alanjjohnstone
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Adam wrote "the reaction of the Brazil government in offering reforms to try to allay the discontent suggests that this is the more likely scenario that the last capitalist government will follow in the event of powerful and growing socialist movement."Exactly the same point made by the SOYMB blog yesterday, stealing the thoughts of the late Stan Parker. http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-peoples-assembly-and-reforms.html “Only the threat of a socialist movement setting down as the only realistic and immediate aim the establishment of social property of society’s means of existence so as to ensure their management by and in the interest of the whole community, would be able to force the capitalists to concede reforms favourable to the workers for fear of losing the whole cake. Yet more reason to advance the maximum programme of socialism….. ….If the view remains that the struggle for reforms is worthwhile then imagine just how many palliatives and ameliorations will be offered and conceded by a besieged capitalist class in a desperate attempt to retain ownership rights if the working class were demanding the maximum programme of full and complete appropriation and nothing less. To stem the socialist tide the capitalist parties will sink their differences and draw closer together, much as religions do today in the face of the world avalanche of atheism. Reforms now derided as utopian will be two-a-penny – in an attempt to fob off the workers. Perhaps, for example, capitalism will provide a batch of free services, on the understanding that this is "the beginning" of a free society, but socialists will not be fooled and taken in by this blatant bribery….” I would be curious about just how many workers would accept the bigger slice of cake…was it Quentin Hogg who said reform is the antidiote to revolution…or someone else…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkeys-crowds-return-armed-only-with-flowers-8669864.htmlThis story of protesters throwing flowers at police lines reminded me of that famous Banksy mural of a youth hurling a posy rather than a molotov cocktail. Also related to my other post on Brasil police. Non-violence is not passive, nor is it a way of avoiding conflict when it takes on a well-entrenched dictatorship. Those who start such a movement face a long struggle, with setbacks and numerous casualties. After all, only one side is committed to non-violence. Nor is there any guarantee of success, even in the long run. However, the other option, as we see in Syria, entails even larger casualties and has even less prospects of success.As soon as you choose to fight with violence you're choosing to fight against opponents in possession of the best weapons. The state's police and army are better trained in using those weapons. And they control the infrastructure that allows them to deploy them. To fight dictators with violence is to cede to them the choice of battleground and tactics. Using violence against experts in it is the quickest way to have a movement crushed. That is why governments frequently infiltrate opposition groups with agents provocateurs—to sidetrack the movement into violent acts that the police and security agencies can deal with. Non-violence is an aspect of resistance that the normal forces of co-ercion are ill-prepared for. It undermines the police morale as we see in Brasil and hopefully leads to cross-overSocialists will develop the substitutes and alternatives to militarising the class struggle and then people will have a choice of psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons which can be applied and are ultimately more powerful against tyranny. Once enough people and organizations within a society (trade unions, community groups) are engaging in civil disobedience and withholding their cooperation from a regime, the capitalists' power will gradually wither from political starvation.The success or failure of any peaceful revolt largely depends on the campaign’s ability to undermine the regimes supporters and weaken the allegiance of its civil servants, police and soldiers to the regime; to persuade those neutrals sitting on the fence to join the opposition. The worse the regime suppresses protests, the more steadfast ought the opposition be in its commitment to non-violence. Socialists are not pacifists on principle but purely as a practical tactic. We witnessed how the militarisation of the Syrian protests lessened the democratic nature of the opposition by placing the power into the hands of the armed exile groups serving the foreign interests of who arms them, rather than expressing the will of the Syrian people.
