Labour Party Conference

subvert47

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
DannyL said:
You're correct to say that Corbyn has called for ceasefires - but he's only ever asked for things to be done via the UN where Russia exercises a veto (they issued, I think their 13th veto on Syria related matters a few days ago) so this calls are ultimately toothless. He knows they won't do anything but it gives him the cover of plausible deniability, and gives yourself a little nugget to throw around in internet arguments. Try and find something he's said that'd lead to substantative active in Syria and then compare that to his statements about Israel, KSA etc. It's pretty clear what his basic point of view is. The only time he ever got exercised was when Trump bombed an empty airbase.

I was involved in a picket outside the STW conference a few years ago, organised by Syria Solidarity. I remember talking to one guy who was super keen to denounce us as warmongers and I remember a friend asking him what his solution would be. He said "well, all sides should withdraw". Like Russia would just pull out, retire from the field like honest gentleman. I realised then that he didn't actually give a damn about Syrian lives, they didn't even factor into his thinking. It was all about enacting his post-Iraq rage at our establishment. I'm certain this guy would be known to JC and very probably on first name terms, and I'm sure the worldview would be pretty much the same.

I don't want to ruin my evening arguing about this stuff so I'll leave is here. It's a video of Corbyn siding with Russia and Assad in wake of the chemical attacks in Syria in 2013. This was the Ghouta massacre which killed 1400 people and violated Obama's "red lines". Assad did it, yet Corbyn here is happy to parrot Russian propaganda, a classic "useful idiot". The story is the rebels gassed one of their own towns in an attempt to create a "false flag". It's stuff like this that makes him unfit to be PM in my view, not any purported tax increases for the rich.
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You clearly know far more about the situation in Syria than me. All the same, I don't see that video as Corbyn parroting Russian propaganda, rather exercising valid caution over Western military intervention. Yes, this perspective stems from Iraq, and other misconceived Western actions in the Middle East, which have been justified by extremely dodgy intelligence. The long-term consequence is that Western intelligence is no longer believed at all, allowing even more unscrupulous agents, such as Putin and Assad, to throw endless bullshit into the pot. Where everyone's motives are suspect, we no longer believe anything anyone says.

DannyL said:
But I think the pass this stuff is given by Corbyn, Milne et al and the embattled way that the Corbyn supporters dismiss any criticisms against him as plot (MSM, Blairities, take your pick) lends this stuff legitimacy.
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This is part of the same thing. We ignore criticisms as plot because they almost all are that. Endless garbage churned out day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. One, to see if anything sticks. Two, just to create an atmosphere of total mistrust. There's no engagement on policy issues ever. Okay, you have a specific criticism - fair enough - but mostly it's just negativity and bullshit, all towards the single aim of preventing change in the form of a not-particularly-radical socialist government.

Today's front pages are a typical case in point, such as the front page of supposedly left-leaning The Guardian: "Revolt over Brexit policy throws Labour into chaos" and the highlighted op-ed "The question now is who will follow Corbyn". What utter total shite.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Mr. Tea said:
It's a simple enough question: what do you mean by "many people are threatened by Corbyn"? Do you mean that many people are really liable to be worse off if Corbyn were PM (in which case, as I said, it's hardly surprising that they don't support him), or do you mean that lots of people *think* they would be worse off (but actually wouldn't), because they have a distorted idea about his policies from a biased media?
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Your original question was confusing in the context of what I'd said ("if such people are threatened by Corbyn then how can you possibly fault them for not supporting him? Would you support a politician who threatened you?") whereas this time it's clearer. I think you were just being too literal around the word 'threatened'.

'Threatened' because they don't actually believe in any kind of social justice but just pretend that they do whilst being quite right wing economically - i.e. they are centrists in the modern sense of the term. For example, many people feel threatened by having slightly less wealth, so oppose moderate tax increases etc. They would technically be slightly worse off, but not in a way that would impact much on their lives at all.

