DJP
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
The dangers that are posed by the Trump election (mass detainment of ‘illegals’, political retribution through abuse of the legal system, loss of access to reproductive health-care, an increase in fossil fuel extraction, and it goes on…) should be taken seriously.
This time Trump is surrounded by yes men and 1/3 (which will rise to 5 out of 9 in the coming years) of the Supreme Court has been appointed by him.
Mere ‘belief’ in democratic resilience (as the website front page currently claims) is beginning to look a bit weak.
I thought this FT podcast is worth listening to, or reading.
https://www.ft.com/content/3686960c-8704-457c-a1cf-695e5e2665d8One day perhaps. In the meantime here’s a talk from medical doctor and bestselling author on the subject, Chris Van Tulken
I want to make the case that obesity and diet related disease is therefore commerciogenic, it’s driven by profit incentives and more and more my research focuses on working with economists and with agriculturalists to understand how financial incentives drive this pandemic.
I guess that’s a start, but from over a decade ago. The recent press about ultra-processed foods isn’t just about added sugar though, but how certain industrial production methods – driven by the need to make a profit – have led to a widespread decrease in the nutritional and satiating value of food. You can see the causal link between this and the, very real, obesity crisis.
Actually, if the words “low sugar” are printed on the packaging of a food item then that is a good indicator that the food is a UPF. They’ve just swapped the sugar out for some artificial sweetener – which are now increasingly being linked to bad health outcomes.
I’m surprised there hasn’t yet been an article in the Standard about ultra-processed foods and the profit motive that creates them.
The CWO’s review of a new book about Pannekoek
The book is actually written *by* Pannekoek. The review doesn’t particularly say anything about the actual contents of the book, just what they think should have gone in the introduction.
The best book *about* Pannekoek is probably this one:
https://libcom.org/article/anton-pannekoek-and-socialism-workers-self-emancipation-1873-1960-john-gerberYes of course, no-one thinks this method is infallible.
Interestingly, as the person who made the keys says in that video, the time they didn’t work was because there was voter interference
“It was a stolen election. Based on the actual votes, Al Gore should have won going away, except for the discarding of ballots cast by Black voters who were 95% for Gore. I proved this in my report to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. One out of every nine to 10 ballots cast by a Black voter was thrown out, as opposed to one out of 50 cast by a white voter.
“Most of those were not so-called hanging chads. They were over-votes because Black people were told punch in Gore and then write in Gore, just to be sure, and those ballots were all discarded. Political scientists have since looked at the election and proved I was right. Al Gore, based on the intent of the voters, should have won by tens of thousands of votes.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/26/allan-lichtman-prediction-presidential-election
I wasn’t sure how much IP really fitted into the “communization” camp, but found this on libcom. As yet I haven’t read any of these in enough depth to have a valid opinion, but posting here for future reference and if anyone else may be interested.
The UK section has engaged in this type of loonyness too. If they are different nowadays I don’t know.
https://libcom.org/history/open-letter-international-communist-current
Well the meeting surely must have left an impression!
Slight digression, but out of the groups that split from the ICC the group Internationalist Perspective is the most interesting or least bad.
I see their most recent article may be worth talking about in the economic calculation thread. Though I’m not sure if their criticisms of “democracy” relate to formal bourgeois/liberal democracy or to the concept of “democracy” in general.
Labor vouchers and radical democracy: is that the post-capitalist road to a human community?
