robbo203
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Something here on the role of the "White Helmets" – by the sound if it, a sort of Al Queda/ISIS amateur dramatic society much adored by some in the Western media for their compelling performances http://theduran.com/warning-disturbing-images-white-helmets-busted-killing-babies-in-pr-stunt-to-start-war-in-syria/
imposs1904 wrote:Excellent article by Robert Barltrop from 1971:Link The Permissive SocietyYes that is indeed an excellent article, The point that Barltrop makes about eras being defined by the perceptions of the ruling class (or as Marx would have itm the ruling ideas are those of the ruling class) is true enough but, as he also suggests, it is not uninfluenced by the experiences of the working class. For instance, in the wake of the Great Depression there was a tendency to tone down displays of conspicuous consumption because it was seen to be somewhat provocative and unseemly in the face of mass hardship. Its a two-way process of adjustment this ever shifting relationship between the capitalists and the workers
alanjjohnstone wrote:.As i touched on earlier, we cannot ignore that it is North Korea that is the real target. A gesture that cannot be retaliated by Syria but if directed upon Korea, i think they would seek revenge.It looks like the Chinese are now preparing themselves for a US attack on North Koreahttp://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/china-moves-150000-troops-and-medical-supplies-to-north-korean-border-in-case-us-attacks-kim-jong-un-regime/ar-BBzFB5g?li=AAmiR2Z&ocid=spartandhp If such an attack came I wonder what pretext would be manufactured by Trump and his merry band of war crimminals. Firing a few dud missiles into the sea, though "provocative", is probably not enough to constitute a casus belli and as for human rights violations, well, considering the US is in bed with some of the very worst human rights violaters – Saudi Arabia for example – that is gonna be a tricky one to pull off in the eyes of increasingly skeptical public Capitalist politics is just a very bad form of theatre.
ALB wrote:The more I think about it, and I'm not normally into conspiracy theories, the more I think that there is something odd about that chemical attack. It had no advantage for the Syrian government, which was just about to be rehabiltated, and every advantage for those states that want "regime change" there, i.e the installation of a pro-West regime. My betting would be that the Turkish intelligence services would have been more likely to have staged it than the Syrian government.Yes Im inclined to agree. The Russans, for one, would be hopping mad if it as discovered that regime was in fact responsible. I think a lot of people are skeptical. I posted something this morning in response to the MSN article mentioned in above (post 38) in the commentary section and was gobsmacked this evening when I came back from work to find that it had got 83 likes, Hopefully its a sign of the times – that people are not going to be so easily conned by the warmongers
The warmongering scum on all sides are at it again – ratcheting up the stakes and increasing the odds in this war of words that could all too easily become a war of horrendously deadly weaponry, if they are not careful, that could wipe out most, it not all, of humanity. Developments can take on a momementum of their own once we cross the line when all rationality breaks down and the irrationality of the war machine takes over http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/syria-crisis-russia-raises-prospect-of-war-if-it-is-given-g7-ultimatum-as-it-mocks-boris-johnsons-no-show/ar-BBzCkUy?li=AAmiR2Z&ocid=spartandhpThese irresponsible idiots need to understand once and for all that this world is not theirs to play with in this cynical and desparately dangerous game of one-upmanship and macho posturing
mcolome1 wrote:Others sources like Forbes and the Economists have indicated that in 2018 the Chinese economy will overtake US. The IMF is referring to the size of the Chinese economy, but others sources have also indicated that it is going to be larger in size, in investment and in millitary power, and spheres of influences. China already made an offer to Meixco in case that Nafta failsNot too sure about military power though. China has a long long way to go before it will catch up with the US in military spending. The US Military spending is about 2 1/2 times the size of China's and as a percentage of GDP its also greater.Here is an interesting list of the top miitary spenders, The surprise for me was Saudi Arabia which even beats Russia into third place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
John Pozzi wrote:.Rear money, i.e., GRB ecos, signify the universal value of the product of nature, i.e., the generation of biomass in an ecosystem, usually expressed in units of mass per unit surface (or volume) per unit time, for instance, grams per square metre per day (g m−2 d−1). The mass unit may relate to dry matter or to the mass of carbon generated. Productivity of autotrophs such as plants is called primary natural productivity, while that of heterotrophs such as animals is called secondary productivity.Secondary production is the generation of biomass of heterotrophic (consumer) organisms in a system. This is driven by the transfer of organic material between trophic levels, and represents the quantity of new tissue created through the use of assimilated food that everyone consumes.Oh dear. What on earth are you on about? This has got nothing to do with money. Money is a social institution grounded in an exchange or private property-based economy, The transfer of organic materials between trophic levels is not some kind of quid pro quo property transaction. I know there is a tendency to resort to metaphors when talking about nature or natural processes but the lion is not really the "king of the animal world". You do know that dont you?
