alanjjohnstone
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In a letter to The New York Times, by IDF’s Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, that:
Quote:“Such terrorists, who hold cameras and notebooks in their hands, are no different from their colleagues who fire rockets aimed at Israeli cities and cannot enjoy the rights and protection afforded to legitimate journalists.”http://countercurrentnews.com/2014/08/these-17-journalists-were-killed-by-israel-in-gaza/
Our website crashed very soon after your last message was posted (possibly by a denial of service cyber attack)….hmmmmmm.????…They don't want you talking to us
Beasts of BurdenAvailable to read free online herehttps://archive.org/details/BeastsOfBurden_54I'll read it later.Naked Empress buy herehttp://www.amazon.com/Naked-Empress-Great-Medical-Fraud/dp/3905280027
The Chinese have long been trying to associate their nationalist problems with Islamist extremism and today we have more terrorhttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-30774172Where i am the southern provinces too has a muslim rebellion against buddhism…as some would put it, rather than explain it from the history of the British in the days of colonialism, simply re-drawing borders and forgetting who lives on them and the political legacy of these map-makers. In neighbouring Burma, it is the muslims who are the victims of terror and nationalism …Politics not sex – the 50 shades of grey…
Just back from the BBC website…and the headline…10,000 soldiers to be deployed ..the militarisation of civil society…http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30774114Seems my forebodings seems accurate…How long before pro-palestinian demonstrations are seen as pro-islamist marches and banned? Latest Fisk here, btwhttp://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/robert-fisk-the-only-point-of-terror-lists-is-to-get-those-named-a-palace-invitation-9971088.html
Quote:Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. What’s in a name?…. I’ve found that journos and editors across Europe are far more fearful of important and rich people with expensive lawyers who might sue them for slander than any gunmen storming into their front office. Paris may change all this. But a lot of true stories have been spiked because of Britain’s absurdly costly libel laws rather than any threat of violence.Perspective again being demanded by him …but you and Redstar will fault Fisk's insistence that not all muslims are the same and arts perpetuated in its name does not make every muslim complicit
"…makes us look fools or authoritarians if we say it will…."No one has said vegetarianism will be compulsory, just as no-one has declared it should be a condition of membership. This is a red herring (which brings us to the status of pescetarian diets) We all concur with that sentiment you express. What i have suggested is that part of arguments of what socialism will be like should recognise that meat-eating will for practical and not just for humane reasons decline substantially to a level that it will only be an occasional component in most peoples diets. Like State and religion eating flesh and abusing animals will wither away because the material reasons for it will disappear…we will have the luxury of choice, not of the choicest cuts, nor will we won't have a whole food industry setting out the exact contents of our larders and fridges.Neither is anyone saying it will be simultaneous or universal, just as many accept the whale-killing of the innuit culture and make an exception…we don't wait, as the very un-pc saying used to go, for every hottentot to become socialist…or veggie…i'll read up on the Brown Dog riots later, i don't have a scooby doo about what they were.And may i tentatively suggest the contemporary sympathy given to vivisection by Lafargue was the prevailing secularism of science, still emerging from laws that made dissection of the dead a crime and forced them to rob graves…
He might not have guessed that ALB …But guess where some French troops are based…Mali…his reasoning was correct enough…history…connections …events…context…his complaint is that media coverage never give a full perspective for us to understand motivesIt was not a random Muslim involved but someone from a country where a civil war is going on and where the French have taken sides.
