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What you want to say – 7 November 2018 November 7, 2018

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

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1. Tomboktu - November 7, 2018

International election observers monitored an election count in Ireland only once, in 2007.

My translation of the part of their report on the count:
“We don’t know what you did there, but the lack of complaints about the counts from winners & losers, from big & small parties, and from officials and the press probably means it was OK. Carry on.”

(report available here: https://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/ireland/26627)

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Joe - November 7, 2018

🙂

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Wolfie - November 9, 2018

it’s easy to know how any one person voted.
just jot down the next number of the vote book.
also, does anyone wonder a bit, that if the vote is not carried on, 1,2,3,4,5, etc. and there is only 1,2, – could then 3 be added.
my suspicious mind.

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Miguel62 - November 9, 2018

Or the original 1 turned into a 4 with the addition of two strokes, and then the desired candidates get 1, 2, and 3.

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Tomboktu - November 10, 2018

If you change a 1 to a 4, then there is no 1, and the vote is invalid

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Miguel62 - November 10, 2018

I meant you’d put in the preferred 1 to 3 after changing the original 1 to a 4! Could be done when “assisting” a less abled person to vote.

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Tomboktu - November 10, 2018

“it’s easy to know how any one person voted.
just jot down the next number of the vote book.”

Actually, that is not easy. The presiding officer is directed to prevent personation agents from seeing the serial numbers on the back of the ballot papers at the polling station. Then at the count the papers are opened face up and observers from the candidates (the tallymen in popular parlance) are prohibited from seeing the serial numbers on the reverse.

“does anyone wonder a bit, that if the vote is not carried on, 1,2,3,4,5, etc. and there is only 1,2, – could then 3 be added.

By whom? When? Where?
Ballot boxes are sealed in front of party/candidate observers in the polling station, and the seals are broken the following morning in front of party/candidate observers. I would think the fact that such a swathe of political activists, from the PDs (back in the day) to the SWP, accept that sealed ballot boxes were secure overnight is evidence that interference like this does not occur.

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2. Paddy Healy - November 7, 2018

Most Fundamental Development Affecting Ireland’s Future !!!!

Cliff Taylor: Ireland could be in a tight corner on EU digital tax plan https://wp.me/pKzXa-xK
“The writing is on the wall. Sooner or later, the international tax rules are going to change, with significant implications for us in Ireland. The only question is how and when.”
Cliff Taylor, Irish Times, Saturday, November 3, 2018,

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3. Alibaba - November 7, 2018

The movement for a right to housing is gaining ground. It consists of workers, unemployed, students, renters, migrants, Travellers, community activists, political parties, NGOs and trade unions.

The National Homeless and Housing Coalition is planning this:

National Demonstration

Garden of Remembrance
Parnell Square
Dublin 1

Saturday 1st December at 2.00 pm

This date is the fourth anniversary of when the homeless man, Jonathan Corrie, was found dead just metres away from the Dáil.

Mass mobilisation of the broadest-based movement is vital to keep the momentum going.

The right-wing has spent decades developing the housing crisis. The critical way to spike this campaign is to bring out people in industrial action. This needs saying and fighting for by the left.

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4. GW - November 7, 2018

100 years ago tonight the Bavarian Soviet/Council Republic of Bavaria was declared by Kurt Eisner of the Independent SPD (USPD).

The German Kaiser abdicated a couple of days later.

I might have linked to the Wikipedia article but the English language version is a travesty of propaganda. The German versions are somewhat better.

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5. peaceandneutrality - November 7, 2018

Major International Conference see:
http://www.NoUSNATOBases.org

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6. GW - November 7, 2018

Survation has the best constructed poll yet on current attitudes to Brexit here.

Headline figures:

Leave: 46% (-6)

Remain: 54% (+6)

Figure in brackets is the change since the referendum.

Wales is now pro-Remain.

Some interesting results on the North:

Q. From what you have seen and heard so far do you think that Brexit makes it more likely or less likely that you would vote to support a united Ireland?

Base: Respondents in Northern Ireland only

More likely: 26%

Neither more nor less likely: 33%

Less likely: 34%

Don’t know: 8%

Q. If Brexit leads to Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom and joining the Republic of Ireland, would you be:

Base: Random 50% of respondents

Very concerned: 20%

Quite concerned: 24%

Not very concerned: 24%

Not at all concerned: 18%

Don’t know: 13%

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Joe - November 7, 2018

Wales is now pro-Remain, says an opinion poll.

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EWI - November 8, 2018

Wales is now pro-Remain, says an opinion poll.

