The TV debates for the Westminster election will offer you a dazzling range of neo-con policies from right wing to very right wing. Conservative, Labour, Liberal or UKIP, any flavour of corporate neo-con control that you like. It is a kind of weird speed dating circle between Cameron, Clegg, Miliband and Farage.
If it had been UKIP with thousands of supporters on George Square yesterday, does anybody doubt the rally would have received much more coverage. The decision about the election debates could not offer starker proof of my thesis that UKIP is an antibody produced by the establishment in response to voter disillusion with the lack of real policy difference between mainstream parties. Protest is to be diverted into a right wing channel that really offers no difference at all.
The fact that UKIP and the Lib Dems are to participate in the electoral debates, whereas the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP – all of which offer genuine alternatives to the neo-con narrative – are not, is indefensible. The SNP will win more MPs than the Liberal Democrats and the Greens will have more votes. UKIP have just won their first ever elected MP – which means they have finally caught up with the Greens. Given equal media access, I expect the Green vote would exceed the UKIP vote too – which is precisely the outcome the broadcasters are desperate to avoid.
The voters must not be shown that other choices, other visions, other policies are possible. You can choose any neo-con you wish.
“All those who abstained,voted against or stayed away should be voted out in 2015.”
Not everyone supports the one state, two-ghettos solution. Not all the Palestinians want it.
“We have lived together in peace for centuries. And if Netanyahu were to ask if we can live together in one state, I would say to him: “If we have exactly the same rights as Jews to come to all of Palestine. If Khaled Meshaal and Ramadan Shalah can come whenever they want, and visit Haifa, and buy a home in Herzliyah if they want, then we can have a new language, and dialogue is possible.”
Ramadan Shalah, leader of Islamic Jihad. If the most vilified part of Palestinian resistance can offer that – then all it needs is the Israelis to abandon their racism and they can build a non-Apartheid state together.
“Wrong answer Craig. More people is not a good thing in itself. Too many people are bad for the environment. Fish stocks are down. Biodiversity is down. Resources are being rapidly consumed and Climate Change is a by-product.”
How many live is minor compared to how they live. To put these things down to a population problem is a gross and dangerous idea.
See capitalism and commercialism for the main culprits, and of course the spokes people for that system (that you do sound like) always blame the people one way or another. I’m sure your fantasy makes them feel great about all the people their policy’s are killing.
It’s an interesting thesis but if you are correct then the LibLabCon have created a Frankenstein’s monster that will destroy them both.
I think it’s more likely that the terror of the Miliband and Cameron is real, and that they genuinely did not think for a minute UKIP stood a chance of making an impression at the next election. You only have to look at how the tactics of their stooges in the mainstream media have changed over the months to see how desperate they have become.
Farage is setting the agenda, and the Tories and Labour, and their media paymasters, are losing traction with every day.
I can see UKIP beating at least one of the two major Westminster parties to second place next year.
@ Daniel
Maybe, we have some closet Tories and/or racists in our midst.
Can’t control the meme, can you, Daniel. Whoever disagrees with whatever crazy or illogical position you take is a racist (or a Tory, which is the same thing to those who though not a Murrayite, seem to support every one of Craig Murray’s Anglophobic, NeoCon aligned positions).
“How many live is minor compared to how they live. To put these things down to a population problem is a gross and dangerous idea.
See capitalism and commercialism for the main culprits, and of course the spokes people for that system (that you do sound like) always blame the people one way or another. I’m sure your fantasy makes them feel great about all the people their policy’s are killing.”
I agree that the discredited population theories of the kind popularized by Malthus have been gaining traction in recent years. This, as you allude to, is an attempt by the establishment to cover for the failings of the capitalist system. You were right to identify capitalism (and by extension, commercialism) as opposed to population growth, as the main culprit. However, I’m not sure that undermines Jemand’s wider argument.
CanSpeccy, so which one applies to you?
