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Someone who has a real stake in the outcome of the war — Ukraine’s richest oligarch. He wants his steelworks (plural) back:
Four members distributed a further 1400 this afternoon which means that most of the streets in the ward have now been leafletted. The few remaining can be done next week or later.
More signs of some other political activity this time such as a window poster saying saying “Keep Calm and Vote for Any Party but Labour”. Also the manifesto of the Labour candidates for the neighbouring Brixton Acre ward.
Imposs1904 will be pleased that it is not only Red Fightback that it concerned with toilet matters. Lambeth Labour is too. Their candidates pledge that “we’ll tackle fly tipping, public urination and litter through long term solutions.” Unfortunately this won’t help Imposs1904 as they propose to deal with this not by providing more public toilets but by “increasing police presence”.
It used to be called transportation. The scheme is not going to work anyway. If there really were opportunities for jobs in Rwanda people would be moving there from nearer countries. The most likely outcome is that the Rwandan authorities will take the money and, after a year or so, run to somewhere like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands leaving the transported Kurds and Afghans destitute. It’s so predictable.
Just saw this. The Greens’ view on how to support NATO’s proxy war against Russia, even if it’s a pain they want to impose on us anyway:
“Germans are being urged to turn down their heating by a degree and use the train or bike over Easter to help reduce their dependence on Russian gas and oil.
‘It’s easy on the wallet and annoys Putin,’ says Economics Minister Robert Habeck, who’s also joint leader of the Greens, one of three parties running Germany.”So it’s guns before butter as well as a rise in the price of butter. I don’t think that workers in Germany — and elsewhere — are going to like the pain their rulers want to impose on them to support Ukraine in the Ukraino-Russian War.
Russell Brand is doing his show at the Brixton Academy on Monday 30 May. Doors open at 17.00. Anyone here up for leafletting the event?
Robbo has drawn attention on our Facebook page to this case. Here is how it is reported from both sides but the fact that he has been arrested and faces trial is not disputed:
Both sides are trying to stamp out opposition to the war in their states.
The Ukrainian secret service, the SBU, will also be a descendant of the KGB. According to the Wikipedia entry on the Security Service of Ukraine (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Service_of_Ukraine):
“According to reports of UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, the SBU personnel is accountable for multiple cases of human rights abuses including enforced disappearings, sexual violence, and torture.
In 2016, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reported that the SBU operates secret detention facilities where civilians are held incommunicado being subjected to improper treatment and torture.”And we are being asked to take sides between these two authoritarian regimes.
Yes, you are right. Most people don’t bother to vote in local elections. 40 percent is a good turn out. I suppose they know from experience that it doesn’t matter for their daily life who controls the council. Local councillors are in fact little more than elected civil servants charged with spending national money locally and with a bit of discretion on some matters.
Even so, they still provide us with a chance to get a word in edgeways for those who do take an interest to hear. And our QR experiment will tell us something.
A further 800 or so leaflets were distributed yesterday in two of the four polling districts. The only other sign of any political activity was one of the LibDem candidates for the neighbouring Clapham Common and Abbeville ward seen on the border between that ward and Clapham East. We gave him a leaflet and took one of his (usual stuff, based on a misleading comparison, about it being a two-horse race, in this case between them and Labour, a bold claim in an area which last time elected the only Tory councillors in Lambeth).
Only one more polling district to cover. Which we will do tomorrow. After that, we will have to distribute the leaflets left over in neighbouring ward, for the QR code.
We have been here before. In 2014 after the publication of his book Revolution. The Open Letter below caused a bit of a controversy in the Party with some mebers dismissing him as a poseur. I don’t think he is, though he certainly had been in the past.
Rosa Luxemburg was another socialist from the same period and area who held that a socialist party should advocate reforms within capitalism as well as advocating socialism. It is not holding this position that means you are necessarily a reformist and not a socialist. Our view is that for a socialist party to do this means that it is likely to attract non-socialist support and eventually become a reformist party.
In the conditions of tsarist Russia the struggle for “bourgeois democracy” (and basic labour legislation and universal education that it would bring) was justified. That was the immediate aim of all sections of the Russian Social Democratic Party before WW1 including Lenin’s. The argument amongst them was over what tactics to adopt to get there. Many think that Luxemburg’s pamphlet on the Mass Strike was advocating this to get socialism; in fact in that pamphlet she was advocating it to get political democracy in Russia.
Yes he did want socialism but he was still a Social Democrat and so favoured campaigning for a minimum programme of reforms to be achieved under capitalism as well as the maximum programme of the capture of political power to establish socialism.
His main contribution, as far as we are concerned, is his analysis of the Russian Revolution and his demonstration that the Bolsheviks distorted Marx. In this he reached much the same conclusion as we did, as this review in 1940 in the Socialist Standard of an English translation of some of his writings (which we republished in 2017 (still available for £4 including post and package) pointed out:
This article from 1932 discusses the views of the Mensheviks and the party’s attitude towards them. Our view was that they had a better understanding of Marx’s views than the Bolsheviks. Apart from that, they were like the inter-war Continental Social Democratic Parties which still retained some link to Marx but whose practice was reformist.
The Programme of the Russian Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries
I think the more likely result is that they will vote against Biden’s party on the grounds that they blame him for getting into a war “half a world away” that has increased their cost of living. People tend to vote on bread and butter issues not foreign policy which they see, rightly or wrongly, as of no relevance to them in their daily life.
I wouldn’t have thought Ukraine is paying. Probably the US is, but it is clear who is benefitting — the merchants of death:
“WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) – The Pentagon will host leaders from the top eight U.S. weapons manufacturers on Wednesday to discuss the industry’s capacity to meet Ukraine’s weapons needs if the war with Russia lasts years, two people familiar with the meeting said on Tuesday.
Demand for weapons has shot up after Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24 spurred U.S. and allied weapons transfers to Ukraine. Resupplying as well as planning for a longer war is expected to be discussed at the meeting, the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity.”https://www.reuters.com/world/pentagon-asks-top-8-us-arms-makers-meet-ukraine-sources-2022-04-12/
