ALB
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Actually, in this particular case, Hedges may well turn out to be right. Israel can and will no doubt crush Hamas but the way they did it will be remembered for years to come.
Israel will have trashed its reputation and will find itself in the same category as South Africa used to be.
In any event, it won’t be able to permanently rule over and hold down the population of the West Bank. It’s a bit surprising that there are politicians and generals in Israel who seem to think that it could. They should have sought the advice of FW de Klerk and Pik Botha about that.
The Israeli ambassador to the U.N. has more than once called the U.N. “a moral stain on humanity”. That is a term that may well come to circulate throughout the world though not in relation to the U.N.
Report from Glasgow:
“managed to distribute over 200 of our ant-war flyers.”
Report from Cardiff:
“We found it hard to get people who were going to be part of the demo/march to take our leaflets, passers-by seemed more willing but only about 30 in total. There were around 300 demonstrators at the most, SWP and ‘Socialist Party’ (ex-Militant) prominent amongst them.”
Report from London
“Local members covered an event this morning at the entrance to Brockwell Park, which is only 2 miles from Head Office. Turned out to be just a literature stall. After leafletting the few there the comrades leafletted the nearby Herne Hill market for about an hour, handing out some 80 in all. No sightings of any SWP, etc.”
There is another national demonstration planned for 13 January. Hopefully it won’t need to happen as a permanent ceasefire will have been agreed by then. Otherwise how much further destruction, killings, maimings and other miseries will those at the receiving end have had to suffer.
One thing that the Gaza War has confirmed is that Geneva conventions, the laws of war, international humanitarian law, etc, etc are just scraps of paper if one side feels that it is not in its interest to abide by them. As clearly, in this war, the Israel state has decided that it isn’t.
The Israeli Attack Force has committed all the war crimes in the book and is getting away with it and in all probability will (except in the unlikely event of them losing).
The only way to stop the atrocities that wars inevitably involve — quite apart from fact war itself is an atrocity — is not international conventions to regulate how they should be fought. It’s to end capitalism which is based on economic competition to make profits which, from to time, breaks out as war.
Report from Oxford :
“Jeremy Corbyn was putting in an appearance so that always draws in a few more. Probably slightly under twice what we had two weeks back. Got rid of quite a few leaflets.”
Local press report here:
Hopefully it is these sort of sentiment that motivates most protestors (rather than Palestine nationalism) :
“One demonstrator Jed said: “I find the whole scenario upsetting. People shouldn’t do this to each other. People just feel they want to do something don’t they, have your voice heard.”
Paul Garroway, who marched with his son Otis, said: “I want to stop the genocide. This is a human rights disaster.”This could have far-reaching effects, reintroducing the supply chain problems that Covid led to, resulting in prices rising more:
There’s an article in today’s Morning Star putting the Venezuelan nationalists position on the dispute. Not an accident of course that the issue has lain dormant for over a hundred years until oil was discovered in the area.
As we have always said, wars and threats of war occur over economic matters such as control of raw materials. And the frontiers between Latin American countries are just lines drawn on a map that have changed many times (as can be seen from the article).
The article concludes “we must all support Venezuela’s stance”. No, we mustn’t. Socialists don’t take sides in disputes between capitalist interests over who controls sources of raw materials.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/guyana-venezuela-dispute-no-us-exxonmobil-push-war
I was going to have a rest this Saturday saying I would only leaflet an event that was on my doorstep. Then I bought a copy of the Morning Star (to see our ad on page 2) and saw that there one in Kingston only a couple of miles away.
There were about 70 there. Apart from Muslims, many seemed to be christian do-gooder types though there was also a banner from Jews Against the War. No sign of SWP, SPEW, FIFR, the new RCP, etc. When I approached one of the speakers who had led chants of “No Peace without Justice” and suggested “No Peace without Socialism” might be better even he said he didn’t know about these things.
The other chant was “No Ceasefire, No Vote” presumably aimed at the Labour Party. That won’t make any difference round here where all three local MPs are LibDems (including their Leader). All three voted for an immediate ceasefire in that House of Commons vote but the speaker was a bit churlish in claiming that they didn’t really mean it, presumably because she didn’t want the chant to be interpreted as a call to vote Liberal.
About half of those present got a leaflet.
Jeremy Corbyn (and a lot of others) will have a smile on his face this morning at the prospect of Piers Morgan, on trial for perjury, being asked 13 times by the prosecutor “were you aware that phone hacking was going on when you were editor of the Scum?”
The editor inserted a dash between “party” and “which”.
I don’t really mind Downing’s behaviour of wanting to stay in the Labour Party being described as grovelling towards the capitalist establishment but my intention was to apply this to the Labour Party.
After all, what Downing said about us was pretty insulting, accusing someone of being “simply a pathetic reformist groveller to the capitalist establishment in the rotten tradition of the anti-Marxist Socialist Party of Great Britain.”
The editor also changed “Trotskyite sectariana” to “Trotskyite sectarianism”, which doesn’t mean the same.
For those who don’t recall the details of Downing’s expulsion from the Labour Party in 2016 and his campaign to try to stay in:
There are more local demonstrations this weekend. We are planning to leaflet those in Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Oxford and London.
It’s in this weeks issue (scroll down to the last letter):
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1471/letters/
It has been sub-edited to make Citizen Downing rather than the Labour Party as the groveller before the establishment.
One of the constituents of the Stop the War Coalition which, along with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has been organising the anti-Gaza War/pro-Palestine demonstrations, is the Muslim Association of Britain.
“Jack Conrad” has been writing a three-part series on them in the Weakly Worker:
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1470/
They are an Islamist organisation linked to the notorious Muslim Brotherhood which seeks to establish an Islamic State in all Muslim majority countries (and in principle throughout the world). Hamas is also linked to them.
Clearly not people that are likely to entertain what we have to say. In fact a group to which we are implacably opposed.
Conrad has his own axe to grind (he doesn’t criticise the Hamas attack on the festival and kibbutzim of 7 October, agrees that it was a terrorist attack but sees nothing wrong with terrorism as such) but his articles contain interesting information including about the SWP and Islamism.
The STW coalition is run by John Rees and Lindsey German who left the SWP after they were held responsible for the failure of that group’s “turn to Islam” when George Galloway kicked them out of the Respect Party in 2007.
Conrad says that the MAB has about 600 members.
So you blame the whole working class for the action of one idiot? What sort of socialist comment is that?
Now Labour is asking capitalist firms to help draw up its election manifesto. Apparently, they want to show that they are “the party of business”. They don’t need to convince us of that as we have always seen Labour as a capitalist party.
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/inews-weekend/20231209/281715504394462
Four members and sympathisers handed out between 900 and 1000 leaflets yesterday in and around the national demonstration in London.
There were of course plenty of Trotskyist ones available but also a leaflet denying human-made climate change and denouncing a cashless society and another about war crimes committed by Ukraine.
The statute of Churchill in Parliament Square was protected by 12 policemen and women completely surrounding it.
