alanjjohnstone
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Sad to see that despite appearances on the BBC in their election results we are lumped as Others, YET Class War, Cannabis Party and even the Moster Raving Loony Party get a specific mention…another protest i think
So far no warning, merely a reiteration of forum rules.If a warning is issued, Steve, you deserve it. I'm not reluctant to place blame where it should rightly be. You made a mistake and i tried to preempt any argument that i could easily guess was looming. …seems with no success. You are simply disregarding what is recognised by everybody on the forum…party business and branch posts and all the diverse related aspects of those should be on the WSM so that visitors not interested in the internecene disputes or branch reports or whatever of the party are not distracted from their queries and questions and observations. All was required was to say, okie-dokie, a slip was made but you immediately went on the defensive and offer an obtuse counter-argument worthy of a claims adjudicator of an insurance company.Even Spintcom would be a better option than the one you chose. Posters can edit their own posts…that is why i said you can delete the content yourself and re-post in the appropriate place and redirect people to a new message on WSM section..The Moderator would then be only tidying up the thread.
Wrong place, Steve. This is General Discussion section Delete and re-post at the World Socialist Movement, Discussion directly related to the business of the SPGB and its companion parties.Otherwise the Moderator will and some may get the impression that it is another example of bias although it's him (or her) doing the job correctly.
The rise of Christianity and the power of the Vatican and the enforced celibacy of the priesthood :-
Quote:"…It began in AD 313, when the Roman emperor Constantine legalized Christianity within the Roman Empire. With his legislation, the early Church evolved from a persecuted group of small communities to become the official faith of a world power under Emperor Theodosius in AD 380.Constantine’s intentions in adopting Christianity were not entirely spiritual. His position was being challenged by political groups; he needed to display his power. Forcing other politicians to become Christians was a test of their loyalty.Constantine used the new religion as an effective tool to weed out his enemies. It strengthened his political power. Constantine also was faced with unifying the many peoples his armies had vanquished. Christianity was the key to establishing a new Roman identity in the conquered peoples. On the surface he made them Christians to save their souls, but this new religion was his final act of conquest over them.With Christianity now the official religion of the Roman Empire, many things changed very quickly in the Church. Priests from the small communities were given special social rank among their new Roman friends. They no longer had to hide from Roman soldiers and fear for their lives. Instead, they received pay for their services as priests and enjoyed special privileges in Roman society. Bishops were given civil authority and assigned jurisdiction over the people in their area. Romans, who were members of the local ruling elite, quickly converted to Christianity as ordered by the Emperor. These were men trained in public life and skilled in city politics. They became priests and rapidly moved into positions of leadership in the Church.These Roman politicians, with their newly acquired priesthood, brought the impersonal and legalistic attitudes of government to the Church. The celebration of the Eucharist moved from small home gatherings to what we now call "mass" involving huge numbers of people in large buildings. The celebration of the Eucharist became a highly structured ritual that imitated the ceremonies of Rome’s imperial court. This Roman influence is the source of our vestments, genuflection, kneeling, and the strict formality of Mass.An institutional Church structure emerged mirroring that of the Roman government. Large buildings, church tribunal courts, rulers and subjects began to replace the family-based small communities that were served by a local married priesthood. The new Roman priests worked to shift authority away from the married priests in the small communities and consolidate political power around themselves. With the assistance of the Roman Empire, Church leadership became a hierarchy that moved away from its family origins and into the Roman mindset of a ruling class that was above the people in the street. Other changes occurred that shifted emphasis away from the people and towards the preferences of the Roman politicians. The Church adopted the Roman practice of men alone holding institutional authority. There is solid historical evidence that women served as priests and pastors prior to this time…"Later on in the early Middle Ages :-"…In this growing atmosphere of power and legalism, certain medieval popes abused their authority. In the year 1075, Pope Gregory VII declared that nobody could judge a pope except God. Introducing the concept of infallibility, he was the first pope to decree that Rome can never be in error. He had statues made in his likeness and placed them in churches throughout Europe. He insisted that everyone must obey the pope, and that all popes are saints by virtue of their association with St. Peter. The hierarchy viewed married priests as an obstacle to their quest for total control of the church and focused a two pronged attack against them. They used mandatory celibacy to attack and dissolve the influential priestly families throughout Europe and the Mediterranean world. At the same time they claimed ownership of the churches and the lands owned by married priests. As landowners the medieval hierarchy knew that they would gain the political power they sought in every country in Europe. An additional benefit of land ownership was money. They now had the ability to collect taxes from the faithful and charge money for indulgences and other sacramental ministry. This practice contributed to the Protestant reformation and the splintering of the Roman Catholic church community in the sixteenth century. In the eleventh century, the attacks against the married priesthood grew in intensity.In 1074, Pope Gregory VII legislated that anyone to be ordained must first pledge celibacy. Continuing his attack against women, he publicly stated that "…the Church cannot escape from the clutches of the laity unless priests first escape the clutches of their wives". Within twenty years, things took a turn for the worse. In the year 1095, there was an escalation of brutal force against married priests and their families. Pope Urban II ordered that married priests who ignored the celibacy laws be imprisoned for the good of their souls. He had the wives and children of those married priests sold into slavery, and the money went to church coffers. The effort to consolidate church power in the medieval hierarchy and to seize the land assets the married priest families saw its victory in 1139. The legislation that effectively ended optional celibacy for priests came from the Second Lateran Council under Pope Innocent II. The true motivation for these laws was the desire to acquire land throughout Europe and strengthen the papal power base. The laws demanding mandatory celibacy for priests used the language of purity and holiness, but their true intent was to solidify control over the lower clergy and eliminate any challenge to the political objectives of the medieval hierarchy…(my emphasis) "The above was from my personal blog but the links are broken so i cannot cite the original source.
