Lorenzo LeNoir

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

Go @Fiery_Particle

[LA Times Festival of Books @latimesfob]

And the finalists for this year's @latimes Book Prize for Biography are...

Laura Beers (@Fiery_Particle)
Cynthia Carr
Jessica Goudeau (@jessica_goudeau)
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Pamela D. Toler

Congratulations, authors!! 🎉 https://t.co/QwKGRdFy9Q

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

@AlwynTurner Superb!!!

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

@johnpmerrick @lifeisnotanovel @AnnaDevs have you read Clancy Sigal 'London Lover' which covers his relationship with Lessing and several other "escapades" to boot? I'm going to wager you have, but thought I'd mention.

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

@LeoZeilig Yes. Also amazing musical line-up that had passed me by!

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

@LeoZeilig

[Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein]

Amazing. https://t.co/QPS394DR6n

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

In Reds (1981) - the film about John Reed - the part of Kerensky is played by… wait for it… Kerensky’s actual grandson, Oleg!

[Groucho @AllThingsMarx]

#RufusTFirefly The last man nearly ruined this place,
He didn't know what to do with it.
If you think this country's bad off now,
Just wait 'till I get through with it

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

@ewangibbs Absolutely bonkers!

[processnorth @processnorth]

A good man gone: amongst his many works, Seabrook's 1971 City Close Up was a remarkable study of Blackburn: https://t.co/ZQjaHarZ3P / @deindustrialpol @BwDDenise @leepaulv @bwilky23 @jackiefloyd17 @NightsafeJan @RichBrowntown @AnthonyShaw91 @radiolancgirl @FionaWild68

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

Solidarity just now (with Eddie the dog)!

[Brandon Tigges @brandontigges]

Day 5 update on @VailResorts Park City ski patrol strike. Here's a synopsis of what's happened for those impacted by nearly 90% of Park City being shut down the past 5 days and wondering what's going on:

- Park City ski patrol has been asking for a base pay increase from $21/hr to $24/hr for several months (neighboring Powder is $26/hr and Deer Valley is $24/hr). This also hasn't increased in x3 seasons so their ask is well below inflation.
- Vail Resorts (VR) and @PCski leadership refused to budge and let them go on strike beginning Saturday 12/28. VR also preemptively flew in ski patrol leadership from many of their other resorts (impacting their holiday and family plans as well as safety at those other locations) which they thought would mitigate any operational impact.
- The result for the thousands of guests visiting Park City for the holidays has been horrendous. Guests have and are still experiencing hour+ long wait lines, runs dangerously overcrowded resulting in guests being hit by other skiiers, guests are waiting longer than usual for Ski Patrol when injured (the days I was up there I didn't see a single Ski Patroller on the mountain), and over 80% of the mountain is still closed due to avalanche concerns (because the experienced Ski Patrollers who know how to mitigate for it are still on strike).
- VR lied to customers for the first x3 days, citing that wind and snow were the reasons runs were closed and lines were long, until they finally released a video admitting that it was due to the ski patrol strike and told us they were going to re-enter negotiations and come to a resolution.
- Last night, PC Ski Patrol notified us that Vail Resorts still has refused to grant them the concessions they asked for, they have allowed the strike to continue, and conditions are still terrible today.
- Finally, the attached letter from the Breckenridge Ski Patrol Union revealed that Vail Resorts has also been compromising the safety of guests at other VR resorts and pressuring other employees from those resorts to act as leverage against their fellow ski patrollers in Park City.

@VailResorts did a great job for many years popularizing skiing and making it more accessible.

And this generation of leadership, specifically, their CEO Kirsten Lynch, is undoing over a decade of good will by making the conscious decision this past week to punish their customers in order to send a message to their employees.

They've compromised the safety and ruined the vacations of thousands of guests because they're more focused on minimizing costs than they are in ensuring that their customers have a beautiful and safe experience during the vacations they invested thousands of dollars in to enjoy over the holidays.

This entire situation was avoidable and could have been resolved immediately at any point in time, but VR leadership chose and continues to choose to subsidize their customer experience in order to minimize their costs.

