tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post66494144034861684..comments2023-11-05T22:35:31.766+00:00Comments on Neil Clark: A party's soul is soldNeil Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10479041156190090119noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-34519454972399747612010-09-22T20:47:40.146+01:002010-09-22T20:47:40.146+01:00Hi Karl, nice to hear from you again.
I agree - c...Hi Karl, nice to hear from you again.<br /><br />I agree - crude economic and geopolitical reasons are underneath every neoliberal move.<br /><br />No more Cif for me, though - the place is swamped by Thatcherite Times-paywall dodgers in whose presence intelligent conversation just cannot get off the ground, or at least for very long, anyway.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-40661087861602208542010-09-22T00:45:51.605+01:002010-09-22T00:45:51.605+01:00@Questionnaire
On pre-1914 liberals and their con...@Questionnaire<br /><br />On pre-1914 liberals and their connection to now.I can see what you are saying. I wish you would thunder back on to CiF. <br /><br />Don't forget The Fabian Society as well, a number of whom went on to praise Stalin.<br /><br />Now , of course, liberals have decided that uncritical support of the USA is the new Future of Humanity.<br /><br />Meanwhile, British soldiers continue to get killed in Afghanistan for a load of spurious reasons<br /><br />My own blog tries, perhaps imperfectly, to understand WHY. It blasts away the Rationalisations.<br /><br />The Afghanistan War is a War for the TAPI pipeline. Nothing much more. The evidence seems to be compelling to me knowUndergroundmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01860176024061937664noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-91916545826724469282010-09-21T17:41:50.088+01:002010-09-21T17:41:50.088+01:00Good article, Neil.
Let's face it, though, th...Good article, Neil.<br /><br />Let's face it, though, the liberals' social welfare programme that began immediately after the Gladstone Report in 1895 and the disastrous Boer War campaign in 1900 - where working-class soldiers were too weak to even reach the battlefields - was a knee-jerk response to the dire poverty and ill-health that was apparent right in the midst of a quintessential free-trade era. They don't REALLY care, they just feel a bit guilty and willing to cough up to clean up the inevitable mess that their odious economic system creates. There's something of Zizek's 'fetishistic disavowal' about the liberal mind-set; they know how fundamentally obscene their system is, but they don't want to know, so they don't know. What really concerns them are business opportunities and the protection of the value of their money and property, hence their obsession with deficit and inflation and their willingness to trade off the unemployment of others as the Philips Curve demands.<br /><br />They have never REALLY cared; not truly, not deeply, and not enough to join the genuine Left. Despite their endless gestures towards rights, progress, freedom and so on, they are still at root Calvinists, and God only helps those who help themselves.<br /><br />Let's hope this can stay in the memory and nobody trusts them again.<br /><br />- questionnaireAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-42870298620406424532010-09-19T16:22:24.873+01:002010-09-19T16:22:24.873+01:00@vladimir gagic
And it was the US that engineered...@vladimir gagic<br /><br />And it was the US that engineered the destruction of Mexico starting in the 70’s with Kissinger as a means of population control instituting economic policies bringing in multi-national banks and corporations to take over Mexico’s national banks and production companies like food coupled with the CIA drug trafficking networks operating from Florida putting thecountry under the control of Mexican drug lords.johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-69514139511677506072010-09-19T14:11:05.841+01:002010-09-19T14:11:05.841+01:00Hi Vladimir: ‘The world's great war machine is...Hi Vladimir: ‘The world's great war machine is the world's great poverty machine as well.’<br />Quite.<br /><br />jock- great to hear from you.<br /><br />Mr Piccolo- many thanks. You ask- 'what happened to the old social conscience conservatives? - sadly there are few, if any left. The Conservative Party in Britain has been taken over by neoliberals. As I've said before, Harold Macmillan would be branded a hard-core leftist if he came back today with his pro-mixed economy, pro-welfare state views.<br /><br />Olching-Hope all’s well. Yes, a lot of people on the centre-left and left did fall for the Lib Dems, thinking that they were ’progressive’ because of their stance on ID cards and civil liberties. But they didn’t realise the extent to which the neoliberal Orange Bookers had taken over the party. The big clue as to what was up was the Lib Dems changing their policy on the railways- in 2005 Charles Kennedy’s Lib Dems had pledged renationalisation, but in 2010 the pledge was absent from the manifesto. Instead there were pro-privatisation policies. Clegg’s Lib Dems are basically socially liberal Thatcherites- the party is now a British version of Germany's pro-privatisation, pro-capital, anti-welfare FDP.Neil Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10479041156190090119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-28937286718745771092010-09-18T11:17:22.011+01:002010-09-18T11:17:22.011+01:00Hi Neil.
