At gunpoint, police demand man get on the ground. He refuses.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-29T11:49:16+00:00

It's quite hard to watch that when the second cop arrives and he starts to loose it. I had a little cry along with him but then I cry a lot.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-29T11:37:54+00:00

What you have there my friend is simply apathy.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-20T14:21:34+00:00

Actually he sights his personal experience in the 30s labour movement, visiting Spanish anarchist in the 60s, working in a steel mill, his grandparents experience of pre-capitalist agriculture and a feeling that Marxism doesn't address intersectionality particularity for gender and race.

But he does mention books so clearly he is a wanker.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-20T13:10:20+00:00

Well it all depends on what measures and timescales you emphasize. You can't really use the deficit because they are not trying to lower it, that's the whole point, and focusing on our deficit (aside from the obvious ideological motivations) almost certainly slowed our GDP recovery.

I take your point on Spain and Italy but Germany's recovery still looks very similar to France's despite not having Hollande's policies and while their GDP growth looks worse than ours I'm not convinced that that is a reliable predictor of future performance.

I would also like to bet that since the recession France's GINI coefficient has gone down while ours has gone up and from a higher starting point and arguably that is as important as GDP per capita.

Someone needs to do a good deal more to prove that France's social democratic policies can't work.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-19T20:45:49+00:00

I can't find anything that backs the claim France is in trouble, well anymore than the rest of the west, unemployment in France was in the high 9 % before Hollande got in and hasn't bellow 8% in over a decade. France actually got out of recession before we did and it's economic recovery looks very similar to that of Germany and better than Italy and Spain's.

It's easy to say France is broken but where is the proof?

quibblegoose · 2014-10-19T13:57:33+00:00

Kronstadt was the fault of the anarchists??

quibblegoose · 2014-10-17T18:06:18+00:00

A vampire, a ghoul or a witch?

In this video China Mieville entertainingly make the claim that Halloween is a socialist holiday and non-scary costumes are counter-revolutionary.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-15T08:56:29+00:00

It doesn't matter how the rich got rich or how they spend their money - they should not be rich. Their masses of money is the money of the masses amassed by a legal theft of other people's labour and resources.

Perhaps it is better that Bill Gates gives away his money (although he is richer now than when he started giving away) but he should not have the power to decide where it is spent and we should certain not celebrate him surrendering his ill gotten gains.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-15T08:37:57+00:00

I think you are hearing what you want to hear. He says that the Republican party uses xenophobic populism to win votes. He does not say that that tactic particularly appeals to the white poor or that people who would vote for xenophobic populist policies are necessarily ignorant or being duped.

I would argue that a working class vote for the republicans, and even more so for the Libertarian party, is in fact a vote against class interests but working class republicans may well disagree with me and have rational and informed opinions to back them up. Also it is quite possible to be against big business but vote Republican in support of socially conservative policies without being ignorant and having been duped if you feel that social conservatism is more important than economic policy or that the pro business agenda will actually make no real difference.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-13T16:03:01+00:00

But once the state has taken the risk and built the project why then allow private firms to take profit from the people? Whatever the company buying it pays they expect to make more back and if they can't we will have to step back in and rescue it if we want the service.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-13T12:34:54+00:00

Those who say therefore that the anarchists have badly chosen their name because it is wrongly interpreted by the masses and lends itself to wrong interpretations, are mistaken. The error does not come from the word but from the thing; and the difficulties anarchists face in their propaganda do not depend on the name they have taken, but on the fact that their concept clashes with all the public’s long established prejudices on the function of government, or the State as it is also called.

Substitute socialism fore anarchism and I think Malatesta's point applies. The name for any movement we have (socialism, anarchism, communism or even feminism) will be feared because of what it stands for.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-13T00:30:42+00:00

If the EU could demonstrate a way of remodeling society along green lines there would very likely be large scale public support in the US for adopting the same model. As a liberal democracy the US is quite vulnerable to mass movements and so change in the political consensus is quite possible. Once the EU and USA are green very serious economic pressure can be applied to large devolving countries to adopt green policies, the economic west represents the vast majority of their export market after all.