Perhaps you can also look at the SOYMB blog stats for page-views and traffic sources etc and see how that behaved in the last couple of months that it has covered the election daily.The figures and where the visitors linked to it from will make more sense to you than to the computer inept blog committee
Quote:Thank you, it's touching that you care so much and have followed my political career (if you can call it that, which you can't) with such interest!Oh, i started reading your and Dave's online contributions upon the recommendation of Darren O'N. I have never doubted you are very well-read individual. And from what i gather, you do tend to adopt the position of whatever you are reading at the moment…Today it is Janet and John Goes to the Polls.
Quote:my faith in Marxism and non-market socialism could not survive the encounter.Is that now an admission that you no longer view yourself as a Marxist? I'll follow your advice and give Nove a read. For others , he was reviewed back in 1984 in the Standardhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1984/no-956-april-1984/abundance-feasible2nd warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.
So easy to misrepresent the opposition in your own terms, Stuart, to justify your stance. Rationalisng it as i say most offenders usually do as i described.It is not from sentimentaliism or morality that i and others criticise you and Brand from but a strong principles and for us a fully justifiable political position. You are defending the ruling class and hindering any understanding for the need for socialism. Re-define the motives of us all you wish to fit in with your own outlook but the de facto, effective politics you serve is the ruling class. Dodge all you want but that is the truth.I am sure i and many of friends, family and acquaintences can equally produce a list of detrimental and damaging things that the Labour Party has done to us …But you seek to create a hierachy of suffering…Pain from the Tories is higher up the scale than the pain done to victims by the Labour party…you want to blot out all the nasty things Labour has done, and, you, yourself, the supposed campaigner against the Iraq war, how trivial now a million or more lives are to you these days. I think it was 2004 that Dave Perrin first introduce me to you and Dave, you were still angry at Blair's war, still no war but class war..But now tell that to the Libyans and the Afghans, wars supported by Miliband.(i also recall the discussion was about the pussy-footing attitude the Party had to the Miner's Strike. You and Dave were critical of the Party not offering unconditional support to the strike if i remember correctly…and here you are calling for support for one of the political parties that actually acted to undermine the NUM…strange days, indeed)I worked in the sorting office during 1997, nothng to do but to sort the mail like an automaton and talk. After decade of Tory rule the prospect of Labour was greeted with overwhelming optimism by my co-workers. I kept reminding folk that while Blair was still in opposition and while we were out on strike, Blair took management's side and this would surely should offer an insight in what was to come but no…We had had enough of the Tories and Blair promised a Third Way…and everybody believed this fresh young energetic visionary and what's more he got a landslide victory, a huge majority scarcely seen in history of UK elections…He could do what he want through Parliament…he had Blair's Babes, ambitious career women..he had all the clever professionals such as the Mandelsons …those dullards from the union movement were few now. Did he side with the disadvantaged, the vulnerable, the exploited? Did he push through a radical transformation to strengthen the safety net you believe the Labout Party defends? I kept saying to the people i worked alongside when the media were hyping this new labour messiah that the honeymoon would not last, that Blair was not pro-worker and in my job under Labour some of the bitterest disputes took place and a supposed public service was prepared for privatisation, something Thatcher backed away from, and to ensure it went smoothly my union was emasculated (ably helped by my union leader and namesake who took the Labour MPs seat in parliament and a then place at the Cabinet table) We in Royal Mail had a taste of Blair's industrial relations. And i have to endure you telling me that the labour movement and the Labour Party are partners and share a common bond. But i wasn't so angr with my colleagues as i am with you. They were pretty much swept forward by the media and their