alanjjohnstone
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This is from another thread which perhaps you or other members may have missed on Left Unity. I think it makes some observations which may be of a help the committee's work. http://www.theleftvote.org.uk/?p=666i agree with Gnome and have no wish to discourage any party member who volunteers his time and enery for prty work. As i said your list of media contacts is impressive. I do hope it is broken down into themes so the appropriate journalist/editor gets the relevant info. It sems that there is a question point over an issue i raised in my post when you say you have no confidence in yourself in responding from your own initiative and instead se your role as postman, delivering the message. I'm suspect that other committees are not up to it to show a lead either, sadly. Perhaps the most effective is the Election Committees who should be CC-ing every statement/coverage to you for you to also release to the other press. More liason between you and they , if it does not exist , would be desirable.Another issue is just what should be done within the party to mediate communication between it and the media committee. A simple section on this list may indeed suffice. MEDIA ALERT, or something like that. What do others think?Or we could revamp the other SPGB webpage which presently only re-posts letters published by members.And as a sign of its under-use and neglect – even i have not got the link to it or visit it – so it is in need of a dusting off for members to begin to use.
Being capitalist is not about culture, of 'aving a workin' class accent. Long ago the rich chose to dress down where only those in the know would recognise a designer brand pair of jeans from a tattered pair of shoddy denims. There is an article in the Standard somewhere on football players and performers wages which describes their pay as rent rather than a wage although i'm somewhat sceptical of the differentation, where it begins …at the 4th Div ?Much the same queation can be asked of the Party these days, to raise a controversial policy, in where it places its funds and from who it receives income. Are we now a capitalist enterprise in the terms of investment?Anyway, with my first ten million quid i won't be averse to throwing the Party a bob or two, even finance the odd video…but it will be from a paradise island in the Pacific !! Fuck if i am going to wear sack-cloth and ashes or cast-offs from a charity shop, when it can be an Armani suit !!
The Weekly Worker take http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/1008/karl-marx-and-friedrich-engels-for-the-masses
Without side-tracking the thread, there is an opportunity in the letters page for someone to challenge another correspondent on socialism/communism who made this statement:"the problem is that the Stalinists chose to designate the outcome of the proletarian revolution as ‘socialism’ "We all know that Lenin in State and Revolution, who redefined the terms, not Stalin, who understood them perfectly well back in 1906 in his Socialism and Anarchism article.I'm already engaged in an active exchange of letters in the WW so cannot really respond but it is worth pointing out as a simple clarification/correction.
So we have elected "amateurs" on a committee to respond.No problem with that but a few queries on procedures.How do members know that the committee is aware of a news item?i know there is an email address to use to let them know and suggest they take action but what is it? Otherwise, how involved are they in surveying the newspapers and websites? Working on the blog i know it is very time-consuming and i barely touch all the possible sources but I think the other bloggers would agree , that it is a necessary daily chore.I certainly acknowledge and credit the Media Comm. with a very comprehensive contact list for press releases. i was very pleasantly surprised by its scope…so a lot of kudos for that. I missed the conference and so far the minutes are unavailable. I also missed the pre-conference motion description , sorry. How does the committee decide on if action is to be taken?How quick are they in responding before a hot news item becomes cold ?How does the members know action has been taken? We have also had a situation where two members , myself and a now ex-member submitted conficting letters under but not in the name of the party to a journal. I treat such incidences as unavoidable as on some issues, members will disagree. Come to think about it , it happened another time but that was my fault in not properly reading the letter i was replying to but the editors helpfully edited it on request so it never contradicted another member who was also in correspondence. i have occasionally suggested that we make a complaints or issue a protest in the name of the party, the last being about the new rules on prisoners books, and if my memory serves me correctly, i raised the matter ahead of the several authors who subsequently protested. Our complaint would be different , of course and in addition to theirs. I never ever heard if this was ever done. Other organisations have some sort of media alert they use, particularly when a multiple response is desired rather than just a solitary complaint from a committee, sometimes with a suggested text (to be slightlly varied and amended).
