Why the Green Party is shit

[dylanredefined]

Nothing really, just sort of followed on from the Icke antisemitism stuff as an interesting aside. Plus guilt by association is perfectly valid.

Nazis are all so known to like cake and kittens. Does that mean anything Nazis are in favour of is now beyond the veil?

 

[belboid]

The following was posted on libcom, as the first response to the Brighton bin workers 'statement on community cleanups.' I have no evidence it is written by a GP member, but I'll give you damned good odds that is is:

"Maybe those 'scabs' who you think are purposely trying to undermine you are taking action to prevent wildlife from being harmed by your reckless action.
But yes of course, humans are the MOST important species, right?"

 

[frogwoman]

The following was posted on libcom, as the first response to the Brighton bin workers 'statement on community cleanups.' I have no evidence it is written by a GP member, but I'll give you damned good odds that is is:

"Maybe those 'scabs' who you think are purposely trying to undermine you are taking action to prevent wildlife from being harmed by your reckless action.
But yes of course, humans are the MOST important species, right?"

 

[xslavearcx]

thats whats so fucking crap about the green party. their biocentricness should take them in the direction of total misanthrope zerzan type shit, but they are too lukewarm and respectable and too guardian readerish to go the whole hog. So you end up with this wooley 'all things to all men' type of 'progressiveness' (cause thats nice right) which ends up with the glaring contradictions that appears through the cracks.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Nazis are all so known to like cake and kittens. Does that mean anything Nazis are in favour of is now beyond the veil?

Kittens: yes. Cake: depends what kind.

Beyond the veil lol

 

[SpackleFrog]

Coal's a difficult issue for Greens, not least because there's as yet no satisfactory way of cleaning the emissions from coal-fired power stations. If you think that's a cop out I can only agree with you.

It shouldn't be a difficult one. You need coal to make solar panels.

 

[SpackleFrog]

Natalie Bennett is speaking at Glastonbury apparently. There's no decent bands on at the same time as her, is it worth heckling her?

 

[ViolentPanda]

This thread is basically one long diatribe against the Greens without a single word anywhere about what they stand for and why. It's as though Urban is completely blind to these issues.

I see you're indulging in selective reading again.
This thread is pointing up where Green policy is suspect/why the Green party is shit. It's not a thread about what the Green party stands for, and why it stands for those things. It doesn't pretend to be.

Spiney, you told me on a different thread that I should try some critical thinking. Well, here's one for you; if sea levels rise worldwide as they're predicted to do because of global warming (assuming you're not a climate change denier?) then who's going to suffer most? Answer; the class which disproportionately lives in the world's low-lying areas - i.e. the working class.

I get that a lot of people here don't like the way Green politicians and councillors are behaving, but the answer to that is not to pretend that we don't face massive environmental problems (of which global warming is only one) or that the many committed Green activists throughout the country (of which I used to be one) are doing it purely because they care about the sodding Bolivian arse wasp.

No-one is pretending that we don't face massive environmental problems. No-one has pretended that we don't face massive environmental problems. People enter politics, and absorb political ideologies for different reasons. That's as true for Greens as it is for anyone, including, sometimes, through hard-right ideologies. That's a traceable current in European Green politics, including the UK.

If you don't like the way the Green party is carrying on, there's a simple answer; start your own. There used to be a group called SERA (the Socialist Environmental Research Association) of which the late Robin Cook was a leading member, but I don't know if they're still going.

Also, accusing the Green movement of anti-semitism is a bit rich to put it mildly when some of the movement's leading lights and prophets (such as Paul Ehrlich) are and have been Jewish;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_environmentalism

Who's accused "the Green movement" of anti-Semitism? Attention has rightly been drawn to the anti-Semitism and quasi-fascism of some Greens, but no-one is attributing those opinions to the entire movement.

 

[ViolentPanda]

And you can't call it why the GP are great. You can only call it something neutral. And then only allow pro-green stuff. You don't half waffle on about free speech and why you love debating on stormfront, but a hint of criticism of the greens and we get this drivel.

Not that such hypocrisy reflects in any way on his "commitment" to "free speech". Absolutely not!

