[wat0n]

The climate here has a lot to do with why the British are less sociable than, say, Caribbean peoples. You’re right about that.

This is extensible to northern Europeans and Americans in general from what I've seen. We, Latin Americans, are usually social for global standards - all on average, of course, one can always find outliers.

[Rich]

It must have taken you a few hours or perhaps days to find such an article from 2018.

Er no, I'd say less than 10 seconds. One google, first hit. A very long time back I knew people, who went on to join the Revolutionary Communist Party. Note I'm talking about the RCP formed in the late 70's not the one formed in the early 1940s. The later Revolutionary Communist Party emerged as the main group out of the fracturing of the RCT, the Revolutionary Communist Tendency. The RCT originally formed as a sub group inside the Revolutionary Communist Group that was expelled by them. The Revolutionary Communist Group started as a faction inside the International Socialists, the fore runners of the Socialist Workers Party that got expelled from the SWP. The RCP were hard line Leninists,basing themselves on "What is to be Done". They were heavily contrarian back then. In the late nineties they formally disbanded and reinvented themselves as a loose network of Libertarians.

Anyway the RCP have been surprisingly influential in their after life, including Claire Fox, Frank Furedi and Brendan ONeil and Mich Hume who went on to publish Spiked., While I don't recommend wasting a large amount of your life reading Spiked its a useful place to get a contrarian opinion.

Sounds like the usual anti-Corbynist terrorism. .ie "Do not return the marbles because Corbyn said he will" and "we can't afford him to be right".

Condition?



The times when Brits were capable of imposing conditions has long gone.

There is only 1 condition, repatriate the Marbles and pay for compensation for the damage caused by Elgin.

The condition is on our politicians not the Greek ones. Anyway this whole thing looks like psyops to allow Charlie Windsor to play the good guy with his Greek tie, after him and Kate being named as the racists in skingate.

[Potemkin]

:) Er no, I'd say less than 10 seconds. One google, first hit. A very long time back I knew people, who went on to join the Revolutionary Communist Party. Note I'm talking about the RCP formed in the late 70's not the one formed in the early 1940s. The later Revolutionary Communist Party emerged as the main group out of the fracturing of the RCT, the Revolutionary Communist Tendency. The RCT originally formed as a sub group inside the Revolutionary Communist Group that was expelled by them. The Revolutionary Communist Group started as a faction inside the International Socialists, the fore runners of the Socialist Workers Party that got expelled from the SWP. The RCP were hard line Leninists,basing themselves on "What is to be Done". They were heavily contrarian back then. In the late nineties they formally disbanded and reinvented themselves as a loose network of Libertarians.

The condition is on our politicians not the Greek ones. Anyway this whole thing looks like psyops to allow Charlie Windsor to play the good guy with his Greek tie, after him and Kate being named as the racists in skingate.

Never ascribe anything to coincidence which could also be ascribed to the cunning of the British ruling class.

[noemon]

:) Er no, I'd say less than 10 seconds. One google, first hit. A very long time back I knew people, who went on to join the Revolutionary Communist Party. Note I'm talking about the RCP formed in the late 70's not the one formed in the early 1940s. The later Revolutionary Communist Party emerged as the main group out of the fracturing of the RCT, the Revolutionary Communist Tendency. The RCT originally formed as a sub group inside the Revolutionary Communist Group that was expelled by them. The Revolutionary Communist Group started as a faction inside the International Socialists, the fore runners of the Socialist Workers Party that got expelled from the SWP. The RCP were hard line Leninists,basing themselves on "What is to be Done". They were heavily contrarian back then. In the late nineties they formally disbanded and reinvented themselves as a loose network of Libertarians.

Spiked has a VERY interesting history which I feel you are unaware of.

I will try to keep this as brief as possible.

Let's go back to 1992.

ITN(ITV) journalists, Penny Marshall, Ed Vulliamy(currently of the Guardian) and a couple of others fly to Yugoslavia to document the refugee camps under Yugoslavian control. The Serbs grant ITN permission and a military escort.

ITN goes to the camps and while filming the camps, ITN itself is also being filmed by a Serbian crew.

