Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Jeremy Corbyn's time is up

You're claiming the response from a tiny crossbreak supports your argument, that it's a 'clear indication' that you're right. The article warns against extrapolating anything from such a small sample.
 
You're claiming the response from a tiny crossbreak supports your argument, that it's a 'clear indication' that you're right. The article warns against extrapolating anything from such a small sample.
TBF Mary is normally very good at predicting the trend

maryfocusgroup.jpg
 
Last edited:
You're claiming the response from a tiny crossbreak supports your argument, that it's a 'clear indication' that you're right. The article warns against extrapolating anything from such a small sample.
The figures I was discussing are statistically significant, and I was aware of that before I started discussing them because although I'm a bit rusty I do have a decent grounding in statistics.

Roughly on that sample base it would have a margin of error of 6% either way for the leave supporters (to 95% CI), so the margin of error figures would be...

Among leave supporters
Owen Smith = 17% (11%-23% CI)
Corbyn = 83% (77%-89% CI)

Among the overall voter pool (95% CI of 3%)
Owen Smith = 38% (35%-41% CI)
Corbyn = 62% (59%-65% CI)


So the confidence interval figures do not overlap for any of the figures, and there is a statistically significant difference in the level of corbyn support of at least 12% at the outside bounds of those confidence intervals between those who supported leave, and the overall voter pool.

So contrary to your assertions, it's perfectly reasonably to draw conclusions from these figures as they are statistically significant, and also perfectly reasonable to says that it 'clearly indicates' something (and by a wide enough margin that this was fucking obvious without needing to do the full calcs to prove it).

That article you posted was discussing people who were extrapolating meaning from polling data where the outer bounds of the confidence intervals were overlapping, so there was no statistical significance to the figures, it therefore doesn't apply in this situation as you'd have known if you weren't trying to pull me up on something that you don't understand yourself.
 
The real problem is seeking to leap from the views of brexit voting labour members/registered supporters to the views of brexit voting labour voters.
 
The real problem is seeking to leap from the views of brexit voting labour members/registered supporters to the views of brexit voting labour voters.
I don't see that it's too much of a leap to assume that the views of leave supporting labour members / supporters will correlate reasonably closely with those of wider labour voting leave supporters, not when the differences are that big in the survey results. The supporters are more likely to be influenced by the pro-corbyn social media campaigns than the wider labour voting electorate so that probably will cause some level of difference, but I'd still be very surprised if such a big difference among members was reversed among labour voters.

There's a lot more uncertainty involved in extrapolating from those figures to the wider leave population, which is why I said "hopefully they can be replicated to some degree among UKIP supporters." rather than claiming that the figures showed this would be the case.

As it is, bmg polling shows no significant difference between the 2 among UKIP supporters or Leave voters when it comes to their preference for smith vs may or corbyn vs May - smith is marginally ahead with both, but it's within the margin of error. Whether Corbyn would have been further behind with those groups had he spent the time campaigning on platforms alongside cameron or not is probably going to remain a question that can't really be answered from the polling data - my take on it being that he would have been, others may disagree.
 
if you weren't trying to pull me up on something that you don't understand yourself.
Nah, I was trying to pull you up on your tendency to take what occasional crumbs of polling data you think support your views and extrapolate wildly beyond anything the figures could possibly tell you.

FWIW I think if Corbyn was going to campaign for remain (I bet he's wondering why he bothered now), the line he took was probably the best he could take. I've no idea if it's made any real difference to how he's seen by leave voters: as you say, it remains a question that can't really be answered from the polling data. Other polls consistently suggest he's deeply unpopular with them, and whether his EU ref position will have made the difference between political oblivion or political oblivion +1 is pretty academic.
 
on one of the Syria threads Geri posted this article also by Hamad:

In that link Hamad provides a source which is a youtube video of a talk by Chomsky, and having listened to it …

Hamad said:
It [the left] claims to be “anti-imperialist,” yet you have no less a figure as Noam Chomsky so absurdly and pathetically claim that Russia’s intervention in Syria is not “imperialist” since “it’s supporting a government,” while he endorses the conservative “realism” of Patrick Cockburn, whose writing has often come down on the side of the Assad regime.

Chomsky actually says:

“… Russia is supporting a brutal, vicious government. I don’t think they should, but it’s not imperialism. To support a government is not imperialism. It’s completely wrong but it’s not imperialism. …

Hamad’s quote suggests that Chomsky is in some way (“absurdly and pathetically”) dismissing the importance of Russia’s intervention. That is hugely misleading if you look at the text I’ve bolded. He’s making a point about the definition of the word “imperialism”.

