ALB
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Background information here on the groups currently controlling East Ghouta (and their ideology) that the media here is not giving and which are currently putting the population there through hell by refusing to give up their control of the area:http://www.egyptindependent.com/rebel-groups-fighting-syrias-eastern-ghouta/
Part Two on the Chartists was ok too.I now know how to pronounce Engels properly (it's more like eccles than angles).
kenax wrote:I assume you've heard of the Zeitgeist movement?Yes, we have. Here's some of what we've written on it:https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2013/no-1302-february-2013/zeitgeist-and-‘marxism’www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2017/no-1354-june-2017/peter-joseph-indicts-capitalism
Turkey's invasion of Syria has the full support of the religious establishment there:http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/01274f26-9a5a-4479-8989-0967194d82adMeanwhile the Grand Mufty of Damascus supports the Syrian government:http://www.irna.ir/en/News/82802289So, it looks as if allah is facing the same dilemma as the christians’ god in the the First World War. He won’t know which way to turn. Of course, if he really was “All Mighty” or “the Greatest” then he could intervene to stop the slaughter and destruction. So either he's a bastard or doesn't exist (or is useless).
Oxfam tries to fight back:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/16/oxfam-boss-mark-goldring-anything-we-say-is-being-manipulated-weve-been-savaged
Quote:I ask if he thinks the anti-aid agenda is at the root of the attacks on Oxfam. “The intensity and the ferocity of the attack makes you wonder, what did we do? We murdered babies in their cots? Certainly, the scale and the intensity of the attacks feels out of proportion to the level of culpability. I struggle to understand it. You think: ‘My God, there’s something going on there.’” Is it that political opponents of international aid – the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel – are exploiting Oxfam’s crisis? He hesitates. “Others are better to judge whether that’s right or wrong. I don’t think it’s right for Oxfam to say that at the moment, because even that feels self-serving. What I’m really concerned about is that this is not used as an approach to attack aid.” But it already is. “Yes. It is.”In December, Goldring was criticised for writing in the New Statesman that most of the globe’s new wealth has gone to the richest 1%. Does he think that has anything to do with the current political backlash against Oxfam? “Part of our mission,” he replies carefully, “is to challenge the things that keep people poor. You don’t resolve people’s poverty by helping with a school and a well and a nurse, if that’s all you do. We go beyond that and say, what’s keeping people poor? We challenge that and a lot of people don’t like that.” If Oxfam’s crisis is politically motivated, it’s working.I would have thought, though, that the damage has been done. That it's mission accomplished to discredit Oxfam for asking this question (even if what they propose should be done about it is quite inadequate).
kenax wrote:i'm for a combination of capitalism and socialism, that may have existed to some degree before Reagan and his susequent era and fairytales of trickledown theories. and if average joe could submit an idea and the rest of us vote on it, this could lead to greater innovation of thought and ideas, as opposed to handing full control to representatives who would make all the decisions over a four period and our only power of choice is the elections once every four years.It is not a question of who can vote for what, but whether or not the economics of capitalism will allow what people vote for to be implemented. No doubt, given a chance to vote for better housing, health care, education or less pollution, that's what most would vote for. But capitalism is governed by economic laws which lay down that profts must come first before improving life for people or there'll be a slump in economic activity.What existed before Reagan (and in the UK before Thatcher) was not a combination of capitalism and socialism, but just a different combination of private and state capitalism. "Leftwing" parties, like Labour in Britain, claimed that the state could be used to tame and humanise capitalism but instead of that happening the experience of capitalism tamed them and led to them becoming just an alternative management team to "rightwing" parties, involved in a game of ins and outs.Basically, it's an illusion to imagine that political action can make capitalism work in the interests of the majority. It can't. So, rather than concentrate on trying to get political reforms it's much more instructive to work to replace capitalism's with its class ownership and production for profit with common ownership and production for use, i.e. with real socialism.
Looks as if his socialist period is going to be sidelined in pursuit of some feminist agenda. Incidentally, in view of some of the things he wrote both in his fiction and political writings, this speculation could well be valid:
Quote:The restoration of Charmian London means the downsizing of Jack’s first wife, Bessie, and their two daughters, especially Joan, who wrote one of the first books about her father that she subtitled “An Unconventional Biography.” If dad had lived until the 1920s, Joan argued, he would have become an admirer of Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist. That’s a stretch, though London certainly admired Nietzschean supermen.I still say that the Tories have been waiting for this chance to get at Oxfam. Remember this from the Daily Torygraph a few years ago?http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10888966/Oxfam-MPs-shocked-by-disgraceful-political-campaigning.html
Here's an example someone has sent in of the sort of information Oxfam puts out that its opponents would dearly like not be heard:
Quote:Richest 1 per cent hoover up bulk of new global wealth.Growing inequality resulted in 82 per cent of new global wealth going to the richest 1 per cent, last year, while the prosperity of the poorest half flatlined, an Oxfam report has shown.It means that if the £7.8trn increase in global wealth between July 2016 and June 2017, £6trn went to 75 billion people, while the bottom 3.7 million had no increase.This trend resulted in the sharpest increase in the number of billionaires ever recorded, to 2.043, with one created every two days, according to Oxfam's report, published ahead of the annual World Economic Forum of global political and business leaders in the Swiss si resort of Davos.The wealth of those billionnaires increased by £550bn over 12 months, it added.Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam GB, said the statistics signal that "something is very wrong with the global economy"."The concentration of extreme wealth is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a system that is failing the millions of people on poverty wages who make our clothes and grow our food."He said change was essential if work was to be a "genuine route out of poverty." (Guardian, 22 January)Without being a conspiracy theorist, it is not difficult to see why those who think that the present system is alright would seize on an opportunity to do down Oxfam.
I think Turkey might qualify this month rather than the "Zionist entity". They have invaded Syria to ethnically cleanse a border area of Kurds or at least submit them to the rule of the savage jihadi militias who are their proxies.
More. Clicked on title to read:
Quote:12 February, 2018: Added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive:Socialism and the Fascisti, April 1923 Is it War?, February 1937 Roads to Socialism, July 1937 Should Socialists Support Federal Union?, May 1940 The Daily Worker writes about its Former Hero, September 1940 What the Soldier Wants and How to Get it, May 1941 Reconstruction: A Lesson from the Last War, October 1941 Echoes of the People's Convention, December 1941 Communists support for Conservative candidates, December 1941 Note on Nationalisation, September 1948Dave B wrote:I thought it would be obvious with numbers like that it would be just the last stage ie assembly.Thanks. That's what I thought.
Quote:Earlier, Mr McDonnell told BBC Radio 4's Today programme taking services into public ownership would not ultimately increase the burden on taxpayers because government bonds could be swapped for shares in a revenue-producing company.So the parasites are going to continue to get a share of surplus value as interest on bonds instead of dividends on shares. Just like under the post-war Labour government's nationalisations which McDonnell now wants to distance himself from.His "worker-consumer" cooperatives wouldn't work either as their managers would still have to apply the laws of the market and seek to make profits (if only to survive).
What's happening in Syria shows just what a scrap of paper the UN charter is. It outlaws war … except under certain circumstances such as "self-defence", so all the countries currently attacking Syria (USA, Turkey, Israel) use this let-out clause to continue their bombing, even though some of their arguments are manifest lies.