own lack of political knowledge, especially of the past. You have no such excuse…You cannot plead ignorance.I know too much have now flowed under the bridge…you resigned because of Occupy and what you saw was our negative approach to it…even though members were sympathetic and only disagreed with you on how to relate to it. You then went off and joined Left Unity which failed to satisfy you and i am not sure if it was the dismissal of your proposal for the Basic Universal Income that got got described by the LU economic workshop as undermining the welfare state you defend on this thread. You now call for support for Labour. On what basis – Labour's commitment to a social partnership with the ruling class…and we know who will be paying the price for that if Miliband is PM …merely will take time to shed the SNP (and Miliband's first job in the Labour Party during the 90s was to counter the nationalist effect in Scotland, something he failed to do )No if i'm being sentimetal and have a moral position, it is now pity for yourself and your lost run-around in circles politics. I feel sorry that you are on a course which will lead you more and more complicit in being anti-working class – and i speak as i said, not on narrow nationalist terms but as a world socialist. Your position reinforces all those around the world that will offer themselves up as lesser evil such as Hillary Clinton.If you follow any of the threads, you know i have admitted that we as a Party have failed to counter this invidious approach to politics and that i seek to find a way to battle it . You, on the other-hand. have embraced it full-heartedly…and you must hold yourself responsible for the consequences, the blood (metaphorically) will be on your hands. You will be fully complicit in the actions of a future Labour Government if it is elected as if you were Miliband himself because as i said earlier….you know better and chosen to ignore the evidence.1st warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.
Hearsay but more than probable in my opinionThe FA …we don't want too many blacks in the England teamhttp://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/may/06/graham-taylor-told-not-pick-too-many-black-players-fa-england
It is my birthday next week. I’ll be 61. It is a bit blurred now, and I’m not sure if it was the 1964 or the 1966 general election but I stood for Communist Party in our class mock election. I got one vote, my own. The SNP won which makes me think it may have been 1966, the eve of their resurgence.I too have fallen for the siren calls of the lesser evil. I have voted for the SSP and the Greens in the past, for pragmatic reasons. In Scottish Parliament elections there is proportionate representation, not merely first past the post so they were never ever “wasted” votes. It made little difference to politics in the end. All my political life, at every election, I have heard the same thing. It will be better next time. It will change. It won’t be like last time. You’ll be treated better. I promise…I swear…believe me…trust me…I’m different now. Give me one more chance to prove myself …The same old story that every battered wife hears from the abuser. I don’t blame the victims, I don’t say, you made your own bed, now lie in it. I direct my outrage where it is deserved, at the perpetrator of the violence. I ignore the rationalisations, that they too were once victims, and simply part of the cycle that they have not yet broken out of. What Brand has been shamefully complicit in doing, is telling a wife to go back to her abusive relationship (supposedly a sincere and genuine relationship, according to you, Stuart), to suffer the very same happening all over again…Those who counsel…leave him, seek out safety in a women’s refuge,…these alternatives are not viewed reasonable because the hubby brings home the house-keeping money, pays the mortgae for the roof over the head, and what is the occasional black-eye when other men may well break your arm or worse. And you’ve been made to expect nothing else but domestic cruelty from other men, so now better the enemy you know.Labour lesser-evilism has made people fear freedom. That’s the crime you and Brand are guilty of, Stuart. Your advice to vote Labour is shameful.
I am not on Facebook so this bit of info is belated "Why i dun it"by Russell Brand, outlining his reasonshttp://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1430911210.htmlMy first question is this remark
Quote:We decided to endorse Labour before we approached them for the interview.Who is the We or has he raised hiself to the ranks of the royalty with a royal We?