 

[ViolentPanda]

1. He wasn't. Thomas Malthus was centuries ahead of him.

Galton was a century ahead too, and tied in the "dilution" of human bloodstock and expanding population of "inferior types" with pressure on resources.
We're all aware of where the ideas of Galton and his contemporaries led, and of the pseudosciences created to justify and support the "rightness" of such an approach.
Read your headlumps, Mr. sihhi, sir? My, I see from the set of your eyes, and the large bump at the back of your head that you're a criminal of the politically-dissenting type. Off with your knackers!

 

[frogwoman]

what do you know, you live in the west so your genes have deteriorated.

 

[ViolentPanda]

OK, but I need a break for a mug of tea. Two of them;

1 / Does Hari's dishonesty (he's admitted that he played fast and loose with the truth when interviewing people) negate the good journalism he's done elsewhere, for example in reporting from the Congo and revealing that the war was largely driven by the wish to control sources of that material which goes into mobile phones (the name of which escapes me at the moment)?

Coltan (raw material from which tantalum, an essential element in some types of resistors, is derived)? That was fairly widely-known before Hari "revealed it". Since Mobutu's time at the least. It's also a fairly pathetic analysis in terms of addressing the issue: It's accurate to say that continuing combat in eastern central DRC is due to coltan, but the continuing strife in the DRC per se is attributable to many divergent factors, from vying for other resources (gold, diamonds, copper, platinum, uranium) to religious strife and "tribal" issues.

 

[ViolentPanda]

What is the relevance of this second-hand anecdote from the pre-1985 era?

Perhaps he's telling us he's a big fan of Goldsmith?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Kittens: yes. Cake: depends what kind.

Beyond the veil lol

Nazis love lardy cake. They know that the high lard content deters most Jews. Truly, lardy cake is a decent Aryan cake!

 

[ViolentPanda]

what do you know, you live in the west so your genes have deteriorated.

Here, is your work colleague a Green, by any chance?

She's certainly misanthropic-sounding enough!

 

[SpineyNorman]

Natalie Bennett is speaking at Glastonbury apparently. There's no decent bands on at the same time as her, is it worth heckling her?

Yes.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Coltan (raw material from which tantalum, an essential element in some types of resistors, is derived)? That was fairly widely-known before Hari "revealed it". Since Mobutu's time at the least. It's also a fairly pathetic analysis in terms of addressing the issue: It's accurate to say that continuing combat in eastern central DRC is due to coltan, but the continuing strife in the DRC per se is attributable to many divergent factors, from vying for other resources (gold, diamonds, copper, platinum, uranium) to religious strife and "tribal" issues.

The most interesting analysis of civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa I've seen is by a bloke called Christopher Cramer, who places it within the context of capitalist development - rather than being separate periods of war and peace, he claims it's a single violent process of class formation, primitive accumulation, state formation, institutional development etc that is punctuated by periods of extreme violence (civil war), and that the violence is a kind of war of position over who will control the surplus. Interesting because it directly contradicts what the world bank and IMF, along with the academic mainstream, have been saying - that civil war is development in reverse - if what he says about conflict and capitalist development is true it would be better characterised as development on steroids.

Makes some interesting comparisons with 'developed' countries - the US civil war, the world wars, etc - basically asserts (a bit like Tilly) that states and their institutions are almost without exception the product of war of one form or another. I've not read enough of the counter-arguments to make a properly informed judgement but it does make a lot more sense than the simplistic resource curse and greed vs grievance arguments - in this analysis the ethnic and religious conflicts, coercive appropriation of resources etc all definitely do play a role in shaping events but are in a sense themselves products of this wider process.

/derail

 

[chilango]

The following was posted on libcom, as the first response to the Brighton bin workers 'statement on community cleanups.' I have no evidence it is written by a GP member, but I'll give you damned good odds that is is:

"Maybe those 'scabs' who you think are purposely trying to undermine you are taking action to prevent wildlife from being harmed by your reckless action.
But yes of course, humans are the MOST important species, right?"

Facepalm indeed Froggie.

Wild Animals don't need such paternalistic "white knighting". True biocentrists would not be arguing for human intervention.

