Left = Right

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

7 November 2013

“For a long time now, at least thirty to forty years, the policy of social democratic parties has been articulated, year after year of neoliberalist rule, by the principle that ‘whatever you (the centre-right) do, we (the centre-left) can do better’…

This state of affairs has a reason: social democracy has lost its own separate constituency, its social fortresses and ramparts: enclosures inhabited by people at the receiving end of political and economic action, people waiting and yearning to be recast or to lift themselves out of the aggregate of victims into an integrated collective subject with interests, political agenda and political agency, all of its own.

In short, what remains (at least in our part of the world) of the exploited industrial working class fighting for the vindication of the injustices it has suffered has shrunk to a marginal position in Western societies, repeating the itinerary travelled by agricultural labour a century earlier…

Moreover, what has remained of social democracy’s ‘natural constituency’ has been all but pulverized into an aggregate of self-concerned and self-centred individuals, competing for jobs and promotions, with little if any awareness of a commonality of fate and still less inclination to close ranks and undertake solidary action….Recast as consumers first and producers as a distant (and not necessary) second, the former social democratic constituency has been dissolved in the rest of the aggregate of solitary consumers, knowing of no other ‘common interest’ than that of taxpayers. No wonder the extant heirs of social democratic movements have their eyes focused on the ‘middle ground’ (referred to not so long ago as the ‘middle classes’) and rally to the defence of the ‘taxpayers’….the only ‘public’ from whom it seems feasible and plausible to obtain solidary electoral support. Both parts of the current political spectrum hunt and graze on the same ground, trying to sell their ‘policy product’ to the same clients….

It is the right, and only the right, that with the left’s consent has assumed the uncontested dictatorship over the political agenda of the day. It is the right that decides what is in and what is out, what can be spoken and what ought to/must become/remains unspeakable. It is the right, with the connivance of the left, that draws the line separating the possible from the impossible – and has thereby made self-fulfilling Margaret Thatcher’s sentence about there being no alternative to itself…”

This reasonable commonsense viewpoint is set out by Zygmunt Bauman, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds, in his book “This is not a diary” published by Polity Press in 2012. See the entry for 4 January 2011, pages 107 to 109.

Antigone1984 is fully in agreement with Professor Bauman’s position, which chimes nicely with our own analysis of partitocracy.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——

Posted in Poland, UK | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Torture and the United States

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

6 November 2013

The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, who was born on the island of Kos in 460 BC and died in Larissa on the mainland in 377 BC, is generally regarded as the father of modern medicine.

His name is still a household word today because of the Hippocratic Oath attributed to him – albeit without much evidence, it has to be said.

This oath, still respected by doctors today even if no longer universally sworn, has for centuries constituted the corner- stone of medical ethics. It enjoins all members of the medical profession to do nothing to impair human health.

You might think such a precept superfluous. After all, doctors are in business to cure and enhance the health of human beings. In what way could they possibly be involved in damaging it?

A natural reaction.

Unfortunately, history leaves us in no doubt as to the permanent value of the Hippocratic Oath.

Take two recent examples.

Adopting the view that some lives were of no importance, Nazi doctors under the Third Reich in Germany conducted hideous experiments on sick people – frequently Jews – who were regarded by the regime as superfluous to requirements.

The Reich’s allies in East Asia, the brutal militarist regime that called the shots in Japan during the Second World War, is also reported to have used doctors to carry out combat-related medical experiments on defenceless prisoners of war.

Well, that’s all history now, you may think.  We don’t need to bother about it these days. After all, we are living in the humane, progressive, liberal  21st century.

Forget it.

According to a report in the London Guardian on 4 November 2013, a study just released in the United States  has concluded that doctors, nurses and psychologists working for the US military “violated the ethical codes of their profession under instruction from the Defense Department and the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] to become involved in the torture and degrading treatment of suspected terrorists”.

The two-year investigation was carried out by an independent Taskforce on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centres with support from the Institute on Medicine as a Profession and the Open Society Foundation. The 19-strong taskforce included military, health, ethics and legal experts.

Its report, “Ethics abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the War on Terror”, concludes that after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001 health professionals working with US military and intelligence services “designed and participated in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and torture of detainees”.

