Posted by Dirty Bull on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 09:01 | #

IN my humble opinion Adolf Hitler’s German National Socialism of the 1930s got every just right - economics, race policy etc.
It was the best system of national organisation ever devised by the mind of man.
It’s just a pity that the stupid bastard (Hitler) had to ruin it all by attacking Russia rather than England.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 11:56 | #

He did attack England, DB.  He lost.  The date was September 15th, 1940.  After that, the Wehrmacht could not invade England any more than the British Expeditionary Force could invade France again.  It was stalemate, and both sides set about bombing the other into submission, according to the Trenchard Doctrine.

Posted by Andy on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 19:17 | #

yes exactly we are in a neo liberal state, This contradiction is paralleled by the ever greater asymmetries in the power relations between corporations and ordinary individuals in both the workplace and our living space (or life-world) I really liked this line very much great article posted..thanks

Posted by Desmond Jones on Sun, 03 Jul 2011 03:31 | #

The most obvious basis for a collective subject is the nation.

The problem is the nation-state destroys racial consciousness. Boulainvilliers outlines how the conquering Frankish aristocracy was sublimated to the nation-state. The Pan-Germanism of WWI & II triumphed over Nordicism. The nation-state will suppress racial consciousness because like religion it threatens state power.

Fichte touched upon the issue during Napoleonic occupation:

To them the other branches of the race, whom we now look upon as foreigners, but who by descent from them are our brothers, are indebted for their very existence. When our ancestors triumphed over Roma the eternal, not one of all these peoples was in existence, but the possibility of their existence in the future was won for them in the same fight.

Posted by Paul on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:41 | #

Off topic - more from Andrew Brons

http://birminghamnationalist2.blogspot.com/2011/07/andrew-brons-i-would-not-personally-bar.html

Posted by Ambitious Outsider on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 22:09 | #

Just got to love the genius of Morrissey

“Bengali, Bengali
It’s the touchy march of time that binds you
Don’t blame me
Don’t hate me
Just because I’m the one to tell you
That life is hard enough when you belong here
That life is hard enough when you belong here

Shelve your Western plans
Shelve your Western plans
‘Cause life is hard enough when you belong
Life is hard enough when you belong here”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qTY6-xKHpM

Posted by Leon Haller on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 22:49 | #

Wikipedia on Morrissey:

————————————————————————————————-

Morrissey has always been politically outspoken, directing his criticism at figures ranging from Oliver Cromwell, the British Royal Family, former British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair and former U.S. President George W. Bush. He has criticised both the two main political parties of the United Kingdom, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party.

In a 1984 interview, Morrissey spoke of the then-Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher: “She is only one person. She can be destroyed. It is the only remedy for this country at the moment.” Morrissey’s first solo album, Viva Hate, included a track entitled “Margaret on the Guillotine”, a tongue-in-cheek jab at Thatcher. British police responded by searching Morrissey’s home and carrying out an official investigation, while Simon Reynolds, who had interviewed Morrissey for Melody Maker, was questioned about the tone in which Morrissey had made certain remarks about Thatcher.[77]

At a Dublin concert in June 2004, Morrissey caused controversy by announcing the death of former US President, Ronald Reagan and stating that he would have preferred it if the then current President, George W. Bush, had died.[78] In October 2004, Morrissey released a statement urging American voters to vote for Democratic Party candidate John Kerry for President, calling this vote a “logical and sane move”. Morrissey opined that “Bush has single-handedly turned the United States into the most neurotic and terror-obsessed country on the planet.”[79]

In February 2006, Morrissey said he had been interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and by British intelligence after having spoken out against the American and British governments. Morrissey said that “They were trying to determine if I was a threat to the government, it didn’t take them long to realise that I am not.”[80] During a January 2008 concert Morrissey remarked “God Bless Barack Obama” and ranted against Hillary Clinton after a performance of “The World Is Full of Crashing Bores.”[81]

In December 2010, he publicly supported Johnny Marr, who had stated that he forbade British Prime Minister, David Cameron, from liking the Smiths. Morrissey added “I would like to, if I may, offer support to Johnny Marr who has spoken out to the media this week against David Cameron. David Cameron hunts and shoots and kills stags – apparently for pleasure. It was not for such people that either Meat Is Murder or The Queen Is Dead were recorded; in fact, they were made as a reaction against such violence”. In his statement, he also lambasted the British Royal Family, noting their continued violence toward animals (in their pursuit of hunting and their use of bearskin to make the hats of the British guards) and their utter irrelevance in British life. He referred to Prince William and his then fiancée Kate Middleton as “so dull as people that it is actually impossible to discuss them”.[82]