@ Som Prat, quoted by Daniel
“To finally admit that he [Farage] ‘would prop up a Tory Government’ if required, says it all, he’s a stooge who is taking us for a ride, what a prat.”
He said he’d prop them in return for an EU referendum by next summer. Since getting Britain out of the EU (and thereby placing immigration under British Government control) is UKIP reason for existence, the terms of his proposed deal with the Tories or anyone else makes sense, and certainly does not make him a Tory.
UKIP Is not proposing to support the Tories or anyone else indefinitely, or under any circumstances. After an EU referendum, UKIP would presumably disband, if the exit vote lost, or would begin campaigning to defeat whoever was in government following a yes for exit.
But to Daniel and co, any proposition from UKIP looks like a racist, NeoCon ploy, which just shows how crazy the defenders of the mainstream parties have become.
@Daniel
CanSpeccy, so which one applies to you?
Which one of what?
@Daniel
I agree that the discredited population theories of the kind popularized by Malthus have been gaining traction in recent years.
In what way is Malthus’s contention that absent artificial birth control, which Malthus referred to as “vice” (now readily available to school children from kindergarten up), population increases faster than food supply (and other resources necessary to life).
Malthus was unfortunate in his timing since immediately after publishing his treatise the industrial/scientific revolution vastly increased agricultural productivity so that, despite occasional disastrous famines killing many millions, human population in parts of the world has grown very rapidly. But we’ve seen that for less than 200 years out of humanity’s 100,000 year existence, so we’ll probably see further confirmation of Malthus in years to come. In fact, the restriction on population due to resource availability is now at work in Africa where population is unlikely to double in the next 40 years as it did in the last.
And in the West, the limit imposed by what Malthus called vice, is actually killing off the European peoples who prefer girls’ education and recreational sex to ensuring their own posterity, which entirely consistent with Malthus’ thesis.
Racist, closet Tory or both? You can be as open as I was to you. Or alternatively, you can deny you are a racist which is about as common a trait among racists as those closet Tories who denied voting for Thatcher was during the early 1980s. Your posts leave no doubt you are a racist but I want you to admit it.
Left of centre voters in England have no alternative to UKIP, but their reluctant support for them is on very shaky ground, more so if some viable alternative(s) were offered to them. UKIPs rise in the south-east should probably turn the north rather against them, but the permanent disenchantment and disgust with the festering corpse of the Labour Party, makes their dilemmas the more stark. The Left there are seemingly unable to run a menage or a whelk stall, much less organise and field election candidates and hold together on the many and more important things that do unite them. What information can English readers and commenters provide on anything remotely capable of holding Labour to account and challenging them in their post-industrial heartlands or doing so consistently across the whole of the country (England)? A similar grassroots-based focus and rallying cry such the Yes Scotland movement made possible, to fund a campaign with promotional materials, election deposits and so on and to enthuse even the apathetic with the imagination and hope to demonstrate their latent power and succeed beyond all expectations, is not just desirable but necessary. Politics is far too important to be left to politicians, we should all be politicians, our elected few no more than what they ought to be: our representatives, that dance to our chosen tune and not whatever pied-piper lures them into the gutter and the sewers, and woe betide them if they betray us or our interests in the least.
If UKIP is the answer with the resultant economic turmoil, international isolation, domestic repression and scapegoating of the poorest and most vulnerable, to shield a rapacious elite of our would-be betters, then the mentality resembles that of the rioter destroying their own home-town, their own schools, hospitals, shops, and community resources, and sowing fear, dividing families, dividing neighbours -then the question must have been how can we destroy all in order to start over again from nothing. UKIP: the party for angst-ridden and ineadequate pyromaniacs, the party of tantrums and tears at bedtime, the party that will scream and scream until they’re sick. The foreign party, foreign to everything that the England that was once thought a model democracy and tolerant society, once held dear.
Mary
13 Oct, 2014 – 10:08 pm
“In favour of the motion, as amended.”
