alanjjohnstone
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Perhaps i am on the right track
Quote:The German leadership has supported the controversial idea of imposing a no-fly zone over northern Syria to alleviate the refugee crisis as the country tries to play in tune with Ankara’s demands for the creation of a so-called “buffer area” along its border.I am sure we can still be in comradely disagreement about some aspects of our positions. Even within our own organisations members are not clones of one another and there always is healthy debate and discussion about where we lay our emphasis and place our priorities. As i often say, we come to very similar conclusions by different routes and on that journey we acquire our own particular baggage and we should understand this. Let a thousand flowers blossom.
While the bombing of the Syrian hospital most likely by either the Russians or Syrians is to be fully condemned as a despicable action, isn't it very noticable how the media and the UN are responding to it compared to the other incidents of hospitals being by bombed by the US and Saudi Arabia. Again with my cynical attitude i suspect these "war crimes" will be the pretext for a safe haven and no-fly zone to protect the rebel forces and permit them to re-group, re-supply and re-launch an offensive once the "ceasefire" fails, and this time perhaps with Turkish and Saudi troops involved.All guess-work and no doubt events on th ground will transpire to be very different in actuality but i never trust the media these days and certainly not the word of the UK government. Other members are fully entitled to their own scenarios which are equally valid.
Just to add some psychological observations of my own, LBird, having read your earlier post on how you consider the Party to be, you must have one of the strongest streaks of masochism i have come across for you persistence in debating and discussing on this forum if you recognise the futility and fruitlessness of it No matter how much you are spurned, you keep coming back for moreIs it unrequited love, Lbird?…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwjS3_cZdN8&list=PL5_uypbSMXwCa_nxqQVu46MgJZDPwM4_y&index=10
Have Turkey and Saudi Arabia decided to go it alone? Or at least make people believe they are willing to do so. Soldiers from 20 countries will be gathering in Saudi Arabia for massive military exercises that are to go on for 18 days, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.The “Northern Thunder” exercise will take place in the north of the country and will include air, sea and land forces. SPA said that it will show that Riyadh and its allies “stand united in confronting all challenges and preserving peace and stability in the region.” Among the participants will be Arab and African countries. The US and other Western powers have not been invited.“Bashar al-Assad will leave – have no doubt about it. He will either leave by a political process or he will be removed by force,” Adel al-Jubeir the Saudi Foreign Minister told CNN.https://www.rt.com/news/332454-saudi-arabia-big-drills/
Israel's position of turning the Palestinian future state into "bantustans", there now preferred solution to the Syrian Civil War is now the same… the break-up of Syria…as mentioned earlier on this thread and now re-iteratedMoshe Yaalon, Israeli defence minister predicted that Syria will turn into "enclaves" under the de-facto control of religious and ethnic sects. Israel preferred the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group over Iranian-backed armed groups in southern Syria, near the border of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.Speaking to Israel's Army Radio on Sunday, Ram Ben-Barak, director-general of Israel's Intelligence Ministry, also described partition as "the only possible solution". "I think that ultimately Syria should be turned into regions, under the control of whoever is there”http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/israeli-minister-suggests-sectarian-partition-syria-160214151440114.htmlHmmmm???…Is this Israel calling for Syria to be wiped from the face of the map….
LBird, should be given full respect for arguing his corner so consistently and determinedly, although, i do think he over-eggs his views and does de-rail other threads with it…and does deserve to be told off about it …and he has shown he can take heed of the Moderator without any rancour…(that even some members cannot do).He'll know this himself. He is like a bull-terrier unable to let go of his bite once he gets his teeth into something. Sometimes a virtue, sometimes a vice. His debate about the differences between Engels from Marx on philosophy is a valid one and i am sure there is a place for such a discussion within the study of Marxism. I'm sure his posts have made those that engaged with him re-read and re-examine Marx and Engels and other thinkers who i never knew even existed. Not a bad thing in itself, even if the positions were irreconcilable in the end.My own caveat though is that there is much more than that topic in our way of presenting socialism to other workers and confronting our enemies. Here, is where i hope LBird can recognise our shared positions and assist in our case for socialism as a comrade. I possess different priorities. Marx didn't make the 1st International digest his German Ideology before joining and participating in it. We all carry our own baggage and idiosyncrasies but being part of a party does mean perhaps parking them at the back of the house and not in the front drive so as not to make it seem they belong to the party as a whole. This is necessary for organising for socialism. LBird should recognise that to become part of the movement we should not be lone wolves , howling at the moon but be part of an organisationwhich does not mean to own it lock, stock and barrel but accept influencing it is gradual and sometime almost imperceptibly, more so in a party like the SPGB with its long history but also its culture of questioning and introversion. LBird is unaware of the full extent of how the Party has been tolerant and (even encouraging) of self-analyses of itself by dissenting members that in many cases continued for years and decades.I am sure LBird's opinions can be slotted into a critique of the party without them becoming to much of a bone of contention that we cannot agree to comradely disagreement so we can actually cooperate in the greater challenge of making socialists to make socialism a reality…and i often said in the many threads and exchanges …i often find the debate surreal.I would welcome LBird to join the Party and take up the fight for socialism with folk who he can still debate and discuss with as comrades-in-arms …if he can't join, we and he should still recognise one another as fellow-workers seeking the same end…the end of capitalism…and regardless of the polarisation of these debates, we are all on the same wavelength politically if not philosophically.