I know it seems to be frowned upon to resort to dictionary definitions but the Oxford on-line dictionary defines Imperialism with “A policy of extending a country’s power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means.”

At first sight I’d probably agree that it is imperialism, although I suspect that Chomsky is comparing Russia's motives to those of American "imperialism". Either way, though, to focus on his use of the word ‘imperialism’ while not giving the full quite is just disingenuous. It makes Chomsky (and hence 'the left') look like a Russian apologist while if you look at the complete quote he's no such thing.

If you give the full Chomsky quotes you’re referring to in your own criticisms I’ll take a look at them too - I'm always willing to be proved wrong - but until then I still maintain that the only criticisms of Chomsky that I’ve seen chased down are where the person criticizing:

(a) does actually quote him and says or implies how disgusting it is that he would say such a thing and you look at what they’re quoting and it’s actually quite true (example “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”)

(b) says “Chomsky says ...” and you look at the actual quote and he’s not actually saying that at all and

(c) where they give Chomsky's words but they're taken out of context (Hamad quote's another example).
 
Last edited:
on one of the Syria threads Geri posted this article also by Hamad:

In that link Hamad provides a source which is a youtube video of a talk by Chomsky, and having listened to it, I'd also add that he talks of the US and it's allies backing Islamists, but fails to mention Shia Islamists and their role in Syria. I wonder why?

I don’t know, but I suspect that it’s because that wasn’t the question he was being asked.

He says, 'if you attack Assad, you're undermining resistance to the Islamic State and al-Nusra'. Where to start with that?

The original question he was answering was whether he would support US ‘humanitarian’ i.e. military intervention. He says:

Is there such a thing as humanitarian intervention? Actually that’s not an idle question. If you look over modern history what you discover is just about every use of force is called humanitarian intervention. Literally, we’re doing it for noble purposes. But then you always have to ask the question “is it true”. And the answer to that is almost always no. I wouldn’t say 100% but overwhelmingly the intervention is for the purposes of those carrying out the force. So would it be a legitimate thing yeh it would if it existed but the question is does it exist?

So he’s saying he would intervene but doesn’t believe the US (or Russia or UK ….) intervention will actually be humanitarian.

You quote “If you attack Assad, you’re undermining resistance to the Islamic state and al-Nusra Front’, but you didn’t give the context (“I wonder why”).

He’s just said that Russia is supporting Assad (“also comparably brutal and destructive”) , Turkey is supporting the jihadi Al-Nusra Front, and Saudi Arabia supported what became the Islamic State.

Just before your quote he asks the specific question "who would you attack?", and after your quote he says that if you do that then "[the Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State] will then take over. Is that what you want for Syria?” To pick on that quote to suggest he’s in some way an Assad apologist is disingenuous.

He also says wrongly, 'if you go back to the 2012 there was no uprising' - news to the countless people who during that time and earlier were arrested, tortured, murdered and disappeared during largely peaceful (on their side at least) protests against the regime.

Where has he denied that people were arrested, tortured, murdered and disappeared before 2012? He’s obviously referring to the escalation after 2012 (in 2012 the fighting spread across Syria and the UN declared there was a civil war) and people began "pouring in from outside". So you’ve turned him giving a different date into some sort of denial of atrocity.

e2a: in fact in a short space of time he manages to be wrong about an impressive number of things

I know very little about the Syrian conflict but the ‘impressive number’ seems to be zero unless you can back up what you've said. As far as I can see you're just doing (c) again – distorting the context.
 
Last edited:
Anyone else think that one of the best things about Corbyn (and to an extent Brexit) is that it's got all these Radio 4 middle-class liberals to show their hand? I don't even mean the people who listen to Radio 4, I mean their actual shit 'left-wing' comedians like Marcus Brigstock and Mitch Benn, they are all a handful of tweets away from calling for a kale-eating Pinochet.

 
Hamad said:

Chomsky actually says:



Hamad’s quote suggests that Chomsky is in some way (“absurdly and pathetically”) dismissing the importance of Russia’s intervention. That is hugely misleading if you look at the text I’ve bolded. He’s making a point about the definition of the word “imperialism”.

I know it seems to be frowned upon to resort to dictionary definitions but the Oxford on-line dictionary defines Imperialism with “A policy of extending a country’s power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means.”

At first sight I’d probably agree that it is imperialism, although I suspect that Chomsky is comparing Russia's motives to those of American "imperialism". Either way, though, to focus on his use of the word ‘imperialism’ while not giving the full quite is just disingenuous. It makes Chomsky (and hence 'the left') look like a Russian apologist while if you look at the complete quote he's no such thing.

