This Past Year

Two days' washing up done, phew! It was my birthday, yesterday, after all . . . I wonder if I had told Facebook . . . No matter.

It was a lovely sunny day, so I took the chance to do a white wash, but bottled it after visiting my neighbours to give them some chocolate cake, and brought my wah in from the line early.

So, today, I want to do some other 'washing up' and let this anti-Semitism rest.

For as long as it shall please The Good Lord so to do.

So, first, I'm honoured that our friend Simon Hill received my Plain-spoken Quaker rant in a graceful way, thank-you to him.

Secondly, as my mum might have said (but I doubt it) almost sixty years' ago when we moved to Chislehurst, Kent from Kennington, Surrey, 'OK, you've had your fun. Now go outside to play."

That would have involved my brother and I playing football in the street (he was good, I wasn't: at football that is. And, perhaps other things, too.)

Just as I recall playing marbles in the street at Meadow Mews in Kennington.

The traffic was far less then.

Or I'd go up 'The Common' on my fiercely-heavy bike, painted blue (did my dad do that painting: I expect so) before I moaned to have a new Moulton bike: flashy but not so very well used. Kids!

There on Chislehurst Common, I'd go beyond The Second Pond and dam up the small streams with the hard, smooth pebbles found there (Chislehurst's name means 'gravely hill', chysl-hirst and one of my fave places is the wald down Botany Bay Hill to the National Trust farmland next to another stream, over those smooth, hard pebbles.

As good a place to visit as the Rideau River falls, where, at melt times, huge blocks of ice would, momentarily, as in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, hover above the Ottawa River before falling into the abyss.

Happy times.

So, back to this anti-semitism thing.

Through 'The Divine Stage Management', this has come to the point where others of my friends have posted a picture of a naked bittom and others have got into declarations of lust.

So time for us all to 'Go outside and play!'

But, before that, my promise to explain all this a bit.

Almost exactly a year ago, when I was living at Coleridge House in Beckenham, Jane Shaw at The Labour Party told me, in her purely administrative, managerial capacity, that some anonymous (to me) individual, or group or organisaion of individuals (again, anonymous to me) had accused me of anti-semitic behaviour, citing various of my Facebook posts in support. I was asked for my response and with a little to-ing and fro-ing, I was told that there would be a hearing. That I cohldn't bring witnesses to that and that I was only allowed to have a 'Silent friend'beside me at the hearing, whose only permission was to whisper things in my ear: such, perhaps, as 'Stop punching him, John!' or'Stop banging his head on the floor, John!'

Both rather unlikely: we are both active pacifists!

In the end, after being 'Decanted' from Beckenham to Littlehampton (long story), things toddled on such that, without that hearing, or the opportunity of appeal, or with an opportunity to reapply for membership *for at least* five years (!), a letter arrived here on Thursday 14th February (that's the mystery envelope that I photographed and posted here, not revealing its contents: nice spot by one of my FB friends!) Saying that, along with twenty-four others, I was expelled from the Labour Party, on the terms described above.

Pretty fantastic: at the age of thirteen, I was leafletting, for or with my dad, Labour Party election leaflets around that self-same Chislehurst Common's Second Pond, and adjacent to which, 2015, as Our Labour Party's candidate for the Bromley and Chislehurst Parliamentary Candidate, at the Methodist Church hustings in Prince Imperial Way (closer to the Third Pond, a rather fugitive welland, and The First Pond), I was giving the re-standing Conservative Candidate, Bob Niell, the coniptions, for saying that true Cinservatives should vote UKIP, since the then-Conservative Party was the New Liberal party, so why both voting Fib, when you can, as well, vote Conservative.

So, why am I typing this?

Simply because, pretty well up to the February 2019 letter telling me of the anti-semitic accusation (for which there is a history, somewhat sketchy, of about six months), I'd never given any attention, in any meaningful way, to the Zionist invasion of Palestine.

So, over the past year, I've felt obliged to do so.

And hence our friend Simon Hill's repeated rhetorical question, 'The Jews, always The Jews.'

That's why over a year, I've read, as best I can, around the subject of Zionism, the creation and behaviour of The Zionist State of Israel.

