ALB
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I hadn’t realised that voting was compulsory in Argentina. That means that, if you are dissatisfied with the conventional parties, you can’t just abstain but have to vote for some other candidate or party, however odd. That might explain why do many voted for an obvious nutcase like Milei. Workers who voted for him wouldn’t necessarily be agreeing with his weird “anarcho-capitalist” ideas but because this was the next best thing to abstaining. If so, that’s a relief.
Having said that, I take it casting a blank vote is still legal? Otherwise what could a socialist in Argentina legally do on election day?
So that loud mouthed populist didn’t come first as expected in the first round of the presidential elections. It seems that not enough workers there were that desperate as to vote for someone who wants a free market in body parts. He can still win, though, as him and the devil they know, the Peronist candidate, will now face each other in the second round in three weeks time.
Just read the statements by Mouvenent Communiste and Internationalist Perspective. They are of course right to denounce Hamas as murderous religious fanatics but would be advised not to distribute their statements at the pro-Palestine demonstrations. They are probably not intended for that anyway as nobody on those demonstrations would read past the opening paragraphs to reach the internationalist, socialist message at the end.
There was some discussion yesterday about whether it was wise or useful to leaflet the demonstrations as they were pro-Palestinian rather than anti-war. One idea was a stunt to burn both Israeli and Palestinian rags on the end of a pole. There were no volunteers to do this.
We still will probably produce a leaflet to hand out on these demonstrations.
This happened three years ago and was discussed here at the time;
Ok, Twiglet, there’s a London branch meeting this afternoon at 2 o’clock in Head Office if you can get there to discuss covering future demonstrations. Otherwise email to order extra copies of the November Socislist Standard for the next demonstration which states our case clearly.
There’s sure to be a monster one the Saturday after the Israeli army enters northern Gaza and destroys everything there, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, houses, people, the lot.
So, I take it no Party presence (to put the socialist case against all varieties of nationalism)/leafletting?
I don’t know. There might have been. In any event, there would have been no objection to doing so.
Isn’t he the bloke who emasculated the Internatuonale with the message “Then comrades come rally and let us all vote Labour”?
A lurker on this forum recommends this article on the “chip war” between the US and China:
https://internationalistperspective.org/hot-and-cold-war/
The author argues that the US is in the stronger position. Also explains the key economic importance of Taiwan as producer of most of the worlds advanced microchips and so why the US wants to keep it in its sphere of influence.
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/21/1207781842/london-pro-palestinian-protests-gaza
So over 100,000 took part in a demonstration in London today to protest against what is happening to the population of Gaza under under siege and bombardment. That is good but a pity that it took the form of a demonstration in favour of a Palestine state and not a protest against the slaughter of fellow workers and human beings as such.
It’s going to get worse. The Israeli army hasn’t even begun to invade Gaza yet which is going to mean even more destruction and slaughter of civilians.
Ordinary people all over the world are appalled at what they are doing but nobody can stop them. Not public opinion. Not the so-called “United Nations”. In theory the USA could but has declared it is 110 percent behind the Israeli government, ostensibly on the grounds that it is a “liberal democracy” but in reality as a counter to Iran as a threat to the oilfields of Arabia and the trade routes to get the oil out.
A comrade who is not a member of the forum has asked for this to be posted here.
The attack on Al-Ahli hospital was an attack on reality itself.
On the night of the 17th October, a missile struck the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, killing almost 500 people and injuring many more, all non-combatants shetering from the slaughter elsewhere in what should have been a safe, “de-conflicted” place.
This was a war crime, possibly the worst single war crime in decades.
For the rest of this article, I do not ask you to believe me. I ask you to believe your own eyes and ears. Footage is freely available from Al-Jazeera, at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/18/what-do-we-know-about-the-strike-on-the-hospital-in-gaza
It is obvious from the footage that this was a large, powerful rocket striking at great speed. You can see this for yourself. This was a large rocket strike, it was not a small, “bottle rocket” of the kind that Hamas use to provoke an expensive response from the Iron Dome system or, on the rare occasion it gets through and actually hits something, set fire to a house or supermarket. Nor were there secondary explosions, as you can clearly see. There was one, large explosion.
With so many of these situations, they happen off camera, and the blame is a matter of he said, she said. But this is *physics*. The explosion is several orders of magnitude greater than that of any weapon Hamas possesses. The power and velocity of the missile is also far greater than anything in the Hamas arsenal. If they did have them, Jerusalem would lie in ruins.
So we can say with high confidence that Israel fired this missile, and thus committed this war crime.
But this war crime would cause the US and other colonial powers trouble in backing Israel.
So it simply could not happen: and thus did not happen.
The disinformation services, both secret and media, sprang into high gear.
Israel circulated a tape of two Hamas members discussing the strike and blaming it on Islamic Jihad. Firstly, any two Arabic speakers could have put this together, so it is no evidence at all. Secondly, by all accounts, they do not even speak in Gazan accents. Thirdly, if Israel had this level of confidence in intercepting communications, it would mean that they must have had advance warning of the initial attack and did nothing – but that’s an argument for another day.
This was quite enough for the senescent leader of the free world, Biden, to declare this a strike by the “other team”. As if his judgment held any more meaning than the rest of his presidency.
