The Farce Goes On

[scottycelt]

http://www.for3.org/forums/newreply....wreply&p=73365

Do you spend all your time looking for irrelevant links, John?

That post referred to last year's riots when thuggery ruled and at least one poor innocent soul lost his life.

Water-cannon and rubber-bullets are normally the weapons of last resort to combat anarchy and thuggery of which, by your very own logic regarding others, you now appear to passively approve of yourself ?

You mentioned I might myself welcome the gunning down people with 'live' bullets. I would not and have never suggested such a thing. It was a typically misleading and deliberately false smear by yourself which even your own 'evidence' fails to support.

As a matter of record, I was the very one who highlighted the gunning-down of striking workers by South African police and was virtually told to shut up by 'lefty-liberals' like yourself on this very forum!

[Serial_Apologist]

'live' bullets.

Plastic and rubber bullets have also been proved lethal, lest it be forgot.

As a matter of record, I was the very one who highlighted the gunning-down of striking workers by South African police and was virtually told to shut up by 'lefty-liberals' like yourself on this very forum!

I don't recall anything of the sort, scotty - since Hey Nonymous has provided your clearly expressed link, you might like to do likewise.

[amateur51]

You mentioned I might myself welcome the gunning down people with 'live' bullets. I would not and have never suggested such a thing. It was a typically misleading and deliberately false smear by yourself which even your own 'evidence' fails to support.

As a matter of record, I was the very one who highlighted the gunning-down of striking workers by South African police and was virtually told to shut up by 'lefty-liberals' like yourself on this very forum!

What a complete and devious misrepresentation of the actualité scotty. You were seeking to score points with a premature post before any detailed facts were known. You deserved everything you got

But then, you do have a strange relationship with what you like to call 'the truth'

[John Shelton]

This is a very depressing discussion. You don't mention that of the countries of the present EU some have had brief experimental moderate-centre governments which have been bloodily suppressed, by the communists of the USSR-alliance.

Some countries of the present EU had brief experimental moderate-centre governments which were bloodily suppressed by the communists of the USSR-alliance. The wrong sort of communists were also suppressed, as were people with religious beliefs and in the case of the then Czechoslovakia bizarrely the Boy Scout movement. My point was that whenever there has been a radical leftist political / social movement in Europe that has arisen internally to a European country pre-EU it has been put down, one way or another, violently. In the years before the end of WW2 that was exclusively the case. After WW2 came the export of Stalinism and a different cycle of repression.

I do not consider Stalinism in any way a least bad option. I am completely with the great C.L.R.James who in the 1930s condemned apologists for the Stalinist Soviet Union. For as long as I've been interested in this subject that has been the case. I guess it's a depressing subject, but I hope the clarification will be accepted.

[John Shelton]

As a matter of record, I was the very one who highlighted the gunning-down of striking workers by South African police and was virtually told to shut up by 'lefty-liberals' like yourself on this very forum!

That would be very odd in my case because I belong to a political group which organised demonstrations in the UK and elsewhere against the gunning down of striking miners by South African police.

[David-G]

I hope the clarification will be accepted.

Of course.

[John Shelton]

Of course.

Thank you.

[scottycelt]

That would be very odd in my case because I belong to a political group which organised demonstrations in the UK and elsewhere against the gunning down of striking miners by South African police.

I certainly agree with you there ... right from the beginning this thread has tended to be very odd indeed, not just in your case.

[John Shelton]

In Hungary http://www.thestar.com/news/world/ar...owhere-to-turn

Alarm at Greek police 'collusion' with far-right Golden Dawn http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19976841

In 1992 with the collapse of the Soviet Empire Francis Fukuyama announced the End of History (and invoked Hegel). The values of capitalist representative democracy had triumphed, the process was complete, accomplished, History was at an end (or was identical with its telos and therefore overcome). How presumptive and erroneous this was very rapidly became evident, and the evidence is continuingly there in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel / Palestine, Syria and in the global financial crises of the past 5 years. The Nobel Peace Prize for the European Union seems to me to be a similar gesture: it may refer to the European Union's past, but it assumes a settled order which has consigned the old European history to the archives. On that basis, the general indeed historical absurdities of the prize apart, I'd argue it's at the least reckless.

[french frank]

On that basis, the absurdities of the prize apart, I'd argue it's at the least reckless.