Penny Marschall doctors the picture that fooled the world which was uncovered by investigative journalist Thomas Deichman.

Marshall received an Emmy for her images and NATO declares war on Yugoslavia openly using Penny Marshall's images as a justification to bomb Serbia due to "war-crimes as shown in Penny's images".

Deichman in Germany proves that the images are fake and that the NATO war on Yugoslavia is a psy-ops. He publishes an article in Germany which is in turn picked up by Jared Israel of Columbia University. Jared's article in the Emperor's clothes is then reposted by Living Marxism(aka SPIKED). Jared is extremely critical to Penny Marshall in the article as he is against Noam Chomsky whom he calls the "vanguard of the empire" due to his ability to linguistically blame NATO while axiomatically blaming the Serbs, so Chomsky used "blaming NATO" as a cover to fool anti-NATO leftists into hating Serbia whom he was blaming axiomatically.

Anyhow, Penny Marshall sues Living Marxism for libel in the British courts and even though the Judge openly agrees that Marshall' team had doctored the images, he says that LM should not have libeled her because she or her team may had done it out of error and not out of intent! This is also about 10 years after the bombings.

LM goes bankrupt and relaunches as SPIKED but also henceforth as an agent of the establishment.

This is how LM(the paper of the RCT) turned from "revolutionary marxism" to "anarcho-capitalist libertarianism" in SPIKED.

For a "Marxist revolutionary, anti-establishment" outlet to be openly arguing that the Parthenon Marbles must stay in London is further evidence of SPIKED's total integration into that establishment.

In any case, the Parthenon Marbles issue is a dead-end. Britain will return the Marbles, the more she refuses, the worse for Britain and the better for Greece and not just on the issue of the Parthenon Marbles in and of itself.

In a world where optics matter a lot and in a world where the lion always eats the last gazelle...

Whenever there is a crisis, the gazelle does not need to outrun the lion, but the last gazelle!

The UK is the last gazelle of the West today and Rishi as well as Britain as a whole(let's not forget that neither Blair or Brown agreed to the return and that even people like Mary Beard have supported them staying in the UK though she has recently changed) further reinforce that view.

The UK is the only Western country seeking to leave the UN Convention on Refugees. This is an attempt to lower "boat crossings" that account for a very tiny fraction of net migration in the UK, while increasing legal migration to unprecedented levels. For decades the UK in the EU had a steady average net migration of 250k people per year. Today that figure stands at 650k per year legally and around 10k illegally via boat crossings. The government is going insane internationally to solve the problem of the 10k while at the same time increasing the 250k to 650k

This makes the British government particularly egregious and cements its position as last gazelle internationally.

This time last year sans a couple of weeks, Britain was facing the prospect of financial bankruptcy, again as a result of her position as last gazelle.

It is also the only European country to have left the EU and to have declared open economic, political, arms(Australian submarines) & biotech(Astrazeneca-Boris scandal) war on it during this charade while at the same time taking open digs at the US for supporting the status quo in Ireland. Not even Biden's Irish ancestry was respected. Something that Brexiteers also tried to change and which remains pending due to NI's pro-British parties refusing to join parliament due to the NI Protocol and Sinn Fein's first parliament victory.

So Britain remains well steady on the path of pariah and actions like these reinforce that pariah status. This is a double action made here by Rishi. Refusing to give the Marbles back is just 1 action but the even worse one is that he canceled his scheduled visit with the Greek PM while he was already in the country to meet with him, effectively putting several nails on the coffin of British reliability in the International System.

[Potemkin]

So the British Establishment use every dirty trick in the book to get their own way. Why does this surprise you, @noemon? How long have you lived in Britain, hobnobbing with the upper classes in Cambridge? Have you only just realised what they’re all about?

[noemon]

So the British Establishment use every dirty trick in the book to get their own way. Why does this surprise you, @noemon? How long have you lived in Britain, hobnobbing with the upper classes in Cambridge? Have you only just realised what they’re all about?

As ye know, it is not now that I have realised....

But what's really your point Potemkin? What am I supposed to do exactly?

And what are you supposed to do?

You 've known the British system for years, and you purport yourself a Revolutionary Marxist, yet it's doubtful on whether you even support Scottish independence. When they pulled these same tricks against the SNP as far as I can tell you went along with it!

