O

Omaar

Guest
I just really don't think these are elections are anything about democracy at all. They are about selling an invasion for which the original pretext had hardly anything to do with freeing people from tyranny.

It is the bush administration and the media who want to frame this as a battle between democracy and anarchy or tyranny. which is crazy.

I feel something like guilt arguing this when faced with pragmatic arguments about what these elections mean for the average Iraqi - but seriously i don't think they really mean much, for reasons given in my last post.

A Blog from iraq

And I honestly can't bear to see that smug look on Bush's ugly mug once more.

I'm feeling that golbal communism might be a long way off, but resisting the expansion of a miltary empire is pretty crucial right now. I'm hoping for big protests when this war reaches the 2 year mark - (march 19?)
 

johneffay

Well-known member
luka said:
i'm in sympathy with oliver because he's taking a pragmatic view as opposed to an idealouge's view. global communism doesn't exist. it's as real as the second coming of christ and the building of jerusalem here on earth. an ideal world may look like global communism, it may look like willy wonka's chocolate factory. it's academic, it won't happen.
democracy may well be nothing but a hazy ideal, like justice or freedom or equality.
So you're making exactly the same criticism of democracy as you are of communism.

The problem with democracy is that, like communism, it has never really been tried; all democracies have relied to some extent upon the disenfranchised. The elections in Iraq may well be something to celebrate, but anybody who thinks that they are democratic is deluding themselves.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
luka said:
i'm in sympathy with oliver because he's taking a pragmatic view as opposed to an idealouge's view.

This is capitalist ideology in itself; it can present itself as realistic only because it has foreclosed the question of what reality is. In other words, it has stopped politics and made everything into a question of administration.

global communism doesn't exist. it's as real as the second coming of christ and the building of jerusalem here on earth. an ideal world may look like global communism, it may look like willy wonka's chocolate factory. it's academic, it won't happen.

Who's talking about an ideal? It seems to me that Oliver is talking about an ideal, albeit one that doesn't, never has and never will exist in reality, only ideologically. The diabolical genius of the neocon agenda is to that it is both idealistic (they claim to be standing for values such as Justice and Freedom) but also 'realistic' and 'pragmatic' (it's OK to kill children to pursue these 'ideals').

Politics has to START from the concrete situation which we're in, but it doesn't have to END there. To say that this situation is all we can hope for, all we can expect, is not politics at all, it is the anti-political quietism of the past thirty years dressed up as 'realism'.

in comparison to actually existing or historical political systems parlimentary democracy has its merits.

Tell that to those raped and killed in former Yugoslavia. Tell it to those being fleeced by the likes of Roman Abramovic in the former Soviet Union. Democracy is better for the exploiter class, better for those who want and are able to 'travel', to go to the theatre and buy goods produced by western companies, but it isn't better for the mass of humanity who couldn't care less about which bureaucrat is ruling them provided they get food and shelter, both of which were guaranteed under state socialism.


i don't think oliver;s point about freedoms can be easily dismissed. you can write and say what you want.

Meanwhile in the real world...

Get a proper job Luke, then you'll see how much freedom you have to say what you like in this country. Sure, you can say what you like here, provided your views aren't expressed so loudly other people can hear them and aren't antagonistic. In other words, provided you go along with the consensus. You're not put in a gulag here, you just lose your job or are put in a psych ward.

it beats afghanistan under the taliban. it beats russia under stalin. it beats feudal europe it even beats today's china. i don't see why, if we're talking about 'ACTUAL examples of really existing democracy' we can't talk about communism as it existed in the USSR or in China under Mao. why we can't talk about gulags and cultural revolutions as opposed to your vision of communism in its pure state.

Because the very arguments Oliver is using to defend the evils of US FP are EXACTLY THE SAME as those which state socialists used to defend those regimes. i.e. the evil of the state socialist apologists was that they made an appeal to pragmatism - sure, this isn't real communism, but it's on the way to real communism, and we have to be realistic, don't we?

if you had to choose a system to live under you'd probably go for parliamentry democracy every time. you're unlikely to simply 'disappear' becasue you insulted the prime minister's wife. it's not much, but it's something.

