ALB
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There are other, better examples of Syrian immigrants to the US. Those who participated in the famous strike in 1912 the textile mills in Lawrence, Mass, organised by the IWW:This from Immigrant City: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1921 by Donald Cole.
Quote:The three Syrians on the strike committee were particularly important: Farris Marad, dyer, tailor, special policeman, and court interpreter; James Brox, grocer; and Doctor Hajjar. When interviewed years, Marad denied that he was influential in the strike and said he had done little more than lead one of the parades. Brox joined the I.W.W. in 1911 and during the strike invited Ettor to speak at one of the Syrian churches."Syria" was then the name of a province of the Ottoman Empire and included present-day Lenanon. From wikipedia
Quote:The first Syrian immigrants arrived in the United States from Ottoman Syria. Most of them came from Christian villages around Mount Lebanon (before the creation of Republic of Lebanon), while around 5-10% were Muslims of different sects. A small number were also Palestinians. According to historian Philip Hitti, approximately 90,000 "Syrians" arrived in the United States between 1899 and 1919. An estimated 1,000 official entries per year came from the governorates of Damascus and Aleppo, which are governorates in modern-day Syria, in the period between 1900 and 1916. Early immigrants settled mainly in Eastern United States, in the cities of New York, Boston and Detroit and the Paterson, New Jersey area. In the 1920s, the majority of immigrants from Mount Lebanon began to refer to themselves as "Lebanese" instead of "Syrians".Here's some of the details of how the online, open primary organised by the Tories to choose their candidate for mayor of London next year:https://registration.conservatives.com/ps/event/LondonMayorConservativeElection2015Don't know how it will work in practice.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Let us not overlook what our election candidate for Brighton said on the Andrew Neil programme…i'm paraphrasing but the jist was….we welcome the presence of those other parties that call themselves socialist because it brings the topic of what socialism is into the debate…That's not what he said, otherwise he'd have more criticism from some quarters than he got!And he certainly did not say (that was former member William Dunn in his letter in this month's Socialist Standard):
Quote:and by implication that means we very much welcome Corbyn's bid for the leadership of the Labour Party and it has already been pointed out, it has instigated political discussions once again on what is socialism.What he actually said textually was:
Quote:( …) to be honest, actually, I welcome the presence of a lot of these other parties . . . (…) This is because what they’re doing is that they may well be raising the right questions. And I think what’s very important for us to put on the agenda this time is that in actual fact there is an alternative to the way things are being run at the moment. And I think anybody who’s bringing that to people’s consciousness is doing a good job. I mean, we disagree with them as to how things should shape up in the longer term. We disagree with them as to whether a party should be leaderless and that people should be leading themselves.So, he was merely saying, rather, that the other parties were raising the right questions, about what was wrong with present-day society and needed dealing with, but not providing the right answer.He took the same approach in his review of Naomi Klein's book This Changes Everything: Capitalism v the Climate in the February Socialist Standard which ended:
Quote:In the current climate anyone who starts asking the right questions has to be congratulated.He is a member of Kent & Sussex branch, so I imagine their branch meetings have as lively discussions as we're having here.
alanjjohnstone wrote:The Green Party attitude to Corbyn…another mixed message…You mean another mixed message from the Green Party or that they like us are sending out a mixed message?Actually, part of it is one of our messages:
Green Party member wrote:He’s a decent, authentic bloke; but in the end he’s unlikely to actually succeed in doing very much more than pasting a new temporary label over the ‘New Labour’ tin.The only difference is that we substitute "Marmite pot" for "tin".
alanjjohnston wrote:i have already raised this option that we ignore Corbyn completely ….I'm sure nobody in the jungles of Thailand has heard of or cares about Corbyn but it's not an option here in Britain and shouldn't be. In fact, can't be. Even usually non-political people here are talking about him.