Watching the coverage of the sympathy marches i felt all of a sudden very afraid. Apart from the irrationality of such emotional outpourings for there have been and will be much more bloody slaughters, let us not fool ourselves that it will not lead to very nasty consequences. I have no doubt for most it was a genuine show concern that we should be tolerant and respect democracy but do you think other darker foces won't take full advantage…think of those politicians in attendance.I'm not talking solely that behind many Je Suis Charlie placards and tricolour there will be a le Pen Nationl Front supporters quietly hissing their particular hatred and getting a a more receptive hearing , and in Germany with Perdiga and here with the EDLBut most of all i recalled the shock and genuine sympathy that went to America after 9/11. Even in Tehran people were showing solidarity against terrorism but what took place? Did Bush build upon this revulsion against the attack upon innocents and use it to further cause of peace? Did he now understand the feel and sensation of being a victim?Nope. Vengence !! Afghanistan was invaded, without giving them time to follow the nicieties of international law and diplomacy. Then the lies were spread that Saddam Hussein was involved and complicit in the attack and the Iraq invasion was justified and launched ..so effective was the deceit that even today many Americans believe he had a part in the 9/11 attack. Truth was disregarded. Justice overriden.FoxTV can now twist the effect and facts to declare that England is under seige from muslim extremists. How would the Syria war vote go now? Will troops now be easier to deploy… Americans shout , Remember the Alamo, and America repeatly replay the images of the twin towers…Will now 12 cartoonists be cast in the role of martyrs, to be avenged themselves.I saw already Netanyahu using the Kosher supermarket atrocity to appeal to French Jews to emigrate to Israel…he wished to liken the act to an anti-semitic pogrom to justify the war against the Palestinians. The Daily Mail reported that Jewish vigilantes are patrolling possible Jewish targets in London…an inflamatory criminal act being ignored by police,Watching the crowds, hearing the spin of the political leaders and the media i fear now what lies ahead.Certainly our civil liberties will be further curtailed. All the protests about internet spying will now be brushed aside. Laws will be passed and laws will be broken in the name of Charlie Hebdo….to become the casus belli of a new crusadei feel a shiver go through my spine now everytime i see a report of Je Suis Charlie…i simply do not trust the sincerity or the compassion of government leaders…worse is to come, i anticipate…Nothing good will come of it, i assure you all…
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/11/oil-company-fossil-fuels-jeremy-leggett-soaring-costs-risky-energy-projectsTotal, one of the major oil companies is predicted to exit the oil business…and oil companies sre feeling morally guilty about causing climate change …but then he adds at the end BP and Shell are going backwards not forward…so does that mean they pick up the gap in market created by no Total.
Quote:Leggett says despite the price collapse due to oversupply and a lack of demand, he remains convinced that the “peak oil” theory that supplies will not be able to meet demand eventually remains intact. This is not because there are not the oil or gas reserves in the ground to meet future growth but because they are too costly and environmentally dangerous to produce, he argues. “I would say to both the utility industry and the oil and gas industry: its game over, guys. You have got to identify the point at which it’s all going to be thoroughly changed and you have got to map back from it,” he said.Hamas condemns the terrorism actA statement in French said Hamas "condemns the attack against Charlie Hebdo magazine and insists on the fact that differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder." Abbas and the PLO condemns thae terrorism actThe Palestine Liberation Organisation called for a public rally to be held in Ramallah on Sunday "in solidarity with France against terrorism."Syria condemns the terrorsim act (saying we told you so)“Syria has repeatedly warned of the dangers of supporting terrorism, especially that targeted Syria and the region"Tariq Ali on the terrorism act herehttp://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/09/maximum-horror/
Quote:There are different versions of Islam (the occupation of Iraq was used deliberately to trigger the Sunni-Shia wars that helped give birth to the Islamic State); it is meaningless to claim to speak in the name of a ‘real’ Islam. The history of Islam from its very beginnings is replete with factional struggles. Fundamentalist currents within Islam as well as external invasions were responsible for wiping out many cultural and scientific advances in the late medieval period. Such differences continue to exist.You are right, ALB. A quick check shows the Bushmen consumes about a third of diet as meat. http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-3f.shtmlBut we re not returning to primitive communism, are we? I thought this was goodhttp://www.splendidtable.org/story/why-do-we-eat-meat-tracing-the-evolutionary-history
