Harry's Place

Has anyone else been reading the on-line comments on the South Ossetia situation in the Times online? Many of them are garbled messages of support for Russia, some apparently originating in the the UK and some in Russia itself. They have completely crowded out what one might assume to be the usual Times readership, so that one does start to wonder how many are genuine. That or the Times readership has suddenly become pro Russia and anti the west. I haven’t caught up with the comments on Baker’s article yet, it will be interesting to see if they follow the same pro Russian, anti western imperalist line as other comments on this topic.

Gerard Baker is spot on. Europe (and particularly France) has always been good at appeasing political bullies in her own back yard, whether Germany v. Czechoslovakia, Serbia v. Bosnia, or Russia v. Poland, Hungary, Georgia, etc. In all of these cases, the outcome has been dreadful, only encouraging further expansionism by the aggressor state.

The EU has not demonstrated any fitness for having a foreign and security policy wing. Whether the bungled negotiations with Iran, or this pathetic pandering to Russian expansionism, it is seen as a soft touch around the globe. Security matters should rest with NATO, and the EU should remain a club of economic convenience.

Mrs Ben – newspaper online comments should never be trusted as a guide to public opinion, and the online Times picks up as many pseuds as the Guardian these days – I expect, like yours truly, that most people find it useful to read both.

Good piece in the (usually unreliable) NYT today, explaining the background to the Russian attempt to annex parts of Georgia:
http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/abkhazia-and-south-ossetia-differences-matter/

Gerard Baker is spot on. Europe (and particularly France) has always been good at appeasing political bullies in her own back yard, whether Germany v. Czechoslovakia, Serbia v. Bosnia, or Russia v. Poland, Hungary, Georgia, etc. In all of these cases, the outcome has been dreadful, only encouraging further expansionism by the aggressor state.

The EU has not demonstrated any fitness for having a foreign and security policy wing. Whether the bungled negotiations with Iran, or this pathetic pandering to Russian expansionism, it is seen as a soft touch around the globe. Security matters should rest with NATO, and the EU should remain a club of economic convenience.

Mrs Ben – Has anyone else been reading the on-line comments on the South Ossetia situation in the Times online? newspaper online comments should never be trusted as a guide to public opinion, and the online Times picks up as many pseuds as the Guardian these days – I expect, like yours truly, that most people find it useful to read both.

Good piece in the (usually unreliable) NYT today, explaining the background to the Russian attempt to annex parts of Georgia:
http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/abkhazia-and-south-ossetia-differences-matter/

Gerard Baker is spot on. Europe (and particularly France) has always been good at appeasing political bullies in her own back yard, whether Germany v. Czechoslovakia, Serbia v. Bosnia, or Russia v. Poland, Hungary, Georgia, etc. In all of these cases, the outcome has been dreadful, only encouraging further expansionism by the aggressor state.

The EU has not demonstrated any fitness for having a foreign and security policy wing. Whether the bungled negotiations with Iran, or this pathetic pandering to Russian expansionism, it is seen as a soft touch around the globe. Security matters should rest with NATO, and the EU should remain a club of economic convenience.

Mrs Ben – Has anyone else been reading the on-line comments on the South Ossetia situation in the Times online? newspaper online comments should never be trusted as a guide to public opinion, and the online Times picks up as many pseuds as the Guardian these days – I expect, like yours truly, that most people find it useful to read both.

Just had a look and the reaction is not too bad.

What I really wonder is what the defeatists actaully WANT to happen. Are they so filled with resentment and (self)loathing that they want to see the West humiliated? OK – maybe our strategy is often poor but one gets no impression that these people hope it will improve. I already suspect that they see no problem in an Islamist led world – maybe they see no problem in a Russian one either? Is the logical end of hating the US that you actually prefer to see the world dominated by Russian and/or Islaimist Imperialism?

Reports now of Russia having used cluster bombs around Gori.

If so – beneath contempt. Time these instruments of murder were outlawed completely.

Is the logical end of hating the US that you actually prefer to see the world dominated by Russian and/or Islamist Imperialism?

Realistically, yes.

I think the defeatists are motivated by that most dangerous of desires, a quiet life, with no interruptions to their oil and gas supplies, and no bombs on their trains. Anything to make those threats go away. The barmy thing is that appeasing Russian imperialistic adventures south of the Caucasus make the latter more likely, not less, since it is clear that Putin wants control over all the pipelines leaving the Caspian basin.

Ah, surprise surprise, a Times columnist attacks Europeans and lefties, and HP loves it.

I don’t understand why we have to be pro-Georgian or pro-Russian. Why does it make me a self-hating anti-Western freak if I’m not especially turned on by the thought of Saakashvili using military means to force the people of South Ossetia to remain part of Georgia? Am I not allowed to think Putin is a bastard whilst at the same time understanding that paranoid Russia has long interpreted the expansion of NATO/the US missile defence shield as Western aggression and was obviously going to welcome the opportunity to try to neutralise/pulverise Georgia?

The Russian regime thrives on this kind of east v west tension – I don’t see why we should feed it by being all gung-ho. But of course some HPers have never found a war they didn’t like.

I think Seumas has been a little screwed up since he found out Daddy was vetting communists while putting his son through public school.

Atrange how the SWP line (above) is supporting the right to South Ossetion secession yet opposing Kosovan secession.

President Saakashvili has a good article on CiF.

I started reading the comments and stopped – I was almost physically sick and couldn’t continue. The Guardian really is a complete sewer isn’t it?

“paranoid Russia has long interpreted the expansion of NATO/the US missile defence shield as Western aggression ”

So what – why do they have to be “paranoid” ? What do they think is going to happen that is so bad if these countries join NATO. Why, they could join NATO as well if they sorted themselves out.

In this day and age what real threat does Russia face from the West apart from one to its so called “prestige” ?

Erm, since we all love freedom and liberty around here why don’t we all support the South Ossetians’ right to self-determination and oppose the attempts of Moscow and Tiblisi to exploit that region for crude military-political ends?

MoreMediaNonsense, of course it would be lovely if we could instantly change Russian political culture and the character of the Russian state, but sometimes a dose of realpolitik is needed in foreign affairs in order to avoid wars’n’shit

“of course it would be lovely if we could instantly change Russian political culture and the character of the Russian state,”

Come on – Russia gave up most of its empire without total war in the last 20 years. Putin and his extreme nationalists are in power and flexing their muscles at the moment but they won’t necessarily be in charge for ever.

Well, yes (ish), but (as this really rather excellent article, eight years old but giving really rather good background info and details about Georgia, notes)

In 1991 the collapse of the Soviet Union, to which all of the Caucasus had belonged, set off a gruesome pageant of warfare, anarchy, and ethnic cleansing that engulfed the region for years and simmers still, with 100,000 dead and one and a quarter million refugees. No other region of the Soviet Union equaled the Caucasus in demonstrating how bloody and messy the death of an empire can be.

Whether indifference (or just plain ignorance) about the region from outsiders, or (often ill-informed) “intervention” from outside is better must remain an open question.

And was Misha being paid to use the word “democratic” in every paragraph in that article (I also note “law-governed” – which is preferred by Armenian gangsters more as a matter of course to justify their tyranny, which, unlike the Georgian variety, does tend to be poisoniously nationalistic and xenophobic): yes, Saakashvili’s regime is less obnoxious than those that preceded it, and those of neighbouriong countries, but democratic, or governed by law! No no no no no no no.

There are many things to admire (and, indeed, love), about Georgia (and good reasons that she defended from her agressive neighbour), but (and regardless of how many times Pres Misha is photographed in front of an EU flag) the notion that they are, in any meaningful sense, a democracy, is absolutely not among them

I agree – but the Yeltsin years were characterised by abject internal chaos and weakness in international affairs. Domestically Russians still have it pretty bad – unless they’re an oligarch – but ‘Pootie-Poot’ retains popularity for as long as he plays it tough on the world stage. I don’t think squaring up to him over the pathetically weak line of ‘protecting Georgia’s territorial integrity’ is necessarily going to help dislodge the hardliners from power and turn Russia into a lovely cuddly liberal democracy.

It seems to me, what is actually happening is that broadly the progressive left isn’t taking sides in this, whilst broadly the right (including HP) are taking sides. Gerald Baker’s problem is that we didn’t all takes sides against Russia. No one serious supports Russian aggression, but most sensible people (Baker’s defeatists etc) don’t support Georgian aggression either.

I’m disappointed with Adam LeBor – I generally agree with most of what he writes.

TheIrie – most ’sensible people’ would be hesitant about using the term “Georgian agression” when what they were doing was trying to deal with Russian-backed seperatist militias.

Dear me, CIF has some rather sensible and well-informed (and readable) articles not only by Julie Burchill, but also by Madelaine Bunting today. Clearly as is a day of obligation.

Agree with Adam and Morgoth. Even the putative Marxist Norm is turning his nose up at the Graun these days.

There is more quite astute analysis in the Telegraph (essentially that Putin’s instincts are authoritarian and anti-democratic), and this in one of its leaders: “After all, it was [McCain] who looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and found not a soul mate, as Mr Bush had initially done, but the letters KGB.” Too damn right.

irie.
I’d agree with the South Ossetians and Abkhazian right to self determination.
And the Kosovans and Kurds.
Does that put me in one of the left right boxes?
I think I’m being consistent.

The old Stalinists such as Milne and Galloway oppose self determination for Kosovans (and Tibetans) but seem to support it for Abkhazians and South Ossetians.
Thats not neutrality.

On a purely factual point, the initial aggression was perpetrated by Georgian forces.

I don’t for a minute believe this excuses Russia’s response, but no amount of furious debate can obscure the truth that Georgian forces struck first agaainst a contested territory that had Russian troops on its soil.

The Georgian President has joined the hapless list of history’s great blunderers and chancers.

No, the tankies (aptly named as we see) don’t support “self-determination” for the Abkhaz (not to mention the 200,000 ethnic georgians expelled from Abkhazia in 1992-4) or the South Ossetians: they (whether implictly or explicitly) support the aborption of South Ossetia and Abkhazia into the Russian Federation.

And could anyone who likes to make the claim that South Ossetia is akin to Kosovo like to explain what makes both of them different from Chechnya?

Has anyone else been reading the on-line comments on the South Ossetia situation in the Times online?

During the imperialist Serbian agression in the former Yugoslavia there were a few loud propagandists making a lot of noise online. They were often joined by representatives of the middle-class Marxist right for whom such empty noisy bleating (think of the number of names used by resistor/Flying Rodent/Flanker on here for instance) is the be all and end all of their supposedly emancipatory philosophy.

I attended the SWP bash last night. I heard a lot about American Imperialism, and NATO expansionism!

Mikey,
Have a look at Lenins Tomb.

He’s been tagging everything relating to Georgia under the tab “US Imperialism”.

Until 13th August.
When Russian Imperialism began for Richard Seymour.

His book should be funny.

is the be all and end all of their supposedly emancipatory philosophy

I don’t know whether it was because you’d just mentioned resistor, Flying Rodent & Flanker but I initially read “be all and end all” as “bell end all”.

@ Venichka

On the Kosovo point, it is not a question of whether South Ossetia is similar to Kosovo or Chechnya or Transdniestr et al. The point surely is that principles of territorial integrity of a recognised nation-state were pretty much junked by the US and EU over Kosovo (Paddy Ashdown made an extraordinary statement on this – effectively saying Serbia was so bad, international law was re-written) and that this has massively weakened the moral force of international law and makes it easier for situations like South Ossetia to deteriorate.

Surely one view could be that the Georgians were foolish to try to intervene to stop the Russians building up their influence in Sout Ossetia – even if the region is officially part of Russia. And I see its “leader” has appeared on Russian tv asking to be subsumed back into Russia. Fair enough.

But how does that justify Russian troops then advancing into Georgia, followed by a rag bag of Ossetian irregulars and blowing things up (and killing Georgian villagers too if reports are to be believed? What is not imperialist about the Russians’ behaviour?

Maybe Quite could explain the nuances to me?

Sorry I meant officially part of Georgia of course in the above contrib….brain running ahead of fingers

Tim, one of the contributors from the floor, in a long winded and roundabout way, used his time to say what could be summed up succintly with the old SWP slogan: “Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism!”

but sometimes a dose of realpolitik is needed in foreign affairs in order to avoid wars’n’shit

Does someone want to tell “Quite”, or shall I?

The New York Times is reporting that Human Rights Watch (who are on the ground in Georgia), are saying that “that Russian aircraft had dropped cluster bombs in two separate raids on the towns of Ruisi and Gori on Tuesday, killing at least 11 civilians.”

HRW has also reported of course that there is no evidence for the 1600-2000 casualties reported by the Russians in South Ossetia and the figure may well be under 100.

Quite – your views perhaps?

Mrs Ben,
South Ossetia has never been part of Russia (at least, not since 1917). so it can’t be subsumed back into it

SB,

That is partially true: but from a purely legalistic constitutional point of view [in terms of the post-1974 Yugoslav constitution], Kosovo’s status (later abolished by Milosevic) was somewhat different from that of South Ossetia: de facto Kosovo enjoyed almost all of the same rights as the Republics of Yugoslavia in terms of its role in the Federation (while at the same time being subordinate to Serbia) – all of which have now suceeded from Yugoslavia (to general acceptance).

