Since I’ve already managed to horribly offend nearly all my left-wing readers, I thought I’d continue in a similar vein. Ariel Sharon is risking his political position to fight for what’s good and right against racists and bigots. This earns him respect, notwithstanding his past as a war criminal.
Tangentially-relatedly, my perenially unsuccessful flatmate went speed-dating last week. One of the women he met said "my name’s Sharon, S-H-A-R-O-N". He replied, "like the Israeli Prime Minister, you mean? But I bet you’re not a war criminal." The date didn’t go uphill from there…
Ariel Sharon is risking his political position to fight for what’s good and right against racists and bigots.
Or is he just consolidating his position?
I used exactly that line on a date, turned out she was a war criminal. Talk about embarrassing.
Could be world kenzdawg. I used that line on a date… turned out she actually was Ariel Sharon.
Sharon: Its all in the pronounciation.
It’s all very well Israel withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. But the Gaza strip is a tiny, barely viable territory, with a GDP per capita of $600, one of the poorest territories in the world (according to US figures only East Timor has a lower GDP per capita.)
So, presently, the word ‘Bantustan’ comes to mind.
Well, just be glad you’re not that woman who writes for the Grauniad whose name actually is Ariel Sharon Neve…
Seriously, though, for once he’s right. What’s the Auden tag again? For once in his life providentially right, but for the wrong reasons, the old sod was permitted to save civilisation..the sod being Winston Churchill, of course…
To avoid rising to the bait, I’m reminded of the confusing headline "SHARON RUSHES TO SICK OZZY’S SIDE".
This is the same ‘Meaders’ whose party commends an anti-Semitic hatemonger for his ‘fearless tirades against Zionism’ and invites him to its annual ‘Marxism’ fest? You have as much credibility on this subject as the late John Tyndall, whose policies on this subject exactly match your own, my dear chap.
Hmmmm. Let’s compare, shall we?
SWP: Invite nutty jazz-player to play jazz at Marxism festival.
Tyndal: Exterminate the weaker races.
Yeah, I can see how you concluded that these were exactly the same sorts of policies.
"(according to US figures only East Timor has a lower GDP per capita.)"
Where does Northern Ireland come, I’m considering if thee’s some lessons to be drawn…….. ;-)
Bill, I don’t speak for Steve Pavitt, but I think you’ll find that the words ‘on this subject’ are the qualifier in his comment, i.e. he is comparing views about Israel, and finds that the policies of the SWP exactly match those of the British National Party in calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state. As this is a statement of fact, I advise you not to press the issue. The anti-Semitism of both organizations is also a fact: just as you find the neo-Nazi Israel Shamir on the web site of the BNP, you find Shamir’s associate and buddy Gilad Atzmon turning up to ecstatic welcomes at SWP events.
A minor point, but Meadway (‘Meaders’) is a particularly stupid as well as dishonest young racist, who still owes his readers an explanation of why he wrote a hilariously pompous post about a French President whose name he managed to get wrong nine times in two paragraphs, and who corrected it (without acknowledgment and hastily covering up his boo-boo) only after I’d posted a comment pointing it out (since deleted without explanation).
Antony, I didn’t mean to give the impression that I was interested in your infantile anathematising. I think Atzmon’s a dickhead, but I’m not interested in being dragooned into some axe-grinder’s crusade.
"…young racist…": care to substansiate? Can’t, in fact, substansiate? Never mind.
A minor point, but Meadway (‘Meaders’) is a particularly stupid as well as dishonest young racist, who still owes his readers an explanation of why he wrote a hilariously pompous post about a French President whose name he managed to get wrong nine times in two paragraphs, and who corrected it (without acknowledgment and hastily covering up his boo-boo) only after I’d posted a comment pointing it out (since deleted without explanation).
god I love blogs.
As one of your left wing readers I’m delighted by the Gaza pullout, and I’m quite happy to give Sharon any credit that’s due, without changing one iota my view of him as a totally cynical manoeuvrist and generally Bad Man.
