Showing posts with label roy nelson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roy nelson. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Friday, January 01, 2010
One Life Costs. Four Don't.
Welcome home, Peter Moore.
(though you left your bodyguards behind)
Our government does not do deals with terrorists.
So how come you survived ?
Our government ARE the terrorists !
(though you left your bodyguards behind)
Our government does not do deals with terrorists.
So how come you survived ?
Our government ARE the terrorists !
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
CB750 And Ice.
Paul was late in this morning.
He was riding on my CB 750, which I have started riding as my winter hack.
As he turned the corner, I knew there was a problem.
He had hit ice in camden and went down the road.
Luckily, he was ok and the bike, too.
A used footpeg and all was well.
Both rider and bike hard as nails.
Yahoo.
(DONT do it again - either of you)
He was riding on my CB 750, which I have started riding as my winter hack.
As he turned the corner, I knew there was a problem.
He had hit ice in camden and went down the road.
Luckily, he was ok and the bike, too.
A used footpeg and all was well.
Both rider and bike hard as nails.
Yahoo.
(DONT do it again - either of you)
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
The Days After Chemo - Round 4
Last weeks chemo appeared to have little side effects.
The weekend was spent with little vomiting and tiredness.
She has cracked it we both thought - yahoo.
Yesterday and especially today has been the nightmare.
Retching and constipation have nearly crippled her.
I returned to london yesterday.
So now feel completely helpless.
My thoughts and prayers are with you, lady.
The weekend was spent with little vomiting and tiredness.
She has cracked it we both thought - yahoo.
Yesterday and especially today has been the nightmare.
Retching and constipation have nearly crippled her.
I returned to london yesterday.
So now feel completely helpless.
My thoughts and prayers are with you, lady.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Militant Tendency. Obituary - Ted Grant.
Obituary
Ted Grant
Trotskyite behind the Militant Tendency's infiltration of the Labour party
* Bob Wade
* The Guardian, Thursday 27 July 2006
* Article history
Ted Grant, who has died aged 93, was a Trotskyite revolutionary who, although born in South Africa, spent most of his life in Britain. He founded and became the leading force in the political group Militant Tendency, which was active within the Labour party until the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, took it on at grassroots level in a speech to the party conference in 1985 in an attempt to make the party electable.
Only his family and a selected few will ever know Grant's real name. Even in his autobiography he is referred to as Isaac "Blank". He said this was to protect his family, understandable when entering revolutionary politics in the 1930s as the fascist tyrannies swept Europe. But it was a secret he kept all his life.
Born in the South African town of Germinston to a Russian father and a Parisian mother, he completed his political development after his parents divorced. His mother took in lodgers, including Ralph Lee, a founder of the South African Communist party, who was expelled for his support for Trotsky's Left Opposition. Lee formed a new grouping that included the 15-year-old Isaac and his sister, Zena.
But revolutionary expectations were limited in this colonial backwater, and the South Africans recognised that their talents could be better used in Europe.
The first to go in 1934 were Isaac and fellow Jewish revolutionary Max Basch. As the only passage they could secure was on a German-owned ship, they took the wise precaution of anglicising their names and documents - to Ted Grant and Sid Frost respectively, names "borrowed" from two of the ship's crew. On arrival in Paris, Grant met Leon Sedov, the son of Leon Trotsky. It was explained that the new Trotskyist movement was well served on the Continent, and the young South Africans would be of more use in Britain.
In London, Grant was joined by Lee and a small band of South African émigrés, but they had little time for the discussion-circle embryo of British Trotskyism, which Grant despaired of as "your typical Bloomsbury bohemians".
Subsequently expelled from the "official" British section of Trotsky's new Fourth International, Lee and Grant formed the Workers International League. They were joined by two former Communist party members and capable organisers, Jock Haston and Gerry Healy. As the second world war erupted, the WIL began to make some headway, particularly after the Communist party became the most fervent supporters of the Churchill coalition government on the shopfloor, in their bid to secure the "Second Front".
Although never numbering more than several hundred, the WIL nonetheless notched up some notable successes during the war years, including widespread support among the 8th Army in North Africa and effectively taking control of the Royal Ordnance Factory in Nottingham, where production became the highest of all ROF plants.