That doesn’t apply to South Ossetia (which had the lowest degree of nominal autonomy in the USSR -it was an “autonomous oblast”/region, not a “autonomous republic” – the status that North Osetiya has within Russia): even if constutional rights of secession under the Soviet constitution were nominal (but took effect at the level of union republics in 1991, as the USSR collapsed), for territories of the status of South Ossetia they simply never existed.

(Abkhazia, as a former Autonomous Republic, and indeed for a time the holder of a higher and unique status before that, is rather more debatable, from this perspective)

Well the leaders (not named) of south Ossetia and Abkhazia have apparently appeared on Russian television saying they want to be subsumed into Russia.

Meanwhile the pro Russian trolls have even invaded the Telegraph comments column. Here is a recent example of a Russian defence, couched in doubtful English by some one claiming an English name. Form your own opinions as to its legitimacy.

“We have no right to interfere in Russia’s back yard. I understand their concerns. They have no desire to embrace a decadent western society. Look what it has done to us! They see the world in a completely different light and who are we to impose our own immoral standards on a nation that fully understands and needs authoritarian rule in order to hold itself together. Western leaders should stop making comparisons. I can only hope that one day we will wake up to the need of imposing an authoritarian regime in this country in orderto rid itself of this evil socialist decadence.”

Posted by Nick Sargent on August 15, 2008 12:45 PM

Come on Brownie – some of the cowboys around here are banging on about the dangers of ‘appeasing’ the Russians. I can only interpret this as them wanting to escalate the situation, match force with force, call the Russian’s bluff (just as they called the Georgian’s bluff), etc.

I support David Miliband’s insistance that the only way this can be resolved is through a peaceful political solution. Militarism by all sides should be condemned outright.

I also happen to think he’s made a massive boo boo by simultaneously saying that our priority should be safeguarding the territorial integrity of Georgia. The priority should be saving lives by avoiding further hostilities.

They have no desire to embrace a decadent western society

Oh LOL Moscow the most decadent capital city in Europe

Hmmm, Russia tried (unsuccessfully) to impose its desired leader (ex-KGB i think) on Abkhazia few years ago, without any success – but it did force the election (that he lost) to be re-run, with their preferred man being brought onto the ticket as Vice-President (see here for what appears to be an OK description.

AS I understand it large elements of the separatist administration in S Ossetia were shipped in from various regions of Russia at various times during the last 7 years or so

Mrs Ben – 5 minutes of googling into what the Russians did in Chechnya will give a pretty sound idea of what their army gets up to. But just because the Russians are bastards doesn’t mean we should come to the aid of Georgia when it stupidly provokes such a response by trying to impose its will on the reluctant population of South Ossetia by military means.

Unless and until we have some form of supra-national authority with both the enforcement capacity and the moral authority to resolve the myriad territorial questions that are found across the planet, I fear we are going to see one after another of these kind of conflicts. Look at the Uighur situation in China recently.

Sadly, the power and influence of the UN system seems to be weakening rather than strengthening, but without a truly robust multi-lateral system I don’t see how situations like Georgia will be resolved other than by military force.

There is some hope. The resolution of the crisis over the Bakassa peninsula, where Nigeria and Cameroon voluntarily submitted to accept the ruling of the World Court is a one ray of optimism.

“He must have been reading Seamus in CIF.”

Or Paul Reynolds at the BBC

Russians losing propaganda war

‘The Bush administration appears to be trying to turn a failed military operation by Georgia into a successful diplomatic operation against Russia.

It is doing so by presenting the Russian actions as aggression and playing down the Georgian attack into South Ossetia on 7 August, which triggered the Russian operation’

‘All this is likely to anger Moscow, which will feel that it has a case and that it is being ignored. Right from the start it said that the operation was not an invasion.

The adverse effect on US-Russia relations, about which Mr Gates warned, is going to be a two-way process.

There are signs, though, that there is some sympathy for Russia within the European Union – although not among the Eastern European states who still fear Russia and not in the British government, which has matched the US line about Russian “aggression”. ‘

http://tinyurl.com/5dcbrz

I attended the SWP bash last night. I heard a lot about American Imperialism, and NATO expansionism!

That isolationist paleocon fucker Andrew Alexander in the Mail today is bleating alongst the same lines.

Another dose of far left and far right convergence.

There was a leaflet outside the SWP/StWC bash last night from I picked up from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) that is headlined:

The whole world must condemn Georgia’s genocide in South Ossetia and support Russia’s intervention in defence of the South Ossetian people.

Any takers?

Sorry, I have no time for the “condemn the BBC” mob, here or elsewhere.

Compared with their coverage of Ukraine (which has tended to swallow Russian propaganda somewhat unquestioningly, at times), they’ve been generally fairly objective and reasonable on this – as indeed that Reynolds piece is.

Thank God for the BBC: the way this country’s going they are one of the few outstanding things left.

Thank God for the BBC: the way this country’s going they are one of the few outstanding things left.

You’re fucking joking, right?

Their online Olympics coverage really is top-notch.

Their online Olympics coverage really is top-notch.

Given how they’re handed five billion quid a year and have 500 people out there on a junket, you would expect it to be…

“Thank God for the BBC: the way this country’s going they are one of the few outstanding things left”

That would be far left.

Thank God for the BBC: the way this country’s going they are one of the few outstanding things left.

The Russians were right about one thing – we are lumbered with a British Bullshit Corporation. I am totally ashamed to have this quango pretending to speak as the voice of Britain. Reynolds piece is little more than naked Russian propaganda – one would hardly believe that South Ossetia was part of Georgian sovereign territory, or that Russia had just invaded, bombed, pillaged, and attacked a neighbouring nation.

I’ll be sending Reynolds this piece, from the usually unreliable NYT:
http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/abkhazia-and-south-ossetia-differences-matter/

Thank God for the BBC: the way this country’s going they are one of the few outstanding things left.

The Russians were right about one thing – we are lumbered with a British Bullshit Corporation. I am totally ashamed to have this quango pretending to speak as the voice of Britain. Reynolds piece is little more than naked Russian propaganda – one would hardly believe that South Ossetia was part of Georgian sovereign territory, or that Russia had just invaded, bombed, pillaged, and attacked a neighbouring nation. I suppose if Reynolds were in charge in 1968 we would be hearing how the violent Prague demonstrators invited the Russian ‘operation’.

Reynolds has listed his email, presumably inviting our comments, so I suggest all concerned assist him in his reporting.

Mrs Ben – 5 minutes of googling into what the Russians did in Chechnya will give a pretty sound idea of what their army gets up to

I used to have some sympathy with Chechnya until they took school children hostage in Beslan. However it was a documentray done a year after the hostage-taking in which some of the children held captive were interviewed that changed my mind.

A couple of the hostage-takers were hijabed females. One boy told of how one of these females, wired with explosives, was blown up by a male chechnyan after she had gotten ‘uppity’ with him. The boy had asked her if he could have a drink of water and she had said yes, whereas the male chechnyan had said no.

He just pressed the detonator and blew her to smithereens, with pieces of her flesh landing on neaby children.

In the documentary the young boy described in great detail just how “warm” and “slippery” human brains are.

You just knew that every word he utterted was true.

Are the far left really claiming Georgia has committed genocide? Human Rights Watch has already said that there is scant evidence of mass civilian casualties in South Ossetia.

I have heard a lot of Marxists and Trotskyites invoking the genocide word in recent years. It is readily apparent that most of them have never read the 1948 genocide convention and have very little grasp of what the term really means.

That would be far left.

LOL (translation; what nonsense)

Suffolk Boy: don’t know (nor care) about the far left – but if so they are repeating the exact words of the Russian propaganda machine (up to the level of the foreign minister – - and, I think, PM, too), who certainly are saying that (with less official russophone elements calling for Saakashvili to be brought to trial at the Hague….which implies, I suppose, a belated acknowlegement of the recognition of the ICTY, if a rather slippery grasp of the geographical boundaries of its jurisdiction)

John P – do you have a reference to that documentary?

Only a far left loon could describe a posse of invading Russian troops camped out on the territory of a neighbouring nation as ‘peacekeepers’.

There was an excellent piece in the NYT on the real conditions in the Russian-occupied half of South Ossetia – a gangster pseudo-state that would put one of Russia’s other satellites, Transdniestria, to shame. For some reason I can’t post the link though without it falling foul of the spam filter.

eg (Sergei Lavrov: “The Georgian govt gave orders that led to acts of genocide….war crimes and ethnic cleansing that cannot go without answer…..Hundreds of our citizens, who suffered in S. O., are prepared to take their complaints to international courts, and the Russian govt will fully support them in order for justice to be done”0

(One context to this is the number of cases of human rights abuse brought, with success, by citizens of various parts of Russia in the North Caucacus, to the European Court Of Justice, IIRC, and elsewhere)

Грузинское руководство отдало приказы, которые привели к актам геноцида, которые вылились в военные преступления, этнические чистки и это не может остаться без ответа. Как я уже говорил, сотни наших граждан, которые пострадали в Южной Осетии, готовят соответствующие жалобы в международные судебные инстанции, и российское государство будет их в этом активно поддерживать, чтобы восторжествовала справедливость.

Old Labour – do you think the people of South Ossetia want to be part of Georgia?

Only a far left loon could describe a posse of invading Russian troops camped out on the territory of a neighbouring nation as ‘peacekeepers’.

Not really. Like it or not (and think it just or not); that is what the (PERMANENTLY STATIONED) troops in S.O. officially were (are) deemed to be. (And, again, like it or not, the agreement that put them there DID end the earlier war there). I really don’t see what else they could be described as without threatrening the objectivity and non-bias for which the BBC is rightfully renowned (except, as far I can see, by fanatics who think that a honourable media organization should take sides in other people’s disputes)

In as much as that was the official status of the Russian troops stationed there (on the basis of an agreement signed by, inter alia, a very weak Georgian state on the brink of collapse in the early 1990s.)

The abuse of diplomatic procedures by Russia re the frozen conflicts (esp. wrt the OSCE, and prob more with regard to Transnistria than elsewhere) is indeed something that needs to be dealt with.

To post links you can either use the html a href tags – or just delete the first http://w bit of the address – I’d love to see that NYT piece. I have no doubt that the “Republic of S.O.”, so-called, is run by dodgy characters involved in all manner of dubious practices

Only a far left loon could describe a posse of invading Russian troops camped out on the territory of a neighbouring nation as ‘peacekeepers’.

Not really. Like it or not (and think it just or not); that is what the (PERMANENTLY STATIONED) troops in S.O. officially were (are) deemed to be. (And, again, like it or not, the agreement that put them there DID end the earlier war there). I really don’t see what else they could be described as without threatrening the objectivity and non-bias for which the BBC is rightfully renowned (except, as far I can see, by fanatics who think that a honourable media organization should take sides in other people’s disputes)

In as much as that was the official status of the Russian troops stationed there (on the basis of an agreement signed by, inter alia, a very weak Georgian state on the brink of collapse in the early 1990s.)

The abuse of diplomatic procedures by Russia re the frozen conflicts (esp. wrt the OSCE, and prob more with regard to Transnistria than elsewhere) is indeed something that needs to be dealt with.

To post links you can either use the a href tags – or just delete the first bit (up to the first w) of the address – I’d love to see that NYT piece. I have no doubt that the “Republic of S.O.”, so-called, is run by dodgy characters involved in all manner of dubious practices

Unless you think Condi Rice is a far-left loon, of course…

Old Labour – do you think the people of South Ossetia want to be part of Georgia?

Do you think the people of Chechnya want to be part of Russia?

You seem to be unaware that 30% of inhabitants of the region are Georgians (until the Russian ethnic cleansing this week).

Ven: the 1992 agreement was made at gunpoint with the threat from Russia of invasion. Reynolds conveniently omits this in his grotesquely biased piece. Anyone who thinks that BBC news today is objective and non-biased (which even its own journalists deny) must be living in cloud cuckoo land.

The NYT piece should be here, if I’ve got my hrefs right!

O/T, so apologies, but there is an excellent article on the execrable Bob Pitt at the Secular Society site that HP-ers might enjoy.

http://www.secularism.org.uk/isbobpittanewmccarthy.html

Old Labour,

Well, that is one way of looking at it. It’s not a million miles from the truth, either – but then the fact that the (then) Republic of Georgia was essentially on the brink of complete collapse into bloody anarchy between various gangster-militia (not in the Russian/Soviet sense of the word) groups at that time, “horsemen” et all, (with a Government that barely controlled large chunks of the country even outwith the separatist regions), or the fact that the NORTH Ossetians (some of whom had been fighting with the South Ossetians in Georgia) were also engaged in their own bloody conflict with the Ingush over a disputed territory between those two republics (within Russia) is also omitted. That, and that the neighbouring republic of Azerbaijan was also in protracted and violent collapse (and more than one-fifth of its territory occupied by Armenia as well)…

I think in the context of early 1990s Caucasus, calling them “peacekeepers” is wholly justified. (yeah one would sure have liked Georgia not to have had a complete nutter as its President when it became independence, as a lot of the mess might have been averted had that not been the case)

keep up the good work Jonny Mac.

