“Ukraine is certainly not seen here as something with a clear moral tale to tell. When brown or black people get bombed or shocked-and-awed, it does not matter, but with white people it is supposed to be different.” Arundhati Roy 

 

“Corresponding disasters every night on the TV

Sickening reality keep gripping me in its guts

All my friends talk and joke and laugh about Armageddon

But like a nightmare it’s still waiting there

At the end of each and every day”

War Baby, Tom Robinson.

It becomes more dire every day. How do you cope? Immersion in sports and soap operas?

Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

Edward L. Bernays. Propaganda 1928

 

Karl Marx had an explanation: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.”

 Education or indoctrination into becoming a wage slave?

‘I learned our Government must be strong;

It’s always right and never wrong;

Our leaders are the finest men

And we elect them again and again’

Pete Seeger

 Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

‘Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori’ – It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.

From a Latin Ode by the Roman, Horace.

First World War poet, Wilfred Owen knocked that one out of the park:

“If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.”

 

NUCLEOMITUPHOBIA  is anxiety or a phobia in the face of a potential future nuclear holocaust.

Up until January 24th 2023, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists doomsday clock stood at 100 seconds to midnight.

On that date it was changed to ninety seconds to midnight.

On a Saturday in January, 2018, anyone with a Hawaiian telephone number received this message:

‘Ballistic Missile threat inbound to Hawaii

Seek Immediate Shelter. This is not a drill.’

 It was. The text had been sent as “accidentality”

 Donovan’s 1965 anti-Vietnam song, The War Drags On still resonates today.

Last night, poor Dan had a nightmare it seems

One kept occurrin’ and reoccurrin’ in his dreams

Cities full of people burnin’, screamin’, shoutin’ loud

And right there overhead, a great orange mushroom cloud

And there’s no more war

For there’s no, no more world.

Heavy Metal bands were on the ball too.

 

Black Sabbath’s War Pigs. 1970

“Politicians hide themselves away

They only started the war

Why should they go out to fight?

They leave that role to the poor, yeah’

 

Iron Maiden said, hold my beer:  Two Minutes to Midnight.  1984

‘As the mad men play on words

And make us all dance to their song

To the tune of starving millions

To make a better kind of gun ‘

 

The  Edwin Starr timeless classic, War, What is it good for? poses a question:

‘They say we must fight to keep our freedom but there’s got to be a better way,

War, What is it good for? You tell me (nothing)

Stand up and shout it  (nothing)’

Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s,  When Two Tribes Go To War official video had it right, Let the “leaders” fight it out amongst themselves. Reagan and Chernenko were featured in the video. Better still, let’s abolish leaders along with capitalism.

 In August 1914, the Socialist Party of Great Britain Executive Committee said:

  Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our good will and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism

THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS!

 Clifford Slapper wrote in the Socialist Standard, July 1984 of the Greenham Common Peace Camp:

 ‘Perhaps they don’t know, or don’t care, that socialists alone have opposed every single war this century, not just before they began, but during and after them too, even where this meant incarceration in prison for many of our members during both World Wars. We do not sneer at the opposition to war of millions of our fellow workers. But how is this opposition to be turned into a practical movement, which will be effective in ending all war?’

 

‘Your old road is rapidly agin’

Please get out of the new one

If you can’t lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin’

Bob Dylan. The Times They Are A-Changin

Capitalism is on notice that the revolution will happen. Socialists work toward a peaceful transition from capitalism to a global sane society which is dependent upon us all  ‘getting together.’ Capitalist, the choice is yours…

‘Hand out the arms and ammo

We’re going to blast our way through here

We’ve got to get together sooner or later

Because the revolution’s here and you know it’s right.’

Thunder Clap Newman. Something In The Air.

Dave C.

 

 

 A former US ambassador, Daniel Kurtzer, who served in Tel Aviv during the George W Bush administration,  accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government of breaking a written agreement with Washington by legalising a group of hardline nationalist and religious settlements in the West Bank.

