What you want to say – 5th July, 2017 July 5, 2017
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.
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On the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first vol of ‘Capital’, here is a great piece written by Korsch in 1932 on the enduring power of Marx’s analysis: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/karl-korsch-on-tremendous-and-enduring-impact-of-marxs-capital-1932/
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Very good interview with Scott Masterson abut the skulduggery of the gardai, the judge, Burton etc in the Jobstown Accused case.
https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/dublin-classic-hits-radio-interview-with-scott-masterson-on-jobstown-verdict-and-role-of-cops-judge-and-joan-burton/
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A new wave of raids and arrests on the West Bank target PFLP leaders and activists, including Khalida Jarrar (again): https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/07/04/west-bank-new-campaign-of-raids-arrests-by-israeli-occupation-forces/
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The German meeja are doing their job in Hamburg prior to the G20 summit.
Task number 1 – never talk about the demonstrator’s critique of the G20. Tick.
Task number 2 – portray a massive surveillance and militarised police presence as barely able to counter the expected wave of leftist violence. Tick.
Task number 3 – portray the burgers of Hamburg as terrified of their property being ransacked by the said leftist hordes. Tick.
The authorities have concentrated on ensuring that attendees of the counter summit have nowhere to sleep and have been so far frustrated by their inability to provoke violence. Bring on the agent-provacateurs.
The fact that the people of Hamburg are more pissed by the restrictions and disruptions imposed by ‘security’ than by the protesters may also not be reported.
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And who’s driving the repression of protest in Hamburg? You’ve guessed it – the SPD city government.
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For once, Irish Labour seems to be in the vanguard. A pity its the wrong vanguard.
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Inaugural Roger Casement Summer School
see Facebook page: dlr roger casement summer school
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http://events.dlrcoco.ie/event/roger-casement-summer-school
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Here’s an interesting LRB article on Brexit, none the worse for the headline ‘Our National Hodgepodge’ and noting ‘Unacknowledged both by Leavers and Remainers, EU membership has served to disguise the messy contraditions of Britain’s multinational state’.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n13/colin-kidd/our-national-hodgepodge?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3913&utm_content=ukrw_subs
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The Southern Star’s ‘Archon’ take note: there’s to be a grand old revisionist tendency hooly in your back garden in a month. Principal patrons include a local Church of Ireland bishop, and the organiser is this fellow: http://www.russellreynolds.com/consultants/simon-kingston
‘Simon is Vice-Chairman of the British Irish Association (BIA). The BIA works to promote mutual understanding between the peoples of Britain and Ireland, to identify emerging issues, to support positive change, and to look to the future’.
Attendees who are going to ‘promote mutual understanding’ include:
Roy Foster
Eoghan Harris
David Fitzpatrick
Kevin Myers
Eve Morrison
Eunan O’Halpin
Dan Mulhall
Kevin Vickers
William Sheehan
Heather Jones
and the resuscitated corpse of Peter Hart.
https://westcorkhistoryfestival.org/
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Looks excellent. Thanks for the hat tip EWI.
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This from John Crace last week regarding May Varadkar meet up:
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The programme seems remarkably vague and evasive, giving its participants leeway to educate the mere Irish on the sins of their fathers and the glories of Stringbow, Bloody Bess,Cromwell,Cornwallis, old uncle Lloyd George and all.
Still, perhaps we should pay a visit. Remember that neither the clowns not the jokers listed are any more friendly to socialism than they are, really to Ireland.
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That’s a key point you make there. These people are very hostile to the left.
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” Remember that neither the clowns not the jokers listed are any more friendly to socialism than they are, really to Ireland.”
Indeed. Myers and Foster would still be enemies of the left even if they suddenly started advocating a United Ireland tomorrow.
Thought it must be said, I’ve seen plenty of right-wing opinions in the Southern Star’s editorial pages (anti-abortion and anti-gay rights). Just because the paper supports Irish nationalism doesn’t mean it also advocates left-wing views.
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Opinions may differ on the ‘looks excellent’. Others may observe the constellation of reactionary rightwingers who dominate this.
But, glad to see that you’re keeping the side up, Joe. Will you be joining the field-digging exercises around Cork?
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80 quid to see Myers, Harris and RDE? Bargain!