__________________________________________
Mary the original motion was:
That this House believes that the Government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel.
But with the amendments it became:
That this House believes that the Government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel on the conclusion of successful peace negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority as a contribution to securing a negotiated two state solution.
Israel, as I’m sure you know, has no intention of allowing a two-state solution; Israel will not dismantle the illegal settlements and outposts; it will not lift the siege on Gaza; it will continue to annex West Bank land and East Jerusalem. Thus there can be no successful peace negotiations.
The only realistic direction (difficult as it will be) is towards a single democratic and secular state comprising the two territories of present day Israel/Palestine.
So this symbolic vote will have no positive effect on the situation for Palestine.
It’s upset a few Zionists so I suppose that’s a plus.
29:00 Ilan Pappe speaks @ Masjidul Quds 1 Aug 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD7MwF6IIDQ
So the cleansing of Palestine that the British authorities would not carry out was internally institutionalised in Israel.
Yet parliament still call it “The Conflict” … Brainwashing.
UKIP seems a harbinger of the type of isolationism that precedes war. Cut us off from the continent and unable to feed more than around 20 million people, and that with up to half the population, rather than the present low single-digit number engaged in agriculture, we couldn’t even manage with half the population we have now, during world war two. I don’t like the idea of our necessities of life having to be shipped across the atlantic from UKIPs only ally, the United States, wich would love nothing more to have Britain’s people wrenched from the its rightful place at the heart of Europe, in their debt and at their mercy, notwithstanding the US can hardly feed, does not even try to feed or care for its own people, but only sees them as ‘marks’ for predatory private enterprise exploiters to bleed dry. That and the fact they are international pariahs, not ever to be seen dead with, though as pawns in their games, sitting ducks for retribution as the ‘little satan’, that might be their plan for us, we and these islands, costly drains and debtors, already written off as expendable losses. Not for Nigel and friends however, they’re assured first class accomodation with Cameron, Miliband and Clegg and the thousand or so, who’ve run the ship of state aground, on the first well-appointed lifeboat out before the mob in steerage get up on deck and get a hold of them.
Well I never! Peter Bone the MP for:
Bell End
Wollaston
Wellingborough
Is a Tory prick!
“There is no shame in cross-breeding. As I’ve said, mongrels have the best genes. Pedigrees have multiple disadvantages…”
Probably a good time to point out that there is no such thing as a ‘pedigree’ human.
Oh well I’m getting the old “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” nonsense and my comments aren’t appearing, so I’ll desist from posting here, so long.
“In what way is Malthus’s contention that absent artificial birth control, which Malthus referred to as “vice” (now readily available to school children from kindergarten up), population increases faster than food supply (and other resources necessary to life).
Malthus was unfortunate in his timing since immediately after publishing his treatise the industrial/scientific revolution vastly increased agricultural productivity so that, despite occasional disastrous famines killing many millions, human population in parts of the world has grown very rapidly. But we’ve seen that for less than 200 years out of humanity’s 100,000 year existence, so we’ll probably see further confirmation of Malthus in years to come. In fact, the restriction on population due to resource availability is now at work in Africa where population is unlikely to double in the next 40 years as it did in the last.
And in the West, the limit imposed by what Malthus called vice, is actually killing off the European peoples who prefer girls’ education and recreational sex to ensuring their own posterity, which entirely consistent with Malthus’ thesis.”
The first paragraph is a red herring since I was not referring to specifics but his general thesis. Malthus was an Anglican clergyman whose writings are devoted to defending the interests of the English landed aristocracy in much the same way that establishment politicians today regurgitate his arguments in order to support correspondingly disingenuous conclusions of their own, namely in essence, that capitalism is ‘natural’.
The point is, Malthus’s principle of population is based on scant facts. According to Malthus it is a law of nature that population increases geometrically while food production grows only arithmetically, so that society will, in the course of things, outstrip its resources.