PS: Workers’ Liberty is one of the last remaining bastions of the true left (as opposed to the fascist-appeasing/totalitarian-swooning arseholes who pose in that role today).

There was a leaflet outside the SWP/StWC bash last night from I picked up from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) that is headlined:

Any takers?

I get the sense that those who used to be on the pro-Soviet left are almost giddy at watching Putin’s Russia behave like their dear old USSR.

It’s not a million miles from the truth, either – but then the fact that the (then) Republic of Georgia was essentially on the brink of complete collapse into bloody anarchy between various gangster-militia (not in the Russian/Soviet sense of the word) groups at that time, “horsemen” et all, (with a Government that barely controlled large chunks of the country even outwith the separatist regions)

Ven – agreed, but I think the south Caucasus should be given a space to work out its own political arrangements, with international bodies overseeing the process, not an expansionist neighbouring military superpower with territorial designs on the area.

Mrs. Ben:

I heard yesterday on CBC Radio (Al-beeb’s Cdn cousin) that Russian hackers had successfully interrupted internet services in Georgia, so if they are also bombarding western media with propaganda, it’s not a surprise.

I have to say the CBC is taking a (surprising) stand that Russia is the provacateur here, having, among other things, started issuing Russian passports to Georgian citizens a few years ago, which they have handily used now to claim they are merely protecting Russian citizens.

A must read.

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/414/Default.aspx

The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) is openly Stalinist, pro-Mugabe and pro-North Korea, but at the same time it does only consist of four people.

Old Labour,

Well, indeed. I agree with that.

Given that (unsurprisingly, with Yugoslavia on fire at the time, inter alia) the area was largely off the international radar in 1992/93. it is unsurprising then that it wasn’t, then.

That isn’t the case now to quite the same extent. I’d hope that some reconfiguration of international supervision, or whatever, of SO, is on the cards.

And as for NK, I don’t see any easy solution, but we should certainly be concerned at the very rapid increase in military spending by both Armenia and Azerbaijan (two countries with deeply contemptible governments) over the last few years, and the complete lack of any kind of progress diplomatically. (Leaning on Turkey might be one way to help)

They were often joined by representatives of the middle-class Marxist right for whom such empty noisy bleating… Flying Rodent…

Do tell. Is this “middle class” as in “Can write in sentences” and “Marxist” as in “Thinks HP is a bit of a boobyhatch and that it’s worth pointing it out now and again as a public service”?

Or is it in the OMFG, Lookit tha Pro-Saddamz Fascisses, they r well mentall and eat brooshetta LOL sense that seems to be favoured by some of the younger kids round here?

Incidentally, if you want to ask me out, just drop me an email. This trash-talking me behind my back is so, like, high school.

Incidentally, if you want to ask me out, just drop me an email. This trash-talking me behind my back is so, like, high school.

What’s wrong Poor Diddums? Afraid you’re not getting enough attention?

thanks old labour.

wardytron – arf arf. You inspired me to look at their website. I loved the use of the word “brilliant” in this – “The launch meeting of the Hands off China campaign, held in London on 19 July, was a great success. The speeches, by comrades Jack Shapiro, Kojo Amoo Gottfried, Avtar Jouhl, Keith Bennett and Harpal Brar were all brilliant”. “Brilliant!” More Big Hairy Cornflake than the vanguard of the revolution, really.

What’s wrong Poor Diddums? Afraid you’re not getting enough attention?

Hardly – if I was desperate for attention, I might wear a lot of black and call myself a libertarian Satanist, or I might just speak to a friend or family member or something. Depends how desperate I am, I suppose.

I normally only say anything if the conversation is so jaw-droppingly unhinged that it’d be a disservice to incautious readers not to, or if there’s some joker making snippy remarks at my expense. That’s fair enough, I think.

Incidentally, if you want to ask me out, just drop me an email. This trash-talking me behind my back is so, like, high school

Says the compiler of the “decentpedia!”

And nobody is talking behind your back as we are all aware by now that you constantly monitor HP (as you have just proved again.)

Now fuck off back into the dustbin of history where you belong.

Bob Pitt is of course another great exemplar of the tendency mentioned above – someone attempting to reassure themselves that that their lives are not totally pointless by being the Islamaphobe McCarthy or alternativelycompiling obsessive “encyclopedia’s” of self-identified tendencies and then hanging around websities every day hoping to pick up new material to back up their pre-conceived bullshit.

Mad as a box of frogs.

Jonny Mac, they have a newspaper called Lalkar, which, though samey after more than a couple of reads, is worth a couple of reads. It has reports on things like a “well-attended” meeting in April to celebrate Comrade Kim Il Sung’s 96th birthday, where “a cultural programme was presented by the comrades of RCPB(ML), which included the Song of General Kim Il Sung“.

Or is it in the OMFG, Lookit tha Pro-Saddamz Fascisses, they r well mentall and eat brooshetta LOL sense

Broosketta, dear. It’s a hard “c” sound, as in Chianti, Chievo etc.

…you constantly monitor HP.

Not so, unfortunately. Even horrible, fifty-car pile-ups get a bit tedious after a few months. Plus, my work has blocked your site, so those lunch breaks aren’t as hilarious as they used to be. They’ve probably blocked it because it’s not work-related, but I like to think that the internet browser has shut you off out of basic, electronic self-respect.

Says the compiler of the “decentpedia!”

Come on, the Boo-hoo, lefty fascists said nasty things about our wars tendency are a sizeable group of like-minded people in government, the media and online in Britain and the US. There are enough of you in positions of influence and your intellectual standpoints are so narrow-minded, if not outright barking, that you don’t get to claim immunity from criticism or ridicule. HP might be a reliable barometer for what the oddballs who actually matter are thinking, but our Decency problem extends far beyond its frankly daft pages.

And anyway, Graham, why would you think I’m talking about you? No offence, but you’re so predictably ill-tempered* and confused** that you make the crashingly dull Marko Attilla Hoare look like a dazzling genius.

*See also, fuck off…

**See also, …back into the dustbin of history… I mean, Jesus.

Not so, unfortunately

It’s just been proven for about the thousandth time!

I am ill tempered and confused? That’s hilarious coming from someone who has never done anything but moan out a kiddies version of oppositionalist politics!

And learn how to interpret a metaphor – its only a GCSE level skill for Christsakes and it may make you sub-private-eye “comedy” bareable to just a few more sad little wankers withiut a life.

the conventional wisdom is that Moscow was provoked by the hot-headed President Saakashvili of Georgia.

Well, let’s blame the Left again (even though of course they are not the ones making the decisions here). This is how these complex international disputes are played out in a bizarre esoteric way here at HP; merely as fodder to fuel the endless obsession attacking bits of the British left – but not those in power.

Actually if you want to listen instead of stereotype, that is not what the many people on the Left or otherwise are saying. To say that the Russians are not to be trusted and are pretty undemocratic and ruthless is stating the obvious. What also should be said is that Saakashvili’s recent actions were (if not hot-headed) just plain dumb. Really, really dumb. Its a pity really, Saakashvili has done some good things in Georgia.

Russia, with Serbia and others (most obviously Armenia and Belarus), could and probably will announce a firm intention to recognise and defend any declaration of independence by South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh or the Republika Srpska, including any decision to be incorporated into any of the states so announcing, all the while as enclaves both against Islam and against its pretended enemy but in fact close friend, those who have moved from “neither Washington nor Moscow, but International Socialism” to “neither Christendom nor the Dar al-Islam, but Global Capitalism”.

And if the next General Election really does produce a Policy Exchange government dependent on the votes of the SNP, then perhaps in the three Northern regions (or, better, in the seven historic counties that they include – southern “Humberside” could, and would gladly, go back to Lincolnshire), we should declare UDI, and appeal for both American and Russian recognition and assistance, citing Kosovo to the former and South Ossetia (plus several others by then) to the latter? On what grounds could either possibly say no?

Well, I’m up for an independent Yorkshire, David! :-)

war with russia. what will you people on HP think up next. Modern technology. marvelous. Actually I read Gerard baker and thought it agitprop in reverse. Here was I arguing that the US interest was really in ensuring that she mantained dominance in western europe and prevented the emergence of an independent relationship with russia and here comes Gerard Baker RIGHT ON CUE. And Harry’s Place. Absolutely perfect. Its just like the old days.

Ah, I see the children have come home from school.

John P – do you have a reference to that documentary?

It was broadcast on America’s PBS ( I think) network a few years back ( 2006?), Alcuin.

If it wasn’t PBS, then I saw it on Canada’s CBC network.

It was one of the most gut-wrenching things I’ve ever watched, and was composed entirely of interviews with some of the surviving children.

Some of those children were Muslim, but it appears that the islamist Chechen *freedom fighters* didn’t even care, and were equal opportunity child murderers.

That said, this whole Russian business is just horseshit…..missile defnse shield included.

Imagine, the tenors of yesterday’s version of the military future dominate post 911 washington circles and are pushing for this not becasue it enhances our security, but because it’s so darned profitable.

The American authorities are nabbing jihadis left, right and centre…one recent suspect with quantities of cyanide… and so washington builds a “defense shield” to defends us from incomming missles hailing from *rogue” states!?!?

Had Russia erected its own missile defense shield against Chechnya, then I suppose Beslan would never have happened!

It’s insanity.

war with russia. what will you people on HP think up next.

My god, is Harry’s Place saying it wants a war with Russia? That’s madness, I can’t believe it’s saying that. Oh, isn’t it? Ah.

war with russia. what will you people on HP think up next.

I don’t know maybe “Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.”

Here’s an even more incredibly stupid example of the tendency. A website like this might be home to any view dear – have you not got that yet?

Honestly. These single-minded morons with one over-encompassing explanation for everything! What have we done to deserve them (apart from being about fifty times more popular than the seedy onanist websites they themselves run of course.)

You seem to be unaware that 30% of inhabitants of the region are Georgians (until the Russian ethnic cleansing this week).

From what census data is available, the Georgian population of South Ossetia is (or was) 20% – 70% are Ossetian and around 10% are from other ethnicites. During the conflict in 1990-92, the Georgians drove over 100,000 Ossetians out of South Ossetia into North Ossetia – that’s more people than currently live in South Ossetia.

And have you actually read that NYT article you linked to? If the Georgian government really did believe that the South Ossetian situation would resolve itself, if it had worked so hard to win-over the South Ossetians, why did it send in the tanks and start shelling last week? Nothing happened on the South Ossetian side that hasn’t been going on for the past 16 years, and there has never been the same violence or even the threat of violence that there has been in Abkhazia.

The only likely outcome of the Georgian incursion, had the Russians not intervened, would have been the elimination or migration of the rest of the Ossetian population of South Ossetia. So, who’s doing the ethnic cleansing here? And yet I can’t believe that that was the goal. Sakashvili is a corrupt demagogue who has successfully aborted Georgia’s fledgling democracy, but he isn’t an ethnic nationalist.

I suspect Sakashvili did this to bolster his own position against growing unrest. Even with independent news broadcasters having been outlawed, his government can’t keep opposition politicians locked-up forever, and the threats to kill them and their families left it in an impossible situation (a Night of the Long Knives would lose Sakashvili support in the West, but not carrying out the threatened slaughter would make him look weak with his key allies at home). An incursion into South Ossetia was a good solution for Sakashvili, whatever the outcome: if Russia didn’t respond then he would be the strong man who beat the great bear; and as it has, now the Georgian people are united under a renewed threat from Russia and desires for democracy will naturally be subsumed.

J. Pabulski – Your long desired crusade against the Mohammedans will always play second fiddle to the need to prevent another round of Russian imperialism in Europe.

Poland has good reason to step up her defences. These are missile DEFENCES remember, not offensive weapons. Putin is perfectly entitled to install some of his own.

Starter for 10. Which neighbour carved up and invaded Polish territory numerous times, stood by and smiled as the Warsaw uprising was crushed by the Nazis, subjugated her people for almost half a century, and is now embarking on a new round of expansionism?

Thank goodness for the US – finally making amends for failing to act against the molotov-ribbentrop pact.

My god, is Harry’s Place saying it wants a war with Russia?

Indeed it is Wardy and the central commitee have put you in charge of the Southern front (we have mustered up an old Volvo for you.)

First reports from Lenin’s tomb suggest that HP’s invasion of Russia is going to be called Barabrossa and will lead to a thousand year HP reich.

During the imperialist Serbian agression in the former Yugoslavia…

God, Graham, you’re just addicted, aren’t you?

‘Serbian imperialist aggression’?

Is that like luxembourgian imperialist aggression, or is it even worse?

Say…like…estonian imperialist aggression?

If this *illness* intensifies any further, you’ll soon be accusing Serbia of invading and brutally occupying the entire Islamic world!

I am ill tempered and confused? That’s hilarious coming from someone who has never done anything but moan out a kiddies version of oppositionalist politics!

As in Opposing what HP posters have to say on certain subjects, a slightly different thing. The people who post and comment here are highly opinionated and make their points very bluntly indeed. I think most of them are horribly wrong on a lot of fundamental issues, and I’m aware that the blame, hate, coalesce format round here makes any fourteen-point plans I have for the betterment of humanity pretty redundant. You get what you give, peeps.

