Young Master Smeet
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alanjjohnstone wrote:For sure, many illegal political organisations use gangsterism to provide the cash to finance their activities, particularly if they have embarked upon armed uprising. The IRA and the UDA, were into drug deals or so we are led to believe. The Bolsheviks had its illegal phase. Some German communists after the Sparticaists were into bank robbery…You would perhaps claim the difference is just a matter of degree and extent. But i'd still argue that nationalism was behind the IRA and it was not a criminal organisation for profit even if it did use such methods as protection rackets to pay its soldiers a wage. But i'd like more explanation from you that trying to create a nation state, a theocratic based one, is gangsterism and simply a cover to steal oil and loot archeological artifacts to sell. IS arose from specific conditions in Iraq that tapped into the Sunnis who had just been dislodged by the Shia in the power pyramid . I quoted the view of British intelligence that Sunni tribes in Iraq and Sunni princes in Saudi supported the rise of IS and are still supporters, even id somewhat reluctant, nowadays
1) The IRA are stuill in "business" and a fair few of their commanders grew rich and fat from their business operations; and they always represented the business case of a section of the Irish capitalist class. It was just a continuation of business, even if they did try to sanctify their interests with a cause that could command the loyalty of their troops. the main difference, however, unlike the warbands in Africa and mexico and Iraq is there wasn't a labour-unintensive extractive industry they could seize to mkae their money, and a large uneducated surplus population they could cheaply throw away.2) Nation states are just the bigger bunch of gangsters and pirates.
alanjjohnstone wrote:YMS, i have seen your comments that you seek to equate IS with some criminal cocaine cartel and i expect that this is what you mean by talking down IS.I'm not sure your analogy is the right one but i cannot claim even any confidence in my own opinions. IS regardless of what we want to think do possess an ideology, political and religious and it has an appeal well outside its home in Iraq and Syria. It has replaced or supplanted Al Qaida. So to a degree it is successful in the battlefield of ideas and cross cultural.Every corporation has a "brand" and an "ethos", some that stretch beyond their membership and command support in the wider world: Apple has fan boys, Google has it's hippy image, M&S commands wider support. Our regular job is to point out that for all their 'ethoses' (?!?) they are just profit machines. So is IS, it's just a bunch of gangsters in the desert.
Alan,I have been suggesting what we can do: talk down the IS threat, and tell people how it really is (and join in any anti-war movement as we did when Iraq was threatened).
Yes, that's why I'm saying the solution is world socialism. However, the French state did not kill those people in Paris, a bunch of brigands did. The FRench state killed an unstated number of people in Raqqa in retaliation, I wanty to protect those people because socialism is no fucking use to a corpse. To that end, my duty is to constrain the capacity of the killing machine within my reach/means, the British state, and the same is true of workers of all lands.That means strangling their attempts to claim that murder is the only option.Anyway, you're entirely right that capitalism has invaded Mexico, and Syria, and IS are just another capitalist enterprise.Anyway, since it seems I need to clarify: "the priority is saving the lives of people in the region.(i.e. Syria, Iraq, etc.)"
http://blogs.channel4.com/snowblog/paris-attacks-middle-easts-wars-arrive-europe/25934Jon Snow makes some interesting points about the role of Saudi Arabia (and, indeed, the comprrador rulers there have their own interests in this game).
Quote:The more the Royal family bows to Western demands for women’s rights — car driving, voting, and the rest – the worse the confrontation with the Wahhabi zealots becomes. Indeed a recently retired British General, well versed in Saudi relations, told me only last week that if the House of Saud were to fall, the consequences for the world could be devastating. Yet there is a terrifying fusion between the Western resentment of the Saudi Royal Family’s failure to modernise, and the Islamic State’s conviction that the country’s rules have already joined the ranks of blasphemers.Iran is a player too. Those two facts alone suggest there isn't a military means to protect the people in the region. Oh, and of course Turkey, too.
Lbird,I'll note that America did not invade Syria. America hasn't invaded Mexico, yet we still have similar outfits there.Tagretting IS' money supply is not, and never has been my 'solution', merely an observation that capitalist states could, if they wanted, do something effective against that organisation, other than killing people; and a general observation that anything that stops (or lessens) the killing is to be welcomed (including preventing the Western states using their war machines).
Lbird, you're conflating two paragraphs. the solution is political, and it is world socialism.In the meantime… we can point out that military action is not the only one available within the logic of capitalism, and the priority is saving the lives of people in the region.
Lbird,pragmatically, you're right, the solution is political, not military. Obviously, our optimum solution is socialis revolution, in the meantime the interest of workers is not being killed in the name of profit, so our more general duty is to restrain military machinations where we spot them. In this case, where the bastards are talking up the threat (quick quote from a conversation overheard in the street, "they'll be coming here next").But, my point was, within capitalism, there are choices and options of a non-military variety, that the workers movement can and should support to prevent more and more war.
