For Lefties too Stubborn to Quit
As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.
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| Jim Monaghan on SF Ard Fheis… the latest… |
 | Tomboktu on No fault dismissal…Yeah, that… |
 | CL on SF Ard Fheis… the latest… |
 | makedoanmend on Sunday Independent Stupid Stat… |
 | ivorthorne on Sunday Independent Stupid Stat… |
 | Alan Rouge on Sunday Independent Stupid Stat… |
 | GM on Sunday Independent Stupid Stat… |
| As the crisis unfold… on Those Labour Posters … | |
| GM on Sunday Independent Stupid Stat… |
 | EWI on Sunday Independent Stupid Stat… |
| EWI on Republican Party Crazy Stateme… |
| EWI on Republican Party Crazy Stateme… |
| CL on SF Ard Fheis… the latest… |
| GM on No fault dismissal…Yeah, that… |
I’ll just throw this out there…are people who describe the Turkish massacre of Armenians as ‘relocation’ off their heads or a nasty little sect?
I direct you to the comments of Watty Cox on a previous ‘say what you like’ thread.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_Party_%28Turkey%29
Maybe its something to do with this shower.
I’ve mentioned Dr. Pat Walsh of the Irish Political Review
has been mentioned on dozens of right-wing Turkish
websites before. He’s claimed several times that there is no evidence of an Armenian genocide:
In 1915 the Russian and British invasions of the Ottoman Empire had a similar effect. The Russians and British raised some people’s expectations so that they were willing to exact retribution on people they had grievances against and in turn those people exacted revenge on them. No one quite knew under whose authority they would exist when the war was over and therefore all restraint was removed on behaviour. It was under these circumstances and in this context that the relocation of Armenians took place and the killing of both Christian and Moslem peoples.
Essentially the responsibility for what happened to the Armenians and the other minorities that existed relatively peacefully within the Ottoman Empire for centuries must be placed at the hands of those who attempted to destabilize and ultimately destroy this multinational Empire.
http://www.turkishweekly.net/article/399/britains-great-war-on-turkey-an-irish-perspective.html
I think the fact that Athol Books are publishing the
.
Kemal Çiçek book (with a blurb from the anti-Armenian
historian Justin McCarthy ) shows this has become
the official Athol Books position- which is
quite worrying
I think Kevin Myers is a fan of the Ottoman empire.
Trotsky was a journalist covering the 1912 war.I have a book of his journalism. I suppose this gave him the relevant experience for leading the Red Army.
Trotsky wasn’t the only leftist covering this area-I found
a speech by John Reed criticising the US for not doing
enough to help the Armenians, despite their claims
of outrage:
Many Armenians are grateful to America for its attitude to the Armenians who suffered from the brutality of the Turks during the war. But what has America done for the Armenians apart from issuing wordy declarations? Nothing. I was in Constantinople at that time, in 1915, and I know that the missionaries refused to make any serious protest against the atrocities, saying that they had a lot of property in Turkey and so did not want to bring pressure to bear
on the Turks.
http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/baku/ch04a.htm
On the subject of Athol Books, I found a long rant
by Michael Stack against Dean
Robert Mccarthy in the the
November IPR (p.25), which
says some very,very odd statements:
“Protestants-one knows them by their braying
voices (!!!) ..while the baskets are handed around after
the..Service, it is the Catholics I know who give paper
money, with coins being dropped in by well-fed,
prosperous-looking Protestants”
Totally unrelated to anything… I saw quite an amusing thread on Reddit with answers to the question…
“My dream is to move to Dublin and go to Trinity College to complete a PhD in Linguistics. I am American. What should I know, understand, or do in Ireland that is a “need to” as a foreigner?”
http://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/n4e8b/what_should_i_know_as_a_foreigner_in_your_country/
Two of my favourite replies…
“After you order a pint of Guinness, the barman will leave it on the bar when it is about 3/4 full. This is so that you can sample it and tell him whether it tastes acceptable or not – like when a waiter pours a drop of wine into the glass in a restaurant before filling it. You must take a deep drink of the Guinness at this stage and tell the barman whether or not it tastes good at this point or he will be insulted (because you would be breaking tradition by not sampling it). He will then pour the rest of the pint. This is only necessary for the first pint you order during the night (because the Guinness will be coming from the same keg from then on) so don’t be confused if other people around aren’t sampling when you go to the bar.”