According to the study, as reported in the Guardian, the Department of Defense and the CIA required their healthcare staff to put aside any scruples in the interests of intelligence-gathering.  They were accordingly involved in security practices amounting to torture or abuse that caused severe harm to detainees, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and the force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike.

Medical professionals are said to have been instructed that the fundamental principle of their ethical code – “do no harm” – did not apply. As a result, inter alia, CIA medical personnel attended waterboarding sessions.

Leonard Rubenstein, a co-author of the report, told the BBC that another example of unacceptable behaviour was medical “participation in interrogations where health professionals search for vulnerabilities which interrogators can exploit”.

The US security services are said to be claiming that they have cleaned up their act in recent years, but the report insists that some practices, such as the force-feeding of detainees, continue (for example, at the US gulag at Guantánamo Bay).

According to the Guardian report, the taskforce maintains that the security-imposed “changed roles for health professionals” as well as “anaemic ethical standards” remain in place to this day.

Dr Gerald Thomson, professor emeritus of medicine at New York’s Columbia University and a member of the taskforce, is quoted as saying: “The American public has a right to know that the covenant with its physicians to follow professional ethical expectations is firm regardless of where they serve”.

And not just the American public! We are talking here about an abomination with global reach. We all have a right to that knowledge.

Antigone1984:

Both the Pentagon and the CIA have rejected the report.

Well, they would, wouldn’t they? To cite English courtesan Mandy Rice-Davies.

The CIA says the report “contains serious inaccuracies and erroneous conclusions”.

Mandy Rice-Davies to that, too.

The Pentagon points out that none of its critics had access to detainees, their medical records or procedures at Guantánamo Bay.

Well, they wouldn’t, would they? The gulag is not a holiday camp known for its open access policy – particularly when it is more than likely that visitors might turn up something unsavoury under the carpet.

We don’t think that anyone will take the US military’s protestations of innocence too seriously – not after Abu Ghraib, Camp Bagram and Guantánamo Bay. And then there was the notorious US “renditions” progamme whereby suspects – yes, suspects, not convicted criminals – were kidnapped and then “rendered” (forcibly transferred) to countries outside the rule of law where they could be tortured with impunity.

Oh yes, the United States of America, land of Lincoln and liberty!

Don’t make us laugh.

You are in there, up to your eyes in it, alongside the torturers of the Third Reich and the Land of the Rising Sun.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Germany, Health, Japan, Torture, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Great minds think alike

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

5 November 2013

Nice to have one’s standpoint confirmed by the great and the good.

Antigone1984 has a lot of trouble convincing people of the soundness of the views it is putting forward.

Our condemnation of the monopoly of political power by differently named but ideologically identical political parties – a system which we have called “partitocracy’’ – is a particularly hard position to sell, even to those you would think were on our side, such as the left-leaning intelligentsia.

Yet about a year ago in Paris we made a bootless attempt to interest the editors of the London-based bimonthly New Left Review in this largely neglected but – in our view – massively significant topic.

Last night we learned that the UK Friends of Le Monde diplomatique – a French monthly whose radical left policies closely resemble those of New Left Review – had turned up their noses at our offer to talk about the concept to their members.

Yet, lo and behold, in the London Guardian this very morning we find a front-page account of the political views of two mega UK celebrities – much-feared TV political inquisitor Jeremy Paxman and big-time media celebrity Russell Brand, a bohemian English comedian, actor, radio host and author – both of whom appear to hold views on the political parties that are not a million miles from our own.

Interviewed by Paxman on television last week, Brand asked him: “Aren’t you bored? Ain’t you been talking to [politicians] year after year, listening to their lies, their nonsense, then it’s this one gets in, that one gets in, but the problem continues?”

Writing in the Radio Times today, Paxman says he understands why Brand has never voted in a UK election.

Russell Brand has never voted, because he finds the process irrelevant,” writes Paxman. “I can understand that: the whole green-bench pantomime in Westminster looks a remote and self-important echo-chamber…In one recent election, I decided not to vote, because I thought the choice so unappetising.