"please no more amateur 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' poison-pen letters to the Beeb"Care to elaborate on your use of the highlighted word? Are there any "amateur" socialists on this list who cannot respond individually to anything in the media they notice and object to.tsk tsk
It won't in America because i doubt it will have much of an audience there. I shoud have done advert as in "advert" because of course i knew it was not an advertisement. But i do treat it as free publicity for the CPUSA, despite its slight negativity, and they will most definitely be pleased themselves at this for gratis promotional item.The similarities are not the same with Flanders…a genuine report on Marx and this indulgence by one of the BBC,s American correspondents. The SLP and SP of America should really be the ones offended. I won't be using their complaints procedure, having done so in the past and realise it is pretty facile to do so but i certainly will not discourage others who want to point out the imbalance in reporting.I have now come to hate the F**king BBC, btw.
How did they manage to stop Brian talking…you aren't know for short pithy soundbites , are you Brian !!
I may have paraphrased what he said and added a bit to it but in essence it is what he reports..antelopes might have been buffalosDid a google Here confirms i never made it uphttp://www.johnchernoff.com/assets/The%20Stones%20Ethnographers%20Trip%20Over.pdfBut who knows…wasn't Margaret Mead fooled by those Pacific Islanders who told her they didn't know how babies were made and she believed them!!
Stuart, i was always facinated by Colin Turnbull's reference in the Forest People that because of their physical environment..dense wooded jungle with few clearings, they have no sense of perspective. They have rarely seen a great distance off and their brains have never re-wired to comprehend that the mole-hills in the distance, the ant-size animals far away are the same objects as real mountains and antelopes close up. Something we all take for granted, seeing and believing, (see my previous post) but what the history of art can show as evolving through time as we gain knowledge and the means to see and understand. Another ramble finished
Is there any chance of the main participants in this thread list what they all agree upon and don't dispute. I can never be sure if there is any substance to the arguments being presented or whether it is nit-picking despite the rather extreme position of the accusations of "Leninist" and counter allegations of "anti-Marxist" (or "anti-Engels" as it may be.) As you all know i try to follow the thread and others…(come back Rosa !! )but i simply get lost, especially when the works of authorities in the field are referred to, since my reading in philosophy is very limited. Truthfully…i don't know the truth…just how i feel about what i think is true and that is i know …yup…KNOW…there is a better way of living our life…what it is i think i haveacquired the answer…anarcho-communism, free access socialism ..co-operative commonwealth and a host of other synomyns…How to get it is more of a problem and more of an argument with other people who agree on our goal but not the way to it…There i claim an agnoticism …just that the weight of evidence has determined my choice of means and the methods. I could be wrong. Sometimes in debates with StuartW i hope i am wrong and he is right but i can only act as i myself see fit now and until i am proved wrong to my own satisfaction. Events will determine that rather than persuasive explanations and astute analyses.When it comes down to philosophy…i'll have to see its worth with my own eyes…empirical evidence…tangible facts and figures …I follow Marx's motto "Doubt Everything" and of course that also means what i see with my own eyes!!! (otherwise i'd think after seeing Uri Geller he was a magician and not a conjuror trickster) Ramble over and out
But again it is a sign of how they use the Right to restrict free speech. We ourselves may well one day face similar charges with our anti-religion…anti-all religion…responses. It seems he was trying to drum up a meeting on the steps of the town-hall.But like Farage, his personal circumstances exposes him as a hypocrit, a migrant worker, himself and he may well have a Romanian wife but i'm betting they won't be sympathetic to the Roma's plight in Romania and admires the Iron Guard history of the country if he is openly fascist as you say.Just what did Churchill say , we can use it against the worship of him because i very much doubt as the spokesperson for the Muslim Council assumes it woud be retracted by him these days. Many historians still hold him personally culpable refusing to let Australian food ships supply aid during the Bengal Famine and i don't recall any sign of regret in later years