It is clear to me that no-one can support *every action* of The Zionist State of Israel (take the sanction for Israeli Army snipers to shoot children, or the continued imprisonment of the Israeli whisteblower Mordechi Vanunu for daring to tell the worl that, yes, The Zionist State of Israel has nuclear weapons, about which it will not admit. And on, and on.

Just think of the brutalisation of those poor Israeli settler boys recently posted to this page, beer bottle in hand, "This is our land that God gave us: and we killed Jesus." My hear still bleeds.

And, yes, we *are*, all, Rachel Corrie.

Worse, I have adumbrated a solution: a One Stare solution, a Palestine to the 1917-1945 boundaries, operating as a secular Co-operative Socialist Commonwealth.

It could be done.

So, let's leave it there.

There will be comments to this.

God willing I'll have the strength to not respond to them.

Nor, I hope, anyone else.

Let's get back to the main task: replacing capitalism with true Co-operative Socialism.

And to attend to that task, not *on* Tuesday, but *by* Tuesday.

Shamom alekhum, Salam alekhum, Peace and Blessings, all,

John

The Most-Recent History

Or, more like, forty-one years of capitalist barbarity (1979-2020).

*That's* why the North (and Midlands?) followed Wales and Scotland in voting 'a pox on you all'.

And all that is the fault of *our* Labout, TU and Co-operative 'movements': instead of being progressive, they were co-opted by capitalism during WWII, then bought into the selfishness-not-socialist offer of the complacent fifties and sixties. That lead to the seventies and to Thatcher/Reagan/Blair/Johnson and the BoD/IHRC fake anti-semitism tactic to kill off the democratic resurgence of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.

Did I say, 'Kill off'?

That will be the case if our movements fail to adopt, promote, implement and then, Annually, Audit and Celebrate the true alternative to barbarity: true Co-operative Socialism.

How we got here

What a tale of woe it all is.

And all because The Labour Party got hijacked during WWII: away from its declared intention in 1937 to create a Co-operative Commonwealth (to replace capitalism and the remnants of feudalism).

And, instead, that hijack imposed the triple Liberal and Conservative plan: Nationalisation of the worn-out parts of the economy, using debt-plus-interest Keynsian 'economics', with the resulting 'mixed economy' serviced by a 'Welfare' State, paid for by the worked class and for the benefit of the Parasite Classes (the 2% , the capitalist and aristocracy class, and the 10%, their Praetorian Guard.

Thus were the mechanisms of capitalism preserved for later brutal use (ie, Theft, called Ownership, Rent, Interest, Profits-to-shareholders and Unequal-pay for the Praetorian Guard, funded by taxing us, the 88%: the Worked Class).

Time for Co-operative Socialism, eh?

Replacing Capitalism

Our friend Alex asked about money, etc.

Here's what I offered:

Thanks, Alex.

There are two money questions: how is it created (static) and how is it used (dynamic). A third, false, pseudo-question, that is used by time-wasters, is 'What is money?'

Those who support capitalism focus, sometimes exclusively and fanatically, to the money-creation story: because they are happy to still exploit others, which is what capitalism is, but they don't like being exploited by others ('The Banksters', the accountants, etc, etc).

It is too early to tell whether the Modern Money Theory controllers are, as equally, the Positive Money controllers,  in favour of the continuation of capitalism.

However, the Campaign for Interest-free Money is in favour of removing the use of money to exploit people and planet.

This Campaign, then, is part of the plan for Co-operative Socialism, which replaces all five of the TRIPUp mechanisms that capitalism uses.

As to those five TRIPUp mechanisms:

Co-operative Careship, time-limited, non-transferable leases fom the commonweal (by appropriate co-operatives) of appropriate economic resources, rather than Theft of Land, etc (that's the T in TRIPUp) for sustainable, respectful wealth creation.

No Rent (that's the R in TRIPUp).

(Incidentally, the T word, Theft, is called Ownership by the Thieves: who allow their Praetorian Guard, the 10%, to Tax us, the 88%, while they, the 2%, the Thieves, extract Rent, Interest and Profits from us, the 88%.)

So back to the rest of the five TRIPUp mechanisms:

I stands for Interest, paid on debts including money-created-as-interest-bearing-debt (as per the Social Credit, MMR and Positive Money people, above): Co-operative Socialism abolishes debt and interest.

