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More on the now correctly-named Free Pass Movement here.Meanwhile, in response to the unrest, the President of Brazil has been promising reforms, a factor to be taken into account when guessing how the last capitalist government might respond to a growing socialist movement.

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The Emir of Qatar, who seized power from his father in 1995, has graciously handed over power to one of his sons. That's how things work in this dynastic state. Along with Saudi Arabia (where things are even worse), Qatar is the main supplier of finance and arms to the anti-government forces in Syria.  And we are supposed to believe the propaganda put out by Cameron that the rebels in Syria are fighting for a liberal democracy. Pull the other one.

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jondwhite wrote:

Good work. I think there were a couple of other left events which clashed (AWL's Ideas for Freedom, ICC day of discussion) but this sounds like the best attended.

Actually, two other members (and one ex-member) went to the ICC event, so proving that we have enough members to engage in two different political activities in the same town on the same day….Here's Ian Bone's confirmation of the number of anarchists who turned up for his People's Assembly Against Hot Air (can you spot the two Party members in the second photo?).  Apparently, no anarchists attended the ICC thing. Meanwhile some wit has suggested that the other People's Assembly should be called the People's Ass for short.

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I think the link you meant to give is this, Janet:http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/revolution/brazil.htmlWhile I'm writing, I'd just add re the point Ed raised about rigging elections that the reaction of the Brazil government in offering reforms to try to allay the discontent suggests that this is the more likely scenario that the last capitalist government will follow in the event of powerful and growing socialist movement.

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I see the media have now corrected their translation of the "Movimento Passe Livre" to "Free Pass Movement", but it's still interesting, and intriguing, that someone should have initially thought of translating it as "Free Access Movement". Why? Perhaps because this was a familiar idea, even as a result of our own efforts at popularising the term? In any event, this shows how an idea can spread.

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Ed wrote:

For the record I said it was not beneath the bourgouisie to rig elections, not saying that they do in the UK. But they well might if we were an actual threat.

I know members speculate about this sort of thing but, surely, when "we", i.e the working class movement for socialism, become a real force and a threat to capitalist rule, the balance of forces will have shifted so much in our favour that they won't be able to do this. It also assumes that the capitalist class will be united in their reaction to a growing socialist movement, but they are more likely to be split with one section wanting to trying to buy off the revolution with social reforms rather than resort to repression. Also, the personnel who actually run elections, mainly local government workers, are members of the working class and many of them will be influenced by socialist ideas. So I don't see the capitalist class getting away with it, at least not in this country.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Of all the reports i read,  the commonality was this ….it was an UNIDENTIFIED flying OBJECT..no-body claimed to ever seen an actual space-ship…just something they personally couldn't explain.

I think the words you are looking for are Unidentified Aerial Phenomena since the word "object" begs the question.I don't think this discussion is a diversion as the association of a political organisation or its members with unwarranted conspiracy theories about 9/11, Kennedy's assassination, etc discredits that organisation.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Pity we never managed to get access to the Anarchist mega-phones for a few minutes…i'm sure we could of if we asked nicely…

Actually, at the end Ian Bone did ask if anyone else wanted to say anything and the thought of taking up his offer did cross my mind. I don't think he'd have said no but, quite apart from not liking to use a megaphone (they're not allowed in Hyde Park), we have our differences as well as points of agreement with anarchist-communists and its was their meeting. Ian Bone is a good bloke and has a soft spot for us (since his student days in Swansea) . He was also a witty opponent when we debated him 4 or 5 years ago. I'd have gone for a drink with him and the others too if the pub hadn't been so crowded. I'm sure the craic was better than if we gone for a one with a group of trots (bored with discussing the Russian revolution).

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The reviewer, who is sympathetic to our view that Leninism is a distortion of Marxism and that Marx used the terms "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably to refer to a class, stateless, moneyless society, writes that the Hindustan Times

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is read by 8 lakhs all over India and it's carried in all the editions.

I think that means it has a circulation of 800,000.Here's another article by him that appeared in The Statesman of Calcutta in March:http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=449041&catid=39

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We actually had a presence there from 9am to 4pm (not the same comrades all the time of course).  Plenty of Trotskyist and Maoist groups but also some genuine trade unionists. The Green Party were there too, including their MP Caroline Lucas. The only unifying factor seems to be opposition to austerity and vague (and dubious) statements such as "debts can be dropped", "A living wage can begin to combat poverty", "Strong trade unions can help redistribute profit". Regional "People's Assemblies" will be held and "a national day of civil disobedience and direct action" is called for 5 November, a Tuesday, so we'll see what happens then (if anything).Ian Bone's "Peoples Assembly Against Hot Air"  took the form of him and three other anarchists speaking to people outside the hall through a megaphone for 10-15 minutes. There weren't many more of them than us.. As opposed to the Trot's call for the TUC to call a general strike to oppose austerity, they called for people to follow the examples of those in Turkey and Brazil to take to the streets. They forgot to mention the abolition of the wages system, but some of the comrades still went for a drink with them.