John Pozzi wrote:.Real money values the product of nature, i.e. natural resources, the basis of our economy.John Pozzi, your comments are becoming more and more bizarre and surreal. Do you know what money is and what it signifies? How is it a product of nature? Natural resources are not money, for heavens sake, though they can be bought and sold for money and that only relatively recently in human history
mcolome1 wrote:Probably, the USA goverment spent 95 millions dollars to impress the Chinese president with their millitary forces, but It did not work out too well either, and in the meeting it looks like China was in a stronger position, they have something that is as strong as millitary hardware, which is capital, China is going to increase their capital investment in the USA which is over 51 billions. The USA does not want to recognize that within a few years China is going to become the number one world economic power.According to the IMF China is already the number one world economic power. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30483762 At any rate, it looks like the 21st century is going to be the Chinese century just as the 20th century was the American century – that is if we dont achieve world socialism first.
Tim Kilgallon wrote:There are arguments in favour of meat production, apart obviously from the delicious pork pies, bacon, sausages and hamburgers we get from it..Yes there are some environmental grounds that support this conclusion – quite apart from the obvious one that some environments such as mountainous terrains or arid regions are not suitable in many cases for arable farming and that by focussing on livestock here you are making use of an ecological niche that would be otherwise unavailable for increasing food output. But there are also other direct benefits that are sometimes overlooked . For example, properly managed pastoralism, partiularly in what are called "brittle environments" like the Meditteranean where there is little or no summer rainfall causing the vegetation to dry up, can play an important role in reducng the risk of devastatiing wildfires. As you will know from the news, wildfires are becoming increasingly significant in many parts of the world. There is also empirical evidence that grazing can have direct benefits for the resilence of ecosystems and for biomass production (see some of the stuff written by a guy called Andrew Warren who did a comparative study of th Sinai/Negev deserts and Israeli versus Bedouin patterns of land use).I am less convinced when it comes to so called factory farming however which is not only often intolerably cruel but also has adverse environmental and nutritional side effects. As with arable farming, I believe this too will have to be radically changed in a socialist society
Just to reinforce the point made earlier about the need to fundamentally change the way we go about producing food in a socialist society, there is this to consider – current industrialised methods of farming are causing an alarming loss of topsoil. Listen to this short youtube clip by George Monbiothttps://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=65usnzkhiR0&app=desktop Also, read thishttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/dec/14/soil-erosion-environment-review-vidalhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/https://phys.org/news/2015-12-soil-lossan-unfolding-global-disaster.htmlhttp://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/soil-fertility-and-erosion.html This is all bad news for the future of humanity and makes the need for a different kind of society all the more pressing. Literally, we face the stark choice – socialism or barbarism
alanjjohnstone wrote:Robbo, the WSM should be resting on its laurels, gloating over the fact that once again we have been proven right and should be rubbing it in with we told you so staementsNot much self-satisfied smugness since being right cost many innocent lives…Agreed Alan. Have you seen this BTW which seems to rule out the possibility that it was a stash of chemicals weapons that was bombedhttp://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/06/on-that-gas-attack-we-dont-need-conspiracies-to-oppose-us-war-in-syria/