But enquiring minds are harder to satisfy than the world’s most powerful man, late for nap time. So the BBC strode into action, with its “BBC Verify” service, which absolutely will tell you the truth, the half truth, and anything but the truth, just as John Simpson, rather than put a spin on the news, will instead lie straight to your face from dawn till dusk. They ignored the physics and pointed to the fairly small crater, and the fact that there were rather few tiles missing from a roof. Now a large crater is a sign of amateurism: professional murderers ensure that their weapons, instead of excavating holes, murder people on the surface. A small crater is what you would expect from a powered rocket landing at a relatively shallow angle. And the tiles were probably protected by the flesh of 500 people who were ripped apart and whose parts had to be collected from across the courtyard by their loved ones. Again, to footnote this unspeakable crime, nothing in Hamas’ arsenal could have done anything like this.
So where are we?
The president of Israel has lied with a straight face to the leaders of their allied powers, principally the president of the USA and the Prime Minister of Britain. Netanyahu has taken no trouble whatsoever to make it plausible: a war crime has been turned into an ultimatum, and a complicity, to force the USA and UK to collaborate in the worst single war crime for decades by covering it up. Whether the war crime was deliberate or accidental, it has been turned into a golden opportunity. The US and UK now cannot back out, or evidence of their crude complicity can easily be circulated.
Said President and Prime Minister, however, have lapped it up. They could have said “Enough is enough” and even without formally acknowledging the truth, in practice demanding that Israel desist. But they have not. Biden has been if anything overeager: our own Rishi Sunak was only slightly less bloodthirsty.
The media machines of the affected states have gone into high gear to explain the inexplicable. The BBC is of particular interest to us because it is supposedly sacrosanct, “Auntie Beeb”. Murdoch may dictate a lie to all his worldwide media holdings: the BBC isn’t meant to do that. Nevertheless the BBC has lied with breakthtaking enthusiasm. Instead of just saying that the PM has accepted it, and that’s good enough for them, they have tasked a whole disinformation unit to conceal the evidence and point it instead at the state’s current enemy. It’s like a UFO conspiracy: except they have conspired to cover up an actual unidentified flying object, this time clearly captured on video and with overwhelming physical evidence, and present it as the result of a Hamas firework.
In that our day to day reality is established by the media, and our only regulation is the BBC – they are tearing reality itself asunder. Memory in the UK is being formed by the media machine as a whole, with the willing complicity of the BBC, and when in the future the truth is revealed, it will strike, if at all, as lightning from a clear sky.
Now we know that politicians lie – to the point where it becomes irrelevant. They say what they want us to believe, and truth or falsehood is utterly irelevant. Only convenience matters.
But the BBC somehow gets treasured. We fight for the licence fee to remain, to fund the BBC, and it is considered part of our public life, our civic presence.
What do we do when the BBC is a worthless, lying institution? Not only that, but has such contempt for its viewers that it is prepared not only to lie, to cover up war crimes, but in this instance to stand in front of what is clearly a war crime handing out leaflets telling you to disbelieve your own eyes – with the constant and daily threat since 2015 that to believe in one’s own senses and reason in such a circumstance, is to be anti-Semitic?
I wish I had answers. I have none.
Simon Wigley.
Somebody writing in today’s Times says:
“In 1913, Argentina was richer than France or Germany, and had about 75 per cent of US’s GDP per capita.”
I take it that “richer” means a higher “GDP per capita” and resulted from Argentina not having a large peasant population which didn’t contribute much to GDP but increased the number of people by which is was divided.
The article, by free marketeer Ryan Bourne of the Cato Institute, refers to Milei’s “uncompromising anarcho-capitalism” but endorses his proposal to “dollarise” the Argentine currency.
I am afraid that the CWO might be right (if for the wrong reason) that a more generalised war is on the cards. The 7 October massacre by Hamas could be a Sarajevo moment for the Middle East.
The US has not moved two aircraft carriers to the Eastern Mediterranean to deal with Hamas. It is as a threat to Iran to try to deter it getting involved but Israel and Iran are already in a state of undeclared war. If — or, rather, when — Israel invades Gaza, Iran is bound to react, either through its proxies in Lebanon or directly itself. I would have thought this is more or less inevitable.
Then what — Israel bombs Iran. Iran bombs Israel. The US bombs Iran? Oil prices rise and Putin laughs. No doubt that unimpressive little man Blinken is trying to avoid this by diplomatic means but clearly not succeeding.
The only way to stop this starting would be for Biden to tell Nutty-yahoo and his Jewish Nationalist government not to invade Gaza. But how likely is that? He’s probably only going to tell them not to kill so many people in Gaza or to only kill them humanely.
And their answer — step up the trade union struggle!
“we communists must tell proletarians that the rejection of war starts for proletarians with the intensification of the trade union struggle for wages and for a decrease in working hours.
The bourgeoisie will not be able to wage its war unless it can convince with its lying propaganda broad layers of the working class. We must counter this propaganda not only by responding with our truths to the lies of the ruling class. We must respond by directing the workers’ struggle to the material needs of the proletariat, a practical experience in which the lies and fallacious arguments of the bourgeoisie and their servants in the workers’ ranks are of little value.”As if the idea that political consciousness (other than Labourism) will emerge from the day-to-day struggle over wages and working conditions hadn’t been repeatedly shown to be wrong.
ps. I hesitate to mention it but they also talk about “class brothers”.
