Sunday 7 June 2015

New Blogs May/June 2015

New month, new blogs:

1. charlottesayshmmm (Unaligned/anti-cuts) (Twitter)
2. Communist Explorations (Unaligned) (Twitter)

3. Consented (Unaligned) (Twitter)

4. edstradling (Unaligned) (Twitter)

5. I'm a JSA Claimant (Unaligned) Twitter)

6. Indygal Inspired (SNP)

7. Mutterings from the Left (Unaligned) (Twitter)

8. News from Nullspace (Unaligned) (Twitter)

9. Politics, Journalism, Etc. (Unaligned) (Twitter)

10. Policy Sketchbook (Unaligned) (Twitter)

11. Red Left Scotland (Unaligned) Twitter)

12. Ruth Rosenau (Labour) (Twitter)

13. Talking Policy (Unaligned) (Twitter)

14. The Fifty Percent Project (Unaligned/feminist) (Twitter)

15. youngradicalfeminists (Unaligned/feminist) (Twitter)


As always, if you know of any new blogs that haven't featured before then drop me a line via the comments, email or Twitter. Please note I'm looking for blogs that have started within the last 12 months. The new blog round up usually appears on the first Sunday of every month. And if it doesn't, it will turn up eventually!

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Phil, I started a new blog last month with an anti-austerity focus: The Hand & Mouse.

Phil said...

Great stuff - it's on the list for next time :)

Imposs1904 said...

Not a blog as such but an archive of old Socialist Standard articles which have been placed on the net for the first time:
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/

Darren

Anonymous said...

"Communist Explorations" is the blog of Ian Donovan.

He was expelled in Sept 14 from the "Communist Platform" in Left Unity for anti-semitism.

Here's what Weekly Worker gave as the reasons for this -

"Let me briefly summarise his [Donovan's] argument by quoting from his Draft theses on the Jews and modern imperialism.1 According to him, “Of all the advanced capitalist/imperialist countries today, Israel is second only to the United States in the threat it poses to the future of humanity.” But the huge ruling class support Israel receives in the west has “a material basis”, over and above imperialism’s own interests. It is “explained by one salient fact: Jewish overrepresentation in the US and other ruling classes”. For example, in the US, “informed Jewish sources” claim that “between 40% and 48%” of billionaires are Jews."

http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1026/no-place-for-anti-semitism/

John R

David Walsh said...

Looked at the same blog that John R referenced. The articles on Tower Hamlets are quite, er, provocative, shall we say

Ian Donovan said...

Except that the statement in WW is untrue, as I withdrew from the Communist Platform when they refused to pass a simple statement that all peoples are equal, and that all forms of racism are to be opposed.

True, they would like to have got rid of me on the basis of their bullshit allegations, but they never actually got the chance.

See http://commexplor.com/2014/09/21/jack-conrads-anti-communist-witchhunt-over-gaza/

for a truthful account of the events being referred to.

They cannot even get basic facts right, or even publish the documents involved.

How is my material on TH provocative? More provocative than the electorate of TH being overruled by unelected judges, perhaps?

Or are you one of those 'lefts' that support that?

Ian Donovan said...

Ah, I posted the link to the follow-up article, but not the one to the actual report of the Communist Platform meeting itself:

That is here:

http://commexplor.com/2014/09/16/centrism-and-fear-over-gaza-communists-vote-down-equality-of-peoples/

Anonymous said...

Donovan is being duplicitous here. The amendment he submitted was a wrecking amendment of the "gut a specific proposal on a specific issue and substitute something anodyne" sort. CPGB balked, and well they should have. That Donovan spins the story to imply that the CPGB is somehow not against equality demonstrates his characteristically low truth quotient.

Donovan - the sad sort of person who still champions the justly abhorred antisemite Atzmon - has now wrapped up the project of marginalizing himself over his own positions on the topic of antisemitism.

Ian Donovan said...

Well, that is utter rubbish, and self-contradictory, as there was nothing anodyne about the amendment. It removed the part of the CPGB motion that was implicitly racist against the victims of Israel's 'foreign legion' in banning analysis and criticism of their activities, and substituted the elementary anti-racist concept that all peoples are equal.

