Young Master Smeet
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Paddy Power's odds on the next Irish election:http://www.paddypower.com/bet/politics/other-politics/irish-politics?ev_oc_grp_ids=591648That Gerry Adams is 6-1 to be Taoiseach is telling.I was flicking through the Irish Sunday Independent (it was there in the pub) and it was one long sustained attack on the Sinn Fein "fascists" (authoritarian populists, possibly).Anyway, there was also this interesting article in which former Taoiseach John Bruton questions whetehr the '16 uprising and the War of Independence were even necessary:http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/historical-decisions-should-always-be-debated-in-a-spirit-of-free-speech-30833281.html
Quote:Home Rule would have evolved peacefully into dominion status and full independence for the area that now constitutes this state, without the loss of life. This is because an Irish Home Rule electorate, with a much enlarged franchise, would have demanded, and obtained just that.Just as the Treaty was used as a peaceful stepping stone to greater independence, so also would Home Rule for 26 or 28 counties have served as a stepping stone to independence…but without all those deaths, and all that bitterness.I think that is a fair assessment.As is:
Quote:But we must remember that, if we give high-profile commemorations to centenaries of acts of violence, without balancing commemorations of non-violent parliamentary achievements, we send a mistaken and dangerous message down to future generations.[…]In commemorating the 1916 Rebellion, and the subsequent War of Independence, we should not glamorise war. We should instead focus attention on the victims of war… all the victims.http://qi.com/infocloud/votes-for-womenI assume they could be contacted and asked for their source…
Exactly, those who want to keep capitalism can deliver reforms that don't destroy capitalism, and those who propose reforms that would destroy capitalism would be instantly seen to be proposing the "impossible".
Possibly the Irish Times shirt-stirring, but:http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/miriam-lord-no-tanks-on-leinster-lawn-but-revolution-close-to-seat-of-power-1.2033502
Quote:And who organised the protest? The Right 2 Water campaign, apparently. Although that’s not how it looked. Looking across from Leinster House, above the perimeter wall, the scene looked for all the world like a republican rally with a green forest of Sinn Féin flags flying from the rows nearest the stage, augmented by Sinn Féin cumann banners, giant tricolours and Éirígí flags….If Sinn Féin lost ground to the hardline left on the water issue in October, it was clear the party was out to claim/reclaim the issue yesterday. They did it with some style. This will have put more than a few noses out of joint among the likes of Paul Murphy, Richard Boyd Barrett and Joe Higgins.Gazumped, I believe is the word. The shinners playing the outsider card again, and using their wider base to nick a populist movement. I suppose ea good example of the problem of the idea of trying to use a reform campaign to build a movement, established (or more established) groups can recuperate such movements very easily. Especially oppositions that have more room for manoeuvre than governments.
http://theconversation.com/we-must-be-sure-that-robot-ai-will-make-the-right-decisions-at-least-as-often-as-humans-do-34985The above is by one of the participants in the pilot projects for autonomous machinery.
Quote:The EPSRC-supported research thgat we have recently launched at the universities of Sheffield, Liverpool and West of England in Bristol are trying to establish answers and solutions to these questions that will make autonomous robots safer. The three-year project will examine how to formally verify and ultimately legally certify robots' decision-making processes. Laying down methods for creating this will in fact help define a legal framework (in consultation with lawyers) that will hopefully allow the UK robotics industry to flourish.It was relatively cordial, and nothing unexpected happened. There were, I think, five of them in all. They seemed to take umbrage at the suggestion that workers don't need leaders, and their speaker explained in detail how he'd led a teacher's dispute over transfer payments (indeed, one of their members, in response to my comment that it wasn't lack of confidence holding back workers, but unemployment chirped up 'What even teachers' unaware, it seems of the massive glut of graduate skicking around who'd have the teachers jobs if they pushed their wages too high). The debate therefore inevitably moved on to the minders's strike (I was aware that they define the current political epoch by the defeat of the miners strike) In his summation, their speaker made the extraordinary claim that with sufficiently determined fight back in the 70's, the British steel industry could have been saved and the glut of unemployment prevented. To the extent that a sufficient fight back to abolish capitalism outright could have happened, he's right, but only that far.