Fucking anthrocentric arrogance. Thin end of the wedge innit. Zoos and gardens. Every piece of litter on the streets is a piece less in landfill!

Trendy metropolitan suburbs are not bioregions. Uh humansplaining dickwads!

Live Wild or Die! Etc.

 

[sihhi]

Jonathan Porritt is still a member and supporter.

Porritt, Chancellor of Keele University imposing massive fee increases, management board member of Wessex Water Major £ from Major's privatisation, also on the board of blacklist-using Willmott Dixon Construction Ltd the massive contractors firm, advisor to Prince Charles and also strategy adviser to anti-union heroes Marks & Spencer; President of Sustainability South West, former chair of Blair's Sustainable Development Commission, still patron of Population Matters/Optimum Population Trust and author of the dystopic fantasy Capitalism: As if the World Matters.

In 2009 he called for Brown to issue government restrictions on families having more than 2 children, where the Times reported him as saying: “I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate”
“I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don’t really hear anyone say the ‘p’ word.”
"UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably."

He supported the Green Euro Election campaign with this gem: "If you dithered about voting for the Green Party before, what can possibly be stopping you this time round? Our two MEPs are the best in the European Parliament, and make a real and lasting difference. We've been proved right on every major issue over the last 20 years or more"

 

[Idris2002]

The Transition Town movement is a Green thing isn't it, even if not (or maybe it is) GP policy?

Here's a comment from the Bad Science forums:

Floppy anarcho toff nonsense. I went to a community garden run by a transition town group. They seemed surprised that we actually wanted to do gardening instead of just chatting. It was populated by families with offspring named things like Tabitha and Rupert. We did not go back. It was a real shame, as they'd been given a really good plot with wonderfully nice soil, but they were just wasting it. Of course maybe not all transition town groups are like that, but I'm now biased against the idea.

http://badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=34271

Remember, this is a normal person talking, not just someone off Urban75.

 

[Meltingpot]

It shouldn't be a difficult one. You need coal to make solar panels.

Good point.

 

[Meltingpot]

Not that such hypocrisy reflects in any way on his "commitment" to "free speech". Absolutely not!

Hint of criticism, my arse. This is a thread called "why the Greens are shit." And since you raise the subject, even on free speech boards (at least the one I know) you can't say anything you like, just anywhere; there are rules to promote good debate, and sections where you're allowed to lark about and others where you're expected to be serious.

What we have here in this thread, and what I'm objecting to, is a veritable slew of negativity about the Green party without any attempt at or even pretence of balance. All I'm asking for is balance, positive comments as well as the negative ones and some attempt at context.

I see you're indulging in selective reading again.

I don't think so, but will let that pass.

This thread is pointing up where Green policy is suspect/why the Green party is shit. It's not a thread about what the Green party stands for, and why it stands for those things.

True, but my point is that it should be, along with all the negative stuff. A beat-up thread doing nothing but dishing the dirt on the Greens isn't good enough for me and IMO it shouldn't be good enough for Urban. You're free to disagree, just as I'm free to protest if I don't like what I see here.

And if I was trying to restrict free speech on here, I'd be contacting the mods and asking them to bin the thread, not just complaining about it.

It doesn't pretend to be.

Sure, but so what? Just to take an admittedly unlikely example, what if you went up to IDS in the street and told him he wasn't a very nice person, and he turned around and said, "I don't pretend to be." Would that settle the matter?

I like to think I'd say something like, "My friend, you bloody well should be. You're responsible for the welfare of a lot of vulnerable people, etc." (Assuming I could even get near the bloke). The same with Urban; we should be aspiring to something better than this.

No-one is pretending that we don't face massive environmental problems. No-one has pretended that we don't face massive environmental problems.

Up until I raised the subject, no one was saying that though. It was all implied implicitly, if at all, by people who presumably knew each other well enough to know where the fault lines are drawn in discussions between them, but that would not be obvious to those who didn't.

Furthermore, I'm sorry but I haven't got the time or inclination to read through any significant fraction of 11 million + posts here to find out where everyone stands on what. It's easy to forget how huge this place is, or how anonymous many if not most of us are to each other.

