114

The Real Left, Phony Left and What’s Left

Philip Farruggio

Elizabeth Warren (right) and Bernie Sanders (slightly less right).

Cutting to the chase, if you consider yourself to be ‘On the Left’ then you have to be a Socialist. Period!

Now, there are many different levels under the banner of Socialism. Some may be Marxist, Trotskyite, Syndicalism etc. Yet, the unifying denominator is that all believe in the common ownership of the means of production and services.

Many socialists do honor the existence of Mom and Pop private ownership of small business. Under a truly socialist system banking, energy, health & dental care, housing and all necessary services would be owned and operated by the community, whether it be local, state or federal.

Imagine if you would if we had real community owned and run mortgage banks, where the only interest charges would be for overhead. Translated: Even in these so-called ‘low rates’ times, where a mortgage rate is around 4 or 5%, with non-profit community banks the rate would be perhaps 1%. Plus, the mortgage paper would remain with that bank. Today’s renters would be tomorrow’s owners of their own abode.

A truly socialist system would similarly own and operate the energy that goes into your home or apartment. For perhaps a fraction of what we pay now, everyone would have complete medical and dental coverage. (This writer has already spent $ 5000 this past year, CASH, with no insurance, for root canals, crowns and one extraction).

The real crime of it all is when we have less than 1/2 of 1% of our populace earning over a million dollars a year, and being treated in the same tax basket as those earning a couple of hundred thousand a year. In 1961, when JFK took office, the top rate was at 91% for a joint return of a couple earning $ 400,000 or more a year. By the time their accountant sharpened his or her pencil, the couple perhaps paid 40-50% of that. Nowadays, couples filing jointly and earning between $ 400,000 – $ 600,000 pay at the rate of 35%. After their accountant does the deed, maybe they pay at 20%. See the loss for Uncle Sam? I could go on and on but you should be getting my drift.

A truly socialist society would not need to have our military all over the world, pointing our majestic force and power at everyone. There is no way, if we curtailed the Corporate War Economy being run by private individuals and investors, that all those phony wars we conducted (or plan to conduct) would ever occur! Cutting the obscene military spending, which is over 50% of our federal tax revenues at present, to maybe 25% or much less than that, would ensure money for safety net programs (like National Health and Dental for All). In addition, we would still be as safe as we are now… NO, actually safer. Why? Well, with no phony wars and excursions into all those Middle Eastern countries (and soon to be Venezuela) the question of ‘Why do they hate us’ would not even be brought up.

Now let’s look at the group I name the ‘Phony Left’. The Democratic Party, continued to be subsidized by the super rich, have a large segment (especially recently) considering themselves as ‘Left wing’. Really? Bottom line: They all still serve the Military Industrial Empire. When do you see them advocating a real pullback of this empire by closing a majority of our nearly 1000 foreign bases, and cutting with muster this fiscally bankrupting military spending?

Matter of fact, Bernie Sanders, who is in reality a decent and caring guy, calls himself a ‘Democratic Socialist’. Yet, his group supported both John Kerry’s run in ’04 and Obama’s run in 2008.

Sanders supported the NATO (US led) carpet bombing and destruction of Libya in 2011 and our incursions into Syria… and now our banging the drums for a new Cold War with Russia. Sadly, he referred to the late Hugo Chavez, democratically elected leader of Venezuela, as a ‘Dead Dictator’!

This ‘Phony Left’ still won’t come out in favor of nationalizing Big Business, especially the real culprits, the Wall Street banks! Do you ever hear these folks ditto that in regard to Big Pharma or Corporate Absentee Landlords? As far as taking on the Super Rich, new ‘Phony Left ‘ presidential candidate Sen. Warren wants to assess a whopping 2% surtax on any assets over 50 million dollars. Wow! You got to be kidding me! The real tragedy is that this ‘Peanut plan’ of hers is already being slammed by the embedded mainstream media. When will this comedic material, right out of a Marx Brothers film, cease?

Ok, now as to the title of this column, what’s left on the Amerikan plate?

Well, and again sadly, we have over a hundred million of our fellow citizens who still buy into this ‘Free Enterprise’ garbage that the right-wing and centrist Phony Left have been selling for seems forever. So many decent working stiffs still will defend to their (fiscal?) death the right for anyone to earn as much as possible.

Why? Well, any mention of true socialism as been tangled together with what we have been propagandized to believe as the hated and feared Communism. Orwell’s Big Brother hangs over them like a vulture, ready to devour. Little do they realize that the Nazi gang sold this same Kool-Aid to the masses of Germans in the 1920s and 30s. Thus, Fascism became the antidote, and you should know the rest folks.

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Martin Usher
Martin Usher
Feb 11, 2019 7:31 AM

I’ve found that many people get to bound up in the notion of what’s real socialism and what’s not that they just end up arguing among themselves about how many angels are able to dance on the head of a pin. To me there’s really only two sorts of socialism. The first, codified by Marx, used economic theory and basic common sense to argue for the social control, if not outright ownership, of the means of production. The other sort was first codified by Otto von Bismark who figured that giving the workers some of the trappings of socialism would not only lead to a strong, prosperous society but it would keep any nascent social unrest in check. Subsequent history has shown that the group we now call the oligarchs (but used to be known by various names like ‘ruling classes’ & ‘robber barons’) greatest fear is socialism, they’ll do… Read more »

The abolitionist
The abolitionist
Feb 11, 2019 1:34 PM
Reply to  Martin Usher

This idea of taking baby steps plays into the hands of the class of employers. To take “baby steps” implies that we should not even address the power of employers as a class. Such a view puts socialism always in the future. As John Dewey, a philosopher of education pointed out, such a view leads to an attitude of procrastination since the future is always put off. Furthermore, as he pointed out, a real aim–as opposed to a pseudo-aim–is used to organize present activities. A so-called aim that is not used to organize present activities is not an aim at all. The left in Toronto do just that–put off to some vague future what we need to do today. For example, rather than criticizing the need for most people to work for employers, they talk about “decent work”–as if decent work is really possible under existing conditions of a society… Read more »

The abolitionist
The abolitionist
Feb 9, 2019 9:03 PM

I am unsure why a comment that I wrote was not posted. There are certainly many pseudo-leftists here in Toronto (and, in general, in Canada). The general left is essentially a welfare-state left here, wanting to go back to a form of capitalism before the economic crises of the 1970s and onward rather than forward to a society without a class of employers. Socialism involves a society where there is no class of employers and where the workers control their lives collectively on a technical basis that emerged with the emergence of capitalist society. Consequently, one of the above posts that refers to Switzerland as socialist is hardly accurate. Do not a class of employers exist in Switzerland? And therefore a class of employees? Socialism is a solution to characteristic problems of capitalism that cannot be solved through a society dominated by a class of employers. The real left, then,… Read more »

Robert Laine
Robert Laine
Feb 10, 2019 3:47 AM

It did get posted, abolitionist. Your problem might be that the page needs to be refreshed after posting to view it.

The abolitionist
The abolitionist
Feb 10, 2019 2:03 PM
Reply to  Robert Laine

Thank you. I noticed it now.

The abolitionist
The abolitionist
Feb 9, 2019 3:32 PM

There is certainly a lot of so-called leftists who assume the fundamental eternity of the power of the class of employers. It is at this level that the “real left” should be distinguished from the pseudo-left. See my own blog on this.

