ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Three of us were at Trafalgar Square for the trade union event there. We listened to John McDonnell promising the reforms a Labour government would bring in , but there was worse, this banner of some Turkish Maoist group.
“As I understand it that is all derived from , like communism , from the Greek word ‘communicate’ which is similar but begins with a K. And sort of had ‘double’ meaning of to ‘talk etc’ and to share; as in share knowledge and information or whatever.”
I think the word you are referring to will begin “koin”. “Koine” is in fact a word used in linguistics to describe a type of language.:
“Koine, also spelled koiné, originally, a contact variety of the Greek language that was spoken throughout the eastern Mediterranean region during the Hellenic and Roman empires. The term comes from the Greek koine (“common” or “shared”), ( …). In linguistics, the term koine is now applied to any modified language variety that has developed from contact between dialects of the same language or, in some cases, between languages that are genetically or typologically related.”
The christians’ “new testament” was in fact written in koine Greek.
Greek had and has no letter C but then it serves no purpose in English as it’s pronounced either as a K or as an S. On the other hand, Latin didn’t really have a K because that’s how C was pronounced.
Yes Milton Keynes is within the South East Election Region. In fact, in the last Euroelections in 2014, we had Royal Mail distribute our leaflet to every household in the Milton Keynes North constituency. At the moment there is no activity planned there this time. So far what is planned in the northern part of the election region is to attend the meeting in Oxford on Thursday 9 May and the event in Burford on Saturday 11 May. Still contacting a comrade in Banbury about activity there.
One of the candidates on our list, Stephen Harper, will do the one on the IOW, He just needs to get the ferry from Portsmouth.
We’ve had invitation to three meetings:
Wednesday 8 May from 7pm: MEP Hustings, Anthony Mingella Theatre, Quay Arts, NEWPORT, Isle of Wight. Organised by Islnders4Europe.
Thursday 9 May 7.30pm to 9pm: Our choices in the European elections. Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St, OXFORD. Organised by Oxford Communist Corresponding Society.
Wednesday 15 May 7pm to 9pm. CHESHAM (Bucks). Details to follow.
Mike Foster will do the one in Oxford. Ideally, Dave Chesham ought to return to what must have been the town of his fathers. We are still looking for a candidate to cross over from the mainland to the Island (and back).
The opening shots of our campaign were fired on Saturday with the distribution of our “We’re Standing Here” at this International Workers’ Day event in Oxford.
Alan mentioned somewhere (but I can’t find where) that the Extinction Rebellion people were standing candidates in the European Parliament elections. That explains why there are so many independent non-party candidates standing in London, 11 in fact. Nine of these are XR people.
Their being prepared to put their views to the test of public support is to be commended but what they are doing does not make sense. First, there is no way of telling which of the 11 independents are theirs. Second, they are not standing as a list (independents cannot), so you can’t validly vote for all of them, i.e. they are competing against each other. Third, each of the 9 has had to be pay a deposit of £5000, that’s a total of £45,000, which they won’t get back since none of them will get past the 2% bar for getting it back especially as they are competing against each other.
Presumably, it’s some short of publicity stunt, a rather expensive one I would have thought.
But it does mean that the number of vaguely radical groups standing anywhere is not made up just of the Animal Rights Party and the Women’s Equality Party. We are the only list that others would qualify as “left of Labour”, i.e. none of the other parties claiming to be socialist are standing.
It looks then as if these elections will be a proxy referendum. The Daily Express is claiming that over 90% of electors say they will vote. I’ll believe that when I see it, not that anything published in that rag is to be taken seriously. Even so, the turn-out could be the highest ever in elections to the European Parliament. It could even break through the 505 barrier for the first time ever. If they take place, that is.
I wish members would check the source of some of the stuff they put up here. The author of the link above, Frances Leader, is a conspiracy theorist and anti-Semite. This is clear from the link itself.
