Harry's Place

I think andy’s article may have been more an attempt to spark debate.

Which to be fair it has done

Newman is positively reasonable compared to the other awful chap, but I have noticed he seems to be a genuinely great believer in the Chinese ‘Communist’ experiment.

He could actually earn a fortune acting as a mouthpiece for the Chinese regime.

The difference, of course, is that no one imagines today that China is a socialist country, whereas it was possible to think in 1946 that the USSR was a socialist country, if a rather unpleasant one.

I’ve always thought of HP in general and Gene in particular as being mature, considered and free from the gullible naiveté of the undergraduate left.

Now we’re supposed to be surprised that Andy Newman regards the five year economic plan and the electrification of the Chinese Republic as justifying a bit of repression and murder.

Of course he regards murdering people at the behest of the state for political reasons as acceptable. Why wouldn’t he?

Now we’re supposed to be surprised that Andy Newman regards the five year economic plan and the electrification of the Chinese Republic as justifying a bit of repression and murder.

Who’s surprised?

Newman sounds more and more like Reg Birch on steroids, poor fellow, a shambles masquerading as politics.

Reg Birch. Lordy.

Whatever happened to the CPB ML?

“..the final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress. It may be my Presbyterian background, but I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good. Stamp hard on certain ‘natural’ beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off.” Andrew Marr

Were they the Albanian communists?

Whatever happened to the CPB ML?

They stored grain, they accepted no hegemony and fought where they were.

Whatever happened to the CPB ML?

As Wikipedia helpfully points out, you must not confuse it with CPGB ML.

Yes they were after the last the Chinese franchise

They were known it is alledged as the goaties

“Whatever happened to the CPB ML?”

Rumour has it that they are living in Comrade Newman’s garden shed.

Looking at their current web site

http://www.workers.org.uk/

they looking like a stalinist version of UKIP

A bit of as disappointment as I would hope they would still have pics of reg and enver but there you go

That being said I’d give them a membership of say three? If anyone on their cc would like to comment otherwise please let me know

They deserve some cattle prodding and exposure in a freezing cell – see how they like it.

In terms of material development, Taiwan wins hands down.

In terms of China being a large country, one might also say that the British Empire was also large and difficult to rule.

The Han Chinese are one of the most homogeneous peoples on earth. I think they make up something like 80% of the population. If they gave up trying to rule the minority peoples in their Empire they would have no trouble. As it is, they are clearly in contravention of UN treaties on genocide.

Hmm looking at people like this, one of my 81 year old mum’s favourite expressions springs to mind: “I wouldn’t give them the steam off my piss”

Gene,

Glad you brought up the Costa Rica example. It blows my mind that “leftists” still apologize for Castro and hold up the Cuban police state as spmething to be “proud” of when Costa Rica has the same if not higher levels of health care and education then Cuba and they have managed to do that all with out Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, discrimination against gays and dark skinned Cubans, supression of free speech and a bloated military that runs the country.

Field: “The Han Chinese are one of the most homogeneous peoples on earth. I think they make up something like 80% of the population.”

They are so culturally similar that some 600 million Han don’t even speak mandarin – the difference between the different linguistic cultures is at least as great as that between say France and Germany.

I think what you mean by saying they are homogenous, is that they all look alike to you.

‘the difference between the different linguistic cultures is at least as great as that between say France and Germany.’

Care to provide some evidence for this claim?

Speaking of China, for those of you who have time this Summer, I want to suggest a magisterial history by Jonathan Fenby. It’s called _Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power_ a very comprehensive, fair-minded, and well-written text.

I just finished it. And my overall impression is: wow, what a brutal, chaotic century and a half for China! I would agree with Andy Newman’s point that China is a profoundly difficult country to govern. Nevertheless I would hesitate to otherwise accept any of his CCP apologetics.

Gordon Brown probably thinks the UK ‘is a profoundly difficult country to govern’.