Much of the left in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (and indeed in Canada in general) are a pseudo-left–really social democrats, desiring a return to the welfare state of old rather than a forward movement without the existence of a class of employers.

I note that one person claimed that Switzerland is socialist. This view merely takes the welfare state as its standard. Does there not exist employers in Switzerland? A class of employers? And a class of employees? How is Switzerland then socialist?

Socialism involves the collective control over our own life process–over our own collective lives–not welfare statism.

Dr Farr
Dr Farr
Feb 9, 2019 2:15 PM

Good article. I’d like to see more from this author. I’ll go with Lenin’s insistence that to be a socialist, one must be an internationalist and thus an anti-imperialist. The new hot item in the US “left” these days is the DSA (democratic socialists of america). They qualify their brand of socialism as “democratic” because, like the anti-communist conservatives and social democrats, they equate stalinism with socialism/communism. As the author illustrates, this brand of “democratic socialism” is not at all anti-imperialist. I wonder how many young DSA members are aware of the pro-imperialist, anti-communist roots of their predecessors

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Feb 10, 2019 1:29 AM
Reply to  Dr Farr

Lenin knew a lot worth learning about how to organise vanguardism into a revolution, any sort of revolution, but he knew bugger all about socialism and was even less inclined to actually espouse it. “Soviets? Schmoviets!” says Vladimir Ilyich. Lenin was all about Permanent Vanguardism provided it kept Lenin in the vanguard of the vanguardists. Ask Rosa.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 10, 2019 6:39 AM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

As might reasonably be inferred from the history of the 20th century, it turns out that Leninism, no less than Stalinism, is actually a programme for the successful construction of state capitalism in industrially underdeveloped countries.

It remains an open question whether socialism, understood as workers’ control and economic democracy, might be at least as successful at industrial and economic development, because it’s never actually been tried, having been everywhere viciously suppressed by either state or private capitalism, or both.

Voline — The Unknown Revolution / 1917-1921

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Feb 11, 2019 3:47 AM
Reply to  milosevic

“…it turns out that Leninism, no less than Stalinism, is actually a programme for the successful construction of state capitalism…”

It turned, past tense, out that Leninism, no less than Stalinism, was actually a programme for the successful construction of state capitalism just as soon as Lenin got his feet firmly planted under the ex-Tsar’s top table, its having been in lurking in private, awaiting the opportunity to spring fully-formed from behind the fluff of the hustings, since well before he boarded his sealed train. “Soviets? Schmuckviets!” said Vladimir Ilyich.

“It remains an open question whether socialism, understood as workers’ control and economic democracy, might be at least as successful at industrial and economic development, because it’s never actually been tried…”

That is what turns out, present tense, to be the case.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 11, 2019 6:43 AM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

The theory that all the Bolshevik personnel were aspiring state-capitalist bureaucrats from the outset, hardly explains why most of those who survived the civil war, were eventually physically exterminated by the Stalin regime.

A more plausible explanation is that they became an obstacle to the ambitious people and institutions, that their mistaken theory had empowered as a supposedly necessary means to some other end.

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Feb 11, 2019 9:21 PM
Reply to  milosevic

“The theory that all the Bolshevik personnel were aspiring state-capitalist bureaucrats from the outset, hardly explains…”

I was neither proposing nor supporting such a theory, I was specifically referring to Lenin. The rest was his masterly creation, command and misdirection of groupthink, as well as its usual accompaniments of stage fright, jobsworthery, etc.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Feb 10, 2019 6:11 AM
Reply to  Dr Farr

Dr Farr: bingo! Correct. Agree with you. Sadly, there are a lot more ‘socialists’ out there who support such things as ‘humanitarian intervention’ or who refuse to even mention Julian Assange coz they ‘dont defend rapists’ etc. A lot out there who claim to be ‘socialist’ – but willingly lap up Imperialist propaganda in rags like The Guardian, or on BBC, and believe it.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 10, 2019 6:44 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

who refuse to even mention Julian Assange coz they ‘dont defend rapists’ etc.

— thus do we discover whose interests Identity Politics actually serves, and why it was constructed.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Feb 10, 2019 6:50 AM
Reply to  milosevic

Milosevic: exactly M, touché…. But weeding out who is real and who is fake (gatekeepers) is pretty tough at times. I mentioned here or yesterday Cory Morningstar @ wrong kind of green does a good job of exposing the phony’s. I can be a bit naive at times.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 10, 2019 7:33 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

I mentioned here or yesterday Cory Morningstar @ wrong kind of green does a good job of exposing the phony’s. I second your recommendation of that resource: http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/ weeding out who is real and who is fake (gatekeepers) is pretty tough at times. As I said below, I consider that anyone exhibiting 9/11 Denial Syndrome has an extremely high probability of being some kind of either witting or unwitting gatekeeper. Conversely, the proponents of no-planes-at-WTC theories are almost certainly either disinfo shills or delusional idiots. Of course, those who promote identity politics, but ignore or disparage class politics, are without question stooges of the ruling class, whether or not they are consciously aware of it, or being properly compensated for their services. (the hysterical rage which overcomes many such people when confronted with real left-wing analysis, suggests that they are subconsciously aware of their actual role, but are trying to… Read more »

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Feb 10, 2019 8:23 AM
Reply to  milosevic

Milosevic: appreciate your comments, particularly regards identity politics. I smelt a rat ages ago, and steer well clear of such ‘revolutionary socialist’ (cough) groups which vocally spout Identity Politics. Also agree with your comment about ‘controlled opposition’. I also share your disheartened feelings about this at the realisation there isn’t much of a Genuine opposition at all out there. Almost none. And yeah, absolutely won’t go anywhere near AVAAZ or Get Up with a 100 ft barge pole.

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Feb 9, 2019 12:13 AM

“Imagine if you would if we had real community owned and run mortgage banks…”

In much of the English-speaking world, except the USA, “Building Societies” (similar to American “Savings and Loans” except more narrowly focussed, as implied by their name, flourished from their beginnings in 19th century Britain until the collapse of the gold standard and the beginnings of fincialization in the 1960s and early 1970s. There are now very few left, their members having, since the globalization makeover of civil society, voted for a restructuring more attuned to the lures of the capitalist dream. Except under the duress of needs must, fascists generally do not push their human detritus into open graves and shoot it; for the most part, it jumps in of its own accord.

Robert Laine
Robert Laine
Feb 9, 2019 3:15 AM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

Indeed. I was quite chagrined when my insurance company (NRMA) started its long demutualisation process. One less collective alternative to support, several more large private investors to please.

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Feb 8, 2019 11:26 PM

“health & dental care”

No “&”. Dental care is health care, c.f. F.W. Woolworth.

dhfabian
dhfabian
Feb 8, 2019 11:43 PM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

We often enough hear the middle class perspective. Democratic socialism ensures modest incomes even for those who can’t work, and those for whom no viable jobs are available. Post-Clinton Democrats obviously oppose this. They ended basic welfare aid. A left would have been shining a light on US poverty as proof of the failures of our capitalist system. Liberals betray their attachment to capitalism by ignoring the consequences and promoting middle class elitism (reframed as “working class” in 2016).

