ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Yes, I did underestimate the intransigence of the US in insisting that Ukraine be allowed to join NATO. I thought that, because there was less at stake for them than for Russia, they would back down. But they didn’t. Instead they called Russia’s bluff and the rest is still going on.
Incidentally, it was dated 21 January, not 21 February as you claim, ie wasn’t said 3 days before the invasion took place.
I imagine he will feel fairly satisfied with what Russia has already got even if he would like Russia to control the whole area of the four Ukraine provinces it has annexed.
The Russian state may well want to go beyond this, if only as a bargaining chip in any future settlement. For instance to withdraw from in return for a guarantee that Ukraine won’t join NATO. Or to force Ukraine to come to the negotiating table. I don’t know. In fact Russia already controls a small part of a fifth Ukraine province that it has not annexed.
My guess is that Russia would be satisfied with a situation that froze the current line of control if this was offered. But it’s not, so it will continue to try to over-run more territory.
That sounds more like it — even if 3500 workers doesn’t seem much and that the union is affiliated to the Communust Party of India (Marxist} (ie Leninist).
You have advanced two contradictory propositions:
1. That the Kiev government will never accept partition.
2. That one part of a partitioned Ukraine will join NATO.It depends on what you mean by “accept”. Argentina doesn’t accept that the Falkland Islands are not part of Argentina but that does not alter the situation that in fact (and under international law) they are part of what’s left of the British Empire.
I would think that you are right that the Kiev government will never accept the partition of Ukraine in law, but, if the present situation is frozen, they will have to accept it as a fact even if they don’t recognise it in law.
This would mean that Ukraine — as a state with an ongoing territorial claim and dispute — would not qualify to join NATO:
Unless, that is, NATO wanted a direct war with Russia. Which they don’t as it is the officially declared US policy is merely to weaken Russia.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/04/25/politics/biden-administration-russia-strategy/index.htm
Russia seems to understand this too. So what there is there is a trial of strength between the US and Russia restricted to Ukraine.
I think this from the official Russian state news agency presents the situation rather well and explains why those in control of the Russian state decided to invade Ukraine two years ago.
They see the incorporation of Ukraine into the NATO sphere of influence as an existential threat to their state while those in control of the US state want to incorporate Ukraine into its sphere of influence just to weaken Russia.
I wouldn’t have thought that that was ever the aim of the Russian ruling class. They would have only wanted to overthrow the government there and replace it by one not so tied to the US, the EU and NATO. To install such a government would be why they tried to march on Kiev. When that failed they concentrated on controlling the majority Russian-speaking areas near to the Russian border.
It’s Ukraine that would have a rebellious population to control if ever they conquered these areas, especially Crimea (and unless they ethnically cleansed them). But this is hardly likely to happen even with NATO weapons.
The most likely outcome would seem to be some sort of truce or ceasefire, formal or informal, more or less along the present line of contact. The sooner the better of course.
In the not so distant past the pro-China Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) in previous by-elections was in an alliance with Galloway’s Workers Party but things have changed. Here is how they now describe the Workers Party:
“A left-social-democratic vehicle for bourgeois parliamentarism and anti-communism.”
Not entirely inaccurate when you think about it taking the words literally.
Since, apparently, George Galloway stands a chance of being elected MP for Rochdale in the by-election there on 29 February as the candidate of the Workers Party here’s that party’s policies:
Here’s a couple of their reforms:
“we support campaigning to preserve the right to use cash.”
“we will ensure working class representation throughout the governance of the Bank of England.”
Which rather belies their claim to be “a socialist party”.
The rest are the sorts of reforms that the Labour Party used to advocate a long time ago.
They are very opposed to the Labour Party:
“we commit to offer a long term and well organised socialist alternative to the corrupt Labour Party, which is now nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Since they claim to be a socialist party but aren’t and are only Old Labour reformists you could say they are sheep in wolfs’ clothing.
Starmer may well be sacrificing more than just one seat because of his pro-Israel stance. This from before the Rochdale fiasco:
George Galloway is standing in Rochdale for the Workers Party. How well he does should be a sign of what might be in store for the Labour Party. The coming general election may see Labour shadow cabinet members fall as well as Tory ministers.
Yes, this extract from the IP leaflet does seem to be a bit over the top:
“However, among the highly developed economies, Israel is unique in the proportion of surplus population under its management. The growth of a surplus population that cannot be profitably exploited by capital is a global trend. Deportations, mass incarceration, and forced displacement are common peacetime solutions, but war is capitalism’s gold standard to clear the way for growth. Israel’s combined solution of bombing concentration camps gives us a chilling view into the future of capitalism’s death world.”
Maintaining the population of Gaza is not a burden on Israel as most of the population there (and those in the refugee camps on the West Bank) are maintained by hand-outs from the United Nations (via the UNWRA which the US and its most loyal supporters are risking bankrupting by withholding their contributions to it).
The passage that “war is capitalism’s gold standard to clear the way for growth” seems to be a left-over from their time in the ICC, though other Left Communist Groups invoke it too. It’s just not true a destructive war has been and is needed to maintain capitalist growth.
