ALB
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Interesting speculation in today’s issue by a Times journalist (Roger Boyes) of what might happen in the event of it becoming “a forever war”:
Zelensky’s being overthrown and replaced by “a disruptive revanchist dictator”.
Not an impossibility. One candidate might be the armed forces chief, Zaluzhny, an open Banderite sympathiser.
I see that the Russia government itself is now beating the “anti-imperialist” drum or at least dancing to it:
https://tass.com/world/1568509
Thought I’d look the World Anti-Imperialist Platform up. They seem to be a bunch of “Marxist-Leninists” as the Maoists now call themselves.
Towards the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, the Locomotive of World Anti-Imperialist Revolution
Nobody is objecting to saying that a further rise to between 2 and 3 degrees above pre-industrial levels (we are already a little abo e 1 degree more) won’t cause serious problems in sone parts of the world which capitalism won’t be able to cope with properly.
What is “alarmist” (which dictionaries defined as “someone who exaggerates a danger and so causes needless worry or panic”) is the claim that the most likely future scenario is somewhere between 3.5 and 4 degrees and that this will reduce the carrying capacity of Earth to only 1 billion humans, ie that up to 9 billion will die of starvation. I don’t think even Malthus would envisage that.
You yourself, Alan, have been — rightly — insistent on debunking “overpopulation chatter”. There is an article in the February Socialist Standard recalling that in the 1960s the likes of Paul Ehrlich were predicting mass starvation before the end of the last century. They were wrong.
Let that be a lesson to us about being alarmist about population.
Also, the effects of a rise to between 2 and 3 degrees will be worse if it happens under capitalism. If it happened on a world socialist society then the problem could be dealt with in a planned and rational way. So capitalism is as much to blame here as climate change.
The real emergency is to get rid of capitalism.
When XR was set up on 2018 they claimed that the world was on course for average global temperature to go up to 5 degrees centigrade beyond pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. This was the worst case scenario the IPCC envisaged and was based on the assumption that no action at all would be taken to try to reduce CO2 emissions.
In this article it is claimed that we are now on course for an increase to 3.6 degrees. Which I think was more or less the second worst case scenario in 2018. Which is an implicit admission that something has been done so as to at least prevent the worst case scenario. The 3.6 degrees scenario is again based on nothing (more) being done in the course of the next few decades to reduce emissions. Which is unlikely.
At the moment the likely scenario is that we are on course for an increase of somewhere to between 2 and 3 degrees by the end of the century. Not good but not as bad as 3.6 or 5 degrees.
And what about this:
“Some prominent climate scientists predict that at 7.2°F (4°C) of warming, the planet will be able to support less than 1 billion people. Our human population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050 at the same time that our food production is decreasing.”
That sounds alarmist to me as, if it happened, that would mean that some 9 million people would perish.
There are different questions here:
1. If there were to be an increase to 4 degrees, would it be the case that only 1 billion out of 10 billion humans would be able to survive?
2. How likely is an increase to 4 degrees?
The first could be true and the second not likely.
Incidentally, presumably, with an increase to 3.6 degrees, billions would still have to perish, even if not the full 9 billion.
If XR Japan are saying that the most likely scenario will involve, say, 5 billion perishing by 2100 due to climate change then, yes, I would say they were being alarmist.
Rod Stewart expresses a growing view amongst members of the capitalist class:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/sir-rod-stewart-calls-tory-26084174.amp
They are not just reformists but war-mongers leading the charge to revive German militarism.
“The German Green party, which has its roots in the peace movement, has been one of the most avid supporters of more weapons being sent to Ukraine. The party was also actively backing a decision to send Leopard 2 main battle tanks, which the German government approved this week.”
German foreign minister: ‘We are fighting a war with Russia’
More details of corruption in the Ukraine regime:
https://www.vox.com/world/2023/1/24/23569257/ukraine-corruption-officials-resignation-purge
And we are having to pay higher energy bills to prop up this corrupt regime.
Yes, it’s all coming out now in the pro-NATO media what anyone informed about the Ukraine regime already knew from the start — that widespread institutionalised corruption was an integral part of it. Despite this we were told sob stories about “poor little democratic Ukraine” needing to be helped and that we should be prepared to make sacrifices, eg higher energy bills, to do this.
Something is only being done now about it because the US, which is financing the Ukraine government, has become worried about where its money has been going. If they hadn’t brought pressure Zelensky (and the tame pro-NATO media) would have continued to let it pass’
I didn’t know the JWs were banned in Russia. They seem a pretty harmless group of religious nutters. Nutters yes but hardly “extremists”. Had an amusing argument with them when they called round a few weeks ago. Easily won the argument.
Authoritarian states don’t like them because they refuse military service (as they did in the days of the old USSR and even in Nazi Germany) and I suppose the Putin government as defender of the Orthodox Christian faith doesn’t like them because they attack Orthodox Christianity. It is probably true that they themselves don’t care whether where they live is part of Russia or Ukraine since they are not interested in states and politics.
Yaron Brook assumes that the capitalists who have left Britain are “entrepreneurs” as those who invest in the production of wealth but most of them will be financiers whose connection with wealth production is pretty precarious. They are not even employers of workers who produce wealth. I see in fact that his own business was “asset management” ie investing the riches of the rich on the stock exchange, etc. So a financier himself.
According to this he is a follower of Ayn Rand and so a bit of a nutter:
Although he’s a prize bastard the leader of the Wagner gang of mercenaries has made a telling response to the US government’s plan to list them as a criminal gang:
“Entrepreneur and founder of the Wagner private military company Yevgeny Prigozhin ironically commented on the US statement that the country is going to impose sanctions against his PMC due to its qualification as a “serious transnational criminal organization.” This is reported by his press service in Telegram.
“FINALLY, NOW PMC WAGNER AND THE AMERICANS ARE COLLEAGUES,” THE BUSINESSMAN SAID.
According to Prigozhin, the relationship between his PMC and the American side can now be called “showdown of criminal clans.”
https://earlybulletins.news/politics/226765.html
Yes, (like all armies) the US army is a gang of mercenaries.
The Labour Party is now openly pro-capitalist and proud of it. In a declaration of political bankruptcy Starmer is on record as saying:
“When Labour held a conference for business leaders at Canary Wharf, one of London’s financial hubs, last month, Starmer said the party wasn’t just pro-business but “proudly pro-business”.
He also told world capitalist business leaders and politicians at Davos:
“that ‘the British economy will be open for business again’ under a Labour government.”
https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/959345/is-labour-now-the-party-of-business?amp
Despite all this, leftwing union leaders like Lynch and Graham will still be calling, even if lukewarmly, for workers to vote for the Labour Party in the coming general election. They must know that they will live to regret this as, sooner or later, they will come into conflict with a Labour government over their members’ pay.
The business elite in Britain too want a change of government as the Tories have run out of steam. They are quite prepared to let Labour, as their alternating government party, have a go instead.
Workers should have nothing to do with this. They shouldn’t vote for British capitalism’s other party. In fact they would be well-advised to get their unions to disaffiliate from the Labour Party and, in the absence of this, contract out of paying the political level (as we do).
It appears that Russian-speakers are not the only linguistic minority being discriminated against by the Ukraine regime. Hungarian-speakers seem to be getting it too:
Govt official: Anti-Hungarian decisions, actions in W Ukraine unacceptable