Yet Healy, with the backing of James Cannon, who was now in control of the Fourth International following Trotsky's assassination in 1940, continually manoeuvred against Grant to gain control of the organisation. It was a feud of Albanian proportions that would continue throughout their lives - as late as the 1970s, when both were in their sixties, if ever they met by chance at labour movement events they would still square up to each other, only to be pulled apart by their respective minders.
The Fourth International eventually cajoled the WIL into "reunification" with the failed "official" British section, to form the Revolutionary Communist party. The RCP was a shooting star that soon spluttered when the end of the war saw not a 1917-style revolution, as Trotsky had predicted, but a weary world settling down to the new consumer benefits of a protracted capitalist boom.
Grant and Haston were the first in the Fourth International to expand upon the prognosis being put forward by the dissident American Trotskyite Max Schachtman, that far from Western capitalism and the Soviet Union being weakened by war, thus paving the way for revolution, both had been immen-sely strengthened and a capitalist boom was on its way. There were hard times ahead for revolutionaries.
The Fourth International was aghast at such heresy, and gave the green light for Healy to purge the British organisation. Grant was kicked out after refusing to support the expulsion of Tony Cliff, later founder of the Socialist Workers Party. After a brief period working as a door-to-door salesman, and then as a switchboard operator - where by all accounts he spent all his time phoning his far flung points of support to build a new organisation - Grant rejoined his old comrades Jimmy Deane and Sam Bornstein to begin rebuilding an organisation out of the ashes.
By the late 1950s a new group had been painstakingly rebuilt, with its main points of support in London and Liverpool. An important acquisition was made in 1960 - Peter Taaffe, who proved to be the organisational gravy to Grant's theoretical meat. The Militant Tendency was born.
Of the three main strands of British Trotskyism that resulted from the RCP (Healy's Workers Revolutionary Party, Cliff's SWP and Grant's Militant Tendency), Grant kept his small force tied to the "entryist" tactic of staying inside the Labour party, while all the others bailed out during the student protests of the 1960s. By the 1970s this began to pay dividends. Within a decade the Militant Tendency was a household name, with 8,000 members, three MPs, a seat on the TUC, control of Labour's youth section, effective control of Liverpool council and more full-time organisers than the Labour party.
But revolutions often eat their own fathers. Despite the expulsion of Grant and four other key members from the Labour party in 1983, the Militant Tendency bounced back with a successful campaign against the poll tax. This created the illusion for the Taaffe-led organisation that activism was all.
Grant, meanwhile, was beginning to see the writing on the wall from the Soviet Union, in that there would not be a "political revolution" as he had previously predicted following the collapse of Stalinism, but instead a triumphant West and an ideological counter-revolution. It was going to be hard times again.
Once more he was expelled, this time by the Militant Tendency he had created. He took 200 members with him to form the "Socialist Appeal" group (the name of the original WIL paper), cheerfully explaining that: "Well, that is the best split I've ever been through!" After his expulsion, Militant soon split into several warring factions. While his group stumbles along in the UK, inter-nationally Grant has begotten several organisations that today are creating a similar impact to that of the Militant Tendency in Britain in the 1980s, notably in Pakistan and Latin America.
Grant was not the easiest of people to work with. During his RCP days, his exasperated comrades famously locked him in his room, refusing to let him out until he had written a promised article, only to discover he had escaped out of the window to go to the cinema.
But he was not the mindless automaton derided by the tabloid media in the 1980s. He liked to bet on the horses, loved cowboy films and had an infectious laughter. He clearly had had his loves too, and late into his life old female revolutionaries from the US and France often asked after him.
Grant remained active until three years ago, when he suffered a stroke while speaking at a meeting in London. He leaves no family, following the death of his eldest sister, Rae, in Paris last year.
· Ted Grant, founder of the Militant Tendency, born July 16 1913; died July 20 2006
Ted Grant
Trotskyite behind the Militant Tendency's infiltration of the Labour party
* Bob Wade
* The Guardian, Thursday 27 July 2006
* Article history
Ted Grant, who has died aged 93, was a Trotskyite revolutionary who, although born in South Africa, spent most of his life in Britain. He founded and became the leading force in the political group Militant Tendency, which was active within the Labour party until the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, took it on at grassroots level in a speech to the party conference in 1985 in an attempt to make the party electable.