 He warned that some ministers in Netanyahu’s new coalition are not interested in a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

 He called on the Biden administration to be more proactive in stopping Israel’s “creeping annexation” of the West Bank.

Kurtzer said he is also concerned about Israel’s plans to press ahead with building settlements in an area just outside Jerusalem known as E1.

“If Israel builds there as they want to build, it would effectively cut the West Bank in two,” he said.

The retroactive authorisation of the nine so-called outposts earlier this month, alongside plans to build thousands of new homes in larger West Bank settlements, is a further blow to a deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

“It’s also a significant violation of a commitment that the Israeli government made in writing to the American government back in 2004 when, in a letter to the then Bush administration, Israel undertook to dismantle illegal outposts, illegal settlements,” he said. “Now you’ve come full circle. Not only are they not dismantling these illegal outposts, but they’re trying to legalise them ex post facto. And there have been many that have been built since that time so that the number is really quite significant.”

“If Israel is still interested in a peace process, it’s going to have to stop a number of the actions that it’s it’s taking. It’s going to have to start doing some things that it’s not doing,” he said.

Former US ambassador accuses Israel of ‘creeping annexation’ of the West Bank | Israel | The Guardian

 When it comes to nationalistic zeal, there is nothing at all with which socialists can identify, for both are abstractions that have imbued the workers of the region with a false consciousness that prevents them identifying their real interests.

The label Ukrainian or Russian camouflage the bigger and more permanent label of ‘working class’, a label most caught up in the present crisis could, if challenged, identify with.

 And as the warring camps continue to vent their hatreds we can only maintain that there is more that unites them as members of that exploited majority, with the same basic needs and desires than can ever divide them along religious or national lines. For the real conflict is yet to be waged – that between ourselves, the exploited, and the master class – though with ideas, not rifles and cannon.

As socialists, we side with no leaders or any  faction, taking no sides in their wars over territory; for we have the insight to see where disagreements over resources, such as oil and water, and artificial borders lead and in whose interests such conflicts are waged. Our thoughts lie with the exploited majority – the common folk – who continue to pay the price of power politics, and eagerly await the day when they have the chance, along with their counterparts the world over, to at last vote for themselves and, more, in their own interests, a world devoid of Putins, Bidens, and Zelenkys and the misery their games bring.

Once we recognise that as a class we have shared basic needs and desires, suffering the same privations because of our less privileged position in the relations of production, and unite in defiance of that minority intent on maintaining the status quo and its bellicose insanity, we need never fear the horror of war again.

As socialists we certainly do not need to re-define our war. The war we must fight to end the insanity and horror capitalism would bring us into is the class war. And this can not be fought with missiles, but something more powerful – our minds, our imagination, our solidarity and preparedness to unite as the majority exploited class and to wrest control of the planet from the madmen before it is to late.

As socialists, as observers of international affairs and commentators on the way they impinge upon the lives of our fellow workers, we are well attuned to the machinations of the elites of powerful countries as they seek to promote the interests of their corporate backers. Though it is no easy task for the uninitiated, we urge our fellow workers to be as vigilant as ever. To believe the arguments of the likes of Biden and Putin is to disarm yourself intellectually – for it is at times like the present, when the media is dancing to the tunes of governments, when the trumpets of jingoism, patriotism and reaction are sounding, that we need to be fighting the war of ideas with a little more gusto.

Nationalist conflict has raged for many long years around the globe. What, in all honesty, have any of the victors gained? What is the ‘independence’ they yearn after, if it means being trapped within borders – artificial constructs, no, prisons – inside of the bigger prison of capitalism?

The solution to the ongoing insanity, we insist, remains the same. There is one world and we exist as one people in need of each other and with the same basic needs. There is far more that unites us than can ever divide us along cultural, nationalistic or religious lines. Together we can create a civilisation worth living in, but before that happens we need the conscious cooperation of ordinary people across the world, united in one common cause – to create a world in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation, a world without borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders and a world in which production is at last freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used for the good of humanity – socialism.

Are you with us? Don’t take too long to think of a reply – the doomsday clock really is ticking.