Anyways, this is probably just a prelude to a disagreement that I'm already tired of, before it's happened. We don't agree on many political points - let's leave it at that.
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
baboon2004 said:
Your original question was confusing in the context of what I'd said ("if such people are threatened by Corbyn then how can you possibly fault them for not supporting him? Would you support a politician who threatened you?") whereas this time it's clearer. I think you were just being too literal around the word 'threatened'.

'Threatened' because they don't actually believe in any kind of social justice but just pretend that they do whilst being quite right wing economically - i.e. they are centrists in the modern sense of the term. For example, many people feel threatened by having slightly less wealth, so oppose moderate tax increases etc. They would technically be slightly worse off, but not in a way that would impact much on their lives at all.

Anyways, this is probably just a prelude to a disagreement that I'm already tired of, before it's happened. We don't agree on many political points - let's leave it at that.
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You're getting pretty defensive there - I only wanted to know what you meant.

I'd assumed that what you were getting at was people on middling incomes who are strongly averse to even a small increase in income tax (as you mention), even though they also moan about the state of the NHS, schools and so on, and who are unable to put two and two together and realise that they would better off with higher taxes and properly funded public services (which relies on a straightforward appeal to self-interest more than to ideas of social justice, as such - although you'd hope at least some of them would think that improving conditions for the very poor, disabled etc. was a good thing to do, as well).

Naturally the very rich actually would be worse off under a left-wing Labour government - I mean that's kind of the point! - but of course they're only a small fraction of the voting population.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Subvert: Did you watch it? He opens by saying Russian evidence - i.e. that provided by Putin, who you're critical of - is "strong". He later says that there's no hard evidence from the British side and the Russian evidence is much stronger. I mean, the lack of judgement is just fucking astonishing. Do you think he would be this fucking credulous if it the US offering evidence about a conflict they're the aggressors in, or our own government? This was in 2013 one might say, we're much more aware of Russian disinformation and so on .... but then we have Skirpal "'let's send the Russians a sample of the gas" last year and apparently, Milne spiking tweets about Idlib last week - that's Idlib where there is an ongoing bloody bombing campaign against civilians.

Having said all that, your position doesn't surprise me, as I've had this disheartening experience with Corbyn supporters many times before. Do watch For Sama - it's in cinemas this weekend - if you get the chance and you might get a sense why I find this so upsetting.

Again, from my timeline. Strongly worded - Idk if I'd put it exactly like this but perhaps that's needed to make the point:

One element in Andrew Fisher's resignation that is going almost unmentioned is Fisher's claim that a statement condemning the bombing of hospitals in Idlib was spiked by the leaders office . This is perhaps what Fisher was referring to when he said that Corbyn's team showed, at times, a lack of basic human decency.

But it shows more than that. In consciously refusing to raise in public the war crimes and genocide in Idlib, and silencing debate on it, Corbyn (or his bad advisers if you want to believe the myth of the Good Tsar), are actively complicit in Assad and Putin's daily massacres. The regime is more than content with silence. Corbyn has form for this of course - a lot of it. From demanding proof of Assad's chemical attacks and ignoring that proof when produced, to slandering the opposition as exclusively Islamist jihadists - exactly Assad's propaganda line since 2011 - he has repeatedly demonstrated his commitment to not talking about Baathist Syria. Sure, if shoved against a wall with a camera in his face, he will mumble the odd criticism, but left to his own devices he maintains a strict and invariable silence about the authors of the greatest crime against humanity of our age.

