Chavez defeated - they voted for George Bush!

As you know, TombWatch was supposed to be going into semi retirement. We still plan to, but we would be failing in gloating duties if we didn't point out that, on top of everything I listed previously, that a defeat for the dictator Chavez is a great note to go out on.

He tried every trick in the book to con voters into making him president for life, including shutting down opposition TV stations and whipping up supporters into a frenzied state of anti American paranoia not seen in our life times; he said voting 'no' was a vote for George Bush and would endorce an American invasion, and said this is why he has been training the army to fight a civil war. But due to the predictable food shortages due to his Mugabe style price control policies, and the increasing awareness amongst his people that democracy was under threat like never before, even the fatwa style obligation his goons always use to get out the vote in his strong holds wasn't enough to get a majority.

There is strong speculation that he may resign within 24 hours (I doubt he will), given the hints he made that he would if he lost during the campaign - that's how big a defeat this is. Certainly this is a turning point for his regime whatever he does.

Venezuela, the region and the wider world - lets not forget his support for the axis of evil and his meddling in the internal affairs of foreign countries - is a safer place today because of this result. A dictator has been faced down and the Tomb has paid a terrible price for it. Let this be a lesson to them.

Update:

The Guardian have egg on their faces too. They changed the early edition, which gave a neutral report, to a report that stated he looked set to win.

Seymour attacks Muslims

The tomb is once again engulfed is a race controversy by claiming white Serbs in Kosovo are being driven from their homelands by Muslims.

This BNP style rhetoric from the Tomb - where Muslims who fight back against racism become the aggressors -is something we have become all too accustomed to. But it's no less shocking.

Back again (updated)

Richard tries some atheist baiting.

Hitchens says he is an anti theist, but contrary to what Seymour claims, I have never seen Dawkins claim this. Dawkins starts from the standpoint that it would be very comforting and assuring to believe in god, and indeed it's a natural impulse that is part of evolution. Most atheists share this view.

Sartre's view on choices appears to entirely contradict Seymour's own views about material circumstances being responsible for everybody's behaviour. Marxism, that teaches the human being is a sort of hapless ping pong ball that is driven to do all sorts of things wouldn't be doing if they weren't in bad circumstances, is his comforting religion.

Update.

Seymour writes in the comments: I will add that generally speaking militant atheists are a fucking embarrassment who are every bit as fetishistic about God and religion as their foils

Well, being a militant atheist myself, I'm sort of proud of that fact; I enjoy giving people a taste of their own medicine and fighting fire with fire. For me that's part of it.

But to say it's all stupid, boring and stating the obvious, is like saying being anti capitalisism is all stupid boring and stating the obvious. Pretending that capitalism is the root cause of all oppression and conflict is equally as silly as claiming religion is the root cause of everything.
You're argument here really boils down to you believing that liberal (capitalist) imperialism is worse than extreme right religious ideologies, therefore everybody needs to pipe down about these religious ideologies. That's the sum of it.

Religions are ideologies like any other types of ideology. If we think of the type of language you use about white fascism - that they make everything up and set out to deceive, and seek to control our thought sytems - there couldn't be a more striking difference with your take on Islamism. With the BNP you take the Hitchens approach, but for Islamism suddently it's back to the root causes game.

What geopolitical circumstances are really to blame for the BNP then? You show extraordinary hyprocrisy on this.

Tomb tedium

I'm finding the tomb increasingly tedious recently. Now that the SWP, Respect and the antiwar movement have all imploded and are fighting amongst themselves, Iraq is recognisably on the mend, 'Tomb goon' Tony has been executed, Brown now has a worse poll rating than Blair (just kidding), and Islamists, who already support genocide against Muslims in Darfur (which removes the 'oppressed Muslims fight back' line the tomb likes to peddle in their defence on these occasions) are now threatening to execute teachers for what they name teddys, there seems less of a point to Tombwatch itself. (Add on anything else to the list if you want)

I mean, it's always fun slagging off the tomb and reminding it of its obvious contradictions, silliness and hypocrisies, but given how obvious they are already to everybody, rational thoughts are finally creeping through about its productiveness - when I think about it, I only really set it up because that fucker Tony started deleting all my posts.