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Feb 8, 2019 9:21 PM

Fakes and frauds and faux left everywhere…. Gatekeepers to lead the unwashed masses down dead ends that will never challenge the status quo. False saviours that promise much. And deliver nothing. The blog Wrong Kind Of Green (Cory Morningstar) exposes quite a few of these charlatans.

dhfabian
dhfabian
Feb 8, 2019 11:46 PM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

The poor get what has been happening, especially since the 1990s. The middle class remain clueless.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Feb 9, 2019 2:33 AM
Reply to  dhfabian

dhfabian: the middle classes still have their ‘creature comforts’. Many still go on their annual overseas holiday to some tropical hotspot, or continue to buy lots of much needed ‘neccesities’ online, many send their children to private schools, many do their little bit for ‘charity’. In short, the reason they remain clueless is most havn’t experienced real grinding financial hardship, and having to count every penny. Yet. In our dog eat dog race to the bottom economic system, that will change.

mark
mark
Feb 9, 2019 11:57 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

I can’t agree with that, GP. What you are describing may once have been true, but it is now ancient history. The middle class is rapidly going the way of the coal miners and the rest of the industrial working class. It is an endangered species. The MC once received some benefits from our system of crapitalism. Reasonably well paid jobs, job security, pensions, maybe some degree of status. That has gone the way of the coal mines. MI5 predicted that the MC would become the new revolutionary class – because they no longer have any stake in the system.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Feb 10, 2019 6:19 AM
Reply to  mark

Mark: okay, point taken and accepted, tho that’s what I meant by ‘that will change’ however I’m probably a decade out with my timing. Things are getting much tougher for increasingly large numbers of people. I see that when I’m out selling The Big Issue mag, a lot of my customers do it hard, espec pensioners. Sorry for late reply mate.

Robert Laine
Robert Laine
Feb 10, 2019 8:24 PM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

A couple of well-deserved ‘onyas, GP, for your Big Issue work. I used to buy the mag when I was in Canberra.

mark
mark
Feb 10, 2019 8:53 PM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

That’s okay, it’s just that people often say how great and wealthy London is compared to the rest of the UK. But nobody can afford to live there with the property bubbles and £500,000 for a crappy one bedroom flat. People have told me similar stories visiting Australia and Canada.

Some Random Passer-by
Some Random Passer-by
Feb 8, 2019 5:02 PM

My local Labour PPC (Fran Boait) has been the catalyst of doubt for me. Five years ago she ran against Corbyn as a PPC for the Greens. Today, she runs for Labour.

Has several directorships lobbying for changes in banking (but wants to change high street banks!?!? Surely the higher ones are smarter to target?!?!)

Both organisations have recirece donations from MAVA. A Swiss based private organisation supposedly working for nature…

Something reeks here.

crank
crank
Feb 8, 2019 7:24 PM

High street banks like HSBC ?
Most money in the economy is created by high street banks, which is the focus of Positive Money (Fran’s campaign). So I guess from their perspective it does make sense to tackle high street banking.

Some Random Passer-by
Some Random Passer-by
Feb 8, 2019 7:57 PM
Reply to  crank

Why is a private wildlife fund financing both her chosen places of directorship? One of which received £183,000 in one year.

How is a private Swiss fund able to raise over £60 million in 12 months? And why would they get involved in banking when they are a wildlife concern?

http://mava-foundation.org

binra
binra
Feb 8, 2019 8:03 PM

I thought the Plan is to herd the survivors into smart cities and conserve the natural world for the chosen ones. You know, tidy the place up a bit.
Who owns the land?
I mean legally – because in truth we belong to what we give home to and care for.

crank
crank
Feb 8, 2019 8:31 PM

Yeah, it maybe strange. It looks, to my superficial viewing like MAVA are genuinely interested in green finance, as Positive Money are. I have to say that I have actually met Fran on several occasions, and it was her professed motivation for getting into finance issues : she studied environmental crises and pieced together that it was fundamentally the financial system that was driving the economy in a certain direction. It maybe no more than that. I have at times suspected that positive money are some sort of front designed to push an agenda of ‘digital cash’ from the Bank of England, i.e. a new paradigm that may emerge after the next crash. It’s a fairly baseless conspiracy theory on my part though as far as I can see. I do not support Positive Money because they’ve seemed to have a naive view of the role of the Bank of… Read more »

Some Random Passer-by
Some Random Passer-by
Feb 8, 2019 9:50 PM
Reply to  crank

Have thought about it already and have been offered a meet by the local PLP chairman after voicing my concerns.

She’s been given more than I’ll earn in ten years, by one charity in a single donation. She doesn’t represent me, or my ilk (my town voted out, easy to see why we did too (if you look) ).

There’s also the issue of modern history showing the bad people get lots of non jobs for think tanks and the like.

Something smells.

binra
binra
Feb 8, 2019 7:58 PM
Reply to  crank

Hi Crank
“Most money in the economy is created by high street banks”

Where do you get that – arrive at that – statement from?

Do you mean credits given out?
Have you any substantiation?
If you care to…

crank
crank
Feb 8, 2019 8:21 PM
Reply to  binra

Positive Money (mentioned) have done a lot of educative work on this, check their website.
Probably the definitive book on the UK money system is called Where Does Money Come From?
Or there is Prof R Werner who has campaigned for public banking but also has written journal papers showing how the accounting procedure that we call ‘banking’ acutally functions.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=richard+werner+money+system
Even the Bank if England have now admitted that these (above) models are correct, if you search.

binra
binra
Feb 9, 2019 12:29 AM
Reply to  crank

Yes money is ‘created’ by issuing credits – but it was the assumption that High street banking is the major input.
I found that surprising and not at all what I would expect. So if you have support for that specific statement- I’d be interested.
But yes I’m aware of the ‘money is debt’.

crank
crank
Feb 9, 2019 7:59 AM
Reply to  binra

I suggest the book (‘Where Does Money Come From?).

binra
binra
Feb 9, 2019 2:28 PM
Reply to  crank

Ok – but lacking specific substantiation I don’t simply accept that High street banking is the major vector for ‘creating’ debt money.

binra
binra
Feb 8, 2019 3:06 PM

Polarities operate to deny the middle way, which is not a centrist DEFINED by fear or aversion to extremes, but a centred embrace of all the forces in play for the embodying of the resultant – and ever fluid balance point. Our identification with the tool, renders life and the challenges of life into terms of the tool. Man is ruled by his tool. What is the tool that divides to rule? Judgements of rejection. Knowledge cartels. Regulatory capture of the narrative. The desire to feel and find the balance point is seeking within life. The wish and attempt for power over life has already made itself alien to its own life – and projects otherness and lack onto others and to situations, so as to find them unworthy and in error – as the basis of its own sense of self-legitimacy. The very metaphor of left and right implicitly… Read more »

mark
mark
Feb 8, 2019 11:36 AM

Is there any point voting for the Faux Left any more, whether it’s Sanders or the Blairite Backstabbers over here, puffed up poisonous little toads one and all, shilling and cheerleading for every Neocon bloodbath and smash-and-grab regime change that comes along, the latest being Venezuela??? You might as well vote Trump or Tory, it’s exactly the same result. People put some hope in Sanders or Jezza, but it’s pointless. It all makes bu**er all difference. The only change is who gets to ride on the gravy train and put his hand in the till. If you vote Labour, the chances are 4-1 that you are voting for some loathsome Blairite Backstabber like Bradshaw, Berger, Bryant, Gapes, Ellman, Benn and all the rest of that filth. Personally I’d sooner vote for the BNP or Ku Klux Klan. The only movements of any value are the Peasants Revolts and Gilets Jaunes,… Read more »

Robyn
Robyn
Feb 8, 2019 12:57 PM
Reply to  mark

You don’t have to be very old or paying very much attention to remember the buzz that accompanied the election of promising, good-looking, energetic, articulate leaders promising to be different and to govern for ALL the people – Tony Blair, Obama, Justin Trudeau, Macron et al. How long will it take for the masses to twig to the fact that these are no more than telegenic puppets put in place to continue the work of TPTB.