[edit]Accusations of racism

Morrissey was accused of racism throughout part of the 1980s and much of the 1990s, primarily due to the ambiguous lyrics in songs such as “Bengali in Platforms,” “Asian Rut” and “The National Front Disco,” the latter containing the lyric “England for the English.” These criticisms also stemmed from Johnny Rogan’s biography of the singer which claimed that, in his late teens, the singer wrote “I don’t hate Pakistanis, but I dislike them immensely.” In 2006 Liz Hoggard from The Independent argued that “Morrissey didn’t help his case with an uneasy flirtation with gangster imagery: he took up boxing and was accompanied everywhere by a skinhead, named Jake.” She claimed that the “man who abhorred violence became strangely fascinated by it.”[83] Encyclopædia Britannica argues that Morrissey’s 1990s albums, including Your Arsenal (1992), Vauxhall and I (1994), Southpaw Grammar (1995) and Maladjusted (1997) “testified to a growing homoerotic obsession with criminals, skinheads, and boxers, a change paralleled by a shift in the singer’s image from wilting wallflower to would-be thug sporting sideburns and gold bracelets.”[84]

A trigger for much of the criticism was Morrissey’s performance at the first Madness Madstock! reunion concert at Finsbury Park, London, in 1992, in which he appeared on stage draped in the Union Flag, often associated with nationalism and the British far-right. As a backdrop for this performance, he chose a photograph of two female skinheads. The British music magazine NME responded to this performance with a lengthy examination of Morrissey’s attitudes to race, claiming that the singer had “left himself in a position where accusations that he’s toying with far-right/fascist imagery, and even of racism itself, can no longer just be laughed off with a knowing quip.”[85]

In the early days of the Smiths, Morrissey stated that “all reggae is vile,” leading to the first reports of his alleged racism. He later explained that this was a tongue-in-cheek answer to “wind up the right-on 1980s NME” and that he grew up partly on the classic singles released by the British reggae label Trojan in the early to mid-1970s.[30][86] The Smiths’ “Panic,” released in July 1986, fades out with the refrain “hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ…” Rogan’s biography reports that initial critical response to this content was interpreted as distaste for the increasing influence of rap and R&B;over popular music at the time.

Morrissey has strongly rejected claims that he is racist, saying “If I am racist then the Pope is female. Which he isn’t,” and “If the National Front were to hate anyone, it would be me. I would be top of the list.” He qualified that by saying that far-right rage “is simply their anger at being ignored in what is supposed to be a democratic society.”[87] In the 2002 documentary, The Importance of Being Morrissey, he posits the question, “Why on earth would I be racist? What would I be trying to achieve?” In the film, he also takes issue with those who fail to discern the subtlety of his supposedly racist lyrics, stating that “Not everybody is absolutely stupid.”

In 1999, Morrissey commented on the rise of Austrian far-right politician Jörg Haider, stating “This is sad. Sometimes I don’t believe we live in an intelligent world.”[88] In 2004 he signed the Unite Against Fascism statement,[89] and in 2008 he made a personal donation of £75,000 to the organisers of the Love Music Hate Racism concert in Victoria Park, London, after the withdrawal of the NME’s sponsorship left the event facing a financial shortfall.[90][91]

In 2007, Morrissey sparked controversy by claiming British identity has disappeared because the country has been “flooded” by immigrants in his interview with NME. Morrissey’s lawyers are now pressing legal action against NME for defamation, with the magazine declining to print a retraction or apology.[92] Within days of issuing the writ against NME, Morrissey also released a detailed explanation of his side of the story via an online fanzine. The statement included a firmly worded rebuttal against the accusations of racism, a condemnation of racism itself and an exposition on his belief that NME’s editor had deliberately staged and scandalised the outcome of the interview in an orchestrated attempt to boost the paper’s “dwindling circulation.”[93] In 2008, Word Magazine was forced to apologise in court for an article by David Quantick that accused Morrissey of being a racist and a hypocrite.[94]

