Young Master Smeet
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Pour le socialisme, la république et la démocratie, pour l’Internationale ouvrière
POID wrote:C’est pourquoi, ce 11 juin, tous les candidats à l’élection présidentielle ont perdu une part importante de leur électorat. La République en marche a perdu 1,3 million des voix recueillies par Macron le 23 avril ; le Front national a perdu près de 4,5 millions de voix ; la droite, près de 3 millions ; La France insoumise a perdu plus de 4,5 millions de voix, les deux tiers des voix obtenues par Mélenchon ; le Parti socialiste, 600 000 voix. Tous ont perdu une fraction importante de leur électorat. Tous sont frappés par le rejet.Me and another comrade received ours in advance of the election, so it can't have been all. I saw evidence on twitter of others receiving.
How we compare:http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/2017-far-left-uk-general-election.htmlAlliance for Green SocialismKensington – John Lloyd 49 (0.1%, -0.2%)Leeds North East – Celia Foote 116 (0.2%, -0.7%)Leeds North West – Mike Davies 47 (0.1%, +0.1%)Communist LeagueIslington North – Andres Mendoza 7 (0.0%, +0.0%)Manchester Gorton – Peter Clifford 27 (0.1%, +0.1%)People Before Profit AllianceWest Belfast – Gerry Carroll 4,132 (10.2%, -9.0%)Socialist Labour PartyBirmingham Perry Barr – Shangara Bhatoe 592 (1.3%, +0.5%)Bootle – Kim Bryan 424 (0.8%, +0.8%)North Cornwall – Robert Hawkins 138 (0.3%, +0.3%)Socialist Party of Great BritainBattersea – Daniel Lambert 32 (0.1%, +0.1%)Islington North – Bill Martin 21 (0.0%, -0.2%)Swansea West – Brian Johnson 92 (0.2%, -0.1%)Workers PartyBelfast North – Gemma Weir 360 (0.7%, -1.6%)Belfast West – Conor Campbell 348 (0.9%, -0.8%)Workers Revolutionary PartyCamberwell and Peckham – Aminata Sellu 131 (0.2%, +0.0%)Ealing Southall – Arj Thiara 362 (0.8%, +0.8%)Hackney South and Shoreditch – Jonty Leff 86 (0.2%, +0.1%)Hornsey and Wood Green – Anna Athow 55 (0.1%, +0.0%)Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough – Mike Driver 137 (0.3%, +0.3%)Just to echo Adam's suggestion, we should target safe Labour seats, but, I'd add, we should target left-wing Labour MPs in safe seats.I'd defend the Islington north campaign, it did raise our profile, and I think the area is worth persevering with (it'll be interestig to se our council election result).
Did anyone see this in he News?http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-40200008?ocid=socialflow_twitter
Quote:The UN has received reports that 231 Iraqi civilians have been killed by so-called Islamic State while attempting to flee Mosul over the past two weeks.At least 204 are believed to have been shot dead by militants during clashes with Iraqi security forces in the Shifa district last Thursday and Saturday.The UN said it had noted a "significant escalation" in such killings.There are also reports of between 50 and 80 civilians being killed in an air strike on the Zanjili area on 31 May.Now, this is undoubtedly a brutal massacre, but why did it not get a higher billing in the broadcast news (this report is the BBC version of a footnote to cover their backs). Iraq body count has a report of 19 burnt alive by Isis on the 10th? This is the opfficial enemy in its death throes: the fall of Aleppo was covered minutely, so why not this? It is a terrible battle against monsters who are maximising the civilian casualties.Simply trying to minimise the scale of he suffering lest it lead to domestic blowback? Surely, psy-ops can spin this: the fact s the UK is involved in a hot war, hundreds if not thousands of troops are comitted to this battle, so why the silence?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40242531Establishment uniting around Macron?Looks like En Marche has drawn in time served SP candidates and assorted hangers on from the wreckage.
The Sinn Fein angle is significant, their success has made a Tory majority easier, but, they are now two seats short of being the largest party in the 6 counties: Belfast North is in sight, and the fall of Belfast South to the DUP may mean SDLP voters will back the Shinners next time. (Although there is an Independent Unionist out there).DUP support for the Tories may well come back to hurt them in the way that happened to the Lib-Dems, and re-unification is the easy business solution to the Hard border problem.
In his current book, Yanis Varoufakis outlines some very intersting goings on with Greek finances.
Varoufakis wrote:Here's how our two bankers – lets call them Aris and Zorba – did it.Aris' family founded offshore companies, to which Zorba agreed secretly to lend without guarantees the millions that Aris' bank needed. Why such generosity towards a competitor? Because Aris and Zorba were sitting under the same proverbial oak. Desperate to raise money for his own bank, Zorba agreed the loan on condition that Aris' bank lent a similar amount to Zorba's family's offshore outfits. Aris' and Zorba's families then used money from their offshore accounts to buy new shares in their own banks, thus fulfilling the regulator's requirements that new capital be raised and thereby qualifying for the real money that the poor taxpayer was borrowing from the troika….they ended up owing nothing to anyone. Both sets of loans … were written off soon after being granted and transferred to the banks's long list of non-performing loans.He adds in a footnote:
Varoufakis wrote:An even more outrageous trick was employed: in addition to millions from Zorba's bank, the Aris family's offshore companies also borrowed millions from Aris' own bank. These loans were also written off as unserviceable or non-performing, or were used to buy office space that was resold to other parties only to be leased back by the bank or sold to it at inflated prices. The newly conjured up funds, or 'profits' would be used to buy new shares in the bank, keeping up the pretence that investors were injecting private capital into them.That's the banks, creating money through real fraud. Next, let's look at what the European Central Bank got up to.