What is it that you do about it exactly?

The British upper classes proved to be a bit incompatible with me or I with them. The Italian, Serbian, Spanish, Portuguese, Balkan, Turkish, Israeli ones however proved to be extremely compatible and these are the people I am sharing this conversation with including this comment of yours.

[Tainari88]

As ye know, it is not now that I have realised....

But what's really your point Potemkin? What am I supposed to do exactly?

And what are you supposed to do?

You 've known the British system for years, and you purport yourself a Revolutionary Marxist, yet it's doubtful on whether you even support Scottish independence. When they pulled these same tricks against the SNP as far as I can tell you went along with it!

What is it that you do about it exactly?

The British upper classes proved to be a bit incompatible with me or I with them. The Italian, Serbian, Spanish, Portuguese, Balkan, Turkish, Israeli ones however proved to be extremely compatible and these are the people I am sharing this conversation with including this comment of yours.

He has secret plans Noemon. He was never liking the British upper class.

He is a contrarian of the worst sort. Lol.

The British upper classes are a bit incompatible with you Noemon?

I never identified with any upper class people in my entire life.

They never give a damn in general about anyone's well being but their own in general. They never commit class suicide and much less for people who are not an integral part of their inner circle since the cradle.

I think the best way to live is being true to humanistic values, and universal human rights, international law, and working actively on a healthy society in all nations. And for me, having some elitist group run the show and never do a damn thing to improve the conditions of all of their own society and much less the conditions of foreign societies is a recipe for future war, or future instability.

But, it sure was interesting listening to Rich and Potemkin and your comments about British politics with Rishi man...

[Potemkin]

As ye know, it is not now that I have realised....

But what's really your point Potemkin? What am I supposed to do exactly?

And what are you supposed to do?

You 've known the British system for years, and you purport yourself a Revolutionary Marxist, yet it's doubtful on whether you even support Scottish independence. When they pulled these same tricks against the SNP as far as I can tell you went along with it!

What is it that you do about it exactly?

The British upper classes proved to be a bit incompatible with me or I with them. The Italian, Serbian, Spanish, Portuguese, Balkan, Turkish, Israeli ones however proved to be extremely compatible and these are the people I am sharing this conversation with including this comment of yours.

Indeed. The British upper classes, by and large, are not very likeable people. Their culture is essentially one which excludes people who are not exactly like themselves. Their general demeanour is cold, distant and arrogant. They are deeply offensive people, not just in their opinions but in the way they interact with people. Yet you chose to spend your life associating with such people, and then complain that you find them offensive and don’t like them. What exactly did you expect?

[noemon]

He has secret plans Noemon. He was never liking the British upper class.

He is a contrarian of the worst sort. Lol.

The British upper classes are a bit incompatible with you Noemon?

I never identified with any upper class people in my entire life.

They never give a damn in general about anyone's well being but their own in general. They never commit class suicide and much less for people who are not an integral part of their inner circle since the cradle.

I think the best way to live is being true to humanistic values, and universal human rights, international law, and working actively on a healthy society in all nations. And for me, having some elitist group run the show and never do a damn thing to improve the conditions of all of their own society and much less the conditions of foreign societies is a recipe for future war, or future instability.

But, it sure was interesting listening to Rich and Potemkin and your comments about British politics with Rishi man...

Just to give you an idea of how convinced British intellectualls and elites were of their Greco-Roman "heritage", when people confronted them with your own argument that British stiff upper lip culture cannot be matched to Hellenic open-arms culture(like the Latin culture), they rationalized this by claiming that they are the "descendants" of the ancient Greek Stoics.

So they turned their stiff upper lip into a Stoic virtue and doubled down.

Have you ever even wondered why the UK still insists on using the 'mile, yard, foot, pound, ounce', etcetera?

This is the Byzantine Greek metric system and even in its officer and aristocratic ranks, the UK still uses Byzantine Greek ranks such as Duke, Captain, Rex, Grammarian, etcetera.

And the Byzantine-Greek system is the official Greco-Roman system.

