ALB
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I didn’t know the NUS was funded by the government. Won’t be a problem if it collapses as being president of the NUS is one traditional pathway to becoming a Labour MP.
Lambeth Council have now published the turnout figures for all the wards. This allows us to compare how the 5 TUSC (SPEW front) candidates did. Here’s what this shows.
Stockwell West & Lakhall: 87 out of 3173 ballor papers returned = 2.7%
Clapham East: 38/1743 = 2.2%
Brixton Acre Lane: 78/3772 = 2.1%
Streatham Wells: 45/2587 = 1.7%
Herne Hill & Loughborough Junction: 71/4795 = 1.5%Our candidate in Clspham East was 31/1743 = 1.8%.
Incidentally, Clapham East had the lowest turn-out at 23.32% — less than a quarter of the electorate — in the whole borough of Lambeth.
Clearly, they are in the same league as us. They did no better with a full-blown reform programme than we did on a straight socialism and nothing else ticket.
People here have quesioned the wisdom of us contesting in view of the small number of votes. But what must SPEW think as they are doing it to get elected and get reforms?
Interview here by an Israeli journalist with one of the leaders of the Azov battalion holed up
In that steelworks in which the journalist asks this relevant question:“In Zaporizhzhia, I met refugees from Mariupol and I spoke with people who were evacuated to Rostov in Russia. They all repeated the same claim that they were shot at from all directions while they were in the basements. They stressed that it wasn’t just the Russians who were shooting, but the Ukrainian soldiers as well – indiscriminately, at houses. I understand that when there are street battles, there isn’t really an alternative. The question is different: Was this worth it? Kherson, for example, surrendered without a battle, and it is occupied, but there weren’t victims there on a scale like this. Has the fierce defense of Mariupol been worth it?“
To which of course there is only one answer.
I doubt it. I think they are more likely to in Britain’s own breakaway statelet across the Irish Sea.
Three members and sympathisers did cover this and gave away leaflets and copies of the Socialism or Your Money Back book and sold a few Socialist Standards. We were also interviewed by some mickey-taking anti-woke YouTube channel. For the record here it is:
Somebody springs to our defence in the Comments.
As that link mentioned, there were presidential elections there on 8 May which were won by an opposition party candidate. I don’t know whether or not this means that the place could be described as some sort of limited political democracy or what divides political opinion there. The size of the electorate suggests that the election was more like one for one small parliamentary constituency in Britain. According to Wikipedia the opposition candidate was less keen on joining Russia so the result of the referendum might not be a foregone conclusion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_South_Ossetian_presidential_election
Of course. He’ll be satisfied if Sweden renders a couple of PKK members. I would the PKK might have more to worry about if Sweden joined, though, come to think of it, they too are the US proxies, in Syria.
It’s not a done deal yet:
“Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan remarked to journalists after leaving Friday prayers in Istanbul that Turkey would not welcome either Sweden or Finland joining the Nato. ‘We are currently following developments regarding Sweden and Finland, but we don’t feel positively about this,’ he said.(…) Accession to Nato requires consensus from all member countries.”
We keep on warning not to believe what you read in the Daily Wail at least not without checking it somewhere else, otherwise you can end repeating the Ukrainian propaganda it echos.
This story, on the other hand, is obviously not Ukrainian propaganda (except for the tendentious subheading — the Grauniad is also pro-Ukraine if a bit more sophisticated) as it describes acts of kindness by Russian soldiers, including the Chechens:
I’m not and I don’t think they are either. It’s just posturing. But they chose the title of “expeditionary force” which is military-speak for “a group of soldiers sent to fight in a foreign country”.
“Ben Wallace has said Britain would “definitely come to the aid militarily” of Finland and Sweden if such a scenario became necessary.
The Defence Secretary, speaking with The Washington Post, said the UK’s position in the Joint Expeditionary Force (which also includes Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway) meant it would “reassure” countries like Sweden and Finland that it would be “inconceivable” not to help them if attacked.“But
“The entire British Army today has the people, equipment and stocks to defend only half the Donbas region” (General Sir Richard Barrons, letter in the Times today).
This could be Borys’s chance to play Churchill again since the last time Britain sent an “expeditionary force” to Russia was in 1919 when Churchill was Minister of War:
“North Russian Expeditionary Force, Dvina River, actions against Bolsheviks
They called it “Churchill’s War,” “The Great Russian Gamble,” and “Whitehall’s Folly.” More than 600 British and Commonwealth soldiers were killed and wounded …” (see 1954 article here: https://naval-history.net/WW1z05NorthRussia.htm)Revealing passage in the obituary in yesterday’s Times of Leonid Kravchuk, a former member of the Soviet nomenkltura who was the first president of independent Ukraine from 1991-94, who died on 10 May:
“Relations with Russia remained tense after the end of Soviet Russia. Yeltsin had warned him against pursuing too close a relaionship with the West, saying:’Ukraine has been, is and will remain within the system of strategic naional interests of Russia’”
This shows the stupidity of regsrding the current Russian invasion of Ukraine as due to the character of the particular head of the Russian government at the present time. It is clear that whoever is in charge of the Russian State will regard Ukraine as falling “within the system of stategic national interests of Russia.”
They can hang Putin (if they can catch him) but that won’t make any difference to any ruler of Russia regarding Ukraine as essential to its strategic interest as a capitalist state. It’s not a question of personalities, but structral. If they were Russian politicians Boris woild be Putin and Truss would be Lavrov.
So do I. But supposing Russia did attack Sweden, what could Britain do? Fight a war with Russia on its own? In fact if Britain could do anything then there’d be no need for Sweden to join NATO. Like I said, it’s meaningless posturing, typical of Borys.
It will just be a pose. The only reason I can think of is that it fits in with Borys’s political agenda of “global Britain”, ie to try to show that Brexit Britain is a world power in its own right alongside the US and the EU. That’s a delusion of course since Britain like the EU, Japan and South Korea is dependent on the US for its own defence. Which is why they have no alternative to go along with the US on sanctions (which wouldn’t work without US participation). Maybe Borys is expecting a few treats as best poodle.
There is also Borys’s personal agenda of portraying himself as a war leader. I imagine the rest of the cabinet are humouring him on this and leaving him a free hand since they know it’s just posturing (and surely are joking about it behind his back).
It is rather surprising though that, from a bourgeois-democratic point of view, Britain can sign, without any parliamentary or public discussion, a treaty with Sweden to go to war to defend that country in the event of it being attacked. But it means nothing as there is no prospect of this of course. So just a cheap gesture.
They did rather ask for it. And probably wanted it as a means of getting further publicity and maybe support, though as frequently happens in campaigns that break the law, this shifts the emphasis from the original aim to defending those who have been penalised for taking part. Like the IRA and “Republican prisoners”.
