Bijou Drains
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I suppose a different way (and simpler way of expressing it) is that people’s thinking is a reflection of their brains, in the smae way that teh speed a car can travel is a refelction of the car’s engine. The difference is is that a brain is impacted very much on what has happened to it before that point, a car engine might get slower by use, but it is unlikely to get quicker.
Im terms of MS’s point, which is valid, we also need to be careful about the pure behaviourist (Skinnerist) assumption that all behaviour is learnt. It clearly isn’t. For instance, following birth, we didn’t learn to breathe by trial and error. If that was true there would be a lot less of us.
In a sense this would be entirely predictable, the areas of the brain they have looked at are largely influenced by the impact of attachment experiences.
As these attachment experiences are largely based on our interactions with other human beings and how we develop views on those other human beings, our brain architecture will reflect this.
To put it another way, because, to a large extent, our brain architecture is patterned by the events we experience, and the events that are most influential in the development of the brain are social experiences, it is therefore highly likely that our thoughts and views are very likely to conform with the understandings we have developed as a result of our experiences.
Politics is largely about society, and our social views are based on our social experiences and that these social experiences are reflected on our brain architecture. It would not be any great leap to expect that our brain architecture would be closely related to our political viewpoints.
The problem with the research report is that it misses this out and it could be implied that political opinions are somehow hard wired into our brains and that they cannot be changed.
An excellent and moving play/musical, I would recommend any one going to see it if it is on in the local area,
Ironically the main lyricist (Alex Glasgow) was a Trotskyist, so according to Leninist theory the miners he eulogised were part of the Labour Aristocracy who were benefitting from the “super profits” of imperial exploitation.
That said, Alex Glasgow produced some wonderful songs
The result that Putin originally envisioned is clearly not where he is now. Ukrainian has not been a walkover and rather than intimidating Sweden, Finland, NATO, et al, it has made the the Scandinavians more western facing and NATO more bullish.
To make an comparison Stalin under estimated Finland and this influenced Hitler to attack the USSR. I hope the U.S. and the Europeans don’t make the same assumptions.
I think the rest of the world knows that Boorish and his mates are effectively the Tory Party 3rd 11, after the failure of Cameron et al, May et al, left the Tory party in the hands of the back woodsmen and small business faction of UK capitalism.
I used to have a van, but I’m still in the party and I sold the van!
If your suspected infiltrator was a spook, part of me thinks fair play to him. At least he got 4 years of fairly easy wage slavery and a period of four years’ company with interesting and amiable people. He may have actually learned something and in that respect they have more to fear from us than we should fear from them!
Due to our democratic approach the most damage he would have made is one vote in a vote of many.
You’re absolutely right that our openness is a great protection. Our principles, our procedures and our anti authoritarian approaches are also hugely protective. Fact is he could have won the “names in the hat” raffle to win be the “leader” of the party and it wouldn’t have mattered.
I often wonder if the plod and the spooks were daft enough to infiltrate us. Let’s face it most of the information they would need is in the public domain and if they had infiltrated us they would have had to pay party dues to get information that was freely available.
Also the SWP accusing anyone of using Orwelian tactis is a little bit of the pot calling the kettle dirty arse.
Re the SWP, I’m just re reading Tariq Ali’s book “Redemption”. I would recommend reading it if you can get a copy of it. I think I’m enjoying it more this time around because the expose of the sexual proclivities of their “leaders” are now fully out in the open.
Anyway the SWP have a persecution complex, they’ll be made up that the Spooks were infiltrating them, they would have been distraught if they hadn’t been infiltrated!
I think ALB’s view that Putin could quite easily occupy the Donbas is probably not quite as straightforward as it looks.
The Donbas has an area of about 60,000 sq km, which is over 4 times the size of Northern Ireland. It is estimated that The Provisional IRA had a maximum strength of about 2 – 3,000 active members during the Troubles. That tied down up to 30,000 members of the British Army, not including the RUC and other quasi military bodies.
Although the IRA was reasonably well funded, it’s funding would be minuscule in comparison to a similarly based Ukrainian insurgency group. A Ukrainian insurgency campaign could be very costly (in troops and material) for Putin.
The little know anti USSR guerrilla campaign in the Baltic states between 1945 – 1953 cost the USSR an approximate 30,000 lives. This would be even more costly.
If ALB is correct in saying former Captain Ben Wallace is suggesting that NATO should March on Moscow, he’s not only a fool, he clearly never studied the work of Montgomery when he was at Sandhurst.
Montgomery said “the first law of military strategy is Don’t March on Moscow”. Although Montgomery was a vain, opinionated, racist )and possible Penderast). I’d rather trust him in terms of military strategy than the jumped up fuckwit who currently holds the office of Minister of Defence.