[noemon]

Indeed. The British upper classes, by and large, are not very likeable people. Their culture is essentially one which excludes people who are not exactly like themselves. Their general demeanour is cold, distant and arrogant. They are deeply offensive people, not just in their opinions but in the way they interact with people. Yet you chose to spend your life associating with such people, and then complain that you find them offensive and don’t like them. What exactly did you expect?

What is wrong with you Potemkin?

I did not spend "my life" doing anything of the sort mate.

And I do not really see your point even if I did!

[Potemkin]

:eh:

What is wrong with you Potemkin?

I did not spend "my life" doing anything of the sort mate.

And I do not really see your point even if I did!

Cambridge is the “Ground Zero”, the “Heart of Darkness” of the British upper classes. It’s like moving to live in rural Arkansas, and then complaining that you’re surrounded by weird-looking people who play banjos all the time. Lol.

[Tainari88]

Cambridge is the “Ground Zero”, the “Heart of Darkness” of the British upper classes. It’s like moving to live in rural Arkansas, and then complaining that you’re surrounded by weird-looking people who play banjos all the time. Lol.

Ground Zero in the Heart of Darkness? That sounds ominous. Just how bad are these Cambridge upper crust folks? I had plans to visit Cambridge someday in some cloudy future where I can buy an airline ticket to visit the UK...in some foggy future. Hee hee. But now with these comments about the heart of darkness? I don't know about that Potemkin. Save me from the Devil Worshippers! I will have to get some protection from some Mexican Curandero that knows how to deal with the Heart of Darkness threats!

[Tainari88]

Just to give you an idea of how convinced British intellectualls and elites were of their Greco-Roman "heritage", when people confronted them with your own argument that British stiff upper lip culture cannot be matched to Hellenic open-arms culture(like the Latin culture), they rationalized this by claiming that they are the "descendants" of the ancient Greek Stoics.

So they turned their stiff upper lip into a Stoic virtue and doubled down.

Have you ever even wondered why the UK still insists on using the 'mile, yard, foot, pound, ounce', etcetera?

This is the Byzantine Greek metric system and even in its officer and aristocratic ranks, the UK still uses Byzantine Greek ranks such as Duke, Captain, Rex, Grammarian, etcetera.

And the Byzantine-Greek system is the official Greco-Roman system.

They turned stoic stuff and stiff upper lip into some form of Hellenistic inheritance? You see, this bolsters my theory that the British are hung up on these Roman and Greek paradigms when their real culture is not that at all.

They live in denial.

[Potemkin]

They turned stoic stuff and stiff upper lip into some form of Hellenistic inheritance? You see, this bolsters my theory that the British are hung up on these Roman and Greek paradigms when their real culture is not that at all.

They live in denial.

And the irony is that it’s based on a misunderstanding of Stoicism. The ancient philosophy of Stoicism wasn’t about repressing your emotions, but adopting the rational and philosophical “view from above” which could put your present situation into perspective. You would still feel emotions such as fear or anxiety or affection, but not be overwhelmed by those emotions. The aim was to achieve a sense of equanimity - a peaceful core of your being which can accept whatever happens as being inevitable and temporary, while still responding to those events and to other people with normal human feelings. As usual, the Brits get it wrong. Lol.

[Deutschmania]

Just to give you an idea of how convinced British intellectualls and elites were of their Greco-Roman "heritage", when people confronted them with your own argument that British stiff upper lip culture cannot be matched to Hellenic open-arms culture(like the Latin culture), they rationalized this by claiming that they are the "descendants" of the ancient Greek Stoics.

So they turned their stiff upper lip into a Stoic virtue and doubled down.

Have you ever even wondered why the UK still insists on using the 'mile, yard, foot, pound, ounce', etcetera?

This is the Byzantine Greek metric system and even in its officer and aristocratic ranks, the UK still uses Byzantine Greek ranks such as Duke, Captain, Rex, Grammarian, etcetera.

And the Byzantine-Greek system is the official Greco-Roman system.

