Young Master Smeet
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Mild health warning, as some other journalists have noted, Fisk was allowed in (presumably by the Syrian authorities, or the Russians) before the OPCWE, possibly to muddy the waters: and his presence is tolerated when more critical commentators are chucked out.The presence of thetunnels does suggest a good reasom why chemical could have been used: and we can also what would happen to civilians had Assad's mob gone in to dig the insurgents out (remember, children starved to death in Mosul).
It's all over for now, members voted in an eballot to end the strike action, in return for a review by an expert pannel: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/9439/UCU-members-vote-in-record-numbers-to-accept-proposals-in-pensions-dispute Results in Total balloted: 53,415 Total votes cast: 33,973 Total number valid votes: 33,913 Turnout: 63.5% Yes to accept the UUK offer 21,683 (64%) No to reject the UUK offer 12,230 (36%) It seems the union command wanted this result, but, despite the activists who wanted to continue, and wanted not to have the bazllot, it's clear that the majority don't want to continue, more as any news develops.
Viaf:https://viaf.org/viaf/126123995/#Socialist_Party_of_Great_BritainLinks through to other control numbers
Credit where it is due to Craig Murray, who first spotted and publicised the inconsistencies in the public line, and the apparent cobbling together of an agreed position with porton Down.However, the balance of probability is that it was the Russian state: but it is not proven beyond a reasonable doubt.Corbyn et. al. have been right to call for clearer evidence, and to reign back a government that seems hellbent on exploiting the incident.The current line, that the chemical is of a Novichok family and could only have been produced by a state actor is itself a bit wobbly, as far as I understand, nerve toxins are organo phosphates, the species of chemicals used in pesticides: so I see no reason why someonew (a Russian oligarch?) in posession of a pesticides plant couldn't have made the chemical (unless I am missing something).Nonetheless, Russia seems to have bought plausible deniability, but it is more likely than not that the Putin regime did the hit.
And Engels, from very early on:
Elberfeld wrote:People ask how this theory is to be translated into reality, what measures we propose to prepare its introduction.[…]Both these measures require money. In order to raise it and at the same time replace all the present, unjustly distributed taxes, the present reform plan proposes a general, progressive tax on capital, at a rate increasing with the size of the capital. In this way, the burden of public administration would be shared by everyone according to his ability and would no longer fall mainly on the shoulders of those least able to bear it, as has hitherto been the case in all countries. For the principle of taxation is, after all, a purely communist one, since the right to levy taxes is derived in all countries from so-called national property. For either private property is sacrosanct, in which case there is no such thing as national property and the state has no right to levy taxes, or the state has this right, in which case private property is not sacrosanct, national property stands above private property, and the state is the true owner. This latter principle is the one generally accepted — well then, gentlemen; for the present we demand only that this principle be taken seriously, that the state proclaim itself the common owner and, as such, administer public property for the public good, and that as the first step, it introduce a system of taxation based solely on each individual’s ability to pay taxes and on the real public good.So you see, gentlemen, that it is not intended to introduce common ownership [G�tergemeinschaft] overnight and against the will of the nation, but that it is only a matter of establishing the aim and the ways and means of advancing towards it. But that the communist principle will be that of the future is attested by the course of development of all civilised nations, it is attested by the swiftly advancing dissolution of all hitherto existing social institutions; it is attested by common sense and, above all, by the human heart.And:
Elberfeld wrote:If, gentlemen, these conclusions are correct, if the social revolution and practical communism are the necessary result of our existing conditions — then we will have to concern ourselves above all with the measures by which we can avoid a violent and bloody overthrow of the social conditions. And there is only one means, namely, the peaceful introduction or at least preparation of communism. If we do not want the bloody solution of the social problem, if we do not want to permit the daily growing contradiction between the education and the condition of our proletarians to come to a head, which, according to all our experience of human nature, will mean that this contradiction will be solved by brute force, desperation and thirst for revenge, then, gentlemen, we must apply ourselves seriously and without prejudice to the social problem; then we must make it our business to contribute our share towards humanising the condition of the modern helots. And if it should perhaps appear to some of you that the raising of the hitherto abased classes will not be possible without an abasement of your own condition, then you ought to bear in mind that what is involved is to create for all people such a condition that everyone can freely develop his human nature and live in a human relationship with his neighbours, and has no need to fear any violent shattering of his condition; it