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58 thoughts on “Galloping Fascism

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  • Sean

    Sadly, the pace of events overtakes the pro-legal arguments.
    Would any of you like to built an argument to the effect that the situation detailed in the links provided below constitutes not fascist censorship but rather a suprising coincidence when taken in conjunction with the arrests above, the events in Bristol earlier in the week, the growing perception of overtly political policing with regards to civic/political activism, and the fact that this weekend just happens to start and finish with the rattling of the royal sabres at one end, and May-Day celebration, at the other?

    http://anticutsspace.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/political-facebook-groups-deleted-on-royal-wedding-day/

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/29/facebook-activist-pages-purged

  • CanSpeccy

    “these three people were NOT plotting or conspiring to cause a breach of the peace. ”

    Well that’s what you say, Clark. But if the case goes to court, that will remain to be judged.

    No sense of humor. Heck why the ad hominem?

    Actually I thought this was quite funny — and after seeing it I shall never believe another Bin Laden threatening video, or is this video real?

  • CanSpeccy

    PS Clark, what’s a “Royalist” stuffy or otherwise?

    I just believe that the British Constitution is superior to, say, the American constitution, which is now “just a goddam piece of paper.”

    Getting rid of the monarchy is a bit trickier, which means the monarchy provides a greater barrier to the arbitrary exercise of power by bought politicians.

  • CanSpeccy

    “We are clearly moving away from the kind of liberal/democracy form of state, where laws enshrined and protected basic bourgeois values and rights, towards a form of state where Control of the citizenry and public spaces is going to increasingly characterise society. ”

    This may be correct, but the arrest of people planning a demonstration outside Westminster Abbey during a Royal wedding does not prove your point.

    Or do you contend that such a demonstration would have been tolerated during the wedding of any other heir to the throne? Hardly a credible view, is it, however far back in history you go.

    So you need better evidence of social transformation than that offered here.

  • Clark

    Alfred, I know you have a sense of humour, which is why I said only that you were sounding that way. I’m sure you know what I mean by a royalist, just as I’m sure you don’t really mean much of what you’ve written on this thread and that you’re just indulging in your favourite passtime of liberal-baiting. But it does make you sound like you’ll suddenly start singing Elgar and saluting the Union Jack.

  • Clark

    Sean, see the next AntiCutsSpace page:
    .
    http://anticutsspace.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/facebook-forced-to-respond-to-our-campaign-for-restoration-of-accounts/
    .
    Those groups had set up profiles, which are intended for individuals only, not groups. That contravened the Facebook terms of use.
    .
    The police actions today were daft, but royal weddings are daft, and don’t happen often. Infiltration of activist groups, monitoring of journalists, preemptive arrests, intimidation of protesters, kettling and abuse of the new terrorism laws remain serious issues.

  • Sean

    Clark, yes – I read the statement put out by Facebook, but it’s still highly spurious. Yes, there is an argument that the usage of individual pages constituted an breach of use, but the deletion of accounts didn’t solely affect those that fitted that explanation: a lot of pages listed as organisations or as events were removed also, which makes the official explanation sound slightly shrill, especially since every one of those accounts were removed without prior warning or explanation.

  • CanSpeccy

    Clark,

    I was quite unclear as to the meaning of the term “royalist,” however, I have now looked it up, and find, I am glad to say, that I am not one, viz:

    “A supporter of government by a monarch.”

    As I have surely noted before, I am for the preservation of Britain’s “constitutional monarchy” under which the monarch has no power, except to deny the status of head of state, head of the armed forces and Prime Governor of the Church of England from the Prime Minister. These powers are not at all insignificant, serving as an important protection against absolute government by unscrupulous politicians.

    As Wikipedia defines constitutional monarchy, it is: “[usually] a parliamentary system in which the monarch may have strictly ceremonial duties … Under most modern constitutional monarchies there is also a prime minister who is the head of government and exercises effective political power.” That is precisely Britain’s form of government.

    As for singing Elgar, I am an anti-imperialist, as you might have noticed from what I have written repeatedly on the subject.

  • Clark

    Yes, Alfred (CanSpeccy). I just said it made you +sound+ like a royalist, not that you really are one. In any case, Britain’s constitution doesn’t seem to do much good. Britain sells out to the banks and big corps, starts illegal wars, gets involved with torture, follows the US, etc etc.

  • CanSpeccy

    “Britain sells out to the banks and big corps, starts illegal wars, gets involved with torture, follows the US, etc etc.”

    It always has.

    But it could be worse, with King Cameron issuing orders from the Palace and able to ring Parliament with tanks anytime the representatives of the people challenged his prerogative.

  • mark_golding

    “Infiltration of activist groups, monitoring of journalists, preemptive arrests, intimidation of protesters, kettling and abuse of the new terrorism laws remain serious issues.”

    This statement shines through the anti-imperialist ‘squabbling’ of misplaced albeit legal street theatre. Thank-you Clark.