The Welsh have always been pro-EU. The 20% of the population who are English-born, however…

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CL - November 8, 2018

“Pundits analyzing Britain’s Leave vote obsess over everything but what mattered: decades of economic decay in declining regions….
in 2015, 29.3 percent more 25-34-year-olds died in the north of England than the south. For those aged 35-44, the number of deaths in the north was 50 percent higher than the south….
Similar to “deaths of despair” in the United States, Shit Life Syndrome leads to stark upticks in avoidable deaths due to suicide, accidents, and overdoses: several former classmates who remained in the depressed Welsh city I grew up in have taken their own lives, overdosed, or died as a result of accidents caused by alcohol or drugs. Their lives prior to death were predictably unhappy, but the opportunity to turn things around simply didn’t exist. To move away, you need money and therefore a job”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/11/brexit-regional-inequality-leave-vote

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Joe - November 8, 2018

“Q. From what you have seen and heard so far do you think that Brexit makes it more likely or less likely that you would vote to support a united Ireland?

Base: Respondents in Northern Ireland only

More likely: 26%

Neither more nor less likely: 33%

Less likely: 34%

Don’t know: 8%”

This is strange is it not? Goes against the line that the Brexit thing has swung more people up North towards a favourable attitude to a UI.
Or am I reading it wrong?

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EWI - November 8, 2018

26 plus 33 is 59…

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Joe - November 12, 2018

And 34 plus 33 is 67…

The 33% is irrelevant in that these are people who feel the same now about a UI as they did before the Brexit thing came into play.

What’s relevant is that, with Brexit in play, 34% are less likely to vote to support a UI and 26% are more likely.
So … that clearly goes against the generally accepted view that Brexit has tilted people up North slightly more towards supporting a UI.

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EWI - November 12, 2018

Why on Earth would ‘Brexit’ make it less likely for rational people to support a UI? I suspect what we’re looking at is (already firmly set) Unionist responses only.

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Joe - November 12, 2018

It’s a bit odd isn’t it?

But sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.
Earlier on in the thread I initimated scepticism about conclusions from any poll with the comment: “Wales is now pro-Remain, says an opinion poll.” So I guess the appropriate response on the UI and Brexit poll result is: From what they have seen and heard so far more people in NI are less likely than more likely to vote to support a united Ireland, says an opinion poll.

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WorldbyStorm - November 12, 2018

Is that reading if right though Joe? It’s not broken down by denomination/political position. Of course some unionists will be swayed by the incessant DUP line so they will buy into a harder line at this point. As you have said it is difficult to shift position and for some unionists this is a doubling down process. But some – and crucially this has been noted from the off, a smaller cohort at this point, will be increasingly favorable to a UI and that too is arguably reflected since many/most CNR will from the off be equally likely to vote pro UI one way or another hence the 33% figure. Look at the concern result -20% are very concerned at a UI but 24% are ‘quite concerned’ quite concerned one can work with.

Some interesting stuff re British attitudes re closeness to EU too.

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WorldbyStorm - November 12, 2018

Scrub my point re concern – I think that’s all UK respondents

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Joe - November 12, 2018

I stand by my read of it. It goes against the accepted wisdom on CLR and in commentary, certainly in the south, if not everywhere. It goes against what my gut would tell me.
But the figures, from the answers to this question in this poll are clear: A higher percentage of the people polled are less likely to vote to support a UI than more likely, from what they have heard so far re Brexit.

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Liberius - November 12, 2018

Can I suggest that since this question is about perceived likeliness it is inherently subjective depending on several factors, including how much the respondents pay attention to politics, what their leanings on the nationalist/unionist axis are, and, how optimistic or pessimistic they are. A optimistic nationalist would answer more likely to that question, but so would a pessimistic unionist and vice-versa. The fence sitters could well lean in any direction either, as such I wouldn’t give any value to the question’s outcomes.

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Liberius - November 12, 2018

Sorry scratch that, I didn’t read that question correctly.

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Joe - November 12, 2018

The question certainly takes a few reads. One would assume that the poll took a representative sample of NI people of voting age – proportionately representative of the two ‘communities’, proportionately representative on gender and class and age basis etc.
Assuming all that, the result goes against the received wisdom on this issue.

But I’d welcome other CLRers reading the question and the answers and giving their tuppence worth on what it all might mean, or where the poll went wrong or whatever. Or indeed on why Joe is being thick in reading the answer the way he has.

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CL - November 12, 2018

“THERE ARE ALMOST the same number of people who want a united Ireland as who want to remain as part of the United Kingdom, according to a poll of Northern Irish citizens.”
https://www.thejournal.ie/united-ireland-poll-3-4059433-Jun2018/

“Polling of Northern Ireland residents by LucidTalk in December found that – in the event of a so-called hard Brexit with no deal on the border, the Good Friday agreement or citizens’ rights – support for remaining in the EU through reunification with the Republic was marginally greater (48%) than support for staying in the UK (45%)….
Driving support for reunification is thought to be the fear of a hard border between the north and south”
https://www.theweek.co.uk/northern-ireland/89293/will-ireland-unite-after-brexit.

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Joe - November 12, 2018

Yep. And the Survation poll says different. But polls be polls….

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WorldbyStorm - November 12, 2018

Perhaps I’m not explaining this very well, but consider it this way. There’s tranches of PUL and CNR and some people in the middle who are less exercised or willing to be convinced of rational arguments in either direction (of which both exist). I don’t think there’s anything terribly odd after the main formation in unionism, the DUP, making huge efforts to shift the terrain of the debate in a certain direction that of the cohort who overall are unionist many/perhaps most are going to say they are less likely to vote to support a UI in light of Brexit given the DUP has pinned its colours to the mast of a hard Brexit.

However, there’s also a cohort within PUL who clearly according to other polls are now more willing to vote for a UI. These don’t contradict the findings of the Survation poll or the other polls. Nor does it go against what is suggested here and elsewhere.

If we take unionism as a bloc then shifts within the 100% of unionism still allow for direction in contradictory ways – and more importantly those numbers from PUL going in a UI direction may (big may but may) ultimately move towards a UI or be willing to tolerate it at the end of the day while another group remains against it (so opinion can be both hardening amongst some in the PUL bloc and simultaneously softening amongst a smaller cohort in the PUL bloc. So far we’ve heard more about the latter but the former, again after the hate bombing by the DUP, doesn’t surprise me). And ultimately it will be down to 50% plus x that will allow for a UI. That could happen, though I hope it won’t, in a context where unionism en masse was 80% against and 20% or even less in favour given the near parity of the PUL/CNR blocs (I hope it won’t because it wouldn’t be a very solid basis for progress even though it would be entirely democratic and within the letter and spirit of the post-GFA/BA dispensation). That’s why there’s no contradiction and this poll merely suggests that the DUP tactic is working on the PUL inclined people.

Though as Liberius notes all of this is entirely academic given there’s no actual new dispensation on the table.

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CL - November 13, 2018

“A major new cross border poll by RTE and the BBC, revealed last night, shows that 62% of those surveyed in Northern Ireland believed Brexit made a united Ireland a more likely possibility.”
https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/62-in-north-believe-brexit-makes-united-ireland-a-more-likely-prospect-884923.html

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Joe - November 13, 2018

“That’s why there’s no contradiction and this poll merely suggests that the DUP tactic is working on the PUL inclined people.” That’s a view, a theory. Loads of other theories could be posited.
But anyway, polls be polls, and poll questions be fierce complicated sometimes. As the RTE and BBC poll shows, polls be polls.

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WorldbyStorm - November 13, 2018

If you can offer an alternative explanation that undermines the critique i offer of the poll I’d be happy to hear it.

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Joe - November 13, 2018

Sorry I didn’t intend to diss your critique. It is probably the most plausible explanation.
But we don’t have the data to back up any of the possible explanations. Your critique avers that this hard-to-explain stat is most likely explained by people from the PUL community becoming either more or less likely to, as the question puts it, ‘vote to support a United Ireland’. Jesus, what a sentence.
Another theory, again with no data to back it up, is that this hard-to-explain stat is a result of people from either or both CNL and PUL communities clinging to the status quo in a time of threatened change. Which, I think, people often do – they fear the uncertainty of a change and so cleave to the divil they know. Just a theory, no data to back it up.

Every other poll that I’ve heard about supports the idea that people might be slightly more likely to support or consider a UI. So this one appears to be the exception that proves the rule.

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WorldbyStorm - November 13, 2018

I don’t think you’re dissing my critique ! 🙂 but a thought strikes – those figures aren’t asking how many support or don’t support a UI – indeed they don’t ask the people answering to give their view on whether a UI is a good or a bad thing at all – we simply can’t extrapolate from them anything other than 26 % are presumably voting pro UI and 34 % are voting anti UI – while the 33% could be pro or anti and again we cannot determine which – the question is a ) how many of that 26% are PUL? We don’t know – some have to be just as some of the 34% have to be. So this stat doesn’t tell us anything about attitude shifts within either CNR or PUL. All it tells us us that there are those on both sides of the constitutional issue in both communities who have shifted attitudes due to Brexit