must be borne in mind that what some individuals have to sacrifice is not their real human enjoyment of life, but only the semblance of this enjoyment produced by our bad conditions, something which conflicts with the reason and the heart of those who now enjoy these apparent advantages. Far from wishing to destroy real human life with all its requirements and needs, we wish on the contrary really to bring it into being. And if, even apart from this, you will only seriously consider for a moment what the consequences of our present situation are bound to be, into what labyrinths of contradictions and disorders it is leading us — then, gentlemen, you will certainly find it worth the trouble to study the social question seriously and thoroughly. And if I can induce you to do this, I shall have achieved the purpose of my talk.http://www.connexions.org/CxArchive/MIA/marx/works/1845/02/15.htm
robbo203 wrote:But again this cannot be a top down process where something called "society" (which will inevitably mean a technical elite given the impossibility of 7 billion people meanfingfully deciding that everyone should be allocated 3.2 litres of water per day – a ludicrous scenario) what you can consume. That would amount to a rationing society and with that will almost inevitably come a system of compulsory labour and hence the eventual re=emergence of class society.Quite, it's an iterative process, globally we set out the vision, regionally we set the targets and strategy, locally we engage in tactics and implementation – that's the 'firm' level of the local stores and service providers.It's not a 3.7 litre ration, but the notion that everyone should be able to access at least 3.7 litres of clean drinking water daily, and if not, we will need to do something about it (as will they).The biophysical boundaries I discussed in another thread may well be other suich useful indicators:https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/About/
What society can decide is that each person should have access tohttps://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/reference-intakes-RI-guideline-daily-amounts-GDA.aspxEnergy: 8,400 kJ/2,000kcalTotal fat: less than 70gSaturates: less than 20gCarbohydrate: at least 260gTotal sugars: 90gProtein: 50gSalt: less than 6gSomewhere between 2 and 3.5 litres of clean water per day for drinking (Somewhere around 150 litres per day need for sanitation and hygene).About 18 cubic metres of personal space (a room 3x3x2) as a bare minimum, with appropriate environmental controls and electricity, suyitable to keep it to about 22 degrees C all year round.Environmentally and culturally appropriate clothes (including socialist burkhas, ba-doom tish), which translates into yay much cotton, wool, nylon, etc.etc.This is off the back of a fag packet, and would be the global standard, that specific communes might want to alkter into greater specificity, taking into account food miles, seasonality, etc.The substantive point is any system has to be consumer demand driven.
Charlie wrote:The labourer is the owner of his labour-power until he has done bargaining for its sale with the capitalist; and he can sell no more than what he has i.e., his individual, isolated labour-power. This state of things is in no way altered by the fact that the capitalist, instead of buying the labour-power of one man, buys that of 100, and enters into separate contracts with 100 unconnected men instead of with one. He is at liberty to set the 100 men to work, without letting them co-operate. He pays them the value of 100 independent labour-powers, but he does not pay for the combined labour-power of the hundred. Being independent of each other, the labourers are isolated persons, who enter into relations with the capitalist, but not with one another. This co-operation begins only with the labour-process, but they have then ceased to belong to themselves. On entering that process, they become incorporated with capital. As co-operators, as members of a working organism, they are but special modes of existence of capital. Hence, the productive power developed by the labourer when working in co-operation, is the productive power of capital. This power is developed gratuitously, whenever the workmen are placed under given conditions, and it is capital that places them under such conditions. Because this power costs capital nothing, and because, on the other hand, the labourer himself does not develop it before his labour belongs to capital, it appears as a power with which capital is endowed by Nature – a productive power that is immanent in capital.[…]Just as the social productive power of labour that is developed by co-operation, appears to be the productive power of capital, so co-operation itself, contrasted with the process of production carried on by isolated independent labourers, or even by small employers, appears to be a specific form of the capitalist process of production. It is the first change experienced by the actual labour-process, when subjected to capital. This change takes place spontaneously. The simultaneous employment of a large number of wage-labourers, in one and the same process, which is a necessary condition of this change, also forms the starting-point of capitalist production. This point coincides with the birth of capital itself. If then, on the one hand, the capitalist mode of production presents itself to us historically, as a necessary condition to the transformation of the labour-process into a social process, so, on the other hand, this social form of the labour-process presents itself, as a method employed by capital for the more profitable exploitation of labour, by increasing that labour’s productiveness.Or something like that.