————
If you want to talk to someone in private you tell them you that want to “see them in the nip”, it means you want to have a quick word with them. It also works in shops, pubs or anywhere when you’re seeking assistance or service from an employee.
Ha ha. Excellent.
We’ve occasionally discussed Ayn Rand and her influence on
the CDL; Nathan Rabin from the Onion AV Club has an insteresting
piece on the unsuccessful movie version here:
As with Christian tribulation movies, there is no place for nuance or understatement in Atlas Shrugged: Part I. We are not being seduced; we’re being sold with the hardest sell imaginable. Both films depict peculiar persecution fantasies in which the dominant ideologies of the day—Christianity and capitalism—are hounded relentlessly by the one-world-government brigade and the nefarious forces of encroaching socialism, respectively. These movies give victors an opportunity to feel like victims. What do you give a demographic that has everything? The righteous opportunity to feel like they have nothing, and like what little they have is on the verge of being taken away. </i.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/heroically-selfinterested-case-file-4-atlas-shrugg,66136/
Who is the John Galt corporation?
“The list starts with the John Galt Co., the shell company at the heart of growing investigations into the Aug. 18 fire at the Deutsche Bank tower that killed two firefighters.
Galt has ties to Safeway Environmental, a company with a lousy safety record that has been barred from city work because one of its directors is a reputed mob associate.”
http://letsrollforums.com/daily-news-probe-finds-t25460.html?s=a2c6ea5fa4de0cf28db4041917e06ec7&
The company Alvo worked for, The John Galt Corp., was also found not guilty on manslaughter charges but found guilty of second-degree reckless endangerment.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/07/06/john-galt-corp-guilty-of-endangerment-in-deutsche-bank-fire-mitchel-alvo-and-company-acquitted-of-manslaughter/
The latest issue of “Interface: a journal for and about social movements” is now out at http://interfacejournal.net on the theme of “Feminism, women’s movements and women in movement”. 27 articles, 486 pages (!) and a special section on what feminist strategy means today with comments from activist collectives and individuals.
Did anyone hear Gilmore in the Dail today talking about the cuts to DEIS and other disadvantaged schools?
SF rightly called him out on his bullshit rhetoric with regards to the losses only being related to “legacy” posts. Does he not realise that our main concern is that these children will be further disadvantaged by his actions? Who gives a crap what scheme led to the creation of these posts, but rather that some of the most vulnerable children will be hurt so that he can bail out bondholers, builders and bankers without increasing tax for the wealthy?
The DES uses the tactic all the time. They expand a scheme beyond its original purpose to meet the all too real needs of some other group of children and then roll it back to its original purpose when they need to make cuts.
Yes, appalling stuff.
Here’s a wee link for those who might have half an hour over the weekend. It’s an interview with Naomi Klein (she of Shock Doctrine fame) and how she thinks the OWS has had some success to date.
Most of the interview covers the situation in Canada, set to become one of the largest oil exporters in the world.
More to the point, she covers a variety of questions on how the left can begin to articulate a strategy to destroy neo-liberalism (her phrase).
A potent quote (for me anywise) “… capitalism is a crisis machine…” which is able to morph with crisis, has no central authority, but relies on a potent narrative whose tenets have become so common place that even those of us anti-capitalistas often accept or fail to question conditions we’d otherwise naturally be opposed to on routine basis.
http://www.energybulletin.net/media/2011-12-16/get-ready-naomi-klein-occupy-tar-sands-pipeline-and-economy
More evidence of austerity working….
http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/latestheadlinefigures/qna_q32011.pdf
GDP down 1.9% and GNP down 2.2% in Q3 2011.
No doubt Labour/FG will take this as evidence that they’re not cutting hard enough.
By my reckoning even if there is a small bounce back in Q4 GNP will still have shrunk by 3% or so, and GDP might have grown by about 1%. Although the deficit is calculated using GDP as the measure, given that our GNP/GDP disparity is huge and that GNP is what’s actually paying back the bailout, are we actually in worse shape than is commonly believed?