Watching Galloway's speech to Respect Renewal conference the other week was a bit of a catalyst for this. He said something along the lines that the SWP are such a tiny representative of opinion even on the far left and are so far of the radar map that nobody could ever possibly take up their views or think them serious. Now, of course, I already knew this. But to hear even a nutter like Galloway, of all people, say it, was strangely clarifying.

I am actually quite busy at the moment too with work and it's of course boozing season, so what I've decided is that, for now at least, I'll probably put my spare time into slagging off Medialens instead, the lucky devils. At least with them you know you're countering propaganda that tries to pervert the course of the free media, so there is more of a point to it - some people actually do take Medialens seriously, believe it or not, (thought bizarrely I think in many ways they're more crazy than Seymour) so Mike Clark is geniunely needed to set the record straight.

But don't forget we're still out there, Seymour....... ***Sinister laugh echoes into the night***

Former Tomb goon claims Seymour is nuts (exclusive)

Crank pot former Tomb moderator, 'tomb goon' Tony, who was stripped of his moderating rights recently for spreading rumours about lenny's SWP, unleashes a bitter, drunken tirad of abuse against his former comrades. Amongst the charges he claims the SWP are deliberately being nasty to him in order so his new project cannot function, he says lenny now bans him from posting at the Tomb - how ironic is that for Mr IP nut - so he doesn't even visit the site anymore (yeah, right!); and he implies that Tomb agents have been passing his emails to third parties.

Attacking another SWPer over at Socialist Unity called 'Canadien', Tony begins...

Jesus, Canadien, what the fuck happened to you? Just take a look at the nasty, sneering, muck-raking shit you’re posting these days.

The issue I have with people like you, Richard and others is, you are making it impossible to discuss this in a friendly way with you. You really have adopted a scorched earth policy of destroying as many working relationships as you can and simply posting to cause trouble. It’s not even to do with the actual issues we disagree on - it’s an entirely sectarian, sneering sort of behaviour that you’re engaged with.

There is a massive space open to all of us to talk about what’s happened and to move forward. Andy (Gallowayite who runs the SU blog) has started deleting comments because people are just continuing to *only* post non-political abuse, which to me is a deliberate ploy of theirs to STOP us moving on and developing new working relationships.

Richard at Lenin’s Tomb is even deleting my comments now, despite me not having changed my politics one bit - I speak the same as I always have, I argue the same as I always have, yet cos I disagree, what was acceptable when it was aimed at one side is now a “sectarian attack” when it’s aimed at the other side.

That’s not even an “editorial policy”. It’s just nuts.

It’s designed to make me not want to debate with SWP members (certainly I no longer visit, let alone attempt to comment on, Lenin’s Tomb - another victory for you guys). Ditto the behaviour of Michael Bradley towards me at the conference at the weekend, refusing to shake my hand, looking down at the floor when I said hello to him twice (similar behaviour from everyone except one other person, who spoke to me when I registered her, but only to attack Kevin Ovenden).

It’s not gonna work. I’ll talk to and work with any serious activist. The people who were passing my emails on to the CC, the people who delete my comments etc., they can go whistle.

But that leaves the other 99% of the SWP, who are good people with whom I simply disagree on the future direction of a few things.

I don’t feel the need to go onto Lenin’s Tomb and say “why did the SWP remove Lutfa’s video, huh? HUH? HUH?” or “what about Ahmed and his call for Galloway to be ‘put down’? HUH?” - yet that is what you, “The East Is Red” and the other people from Lenin’s Tomb are choosing to do.

Remember, you talk of witch-hunts (and it’s rich to use the example that you did, given your recent behaviour on here), but the SWP has a leader who has tried to drag Linda Smith through the mud; the leadership of the SWP has lied about and smeared leading comrades, denied others access to the democratic bodies of the party and is now busy cutting out people who disagree but have stayed in the party.