Kirsten Lynch's responsibility is to maximize the value of $MTN stock for shareholders. How does stealing time and money from thousands of guests, putting guest safety at risk, and causing irreparable harm the Vail Resorts brand maximize shareholder value?

@VailResorts board should hold Kirsten, Deirdra Walsh (VP & COO of Park City), and Bill Rock (President of VR Mountain Division) accountable for putting cost-cutting and their personal egos ahead of customer safety and experience.

My hope is that VR and Park City leadership humbly admits they were wrong and stops putting Park City guests safety at risk, ends the strike so the Park City ski patrol can get back to work, and opens up the mountain.

@UtahStateParks @ParkCityGovt @PCMtnAlert @NSAA_org @usfs_r4 @ParkCitySki @tanyaachar
@KSKInvestors @MariahXHoard
@mirandastacy @sbmgreer
@RobBradUVA @thomas_scott__
@LiberalLeopard @ZcryptA @lyfeblock
@dhowell @trevorcall1
@crypto_chik01 @SoFloExecutive
@munves @bmullahy2news
@MichaelK_Riley @liftblog
@TownLiftNews @KPCWRadio @skimagonline @sundancefest @p_malatesta @zak_podmore @SoFloExecutive @sustainbytrain @iz_aries @NShrubs @iwasid @stgoldst @ZachWritesStuff @jfberke @ByGerrySullivan @ChossUSA

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

This has made me titter

[Pippa Norris @PippaN15]

Neat demonstration of the powerful effects of demographic replacement on value change in just a half dozen years.
https://t.co/0gIFU7NT88

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

Musk?

[Dr Ally Louks @DrAllyLouks]

If you still don’t believe in olfactory messaging, please read this advertisement for Trump’s new cologne ‘Fight Fight Fight’ and tell me what it actually smells like.

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

if this is your bag, it's really good: https://t.co/Bt1ooBJ7n8

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

In my postbox today. What a subtitle! Many congratulations! @philchild

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

Couldn't MPs' expenses be means-tested?

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

Woody Allen and Winston Churchill share a birthday (today). And there was a bass guitarist called Allen Woody.

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

This is comedy gold, like your preposterous review of the book. Are you just cosplaying a character from Tariq Ali's 'Redemption'? Just attend and comment. It's a critical discussion, freely advertised. You are currently doing yourself no favours.

[David North @DavidNorthWSWS]

I have sent this letter (posted below) to the Institute of Historical Research (@ihr_history) at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, which is sponsoring on December 2 an online seminar at which Professor Aidan Beatty will be speaking on “Gerry Healy and the WRP: Violence, Gender, and the Perils of Trotskyism”. I have asked that I be afforded time to respond to Beatty's presentation. Please send statements supporting this request to [email protected]
----------

November 29, 2024

To the Institute of Historical Research:
[email protected]

On 2 December 2024, the Institute of Historical Research is sponsoring an online seminar titled “Gerry Healy and the WRP: Violence, Gender, and the Perils of Trotskyism”. The listed speaker is Professor Aidan Beatty.

As the title of the seminar clearly indicates, the scheduled seminar is not an educational event, but rather a political meeting whose explicit purpose is to attack and discredit the Trotskyist movement.

Mr. Beatty's recent book, “The Party is Always Right: The Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism”, is a blatant exercise in historical falsification, which violates the most elementary standards of scholarly research. It makes claims about Gerry Healy’s life that are demonstrably untrue. The book has been published by Pluto Press, which is controlled politically by long-time opponents of Healy. It is based on what Mr. Beatty palms off as “oral history,” which consists almost entirely of undocumented allegations by political opponents of Gerry Healy. Incredibly for a historian, Mr. Beatty conducted virtually no archival research in the writing of this biography. In a 234 page book that purports to cover the political career of Gerry Healy, which spanned six decades, there are only five footnoted references to the writings of his subject. The actual content of political controversies in which Healy played a central role are ignored and the relevant documents are not referenced.