You're not claiming to be unaware of the amount of people that the British and American govts have made 'disappear' are you?

if it's legitimate to tell people to 'read foucault mate' it's also legitimate to say
read conrad mate, read dostoyevsky. the books are more entertaining anyway, they've got storys and the prose is better.

It's even more legitimate to say read both and then be in a position to make the comparison, as I have and am.

I say, read Dostoyevsky again, especially Ivan Karamazov's dream of the Grand Inquisitor - it explains perfectly the 'pragmatic' utilitarian logic of the oppressor, from Stalin to Bush.

i agree that oliver brushes sins committed in the name of democracy under the carpet.

democracy may well be nothing but a hazy ideal, like justice or freedom or equality. they are banners and people who march under those banners have acheived things which seem to me to be worth acheiving. they continue to fight for things which seem to me to be worth fighting for.

Such as? How is campaigning to give lawyers power over you positive?

racism and discrimination didn't disappear with the abolition of slavery. sexism and discrimination didn't disappear when women were given the vote. continuing inequality doesn't negate those acheivements.

What achievements and how do they relate to dictatorship of the elite?

oliver is saying, iraq is fucked despite the fall of sadaam and the introduction of democratic elections. that doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate the fall of saddaam and the democratic elections. small victories are worth celebrating, and in the absence of willy wonkas chocolate factory and the birth of the ideal world, they are the only things worth celebrating.

What are we celebrating? People did have a vote under Hussein - at least they were under no illusions that their ratification of an 'inevitable' process had no impact upon it whatsoever.

'The inflexible law is to do with a tendency towards subordination to the necrotic structure of bourgeois representationalism.'

this is the worst sentence ever written.

k, but your ARGUMENT against its claim would be?
 

luka

Well-known member
ok, i will reply in
this same lazy facetious manner

it can present itself as realistic only because it has foreclosed the question of what reality is.

meaningless.

Who's talking about an ideal?

both you and oliver. he is talking about the ideal of democracy. you are talking about the ideal of communism. neither of them have existed in a 'pure' state. things don't exist in pure states, other than in peoples minds. democracy and communism are abstract ideas

To say that this situation is all we can hope for, all we can expect, is not politics at all, it is the anti-political quietism of the past thirty years dressed up as 'realism'.

er.. yes, i agree. read what's written please. go back to the point about the abolition of slavery and giving women the vote. read slowly. the point is not that it is all we can hope for, it is that these are steps in the right direction and worth celebrating, not as the end goal, but as steps towards it. they are battles in a wider war, battles won and victories worth celebrating, not the end of the war itself.

as i said before i think oliver needs to take the sins committed in the name of democracy more seriously than he does. i also think i'd prefer to live in south korea than north korea, england than china. all things considered.

meanwhile in the real world...
so, er what happened to being above ad hominen attacks or whatever you were going on about. don't tie yourslef in knots mark. you've got a middle class job. make up your mind. are you priveledged to be a member of the bourgeiosie or not? don't pull that proper job move, it's beneath you. you're not the only left wing teacher to have existed in the history of parliamentry democracy,(see eric hobsbawn and christopher hill for example. they wrote books and everything) and not each and every one of them was put in a mental hospital. not only that, but they let you out too, wisely or otherwisely. i don't think much hard labour was involved either.
(see eric hobsbawn and christopher hill for example)

Such as? How is campaigning to give lawyers power over you positive?

once again, the abolition of slavery, chopping charles I head off, fuck it, the NHS too, i'm sure other people can think of some more.

What are we celebrating? People did have a vote under Hussein - at least they were under no illusions that their ratification of an 'inevitable' process had no impact upon it whatsoever.

we are celebrating the fall of a dangerous lunatic tyrant. not dangerous to me and you admittedly, but by your reckoning that really shouldn't matter. i didn't suppport the war, that doesn't mean i'm forced to deny any good can come of it. thats childish, stubborness for the sake of it. to say that no good can possibly come from the eelections also seems premature. my feeling is that an elected government has a greater chance of getting the foreign troops to leave than a few pychos chopping the heads off aid workers. native populations have got rid of colonial powers before and they will do so again. don't be unecessarily defeatist.