Quote:The Irish government will ask the European Court to revise its judgement in the case of a group of men who said they were tortured in Northern Ireland.Those who became known as the hooded men claimed they had been tortured after being interned in 1971.This news stiory led me to the angriest I can remember in a long while. The BBC news reader on 5Live, interviewing one of the victims started asking questions along the lines of 'Considering the situation at the time, isn't this understanable?'. I couldn't believe my ears, how far does the British state have to go before journalists will stand up and act remotely decently? The man being interviewed decribed how he blieved he would die when being pushed blindfold from a hellicopter (it was only a couple of feet off the floor, but he couldn't know that. In the torture playbook the faked execution is a standard practice).The RTE programme can be viewed here:http://www.rte.ie/news/player/prime-time/2014/0604/
And therein lies the difference. The conquest of political power does need to be organised by the working class, but it emphatically doesn't need leninist organisations running its campaigns and struggles. And socialist understanding isn't going to arise from a campaign against water meters.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30326384Interesting and useful peice here.
Quote:And that debate is given added urgency by the sheer pace of technological change. This week the UK government has announced three driverless car pilot projects, and Ben Medlock of Swiftkey sees an ethical issue with autonomous vehicles. "Traditionally we have a legal system that deals with a situation where cars have human agents," he explains. "When we have driverless cars we have autonomous agents… You can imagine a scenario when a driverless car has to decide whether to protect the life of someone inside the car or someone outside."Those kind of dilemmas are going to emerge in all sorts of areas where smart machines now get to work with little or no human intervention. Stephen Hawking's theory about artificial intelligence making us obsolete may be a distant nightmare, but nagging questions about how much freedom we should give to intelligent gadgets are with us right now.And if you can have that ability to make judgements, you can have the ability to kill as well…
Quote:What is unique about him – and he will be the first of many, I’ll wager – is that he doesn’t need the conventional media to support him. He can take on Murdoch and the Daily Mail because his voice is not limited to their platforms. He can respond to the “hypocrite” accusations within hours online and hundreds and thousands will watch it. He tweets to nearly 9m followers, broadcasts via YouTube and writes best-selling books. He is not going to go away.http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1037/ireland-we-need-a-united-marxist-party/
Quote:The most interesting difference with previous upsurges is the level of organisation. The protests against water metering began early in the year on an estate in Cork city. Residents and supporters blocked access to stopcocks and prevented the installation of meters. Gardaí were called and the situation resulted in a stand-off. Residents refused to back down and after several months Irish Water contractors were forced to give up. At the same time similar protests began on estates in Dublin and spread to Drogheda, Galway, Limerick, Donegal and many other parts. Throughout the country people are organising on their streets and estates to stop the metering. They are blocking access not only to stopcocks, but to entire roads and sometimes towns, to keep out the contractors. Social media is awash with reports of confrontations with the gardaí and contractors, and of the ‘water fairies’ who are busy sabotaging any work that has been done.So, the working class are organising in their own defence, and the Weakly Wanking publishes an article about how a party is needed to lead these movements.
And now, the streets of England:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30316458As well as testing the practicalities, the trials will road test insurance and financial implications. Of course, it will be years before we can download an app that summons a driverless car to take us wherever we want, I suspect in the meantime it will be coupled with human drivers: so black cab drivers already threatened by sat-nav are about to be made obsolete by driver plus computer cars. Mail delievry trucks, even some lorries will become automatic, so lorrie drivers will be deskilled.This is a tremendously disruptive technology.
Well, I think the party position (as such) would be that vegetarianism/veganism is not a question of individual morality, but will have to be a decision of the democratic production within socialism. I'd suspect that there will be some meat, it's a way to use scrub lad that we can't otherwise farm. And I have an ace plan for sealing off the Medditerranean and turning it into a genetically modified whale farm (we could use the fur as well).
Quote:The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides guidelines for estimating livestock emissions on a regional level. Direct emissions of methane and nitrous oxide from livestock worldwide has been recently estimated: they represent about 9% of total GHG emissions caused by human activity.Quote:Consequently, beef releases more emissions than pork and chicken per ton of meat traded. Dietary preferences are a strong driver of livestock emissions, with beef generally related to substantially more GHG emissions per ton of meat traded than pork and chicken, and much more than vegetables. Therefore, substituting pork, chicken or vegetables for beef in the diet could reduce livestock emissions.
