ALB
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Had to laugh at the news item about football fans learning to sing La Marseillaise. Rugby players have been singing it for years but with different wordsYou could use these instead if you are at a place where you have to sing it. When they played (and play) the Welsh national anthem I used to sing "My hen laid a haddock on the top of a tree".That's the way to deal with national(ist) anthems.
Here's the best statement from a Left Communist perspective I've come across. It could have appeared in the Socialist Standard (maybe it could/should?):
Quote:DOWN WITH THESE FLAGS!“Allons enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé…”(“Let’s go, children of the fatherland, the day of glory has arrived…” –the opening of the ‘Marseillaise, the French national anthem)The Marseillaise is popular again. The bloodthirsty song rises again from thousands of throats on French squares, before sport events and concerts, in the Sorbonne and in the parliament: “Amour sacré de la patrie, conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!” (“Sacred love of the fatherland, lead, support our vengeful arms!”) On Facebook a campaign was started to exhort users all over the world to change their profile in the colors of the French national flag.Do not sing the Marseillaise.Do not change your FB profile into the colors of the French national flag.Do not fall in the trap of the war-mongering media.The terrorist attacks in Paris were horrific and repulsive. But nationalism is not the answer; it spreads the poison further. It may be true that most people who now sing the Marseillaise, or change their FB-profile into the French colors, only want to express their solidarity with the victims. But at a moment like this, it is important to know what the symbols, around which we are asked to close ranks, represent. Under the French tricolor, millions were sent to their death, in wars for worse than nothing. Under this banner, atrocities were committed (in Algeria and elsewhere) that were even worse than those of ISIS, while singing the Marseillaise: “Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!” (“May their impure blood water our furrows!”)We don’t want to single out France: other national flags and anthems are equally blood-drenched. ISIS itself is not a religious movement; it simply uses religion as a flag and anthem to recruit cannon-fodder for its real goal: to control territory, to gain power, to amass capital. It seizes opportunities arising in the context of war and economic crisis in the Middle East to establish its own state. A state at war, and in war, as the history of France, the US, Germany and just about any other country illustrates: all is permitted.What did ISIS have to gain from the attacks in Paris? Continuous recruitment is essential for the so-called Islamic state, it needs it to wage war and to control its territory. The attacks favor its recruitment in two ways: first, as a demonstration of power, which increases its appeal for young people who feel angry and powerless. Secondly, the attacks fan the hatred of Muslims and thus the ill treatment of Muslims, pushing more of them into the tentacles of ISIS. Furthermore, ISIS needs to stop the exodus of refugees out of Syria. It cannot permit the emptying of the territory it controls or wants to conquer. Contrary to what’s often claimed, it does not get its main income from oil-exports or from Saudi subsidies but from the exploitation, in various ways, of the population in the areas it controls. So those who use the attacks to fan hatred for Islam and to keep the refugees out, do exactly what ISIS hoped they would do.The problem is not Islam. The global system is in crisis and this crisis creates situations in which waging war becomes very profitable. The warring parties feed on each other. The civilian casualties of drones and missiles feed the Islamist propaganda; the Islamist atrocities feed the belligerent, nationalist, anti-other ideologies in the West which prepare the way for more war.The first thing president Hollande did after the attacks was to send planes to bombard Raqqa, a large city that is said to be the capital of the IS. One wonders: had these planes “clean” military targets for what became the largest bombardment of Raqqa so far? If so, why weren’t they hit before? And if they were not, how many civilians were killed in Raqqa? Will the media tell us? Will there be a campaign on Facebook to put the flag of ISIS on our profile, in solidarity with the innocent victims that fell on its territory? Or will the mangled corpses only be seen on the Islamist social media?Revenge. Reprisal. Retaliation. The deeper the crisis becomes, the more we risk to see of it. The wars, the terrorist attacks, the massive unemployment and uncertainty, the ecological catastrophes, the swelling stream of refugees, all show that the systemic, global crisis of capitalism brings with it ever more social disruption, violence and destruction. The real problem is in society’s foundations and as long as they remain intact –as long as capitalism survives- the spiral will only widen.Changing the foundations , changing the purpose and means of human relations, ending capitalism, can only come as a result of massive collective struggle, which does not exist today. Nobody knows what the future will bring. But we do know it’s not written yet. What we do or don’t matters. It matters that we don’t passively accept the logic of capital. It matters that we refuse to sing the national anthem together with those who exploit and oppress us. It matters that we stand in solidarity with the victims of wars and terrorist attacks, whether they are French or Turk, Arab or Jew, black or white, without embracing any of the war-making parties. It matters that we raise our voices against the calls to close borders, erect walls, keep out refugees, and engage in more war. It matters that we say no! to more control, more police violence, more austerity in the name of national security. It matters that we refuse to help dig our own graves. It matters that we demonstrate that none of the problems facing society can be solved within capitalism. It matters that we speak, in the rivulets of revolt, of the power of the stream they could become.INTERNATIONALIST PERSPECTIVE__._,_.___
That's actually how Paddy was chosen as our "Leader" at one Conference. The idea was repeat the exercise every year but you have to pay £25 every time you make a change and there's a certain amount of bureaucracy is involved. But if you want to be our Leader it can be arranged. When registering him we did make it clear in a covering letter that it was for the purpose of the Political Parties Act only.Meanwhile, the 16 November having past and despite our letter, the Electoral Quango has gone ahead and removed "SPGB" as one of the registered variants of our name.