Ray Raven
Ray Raven
Feb 8, 2019 1:21 PM
Reply to  Robyn

You forgot to reference Bob Hawke in the list of .”promising, good-looking, energetic, articulate leaders promising to be different and to govern for ALL the people”. That was a man for the people. And he managed to snare (what is widely considered) a trophy wife – can’t get too much better than that.

Robyn
Robyn
Feb 8, 2019 4:21 PM
Reply to  Ray Raven

Re Bob Hawke’s trophy wife – I rather thought she snared him 🙂

Robert Laine
Robert Laine
Feb 9, 2019 2:31 AM
Reply to  Robyn

I don’t know who snared whom but they sure had plenty of time to do it while his bio was being written. Having talked with Hazel during an awards dinner for my non-profit organisation and watching the flamenco dancing entertainment together, it seems to me she would have been the real trophy wife.

mark
mark
Feb 8, 2019 5:09 PM
Reply to  Robyn

Bush (Dubya), Obama, Trump, all gained substantial popular support by stating they would scale back the ruinously expensive foreign wars for Israel with chaotic and disastrous outcomes, and focus instead on America’s many neglected domestic crises. Once elected, we got Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Georgia, Ukraine, and a dozen other grubby little wars that we never hear about in the MSM like Niger and Nigeria. And soon Venezuela, Iran, and maybe Russia and China. The problem with Binra’s “centrist way” is that it never equates to scaling back military aggression or pursuing policies designed to meet the needs of 99% of the population. Unconditional and unlimited support for Israel is “centrist.” Devoting yet more money to a trillion dollar a year war machine is “centrist.” Vitriolic hostility to Iran, China and Russia is the “centrist” concensus. Giving free rein to Wall Street’s parasitic looting kleptocracy is “centrist.”… Read more »

binra
binra
Feb 8, 2019 7:41 PM
Reply to  mark

I specifically stated that the middle way was not a centrist position, defined against polarised extremities or risk aversion – but you insisted on reading what I did NOT say. Is that not in itself curious? It is not ‘my way’ but my willingness to live. You are uncovering or evading your responsibility to your own life. Which ‘freedom’ do you accept true? Of course it entirely depends on how we see our self. If responsibility equals burden. sacrifice, pain and loss – then NIMBY (push it somewhere and to someone else. But if freedom truly calls, your response-ability is to move! If you are invested in lies of convenience, you will not be able to move unless you write them off and let the dead bury the dead. So those who are as yet willing and able to live a lie – perhaps under a fearfully compulsive dictate in… Read more »

bc
bc
Feb 8, 2019 1:15 PM
Reply to  mark

“People put some hope in Sanders or Jezza, but it’s pointless. It all makes bu**er all difference.”

courtesy #integrityinitiative

binra
binra
Feb 8, 2019 2:51 PM
Reply to  mark

Voting… for a salesman who will give you more of the same – Ivan Illich

Savorywill
Savorywill
Feb 8, 2019 11:21 AM

I didn’t realize until reading this that Bernie Sanders had supported the NATO destruction of Libya and the attempt to do the same in Syria. I did notice, though, during his debates with Hillary that he was always talking about having not supported the Iraq war but was strangely silent about the Libyan one. I wondered about that at the time and now i know. He could have hammered her so hard over that, but he supported it too. And, he probably thinks the America needs to go and rid of another unfavored leader, a monster, in Venezuela, as he now refers to Chavez as a ‘dead dictator’. Sounds like he is a big fake, a pretend compassionate person, who actually has a heart of stone. Has he ever apologized for his support of the destruction of Libya, a true socialist country under Gaddafi? Everything he says he wants for… Read more »

Savorywill
Savorywill
Feb 8, 2019 11:29 AM
Reply to  Savorywill

Why is it that I carefully proof my text before submitting it, but always find typos, or slightly wrong word usages like ‘vastly preference’ rather than ‘vastly preferable’, which I know is correct. Maybe I am getting old…. And we can’t go back and fix any mistakes, like you can do with Facebook. Anyway, i guess it shows that I am a fallible human being and not a machine, perhaps even adding a bit of credibility to what I had to say (as long as it is not about global warming!!!).

binra
binra
Feb 8, 2019 3:01 PM
Reply to  Savorywill

Many devices have a spelling correction facility on by default.

I turn this off but also notice similar errors that don’t feel like I would have typed the keys to me. I often find a ‘the’ has gone where a ‘to’ was intended for example.

This apart from dyslexic typing. Too much aluminium/mercury/lead etc in our brain?

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 9, 2019 2:25 AM
Reply to  binra

I’d say that dyslexic typing is the least of your problems; even if your oeuvre was flawlessly spelled, it wouldn’t be any less meaningless. So many words needlessly wasted, on so little content.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 9, 2019 8:42 AM
Reply to  milosevic

The two worst spellers in Eng.Lit were Jane Austen and Wm.Shakespeare. Didn’t harm their readership.

binra
binra
Feb 9, 2019 3:30 PM
Reply to  milosevic

Yes, I can feel where you are coming from. You have a purpose for your words too – and they are faithful to your intended meaning. Different purpose is a different mind – and in conflicted minds communication is lost. However, you must have a meaning – and so you have given what I write all of the meaning it has for you – which you clearly feel a need to deny in derision, ridicule and smear. When we make peace within our selves, the world becomes a different place milosevic. Much that was hidden becomes clear, and much that seemed clear is rendered meaningless so as to wonder that we ever believed it. Beneath the mind that thinks, is a world unknown, and yet a place of being truly known. The personality is a mask, milosevic, and yet – as part of us, it needs neither deifying or demonising… Read more »

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 9, 2019 4:23 PM
Reply to  binra

you clearly feel a need to deny in derision, ridicule and smear.

yah, I have an instinctive hostility to government disinfo shills. I’m just irrational, that way.

binra
binra
Feb 10, 2019 8:43 PM
Reply to  milosevic

I would associate ‘government disinfo shills’ with baseless accusation and smear. Not that I suggest you are on the payroll, but surely a ‘useful idiot’ in making such services available for free. Perhaps you hate the axis of evil and declare that anyone who is not with you is against you – and therefor evil. IF that is your rule, I am un-person to you by my refusal to join in the evil of hate. Not that the feelings OF hate do not come up for me in terms of man’s broad spectrum of inhumanity to man. It is possible that the belief in shills creates more division than needing to actually pay them, because once incited to distrust and attack anything they cant understand and feel threatened by – people will do it to each other. How much of the fact of conspiracy to dominate and subjugate is by… Read more »

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Feb 11, 2019 5:20 AM
Reply to  binra

Occult fecal blood, example 11274:

“I don’t mean to patronise [x] when I state that [x]” [insert debilitating passive-aggression and/or unchallengable patronization here]