And if the invasion of Iraq had, against all odds, led to a free, prosperous and democratic country where the rights of women and minorities were scrupulously observed, I’d have been delighted to eat as many of my words as I could find and give all due credit to George Bush, without even slightly altering my opinion that the man is a dangerous religious lunatic.
btw, score a few points for your predictive ability John; check out the latest leak from the IPCC Menezes inquiry …
"Substansiate"? Do you mean "substantiate"? A pleasure. I concede that describing you as young is not something I know is true, but it’s an obvious conclusion from your mastery of the intricacies of recent French political history (such as the name of the President) and your prose style that you – how to say – are somewhere below the legal age of consent. Your ignorance of the conventions of intellectual honesty confirms this (ie. when someone corrects you, you need to acknowledge it and tell your readers where you’ve amended your copy, you don’t delete the comment and quietly alter the post in a doomed attempt to cover up your stupidity). If this is not true, then Mummy and Daddy are owed a large refund from you on the school fees as you obviously paid no attention in class.
I guess that’s what you’re querying, because the racism point is too obvious to need comment. Jews aren’t a race, but anti-Semitism is a form of racism.
Wow, I’ve been correcting spelling mistakes on my blog without advertising the fact for ages – i didn’t realise that was intellectually dishonest!
Is it intellectually dishonest to use a spell-check before you post?
Me too jonathan… I feel so shoddy now.
Relax, gents. Correcting spelling mistakes on yer blogs is intellectually honest and a darned good thing. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
If you were to devote a post on yer blogs to sneering at the stupidity of a distinguished
journalist and author because he doesn’t happen to hold your own massively-informed views about one of the most important politicians of the second half of the twentieth century, and managed to demonstrate that you yourselves didn’t know the name of that pol, then you wouldn’t half look stupid. If, in discovering from a friendly commenter how stupid you are, you deleted that comment and banned its author from any further comments while scuttling off to make it look as if you’d got it right all along, then that’s intellectual dishonesty. It’s also even stupider than the original stupidity. Meadway is thus doubly stupid, but I’m pleased to say that his stupidity and dishonesty aren’t in fact the worst things about him (see above).
All clear now? Jolly good.
Ant(h)ony Martens – I see you’ve replied: you’ve failed entirely to give any substance to the nasty little smear you tried earlier, for the simple reason that you can’t. Not impressive. Approaching dishonesty, you might say. (Relatively, the sixth-form sniggering about Mummy and Daddy’s school fees is a minor issue.)
I freely admit the blog is riddled with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and badly-phrased sentences: writing without the benefit of a sub-editor has its disadvantages. I’m not desperately bothered by these slips, for the simple reason that I think it comes with the territory, and everybody does it. Spelling mistakes are a particular concern only in as much as Google is less likely to pick up on you if you’ve spelled something incorrectly. I correct them sometimes.
However, I’m happy to acknowledge anybody who does indicate spelling (or any other) errors, and have done in the past – especially when such indications are offered in good faith. But why on earth should I acknowledge someone who mistakes his pedantry for a critique? And why on earth should I give space on the blog to an evident troll?
No nasty little smear, just a nasty little racist, i.e. you. Come to think of it, even that’s to compliment you too much, you’re more of a pathetic little racist than a nasty one. If you recall (and despite your increasingly desperate efforts to censor discussion of the subject) you cheered the invitation by the SWP to an anti-Semitic bigot. You had the stupidity to defend the decision by stating that he, duh, wouldn’t be speaking (the non-speech, which funnily enough takes the form of lots of words, is on the racist’s web site!). I still give you the benefit of the doubt on this, you’re a racist fool rather than a racist schemer. You just don’t know enough about the SWP and so you made yourself look ridiculous. You also have a history of citing apologists for Nazi Germany, and you pay tribute to them. Again, you can call me genrous, but I think your racism and anti-Semitism are more like the genteel bigotry against Jews that Orwell wrote about than the David Duke school, but the message is the same.
Your defence of covering-up your stupidity over French politics is a marvel. Troll is such a useful word, isn’t it? In your use it covers everyone who reveals you to be a buffoon, and that’s a lot of people and a lot of comments. But that’s not my point, though. Nobody asked you to include a particular comment. People who expect honesty just assume that when you correct a gross error showing your ignorance of politics (you even ‘corrected’ the writer you condemned for ‘silliness’ unaware that he was right and you were exposing your stupidity!), you’ll make a note on your blog saying where you’ve changed the wording. That’s what honest writers do. You’re a racist ignoramus so you mount a cover-up.