  Pharmaceutical giant Moderna announced Thursday that it brought in over $19 billion in revenue and $8.4 billion in profits in 2022 thanks primarily to its Covid-19 vaccine.

“Moderna’s revenue in 2022 alone is equivalent to the combined health budgets of 68 countries,” Maaza Seyoum, Global South convenor of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said in response to Moderna’s earnings report. “Already, the company expects to make more from the vaccine in 2023 than the combined health budgets of 42 countries.” 

Moderna sold $18.4 billion worth of its coronavirus vaccine—the company’s only product on the market—last year while rejecting calls to share critical technology with the rest of the world, denying low-income countries the ability to quickly produce lifesaving shots for their populations.

Tim Bierley, a pharma campaigner at Global Justice Now, said, “History will not be kind to Moderna, whose scandalous profits are a direct result of the company’s refusal to share vaccine technology with the Global South, even when it was clear that global shortages would be deadly.” He added, “Millions of people around the world are now grieving the loss of family members, many of whom were unable to get a Covid-19 vaccine.” Bierley continued, “Moderna’s pandemic profiteering is even more shocking given that the U.S. public-funded 100% of this vaccine’s development. Now the company is brazenly threatening to hike prices on its vaccine…”

Moderna’s 2022 Windfall a ‘Scandalous’ Result of Pandemic Profiteering, Campaigners Say (commondreams.org)

 Less than 6% of plastic is recycled in the US. Much of the rest – millions of tons of it – is dumped in the oceans each year, killing marine mammals and polluting the world. Plastic does not fully decompose; instead, it eventually breaks down into tiny bits, some of which wind up inside our bodies. The idea of creating fuel from plastic offers the comforting sense that plastics are sustainable. But the release of cancer-causing pollution is just one of several significant problems that have plagued attempts to convert discarded plastic into new things. One recent study by scientists from the Department of Energy found that the economic and environmental costs of turning old plastic into new using a process called pyrolysis were 10 to 100 times higher than those of making new plastics from fossil fuels. Chevron buys oil that another company extracts from discarded plastics through pyrolysis. 

In January 2022, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced the initiative to streamline the approval of petroleum alternatives in what a press release called “part of the Biden-Harris administration’s actions to confront the climate crisis.” While the program cleared new fuels made from plants, it also signed off on fuels made from plastics even though they themselves are petroleum-based and contribute to the release of planet-warming greenhouse gases. The EPA recently gave a Chevron refinery the green light to create fuel from discarded plastics as part of a climate-friendly initiative to boost alternatives to petroleum. But, according to agency records obtained by ProPublica and the Guardian, the production of one of the fuels could emit air pollution that is so toxic, one out of four people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer. The one-in-four lifetime cancer risk from breathing the emissions from the Chevron jet fuel is higher even than the lifetime risk of lung cancer for current smokers.

“That kind of risk is obscene,” said Linda Birnbaum, former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. 

That risk is 250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA division that approves new chemicals.  The cancer burden will disproportionately fall on people who have low incomes and are Black because of the population that lives within three miles of the refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

 Maria Doa, a scientist who worked at the EPA for 30 years, reviewed the document laying out the risk. Doa, who once ran the division that managed the risks posed by chemicals, was so alarmed by the cancer threat that she initially assumed it was a typographical error. “EPA should not allow these risks in Pascagoula or anywhere,” said Doa, who now is the senior director of chemical policy at Environmental Defense Fund. In her three decades at the EPA, Doa had never seen a chemical with that high a cancer risk that the agency allowed to be released into a community without restrictions.

The fuels that Chevron plans to make at its Pascagoula refinery present serious health risks, including developmental problems in children and cancer and harm to the nervous system, reproductive system, liver, kidney, blood and spleen. Aside from the chemical that carries a 25% lifetime risk of cancer from smoke-stack emissions, another of the Chevron fuels ushered in through the program is expected to cause 1.2 cancers in 10,000 people – also far higher than the agency allows for the general population. The EPA division that screens new chemicals typically limits cancer risk from a single air pollutant to one case of cancer in a million people. The agency also calculated that air pollution from one of the fuels is expected to cause 7.1 cancers in every 1,000 workers – more than 70 times the level EPA’s new chemicals division usually considers acceptable for workers.