, but your ARGUMENT against its claim would be?

well it doesn't mean anything, its a jumble of words.
 

luka

Well-known member
and omaar, this just for you. you may well be right about the american governemts intentions. i don't think that's the be all and end all though. when the iraqis were voting they were not voting to endorse 'an invasion for which the original pretext had hardly anything to do with freeing people from tyranny.'

so you have more than one set of intentions and more than one set of hopes and expectations and to think those of the american government will previal again seems premature and unduly pessimistic.
 

luka

Well-known member
what i'm interested in is when the two sets of expectations clash
if the whole of iraq thought the elections were a sham destined only to rubberstamp the american invasion they wouldn't have risked being blown up. as i understand it most if not all the major parties including getting rid of the foreign troops as a major part of their manifestoes. so the vote was, at least in part, a vote to end the occupation. america has been guilty of hubris before. just becasue they believe they'll be able to keep whoever wins the election in their pocket, have them renege on their pledges and promises, it doesn't make it true.
 
O

Omaar

Guest
Luka - I think you make a good point about the vote being in effect a vote for an end to the occupation, in that this is the platform on which a lot of the politicians are standing. Anyway, if this new democracy is about giving people a voice, that's all well and good, but democracy is supposed to be about that voice having an impact on the direction in which leaders move a country. I can't see that this vote will effect the end of the US occupation, in that ultimately the US will decide whether or not they stay in Iraq, not the iraqi people or politicians. I realise you think this is pessimimstic, but I just don't see any indication that the US intend to withdraw from Iraq in the immediate future. Not until foreign ownership of Iraqi oil is sorted out anyway.

I also find it disturbing the way this is sold in the media as a victory for bush, and a triumph for democracy, in order to legitimate an invasion that was completely unjustified on the pretexts given.

Will this election not be used to justify anything that happens in Iraq (which I think will be dictated largely by the US) to be legitimate using the claim that Iraqis haved voted in free and fair elections?

And if the US can't manage to hold free and fair elections in a first world peace zone, how can we expect these elections in a war zone to be free and fair?

As an aside, I think global democracy is an impossible ideal under capitalism, - i think that 'democracy' in the first world is structurally dependent on tyranny in the third world.

http://www.pnac.info/
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
luka said:
ok, i will reply in
this same lazy facetious manner

As opposed to your usual carefully argued, honed and focused responses?


it can present itself as realistic only because it has foreclosed the question of what reality is

meaningless..

Do you really want me to explain what it means? This bluff commonsense thing is really rather tedious.

Who's talking about an ideal?

both you and oliver. he is talking about the ideal of democracy. you are talking about the ideal of communism. neither of them have existed in a 'pure' state. things don't exist in pure states, other than in peoples minds. democracy and communism are abstract ideas

Yeh, my point exactly. Now why not choose a worthwhile ideal over the Tony Blair and the arms factory?

To say that this situation is all we can hope for, all we can expect, is not politics at all, it is the anti-political quietism of the past thirty years dressed up as 'realism'.

er.. yes, i agree. read what's written please. go back to the point about the abolition of slavery and giving women the vote. read slowly.

Make the point. Women both have and hadn't had the vote under democracy. So there's clearly no essential connection between democracy and women's suffrage. Besides this is a classic example of a circular argument - you can't adduce women having the vote as evidence for the virtue of democracy unless you have already assumed that having a vote is a good thing.

the point is not that it is all we can hope for, it is that these are steps in the right direction and worth celebrating, not as the end goal, but as steps towards it. they are battles in a wider war, battles won and victories worth celebrating, not the end of the war itself.

The whole 'steps in the right direction' moves presupposes a story about Progress, which is the hidden assumption of both your and Oliver's arguments.

as i said before i think oliver needs to take the sins committed in the name of democracy more seriously than he does. i also think i'd prefer to live in south korea than north korea, england than china. all things considered.

meanwhile in the real world...

so, er what happened to being above ad hominen attacks or whatever you were going on about. don't tie yourslef in knots mark. you've got a middle class job. make up your mind. are you priveledged to be a member of the bourgeiosie or not? don't pull that proper job move, it's beneath you. you're not the only left wing teacher to have existed in the history of parliamentry democracy,(see eric hobsbawn and christopher hill for example. they wrote books and everything) and not each and every one of them was put in a mental hospital. not only that, but they let you out too, wisely or otherwisely. i don't think much hard labour was involved either.
(see eric hobsbawn and christopher hill for example)

The point about ad hominem attacks being bad is that they substitute an attack on the person for an attack on the argument and are therefore irrelevant. Your argument was that lib democratic societies allow freedom of speech. I am asserting that you are only saying that because you have never been in a situation where your free speech has been challenged, which is what allows you to make such a naive assertion. This may be factually wrong, but my argument as it stands is not irrelevant; therefore it is not an ad hominem attack.

