ALB

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  • in reply to: Syria and Chemical weapons #126519
    ALB
    Keymaster

    A result of the last time they brought about "regime change":https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/10/libya-public-slave-auctions-un-migrationMaybe that's what they want in Syria too: no state just war lords as the price of depriving Russia of a naval base in the Mediterranean.

    in reply to: Syndicalism and Noah Ablett #126548
    ALB
    Keymaster

    No, there used to be an organisation called the Syndicalist Workers Federation and there are still some classical Syndicalists about somewhere.Last year someone forwarded an email from Robert Turnbull about his forthcoming book on Ablett which gives more information on him:

    Quote:
    Climbing Mount Sinai Noah Ablett 1883/1935 Climbing Mount Sinai  is  the first full length biographical study, of one of  the best known and also controversial  personalities  to emerge from the South Wales coalfield in the era preceding WW1, an era of unparalleled industrial militancy in which the subject of my book played a leading role. The book  tells the story of Noah Ablett from his early days as a boy preacher in the Rhondda coalfield, to his rise to prominence within the tight knit coalfield communities of South Wales, and his emergence as an uncompromising agitator, not only against the coal owners of South Wales, but also his own union, where his uncompromising brand of revolutionary class warfare, brought him into  sharp conflict  with the moderate consensus politics of William Abraham or Mabon, a liberal who had led the South Wales miners since 1875.  The conflict with Mabon and  what he represented,  would lead to one of the most famous pamphlets in labour history, namely the Miners Next Step of 1912, which called for workers control of industry, in the wake of the bitter Cambrian Combine strike of 1910/11. Although very much a collaborative effort, the Miners Next Step is perhaps the most famous statement of Ablett's rejection of  the parliamentary road to socialism as "No better than an ant heap on the way to becoming a dunghill" The book also concentrates on Ablett's time at Ruskin College Oxford, where he  was instrumental in helping to form the Plebs League, to agitate for independent working class education, or IWCE, a movement which began with the famous Ruskin College strike of 1909, and eventually spread all over the country The study also reveals Ablett's previously unknown role in the Hands off Russia Movement in 1919 and 1920 in which he spoke alongside such leading figures as Tom Mann Using newspaper sources from the era and information from members of Ablett's family, including original essays, written during his time at Ruskin,the book also details his descent into chronic alcoholism, as the revolutionary tide of 1917 began to ebb, and his subsequent removal from the executive of both the South Wales Miners Federation and the Central College in 1926, a development which  the author believes finally put paid to any lingering notions of Ablett regaining the stature that he once had.  The book concludes with Ablett's tragic death from cancer in 1935, aged just 52, and contains a moving obituary written by Jim Griffith's later to be President of the Fed. I hope the book will appeal to labour historians and the general reader alike.

    We are trying to get a review copy. Maybe copies will be available at the talk if you can get one for us.

    in reply to: Lefties #124557
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Misunderstanding: Your father didn't call himself W. Brain. Vic Brain was a different person.

    in reply to: Syria and Chemical weapons #126509
    ALB
    Keymaster

    The more I think about it, and I'm not normally into conspiracy theories, the more I think that there is something odd about that chemical attack. It had no advantage for the Syrian government, which was just about to be rehabiltated, and every advantage for those states that want "regime change" there, i.e the installation of a pro-West regime. My betting would be that the Turkish intelligence services would have been more likely to have staged it than the Syrian government.

    in reply to: 100% reserve banking #86983
    ALB
    Keymaster
    John Pozzi wrote:
    Stat money like US$ signify taxes on the product of labor to pay the interest to capitalist banks like the Fed.

    No it's not. The workers who produced "the product of labour" have already been deprived of a part of it which goes in the first instance to their immediate employers as surplus value. Out of this come all property incomes (rent, interest, profit) as well as taxes paid to the State. Interest is only a share of surplus value, already taken from the workers, so why should they worry if their exploiters have to share some of it with those who lent them money?Incidentally, I still don't see how State fiat money involves interest. But I see we've managed to coral the two of them on to this thread, set up to deal with currency crank arguments.

    ALB
    Keymaster

    Here's most of Socialist Review from Jamaica:http://www.worldsocialism.org/english/socialist-reviewIncidentally, from the WSM site (rather than the SPGB).

    in reply to: Brexit begins #126365
    ALB
    Keymaster

    After Norway and Switzerland, the model arrangement has been relegated to … the Ukraine. Here's Simon Nixon in last Thursday's Times (6 April):

    Quote:
    Ukraine, for example, negotiated an Association Agreement with the EU that covers security and foreign policy, as well as a deep and comprehensive trade agreement. This deal allows Ukraine tariff-free access to much of the EU single market for goods in return for compliance with EU rules overseen by a bilateral commission, but it isn't part part of the customs union, allowing it to strike its own trade deals.
    in reply to: Syria and Chemical weapons #126493
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Apparently, according to the media, the US gave the Russian military one hour's notice of the attack, time for them to move their personnell and to tell the Syrian government to move theirs. Hence, the low number of casualties, mainly civilians living near the base, including childrem. So maybe it was just a one-off, token, shot across the bows. Let's hope so.As a Tomahawk missile is said to cost $1.5 million dollars each, times 59 that makes the cost nearly $90 milliom. The money for destruction is always when the State needs it.Trump in his speech justified it on the grounds of defending the US's "vital national interest'. That would have been inserted by his lawyers to get round the 'ban' on war in that scrap of paper the UN Charter except where 'vital' national interest is involved.

    in reply to: Levellers’ Day 2017 #126543
    ALB
    Keymaster

    As in previous years, West London branch have already booked a stall.

    in reply to: Changing the D of P #126537
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Clause 6 and 8 of the WSPUS's Declaration of Principles are not quite the same as ours. Why should they be, e.g. there is no aristocratic privilege to overthrow in the US?http://www.wspus.org/sample-page/declaration-of-principles/

    ALB
    Keymaster
    in reply to: The PRINCIPLE of HEALTHY & MEANINGFUL LIVING #126021
    ALB
    Keymaster

    I don't think Prakhash bans squandering money on pets, does he?

    in reply to: Syria and Chemical weapons #126470
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Both sides have used (permitted) chemical weapons but it is not that plausible all that the Syrian government would choose now to use sarin (they are not in that desperate a position, in fact the opposite). More plausible is that it was the rebels to discredit the government, egged on or even arranged by the Turkish or some other regime that wants to escalate the war now that the government is winning. After all, they do think they have god on their side and god can do no wrong.A discussion here:http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_SYRIA_CHEMICAL_WEAPONS_ANALYSIS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-04-06-06-53-07

    in reply to: The PRINCIPLE of HEALTHY & MEANINGFUL LIVING #126014
    ALB
    Keymaster

    You forget that cats weren't originally pets. They performed a useful role in homes and in farms of keeping mice and rats (which eat food supplies) down. I can't see why this couldn't be so in socialism, especially on your small-scale farms.

    in reply to: Local Election Campaign 2017 #126125
    ALB
    Keymaster

    THe full name of "The Socialist Party of Great Britain".

Viewing 15 posts - 5,941 through 5,955 (of 10,530 total)