This from a thread publicising a meeting in Brighton on 15 September:
gnome wrote:In addition, the tactics of the likes of Naomi Klein, Caroline Lucas and Derek Wall, along with special reference to the present Corbynmania phenomenon, will be ruthlessly exposed and dissected…Why, Gnome, up the ante in the discussion here by introducing your approach into publicity for a public meeting? What you say here is going to happen at the meeting doesn't seem the best way to win over people in an area which has Britain's only Green Party MP. Much better to concede that the likes of Klein and Lucas are asking the right questions but providing the wrong answers or even that they are making some good proposals but that these won't be able to be implemented unless we get socialism (the approach we took towards the Green candidate in Oxford West in the general election) than to "ruthlessly expose" them in an in-your-face confrontational way.. That type of aggressive, macho approach won't go down in Green circles (and, presumably, the hope is that some people who may well have voted Green will turn up). It will just put people off.Incidentally, we will know by then whether or not Corbyn has been elected Leader of the Labour Party which, if he has, will have interesting political implications which will inevitably come up at the meeting.
Before engaging Derek Wall people should know where he is coming from. As has been pointed out, he spoke at one of our summer schools and knows the party and its position well. Even though he is in the Green Party he stands for socialism/communism in our sense and is well-versed in Marxism. His criticism of us has always been that we don't do anything except engage in so-called "abstract propagandism" for socialism though at one time he was prepared to recognise that this was useful since nobody else was doing it.This time he seems to have gone completely overboard for Jeremy Corbyn:http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-41a3-A-win-for-Jeremy-would-benefit-the-entire-left-not-just-Labour#.VerrD30WNdgSo it looks as if he would still attack us even for simply arguing that Corbyn is a reformist (as he is) without the Marmite pot incident.Incidentally, SP, to be fair our tweets do attack Tories and Ukippers too. See (you don't have to be a signed up as a tweeter to look at it):http://twitter.com/OfficialSPGB
That's a red herring, not to say a kneejerk. Nobody is saying that we are not opposed to Corbyn or the Labour Party. That's not the issue. It's about the way and tone in which we express this opposition.
Vin wrote:gnome wrote:Socialists are therefore hostile, not in the sense of committing violent acts against other parties or their members, but to the ideas of those parties which support capitalism.Gnome, Where does this come from?
These words appear elsewhere on this site (explanation of Clause 7 of the Declaration of Principles):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/our-object-and-declaration-principles
alanjjohnstone wrote:SOYMB blog will remove the relevant blog-post if instructed to do so by today's EC meeting.There is nothing wrong with the blog reproducing the good statement from the media committee or the Private Eye article. The objection is to it reproducing the Marmite thing in the middle of a controversy about it, i.e that's all that would need to be removed if it's decided to close the stable door after the horse has bolted.
jondwhite wrote:Not saying I agree with either image but I've found the Socialist Standard from October 1979 front cover used the Leninism: 57 varieties image (the Solidarity pamphlet is possibly dated 1972 and I'm not certain uses it anyway)This is a brilliant, original SPGB production which others have copied, not the other way round.
Now, as a result of the blog item, it's been re-tweeted (scroll down):https://twitter.com/officialspgbPeople will think we're proud of it and that we are indeed waging a "ferocious media campaign" against Corbyn.Why don't members think before they shoot?
Just read in the papers that in the television debate last night between the 4 candidates Corbyn said he was in favour of the decriminalisation of cannabis. I'm sure there will be some members who won't consider that a "bs policy".
Why are members still distributing this stupid and damaging marmite thing when they know that it has caused damage and is criticised by members and could be disavowed?http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/private-eye-and-spgb.htmlIt doesn't express the Party case properly and is not even factually correct (are we opposed to Corbyn's policy of opposing and repealing anti-trade union laws? Are we against his anti-war stance? Are these "bs policies"?). Reproducing it on our blog is giving it wider distribution than originally and so credence to the false Private Eye allegation that we are engaged in "a ferocious media campaign" against Corbyn.Is it too late to take it down?
Here is Derek Wall speaking only 3 years ago:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2P7zXktn3gSometimes we're our worst enemy.