Malthus argues that if the living standards of the mass of the population are any higher than the level of subsistence, they will start to have more children. until the imbalance between population and food production forces down living standards below subsistence and causes famine and disease which, by removing surplus mouths, restore equilibrium.
So according to Malthus, any attempt to improve the living standards of the mass of the population was doomed to failure by the ‘law of nature’. Any attempt to create a society based upon liberty, equality and fraternity would from this so-called inevitable law of nature degenerate into pre-existing society. Capitalism is thus natural.
This notion that capitalism is natural is the ideological underpinning of establishment political discourse. It is little wonder that Malthus’s theory was invoked by 19th century capitalists and their apologists in order to justify paying workers their bar subsistence and no more. The same justifications continue to be pumped out by the propagandists today.
“Left of centre voters in England have no alternative to UKIP”
That’s nonsense Tony. Voting Respect and Green are viable and real alternatives.
Don’t be too hasty, Tony M.
Some say there’s an automatic keyword filter that occasionally delays a post, or maybe it’s a random glitch. In any case, your post will soon turn up.
I’d miss your sometimes rambling, always interesting, nearly always sensible comments.
O/T but perhaps of interest to Fred (The Viking):
Denmark to ban sex with animals
“The absence of a law on bestiality led to a growth in animal sex tourism industry in the country.”
http://rt.com/news/195380-denmark-ban-bestiality-animals/
No more trips to Copenhagen Fred.
Malthus argues that if the living standards of the mass of the population are any higher than the level of subsistence, they will start to have more children. until the imbalance between population and food production forces down living standards below subsistence and causes famine and disease which, by removing surplus mouths, restore equilibrium.
That was the case throughout the first 100,000 years of human history and is true of all other species (see David Lack: the Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers), and it is demonstrably true of humanity in parts of Africa and some other places today. Where it is not true the reason is either because the scientific revolution has increased food production even faster than the natural increase in population (a doubling within 40 years in Africa for example) or because people resort to artificial means of birth control or other forms of what Malthus called “vice.”
So as with everything else you’ve argued today, you are warping, twisting or totally inverting the truth to prove an obvious absurdity.
Greens maybe yes Daniel, I had intended voting Green myself in Scotland, once, but not until independence was assured and after concerns that the party itself was not Scottish in the way the Labour Party is Scottish while run as a sub-branch of the London-based machinery and thus not answerable all the way to the top, but plagued with middling sacrificial nonentities. I have no Respect for George Galloway however and he does seem to personify his one man band party, his stance during the referendum was despicable and divisive and some sort of friend or foe identification has been activated irreversibly in respect to GG. There is no way back for him, he is a fickle opportunist, neither consistent or logical, an untrustworthy schemer and backstabber, publically out for the unattainable privately pursuing the inscrutable, yesteryear’s politician of a sort we all can do without.
Doug Scorgie.
No that’s not the motion passed as the first proposed amendment was never put.
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/commons/todays-commons-debates/read/unknown/433/
“There is no shame in cross-breeding.
Who said there was Techie?
Er, well actually no one.
Right.
Those who oppose the genocide of the English by mass immigration, a process that has gone more than half-way to completion in London, Leicester, and Luton, are arguing several things, which have nothing to do with individual mating choices.
One of the things they are arguing is that genocide, both racial and cultural, is wrong. Another thing they are arguing is that human diversity is a good thing, so whatever your own mating preference may be — and that is personal, private matter in which you have complete and generally approved liberty — it is not a good thing to mongrelize the whole human population (and don’t get wound up about use of the term mongrelize, it is a pejorative, if at all, only in the minds of the politically correct). But if you value human diversity, the speed of a Jesse Owens, the stamina of a Kipchoge, the charm of a Vietnamese girl’s nose, then you must value the maintenance of separate homelands for the nations of the world. Diversity is the result of separate development over 100,000 years and more. It can be destroyed in a generation or two, but can never be restored.