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EWI, you need to radio those French commandos heading for Rockall. Tell them to change course and head for Roaring Water Bay. Land at Baltimore on the first weekend of the conference and capture all those Protestants and wannabes and transport them to Algiers to be sold into white slavery.
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EWI, you need to radio those French commandos heading for Rockall. Tell them to change course and head for Roaring Water Bay. Land at Baltimore on the first weekend of the conference and capture all those Protestants and wannabes and transport them to Algiers to be sold into white slavery.
….what?
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It’s complicated EWI. Have you no imagination at all?
You suggested putting EU marines on Rockall to stick it to the Brits there a while back. Back in the seventeenth century a Dutch privateer sailing under the flag of Algerian pirates sacked the town of Baltimore and took away over a hundred of its Protestant settler inhabitants. They were subsequently sold into slavery or had ransoms paid for their freedom. Look it up.
Sure wouldn’t you love to do the same to that revisionist Church of Ireland bishop and his guest speakers?
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…are you off your meds?
Or have been drinking 😂
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Ah EWI. You know so little ):
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Quite right, Stark, and, in the real world we live, there are a few, otherwise lefty, who support Irish partition actively. It is just that support for Irish self-determination is more compatible with (and can be a trigger for) socialist politics.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about Corbyn and Brexit.
Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, Labour wins a general election within the next year under Corbyn. The party’s current position is that they want to retain the benefits of single-market access whilst exiting the single market itself.
Labour would want to make two fundamental changes to the UK’s existing relationship with Europe. Firstly, partly to appear Northern MPs and sections of the Labour electorate, they would want to make some tweaks to the freedom of movement, which would be far less onerous than what the Conservatives are seeking. Secondly, they would want to escape from the state-aid rules currently in force across the EU so as to be able to pursue an independent industrial policy.
I really can’t see why the EU would offer much on either front, and state-aid rules (i.e. the Lexit part) would probably be an even bigger stickler for the likes of Verhofstadt than freedom of movement (which has, after all, been restricted in the past — i.e. post-2004 expansion).
A Corbyn-led government would thus find itself in an extremely difficult position. They would be confronted with massive indigenous opposition from business accompanied by capital flight and possible subversion within the military and other parts of the deep state, not to mention the media. This in itself would create huge economic and political difficulties, making it difficult to fulfill many manifesto commitments.
And, at the same time, they will be trying to negotiate Brexit, starting from a highly optimistic negotiating position, with very little time left on the Article 50 clock. If the UK ends up tumbling out of the single market on Corbyn’s watch, this will create further economic disruption at least in the short term. If, on the other hand, they blink and decide to do a U-Turn, retaining single-market membership on Norwegian terms, then the Tories and the right-wing press will accuse them of selling out. They will also find it impossible to implement a radical social-democratic program given state-aid rules.
It all sounds like a recipe for A Very British Coup. Anyone know how to square this circle?
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* “to APPEASE Northern MPs” is how it should read in the third par.
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The only quibble I have with your analysis which I think is spot on is that they actually would be much more able to do social democrat inclined things within the EU than they seem to think (and if they can’t what the hell is stopping them from putting it up to the EU? Why wouldn’t they just push the envelope given how right governments in the EU have been let get away with various things…). But otherwise I think it’s potentially a vale of tears.
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Corbyn’s radicalism is vastly exaggerated in many left quarters. I was in Britain the week of the elections. I watched with interest as he declared on one of the so-called leaders’ debates on Channel 4 that he wanted 10,000 more cops on the street and more money spent not only on the police but on the ‘security’ and ‘intelligence’ services. He wants more control over immigration. He had had “a nice chat” with the queen and the monarchy would not be abolished by a government led by him. He also supports updating Britain’s nuclear weapons capacity. Oh, he has also said he admires Israel’s ‘spirit’ and ‘energy’ and he has stood idly by while Ken LIvingstone has been suspended from the Brit Labour Party on trumped up charges of ‘anti-semitism’. I think it unlikely that the smart money in the British ruling class are quaking in their boots about what he represents. What is odd is why so many on the left think Corbyn is some sort of radical, just because he wants to spend more money on public services and wants to renationalise some stuff that private ‘enterprise’ has made a mess of. There is nothing inherently left-wing about any of that – in fact, if you balloted most british neo-nazis you’d probably find they wanted those things too. The real political test is where Corbyn stands on the *British imperialist state* and the simple fact is that he wants it to be stronger.