I’ve always been a little confused when members/sympathisers say, why don’t you do this/that/the other, with regard to various activities that the party undertake. Over the years I’ve seen comments like, why do you organise debates when we should arrange cooperative forums? Why do you have election campaigns as opposed to leaflet drops? Why do you arrange paper sales at left wing rallies as opposed to anarchist book fairs? Etc.etc. etc.
The thing is, none of these things re mutual exclusive. We can do leaflet drops and also do elections, we can attend left wing rallies as well as anarchist book fairs. We can do all of these things (the fact is, we SHOULD all do all of them, it’s not like we are short of a bob or two)
That some members think that it is worthwhile for them to carry out election campaigns, does not stop the critics of that type of activity from undertaking the kinds of activity that they think we should undertake. I cannot perceive the EC or the Party at large blocking the critics from undertaking the activities that are suggested. To those comrades who criticise this activity, go out and do it the way you think it should be done, no one is stopping you.
I do not wish to be harsh, but to reiterate “the critics” are not being prevented from doing what they suggest.
We are not some Leninist clique that needs to have some prescribed way of campaigning. We have the funds (within reason) for individual groups and members to do whatever they chose to do. If you’re not happy with election campaigns and think that we should do something else, what is to stop you organising and doing that activity yourself? The Party at large and the democratic structures of the Party are not stopping you!With regard to the campaign and the results, congratulations to all of the party members that got involved with the campaigns. In term so of results, the result that the Possibilist candidate received more or less the same number as the Impossiblist candidate, is pretty significant!
I acknowledge that it is difficult to extrapolate from small numbers but, if we got a 1.5% result in a General Election, in the way that we got in Clapham East, based on the last election turnout, that would give us 480,212. I for one would be ecstatic with that!
There have been reports of explosions in Transnistria, Russian state media claiming they originate from Ukrainian agents, it may well spark an attempt to link the Russian invasion to the Transnistria/Moldova situation. Strategically, this would make sense for the Russians, allowing them to have unhindered access to the Black Sea, for trade routes and other reasons.
If the Russians achieve a link up from Transnistria to The Crimea, the next pinch point will be access to the Med through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, no surprise that Erdogan has been quite quiet about the whole situation.
The situation might get worse with regard to confrontation between NATO and the Russians as well, with Moldova being heavily linked to Rumania (a NATO member).
As Kenneth Wolstenholme may once have said “They think it’s Moldova, it is now!”
With regards to public urination, my experience is that a long term solution is not exactly what is needed. Usually, at my age, what I need is a very, very quick solution.
That’s terrific news MS, can you send me a link to it?
My Spanish is pretty weak, but I amsure I can pick up the jist of the conversation.Perhaps I’m just cynical, but is it a coincidence that Britain has agreed to pay its previously denied debts to Iran (and precipitate the release of Anoosheh Ashoori and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe) at the middle of a crisis for Western oil experts.
With Iran and Venezuela back on board, maybe the Western Oligarchs will breathe a little more softly in their beds tonight, surely a small price for all of the dead workers and the thousands of children of future workers from Russia and The Ukraine to be deprived of one or both of their parents.
I wouldn’t be too concerned about the Express AC, the Viz has more accurate news coverage than the Express.
“But wait! Drunk people can be convinced of the case for socialism, no?
And you haven’t answered my question. Sometimes you can’t avoid drunk people when putting the case for the abolition of the wages system. And sometimes, with drunken shitwitted buffoons, they want to offer you violence. I’m interested in what the party line might be.”
IDABM
Generally drunk people can be convinced about the case for socialism, however they generally forget about it the next day.
As to violence, if threatened I have been more and happy to “put the boot in” if required to keep myself safe.
I remember vividly in the 1980s a rather pasty faced SWP student member, who thought himself a “bit of a lad” taking exception to me describing him (correctly) as a red fascist and saying that he was going to put a glass in my face. As a result, then Cde Paul Robinson (last seen in Japan) pulled out a primed crossbow, which somehow calmed him down enough to start a reasoned debate.
In a similar way my mate, but no longer a party member, diffused a confontation with a bunch of Combat 18 fascists by explaining to them in very explicit ways, that if they didn’t stop threatening our group of Comrades selling Socialist Standards, he was going to kick the f**king shit out of them.
It must be also recognised that ex Comrades Marratty and Colburn (and some of the ex miners at Seaham Branch) were particularly useful to have around if the “ultimate dialectic” needed to be explained,.
So it is not the case that the SPGB is a pacifist party, just not prepared to kill or be killed for capitalsim.
That said, I also am also aware that as nowadays being a person in his early 60s, I might show a little more caution in such a situation (but not much).