I can't help but express my very righteous anger at conspiracists who have supported and permitted genocidal policies. The links provided show that most support multiple theories and giving credence to one offers succour for the others too so , yes , i am rather serious about Kennedy assassination as it is often the ABC jumping off spot for many other types plus it revises history…if only he had not been killed by the military-industrial complex (itself a phrase by Eisenhower taken out of context and made into a conspiracy), the Vietnam war wouldn't have never have happened. ….and you unfairly suffered the back-lash ….my apologies for that…Condescending…high horse….i am afraid i plead guilty …for someone who initially claimed to have read about the assassination in your post, Ed, your points about the assassination are perhaps the easiest to demonstrate as factually wrong, not one of interpretation, or, of opinion, but verifiably wrong as a fact. Was LHO capable of the shot…yes…his marine records show he was…from that distance and angle and in the accepted time permitted for 3 shots with that model of rifle …yes…it has been re-enacted , not as a lucky fluke, but like all scientific proof…confirmed by replication…. numerous times…To support a conspiracy it requires other conspiracies to explain the attempted shooting of Walker…the murder of policeman, Tippet…and countless others from the tampering with the evidence to the deaths of those linked , no matter how tenuously, to the supposed conspiracy…always strange that the authors who expose these are never ever killed themselves. As an aside, I recently learned the original source of describing the rifle as "humane" because of its supposed inaccuracy…a 1943 speech by Mussolini when to explain another military failure he placed the cause on the equipment…what do they say about a bad work-man blaming his tools. I am minded also of reading a book on debunking the Bermuda Triangle…(how that conspiracy has faded in recent years in popularity)…but the point was that most of the books on the subject took for granted the claims of the others …and did not go to sources. "Blue skies and calm seas" when checked with the actual met reports turned out to be stormy weather, coast-guard reports found those "experienced sea-fairers" to be judged as "weekend sailors" . Oh and i do support the existence of certain conspiracies…Stalin's show-trials were one, were they not ?…Yet we had very reasonable, intelligent sophisticated and self-styled objective observers, normally at the forefront of justice, totally committed to the truth of their guilt as Trotskyite saboteurs. Adam, i once worked a few years in air traffic control and would read the UFO reports…some were very convincing…reports from experienced pilots who knew all the usual causes for certain phenonomen…..others were, ummm…. less so…"after a night in the pub i was making my way home and i looked up and saw lights in the sky (hic)…"…or even from the police who made reports…."as a very non-eventful tedious boring night-shift drew to a close and as i fought to keep my eyes open …(yawn)…i saw these strange things in the sky …" Of all the reports i read, the commonality was this ….it was an UNIDENTIFIED flying OBJECT..no-body claimed to ever seen an actual space-ship…just something they personally couldn't explain. Anyways ….this thread is an example of how one can be diverted down side-tracks…it did originate on those outside the WSM that share many but not all our positions and how do we relate and co-operate with them. I may be showing an "uncomradely" tendency towards members of our own party on this thread, as Ed says, but i counsel in our relations with "fellow travellers" we should be more comradely.
"Went for a drink with Ian Bone and anarchists from Anarchist Federation…We in the SPGB and Anarchist Commnists share the same goal of a …egalitarian society" – steve Who bought the rounds? Was there a commonly owned kitty for the bevy? Some anarchists used to have a round for absent" friends but they called it something else…each put the price of a drink into a collection for Anarchist Black Cross…i wonder if they still do that."There weren't many more of them than us." – adamI have mentioned in a few recent blogs that the popular put down against ourselves on numbers simply is irrelevant when compared with the members of other parties and groups, including those of the left sponsoring this assembly…just what is the membership of ISN or Counterfire? As for the anarchist alternative leaflet/meeting…didn't i suggest a sarky leaflet like theirs and also an alternative outside forum with megaphones? Great minds think alike…Pity we never managed to get access to the Anarchist mega-phones for a few minutes…i'm sure we could of if we asked nicely…and if Steve offered to buy them all a pint later on…..But excellent that 8 members distributed hundreds of leaflets and i second that "well done"I will be interested in reading the WW and other lefty reports on the proceedings of the Assembly…if it matched expectations
i wonder if the mIses people will tell them all the greedy and selfish will be jumping on the bus for one or two stops and why the bus is always full….arrrggg…that is what happens with the free over-60s bus pass here…
The article is excellent in debunking the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory, although i was under the impression that Umbrella Man was drawing attention to the Munich appeasement of Chamberlain. Indeed it is puzzling why those who purportedly carry out a conspiracy seek the most complicated and convoluted methods. Easier to get rid of Kennedy in the next election particularly his showings in opinion polls were at a low. If his philandering and adultrous ways were exposed then indeed he would have lost some of his Catholic support base ( yes, there was a conspiracy, by the media in its refusal to report Kennedy's private life). It was a lot easier to use the ballot than the bullet to replace him. Likewise 9/11…a few simple but deadly car bombs would have served the same political purpose as hi-jacking aircraft and flying them into buildings that had been wired to explode to collapse and would have been a lot easier to organise and involve a lot less participants…which is the general rule of a successful conspiracy…the less in the know , the better chance it remains secret. Gerald Posner's "Case Closed, which is cited in the article , is excellent and an attempt to discredit it online as flawed with a 100 errors is effectively countered when each error is examined , some being typos and total irrelevancies. Those like Oliver Stone who glorified a vindictive liar such as Garrison as some sort of searcher of truth whose frame-up led to the ruin of an innocent man mainly because he was a leading New Orleans gay should hang their head in shame. Factoid upon degrees of separation …Jack Ruby was a very distant relation of the Bouviers – Jackie Kennedy…Was it all just a way of getting rid of a cheating husband and marry Onassis who she had just spent a vacation cruising with ? Did Aristotle hire the French hitmen who have been accused of carrying out the assassination? Ys Adam, it is so easy to fashion your own conspiracy , as you say. And talking about Ruby just take the time-line and it is clear that it is a crime of opportunity…he went to the Western Union to wire money to a dancer…what if there was a line he had to stand in ?…he got stopped at a red traffic-light if it had been green he would have seen a policeman at the ramp to police station who a few moments later left…if the post office investigator…(yes SteveC , the American version of the IB even interviewed LHO on the post-box) …hadn't had some questions …if LHO hadn't decided he wanted to change the sweater he had on and return to put on a new one …LHO would have been long gone before Ruby's arrival…and, of course, every Mob hitman takes his pet dog on the job.