Such as? How is campaigning to give lawyers power over you positive?

once again, the abolition of slavery, chopping charles I head off, fuck it, the NHS too, i'm sure other people can think of some more.

But slavery wasn't abolished the moment liberal democracy came in. The two were compatible. Lenin got rid of the Tsar and state socialist regimes have health care for all.

What are we celebrating? People did have a vote under Hussein - at least they were under no illusions that their ratification of an 'inevitable' process had no impact upon it whatsoever.

we are celebrating the fall of a dangerous lunatic tyrant. not dangerous to me and you admittedly, but by your reckoning that really shouldn't matter. i didn't suppport the war, that doesn't mean i'm forced to deny any good can come of it. thats childish, stubborness for the sake of it.

But this is arrant hypocrisy. At least Oliver's position is consistent. Why didn't you support the war then? This was clearly going to be the outcome.

to say that no good can possibly come from the eelections also seems premature. my feeling is that an elected government has a greater chance of getting the foreign troops to leave than a few pychos chopping the heads off aid workers. native populations have got rid of colonial powers before and they will do so again. don't be unecessarily defeatist.

I'm not defeatist about that, obviously it will happen. But the anti-colonial struggle is not necessarily connected with the rise of liberal democracy.

, but your ARGUMENT against its claim would be?

well it doesn't mean anything, its a jumble of words.

Thus spake the bard.

Again, this bluff hail fellow well met 'I can't understand your fancy words, mate' act is beneath YOU....

The point is that there is an inevitable, necessary and ineluctable tendency towards empty rhetorical gameplaying in liberal democracy. The system itself has a logic, a logic of inertia.
 
O

Omaar

Guest
The Vietnam turnout was good as well

"On September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of the Vietnam war. Under the heading "US encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83% turnout despite Vietcong terror", the paper reported that the Americans had been "surprised and heartened" by the size of the turnout "despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting". A successful election, it went on, "has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam". The echoes of this weekend's propaganda about Iraq's elections are so close as to be uncanny"

The Vietnam turnout was good as well
 

mexican

Banned
beat that luka! :( can't you realise that you have to subordinate your ego to K Punk's superior reading abilities? Global communism is going to need some heavy duty intellectuals if it's going to work, and K Punk is one of them. :eek: He actually wants to free you. All you need to do is stop thinking your way and start doing what he says. :p He is a great man. :eek:
 

luka

Well-known member
As opposed to your usual carefully argued, honed and focused responses?
Do you really want me to explain what it means?
This bluff commonsense thing is really rather tedious.
Now why not choose a worthwhile ideal
Make the point.
which is what allows you to make such a naive assertion
this is arrant hypocrisy
obviously it will happen
Thus spake the bard.

hmm, you piss me off too much for me to carry on up this dead end. viva la revolution.

omaar though. i will say what i think about this quickly.

I realise you think this is pessimimstic, but I just don't see any indication that the US intend to withdraw from Iraq in the immediate future. Not until foreign ownership of Iraqi oil is sorted out anyway.

I also find it disturbing the way this is sold in the media as a victory for bush, and a triumph for democracy, in order to legitimate an invasion that was completely unjustified on the pretexts given.

Will this election not be used to justify anything that happens in Iraq (which I think will be dictated largely by the US) to be legitimate using the claim that Iraqis haved voted in free and fair elections?

And if the US can't manage to hold free and fair elections in a first world peace zone, how can we expect these elections in a war zone to be free and fair?


i don't see any indication that the US intend to withdraw from Iraq either. i don't like the way the elections have been presented in some quaters as somehow validating the war either. i have no idea whether the elections were free and fair although i would assume, on no real evidence that they were as free and fair as could be expected in the circumstances. i would expect the party with the most votes to be declared the winner. maybe i'm being naive.

it just occured to me that maybe the elections would end up working against american intentions. that they would backfire and produce results the americans neither expected nor wanted.
 