That there is inconsistency and flip-flopping among the British far left regarding minority rights and national autonomy/independence is unsurprising. Some movements are apparently worth supporting (e.g. Palestinians, Kurds) and some aren’t (e.g. Chechens, Uighurs). It depends on who the oppressors (in the eyes of leftists) are: regional hegemons with a long imperial history but with recent experiences of Marxist forms of government (e.g. Russia, China) get a free pass, while newer states formed from the ruins of empires (e.g. Turkey, Israel) are constantly slammed. I think the most effective response to such contradictory attitudes is to ignore the childlike minds that produce them. To paraphrase Anthony’s Lane’s brilliant one-liner on Demi Moore:

What is the point of Andy Newman?

@Bob-B: lol!

He does, doesn’t he? From where I sit ‘across the pond’ it seems like it’s been a terribly stressful period for old Gordon…

Andy Newman –

Bull – I was talking about their culture. From Wikipedia:

“Spoken Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, although all spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between seven and thirteen main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Min (70 million) and Cantonese (70 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. Chinese is classified as a macrolanguage with 13 sub-languages in ISO 639-3, though the identification of the varieties of Chinese as multiple “languages” or as “dialects” of a single language is a contentious issue.”

That’s 850 million speaking the same language – the largest concentration of a language group in a contiguous area on the planet. That’s why I said they were homogenous. They are certainly more homogenous culturally than French and Germans.

Ganselmi –

Why, if the Chinese (a) gave up trying to rule Tibetans, Uighurs, Mongols and other minorities (b) adopted representative democracy and (c) dismantled the privileges of the Communist establishment, do you think the country woudl be difficult to rule? There’s no evidence for that. The evidence from Taiwan and Singapore is that the Chinese are perfectly well able to rule themselves when freed of dictatorship.

Actually the word “concrete” (not so different in Spanish also) was a joke between me and some of my mates when I was doing the first years of my undergraduate in History. Whenever we did not know what to write in our papers, we used that word.

field,

I would hope folks would know me by now as a huge advocate of democracy and human rights for folks in my homeland (Iran). And if I speak up for democracy and human rights in Iran, it’s not because I believe that Iranians are uniquely entitled to these things, but because I believe them to be universal values and aspirations. Therefore, I would whole heartedly agree that the Chinese government should implement (a), (b), and (c).

That said, it’s an empirical rather than normative judgment that I — and many others — would make in suggesting that, given the country’s sheer size, enormous population, unequal distribution of wealth, extensive ethno-sectarian diversity, uneven levels of literacy, etc. etc., China would be a difficult country to govern be it by a totalitarian regime or the most liberal democracy.

Also, field, you can’t draw parallels between China and Singapore, which is a far more homogenous city-state with a population of 4 million. Not to mention the fact that Singapore is from a liberal democracy to begin with. Actually it’s an free market autocracy. (Remember, this is a country where you are flogged for spitting your gum out by the sidewalk!)

Ha ha! field, you are comically ill-informed. Singapore! Get thee to the Wikis!

Let’s just say that the Chinese police will respond differently to muslim provocation than say, the Metropolitan Police. I reckon the Chinese police would be more ‘assertive’ – and why not?

Dictatorship of the proletariat is a marketing scam that transforms wage earning folk into a cash cow for a snake oil selling cult of miserable self styled revolutionaries, whose contemporary British analogue are incapable of running even a Whelk Stall never mind delivering improvements – concrete or otherwise – for workers or indeed peasants. China only lifted their hundreds of millions out of poverty by shafting workers in the West and in South Asia – the latter for instance lost out its clothing manufacturing

Plenty of material in that thread, but I thought this summed it up:

“171. Terry Smith:

“Defend Beijing’s capitalist clique which has brought about this slaughter by all means. Shame that the mass murder of the Muslims is no longer a concern on this site.”

Murder has never been a concern here, really. Defending untenable ‘orthodox’ ideology is the name of the game. That takes some real moral and logical gymnastics!

Comment by Mick — 10 July, 2009 @ 7:59 pm”"

I think what you mean by saying they are homogenous, is that they all look alike to you.

Andy, yours was and is a political party which has feasted on creating ethnic and religious conflict between previously co-existing groups in this country, as well as courting abroad the foulest religious reactionaries and inhumane killers since the likes of Mao or the Khmer Rouge.

You are the last person who should accuse others of courting racism.

“Commies love concrete! Commies love concrete, but they don’t know how to make it. Concrete is a mixture of cement, gravel and straw? No? Gravel, water and wood pulp? Water, potatoes and lard?