People enter politics, and absorb political ideologies for different reasons. That's as true for Greens as it is for anyone, including, sometimes, through hard-right ideologies. That's a traceable current in European Green politics, including the UK.

Sure, but on balance I believe the Greens have always been amongst the nicer of the parties, one reason being that there simply isn't anything like as much to be gained personally from being in the Greens as there is from, say, being a Tory and making business contacts through the Conservative party. Our first parliamentary candidate after I joined was a vicar.

Who's accused "the Green movement" of anti-Semitism? Attention has rightly been drawn to the anti-Semitism and quasi-fascism of some Greens, but no-one is attributing those opinions to the entire movement.

Fair enough, but again it's about balance. On the first page, there was a link to a thread called "Greens and eco-fascism." When I pointed out to Spiney that David Icke had written a book about Green politics, he said that he wasn't interested unless it was about lizards and power-hungry Jooz. Even if he was joking (and he might well have been), that doesn't exactly make for good discussion.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Hasn't all this whataboutery already been done ad nauseam on the Guardian thread?

 

[Meltingpot]

And you can't call it why the GP are great. You can only call it something neutral. And then only allow pro-green stuff.

But no one would start a thread on here saying why the Greens are great (at least not a serious one), and not expect anyone to say anything negative about them, so the problem wouldn't arise; and even if it did, again it would be unbalanced, although in the other direction. No political party is perfect and they shouldn't claim to be.

 

[Frances Lengel]

...it's a murky world, the fringe.

It's not so much murky but you just can't see with all that hair in your eyes.

*massive gamble no-ones already said that over four pages*

 

[sihhi]

But no one would start a thread on here saying why the Greens are great (at least not a serious one), and not expect anyone to say anything negative about them, so the problem wouldn't arise; and even if it did, again it would be unbalanced, although in the other direction. No political party is perfect and they shouldn't claim to be.

Shocking imbalance. Where on earth will capitalists put forward unsullied ideas about how great pro-EU capitalist parties are, how they still look after people's interests in spite of hard times? There must be some sort of medium for this...

 

[stethoscope]

I find it odd and honestly bewildering MeltingPot that a thread about the Green Party being shit (they are), and a thread about Johann Hari being a fraud (he is) on urban should seemingly raise your ire so much, when you've also freely admitted to posting/discussing with the assorted fascist scum over on the Shitfront board?

 

[sihhi]

I find it odd and honestly bewildering MeltingPot that a thread about the Green Party being shit (they are), and a thread about Johann Hari being a fraud (he is) on urban should seemingly raise your ire so much, when you've also freely admitted to posting/discussing with the assorted fascist scum over on the Shitfront board?

My suspicion: Easy thrill of contrarianism.

 

[Frances Lengel]

Am not arsesd either way, but just so I know, does MeltingPot (he's not MP, MP's Miles Platting), post on Stormfront as what? An anti? Or a closet anti/shitstirrer/troll? Or just a regular poster?

 

[free spirit]

Hint of criticism, my arse. This is a thread called "why the Greens are shit." And since you raise the subject, even on free speech boards (at least the one I know) you can't say anything you like, just anywhere; there are rules to promote good debate, and sections where you're allowed to lark about and others where you're expected to be serious.

What we have here in this thread, and what I'm objecting to, is a veritable slew of negativity about the Green party without any attempt at or even pretence of balance. All I'm asking for is balance, positive comments as well as the negative ones and some attempt at context

I'm a long time environmentalist, and can't help but agree with the general synopsis of this thread - ie that the green party are generally pretty shit, with a couple of notable exceptions.

They're so shit even about their only decent asset couldn't be arsed to lead them any more, preferring to focus on being a decent MP instead of having to actually try to get some semblance of coherence from the rest of the dippy hippy infused rabble that makes up much of the party around the country.

I'd love nothing more than to have a decent left wing environmentalist party in government, but let's face it, the green party aren't ever going to get to that point - even on the environment their policies simply aren't credible, as someone pointed out earlier in the thread, reducing carbon by 10% a year every year is the stuff of ignorant fairy tales, it simply couldn't be done without rolling blackouts or similar, so why pledge something that any expert will tell you is impossible (and I am pretty much an expert in that field).

Just to give the thread some balance like