If you want to just stop trying to cause trouble, there is big room for us to debate things.

I’ve not changed my politics at all. I’ve not changed my allegiances at all. I’ve not even changed my wish to work with as many people as possible. And I’ve not changed my behaviour towards people.

You should question the way you have switched from being willing to discuss things openly (even when I’ve disagreed with you on LT, it’s always been friendly), to only firing pot-shots at people who have clearly decided are an “enemy” to be at war with.

What the fuck is up with people that that is their political method of dealing with things?

(Thanks, tipster)

Richard gives his account of the Respect split to far left mag

A few comments on it. Why does he describe Michael Crick as a "right wing journalist?" Crick does the same style of reporting on every political party, and ripped it out of Kilroy when he left UKIP in a mirror type move to what's happened to Respect. He also famously took down Jeffery Archer and sparked off the revolt against Iain Duncan Smith that overthrew him. Crick actually used to support Labour before he became a top journalist too, you know.

Seymour also comes across as humorous by dissing the monty python sketch. The truth is, there is something to it; you only have to have seen how Seymour himself suddenly changed his tune on Galloway after the SWP committee told him the new line to how fickle and sectarian the far left can be. Before that occurred there wasn't a peep out of him on the whole crisis, and he had gained a hard earned reputation as being the most sycophantic pro-Galloway blogger on the web.

A poster in the Seymour's thread links to a story on Galloway going to Syria to defend his pro-Saddam bent mate who made money at the expense of Iraqi children, to which Seymour retorts that he's not going to start demonising him on that score - politics is what this should be about. However the reality is Seymour couldn't attack Galloway on that whole thing even if he wanted to - given the endless posts defending every detail of his personal dealings that remain in the Tomb archives. That would be too hypocritical even for him. But you still have to pinch yourself to see the terms in which Seymour now describes the "maverick MP" (medialens would say "maverick" is a propaganda term).

Check out the last section where he lays into the Respect Renewal conference and Galloway's style of working.

Tomb breaks silence on DataGate

A few points we need to remember. The civil service had seen massive expansion since Labour's time in office. That's why all sides of the political debate welcomed Brown's decision to shoot the Tory's fox by make a culling of his own, pledging to plough the money into front line services else where, announced shortly before the last general election. How much this policy has to do with this latest crisis is unknown at this stage, however the principle of cutting bureaucrats in order to maintain the extra funding to front line staff in the key public sector areas is one that the public think is an excellent idea; we should remember that amid the tabloid fury about DataGate.

I can understand why this policy has made civil service union leader Mark Serwotka in particular very bitter and twisted towards Labour - how could he not be overcome with irrationality when his people are being cut whilst all the other unions have seen massive increases in pay and staff. That doesn't automatically mean the policy is wrong for the country though. He is running a vested interest group with narrow concerns; he if were to ask the TUC if Labour is doing a good job for working people overall, he would get an emphatic positive answer. You can't please everybody I'm afraid.

On top of that, Serwotka is a bit of a far left fanatic (he was spotted speaking at the SWP Respect conference last weekend) who is on record stating that strikes are automatically good because they happen rather than because they achieve anything - a moronic concept. And he has tried, unsuccessfully, to bully the other unions into adopting this ruinous madcap position. I'm sure the tomb understands why the bulk of the unions are sensible and intelligent enough not to be taken in by this sort of dangerous nutteristic stance.

What about black Zimbabweans today, lenin?

lenin provides us with a breathless and damning obituary of white bogey man, the eviiiil Ian Smith, the much reviled former white leader of Zimbabwe, who, like Mugabe today, opposed British attempts to make the country democratic. (Many of us thought he was already dead).

