ALB
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alanjjohnstone wrote:https://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2012/10/jewish-history.htmlA useful read from my personal blog Mailstrom of an article by Schlomo Sand, professor of history at Tel Aviv university.
Is this true:
Sand wrote:Israel is a state which forbids marriage between a ‘Jew’ and a ‘non-Jew’,It can't be, can it? Is Israel really that bad?
bbc wrote:Mr Gabbay says the policies of Israel's opposition party and the ruling coalition government were "aligned" when it came to the "security of our citizens and the actions of our soldiers" and Mr Corbyn had shown "hatred" of the government's policies in these areas.Here is a prime example of someone using the new, invalid extension of the meaning of anti-semitism to mean not just "hatred of Jews" but "hatred of policies of the government of Israel". The Israeli Labour Party is of course a Zionist outfit.
The word Semitic in relation to "race" (or "ethnicity" as you have to say now) is just as unscientific as Aryan in the same context. Both in fact orginated at the same time, when the the facts about "race" were not yet known and prejudices about it widespread, even mainstream.The only scientific use of the two terms is in relation to language and, here, the irony is that the European Jews who went to Palestine as colonists under the Zionist project spoke a dialect of German, a non-Semitic languague (Aryan, in fact). And the Jews that came to Palestine after the state of Israel was set up spoke Arabic (which is a Semitic languague). They were in fact Arabs whose religion was Judaism just as most of the Christians of the area are Arabs whose religion is Christianity.
For the record, here's how the various States on the UN Security Council voted:www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1804/S00063/security-council-fails-to-adopt-three-resolutions-on-syria.htmThe OPCW investigation is going ahead anyway but so might the NATO bombing campaign and retaliatory action by Russia (probably on bases of US-trained rebels in Syria).
I don't know if this is true but it seems reasonable:https://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/chemical-weapons-watchdog-to-send-inspectors-to-syria-1.521295https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201804101063408765-opcw-douma/What's going to be interesting is how the War Party is going to react. Will they give the OPCW team the run-around that they gave poor old Hans Blix over Iraq's non-existent "weapons of mass destruction", ignoring any unfavourable conclusions?Bomber Blair is naturally in favour of bombing first and investigating afterwards.
To give the man his due, he is not joining in the "Bomb Syria" campaign in which many of his own MPs are participating.:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5594765/Corbyn-refuses-blame-Assad-chemical-attack-Syria.htmlTo go to war, capitalist states need a pretext and this time it's "gas attack" even merely "alleged" or "suspected" (last time it was "weapons of mass destruction"). But since the place where the attack is alleged to have taken place is no longer in rebel hands it should be easy to verify whether or not one took place. The place and the people in the video should be able to be identified. I can't see how any reasonable person, as someone who wants to avoid further deaths, injuries and destruction, could refuse to such an immediate on-the-spot investigation.One of the reasons that the Oxford Communist Corresponding Society gave for voting Labour in 2016 — in fact the only reason as they accepted that a Labour government even under Corbyn would not be able to make capitalism work in the interest of the working class — was that Corbyn as PM would not authorise military action overseas. I think he might try not to, as he's doing now, but would be toppled if the vital interest of UK capitalism was threatened.
