Dave on Various reading and musing has led me to the foundation of the United States, not the least, my studying of the history of Mexico. I wrote a little piece on the its founding, on my blog, interestingly called https://davelevy.info/subsidiarity-representation-and-human-rights/. I say interestingly, because the title has little to suggest it is about US governance and its constitution.
Dave on The scandal, which broke in April 2018, saw the UK government apologise for deportation threats made to Commonwealth citizens’ children. Despite living and working in the UK for decades, many were told they were there illegally because of a lack of official paperwork.
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Dave on Provoked by Adonis, I came across some stuff about the so-called Glorious Revolution. Here are my notes … Read More
Dave on Looking for Dennis Healy’s admiration for how Austria came to terms with its loss of Empire and found ‘Like Romans Becoming Italians’: Italy as the Negative Paradigm for British Decline in the Language of the Press and Denis Healey by Ettore Costa, published it seems in 2018. An interesting read, here are my notes. i.e. this is a review of the paper, not an essay on the theory of comparative advantage. Read More
Dave on The Govt send HMS Defender into the Black Sea where it approached or entered Ukraine’s or Russia’s territorial waters and the Russians took some form of warning action using either artillery, naval guns and/or bombs. This is just a provocation. WTF were we doing there? …
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Dave on Not really, but I was asked the other day. Here are some notes.
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Dave on Martin Thomas (of the AWL) together with Peter Thomas has produced a pamphlet/book on the Life and thoughts of Gramsci. I might read it some time, but not today. Their landing page which hosts the .pdf is called Gramsci in Context. I also found this, from Socialist Appeal which argues that many Communists and Social Democrats have adopted and distorted Gramsci’s insights into hegemony and propaganda. I have no further notes on this item.
Dave on I need to sell my stamp collection, here are my notes. Read More
Dave on As part of my English revolution reading, prompted by Arden’s Left Handed Liberty, I took a look at Magna Carta itself, what did it codify/concede? How relevant is it today? Here are my notes. …
Dave on I have been doing some reading recently on what I considered pre-capitalist history much of which I tried to put in a class struggle context, basically about the coming of the bourgeoisie. I always felt that Capitalism came into being at the end of the 17th century but others challanged this and since I can no longer rely on my schooling, here are some subsequent notes, mainly important dates between 1773 and 1844. … Read More
Dave on I am playing a game of inverse “would I lie to you” each weekend. We don’t have so many rules as the TV shows; I was considering doing one on English Revolts, but decided not to; but made some interesting discoveries, which for me reinforces the need for a debate on English History teaching. I was also motivated to discover the truth about the Battle of Deptford Bridge. Here are the links I found, with a little bit of commentry. …
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Dave on The Leveller’s and the mutinies. Curious as to whether there’s a battle to propose to Class Wargames, as a result of further thinking beyond my comments here.. It seems there was. Here are my notes which focus more on the politics now, rather than the military actions.
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Dave on I was pointed at this review of, Chris Bambery’s book The Second World War: A Marxist History (2014) which takes a different from normal view of the politics of the second world war; the story where the people’s of the last democracies in Europe united with the United States to fight its fascist blight. This blog article looks at the US financial contribution to the Allied war effort, the Tory Party, even Churchill’s, ambivalence in fighting fascism, and US Capitalism’s contribution to the fascist victory in Spain. The review is more comprehensive and the book would seem to be even more so. For more here, see below/overleaf. …
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Dave on Mexico has a sad and long history, having finished Class Wargames, I am looking to pick up, “Mexico, a brief history”. Here are my other notes & links … Read More
Dave on I have been/am still reading Richard Barbrook’s book, “Class Wargames”. Among its many fascinating themes is his study of the collapse of democratic military forces into dictatorship.He name checks Napoleon, Toussaint Louverture & the Russian Revolution. I wonder why he didn’t start earlier with the English Civil War, it would seem to me to be another failure of a democratic military. To him, Guy Debord’s “Game of War” is critically important, partly because of the way it abstracts large elements of military conflict, but they adopted different rules, using miniatures for both the Haitian and Russian Civil War scenarios. How easy would it be to find or adapt some ECW rules? Here are my notes … Read More