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Corbyn’s politics are mainstream Labour 1960s-70s style. That seems radical by today’s Blairite standards. He has, however, opened up an opportunity for a debate about fundamental aspects of Labour politics that wasn’t there before – that is the great benefit of his leadership, if he can gain control of the party bureaucracy.
I don’t think there is any danger of a military coup if he wins a general election.
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Aye, if you were watching those leaders’ debates, you would have heard the leader of Britain’s far right arguing for investment in public services and renationalization … actually no, you would have heard Paul Nuttall, who believes the NHS should be privatized, attacking Corbyn bitterly for Labour’s policy of increasing corporation tax and repeating lines straight from the pages of the Economist. As for the other questions, your reading of Corbyn’s stance is farcially tendentious. You’ve invented your own criteria for judging Corbyn (not talking about him as an individual here, naturally, but the political trend that he represents), totally excluding economic policy, as if that was a matter of no real importance; and even then you have to stack the deck by selective misreadings.
I’m glad to say that the great majority of Britain’s radical left, while remaining critical of the compromises and hesitatations that are bound to occur when a left-wing breakthrough comes through the medium of a party like Labour, is nonetheless able to recognize a breakthrough when they see it, and the progress in comparison with where things stood a couple of years ago. And so is the ‘smart money’ in the British ruling class, which has been unrelentingly hostile to Corbyn’s movement from the start, in a way that has never been seen for a Labour leader before (including Foot), even when Labour seemed to have no realistic chance of winning an election. Perhaps if you’d spent more than a week in Britain, you might have picked up on that.
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For one example of misreading, here’s the most sensible take I know of on the controversy involving Ken Livingstone, from the veteran Jewish socialist and anti-Zionist campaigner David Rosenberg. Suffice it to say that the idea of Livingstone as a heroic martyr abandoned by his former comrades is not one that holds up to careful scrutiny:
“Livingstone’s claims that he is being targeted partly because he supports Jeremy Corbyn don’t stack up well. Corbyn was under massive pressure on this issue from an unholy alliance of Blairites, the mainstream media, Jewish community “leaders” and Tories. A spokesperson for Corbyn had already welcomed Shah’s apology. Livingstone’s intervention further undermined Corbyn. And some who know him well have suggested that this was deliberate – whether for reasons of jealousy or some petty sectarianism.
“I do not believe Livingstone is antisemitic. Nor do I believe that right-wing Jews whom the media treats as spokespersons have any right to define what is offensive to all Jews. I respect the integrity of the longstanding socialist and Labour Jewish activists who gave supportive testimony at Livingstone’s hearing, several of whom I know personally. However I do believe that Livingstone deliberately invites controversy and notoriety, that his judgement on these issues is very poor, that he has set back the Palestinian cause by his utterances, and made life more difficult for the embattled left-wing Labour leadership.”
https://rebellion602.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/hero-or-villain-the-livingstone-question/
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Why does Newton Emerson get a column? His analysis usually involves a bonkers-level bias in terms of attention and interpretation. DUP lads are poor misunderstood folk and SF are pernicious, malicious bastards.
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His latest is a classic.
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EWI, Joe is somewhat conflicted and confused on these issues.He claims for instance that whenever “south of Garryowen” is sung that he mutters “come on the sargeant ” .Thing is if the sargeant who “foiled their daring plan” had been totally successful,Joe’s high ranking party comrade of the 80s and 90s Sean Garland would have merited a ballad in his own right !
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He has already, Roddy. Did you never hear tell of ‘The man they couldn’t kill’? I’m sure it’s sung regular in the bars around Bellaghy.
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Was he ever alive poiitically ?
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Was he ever alive poiitically ?
Now, there’s a thread. ‘Describe the woke-ness of the Stickies on a scale of one (Bernadette McAliskey) to ten (Eoghan Harris)’.
Joe, I’m afraid you’ve quite some homework to do to improve from your eight.
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(McAliskey was in the Stickies at one stage? How did she come to the IRSP?)
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The IRPS was originally a merger between Costello and his ex-Sticks and MacAliskey and her supporters. It split after a year, leaving the Costellistas in possession.
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http://thepensivequill.am/2016/10/a-terrible-state-of-chassis.html
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That’s a great speech by McAliskey that MC linked to
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@SoS she speaks the most sense of anybody at the moment.