The concrete runway at Warsaw’s Miedzynarodowy airport is coming to pieces. From bumpy landing until bumpy take-off, you spend your time in Poland looking at bad concrete.”

P.J. O’Rourke from Holidays in Hell

This Chinese Uighur issue is a real “splitter” for the Far Left “resistance” Junkies. This will make them look like a gang of credulous, impudent, ideologically bigoted fools. Oh sorry, sorry, “will make them look EVEN more like a gang of credulous, impudent, ideologically bigoted fools”

Far Left Brain Cell 1 Logic (right cerebral hemisphere) = Muslim resistance against the Imperialist Zionist Crusader Alliance = Good, very, very, ecstatically Good.

Far Left Brain Cell 2 Logic (left cerebral hemisphere) = Muslim resistance against Chinese Proletariat progressives = Bad, very, very, very depressingly Bad.

Who cares what the Far Left Think, They are finished, they just don’t Know it yet. The Islamist/Far Left alliance, what a fuck up, whoever thought that was a good Idea must be really, really intelligent, a real “Left wing” political genius, I bet they still have their betamax tape of “an assholes guide to proletariat progress” the special Stalin/Mao limited edition.

Reality -

Chinese suppress nationalists in critical north-western province. Nationalists happen to be Muslims as well.

Manchester school exclude 14-year-old boy for having a moustache. Boy happens to be a Muslim as well.

Islamist-speak:

Chinese suppress Muslims in critical north-western province. Muslims happen to be nationalists as well.

Manchester school exclude 14-year-old boy for being a Muslim. Boy happens to have a moustache as well.

Firms like Corus and Diageo are paying off thousands all over the country. This was supposed to be the white-collar recession – the first recession in modern history to brutalise those who most benefited from the boom years, but yet again it’s the little guy who’s getting punted onto the dole queue. Neither Britain nor, terrifyingly, America have made any moves towards restructuring the system that not only fucked the planet’s economy, but demanded and was granted insane, generation-fucking quantities of taxpayer cash to sustain itself in its current bloodsucking form.

It’s with that in mind that I ask, why the hell should the British left take any a position on Xinjiang at all, since it’s an issue Britons can’t affect in any way? Whatever will happen there will happen, because the Chinese don’t care what anyone says and we can’t force them to listen.

Hell, let me dig out my copy of Nixonland, since I’m quoting it at anyone who will listen right now…

Speaking to ADA in 1965, (Hubert Humphrey) had delivered the liberal-hawk case for Vietnam: “This is the clearest lesson of our time. From Munich until today we have learned that to yield to aggression brings only greater threats”… Arthur Schlesinger had replied, “Hubert, that’s shit and you know it.” Hubert said he didn’t remember Arthur saying that when he was working under JFK, when the commitment to Vietnam began… This is what Vietnam was doing to the Democratic Party: people who agreed about 98% of everything else were throwing schoolyard taunts at one another.”

SU & HP = Get a room, guys.

Note: Anyone using this to pass ironic comment on anyone’s opinion on Israel/Palestine is reminded that few, if any, of us knew where Xinjiang was this time last month.

Flying Rodent:

‘It’s with that in mind that I ask, why the hell should the British left take any a position on Xinjiang at all, since it’s an issue Britons can’t affect in any way?’

Leon Trotsky:

‘Indignant protest against unbridled behaviour by men armed with machine guns, rifles, and bayonets was required for our own moral self-defence. An individual, a group, a party or a class that is capable of “objectively” picking its nose while it watches men drunk with blood, and incited from above, massacring defenceless people is condemned by history to rot and become worm-eaten while it is still alive. On the other hand, a party or a class that rises up against every abominable action wherever it has occurred, as vigorously and unhesitatingly as a living organism reacts to protect its eyes when they are threatened with external injury – such a party or class is sound at heart.’

Note: Anyone using this to pass ironic comment on anyone’s opinion on Israel/Palestine [...]

Ah, in his prusuit of totalitarian control of language, Rodent once again constructs a position of complete amoral indifference which he demands, *requires* everyone else to adhere to to make his own position look less disgraceful.

is reminded that few, if any, of us knew where Xinjiang was this time last month

Speak for yourself. There are some people who don’t base their opinions on opposing whatever they believe a webpage to represent and, in actual fact, have an interest in their brethren and sistren.