In September 2010, during an interview with Simon Armitage in the Guardian’s weekend magazine Morrissey described the treatment of animals in China as “absolutely horrific” and in reference to other reports of animal welfare violations in China he said, “you can’t help but feel the Chinese are a subspecies.”[95][96] A spokesman for Love Music Hate Racism, which received a donation of £28,000 from the singer in 2008 after his apparently anti-immigration comments made in music magazine NME, said it would be unable to accept support from Morrissey again if he did not rescind or dispute the comments, saying: “It really is just crude racism. When you start using language like ‘subspecies’, you are entering into dark and murky water. I don’t think we would, or could, ask him to come back after that.”[97]

Despite accusations of racism in the United Kingdom Morrissey maintains a large Latino fan base in the United States and in Los Angeles particularly. His height in popularity among U.S. Hispanics was the subject of William E Jones’ documentary Is It Really So Strange?[97] Morrissey himself has written about Mexico in his song of the same title and has stated his affection for the Mexican people in interviews.

—————————————————————————————————-

Only simpletons confuse ambiguity with brilliance.

(Sorry, Graham, still must respond to you; still enjoying my Independence Day weekend away.)

Posted by Graham_Lister on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:25 | #

Happy 4th of July to our American cousins.

Didn’t Dick Cheney once describe Tony Blair as a “Preacher on a Tank”? Who in their right mind doesn’t despise our political classes? Dear old Mozza (aka Morrissey) can hardly ‘come out’ as an English ethno-nationalist can he - the man would be ruined at the present time. But anyone on record as expressing the sentiment of ‘despising Pakistanis’ cannot be all bad.

OK back to American themes

When I lived in America two things puzzled me. One why are so many people seemingly religious? It just struck me as weird. And two why all the flags? Let’s examine the second question.

The nature of US nationalism is an unjustly neglected topic. Few citizens of the US would own to being ‘nationalist’. But ‘patriots’ are not hard to find, nor are those who fly the flag from their porch. Why is this? Can anyone suggest a serious account of this curious phenomenon of political dissonance?

Could part of the answer be that the mythology of the USA partly rests upon the assumption that it is the ‘universal’ nation – the standard in all things – that all must ‘rationally’ subscribe to? That one adopts ‘American values’ rather than it being an matter of inheritance and history?

Thoughts and comments please (once you have finished celebrating kicking limey butt, obviously).

Posted by Yank on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 03:31 | #

One why are so many people seemingly religious? It just struck me as weird.

I think most people would answer this question by invoking the context of the Cold War. Prior to WWII, agnosticism/atheism was reserved almost exclusively for iconoclastic and contrarian intellectual types since:

1. Darwinism was not widely known or accepted.
2. People were far more traditionally-minded.
3. Western culture was firmly rooted in Christian values (think Hays code).
4. Methods of mass propaganda were limited (many people received news from the pulpit and/or the locally-owned newspaper).

While those who inherited the west in the wake of WWII were virulently anti-traditional and atheistic, they found religion to be a useful weapon in countering Soviet propaganda, and claims of communism’s moral superiority.

While the Cold War has ended, religion has not outlived its usefulness for the elite. “Old Time Religion” is the only connection many Americans have left with their fore-bearers, and given the nature of evangelical indoctrination techniques it is also one of the most resilient to change. Nevertheless, since most christian sects (especially in the wake of the Second Vatican Council) have adopted rationalistic, universalist, and progressive poison hook line and sinker, it makes little sense for those (neo-liberals as you say) in power to slander, attack or disenfranchise Christianity or Christians.

Probably the greatest criticism of organized religion, and Christianity in particular, is its transmutibility. Christian doctrine is often so contradictory and ambiguous that it can be made to rationalize nearly any type of political system or behavior, from absolutism (divine right) to socialism (nearly everything Jesus said), from belligerence (spread word of god) to pacifism (Quakers). By Christianity the greatest culture in human history was born, how befitting then that by Christianity it fell.

Few citizens of the US would own to being ‘nationalist’. But ‘patriots’ are not hard to find, nor are those who fly the flag from their porch. Why is this? Can anyone suggest a serious account of this curious phenomenon of political dissonance?

I think Hail’s comments about patriotism after 9/11 are quite interesting:

http://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/capitalist-liberal-multicultacracy/

“Back then, it hit me that the U.S. flag was worthless as a national symbol, the symbol of a specific Nation, or People. Consider: If I go to Jordan to work for an oil company, let’s say, and Jordan suffers some tragedy, will I start enthusiastically waving Jordanian flags all over the place, draping them from my home’s windows, on my car, and so on? No, that is laughable. I would sympathize with the people who had suffered, but this flag their symbol, and I respect that. If you or I went to Japan, and they had some disaster, it’d be the same. It just wouldn’t be something to occur to someone to wave a foreign flag in such a circumstance.