What's immediately striking is how much effort lenin puts into condemning this relic of the past compared to his utter silence at the far worse situation in that country today. lenin has never mentioned, and doesn't here, that Zimbabwe now has the lowest life expectancy in the world, terrible human rights abuses, or the ongoing destruction of the model economy, free press and first class democratic institutions it inherited. It really is one of the great crimes of our times what has happened to that country in recent years, yet none of that is of the remotest interest for lenin compared to the much more important task of looking back in great detail at Britain's wrong doings 50 and 100 years ago. His only comment about the present situation is to make the obscene claim that getting rid of the hand full of white farmers that remain will solve the countries problems; he knows full well it a policy that has created famine.

It echoes precisely the sort of language Mugabe uses as cover every time he launches a new crack down on his people.

Of course debating British history is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, but put in the context of the Tomb's other-worldly agenda - i.e pretending that the modern day world is no different from the height of the British empire therefore we need to support any old racist despot who oppresses their people as long as they oppose whitey's capitalist ways - puts a rather sinister slant on these things. That is unfortunate.

lenin opposes French working people

lenin has jumped on the French strike bandwagon. This is the same country he was condemning as white supremacist last year during the Islamist uprising, but now we are told that "France is amazing. I don't want to eulogize, but..."

The strikes in France are the normal state of affairs, of course. The question for Sarkozy and the left forces in favour of progress is whether they can break the habit of French government's going back decades and not cave in to the fascistic minority who are once against holding the country to ransom. And that's an important point; the majority of the French people support reforms, including the working class, who have suffered terribly from unemployment, so this really is a question of who runs France; the democratic government backed by the majority of the people, or the vested interest groups fighting to leave the EU, retain protectionist measures that hurt the third world, and generally impose their backward agenda on the country - whether they voted for it or not.

There was the amazing statistic on BBC Newsnight last night that only 8% of the work force in France are members of a union. Put in that light you can see how unjust it is for any government to surrender to people who have nothing to do with even the majority of working people.

lenin's voodoo economics

lenny writes:

"The credit crisis, if it is resolved in a capitalist fashion, will see large amounts of public wealth transferred to the private sector. Every previous crisis has resulted in the taxpayers bailing out massive corporations - whether it is Reagan bailing out Chrysler, Clinton bailing out the hedge funds, or Bush bailing out the airlines in 2001. The alternative of public ownership is obviously forbiden by neoliberal ideology, but there isn't a single good reason why nationalisation cannot or should not be carried out extensively."

lenin seems to be missing the rather obvious point that nationalisation across the board would lead to far more of the public's wealth being wasted on companies, since the state would own absolutely everything. Where's the logic in that?

Whilst there may be an isolated case for nationalising Northern Rock - which has found itself in a somewhat unprecedented situation for a bank - wholesale nationalisation of key industries in general would take us right back to the mass unemployment, low productivity and vast waste of the 1970s.

I'm sure when lenin reflects on this properly he will remember the difficulty failing industries got themselves into when the state would come in to prop up sectors that the market couldn't sustain in the long run, thus making the pain a lot bigger and more expensive when they finally had to pull the plug. That type of misery is not something lenin wants British tax payers and workers to return to for one second, thus I'm sure he will withdraw these unfortunate remarks.

Revolutionary achieves self determination - no thanks to the Tomb

A party led by a former Kosovo Albanian guerrilla leader has won the breakaway province's parliamentary election, according to unofficial results.

Hashim Thaci has promised to declare formal independence from Serbia after 10 December - the UN deadline for Albanians and Serbs to reach a deal.

Cunts

No, not the Tomb this time.

Hilarious

Sorry but it really is. Two Respect conferences. Lib Dem/SWP (breathless report from lenin) on the one hand, and Galloway/Islamist on the other. They both claim great success and predict huge gains in the future.

A party couldn't have conspired to better discredit themselves with the general public.

What's the betting that both organisations will not exist, or at least be significantly smaller than they presently are, a year from now? I'd put money on it.

'Tomb goon' Tony removed as Tomb moderator

I bring you stunning news, readers. The tomb moderator that turned the tomb into a censorship hell hole in the first place - known as TonyC - has been stripped of his moderating rights by Richard Seymour!