Only his family and a selected few will ever know Grant's real name. Even in his autobiography he is referred to as Isaac "Blank". He said this was to protect his family, understandable when entering revolutionary politics in the 1930s as the fascist tyrannies swept Europe. But it was a secret he kept all his life.
Born in the South African town of Germinston to a Russian father and a Parisian mother, he completed his political development after his parents divorced. His mother took in lodgers, including Ralph Lee, a founder of the South African Communist party, who was expelled for his support for Trotsky's Left Opposition. Lee formed a new grouping that included the 15-year-old Isaac and his sister, Zena.
But revolutionary expectations were limited in this colonial backwater, and the South Africans recognised that their talents could be better used in Europe.
The first to go in 1934 were Isaac and fellow Jewish revolutionary Max Basch. As the only passage they could secure was on a German-owned ship, they took the wise precaution of anglicising their names and documents - to Ted Grant and Sid Frost respectively, names "borrowed" from two of the ship's crew. On arrival in Paris, Grant met Leon Sedov, the son of Leon Trotsky. It was explained that the new Trotskyist movement was well served on the Continent, and the young South Africans would be of more use in Britain.
In London, Grant was joined by Lee and a small band of South African émigrés, but they had little time for the discussion-circle embryo of British Trotskyism, which Grant despaired of as "your typical Bloomsbury bohemians".
Subsequently expelled from the "official" British section of Trotsky's new Fourth International, Lee and Grant formed the Workers International League. They were joined by two former Communist party members and capable organisers, Jock Haston and Gerry Healy. As the second world war erupted, the WIL began to make some headway, particularly after the Communist party became the most fervent supporters of the Churchill coalition government on the shopfloor, in their bid to secure the "Second Front".
Although never numbering more than several hundred, the WIL nonetheless notched up some notable successes during the war years, including widespread support among the 8th Army in North Africa and effectively taking control of the Royal Ordnance Factory in Nottingham, where production became the highest of all ROF plants.
Yet Healy, with the backing of James Cannon, who was now in control of the Fourth International following Trotsky's assassination in 1940, continually manoeuvred against Grant to gain control of the organisation. It was a feud of Albanian proportions that would continue throughout their lives - as late as the 1970s, when both were in their sixties, if ever they met by chance at labour movement events they would still square up to each other, only to be pulled apart by their respective minders.
The Fourth International eventually cajoled the WIL into "reunification" with the failed "official" British section, to form the Revolutionary Communist party. The RCP was a shooting star that soon spluttered when the end of the war saw not a 1917-style revolution, as Trotsky had predicted, but a weary world settling down to the new consumer benefits of a protracted capitalist boom.
Grant and Haston were the first in the Fourth International to expand upon the prognosis being put forward by the dissident American Trotskyite Max Schachtman, that far from Western capitalism and the Soviet Union being weakened by war, thus paving the way for revolution, both had been immen-sely strengthened and a capitalist boom was on its way. There were hard times ahead for revolutionaries.
The Fourth International was aghast at such heresy, and gave the green light for Healy to purge the British organisation. Grant was kicked out after refusing to support the expulsion of Tony Cliff, later founder of the Socialist Workers Party. After a brief period working as a door-to-door salesman, and then as a switchboard operator - where by all accounts he spent all his time phoning his far flung points of support to build a new organisation - Grant rejoined his old comrades Jimmy Deane and Sam Bornstein to begin rebuilding an organisation out of the ashes.
By the late 1950s a new group had been painstakingly rebuilt, with its main points of support in London and Liverpool. An important acquisition was made in 1960 - Peter Taaffe, who proved to be the organisational gravy to Grant's theoretical meat. The Militant Tendency was born.
Of the three main strands of British Trotskyism that resulted from the RCP (Healy's Workers Revolutionary Party, Cliff's SWP and Grant's Militant Tendency), Grant kept his small force tied to the "entryist" tactic of staying inside the Labour party, while all the others bailed out during the student protests of the 1960s. By the 1970s this began to pay dividends. Within a decade the Militant Tendency was a household name, with 8,000 members, three MPs, a seat on the TUC, control of Labour's youth section, effective control of Liverpool council and more full-time organisers than the Labour party.
