ALB
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Yes, and don’t forget that NATO also waged a war against Serbia in 1999 which they did all the things that they denounce Russia for doing in Ukraine—bombing hospitals, civilian infrastructure and fleeing columns of refugees. There are still NATO troops in Kosovo.
“The NATO bombing killed about 1,000 members of the Yugoslav security forces in addition to between 489 and 528 civilians. It destroyed or damaged bridges, industrial plants, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments, private businesses as well as barracks and military installations. In the days after the Yugoslav army withdrew, over 164,000 Serbs and 24,000 Roma left Kosovo. Many of the remaining non-Albanian civilians (as well as Albanians perceived as collaborators) were victims of abuse which included beatings, abductions, and murders.“
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia
Then they just used their air power. Now, in the Ukrainian armed forces, they have boots on the ground and all they need do is supply the weapons.
A similar outcome can be expected if ever they NATO-armed Ukraine state succeeds in “recovering” the Donbass and Crimea. The destruction and damage of “bridges, industrial plants, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments, private businesses” is going on now as we speak. The ethnic cleansing and massacres would ensue in the event of “success”.
As you say, what hypocrites in their pro-war propaganda but of course par for the course in a world of competing capitalist states and blocs coming into conflict over economic resources and trade routes and seeking geopolitical dominance to achieve or protect these.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67016375.amp
So another bank is in trouble. Metro Bank needs to raise more capital but, if banks can create money out of thin air, why don’t they just do it and their problem is solved?
Although the problem hasn’t been caused by depositors taking their money out — this seems, rather, to be a consequence — note the matter of fact way that financial journalists accept that depositors are important to banks. Here’s Patrick Hoskins, their financial editor, in today’s Times;
“All banks … are ultimately unstable entities, relying on the continuing confidence of their ordinary depositors to function. Metro is 81 per cent depositor funded and had £115.5 billion of outstanding deposits at June 30.”
Yes but it means that Mick McGahey’s joke doesn’t work so well any more. But I see that one of the candidates in the Rutherglen parliamentary by-election (where 10 signatories are still required) also held yesterday one of the candidate got only 6 votes. Maybe the punchline is that 4 members got expelled for not voting for their candidate.
It wouldn’t have taken long as there were only 1418 papers to count (there were 3 invalid votes, voting for more than one candidate).
I was at the count and it only took a couple of hours. Talked to the Tory candidate who thanked us for sending him a copy of the Socialist Standard with the articles on Adam Smith. We had hoped that he might be tempted into replying in writing.
The result is in line with what we get at local by-elections in the area.
Turn-out was 22 percent down from 27 percent at the full council elections last May.
Here’s the result announced just after midnight;
LAMBETH Vauxhall
SWAINE-JAMESON, Tom Simon (Labour Party) 595
ALDERECHI, Fareed (Liberal Democrats) 395
BOND, Jacqueline Rose (The Green Party) 256
ROTHERHAM, Lee Stuart (Conservative Party Candidate) 160
LAMBERT, Daniel Peter (The Socialist Party (GB)) 9Vauxhall (Lambeth) council by-election result:
LAB: 42.0% (-11.1)
LDEM: 27.9% (+16.8)
GRN: 18.1% (-2.1)
CON: 11.3% (-4.3)
SPGB: 0.6% (+0.6)Votes cast: 1,415
To complete what our opponents say, here’s the Tory candidate’s election statement. It is the Lee Rotherham, the die-hard Brexiteer and researcher for the Taxpayers Alliance.
Lee Rotherham: I’m standing for Lambeth Council to provide a functioning opposition to Labour
Polling day is tomorrow. The result should be announced well before midnight.
In the meantime we have more data on visits to the landing page. The page was the one for the offer of a free 3-month trial subscription to the Socialist Standard. We were not expecting anyone to take up the offer but chose this page as one that would not have all that many visitors. (If we had had time we could have prepared a special page.)
There have been 175 visits since we started leafletting on 16 September. Depending on what the normal number of visits a day are assumed to be (5, 6 or 7) the extra number could be between about 40 and 80. Since 1950 leaflets were distributed that’s between that between 1 in 50 (2%) and 1 in 24 (4.1%). Which shows that a QR code is relatively useful as a measure of the minimum number of those who take some notice of the leaflet, ie don’t simply bin it. Others will have read it without using the code but there is no way of measuring that.
Our next experiment will be to leaflet an area when there is not an election on.
The leaflets cost £105 to be printed. We are not expecting the percentage of the vote to be similar of course as it’s not a measure of those who agree with what it says only of those who used the QR code.
I don’t know if this is the right place but not sure this deserves its own thread only being recorded somewhere.
Yesterday in a speech to the Tory conference the Minister of Transport publicly endorsed the conspiracy theory about the “15 Minute city”, the idea that people should be able to access the shops they need within 15 minutes walking distance. Seems a good idea at least in socialism, but the conspiraloons see it as part of a plot by a shadowy elite to control and enslave us.
I have a copy of a one of their leaflets which says:
“AGENDA 2023. We will destroy 15 minute cities and BE HAPPY”
and
“15 Minute City. Enslavenent in small steps. Cameras. Charges. Cutbacks. Control. Communism.”
(If only getting to Communism was that easy!)
Anyway, here’s what the minister said:
“What is sinister, and what we shouldn’t tolerate, is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops, and that they can ration who uses the roads and when, and that they police it all with CCTV.”
https://www.wired.com/story/15-minute-city-conspiracy-uk-politics/
But local councils can’t decide this nor is there any plan to give them this power. It’s only in the minds of anti-15 Minute City conspiraloons. Among whom a Tory minister must now be included.