Stop a moment to think what that means. This aspirant for state power, this alleged moral exemplar amongst politicians, this secular saint according to his cultish followers, actively covers up for, and silences debate about, a genocide that has killed approaching a million people, including vast numbers of children. He does not need to do this. It will do him no political damage to condemn Assad and Putin. If nonetheless he can't bring himself to issue a whole-hearted condemnation - and it's really only words that I'm asking for - only one conclusion is possible. He prefers to defend the regime by silencing criticism of it, rather than supporting the revolution. He probably has a few qualms about this. He did once nominally support the revolt, when it started. He would probably rather the regime just went away. But they haven't and won't and the choice remains between the regime and the revolution. The Syrian people after all have done their utmost to remove Assad, thwarted only by imperialist Russian air power. Corbyn has made his choice by his silence, his equivocation. He will support Assad by remaining silent about the monster's crimes - which is all the support Assad requires. Torture prisons. Mass rape. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians. That's what Jeremy Corbyn wants to keep quiet about and that's therefore what Jeremy Corbyn stands for
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
danny with all respects to you brother if labour started condemning what is going on in syria this isn't going to help syrian lives by this point and will only be the cheapest pseudo-solidarity. like, i understand your outrage over this and agree with many of your points (though not all) but really this goes back to miliband/brown era. Corbyn is an easy prop to focus on and Miln is a Stalinist fuckwit yes, but at the end of the day your outrage towards corbyn supporters isn't going to contribute to a decent foreign policy because the two party system is strongly disintegrating and we're witnessing political and not social meltdown. I think one has to confront the real conditions of their life. its all well wishing for pragmatic government and pragmatic foreign policy, but distance yourself and apply a bit more of an analytical lense, would be my advice.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
also you don't really expect the labour party to back the anarchists if they took a pro-opposition stance do you? I mean, I'm pro-opposition, but I can acknowledge that groups aligned to the ikhwan are islamists, albeit bourgeois-democratic ones. Even Erdogan is technically an islamist whilst ruling a secular state. of course this is not what assadist propaganda means by islamist, me and you know that very well, but just putting it out there. I mean the Douma 4 and others weren't kidnapped by Assad - although many, many leftists/commies were tortured in assad's dungeons. ba'athism is closer to falangism than it is any kind of even arab stalinism.

We're talking about a party that crushed the general strike in 1926, I don't expect their record to be any better than the tories, tories also talk the nice talk. so what?
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Yeah man, I generally agree. I'm not expecting anything at all - was just responding to Subvert, illustrating why this shit pisses me off so much and why I find his faith in Corbyn hard to countenance.

Not sure what would help Syrian lives at this point, that horse bolted some time back. Seems fuck all chance of anything happening 'til Trump goes. I do wonder if the Assad regime will collapse quite soon though. A torture-rape kleptocracy that's murdered pretty much an entire generation of young people can't have that much of a future - this is kinda what's motivating the Idlib attacks in my view - an army has to act. The cessation of hostilities will lead to the whole thing falling in on itself - and will get war crimes persecutions moving. Having said all that, I haven't been keeping as informed as I was, because it's generally so dark, so I might be wrong. I welcome your comments as always though.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
fate of syria seems to be balkanised warlording unofficial fiefdoms by this point, similar to Afghanistan. bleak really. the country burning means the country being uninhabitable for decades to come. assad's victory will be pyrrhic ultimately, but it will be one for his family/clan and not even his state apparatus.

As for subvert, I'm not sure how people getting outraged in the media is any indication of corbyn's policies being threatening. I come from Turkey and we never had a communist party in power. still in the 70s that meant america sponsored armed fascist thugs to kill communists. nothing like that is happening to the labour left. I think people in this country don't know the price that the enemy class will try and make us pay for something truly threatening.

A lot of this pro-corbyn vs anti-corbyn is political spectacle because its separate from our daily conditions of experience. It's a commodity we're being sold back to make us think we have a need to take interest in what is happening in 10 downing st. And of course massive amounts of money is made from this. but it's an invented need really. I'd highly recommend you read the situationists on this rather than the weird post-punk dilettantes who were more about lack of rigor and artistic indulgences than any deep commitment to what these texts were trying to say, green gartside being the absolute worst offender of all of this, a horrible man.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Last from me tonight, but Lab acknowledgement of the nuances of the Syrian opposition?! Some hope. This people have zero clue about the country and less interest. "ragtag jihadis" will do them. There's a kinda deep liberal whiteman racism at here, embedded in the very terms they argue with.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
luka said:
My theory is he had his kid at about the same time Syria was hitting the news and he was in this vulnerable hyper impressionable state and so took an abnormally strong imprint on all that horrible undiluted misery and pain.
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I missed this earlier and I have insomnia so.... My partner actually didn't like the way my interest in this overshadowed the early days of my kids life.

Yrraldrin: It might be connected with coming out of a long period of therapy and wanting to do something real world as part of that though I'm not 100% sure about that.