But revolutions often eat their own fathers. Despite the expulsion of Grant and four other key members from the Labour party in 1983, the Militant Tendency bounced back with a successful campaign against the poll tax. This created the illusion for the Taaffe-led organisation that activism was all.
Grant, meanwhile, was beginning to see the writing on the wall from the Soviet Union, in that there would not be a "political revolution" as he had previously predicted following the collapse of Stalinism, but instead a triumphant West and an ideological counter-revolution. It was going to be hard times again.
Once more he was expelled, this time by the Militant Tendency he had created. He took 200 members with him to form the "Socialist Appeal" group (the name of the original WIL paper), cheerfully explaining that: "Well, that is the best split I've ever been through!" After his expulsion, Militant soon split into several warring factions. While his group stumbles along in the UK, inter-nationally Grant has begotten several organisations that today are creating a similar impact to that of the Militant Tendency in Britain in the 1980s, notably in Pakistan and Latin America.
Grant was not the easiest of people to work with. During his RCP days, his exasperated comrades famously locked him in his room, refusing to let him out until he had written a promised article, only to discover he had escaped out of the window to go to the cinema.
But he was not the mindless automaton derided by the tabloid media in the 1980s. He liked to bet on the horses, loved cowboy films and had an infectious laughter. He clearly had had his loves too, and late into his life old female revolutionaries from the US and France often asked after him.
Grant remained active until three years ago, when he suffered a stroke while speaking at a meeting in London. He leaves no family, following the death of his eldest sister, Rae, in Paris last year.
· Ted Grant, founder of the Militant Tendency, born July 16 1913; died July 20 2006
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
What Next For The Economy ?
Nothing.
A few City boys and girls will move offices is all.
Some may turn from the greed driven trade and do charity work.
But most will return and in a year, maybe two, all will be as it was.
Or will it ?
America's Banking System has all but collapsed.
The UK and European Banks are teetering on the edge.
Governments having to step in and buy out the major Finance Institutions, just to try and stop the rot.
Its not looking good.
Worse, the Governments have borrowed the money from same Financial Institutions and been charged interest on the loans.
Higher taxes for us.
More profit for them.
The last time major finance institutions went bust was the Great Depression, in the 20's.
That led to the rise of Fascism.
That led to a World War.
A few City boys and girls will move offices is all.
Some may turn from the greed driven trade and do charity work.
But most will return and in a year, maybe two, all will be as it was.
Or will it ?
America's Banking System has all but collapsed.
The UK and European Banks are teetering on the edge.
Governments having to step in and buy out the major Finance Institutions, just to try and stop the rot.
Its not looking good.
Worse, the Governments have borrowed the money from same Financial Institutions and been charged interest on the loans.
Higher taxes for us.
More profit for them.
The last time major finance institutions went bust was the Great Depression, in the 20's.
That led to the rise of Fascism.
That led to a World War.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Letter To Siabreen.
Dear Siabreen,
Im writing this as I had no opportunity to express myself before you left.
For over 8 years, we were a loving, powerful partnership.
With you, I experienced true emotion, for the first time in my life.
It was you that helped me come back to myself and, for that, I will be eternally grateful.
We produced Grace, a miraculous event and a miraculous child.
You and I together.
Thank You.
Our relationship was many thing, but never dull.
Towards the end it became too painful to be around you.
The final straw was when you broke your oath to Zelda West Meeds, our Relate Counsellor.
But the end of our relationship need not have meant the end of us as a family.
We could have survived as people and parents, even though apart.
You must have known that.
I wonder if you knew how much your keeping me from Grace hurt(s).
Even now, I doubt if causing me pain was your goal, so what the hell was it ?
(There will be no answer now.)
Thank You for being in my life.
Thank You for allowing me into yours.
I FORGIVE you completely and you are FREE.
Love and Light be with you wherever you are.
Im writing this as I had no opportunity to express myself before you left.
For over 8 years, we were a loving, powerful partnership.
With you, I experienced true emotion, for the first time in my life.
It was you that helped me come back to myself and, for that, I will be eternally grateful.
We produced Grace, a miraculous event and a miraculous child.
You and I together.
Thank You.
Our relationship was many thing, but never dull.
Towards the end it became too painful to be around you.
The final straw was when you broke your oath to Zelda West Meeds, our Relate Counsellor.
