistaken about Twitter tools. I see no need as YMS or the IC might of some centralised command holding the passwords, but rather control of the blog or Twitter is shared and not held by one person.
Quote:What i find extraordinary is a committee chose to find a member inappropriate for a job, not on technical ability but it seems on "political" grounds of unreliabilty that reflects badly on the member.Who has told you this? This is the first I have heard of it. Am I in a special section of the party without being informed but you have??My apologies. No-one told me. I tried a guess that there had to be a personal reason, one which was better not publicised as DJP post implied. I made an assumption. Perhaps i am totally wrong and my apologies to the IC and yourself for casting aspersions on both. As for not being above reproach, Vin, don't re-write history. I merely refer to repeated occasions over a very long time where you ended up in conflict with others in the party as a non-member, as an applicant to re-join and as a party member and forum contributor….You are not the only sinner by all means but you were hardly a saint in the years i have been aware of you on these web-pages. If some members have concerns about offering you a position of responsibility, it is understandable if mistaken. (as an aside, i recently recall you started a thread and forgot you had, blaming it on prozac and booze, scarcely a recommendation, is it?) What we have to do is go beyond this atmosphere of friction and reach out for a settlement of it. I am sure many, including yourself, is fed up of this acrimony that has been going on for some years. I am simply trying to clear the air and pin-point what the problem is…and since as i said it is not simply the Twitter account but something that goes further back. We need to get it sorted once and for all.
Tim, i don't think we should concoct any sinister motives from the IC.As i tried to explain, i don't consider them to be a secret cabal in cahoots with one another to victimise Vin (or anybody else for that matter). Misunderstandings and perhaps genuine unease arose when Vin volunteered (he'll be the first to admit, there exists a history and a past where he himself was not above reproach.)I think there may well have been a lapse by the IC in taking it upon themselves to turn down Vin. How much they discussed it and to what degree it was a collective decision, needs to be clarified, i think. As i said, if the IC had reached out to others, alternative measures could have been put into place to avoid any worries they may have held. Perhaps if more members had been in the loop they could have offered ideas to satisfy all those involved concerns. The fact you and i are freely discussing and questioning this issue, washing our dirty linen in public, shows just how far we really are from the SWP/SPEW democratic centralism dictatorship, you fear. Doesn't help to exaggerate the situation into something it isn't. I have aways thought one of the weaknesses of our organisation is that ALL the members seek to micro-manage it, and delegating responsibility is something they are reluctant to do. I'm happy to let members and committees have a very long leash, but we do have to strengthen accountability which has been pointed out by others such as by YMS, who recognises there is a problem that could possible potentially grow more serious. We really also should have in place a trusted grievance procedure that members can resort to for resolving conflicts. Too often disputes spiral out of control when that need not be the case. Just look at the exchanges here with moderation as an example of charge and counter-charge and counter-counter-charge.
As Mcolome points out, the history of American politics is littered with demagogue populism, of which some have been Third Party or independent candidates, other times, as members of the duopoly. I think this is the main difference between Debs and Sanders. Regardless of the fact that we have crticisms of the reformism of the SPA at the time, Debs stood as a socialist candidate of a socialist party, selected by that party and accountable to it and its voters.Sanders is a self-appointed candidate for the Democratic Party deciding campaign issues from the top-down as an enlightened leader.More damning is his pledge to endorse and assist Hilarity Clinton, the Wall St candidate if he loses the nomination.Well worth reading is this article on Clinton's Wall St support…They are there standing on the sidelines, waiting for their opportunity to enter the White Househttps://theintercept.com/2016/03/02/larry-fink-and-his-blackrock-team-poised-to-take-over-hillary-clintons-treasury-department/
Tim the pertinent words in that post is "inactive" and "trials". They never went live.They were experiments for a new blog, and to be specific, to replace SOYMB so to give the official blog a new look and a new remit….not a SPGB blog but a WSM with contributors from companion parties. It was in the end deemed not practicable or necessary but rather than delete, they are parked for future use. I'm an eternal optimist about the future growth of the socialist movement, not at all gloom and doom as i make out. I think in this debate we need to recognise the the IC may not be a monolithic whole, its members conspiring together. They are individual members with their own particular take on things. What i find extraordinary is a committee chose to find a member inappropriate for a job, not on technical ability but it seems on "political" grounds of unreliabilty that reflects badly on the member. It seems the IC were reluctant to explain why to him and seek out a compromise, such as enrolling a co-blogger to look over the shoulder. The SOYMB blog has two members who perform that role, acting as monitors for any slip-ups and there has been occasions where blog-posts required amending, or explanations required to be given for certain views expressed in them. Not often, it has to be said, but it is inevitable that such incidents occur. If the EC was kept in the loop for the reason for a member's offer of promoting the case for socialism on social media being refused, it would be helpful to know the dates of the relevant EC minutes where they were informed.