Being in Ealing in West London yesterday I gave out the last handful of the branch’s leaflets at a pro-Palestine rally there of a hundred or so people. This time I listened more carefully to what the speakers had to say. It seems that the position of the protestors is hardening into an anti-Israel rather than an anti-war one, with chants of “Israel — terror state” and “Palestine free, from the river to the sea” and even cheers for the “resistance”, ie Hamas (though not mentioned by name as it is illegal to express support for them).
There were also chants of “Sunak, Starmer, Netanyahu you can’t hide, you are guilty of genocide”. Every mention of Starmer was booed.
The SWP was present both on and off the platform and there were other speakers saying the struggle was anti-imperialist and even anti-colonialist.
One of the speakers was an imam. I’d never heard one before but this one seemed the equivalent of a trendy vicar. Young, dressed in ordinary clothes. His message was that the Koran said that Allah rewards suffering (all religions say that) and so the people of Gaza would get their reward, but he didn’t say what form this would take, whether going to paradise or being freed from Israeli state oppression. He joined in chants of “free free Palestine” but not of “from the river to the sea”.
A bit of good news here on the freedom to criticise Zionism issue:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68211872.amp
This should undermine the bullying tactics of organisations like the Community Security Trust and Board of Deputies aimed at suppressing the freedom to criticise the Zionist project and its outcome, Israel, and to get people sacked (and politicians brought down) for doing so.
The International Court of Justice has already, by ruling that there is a plausible case for saying that Israel might be contravening the Convention on Genocide in its war in Gaza, in effect struck out part of the tendentious definition of anti-Semitism drawn up by pro-Israel elements that it is anti-Semitic to accuse Israel of acting like Nazi Germany.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_definition_of_antisemitism
If this continues, eventually the definition of anti-Semitism could become what everybody knows it means when they see it, such as calling Jews “Yids”, saying they control the world, that Hitler was right, painting swastikas on synagogues, etc. And that it is not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel or Zionism.
Meta (Facebook) is considering banning a thread like this:
Either they are ignorant about the history of Zionism which shows that many Jews were opposed to it and still are or they have been got at by the Zionist lobby.
Whatever the reason it’s a threat to free speech, if only by intimidating people into not expressing their real opinion of the Israeli government for fear of being called “anti-Semitic”.
Head Office has acquired a copy of the first issue (No.1, 24 January 2024) of “The Communist”, the journal of the proposed (third) “Revolutionary Communist Party”.
A picture of Lenin appears on 7 of its 16 pages. There are also articles by and about him. There is no mention of Trotsky on any page. It is not clear on what basis they have calculated that they will do better calling themselves “communists” with Lenin, hammer and sickle and the rest rather than posing as leftwing “socialist” Labour Party members.
Strange, because their origin is the part of the Militant Tendency that stayed in the Labour Party when the other lot left and tried to steal our name but ended up being know appropriately enough as SPEW. Their guru, Ted Grant, had always taught that Trotskyists should stay in the Labour Party until the revolution started as that’s where workers would apparently turn to when they began to become more radical.
Maybe his successors feel that “the revolution” (armed uprising) is imminent. Some of the articles and headlines suggest that they might think it is.
We are told:
“It is becoming increasingly clear that capitalism has reached its limits … the deepening crisis of world capitalism …Under capitalism we are heading for disaster.”
“Capitalism is in a profound crisis. Millions of workers and young people are drawing revolutionary conclusions, and are looking to the ideas of communism.”
Millions?! We haven’t noticed it and they themselves claim only 1100 members.
The editorial ends:
“We need a fighting communist leadership in the working class. That is what we are building”.
No thanks. The working class needs that as much as a hole in the head.
“We woz blown off course” is usually the excuse that governments invoke when they fail to deliver on their election promises. Starmer and the Labour Party have gone one better. They have invoked this to justify abandoning one of their election promises even before the election when Starmer announced yesterday that the party was abandoning a previous promise to spend £28 billion pounds a year on a grandiose “Green Prosperity Plan” because “circumstances have changed”.
The plan was never going to work anyway because governments can’t control how the capitalist economy works and so it was likely to have been had to be abandoned at some point due to “changed circumstances” — such as capitalists not being willing to take part in it since the profits from it were not high enough or because of a downturn in economic activity which meant that capitalist profits had to be given priority over taxing them to pay for the plan.
“Green Deals” are pie in the sky because they are based on the mistaken assumption that governments can make capitalism serve some useful social purpose. They can’t because what drives capitalism is the quest for profits and that will always prevail in the end. Capitalist enterprises will invest in green projects if that is profitable; otherwise they won’t. And governments can’t tax profits too much to pay for unprofitable projects without risking an economic slowdown or downturn.
But Labour are sticking to one promise, made by Reeves last week:
“we will campaign as a pro-business party — and we will govern as a pro-business party.”
We can’t fault them on that. That’s exactly what they are doing and will do. If you are not a business, take note.