I often relate to a particular member of my own union branch, a UKIP supporter from its earliest days, a staunch Orangeman being a member of an even more extreme independent lodge but when it came to union activity, he was as miltant as any left-winger, even accepting the banner of James Connolly on the picket lines as a trade union organiser but not as a proponent of Irish nationalism. I used to describe many of his ilk and there are many in Scotland as Orange Reds…
Trying to ban Peter Tatchell.Another example that the bastions of discussion and debate the universities are undermining free speech and expressionhttp://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/13/peter-tatchell-snubbed-students-free-speech-veteran-gay-rights-activist
Quote:Fran Cowling, the union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) representative, said that she would not share a stage with a man whom she regarded as having been racist and “transphobic”…Vin, if my memory serves me correctly, we have had a few ex-facists who joined the Party and of course one of the most well known has been Ricky Tomlinson ex-NF (but perhaps he didn't give up his authoritarian tendencies by joining the Scargill's Stalinist SLP )We are all permitted to change our views and it would be more accurately to describe Bowie as an ex and now recanted fascist rather than self-confessed.As a recanted Tartan Army follower i too share your absolute disgust at Jimmy Hill's inclusion in the Standard …Can i be referred to the ex-miner the Great St Jock Stein's obituary? During a miners’ strike they were shipping coal in from Belgium and he spotted the scab drivers. Stein stopped them and said: ‘I hope you’re proud of yourselves. You’re doing people out of a living.’ Then he said : ‘This is an absolute bloody disgrace. You go down that pit shaft, a mile underground. You can’t see a thing. The guy next to you, you don’t know who he is. Yet he is the best friend you will ever have.’or Bill Shankleys "“The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It’s the way I see football, the way I see life.” …Less said about that champagne Labour supporter but ex-shop steward and striker in the union sense of the word 'Up the Reds' Ferguson the better
I'd still treat the claim that Saudi air traffic controllers understood the world is flat with a healthy dose of scepticism. They be aware of the curvature of the Earth by the limits placed on the navigational aids that are line of sight and radio frequencies that aren't. (But i suppose satellites and GPS these days would easily explain the world is flat to an Islamic ATCO)But even if they did believe the world was flat, their responsibilities are geographically limited so i doubt such a belief would have any impact on their instructions to pilots…"Golf Alpha Tango, you are now approaching the edge of the world and risk flying into the unknown blackness of outer space…Please adjust your bearing and flight level to…" I was once talking to a group of Air Qatar folk in a bar once and the woman i sexistly originally thought was cabin crew turned out to be the flight engineer (she was Qatari). And to think in neighbouring Saudi Arabia females aren't allowed to drive cars… But if what you say is correct it is really a charge against modern-day Saudi Arabia and not one that applies to every Muslim in the control tower.. I am sure Muslim doctors ignore biological stuff in the Koran, just as fundamentalist doctors like Ben Carson does about the medical accuracy of the Old Testament.
A clever amusing videohttp://i100.independent.co.uk/article/all-the-people-who-have-accidentally-mispronounced-jeremy-hunts-name-on-live-tv-or-radio–WkqapAC0ag?utm_source=indy&utm_medium=top5&utm_campaign=i100
Isn't this discussion now verging upon esoterical stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forestI've already said i have not a scooby on stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat
Also in the news is the deployment of Saudi aircraft and support personnel to Turkey supposedly to attack ISIS but many would say it is to set up a safe haven for the Salafist opposition to protect the likes of Al Nusra from Russia while the Turks use it as an opportunity to destroy the Kurdish already existing "safe havens". https://www.rt.com/news/332354-saudi-turkey-jets-deployed/There is also the increase in accusations that the Russians are killing civilians – no doubt they are but it is sheer hypocrisy to ignore that the French/UK/US also kill civilians…they call it collateral damage. There is also the build up of troops in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, even neutral Sweden are sabre rattling against the Russkies. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/10/uk-to-contribute-five-extra-ships-to-baltic-as-nato-boosts-presenceUK has increased its military presence in Jordan supposedly for war games. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/12143515/1600-British-troops-head-to-Jordan-for-war-game.htmlThe Americans increasing their Euriopean spending and demanding the Europeans beef up their own military spending. And was it coincidence that much of the media carried stories of a Russian 3-day invasion victory…a planted story if i ever saw one. To be honest, i can't recall this much military posturing against Russia in a long long time. During my time working in air traffic control decades ago, the recce flights of the Soviet Bears was an almost daily occurrence and meant little except for a scramble of Lightning jets from Leuchars. It was all in a days work for the RAF…Now it is seen as Russian aggression, demanding diplomatic exchanges. What is the saying about sleep-walking into a war…
This thread's title should be changed as the issues on it has widened tremondously.http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/13/artificial-intelligence-ai-unemployment-jobs-moshe-vardi
Quote:Machines could put more than half the world’s population out of a job in the next 30 years, according to a computer scientist Moshe Vardi told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): “We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task. I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: if machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?” Citing research from MIT, he noted that although Americans continue to drive GDP with increasing productivity, employment peaked around 1980 and average wages for families have gone down. “It’s automation,” Vardi said. Vardi said he wanted the gathering of scientists to consider: “Does the technology we are developing ultimately benefit mankind?Perhaps we could do a short pamphlet or special issue of the Standard on the topic to circulate to those scientists blinkered to continually framing their questions within the context of capitalism as their only existing world rather than putting forward a socialist alternative.
