Must socialist government mean sociopathic leaders?

by Are You asking us to vote? Mon Sep 25, 2006 21:11

In Ireland we don't have to , we are currently watching the demise of one
overlord who never punished, sacked anyone (well nearly never) being hauled
over the coals. The Tanaiste moves flawed legislation as much as he moves his
bowels-as the nurses say. The opposition voted to move the flawed legislation
through the parliament, which resembles an over-cocked hen-house.

The left is having a shot-gun wedding with the hard-right and to top it all,
the thinking heads of the new left are being trumped by people power.

Mc Dowell is going to arm the cops and we have more roads than hospitals.
In fact its Yeats' nightmare.

Now Bertie is being' sinisterly' stalked and the Tanaiste who is a fool, is
limbering up to be the great white hope of Oirish politics. Where in all that
disfunction could one put their 'x'.???????????????????????????

I suggest we ignore the EU and pretend its not there at all, at all, but if FG
get in, we shall see it looming large in our lives.

by ipsi Mon Sep 25, 2006 21:34

No i'm not asking those who think like me to vote. Before the casual reader wonders - i'm a libertarian socialist which means pretty much the same thing as an anarchosyndicalist. I uphold the 1st international's position on participation in elections and the election of officials to employment as leaders. But like many libertarian socialists or anarchosyndicalists I recognise that though the instititutions of state be as illegitimate as those of church for solving the problems of the working class - people vote . But we on the "@narchist left" have never been irrelevant to franchise, since the days of the 1st international before even Marxism was born we were at the fore of extending rights to vote & emancipation to all regardless of gender, ethnicity, creed or income. We are indeed the purist of democrats possible.

& in some cases the number of abstention is very important. ( i'd cite thinking of my "sociopath list" in the article above) - those who abstained from voting in Mexico for either the declared winner or the self-declared leftist legitimate president l'Obrador - almost half the enfranchised electorate. I'd point to the share of Basque & Catalan voters who do not exercise their right to vote in the Spanish state perhaps in protest & non-acquiesence to the Madrid thrashing of Catalonia's popularly supported "estatut" or the farce which is the "political party" law in Euskal Herria. I'd remind all of the 60% of voters who though registered to pay stealth taxes in England & Wales didn't bother to vote & stop the election of BNP councillors.

we on the micro-left as one ambitious & slightly pretensious young Turk of Sinn Fein once called us, may not court or encourage voter share - to the contrary we encourage & insist on abstention. But that doesn't mean we're irrelevant to elections. As those of the "centre-left" elected throughout the world & notably in Europe govern on elections of average 30% abstention, I believe our criticisms & distaste & rejection of their policies, rule by opinion polls, lies & sociopathy take on greater importance.

"either they listen to what we're saying, & allow us to harp on about "not-voting" less - or they herald in the obvious endgame of social democracy - the election of far right parties".

So even if neither you nor I are nto going to vote - the social democrats ought be very worried that we aren't. We need to get across that we do not vote because we are "dis-interested" but to the contrary because we are very interested.

by iosaf Wed Sep 27, 2006 21:10

Yesterday The Guardian (whence the cartoon above by Steve Bell) led with a wonderful headline "'That's a lie' - the remark that wrecked Brown's day " http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1881043,00....html reporting how Cherie Blair was seen to mouth & word such in response to gordon Brown's speech at the moment he said he loved Tony her husband. That's definitely one point to the sociopaths. & the next day tony Blair tells us all how wonderful Gordon is, in the long lead-up to him being the next PM of HMG UK.
The sociopaths are passing the torch which is a very tory symbol, once upon a time the Labour movement would have passed a rose & at most a shaving brush.
here's my Cherie sociopath file which I wrote back in the days I really thought her husband was "going to go" :- it was called "Home spun Spin & the house arrests of Azkaban." You get an idea of what sort of woman she is..... the most dangerous sociopath is a barrister.
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68850

The Hungarians just sort of got bored responding to their PM in full Blairist style leaking the truth to them. Yep, he lied. Yep, he's probably a liar. Yep, that helped him be a millionaire. Yep, if you learnt how to lie you'd be on the pigs back too.