You’re a disgrace.

‘few, if any, of us knew where Xinjiang was this time last month.’

Flying Rodent believes that the conflict in Xinjiang is a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.

“‘few, if any, of us knew where Xinjiang was this time last month.’”

I did.

Anaximanders other sandal

So did I. So did quite a few on this site, I would wager.

Xinjiang is part of the slightly upmarket post hippie trail

Bus from Islamabad/Rawalpindi to Gilgit then to Sust and thence to Taskkurgan and Kashgar and so to Urumchi and Turfan. Right?
Some of us did O-Level Geography, too.

That’s a brilliant and entirely apposite quote from Trotsky, Marko.

Were they the Albanian communists?

No. They were the RCP(M-L).

Were they the Albanian communists?

No. They were the RCPB(M-L).

Flying Rodent believes that the conflict in Xinjiang is a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.

I believe that the Chinese Communist Part is completely indifferent to the opinion of narky middle-aged Brits, and that the British government could exert itself to the full extent of its abilities without having any effect at all on the situation.

I also think narky, middle-aged Brits generally know little about the region and less about its politics, and that Xinjiang functions like pretty much any other issue round these parts – i.e. as a stick to beat dissenters.

Hell, I could have any number of opinions on the matter, but I’d struggle to find a less noble motive than that.

I fear that Flying Rodent’s view of the world is closer to Neville Chamberlain’s than leon Trotsky.

I just got a ‘friend-suggestion’ on Facebook: Andy Newman.

Don’t think I will respond.

I fear that Flying Rodent’s view of the world is closer to Neville Chamberlain’s than leon Trotsky.

What exactly does this mean in the context of China and the Uighurs? Are the Chinese Hitler? What to you think that a modern Churchill should do about the situation? I mean, is bumping your gums on the internet now an act of Churchillian bravery, or do you actually have to start pushing counters around a map of the world like you were playing Risk?

I don’t know why I even ask, because the answer’s apparent already. This kind of stuff is kneejerk wibble with all the intellectual and practical content of a chihuahua barking at the postman.

The description of the CPB ML as a Stalinist UKIP is both very funny and accurate.

The RCPB M-L continue to amaze with their obnoxious support for North Korea and friendship with the doddery gimmers of the NCP, whilst espousing the views of the utterly mad, late Hardial Bains.

Neither should be confused with the family-party of the Great Helmsman of Nowhere, Harpal Brar, the CPGB M-L,. whose “internationalism” is so extensive that it includes support for Mugabe’s rule in Zimbabwe, North Korea and a laughable “Hands off China” campaign.

Thank you, Ermintrude

The Fascist-Stalinist left are good at doing somersaults – so long as the ideology fits, it doesn’t matter what happens to people. They move from islamophilia to the slaughter of muslims without any trouble.

China is a totalitarian state, a colonizer of Tibet and cannot be justified in any way.

Either Leon Trotsky was completely out of date or more up to date than he realised:

“An individual, a group, a party or a class that is capable of “objectively” picking its nose while it watches men drunk with blood, and incited from above, massacring defenceless people is condemned by history to rot and become worm-eaten while it is still alive.”

This is a perfect description already of the Leninist regime. When, under Lenin’s rule, vandals rampaged through middle class streets pillaging and malteating people, his wife asked him, “Shouldn’t we stop this.” His reply was, “No, let them carry on.” (Lenin by Robert Service, London, MacMillan 2000)

Under Stalin the people who really believed in the communist ideal were sent to Siberia and killed. (Autobiography of Maya Plissetskaya – her father disappeared forever after refusing falsley to incriminate a comrade).

I have been desperately wooed in Verona by a Leninist group. You’d think they’d take one look at me and and decide I was not for them, but no, they even offered to fetch me by car for meetings – there office is just down the road – so they must have been desperately short of supporters. When I told them what a monster Lenin had been and mentioned R. Luxemburg’s critiques, they became hostile. Luxemburg failed, they told me, because she didn’t obey Lenin’s instructions.

