I have shared a platform at anti-war and pro-Palestinian events with Jeremy Corbyn on dozens of occasions over ten years. We have also worked together where Jeremy has been extremely helpful asking parliamentary questions on matters including Britain’s stance on Palestine at the UN, and the Liam Fox/Adam Werritty/Matthew Gould relationship. I would not call him exactly a friend because we have never spent purely social time together. But he is certainly someone for whom I have the highest personal regard.
I am delighted that he is going to run for the Labour leadership and give voters a real alternative, compared to the minute differences between the neo-con puppet candidates. I shall be most pleased if this, like Nicola Sturgeon in the general election, gives a chance for anti-Trident and anti-austerity arguments actually to be heard in the corporate media.
But I fear this won’t happen. The BBC have been deluging the airwaves with the right wing identikit candidates, not only in items relating to the Labour leadership election, but inviting them on to any conceivable programme to blether on any topic. I am willing to bet a large sum the same media access is not granted to Jeremy Corbyn. If you don’t say “aspirational”, you don’t get on.
The media dismiss any argument outwith the bounds of their narrow, manufactured corporate consensus as marginal and irrelevant. For example, never mind the fact that a clear majority in the UK has for years supported renationalisation of the railways. The very fact of its popular support makes it imperative to the BBC and other corporate media that it must not be voiced. Jeremy is very likely to voice it. Watch as he is carefully marginalised, patronised and excluded.
The difficulty which the corporate media and political classes have is that we in the SNP have just driven a coach and horses through the argument that the radical case for social justice is marginal and has no popular support. The Labour membership, outside the London millionaires and focus group organisers, can see this too. The problem is that party is riven between Blairites, who only ever joined for personal career and position and don’t believe in anything except a vague attachment to Thatcherism, and actual believers in social progress, who have spent years in pathetic befuddlement wondering what happened to their party.
The idea that Andy Burnham – who privatised the English NHS at a much faster rate than the Tories – is in any sense at all a left wing candidate is utterly risible. It is typical of non-free “democratic” systems that they give electorates a pretend alternative, just as Ed Balls was no different to George Osborne. Sounding marginally more northern does not make you more left wing, and Burnham isn’t. He has just won the prize for the most obsequious arse-licking of Prince Charles, beating even the egregious Tony Blair. Anybody who signs a letter “I remain, Your Royal Highness, Your most humble and obedient servant” should not just be debarred from politics, but should be sniggered at by everybody they encounter for the rest of their life.
I am afraid I expect that enough Labour Party members are Thatcherites anyway, or open to persuasion by the media that Jeremy stands outside “respectable” opinion, that he will not be able to mount a serious challenge. And I am afraid we won’t see much of his views on wasting public money on weapons of mass destruction given air time. But fair play to him for running, and I sincerely hope I am wrong.
My personal political priority remains to achieve Scottish independence as I believe only the break-up of the UK can change its rotten corporate controlled political system. The kaleidoscope needs a kick, not a shake. To achieve that, I am committed to support of the SNP. But the lack of any credible or worthwhile opposition in Scottish politics is deeply worrying. I would welcome the kind of Labour Party that Corbyn would lead as a healthy democratic development. Sadly I don’t expect it.
Mr Goss
“Like Herbie I do add comments of note….. you could learn from them”
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Thank you very much but if I wish to hear the Moscow line I prefer to get it direct rather than filtered by you.
“if I wish to hear the Moscow line I prefer to get it direct”
The way things are going you may well do.
Anyway, habby.
Not sure why you’re always so down on Moscow, even in its communist era.
The West chose to ensure Stalin defeated Hitler, and then divvied the world up with him.
Would you have preferred they chose Hitler over Stalin?
Herbie
5 Jun, 2015 – 12:10 pm
Villager and Phil’s prescription for human emancipation seems a bit pie in the sky.
Is that its purpose.
Consciousness raising, eh. Freedom always just over the next hill.
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Herbie, you are so full of cliches that show your shallow-thinking.
You are filled with Knowledge. But have you ever considered all knowledge is limited. By definition that is true is it not. Besides knowledge is the past, memory and therefore time. And you think from that centre of the past, weighed down by all your knowledge. So are not thinking afresh. Nothing original to say. No original response in the moment, only reaction based on your memory.
There is no prescription. It is you who thinks in that cookie-cutter mindset. Analysis-paralysis chained to your chewing the cud of the past.
Consciousness “raising” — what does that mean? Some kind of elevation implying measurement and metrics? Is that how it works? Or is it that our collective consciousness, its content is the aggregate of all of humankind? So, any change in one impacts the whole. I prefer to look at it in terms of its qualitative content, not necessarily ‘raising’, it could be lateral. The point I have made earlier, above, is that the source of change must be you and me. Not that you tinker with some external structure, policy, organisation and lo’ and behold you have a change in human consciousness. Something has to twig inside us. And for that to be a real change, not a marginal modification, you have to put aside everything you ‘know’. And discover what is actually real and true.