Rounding on the three largest UK political parties – the Conservative (Tory) Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat Party –  Paxman is damning about the opportunities on offer when the people of Britain go to the polls to chose their next government in 2015.

At the next election we shall have a choice between the people [Tories] who’ve given us five years of austerity, the people [Labour] who left us this mess, and the people [Liberal Democrats] who signed public pledges that they wouldn’t raise student fees, and then did so – the most blatant lie in recent political history,” writes Paxman.

It won’t be a bombshell if very large numbers of the electorate simply don’t bother to vote. People are sick of the tawdry pretences.

Antigone1984:

And so say all of us!

It looks as if the dangers of partitocracy are finally becoming apparent to at least some of the country’s movers and shakers.

In an interview with Stephen Moss in the London Guardian on 28 October 2013, veteran UK leftwing militant Tony Benn said:

How does progress occur?

To begin with, if you come up with a radical idea, it’s ignored.

Then, if you go on, you’re told it’s unrealistic.

Then, if you go on after that, you’re mad.

Then, if you go on saying it, you’re dangerous.

Then, there’s a pause – and you can’t find anyone at the top who doesn’t claim to have been in favour of it in the first place.”

And so we shall push on regardless.

Historical note: The governing rightwing Labour Party lost the 2010 UK parliamentary election, being replaced by an even more rightwing coalition of members of the Tory Party, the senior partner in the alliance, and the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in France, UK | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US glad-hands Egyptian dictator

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

4 November 2013

It is no coincidence that US Secretary of State John Kerry rocked up in Cairo yesterday on the eve of the show trial of  the democratically elected Egyptian President, Mohammed Morsi, in a kangaroo court appointed by the army which overthrew him in a coup d’état on 3 July 2013.

The purpose of Kerry’s visit was to confirm publicly to Egyptians and to the world that the US is backing the generals that overthrew Morsi by force of arms.

Glad-handing Egypt’s new dictator, the leader of the putschists, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and three of his stooges – “President” Adly Mahmud Mansour, “Prime Minister” Hazem el-Beblawi and “Foreign Minister” Nabil Fahmy – Kerry confirmed that the US was committed to working with them.

According to a report in the London Guardian today, Kerry tentatively praised the attempts by the “new administration” to restore democracy.

“Thus far there are indications that this is what they are intending to do,” he is quoted as saying.

Now what would those indications be, we wonder?

Would it be the killing of 50 supporters of the ousted president that were reported to have been shot dead on the day of the coup d’état?

Or would it be the arrest and imprisonment of up to 300 senior officials from the Muslim Brotherhood party, to which Morsi belonged?

Or would it be the massacre of an estimated 2 000 Morsi supporters by the police and army in Egypt – including hundreds at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in Cairo – on 14 August 2013?

No, what Kerry apparently had in mind was a “road map” drawn up by coup leader General al-Sisi proposing constitutional reform and elections by spring 2014. Jam tomorrow, so to speak.

Moreover, since it was General al-Sisi who mounted the military putsch that toppled the democratically elected President of Egypt, he is hardly the right person to be trusted to organize democratic elections.

In any case, since the military has outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, it is to be assumed that they will not be allowed to stand in any subsequent election – thus compromising the legitimacy of any such poll.

When Morsi was brought from prison to a police compound in Cairo today for the first day of his trial, he told the judge: “I am Dr Mohamed Morsi, president of the republic. I am Egypt’s legitimate president. You have no right to conduct a trial into presidential matters.”

Morsi took office as President of Egypt on 30 June 2012 after a democratic election in which he won 52% of the vote.

Together with 14 other members of the Muslim Brotherhood, he faces the trumped-up charge of inciting members of his party on 5 December 2012 to attack protesters demonstrating outside the presidential palace. In the melee, at least 10 people are said to have been killed.

Today’s trial was adjourned until 8 January. Morsi was then taken back to the slammer.

Antigone1984:

In our view, it is a racing certainty that the United States, which is funding the Egyptian military to the tune of an estimated $ 1.3 billion in annual aid, was briefed in advance of the impending putsch and okayed it.

So it is hardly surprising that they are now backing the putschists.