Do you ever take time out to read what people say. Post #11“I definitely think high-lighting various conspiracy theories (from Lockerbie to HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and, of course, 9/11) to attack capitalism as a system of deceit is on the wrong track. There are plenty of lies that are indisputable out there to draw attention to this.” You now ably provided several examples that could have been used and i am sure it can easily be added to and expanded. Off the top of my head one of the biggest in the UK being the 1956 Suez Canal invasion. And Porter Down carried out numerous experiments on military who i doubt were able to give knowing consent. We had soldiers deliberately positioned within the effects of atomic bomb blasts in nuclear weapon testing in Australia. Post#22 “I no longer attempt to persuade or convince people they are wrong, since experience has taught me it is a waste of time. Urban myths such as the Magic Bullet and the JFK movie are too deeply imbedded – i now simply say you are wrong, you are mistaken based on factual errors. YOU prove to me i am wrong and that there was a conspiracy and LHO didn’t do it, or did so with the help of others.” So I await YOUR proof of a conspiracy. Ed’s attempts, i’m afraid failed to reach the standard required Post#24“Indeed, LHO motives are speculative” However, numerous facts about the case are not up for debate but are a matter of public record and a great number of claims of supposed evidence of a conspiracy can be refuted….but another lesson, i have learned…the goal-posts are always moving once something supposedly considered crucial to support a conspiracy is shown to be wrong. I have said in a previous post, conspiracy theories are not some innocent idle pub chat but has led to hundreds of thousands of actual deaths…and if some conspiracies were to be accepted, it would lead to millions more of deaths. A mind that is too open lets the brains spill out.
Two posts on my personal blog on conspiracy theory.
http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2012/01/conspiracy-or-science.html
http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2011/09/we-conspire.html
(and hopefully spaces between them)
grrrr…i purposfully double spaced the paragraphs to make it easier read and i still got no breaks …grrrrrrrr… it is a conspiracy, i tell you…a conspiracy .
“The only real points that can be debated is on the weapon, the bullet and the chosen vantage point from which he supposedly shot. The fact is weapons experts have tried to recreate the shot many times over the years with the same rifle and struggled to reload as fast as Oswald supposedly did. When they have achieved it, it is with no accuracy. That is, with even less than the rifle would usually fire with. Coupled with the fact that Oswald’s military record shows he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn door. Maybe he improved in the intervening years, it’s possible. But not with that rifle and not from that vantage point. Unless it was a freak one in a million shot.”Ed, none of the above what you say is actually true. As i said, certain claims are taken as factual when that is simply not so. Its not just a matter of debate and interpretation but verifiable facts. I could take each of your claims and provide sources that demonstate their error but it would mean de-railing the thread. But just one example of this. The next time you watch the movie JFK when it is being demonstrating the shots cannot possibly be made within the time – Costner actually succeeds in doing so !! Indeed, LHO motives are speculative, particularly since he isn’t around to explain them and even if he was would he even understand his own motivations on a psychological level, (Jack Ruby , i doubt fully understood why he shot LHO) as in innumerable other murders and crimes. But this is to be compared with the large variety of differing and contradictory motives presented by various theorists on who are possibly behind such a conspiracy presenting less convincing and even more speculative motives , some verging on the ludricous as in David Icke’s lizard-people and Garrison’s gay conspiracy but even the more sensible and seemingly plausible ones fall such as Colonel X and withdrawal from Vietnam when the contrary evidence is presented to counter it. But anyway as an anarchist friend of mine always says…Who killed Kennedy?…Who fucking cares? Me? It’s about credit where credit is due….LHO did it…JFK deserved it. Was luck involved? a chance in a million? Well…of course…LHO got a job that overlooked the presidents car route…a few months previous, Kennedy himself decided he preferred open-top limosines…and a countless other coincidences…any accident investigator will tell you , one single fault rarely causes a disaster, usually a series and combination of them is the cause and its often down to bad luck that they are missed. Luck was indeed involved …bad luck …for Kennedy… because Oswald only missed with one shot and unlike when he attempted to shoot the right-wing ex-General Walker a few months previous and missed completely (who was oblivious about the failed assassination attempt on himself.) Once again i think it is overlooked that most crimes are not one-offs but are built up to, a learning process until they graduate to the serious stuff…a psychopath starts young by torturing animals, they say …LHO fantasy world began when he considered himself a Marxist as a teenager, reinforced when he defected to Stalinist Russia and then tried again to defect to Stalinist Cuba…totally forgetting that he is brandishing copies of Trotskyist papers. So he wasn’t particularly politically astute!! I’m glad he never joined the WSPUS!!