Here’s the conspiracy stuff:
https://steemit.com/life/@francesleader/agenda-2030-no-escape
And here’s the anti-Semitism: a picture of Theodor Herzl with this printed over it:
“We will lead every revolution against us Zionist Theodor Herzl”
And this.
She also seems to believe that global warming is caused by geoengineering.
In short, she’s an utter nutter whose views on Extinction Rebellion (and everything else) are completely worthless.
Linking to stuff like this only undermines our own credibility.
By the way, there are also 3 independent candidates standing in the South East region.
On the national scale, we are the only party even claiming to be socialist that is presenting a list. The only other vaguely radical parties standing, both in London, are the Animal Welfare Party and the Woman’s Equality Party.
It certainly wasn’t Marx and doesn’t seem to have been Lenin either:
Did anyone actually say “the capitalists will sell us the rope we hang them with”?
by inAskHistoriansIt seems to be a favourite “quote” of US antie-cahmunists because it associates communism (and socialism) with wanting to hang capitalists. It even appears as a quote from Stalin as “when we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use” but that’s probably a fabrication too (it doesn’t even make grammatical or logical sense),
We have criticised Extincton Rebellion on this thread for being naive in appealing to governments to do something capitalist economics means they can’t do (and, in my view, for exaggerating by talking of the extinction of the human species as an immediate prospect) but this criticism of them as a “capitalist scam” is way over the top. Presumably it comes from rival groups who with disagree with XR’s non-violent tactics and favour violent direct action.
I noticed that letter in the Times but it never occurred to me that this meant that certain business interests were behind XR. Rather, that it was certain business interests who were taking advantage of their naivety.
Anyway, for the record and so people can judge, here is the text of the letter published in the Times on 22 April under the headline “Business and the climate rebellion”:
Sir, The multimillion-pound costs that the Extinction Rebellion protests have imposed on business are regrettable, as is the inconvenience to Londoners. But future costs imposed on our economies by the climate emergency will be many orders of magnitude greater.
Contrary to belief, there is business support for the Extinction Rebellion (XR) agenda. Hard pressure drives change, but even the most committed businesses will need time to respond. We welcome the news that Extinction Rebellion is evolving a new platform, XR Business, to engage business leaders, investors and advisers. To drive things forward, the idea is to convene a meeting of XR activists and experts with business leaders and influencers. Most businesses were not designed in the context of the developing climate emergency. Hence we must urgently redesign entire industries and businesses, using science-based targets. To kickstart the process, businesses should make a declaration that we face a climate emergency and organise a session at a full board meeting to consider the case for urgent action. We will encourage the senior management teams of which we are part to do likewise.
Bevis Watts, managing director, Triodos Bank UK; Christopher Davis, chief sustainability officer, The Body Shop International; Seb Beloe, partner, WHEB Asset Management; Paul Polman, former CEO, Unilever; Sir Tim Smit, founder, Eden Project; John Elkington, co-founder, Volans Ventures Plus a further 17 signatories at thetimes.co.uk/lettersI would see setting up “XR Business” as another sign of their naivety rather than them being a “capitalist scam”.
More on the UK EU Party here. Die-hard Remainers.
More here, including about their candidate in the South East region, Pacelli Ndikumana. He seems well-meaning enough.
James, the nearest part of the South East electoral region to you is Banbury, 40 miles down the M40. A further 28 miles brings you to Oxford. We have members and sympathisers in both places. The idea would be for West Midlands branch to cover these places (leafletting, street stalls). Details haven’t yet been finalised but will be this weekend.
We do know for certain that we will have a stall in Burford on Saturday 11 May for the Leveller’s event (details here). We can do some leafletting there too, even if this is Tory heartland or maybe in neighbouring Chipping Norton which has some Labour councillors despite being where Cameron lives (it used to have a textile mill and has a history of trade union militancy).
Here are the runners and riders. There are 9 lists. The 8 lists we are standing against are the usual suspects plus the Brexit (including the man himself) and Change (whose top candidate is the outgoing Tory MEP) parties and a mysterious UK European Union Party:
