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Post by dodger on Jul 31, 2013 8:01:13 GMT
Vice Admiral Sir Francis Drake (c.1540 – 28 January 1596) was an English privateer, navigator, naval pioneer and raider, politician, and civil engineer, of the Elizabethan period.
Speech to his crew off of Puerto San Julian, Argentina, prior to entering the Strait of Magellan (May 1578)
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Post by dodger on Aug 9, 2013 10:54:00 GMT
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Post by dodger on Aug 12, 2013 9:27:52 GMT
Wilberforce wrote that Christianity "renders the inequalities of the social scale less galling to the lower orders, whom also she instructs in their turn to be diligent, humble, patient: reminding them that their more lowly path has been allotted to them by the hand of God; that it is their part faithfully to discharge its duties, and contentedly to bear its inconveniences." William Cobbett called him the prince of hypocrites, who praised the benefits of poverty from a comfortable distance.
T' good old Church of England, long known as the"Tory Party at Prayer" had long since given up any pretence at engaging with the working class. As welcome on their church pews, as a fart in a suit of armour. St James at Piccadilly, can still be seen the stout poles held by wardens to drive the poor from entering. A concession was made and 6 seats provided on a high, freezing in winter, balcony,aloft. Though nearer heaven it must be said.
"The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate."
All things bright and beautiful--3rd verse- often neglected in these 'progressive' times. Written 15yrs after his death, we can picture him with a lyre belting out in the heavenly choir,that infamous verse. What piety.
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Post by dodger on Aug 26, 2013 15:48:18 GMT
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
Desmond Tutu
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Post by dodger on Aug 27, 2013 17:08:24 GMT
Execution of Charles I
Carlyle wrote of the regicide, "I reckon it perhaps the most daring action of any Body of Men to be met with in History ever, with clear consciousness, deliberately set themselves to do. ... This action of the English Regicides did in effect strike a damp like death through the heart of Flunkeyism universally in this world."
Carlyle acknowledges, contrary to convention, "there is no period to be met with, in which the general Twenty-five Millions of France suffered less than in this period which they name Reign of Terror."
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Post by dodger on Aug 28, 2013 14:23:24 GMT
Jack Dee @therealjackdee
King: "I have a dream".
Obama "I have a drone".
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Post by dodger on Aug 29, 2013 12:50:57 GMT
John Stuart Mill supported a rational, progressive nationalism, writing:
"We do not mean nationalism in the vulgar sense of the term: a senseless antipathy to foreigners; an indifference to the general welfare of the human race, or an unjust preference of the supposed interests of our own country; a cherishing of bad peculiarities because they are national; or a refusal to adopt what has been found good by other countries. We mean a principle of sympathy not of hostility; of union, not of separation. We mean a feeling of common interest among those who live under the same government."
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Post by dodger on Sept 21, 2013 18:15:39 GMT
A United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists ... but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe
Lenin
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Post by dodger on Sept 23, 2013 13:25:49 GMT
In 1881, just two years before his death, the ailing Karl Marx received a letter from a young socialist, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, asking for his opinion about the call to rebuild the International Workingmen’s Association, the most advanced experiment in Left Unity up to that date. An unequivocal response.
“It is my conviction that the critical juncture for a new International Workingmen’s Association has not yet arrived and for this reason I regard all workers’ congresses, particularly socialist congresses, in so far as they are not related to the immediate given conditions in this or that particular nation, as not merely useless but harmful. They will always fade away in innumerable stale generalised banalities.” When not explicitly tied to the concrete struggles of a real historical conjuncture, the question of Left Unity can be nothing other than the “statement of a phantom problem to which the only answer can be – the criticism of the question itself.” -
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Post by dodger on Sept 23, 2013 15:10:09 GMT
"I was furious to discover that other major banks too were recklessly using their customers' own money to speculate."
"had not fully appreciated that moral norms were not constraining the behaviour of those competing across complex and interlocked global entities that covered both shadow and formal banking systems."
Yet Brown had been calling (fruitlessly) for constraining `moral norms' for years......
For 13 years at the top of government, Brown let finance capital rip. He promised an end to boom and bust, but he hyped up the boom and made us all pay for the inevitable bust.
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Post by dodger on Oct 18, 2013 12:00:40 GMT
Speaking in Bradford in June 2005, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, said, "Immigration has reduced wage inflation:...If the increased demand for labour generates its own supply in the form of migrant labour then the link between demand and prices is broken...Indeed, in an economy that can call on unlimited supplies of migrant labour, the concept of output gap is meaningless...the inflow of migrant labour, especially in the past year or so from Eastern Europe, has probably led to a diminution of inflationary pressure on the labour market...Without this influx to fill the skill gaps in a tight labour market, it is likely earnings would have risen at a faster rate, putting upward pressure on the costs of employers."
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Post by dodger on Oct 18, 2013 12:17:43 GMT
"We do not at all regard the theory of Marx as something complete and inviolable. We think that it is particularly necessary for socialists independently to analyse the theory of Marx, for this theory provides only general guiding propositions which must be applied differently in England from France, in France from Germany, in Germany from Russia."
Lenin.
Does that have to be repeated? Apparently. Yes and often.
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Post by dodger on Oct 19, 2013 15:45:54 GMT
In his Testament written on 15 May 1965, he said: “Our war against US invasion may take few more years. Our people may suffer from more human and material losses. However, we are determined to fight Americans until the final victory. The US imperialism will get out of Vietnam for sure. Our Homeland will certainly be reunified. Few more years means 10 years, in 1975 at the most.”
In his speech on the 15th founding anniversary of Democratic Republic of Vietnam in September 1960, Ho Chi Minh wrote: “If we are united, perseveringly struggle, the country will be reunified in 15 years at the latest.”
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Post by dodger on Oct 20, 2013 1:13:57 GMT
"So perverse is mankind that every nation prefers to be misgoverned by its own people than to be well ruled by another", as General Charles James Napier noted in the 19th century.
Pip Pip !
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Post by dodger on Oct 28, 2013 3:57:22 GMT
 Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution was founded in 2004
to campaign against the creation of an undemocratic superstate in Europe. www.tuaeuc.org/TUAEUC Secretary Doug Nicholls described the EU as a dying beast lashing out in weakness. It represents failed national capitalisms, which huddle together for warmth, but in reality are on a life support machine. He likened the real motor behind the EU, the "Round Table" of industrialists, to pirates robbing the people ever more greedily, but as their treasure chests rise so their ships begin to sink. |
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