Young Master Smeet
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This is moderately interesting: China is buying Russia’s gold in significant amounts – I wouldn’t be surprised if China was getting a good deal on gold here. I knew Russia had stockpiled gold before the war kicked off, which left it relatively secure after santions, and still able to make some trades, these sales could be a cash life-line for Russia.
“Central banks bought a net 399.3 tonnes of gold in the July-September period, more than quadrupling on the year, according to the November report by industry group the World Gold Council. The latest amount marks a steep jump from 186 tonnes in the preceding quarter and 87.7 tonnes in the first quarter, while the year-to-date total alone surpasses any full year since 1967.”
Other counties are moving to gold to also avoid paper currency restraints and dollar dependency. Russia is, apparently, also a gold producer, which will give it continued leverage in the war.
I think some people in this thread should try staying away from bridges.
Anyway: According to TASS Russia’s economy is shrinking by 3% this year.
And, it seems they are signalling that they don’t want to depose Zelensky(according to RT. So much for removing ‘Nazis’.
But, they are projecting 3 million more Ukrainian refugees plus increased illness from home burning. So, the regime is protected, it is the workers who are made to suffer.
But, this is all in a good cause, film director Andrey Konchalovsky says “”I think that Russia’s mission is to preserve European culture, and not let it die. Russia is not only an inheritor of Europe’s great culture, but, maybe, today it is its only and main champion,” he said in a video address to the participants of a roundtable meeting at the Russian State Duma (lower parliament house) dedicated to the establishment of the public movement Russia’s Cultural Front.”(according to Tass. I think we can concur with Gandhi that European civilisation would be a good idea.
Except they won’t: they will reform the pointless second chamber, to ensure a good supply of jobs at the parties’ disposal: I’d expect some sort of election via list system.
The Putin fanboys at moon of Alabama Blog are saying the quiet part out loud: Switching off the lights
“Another effect of the strikes on the electricity systems and the blackouts in the big cities that follow them is a renewed stream of refugees that will want reach western Europe. It will over time change the public opinion and the political priorities of those countries. If they fail to end the war they will have to carry the burden.”
I agree with TS, in a modern industrialised society, it is impossible to disentangle the civilian from the military infrastructure, hence all civilians are actual targets in war. That is why we should reject war as a political method and project.
But, here we see also, there is a conscious aim to create refugees. Of course, our masters can always find trillions to kill, but baulk at humanitarian aid, real solidarity is accepting the refugees and evacuating the warzone to the greatest extent possible.
My guess is Zelensky is playing to his home audience. Certainly, the Kremlin apologists are making hay over the fact that he won’t even entertain the possibility that it was a Ukrainian missile that came down.
Justifications for destroying civilian infrastructure
“he commented on the massive strike that the Russian Armed Forces carried out on Ukraine’s military command and control system and the related energy facilities on November 15, Peskov stressed that “the infrastructure facilities in question were directly or indirectly related to the military potential of Ukraine and the Ukrainian regime.”
Of course, the just war fantasists would tell us that civilian infrastructure is outside war and a war crime to hit, but here the Russians can define it as a military target as indirectly related to military use (and doubtless NATO hit similar targets in Serbia all those years ago).
But, note the headline “Special operation does not depend on weather conditions” it’s just a freak accident that “millions of Ukrainian citizens who remained without electric and thermal power supply on November 15 due to combat operations at a time when weather forecasts predicted lower air temperatures” and of course “Peskov said that this was a result of strikes on military infrastructure due to Kiev’s reluctance to conduct negotiations with Russia.” The cry of the bully through the ages.
Apparently the police have taken to arresting any journalists who turn up to these events on ‘suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” – partly, it seems, to try and get access to their phones to see if they can find out who their sources/contacts are, but I suspect it’s also to try and dampen publicity.
Now, this could be similar to their unlawful arresting of hunts sabs (and they could end up funding XR through compensation claims).