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Joe - November 13, 2018

We could talk about that question and answer forever. It’s a brutal question to put in a survey. Cos the answer tells us very little, very little that we can be in any way certain about.
You say “we simply can’t extrapolate from them anything other than 26 % are presumably voting pro UI and 34 % are voting anti UI”. I don’t think we can extrapolate that at all from them! Explainer: For example, let’s say you’re a pretty strong and staunch unionist but let’s say you’re a dairy farmer also. You might say that you would be slightly more likely to vote for a UI, given Brexit, but you’d still actually vote against a UI – before Brexit you were a 100% cast iron, staunch unionist, after Brexit you’ve gone down to 99%. So you’re voting against a UI but you are included in the 26%.
Look, enough said, it’s a crap question and Survation need to explain what they were at in phrasing it that way.

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WorldbyStorm - November 13, 2018

Agreed, it’s a brutal survey! I’d love to meet that farmer – that’s a good point, we can’t be sure that most of those more likely are actually going to vote UI, or even those less likely are going to vote against.

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7. Phil - November 8, 2018

John Smith, author of the excellent ‘Imperialism in the 21st Century’, on Brexit, Britain’s border in Ireland and the end of the old world order: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2018/11/07/brexit-another-day-in-the-death-of-the-old-world-order/

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CL - November 8, 2018

Varadkar is under some pressure but its unclear what he can do.

“Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the Taoiseach’s position that he is open to a review mechanism effectively “torpedoed” any clout that Ireland had in the talks.
She accused the Taoiseach of “losing his nerve” when Brexit talks were at crunch-time, adding that his remarks stating he was open to such a review were a “cock-up”.”
https://www.thejournal.ie/leo-varadkar-review-mechanism-brexit-backstop-4325652-Nov2018/

It seems that insisting on the backstop will result in a ‘no-deal’ crash-out exit and a hard border. This is Dublin’s dilemma.
Maybe there is no answer to the Irish question.

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CL - November 8, 2018

“For far too long British politicians, journalists and voters have enjoyed a patently distorted vision of the nation as indispensable world player. Now the nation is facing the painful truth that the UK is not as pre-eminent as it has liked to believe….
the UK has essentially been pushed around by Ireland, because the EU has thrown its weight behind the demands of its continuing member….
The hard fact is that the power imbalance has meant the UK is being forced to choose between the chaos of a no-deal Brexit or undermining the constitutional integrity of one of its four sovereign parts and signing up to a significant amount of rule-taking.”
https://www.ft.com/content/29468d52-e0e5-11e8-8e70-5e22a430c1ad

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GW - November 8, 2018

A classic of its kind:

The European Union is an alliance of major and minor imperialist countries

Like Ireland, Finland, Luxemburg, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia etc. presumably.

The EU is many things simultaneously. Some goodish, some bad. One dimensional analysis does nobody any favours.

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makedoanmend - November 8, 2018

Someone expressing this simplistic viewpoint seems rather like the writer of an USA editorial I read lately that lamented the imperial ambitions of China. That’s one big pair of blinkers the US writer had to be wearing.

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8. Paddy Healy - November 9, 2018

Dáil Record Nov 8 2018
Housing Emergency Measures in the Public Interest(HEMPI) Bill 2018: First Stage
Full Speech https://wp.me/pKzXa-wc
Seamus Healy TD I move:
That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to, in the public interest, serve the common good in the matter of housing.
This Bill seeks to declare formally the housing and homelessness crisis a national emergency. The Bill provides for the delimiting of the rights of landlords, banks and finance houses, including vulture funds, in order to prevent tenants and mortgage-holders from eviction, as provided for in Bunreacht na hÉireann and as advocated by Focus Ireland.

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9. Paddy Healy - November 9, 2018

Seamus Healy TD
An Bille Um Bearta Tithíochta Eigeandála ar Mhaithe le leas an Phobail, 2018
Housing Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill 2018: Text of Bill, Introductory Speech, Video https://wp.me/pKzXa-wc
Please urge your Dáil representatives to Vote for this Bill
First Vote Tuesday Next 8 PM

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10. Paddy Healy - November 10, 2018

Trump slams Macron for ‘insulting’ plan to build up Europe’s military
Trump tweeted that Mr Macron “has just suggested that Europe build its own military in order to protect itself from the US, China and Russia. Very insulting, but perhaps Europe should first pay its fair share of Nato, which the US subsidises greatly!”

DEFEND IRISH NEUTRALITY


Irish Examiner, Friday, November 09, 2018

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11. Phil - November 10, 2018

While the potato blight was an act of nature, there was nothing natural about the consquences – a million dead and another million forced out of the country. An all the social, physical and mental shock that went with the cataclysmic late 1840s.