Occult fecal blood, example 11275:

“I’m not perfect but… [insert disparagement of another here]

Occult fecal blood, example […]

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 11, 2019 6:48 AM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

You’ve lost me, with that reference.

binra
binra
Feb 11, 2019 11:21 AM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

I have oft appreciated vexarbs posts as I just did one of yours. This obscure comment seems to imply I am seeing to defend myself by smearing vexarb. But he is the one who makes accusation to associate me publicly with a an object to be hated and cast out. And I responded to the situation as I see it and not to his personal fears and behaviours that are symptomatic of such fears. He could have joined with the theme of dyslexic typing as something that I know many others experience. He could have simple stated that he did not understand or therefore value my posts. But he elected to ‘understand’ them in terms of his fear – without ANY substance whatsoever – excepting as far as I can see, that he did not feel me to be on his ‘side’ in a war as he sees it. The… Read more »

mark
mark
Feb 8, 2019 11:45 AM
Reply to  Savorywill

Amnesty International played a big part in legitimising the destruction of Libya. They put out propaganda stories of Gaddafi giving Viagra to black Africans to rape women. A lot of black African migrant workers were lynched from lamp posts as a result. The others found themselves up for sale in the slave markets that are a feature of the “new Libyan democracy” Cameron and Sarko helped them build.

Savorywill
Savorywill
Feb 8, 2019 12:00 PM
Reply to  mark

That war was really the worst. Chavez really admired Gaddafi and I remember him trying to help, offering to negotiate, or intercede in some way, to assist Gaddafi in any way he could. It was so disgusting! I mean, Saddam Hussein did fight a war with Iran, did invade Kuwait, killed many Kurds, so what happened in Iraq was a bit understandable. But, Libya!!! Never invaded any neighbors, did try to help the IRA and the Palestinians, only because Gaddafi saw that the situations were unjust. What happened is unforgivable and I really feel for the people there who have had to put up with so much, through no fault of their own. I read that Gaddafi’s son was possibly running for office. I can imagine that for Libya, having Gaddafi as leader was like heaven compared to now. Maybe Gaddafi’s son could win but probably he would be designated… Read more »

Robyn
Robyn
Feb 8, 2019 1:03 PM
Reply to  Savorywill

Never forgetting that the US backed Saddam’s invasion of Iran all the way – he was a ‘friend’ then.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 8, 2019 1:36 PM
Reply to  Robyn

— nor that Saddam Hussein sought, and received, the permission of the US ambassador to invade Kuwait.

— nor that pre-gulf-war massacres of the Kurds were carried out with chemical weapons kindly provided by the US and Germany.

— nor that post-gulf-war massacres of the Kurds were facilitated by US permission for the Iraqi military to fly their attack helicopters, which would otherwise have been shot out of the air.

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

Savorywill
Savorywill
Feb 8, 2019 9:58 PM
Reply to  milosevic

Nonetheless, and this was my point, Gaddafi did not none of that and yet he wasn’t even given the dignity of being captured and hung. And, of course, then there is the famous ‘we came, we saw, he died’ clip of Hillary, whilst cackling, like it is the biggest joke ever. After seeing that, I just couldn’t believe in her, or her boss, Obama, or any of their ilk, ever again. Trump’s most redeeming point, in contrast to Hillary, is that he had nothing to do with all that, making him a saint in comparison.

mark
mark
Feb 8, 2019 1:24 PM
Reply to  Savorywill

Even Saddam Hussein was heaven compared to the Mad Max Hellhole of present day Iraq. Dumb goy muscle Uncle Sam doing the Zionists’ dirty work yet again.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 8, 2019 1:52 PM
Reply to  mark

That’s what the dumb goyim are for, to serve the needs of the Master Race. Otherwise, they would have no reason to exist.

Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel.

Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat.

— Ovadia Yosef, chief Sephardi rabbi of Israel

https://www.jta.org/2010/10/18/israel/sephardi-leader-yosef-non-jews-exist-to-serve-jews

BigB
BigB
Feb 8, 2019 11:15 AM

Then (2009): “If you succeed in getting a no vote here [in Ireland: on the Lisbon Treaty], that will be such a boost to people like us, all over Europe, that do not want to live in a European Empire of the 21st century.” “…and under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, Europe will become subservient to the wishes of NATO and the aims of NATO.” “We are creating for ourselves here one massive, great Frankenstein, which will damage all of us in the long run.” “What it does [the Lisbon Treaty] is create this military machine, this military Frankenstein, which will be so damaging to all of us” https://www.theredroar.com/2019/02/exclusive-corbyn-branded-eu-military-frankenstein-and-trashed-second-irish-referendum-in-unearthed-footage/ Now (2019): Labour has long argued that the Government should change its negotiating red lines and seek significant changes to the Political Declaration to provide clarity on our future relationship and deliver closer economic relationship with the EU. The changes… Read more »

crank
crank
Feb 8, 2019 12:06 PM
Reply to  BigB

Thought I’d link to a Guardian (pseudo) debate two weeks prior to the 2015 Labour leadership election. The issue of Europe comes toward the end (Corbyn speaking on it at 1h28s). https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2015/aug/26/guardian-live-labour-leadership-hustings-live-stream [It’s interesting just for the chance to witness the (body) language of R Behr and J Harris] The difference that you point out between Corbyn 2009 and Corbyn 2019 is mentioned by many, but is it not the difference between Corbyn as a campaigning renegade MP and Corbyn as a self professed leader of a so-called ‘bottom up democratic party’? The Labour Party is split on Europe, so to represent the Party’s views as policy rather than impose his own he would have to strike a compromise, no? To really Leave in a ‘Lexit’ sense would mean nothing short of revolution in my opinion, which might be the better option in the long term, but it’s fair to… Read more »

BigB
BigB
Feb 8, 2019 1:23 PM
Reply to  crank

The position is absolutely clear – despite the miasma of superheated foetid air emanating from Westmonster – any minister who is not prepared to deliver Brexit, is constitutionally ‘in breach of contract’ to the Crown …and should be suspended (see comment below). Tertium non datur: a third was not given – its either Leave or Remain. So that’s one betrayal. The EU “military Frankenstein” and European Empire have progressed to become an actualised entity in the last decade. There has not been a single word on the anticipated EU Military Unification (the European Defence Union) in the entire debate. We are being sold into NATO suzerainship without a single word of debate. “Qui tacet consentire videtur”. That’s another betrayal. Socialism, any socialism, is a priori ruled out by the Maastricht Treaty, etc. There will be no progressive socialist reform in the neolib/neocon EU Empire. Especially not to vassal members who… Read more »

crank
crank
Feb 8, 2019 2:38 PM
Reply to  BigB

I don’t disagree with any of that. I only think that Corbyn ‘betrays his class affiliation’ as anyone does who seriously thinks that Labour offers a significant route toward their enfranchisement. That ‘compromise’ is mentioned only in the context of a system where there really is no meaningful compromise, nor the possibility of one. I now stand with those who claim that Corbyn was not ever a meanigful break with the status quo, because there is no meaningful break with the status quo short of some complete overhall of just about every institution in modern society, and that his term as leader has only benefited us by showing how true this is. I think that any honest sense of ‘sovereignty’ is long gone down the river from Westmonster to the square mile, there to be shuffled around in private offices, many of which are occupied by people with loyalty to… Read more »