The Brazilians are still trying to get their national spoon into the congealed shite which is the corruption at the heart of the PT and Lulu's rise to power. & yes he was the darling of Tony & Gordon likes him. If Brazilians could afford a Cherie Blair after dinner speech she'd tell them how to be nice to muslims.

Zapatero. Oh well what can I say? The local offices of the PSOE in the basque got bombed this week. Not a big proper dirty bomb just a home made thing. The sort of inconvenience I believe are called "pipe bombs" in our northern province. & why? Because 6 months on, that process doesn't really seem to be a process at all & now the 2 diametrically opposed sides those of the most radical basque nationalist & the most conservative spanish nationalism have found the oxygen they craved. Are we to see a "real ETA" under the man nicknamed "cherokee" to rival Omagh? I can't second guess either side..... ( no sociopath or psychopath me )

Portugal & Socrates. well what do you know? I sincerly hope after a a generation of EU / EEC membership you know a wee bit more about the Portuguese than.... the Romanians.............quite. Their peasants still use donkeys & carts! But of course the Portuguese have moved on from exhuming graves to stake vampires. (yep. I told you about vampire killing in Romania as well as vampire bats in Brazil http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=72884 )

I hope this all puts Bertie Ahern (who once told us he was a socialist & thus a sociopath too) and his fibbing in perspective.
He's an honest man, buitl and moulded of virtue. He'd love to give all the money back, it was only resting in his account, the damn feckers are just so rich & greasy they wouldn't take the brown envelope.

I reckon the Romanians & Bulgarians are in for a shock-.

by iosaf Fri Sep 29, 2006 13:38

yippeee.

The Italian congress was suspended by its speaker for 15 minutes ("to stop shame being brought the nation") as mostly opposition deputies started chanting "Liar!" at Mr Prodi.
This is all of course down to Italian telecom which is in serious financial difficulties. Mr Prodi has promised that the citizens won't have to suffer higher bills because of this, (which was ok) but what really got everyone's back up was the precious :-
"I honestly didn't know about any of this before". Now it's been a while since Mr Prodi wanted to rule Italy, & lest we forget we all wanted Mr Berlusconi not to rule Italy. & it's been a short while since Mr Prodi got the job of ruling Italy. One would expect him to have at least opened a file or document on the biggest public/state financial disaster in recent Italian history. Or even to have noticed the proposed solution (selling off TIM the Italian mobile network to a corporation) has been debated in the commercial press of both left & right wing readerships for the last year. But no.

"He honestly didn't know about any of that before"...... cross my heart! please extinguish my pants! where am I? what's happening? who are you people?

by Intravenous Agnostic Fri Sep 29, 2006 16:42

If the 'socialists'- with few exceptions are accessing and using capitalist power
structures then they just go mad with all the power. Look at Bliar- the third way,
do they go in and dismantle the secret services, the media-monitors, the
super-structures that are evident in every western capitalist state?

Does Reid- (currently quietly manouevering against Brown) stand on the
podium of the Labour Party Conference and hold up examples of the
devices that were used by the Brown/Blair regime to spy on the U.N
(GCHQ- Gunn , the whistle-blower faced Jail for whistleblowing) and say
that it will never happen again. No , Reid stands on the podium of the
Labour Party Conference talking about terrorism and tightening immigration
laws.

That ex-trade union party ( collusive in illegal war and Gitmo) does not dismantle
the apparatus of the capitalist state,it improves and hones them.

Will our next minister for communications dismantle the TDR- instigated by
O Rourke and Mc Dowell wherein our mobile and email data is retained in this state
for three years, dismantle the media-monitoring of the FF government,
address the issues raised by the people of Rossport-when Mr Kenny's brother
as Lord Mayor disallowe ddebate on the issue in one of the town councils.

The centre parties in this State have refused to take on the issues of abuse
happening in the 9 year reign of the current administration, maybe their election
canvassers should start answering questions about why they so completely
failed in opposition-before promising to put an 'x' on the ballot.

