ALB
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Party members who are vegetarians should not advocate this in the name of the Party. That's the danger. That they are trying to convince the rest of us to become vegetarians is one reason why we cannot let religious people in. They would do the same and we'd be side-tracked into arguing amongst ourselves about that too.
Not all socialists are vegetarian nor want socialism and vegetarianism to be linked. William Morris for one:
Quote:Our readers will have noticed several letters amongst our correspondence on the subject of Vegetarianism, one or two of which were written in a somewhat aggrieved tone, apropos of attacks by Socialists on that doctrine, if one may call it so, though several comrades and friends are vegetarians. It seems to me that there is no need either to attack a vegetarian or to confer a vote of thanks on him, so long as he is one because he chooses to be so on any grounds that please himself, whether he makes it a matter of health, or economy, or sentiment. But a man can hardly be a sound Socialist who puts forward vegetarianism as a solution of the difficulties between labour and capital, as some people do, and as one may think very severe capitalists would like to do, if the regimen were not applied to themselves; and again, there are people who are vegetarians on ascetic grounds, and who would be as tyrannical as other ascetics if they had the chance of being so. I do not mean to say that Socialist vegetarians are likely to fall into these traps; they only make themselves liable to the sneer of an anti-Socialist acquaintance of mine, who said to me one day 'All you Socialists have each of you another fad besides Socialism'. (Commonweal, in September 1886).George Orwell made the same point in The Road to Wigan Pier, less politely (but we are all Charlie Hebdo now, aren't we?):
Quote:One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words "Socialism" and "Communism" draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, "Nature Cure" quack, pacifist, and feminist in England….The food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity.We must avoid associating socialism with one particular lifestyle choice, especially as most humans have always been meat-eaters and always will be.
alanjjohnstone wrote:I can say now that the consequences will be serious for those who are atheists. Won't be long before the Dave Allen's of the comedy world will be silenced…jokes on priests and paedophilia will soon be banned because of religious "hurt". And the law will be selectively applied only against those that the State disapproves of.Actually, they did try this but were forced to back down, as Boyd Tonkin recalls in yesterday's i paper:
Quote:… in 2005 came the lamentable attempt to strangle the critique of religion via the first draft of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, with its scattergun provisions against "insulting" belief. It took an energetic and well-organised revolt of artists, writers and comedians to knock sense into that statute.Agreed, though, that the very fact that they (and the Labour government was in charge of the State at the time) wanted to do this exposes their hypocrisy.Reading the correspondence columns of the Times shows that Christians too do not believe in freedom to criticise religion, with letters from vicars and professors of divinity saying that papers like Charlie Hebdo should not have the right to insult and mock religions in the way they do. They want to stop them doing this, not by shooting them by making it illegal and sending them to jail if they do.
alanjjohnstone wrote:And from Robert Fisk providing some much needed historical perspectivehttp://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/charlie-hebdo-paris-attack-brothers-campaign-of-terror-can-be-traced-back-to-algeria-in-1954-9969184.htmlFisk has written some good stuff but he is far too pro-Muslim for my liking, coming near to the position that Darren Redstar has criticised here of condoning what politicized Islamists do as a reaction to imperialism. He ends that article:
Quote:You can see why some Algerians went to fight for the Iraqi resistance. And found a new cause…I'm afraid I can't. They can't use history as an excuse. I can see rather why millions of people from Algeria, both there and in France, would just want to get on with their lives under capitalism without the additional complication of violence from fanatical, murderous Islamists.