…learn how to interpret a metaphor…

Oh, I can interpret a metaphor. I can also tell you who first coined it, who he addressed it to and the context in which it was used – I assumed you knew too. Apologies, then.

Oh, I can interpret a metaphor. I can also tell you who first coined it, who he addressed it to and the context in which it was used – I assumed you knew too. Apologies, then.

Really? I thought that your problem was with the “back into” bit which Trotsky didn’t coin – or perhaps you think he did – hard to tell with your confused and tortured prose.

The people who post and comment here are highly opinionated and make their points very bluntly indeed.

You see this more bollocks – sometimes people are and sometimes those who seem most opposed on politics can have discussions and find themselves agreeing. I’d agree that anyone like yourself who comes here to throw childish pre-conceived notions around is going to have problems though.

Is that like luxembourgian imperialist aggression, or is it even worse?

I’m sorry. Did I miss the happening in the alternative universe where Luxembourg invaded its immediate neighbours? Were the Belgians ethnically cleansed?

Weird!

Indeed it is Wardy and the central commitee have put you in charge of the Southern front (we have mustered up an old Volvo for you.)

I’m washing my hair. Also, I don’t actually have a driving licence.

The people who post and comment here are highly opinionated and make their points very bluntly indeed.

That’s hardly unique to HP, is it. Be honest, people who argue about politics on the internet are like that, whether “Decent” or not; it’s what makes them so interesting to look at and think there but for the grace of God etc. It’s like a cheap version of going to the zoo. There isn’t a shop, but I always found I never wanted anything from the shop at Chessington anyway.

Not even wade whimsies in the shape of an anteater?

the Ossetians are Persians:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossetians.

They speak an Iranian language:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossetic_language,

They are neither Georgian nor Russians.

Russian was at war with in Iran in 1813 and 1826(Russo-Iranian wars).

A large portion of Caucuses the cities, towns, and villages of Georgia were given to Russia at the Golestan Iran-Russia Treaty.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/249210/Treaty-of-Golestan#tab=active~checked%2Citems~checked&title=Treaty%20of%20Golest%C4%81n%20–%20Britannica%20Online%20Encyclopedia

The 2nd treaty in 1826 undermined the dominant position of the British Empire in Persia and marked a new stage in the Great Game between the Russian and British empire.

Here was I arguing that the US interest was really in ensuring that she mantained dominance in western europe and prevented the emergence of an independent relationship with russia

If by

‘prevented the emergence of an independent relationship with’

actually meant

‘not being invaded by’

Then yes, that’s probably accurate.

Strange choice of phrase though, Mr John G!

As I read recently, the leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have appeared on Russian tv announcing they want their regions to be absorbed into greater russia.

Incidentally can anyone tell me, how far is the oil pipeline from the South Ossetia border? Does it fall into or near the so called buffer zone the Russians have created and are patrolling? Be interesting to see how far they think they can push their takeover.

Mrs Ben

It is to the south of Tbilisi if this map is to be believed Mrs B.
So (Ven may correct me) but it must be about 100 miles from the S Ossetia border.

http://www.energytribune.com/live_images/Russia%20Map_dec.gif

Whoops thats a gas one – the oil one appears to also go south of the capital.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2213/images/20050701000805902.jpg

I thought that your problem was with the “back into” bit.

To be honest, the distinction is so fine that I must be too dense to get it.

I have no trouble agreeing with reasonable points. Wardy is entirely correct about the nature of the internet, for instance.

What I’m trying to say is that HP commenters, as a group, do not respond well to opinions that differ significantly from their own – more often than not, they react quite violently. I appreciate that you think they’re a varied bunch with a wide range of opinions, and in some ways they are. When it comes to matters of substance, though, they only disagree on who the most evil ones are and the voltage by which they should be zapped.

Which is why I mention the Blame, Hate, Coalesce tone of comments threads – this one will do as a fair example. Blame the left for “appeasement” of Russia; Hate the left with repeated condemnations then Coalesce it all into a wider, pre-existing picture of leftist treachery and pro-tyranny.

Are you really surprised that the dissenting commenters you get aren’t extending you the hand of peace, amity and understanding? It’s hardly as if the comments threads teem with it to begin with.

Rodent, would you actually care to substantiate any of that thesis?

(BTW, given that you are apparently no longer constantly monitoring HP, it really was quite an unfortunate coincidence that your first post here for several weeks followed the mention of your name!)

To be honest, the distinction is so fine that I must be too dense to get it.

Really? I could have sworn it was what you were talking about above.

Are you really surprised that the dissenting commenters you get aren’t extending you the hand of peace, amity and understanding?

No. I personally couldn’t give a toss if they do or not. The (real) world that I live in is just the same . What never fails to surprise me is that people come along with the same old pre-conceived opinion they have been throwing into the comments boxes for three years (and which we have heard 500 times before) and then get sniffy when told they are boring us shitless. You seem to think that you can have comments threads which can be directed a certain way, I think that the consensus here is that we would much rather they were not (although that does not men that we won’t individually argue our corners.)

Nobody I can see is collectively blaming “the left” for anything either. If anything there is a wide-ranging selection of comments on a Times article which seems to have identified a problem with the lazy cliche’s about “Imperialism” that are routinely (and I have to say somewhat half-heartedly) trotted out by everyone from Seumus Milne to Simon Jenkins so it is hardly a surprise if people use Blogs like HP to express their disatissfaction with a journalistic establishment which seems far removed from the reality as ordinary folks of all persuasions (no doubt suffering from false conciousness in your view but there you go) see things.

Plus, my work has blocked your site, so those lunch breaks aren’t as hilarious as they used to be. They’ve probably blocked it because it’s not work-related, but I like to think that the internet browser has shut you off out of basic, electronic self-respect.

Or is it possible they noticed how much time you spent here? Being outraged and all, y’know…

Good rebuttal Graham – measured and accurate.

I see Putin’s generals are now threatening nuclear holocaust on Poland. These people really are bloody dangerous.

Look forward to Mad Dog Milne or one of al-Guardian’s other hack writers spinning that one.

I read somewhere that the oil pipeline was as close as 55kms from the South Ossetia border in places.

I’m sorry. Did I miss the happening in the alternative universe where Luxembourg invaded its immediate neighbours? Were the Belgians ethnically cleansed?

Ask Herr Fuhrer Santer….

(who is, I believe, the most famous Luxembourgois in existance. I would have mentioned Edward Steichen, but it’s likely no one here has a fucking clue who he was).

I can sort of see how if you are a border region with your own traditions, and feel repressed by the main ruling party, how you might feel drawn to a more powerful neighbouring country who says we’ll stick up for you and get you your independence. OK so they speak with forked tongue, but you want to believe them.

And I can see how it might suit Russia to sucker in the South Ossetians in this way.

What I fail to understand is the view among a large element of the broad left (I exclude the old die hard Stalinists who are presumably cheering the Russian tanks rolling into Georgia) that we should not upset Russia by allowing any of the former Soviet countries, now independent, on the Russian border to join NATO, or even develop closer links to the west. On the grounds it might annoy Russia.

Hello, the last time I looked the former Russian empire was just that, former, it had broken up. It failed, right? As all empires do eventually. So why shouldn’t the now independent countries which used to be in it, make what alliances they like. I know something about Estonia, having travelled there, and they HATE the Russians. Ditto the Czechs and so too presumably do the Poles and the Hungarians.

Shouldn’t we be encouraging them to become closer to Western Europe and promoting our democratic ideals to them, not muttering they must leave us alone in case it annoys Russia.

Interesting too that the British government seemed happy to contemplate a Gazprom take over of Centrica as recently as 2006. (”After Gazprom stated its interest in buying Centrica earlier this year, Mr Blair made clear that he would not intervene.) So the British government at least doesn’t mind being dependent on the Russians for our energy supply and generation.

Have I missed something here?

John P, unlike the Serb leaders of the 90s and their ideological successors, neither the Estonians nor the Letzebuergers view their neighbours as genetically defective or subhuman.

I read somewhere that the oil pipeline was as close as 55kms from the South Ossetia border in places.

I think Gori is about 60 miles from Tbilisi so you would be in the roughly general area though perhaps just slightly underestimating.

Have I missed something here?

I can remember once arguing with a certain sort of cliche-ridden trendy (who would have called himself a leftist though that isn’t exactly what I would have called him) who had the screename “Captain Pechorin” and who whilst endlessly extolling the virtues of “A hero of our time” refused point-blank to believe that Lermontov was writing about Russian Imperialism. I was actually lost for words as to how you could read a book whose setting is the reconquest of the Caucasus and blank it all out.

Are you really surprised that the dissenting commenters you get aren’t extending you the hand of peace, amity and understanding? It’s hardly as if the comments threads teem with it to begin with.

This is Balls, I must say. It’s very easy to dissent here and not be reacted to – Morgoth does it all the time, and some of his views strike me as frankly quite looney, but he’s a civil chap, which is the all-important point. Let me refer you to Notes on Rhetoric, which is like a good and funny and non-partisan, honest version of the Decentpedia, which you ripped off:

Barred If you have been barred from a blogger’s comments thread it is always because you ‘reminded them of some uncomfortable truths’, you ‘told it like it was’ etc, never because you were an insufferable troll or (for example) a tedious prick whose diversionary ramblings and clumsy put-downs were an embarrassment to all but yourself.

I could have sworn it was what you were talking about above.

What I was talking about goes into the same category as invoking “false consciousness”, i.e. some bizarre, knee-jerk red baiting instinct. This is just a guess, but I’d wager you’ve got more of a background in far left politics than I do – it’d be hard to beat “none whatsoever”. So what’s with the screw-you-comrade routine?

Oh wait – while we’re trading in jaded metaphors, it’s because a man who only owns a hammer sees a world full of nails.

the same old pre-conceived opinion

I can’t speak for what others have said, but maybe the reason you keep hearing the same opinions is that you’re wrong on many, many issues. Hell, I hope I’m right on most of today’s big news stories, but time makes fools of us all… I hate to trouble you with the possibility, since it seems to bore you shitless, unlike these endless, endless circle jerks on the moral deficiencies of your political enemies.

…it is hardly a surprise if people use Blogs like HP to express their disatissfaction with a journalistic establishment …

Stop. You might mean “the Guardian” and occasionally “the Independent”, but I suspect you really mean “a few of their opinion journalists”. That’s not the “journalistic establishment”, it’s a small minority in the market for newspapers. Bitch away, by all means, but it’s a bit rich to act like you’re being oppressed by a tyranny of the majority – give it a few months and you might wind up with the thoroughly Decent Miliband as Prime Minister, after ten years of Tony Blair.

ordinary folks of all persuasions

Jesus Christ, that actually is how you see Harry’s Place, isn’t it? Do you seriously think that ordinary people are even aware of half the issues discussed here, let alone ferociously partisan about them, as you lot are?

Face it, you’re an egalitarian meeting of independent minds, locked in pursuit of enlightenment, like Policy Exchange is an apolitical organisation dedicated to the betterment of the homeless.

Do you seriously think that ordinary people are even aware of half the issues discussed here, let alone ferociously partisan about them, as you lot are?

Flying Rodent, self-appointed defender of the “Common People”, eh?

Let’s face facts here, Rodent…the closest you and your fellow Stoppers get to the Common People is a Pulp Concert.

Stop. You might mean “the Guardian” and occasionally “the Independent”

It is impossible to have any kind of meaningful conversation with someone who hasn’t even noticed that we are discussing an article from the Times.

Do you seriously think that ordinary people are even aware of half the issues discussed here

Er yes I do actually (but thanks for reassuring me as to what a snob you are.)

but maybe the reason you keep hearing the same opinions is that you’re wrong on many, many issues.

I don’t keep hearing the same opinions (except from lazy and frankly rather boring people like you, Flanker and Resistor – which was my original point.)

Whether I am wrong on “many many issues” or not really does not matter. It is only in your own self-created world where anyone on HP has a direct line to Tony Blair and George Bush. 95% of people are grounded enough to realise that we are for the most part just ordinary powerless folks discussing issues on a blog (which does make it quite funny when the self-appointed Leninist vanguards turn up wanting to act as if they are storming the winter palace.)

Although the joke wears rather thin when they do it daily.

Rodenty, love, let’s cut a long story short: it’s very, very easy to disagree with whatever one might imagine the HP “line” to be on any given issue and yet still be greeted amicably in fraternal loveliness and teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO is be rather convivial. That’s literally all it takes. This is apparently beyond your capabilities, which is a shame because you appear to be able to string a readable sentence together, while showing some signs of wit and intelligence and whatnot. Unfortunately you seem to be unable to distinguish between disagreeing and attacking, and come here in a spirit of hostility rather than honest disagreement. So when people tell you to fuck off, you cunt, or whatever, it’s because you came here determined to be a cunt. Give being convivial a go, go on.

It is impossible to have any kind of meaningful conversation with someone who hasn’t even noticed that we are discussing an article from the Times.