It is not enough to say that they are offering themselves as an alternative
to their right-wing forbears, but to be seen to dismantle the systems that have beggared
the states they represent. In this case 'Socialist' governments do not offer any real choice
because they adapt to existent structures.

by historian Fri Sep 29, 2006 16:50

Social democrat leaders are a notoriously shifty lot as evidenced by Blair, Rabbitte and so on. However, they do enjoy one huge merit over 'real' socialist leaders in that they tend not to leave us as their legacy the slaughter of millions of their own people. SOmething not to be sniffed at I think you will find.

by Intravenous Agnostic - # Fri Sep 29, 2006 17:12

Ask the new left- (who are marrying Enda) these questions:

1. Will they dismantle the TDR legislation which Is Mc Dowell's burnt offering to Bush/Blair?
2. Will they investigate the Wood's indemnity deal (the Church are paying1/10 of reparations
to abuse victims)?
3. Will they introduce a Bill which properly deals with the decision of Laffoy to relaease Mister'A'?
4. Will they investigate and reverse section 5 of the Sex Laws?
5.Will they fund adequate social housing?
6. Will they introduce methods to rid us of rotten consultants/judges?
7.Will they overhaul or replace the HSE?
8.Will they get rid of the media-monitors, corporate cronies and other apparati
of state abuse?
9. will they apologise to the people of Rossport, Tara, Pallaskenry and Poolbeg?

Will they please tell Michael Mc Dowell to fuck off with his% of the vote and his bully boy tactics
cos guess what- they allowed Woods to stay in power when the deal was introduced to
indemnify thechurch- they let it go, they fought an election on the economy and they lost.

Countless people have suffered as the result of state abuse and will continue to
do so, but they will come to your door and talk taxes.

Finally- would someone apart from Joe Higgins stand up and accuse the Tanaiste
of failing in his election promise to watchdog FF, cos its patently clear that
the issue of Thornton Hall is as corrupt as the National Stadium and all the
other land grab bullshit we have endured for so fecking long?

by iosaf .:. ipsiphi Wed Oct 04, 2006 23:23

* the Hungarian PM's party lost lots of votes in the municipal elections.
http://indymedia.ie/article/78484

* Lulu failed to win an outright majority in the first round of presidential elections & must now face a run-off vote against his Opus Dei backed rival.

* Zapatero met with Blair to assess the Basque process, the same day France discovered an ETA arms-cache & Blair told him to "persevere, be patient & not ask for dis-arming"!?!? The last things worth mentioning are the "importance of prisoner release",
"how terribly slow it all is" & how having an opposition that agree with you (like Blair has in the tories but ZP doesn't have in the PP) is really c-o-o-l.

* Prodi took a pay-cut. He has rejected the last increase in pay approved by his predecessor Mr Berlusconi. But he can still afford to pay his mobile phone bill.

* Mexico's self-styled "legitimate" president L'Obrador has had nothing to say about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Oaxacoa. Current outgoing president Fox has still not ordered an intervention by the federal police (an army like entity complete with naval helicopters) to put down the city. In the last months a story which began with schoolteachers seeking better pay and conditions had seen the city evolve a "anarchosyndicalist autonomy" & demand the government goes.... it remains to be seen if the federal police go in how many people just like us or just like we imagine we might be in a crises or opportunity will get killed.
http://indymedia.ie/article/78757
__________________________________________________

All of these stories merit further explanation, background, analysis & comment - which I will do soon enough. {But at the moment I'm dealing with a broken toe and lack of home internet connection & thus am "less forthcoming" than usual.}

by C Murray Sun May 06, 2007 17:54

John Reid who was planning with Tony Blair the division of the British Home office into
two sections has decided that he will move to the back benches and ensure that he
will support Brown and the threatened re-structuring and sub-division of the British
Home Office-

That just leaves Ms Ruth Kelly ( Blair apologist and Catholic) in the present
triad of messianic leaders holding position in the Brown administration.

Ms Kelly became very vocal on the subject of Gay Adoption in recent months.
John Reid distinguished himself by writing legislation that was completely
(almost undifferentiated) from the Irish Legislation On Immigration.

Reid disallowed both Bulgarian and Romanian EU citizens full rights in
relation to work , as did our department of Justice. [at exactly the same time !]

The question of the re-structuring of the home office is alluded to in the
Resignation report:-

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2073828,00....html

This is the first Blair loyalist gone to the cull in what was a horrible election
campaign and resulted in New Labour ceding vast tracts of councils areas
to the Tories in the South Of England.