Ed, i have done extensive reading of the Kennedy assassination, and i do mean extensive. LHO did it. (and INMHO, Kennedy deserved it) What are presented as facts to the contrary are simply not so but often repeated inaccuracies or faulty initial off the cuff statements and findings that have since been rectified and clarified such as the supposed audio proof that the follow up to Warren, the House Committee investigation into assassinations had no time to analyse or double check obliging them to accept a conspiracy scenario. As for LHO’s motives see my blog post http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2006/11/lee-harvey-oswald-why-did-he-do-it.html Other posts here http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2012/05/lho-killed-jfk.html http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2007/02/kennedy-assassination-again.html http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2006/09/dallas-1963-again.html I no longer attempt to persuade or convince people they are wrong, since experience has taught me it is a waste of time. Urban myths such as the Magic Bullet and the JFK movie are too deeply imbedded – i now simply say you are wrong, you are mistaken based on factual errors. Now, YOU prove to me i am wrong and that there was a conspiracy and LHO didn’t do it , or did so with the help of others. As an aside, i unsubscribed from MediaLens discussion list because of the prevalence of conspiracists. Not just your banks create money from nothing types but such as those who insisted HIV didn’t cause AIDS, – not some silly innocent theory but with the practical effect of hundreds of thousands of South Africans needlessly dying because they were denied AZT medicine because the ANC government accepted the view .And that vaccination is all a plot by Big Pharma to make profits (and the Welsh measles jags kills more than than measles itself). Even smallpox has been “proven” not to have been eradicated but is secretly misdiagnosed as another variant of the pox virus. Imagine the conseuquences if such conspiracy opinions was accepted with the return of polio. As a kid i remember, as other older members will also, many with the leg braces and these days i have often had to step over beggars inflicted by polio practically on a daily basis and i am to be expected to treat those who hold anti-vax views as reasonable dissenters rather than the dangerous lunatics they are. The MediaLens website had a policy of banning discussion on 9/11 but not the other common conspiracies…every terrorist atrocity was a false flag operation apparently. Gnome…just one question that i have never received a satisfactory answer…if the black ops of the US state can organise on the scale of 9/11 …why couldn’t they fake even the most simplest of WMD evidence in the Iraq war…a task infinitely easier to accomplish. Given a few million quid or so, even you and i could have arranged for a few WMD to be “conveniently” uncovered in the chaos of post-invasion Iraq much less those with the whole resources of America available to them. Common sense rather than scientific expertise in explosives chemistry and demolition techniques leads me to conclude that terrorists flew aircraft into the buildings. If, however, it transpires that certain intelligence agencies had information in advance about the attack, and let suspects slip through the security net then did their best to sweep their ineptitude under the carpet, then, of course, that would be a cover-up conspiracy, something entirely different and wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. Bureaucracies produce balls-ups and are reluctant to confess to them. Every member can hold their personal view on events but we should not make the mistake of imposing them on to the party. GM foods, nuclear power, fracking, are current examples where there is differing opinions on the scientific validity of the evidence. The party rightly declares itself agnostic. SOYMB blog has tried to walk the neutral line while at the same time exposing the risks of vested interests influence. Not always easy. As been pointed out on another thread…we as an organisation have not been required to eat humble pie in regards to the failure of some projections to materialise…(such as peak oil, was it?)