Yet here were tens of thousands of immigrants, with weak ties to the USA and little care for the country, flying the U.S. flag. It occurred to me then — without me realizing, I think — that the Flag was a commodity, that U.S. citizenship itself on a “spiritual” level had become worthless.”

The problem with America is that there has never been a clear sense of what constitutes an American, American culture, or American values. For nationalism to exist these must be clearly defined, since nationalism is more or less defined as a political movement concerned with their preservation . As for patriotism, Jingoistic patriot-types are simply useful idiots used to promote, what is to elites, ideal American behavior.

Posted by Bill on Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:21 | #

This tread seems spent so I’ll have my say here.

There is a furore going on in our establishment at the highest level, in the eye of the storm is our Prime Minister David Cameron and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.  Essentially it is about the corruption of journalism in one of Murdoch’s red tops, the News of the world.

Bunging bungs to the police, hacking into to mobile phones of the rich and the famous and the vulnerable is the common currency.  It is the latter group which is arousing the ire of the establishment, the very idea of a newspaper hacking into the phones of the vulnerable is apparently heinous and beyond the pale.  These vulnerable people are the parents and kin of child victims of murder and abduction, they are also the parents and kin of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Sums as high as a hundred thousand pounds are being bandied around as bungs to the police in exchange for information.

The dramatic upshot so far is Murdoch has killed off the 163 year old tabloid, it is no more.  The irony here is the head honcho at the time of these wrong doings keeps her job in the Murdoch empire while 200 or more employees are heaved out on their collective ears.
 
The faux hand wringing of the guilt ridden liberal establishment knows no bounds and is on universal mawkish display throughout the British media.  Like the politicians a while back, their culture of corruption has been exposed for all the world to see.  It is not a pretty sight.

This hand wringing saga is all still very much in the air, more dramatic revelations are expected, I wonder how they will keep the lid on it all?  How will they account for the relationship of all our top politicians with the MSM, why do editors have direct access to no. 10? 

Murdoch’s presence in Downing Street at the time of Blair is legend, so much so the joke was Murdoch was part of the Blair cabinet.  How will Cameron spin away the fact that on becoming head of the Conservative Party Murdoch was urgently seeking an audience with Cameron.  What do prime ministers and heads of opposition parties have to discuss with a Media Magnate?  It really does stink.

Like most things in history, this relationship between politicians and the MSM and powerful business interests is all part of the furniture, I wonder if the British people will be any the wiser when the curtain comes down, what’s more, will they even care?

Posted by Leon Haller on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 11:38 | #

I repost this here, as the thead is light, and so the material won’t get lost. (LH)

Mr Haller

God enjoys omnipotence and is the ground for all ethics/morality yet morality exists independently of him and not by his will. What strange ideas you have, even for a Catholic.

The Euthyphro dilemma is found in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, in which Socrates asks Euthyphro: “Is the pious loved by the Gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the Gods?” It involves several aspects.

Sovereignty: If there are moral standards independent of God’s will, then there is something over which God is not sovereign. God is bound by the laws of morality instead of being their establisher. Moreover, God depends for his goodness on the extent to which he conforms to an independent moral standard. Thus, God is not absolutely independent.

Omnipotence: These moral standards would limit God’s power: not even God could oppose them by commanding what is evil and thereby making it good. As Richard Swinburne puts the point, this horn “seems to place a restriction on God’s power if he cannot make any action which he chooses obligatory… [and also] it seems to limit what God can command us to do. God, if he is to be God, cannot command us to do what, independently of his will, is wrong.” This point was very influential in Islamic theology: “In relation to God, objective values appeared as a limiting factor to His power to do as He wills… Ash’ari got rid of the whole embarrassing problem by denying the existence of objective values which might act as a standard for God’s action.” Similar concerns drove the medieval voluntarists Duns Scotus and William of Ockham.

Freedom of the will: Moreover, these moral standards would limit God’s freedom of will: God could not command anything opposed to them, and perhaps would have no choice but to command in accordance with them. If moral requirements existed prior to God’s willing them, requirements that an impeccable God could not violate, God’s liberty would be compromised.