Although there was an armed rebellion in 1848, it was too little too late and a leadership which was not reaqlly prepared for a serious insurrection – some wouldn’t even chop down trees on landowners’ estates to build road blocks because that would interfere with private property.

The clearest voice for what needed to be done for the Irish masses to save themselves from isaster was James Fintan Lalor (1807-1849). The great Irish revolutionary workers’ leader James Connolly would later say that among the republicans of that period, “the palm of honour for the clearest exposition of the doctrine of revolution, social and political, must be given to James Fintan Lalor”.

I’ve been very slowly making progress in getting Lalor’s work up on The Irish Revolution blog. This is something that Lalor wrote in January 1847, addressed to Irish republican clubs across the country. It appeared in the republican newspaper ‘The Irish Felon’ in July 1848:

Fintan Lalor on Repeal, land ownership, insurrection and saving the Irish masses in the Famine

And here’s Connolly on Lalor: https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2018/09/12/the-clearest-exposition-of-the-doctrine-of-revolution-social-and-political-connolly-on-fintan-lalor/

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CL - November 12, 2018

Peter Lalor, James Fintan’s brother, had quite a career in Australia.

“Irish immigrant Peter Lalor led a small group of fellow miners against an overwhelming force of soldiers and police at the Eureka Stockade.
Within 15 minutes they were utterly routed. Thirty miners were killed, and their rebellion appeared to be over. But within a year, they had won the right to vote, and put an end to the oppressive miner’s tax and the police harassment that went with it.”
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2004/s1256360.htm

“The first digger to be acquitted in Melbourne after the Eureka stockade battle was a black American named John Josephs.”
https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/au_eurek.html

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lalor-peter-3980

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12. Phil - November 10, 2018

John Smith, author of the excellent ‘Imperialism in the 21st Century’ on Brexit and the death of th old order: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2018/11/07/brexit-another-day-in-the-death-of-the-old-world-order/

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13. Paddy Healy - November 11, 2018

Seamus Healy TD to Propose Anti-Homelessness Bil (HEMPI 2018), Tuesday Next 8pm—-CONTACT YOUR LOCAL TDs TO SUPPORT THE BILL!!l
Housing Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill 2018
Full Text of Bill https://wp.me/pKzXa-wc
An Bille Um Bearta Tithíochta Eigeandála ar Mhaithe le leas an Phobail, 2018

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14. Starkadder - November 11, 2018

I found this linked on the comments section of Louis Proyect’s blog.

It’s a new US left magazine called “Commune”. The editor is
Shyam P. Khanna, and one of the contributors is
Kim Stanley Robinson.

https://communemag.com/about/

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15. GW - November 12, 2018

Amid all the Anglo-centric armastice remembrance, it is worth noting that the war in some way or other continued for a number of years in Central and Eastern Europe.

Here is the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung’s timeline of events in Germany from Luxemburg’s release from goal to her murder.

Fascinating and packed with photos. Unfortunately in German, but deepl is your friend.

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EWI - November 12, 2018

Not just that, but for the British Empire they chose to continue the fighting with invasions of Russia and Turkey.

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GW - November 12, 2018
16. Michael Carley - November 12, 2018
17. GW - November 12, 2018

Anyone care to guess how many times this week the Murdoch Press / BBC / Daily Mail will declare that a Brexit agreement has been reached, followed by a quick denial?

My guess is at least once, possibly twice.

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18. GW - November 12, 2018

Today marks the anniversary of the achievement of the right to vote and become elected representatives by women in Germany. Socialist women in the SPD and uSPD were central to achieving this.

Article 109 of the Weimar constitution stated:

Alle Deutschen sind vor dem Gesetze gleich.

Männer und Frauen haben grundsätzlich dieselben staatsbürgerlichen Rechte und Pflichten.

(All Germans are equal before the law.

Men and women have the same fundamental civic rights and duties.)

The struggle now is for parity (50%+ representatives on any representative body should identify as women) as is the case in the Left and Green parties and the united services union Verdi.

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GW - November 12, 2018

100th anniversary, I should have written.

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James O'Brien - November 12, 2018

Nice to see the sadly neglected USPD mentioned in your comments GW.

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19. Paddy Healy - November 12, 2018

Rents Cannot Be Controlled while Eviction From The Private Sector Continue- Tenanants are afraid to complain about rent rises-Niamh Randall, Threshold

Seamus Healy TD to Propose Rent Control and Anti-Homelessness Bil (HEMPI 2018), Tomorrow Tuesday

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