Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
April 12, 2009
The British Curse

The British New Labour spin doctors worked an a smear campaign against the conservatives right out of Downing Street No.10:

In his most lurid slur, McBride suggests that “secret tapes” exist containing evidence that Osborne had sex with the prostitute. McBride makes obscene allegations about the use of a sex aid and also claims that drugs were taken. The shadow chancellor has always denied having any physical relationship with Rowe or taking any drugs with her.

Finally, McBride suggests Red Rag concoct a tale about Nadine Dorries, a Tory back-bench MP, having a one-night stand with a married colleague during a party away day. McBride suggests Red Rag hint that a sex aid was accidentally left in a hotel bedroom.

Maybe not so unusual anywhere but other smear planers, Rove comes to mind, do not use their official government email addresses for such smear and take care not to get their emails published by a (right.-wing) blogger.

Craig Murray opines:

These disgusting New Labour spin doctors are a cancer attached to the heart of the British government. They pose an infinitely more fundamental threat to British society and values than terrorism does. We can get through the odd bomb attack. We cannot get through the radical corruption of the democratic system.

Right on. The Brits are cursed with Blair's and Brown's New Labour.

But the real questions is: Are the realistic alternatives any better?

Comments

no

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 12 2009 17:37 utc | 1

they are collectively, swine. their ‘political culture’ is so corrupt, cloying as it does to its u s imperialist masters on all things high & low. marx once thought that the english people would be the first to carry out a revolution. history, recent history tells us otherwise
margaret thatcher demolished the institutions, all the institutions of the working class & new labout anhilated the working class. they have created a people in complete service of every immoral impulse of their cretinous ruling class & their sposeman, rupert murdoch
the rise of the openly fascist bnp does not surprise me at all because there is only a quantitative difference between their policies those uttered without shame on that box of beasts, the bbc

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 12 2009 18:13 utc | 2

via Angry Arab: If you think Dubai is bad, just look at your own country

I could have written an article stating that Britain, the human rights champion, not wanting to get its hands dirty, had resorted to secretly outsourcing torture to Third World states under the guise of rendition by allowing up to 170 so called CIA torture flights to use its bases. Or that Britain’s MI5 unlawfully shared with the CIA secret material to interrogate suspects and “facilitate interviews” including cases where the suspects were later proven to be innocent.

I could have written about how mortality rates from liver diseases due to alcohol abuse have declined in Europe in recent decades but in Britain the rate trebled in the same period reflecting deep societal failures.
I could have written about how in “Big Brother” Britain maltreatment of minors is so serious that one in 10, or an estimated one million children a year, suffer physical, sexual, emotional abuse or neglect.
Or that according to Oxfam 13.2 million people in the UK live in poverty – a staggering 20 per cent of the population in the sixth richest nation in the world.

Posted by: b | Apr 12 2009 19:11 utc | 3

I’d be happy to help organize.
Seems like trusted international trade links between local community groups would be a very important thing to start establishing.

Posted by: china_hand2 | Apr 13 2009 1:36 utc | 4

Dawn.com: “Only 53pc in US now support capitalism: survey” … and 97% of those said they would drop their support in return for a Fed, State or Local mil.gov for life, and would someone remind me what we are paying taxes for, if just to keep all those welfare tax-dole policy wonks in their orthopedic cubicles, ‘don’t stress me out or I’ll call the union, and what’s the taxpayer-subsidized interest rate on my pension?’
They’ve cut health & human services bareass, they’ve clear-cut teachers and firemen, they’ll be dumping the homeless and insane and criminal back on the streets, they’re reducing unemployment benefits, they’ve collapsed capital spending, maintenance and utilities services is in a holding pattern somewhere over New Orleans, and now they are talking about increasing taxes. When did mil.gov drones become our ruling caste?
When are they going to fire, RIF, downsize, outsource the 50% mil.gov metastatis since before the Big Con pulled into town on Y2K? We got trouble, oh, yes, right here in River City, with a capital G and it rhymes with O and it sounds like V.

Posted by: Meredith Willson | Apr 13 2009 3:05 utc | 5

I’m with Slothrop here.
As far as I’m concerned, both sides are horrendous and should be culled before they kill the host.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Apr 13 2009 13:01 utc | 6

@CluelessJoe – Unless the people stand up, who will do such culling?

Posted by: b | Apr 13 2009 13:57 utc | 7

china_hand2,
Seems like your #4 comment is OT but it piqued my interest. Care to elucidate or point me to the thread for which it was intended?

Posted by: Juannie | Apr 13 2009 14:47 utc | 8

@Juannie – I deleted some comments in this threat as off-topic and repetitive – ch2 referred to one of them.

Posted by: b | Apr 13 2009 15:18 utc | 9

Ree-publics and representative democracies, partly because of the peculiar nature of parliamentary politics, – in the US, no need to go further than lobbying, the pols belong to the corps and the finance class – have become mired down in boulevard ppl scandals, as finally that is all they have to offer as a score card or as a standard for judgment.
What policies did they create, support, vote in? What did they achieve, what were the results, what is their compass, what are they working towards, what is the future? Nobody knows. Who did the horizontal mambo with whom serves the same old dodge – reminiscent of the kings of France or in recent times Charles and Di and all that…
A perpetual game of popularity scores, doing in rivals, jockeying for money, favors, dope deals, getting in with the hot babe or enigmatic powerful man, both of whom have *contacts*, *connections*, vote trawling for the next ee-lection, which means pleasing not the electorate -that is a side line- but other players, making deals, showing allegiance to the PtB and pandering to the media who also live off their idiocy and subservience in perfect symbiosis.

Posted by: Tangerine | Apr 13 2009 19:16 utc | 10