If you give the full Chomsky quotes you’re referring to in your own criticisms I’ll take a look at them too - I'm always willing to be proved wrong - but until then I still maintain that the only criticisms of Chomsky that I’ve seen chased down are where the person criticizing:

(a) does actually quote him and says or implies how disgusting it is that he would say such a thing and you look at what they’re quoting and it’s actually quite true (example “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”)

(b) says “Chomsky says ...” and you look at the actual quote and he’s not actually saying that at all and

(c) where they give Chomsky's words but they're taken out of context (Hamad quote's another example).

This is a simple misreading of Hamad's intentions here - and i suspect not being aware of the historical debates within the left not around what constitutes imperialism but what political response imperialism entails. Hamad's claim is that Chomsky's idea that Russia's intervention is Syria does not count as imperialism as it has been asked to intervene by the 'brutual, vicious government" is what is absurd and pathetic in itself - simply plain wrong (and in that it is entirely justified to focus on the question of imperialism - something which you seem to think is disingenuous for some reason).

Now the importance of this, and the reason for the focus, is that for the historical left - including chomsky from the 60s onwards - if something constituted imperialism then you were obliged to actively support it, or pretend that it wasn't imperialism at all. Chomsky during the Syrian uprising has moved from the first position to the second - to that of the stalinists and orthodox trots he had always previously opposed. And in the process it takes the sides of all states against all protests, against all uprisings against dictatorships because the regimes are formally legal, and so by extension any outsid intervention they decide on to further their murderous actions are also legal. From calling the US actions in Vietnam imperialism to arguing that they're not in effect. That's why it's absurd and pathetic and Hamad is right to say so.

And it's also actually is why that logic is a demonstration of part of the the left being "russian apologists". That's the intention of the article and there's nothing at all in your post that undermines the article or its claims. None of those three things you list at the end were done in Hamad's article.

This is the second time someone has been outraged by this specific outrage of challenging Chomsky with the words absurd and pathetic btw. See from here on for previous.
 
two sheds
don't have much time today unfortunately and butchersapron has written a good reply already, but I thought you might be interested in this piece, also by our friend Sam Hamad, about the relationship between Saudi Arabia, Wahabism, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, among other things - relevant to what Chomsky has to say on the subject in that talk.
 
I don’t know, but I suspect that it’s because that wasn’t the question he was being asked.



The original question he was answering was whether he would support US ‘humanitarian’ i.e. military intervention. He says:



So he’s saying he would intervene but doesn’t believe the US (or Russia or UK ….) intervention will actually be humanitarian.

You quote “If you attack Assad, you’re undermining resistance to the Islamic state and al-Nusra Front’, but you didn’t give the context (“I wonder why”).

He’s just said that Russia is supporting Assad (“also comparably brutal and destructive”) , Turkey is supporting the jihadi Al-Nusra Front, and Saudi Arabia supported what became the Islamic State.

Just before your quote he asks the specific question "who would you attack?", and after your quote he says that if you do that then "[the Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State] will then take over. Is that what you want for Syria?” To pick on that quote to suggest he’s in some way an Assad apologist is disingenuous.



Where has he denied that people were arrested, tortured, murdered and disappeared before 2012? He’s obviously referring to the escalation after 2012 (in 2012 the fighting spread across Syria and the UN declared there was a civil war) and people began "pouring in from outside". So you’ve turned him giving a different date into some sort of denial of atrocity.



I know very little about the Syrian conflict but the ‘impressive number’ seems to be zero unless you can back up what you've said. As far as I can see you're just doing (c) again – distorting the context.

He's most def not saying the he/or anyone else should intervene. He opposes intervention. He might helpfully offer grounds to those on the left who don't and need reasons to support such positions, but he doesn't support intervention itself.