You are quite right, though of course th...Hi Neil.<br /><br />You are quite right, though of course the Orange Bookers did make explicit their lovefest for neoliberal politics before the election. I suppose it took this for many leftish LibDem voters to realise that the liberals are dicey enough. <br /><br />Today Nick Clegg will tell his party that a left-turn is not an alternative for the LibDems. I feel somewhat sorry for the Kennedys and others in the party, but their option is to leave the party (or for voters simply never to vote the NeoLibDems again). <br /><br />As for Papandreou: Yes, it's the same old story. Once a government agrees to sell out its country, it's described as progressive; resistance to that by contrast as reactionary. Look at Bosnia or Hungary. It became open business, and there is nothing local left anymore (other than the flight to religion); it's all Tesco, Lidl, and Volksbank with the wages not matching the living costs. Yes, great progress thanks to the liberal market.olchinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12155200018404294369noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-49959366687422361652010-09-18T00:36:57.421+01:002010-09-18T00:36:57.421+01:00@Mr. Clark,
Great article. What happened to the o...@Mr. Clark,<br /><br />Great article. What happened to the old social conscience conservatives? Perhaps the closest thing we have today are the anti-globalization paleoconservatives, but they don’t seem to have much real political clout. <br /><br />As for the faux Left, I think it just goes to show that calling yourself a “socialist” or a “progressive” doesn’t mean much anymore. In my own country, there are some self-described conservatives like Pat Buchanan that are probably more pro-worker than many so-called progressives. <br /><br />@Mr. Gagic,<br /><br />I hear Baja is nice this time of year, maybe I should brush up on my Spanish? All kidding aside, I was shocked by the new statistics, but was even more shocked by the comments on the news website, for example "well, those people want/deserve to be poor" or "they can't be poor if they own cell phones." I think many people fail to realize that if it wasn't for the government intervention they loath so much, the poverty rate would undoubtedly be higher, and they might have been included in those statistics.Mr. Piccolonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-41600992584155515372010-09-17T21:03:38.606+01:002010-09-17T21:03:38.606+01:00Hi Neil, good to see you back and still kicking. ...Hi Neil, good to see you back and still kicking. I had to laugh at that advert that's rolling across the top of your blog " Need a loan? Can't get credit? " Maybe it's personalised to my tastes - you never know with these computer things.<br /><br />I know a lot of Liberals are supposedly disgusted with Clegg, but they can't be the sort of Liberals I've ever met - tend to be just younger, cannabis-smoking versions of the blue-rinse brigade? Maybe that's just the sort of people I meet generally, dunno... This mean-spirited viciousness is just what I'd expect from them.<br /><br />Oh, and didn't the Liberals used to be known as the gay party (no offence intended)? What happened to that? They're no fun at all now.jock mctrousersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-87546548400502038162010-09-17T17:14:36.238+01:002010-09-17T17:14:36.238+01:00Speaking of "neoliberalism in practice",...Speaking of "neoliberalism in practice", 14.6% of Americans, or 44 million people, are now in poverty. The world's great war machine is the world's great poverty machine as well. Ironically, according to the CIA handbook, 13.8% of Mexicans are in poverty. Maybe the illegal alien tide will reverse direction.vladimir gagicnoreply@blogger.com