Jeremy Corbyn 2

Josh Lagata -- exactly.

Not sure why iyraste1313 is trying so hard to confuse these when everybody can see through it except the people with his agenda -- what ever that is exactly.It really is just irritating people with no chance of convincing or fooling anyone.

lagatta4 wrote:

Yes, I'm really sick of that shit. I do NOT support a NATO buildup anywhere. I'm opposed to NATO and always have been, and the only political party I belong to (Québec solidaire) opposes it.

Nowadays, as there is no more Eastern Bloc, there is no longer even a suppsedly logical reason for NATO's existence.

Bully for Corbyn. Shame on those who contrive to sully the good name of left activists who aren't Putin fans (remember: homophobia? support for the religious establishment?) as somehow useful idiots of Empire. (Note the glissement from imperialism to Empire...).

What Lagatta The Fourth said. 

There has never been any reason for anyone on the left to see Putin as an ally or an anti-imperialist.  Nothing he does serves any of the left's objectives or ideals.  He is simple the latest Bonapartist.

josh wrote:

One can oppose Russian actions and Putin and oppose the eastern expansion of NATO.  It's not an either/or proposition.  Although some on here are trying to make it so.

What I see is many posters trying to say opposition to NATO's buildup makes one a Russian paid troll. I agree that there are people on here who are doing that on a daily basis.

What I see is many posters trying to say opposition to NATO's buildup makes one a Russian paid troll. I agree that there are people on here who are doing that on a daily basis. 

Don't recall seeing anything of the sort.  And I'm certainly not in that camp.

Perhaps we need to refine the use of tag lines so people posting can have a complete summary of all their opinions in order to be allowed to post anything that an accusser does not agree with. So in order for me to criticize, for example, Putin's Homophobia, I should have a tag paragraph saying:

I do not agree with the aggressive stance of NATO and do not support the imperialistic ventures of the United States. I do not support Blairites. I support the need for social license particularly on Indigenous land when it comes to any construction or resource extraction. etc. etc. etc.

I suppose a couple hundred words would suffice to say all the things I am supposed to say in order to be allowed to express an opinion on a particular issue.

We could close with a disclaimer that says "Opposition to Putin and Trump does not mean support of the United States, Clinton and NATO.

People need to stop drawing lines from one opinion they dislike to another that the person posting that opinion does not hold. That is dishonest.

This: "What I see is many posters trying to say opposition to NATO's buildup makes one a Russian paid troll. I agree that there are people on here who are doing that on a daily basis."

Is a lie.

There are not many posters supporting a NATO buildup. What we have is a few posters arguing that any opposition to Putin (and sometimes Trump) means this. It doesn't.

Corbyn supporters will consider this proof positive of the much complained media bias against Corbyn. Other observers will likely consider it proof that the media is held broadly to account and the process 

Why can't it be both?

Ken Burch wrote:

sherpa-finn wrote:

The BBC's media watchdog found for Jeremy Corbyn today in a complaint filed about BBC coverage of a terrorism related story, after the Paris attacks. No doubt, Corbyn supporters will consider this proof positive of the much complained media bias against Corbyn.  Other observers will likely consider it proof that the media is held broadly to account and the process and finding in this case affirm the media's general objectivity / veracity.

BBC report on Corbyn and shoot-to-kill broke the rules, watchdog rules

Jeremy Corbyn scored a rare win in his struggles with the media today as the BBC Trust ruled Laura Kuenssberg’s report on his views on shoot-to-kill were inaccurate. The corporation’s own watchdog judged that Kuenssberg, the political editor, had breached rules on accuracy and impartiality, when she covered her interview with Corbyn in the wake of the Paris terror attacks in November 2015, but cleared her of acting in bad faith

http://labourlist.org/2017/01/bbc-report-on-corbyn-and-shoot-to-kill-bro...

 

because one MINOR victory in virtually the ONLY independent broadcasting watchdg group in the UK proves that UK media is scrupulously fair,  isn't obsessed with smearing and demonizing Corbyn, and hasn't been on an endless and totally unjustified vedetta against the guy.

 

To maintain a titled field and ignore calls for repair you have to allow the odd goal for the disadvantaged team.