Yes. We have to start with the fact that the status quo is what the Israeli government wants, they’ve shaped it. The Palestinians have everything to gain, Israel can only lose: so there’s no basis for compromise.
We could build fantasy solutions, all of which are workable: cantonisation, co-dominion (the Swiss option, the Belgian Option, the Ulster option), etc. Even the UK is a model of sorts.
Any de jure two state solution would be a de facto one state solution. Any de jure one state solution would be a de facto two state solution.
the costs could actually be quite low, I believe the PA could sell the ‘right of return’ for the building of a decent port in Gaza, and some sort of land bridge to the West Bank.
In the Japanese boardgame Go, there is a thing called a ko position, where both sides put their pieces at risk, and neither wants to resolve the situation because they want the threat to remain open to exploit for initiative. Palestine is a ko position, none of the international actors actually want a resolution, so it won’t be resolved.
Moshe Machover on the one-state solution
He makes some good points on why it isn’t possible, except AFAICS there is only one state already, and it’s Israel.
Class and race in Israel/Palestine with Emmanuel Farjoun IIRC this has some interesting this to say about the Labour situation in Israel. From memory (and skimming his old report) Israel heavily depends on Arab labour: and skilled labour, not just ‘menial’.
DJP,
yes, that whole section on the milieu in Britain in the turn of 20th century: given that elsewhere it covers ‘anarchists’ who end up taking seats in Government, our contribution to the idea of a stateless classless society probably shouldn’t be overlooked (purely for the sake of anarchist anti-ballot box fetishism, especially as Guy Aldred is acknowledged to have advocated the Sinn Fein approach which is hardly a million miles from us). Whilst we certainly do not call ourselves anarchists (rightly so, because of their general hostility to democracy) I think we have contributed to the conversations around specifically anarchist communism just as much as William Morris.
DJP,
it mentions the SLP, so we could have made the same paragraph. It also finds space for ‘anarchists’ who go into Government, so for an overview of the idea of groups advocating a stateless classless society, I think we’d warrant a paragraph (especially as I know he knows who we are and what we stand for).
Alan,
the short version is that inflation is not a top priority problem for working people, as we can push wages up to match, the issue is for pensioners and people on benefits (there is a side issue on the way in which inflation erodes savings, and thus helps keep workers trapped in their condition). So, organise in unions, and make sure benefits get linked at least to inflation, but better, to wages.
You’re right, we have to bring it back to class struggle.
Alan,
I think, in terms of cost of living, knowing what does and doesn’t cause general price increases is important: especially, as some political movements (to be clear, not Cristicuffs) latch on to currency crankery and the idea that the government or the banks can just create money, so why don’t they do it in a way that helps us? Also, I think it’s worth the effort to focus on the exploitation in the workplace, and move away from analyses that ‘blame the bankers’ and other financiers, when they are a subordinate part of the problem.
There is also the question of reform: to what extent can a government change/control the situation.
finally, the key question, does pushing wages up fuel an inflationary spiral? Since we believe the answer is no, it’s important to be able to have an account of why workers can push their wages up despite the naive idea that is widespread that that would fuel inflation. So a convincing and correct model of inflation is needed for basic propaganda.
On the difference between SPGB & Cristicuffs, in practical terms, we’ve seen inflation (*as such*) as a creature of state policy, and I believe articles (by Hardy) in the past have stated the government of the day can stop inflation pretty much dead *if they want to* whereas Cristicuffs see if as emerging more, AFAICS, from the Chaos of the financial casino.
As they state: “an increase in credit volumes does not directly translate to a proportional devaluation of money, in the sense of a simple quantity mismatch: more money confronting the same heap of commodities, but this increased credit volume may be the fundamental reason for an increased heap of commodities. The rate of inflation is thus explained by the motley competition of capitals for solvent demand and credit and how quickly they turn this credit into additional commodities.”
Now, I think what they describe there does occur (and is the usual trigger point for economic crises) but I think it doesn’t cause general inflation.
