Post by Wayne Hall on Nov 21, 2021 17:10:25 GMT -5
Message to The Highwire
The question goes deeper and takes us to the England of Cromwell and the revolution of 1688-9.
E.V.
Without yet having read Mark Mazower's book on the Greek Revolution halva.proboards.com/thread/567/greek-revolution?page=1&scrollTo=1601 I think it is right to be against exaggerating the role of the Greek Revolution in forming the nation-state system. And it is true that Cromwell and the English Revolution are significant influences. But to conflate Cromwell and 1688 introduces confusion if one is trying to assess the relevance of Left viewpoints. Marxists and Leftists in general are interested in Cromwell and even moreso in the more radical currents among his supporters (Winstanley, the Diggers). But 1688, the "Glorious Revolution", WillIam III, etc. are not even recognized as a revolution by Marxists. The "Glorious Revolution" is a notion beloved of the people who made - or identify with - the American War of Independence. Their key chronicler (or one of them) is Thomas Babington Macaulay, and the current he personifies is called "Whig history" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history
In relation to present-day political problems, and first and foremost the split between the political current slandered as "anti-Vaxxers" on the one hand and e.g. DiEM25 and Varoufakis on the other, is Ellen Brown's latest article on central bank digital currencies halva.proboards.com/post/1607 a relevant input? I suspect that it is.
Varoufakis and Dimitris Kazakis are both leftists and theoretically could play a role in lifting present-day emancipatory currents out of the near-exclusive embrace of the "right wing". In this context I prioritise achieving mutual recognition and acceptance between Kazakis and e.g. The Highwire. Del Bigtree's recent interview of Geert van den Bossche is centrally important halva.proboards.com/post/1603 How realistic is it to expect the Greek (ex?) Communist) Kazakis to attract the respect and interest of the American (ex?) Democrat Bigtree? As for Varoufakis, he and Kazakis both emerged in 2008 in the "movement of the squares" and the "indignados" (in Greek "aganaktismenoi"), but they are antagonists and they are both self-centred. halva.proboards.com/post/1603. nymag.com/news/intelligencer/aaron-james-assholes-2012-12/
I wrote this: On the subject of Dimitris Kazakis, the more I proceed with translating his address to his political party EPAM, the clearer it becomes that there should be an orientation towards the USA to make up for the limitations of support he is receiving from other competitors in Greece. As a (former?) Communist and a Greek, Kazakis is unusual in his openness to the idea that the USA might still have a lot to offer to the world.
These are his words (my translation): "Imagine the traditions of the medical world, that we are called on to erase now. We have to erase them because that sense of social obligation towards the patient and towards society, the profoundly humanitarian content of the medical profession, has to be totally erased so that the doctor can be transformed into what he was under Nazism: the retainer, whose priority was personal self-interest: to have a nice car, to have a bank account in Switzerland, or wherever else he can see, some refuge abroad where Big Pharma could make its deposits. Four and a half thousand doctors were caught by the Americans, Greek doctors, who were taking fat bribes from Novartis. The issue got only as far as small print in the newspapers. And today these four and a half thousand doctors are the wise men in the committees and the various characters who come on television and say how great it is to be vaccinating even babies. To make us accept that we don't have a national health system and that we have to hide: that's what they said. They said epidemics do two things: we either get infected and die or we hide. I'm sorry, I know that that was the logic of troglodytes. I didn't know that to study medicine or become a professor you have to become a troglodyte with academic qualifications. That is precisely the situation we face today. And anyone who thinks that this has come in order to go away, or that it is temporary, it is panic and we will get over it, just look and see what is happening in the United States now, and how the medical sector in the U.S. is fighting, in a country which had no idea, and has no idea, what a public health system means. How a big proportion of private doctors are fighting, irrespective of whether they have been vaccinated or not, against their transformation into agents of state policy and private interests. To practise medicine, not on the basis of the clinical picture of the doctor himself/herself, where the doctor himself/herself as a clinical doctor is able to decide and able to help or advise his/her patient, having above him/her first and foremost the life of the patient or the person who is asking for help, but on the basis of protocols that come from a panel of specialists making decisions behind closed doors, or the vested interests of Big Pharma."
I hope to be able to speak to Del Bigtree about this and about Kazakis.
Wayne Hall, Aegina, Greece