  • ingo

    If anti cuts sites are shut down then this will hopefully get some union activists active, away from their own agenda of ‘runing with the wolfs’, towards opposing this pack. I’m with mar and Clak on this, we can’t pander on the status of an unwrittn Constitution which can be interpreted as being relevant or not, depending on the whims, bias, or oppulent lunch/wine of a repective judge, not to speak of his ‘ties’ to the garter or any other underwear…

  • Courtenay Barnett

    I choose to exercise my right of free speech…

    I read this Pepe Escobar article – then I received this in my email today:-
    http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/pjm-exclusive-a-massacre-in-syria-content-warning/
    Now, no doubt one could consider the Middle East, and note the plight of the Palestinians, the shooting down of demonstrators in Yemen and Bahrain, the whippings, chopping off of hands and heads in Saudi Arabia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnO2Cytsk2E – and – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf-qJZD1MH0&feature=related – and – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOIbgd5qcrg&feature=related) and so on from country to country. In so observing, I am definitely not shying away from the arguments as regards human rights abuses – I am openly stating that these abuses exist widely. I am also placing in context the foreign US/NATO interventions as selective choices supportive of broader strategic goals. Any one of the Middle Eastern countries could be a candidate for “humanitarian intervention” tomorrow – but only some are today chosen.
    I know that in a humane sense decent persons will abhor the abuses/or killing of unarmed citizens. Yet, the “game” in the technical sense of “game theory” as used by all advanced military forces around the globe, is one of seeking global strategic advantage – be this economic, political or militarily with global resource access in mind. As Escobar correctly observes:-
    “From energy wars to water wars, the 21st century will be determined by a fierce battle for the world’s remaining natural resources. The chessboard is global.”
    So – let it not now be said that I have not balanced the cruelty of the individual beatings and against the realities as reasons for the collective bombings.
    CB
    http://www.globaljusticeonline.com

  • R2D2

    Please can we have the old comments system back? It was FAR MORE viewable that this current comments system – which is horrible.

  • dreoilin

    “I am for the preservation of Britain’s “constitutional monarchy” under which the monarch has no power, except to deny the status of head of state, head of the armed forces and Prime Governor of the Church of England from the Prime Minister.”
    .
    “But it could be worse, with King Cameron issuing orders from the Palace and able to ring Parliament with tanks anytime the representatives of the people challenged his prerogative.”
    .
    I don’t know why you keep insisting on this, Alfred. You’ve said it before. But in Ireland the PM (Taoiseach) is neither head of state nor head of the armed forces. (Head of the Church doesn’t arise, obviously.) One can quite easily “deny” the status of head of state from the PM by having an elected president like ours. She is also “Supreme Commander” of the Irish Defence forces (such as they are) but in practice the Minister for Defence acts on her behalf and reports to the Government.

  • CanSpeccy

    “I don’t know why you keep insisting on this”

    I can’t imagine why you think the British are going take the Irish as an example for anything. LOL

  • CanSpeccy

    Pretty stupid question, Dreoilin.

    Why would the British abandon their constitution that has worked well since 1688, to emulate the arrangements of some bankrupt republic that has existed for less than 100 years.

    If the Irish elected a new President tomorrow, nobody would give a toss, and no one outside of Ireland would know a thing about it.

    But when the grandson of Britain’s constitutional monarch is married, the picture takes the whole front page here in Canada with a an additional eight page supplement to the local paper with further details.

    That is an essential aspect of monarchy. To serve its constitutional function effectively, it must provide a spectacle. And it does.

    If the Republic of Ireland still exists as a free society in another couple of hundred years, tell us then about your wonderful constitution.

  • dreoilin

    I didn’t ask a question Alfred. I was pointing out that this
    .
    “except to deny the status of head of state, head of the armed forces … from the Prime Minister”
    .
    doesn’t wash. It can be done differently.
    .
    I don’t give a toss for spectacles, yours or anyone else’s. Blithering on about, “If the Irish elected a new President tomorrow, nobody would give a toss”, is simply avoiding the point.

  • dreoilin

    Apparently the real reason you support a constitutional monarchy, Alfred, is to have, “the whole front page here in Canada with a an additional eight page supplement to the local paper with further details.”
    .
    That’s pathetic.

  • Clark

    Dreoilin, Alfred has extended his prime hobby of liberal-baiting to one of his secondary hobbies, Irish-baiting. He illuminates an important point, which is that the British monarchy is still a potent focus, that in an important sense the colonial British empire is still intact. Note his statement that it has “worked WELL since 1688”. There is an important assumption in that statement, which is that the Western colonial system was/is a force for good. This is another viewpoint that Alfred has argued for.
    .
    It certainly worked, and seems to continue to work. I suppose that whether one considers it to work “well” depends upon whether one gains or loses from its operation. Personally I think it is disastrous. Its effectiveness at transferring wealth from the world in general to privileged large minorities is moving humanity towards ecological catastrophe.

  • kathz

    I think that, if they’re so worried about dissent, they should also arrest the people who were singing songs by well-known republicans in Westminster Abbey – that would be the choir for singing “Blest pair or sirens” (words by John Milton, who defended the execution of Charles I and continued to call in print for a “free commonwealth” even when the restoration was inevitable) and the entire congregation for singing “Jerusalem” (the author, William Blake, was tried for high treason on the grounds that he was alleged to have said “Damn the king” and “soldiers are all slaves” – he may have been acquitted but subsequent evidence indicates that these were indeed a rough estimate of his views). With all that lot in jail, perhaps the rest of us could get on with setting up a new free commonwealth.

  • dreoilin

    Ireland, part of a Celtic civilisation with at least 3,000 years of cultural continuum, shares a constituency in the Breton Woods institutions with Canada, whose representative regularly invited our delegate to advise our authorities to rejoin the Commonwealth. This invitation was both meant, and taken, as a joke, and treated accordingly. Alfred is a little man trying to poke people in the eye while he giggles over his sherry. One must not take him too seriously.

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