Also Engels wrote:But these, gentlemen, are far from being all the consequences of free competition. Since each man produces and consumes on his own without concerning himself much about what others are producing and consuming, a crying disproportion between production and consumption must, of necessity, quickly develop.[…] what is the real reason of this deplorable state of affairs? What gives rise to the ruin of the middle class, to the glaring contradiction between rich and poor, to stagnation in trade and the waste of capital resulting therefrom? Nothing else than the divergence of interests. All of us work each for his own advantage, unconcerned about the welfare of others and, after all, it is an obvious, self-evident truth that the interest, the well-being, the happiness of every individual is inseparably bound up with that of his fellow-men. We must all acknowledge that we cannot do without our fellow-men, that our interests, if nothing else, bind us all to one another, and yet by our actions we fly in the face of this truth: and yet we arrange our society as if our interests were not identical but completely and utterly opposed.[…] In communist society, where the interests of individuals are not opposed to one another but, on the contrary, are united, competition is eliminated. As is self-evident, there can no longer be any question of the ruin of particular classes, nor of the very existence of classes such as the rich and the poor nowadays. As soon as private gain, the aim of the individual to enrich himself on his own, disappears from the production and distribution of the goods necessary to life, trade crises will also disappear of themselves. In communist society it will be easy to be informed about both production and consumption. Since we know how much, on the average, a person needs, it is easy to calculate how much is needed by a given number of individuals, and since production is no longer in the hands of private producers but in those of the community and its administrative bodies, it is a trifling matter to regulate production according to needs.Engels wrote:We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.[…]Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.[…]In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.So the individual demands will condition what is collectively made available.
Victory for free speech! The Qatari royals have failed in preventing us from criticising the Shard over their empty multi million quid apartments. They also failed in getting over 500 quid in costs for their injunction over protests at the building.
— Class War (@Classwar2015) February 8, 2018
Alan,you're right, except that even with Vietnam and it's poor standards of living is busting those enviornmental limits, if we stopped wasteful capitalist production, we'd still be at risk of busting the enviornmental boundaries. So, looking at the UK, under wasteful cap[italism it is busting through those boundaries, and getting down to them would be a serious chore.https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/countries/#UnitedKingdom
Alan, I answered your question. We wouldn't be able to treat each plot as a discrete unit, and would have to aggregate total spud production.Labelling each bag would be not worthwhile when entering into intermediate goods, since the spuds would all mix together.Your way would mean that a worker on plot 1 is three times as productive as one on plot 3…The point about teachers was that you would have to nominally give vouchers to directly productive workers of less than the value they produce, and you would have to find some way of giving teachers labour vouchers from that pot re-directed from that deduction.Rationing would actuially be better than labour time vouchers, and make more sense (and actually be easier to administer); better yet would be productive abundance so it's too much trouble to measure…
Indeed it didn't, except that it posed physical barriers such as a 76.2 tonne material footprint per capita: based apparently on this article:https://www.nature.com/articles/461472aNow, to say that socialism will involve living less well than contemporary Vietnam will not enthrall the masses.Private Frasier is too optimistic…