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By co-incidence, more amusing stuff from Ministry of Defence files released yesterday:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/last-release-mod-ufo-filesThe MoD seems to have been more patient than I would have been.

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DJP wrote:

FWIW my old philosophy tutor has an interested in conspiracy theories and unwarranted conspiracy theories.Here's an (unfinished) paper by him on the subject:http://www.uea.ac.uk/~j097/CONSP01.htm

I read the whole 40-page paper last night and it's excellent. I trust the others taking part in the discussion here on conspiracy theories will too. It's surely the last word on this digression here.I liked two of his points in particular: (1) that when the conspiracy theorist starts to claim that the documentary and forensic evidence has been faked that's the end of any possible meaningful discussion with them, and (2) that in most cases the alleged conspirators would have been able to achieve the aim attributed to them by easier and less risky methods.I'm not a JFKennedy Assassination Theory buff but I am a Currency Crank one and noticed some of the leaflets distributed by currency cranks during the Occupy St Pauls in 2011 tried to argue that one of the reasons he was assassinated was that he wanted to transfer the power to issue the US currency from the Federal Reserve (central bank) to the Treasury (the government), as many US (and British) currency cranks advocate. See, for instance,http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/thefederalreserve.htmand the refutation here:http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/weberman/jfk.htm  Clearly you can fashion your own Kennedy Assasination Conspiracy Theory to fit in with anything, even something which nobody considered an issue at the time. Presumably you can do this with other events too..

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Yes of course but they were eventually found out and proved from official US government documents (and besides were carried out by the government not by some conspiratorial group). That's the point I was making. Such documents concerning a hypothetical 9/11 inside job, fake moon landings and suppression of evidence for alien landings have not been found and won't be because they won't exist. How else could you prove them except from government documents?

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Ed wrote:

Well of course it's standard for the bourgouisie to rig elections, encourage coup d'etats, assasinate or imprison political opponents. That's not a secret, or a secret state though that's one and the same state apparatus which must be captured. So not really sure what you mean by a secret state or how it would effect an overwhelming socialist majority?

I don't think it's true that in countries like Britain and the USA  elections are rigged by "the bourgeoisie". I've been to many election counts and can't see how "the bourgeoisie" could do this. To do it, they would have to have a  vast secret organisation involving polling clerks, returning officers, some candidates, etc (so vast in fact that it would be impossible to keep it secret). Theories that 9/11 was an inside job or that flying saucers exist but that the government has covered this up also presuppose a secret organisation.Some of our critics argue that there is no point in trying to win control of parliament because "parliament does not control the government and that the apparent government is not the real government". We deal with this argument in the section headed "Conspiracy" in our pamphlet What's Wrong With Using Parliament?:

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But is the government that is chosen by parliament the real government or is this some shadowy committee of capitalists? There is not the slightest evidence for the existence of such a parallel government. The idea that it exists is pure conspiracy theory. If it did exist, it is difficult to see how its existence could be kept secret. The ministers of the government we can all see and know about would mention it in their memoirs. None ever has. There are other problems with this conspiracy theory. How would the members of this supposed secret committee of capitalist puppet-masters be chosen? What mechanisms would they have to settle policy differences between different capitalist groups (since the capitalist class is not a monolith with a single obvious common interest)? There certainly exist capitalist pressure groups, such as the European Round Table of Industrialists, but these endeavour to influence governments, rather than themselves being a kind of power behind the throne. The whole theory is absurd. The fact is that the government is the government we see

The ironic thing is that the USA, the land of conspiracy theories, probably has one of the most open governments (relatively speaking) in the world. After all, where does Chomsky get the information to enter into the mind-numbing detail of his books on US Foreign Policy if not from US government documents? Incidentally, to his credit, Chomsky prominently and publicly rejects 9/11 conspiracy theories and gets called a "left gatekeeper for the conspirators" for his trouble.On the general question of conspiracy theories, the important thing is not to get diverted into refuting them (though choosing one to look into in detail could be a useful exercise in critical thinking) but to work out why some people believe in them and why such theories circulate. I think Chomsky is on the right lines when he suggests that it's a reflection of people's sense of powerlessness in a world they can't understand.

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But wouldn't it have serious consequences for our policy of the working class gaining control of the state machine via the ballot box if, behind the state institutions that everyone can see, there existed some parallel secret state which controlled things and was the real seat of power?

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