Last month, as the military crackdown on Morsi’s supporters continued, the US suspended part of its annual aid package as a public relations gesture. However, according to the today’s London Guardian, on landing in Egypt Kerry downplayed the suspension of aid, saying “it’s not a punishment”.

The fact remains that – not by for the first time – the US  is giving its calculated approval to the violent ouster of a legitimate government of which it did not approve.

——-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

Posted in Egypt, Military, Politics, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

People versus Populists

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

3 November 2013

The elections to the European Parliament next May will be a “great battle between the Europe of the people and the Europe of populism”, according to Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta.

Letta was leading the charge for the anti-democratic Euro-elite in a special interview vouchsafed recently to six “reliable” pro-establishment newspapers. These are journals which the Euro puppet-masters in Brussels and Frankfurt know they can trust to ignore the welling anti-Brussels sentiment on Europe’s streets, while at the same time peddling uncritically the “line-to-take” dictated to them by Eurocrat spin-doctors.

The papers in question are – no surprises, here – the UK’s Guardian (for whose ruthless censorship of criticism of the European Union we can personally vouch), La Stampa (Italy), Le Monde (France), Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), El País (Spain) and Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland).

No surprise either that Letta – himself the inexperienced leader of a shaky “left-right” coalition government – should make a distinction between the “Europe of the people” and the “Europe of populism”.

By the “Europe of the people” he means the “Europe of those people who swallow hook, line and sinker the unending stream of pro-EU propaganda that is pumped out daily by Brussels and then foisted indiscriminately on an unsuspecting public by sycophantic and servile media.

By the “Europe of populism” Letta means the “Europe of those who have decided to reject the European Union’s false blandishments”. This is what the Euro elite cannot stomach – people who disagree with them. Democracy is not a strong suit among Euro fat cats nestled comfortably in their sinecures amid the ivory towers of Brussels.

Letta even goes so far as to tell his tame journalists of his fear that “the European elections will be lost”.

Lost?

How can an election be lost?

The voters will go to the polls and cast their votes.

The outcome will determine the allocation of parliamentary seats.

Having had their ears bombarded with election propaganda, voters will finally have their say and will make up their own minds.

How, in these circumstances, can an election be said to be lost?

What Letta means, of course, is that the people, exercising their democratic rights, may decide to reject the monolithic one-size-fits-all vision of Europe being force-fed to them by the media on behalf of a haughty “we know best” Euro-elite.

This is the spectre that keeps the Eurocrats awake at night.

For this much-vaunted European Union could do nothing to protect Europe’s citizens from the near-collapse of the global economy in the years 2007 to 2011. Growth is currently negligible and unemployment in the eurocurrency  zone – to which 17 of the EU’s 28 states belong – is at a record 12.2 %. Living standards have plummeted as EU states impose never-ending austerity on their long-suffering citizens in order to pay down unsustainable public debt.

In these lamentable circumstances, what is this Eurovision that the Euro-elite is dangling so unappetizingly before the eyes of the citizens of Europe?

It is, of course, “more Europe”!

According to Letta, Europe has failed to stem the rising tide of populist anger because of the “fragmented nature of European institutions”.

The best way to prevent further crises, he maintains, is to strengthen the European institutions –  that is to say, the euro-bureaucracy in Brussels and Frankfurt. In the euro-currency zone, in particular, the 17 member states should surrender their economic independence to a single economy minister who would administer the zone’s economies as a single entity. Homogenisation is the way to stamp out the entropic diversity of Europe’s nation states.

It is easy to see where Letta is heading. It is in the direction of  that holy grail long longed for by the European movement “ A United States of Europe” . It is a goal of which Letta is reported to be a staunch advocate.

Thus, the silver bullet selected for the purpose of appeasing those citizens who think that  the states of Europe have already gone too far in the direction of national harakiri is… to push ahead even more furiously with the European steamroller, to abolish the nation states altogether and, ultimately, to become a pale sickly imitation of the United States of America!

You could not make it up!

The citizens of all 28 EU member states will vote in elections to the European Parliament between 22 and 25 May 2014. At stake will be 751 seats (a total that may be modified in due course to take account of Croatia, which on 1 July 2013 became the 28th member state of the EU). The voting system is proportional representation and the parliamentary term is four years.

