ALB
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Yes, with two wars going on everybody has forgotten about that. I wonder if anybody has calculated what they are contributing to global warming. Those aircraft with their missiles must be burning up quite a bit of fuel.
Don’t forget the pipelines? This video, made by someone in Damascus, while it doesn’t explain the Israeli-Gaza War could be taken into account as a contribution to understanding why the US and the “West” are so supportive of Israel and tolerant of its atrocities. In any event, it’s a much more plausible explanation than that Israel is a “liberal democracy” or guilt about what happened to the Jews in Europe in Ww2.
The justifications for Israel slaughtering civilians in pursuit of a “just” cause brings out some interesting historical facts. Here’s one from a letter in today’s Times.:
“In June 1944 the Allies launched an invasion of Normandy, an area comparable with that of Gaza, aimed at overcoming and driving out the occupying forces of Nazi Germany. In the process up to 20,000 French civilians, many of them children and the elderly, were killed in collateral damage, almost all of which was caused by the British and American bombing and shelling of centres of population such as Caen.”
I didn’t know that, did any of you? Up to twenty thousand slaughtered ! So, it’s ok for the Israeli army to do the same and have a free hand to reach the same figure (as they may well by the time they’ve finished)? What sort of warped logic is that?
Meanwhile a Tory MP has been given the boot from a junior government position for letting his humanity get the better of him by supporting a stop to the killing of innocent civilians in Gaza.
Starmer of course would never do that as he likes to be seen behaving like a responsible prime minister of UK PLC. Like Sunak. Spot the difference if you can.
Put to the comrade who drafted the leaflet they comment:
“Yes, they ‘claim’ they are not ‘anti-semitic’, and the tone and the terms of their 2017 charter may be different from their 1988 one. But their deeds – and other of their words – still show them as manifestly anti-semitic. Apart from the fact that Jews are demonised in the official school curriculum and Hamas leaflets describe them as ‘bloodsuckers’, ‘brothers of apes’, and ‘human pigs’ and that ‘deceit and usury are stamped in their nature’, can we really interpret the scenes of raped, brutalised women being paraded across Gaza by gleeful militants and hooted at by cheering crowds as anything but a manifestation of those characterisations? It manifests as the kind of anti-semitism practised by the nazis. Note too by the way that even now they are claiming that their slaughter of people at the ‘rave’ took place because they mistakenly thought that those attending were involved in military manoeuvres. So it would be straining all credibility and utterly naive of us to accept at face value Hamas’s ‘formal’ statements and in particular the one that they are anti-zionist and not anti-semitic.”
It’s on the front page of our website here:
“Thing is, if they made the ball round, they could kick it properly and they wouldn’t have to pick it up.”
I think that in Ireland they play a sort of rugby with a round ball called Gaelic football. I suppose their anthem might be “The Merry Ploughboy” whose chorus is;
“And were all off to Dublin in the green
Where the helmets glisten in the sun
Where the bay’nets clash and rifles crash
To the echo of the thompson gun.”Certainly not last night of the proms stuff. At least not in London. Don’t know about Dublin except in pubs there.
So Labour’s shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has been exposed as a common plagiarist. That’s for a book she wrote, but that seems to be her stock-in-trade.
She has also plagiarised previous Chancellors’ economic policy of fiscal conservatism. If she ever gets the job expect her to copy passages from their speeches about fiscal restraints, tighten your belts, jam tomorrow, we can’t afford that, don’t ask for higher wages, etc, etc.
And some people still seem to think that a Labour government would be — could be — any different from a Tory one or, for that matter, from all previous Labour ones.
That doesn’t apply to the South Wales mining values where rugby union was the popular sport. Maybe why rugby league clubs sent out scouts to recruit players and anyone with a northern accent at a rugby match was looked on with suspicion. I don’t suppose many doctors and solicitors would have been tempted to change code for money.
Talking of “anthems”, the most popular rugby one was Cwm Rhondda. It’s actually a hymn whose words are terrible. Massed workers singing:
Guide me, O thou great Redeemer,
Pilgrim through this barren land;
I am weak, but thou art mighty;
Hold me with thy powerful hand:
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven
Feed me till I want no more.
