Young Master Smeet
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Guardian get a journalist on the ground:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/06/the-dead-were-wherever-you-looked-inside-syrian-town-after-chemical-attackLooks very much like it was Assad.Trump is playing a dangerous game: has not stated war aims, and does appear to have antagonised the Russians:https://www.rt.com/news/383815-putin-us-syria-aggression/
Quote:President Putin “regards the strikes as aggression against a sovereign nation,” his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, noting that the president believes the strikes were carried out “in violation of international law, and also under an invented pretext.”So much for the pissoir theory of history.MSF are saying chlorine and a nerve agent may have been used.Juan Cole suggesting this is a one off attack:https://www.juancole.com/2017/04/trump-intervenes-mideast.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Juan Cole finds it plausible:https://www.juancole.com/2017/04/washingtons-hypocrisy-chemical.html
Quote:Iraq used chemical weapons for the same reason that the Syrian army does. They are deployed to level the playing field in the face of superior manpower on the other side. Saddam Hussein had a country of 16 million and invaded a country of some 40 million. US military doctrine of the time was you should only invade at a ratio of 3 to 1. So Saddam would have needed a country of 120 million to invade Iran. Needless to say, he lost the war very badly after an initial lightning invasion, since Iran could always over time raise a much bigger army than Saddam could. Hence the use of mustard gas and sarin gas on Iranian troops at the front.Some Syrian military units have a chem team in case they face being overwhelmed by a more numerous enemy. The Syrian army was 300,000 before the war. It is at most 50,000 now. That number is not sufficient to control the whole country, though with the help of the Lebanese Hizbullah and Iraqi militias and some Afghans dragooned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, plus vigorous Russian air support, they have been able to fight off the rebels and to take most urban areas. The small number of troops means that when they fight in a rebel-held territory like Idlib Province, they are tempted to deploy chemical weapons to offset their small numbers.http://www.npr.org/2013/03/28/175609678/the-violence-within-usCaught this on the radio the other day: interesting stuff on murderous psychopaths and their environmental causes…
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/hist-mat/pov-phil/ch02.htmAs ever, Charlie Marx to the rescue…
Quote:Next comes the humanitarian school, which sympathizes with the bad side of present-day production relations. It seeks, by way of easing its conscience, to palliate even if slightly the real contrasts; it sincerely deplores the distress of the proletariat, the unbridled competition of the bourgeois among themselves; it counsels the workers to be sober, to work hard and to have few children; it advises the bourgeois to put a reasoned ardor into production. The whole theory of this school rests on interminable distinctions between theory and practice, between principles and results, between ideas and application, between form and content, between essence and reality, between right and fact, between the good side and the bad side.and, more importantly:
Quote:Socialists and Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class. So long as the proletariat is not yet sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class, and consequently so long as the struggle itself of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie has not yet assumed a political character, and the productive forces are not yet sufficiently developed in the bosom of the bourgeoisie itself to enable us to catch a glimpse of the material conditions necessary for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the formation of a new society, these theoreticians are merely utopians who, to meet the wants of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and go in search of a regenerating science. But in the measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines, they no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece. So long as they look for science and merely make systems, so long as they are at the beginning of the struggle, they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society. From this moment, science, which is a product of the historical movement, has associated itself consciously with it, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.Well, the Co-operative bank seems to be about to prove how things really work: they cannot even sell the damn thing, and to Co-op has just written off the value of its holdings.
JUst to cover something I missed in my last post:
Lbird wrote:For my version of Democratic Communism, only the 'generalists' can decide whether the 'specialists' know what they are talking about – the 'specialists' are not the source of 'truth', they are only the source of 'options' for our votes. We might accept one option, or two or more, or reject all those currently supplied. That is, 'truth' is not necessarily singular, and certainly isn't 'Eternal Truth', a myth of bourgeois science. 'truth' is a social product, and we can change it, and within a democratic society, that changing of truth can only be a democratic decision. There isn't an elite who 'Know Reality'.1: We do not socially produce The Trth. We produce thought objects, one species of which is truth claims.2: We cannot directly vote on truth claims, we can only vote, if you will, on truth claims about truth claims. That is, we can collectively produce a truth claim about a truth claim. If I wrote 'I am masturbating while writinmg this' that would be a truth claim. Since there are no witnesses to prove that claim one way or another, and the event is unrepeatable, you would only be able to to vote upon an assesment of my truthworthiness and the likelihood of the claim (and how much it gells with other accepted truth claims). That is, you could validate, but not verify. You could then agree a general position on the truth claim (whether you believe or disbelieve, but I am the onjly one who will ever know what really happened here).3: This leads us to a further problem, the generalists when voting upon the truth claims of specialists would likewise have no basis to assess truth, what are their criteria? As the oft heard refrain goes in climate science, 99% of scientists believe in Anthopogenic Global Warming, but 99% of scientists could be wrong, and we simply could not vote based on the weight of evidence, we'd need criteria with which to validate truth claims. Uncontroversial claims, uncontested claims, could stand, but how do we decide between specialists, when we rely on specialists for our information?Essentially, what you are describing is what we have now, there's nothing in the above that is not compatible with bourgeois society: specialists adviose, and generalists decide.Truth is not eternal, because everything, including the life of humanity, is finite: but The moon is there, untiol the day it is not, and the moon will always have been there, until there are humans to forget it was.I'd suggest this, abandonm discussion of the truth, and speak of talking truly, and truly made statements.