The so-called “populist” parties – that is, those parties which do not share the Panglossian vision of Europe put about by Brussels – include the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the anti-immigrant National Front (FN – Front national) in France, and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S – Movimento 5 Stelle) in Italy.

Antigone1984:

The point of this post is to highlight the innate anti-democratic bias of the arrogant self-righteous elite that calls the shots in the European Union.

We do not support all the policies advocated by those parties which want to break out of the strait-jacket of the Brussels imperium. Of the three mentioned above, we have no time for the French FN. Our views are closest to those of the Italian M5S. The anti-EU stance of the British independence party, UKIP, we wholly endorse, but we are not enamoured of some of its domestic policies.

To conclude, we reproduce a passage we published on 3 March 2013 in our post The people have spoken, the bastards!

The idea that politicians are elected to represent the views of the voters who elect them is an alien concept in Brussels or Frankfurt. To the Eurocrats, democracy means that a tiny handful of senior establishment politicians fix policy among themselves behind closed doors and then rely on docile media and biddable party underlings to persuade a passive electorate that there is no alternative.

Writing in the London Guardian on 27 February 2013, contrarian commentator Simon Jenkins said that “wildcat populism always terrifies the existing order”, adding that “if there is one thing a politician dreads more than a central banker, it is an election”.

But what is this “populism” of which they are frit?

It is simply means that those aspiring to public office undertake to represent the views of those who put them there. Instead of imposing on people policies which they do not want, it means listening to what the voters say and giving them what they want. It is in fact nothing other than our old friend democracy, to which the powers-that-be pay lip-service in public but do everything they can to thwart in practice. In theory democracy means “rule by the people”. In practice, it means “rule over the people” by a tiny elite of political bosses who have manoeuvred themselves into public office via the springboard of political parties which they themselves control.

Readers may also like to check out the following post published on 20 July 2012:  Partitocracy v. Democracy

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Europe, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Red readers

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

2 November 2013

“It is a remarkable institution, especially that exceptional reference section. Ask them any question, and in the very shortest space of time they’ll tell you where to look to find the material that interests you…Let me tell you, there is no better library than the British Museum. Here there are fewer gaps in the collections than in any other library.”

This is none other than Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (1870-1924) – sometimes known as Lenin – commenting in 1907.  Another fairly well-known Communist, Karl Marx (1818-1883), had worked earlier in the Museum’s famous circular Reading Room.

The British Museum, whose exhibits include Magna Carta, the Elgin Marbles and the Rosetta Stone, was founded in London in 1753. In 1998 the library was hived off from the museum in Great Russell Street and moved to newly built premises in the Euston Road.

 

 ——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Literature, Politics, UK | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Celts best Romans

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

1 November 2013

Vae victis!

Woe to the vanquished!

Remark attributed to the Celtic leader Brennus as he sacked Rome in 390 BC.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cambronne’s rude word

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

 31 October 2013

To be defeated but not to surrender: that is victory.

Marshal Józef Piłsudski (1867-1935), Polish nationalist and first President of Poland (1918-1922). Mounted a military coup d’état in 1926 and set up a government consisting of his own protégés. Fiercely anti-Russian.

This attitude of defiance when confronted with defeat was famously adopted earlier by the Napoleonic General Pierre Vicomte de Cambronne (1770-1842), who commanded first regiment of foot chasseurs at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Invited to surrender by the British, who won the battle, he replied with the brisk vulgarism “Merde!” (Literally “Shit!”but the meaning “Like hell I will!”).

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Posted in Poland, Russia | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Carpe diem

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

30 October 2013

Life is not a rehearsal.

                                                                            Anon.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Literature, Philosophy, Religion | Leave a comment

Hacked off by double standards

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

29 October 2013

This week in Britain a trial is due to start of newspaper executives who are alleged to have hacked illegally into the private phone messages of celebrities.

This week in Britain – and anywhere else you care to think of in the world – a trial is not due to start of United States presidents whose spooks are alleged to have hacked illegally into the private phone messages of some 35 world leaders.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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