Now I have this song , from a Gilbert and Sullivan musical running through my head . More to the point , I think that the British seem to have historically seen themselves as being the bastion of Christian Western Civilization , in opposition to Islamic Middle Eastern Civilization. Therefore they were concerned at the time about the Ottoman Turkish Muslims destroying the art of the Parthenon , in like manner to how other statues , such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan were eventually demolished . https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/why-extreme-islamists-are-intent-destroying-cultural-artifacts-flna1B8222275 But unless they are like me , a descendant of the Byzantine Greek Princess Irene Angelina , they cannot validly claim to be the successors of Greek culture. And even I do not really personally claim my Greek heritage , as it is so very distant , even more so than my Jewish lineage , and as I am not of the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith , I do not feel that I have all that much in common with that ethno-cultural community .

[noemon]

Therefore they were concerned at the time about the Ottoman Turkish Muslims destroying the art of the Parthenon , in like manner to how other statues , such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan were eventually demolished

Are you actually serious? Or just being ironic?

The Parthenon has been damaged by 2 people alone during its entire existence.

The Venetians who bombarded it with cannons and Elgin who caused even more serious damage by breaking the building apart so that he could decorate his country home and impress his wife.

He got unlucky, because his ship carrying the marbles met a storm & sunk near Elafonisos, he then spent a couple of years fishing them out and a couple of years after his return to the country, his wife divorced him, leaving him penniless and forcing him to sell the Parthenon's walls to the British Museum.

The Buddhas were destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, not the Ottoman Empire.

In both cases, the Parthenon was damaged by Christian Europeans and not Muslims.

[Tainari88]

Are you actually serious? Or just being ironic?

The Parthenon has been damaged by 2 people alone during its entire existence.

The Venetians who bombarded it with cannons and Elgin who caused even more serious damage by breaking the building apart so that he could decorate his country home and impress his wife.

He got unlucky, because his ship carrying the marbles met a storm & sunk near Elafonisos, he then spent a couple of years fishing them out and a couple of years after his return to the country, his wife divorced him, leaving him penniless and forcing him to sell the Parthenon's walls to the British Museum.

The Buddhas were destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, not the Ottoman Empire.

In both cases, the Parthenon was damaged by Christian Europeans and not Muslims.

Wow, Elgin got some bad luck there Noemon.

You know that reminds me of Hernán Cortés that took over the Aztec Empire and decided to use the stones for building Roman Catholic churches and stole all the gold and etc and the High Priest of the Templo Mayor in Mexico City cursed his ass. And everything the Priest said would happen to him happened to him.

He wound up losing all his position, his ambitions turned to dust with his arrogance. One has to wonder about these things in human history eh?

[Rugoz]

All countries have their own ridiculous cultural peculiarities.

[Tainari88]

All countries have their own ridiculous cultural peculiarities.

Yes, and the problem is that the very powerful ones get a free pass. They do not like being criticized for their lying and their arrogance and their lack of respect for the ones living with inequality.

[Rich]

Spiked has a VERY interesting history which I feel you are unaware of.

I will try to keep this as brief as possible.

Let's go back to 1992.

Actually I am aware of it, at least the broad outlines. I used to read Living Marxism back in 1992. ( Along with the Financial Times , the Economist, Marxism Today and other publications, so reading it didn't mean I was a supporter. I didn't know any RCP members myself, but I remember a guy I knew telling me a story. For some reason he was sharing a building with an RCP member and he over heard this member ring up a second member / supporter and tell them that they wanted them to go to some meeting along with a third member, but could they keep an eye on this third member and report back on them. Having got off the phone he then promptly rings up this third member, asks them to go to the meeting and could he keep an eye on the second member for him.

And I later heard that the person that told me this story had become an RCP member himself. Anyway they were always a weird outfit. The RCP was pretty successful at recruiting "Black" and South Asian members at a time when the far left membership was not that "diverse". WAR, Workers Against Racism was one of their main two front organisations, but at the same time they would go to Bernard Manning gigs and declare how funny he was.

As to the claims about Bosnia I think I read them at the time. But I didn't really follow the matter closely. For right or for wrong I was generally supportive of the NATO hawks in the former Yugoslavia, up until the issue broke out over Northern Kosovo. I wasn't aware of the details of the judge's ruling. But personally I have long wanted to see a massive reduction in the scope of libel and slander laws if not their out right abolition.