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Reports are circulating the far-right Polish historian
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz helped Trump with his Polish speech:
http://www.newsweek.com/poland-trump-anti-semitism-632702
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They should have Marek down to west cork
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Thing is Bernadette left Costello supposidly over “militarism” and yet gave graveside orations in later years over people who were very much in tune with Costello’s militarism and who were even more active in the “military ” campaign than Seamus ever was.
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Her objection was not to the armed struggle per se but to the orgnisational fact that the INLA Army Council was the supreme policy authority against the politicos.
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http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/uda-boss-stitts-gang-behind-theft-of-bonfire-pallets-stored-by-belfast-city-council-35894842.html
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Interesting article that Sylvia Pankhurst wrote in May 1916; it appeared the day after the last executions, so I presume it was written part way through the executions.
https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2017/07/07/sylvia-pankhurst-on-the-1916-rising/
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Transcripts of the Jobstown trial have been posted online
https://sites.google.com/view/jobstownnotguilty//trial
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Great that have that up – am getting stuck in already . Maybe one for the CLR Book club
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Meant to write :Great to have that up
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Durham Miners are the people you’d want on your side:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/07/corbyn-critics-banned-durham-miners-gala-reception
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And it’s Tolpuddle next week. The reception Corbyn got last year was embarrassingly far up the Messiah scale:
This year should be good.
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Corbyn is a seasoned left-wing speech maker and certainly knows how to press the key buttons about class solidarity, trades union activity and social activism. Did any Irish Labour TD make speeches like that in recent decades?
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Oops corner….
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jul/07/tuition-fees-should-be-scrapped-says-architect-of-fees-andrew-adonis
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Excellent essay by Masha Gessen at “Harper’s Magazine” about the Bush-era roots of Trumpism:
To be worthy of the lofty name “resistance,” the opposition to Trump must aim to break the country’s post-9/11 trajectory. It must question the very premise of the war on terror, challenge the very fact of a perpetual state of emergency, and confront not only the Trump presidency but the legacy of the Bush and Obama Administrations. Organizations such as the A.C.L.U. have been doing this for years. The Trump presidency has not only, paradoxically, brought the group millions of dollars, it has also, potentially, rallied millions of people to the cause.
Now is the time to stop waiting for the Reichstag fire and start battling the consequences of the one we already had—Trump and the legal and public conditions that are enabling his presidency.
https://harpers.org/archive/2017/07/the-reichstag-fire-next-time/
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This is unbelievable; David Norris thinks the Original Dixieland Jazz (or Jass) Band were the real ‘inventors of the music’
They’ve been ignored and derided because good old fashioned non-inverse racists for years tried to claim, as Norris is, that African Americans couldn’t have managed it all by themselves, and weak sauce vaudaville with a few hot licks was paraded as ‘jazz’. They were praised by Satch for the same reason he always had a white manager – he knew the ways of the world.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/remembering-the-real-inventors-of-jazz-1.3144305https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/remembering-the-real-inventors-of-jazz-1.3144305
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and there is no such thing as ‘inverse racism’ ffs
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Norris has somehow become (incorrectly) identified as lefty or liberal.
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He’s occasionally been incorrectly identified as an academic.
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Do people not realise that those who take the unionist line on the national question inevitably are exposed as reactionaries on many other issues.I was once howled down on this site for criticizing “trade unionist” Chris Hudson as a”British unionist”.This week I heard him again excusing Israel on the Palastinian question.
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Was it on this thread roddy? Hardly a ‘howling down’. More like a quiet nod of agreement. https://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/what-you-want-to-say-28th-october-2015/
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No it was a previous thread WBS, where one of the put downs was the highly articulate ” would you ever stop that oul shite Roddy”! The laughable bit in his latest Radio Ulster rant was where he wouldnt allow Israel to be called “an apartheid state” He “reinforced” his arguement by being able to “prove” his opposition to “real apartheid” because and I kid you not “Thomas McGiolla once gave me an award for my contribution to the anti apartheid struggle.”
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I’ve seen others of the Peace Train lot popping up with far-right opinions over the years, too.
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https://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/what-you-want-to-say-20th-august-2014/
Well it was just one comment roddy. Hard to feel it was indicative of some broad support of Hudson.
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