ALB
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You will be pleased to know that the Party has opened a second-hand bookshop in the front part of our premises at 52 Clapham High Street London SW4 7UN.
You will perhaps not be so pleased that people can pay by card using one of those new-fangled card readers.
They’ve only been in for less than 100 days and are beginning to lose votes already.
Maybe because their famous “missions” were perceived as being (1) get into office (2) get more freebies (3) cut pensions.
Serve the “Labour fakers” right.
Thanks. Read it now. Yes, it does describe the brutal theocracy in Iran as it is. Not sure, though, that the aim of the regime there is to impose the rule of Ayatollahs and mad mullahs on the Arab countries where Sunni not Shia Islam is the majority. Imposing barbaric and anti-woman sharia law would be more likely to be what the dynastic rulers of Saudi Arabia would like.
I think it is rather a question of the current rulers of Iran seeking to use Shia minorities in Arab states to further its foreign policy aim of kicking out the US from the region.
What I don’t understand is why the Shia minority in Lebanon — which historically has been a downtrodden group, the bottom of the pile there, beneath the Christians and the Sunnis — should think they have a stake in destroying Israel. As its immediate neighbours it might be thought that they would think in terms of live and let live.
But just as the Israeli Jews allowed themselves to be the US rulers’ cat’s paw in the region so the Lebanese Shia have allowed themselves to be Iran’s. Two big mistakes whose results we are now seeing.
In that by-election in South Acton (Ealing) yesterday, the Workers Party easily beat TUSC. They got 32 votes (1.5%) to TUSC’s 18 (0.9%). The council seat was retained by Labour with 1009 (48.5%) of the votes cast. ReformUK got 159 (7.6%). Mind you, the turnout was only 17.34%.
I wouldn’t have expected Galloway’s party to beat TUSC amongst left-of-Labourites. It must be something to do with national publicity and better name recognition. In any event, TUSC’s claim to represent trade unionists must be as open to challenge as their claim to represent socialists.
I couldn’t open it so I don’t know what it says. But Patrick Cockburn’s articles in the weekend i paper are always good. In a recent one he makes the point that the no decent-minded human being can honestly condone what the Israeli killing machine directed by its present government is doing. They are ordered to kill their opponents’ military and political leaders irrespective of how many ordinary people are as well. In fact they have a calculus of how many can be killed depending on the importance of the intended target. If you happen to live in the same apartment block as one of these or just to be passing by, too bad you are expendable. You will be killed too. See this article from the May Socialist Standard:
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2024/05/pathfinders-death-by-algorithm-2024.html?m=0
The Israeli killing machine has reduced Gaza to rubble and has killed tens of thousands of ordinary people. It’s now embarked on doing the same to Beirut.
I realise that this is what a state will do if it considers that its very existence is threatened, but even so.
Actually, the ICC had a “security service” even now under capitalism, at least the French section did, which took those accused of transgressing to interrogations by the leadership.
“In 2000 a group of ex-members of the French section of the ICC published a pamphlet Que Ne Pas Faire? (‘What Is Not To Be Done?’) which exposed similar practices to some of those described by Lalich in the DWP (an older, charismatic leader; adoption of a new name; an order-giving hierarchy; interrogations; a security service).”
Incidentally, one of those ex-ICCers behind that pamphlet was Raoul Victor who has written a quite good criticism of the Labour time voucher idea:
https://libcom.org/library/economy-transition-communist-society
That’s a good find, especially coming from a witch doctor and a supreme one at that. It shows that even he accepts a materialist (as opposed to a religious) explanation for the conflict in the Middle East.
Here for the record (and it’s worth recording for future use) is what his official website says what he said:
“The insistence of the US and its allies on ensuring the safety of the usurping regime serves as a cover for their lethal policy of changing the [Zionist] regime into a tool for seizing all the resources of this region and using it [that regime] in major global conflicts.
Their policy is to turn the [Zionist] regime into a gateway for exporting energy from the region to the Western world while facilitating the import of goods and technology from the West to the region. This [approach] ensures the survival of the usurping regime and increases the entire region’s dependency on it.”There is a council by-election in Ealing in London next Thursday 10 October. Both SPEW and Galloway’s party are standing, so it seemed worth leafletting. 500 of our End Capitalism leaflets were distributed through letter boxes today. A further 500 will be before election day.
Others have been out leafletting too. A SPEW leaflet on behalf of the TUSC candidate is completely reformist as well as being contradictory. Unfortunately it says “Vote Socialist”. The nearest it gets to saying what they mean by “socialism” is:
“We need a true socialist alternative that will enact real change and raise the standard of living for the majority, not continue to line the pockets of the rich with profits.”
The leaflet calls to “Fund public services” saying “Make the rich 1% pay for it — not ordinary people”.
So the rich are still going to exist and make profits but some of these are going to be taxed to restore public services that have been cut.
This is just leftwing populism. Tax the rich to “raise the standard of living of the majority”. As if this is possible under capitalism with its division of society into the rich and the rest of us. Trying to do this would provoke an economic crisis as it goes against what drives the capitalist economy — making profits to re-invest in making more profits. Cut profits too much and capitalist firms won’t invest and production will fall.
Speaking of populists, Reform UK have a candidate. They too are complaining that “32,500 pensioners in Ealing to lose Winter Fuel Allowance” and calling to “campaign for better local health care including social care.”
Be interesting to see who gets the populist vote.
Looks like another of your scarce stories with a tendentious title for the thread which even the article doesn’t claim.
It merely says “right now it’s impossible to say that it won’t be seriously considered.” And you yourself summarised it as that it something that the Orthodox Church “urges” (though in fact it seems to be an extremist priest with a bee in his bonnet about it).
I imagine any such move would be strenuously opposed by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
I am not sure that it is the official theology of Orthodox Christianity that Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species is to be rejected (any more that Roman Catholicism teaches thus) but you’re the expert here on Orthodox Christianity. So perhaps you can throw some light on this.
Ps. Do you want to change the title of this thread to something like: “Not impossible that removing Darwin from Russia might be considered”.
Yes, the G8 became the G7 again when they booted out Russia in 2014. And their meeting in Glenragles was in 2005.
We were saying that long before 2008. For instance, this from 1970:
What a surprise. Not. Another entry in the Black Book of the record of the Starmer Labour government:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2krlgekpxo.amp
UK military support for the Nutty Yahoo regime as part of course to maintain Western capitalist control of the Middle East oil resources and trade routes.
Review here in this month’s Socialist Standard:
A comrade in the US has dug out this;
https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1992
Here is the Carter Doctrine:
“Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
And here is the Qualitative Military Edge for Israel Doctrine:
“We are required by statute to guarantee that Israel has a qualitative military edge over rivals in the region. It’s not a discretionary question. It is a statutory requirement, and it is one that we are committed to. So there is also an important deterrent effect to the United States continuing to send a message to Israel’s adversaries that if they attack Israel, we will defend it.”
Taken together they explain US policy in the Middle East and Israel’s role in it. As can be seen, the US is just as much a “malign influence” in the area as Iran. But this sort of thing is par for the course under capitalism when a source of a key raw material and the trade routes to get it out are at stake.
