alanjjohnstone
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I did manage to read your article, Janet, on food production.
Along with climate change, that is perhaps the most important challenge facing us even when we achieve socialism, meat-eating being almost equally as damaging to the planet as fossil fuels
“We are going to see problems with Covid for a long time,” said Prof Adam Finn of Bristol University. “The virus has shown itself to be genetically more nimble than we expected, though not as much as the influenza virus. So I would envisage Covid being a continuing problem for some time, with annual death tolls reaching thousands and possibly tens of thousands.”
This view was backed by Prof James Naismith, director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute in Oxford. “We won’t see Covid-19 spread like wildfire again. There will be enough herd immunity in the population to ensure it will never kick off like that again.
“But everything will not be hunky dory. We will have waves of illness similar to flu, I think. And they will kill. The issue is: how many? That is difficult to assess but if you look at current Covid deaths, these are occurring at about 100 a day.
“So a wave that kills a few thousand seems a reasonable measure of what you might expect in a future winter wave. And then, you might get a bad wave one year and have the tens of thousands of deaths.”
Bidens latest CNN Townhall shows Biden’s senility growing. He meanders off into waffling.
At one point he praises the fact that he is the senator of a state that is home to more corporate HQs than all the other states combined. Delaware is a tax haven and to boast of it runs contrary to his supposed global policy of tax equality. He should be ashamed not proud of Delaware’s tax dodging laws.
His wife was active too
https://www.marxists.org/archive/duncker-kate/index.htm
As there was an earlier exchange on the forum about women, she writes about it in 1910
https://www.marxists.org/archive/duncker-kate/1910/women-social-democracy.htm
“…it is clear that there is only one means for the women of the proletariat to free themselves from wage and domestic slavery and to fight for equal rights, namely by joining the ranks of the Social Democratic struggle. Even if they cannot yet cast their votes for Social Democracy in the elections, they can still join the Social Democratic organization and work in it…And if women join the Social Democrats in ever-increasing numbers, the latter will not only grow in size, but their clout and confidence in victory will also increase. The man who has an unenlightened and indifferent wife at home is only half a fighter, an uncertain one…”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/duncker-kate/1910/women-social-democracy.htm
Cuban’s anarchists speak out
https://libcom.org/news/cuban-anarchists-protests-july-11-29072021
The naval shadow war between Iran and Israel begins to escalate.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Friday blamed “Iranian terrorism”.
Israel has accused Iran of being behind an attack on an oil tanker in which two crew members – a British national and a Romanian citizen – were killed. The MV Mercer Street was off Oman’s coast in the Arabian Sea. It is operated by the London-based company Zodiac Maritime which belongs to Israeli shipping magnate Eyal Ofer but is Liberian-flagged and the tanker Japanese-owned.
It is thought to have been attacked by multiple drones.
Israel’s response to a previous attack carried out on an Iranian oil tanker off the Syrian coast in the spring killed three people was, of course, muted.
A coalition of over 100 groups, from Mainers for Accountable Leadership, the Chicago Teachers Union, and Sunrise Movement Seattle to various arms of Democratic Socialists of America, Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), and Our Revolution organised protests in 50 cities in support for M4A
Those who built their political careers from advocating free healthcare, Sanders, AOC, and the other members of the Squad who made their political careers from advocating Medicare For All were not in attendance at one single rally, not even Pramila Jayapal who moved the Medicare for All Act in March.
Weren’t they suppose to push Biden to the left by organising the grass-roots?
Lift the sanctions – 400 open letter signatories
Open Letter to Biden: Lift Trump Sanctions & ‘Let Cuba Live’
Out of the headline news does not mean it is all over.
Assad has attacked a former opposition stronghold with missiles and artillery shelling in an attempt to crush a simmering insurrection, in an unprecedented development in Syria’s decade-long war.
The situation in Deraa deteriorated sharply when the local population decided to boycott May’s fraudulent general election, in which Assad was returned for another seven years in office with 95% of the vote. Regime soldiers began blocking roads and turning off water and power supplies to neighbourhoods home to about 50,000 people, leading to shortages in food and medicine.
“The escalation in Deraa al-Balad represents a breakdown of negotiations between the leaders of the ‘reconciled’ rebels and the regime, mediated by Russia,” said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the Newlines Institute with extensive knowledge of southern Syria’s dynamics. “Assad is now implementing the ‘solution’ it wanted to impose on Deraa all along – forcing complete surrender and displacement of those who refuse to act as loyal subjects of the Syrian regime. Unless Russia intervenes to put an end to the fighting and broker a ceasefire, the fighting will result in even more civilian deaths and displacement, and likely the subjugation of Deraa al-Balad under full regime control.”
News is difficult to get out of Iran so this Weekly Worker article is a useful addition to the usual media’s reporting
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1358/anger-finds-open-expression/
Some may be interested in this report of how Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain operates
I have often used the RNLI as an example of voluntary cooperation in a risky dangerous task that gives an insight into what might happen in socialism and to reject the lazy greedy selfish human nature hypothesis.
I blogged on this on Tuesday
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2021/07/lifeboats-saving-lives.html
We of course have our differences with the ICT but this article on Cuba by them is a very helpful and useful read
https://libcom.org/blog/cuba-latest-episode-death-agony-state-capitalism-27072021
“Cuba is the latest illustration of the failure of the Stalinist recipe of party dictatorship behind national borders, which palms off socialism as the development of the productive forces within a money based economy whilst every capitalist category, from wage labour to commodity production, from surplus value extraction to the concentration of privilege at one pole, is retained…Capitalism in all its variants, regardless of the degree of state intervention in the economy, even outright ownership of some or all the means of production, only offers worse, then worse again. Socialism or barbarism, revolution or ruin, an increasingly overdue struggle for a future or what is increasingly looking like generalised societal collapse should we continue on the current trajectory. Cuba’s protests are just the latest evidence of the dead end of Stalinism, itself one aspect of the dead end of global capitalism.”The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, accused the U.S. of misrepresenting China.
“First, the U.S. must not challenge, discredit or even try to subvert the socialist path and system with Chinese characteristics,” stated the Chinese spokesperson. “Second, it must not try to obstruct or even interrupt China’s development process. And third, it must not infringe on China’s national sovereignty, let alone undermining China’s territorial integrity.”