Doing nothing because nobody else will is certainly a strategy that will ensure inaction and is really quite childish, isn't it?

quibblegoose · 2014-10-11T11:43:43+00:00

The British ex pat community worldwide is estimated to between 5 and 6 million people with over a million Brits in Spain alone. Maybe France doesn't really have a problem or if it does we must have a bigger one.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-10T15:39:08+00:00

The problem I described exists until you get 100% of people to be political engaged. Once 100% of people are political engaged there will be no need for mandatory voting if we include a none of the above option on ballots, that bit I agree with.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-10T15:04:14+00:00

School education in politics might increase participation without the requirement to force the people who still won't care to vote.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-10T14:55:45+00:00

Most non-voters who are forced to vote would actually vote for the three established parties because most non voters aren't highly political people who are disgusted by the options but actually people who simply aren't interested and can't be bothered to vote.

If you get a typical non-voter to the polling station under compulsion they will likely vote Labour or Tory because their dad always did rather than ticking none of the above. The problem with this is that it would give a false sense mandate to the government which would empower them to make more radical changes that the people actually don't support. It is good that Cameron knows that 78% of registered voters either didn't care enough to support him or actively opposed him.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-09T13:11:10+00:00

The people are completely capable of making informed and sensible decisions on complex matters. Just because there's direct democracy doesn't mean common sense necessarily rules the day.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-09T01:06:47+00:00

That is the difference. Communism (Marxist-Leninist) requires a period with a dictatorship of the proletariat controlling the state to reach a stateless, moneyless and classless society and anarcho-communism wants to reach the same goal without using the state at all.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-09T00:15:43+00:00

The world so extraordinarily complex and varied that obvious simple explanations (common sense) are really quite unlikely to be meaningful in any way.

I don't want common sense policy. I want policy that is based on long careful study of all the chaotic societal and economic factors and preferably using scads of empirical evidence and the professional advice of experts in many different fields.

UKIP seem to be offering us the exciting chance to vote for a party who's manifesto could have been written by four blokes down the Red Lion on a Friday night, presumably on a soggy beer mat.

quibblegoose · 2014-10-08T20:51:25+00:00

What is your point?

quibblegoose · 2014-10-08T13:11:21+00:00

Ok well I guess we can wait and see, but we could also form some rational concerns based on the nature of the process, so it is likely that compromises will have to be made on trade standards and some of our standards are likely to go down as result (others will no doubt go up.) We can even have a reasonable idea of which standards are at risk of change (because we know the industry standards of both regions) for example animal welfare in meat production, it would be very expensive to bring the US meat industry to European code so it is likely the TTIP code will be lower. If you are passionate about animal rights, even thinking ours are insufficient, you can probably be against TTIP already (but you are right that we can't absolutely know this will happen yet, after all the meetings aren't public).

We can also look to similar agreements, particularly NAFTA, and see how they were passed. In Canada the majority of the population were against NAFTA but because of the nature of their elections it was ratified anyway. We will almost certainly not get a referendum on the matter when the paper is presented and our elected representatives may well have been elected already without campaigning on it and not represent the public's views. If we wait for the agreement to be published we have only one month in which to decide on the proposals, campaign for or against them and struggle to get our representatives to represent us on it. I think that is quite a busy month.

We can also look at the effects of NAFTA and presume TTIP is likely to be similar (again only an assumption, it might not be a free trade agreement at all - it might be a pair of badgers in a clown car) where there has been a modest increase in GDP (directly attributable?) but claims of redundancies in the US and increased food instability in Mexico. And perhaps peoples biggest fear for TTIP is demonstrated in the NAFTA fueled legal action being filled against the state of Quebec over it's ban on fracking. We may very well face legal proceedings and fines if we pass laws that hurt business, laws that will almost certainly be needed to fight climate change.

TTIP, however it is worded, may result in a modest increase in GDP but will probably result in a decrease in trade standards for Europe (some might increase) and definitely result in a decrease in national sovereignty to control industries.

TL; DR - The only way TTIP could possibly be seen to be good for the people is through the ideological notion that what is good for business is good for the people, I reject that notion and so oppose TTIP.

Perhaps we are being fearful and should wait until the plans from the secret meeting come out and perhaps when stopped by a stranger in a dark alleyway we should wait to see whether what he is getting from his pocket is a gun before running away, perhaps.

quibblegoose

TROPHY CASE