P stands for Profits-to-capitalist-shareholders: in a Co-operative Socialist economy, the 'Financial Surpluses' in Co-op speak, get returned to 'The Common Purse' for use to enhance The Common Good.

Finally, the Up part.

This deals with Incomes.

Within Nations, Co-operative Socialism proposes that, eventually, the use of money will disappear, since most human needs will be 'Community-provided, Free-at-the-point-of-use', on the NHS, Public Libraries, Schools, Social Services, Fire Service, etc, model.

In the meantime, we propose that money incomes should be based on a Living Income for Everyone, socially-determined, annually-reviewed, and not mean-tested, along with an upper limit , again socially-determined and annually-reviewed, for incomes from paid work.

The international aspects of this are in the seven-point plan for Co-operative Socialism, as published as a five, monthly article set by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the 'CCPA', and available as a PDF, 'CCPA Monitor, Readings on Co-operative Socialism'.

That is in the papers' section at:

www.interestfreemoney.org

There arw videos and a recorded radio interview on YouTube. Search there using:

"Co-operative Socialism"

And collected short essays at:

www.sustainabilitynotcapitalism.blogspot.com

Finally, an early essay, also archived in the papers' section at www.interestfreemoney.org is titled 'Solving the world's problems: it can be done' might be 'of interest'!

Very best wishes,

John.

Income inequality and the Ecocide

Why capitalism must be replaced: Income Inequality and the Ecocide

Non-sustainability occurs only when an enterprise carries the burden of 'return on capital employed' in the form of rent, interest and profit, along with taxes, both external and internal (ie unequal pay to, either, an internal 'management' and its enforcers, such as supervisors, inspectors, foremen and sub-foremen, and the external 'Praetorian Guard' of those with jobs beginning with, often, the letter P).

The reason for the exponentially accelerating production of pollution (see the CO2 data as one marker pollutant) is that the creation of wealth and pollution are linked:

Materials  +   Energy  ---->  'Wealth'   +   Pollution

(By 'Wealth' I mean 'that which assists in providing for human needs' and 'Pollution' being 'waste' heat and 'waste' materials.)

In capitalism, the wealth is appropriated (stolen) by the capitalists (ie by the thieves of the economic resources needed to create wealth and, thus, supply human needs) and, then, converted into more money than was needed to finance the first cycle of production.

(I understand that Karl Marx got a handle on this with his equalition, M  --->   C   --->  M'  where M is the initial money invested, C Resultant Commodities and M' the larger amount of money accumulated (stolen) in each pproduction cycle. I'm no Marx scholar and whether that equation hhad been identified earlier, I don't know. Incidentally, Marx worked before modern chemistry had been fully worked out. Whether he was aware of its state, in the mid- nineteenth Century, I, also don't know.)

So, that larger amount of money is then 'put to work' in a second cycle of production: the operation of which produces more pollution than in the first cycle. And, hence the accellerating rise in pollution, as observed.

All of this is 'The Chemistry of Wealth Production'. To it may be added the rôle of The Second Law of Thermodynamics, which we don't need to discuss here.

(Ps, my 'Dr John' bit is because I'm a UCL PhD Chemist, with both a Teaching and Research past. And, as a worked class man, plenty of life experience of unemployment, work, business, homelessness, the 'benefits' meat-grinder, etc, etc!)

Now, these mechanisms are rooted in the *qualitative* inequality of oppression: slave-owner and slave, capitalist and worker, etc.

Which leads to the *quantitative* inequality of 'rich' and poor.

And, it's the inequality that's killing us.

And the Planet.

(See 'The Spirit Level' book, its sequel, 'The Inner Level' - that focusses on the increasing level of mental ill-health that is consequential upon, caused by, increasing inequality - and the supporting web materials at www.equalitytrust.org.uk )

All of the foregoing requires, therefore that we implement a plan for equality: ie a replacement for capitalism.

Hence the plan for equality: the plan for Co-operative Socialism.

Details of which may be found in the papers' section at www.interestfreemoney.org and by searching YouTube with the search term:

"Co-operative Socialism"

There is an archive of essays at:

www.sustainabilitynotcapitalism.blogspot.com

I hope this helps.

Very best wishes,

John Courtneidge