Quote:The denial of democracy within epistemology is itself a political act, which is intended to reserve the decision on whether a 'theory' has 'failed in practice' to an elite of 'scientists' who have a 'special consciousness' that the masses cannot develop, and that these 'scientists' have a politically-neutral method, and they are 'disinterested' passive observers (ie. that they don't create the 'Reality' that they are 'observing'), and so this elite are the ones to determine the 'practical failure of a theory'.You have never substantiated this claim that the a special consciousness is required to access objective reality.Also:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/materialism-perfect-ideology-elitists?page=1#comment-39683You have agreed, expressley that materialism is not inherently elitist. We can all know reality.
Just to prove the deabte isn't static, today is the day we celebrate Lbird agreeing that materialism isn't inherently elitist:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/materialism-perfect-ideology-elitists?page=1#comment-39683
EU negotiating positions:
Quote:18. The British government has indicated that it will not seek to remain in the single market, but would like to pursue an ambitious free trade agreement with the European Union. Based on the Union's interests, the European Council stands ready to initiate work towards such an agreement, to be finalised and concluded once the United Kingdom is no longer a Member State.19. Any free trade agreement should be balanced, ambitious and wide-ranging. It cannot, however, amount to participation in the Single Market or parts thereof, as this would undermine its integrity and proper functioning. It must ensure a level playing field in terms of competition and state aid, and must encompass safeguards against unfair competitive advantages through, inter alia, fiscal, social and environmental dumping.[…]21. The future partnership must include appropriate enforcement and dispute settlement mechanisms that do not affect the Union's autonomy, in particular its decision-making procedures.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/31_03_17_eu_draft_guidelines.pdf
I'm not sure I understand the question.How does that question relate to or prove that an objective world requires special consciousness?At a guess I'd say an objective world is open to democracy, as people will directly access and understand it themselves, without needing an elite, as I've suggested before, so your question seems to support my cas more than thine.
LBird wrote:In the former ideology, that in bold, 'being' is not 'conscious' (otherwise, it could not 'precede knowing').That which is not conscious cannot know, conscious being precedes knowing, so your above claim is false.Thus dies your straw man.But, to return to the point of the thread: your major premise.You have yet to prove that the existence of an objective world means that it is only accesible to special consciousness, and thus necessitates elitism.
LBird wrote:So, if 'everybody can know', why can't they vote to change what they know?If it's because there is a difference between 'the world' and what 'they know of the world', who 'knows the world' that they collectively don't?I'm not sure the question is sensible: if everybody can know the world, why won't Louise sleep with me? They aren't two propositions that are causally linked.If I understand correctly what you're saying, because someone can be wrong, i.e. because truth exists, you're saying that only a minority can tell people they are wrong. But that doesn't follow. No-one might the world' that they collectively don't.
LBird wrote:Marx pointed this out in his Theses on Feuerbach. For 'materialism', there has to be an elite who 'know the world', who can tell the majority that they are wrong in their own determination of what 'everybody can know'.You still haven't proven this, it could just as easily be a majority that points out the minority is wrong. Claiming Max's authority (for what I consider a misreading of the theses) doe not constitute proof.I'd suggest your aunt sally answer, "because there is a difference between 'the world' and what 'they know of the world', is not the answer, rather, I'd suggest, it is because you cannot change knowing without changing being, being in the world preceeds knowing (social being determines social consciousness, as Engels said). We and the world can change, but that does not mean that the being wasn't there: history has happened. Put more succinctly, because there is no magic.