Any media watchers of the NDP over the last 40 years can attest to this.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

To be clear what is being done is:

Any criticism of Putin = a right wing poster pushign the agenda of NATO

It isn't and it is utter bullshit to be suggesting it is.

I do not see that and it is not clear to me. The comment that set off this shit storm was made by a right wing commentator about Corbyn and NDPP compared it to people on this board but used quotation marks. I did not think he meant people like you or Lagatta but instead some of our more outspoken posters who frankly I have a hard time seeing their views as anything but right wing.

I have seen people get told not to cheer when the people of Aleppo were liberated. I found that outrageous. I also think that in many instances Putin sounds more reasonable than his NATO counterparts. When people attack NDPP I think they are attacking my views as well.

Perhaps this is one of context and each has their own depending on their unique engagement across multiple threads.

This issue has gone across several threads and when the undirected statements about people opposing Putin were leveled -- after I had criticized him -- it certainly seemed to include me even though I never expressed the views attributed to those who did not agree with Putin.

The moral of the story is when you are going to make sweeping statements that those who hold opinion x therefore support opinion y then you will gather people in the dragnet who will object with some anger. Better to be really clear who you mean when claiming people are right wing.

When you defend a person who makes a sweeping statement -- you might want to look at the cross thread disputes that person has because you may engage people you do not mean to.

I think calling people right wing on this board (unless they are one of just a couple who are self proclaimed) you need to be careful because it is one of the worst things you can call people in a place like this. When you say everyone who disagrees with me on this issue is right wing -- you are opening for a different kind of disagreement than the one you originally held.

Even if you support a person generally when they say something like this you might want to stay out becuase they are picking fights with people that might actually be allies.

Krop wrote: I have seen people get told not to cheer when the people of Aleppo were liberated. I found that outrageous.

Yeah, civil wars are a bugger. There is video showing the 1939 "liberation" of Barcelona. Crowds of Catalans cheering the Franquist forces as they marched into the city. A huge open-air mass thanking God for their new freedom. Images of defeated republicans ('Bolsheviks') scurrying away into the mountains headed for France.

Apologies if some thought it not appropariate to cheer. It must have seemed like an outrageous request.  

sherpa-finn wrote:

Krop wrote: I have seen people get told not to cheer when the people of Aleppo were liberated. I found that outrageous.

Yeah, civil wars are a bugger. There is video showing the 1939 "liberation" of Barcelona. Crowds of Catalans cheering the Franquist forces as they marched into the city. A huge open-air mass thanking God for their new freedom. Images of defeated republicans ('Bolsheviks') scurrying away into the mountains headed for France.

Apologies if some thought it not appropariate to cheer. It must have seemed like an outrageous request.  

Civil wars are always traumatic which is why getting involved is wrong. Guernica was a war crime as was bombing Aleppo and Mosul and Fallujah and Tripoli etc etc.

I am really astounded that you would compare the Islamic jihadists who controlled East Aleppo to the Spanish left.  I guess that for me is where we fundamentally disagree. 

omit

If it wasn't a civil war, Aleppo wasn't liberated.  It simply changed hands from one brutally violent faction to another.  No one in that city is any freer for being back under the rule of Assad The Third.

There simply isn't a "good side" among any of the combatants there.  The "rebels" aren't liberating revolutionaries and the Ba'ath Party is neither socialist nor in any sense a legitimate government.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

To be clear what is being done is:

Any criticism of Putin = a right wing poster pushign the agenda of NATO

It isn't and it is utter bullshit to be suggesting it is.

I do not see that and it is not clear to me. The comment that set off this shit storm was made by a right wing commentator about Corbyn and NDPP compared it to people on this board but used quotation marks. I did not think he meant people like you or Lagatta but instead some of our more outspoken posters who frankly I have a hard time seeing their views as anything but right wing.

I've asked numerous times who is meant. There's never an answer, except from you - and you are not the one smearing other babblers. I can only include it's a deliberate attempt to smear people like lagatta or Sean as "right-wingers". That poisons the atmosphere here. 

I am dropping out from participation here. For me, it's just aggravating and not advancing any useful goal to take part in babble. It's not the strong pro-feminist space that it once was. No solutions to propose, but I really don't see much value in taking part here any longer. 

epaulo13 wrote:

..i am sorry to see you go swallow. i have always appreciated your pov. i do get what your saying and even agree with you..especially re no solutions. maybe after a while after a break you will come back. i hope so.

