ALB
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By way of contrast:
So the ball is in the West’s court. But they don’t really want an end to the conflict. The US’s stated aim from the start has been to weaken rather than defeat Russia by keeping it bogged down in a never-ending war. But they might have to compromise as they’ll soon be down to the last Ukrainian.
That letter in last week’s Weekly Worker has provoked a full page reply to it and another letter:
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1492/minimal-symmetrical-errors/
Apparently SPEW’s reform programme was not the pre-WW1 Social Democrats’ “minimum programme” but was supposed to be Trotsky’s “transitional programme”. However, the author (Mike McNair) realises that “in practice, what is ‘transitional’ turns out to be merely what is currently popular – “attractive-sounding reforms”.”
Like we said. SPEW have been advocating these sorts of reforms for so long that they have come to really believe that they could be achieved under capitalism and is in practice a common or garden reformist party.
McNair goes on to argue that by “minimum programme” the pre-WW1 Social Democrats meant a more complete (or less incomplete) political democracy. No doubt they did stand for this but I think it wasn’t just this but did include social measures to be achieved within capitalism as well. In any event, it was these that got them electoral support and made them prisoners of their reform-minded voters and led to them eventually becoming ordinary reformist parties.
Mind you, it’s their own fault as, to curry favour with the demonstrators, they had a leaflet calling for a “socialist intifada”.
They just meant a mass uprising. That will teach them to be opportunist (but it won’t)
Yes, we shouldn’t let this pass unchallenged.
Actually, Gove is being unfair to SPEW. They don’t agree with the SWP and RCP position of “smashing Israel”. I have been at various Gaza events and can confirm their lit sellers do not join in the chants of “from the river to the sea”. They are for a “two-state” solution, with a Labour government in Israel and a Labour government in Palestine co-operating.
Just seen that they have already replied to him pointing this out:
As you say, Gove has not done his homework.
A lurker on this forum has drawn attention to this article entitled “Were Neanderthals More Than Cousins to Homo Sapiens?”
https://www.sapiens.org/biology/hominin-species-neanderthals/
Interesting. On another thread TM wrote that the humans and chimpanzees are “cousins”. One of the articles linked on the same page as the above describes Homo sapiens and Neanderthals as “cousins”. I realise that the point being made in both cases is that two species are related in the sense of sharing a common ancestor species.
Taken literally, a (first) cousin is someone who shares common grandparents. The table at the beginning of this article
would mean on this strict definition that it is gorillas who would be our first cousins and chimps our siblings (and old world monkeys our second cousins — same great-grandparents).
Neanderthals are of course much closer to us than that. In fact, are they even a separate species? If not, they are us.
Well, well. So the International Court of Clowns wants to indict NuttyYahoo. So we are going to see if Might is Right. Or if international law is more than a scrap of paper. And who are the hypocrites.
Of course the US and its allies are subsidising bogus NGOs with a view to trying to bring in a friendly government. Russia too no doubt with a view to maintaining in power a friendly government. These are the sort of intrigues that used to go on in the Balkans in the first half of the last century (and the assassination attempt on the prime minister of Slovakia the other day suggests they still are).
I noticed this:
Russian troops currently occupy some 20% of Georgian territory
This will be in two breakaway areas inhabited by non-Georgian speakers. It is looking like that is the way the Ukraine war could end — with Russia continuing to hold what it has occupied and Ukraine (and the US and its allies) having to accept this fact on the ground without recognising its legality.
The members who attended the SPEW meeting on “Reform or Revolution?” in Vauxhall on 25 April report that, in answer to a question as to whether the revolution they envisaged would abolish money and private property, replied that capitalism had not yet sufficiently developed the forces of production for that.
In a bid to give this rather esoteric thread some contemporary relevance here’s something that suggests pSt George might be a figure to slay the dragon that is Israel:
Good question. Probably to take a potshot at christianty. Nothing wrong with that. It’s easy and it’s fun and they deserve it. But it’s best not to claim something that can’t be solidly backed up.
Apparently in a footnote Gibbon says: “this transformation is not given as absolutely certain, but as extremely probable” if you can check. I have discovered that it’s not a copy of his whole book that I have but only a couple of chapters published by the Rationalist Press Association as “Gibbon on Christianity”.
Gelasius canonised George in the late fifth century, barely a century after the bishop’s assassination, whereas George of Lydda had supposedly died a further century before that.
You are not saying that the George that Pope Gelasius made a saint was Bishop George of Cappodocia, are you? It would have been the mythical “George of Lydda”, wouldn’t it ?
Gelasius ” also had cordial relations with the Ostrogoths, who were Arians (i.e. Non-trinitarian Christians), and therefore perceived as heretics from the perspective of Nicene Christians.[7]”
That looks like a quote from Wikipedia! Or did you find it in one of your pile of vellum-bound books?
Anyway, what are you saying? That Pope Gelasius made an Arian bishop a saint just to please the Ostrogoths?
The article you found on the internet (where would you be without it?) about the pork salesman is amusing but it does not actually claim, as you did on your original post, that it was George of Cappodocia who was made a saint but only that the St. George was based on him. Mind you, I wouldn’t put it pass a Pope to create a fictitious person to make a saint. They have done worse things.
A letter based on BD’s comments above is published is this week’s Weekly Worker:
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1491/letters/
The letter published immediately after from a group in Manchester is interesting as it seems to be putting a similar position as us, as long, that is, as they mean by communism what we mean by socialism.
Yes, this “could have” happened. Also there “could have” been a real Roman soldier called George who was “martyred” for being a christian. All sorts of things “could have” happened. The job of a historian is to try to work out, on the basis of any available evidence, what is most likely to have happened.
I wouldn’t have thought that there is enough (or any) definitive evidence to say that St George was the historical George of Cappodocia.