As for the impressive number of things he's wrong in on that video you quote two of them - SA being behind ISIS and Turkey being behind what was JAN. They are simply not true and only someone whose not really been following what's going on and instead falling back on old shopworn myths. SA funded the groups that nearly destroyed ISIS in 2013 - that's why they've became targets themselves for example. The best corrective to this old nonsense is actually Hamad himself in the article “The Rise of Daesh in Syria—some Inconvenient Truths” in the book Khiyana: Daesh, The Left and the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution. There is a much shortened version of the text here

Another one is there being no uprising in 2012 - that, again, is simply untrue and no serious book suggests such a thing. The regimes militarisation of the uprising a) took place in late 2011 and b) didn't kill the uprising. If it did, why are we here now and why is the uprising continuing? There are now many books demonstrating this but the best is Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution & War by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami. So why would Chomsky be claiming there was no uprising in 2012 during an interview in late 2015 and what was his basing this misreading on? And why did he find it one he could use?
 
two sheds
don't have much time today unfortunately and butchersapron has written a good reply already, but I thought you might be interested in this piece, also by our friend Sam Hamad, about the relationship between Saudi Arabia, Wahabism, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, among other things - relevant to what Chomsky has to say on the subject in that talk.
Just pointed out in that second reply, that this is much shortened version, but does cover the exact points. I reckon also this isn't the right thread for this discussion.
 
Last edited:
Anyone else think that one of the best things about Corbyn (and to an extent Brexit) is that it's got all these Radio 4 middle-class liberals to show their hand? I don't even mean the people who listen to Radio 4, I mean their actual shit 'left-wing' comedians like Marcus Brigstock and Mitch Benn, they are all a handful of tweets away from calling for a kale-eating Pinochet.


Mitch Benn's a prick. I once gave him a gig back in the 1990s. I recently had a Twitter scrap with him. He kept repeating the same spiel as the rest of the anti-Corbyn types and each time I challenged him, he'd reply with another pre-packaged spiel.

His songs are shite too.
 
Anyone else think that one of the best things about Corbyn (and to an extent Brexit) is that it's got all these Radio 4 middle-class liberals to show their hand? I don't even mean the people who listen to Radio 4, I mean their actual shit 'left-wing' comedians like Marcus Brigstock and Mitch Benn, they are all a handful of tweets away from calling for a kale-eating Pinochet.



Even in the steaming pile of shite that is the Now Show, Mitch Benn was always an especially rancid turd. Brigstocke is a bit more disappointing because at least he's funny. But he's posh as fuck, of course. Upper-middle-class lefties like that only really want society to be a bit nicer to people less well off than them. I guess that's better than being an upper-middle-class right-wing cunt, but not much, as many of them are revealing now, like you say.

I guess I have to own up to being a middle-class lefty myself (not at the public-school, getting-on-R4 level though. Being from the North East helps in that respect - our idea of middle class wouldn't really cut it in Islington.) Not all of 'us' are showing that hand right now - I don't find Corbyn that left wing, never mind threateningly so, and I share your contempt for those whose left-wing 'principles' have taken flight so easily.
 
This is the second time someone has been outraged by this specific outrage of challenging Chomsky with the words absurd and pathetic btw. See from here on for previous.

"outrage" :D

errm those were the words he used, I was quoting him to disagree

But yes fair point I'll take it over to the Syria thread when I've had a look at what you're saying.

How has Corbyn been on Syria btw? Anything he's said that you've seen that you dislike?
 
"outrage" :D

errm those were the words he used, I was quoting him to disagree

But yes fair point I'll take it over to the Syria thread when I've had a look at what you're saying.

How has Corbyn been on Syria btw? Anything he's said that you've seen that you dislike?
I know, but it was those two exact words that both you and the other poster responded to. I even put them in quotes to make sure in the first post.

Yes, he's been worse than chomsky. He was the head of the STWC when they took a simple pro-assad position, invited nutter pro-assad speakers, sidelined anti-assad syrians (calling the police on them when they tried to speak at meetings), helped cover-up the depth of the democratic revolutionary elements of the uprising by reducing them simply down to 'western-backed rebels' (and that's a code-word the 2nd sort of people i mentioned in my first post used to use to support USSR backed imperialism) and basically used a top-down geo-political rivalry interpretation to quietly leave the mass murdering, barrel boming, tens of thousands of torturing to death, people disappearing regime alone - and disappearing the anti-regime revolutionaries in the process.

And this has been the default position of much of the old left (the stalinists and ortho-trots) and their new anti-imperialist coalition partners, the SWP and ex-swp milieu. Essentially the old stalinist position won. Corbyn was always part of that former group.
 
btw, the massively publicised thievery of money and the trifling reasons given is to put people off attempting to join or register next time. Not to cost corbyn the election this time around. The more the stories are built up and shared the better for them. Pretty clever.
 
Sometimes. Of course, even Rudolph Hess would have the odd decent joke if you put him up against Mitch Benn and Punt and Dennis though.
'I've got tickets for the ballet, it's a Spandau Ballet, geddit? I'm here all week. Well, 40 years to be accurate'.
 
Back
Top Bottom