And this is not a process of time. Freedom is in the beginning — in the seeing of the ‘what is’, the fact of your anger, your violence, greed, desire, suffering, pain, pleasure, joy, compassion all that in one single perceptive movement and insight in the here and now. Not something to be achieved in time tomorrow, where, yes, your psychological freedom is over the next hill and is pie in the sky. That is what humankind has been doing for millennia. Today I will kill in order to have Peace tomorrow. How lovely!
And while they are doing all that you and Chomsky are playing with the narratives of war? Is that who you are and is that what you do?
But, Villager
Elites have been undermining human awareness of what is real and true, for millennia.
And they’re still at it today.
Surely, in order to achieve your dream, it’d be a good idea to fully understand these mechanisms of control and undermine them?
Just hanging around waiting for it to happen doesn’t seem to have worked so far.
Perhaps you’re thinking of some sort of Teilhard de Chardin omega point or other orthogenesis, which is nice, but ain’t gonna do much in the here and now.
@ Herbie
“Elites have been undermining human awareness of what is real and true, for millennia.
And they’re still at it today.”
Yes and here is one of them.Prince Charles: arms dealer by royal appointment to Middle East tyrants. http://stopwar.org.uk/news/prince-charles-arms-dealer-by-royal-appointment-to-middle-east-tyrants
Herbie, we rarely disagree to any great extent.
“The West chose to ensure Stalin defeated Hitler, and then divided the world up with him.”
I contest this. Indeed the west was hoping that German army would defeat Stalin and the awful spectre of Communism so they could carve up the Soviet Union. It is why they never offered any assistance and let the Soviet Union take such heavy losses in securing its boundaries.
“It is why they never offered any assistance”
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It’s another John Goss moment, folks!
I was beginning to give up hope… 🙂 )
‘Erbie
“The West chose to ensure Stalin defeated Hitler, and then divvied the world up with him.
Would you have preferred they chose Hitler over Stalin?”
________________________
I think Churchill probably got it right when he said he would make an alliance with the Devil himself in order to see Hitler defeated.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Another expression I commend to your attention, Herbie, is the Polish comparison of its geographical situation as being that of Christ crucified between the two thieves.
John
I think attitudes changed during WWII.
The US certainly provided military assistance, and this was instrumental in turning around Stalingrad.
I’ll look for some references later.
There’s something on it here, in the meantime:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
Yeah, habby.
Neither Poles nor Ukies have learned the lesson.
There is some small hope for the Poles though with the recent election.
Of course you know that the West funded Hitler as well.
“The US certainly provided military assistance, and this was instrumental in turning around Stalingrad.”
Britain supplied intelligence, we had broken the enigma code and were supplying intelligence through the Russian embassy in London without which Stalingrad would certainly have fallen.
And anyway, who the fuck are the Poles to be calling anyone else thieves.
They were running around nabbing whatever they could get with the Germans weakened at Versailles.
Some nasty raping and torturing too, I’m afraid.
Herbie
5 Jun, 2015 – 7:32 pm
But, Villager
“Elites have been undermining human awareness of what is real and true, for millennia.”
Organised religions have certainly done humankind no good. In fact they have worked to mislead and misguide and perpetuated power structures. I am not interested in any mythologies, of the East or the West; all these manmade books, rituals and nonsense. Man has created Gods in his image, not the other way round. I don’t want to know somebody else’s story when he comes around and tells me that he is enlightened. I write my own story based on the actuality of my life and relationships. Man cannot live isolated. Life is relationship, and to know oneself you look into that mirror of relationship.
‘And they’re still at it today.
Surely, in order to achieve your dream, it’d be a good idea to fully understand these mechanisms of control and undermine them?”
Whatever they do I observe but to call it a good idea to undermine them is to play their game; I won’t go there. And, btw, I have no dreams. Dreams imply ambition. Ambition is conflict for it denies the ‘what is’ with an intent to reach some other destination. I have no destination other than Freedom, first and last.
“Just hanging around waiting for it to happen doesn’t seem to have worked so far.”
I’m not sure that is what humanity has been doing. Sounds benign. Man has been killing man since time immemorial. It’s much worse. How do you propose to stop that?
“Perhaps you’re thinking of some sort of Teilhard de Chardin omega point or other orthogenesis, which is nice, but ain’t gonna do much in the here and now.”
Herbie I’m not given to the flowery world of intellect. You may be a great intellectual, but I don’t care how much you know, for it is limited. Don’t be fooled that modern man is very evolved. There is no such thing as psychological evolution. I would rather walk the parks and hills and smell the extraordinary perfume of a rose or a wildflower and be in awe of this immeasurable Universe and our connection to it and that we are part of all this we call Nature and the environment. I am wholly aware of the Unknown and I walk that line of the Known and the Unknown.