Juan Cole makes a more interesting analogy:
Quote:I would argue that Daesh is analogous to the pirate enclaves of the early modern period. Al-Raqqa, Palmyra, Mosul, Falluja and Ramadi function for it as desert ports, as Tortuga and Port Royal did for pirates in the Caribbean and St. Mary’s on Madagascar did for pirates in the Indian Ocean. It is easy to be misled by the organization’s language of “state.” It is a militia of some 25,000 fighters who conduct raids. They don’t actually do much governing of the places they dominate, and mainly extract resources from them. Tribal raiding states in it for the loot have been common in Middle Eastern history, as with Nadir Shah in the eighteenth century. Looting one city pays for the raid that lets you loot the next. They even make the people who want to emigrate and escape their rule pay a sort of exit ransom.We need to make this point loudly, I think : IS is a business, just a business. All this talk of 'they hate our freedom' is just part of the same smoke screen they use to befuddle their recruits.
Quote:To some extent, the attack was expected to attract men and money, just as a pirate raid of the past would have. Pirate raids often involved forms of brutality and the infliction of humiliation on the adversary. These actions intended to make royal navies chary of frontally attacking the pirates. Likely the Paris attacks also were intended to function as the Madrid bombings of 2004 did, pushing a country out of the Middle East (Spain got out of Iraq after that).Don't believe the hype.http://www.juancole.com/2015/11/modern-raiding-pirate.htmlI'd suggest that Cole is slightly incorrect about teh emedy, after all, it suggests really we could buy some of their adherents off to Police the place. More importantly, cutting off the oil money would work a thousand times better than bombing them mercilessly.
Some quick theories.1) The 'spectacular' is militarilly weak, going for the maximum prize, a bloodbath in a football stadium, wasted three personnel that must be in short supply. think of how much damage those shoter teams could have inflicted if they:a) Tried to stay mobile and alive.b) went out in waves, days apart.The likeliest conclusion is that it's a PR stunt by the relatively weak Rape/Murder gang in Iraq and Syria. 2) Thinking in terms of their medieval economics: these gangs live on surplus (not surplus value), humans are a disposible resource: they're lack of effective reach and capacity to control means they have to fall back on medieval means: the spectacular destruction of human bodies (cf. Foucault's studies of how medievalism moves from control to discipline, because, after all, a feudal king is relatively weak, He only has the capacity to kill).3) Think Mafia, think respect, the economics of respect and fear. This isn't guerilla war, this is business. 4) At most the relative autonomous ideologues (especially outside IS proper, and who have a proximate aim of striking at their own society, have gone off on their own. this wasn't a strategic strike, but an indisciplined expression of nihilism).5) Military set-backs, and apparent low actual battle field moral may mean that this is more about shoring up their own core support, evem if at the expense of isolating them furtehr 'no one likes us, and we don't care'. It also makes it even harder for defectors, since they can spread the word that no-one will accept their surrender now.
Two threads collide.http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/university-college-london-union-officer-asad-khan-bans-macer-gifford-from-giving-students-isis-a6722431.html
Quote:Head of the Kurdish Society at University College London (UCL), Kavar Kurda, issued a statement online saying he was ‘angered’ and ‘deeply offended and disgusted’ after University College London Union’s (UCLU) activities and events officer, Asad Khan, blocked Macer Gifford from speaking at an event which was being organised by Kurda.I believe, though, the constitution will give the Generals control of defence and police ministeries, so they haven't fled the field, just seized a redoubt; however, as Erdogan has shown in Turkey (a former bastion of Military power) the attritional edge is with the politicians…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34795506Now, this is the Iraqi Kurds, so that's the Peshmergas and the KDP, but from a few twitter feeds, it looks like the PKK is joining in…Cutting the line between Raqqa and Mosul would cause problems for IS
Vin wrote:So we do not support workers struggles against austerity? Simple enough question.It's not a simple question. What do you mean by 'austerity'? If you mean the common usage in politics of a restriction of government spending, then the answer is, no we're not opposed to austrity. We don't care how much the capitalist class spend on on or through their state.If you mean do we support the working class organising to improve their material wealth and freedom, then yes, we do support that; but, again, we are unconcerned whether the wages come direct from employers or via the state.Assuredly, we would not advocate a vote for any partty seeking to increase (or maintain) the level of state expenditure (whether by tax or by borrowing), just as much as we would not advocate a vote for a party intending to decrease state spending. Since the outcome of elections is the easiest or most direct way to change state funding, to support a party that advocated such change as a person might desire, would be the only logical way to effect that change.
Gordon Brown tells it how is on Tax credits:
Brown wrote:Some argue that personal tax allowances, a citizen’s income and a negative income tax offer better solutions. But if it is family poverty we want to relieve, nothing is as targeted or cost effective as tax credits.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/10/tax-credits-osborne-poverty-working-parents-children"targetted" "cost effective": in a nutshell.