Quote:LRK: Are we hardwired to be meat-eaters? If you decide you’re not going to eat meat, are you going against some basic form of human nature?BP: Not necessarily. The meat-eating that we do, or that our ancestors did even back to the earliest time we were eating meat, is culturally mediated. You need some kind of processing technology in order to eat meat, and there’s an amazing amount of social diversity in the way that meat is used, cooked and eaten in the modern world. So I don’t necessarily think we are hardwired to eat meat, but it is an important part of our evolutionary history.Quote:When the world is fed, housed, clothed and safe we can all start taking about ecology and other 'important' issues.Ahh, so we were a bit premature publishing two environment pamphlets, and one on how we could live, as well as others on racism, and women, even religion…We should have left discussing all those issues after feeding housing and clothing the world…Even though they are all intrinsically linked together.I'm sure you never meant what you typed but wanted to relegate what we eat very low down on our priorities of what needs be done. Nobody is decreeing an hierarchy of exploitation. We have a clear policy on what takes precedence in our struggle…the class war against our masters and their private ownership of the means of production and distribution…ooops, that includes land and farms and food processing and transportation and retail distribution…when communities take control then they will choose what to do and in what order of importance which will vary according to location and circumstance.I agree we cannot set the agenda of what will be done, much less a time-table. "So much to do, so little time to do it in" ..said the socialist white rabbit
Vin, you are completely misunderstanding the arguments involved on this thread. Livestock farming reduces the availability of land, water and results in less food production than if it was re-portioned to arable grain farming,and it adds more to pollution, although so does grain growing to a lesser degreeBut we do know that presently you do not need to slaughter any animal to feed starving people…enough food does exist…as you, yourself, pointed out. A lot of it goes to fodder to feed the animals …instead of to people …(and ethanol)Nor am i claiming grain and vegetable crops are currently well-managed…think of all that pesticides and fertilisers…Which brings us on to another topic…organic farming…for another day, i think…Here is fairly run of the mill video of a British slaughter house, supposedly regulatedhttp://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2010/oct/07/animal-welfare-abuse-slaughterhouse
Hopefully, ALB, i have always included the proper caveats and nuances and get-out phrases when i have blogged on the topic. In #28 i hopefully used the right quotes to present the party case. And i seemed to have anticipated Species and Class article too by saying when i looked back at this thread.
Quote:Politically and economically there is little an individual can really do, just in the case of the impotence of what an individual person can do to combat climate change and global warming. Change has to be social and systemic to succeed. Plus it is not for a small group of propagandists, as we are presently, to determine what the character of a socialist society should be.And in #26 i did make it clear that i agree
Quote:We try not to make life-style decisions for our membersand then repeated
Quote:Although we cannot and should not make vegetarianism/veganism a condition of membership,But i did make a point of saying we should include it in our vision of a future socialist society …and that, Vin, is why there exists this thread…to debate and discuss possibilities and potentialities of socialism. We can speculate, surely but as i have stated , imo, we can go further…we can include in our literature aspirations for a better future.But you all know i have previously argued on various threads we should be more detailed in our descriptions of socialist society, that i have counselled to present a clearer blueprint. When we describe food production in socialism and protecting the environment in socialism, i see no reason not to include vegetarianism/veganism as part of a solution option. Scientific evidence backs it up. Other aspects has been raised …The health concerns of meat-eating…we eat too much of it…so perhaps not fully vegetarian but our well-being benefits from a low meat diet…and there is the humanitarian reason been offered and that too links with our case that the environment influences behaviour…we want respect for life…it will begin with our own species but spread to other life-formsWe won't ban smoking in socialism or stop anybody from doing it…but i am sure the tobacco plantations of Ol' Virginy' will be transformed into growing much more beneficial crops and as Hallbithe said, Vin, … if you want flesh, you'll need to raise the animals by yourself, slaughter and butcher it yourself…and then explain to your daughter as she watches Babe the Pig having its throat cut and listens to its squealing…it is so Daddy can have his rasher of bacon and a pork sausage.