Varoufakis wrote:The ECB granted Greece's bankrupt banks the right to issue new IOUs with a face value of €5.2 billion – worthless peices of paper, given the banks' coffers were empty.As no sane person would pay money to buy these IOUs, the bankers took them to the finance minister..who stamped on them the bankrupt state's copper cbottomed guarantee – a really useless gesture, since no bankrupt entity (the state) van meaningfully guarantee the IOUS of another bankrupt entity (the banks).The bankers took the worthless IOUS to the central bank of Greece, which is, of course, a branch of the ECB, posting them as collateral for new loans.The Eurogroup gave the green light to the ECB to allow its Greek branch to accept these IOUs as collateral and, in exchange, give the banks real cash equivalant to 70% of the IOUs face value (a little more than €3.5 billion).Meanwhile, the ECB and Eurogroups gave [Greece's] finance ministry the green light to issue new treasury bills with a face value of €3.5 billion – IOUs issued by the state, which, of course, no investor in their right mind would touch given the emptiness of the state's coffers.The bankers then spent the €3.5 billion they had received from the central bank of Greece – in fact from the ECB itself – when they pawned their worthless IOUs in order to buy the state's worthless IOUs.Lastly, the Greek government took this €3.5 billion and used it to pay off ….the ECB!You neeed to read that a few times, it's a method to allow Greece to not default on a debt it owed to the ECB.
I remember some on the Labour right arguing thus after the last election, labour got 9 million votes, the Tories 11 million, to overhaul that, Labour needed to tack right, because Tories plus UKIP formed a natural right majority. They noted that Corbyn's alternative was to find three million voters from somewhere. He did that, the Tories found an extra two million. I suspect many came from the same source: they hoovered up the UKIP vote between them, but the Tories squeezed the Liberals harder.The interesting things is the six counties now only have two parties.I think the outcome is May stays, the question is, will Labour use their veto to prevent another election, and watch the Tories tear themselves apart.
LBird wrote:I thought that you'd avoid political discussion, and return to insults, YMS.You're politically predictable, just like all individualists.It's not an insult, it's a point, that you behave like Humpty Dumpty, words mean whatever you want them to mean. So, if you've finished avoiding the question: how is "community" individualist? Surely, you are a commun(ityi)st?
LBird wrote:If they are now class conscious members of the revolutionary proletariat, then yes, they will. If not, no, they won't.But they won't be members of the proletariat, will they, because they won't be free labourers selling their ability to work, and will instead by co-owners of the means of production.
LBird wrote:My comments above about 'people' also apply to 'community', 'community as a whole', and 'humanising', for the same political reasons – you're trying to hide the 'social' nature of 'production', because you're an individualist.How is community individualist, Humpty?
Won't the ex capitalists be building socialism?My preferred term is 'the community' rather han people, the community as a whole,will that suffice? I prefer terms that humanise, rather than metonyms.
Vin wrote:This is a lot worse. I don't have to spell out where this leaves our candidate standing against Corbyn in Islington. Many 'left wing' groups (all?) have thrown in their lot with Corbyn – 'without illusions' as Robbo says elswhere. I would call that bad judgement but it is honest bad judgement. These members have not only brought the party into disrepute but they reveal us as dishonest and hypocritical. They have declared their preference for reformism. The Left will have a great time with that one and we will never recover from it.This is more than a little bit hysterical: we have party democracy so we can disown the actions of a few individuals, the party's position remains unchanged. Members ar entitled to express opinions (as Gnome pointed out, correctly, even saying you will vote Labour is not quite actionable, unless you actually do and are daft enough to openly admit it). I've heard tell of members in the past who used to vote communist on the sly.
Just to be clear then, if there are no classes in socialism, what is the point of using any designation like 'social producers' or 'workers'? People suffices, as you can see, the persistence in using these terms has lead to confusion, since, naturally, interlocutors inferred that there was some significance in this designation and hat there would be non-workers.So, for further clarification, "social-producers" and "people" are exact synonyms?
Vin,this is strictly a personal opinion: Paula's comment, if true, is actionable: John's is more debatable, he's simlpy said he can envisage a circumstance in which he could vote Labour, he hasn't committed to doing so. A case could be made either way on that one, in my opinion.(BTW, I'm not on the party Facebook group hence why I've not commented previously).
Vin wrote:Why is it that party members are free to support Labour but a member will be expelled for opposing Labour?BTW, I notice that the councillor has failed to declare his membership of the Socialist Party: https://democracy.durham.gov.uk/ecSDDisplay.aspx?NAME=SD2385&ID=2385&RPID=6040762.