Quote:People that know a lot more about this than me, and probably you, advised me that we’ll be better off rucking with a Labour government than a Conservative oneUmm…which people and who decided they have a higher political knowledge?…Against elitism , but touch the forelock to them, nevertheless…they know best …
Quote:It feels like it does and when the next administration fails to deliver because of the limitations of parliamentary politics I’ll happily participate in setting it up. With you.Not with you, would be my answer in the future…
Quote:vote Labour is an optimistic punt that the degeneration of Britain will be slowed down and the lives of the most vulnerable will be a little more bearable than they’d’ve been under the Tories. Nothing more ambitious than that.And he has no concept of the wider consequences of creating despair and desolation by creating disllusionment. And when it came down to it , his reasons are:
Quote:My fundamentalist abstemiousness became untenable because of mates making practical pleas of varying import; 1. “My brother has MS, if the Tories get in, his independent Living Fund will be cut and he’ll have to go in a home or move into mine…” 2. “My kids can’t do a production at school because of budget cuts…” 3. “My daughter can’t go to university because we can’t afford to pay a student loan back…” 4. “Our drug treatment day care program is being shut down due to cuts…Each and every one can be laid at Labour's door too…1. Labour said that although England will now be the only UK nation not to retain an Independent Living Fund (ILF) to support severely disabled people to continue to live in the community they too will close it from June 2015. 2. Labour cut education 3. Labour introduced fees and loans 4. Labour cut drug-addiction treatment fundingWho has been feeding Brand the supposed facts?
Oh…now i see you have said what you will do…I needn't have read between the lines.Is your constituency a safe Labour seat? If so why not vote for Green or Tusc or NHS Party..Or is it a Tory seat and tactically better voting for the LibDems or Ukip to ensure a Tory isn't elected?The Lesser Evil option doesn't always mean Labour, does it?…
That "prancing tit", which he never stopped being, btw, (and go back to the earliest Paxman thread i never said i ever did enjoy his entertainment) has done over 300 Trews videoes, he wrote a book and he is fronting a documentary film all based on the premise of …ummm..revolution…He defected… DEFECTED…over to Labour without any discussion or debate or discourse with his audience and supporters…He sure didn't give an opportunity to listen, did he? You say it is a personal epiphany he had …and without declaring your own vote , you make it clear who you will be casting your ballot for…… And the choice is based on what?…Promises of what they will do in the future, the promises of proven liars …Yup …in a year you will be saying…, Is it Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush you want?…Blair the lesser evil…Obama the lesser evil…Hollande…etc etcYou simply wash your hands by declaring that the Labour Party still remains the party of labour. That, of course, is very contestable.Is it now all about power, being in office, and no longer about principles?But can we say it is all about advancing towards a new society …of promoting socialism …of advocating a new system…they are mere abstract phrases now for Labour…Unless you do think the gradualism of reformism and choosing the lesser evil has brought the prospects of socialism closer?Before you say it…nope, neither has the strategy of the SPGB…but as i said on another thread…"first do no harm" and apply the precautionary principle…even if it is by inaction. If it is better to do nothing in some cases, then you are doing good by doing nothing. Can you say that about the consequences , purposeful or inadvertent , of the interventions of the Labourite or the Leninist. .I will repeat, the SPGB is part of the World Socialist Movement…i myself live on the other side of the world…What is good for the British worker (and i simply take your word that Miliband will be for that) may well not be good for the others workers of the world….that is as you say an acceptable compromise, a nationalist compromise.I beg to differ. It is not a compromise a socialist can make. But i will say this Party heresy , …we need to present our attitude to reforms (not reformism) and our relationship with those campaigning for them in a different fashion…how and to what, i still not sure in what way to make it practical politics but it has to stop short of class collaboration. I'll end with my favourite election candidate
Quote:“I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and mis-representatives of the masses — you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.” DebsAnd just why did he change his mind was what i asked when the situation has never changed. Did you prefer a Labour-led invasion of Iraq with very predictable millions of deaths to a possible Tory one, Stuart when active with No War But Class War? Or was it an acceptable price for a Labour government? As i said, the broader issue is lesser evilism…You may ascribe to the belief that this is the best logic for some of the working class to take …short-termism and self-interest and nationalism. I think that is the problem of lesser evilism is one we must overcome, not succumb to.As someone on the thread said:
Quote:Rolf Harris abused less children than Savill so should we let Rolf babysit?I'm confident enough to predict that Miliband will be as treacherous sell-out as Blair if elected. I do accept capitalism's needs determine the actions of governments. Do i expect Miliband to change the policy to Mediterrean boat-people? Not at all. He may offer different humbug and shed crocodile tears but he'll follow Cameron's approach. I never ever forget i am a WORLD socialist, and i do balance the feeble pledge of a miserly rise of the minimum wage against the lives of fellow workers.Again i repeat we have to somehow challenge this mind-set of lesser evilism and its domination over working class politics…nor is it particularly new…same old debate between socialists and Labourites demanding we vote Liberal…right up to the present of Brand and the Left insisting we must vote SNP.
