ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
This, from the German “Gegen Kapital und Nation” (Against Capital and the Nation) group, explains the relationship between China and the US quite well :
That article is irrelevant to the point at issue as it is about the eating habits of early members of the species homo sapiens. In other words, after we had evolved.
The claim is that meat-eating led to the evolution of modern humans from earlier hominid species — that eating meat provided key proteins for the development and functioning of bigger and more functional brains. In other words, before we evolved.
Like all scientific conclusions (and I think this is the majority view) this is open to challenge but that article doesn’t challenge it, not was even intended to.
Incidentally, the way that news website reports the findings is tendentious as it speaks of the humans concerned being “vegans”. I’ve not read the scientific paper but it seems to be arguing, not that they ate no meat, but more non-meat food than apparently some have thought. My guess is that it (the report not the research) was written by a vegan or vegetarian, a textbook example of bad journalism.
Her argument (which is valid) about humans being animals more like many other animals than some care to admit works both ways. As some other animals have the “right” to eat other animals, why can’t we (especially as we wouldn’t have evolved if we hadn’t)? That wouldn’t mean that we can hunt other animals for pleasure or experiment on or be cruel to them as no other animals do this.
In fact the argument that we shouldn’t kill other animals to eat is based on something that does distinguish us from them — that we can change our environment and have now reached the point where we have a choice not to eat other animals in that we could survive without doing this. Whether everybody should be forced to make this choice is another matter altogether. All that books like hers can do is to try to influence people to make that choice. Which is presumably why she wrote it.
She may also, as WEZ suggests, be campaigning to ban hunting for pleasure, blood sports, animal experiments and cruelty to animals. But these are things meat-eaters can and do agree with stopping. Not sure about banning leather shoes but fashion accessories could be. She would only cross the line if she were to argue that eating other animals should be banned.
So you refer me to Adorno, Habermas and that lot. I’ve had a go at reading them but it’s torture, so can you summarize what their explanation is.
As they were not and didn’t claim to be psychologists or psychiatrists, I imagine their approach will be philosophical or, with a bit of luck, historical or sociological.
Something on the Trump and the Republican Party’s economic programme.
This bit suggests the might have stolen a plank from new Party of Business government here:
“But Moore said he believes that Trump would be pragmatic in office and focus on the needs of business to drive economic growth.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/rncs-day-focus-economy-trumps-plans-111942382
Nobody has told us what Freud’s explanation of Auschwitz etc would have been. That humans are natural born killers? Or what?
Personally I don’t think the Marxian methodology is that scientific mainly because as Popper says you can’t create an experiment to disprove his theories.
Yes, I too thought that that was over the top and certainly cannot be said to apply to all Marx’s (and our) theories even if Popper’s definition is assumed to be valid.
Perhaps this could/should be the theme of a thread of its own?
Something more positive — and more up to date — from Generation Z:
“Starmer’s Labour won the support of just 20.1% of registered voters on July 4th. No administration since the introduction of universal (male) suffrage in 1918 has ever governed with the support of a lower share of the total electorate.”
That means that when things go wrong for the government (as they inevitably will) 4 out of 5 people will be able to say “don’t blame me. I didn’t vote for them”.
No. No state has an interest in a wider war in Europe. Not the European NATO members states. Not Russia. Certainly not the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Estonia.
In any event Trump is not that indifferent to NATO. He just wants the European members to pay more so that the US can pay less.
You are letting your imagination run away with you.
Two comments on the new government’s proposedNational Wealth Fund under which the government will put up a quarter of the cost of a green infrastructure project provided private capital puts up the rest.
“This is going to sink or swim based on its return generation. If it loses money it’ll be in trouble. It’s absolutely critical that it makes money” (an inside “source” quoted by the Times, 15 July).
“Labour has made a virtue of ‘derisking’ private sector investment. The danger is a state that will end up underwriting corporate profits while nationalising losses in the rush to fix a longstanding gap by throwing money at private finance” (Mehreen Khan, Times Economics Editor, 16 July).
Trump and Zelensky speak to each other on the phone. Trump apparently urges a negotiated settlement:
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/19/politics/donald-trump-zelensky-phone-call-2024/index.html
Front page of today’s The Times:
https://x.com/hendopolis/status/1814047796309491773
They fought the state and the state won.