Elections In The UK [aftermath]

by C Murray Sun May 06, 2007 19:45

There has been an ongoing awareness raising campign in UK Kollectives,

http://www.indymedia.org.uk

regarding the mess that the prison system in Britain is in, it is based in small
local groups and parents and survivors of young women who have committted suicide
in the prisons.

The sentences that they recived for petty crime were very harsh and
mostly they died violently. Will add in the links later.

The nationalities of the dead appear to be from working class areas and they
have been manily white, many dropped out of the education system and were
charged on minor misdemeanours.

I think that the Guardian may have covered the issue to calling it
'social alienation', not human tragedy.

John Reid was the minister with responsibility for the prisons services
at the time of the protests which were begun in November-December last year.

by captain nemo Sun May 06, 2007 19:47

He really is one of the sharpest political cartoonists working for the commercial press. Almost always his cartoons have multiple meanings, but his perspective is a local one. He's a north Londoner who came to his own niche through the mishmash of ideologies and protests that the party which was once a movement (British Labour) included under its umbrella before many of our readers were born.
But this cartoon is neither his often vulgar lewd "overly obvious & too easy" nor one of his "really clever and subtle". It just seems wrong. Bambi was once the name given to Zapatero the current prime minister of Spain when he as leader of the Spanish socialist and workers party seemed hopelessly unelectable. He ran away from every important debate, let the far left take the streets but not give them support from the podium (he didn't even protest the war on Iraq till a mere 7 weeks before it began) in fact the only time he gave Aznar (who was the right wing prime minister of Spain and an ally of Bush) a hard time was after the parsley islands crises. The parsley islands are as small as Dalky islands and are few hundred meters off the coast of Morocco. When the king of morrocco (a young guy just out of playboy days) inherited the throne and talked tough on Spain and Europe, some morroccan cops landed on the parsley islands (Perijil in Spanish Laila in Arabic) with a flag, Aznar ordered a Spanish SAS team to take them back, falklands style. Bambi went off to chat with the young King and got photographed under a map which showed the Parsley islands, Ceuta, Melilla (Gibraltar type enclaves on the African mainland which belong to Spain and where most Al Qaeda suspects have spent time, to the serious discomfort of the local majority muslim residents) and the Canary Islands, Wesern Sahara and even Mauritania as Morroccan. Bambi told young King chap everything would be ok in the future and Spanish socialists would help Morroccans (who are really poor and average age 24 - the youngest population in Africa - but with 54% illiteracy not the most employable) find a course to European integration. No-one believed him then and no-one believes him now.
Anyway - what was Steve Bell on about this time - with his bambi cartoon? What has Zapatero got to do with the Scottish or Welsh or English council elections? I don't get it. It just makes me ping athe time just over 2 years ago that Ahern went and met Zapatero. The photo of both of htem together (Ahern & Zapatero) is at this link
http://indymedia.ie/article/69604?comment_limit=0&conde...10755
which was a comment to an article called "Talking about us"
http://indymedia.ie/article/69604

If people are talking about you - don't give away anything you don't want them to know. You should be prepared for people to talk about you at certain times. Know how to shut up. I hope Steve Bell' cartoons get better, coz over the years I've really got to like the bloke with his spot-on anti-war and exposure of the way our democracies are manipulated by so called "experts" the political party's and spin foctors give jobs to.

Do better Steve!

by C. Sun May 06, 2007 19:55

It works on simple levels, (the Cartoon).

Firstly have you ever been to a fund-raiser in middle england, (?) they generally happen
round the church. They have one every year in Altar in West Cork. Punch and Judy,
tea cosies, creamy scones and a vicarage!

The little kids go and sit at the Punch and Judy show, and the parents have tea.

Strangely for some British people, with a quasi-catholic self-avowed messiah
and Bush apologist for leader the traditions such as those parties probably
feel threatened. The woman could be an over weight queen and though
the puppet is american, the face is definitely Punch.

Judy is hiding somewhere with the rolling pin- I know it.

Altar , btw is so called because at the edge of the little settlement sits
a megalithic table altar-shaped like a dolmen. it looks out to the sea.

The many religions, even though the community is largely protestant
gather and enjoy this rather strange ritual every year- very weird it is too.

Maybe a Punch would have been more appropriate?