What's that British Press, Nothing To Say, Nothing At All?

[Jericho]

Bollocks.
I'm not going suck cock in public, But I do apologise to you, Broncofan.

(I haven't read the above yet, I might change my mind about that)

[Jericho]

You also are the type of person to suggest my being American is a gotcha when I went to protest after protest against the Iraq war. But for Corbynites guilt is decided not by your actions but by your nationality and which side it’s thought to represent in their ideological struggle.

To the rest of the world, your being American is a Gotcha
You pretested Iraq, good for you.
That and 5 bucks will get you a frothy coffee!
Meanwhile, what happened?
Cause and effect, How did that improve the world?

It’s about as childish as the politics of right-wing Americans, which is why, paradoxically you occasionally find yourselves with common ground.

The British left aligning with the American Right...Have you just had a stroke?

[Jericho]

6. The people at Tree of Life who were murdered were murdered because they're Jews. That you had a clp vote down a motion to condemn the act or to show solidarity with them is sad but telling.

Do you have a link to that?

7. Yes, the EHRC found your party discriminated against Jews.[/QUOTE]
Now do th Fordd report.

[broncofan]

Bollocks.
I'm not going suck cock in public, But I do apologise to you, Broncofan.

(I haven't read the above yet, I might change my mind about that)

I don't really see how you've insulted me if I haven't also written several insults to you. If I can dish it I should take it too. So I apologize to you as well. Yes I see your next post and it hasn't bothered me. I'll write back in a couple days and be more civil.

On the Jewish stuff, why don't we just declare it's a disagreement. We both don't like the bigotry when it occurs, maybe disagree about how often we see it, and interpret things differently.

And you're right that you can post any video you want. If I was that determined to address its merits I could have sat down and watched it. A lot to ask but oh well. Have a good weekend.

[broncofan]

Do you have a link to that?

7. Yes, the EHRC found your party discriminated against Jews.

Now do th Fordd report.[/QUOTE]
I haven't read it. I think it was more mixed. That there were aspects Corbyn supporters liked. For instance the claim that some right-wingers made frivolous accusations. But that doesn't mean there weren't also parts of it I would support. Let me look into it.

[filghy2]

Well thank heavens for that!
Imagine how silly that would have looked in the history books, scrawled in chalk upon slate....Yes, we started a nuclear war because of a slip of the tongue.

I don't blame the puppet, Zelensky.
I blame the good ole USA.
Dragging us in to yet another proxy war.

Are you going to apply that criteria to all wars waging around the world right now, or just this one?

Why is it impossible for you to utter even a single word of criticism of Putin? Apparently, this war is everyone's fault but the guy who started it. If Putin launches nuclear weapons against Ukraine will you say it's our fault for provoking him?

Your "logic" here is no more than Iraq/Afghanistan: therefore other countries should be allowed to do as they like. How exactly is that going to make the world a safer place?

You are evidently a paid-up member of this club (written a few years ago, but still relevant). https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins...british-idiots

[filghy2]

The British left aligning with the American Right...Have you just had a stroke?

On Ukraine they seem to be on a unity ticket - both have tended to echo Putin's lines.
https://www.discoursemagazine.com/po...merican-right/

[Stavros]

What puzzles me is why some people on the left think their views are 'left wing'.

It used to be easier, because the fault-line was anti-Imperialist.

And to be anti-Imperialist meant being Anti-American, as it was the Americans who were leading the charge against 'Socialism' in Cuba and the rest of Latin America where -so the narrative goes- they succeeded in installing Military Juntas in the 1970s, in Sub-Saharan Africa where there was a proxy war with the USSR in Angola and Mozambique, and the US supported Mobutu and Apartheid. There was the American Imperialist war against Socialism in South-East Asia, the Gladio network across Europe which was intended to prevent the spread of Communism primarily in Italy, and after 1967 the transformation of Israel from a Socialist Zionist state to partner of American Imperialism in the Middle East.

Perhaps nothing illustrates the structural illusions of the left than the Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979, when the Socialist Worker's Party newspaper in the UK ran the headline 'All the Way with the Ayatollahs' -the underlying argument being that because this was a 'People's Revolution' that could be won by the left, the Ayatollah's were the interim tool that had prized open the country, expelled the Shah and thus made it ripe for Revolutionary Socialism.