alanjjohnstone wrote:I vaguely recall a long time ago DannyL when he was a regular orator at Hyde Park becoming involved with some radical Muslims speakers there and the idea of a formal debate was raised…and we shit our pants – so to speak – scared that the debate would become a physical confrontation and HO would be damaged and no more was said about the possibility.I'm no sure about that anecdote. We have confronted radical Islamists in debate, at various universities in the 1990s. I recall the late Eddie Grant saying after he had done one that the last time he had seen an audience segregated into men and women at a meeting was at a synagogue. At one anti-war demonstration in Hyde Park our stall happened to be next to a radical Islamist one. The young people (men) of Bangladeshi origin were fascinated to hear the atheist case presented. They had never met one before. The perils of living in a secular society, nothing of course compared to the perils of an atheist living in ISIS-land.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Fisk at his best again bringing some perspective to the problem…and asking a poignant question ….if the French could retaliate by taking out an arms depot and training base, why didn't they do it a week ago rather than in revenge attack?…Maybe because they didn't want the Syrian army to get to Raqqa first, i.e before their proxy pawns on the ground:http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/11/syria-aleppo-army-lift-blockade-kuweires-airport.html
When and who did you speak to at Head Office? Shelley has always been highly regarded in the socialist movement. This article quotes his attack on "commerce" in Queen Mab which he sees as a product of selfishness in the sense of people wanting to sell their surplus for money rather than give it to others to satisfy their needs:
Quote:Hence commerce springs, the venal interchangeOf all that human art or nature yield;Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand,And natural kindness hasten to supplyFrom the full fountain of its boundless love,For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now.Commerce! Beneath whose poison-breathing shadeNo solitary virtue dares to spring,But Poverty and Wealth with equal handScatter their withering curses, and unfoldThe doors of premature and violent death,To pining famine and full-fed disease,To all that shares the lot of human life,Which poisoned, body and soul, scarce drags the chain,That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind,Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,The signet of its all-enslaving powerUpon a shining ore, and called it gold:Before whose image bow the vulgar great,The vainly rich, the miserable proud,The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings,And with blind feelings reverence the powerThat grinds them to the dust of misery.But in the temple of their hireling heartsGold is a living god, and rules in scornAll earthly things but virtue.and
Quote:All things are sold: the very light of HeavenIs venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love,The smallest and most despicable of thingsThat lurk in the abysses of the deep,All objects of our life, even life itself,And the poor pittance which the laws allowOf liberty, the fellowship of man,Those duties which his heart of human loveShould urge him to perform instinctively,Are bought and sold as in a public martOf undisguising selfishness, that setsOn each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign,Even love is sold; the solace of all woeIs turned to deadliest agony, old ageShivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms,And youth's corrupted impulses prepareA life of horror from the blighting baneOf commerce; whilst the pestilence that springsFrom unenjoying sensualism, has filledAll human life with hydra-headed woes.I think this makes him at least a "proto-socialist".
This will please Vin:https://twitter.com/SimonCapewell99/status/665799046209081344?lang=no
Jeremy Corbyn's take on this:http://labourlist.org/2015/11/jeremy-corbyn-calls-for-political-settlement-to-end-syria-conflict/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LabourListLatestPosts+%28LabourList%29and one from our blog:http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/neither-god-nor-state.html
All true, but sometimes any publicity is good publicity. And some people will see a half-empty glass where others see a half-full one.
Not a bad caricature of yourself, Private Fraser Actually of course is means two things. That those who read the book would have been introduced to us. And that Party members are not inclined to read books by Ferguson given his TV performances.
What's wrong with these nutters? Anyway, I'm not going to Paris for the climate change demonstrations there on 1 December. Not sure about going to the one in central London on 30 November either. And some people think fascism is still the main threat to rational civilisation.
Looks like a good article opposing this dangerous and disturbing nonsense but here's a link to it which works (I think):http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/Don't know why Robbo's doesn't (at least not for me)
ALB wrote:I don't believe this one from today's Daily Mirror website:http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/isis-savages-gun-down-200-6798484It sounds too much like German troops bayoneting babies in WW1 and don't think even the koran would authorise such a mass killing of children.This has since been debunked. Another example of bad journalism (or good journalism from the point of view of war propaganda):http://observers.france24.com/en/20151113-daily-mirror-massacre-200-children-islamic-stateIt was still a film of a massacre but of captured prisoners of war not children. Still savagery of course.