Except in the quote I lifted from your comment, you were talking about “everyone from Seumus Milne to Simon Jenkins”. Forgive me, but it looks like you meant From one Guardian opinion columnist to another Guardian opinion columnist. It’s hardly the Gestapo, is it?

thanks for reassuring me as to what a snob you are

Yes, your usual tedious squid ink, and just as effective as ever. I’m sure if I stepped into the street right now and asked the first person I saw what their opinion was on a two-state solution, Hugo Chavez, Richard Seymour, Ken Livingstone’s dodgy financial dealings, Osama Saeed, the Muslim Council of Great Britain or, indeed, the dodgy opinions of Seumas Milne and the British Left’s appeasement of Russia, I’d barely be able to get them to shut up.

And this – and this! – from a guy who I’ve seen assert that the public aren’t bothered about the invasion of Iraq!

Really, what turds you are. Is there not a single obvious, stupid, fatuous rhetorical device you won’t employ if you think it will land a knock-out blow?

Give being convivial a go, go on.

Really, what turds you are.

Oh well, that was a waste of time.

And back and to the left, again – on an HP “line” –

I appreciate that you think they’re a varied bunch with a wide range of opinions, and in some ways they are. When it comes to matters of substance, though, they only disagree on who the most evil ones are and the voltage by which they should be zapped.

Wardy – ALL YOU HAVE TO DO is be rather convivial.

Yes, of course. “Conviviality” isn’t the first word I’d use to describe HP, since each post generally accords to the formula Fuck (x)

If you sympathise with anything (x) has to say,forget it.

One of the things that brings me back to HP time and time again is the only “line” fot commenters here is: Thou Shalt Be A grown-up. I don’t always live up to it, but there you go.

Except in the quote I lifted from your comment, you were talking about “everyone from Seumus Milne to Simon Jenkins”.

So now we are talking about what I say instead of what all the commenters on HP say? You twist and turn and lie – is it any wonder people think you are a cunt? Really?

And this – and this! – from a guy who I’ve seen assert that the public aren’t bothered about the invasion of Iraq!

They aren’t (and even the 2 million who once were drifted away when they saw how dishonest the snobby leaders of the STWC were.) Surely you have learnt a lesson from this (although if you think that lesson is that ordinary people are not interested in politics then it is no surprise that your histrionics are getting increasingly unbalanced as you disappear down the plughole.)

You really are quite mad.

If you sympathise with anything (x) has to say,forget it.

Do you mean like Ken Livingstone?

So now we are talking about what I say instead of what all the commenters on HP say?

Look, sorry, I just thought that when I directly quoted you and then responded to what you had said in that passage, you’d understand that I was talking about what you’d said in that passage. It was presumptuous of me to assume.

although if you think that lesson is that ordinary people are not interested in politics then it is no surprise that your histrionics are getting increasingly unbalanced as you disappear down the plughole

Right, so let me be clear here – I asked whether ordinary people cared about half of the issues discussed at HP, and you thought they did. That surely means that ordinary people – the random folks you or I bang into every day – do care about half of the following – a proposed two-state solution, Hugo Chavez, Richard Seymour, Ken Livingstone’s dodgy financial dealings, Osama Saeed, the Muslim Council of Great Britain or, indeed, the dodgy opinions of Seumas Milne and the British Left’s appeasement of Russia, but they do not care about the invasion of Iraq.

These are all minority issues, with the exception of the iraq invasion. That’s affected many, many British people very directly, since there have been thousands of soldiers ploughed through that country in the past five years.

And it’s me that’s meant to be mad here. I mean, come on.

Do you mean like Ken Livingstone?

Yes, you like Ken Livingstone, I get it.

Look, sorry, I just thought that when I directly quoted you and then responded to what you had said in that passage, you’d understand that I was talking about what you’d said in that passage.

You mean except for the bit where I mentioned the Times article and then (quite clearly from the context) said everyone from the (supposedly left wing) Seumus Milne to the (rather right wing) Simon Jenkins- and you decided that meant I was only attacking the Guardian which somehow in your view is leftwing? Come on its a bit of a stretch isn’t it!

Ordinary people care about politics – if you ever talked to any you might find that they know more than you think (although as a good proportion of them will have views opposed to yours and you seem incapable of being grown up enough to accept that then perhaps it is better for your own health that you stay on cloud nine and in the “party of one” that you obviously currently belong too.)

Iraq is obviously the issue which has defined your own youth but many of us remember other wars and their aftermaths (I can just about remember the acid casualty hippies still banging on about Vietnam in the late seventies for instance and you are beginning to sound an awful lot like a cross between them and angry boy.)

History/farce (you get the picture I’m sure fully up on marxist cliches as you are.)

Yes, you like Ken Livingstone, I get it.

So do you then see how I might find:

since each post generally accords to the formula Fuck (x)

If you sympathise with anything (x) has to say,forget it.

rather silly? Or can you really not get your head out of your own arse enough to see that we all disagree with each other here and there is no party line no matter what you have imagined up.

The people who post and comment here are highly opinionated and make their points very bluntly indeed

Yes, like calling people ‘turds’, ‘unhinged’, ‘barking’, ‘daft’, ‘confused’, ‘ill-tempered’, ‘dull, ‘fatuous’…

Oh no, hang on, that was you!

Deary me.

Flying,

I think I like you more than I do our average dissenter. On the other hand, I can’t help suspecting that, much as you might dsiagree with the vast majority of what is posted on HP, you actually think Seumas Milne is a god-awful twat, ‘Lenin’ is a middle-class prick and significant numbers of what might loosely be described as the ‘anti-war’ left are knee-jerk, anti-American numpties, but…..we’ve got more chance of crowning a drug-free winner of the Tour de France than we have of hearing you say as much.

I can’t explain why, but it annoys me.

You mean except for the bit where I mentioned the Times article and then (quite clearly from the context) said everyone from the (supposedly left wing) Seumus Milne to the (rather right wing) Simon Jenkins- and you decided that meant I was only attacking the Guardian which somehow in your view is leftwing? Come on its a bit of a stretch isn’t it!

The Times article bashing “The Left”? The “pusillanimous…hand-wringing…self-loathing… posturing” left? When you talk about two Guardian journalists, then wave your Oooh, but the left wing is really the right wing flags and expect me to salute?

Hey, I think Seumas Milne’s a world-class asshole and I never read him if I can help it. But do us a favour and say The Guardian and have done with it, and don’t screw us about with this “establishment media” bullshit. You know full well which way the British media leans.

Ordinary people care about politics

Yes, they do, don’t they? Although I think you should be dragged into the streets and beaten with two-by-fours for daring to use a sentence like you seem incapable of being grown up enough, we do have our own concerns, and foreign policy is probably pretty low among them… But not as low as you might think.

Unlike you I live in Scotland and watched the vox pops come in from Glasgow East. You know, for every Glaswegian citing “crime” as their reason for going to the SNP, another cited “Iraq”? I watched hours of this stuff – hours and hours, the government pay me to do it, it’s actually my job – and it kept coming back… Iraq. And in Glasgow East, of all places!

And then I look about me here, in Scotland, the hearland of Labour, where almost everyone I know intends to vote for the nationalists – who I personally can’t stand – and so many cite the Iraq war as their big disillusionment with the Labour Party.

And I think, wow, how disconnected from the beliefs of the working classes I am. And just think, my dad’s a car mechanic who spend years driving coal trucks!

Thank God I had you, Graham, to point out that Iraq meant nothing to anyone except for latte-sipping elitists. I’m so out of touch! Just watch Glenrothes (Labour), and I’m sure you’ll be proved right.

Well, an SNP rout at the general election will be a disaster for both of us, but between you and me… I feel pretty blameless. How about you?

“Ordinary people care about politics”

I think you have been tripped up by Graham’s odd definitions Flying Rodent. You see in his little world “ordinary people” and “the working class”, are people who agree with the current rubbish he is spewing.

“Or can you really not get your head out of your own arse enough to see that we all disagree with each other here and there is no party line no matter what you have imagined up.”

The majority of people here are too scared or unimaginative to think up opinions of their own, so they parrot whatever tortured justification for the iraq war or the curtailment of civil liberties the government comes up with. They don’t need a party line to keep them in their little box.

Nearly all the disagreements between you lot are meaningless, superficial, or deliberately created by people like Graham to boost their pathetic little ego’s. Graham’s life would be meaningless without these little intenet spats.

It doesn’t matter what the people glasgow east thing Flying Rodent. The imaginary ordinary folk living in Graham’s brain agree with what he says. AND THAT’S ALL THAT MATTERS.

Brownie, I actually think Seumas Milne is a god-awful twat, ‘Lenin’ is a middle-class prick and significant numbers of what might loosely be described as the ‘anti-war’ left are knee-jerk, anti-American numpties.

I don’t say it here because they’re not my concern, you lot are. I’ve got no ties to them whatsoever, and they have very, very little power. You lot on the other hand… Well, you’ve had Tony Blair, and if it all goes horribly wrong you’ll get Miliband too.

With great power comes great abuse, grasshopper.

When you talk about two Guardian journalists

You mean the left wing one and the right wing one?

Thank God I had you, Graham, to point out that Iraq meant nothing to anyone except for latte-sipping elitists.

And where did I do that then? Can you quote? No you can’t because you made it up out of thin air and the voices in your head didn’t you? Again!

The majority of people here are too scared or unimaginative to think up opinions of their own

Not the majority Tagnuts – just wankers like you.

you made it up out of thin air and the voices in your head didn’t you?

Yes, okay, I did. It’s only because I’ve read your stuff in the past and I suspect it’s what you really mean – if I’m wrong, I’m happy to apologise.

The majority of people here are too scared or unimaginative to think up opinions of their own,

This is a genuinely disgusting comment, and a disgusting sentiment. What gives you, who have never shown any evidence of being original or intelligent or even civil, to condemn so breezily the people here? You really are filth.

Yes, okay, I did. It’s only because I’ve read your stuff in the past and I suspect it’s what you really mean

Ah so it was a thoughtcrime.

Whatever Iraq meant to many people (of all classes) their chances of doing anything about it were wrecked by the elite who ran the STWC and the idea that they are now voting with their feet against Labour (of which I am not a member by the way) is slightly undermined by the re-election of Blair AFTER the war in Iraq.

But you knew that now didn’t you?

As for having a go at the Guardian it is the Newspaper that I read so of course I am more disapointed when it prints crap. But it is part of the establishment media (just as the Labour party is part of the establishment) and there is a reason why blogs have become popular places to discuss news (if not why run one?)

By the way the working classes tend to use sentences like “you seem incapable of being grown up enough” and the middle-classes try to prescribe language usage (such is the way things have always been and it provides a diversion from actually discussing issues.)

David Lindsay thinks Abkhazia would be “an enclave against Islam”

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Right, that’s Mrs. Rodent home, I’m on husband duty. I’ll pick this – such as it is – up tomorrow if anyone wants.

They don’t need a party line to keep them in their little box.

Sound of cuckoos flying round and round Tagnut’s head….

David Lindsay thinks Abkhazia would be “an enclave against Islam”

Perhaps he’s planing to get Neil Clarke to go over and forcibly convert the population.

What, to horse-racing and watching episodes of “Dad’s Army”.
(I’m not sure they’d appreciate it quite as much as – damn it, I’ll call it by it’s full name, Кавказская пленница, или Новые приключения Шурика)

(On a similar note, I did love a semi-official Georgia tourism website I came across last year, that said something to the effect that “You may have heard of foreign tourists being kidnapped while visiting Georgia! It does happen! But do not worry! You will not be beheaded! Georgia is a Christian Country!)

I really love Georgian people, but, fuck me, they are quite immeasurably overemotional

(Back to Mr C, I do hope da man is going to write a lament for the Walthamstow Dogs RIP – gone the same way as those British Rail sandwiches he misses so much)

Yeah and you never had a word to say about the demise of Catford did you? I hope you feel responsible.

I don’t go Sarf of the river. If Romford gets the axe I may comment accordingly. You can have Crayford.

And while we’re on the subject of “enclaves against Islam” (and the oh so wonderfully complicated machivellian machinations of Caucasian politics), again, I note that more or less the closest ally to the (Gangster) state that supports the so-called “Nagornyi Karabakh Republic” is the Islamic Republic of Iran

Well I must say, contrary to the rather inward looking circles Graham frequents, everyone I know has an opinion about most things current. Sometimes, if it is very current, they are reluctant to voice their views immediately because they know some listeners will get very excited. But anything more than a few months old is fair game.

I on the other hand have strong views about most things current and am happy to voice them although truth to tell, even I am sometimes nervous about the impact this has. Shortly after the de Menezes affair I was at a Christmas Party attended by a number of elderly ladies. After a couple of glasses I laid into the Met Police’s actions with some relish. Those brave enough to respond, bravely said they trusted our police to protect us. The following year I was there again, nervous of the reaction.

They were jostling to sit next to me, one lady even confided that “everything you said turned out to be right” (I had expressed the view that de Menezes was not wearing a thick jacket, had not vaulted the barrier and would be found to have been killed in cold blood by incompetent police). They were keen to discuss the case and to gauge my views on the latest current affairs. Distance had lent enchantment.

Of course I don’t claim to be right all the time but what was interesting was the way despite disagreeing with me or saying nothing at the time, they had been taking it all in and forming views, and at a safe distance were keen to discuss what had happened.

