ALB
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I only said that this was part of our case against UKIP — the part which says that in a socialist world there will be no borders or "national" states.As a matter of fact one socialist in the audience did say, almost textually, that "we do not choose our colour, race or place of birth". Nobody said "fuck". We're a respectable lot.
I take it the "Workers Party" was the name of the "Communist Party" had to adopt because it was banned?
I saw that too but will they raise the £65,000 and will they be able to get the administrative work done? We'll see.Just had a look at the No2EU site and they (or rather the late Bob Crow) call on workers to vote for them but don't say where they will be standing. Once again, we'll see. I see Militant are supporting them (usurping our name) but they'll be concentrating on the local elections the same day under the TUSC name.
I went to a meeting of election agents in Southampton yesterday and I can now understand why the three from Liberty GB asked if their home addresses would be published. The answer was "yes". One of them, incidentally, was an Italian with a vote in Italy. So, the word "fascist" can be properly applied in their case.Besides the Tories, LibDems, Labour, Green and UKIP, other opponents represented there were the English Delocrats, the Peace Party and a new not-yet registered party the "Harmony Party".The Peace Party stood last time (and got 9,500 votes).I have my doubts that the Harmony Party list will materialise as their represenhtative, an ageing hippy from Hastings, didn't seem all that au fait with the procedures to be followed. They might even been a front for some way-out sect. Be that as it may, there was an expression of disharmony in the leaflet he gave me:
Quote:Charity begins at home. British jobs for Black & White workers.As opposed to the BNP's "British jobs for White British Workers". Come to think of it, "British Jobs for Black and White British workers" is what No2EU (soon, hopefully, to be defunct) and the Scargill Labour Party in effect stand for. No indication whether these two parties will be standing as they did last time.
That reminds me. When a month or so ago I was stopped and taken to the local police station to be breathalysed ( I got off) one of the boxes the station sargeant had to tick was "ethnicity". I said I was a human being. He said, I know, we all are. I said I had an Irish passport so he put down "White Irish". I hope this distorts their statistics. In fact I think that if they tried a huge minority could get themselves described as "White Irish" if they wanted to — except for any descedants of George Henry Thompson, described by Andrew Boyd in Holy War in Belfast as "a negro who lived among the Protestants of Shankill Road" (page 96) and who in 1873 was convicted of riotous assembly for leading a mob that drove Catholics out of their homes. They could add to the welcome confusion by labelling themselves "Black Irish".
Critisticuffs have now published this talk as an article:http://critisticuffs.org/texts/david-harvey/It criticises Harvey's proposal for an "oxidisable money", i.e for money which cannot be accumulated. How someone who has written extensively on what Marx is supposed to have been can end up advocating monetary reform is incredible.
Another of our opponents in this election:http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/home/root/news-libertygb/6237-the-campaign-starts-here-paul-weston-for-mepThese people make UKIP look tame.
Quote:Most importantly, they will be presenting to voters Liberty GB's demand for the complete removal of Islam from Britain and EuropeThey seem to be a breakaway from the BNP. Anybody know anything more about them?
NASA have issued a press release stating that they neither funded nor paid for this study:
Quote:RELEASE 14-082NASA Statement on Sustainability StudyThe following is a statement from NASA regarding erroneous media reports crediting the agency with an academic paper on population and societal impacts."A soon-to-be published research paper 'Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies' by University of Maryland researchers Safa Motesharrei and Eugenia Kalnay, and University of Minnesota’s Jorge Rivas was not solicited, directed or reviewed by NASA. It is an independent study by the university researchers utilizing research tools developed for a separate NASA activity."As is the case with all independent research, the views and conclusions in the paper are those of the authors alone. NASA does not endorse the paper or its conclusions."Which goes to show that you can't believe all you read in the papers (as next month's Socialist Standard, now at the printers, didn't)..
This programme on BBC Radio 4 at 11.00 this morning seems very relevant to this thread. It's being broadcast again next Monday (31 March) at 21.00:
Quote:The most convincing evidence that someone really believes something is when they are willing to risk their own money on it. Businesses around the world are doing just that; betting that they can profit from the effects of climate change. Justin Rowlatt meets the entrepreneurs who believe there is money to be made from the world's changing climate.alanjjohnstone wrote:Graeber in the Guardian seiing on the reporthttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/18/truth-money-iou-bank-of-england-austerityGraeber overstates his case that bank loans are essentially IOUs. They can be seen as this from one point of view but this doesn't mean that banks can issue IOUs at will without being able to cover them. A bank which did this would soon go under, as the Bank of England article explicitly explains.He distorts what the article says when he writes:
Quote:What this means is that the real limit on the amount of money in circulation is not how much the central bank is willing to lend, but how much government, firms, and ordinary citizens, are willing to borrow.Most of the article is devoted to describing in detail the various limits to banks' lending (including having to find new outside deposits or loans from other banks and others to remain profitable) which are well below what people want to borrow.
Quote:Just consider what might happen if mortgage holders realised the money the bank lent them is not, really, the life savings of some thrifty pensioner, but something the bank just whisked into existence through its possession of a magic wand which we, the public, handed over to it.This is pure currency crank nonsense. What a bank or building society lends to someone to buy a house is covered by assets which really exist, whether from "the life savings of some thrifty pensioners" or from what the financial institution has itself borrowed at a lower rate of interest. Graeber needs to explain what banks do do with savings people deposit with them if they don't re-lend them. The Bank of England article says:
Quote:banks do not act simply as intermediaries, lending out deposits savers place with themGraeber seems to have deleted the word "simply".
I think you may be thinking more of the old League of Empire Loyalists. UKIP is in fact isolationist, opposing UK intervention in Iraq, Afghanistran and Syria as "foreign wars":.
ALB wrote:It seems to be another example of Zizek's saying that the end of civilisation is seen as more conceivable than the end of capitalism.Just reading a book in which this ("that it is easier to think of the end of the world than the end of capitalism") is attributed to Frederick (I think that should be Frederic, shouldn't it?) Jameson. Does anyone know if Zizek too got it from him?
From Monday's Times:
Quote:The set text of Mr Miliband's leadership on this issue is Varieties of Capitalism, a book of essays edited by political economists Peter Hall and David Soskice. It identifies two models under which to run a capitalist economy: "liberal" (such as Britain and the US) and "co-ordinated" (such as Germany and Sweden). Can Miliband switch Britain from the former to the latter category?Probably not, but even if he could it would still be a "variety of capitalism" with all the problems capitalism causes, as workers in Germany and Sweden will know all too well.
LATEST NEWS: Left Unity to contest one seat in local elections this May:
Quote:During general discussions about the 2014 Council elections, a number of points were made, including: • Left unity is standing in Birmingham Ladywood • As this is the first time out for Left Unity, election campaigns will need careful c0-ordination to avoid low votes • There have already been discussions at local level between TUSC and LU to avoid clashes and co-ordinate campaigns In answer to a question raised by Toby Abse, Bianca Todd said she hoped Left Unity would be a registered party with the Electoral commission in time for the Council elections.They are still afraid of contesting elections because they know that they will get a low vote (not much more than us).From the rest of the same report, it is clear that they are shambles going nowhere. Admittedly they are trying to organise on a non-Leninist basis whichis something to their credit.