All forms of racism necessarily involve hatred of all members of an particular ethnic group, not criticism of some members of that group for oppressive behaviour towards others.

If you argue against that idea, you are arguing in favour of privileges of an oppressor group over the oppressed.

The amendment was completely in order and was in indeed voted on as such, and in voting against it they voted against equality and the ideas put forward above. When they thus voted against equality, I withdrew from the Platform, leaving their members simply to vote against their own democratic rights in future discussions.

I don't care in the slightest about arguing for unpopular positions. Anyone who does not have the courage to do that is no Marxist. And someone who does not dare to use a recognisable name while posting smears is doubly contemptible and cowardly.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, having trouble hearing you over the noise. It's hard to tell which is louder, Atzmon's jackboots or the sound of your kissing them.

Ian Donovan said...

Still don't have the courage to use a recognisable name, I see.


Ian Donovan said...

Anyway, to indulge our cowardly Anonymous poster, he or she does not seem inclined to produce evidence of any 'Jackbooted' behaviour by Atzmon. I have lots of differences with Atzmon, but one thing he is right about is the ethnocentric nature of those who apologise for Israel, and who cover up for the racist, ethnocentric politics of its bourgeois supporters in the Western countries.

From those who sit in deckchairs overlooking Gaza, drinking cocktails and cheering when the bombs fall and tear hundred of little Arab children into pieces, to those Jewish and/or Zionist racists who lie and falsely accuse those who accurately point out the similarity of this mass murder and genocide to that of the Nazis, there we see behaviour that truly is Hitler-like and racist.

Then we have those on the left who act as gatekeepers for the Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie in the West, who slander as 'anti-semitism' materialist criticism and analysis of organisations like AIPAC, the Tory/Labour Friends of Israel, whose actual agenda, let us be clear, is support of specifically Jewish racism and Jewish-nationalist ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in occupied Palestine.

These people, and their lackeys on the left, who protest against the publications of books by the likes of Atzmon, and who seek to even get musical concerts cancelled, are those whose conduct is reminiscent of those who use jackboots - Stalinist, or Nazi.

False allegations of support for Nazism are the common currency of Stalinists and Zionists, and those who capitulate to Stalinism and Zionism. Stalinism and Zionism are not mutually exclusive - it was Stalin who supplied the Haganah with the arms to carry out the forcible expulsion of 2/3 of the Arab population of Palestine in 1947-8, a Nazi-like action that set the scene for Israel's evolution into a state based on Hitler-like racism ever since.

Which also incidentally created the basis where some Israelis who came to understand the nature of this barbarity could exhibit a degree of confusion about what was involved in the Second World War.

So which are you, Mr Anonymous coward? Stalinist, Zionist or both? Or a capitulator to one or the other.

Anonymous said...

It's something of a testimony to just how completely Palestinian solidarity has addressed and clarified the issue of antisemitism over the last half decade that the defense of Atzmon now falls to people like the panto browbeater Ian Donovan. If there is a better signpost indicating "cast into outer darkness", I don't know what it is.

Ian Donovan said...

Just a post-script on this smear:

See Left Unity Disputes Committee Exonerates Ian Donovan of ‘Anti-Semitism’ Smear

Those who try to smear me with allegations of racism had better beware. I have generally adhered to the rule that disputes involving those of the workers movement are best kept within the workers movement, i.e. not pre-emptively resorting to legal action for defamation.

But this is not an absolute principle. In the light of my exoneration by the Disputes Committee of Left Unity, anyone repeating this smear in the future would be a sitting duck for a libel lawsuit. Just saying, like....

Anonymous said...

Worth noting the immense gulf between what the committee said - that one of your posts was not evidence of antisemitism - and what you claim they have said, which is that you are not an antisemite. But you are tedious and repetitive, and I'm only fueling your ego by replying to someone at the margin of the margin of the fringe.

We'll believe you've left antisemitism behind when you leave Atzmon and his friend Paul Eisen behind. Until then, he remains a virtual swastika tattooed between your virtual eyebrows, and your isolation will only increase.

End of discussion.

Ian Donovan said...

Whatever, this is not for your benefit, but of normal people with normal morals, not freaks who post anonymous abuse.