What is also true is that most people over 50 (HPers excepted of course) seem to find comfort in the belief that the state has their best interests at heart and desperately want to believe this. I am much more cynical.

I did briefly believe Tony Blair over the Iraq dossier. When I found out how we were all deceived I just realised I had been taken in by a master con man. But I suspect a lot of people feel a lot more let down by politicians in general including presumably a lot of people in Glasgow.

David Clark responds to Seamus Milne on CIF.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/15/russia.georgia1

Oh yes, those British Rail sandwiches……I’d completely forgotten
about those–memories of yesteryear….

“(apart from being about fifty times more popular than the seedy onanist websites they themselves run of course.)”

FALSE, due to the quantized nature of readership you are either infinitely more popular or less than 17 times more popular.

PS I know you fucking idiots wont get it, but I do enjoy seeing my jokes sail over your heads.

Well I must say, contrary to the rather inward looking circles Graham frequents, everyone I know has an opinion about most things current.

That ordinary people have an opinion about most things current is my point Mrs B. That they would vote in a Labour candidate with a 7000 majority in Glasgow East 2 years after the Iraq war started but kick Labour out because of the Iraq war 3 years later is stretching credulity a little too far.

We will take infinitely more popular Flanker (whilst laughing at the sight of another egotistical Nietzschean pretending to be a leftist.)

Sure Graham… but thanks to neocounter (seriously your Freudian slips are glaring) I will always have the last laugh.

I can however accept the description of the so-called “Republika Srpska” illegitimate entity as an “enclave against Islam” in as much as almost all of the mosques that that had been there for centuries were blown up (16 alone in Banja Luka, where the front line of the war never even reached), and most of the muslims were forced out at gunpoint, and their legitimate right to return to their homes subseuquently existing more on paper than in practice, with those who would not leave being brutally murdered.

I also note that one could describe the same illegitimate entity as an “enclave against Catholicism” for broadly similiar reasons – even if there wasn’t as much hatred being preached against the Papists as against the Mohammadens. It does some somewhat unfair that the horrendously ugly 1970s cathedral in Banja was left standing – one presumes in so doing was a warning against the heresy of modernism that had infected the Western Church and world but which the Serbian Orthodox Church, preferrred a world in which “might is right” had been immune to

I will always have the last laugh

many lunatics laugh right up to their last breath Flanks.

I see someone saw the dark knight last night. Any other pop culture wisdom you want to indulge us with next?

Mrs Ben said:

I know something about Estonia, having travelled there, and they HATE the Russians.

I had opportunity to talk with a very old Estonian woman about 25 years ago. She told me that the Russian ‘liberators’ treated them worse than the Nazis. That’s fucked up.

“There’s a routine now whenever some unspeakable act of aggression is visited upon us or our allies by murderous fanatics or authoritarian regimes. While the enemy takes a victory lap, we compete in a shameful medley relay of apologetics, defeatism and surrender.” – Gerard Baker.

What is this “unspeakable act”? Who is this “we” exactly. Is Mr Baker suggesting “we” go to war with Russia over South Ossetia? What for? Let us look at the alternatives.

‘Finlandisation’ was once a favourite phrase of the right, used to describe what happens to those who failed appreciate the real threat in Europe from the USSR. Even up to the 1970s according to this theory Finland was being being absorbed by Moscow, or so the story went. Yet, today it is Finland which flourishes and it is the neighbouring regions of Russia who look on wistfully to Helsinki, not distant, indifferent Moscow. Quietly, Finland has not only apparently freed itself from the iron grip which once was so unshakeable; it is extending its influence through its notable success as an open, pluralistic, advanced society. It threatens no one. But then, it was never led by a blabbermouth graduate of a US business school.

“The initial reaction is almost always self-blame and an expression of sympathetic explanation for the aggressor’s actions. In the Russian case this week, the conventional wisdom is that Moscow was provoked by the hot-headed President Saakashvili of Georgia. It was really all his fault, we are told.”

I think ‘hot headed’ is not misapplied to President Saakashvili and for once the ‘conventional wisdom’ might just be wise. Saakashvili could have learned from the Finns. Instead, a not very clever tail tried wagging its very much larger dog, or that part which sits in Washington. He will get no thanks for it.

Putin’s Russia has merely confirmed what assassinations of journalists and poisoning of dissenters demonstrated: he is a thug. This situation calls for steadiness. Deliberate and thoughtful action by allies drawn together by principle, not wild accusations and unrealistic (indeed, synthetic) anger. The west is not weak, its institutions and procedures are the best available and the record will show who loses in the long run. South Ossetia is not Czechslovakia, and Saakashvili is no Masaryk.

Any other pop culture wisdom you want to indulge us with next?

Quite possibly (and most certainly if it annoys you!)

Yeah, Saakhashvili is an irresponsible hot-head….but Georgia, as a society or culture, is also nothing like Finland. (I can’t even imagine a Finnish equivalent of Zviad Gamsurkhadia…)

Saakashvili could have learned from the Finns.

I’m not sure such an analogy would stand up even on the most general of levels. The Finns basically signed away much of their independence in 1948 and by the late seventies were so paranoid about the USSR that they were possibly even managing to outdo anything the Russians expected in the way of support (when I was in Joenssuu in the early eighties police patrols checked my hotle nightly for “runaways” to return.

I don’t really think the Georgians would consider sixty years worth of paranoia in the hope of the eventual collapse of Russia to be a good deal. (is imagined totalitarianism even worse than the real thing I wonder?)

Putin’s sinister and manipulative style and tone remind me of Cardinal Richelieu.

I was planning a post linked to this – can’t be bothered now so I’ll stick it in here:

Among the Rabbit’s staff at Stalin’s villas was an experienced and trusted cook who rather extraordinarily had served Rasputin and Lenin, and now cooked for Stalin, too. This was President Vladimir Putin’s grandfather.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/stalin-father-egnatashvili

Re Finlandisation:
Self-censorship was a prominent feature.
Out of interest, I looked up the Wikipedia article on Finlandisation, took a little chunk, and substituted Islamic for Soviet, and Muslims for Soviets:

. . . Islamic adaptation spread to the editors of mass media, sparking strong forms of self-control, self-censorship and pro-Islamic attitudes. Most of the élite of media and politics shifted their attitudes to match the values that the Muslims were thought to favour and approve, developing into a self-imposed Finlandization . . .
During the period of Finlandization freedom of speech was limited. Public libraries removed from circulation books, more than 1,700 titles, that were deemed anti-Islamic and bookstores were given catalogs of banned books.[1] The Finnish Board of Film Classification likewise banned movies that it considered to be anti-Islamic.

Thanks John P. for this link:

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/414/Default.aspx

Exactly my sentiments.

“This is a genuinely disgusting comment”

This coming from somebody who openly fantasises about throwing rocks at me while I am drowning.

“What gives you, who have never shown any evidence of being original or intelligent or even civil, to condemn so breezily the people here?”

Hahahaha,

“They don’t need a party line to keep them in their little box.
Sound of cuckoos flying round and round Tagnut’s head….”

Translation, Graham can’t think of a decent response to what I say, so in desparation, he just calls me names.

“The imaginary ordinary folk living in Graham’s brain agree with what he says.”

Graham says, 2 posts down

“you made it up out of thin air and the voices in your head didn’t you?”

See what I mean Wardy, when I say that HP users are bovine cretins with no minds of their own.

The news from Georgia is bad – very bad. Seems like Sarkozy has given the Russians a free pass to roam at will in Georgia taking what action they see fit.

Georgia’s sovereignty has been sold.

None of us want to go to war over Georgia. But there is no reason for us to lift one finger to help Russia over anything.

It’s clear Putin is unreconstructed KGB and is looking to restore the Soviet Union in all particulars, except perhaps the planned economy.

Russia is threatening other former colonies too.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4543744.ece

Actually, I think Russia is being quite reasonable in this case. Unlike in Georgia, they would be well within their rights to do an Osirak on one of the “missile defence” installations.

Most Polish cities are so grim and tacky that they would probably be improved by a nuclear strike LOL.

See what I mean Wardy, when I say that HP users are bovine cretins with no minds of their own.

Whatever, you’re nothing. No value, no anything. Negligible, even by our trolls’ standards. Zero.

Not to you wardy. I think only mettaculture and graham respond in a more hysterical way than you.

The comebacks from you HP idiots get better and better as time goes on.

Since 1991, NATO has really only existed in order to annoy the Russians. But Georgia and the Ukraine will never now be allowed into it (nor will Georgia ever be admitted to the EU, as egged on by the always pro-EU Americans, but despite having no border with any EU country).

In other words, a body which has no real purpose except to irritate and blackmail Russia now finds that Russia has an absolute veto on admissions to that very body.

You have to laugh.

The Ukrainian decision to seek even closer ties to NATO and the EU, leading to admission as soon as possible, has impending disappointment written all over it. Only last week, the EU’s own report found that Georgia met none – not one – of the criteria for admission, what with the crackdown on the press, the torture, the imprisonment of the Leader of the Opposition by a secret court, and all the rest of it. How much better is Ukraine?

And in any case, neither NATO nor the EU will now consider any application from a part of the former the Soviet Union. They would never admit it in those terms, but that is the way that things now are, and always will be. Unipolarity has died on the streets of South Ossetia. Welcome back to normality.

Meanwhile, the latest is that the ethnic Georgians (or their descendants) moved out of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as part of the endless population movements favoured by the USSR should have some say in the future of those territories, no part of any historic state and never governed from Tblisi since the fall of the Soviet Union; and might even be moved back there.

Well, I am not necessarily advocating any of the following, but I only suggest, for a start – the Palestinians, the cleared Highlanders, those forced to relocate to the towns by the enclosure of the English countryside, the American Loyalists driven to Canada (where their descendants keep to this day the keys and the title deeds to the properties from which their ancestors were evicted)…

And waht of territorial integrity? That would be the same territorial integrity threatened, in the Russian case, by the American-backed Islamic separatists in Chechnya? And, in the coming Chinese case, by Islamic separatists in Xinjiang who will enjoy, even if not the official backing of the Obama Administration, nevertheless the full help and co-operation of the CIA, the remnant neoconservative movement, and all the rest of them?

Compare and contrast the treatment of the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, still in existence and enjoying full international recognition at the time of the UDIs in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (with absolutely no history of independence).

The territory apparently enjoying such integrity in Georgia was arbitrarily imposed by Stalin. Neither Abkhazia (home to the port of Poti, Georgia proper being landlocked) nor any part of Ossetia was ever part of Georgia before that. Whereas, for example, Tibet and Xinjiang have been part of China for as long as there has been a China, and Kosovo has been part of Serbia for as long as there has been a Serbia.

If ninety-per cent ethnically Albanian Kosovo can declare independence (undoubtedly with a view to incorporation into Albania), then why cannot ninety-per cent civically Russian South Ossetia (by no means certainly with a view to incorporation into Russia)?

Of course, we all know why. Like the Yugoslav government before it, the Serbian government was not brought to power by a CIA-fomented coup, is not headed by someone who is culturally and effectively an American (much like Britain under Blair, of course), and does not have an actual Israeli as Defence Minister.

So much for territorial integrity. Territorial integrity is intimately related to sovereignty. And the Satrapy of Georgia simply is not a sovereign state.

“Whereas, for example, Tibet and Xinjiang have been part of China for as long as there has been a China,”

Erm, with a statement like that, it is evident you don’t even have a basic knowledge of Chinese and Tibetan (or Uighur) history.

I do agree with you that South Ossetia and Abkhazia should be allowed to secede if they wish to, and western governments are being hypocritical when they call for Georgia’s territorial integrity to be preserved, with remarks like that it shows that you are nothing but an obnoxious little idiot who would support any vile regime as long as it is opposed to us.

Translation, Graham can’t think of a decent response to what I say,

No. Translation= Graham thinks Tag is a thick cunt (and Graham is not wrong is he?)

Question:

Do the Russians really want self-determination for South Ossetia (given they control North Ossetia) or do they want chaos and destruction for Georgia, to serve as a warning to all former states of the Soviet Union?

I agree with David Lindsay that the policy of extending NATO was undoubtedly a mistake, given that we could probably have won more peace and security in the area by trading non-extension for Russian commitment to accepting the proper independence of ex states of the Soviet Union.

The EU is slightly different in that it was difficult to see how, constitutionally, you could ever prevent its expansion, at least within anything remotely defined geographically as Europe and the Russians surely aren’t intimidated by it in any shape or form. In fact, the closer the EU to Russian borders, the more easily it can frighten the EU!

“No. Translation= Graham thinks Tag is a thick cunt (and Graham is not wrong is he?)”

Graham is almost always wrong. Instead of admitting it, he starts mouthing off and making misogynist comments.

I think it’s best if you just went and fixed bugs on the website and try to make layout of this website less rubbish, because you obviously have nothing to say graham. Leave political debate for people who have something substantial to say, and and back it up without callling names, falsely pretending “ordinary working class” agree with whatever tosh your spewing, and making racist comments, then deleting them and loudly denying you ever made them.

Or you could kill yourself, that would have the added benefits of saving oxygen, and removing a burden from your family.