That wouldn't be unprecedented, would it?

[scottycelt]

In Hungary http://www.thestar.com/news/world/ar...owhere-to-turn

Alarm at Greek police 'collusion' with far-right Golden Dawn http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19976841

In 1992 with the collapse of the Soviet Empire Francis Fukuyama announced the End of History (and invoked Hegel). The values of capitalist representative democracy had triumphed, the process was complete, accomplished, History was at an end (or was identical with its telos and therefore overcome). How presumptive and erroneous this was very rapidly became evident, and the evidence is continuingly there in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel / Palestine, Syria and in the global financial crises of the past 5 years. The Nobel Peace Prize for the European Union seems to me to be a similar gesture: it may refer to the European Union's past, but it assumes a settled order which has consigned the old European history to the archives. On that basis, the general indeed historical absurdities of the prize apart, I'd argue it's at the least reckless.

The prize was awarded because of the raison d'etre of the EU and it's undoubted achievements in promoting peace and sponsoring co-operation between former political enemies in Europe.

The EU is certainly not responsible for lingering archaic extremism of any kind ... that is solely the responsibility of the anarchists, fascists and communists and all their associated fellow-travellers who wish to destroy it and turn the clock back a century or so.

I can think of few organisations more genuinely worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than the European Union.

[teamsaint]

The prize was awarded because of the raison d'etre of the EU and it's undoubted achievements in promoting peace and sponsoring co-operation between former political enemies in Europe.

The EU is certainly not responsible for lingering archaic extremism of any kind ... that is solely the responsibility of the anarchists, fascists and communists and all their associated fellow-travellers who wish to destroy it and turn the clock back a century or so.

I can think of few organisations more genuinely worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than the European Union.

So there is no link at all between EU imposed austerity measures, for instance, and the rise of far right groups then?
Even if you credit the EU for peace inside Europe, don't you have to balance this with fair criticism for its role in the economic shambles, and consequent social developments, of recent years?
Perhaps things look a bit different from Athens or the islands....

[scottycelt]

So there is no link at all between EU imposed austerity measures, for instance, and the rise of far right groups then?
Even if you credit the EU for peace inside Europe, don't you have to balance this with fair criticism for its role in the economic shambles, and consequent social developments, of recent years?
Perhaps things look a bit different from Athens or the islands....

Of course the EU (run by humans) will have made mistakes ... though I think to entirely blame it for a western world crisis, which originated in the sub-prime mortgage market in the US, is maybe a little bit unfair?

Things will almost certainly look different from Athens compared to Berlin or London in the same way as people might view things differently in New Orleans to, say, New York or Washington? Is that any reason to say .. 'okay then, let's stop all this 'co-operating' let's have another good old continental civil war instead?'

That, in my humble opinion, is the stark and historically-based alternative ...

[aeolium]

Things will almost certainly look different from Athens compared to Berlin or London in the same way as people might view things differently in New Orleans to, say, New York or Washington? Is that any reason to say .. 'okay then, let's stop all this 'co-operating' let's have another good old continental civil war instead?'

That, in my humble opinion, is the stark and historically-based alternative ...

Of course it could be that the imposition of extreme austerity measures by the EU troika in a number of Eurozone countries may in itself provoke civil wars in some of those countries: that is not far from the case in Greece now.

Although I disagree with its penultimate paragraph, I think this article accurately describes the damage arising from the flawed construction of the eurozone, and in particular in this quotation:

"The Nobel committee, warning this month that the break-up of the EU would lead to a return of "extremism and nationalism", passed over the rise of neo-nazism in Greece and mounting separatist forces in Spain and Belgium. It lauds the role of the EU in bringing democracy and human rights to post-communist countries, but says nothing of how the politics of xenophobia and antisemitism have returned in Hungary and other parts of post-communist Europe. Propping up the eurozone is fuelling the very evils the Nobel worthies tell us the EU was designed to prevent. The idea that without the euro the continent would be at war is mere hysteria."

[scottycelt]

... The idea that without the euro the continent would be at war is mere hysteria."

Can anyone name even any foaming-at-the-mouth rabid pro-European who has ever said as much ...?

I'm not aware that anybody is suggesting that the UK, for example, is currently at war with the other EU members who decided their best national interests lay in becoming part of the Euro ...?

Are we all living on the same planet ...?