Morality without God: If there are moral standards independent of God, then morality would retain its authority even if God did not exist. This conclusion was explicitly (and notoriously) drawn by early modern political theorist Hugo Grotius: “What we have been saying [about the natural law] would have a degree of validity even if we should concede that which cannot be conceded without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God, or that the affairs of men are of no concern to him.” On such a view, God is no longer a ‘law-giver’ but at most a ‘law-transmitter’ who plays no vital role in the foundations of morality. Nontheists have capitalized on this point, largely as a way of disarming moral arguments for God’s existence: if morality does not depend on God in the first place, such arguments stumble at the starting gate.

Posted by Leon Haller on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 11:38 | #

That was from Graham Lister.

Posted by Leon Haller on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 11:42 | #

I likewise repost this from Graham. (LH)

Mr Haller

I know there are a lot of active threads at the moment so I didn’t want you to miss my reply/questions.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Mr Haller

Let us argee to disagree on your interpretation of the effects, importance, and value of market mechanisms. I feel we are, at best, to be talking past each other. I could be cheeky and ask for a negative effect of markets from you but it’s not important.

The quote in my post in the Greece thread is of course from Adam Smith.

I’m interested in your thoughts on methodological individualism (does it miss anything about social reality?, Does it have implicit normative assumptions? etc.) and on the sociology of religion.

Is God dead sociologically in these post-modern times? How do you imagine you could enforce such a organising narrative? Crude mythologies don’t stand up well in the bracing cold winds of science, and any sophisticated defence of theism is well about the heads of the average Christian.

On the Christianity point – yes some Christians have been traditionalist or conservative in viewpoint but equally there is the tradition of those facing towards the left as witnessed in the Civil Rights era and the Catholic social gospel (which I would guess you totally dislike). So Christianity can be ‘read’ in many different ways and I am skeptical at a societal level it will every be read in an exclusive ‘catch-all’ way again.

In post-Christian England many people will, on being asked their religion, answer Anglican (’we’re Church of England’) but it means practically nothing other than wanting a nice old Church to have a wedding in, and for the middle classes getting one’s children into a half-decent school. Even for the 5-10% of the population in the pews in England their worldview is little more than ‘motherhood and apple pie-ism’ and ‘being nice to people’. There was a documentary series a while ago on the BBC about a year in the life of a regular Anglican parish in England, and at one point the filmmakers asked the vicar if they could ask the worshipers about what they believed. He vicar’s brilliantly and unintentionally funny remarks were along the lines of: ‘please don’t as you will only confuse them’.

What I think you don’t appreciate is that most well-educated people of all outlooks, and especially those in the strata called the intelligentsia, in the West at least, are not generally religious. In the modern academy atheism, methodological naturalism or whatever label you wish to use is the default background assumption for anyone seriously engaging in the natural sciences and the social sciences along with most of the humanities. Now I’m not saying that one cannot be a well-educated, intelligent and articulate theist but it is a minority pursuit. (GL)

Posted by Leon Haller on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 12:44 | #

Dr. Lister,

I just don’t have time to respond adequately to your post, except to say that I perceive no contradiction in my position. Where have I stated that God is absolutely omnipotent? Can God make logic illogical, or 2+2=5? No, He cannot. I have never held or stated otherwise.

That morality exists independently of God’s will does not mean that He cannot violate it (only that He does not), nor that any being other than God can fully comprehend it. That is, morality exists independently of God, but only God in His omniscience can fully recognize the moral ‘totality’ inherent in any particular situation. Humans can only approximate perfect knowledge of morality, though to a higher degree in some instances (like a savage raping and strangling a young girl) than in others (eg, should we ‘pull the plug’ on terminally ill people for reasons of cost, even if they might be artificially prolongued in life for some short additional period?).

Nevertheless, God is the ground of morality because only His existence makes it meaningful. With God, man becomes something other than merely a “hyper-social primate”, and his actions thus take on metaphysical/moral significance. Without God, man’s actions are nothing more than an animal’s, and animals act by instinct only, not by reason. If a lioness tends to her cubs, it is not a freely chosen act of personal sacrifice, but a genetically programmed instinct which compels such behavior.

There is no morality or purpose in nature, and without God, there is no ontological distinction between humans and other animals. Why be moral then? At best, we could agree out of enlightened self-interest to submit to a Hobbesian despotism in order to forestall the “warre of all on all”, and thus win for ourselves the benefits of social cooperation and division of labor. My following the law would be based likewise on enlightened self-interest.