Oh dear, common sense may be breaking out.
General Sir Mike Jackson has a measured article in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/08/17/do1701.xml

On Saturday there was a letter from Lord Chalfont, who knows a thing or two about defence, in the DT:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/08/16/nosplit/dt1601.xml

And to my surprise the main substance of the letters in the Sunday Telegraph, from those who one would expect to be dyed in the wool “the Russian bear has got to be put in its place” types, are remarkably measured too.

Leave political debate for people who have something substantial to say

But Tags then you wouldn’t be able to comment either – because let’s face it you have never said anything original or had a view which wasn’t copied from some half-hearted RCP hack or tried to “debate” without throwing your toys out of the pram and making spurious accusations of racism when your silly views were torn apart by those much more intelligent than yourself. Get an educationa and you wouldn’t be so obviously angry at your betters merely because they have an actual view on issues.

“Whereas, for example, Tibet and Xinjiang have been part of China for as long as there has been a China”

LOL. Quick, send him a Ladybird book of basic history, someone.

“In other words, a body which has no real purpose except to irritate and blackmail Russia”

Oh dear, those poor little innocent Russians, who have never behaved like fascist thugs in all their history …

See my previous post.

A British diplomat (I can’t remember who) once said: “What else is history but the erasure of borders and the disappearance of peoples?”

Re Finlandisation:
Self-censorship was a prominent feature. – Trifim.

With the result? I take this to mean they kept their mouths shut and did not attempt to re-gain Karelia by force. My point was and remains that today Finland prospers, Georgia does not. Georgians now suffer much more than a month ago. What greater price must they pay for your courageous stand?

Incidentally, take care. Wikipedia once informed the world that Winston Churchill’s Defense (sic) Minister (in 1950 actually Minister for War) was Manny Shinwell …

Tagnuzlsx doesn’t have any value here either, does it. Let’s get it and HP=BNP banned and we can have a nice blog again. If not then fine, but I won’t go near here.

Larkers –

“My point was and remains that today Finland prospers, Georgia does not.”

Yes, and the Germans prospered under Hitler for 8 years. What kind of yardstick is that for anything?

People threatened or under duress may decide that discretion is the better part of valour. But please don’t try and make that sound like the equivalent of a freely chosen moral position.

“Incidentally, take care. Wikipedia once informed the world that Winston Churchill’s Defense (sic) Minister (in 1950 actually Minister for War) was Manny Shinwell …”

Yes, I’m sure you’d wish to return to the good old days when EH Carr wrote the articles about the Soviet Union for the Encyclopedia Britannica and no one was allowed to challenge his accuracy on anything.

Russia had a chance to make a better world in the 1990s. Instead it has reverted to type and become a standard bearer for tyranny the world over – the poisoner’s friend, the murderer of journalists, the stockpiler of illegal weaponry (can any of us really believe that Russia is now observing treaties on weapons of mass destruction), the invader of other people’s lands. A bear on the rampage.

Among the Rabbit’s staff at Stalin’s villas was an experienced and trusted cook who rather extraordinarily had served Rasputin and Lenin, and now cooked for Stalin, too. This was President Vladimir Putin’s grandfather.

Wow! That’s amazing!

Did you dig that little pearl up yourself, or did someone put you on to it?

So Putin’s grand-dad was personal chef to ‘Great Leader’.

But did he survive every tasting?

I just finished reading “Young Stalin” JP (wherein it is mentioned.)

“because let’s face it you have never said anything original or had a view which wasn’t copied from some half-hearted RCP hack or tried to “debate” without throwing your toys out of the pram and making spurious accusations of racism when your silly views were torn apart by those much more intelligent than yourself. Get an educationa and you wouldn’t be so obviously angry at your betters merely because they have an actual view on issues.”

Replace “RCP hack” with “HP blogger”, and “racism” with “being middle class and being out of touch with reality”, and this little rant would be an absolutely perfect description of you.

Projection is such an interesting thing isn’t Graham. I’m sorry that you feel that you have no real opinion on issues, and you think everyone here is better than you, but there really is no need to act like an arse.

I think I deserve a thankyou Graham, for enabling you to let out your burning feelings of self-hatred.

“Tagnuzlsx doesn’t have any value here either, does it. Let’s get it and HP=BNP banned and we can have a nice blog again. If not then fine, but I won’t go near here.”

Note that nobody has begged Wardytron to stay…..

What a shame you never got to achieve your dream.

Still time Tags! (By the way God knows what you are trying to say in your first comment above – its just a lot of childish nonsense really isn’t it?

I said your an idiot, and the desperate insults you throw at other people are a better description of you than they are of them.

Do you understand now, or do you want me to draw a picture.

Typical Graham….”I don’t understand it therefore it’s bad, and the imaginary working class thinks it’s bad too”.

“You are” or “You’re” Tags. (Honestly how thick can you get and you must have had all the educational advantages possible. I bet your parents despair!)

You merely repeated what I said about you because could not respond with anything original Tags (as usual.) You are making my original point on this thread about empty pseudo-left bleating for me….

“being middle class and being out of touch with reality”

I see that illiterate lefty airhead tossers think there is still some mileage to be had from the moronic ‘insult’ of ‘middle class’.

One can be middle class and know a lot more about the world than an ignorant lefty loony such as yourself, Tag.

Or (alternatively, and like Tags, Rodent and the two others) one can be an ignorant middle-class “lefty” loony who is so out of touch with reality that they really think both that the working-classes back them as a vanguard (guffaw!) Or that (copywrite FR) the people of Glasgow are now voting against Labour because of Iraq (presumably being too stupid to notice that the war had been going on for two years when they gave David Marshall a 13000 majority at the last election….)

You couldn’t make it up!

No, you couldn’t. There is no end to the stupidity of champagne socialists … or middle-class ‘trotskites’ (LOL).

You couldn’t make it up!

Well, clearly you could make it up, since you just have done.

Take they really think both that the working-classes back them as a vanguard (guffaw!). Find an example of my saying this or anything hinting at it, and I’ll put my hands up to it. Since it’s some kind of hilarious in-joke around here, most often directed at SWP members, you can feel free to chuck in some evidence that this is in any way relevant to me.

Note – But U R A Saddam Luvr like tha SWPz isn’t going to cut it, unless you’re trying to convince stroppy eleven-year-old Tories like Oxfordian there.

Then there’s the people of Glasgow are now voting against Labour because of Iraq… which is a little bit different to what I wrote. You can tell, because it’s just up the page, see?

Did I not say for every Glaswegian citing “crime” as their reason for going to the SNP, another cited “Iraq”?

Now, I’m aware it’s anecdotal evidence, and you have only my word that I watched hours of election coverage for weeks in advance, but that’s the way it is – this is the internet, not Panorama. So no, I didn’t claim that “the people of Glasgow” are voting against Labour because of Iraq. Quite a lot of working class people in Glasgow East voted against Labour because of Iraq, which is a surely a bit problematic, given the SNP’s wafer-thin majority.

All of which was said in the context of you stating that working class people are interested in HP’s subject matter – boy, I bet The Times whizzed off the shelves up in Parkhead when they heard about Gerard Baker’s article bashing the left – but that they aren’t interested at all in the very war that is, by and large, being fought by working class lads.

I don’t understand why you’d post such easily-refuted bollocks, nor do I understand why you feel the need to cast yourself as some kind of tribune of the people. Your habit of assuming that everyone who takes issue with you is some kind of honking, home counties Miles, Giles or Samantha is pretty fucking weird as well.

I reckon it’s because you’re a walking bundle of bugbears and grudges with so many chips on your shoulder I could slap a haddock on your forehead and call you a fish supper, but again, I’m just guessing.

Well clearly I haven’t made it up since you can’t refute it

Quite a lot of working class people in Glasgow East voted against Labour because of Iraq, which is a surely a bit problematic, given the SNP’s wafer-thin majority.

Not nearly as problematic as explaining away why they gave Labour such a large majority after the war in Iraq though is it? Feel fre to imagine up a scenario in which Glaswegians are so stupid that they have only just realised that a war started.

All of which was said in the context of you stating that working class people are interested in HP’s subject matter

Er no, I said that ordinary people were interested in politics and you said they were not (presumably only the vanguard (such as yourself could be.) No mention of the working-class or HP – why you would be so dishonest when your words are all there to be read above is beyond me.

Your habit of assuming that everyone who takes issue with you is some kind of honking, home counties Miles, Giles or Samantha is pretty fucking weird as well.

Again what an odd and lazy assumption! I don’t assume this at all when arguing with Spanker Ken (for instance) though I do take the reasonable position that middle-class people and those without experience of working-class life are over-represented on the internet. It really is your imagination running away with you again here isn’t it?

I reckon you are just a weird fantasist who fits every bit of new information around his own pre-conceived narrative and accuses anybody who exposes his childish fantasy world of “grudges” and “chips” (this really is shorthand for “I am a middleclass prick” -and I’m not really needing to guess at this am I?)

Honestly! Get yourself together – you come over as a complete tosser!

By the way anyone wanting to play “spot the pseudo-leftists” thrashing about wildly in pain might like to check where on this thread I even mentioned the working class before Tag and Rodent decided to stage a version of Coriolanus starring myself as “Brutus: Tribune of the People, a champion of the people, appointed to protect the rights of plebeians!” and no doubt themselves as the nice (and very much not completely batty) Roman emperors.

Once again , you couldn’t make it up. (Nor the bit about mentioning Rodent and he will appear!)

Graham, don’t confuse the asshole with facts!

I mean, the delusional twit calls me a Tory for some bizarre reason, AND thinks this is an insult – ROFLMAO!

Did I not say for every Glaswegian citing “crime” as their reason for going to the SNP, another cited “Iraq”?

That would suggest that you thought that people were voting for the SNP because of Iraq wouldn’t it?

Well of course the problem with such people (particularly Tag and the RCP posse) is that they actually would like to be tories but:

a) Do not want to leave the comfort of the left where they feel they have some sort of mainline into the moral highground

and

b) Feel that the real tories may not be as easily blackmailed as the real left by their emotive diarrhea (as in “don’t you feel responsible for Iraq/Labour losing a seat/my uncomfortable feeling that I am actually a right winger.)

They really are between a rock and a hard place and in some ways it is no wonder they vent their frustrations on the net.

Very nicely put, Graham ;-)

Feel fre to imagine up a scenario in which Glaswegians are so stupid that they have only just realised that a war started.

Bugger if I know, I just know what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. Maybe the interviewers kept going out onto the street to take vox pops on SWP day or something – they certainly weren’t interlopers from Bearsden and Milngavie. It’s in the accent.

Let’s look back a bit here…

FR – Do you seriously think that ordinary people are even aware of half the issues discussed here?

G – Er yes I do actually

Presumably they just skip the posts on Iraq, since they don’t care about that, and go straight for the ones about Seumas Milne and the Muslim Council of Great Britain.

As for the assumptions, your first mention of me on this thread is as part of the middle-class Marxist right, and here you are clattering on about an ignorant middle-class “lefty” loony who is so out of touch with reality and a middleclass prick.

I reckon you are just a weird fantasist who fits every bit of new information around his own pre-conceived narrative.

Who knows, that’s as may be – I’m nobody’s Confucius. OTOH, I’m not the one insisting that the general public aren’t interested in Iraq, but that they are just shocked, shocked! at the nasty way the STWC protested a war they don’t care about; nor am I babbling about “vanguards”, “right-wing Marxists”, “the loony left” and an elitist media that seems to run the full gamut between one Guardian journalist and another.

I mean, you can see how that might look a bit odd, right? I mention it since I see you’re now rattling about people who vent their frustrations on the net

Presumably they just skip the posts on Iraq, since they don’t care about that, and go straight for the ones about Seumas Milne and the Muslim Council of Great Britain.

What exactly do you consider to be an “ordinary person” and why do you not consider yourself to be one?

As for the assumptions, your first mention of me on this thread is as part of the middle-class Marxist right, and here you are clattering on about an ignorant middle-class “lefty” loony who is so out of touch with reality and a middleclass prick.

I see no contradiction between calling you part of the Marxist right and putting “lefty” in quotation marks in order to call attention to the irony.

I’m not the one insisting that the general public aren’t interested in Iraq

I think it is very difficult to believe that many people are interested in Iraq now. There really do (compared to a few years back) only seem to be a few people desperately trying to insist that they are – although you would be chief amongst them here. Maybe some were interested before the STWC totally fucked up a mass movement by insisting that they knew far better than “ordinary” people how to run a campaign against the war.

Didn’t quite come off that did it? Probably a lesson for you there

I mean, you can see how that might look a bit odd, right?

Er certainly not in the context of here I hear much worse daily although “loony left” seems a bit of an eighties throwback (where do I mention that then? When supporting Ken maybe?)

Here’s a bit of advice – your insults might work better if you didn’t always have to over-egg things by inventing something out of thin air (come to think of it this might help your political outlook in general!)

where do I mention that then?

11:59, although to be fair it’s “lefty” loony instead.

What exactly do you consider to be an “ordinary person” and why do you not consider yourself to be one?