The World Socialist Web Site [https://t.co/nPT5gslm77] has published several reviews of Mr. Beatty’s book in which his falsifications of the historical record are exposed. A central claim made by Mr. Beatty on the first page of his opening chapter —“Most egregiously Gerry Healy’s well-repeated claim that he saw the Black and Tans shoot and kill his father during the War of Independence was an outright lie” — is entirely unsupported by any sort of written evidence and is based on nothing more than gossip. Research carried out by the WSWS conclusively establishes that Healy never claimed to have witnessed his father’s death. In fact, he never wrote or spoke about his family background — not even to his daughter.

Further claims made by Beatty — that Healy was raised in an affluent bourgeois family and that the area of Ireland in which he spent his childhood was largely spared the violence of the rebellion and civil war — have also been shown by the WSWS to be totally false.

Permit me to refer the Institute to the recent and most detailed reply to Beatty’s biography posted on the World Socialist Web Site: “Slander vs. Biography: Aidan Beatty’s falsification of Gerry Healy’s family and childhood in a decade of rebellion and civil war,” by Thomas Scripps [https://t.co/X9NDPNV0xZ]. Mr. Scripps' exposure of Beatty’s falsifications is based on solid archival research.

Mr. Beatty does not confine his attack to the Gerry Healy. Astonishingly, in what purports to be a biography of Gerry Healy, he devotes his final chapter to a denunciation of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States and of me. The latter attack is highly personalized and includes data that he seems to have mined from https://t.co/OKlVTZV5Pv. He includes references to my grandparents, parents and other personal information entirely unrelated to the life of Gerry Healy.

What Mr. Beatty fails to include in this personalized denunciation is any reference to the extensively documented record of my political differences with Gerry Healy.

This raises yet another significant issue. In Mr. Beatty's acknowledgments, in which he purports to explain his motivations for writing the biography, he fails to disclose that he is a leading member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a political party in the United States that is bitterly hostile to the Socialist Equality Party, of which I am the national chairman. Moreover, for approximately five years, Mr. Beatty worked at Wayne State University in Detroit, where the Socialist Equality Party and its youth organization, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, have been conspicuously active. The DSA’s efforts to suppress the presence of the SEP and IYSSE on the WSU campus included calls to the police. Thus, the first sentence of Mr. Beatty’s Acknowledgments — “I can’t remember when I first heard of Gerry Healy, but by the very start of 2020 I had begun to gather material on him, not knowing whether it would lead to a piece of long-form journalism or an idiosyncratic academic article." — is simply unbelievable. As a politically active opponent of the SEP on the campus of Wayne State University, Beatty would have most certainly been sufficiently familiar with the history of the Trotskyist movement to have heard of Gerry Healy well before he decided to write his biography.

There is a further point related to the origins of Beatty’s biographical project. Beatty writes in his Acknowledgments: “My research in Britain was funded by the Program on Jewish Studies and the World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh, who were generous enough to see the Jewish, Israeli-Palestinian and global connections of this project.” Mr. Beatty fails to explain the nature of these “global connections,” and how he convinced these two institutions to assist in the financing of a biography devoted to the life of an Irish-born Trotskyist who spent his entire political career in Britain. Mr. Beatty has longstanding relations, spanning a decade, with organizations closely associated with the Zionist movement and the Israeli state. Given Gerry Healy's well-known support for the struggle of the Palestinian national movement against the Zionist state, it is reasonable to assume that financing was provided to Beatty with the understanding that his biography would serve to discredit the Trotskyist movement. Mr. Beatty has failed to reply to the WSWS’s request that he make public his applications for funding from the Program on Jewish Studies and the World History Center.

Given the issues and circumstances enumerated above, I request that the Institute of Historical Research allow me to participate in the December 2 online webinar, with sufficient time to reply to Mr. Beatty’s presentation. The IHR, with its reputation for the promotion of scholarly research, should not be endorsing Mr. Beatty's manifestly false and maliciously factional political attack on Trotskyist movement. The IHR’s obligation to allow me to respond to Mr. Beatty is all the more imperative given the fact that I am a subject of his attack.

The lateness of this request should not be given as an excuse to deny it. We received no official notification of the planned online seminar, and only learned of it within the last 48 hours. In any event, the nature of an online event presents no specific organizational obstacle to the granting of my request.

I look forward to your reply,

David North

[Lorenzo LeNoir @LawrenceeBlack]

@untypicalboro V good!!