I don't think the level of my interest is that unusual compared to anybody who gets a little bit involved in a cause and related activism. Most activist and political types I know are far more involved and active than I am on a range of issues. It's a compelling cause - what I've read and seen about the days of the revolution is tremendously inspiring, the best of humanity, though what follows is the worst.

It's also been a good lens for me to find out about disinformation, propaganda, Russia, the Middle East, the Labour Party, loads of stuff. It's also the world's biggest and most brutal conflict - the consequences will be with us for generations. Why aren't more people interested might be a good question.
 
subvert47

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
DannyL said:
Subvert: Did you watch it? He opens by saying Russian evidence - i.e. that provided by Putin, who you're critical of - is "strong". He later says that there's no hard evidence from the British side and the Russian evidence is much stronger. I mean, the lack of judgement is just fucking astonishing.
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No, he says it seems much stronger and appears to be much stronger, on the basis of what the Russian officials were saying about it and their intention to bring it to the UN. (Did they ever present anything, however dubious?) Whereas the US and UK made claims without bringing forth any real evidence. This is all in the context of opposing a rush to military involvement in Syria, following other such in Iraq and the Middle East. It's about not believing anything the US/UK claim without concrete and definite evidence that it is true. (Though obviously Corbyn didn't believe the "evidence" in earlier instances either, and rightly so.)

Okay, taking anything the Russians say at face value might well be called bad judgment, but taking anything the US/UK say at face value has been amply demonstrated to be bad judgment; i.e. when we've cried "wolf" endless times already. Thus Corbyn said that proving or not proving this or that doesn't end the crisis and that there has to be a return to diplomacy. And he's maintained that position since then, as he wrote in a piece last year IIRC.

The fact is that, in conflict situations, Corbyn would always rather talk first and then talk some more. He is especially opposed to Western military intervention anywhere, and that includes a disinclination to saying anything that might in any way support such actions. Whether that's the right stance to take in each particular instance is less clear – e.g. when faced with total bastards like Milosevic or Assad – but it's a consistent and principled one. Indeed, his position on Brexit is much the same. No, it doesn't really help Syria very much.

PS I'll watch the For Sama video later.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
and there we have it. diplomacy is exactly what I'm saying. status quo. a diplomat is not threatening to the centrists, what they are doing is cheap redbaiting huckstering and we're supposedly to watch agonisingly like this is a film that has after a long protracted process passed the state censors in 1982 turkey under martial law. really cringe! however if a mass strike wave erupted in this country you bet that would be a threat. why the obsession with big boy politics? what does it actually tell us about whats going on irl? nothing.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
thirdform said:
danny with all respects to you brother if labour started condemning what is going on in syria this isn't going to help syrian lives by this point and will only be the cheapest pseudo-solidarity. like, i understand your outrage over this and agree with many of your points (though not all) but really this goes back to miliband/brown era. Corbyn is an easy prop to focus on and Miln is a Stalinist fuckwit yes, but at the end of the day your outrage towards corbyn supporters isn't going to contribute to a decent foreign policy because the two party system is strongly disintegrating and we're witnessing political and not social meltdown. I think one has to confront the real conditions of their life. its all well wishing for pragmatic government and pragmatic foreign policy, but distance yourself and apply a bit more of an analytical lense, would be my advice.
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I think it's instructive to compare Corbyn's umming and ahhing over Syria and Russia with his extremely outspoken opposition to Israel and Saudi Arabia. If the Labour leadership's condemnation of Assad and Putin over their terrorization of the Syrian people would just be "cheap pseudo-solidarity", then doesn't the same apply to leftist support for the Palestinians and Yemenis?