I have to 'fess upI'm warming the seats of two inactive world socialism blogs awaiting the resurgence of the WSM to take them overhttps://worldsocialism.wordpress.com/https://worldsocialists.wordpress.com/They were trials for a new blog that didn't see the light of day but one day may be useful and it stops other rival groups from grabbing the name.
Quote:An individual applied to the IC. The IC rejected the individual. As this is a public forum and the question is about an individual and rejected application it does not seem appropriate to go into further details here.I understand your reticence to cast aspersions upon a bona fide member but can you say if the individual privately was apprised of the reasons his offer to volunteer was turned down in any personal e-mails to him? And did the IC explain their course of action to the EC?My follow up question was having refused the offer of assistance, did those rejecting the offer try to seek other persons to take on the role and turn the original Twitter account into a useful tool for our organisation.I vaguely recall the account being said to belong to the WSM and companion party's approval/involvement was necessary. Which seems to me that the SPGB IC itself exceeded its responsibility on those grounds by refusing an individual assistance. But i may well be wrong in that reasoning because as i say it has been a case of clashes of opinions and those uninvolved have never been any the wiser on the rights or wrongs. Again i have to hazard a guess that some on the EC are as much in the dark as i am since some EC admit never actually even follow this forum much less the Twitter and Blogs so perhaps their decision should be treated with a certain amount of circumspect.
I'll happily give a hearing if anyone who wishes to explain what has been happening and who possesses a differing view…as long as it is expressed in the same neutral tones as DJP posted, so that people like myself can comprehend what has been going on in this protracted dispute where a lot of accusations are being thrown about. To solve a problem we must first identify where the problem lies and that can be a slow process of resolution. But let us try.Long ago i suggested the Party creates a members' grievance process similar to the IWW but like a lot of my suggestions they are sowed on barren ground…
Many thanks for the clarification.Can i now ask who rejected and why the original Twitter wordsocialism offer to revive it was rejected? And what alternative was suggested and what were the measures to make it active once again?
"Yes, Home Rule did turn out to be Rome Rule for forty or so years" Our blog made a similar point about the "Free State"
Quote:Eamon de Valera’s later smothered the labour movement in the embrace of Fianna Fáil. He talked the language of social democracy with enough rhetoric to rob labour of a distinctive voice, while never delivering the goods and transforming the new republic into a quasi-theocracy where the important social issues were placed under the tutelage of [the]Catholic Church.http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-free-state.html
Can i be the only member who is becoming increasingly lost and confused by this debacle on the Twitter account. I'm not surprised the EC may have possibly erred because i'm guessing from past remarks most of them like myself are ignorant of Twitter. It began i thought that a dormant Twitter account was being re-activated and then objections were raised that this was the preserve of a moribund WSM and the volunteer should desist….it then has escalated into whether the user is Twitting (Twittering -no idea of the verb) inappropriate sources without a disclaimer, now it seems the whole Twitter account should carry a statement distancing its content from the Party and so it can no longer be called a Party Twitter account, So do we have an official Twitter account now? Or is this all about some other Twit. Is this brief summary accurate? If not, please correct my impression as simply as possible.What do they say about being incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery…And Vin try not to take it all too personally…the Socialist Party has often never been very social.
It is very promising that your branch's discussion meeting has non-members out-numbering members. In recent years it seems to be always the other way around.Is this an effect of you collecting contact e-mail addresses from your street lit -stalls of those interested and then following up by sending out invitations to the meeting?