They declare it is not a membership organization. If you open the speakers link you will find that there is also Susan Ohanian, a teacher who has written on education and Carol Doherty, another teacher by profession. There is People for Democratic Revolution blog which doesn’t look too popular visited but is very new. Spritzlers personal blog is much more substantial but last entry is Dec 2011. But as you point out , their articles have been picked up by Countercurrents that is widely visited. Someone on Facebook can check to see how many friends they have. As i have found with many political groups i have come across in America it appears very localised, in this case centred in the Boston/Massachusetts region. I definitely think high-lighting various conspiracy theories (from Lockerbie to HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and, of course, 9/11) to attack capitalism as a system of deceit is on the wrong track. There are plenty of lies that are indisputable out there to draw attention to this. They will eventually end up with the reputation of the anarcho-Posadaists with beliefs in flying saucers! My initial enthusiasm about this group is now slightly more realistic. When a political group is so dependent upon one or two individuals they do tend to inherit those individuals eccentricities in their political outlook. They lack a more detatched objective approach but are influenced by personality qualities, for better or for worse.
i am not sure of the source but i remember reading that the proscription in eating cows in India was due to the importance of them as pulling the plough. If in a famine situation you end up slaughtering your water buffalo, what happens when you need to prepare the fields and sow for the the next harvest – you can't – consequently the famine continues. And so to ensure it doesn't happen it is incorporated into religious teachings.I can't recall milk products being forbidden in India. In fact, the article i read on the purpose of cow-eating ban it specifically referred to keeping them alive for this purpose. Perhaps by some Jain ascetics, perhaps, but milk was definitely used by every hindu i knew of. Of course keeping it fresh without refridgeration was the problem so it was made into yoghurt a lot of the time.There is a common in parts of Asia of lack of the lactose tolerance that makes consumption of dairy products unpopular in their diet and it took a genetic aberration to permit it in what is now Turkey. Where i stay soya milk is popular probably for this reason but more and more asians no longer have this intolerance to milk-based products – evolution in practice.As for the importance of veg to the daily diet, certain in Thailand it is fully appreciated, much more so than in the West from my experience of the "Glasgow Diet" and with a much wider variety of greens to choose from. And in South India vegetarians are numerous. "Pure Veg" restaurants are everywhere. The point on sexual discrimination to eating i think has been found to be generally true.But also obesity is now being increasingly included in the health concerns of poverty…too much of the wrong food eaten by the poor
It is also a great pity that they appear to ascribe to ( or at least publicise) many conspiracy theories, taking Marx's maxim "doubt everything" to absurd levels. It is a shame they clutter their website with such links.But even within our own party members hold private personal beliefs of a similar nature…i recall one comrade not too far away from this thread casting doubts on the scientific evidence of the dangers of passive smoking
I think i would have uncovered a box of new books in my constant rummaging at HO (i put Tristan's pet ferret to shame with my ferreting around the dusty nooks and crannies on my visits.)But if they do turn up, yes they can be placed on the ground-floor shelves with the rest of the 2nd hand books and music tapes for sale. Or better still offered to members to buy.I see no great schism in suggesting that Marx may not have been perfect and could have contributed to elements of Leninism. I think we sometimes absolve him of his organisational flaws, as well as Engels for his light-touch criticism of the 2nd International and the SPD. I do not consider it as a difference in socialist principles to hold contrary opinions to the worth of Marx and Engels contributions in the field of workers' political parties. I am however talking from the disadvantage of not knowing his reasons for linking Marx with Lenin and if he is accepting Lenin's claims of what Marx said too readily rather than Lenin misquoted and distorted Marx. Thats simple to show and remedy. Stratman can still hold his opinion that Marx had flaws if it is not prejudicial to the fundamental economic and materialist arguments of Marxism. Engels believed there was something scientific in the study of bumps on a persons head ! It would be useful to re-establish contact since as we all know , this " thin red line" is not getting any bigger very quickly. As i suggested we should send over free books, hopefully for them to review, as a gesture of our good-will – non – party published stuff , as well. We should also comradely offer a standing invitation if either Stratman or Spriztler ever visit the UK again to address party members in a Question and Answer forum. Yes, i know this is almost like providing them with a platform but it is going to get a better reception than a challenge to a formal debate especially if its about splitting theoretical hairs on what Marx said and what Lenin said and who's translations to depend upon. I found reading their material an echo of the American SLP because of the frequent mention to the United States in some of their articles so not too sure of their position as world socialists.