People who don’t spend hours arsing about political blogs on the internet. Given that most people don’t and the deserved rep of those of us that do is that we’re appalling geeks, it’s not much of a claim to fame. Pick a random Briton and I’ll guarantee you they won’t know who any of the people on a blogroll are.

I think it is very difficult to believe that many people are interested in Iraq now.

Really? I’m not arguing that people are going to storm Westminster here, just that there’s a lot more anger, disappointment and disillusionment out there than you allow. I think it was an Emperor’s-New-Clothes moment for a large number of people, and that large, hairy New Labour arse has just been more and more embarrassingly visible with every passing year.

Plus, AFAICS, nobody has a clue who the STWC are, and by and large they never have – hell, I didn’t at the time, and I read every newspaper that’s dropped in front of me. It really smacks of a kind of ideological blindness to believe that there’s any serious popular resentment for a small bunch of no-marks, and that the government’s unpopularity has just blown up out of nowhere.

I see no contradiction between calling you part of the Marxist right and putting “lefty” in quotation marks in order to call attention to the irony.

No, you don’t, do you? It’s quite sad, really, but it explains why all of these pro-war left blogs only ever link to each other and to nutters like Melanie P.

Graham, FR is right – the majority of people who opposed the war neither knew or cared who was running the STWC. They didn’t suddenly stop protesting against the war because they were appalled by the antics of the STWC, they did so because the war went ahead anyway, despite their protests. They realised they had lost and there was no point continuing to try and prevent something which had already happened.
However, the war has left a deep and long lasting legacy of resentment and mistrust against the government and it is undoubtedly still hurting Labour. Of course there are other issues which have come to the fore since and I can’t comment on Glasgow East but it is still a contributor to the general mistrust that people have of the government.

11:59, although to be fair it’s “lefty” loony instead.

So totally not something with the same resonance as “loony left” then? (A comment on an individual in fact.)

So people who are not ordinary are people who comment on political blogs? Very odd. I would certainly like to see a lot more “ordinary” people commenting here

just that there’s a lot more anger, disappointment and disillusionment out there than you allow.

If there is then it is not something I come across living in inner-London and teaching all around the city. I only come across it on here where privileged access to the back stairs allows me to see that any anger about iraq is these days confined to about three or four people using a myriad of names.

As for the STWC the point surely is that they COULD have made more of a difference but didn’t, so therefore your anger would be better directed against the people who failed to either stop the war or keep a mass movement together than against a blog where (some – and it was only some) contributors supported the war.

but it explains why all of these pro-war left blogs only ever link to each other and to nutters like Melanie P.

yada yada blah blah bullshit to make yourself feel better….

Andrew. I think rather it is something that certain sections of the left feel needs to contribute to the “general mistrust that people have of the government”. Personally I think that many people feel let down by “other things” and I am old enough to have seen “party fatigue” kick in before. On the STWC see above – if I said that I came across people who wanted to so much as talk about Iraq in my daily life I would be lying.

Flying rodent calls Melanie P. a nutter – now I know that he is on the run from a closed institution.

“if I said that I came across people who wanted to so much as talk about Iraq in my daily life I would be lying”

Ditto.

As for the STWC the point surely is that they COULD have made more of a difference but didn’t, so therefore your anger would be better directed against the people who failed to either stop the war or keep a mass movement together than against a blog where (some – and it was only some) contributors supported the war.

It wasn’t the STWC who failed to stop the war, it was ALL of us who opposed it who failed. Maybe there was more that we could have done, although I don’t see offhand what and there were only 33 days between the mass demonstrations and the start of the war. Sometimes you just have to accept that you did your best and lost. But if you are right and we could have made more of a difference then we all have to take responsibility for that – the STWC were never as significant as many of their critics (and they themselves) think.

Personally I don’t come across many people who insist on talking about Iraq (thankfully), but I don’t think that most people who opposed the war, and some of those who reluctantly supported it, have ever forgiven the government for it, even if they don’t bang on about it at every opportunity. I don’t claim it’s the only reason for mistrust in Labour, or that there is not an element of party fatigue in the mix as well. Clearly there is widespread dissatisfaction with the government for a number of reasons and different people will weigh the various factors differently. It’s just my judgement that there is a lot of quiet resentment out there.

Flying rodent calls Melanie P. a nutter – now I know that he is on the run from a closed institution.

Oh come on. Whatever you think of FR, Mel P. is an absolute fruitcake.

It wasn’t the STWC who failed to stop the war, it was ALL of us who opposed it who failed.

No I don’t think that is true. Without the proper leadership which was needed an anti-war teenager in a bedsit in Sunderland was totally powerless despite having millions in agreement. The STWC got themselves in the position of being the leadership but then let you all down. You could argue that others (such as Tony Benn perhaps) should have taken more responsibility but the KEY thing is that Rees, Galloway et all became the face of the anti-war movement. Whether pro or anti-war there is a lesson to be learnt as to how campaigns are handled in future so such disasters are avoided.

Mel P. is an absolute fruitcake.

never bothered reading her – I presumed she was a watered-down version of Old Peculier.

Bahahahahahaha

This is so hilarious. It’s funny to see Graham and Nearly Oxfordian make complete idiots of themselves.

“You are” or “You’re” Tags”

Going after people’s spelling mistakes is a true sign of desparation Graham. I believe it was you who called it “middle-class pedantry” in an earlier thread. It seems even Graham doesn’t believe in his drivel.

“You merely repeated what I said about you because could not respond with anything original Tags (as usual.)”

I couldn’t come up a better description of you than your insult towards me. Looking at our posts, it is obvious it is you who posts the same tired crap all the time.

“You are making my original point on this thread about empty pseudo-left bleating for me….”

What original point, you constantly change positions on issues when you lose the argument

“Or (alternatively, and like Tags, Rodent and the two others) one can be an ignorant middle-class “lefty” loony who is so out of touch with reality that they really think both that the working-classes back them as a vanguard (guffaw!)”

Um, I’m not a member of any “vanguardist” party, and I certainly don’t think that the “working classes (as if they were some monolithic bloc)” back up what I say. Also…I didn’t know you were psychic and know much money me or my parents make in a year. I think it’s sad and desperate when people claim the “working class” back up their positions, whether they be the loony left “vanguardist” parties, or graham.

“I see that illiterate lefty airhead tossers think there is still some mileage to be had from the moronic ‘insult’ of ‘middle class’.
One can be middle class and know a lot more about the world than an ignorant lefty loony such as yourself, Tag.”

I KNOW “NearlyOxfordian”. It’s Graham that uses the insult of “middle class” whenever he loses arguments. Are you illiterate!!!???

I find it interesting that Graham portrays himself as an “ordinary guy” who goes after stupidity wherever it lies, but ignores stupid comments made by people who agree with him. How pathetic.

I couldn’t come up a better description of you than your insult towards me.

Wel exactly (touche in many fewer words!)

Going after people’s spelling mistakes is a true sign of desparation Graham

What about going after their punctuation?

(No. This is just too cruel.)

“I couldn’t come up a better description of you than your insult towards me.
Wel exactly (touche in many fewer words!)”

That’s right Graham, when it comes to self-hatred and projection of your own shortcomings on to others, you leave me in the dust. Speaking of which, this post….

“Well of course the problem with such people…..is that they actually would like to be tories but:
a) Do not want to leave the comfort of the left where they feel they have some sort of mainline into the moral highground and
b) Feel that the real tories may not be as easily blackmailed as the real left by their emotive diarrhea…..They really are between a rock and a hard place and in some ways it is no wonder they vent their frustrations on the net.”

…is a perfect description of Harry’s Place. You really are your own worst enemy Graham.

Nice to see NearlyOxfordian getting it wrong again.

What I’m trying to say is that HP commenters, as a group, do not respond well to opinions that differ significantly from their own – more often than not, they react quite violently

WHat’s interesting about this statement is not just how it utterly ignores the fact that many regular HP commenters have opinions which differ significantly – within the (ill-defined) “group”.

Nor is it Rodent’s refusal to specify, despite being asked, who makes up this “group”? Ie: DOes it include DavidT? SO Muffin? Metaculture? Benjamin? Morgoth? Field?

No. The most interesting thing is that Rodent seems to actually believe that other Blogs and their “commenters” behave otherwise.

Like Aaronavitch Watch? Yep – tons of cordial exchanging of differing opinions there!

Or Crooked Timber – where John Quiggin bans people who object when some of their regular commenters state, without reservation, that pre-war Baathist Iraqi society was “stable”.

I mean there’s whole sections of the Blogging world dedicated solely to mock and dismiss the liberal-left interventionism that would loosely define what binds HP’s “commenters” as a “group”.

Please, Rodent, at least be serious. Stop hiding your opinions by only ever airing them in echo chambers.

The Children of Beslan documentary is here, this is part 3. The section in which John P. is talking about the woman with the suicide-bomb strapped to her is on part 2.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=QdmQ5S6K6UE&feature=related

Sorry, “about which John P. is talking”. John doesn’t appear in the documentary, as far as I know.

Tags as a political commenter you would make a great parrot!

“I don’t think that most people who opposed the war, and some of those who reluctantly supported it, have ever forgiven the government for it”

Beyond dumb, as you would expect from airhead loony Islingtonites. Those of us who supported it have nothing TO forgive.

But then, this tit thinks that MP is a fruitcake. ..

The Tag thinks I ‘got it wrong’ … pity it’s parents.

Graham, I recommend MP. She can be infuriating, and I disagree with her on certain issues, but she gets a lot of things more right than any of her pusillanimous colleagues in pressland and cyberland.

WHat’s interesting about this statement is not just how it utterly ignores the fact that many regular HP commenters have opinions which differ significantly – within the (ill-defined) “group”.

Exactly. Whilst every possible centimetre of distance is put between himself and the Leninist STWC (who’s “blame anyone but us” attitude he at least shares) the entire commentariat and all posters at HP are lumped together as a “violent” group who pick on poor Ratty.

There is a certain amount of self-absorption at work here which seems to be found amongst many of the people who invested a lot of time and energy in the “anti-war” movement and seem to feel they are entitled to something from the rest of us.

There is a certain amount of self-absorption at work here which seems to be found amongst many of the people who invested a lot of time and energy in the “anti-war” movement and seem to feel they are entitled to something from the rest of us.

Even if that were so it wouldn’t justify the war in Iraq. To find nut-jobs on any side of any issue doesn’t negate the arguments of all who opposed the war in Iraq, which is something that this blog often energetically attemps to do.

And is entitled to do. The anti-war sector chose (!) to throw in its lot with demented antisemites, to put it mildly. Sorry, but you can’t expect the rest of us to simply forget this.

which is something that this blog often energetically attemps to do.

You see this is completely untrue. When the Iraq war actually was a live issue (rather than the nostalgic raison d’être of one or two people who know very little about anything else there were many intelligent opponents of the war here (and a couple of anti-war posters too.)

So nonsense basically.

And is entitled to do. The anti-war sector chose (!) to throw in its lot with demented antisemites, to put it mildly. Sorry, but you can’t expect the rest of us to simply forget this.

Everyone who opposed the war were anti-semites? Or they all, en masse, chose to ally with anti-semites? This is nonsense.

Graham, I had never even heard of this site when it was a live issue, so I don’t know what was going on then. But I won’t be tarred with the anti-Semite brush. If you are going to do that then you may as well say that you threw your lot in with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who wrote a letter to thank George W. Bush for getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Or with Moqtadar al-Sadr whose goons were cheering during the hanging of Saddam Hussein.

Anyway, I am glad you can appreciate that there was intelligent and principled opposition to the war which contradicts Neo-Oxfordian, who says they’re just a bunch of anti-semitic scum.

Devil

I would not worry unduly about being tarred with the anti-semite brush (as you put it) that is something which has happened to many of us (often at the same time that we are being called “zionazis” or something equally charming by those on the other side of the argument.) Israel/Palestine is one issue which a single word can get you into trouble here (though that is not to say there have not been good debates on that subject.)

There certainly were intelligent and principled opponents of the war and some of the debates at that time and on that subject were extremely thought-provoking.

Israel/Palestine is one issue which a single word can get you into trouble here (though that is not to say there have not been good debates on that subject.)

That’s right and for the record I think that Israel/Palestine is peripheral at most to the war in Iraq.

There certainly were intelligent and principled opponents of the war and some of the debates at that time and on that subject were extremely thought-provoking.

Which makes it a shame that those who stuck around here are for the most part interested in slinging insults and not interested in any serious debate, it seems.

Indeed devil – especially as it has been made quite plain over the past few months as to how easy it would be to get a guest post up here.

Even if that were so it wouldn’t justify the war in Iraq. >/i>

To find nut-jobs on any side of any issue doesn’t negate the arguments of all who opposed the war in Iraq,

Of course not.

Which is why neither myself nor Graham ever suggested otherwise.

(are you beginning to see a pattern here?)

which is something that this blog often energetically attemps to do.

For fuck’s sake – this is so predictable it’s gone beyond boring, and become satire…

You are a flat out liar “the devil”.

You might not even realise this. But you are.

Unless you can back up that last statement with evidence.

Go on. Try.

No idea who the hell ‘Old Labour’ is, r why s/he is using a link to our website, but s/he has no connection to marxist.org.uk.