Me too.

Swallow, your leaving here would be a serious loss. You are an important and very well respected voice here and your contribution is very valuable. Please stay. Many here very much appreciate your thoughts.

That must have changed since the Eighties.  One of the most damaging things that happened to Labour's chances in the 1983 election was when right-wing Labour MP Bob Mellish, having been deselected as candidate by his constituency party in favor of left-wing gay activist Peter Tatchell, immediately gave up his seat, and a byelection was held in which Tatchell, after being hounded by a viciously homophobic and red-baiting hate campaign, was badly defeated by Simon Hughes of the Liberals(ironically, Hughes would come out as bisexual a number of years later...and eventually had the decency to acknowledge that Tatchell did not deserve the tactics that were used against him by other parties, tactics that included  the Liberal pamphlets that calling Hughes "the straight choice"-they insisted they had simply meant he was the CLEAR choice-yeah, right).  The loss of Bermondsey, which had been one of the safest Labour seats in the UK, was devastating to Labour's chances.

 I always assumed the Thatcher government insisted on holding the byelection, despite the fact that a general election was already likely within a few months.  Are you saying Labour inflicted that wound on itself?

FWIW, wikipedia says this and other parliamentary conventions were formally 'codified' in 1973. 

I remember the Bermondsey by-election well.  It was indeed a significant political moment.

My understanding is that the practice in the UK is that by-elections are generally called within 3 months of a seat being vacated. Mellish resigned on November 1st 2012 and anticipating an electoral disaster, Foot stalled as long as felt he could. (Just looked this up in "A Life: Michael Foot" by KO Morgan. An interesting biography of a fascinating man.) 

I am not sure when the by-election was actually called, but the vote was held Feb 24th.  So the timelines generally fit. And upon viewing the implosion of the Labour Party, Thatcher called a general election for June. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I had a copy of Tatchell's book "The Battle for Bermondsey" on my shelf for decades but we did a big literary cull last year and off it went to the local library book sale. So I do not have ready reference to Tatchell's reflections - if any - on the timing issue.

A historical note: the title of Tatchell's book was actually a riff on an earlier Battle of Bermondsey,  - one of the London street fights between socialists and the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.

http://www.lydiasyson.com/the-battle-of-bermondsey/

ETA: Tatchell did not actually defeat Mellish for the nomination. Mellish had announced beforehand his unhappiness with the leftward shift in Labour generally and more particularly in his own constituency organization. And so gave notice that he would not re-offer at the next election. When Tatchell won the nomination race over an 'establishment' candidate, Mellish chose to resign from the party and sit as an independent in the House. Foot asked him not to resign his seat early, but he did - effectively forcing Foot's hand with the byelection.  Mellish then supported a "Real Labour" candidate in the by-election, further dividing the Labour vote.  Unhappy times. 

Ken Burch wrote:

One thing you should know about Labour List...while it identifies with the party, it is not an official Labour website-it has generally been the voice of the Labour Right, and until recently was relentlessly anti-Corbyn, although I think LL has grudgingly accepted him as leader for the moment.

From what I  have seen, Labour List is the best on-line source of basic party-related 'news'. There are certainly other sites and blogs for opinion pieces of assorted hues, but for someone just trying to keep track of basic Labour Party developments from afar, its better than anything else I have stumbled across. Always open to being steered elsewhere. 

sherpa-finn wrote:

FWIW, wikipedia says this and other parliamentary conventions were formally 'codified' in 1973. 

I remember the Bermondsey by-election well.  It was indeed a significant political moment.

My understanding is that the practice in the UK is that by-elections are generally called within 3 months of a seat being vacated. Mellish resigned on November 1st 2012 and anticipating an electoral disaster, Foot stalled as long as felt he could. (Just looked this up in "A Life: Michael Foot" by KO Morgan. An interesting biography of a fascinating man.) 

I am not sure when the by-election was actually called, but the vote was held Feb 24th.  So the timelines generally fit. And upon viewing the implosion of the Labour Party, Thatcher called a general election for June. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I had a copy of Tatchell's book "The Battle for Bermondsey" on my shelf for decades but we did a big literary cull last year and off it went to the local library book sale. So I do not have ready reference to Tatchell's reflections - if any - on the timing issue.