So when are you going to give Mummy and Daddy that refund on yer school fees?
Antony – I have no great wish to extend your abuse of SBBS’ comments’ boxes for what seems to be a mighty big axe you’re grinding away at, but I’m equally unwilling to simply let you lie and libel me down here:
1. you called me a racist: demonstrate it. Find a quote. You won’t be able to. It’s an absurd claim.
2. I have never "cheered" an invitation offered to an "anti-Semitic bigot". (Find a quote. You won’t be able to.) Quite the opposite, if you’re referring to Gilad Atzmon, who cannot count me amongst his defenders. Another absurd claim on your part.
3. I don’t "have a history of citing apologists for Nazi Germany": don’t be so bloody ridiculous.
4. I’ve relied on state funding all my educational life, so thanks for all the taxes, but no thanks for the ignorant sub-common room sneering.
All things considered, you’ve not managed to do very well here.
If you want to engage with what I wrote about Mitterrand, please do so. Harping on a spelling mistake does not make you look any more impressive or clever, as others have pointed out.
Really, I’m amazed at the capacity the internet offers clearly slightly obsessive individuals to act like this: smearing obscure bloggers, for example, for god knows what purpose. If you want to carry on the discussion, please email me. I’m not going to bother clogging up someone else’s site replying to an obsessive troll.
I think I’d prefer to expose your dishonesty, stupidity and racist bigotry in public, if it’s all the same to you. As you know, anyone who posts a critical comment on your blog gets deleted and banned, so I’d like to test your stated but never observed belief in the big conversation.
So now at last we have a comment from you on the anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon. Except it isn’t a statement at all. Just like your blog, on which you carry no statement about Atzmon for the simple reason that anyone who asks your view of the SWP’s cheering of him gets deleted and banned (as I am). You of course stated mild reservations about Atzmon only BEFORE you realized that the SWP line was to cheer him, and now you’re stuck, you pillock. You were so dumb you even said it was a ‘mistake’ on the SWP’s web site to list Atzmon as a speaker! (You can find Atzmon’s speech to this bunch of wankers on his web site). Of course you cheer Atzmon, because that’s the party line and you’re too stupid and junior to have guessed it before it was issued. But turn it round. WHERE is the condemnation of Atzmon’s appearance at SWP events? There isn’t any of course, because you approve of this vile Jew-baiter’s appearance before the adoring SWP masses. If I have misrepresented you, then kindly state now what action you will take with the SWP to get its leadership (Martin Smith) sacked and expelled from the party. You won’t, of course, because you’re a microbe in the SWP universe and very thick to boot.
I’m sorry that your latest attempt to fabricate and cover up your stupidity and bigotry isn’t going to work either. If you go through the archives of your blog, you’ll find that you cite with applause the Net’s biggest neo-Nazi blogger Paul Dunne. He wrote to you to condemn Kamm’s linking of the SWP with fascism and you were so stupid you gushed over him. Even tho you were cheering someone who believes that Hitler’s invasion of Poland was a defensive action in line with international law. And when Kamm pointed this out you CARRIED ON swooning over your Nazi friend. You sick, stupid, fraudulent, racist fuckwit.
Let’s go over that Mitterrand disaster again shall we? You commented on Will Hutton’s ‘silliness’ in French politics, and ‘corrected’ his spelling of a recent French President. You did it 9 times. It was delicious, magnificent and a wonderful demonstration of your arrogant ignorance. No wonder you covered it up, and no wonder you carry on deleting things that make you look the fool that you are.
Do Mummy and Daddy know?
Did Meaders bully you at school?
Antony: Mmmm…. quite the stalker, aren’t you? (Paul Dunne defended himself against Kamm’s smears back then, and no doubt he’d do the same against your repetition of the same nonsense. As for Atzmon: it’s certainly not the "party line" to "cheer" him, and I’ve made my own views clear.)
Word of advice: you and "Steve Pavitt" share both this peculiar obsession, and an IP address. If you want to accuse others of "fraud" and "dishonesty", may I suggest you do not attempt to fabricate the impression of interest in your hysteria by using multiple pseudonyms?