That was the case throughout the first 100,000 years of human history and is true of all other species (see David Lack: the Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers), and it is demonstrably true of humanity in parts of Africa and some other places today. Where it is not true the reason is either because the scientific revolution has increased food production even faster than the natural increase in population (a doubling within 40 years in Africa for example) or because people resort to artificial means of birth control or other forms of what Malthus called “vice.”
So as with everything else you’ve argued today, you are warping, twisting or totally inverting the truth to prove an obvious absurdity.”
I’m warping and twisting nothing. The above is patently nonsense predicated on flawed theories surrounding the psuedo science of socio-biology of which people like Gould pontificate in order, like I said, to justify the perpetuation of the status-quo. As with Malthus, Lack became a convert to Anglicanism, which distorted his theories.
I like to be hasty, the best decisions are the rash ones, when the brain is craving glucose and fight or flight spiky reactions over-ride commonsense, but also counter conformity and compliance. The last time I reported getting “Your commment … ” I was told it was impossible, couldn’t possibly be happening here. I think I had a life before the internet, but being most of the time recently bed-ridden and delirious it has assumed too great an importance. I need to step back and leave politics to those that know best, to that nice Mr Cameron and friends, I’m sure they mean well and given a chance will surprise us all.
“Greens maybe yes Daniel, I had intended voting Green myself in Scotland, once, but not until independence was assured and after concerns that the party itself was not Scottish in the way the Labour Party is Scottish while run as a sub-branch of the London-based machinery and thus not answerable all the way to the top, but plagued with middling sacrificial nonentities. I have no Respect for George Galloway however and he does seem to personify his one man band party, his stance during the referendum was despicable and divisive and some sort of friend or foe identification has been activated irreversibly in respect to GG. There is no way back for him, he is a fickle opportunist, neither consistent or logical, an untrustworthy schemer and backstabber, publically out for the unattainable privately pursuing the inscrutable, yesteryear’s politician of a sort we all can do without.”
I agree with you about Galloway and pretty much everything else you said there. I suppose my point is that at least the policies of Respect come as close to old Labour values that have been abandoned since Blair and thus do offer – at least in theory – some kind of tangible alternative. It’s a pretty depressing state of affairs when the left are put in the potential position of voting for essentially an opportunistic one man band or the middle-class Greens both of whom only have one seat each in Parliament.
“That’s nonsense Tony. Voting Respect and Green are viable and real alternatives.”
Agree, but many would rather kick up a stink, as they feel ukip are anti establishment.
To me though it’s not enough just to vote greens. The uk has a long way to go before people start taking responsibility imo. Something corporate politics never encourages in a real way. And aside from attacking minority groups they would never imply the population could have issues.
It’s going to take a persistent popular social movement that actually raises the conciseness of people.
I know this does not go down well with some, that it’s some pretentious nonsense, but it’s not my ideas i’m interested in. But the rising of awareness so people can at least understand the functioning of the system, and do then as they see fit.
There are events that actually happen, that people simply don’t know about. What the exact facts of those events are can be disputed, but that these things actually happen at all is hidden. Like I never knew Israel asked the UK to cleans Palestine, And it is part my responsibility to get in and find out for myself. That doesn’t let the establishment of the hook in any way. One assumes they have known the Israeli mindset all along.
“Monday’s vote in the House of Commons aiming at recognising a Palestinian state is certainly historic, and in several senses. It’s a historic mistake; a historic instance of ignorance and bigotry at the heart of the British political system; and a historic gift to Islamist terrorism.”
“The mind boggles. With opinion polls showing that Hamas — as bloodthirsty a terror group as Islamic State — would win Palestinian elections if they were held any time soon, a bunch of Labour-led buffoons in Britain think this is exactly the right time to reward terrorism.”
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/5288/israel_palestine_uk_parliament_s_vote_for_terrorism
Why is Hamas is so popular with ordinary Palestinians?
The answer is so obvious it need not be stated.