Now I know there's a standard response here about Israel and KSA being allies of Western countries and therefore in theory susceptible to pressure to change their behaviour if Western countries wanted them to (e.g. the UK is a major arms vendor the KSA). But the UK does a lot of business with Russia too - look at Russian investment in the London property market alone - and it's entirely feasible that a UK government that wanted to could put significant pressure on Russia using sanctions. But I don't think this has ever crossed Corbyn's mind.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
subvert47 said:
Okay, taking anything the Russians say at face value might well be called bad judgment[/I]

Might that be the first inklings of a criticism? Corbyn's Russophilia is career-kong. Recent events show that the Labour high command can't find it in themselves to put out a fucking Tweet condemning the systematic bombing of hospitals. "Bad judgement" isn't the half of it.

but taking anything the US/UK say at face value has been amply demonstrated to be bad judgment;


The power structures in the UK, and their Russian equivalent and their expression through media, aren't remotely comparable. I mean, we all know about the dodgy dossier precisely because it was on Newsnight and debated back and forth in our press. There were millions on the streets against Iraq and it lost Blair 100s of Parliamentary seats. This doesn't happen in Russia, the lie is built in from the ground up with their media structures. I'd recommend having a read of Peter Pomerantsev's books or a regular look at sources like Bellingcat if you wanna comprehend the difference. It makes me so mad when people compare the Beeb with Russia Today. They are really nothing like each other. This is what Third is getting at - here, we don't know what the real brutal exercise of state power looks like. The IFJ did a list of murdered Russian journalists since 1993 that was 300 people long. Laura Kusenberg being a twat or John Humpherys being a right wing jerk isn't the same thing.

Anyway, this is ancient history to some degree. I will probably retire from this conversation now. Do watch For Sama if you get the chance.

Edit - something I forget to say earlier. In the case in the clip above, old news though it may be - Corbyn went to bat for the murders. 1400 dead. Corbyn, in the clip above provides cover for the killers and gives legitimacy to their conspiracy soup of liars.
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subvert47

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
DannyL said:
Might that be the first inklings of a criticism?
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Not really, no. I don't know anyone in the Labour party who doesn't have criticisms of Corbyn. But we back him up because he's the one up front taking the non-stop flac, most of which is utter garbage and politically motivated. You talk about "Corbyn supporters" and perhaps think it's some sort of personality cult. But it's the anti-Corbyn-ists who are really obsessed with him.

DannyL said:
The power structures in the UK, and their Russian equivalent and their expression through media, aren't remotely comparable.
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Indeed. I'm not sure what relevance that has here though. That Putin tells lies all over the place doesn't mean we can therefore implicitly trust US/UK intelligence and act accordingly.

DannyL said:
Corbyn went to bat for the murders. 1400 dead. Corbyn, in the clip above provides cover for the killers and gives legitimacy to their conspiracy soup of liars.
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No, he didn't. He expressed doubt over the circumstances. It's those who created the arena of distrust in the first place who provided that cover.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
I can't be bothered to bang on about this all night. What did you - or others - make of the conference?
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Subvert with the most dominant debate club performance since Vimothy gave hmg a Bitcoin lesson.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
subvert47 said:
You talk about "Corbyn supporters" and perhaps think it's some sort of personality cult. But it's the anti-Corbyn-ists who are really obsessed with him.
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Can you name a British politician in living memory who has this sort of public?


If that's not a personality cult then I don't know what is.

I'm glad you know people who are pro-Corbyn but recognise that he's human and fallible. I've tended to find the opposite. A bunch of people I know think the sun shines out of his ring and that to admit that even 5% of the criticism he gets might be valid marks you out as a "Tory" or, worse still, a "Blairite" - which is to say, irredeemably evil. It's like a religious fervour. I've literally lost friends because of this nonsense. But as far as they're concerned, any and all criticism is a "right-wing smear" (never mind if it's in the New Statesman!), and the party's antisemitism crisis is entirely manufactured (by a sinister cabal of media-controlling, money-mad Jews, naturally).

Having said all that, it's perhaps telling that most of the people I know who are like this are not party members and aren't really that engaged in politics generally, aside from really, really loving Corbyn. But I've never seen anything like it before four years ago. Maybe some people were like this about Thatcher when I was a little kid, I dunno.
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
version said:
Farage? UKIP became a one-man show and their voters immediately switched to BXP the moment it went public.
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Now you mention, he is the other point of comparison. Though I don't think his name has ever been chanted by a crowd of thousands at Glastonbury. (Glyndebourne, maybe?)
 
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