But that is moral mimickry, not morality, the essence of which, as intimated, is not simply following authoritarian rules whose purpose is to facilitate human material advance and conflict avoidance, but rather, personal sacrifice for the good of another. Without God as Judge, such sacrificial action would be merely ridiculous (indeed, evolutionarily maladaptive). I would never rape a woman because rape is deeply repellant to me (and not just for Christian reasons: I also would personally recoil from such behavior as a matter of my own, genetically programmed instincts - which, however, do not extend in all directions: I would lose not a minute’s sleep over exterminating enemy combatants, especially if they were nonwhite - as well as hurt pride, which also precludes my ‘renting’ whores (ie, I shouldn’t have to steal it or ‘pay’ for it, in my self-estimation)). But without God, I would not desist from embezzlement or any other crime which suited me, and which rational calculation considered prudent (greater than 50% chance of escaping detection). 

Morality, like math, is independent of God, but without God, and unlike math, it would be drained of meaningfulness, something only for the weak or superstitious.

Posted by Leon Haller on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 12:47 | #

I have some things to offer re your second comment, but I’ll have to do so later.

Posted by Leon Haller on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 18:21 | #

Actually, I’m going to emend that last comment.

I don’t think I’ll have time to contribute much more to MR for quite a while. I’m not going to comment on any new threads, and will only respond to comments directed to me from currently active threads.

Some time later in the year, or early next year, I’d like to post some formal pieces, if GW accepts them. My purpose will be to elicit feedback from other WNs, so as to improve my analyses prior to submission for publication in magazines or journals (which in turn will be useful for future book projects).

So I’m going to fade out after this thread.

But I’ve enjoyed conversing with many here. Our struggle will be long, and victory is far from certain. We have set our faces against the dominant superstitions of the present.

Good luck, camaraden!

Posted by Bill on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 22:51 | #

Further to my July 08, 2011, 11:21 AM above.

The DT’s Oborne’s RPG straight up Cameron’s ass turned out to be a nuclear device from which the fallout is still mushrooming.  Both the Guardian and Telegraph blogs are taking huge hits.

It appears Oborne’s rocket has hit a festering abscess which it seems was waiting to be lanced.  The whole bloody system is corrupt - the bloggers cry.

Can Cameron survive?  Can the system survive?

It seems postmodern liberalism’s wholesale removal of objective truths, boundaries, checks and balances, discrimination, limits, borders, demarcations, moral relativism, in fact the whole bloody gamut throughout Western society has achieved its logical ends, our nations have become ungovernable.

Where now?

Posted by Bill on Sun, 10 Jul 2011 10:34 | #

In all the debates and comment I have seen this weekend regarding Murdoch’s influence over the political cultural life of Britain, there has been a persistent elephant in the room - Immigration.

The question to be asking is how much influence has Murdoch had on Britain’s policy of immigration.

Exactly how much pressure has he put on our prime ministers (Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron over the years?

Exactly to what degree is Murdoch illumined and how near to the top of the apex is he?

We’re so far gone in Britain that there is no institution remaining that has not been corrupted by neoliberal decadence as typified by Murdoch’s press.  Who is left unsullied to police the police?  What or who is there to regulate the printed word?  Who or what is there to police the Televised media?  Lastly, who or what is there to check and balance the political machinery of Westminster?

Are the corrupt to continue policing the corrupt?  For that is what they are doing.  The rabbit hole is so deep the mind boggles.  I haven’t even mentioned the bankers, the military, civil service, security services, in fact the long march since the ‘60’s has corrupted every civic institution in the land.

Britain’s people is Gulliver lying trussed helpless on the beach of globalism.

This article pretty much sums up what it’s all about and where we’re at. 

Murdochgate, the Cameron project and the Crisis of the British State

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/gerry-hassan/murdochgate-cameron-project-and-crisis-of-british-state

This thing is going to run and run, we are indeed in uncharted waters.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 10 Jul 2011 15:07 | #

Leon,

Some time later in the year, or early next year, I’d like to post some formal pieces, if GW accepts them.

We are open to all intelligent argumentation.  Mail me as and when you have something to offer.

Posted by Leon Haller on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:09 | #

Sounds good!

I shall return ...