What happened next with the Americans and the Saudis funding Saddam Hussein's war against Iran at the same time as it was funding the war against the USSR in Afghanistan, was playbook revolutionary politics, just as long as hard questions were not asked about daily life in Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan and what the victims of American Imperialism wanted- or delivered: homphobia, misogyny, corruption. By the time of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990. someone I had met in the region where I was at the time, told me in no uncertain terms 'Saddam is Right'. Another laughed at the Kuwaitis 'They have never done a day's work in their life!' And so on, and even when they knew more about the reality of life under Saddam, that old inedible chestnut: He maintained order (no trains to be on time in Iraq), he survived numerous attempts to overthrow him, he was an Arab hero, etc etc. Excuses, not explanations.

The problem with the structural view, is that from one angle it was part of the strategy of the USSR through its proxy Communist Parties in Europe, even including the 'Eurocommunists' of the 1980s, to support whoever the USSR was supporting. From another angle, the Holy Writ -Thou Shalt Support All Revolutionary Movements, made what became the fatal mistake -ignoring what the Revolutionaries wanted, and what they did After the Revolution.

The roll-call is not heart-warming, but sickening: the Khmer Rouge in Kampuchea, the Boat People of Vietnam or the Hmong of Laos; the litany of bombings, assassinations and hi-jackings of the PLO, the UK equivalent with the Official and then the Provisional IRA, the actuality of the Islamic Republic in Iran, or the epic levels of corruption in Angola which by the end of the 1970s had abandoned Marxism anyway.

How we got from supporting the downtrodden masses of the 'Third World' to the quite revolting attacks on Jews as a proxy for attacking Israel, I don't know. It was not something that would have lasted five minutes when I was in the Labour Party. Just as supporting Trans issues without criticism seems to have been adopted by some on the left as a non-negotiable policy as if there were no complexities to politics inside Israel or across the range of Trans people with diverse needs and circumstances. In other words, the left has often been more associated with a campaign against something, rather than for it. Or, it has been more coherent when criticising a situation X, than offering an alternative known as situation Y.

And yet, if you take a less revolutionary road, dare I call it the 'centre ground', it is possible in Government to get things done. The most left wing Labour Govt we have had, in 1945, could not have re-built the UK after the Second World War, creating the NHS and a State Education Service, Nationalising Coal and the Railways, beginning the construction of affordable Council Housing -and building an Atom Bomb -without American money.

I make my mind up according to the facts, and when the facts change, I change my mind. So Keynes is often quoted, but it is not something Corbyn can do, because I don't think he thinks the facts have changed. When Labour lost four elections in a row to Thatcher and John Major, it was clear as day that something had gone wrong and the party needed to change, and it did, though I think Blair went too far in ditching Clause 4 and consolidating the Centre Ground where Thatcher left it.

But so too Russia, where in the aftermath of the demise of the USSR, the country began a process of democratization, but where the chaos of the Yeltsin years failed to deliver benefits to enough Russians to help consolidate democracy and enable the development of a robust civil society. What Putin did in his first ten years, was restore a sense of order, but by stealth crush civil society and a free press, and make democracy merely a tool of his party and thus revert to the kind of Autocracy Russia has known since 1917. I don't see what any nostalgia for the Russian Revolution has for today, but for Corbyn it is part of a pseudo-Marxian narrative in which the fundamental driver of history has been a version of Class Struggle that requires fidelity to a cause, even when it is lost. Even when the facts change, and require a change of policy and direction from all concerned.

And what have we been left with? Dictatorship or Democracy, in the US as well as Russia, as if that was even a choice that needed thought.

[Jericho]

What, you think im happy about all this? As you said, and i agreed, Putin's just another oligarch.
But you poke a bear....

[filghy2]

What puzzles me is why some people on the left think their views are 'left wing'.

Some people seem to be incapable of rethinking the frameworks they learnt in their formative years. There's also a sort of reflexive tribalism: whatever the other side is for or against, I must take the opposite stance. I know there's a lot of this on the right as well, but if you are claiming the high moral ground you ought to do better.

The double standards are glaring. The same people who complain bitterly about poverty and inequality in their own country seem to be indifferent to the suffering of people being killed, tortured or imprisoned on Putin's orders. The same people who complain about subversion of democracy in their own country seem to think that Ukrainians should have no right to determine their own destiny. I know they will offer some grudging disclaimer if pressed, but there's obviously no feeling in it.

The lack of intellectual and moral clarity and consistency is just depressing. If you were opposed to the US invasion of Iraq then surely you should condemn equally other cases of aggression rather than using it as an excuse to avoid doing so. I know Western democracies are far from perfect, but do these people seriously think they are responsible for more oppression than Russia, China, Iran, etc. Do they really believe we would be better off if the US retreated into isolation and let Russia and China have their way?