A historical note: the title of Tatchell's book was actually a riff on an earlier Battle of Bermondsey,  - one of the London street fights between socialists and the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.

http://www.lydiasyson.com/the-battle-of-bermondsey/

ETA: Tatchell did not actually defeat Mellish for the nomination. Mellish had announced beforehand his unhappiness with the leftward shift in Labour generally and more particularly in his own constituency organization. And so gave notice that he would not re-offer at the next election. When Tatchell won the nomination race over an 'establishment' candidate, Mellish chose to resign from the party and sit as an independent in the House. Foot asked him not to resign his seat early, but he did - effectively forcing Foot's hand with the byelection.  Mellish then supported a "Real Labour" candidate in the by-election, further dividing the Labour vote.  Unhappy times. 

 

I stand corrected about Mellish being de-selected(although he clearly would have been had he stood for re-selection).  The "Real Bermondsey Labour" candidate, John O'Grady, was a vile little man who rode through the streets of the constituency on a horse-drawn cart singing a song with the words "Peter Tatchell, pretty as a poppet, wears his trousers back to front".   O'Grady finally died last year or so, and I'm guessing both branches of the afterlife are arguing over who has to take him.

Thanks.  It was particularly telling to see the image of Neil Kinnock sitting there doing nothing while Tatchell was savaged by the right-wing reporters.  You can tel Neil WANTED Tatchell to lose, and was already planning to drive all the socialists out of the party(all the while PRETENDING to be left-wing).

Yes, an excellent little political documentary. [Thanks, Josh]. Though Ken and I no doubt have significantly different perspectives on that moment in history and the lessons to be extracted from it.

For one, I certainly do not consider Kinnock someone who "pretended" to be left-wing. He was someone who came out of the party's left wing but who came to understand through the hard knocks of Thatcherism that a radical left-wing agenda was simply not the route to electoral victory for the Labour Party. 

His efforts to modernise and moderate the Labour Party yielded improved electoral results in the two elections for which he was leader and set the stage for Labour to finally win power again in the 1990s after a generation in the wilderness. 

Watching this documentary will likely underline for modern viewers the possible parallels between Michael Foot and Jeremy Corbyn: the notion of a leader "more determined to be right than be Prime Minister", an unhealthy reliance upon rallies and marches to assess support rather than polling, - and of course that killer line about the Labour Party's 1983 Election Manifesto being "the longest suicide note in history". 

After several months of relative calm on the internal political front, Labour is moving towards another key moment: the imminent vote in Parliament on launching Clause 50 for BREXIT.  

Corbyn has just released a 'three-line whip', - the strongest directive possible by a party leader, instructing all Labour MPs to show up and vote with the governing Conservatives to launch the withdrawal process.  There had been pleas within the shadow cabinet for a free vote, as many MPs represent ridings that voted firmly for Remain. Or feel personally compelled to vote against withdrawal for their own reasons.

Only one member of the shadow cabinet has announced her resignation to date, and about a dozen Labour MPs have indicated they will ignore the whip. Some of these suggest that another 50 or so MPs are possible defectors.

But the fall-out of this (even if there are large scale defections) for Corbyn is uncertain, as there are similar divisions amongst the governing Conservatives, indicating how this particular issue cuts across party lines.

Rightly or wrongly the people voted to leave. I believe that vote should be respected.

Rev Pesky wrote:

In fact the outcome of the vote was very close, so 'respecting the people wishes' means ignoriing the wishes of nearly half of the population.

And respecting the wishes of nearly half the people would be ignoring the wishes of over half the people. So the losing side would win. And you couldn't even blame it on an electoral college.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

So the Labour MP's who will vote against the motion obviously don't believe in referendums. I wonder if any of them have previously stated their opposition of this method of determining policy. Because if you have a referendum then it seems like you should listen to the people's will.  

There has been substantive and sustained debate on this issue within the UK over the past couple of decades, largely driven by the various devolution / independence referenda held in the different component nations. (There was also one referendum on electoral reform - defeated - a few years back.)

It is pretty much universally agreed across the political spectrum that referenda are advisory to Parliament and not binding. So what a party or government does with the outcome of a referendum is wholly contingent on their assessment of the political cost and / or benefit of taking the advice given.