Posted by Bill on Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:38 | #

The remnants of the now certified dead New labour project are gathered round the drawing board casting around for ideas as to how they can again get their hands on the levers of power of Gt. Britain PLC.

They are talking about something called Blue Labour and it seems they are hoping to have it up and running to join the fray within the next few years.  By the next general election perhaps?

I’ve been reading some of their stuff.  The nuts and bolts of the new project centres around British traditional male values would you believe, albeit in tandem with the present neoliberal economic model.

It is far too large a subject for a mere comment here, but I would just like to ask is this new Blue Labour project a politics for the existing demographic make up of Britain or are they talking about a post white melting pot Britain?

Here’s a snippet from an interview with an architect who is actively involved in the casting around exercise.

AF: You have also written books about the cultural politics of Englishness. Writing about this for Blue Labour seems now to have made some readers uncomfortable. Are you surprised by that? Can you understand it?

JR: Jingo, proto-fascist, empire lover, and any number of euphemisms that connote racism come flying at you when you start to unpick issues of race, national identity, the emotional need for belonging, the pleasure of a familiar landscape, pride in one’s country. The left was always about patriotism at one time. I’m for an England which is about the hijab and the bowler hat and which values regional identities. We are an immigrant nation and we have to construct a sense of national identity together in dialogue, finding what we share in our differences but also dealing with the rage, disappointment and simple grief. We can’t evade them. When the elite tries to manage this process, for example the Cool Britannia thing or the ‘British Values’ debate it falls flat;  its vacuous and evades the deep currents of feeling that are swirling around. Being uncomfortable is part of the process of having a real debate.

The above was from ‘Our Kingdom - Open Democracy’

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/alan-finlayson-john-rutherford/what-is-blue-labour-interview-with-jonathan-rutherford

Posted by Bill on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:14 | #

Neathergate Trust. on July 18, 2011, 06:49 PM (see Suzie Green V,Dare thread)

Why???

Here’s Benedict Brogan’s take in the Telegraph.  20.7.2011.

We should also be clear about the poisonous politics that have shaped these events. Employees of News International are being investigated over allegations of criminal behaviour. Because NI is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and because Mr Murdoch is Public Enemy No 1 for the Left, a straightforward story of corporate criminality has been treated as some kind of existential debate about the future of the British media and the relationship between politicians and journalists.

In the Mail they are saying this Murdoch thing is a smokescreen to distract the herd from the (imminent?) EU financial crisis.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100097830/phone-hacking-this-is-a-stress-test-for-the-bigger-crises-that-david-cameron-will-face/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016645/REAL-scandal-MPs-ignore-As-Murdoch-grilling-turns-farce-bankers-14bn-bonuses-IMF-warns-euro-meltdown.html

Posted by Bill on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:28 | #

A week is a long time in politics.  Blue Labour KO’d by own guru.
 
Glaman’s Telegraphed punches KO’s Blue labour in round one.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/maryriddell/8644334/Labours-anti-immigration-guru.html

New Statesman thinks it’s all over.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/dan-hodges/2011/07/blue-labour-maurice-glasman

Posted by Bill on Mon, 08 Aug 2011 11:20 | #

I found this piece below on a recent trip to Gates of Vienna (GoV.)  It is an article by Paul Weston who is described as GoV’s English correspondent and is a regular columnist at GoV, in fact Weston has built up an impressive repertoire of comment going back to 2007.  Here below is just one such article, which appears to be his latest contribution entitled Multi Layered Betrayal of Britain.  Dated July 11 2011.

Even to hardened nationalists, this piece should come with a government health warning, for it is written in stark terms and is not for the squeamish, in short, it is an accurate portrayal of what England has become to-day.

Poor old Britain is in a terrible state. Whilst the recent obscenity of a Labour government is mostly to blame for this, they were not alone in the cultural and racial war which has been waged against the British people over the last half-century. Such has been the all-encompassing assault on who we once were that it is now hard to find any social group which has not been betrayed.

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2011/07/multi-layered-betrayal-of-britain.html

Posted by Bill on Wed, 31 Aug 2011 09:37 | #

Cameron gives ministers a month to find answers to broken Britain

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2031974/Cameron-gives-ministers-month-answers-broken-Britain.html#ixzz1WarQ6RyE

This says it all, all hope is lost!

Answers on the back of a fag packet.

BTW, whatever happened to Graham Lister and what was the other one, ah yes Grimoire?