Oh dear, the conspiracy theories havealready started. This from another forum I'm on (in the US, naturally):
Quote:I am very skeptical of the official account as to what happened and who the perpetrators really were, as for one thing the details of this official account seem to change by the day, if not the hour, and some of them strike me as nothing less than a pile of crap, stuff like the precision killer team leaving an ID or two in a getaway car, and the way the explanations for why have changed back and forth a bunch of times in less than 72 hours. Much of this reminds me of 9/11, which i am absolutely convinced was an inside job false flag terror attack, just like the “terrorist” wave of bombings which hit Italy in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, about which Sanguinetti the situations wrote a book, and which was subsequently revealed to be the work of the Italian state and NATO intelligence agencies, including the CIA.duncan lucas wrote:No my vision of Socialism is more realistic and achievable than yoursWhat, an English-hating Scottish nationalism ! Maybe at the moment that is more achievable than a world without frontiers where the Earth's resources have become the heritage of all humanity, but it's not socialism. Incidentally, I'm not "English" by your standards, let alone ours. I don't understand why you seem to hate those fellow humans you call "English". It's a bit like the xenophobia UKIP propagates, only even narrower.
duncan lucas wrote:Scots dont vote Tory only one MP in Scotland 100s in England we dont think the same as England our first thought is to those less well off than themselves Englands first thought is -how are my shares doing or is the price iof my house rising. THey just dont CARE the same its called Humanitarianism and they are sadly lacking in that area .Once again what you say needs correcting.According to a recent book Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box (edited by Philip Cowley and Robert Ford. Biteback Publishing), it would also appear that the prevailing underpinning values of voters in Wales and Scotland, for instance, are not that different on most issues to those of people in parts of the UK that tend to vote Conservative.More here:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/scottish-politics/11242539/Scotland-and-England-How-different-are-they-really.html
Quote:According to Ms Henderson, the data shows "in no case are there significant differences between Scotland, Wales and England", but she notes Scots are more likely "to report themselves as being left-wing than other Britons".I suppose this an argument for not using coupons instead of money in socialism but for replacing both by free access and free distribution.
duncan lucas wrote:THe situation is follows = In Scotland the vast majority vote for the SNP because they are the leading left wing party .No, they don't. Here's the result of the last Scottish-wide elections, last May's Euroelections:Scottish National Party 389,503 28.99%Labour Party 348,219 25.92%Conservative 231,330 17.22%UKIP 140,534 10.45%Green Party 108,305 8.06%Liberal Democrats 95,319 7.09%Britain First 13,639 1.02%BNP 10,216 0.76%No2EU 6,418 0.48%I don't how you turn 29% into "the vast majority". It would be more accurate to say that the vast majority do not support the SNP. And you seem to have forgotten that the SNP lost the referendum.Let's at least have an argument on the basis of the facts.
Here's another example of outrageous behaviour by Muslim opponents of free speech and a sign of what to expect if politicised islamists get control of political power:
Quote:Saudi blogger will be flogged in public todayRiyadh A liberal activist sentenced to jail and flogging in Saudi Arabia will receive the first 50 of 1,000 lashes today. Raif Badawi, who set up the Free Saudi Liberals website, was charged in June 2012 with offences including cybercrime, disobeying his father and apostasy. Last year he was given a 10-year jail term, fined 1 million rivals ($266,666) and ordered to receive 1,000 lashes after an earlier seven-year sentence with 600 lashes was deemed lenient.Amnesty International said that he would be whipped in front of the al-Jafali mosque in Jeddah after prayers. The remaining lashes will be administered on a weekly basis. (Reuters).{Times, 9 January)No big press campaign against this — no, "Je suis Raif Badawi" posters and slogans — but then Saudi Arabia is one of the Western capitalist bloc's allies and a lucrative market for their arms sales
duncan lucas wrote:If you dont know big business rules the UK/US government well I cant help you.But we do know that, or at least that all governments rule in the interest of profit-seeking businesses because in the end the economic forces of capitalism force them to adopt policies that give priority to profits and profitmaking. Sometimes a party arises that wants to favour smaller rather than bigger businesses. UKIP in Britain and the SNP in Scotland are examples. If you think that the SNP is socialist, we can help you if you like.
duncan lucas wrote:What you are doing is playing into the hands of the NWO /Banksters of divide and conquer and it works .He's just exposed himself here as a conspiracy theorist nutter. I wonder who he thinks are behind the "New World Order" these "banksters" are conspiring to bring about? Is it the Illuminati, the Elders of Zion or who?