Feed me till I want no more.does sound good but the words’ meaning is terrible — “I am weak, but thou art mighty”. Workers should rather be singing “Thou art weak [in fact thou existest not], but we are mighty”. Speed the day !
Now the US has joined in with a strike on Iranian forces in Syria. It’s the Gulf War syndrome. The application of the Carter Doctrine enunciated by President Carter in his state of the union message on 23 January 1980:
“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.”
In other words, the US will go to war if there was any attempt to challenge its control of the Arabian oilfields and of the trade route out through the Persian Gulf.
At the time the threat came from Russia. Twenty years ago it was Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Now it is Iran under the ayatollahs. Israel has always been the US’s rather unruly and often rogue proxyin the area. Which will be why Iran is so against it. Israel and Iran have in fact been in a state of undeclared war for a number of years now.
Two US aircraft carriers are in the eastern Mediterranean to protect Israel as its proxy against Iran by deterring Iran from joining in. They won’t want a war. Iran probably doesn’t either. It remains to be seen how successful the US is in preventing Israel putting a match to the powder keg.
Are you being provocative again? The tune may be ok but the words are anathema to Socialists. As bad as the “national anthem”, if not worse
“I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;”I think you can confirm that it could be roughly translated into German as my country uber alles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Vow_to_Thee,_My_Country
Written by a Colonel Blimp they are patriotic (and religious) drivel. No socialist could sing that. In fact, if we dared, we should boo it every time we hear it. Personally I hate it and always have since we had to sing it in school.
Ironically, in his youth Holtz used to frequent meetings of the Socialist League. He should have known better than agreeing to his tune being perverted in this way.
So many Labour councillors have resigned over Starmer’s following the US/UK line and justifying the continued bombing of civilians in Gaza that Labour has lost its majority on Oxford City Council.
At least there are some people in the Labour Party who have other things on their mind than their leaders getting to be driven round in a ministerial car.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-67231473.amp
Headline in today’s Times: ISRAEL BRANDS THE UN A ‘STAIN ON HUMANITY’. Looks like a case of if the cap fits.
Meanwhile Starmer is in trouble over his statement that the Israel has the right to cut off water and electricity to Gaza. Sone fellow Labourites are pointing out that this could lose the Labour Party votes and seats in constituencies with a large Muslim population. Losing votes is always the over-riding issue in a vote-catching opportunist party such as Labour. And he has been forced to timidly backtrack, even though his original statement probably did genuinely reflect his personal view and he was caught him off guard.
I see the Jewish Nationalists (Zionists) who control the government of Israel are gunning for Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, for saying that the murderous Hamas attack on Israel did not happen in a vacuum (as it obviously didn’t) and no doubt also for expressing the view, held by most ordinary people in the world, that the Israeli bombardment of Gaza should stop.
https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-united-nations-antonio-guterres-hamas-attack-vacuum-comments/
They won’t find is as easy to bring him down as they did Corbyn. In fact they are likely to succeed only in showing themselves to be fanatical nationalists, entitled to no more special consideration than any other fanatical nationalists (despite the setting up of a Jewish state in Palestine not happening in a vacuum either)
The answer seems to to be that voting is not compulsory for everybody but only for those aged between 18 and 70 and then with exceptions
“Voting is compulsory between 18 and 70 years old, with some exceptions (illness and long distance from polling stations); penalties for abstention consist of a fine (between 50 and 500 Argentine pesos) and prohibition to hold public office or employment for three years from the election.”
(https://web.archive.org/web/20131031040409/http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2011_B.htm)So, voting is not compulsory for those aged 16 and 17 (they have the vote) and for the over-70s.
With the raging inflation there 500 pesos can’t be much — just over a £ – a small price to pay for abstaining from voting for some pro-capitalist candidate.
Voting in Belgium is also compulsory but only for Belgian citizens. EU nationals had the vote in local elections but weren’t legally obliged to vote. I voted once but couldn’t write “socialisme mondial” or “wereld socialisme” across my ballot paper as it was machine voting. The machine provided for people to cast a blank vote, so I voted “blanc”.