But the end of our relationship need not have meant the end of us as a family.
We could have survived as people and parents, even though apart.
You must have known that.
I wonder if you knew how much your keeping me from Grace hurt(s).
Even now, I doubt if causing me pain was your goal, so what the hell was it ?
(There will be no answer now.)
Thank You for being in my life.
Thank You for allowing me into yours.
I FORGIVE you completely and you are FREE.
Love and Light be with you wherever you are.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Giveaway Of The Day.
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/
Just a plug for one of my fav sites.
Thank You.
For those who dont know, the site offers licences to new software coming onto the market.
Just a plug for one of my fav sites.
Thank You.
For those who dont know, the site offers licences to new software coming onto the market.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Visiting Siabreen's grave.
On Tuesday, I discovered where my ex partner, Siabreen, is buried.
The knowledge has caused turmoil with my emotions; also with my body.
The glands of my groin are swollen and sometimes painful.
My thoughts are full of bile, then swing to our LOVE remembered.
It has been an amazing roller-coaster of rediscovered (suppressed) memories and feelings, beautiful, sad and sometimes hateful.
When she first died, I had the thought of desecrating the grave. Payback for the things she had said and done.
My anger was very strong, July 2004.
Now,it is different. I AM different.
It is my intention to visit her grave tomorrow (saturday).
I can feel the sadness welling up even now.
What will I do ?
Cry like a baby.
Shout at her and God.
My prayer is that I FORGIVE her completely
and am finally able to release her.
A conclusion to our most amazing journey together, which started 18 years ago.
Producing our daughter, Grace, as proof that fear and medical conditions need not stand in the way of dreams !
The knowledge has caused turmoil with my emotions; also with my body.
The glands of my groin are swollen and sometimes painful.
My thoughts are full of bile, then swing to our LOVE remembered.
It has been an amazing roller-coaster of rediscovered (suppressed) memories and feelings, beautiful, sad and sometimes hateful.
When she first died, I had the thought of desecrating the grave. Payback for the things she had said and done.
My anger was very strong, July 2004.
Now,it is different. I AM different.
It is my intention to visit her grave tomorrow (saturday).
I can feel the sadness welling up even now.
What will I do ?
Cry like a baby.
Shout at her and God.
My prayer is that I FORGIVE her completely
and am finally able to release her.
A conclusion to our most amazing journey together, which started 18 years ago.
Producing our daughter, Grace, as proof that fear and medical conditions need not stand in the way of dreams !
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Today, I was asked if I was glad Siabreen had died.
My first thought, Im ashamed to say, was Yes.
Only for a moment.
Then, I remembered my Lover and Friend of 8 years.
The Mother of my Daughter, Grace.
The Stepmom to my Daughter, Leona.
Siabreen and I had been communicating.
Grace and I had been communicating.
The Nightmare was coming to an End.
The Fairclough and Gelfand families put a stop to that.
For Grace, not only did she lose her Mother,
but she lost her Father all over again.
Would one of the family please contact me !
It is never too late to Heal this situation.
For Grace's sake !
My first thought, Im ashamed to say, was Yes.
Only for a moment.
Then, I remembered my Lover and Friend of 8 years.
The Mother of my Daughter, Grace.
The Stepmom to my Daughter, Leona.
Siabreen and I had been communicating.
Grace and I had been communicating.
The Nightmare was coming to an End.
The Fairclough and Gelfand families put a stop to that.
For Grace, not only did she lose her Mother,
but she lost her Father all over again.
Would one of the family please contact me !
It is never too late to Heal this situation.
For Grace's sake !
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Death is never far away.
My friends father died yesterday.(saturday).
I took a phone call,from a member of the family,on friday,saying he was ill.
My friend had issues with his father so there was no direct or quick communication.
Such a shame.
I pray that Grace is able to meet her father soon.
I took a phone call,from a member of the family,on friday,saying he was ill.
My friend had issues with his father so there was no direct or quick communication.
Such a shame.
I pray that Grace is able to meet her father soon.
Friday, May 19, 2006
Alison Gelfand
Alison Gelfand of Merrick,New York,hates me.
But loves my daughter !
Though her reasons for hating me are wrong !
But loves my daughter !
Though her reasons for hating me are wrong !
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)