The text of the leaflet is based on this:
You have missed my point about 82% being low. It is of course an overwhelming majority but I understood it to be in answer to the question “Do you think that Ukraine should be an independent country?”
In most countries the reply to such a question would be near to 99%. Or do you think that in Australia the reply would be less than that? A figure as low as 82% suggests a serious minority problem.Thanks for the figures on those who support negotiations with Russia. Seeing that it is dangerous to hold this view and that no politician dares express it for fear of being arrested and charged with being “pro-Russian” (with good reason: opposition MPs who put this view have been kicked out of parliament, their parties banned and their leaders arrested) I would have thought that it is surprisingly high. One in 4 in the country as a whole, rising to 1 in 3 in the east and to nearly 2 in 5 in the south.
I think you are probably right that the higher figures reflect the greater number of native Russian-speakers there but they could also reflect that this is where most of the shelling from both sides and destruction is going on and that people there just want it to stop. An expression of ordinary people’s abhorrence of war but bad news for war-mongers like yourself.
I hadn’t realised that the UN’s “International Court of Justice” had ordered Azerbaijan not to blockade Nagarno-Karabakh but they did:
Note the final paragraph:
“It is not yet clear whether Azerbaijan will follow the order. While the order is binding, however, the ICJ has no way of enforcing it.”
Quite. When it comes to relations between capitalist states, might is right and judgements of international courts of justice just scraps of paper. Realpolitik rules.
I will let others wade in to deal with your flimsy pro-war arguments, basically an echo of what the media put out which you have swallowed hook, line and sinker even to the extent of blaming it on one evil man. If you think that the war has nothing to do with whether or not Ukraine should join NATO then that just shows how naive and unworldly you are.
I just want to clear up your failure to understand my point about “only” 82% of those polled (whoever they were) being in favour of an independent political Ukrainian state. In most countries (unfortunately since such is the grip of nationalism) you would expect this to be at least 99%. The fact that some 18% are against must be of some significance if only to serve as a pretext for the Russian ruling class (and your counterparts on their side) to justify the war.
I notice you left unanswered my request for the percentage of those polled who supported negotiations with Russia.
More getting-it-wrong from Wolff.
Harriet Fraad, Richard D. Wolff – Twenty-First Century Socialism: What It Will Become and Why
The first part, about the history and evolution of mass parties calling themselves “socialist” or “communist” is not bad once you get over your annoyance at them being referred to as socialists or communists. It’s his proposed alternative of a market economy composed of democratically controlled workers’ cooperatives producing for sale that’s wrong (and isn’t socialism either).
Here’s a couple of extracts:
“Inside enterprises, each worker will have one vote to decide the major issues facing enterprises. Such issues include what, how, and where to produce as well as how to use the resulting products or, if products are marketed, what to do with the revenues. The difference between employers and employees disappears; the workers become collectively their own boss. Profits cease being the enterprise’s top priority or “bottom line” because that maximization rule prioritizes employers’ gains over employees’ gains and capital’s interests over those of labor. In democratized enterprises, profits instead become one among many democratically determined enterprise goals.”
“Democratic worker cooperatives become a key institutional foundation of whatever state apparatus survives. Worker co-ops, democratized households, and individuals will be the state’s three revenue sources and thus key sources of its power. They will democratically decide how to divide the provision of such revenue among themselves.”
Not quite sure what this should be called. Unrealistic worker control of a market economy? Wolffism perhaps? If the state can’t control how the market economy operates how can workers coops be expected to?
The last 200 leaflets were distributed yesterday. Preliminary data on the use of the QR indicate that there was an increase in visits to the page chosen as the landing page on the days that leaflets were distributed but it has no yet been established by how much above normal.
Thanks, pgb, for making your position absolutely clear — you support NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine to incorporate the country into their bloc. You naively accept the “humanitarian” and “moral” reasons and talk of “justice” invoked by the NATO governments to justify their arming and financing the Ukrainian state and keeping the war going
The issue has always been whether or not Ukraine should join NATO. That’s why the West supported the overthrow of a pro-Russia government in 2014 and why Russia invaded in 2022 in a bid to overthrow the pro-West government there. Whether or not Ukraine should exist as an independent political entity has never been the issue. Both Russia and the West accept this; they just want its government to favour them. NATO wants to expand further to the East. Russia sees this as a threat to its vital interests as a capitalist state. In international relations (relations between capitalist states) “morality” and “justice” don’t come into it. Might is right. Realpolitik rules.
Incidentally, you quote an opinion poll which says that 82% of the population of Ukraine support its existence as an independent state and that this is “the highest it has ever been”. That seems rather low at only 82%. What about the other 18%? Presumably they either couldn’t care either way (which would be good) or think that it should become part of Russia again (a sizeable minority which would make for political instability). Also, was this poll conducted just in the territory controlled by the Ukraine government or in the whole of its designated territory? If the former, that would mean that if those in the Russian controlled territory were included the figure would be much higher. And if the latter, how did the pollsters poll those in the Russian controlled parts?
You say that the poll showed that “support for negotiations with Russia is relatively low” but don’t give the exact figure. Have you got it to hand?
Finally, the SPGB has always been opposed to conscription and practised what it preached, with those members who were in a position to do so refusing to be conscripted in both world wars and also in the period of “national service” after WW2 and either being sent to jail, assigned to non-military work or going on the run. It’s a socialist principle not to kill fellow workers in conflicts between capitalist states.