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Feb 11, 2019 1:54 AM
Reply to  BigB

“Jeremy Corbyn has betrayed his own principles; betrayed his class affiliation…” Jeremy Corbyn has betrayed neither. He was born, grew up and was educated the son of well off, middle class, Labour supporting peaceniks and remains very much a chip off the old block; he worked in trades unionism and remains fully committed to it; he learned the resilience and endless persistence required of internationalist “democratic socialists” (an example of which he has stated himself to be) from Tony Benn and has forgotten none of that either. He also, clearly, made a conscious choice to go into traditional British parliamentary politics in a long-established, major political party as a way of expressing all of that, rather than into any of scores of possible sideline fantastics. Nothing in his current or any previous public platform is at odds with either any of the above, or even all of the above combined.… Read more »

UreKismet
UreKismet
Feb 8, 2019 12:44 PM
Reply to  BigB

Whatever, Mr Corbyn is trying to steer a way through the tory mess that will prevent the schism which the tories have and have been trying to infect the Labour Party with – ably assisted by the blairites who will do anything if they think it keep a Corbyn led party out of government. I am a bit puzzled as to why anyone would raise the issue of Corbyn’s leadership of Labour in a conversation about establishing socialism, given that the notion of creating a socialist state by way of getting people to dutifully tick a box is farcical. We’ll just set to one side the elephant which is that Mr Corbyn has said from the get go yjat he is not up for belonging to an eu which prohibits the re-socialisation of vital national assets and infrastructure. He has not or ever would resile from that but he hasn’t… Read more »

BigB
BigB
Feb 8, 2019 1:35 PM
Reply to  UreKismet

UreKismet

See what you did there? Gave ‘them’ your power of autonomy and self-sovereignty. We, the People, are the sovereign power. They only do what they do because we crawl and refuse to stand tall. There is fuck all they can do without our authority. The more we volunteer servitude, the more they take our autonomy. Right now that autonomy is in existential danger of going forever. To keep it topical: if we support the phony-left – what’s left?

bevin
bevin
Feb 8, 2019 3:23 PM
Reply to  BigB

“..There is fuck all they can do without our authority.” Which ‘they’ have asserted that they have since the beginning, so that all that they have done from Bengal to Culloden, from Peterloo to the Boyne, was done with our consent, on our behalf and arm in arm with us all. And, in the final analysis, they make the same argument that you do, BigB, which is “if you want power you will take it. You haven’t taken it so we can assume that you are happy with current arrangements.” Your argument differs slightly in that you will claim that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, “The Sovereign people” already have power, which they are choosing not to exercise.. As ‘crank’ points out Corbyn’s apparent change in attitude is largely attributable to the fact that he is now employed to promote Labour Party policy. (There is also a considerable difference between… Read more »

BigB
BigB
Feb 8, 2019 5:02 PM
Reply to  bevin

Bevin Let’s start from a presumptuous common denominator I think we share? We both want socialism, and we both want a sovereign people. Let’s bracket out the “military Frankenstein” of the Lisbon Treaty for the moment. Let’s confine the issue to a self-sovereign people, and where their best interests lie: viz-a-viz the EU. I do not need a situational report on impinging poverty. I live in the country and am a loss of job and 3-4 months away from the food-banks myself. I’m a just-above JAM (just about managing) precariat. Why are we poorish and getting poorer? Why are our social welfare safety-nets being packed up? Why is our healthcare services… you know the score. The deep answer is EROI (you must be aware of my POV by now). The surface expression is neoliberal austerity. How can a complete accession to a neolib/neocon Empire be an answer? It cannot. I… Read more »

Mikalina
Mikalina
Feb 8, 2019 11:13 PM
Reply to  BigB

I still have that t-shirt, if you want it……

BigB
BigB
Feb 8, 2019 11:38 PM
Reply to  Mikalina

XXL? 🙂

Mikalina
Mikalina
Feb 8, 2019 11:53 PM
Reply to  BigB

Hey, room for “really, really, really,,”

Look at the MPs who supported Corbyn’s selection as contender for leader; they don’t seem to be around much in support these days. Also when asked, they say lame comments like “wanted to give the left an opportunity”, etc. Corbyn was put in place as Labour Party Leader so that when Maggie May channelled Heath on steroids (hopefully without his hobbies), no-one would want that ‘loony’ running the country (good god, the man wear’s a coat like the last labour loony). The most important thing to remember when you have a left wing and a right wing, is that both are owned by the body in the middle – and the body wears blue with little stars…….

BigB
BigB
Feb 9, 2019 1:02 AM
Reply to  Mikalina

Mikalina That’s the problem entirely: that the mass perception cannot see the body in the middle. They think the left wing is an independent entity that will fly with all of their hopes. As soon as they give their consent their hopes are dead. You can write to your MP, or start a petition …but who do you send it to? The Pentagon? The BIS? That is where hopes go to die under neoliberalism. We have this unique, amazing, intrinsic power that we so cheaply give away. I maintain more than ever that those who support actually existent phony-left socialism within the EU Empire – which is a sick joke – have no idea what sovereignty is. If they realised what it is worth – or did not delude themselves that it is to be retained – we could really effect a change. So long as we honour traitors –… Read more »

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Feb 8, 2019 5:13 PM
Reply to  BigB

BB – disappointed that you are selective and generalising.

The simple election of the ‘socialist’ wing of Labour under Corbyn – twice – does not mean the deep foreign, banking, academic infiltration and worm tonguery suddenly left the scene. They need to be faced down.

No doubt the specific issues will be fully addressed at the forthcoming general election. Where JC can be afforded equal news coverage.

In the meantime it is obvious that tory central office and the nulabinc ‘traitors’ are singing from the same hymn sheet.

As the BBC news leads with the Berger bullshit, fully supported bt the Graun and msm. She will chase down anti- semitism wherever ! Where else has she found it except in her party leadership?

The phony war heats up.

crank
crank
Feb 8, 2019 5:54 PM
Reply to  DunGroanin

The Labour Party is an organisation designed to prevent genuine socialism from gaining real ground in the political system. It’s a containment excersize.
I cannot see it as a vehicle for ‘facing down’ the secret state, zionists and the financial powers who run this country.
Tom Watson steps in to save Berger’s ass. The demotion or removal of all the wreckers in the party will be accompanied by the detonation of their worst ‘bombs’ yet.
What will be left at the end of that process?

BigB
BigB
Feb 8, 2019 6:01 PM
Reply to  crank

Is that Mark Regev’s subaltern Tom Watson?

crank
crank
Feb 8, 2019 8:08 PM
Reply to  BigB

The Wavertree affair will surely be the opening salvo in the final battle between the zionist lobby and the Corbyn movement.
Some make the case that his passive non-resistance to their onslaught has been most effective in showing anyone -who can still think, the true nature of this lobby, with its outriders and boosters in the media.
Others label Corbyn a capitulating wimp who has allowed fascists to stomp over the movement and effectively turn the party into a zionist enforcement agency.

Either 40% of the electorate supports (in their minds) ‘an antisemtite’, or we have to conclude that there is at least some truth in the former case.

