ALB
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What is at stake in Venezuela is not simply a change of officeholders (as happened here on 4 July) but a change of one state from one big power’s sphere of influence to another’s — in the occurrence from Russia’s back to America’s. In these circumstances both sides are going to play dirty, as we’ve seen in Ukraine.
According to this, one possible outcome is a fresh elections:
“In the meantime, there is a succession of rumors in the regional media regarding the confidential negotiations carried out by the governments of Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. According to the reconstruction of the Spanish newspaper “El Pais”, which has not yet been officially denied, the idea would be to open a direct conversation between Gonzalez Urrutia and Maduro, but removing Machado from the scene, clear winner of the primaries carried out by the opposition last October but made ineligible on the basis of controversial rulings of administrative justice first and then criminal justice. A leader who has always been indigestible to the government authorities, considered – also by virtue of past pronouncements in favor of a military attack from abroad – a member of the “radical” opposition accused of plotting against the national order in the pay of the USA. The end point of this negotiation would be a new election, to be held before the end of the year, with a renewed promise to adhere to international standard.”
I don’t know how realistic this is but it can’t be ruled out. Or how reliable the news agency is but it seems to a leading Italian one.
According to it, the Maduro government has apparently passed on the famous “actas” — the full results — to the Supreme Court examining the elections, so somebody else has got them. Surely they will be leaked at some time?
Apparently the Supreme Court has to come up with something by next Friday.
Is this serious? It reads like an account of the battles between mods and rockers of yesteryear:
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/amp/when-the-wild-ones-terrorised-the-seaside-306623/
Anarchists living up to their reputation. And from the ACG who are supposed to the best of that bunch.
I see the black blob were were there. They must be jealous that they couldn’t organise so many battles with the police in so many places over so many nights.
We don’t participate in demos on a point of principle
I don’t think that’s true, is it? It depends on what the demonstration is for. After all, we have organised our own demonstrations for socialism in Trafalgar Square. And then there are trade union demonstrations. Ok, we don’t take part in them as a party with our banner but individual members do as class-conscious workers.
In any event we are often at (if not on) a demonstration with some reformist aim we don’t agree with, handing out leaflets and selling the Socialist Standard.
Even though it might have nothing to do with socialism I can’t see anything wrong in principle with workers gathering to stop other workers from being attacked by racists.
Account from Bristol of counter-demonstration. Much more of them.
Huge counter demo in Bristol sends clear message that far right not welcome – as it happened
For whatever motive, Moscow is interested in these riots as this interview by one of their media outlets of Nick Griffin, billed as an ex-MEP shows. I see griffin is now a conspiraloon too.
I think it’s more anti-Muslim than white supremacist. After all, Robinson has concluded an alliance with the Hindu nationalists. Not sure that a lot of the rioters would agree with or understand this.
Yes, we should have something to say about this. It can’t just be a result of misinformation on social media and outside agitators directed by Tommy Robinson from his holiday hotel room in Cyprus, as the media are claiming. It seems more like a spontaneous misdirected (and how!) expression of the discontent of a section of the working class. Not that rioting is any answer.
Starmer is calling for the full force of the law to be directed against the rioters. He has form on this as he was prosecutor-general at the time of the 2011 riots in London when some poor sod was jailed for stealing a bottle of mineral water:
https://www.businessinsider.com/nicolas-roberts-looter-water-london-2011-8?amp
In Belfast the Union Jack and the Irish tricolour have been waved side by side, something that last happened during anti-Means Test protests in the 1930s.
Tragic that this unity is directed at another section of the working class.
It is not only the pro-US right that is questioning the official result but also leftists such as the Communist Party of Venezuela and at least one Trotskyist group:
https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/Venezuela-que-se-publiquen-todas-las-actas
Their demand that the government publish the full voting figures seems reasonable enough, even elementary.
These documents, published last month, show that it was always US policy to expand NATO membership eastwards to Russia’s borders despite Russia’s misgivings (but having lost the Cold War were in no position to stop it).
The documents also show that the US government were advised that it would be easier to manipulate and bamboozle Putin than Yeltsin. How wrong this proved to be when they decided to try to incorporate Ukraine into NATO.
This article, which says that Hayek was right to say that you can’t plan the market, seems relevant to this discussion. But then socialists don’t want to plan the market but to organise the production and distribution of useful things and services directly for use, not to be sold on a market.
It not what the scientists are proposing that is loony but the way that article has reported it. It would not been the animals themselves that would be stored there but their DNA.
Since it has gone online-only the Indeoendent seems to have become a tabloid, with outrageous headlines designed to get clicks and boost what they can charge advertisers.
But don’t you ever check these stories or are you just indulging in confirmation bias?
Here’s a more sober report of what is proposed and why:
Picture of our stall at a meeting this afternoon in Brixton to protest against the Party of Business’s decision to keep this cap:
Yes , interesting to note that the new Party of Business government’s kneejerk reaction to a “hole” in the capitalist state’s finances caused by the previous government’s “overspending” is to cut not only some benefits but even some infrastructure projects.
A sign of what they will do (have to do) when their own plan to artificially boost growth fails and another hole appears.
There is a possible alternative explanation for the facts unveiled to “unequal exchange” (which implies that “the South” is not being paid a fair price for what it sells up the supply chain).
It’s the theory that the whole world is a “planetary factory” in which the world working class produces, as a class, a pool of surplus value which firms and states compete to grab as much as they can. The firms and states of “the North” do better in this, channelling to themselves a disproportionate amount via interest on loans, charges for financial and legal services, patents and other “intellectual property” rights.
This, from the German “Gegen Kapital und Nation” (Against Capital and the Nation) group, explains the relationship between China and the US quite well :
