political blog recommendations?

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simon silverdollar

Guest
i read the virtual stoa and harry's place regularly- what other political blogs do people recommend?
 

owen

Well-known member
hmmm harry's place eh

predictably, given my Spart tendencies i like these, though i would like to take this oppurtunity to state that I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Socialist Workers Party.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/
http://apostatewindbag.blogspot.com/
http://lecolonelchabert.blogspot.com/
and dead men left seconded

less obviously politically i like this a hell of a lot-
http://huh.34sp.com/wrong/
and despite his being the enemy, it's always a pleasure to read this-
http://worldwarfour.blogspot.com/
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
owen said:
hmmm harry's place eh

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i should say that altho i read harry's place, i don't actually like it that much, most of the time...
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
if you've got any interest in the minutiae of American politics, this Democrat grass-roots forum is pretty compelling, it's not quite a blog but it has sundry satellite blog/diaries attached to it and long, long comments boxes that are quite bloggy

http://dailykos.com/

especially with the current meltdown of Bush/the white house/the republican party it's pretty gripping to read

right now there's a pretty alarming story about Bush's state of mind, how he's turned into a virtual recluse
 

D84

Well-known member
Simon I find it more ludicrous than frightening. I love the story about Bush finishing a meeting by telling his colleagues to "go fuck yourself". Sometimes schadenfreude fits like a glove...

I've been getting into some of the Australian political blogs.

This one's been quite active today:
http://stoush.net/
I like this quote, which could be adapted to describe the press' attitude to the Iraqi resistance:

Political scientist and Australian media guru Henry Mayer had what must be the very last word on press coverage of industrial relations in his 1964 book The Press in Australia:

"My own private vision of hell would be to condemn the inhabitants to read nothing but Australian editorials on unions and strikes since 1900. In the case of news about strikes, it seems not so much a question of any deliberate policy, but rather of the complete inability of reporters… even to begin to grasp what goes on in the minds of factory workers. The workers’ ways of thinking and doing not only are presented as something unreasonable and ridiculous, but as utterly mysterious."1

1Mayer, Henry. The Press in Australia. Landsdowne, Melbourne 1964​
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Have people seen this piece?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1644298,00.html

It's predominantly PBL (wot? No Lenin's Tomb)

this was a telling para, on one of the idiots from Harry's Place

"He says he's given up, but he'll be back, because blogs are like crack and you can't quite ever give it up," says David. Or not like crack, but pornography: "The internet grew, as so many industries did, because of people's desire furtively to find pornography," he points out. "I sometimes think blogging is the political equivalent to that." He spends only a brief time writing his own blog entries, he says - but hours reading through readers' comments.'

He spends only a brief time writing his own blog entries.... no shit...

What does that analogy with pornography even mean? How does it work? What is the equivalent of ppl furtively seeking porn? People's desire to furtively find political writing?
 
On the same day as they published their Chomsky apology and pulled the disgusting Brockes 'interview', they publish this heavily right-wing-weighted, favour-for-a-friend puff piece.

MMM...they all look so charming!
 
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scottdisco

rip this joint please
that Guardian piece is a bit of a joke.
Norm Geras is preening over it at his blog, of course.

the fact that Oliver Kamm voted Tory at the last general is worth mentioning.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Love the fact that Geras' position now seems to be 'there's still an outside chance that I wasn't completely wrong about Iraq'...
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
The whole premise of the Guardian thing is twattish... as if these are the unheard, marginalized voices whose edgy POVs wouldn't otherwise get an airing... yeh, it's so true, there's no mainstream place you can go to here the Peebie message... apart from the columns of such dangerous outsiders as Nick Cohen, Johann Hari, David Aaronovitch of course...
 

Wrong

Well-known member
k-punk said:
Love the fact that Geras' position now seems to be 'there's still an outside chance that I wasn't completely wrong about Iraq'...

I agree that that's the substance (such as it is) of his position. But that increasingly just serves as something on which to hang his fucking awful writing. The smirking coyness (e.g. the recent post on Afghanistan entitled "Women representatives in... certain countries"), the prissy word choice and phrasing ("An octet of bloggers"?), the careful sprinkling of tweeness ("Wife of the Norm"? fuck off). I'm surprised by how visceral my reaction is, but reading his blog genuinely makes me feel ill.
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
Wrong said:
I agree that that's the substance (such as it is) of his position. But that increasingly just serves as something on which to hang his fucking awful writing. The smirking coyness (e.g. the recent post on Afghanistan entitled "Women representatives in... certain countries"), the prissy word choice and phrasing ("An octet of bloggers"?), the careful sprinkling of tweeness ("Wife of the Norm"? fuck off). I'm surprised by how visceral my reaction is, but reading his blog genuinely makes me feel ill.

his political philosophy stuff is pretty great though. especially a journal article he wrote a while back on Marx and justice.
 

owen

Well-known member
incidentally rather than 'PBL' for the harry's place ilk, I prefer Bat's acronym- PB PB PB, or 'Petit-Bourgeois Pro-Bombing Paki-Bashers' :p
 

Pearsall

Prodigal Son
simon silverdollar said:
his political philosophy stuff is pretty great though. especially a journal article he wrote a while back on Marx and justice.

now there's a contradiction in terms.

how the inheritors of the most murderous ideological tradition in human history can continue to so smugly wrap themselves in the cloak of moral righteousness is beyond me.
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
Pearsall said:
now there's a contradiction in terms.

how the inheritors of the most murderous ideological tradition in human history can continue to so smugly wrap themselves in the cloak of moral righteousness is beyond me.

Well, there's a distinction to be drawn between Marx's writings, and the political ideology of Marxist-Communism. Marx hardly wrote anything about communism, may be only 30 pages or so (compared to thousands of pages on capitalism). Geras' political philosophy is chiefly interested in Marx's writings, rather than Marxist-Communism.
 

Melchior

Taking History Too Far
simon silverdollar said:
Well, there's a distinction to be drawn between Marx's writings, and the political ideology of Marxist-Communism. Marx hardly wrote anything about communism, may be only 30 pages or so (compared to thousands of pages on capitalism). Geras' political philosophy is chiefly interested in Marx's writings, rather than Marxist-Communism.

I'm assuming that you mean what I would call Marxist-Leninism with your phrase Marxist-Communism. I think it's worth noting that Lenin's influence on "Marxism" was enormous, as was the specific experience of the Russian Revolutions.

And regardless, I can think of plenty of nations where Marxist-COmmunists had vastly more positive impact than negative and never killed anyone. Australia, the US, the UK, New Zealand - if you work in a job with any benefits at all then a Marxist was probably a fairly important part fo making that happen. Same with indigenous rights. And the legacy of Communists in those countries is not really connected with any kind of history of violence. I'm personally not a Communist (or at least not a Marxist one) but I think the legacy of the Communist parties of most of the world where they never took power is actually pretty good.
 

Melchior

Taking History Too Far
Pearsall said:
now there's a contradiction in terms.

how the inheritors of the most murderous ideological tradition in human history can continue to so smugly wrap themselves in the cloak of moral righteousness is beyond me.

And beyond that, how can writing on Marx and justie be inherently a contradiction in terms? Perhaps he was writing about what Marx thought about justice? Or even the implementation of a justice system under so-called Marxist states?
 
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