BigB
BigB
Feb 9, 2019 12:43 AM
Reply to  crank

Crank Well I’d be in the latter camp – the discrediting of a real lifelong anti-Zionist, anti-racist like Hadjo Meyer being the final straw. Then there was the capitulation over the IHRA plus mendacious pseudo-defintitions. That made the whole Wavertree fiasco somewhat predictable. The real racist Berger claims she is the victim and Tom ‘proud to be a Zionist’ Watson waves the anti-semitic ‘get-out-of-jail-free-card’. As I predicted at the time, the neolib/Blairite/Zionist phalanx hold the balance of power. No one is safe from crocodile tears to camera or a fifteen year old tweet turning up if they cross the real racists. All in all, Jeremy Corbyn has presided over the death of the once proud Labour movement in the UK. They never served the People, but now they serve another God entirely – Mammon. Of the phony left, what is left is the Labour Party of Israel (Westmonster Branch). If… Read more »

crank
crank
Feb 9, 2019 8:20 AM
Reply to  BigB

Is it Corbyn, the person, or the machinations of a party where the leadership and the membership lack power and control? The members overwhelmingly wanted mandatory re-selection and it was stolen from them. This is perhaps an equal pre-cursor to the Berger situation. M.R. would have dealt with the situation without creating this fractuous atmosphere so desired by the wreckers. Who scuppered mandatory re-selection? Lansman and momentum with the right wing unions. The hustings vid I posted at the top showed Corbyn promising to lead a party where the leader was a representative rather than a dictator. Has he done that? In a way he has stood back and allowed the string pullers free rein. I can understand why people think that this was all a plan to draw activists into a cul-de-sac : a fake Left movement. This doesn’t take away from the fact that Corbyn’s tenure has revealed… Read more »

BigB
BigB
Feb 9, 2019 10:17 AM
Reply to  crank

Crank You raise some really pertinent points. I think the warning signs came with the Lansman email coup d’etat – backed by Corbyn – that de-democratised Momentum. Then, as you say, we were told all last year that the grassroots would get mandatory re-selection and purge the party of Blairites. Now it is quite clear that if the CLP move – absolutely legitimately – against arch-racists like Berger, they have the backing of the party Nomenclature. In other words, I do not think Tom Watson acted as a unilateral. independent agent. Fundamentally, I still believe Jeremy Corbyn to be an honest man – too honest and genuine, perhaps? All party decisions are ‘democratically’ made is a policy mantra. Therein lies the rub. How does one form policy in a pit of neoliberal vipers? There is a vicious dialectic set up that means that any real, genuine, progressive politics is poisoned… Read more »

crank
crank
Feb 9, 2019 1:51 PM
Reply to  BigB

Yep. I wonder what proportion of the 3-400,000 people who joined the party with hopes of genuine change, think this way BigB. Corbyn strikes me as callow, but what do I know? What of Milne et al? Surely they knew who controls Westminster and what it would really take to create a genuinely democratic movement. Perhaps they are frauds, or incompetent ? I wonder what (assuming that they are genuine) they could have done differently. It could have been priority number one to establish a new media organisation to counter the propaganda and smears and to get their side of the story out. Instead they seemed to cower away, capitulate, give mixed messages and rely on fringe independents to build the base in the information sphere, perhaps hoping that more members would join and push through the changes. Perhaps they are not strategists at all but blithering idiots? I guess… Read more »

mark
mark
Feb 9, 2019 12:22 PM
Reply to  crank

Jezza needs to grow some b*lls and face these people down. You can never appease these people. Jesus couldn’t when he walked the earth, so what chance has anyone else got? The Board of Deputies and the Mossad folk are quite open about mounting a multi million campaign “to drive him out of public life”, in their own words. This is the way it always is. Fight 5 wars for Israel and you are anti semitic because you haven’t fought 10 wars for Israel. Give Israel $20 billion and you are anti semitic because you haven’t given it $50 billion. Grovel on your knees to the Zionist Lobby and you are anti semitic because you aren’t simultaneously kissing their a*se. Maybe you have to cut Jezza some slack, because 80% plus of the PLP are scum and absolute filth – people like Berger, Bradshaw, Bryant, Gapes, Ellman, Benn, Watson,and so… Read more »

mark
mark
Feb 9, 2019 12:07 PM
Reply to  BigB

Yes, he’s got the Board of Deputies and the Mossad Office at the Israeli Embassy on speed dial.

binra
binra
Feb 8, 2019 7:55 PM
Reply to  crank

I hold an idea of a ‘human alliance’ – regardless of party. While I hold the Climate guilting a scam, it takes the ground of a genuine and imminent threat to human being as the embrace of life on Earth. This threat IS the result of human doing – but masked in falsely framed thinking. And so can be undone. Recognition of self in other remains the basis of Sanity. This calls on a miracle – does it not – and therefore on the true nature of your being – as no different than another as an expression of life. But this is not how we accept ourselves in thought and image and so we cling to what we ‘know’ in social reinforcements of conflict that attract opportunistic predation. The difference between conditions and conditioning is that the former is regarded as settled consensual fact. Or rather – what we… Read more »

BigB
BigB
Feb 8, 2019 5:58 PM
Reply to  DunGroanin

DG Selective and generalising – how? I have laid out a case for our loss of sovereignty to an EU Empire. The “the deep foreign, banking, academic infiltration and worm tonguery” do indeed need to be faced down. How can acceding our autonomy into their control in anyway achieve that? It’s a circular argument: face them down – where and how? When we are their basement gimp we will not be consulted. Nor will we know who to seek redress from. Our elective dictatorship will all be wearing the gimp masks the IMF/BIS gave them. When our troops and navy are deployed as EUFOR and EUNAVFOR (already occurred – EUNAVFOR is billeted at our Navy HQ which should raise alarm): who will they answer to? Who will be in command? And our shiny new Tridents Labour want us to buy (£31bn the NHS should have had): who will deploy them… Read more »

Joerg
Joerg
Feb 8, 2019 9:15 AM

Even godly “Brother Nathanael” is more “left” than this bunch of traitors:

crank
crank
Feb 8, 2019 10:11 AM
Reply to  Joerg

A while back, I used to think this guy was just a crank.

Ray Raven
Ray Raven
Feb 8, 2019 1:11 PM
Reply to  crank

And what is your current opinion of the person whose birth name is Milton Kapner but is now more commonly known as Brother Nathanael ?

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 8, 2019 8:38 AM

At this extremely late date, nobody still upholding the Official 9/11 Faery Tale and similar delusional fantasies, which have served as the essential pretext for the entire ruling-class programme of the 21st century, can be considered “left-wing” in any meaningful sense. They are rather, as they must be at least subconsciously aware, a controlled opposition, in fact the best opposition that money can buy, to divert popular discontent down harmless ratholes which pose no threat at all to Business As Usual.

crank
crank
Feb 8, 2019 9:05 AM
Reply to  milosevic

Medialens linked to this revealing exchange between Aaronovitch, Owen Jones, Badiel and Bastani yesterday.
twitter.com/DAaronovitch/status/1093207721447510016
Does it not exemplify Atzmon’s ‘Jerusalem thinking’ just perfectl i.e. the need to adhere to the ‘correct line’ rather than to argue rationally? They stumble over each other to demostrate how they keep to ‘God’s law’ on Russia, Skripal, Sarin etc..
Aaronovitch chimes in, asking, ‘9/11 ?’ as a loyalty test to one who dares to defend the logic of asking basic questions about things, although even they repeat the ‘written truth’.

9/11 changed the discourse and made it kind of mandatory (within public debate at least) to defy all logic and reason and to devoutly recite the narratives of the powerful.