Trump has now finally been exposed as a complete and utter conman – or more precisely, neo-con man. The one thing that superficially separated him from his utterly obnoxious warmongering Democratic rival, Killary Clinton, and that cast him in a relatively favourable light was his promise not to meddle, militarily speaking, in other countries' affairs, to become more isolationist and to put "America first". However, it was pretty obvious right from the start that this was a hoax. Why make such a promise and at the same time also promise to beef up America's military might? Something did not ring true here. And now some of his gullible redneck supporters on the Right are furious and feel betrayed. As if that wasn’t totally predictable. . They would do well to reflect on all those other empty promises Trump made – like his faux pretence to have the interests of the American workers at heart. This from a billionaire who has treated his own employees with ruthless contempt and who despite his professed desire to "bring back jobs to America" has himself business interests in more than two dozen countries. Not that that really matters at the end of the day. Trump has predictably turned out to be a totally hypocrite and a lier to boot but he is just a symbol. His personal traits are an irrelevance. What is relevant are the millions of American workers who put him in power in the deluded belief that he would make a difference. With this latest example of military adventurism in Syria, Trump has fallen completely into line with the predictable pattern of every American President – which is to do the bidding of American capitalism. All of them have played the humanitarian card to manufacture a pretext for military intervention regardless of the disgusting hypocrisy this entails. Trump’s crocodile tears over the children gassed in Syria cannot wipe away the bloodstained record of his and American military's war crimes in Mosul, for instance, where the inhabitants of that benighted city were leafletted by air and told to remain in their homes, only to find those same homes bombed to smithereens at the cost of literally hundreds of lives. If Trump is such a humanitarian why does he not oppose Saudi Arabia’s brutal bombing campaign in Yemen. If he was a humanitarian why does he forbid some of those hapless human victims of war entry to America? A humanitarianism that is selective is not humanitarianism at all but a sickening cynical ploy. Chemical weapons are horrific but what is so especially horrific about them that sets them apart from the slow and agonising death under a mountain of rubble resulting from an aerial bombardment? This particular focus on a particular kind of weapon is the liberal’s get-out card that enables them to kill other human beings in the name of humanitarianism
I see that according to the Sun Newspaper Following the bombings, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said that the strike was a "proportional response to Assad's heinous act".The spokesman said that the Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces and he revealed that America intelligence believed aircraft from the base carried out the chemical weapons attack.He added: "The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again."(https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3275613/donald-trump-us-attacks-syria-chemical-attack-sarin-latest-news/) If the airbase was used to store chemical weapons as claimed then surely bombing the airbase poses the risk of releasing these deadly gases into the environment. In which case….
http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news "Breaking: US launches airstrikes on Syria: Military fires more than 50 Tomahawks on Homs airfield just hours after Trump said 'something should happen' following gas-attack atrocity –The military fired more than 50 Tomahawk missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield –Secretary of state Rex Tillerson said earlier today that the U.S. was already exploring the enlistment of an international coalition to oust [aka an illegal coup against] Assad | 06 April 2017 | America has launched airstrikes against a Syrian air base. The US military fired more than 50 Tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs on Thursday. Officials confirm that no fixed wing aircraft were involved. The move comes just hours after President Trump denounced this week's horrific chemical weapons attack [due to the US-backed 'rebels' storing such chemicals] as an 'egregious crime', saying 'it shouldn’t have happened. And it shouldn't be allowed to happen.' Russia now has more than 30 helicopters operating in Syria, including a fleet of around eight Mi-28N Night Hunter and Ka-52 Alligator gunships stationed at its Shayrat airbase southeast of Homs city, according to satellite images posted online by IHS Jane's analysts" With so much Russian military stationed in Syria could someone please explain how a concerted attempt by this "international coalition" to oust or topple Assad could not possibly run headlong into this same military with all the repercussions that that might entail?