Tony is not happy about it:

"I am massively fucked off at all of this - fucked off that I get removed as a moderator on Lenin’s Tomb cos I’m on the “wrong” side (despite it not affecting my role there), fucked off at the abusive emails, fucked off at the attempts to undermine my credibility in the RMT, fucked off at the SWP leadership lying to activists about me and others."

Whatever one thinks of lenin and his politics, this is an excellent decision for which he should be commended. Tony's sole purpose in life was to try and get other commentators banned and harass anyone who didn't follow the editorial line; he would sneakily remove messages before Seymour got to see them, so its no wonder Seymour has decided he can no longer be trusted given he is now on the opposite side of a dispute. What other comments providing sensitive information could he be intercepting?

It's irritating people like Tony who motivated me to start this watch site in the first place; hell, I might even close it down now. (Well, I probably won't yet)

Whilst I don't expect the censorship policy to change at the Tomb - lenin is in way too deep now to change that - it's nevertheless excellent news that this odious individual has been sacked.

(Thanks to the tipster who alerted me to this)

Mark Steel slams SWP members who hype the antiwar movement

Here:

"...the Stop the War Coalition began as a magnificent example of how the ideas of the SWP can influence a movement in the most exhiliarating fashion. But as the massive anti-war march receded into the past, relating to those people who went on it became more complex.
The most typical attitude seemed to be that while no one regretted going on the march, they couldn’t see that it had made any difference. But instead of analysing how to address this sentiment, the SWP seemed to repeat the tone that suited the frenetic weeks before the war. Every march and protest was depicted as a triumph. And there was no acknowledgement of the process in which Stop the War meetings and rallies became smaller, and almost devoid of anyone under forty."

Who could he be talking about?

'The extraordinary successes of the antiwar movement'

Richard has been set the odious task by the Socialist Worker of pumping up the antiwar movement, which everyone knows has long been dying on its arse for some years now - a process that has speeded up recently with the collapse of violence in Iraq. It's of course the root cause of why the Respect coalition couldn't bury its differences for the greater cause anymore too. On every issue they failed - whether on forcing Blair to resign, defeating Bush, stopping the surge or overthrowing Iraq and Afghan democracy, they have taken a fatal beating. Even the runaway Dem front runner candidate is the most prowar and centrist of the bunch, whilst the likes of Edwards, who has taken a rather desperate antiwar position, completely bombs. Who would have predicted that?

Anyway he gives his best shot to a dreary and tired readership who know the game is up. Unfortunately for him their failure is everywhere - even the post below his on the Medialens message board where he plugs his blog charts the failure of the Irish antiwar movement, which was rather unfortunate timing.

If this is what extraordinary success means then I hope they will deliver a whole lot more of it.

Non-neo con Brown

What is neocon about vastly increasing the size of the state, linking pensions to earnings, making great steps in ending low pay and child poverty, increasing workers rights and trebling aid to the third world?

You twat, Seymour. Stick to your backward looking 90 year anniversaries.

lenin can't mention the war

You can tell how weak the argument is against Sir Ian Blair by the fact lenin can't bring himself to mention, even in passing, what happened the day before the unfortunate Menezes incident occurred, on 21/7, or what happened on 7/7 just two weeks before that. Not one little mention from him. Surprising, no?

One would have thought if the argument against Blair is so good then lenin would have no problem in mentioning the context that Islamists, who are at war with us, had tried to massacre hundreds of innocent civilians on the tube the day before, two weeks after another group had successfully taken out 52 people, and that at the time of the shooting the police were engaged in an unprecedented race against time to try to hunt down these four loose suicide bombers before they struck again.

Instead he is reduced to parroting some of the absurd media criticism, such as the criticising of Sir Ian Blair's rational call to postpone the IPCC investigation in the immediate aftermath while the hunt was still going on (something obviously the IPCC have a vested interest in being critical of), and other nonsensical baloney where he refers to an entirely different incident where child pornography was indeed found on a terror suspects computer, contrary to what lenin claims.