Amazingly, Medialens seem to obey this diktat on 9/11.

I agree that nothing moves until this situation changes. It’s all just guff.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 8, 2019 12:06 PM
Reply to  crank

to defy all logic and reason and to devoutly recite the narratives of the powerful

It’s all just guff.

“He who pays the piper, also calls the tune.”

“It is hard to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”

The “Grassroots” Myth: “Liberal CIA” Network of “New Left” Foundations, Media and Activist Groups

crank
crank
Feb 9, 2019 9:47 PM
Reply to  milosevic

Just to bring this thread full circle, one of the people who brought the motion against Berger is a 9/11 skeptic:
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/no-confidence-motion-in-berger-tabled-by-9-11-conspiracy-theorist/
The motion was withdrawn (one can only assume under duress) before any constitutional response from the NEC was given. Watson was just playing his part in stirring it up in the media.
The fake Left Novaramedia journo Michael Walker suggests that the bringer of the motion should be suspended not Berger, because ‘tin foil hats’ etc….
There is no bridging this divide except through understanding 9/11 and understanding the importance of it, but people like Walker never will because they are mentally gridlocked fuckwits.

And that is how you get on the BBC. That’s how the zionists stay in power.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 11, 2019 7:15 AM
Reply to  crank

they are mentally gridlocked fuckwits.

Perhaps this is a colloquial way of saying “they know on which side their bread is buttered.” Or perhaps it’s the other way around — the colloquialism, that is, not the bread and butter.

A more specific psychological analysis would be, that the mentally gridlocked fuckwittery is a symptom of their emotional need to remain consciously unaware of their actual social role, as well-paid disinfo shills for the ruling class. That kind of cognitive dissonance would be enough to mentally gridlock any aspiring fuckwit.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 8, 2019 8:34 AM

Phony Left: those with iPads / iPhones, fancy cars, lots of frequent flier miles. Amongst the poor a few phonies also reside, but much less than under the well off.

rogerglewis
rogerglewis
Feb 8, 2019 10:21 AM
Reply to  Antonym

Paulo Freire > Quotes > Quotable Quote
Paulo Freire
“[T]he more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.”

― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

BigB
BigB
Feb 8, 2019 11:58 AM
Reply to  rogerglewis

One of the best books ever written, IMHO.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 8, 2019 6:30 AM

Quote from a Gilets Jaunes protester: “The powerful will only stop dominating us when the little people stop crawling.”

On-the-ground reporting as usual by Great Britain’s very own Vanessa Beeley:

https://www.mintpressnews.com/macron-tactics-against-yellow-vests-have-nothing-to-do-with-public-safety-everything-to-do-with-global-politics/254782/

BigB
BigB
Feb 8, 2019 12:21 PM
Reply to  vexarb

On ‘Direct Democracy’; and the right to a CIR (Citizen Initiated Referendum) – we, the People of the UK, already have a similar right. We have had it since 1215. We have a right of redress with the Crown (not the sitting-tenant Monarch – with the Crown.) We can petition for the Crown to withhold Royal Assent on any anti-Constitutional statute law that violates the corpus of common law contracts we hold with the regimes of power. That would be pretty much all of them – certainly since 1972 – when Parliament anti-Constitutionally acceded sovereignty to a foreign power (the then EEC). This was made clear at the time by Lord Kilmuir. We have the right to petition the Crown – in the form of the sitting-tenant Monarch – to prorogue (suspend) Parliament, if and when Ministers are acting anti-Constitutionally, against our interest, in violation of their oaths to the… Read more »

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 9, 2019 12:58 AM
Reply to  BigB

We have the right to petition the Crown

yah, good luck with that.

BigB
BigB
Feb 9, 2019 1:55 PM
Reply to  milosevic

It’s an arcane POV for sure. I’m not really expecting a mass mobilisation any time soon. My point was more that if we accept voluntary servitude to the diktats of the EU Empire – we will be on our knees forever. Or worse, missing an eye, face in the dirt. Faced with such a prospect, I’m somewhat miffed as to why intelligent people think this is a good thing …because some bloke called Jeremy says so? He had more insight ten years ago.

Adrian E.
Adrian E.
Feb 8, 2019 6:22 AM

The criteria for socialism seem a bit arbitrary to me. Switzerland, of all countries, might have a good chance of being called socialist. – In Switzerland, there are state-owned banks (cantonal banks owned by the cantons) that are quite popular (there are private banks, as well, of course, and their reputation is not that good internationally). – Mortgage rates and interest rates in general depend on several factors. But mortgage rates around 1% are, indeed, normal in Switzerland (this hardly has to do with the existence of these state-own banks, let alone socialism, but it also brings Switzerland closer to the image of socialism). – Generally, private households in Switzerland still get their electricity and water from state-owned companies. There has been some privatization, but mostly for the electricity supply for companies, not for private households. – Of course, Switzerland as a neutral country does not send its military around… Read more »

rogerglewis
rogerglewis
Feb 8, 2019 5:46 AM

The Article is almost politically illiterate in my opinion, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/robert-graham-the-general-idea-of-proudhon-s-revolution https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/2017/05/09/the-bastiat-proudhon-debate-on-interest-1849-1850-letter-13/ ”NOW PROUDHON ADVOCATED A SOCIETY WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, AND USED THE WORD ANARCHY TO DESCRIBE IT. PROUDHON REPUDIATED, AS IS KNOWN, ALL SCHEMES OF COMMUNISM, ACCORDING TO WHICH MANKIND WOULD BE DRIVEN INTO COMMUNISTIC MONASTERIES OR BARRACKS, AS ALSO ALL THE SCHEMES OF STATE OR STATE-AIDED SOCIALISM WHICH WERE ADVOCATED BY LOUIS BLANC AND THE COLLECTIVISTS. WHEN HE PROCLAIMED IN HIS FIRST MEMOIR ON PROPERTY THAT ” PROPERTY IS THEFT,” HE MEANT ONLY PROPERTY IN ITS PRESENT, ROMAN-LAW, SENSE OF ” RIGHT OF USE AND ABUSE ” ; IN PROPERTY-RIGHTS, ON THE OTHER HAND, UNDERSTOOD IN THE LIMITED SENSE OF POSSESSION, HE SAW THE BEST PROTECTION AGAINST THE ENCROACHMENTS OF THE STATE. AT THE SAME TIME HE DID NOT WANT VIOLENTLY TO DISPOSSESS THE PRESENT OWNERS OF LAND, DWELLING-HOUSES, MINES, FACTORIES AND SO ON. HE PREFERRED TO ATTAIN THE SAME… Read more »

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Feb 8, 2019 1:09 PM
Reply to  rogerglewis

‘Mutual Aid’ should be compulsory reading for every high school senior on the planet.

rogerglewis
rogerglewis
Feb 8, 2019 5:07 AM

There is no or right its a false paradigm.

There is Rich and Poor and there is the Oligarchy and the rest.

There is also the Bourgeoisee or the 5 %

This is where the Gatekeepers live.

Divide and Rule or Polemics, Binary argumentation.

https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/?s=Left+Right

Mikalina
Mikalina
Feb 8, 2019 11:31 PM
Reply to  rogerglewis

Hush, quiet now; don’t tell the cattle. They’ll stop fighting, or voting, or posting, and then where will we be……..