My definition of intelligence is not your IQ. I believe that is a misnomer as it only measures intellect (the brain), whereas intelligence is something different — its my brain, heart and indeed stomach and the whole of me. Intelligence is coded naturally throughout Nature. I fear you know too much and perhaps not enough recognition of what you don’t know
A root of man’s problems is insecurity. Man being animal faces and is conditioned to physical insecurity. But why is there also such huge psychological insecurity? the world is divided into nation states — we have done that. Apparently in order for our own security. It has had the opposite effect in fanning insecurity, the Arab v the Jew, the Ukranian v the Russian…you know all the wars better than I. And, further, if you delve into it, you might find that that physical insecurity in animal, in nature, has spilt into the psychological realm, so that we all live in fear. Easily tapped into by the Elite or whoever with power.
So we sleepwalk through life. People don’t want to be woken up, they are content in their slumber and content in watching the great game of elections and shit. So we can carry on in our sleep, in our vigorous analysis of the outer and call it progress. But an inward journey to understand our own story, after all unlike my TV or computer, I did not arrive here with a manual and long ago threw out all the lovely fables of th manmade religion books. So to understand our selves inwardly, well all that is bilge and to one psychotherapist here, psychobabble. Well, carry on….and good luck! Read all your lovely books; i don’t mean the religious ones, thats passé for most now, but all your lovely intellectual analyses, critiques, theories, ideologies, so and so forth. Not.
@Habbabkuk
“I think Churchill probably got it right when he said he would make an alliance with the Devil himself in order to see Hitler defeated.”
Churchill the Great Beast then with his best mate and Nazi anti-Semitic Frederick Alexander Lindemann had a plan with American help to Nuke the Soviet Union.
The siege of Leningrad saw countless dead civilians as well as military, many through starvation. Where were the Allied Forces?
“The siege of Leningrad saw countless dead civilians as well as military, many through starvation. Where were the Allied Forces?”
They went to Stalingrad by mistake.
“Another expression I commend to your attention, Herbie, is the Polish comparison of its geographical situation as being that of Christ crucified between the two thieves.”
Um, exactly.
The Afghans have a saying which approximates to ‘being in front of a lion and on the edge of a mountain’.
It looks like the Fascist leader of what’s left of Ukraine is about to open up war on another front. He has promised today to help Moldova get its Transnistria territory back. For a few days there has been speculation in the press that I read that this would be another of his ambitions to draw Russia into a war with the Yanks.
There is no evidence that Moldova really wants Poroshenko’s war with a neighbour with whom it has co-existed since 1992 following a war. It has declared that it does not want a military conflict. Bring on a fat tub of chocolate lard – Poroshenko. As might be expected with someone prepared to wage war on his own country where there are Russian sympathies he will have no compunction in waging war on a neighbour which also has Russian sympathies. I fly no flag for Transnistria and would like to see it as part of Moldova. However, I do not believe in regime change if the government is elected, which it appears to be, unlike Ukraine.
“They went to Stalingrad by mistake.”
Sometimes you can be very witty Fred. 🙂
Well if the Poles have such an understanding as to their situation, why oh why do they fuck up so often.
What they did to the Germans after Versailles certainly earned a response.
The Poles are as nasty as either, only difference the other pair have more stamina.
“The siege of Leningrad saw countless dead civilians as well as military, many through starvation. Where were the Allied Forces?”
They were providing materiel to the forces regrouping in the East.
I think they’d worked out that if Germany took Russia it’d be checkmate for Eurasia.
And so, the game continues.
Villager
Why do you assume I’m unfamiliar with the way of being you describe?
Most people much rather enjoy these things.
But.
We need food for the body as well. And there are those who would wish to deny us that.
So, that’s why we have politics and wars and cartels and rich and poor and so on.
That needs a different approach.
Not so sure about that Herbie. Roosevelt, who was one of the better US presidents perhaps, may have tried to get food aid and equipment into certain areas but as for Britain’s role I can only endorse what Dave Lawton says.
John
It isn’t about whether they’re nice guys or not.
Had Germany defeated the USSR. then global power would have moved to the East, rather than to the US/UK/USSR.
With those weird Germans and Japs, top of the pile.
Completely intolerable!
Herbie, are we talking big Banksters here? If so I agree.
They’re but one party to the dance.
But, then as now.
It’s producer and commodity nations, against the middle men countries.
” It is why they never offered any assistance ”
http://www.rusemb.org.uk/arcticalliedconvoys/
Ignoramus.
Britain provided Stalin with Ultra intelligence in advance of Operation Barbarossa (which with warnings from his own people he ignored), the Battle of Kursk and much else.
“The siege of Leningrad saw countless dead civilians as well as military, many through starvation. Where were the Allied Forces?”
Such astounding ignorance – the Artic convoys to Archangelsk and Murmansk experienced the greatest casualty rates in WW2. My inlaws relatives who lived in Moscow often recall the corned beef and shoes that they received from Britain during the war.
Of course the rewriting of history is all part of the Putin project, having turned his hand to Molotov Ribbentrop we now find that the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia is the current project.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/02/new-russian-invasion-documentary-dismays-czech-slovak-governments
Wonder if the we had to invade to stop a counter invasion meme might be due for an airing elsewhere in the near future?