O

Omaar

Guest
luka said:
it just occured to me that maybe the elections would end up working against american intentions. that they would backfire and produce results the americans neither expected nor wanted.

Quite. I certainly hope so.
 

hombre

Member
from what i can see this "election" has little to do with democracy as we would like to have it. iraqis apparently hope that the election will bring change and relieve them from their misery (which includes ending the occupation by foreign troops), but this is not likely to happen. sunni arabs refused to vote, which means the election lacks legitimacy even if we accept that elections held under foreign occupation can be legitimate.

the purpose of the election was to give some sort of legitimacy to the occupation and it does represent a small victory for the right-wing maniacs in the american administration. i can see it being used against the people in the west who oppose the war.

anyone who believes the americans will allow a meaningful democracy in iraq is indeed being naive. they did not invade iraq for altruistic reasons.

all this resolves nothing though. the will of the iraqi people goes against the plans of their occupiers and unless the american government has some other trickery in the pipeline things are bound to get worse.
 

Randy Watson

Well-known member
Omaar, did any of the parties standing in the elections in South Vietnam in 1967 do so on a platform of the withdrawl of US occupation forces?

I agree with Mark's point, that ad hominem attacks are unhelpful. Claiming that Luka's opinion is not as valuable as his own because he doesn't do a "proper" job is patronising, and not just to Luka.
 

hombre

Member
Randy Watson said:
Omaar, did any of the parties standing in the elections in South Vietnam in 1967 do so on a platform of the withdrawl of US occupation forces?
it was a rigged election, basically. the election in iraq was free in comparison.
 

luka

Well-known member
actually i'm going to try and be grown up about it. even though i want to say... heh, nah, i'm not going to say it.
unlike you mark, i don't have all the answers. i'm making suggestions. i'm thinking about things. when there's two people doing that you have conversations. i like conversations. they're open-ended. they're engaging. you get results you weren't expecting. one day you too might learn how to have a conversation. two didactic morons yelling slogans at one another isn't my idea of fun. anyway...

i think there is a connection between women voting and democracy. i think it is implicit in the idea of democracy. i think its being obtuse to say otherwise. the same goes for the abolition of slavery. so democracy doesn't exist in its pure state but as a point on the horizon to move towards.progress doesn't have to be a dirty word. i don't think it would be wholly contentious to say that britain has become ever more democratic ever since the establishment of the first parliament here. you put an ideal inplace and try to move towards it. so yeah, steps in the right direction, why not? if you use any word like naive or any other dismissive term which is an excuse for not treating anything i say seriously i will come to your new house in leyton and burn it down.
it may be that democracy is a bad ideal. democracy in its pure state might be an ugly thing. it would probably involve castrating criminals of various types. i dunno. its something to think about.
 

Pearsall

Prodigal Son
hombre said:
sunni arabs refused to vote, which means the election lacks legitimacy even if we accept that elections held under foreign occupation can be legitimate.

Quick question: if South African Whites had boycotted the first post-Apartheid election, would that mean it would have lacked legitimacy?
 

luka

Well-known member
from
http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/entry/iraqs_election/

'That is a real triumph of non-violent resistance, for which Sistani has been the symbol. The US sought in every possible way to avoid elections, but has been compelled to back down, step-by-step. First, it tried to ram through a US-written constitution. That was barred by a Sistani fatwa. Then it tried to impose one or another device (caucuses, etc.) that could be controlled completely. Also blocked by non-violent resistance. It continued until finally the US (and UK, trailing obediently behind) had no recourse but to allow an election—and of course, the doctrinal system went into high gear to present it as a US initiative, once it could no longer be avoided. The US also sought to undermine it as much as possible, e.g., by driving independent media out of the country (notably al-Jazeera, the most important), by ensuring that its own candidates, particularly Allawi, would be the only ones to have access to state resources to reach the public (most candidates had to remain unidentified), etc. But the US-UK couldn’t block the elections, greatly to the distress of Washington and London. The question now is whether they can be compelled to accept the outcome. There’s little doubt, even from the more serious mainstream press as well as from polls and from properly hawkish experts (like Anthony Cordesman) that people voted with the hope that it would end the occupation. Blair announced at once, loud and clear, that the prospect is not even being contemplated, clearly articulating his usual contempt for democracy. '
 
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