If Sir Ian Blair does go it will be a huge shame since he has, by and large, been an excellent commissioner that has a very good record in busting terror plots and lowering crime. People like Seymour and his partisan allies the Lib Dems and Conservatives are simply using this for shameful political reasons, and as even Ken Livingstone says are only helping the terrorists by doing so. They have absolutely nothing on him - ziltch, zero - as Seymour displays.

The people who tried to murder hundreds of Londoners have already gotten around 40 years each - who were caught just a few weeks later by the same officers involved in Stockwell - so accountability has already occurred. That is that.

Now, I have a couple of other general comments relating to this issue.

Another interesting aspect of this whole thing is those moronic type people who go around saying they are scared of getting shot in the head by the police for no reason thanks to the Stockwell incident. Yet these are usually the very same people who are the first to cry 'scaremongering' when anyone warns of the much more likely event that a suicide bomber could blow them up on the tube. Suicide attacks have much worse consequences for real social cohesion in this country as well, other than the manufactured outrage you get from community leaders when the police screw up, so if people were really interested in an easier life for Muslims then they should befirmly anti terrorist. Why are you not, lenin?

lenin also complains that the police get far too much respect in his post - after all they are not the only people to have dangerous jobs he says. Well firstly, most dangerous jobs don't include running after suicide bombers. But even so the reason police hold a special role in public service is, without them, society would quickly turn into chaos and anarchy, as we saw in Baghdad and New Orleans. They play a very important moral role that does indeed deserve some respect.

Another question I have for lenin in relation to Islamism is why he has never touched on his blog, that I would like to see a post on, is his take on why Britain was the soft touch of Europe, and indeed the world, on Islamism during the 1990s - a policy that continued until about 2003.

So how did such a bunch of "white supremacist" bigots allow this country to become the most important terror centre in the world out of the training camps of Afghanistan? It doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps lenin could explain?

Richard's racism

lenin has a fresh rant about some BBC programme that apparently doesn't stick to strict tomb-dogma that capitalism and whitey are responsible for allthe major atrocities in the history of the world, ever. We are told the programme is utterly reprehensible for leaving out the Tomb-known-fact that the white man and his capitalism invented racism, genocide and of course the dreaded imperialism, and were brutal in a way no other part of the world had ever experienced before he set foot on their lands.

Yes, indeed.

Of course, you and me both know that racism and genocide is far more a key part of the history of communist and fascist states; capitalism certainly has nothing on them when it comes to such matters. But we already know that; what's more fascinating to me is how the anti-imperialist mindset can quickly default into a racist mentality towards the west and believe in all sorts of mumbojumbo conspiracy theories. As Nick Cohen once wrote, anyone who thinks nothing good can come out of the west is just as racist as someone who believes no good can come out of the non-western parts of the world. He was right. It used to be tempting to believe lenin was just an opportunist - after all he did support Serb fascism in the Balkans against eastern looking Muslims, so racism couldn't be at the root of his thinking, or so we thought. But as it has emerged recently that, just like Hitler before him, he doesn't consider Slavs or Eastern Europeans to be white people at all.

It's hard to conclude that racism is not at the heart of much of his views on present day activities of the west, and why no matter how bad the non-western despot and tyrant he will always support them against whitey,and repeat revisionist versions of history as fact. I know some of you will try to blame it all on Marxism instead; but you can't since I know plenty of Marxists who don't share this deep hatred of everything western and are totally colour blind. No, it's something more sinister than that.

lenin's imperial problem

First you need a definition of imperialism if you are to investigate 'imperial denialism'.

The tomb's definition of imperialism includes any type of UN peace keeping mission, the global economy, the notion of human rights and even international law itself.

It would be much more interesting and valuable to have an investigation into how somehow could get themselves into such preposterousness.

The idea that every country in the world could live in North Korean style isolation from each other is just totally unrealistic in this day and age - you've really got to get up to date.
These days this 'imperialist' crap is the last refuge of tyrannts, terrorists and despots. You're fooling nobody.