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Oh my, where to start ? I think my problem with this is that it fails to recognise NuLab as a deviant entryist cuckoo in Labour's nest.

All of his exhortations about resisting the attractions of conservative thinking would have been better said in 1995. cos that pass was sold off to the corporates before 97. Right now, Alan Johnston is attacking Ken Clarke from the authoritarian right.

honesty ?? Has he been paying attention to the leadership hustings ? What is the subject never discussed ? Iraq and the lies that got us into this mess. how cna we have honesty when the likely winner, David freaking Miliband, simply says, "oh we must put it behind us". NO. LABOUR. CAN'T.

They are incapable of facing their problems. Too busy chasing City donations. Too busy ensuring that we remain relaxed about city parasites becoming filthy rich. Too busy sucking up to the security industry, stoking up the terrorist threats they created to justify yet more clampdown on civil liberties.

NuLab must die. Everyone associated with it should be expelled from Parliament. Every Oxbridge Blairite intern chum parachuted into a northern constituency they will never find again without help should be expelled from the party for being Tory right wing filth. Yes, Shaun Woodward, I do mean you.

Get rid of the tories, get rid of the authoritarians, get rid of the militarists. Then we can talk. Until then, it's just meet the new boss, same as the old boss (and he was shit)


keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Wed Jul 21st, 2010 at 11:16:56 AM EST
re: meet the new boss, same as the old boss

This is exactly the appropriate response to exclusive government and bogus political pledges.

Labour needs to develop a way of talking about politics that is metaphorical, empathetic and tangible [sic].... The left must do metaphor better.

This remark is just offensive. It insults the intelligence of people who have decided that they cannot be induced by platitudes to participate in the organization of a government structurally unsuited to equitable welfare. Really, it's one in a series of exhortations to avoid political action that establishes organizations designed to supply essential, "community" experience and services that the bureaucracy does not. It instead directs "Labour" [!] to apply energy to composing propaganda that "frames" the "responsibility-for us all" in propaganda of the designated opposition. Such industry, Lakoff insinuates 400 years too late,

tempts us to believe our own propaganda.

He's a rotten preacher, because "cognitive science" is a rotten god. He's a rotten teacher, because all he lectures is How To Write Propaganda.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu Jul 22nd, 2010 at 12:40:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Ploughshares' adviser and propagandist Jeff Skoll is president of Participant Media, one of the production companies behind Countdown to Zero. The film's Co-producer, the World Security Institute (a major recipient of Ploughshares Fund dollars), tapped its Global Zero project membership to narrate the film through dozens of interviews with the likes of elder statesmen, and NGO executives like Cirincione who are very friendly to the Obama administration's nuclear buildup.

Participant Media is a full service propaganda shop for liberal campaigns, producing both documentaries and dramas. In addition to the benchmark documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Participant is responsible for some very excellent and thoughtful films like Syriana, Food, Inc., and The Cove. And this is where complexity comes in. Some of the producers and voices featured in Countdown to Zero have wonderful intentions, and all of them are probably genuinely concerned with, and fear, the possible day that nuclear weapons might be used, whether by a state or by a criminal group. Herein also is the propagandistic danger of Countdown to Zero.

Albert Camus once wrote that "the evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding." Backed with a lot of foundation money, the producers of Countdown to Zero have paid organizers across the US to do considerable outreach for the film, whipping up interest on Facebook and other social media and generally co-opting the energies and intentions of many anti-nuclear activists. Countdown  premiers July 23 and will be shown in theaters across the US. Many screenings are being organized by activists whose intentions are unimpeachable, if naive.

What audiences are going to learn from Countdown to Zero is that nuclear weapons are a threat today because the bad guys might get a hold of them. They'll learn that al-Qaeda is seeking nuclear weapons, that it is their sworn duty; That highly enriched uranium is easy to smuggle; That "we are on the verge of a nuclear 9-11"; That tens of thousands of pounds of uranium are stored under virtually no security around the globe. In other words they'll learn that dark scary men, muslims, "terrorists" and anarchists are trying to kill them with nuclear weapons, and that nations like Iran and North Korea will gladly assist them. Their feelings of revulsion for nuclear weapons will be stimulated and channeled against these dark enemies of civilization.

Read more...



Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Thu Jul 22nd, 2010 at 03:22:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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