Comments on: MARK ALMOND ON GEORGIA, RUSSIA, AND NATO

By: asdfskdfh

asdfskdfh — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:56:08 +0000

this is a total crap!! this guy is talking lies and he confuses the facts. He is giving wrong information and dares to lie in public. probably he is just stupid and does not have enough knowledge, but it;s sad that he also is so impudent to speak up despite of all the wrong, misleading information he has.

By: Karl

Karl — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:06:57 +0000

I think you are being a bit unfair to Mark Almond here. He is what Bernard Crick, in his biography of Orwell, calls ‘that rare bird, a Tory anti-imperialist’. In many ways, Almond is a reactionary Tory no less that Johnathan Swift the great satirist ( and from Dublin ! ).

Swift was vehemently against the Whigs of his day and taking England into the War of Spanish Succession as well as greed, hubris and the messianic guff spouted by politicians to cover the shabby pursuit of material interests.

Almond belongs to that tradition, even though it has been forgotten by many, and there are others like John Gray who also dislike a foreign policy based on emancipating all humanity through military regime change and neoliberal economics.

There is a conservative tradition of disliking what we now call ‘humanitarian intervention’ or liberal imperialism or ‘interventionism’ and who, like Almond and myself too, believe that NATO and the policy of expanding it eastwards dangerous and foolish.

By: Seán Báite

Seán Báite — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:19:00 +0000

The whole ‘kerfuffle’ and international alignment around it reminds me more of the Crimean War than the Cold War - Tsar Vladimir the whatever against the world… A Crimean War with hydrocarbon resources to spice it up a bit.
Hopefully the UN will send in some Brit Upper Class Twits on horses to sort it out in a jiffy - just like they did back in Vickie’s day.
Does the other Marc Almond have anything to say about it ? … I actually won an album of him doing covers of Russian standards off French radio one time - so he must have his two kopeks worth to say…

By: Conor McCabe

Conor McCabe — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:31:03 +0000

True. Still. He’s a funny bastard though.

By: WorldbyStorm

WorldbyStorm — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:22:43 +0000

No, that’s a fair point you make, and like yourself I’d draw on a wide range of opinion. But I tend to prefer that to be from people who’re not players, or at least if they’re players they make their interests in a situation known up front and the BHHRG is a bit opaque about that sort of thing. I don’t doubt he’s got insights, just that the end point of his argument is probably more pre-formed than I like.

By: Conor McCabe

Conor McCabe — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 09:37:04 +0000

Fair enough. For myself, when Shane Ross says that there’s cartels running the estate agents business in Ireland, I don’t ignore it if the facts stack up. With Almond, what he’s saying - that this is a return to old style cold war politics - doesn’t seem that wide of the mark.

I didn’t know that he was a member of a reactionary right-wing group, but, listening back to the recording it does make sense. My experience of the far left is that - with the exception of people like Mark Steel - they are useless at humour (Boyd-Barrett, Kieran Allen, Joe Higgins (bless ‘im), Clare Daly (complete humour transplant), etc). In politics, it seems, the devil has all the best jokes.

By: WorldbyStorm

WorldbyStorm — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 09:00:04 +0000

Almond is part of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, a most interesting right wing (some would say reactionary) grouping. I think he’s very partisan indeed in a weird British conservative way.

I’m strangely immune to his arguments for precisely that reason.