The list of candidates has now been publshed. In London the voting system is that there are 3 councillors per ward, with the first 3 past the post being elected. Electors can cast up to 3 votes (which must be for different candidates).In Islington Junction ward: it's a straight fight between us and 3 candidates each from the usual suspects (Tories, Labour, LibDems, Greens), making a total of 13 candidates.In Richmond Barnes ward: besides us there are 3 Tories, 3 Labourites, 2 LibDems and 1 Green (the Lib-Dems and Greens have formed an electoral pact), making 10 candidates in all.In Southwark Borough & Bankside ward: we're are up against 3 candidates each from the usual suspects plus 1 from the Women's Equality Party, a total of 14 candidatest
More added. Click on title to read:
Quote:The Finance of War, September 1959 We are all Socialists now, April 1962 A Tale of Two Simpletons: Good man gone wrong, September 1962 The Common Market and the old Corn Laws, October 1962 Forerunner of Common Market, November 1962 Marx and the Sunday Times, November 1963 The Founding of the Trades Union Congress, June 1968 Capitalism's Dilemma, January 1974 The Strike Weapon, May 1976 The Future of Unemployment, August 1976 A useful introduction to Marx, June 1978Quote:How to abolish wage labor within 5 years in five simple steps:STEP ONE: In the first year, add one three day weekend. Each week activists would target one working day to disrupt all wage labor. The work week will now be reduced to four days and all wage labor beyond this point will be targeted.STEP TWO: In the second year, add one four day weekend. Each week activists would target two working days to disrupt all wage labor. The work week will now be reduced to three days and all wage labor beyond this point will be targeted.STEP THREE: In the third year, add one 5 day weekend. Each week activists would target three working days to disrupt all wage labor. The work week will now be reduced to two days and all wage labor beyond this point will be targeted.STEP FOUR: In the 4th year, add one six day weekend. Each week activists would target four working days to disrupt all wage labor. The work week will now be reduced to two days and all wage labor beyond this point will be targeted.STEP FIVE: In the 5th year, add one full week off. Each week activists would target all five working days to disrupt all wage labor. The work week will now be reduced to zero days and all wage labor will be targeted.If you can persuade workers to do that, you could persuade them also to go through the front door and vote the political representatives of capitalism, who currently uphold capitalist rule and private property, out of office too. Then they withdraw the state's support for the existence of private and corporate property rights, lop off its coercive and undemocratic parts, and use what's left to coordinate the change-over to the communist society described (what we also call socialism). In any event, not all of the admittedly large increase in state spending over the past 100 years is just on the coercive aspects of the state (armed forces, police, courts, prisons, etc). Much of it is on things that are at least in principle socially useful such as education and health; local councils also run lots of useful services; and there's also resources (very far from adequate of course) to maintain those who don't work for one reason of the other. To deprive the existing state of the resources to keep all this going would be suicidal and, anyway, would never get majority support. Back to the drawing board, I'm afraid.
And Thomas More didn't envisage a basic "income" in his "utopia" but a society that didn't use money. Not at all the same.
They are all terrible. They can't have a maple leaf on a socialist banner. That would be like us having a union jack on ours.
Here's the link: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/08/labour-antisemitism-opinion-pollIncredible. I don't believe it. A relentless smear campaign conducted by the media has managed to persuade a third of the population that Corbyn himself is an anti-semite, i.e that he hates Jews, wants to discriminte against them and/or thinks that they control things from behind the scenes. Not even the journalists who participated in the campaign will believe that that's what he thinks. As you point out, the real reason why the Board of Deputies has been out to get him is his pro-Palestine stance in the Israel/Palestine conflict. It could turn out to be a pyrrhic victory for them, though, as over a third of voters still support the Labour Party; which suggets that they don't think that anti-semitism in its illegitimately extended sense of anti-Zionism and anti-Israel is that reprehensible or that important or relevant.
For the record, ex-comrade Gareth Thomas is standing for the Labour Party in the Coombe Vale ward of Kingston Council. The last time he stood in a local election was in Uplands ward in Swansea in 1987. In his manifesto he declared:
Quote:On May 7th you have a choice to make. You can vote Labour, Tory, Alliance, Plaid Cymru … or Socialist. The first four parties will be making promises. They'll be promising to fight for Singleton hospital, They'll be promising to keep rates down. They'll be promising to povide better local services, like pavements, schools and rubbish collection. And they'll all be blaming the othe parties for the things that aren't right. (…) The plain fact is that all these parties are committed to running a system where the single most important factor in decision-making at all levels is, and must be, "how much does it cost?" — profit takes priority and human needs come a poor second.And they're committed to running the system — because it can't be run in any other way — for the benefit of the smalll minority of people (about 10 per cent) who own most of the wealth of society and to whom the profit from the labour of the majority goes.Good suff but no doubt this time he'll be promising to fight for Kingston hospital, to keep the rates down ….
I think he's more what Marx called a "crude communist".https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htmandhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracks_communism