A taste of Trotskyism: I knew friends of friends in London who were Trots and they were due to be put on an internal trial, which would decide whether they were to be thrown out or not. What amazed me is that they went to the trial. If this is the way they behave….well we have had plenty of evidence on HP.

For lack of time I can’t go into the correctness of Marx’s critique of capitalism, and what could be done about it now.

When Marx was at the height of one of his revolutionary fervours in 1848, he, much to the surprise of his followers, disowned his association with the communists, because he thought the middle class revolution had to come first. (See Service’s book above).

In the 1840’s there was a flourishing middle class culture in music and poetry in Germany and elsewhere.. To have destroyed all that would have been a catastrophe, especially as the artists were instinctively following a self-critical dialectic against their own class, which is still invaluable today.Aristocratic culture was absorbed and gradually transformed by the middle class revolution. The aristocrats themselves adopted middle class style, the replacement of heavy Baroque by Mozartian lightness and grace. The next transition from middle class to popular has, as itwere been sliced off. to Meanwhile communist newspapers support only pop music, which is an entirely commercial capitalist product, spawning millionaires. Marketable exchange value rules over all.

The whole prospect of change for the better has to be radically rethought.

Maybe the Communists and others haven’t woken up to the fact that Marx was perfectly right in his prediction of the inevitability of last revolution, and that we are indeed living under the dictatorship of the proletariat, bedevilled by the invisible monster of capitalism… certainly not as he envisioned it.

This kind of stuff is kneejerk wibble with all the intellectual and practical content of a chihuahua barking at the postman.

Hang on, is this the scroat who writes/wrote Dickipedia?

HP is littered with examples of your and Manky Muscular’s ‘mocking’ the site, authors, commenters and anyone who disagrees with Rodent as obsessing about named conflicts (Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel) when there were others elsewhere in the world. I even recall your constructing an alternative history in which China was deemed the principle threat, and ‘Decents’ swinging in action calling for strikes on Beijing.

Now, opportunity knocks with Diageo and, like only a deranged MA graduate working for Edinburgh City Council can, you become misty-eyed over distillery workers and start shrieking about anyone daring to express on a blog sympathy for foreigners.

Please. Just. Fuck. Off.

I was about to pen a comment but was interrupted by watching the BBC 2 programme on Robespierre tonight. In short, how I’d love to see the deranged radicals on this thread devoured by their own Frankenstein revolutions.

“What exactly does this mean in the context of China and the Uighurs? Are the Chinese Hitler? What to you think that a modern Churchill should do about the situation?”

It means that you have a politically parochial view of the world, limited, narrow, also like Chamberlain.

‘I also think narky, middle-aged Brits generally know little about the region and less about its politics, and that Xinjiang functions like pretty much any other issue round these parts – i.e. as a stick to beat dissenters.’

Flying Rodent doesn’t have a problem with brutal foreign regimes oppressing their people. He has a problem with Brits who object to this and seek to publicise it, or who speak up for the victims. It’s not the Chinese Communist tyrants who are the bad guys, but their British critics.

He feels the world would be a much better place if people in this country would just keep their mouths shut, and let brutal foreign regimes get on with the business of oppressing their people in peace.

Unless it’s Israel.

MAH’s quote from Trotsky is a nice one, but it is mostly right in a theoretical sense. We can and should care less about people far away about whom we know little. If the French tell us they were hard done by in voting rights in the expanded EU we can judge that because we know more about the situation and the people involved. If the Pakistanis tell us they are hard done by in the Kashmir dispute, we can judge that less well because most of us do know little – although we know some because of colonialism. If the people of Kyrghyzystan want us to intervene in a dispute between two clan groups vying for power, few of us are going to be well informed.

The less we know, the more we are likely to judge incorrectly.

As for the Chinese, they reject the idea that linguistic diversity means they are not one people. In fact many of them get upset at the idea the Cantonese are not Chinese. Isn’t it a little patronising, or even Imperialist dare I say it?, to insist that our methods of measuring ethnic difference ought to apply to people who use other methods?

Marko, I don’t think Rodent has a real problem with Israel. He has a Westphalian fetish but, above all, a *real* problem with Harry’s Place.

He’s a complete and utter fucking nutter.