In addition to the chemicals released through the creation of fuels from plastics, the people living near the Chevron refinery are exposed to an array of other cancer-causing pollutants.

Scott Throwe, an air pollution specialist who worked at the EPA for 30 years,was asked  how existing regulations could protect people in this instance. Now an independent environmental consultant, Throwe said the existing testing and monitoring requirements for refineries couldn’t capture the pollution from these new plastic-based fuels because the rules were written before these chemicals existed. There is a chance that equipment designed to limit the release of other pollutants may incidentally capture some of the emissions from the new fuels, he said. But there’s no way to know whether that is happening.

Chevron said that “plastics are an essential part of modern life and plastic waste should not end up in unintended places in the environment. We are taking steps to address plastic waste and support a circular economy in which post-use plastic is recycled, reused or repurposed.”

But environmentalists say such claims are just greenwashing. The creation of fuel from plastic is in some ways worse for the climate than simply making it directly from fossil fuels. Over 99% of all plastic is derived from fossil fuels, including coal, oil and gas. To produce fuel from plastics, additional fossil fuels are used to generate the heat that converts them into petrochemicals that can be used as fuel.

“It adds an extra step,” said Veena Singla, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They have to burn a lot of stuff to power the process that transforms the plastic.”

This ‘climate-friendly’ fuel comes with an astronomical cancer risk | Pollution | The Guardian

 As a result of the intense rivalry between the U.S. and Russia, the danger of a new destructive world war has increased and concern among the people has heightened. Throughout the world, as well as in this country, genuine socialists are stepping forward to champion the cause of peace. On the other hand, the media and opportunist parties are filling the air with all kinds of propaganda which serve to support one side or the other.

With the world on the brink of war, Russia is presented as the most aggressive being an expanding imperialist power trying to replace U.S. imperialism as the king of the world’s exploiters to become the top dog. Many on the left try to cover up the imperialist nature of Russia highlighting the provocations of NATO using Ukraine as a proxy. Anyone who raises a voice against both sides, rather than simply against the U.S.A and NATO is guilty of “anti-Putin” propaganda. Vice versa, when socialists point to the West’s encroachments on Russia’s spheres of influence, they are described as  “pro-Putin” apologists.

Working people see huge profits made from this war. War is horrible; it threatens the standards of living and even the existence of the working class. Our capitalist masters and their political tools are deliberately plotting and preparing to drag working people into another war. Capitalist production for profits cannot be reconciled with peace and prosperity. There can be no effective struggle against the monster of war unless it is directed towards the establishment of a society based on human needs, without profits, classes or exploitation. 

Only one party stands on that basis, the Socialist  Party. There is no other peace party. Working men and women, you have the power to change everything. Let’s begin building a world where we and our children can live in peace as free human beings without poverty and without fear. There is only one way to fight war – that is, to do away with the capitalist system, which breeds war, and replace it with an international socialist society.

Socialism or Barbarism – that is the choice before us.

 The key to all the “anti-war” activities of Marxists is the understanding that the fight against war is the fight for a socialist society. It is of little use to protest against war while tolerating a social system that breeds war. Capitalism makes war inevitable. Capitalist nations not only exploit their workers but ruthlessly invade, plunder and pillage one another. The profit system is responsible for it all. Abolish that, establish industrial democracy, produce–for–use, and the incentive to war vanishes.

In a war, the Socialist Party does take sides, but it’s a third side. It’s the side of the workers, against the owning class that exploits them now, as well as against the owning class that WANTS to exploit them. 

NOT PEOPLE AGAINST PEOPLE, BUT CLASS AGAINST CLASS.

 

Women “work for free for nearly two months” a year, according to fresh analysis which reveals a 15% gender pay gap that widens “dramatically” after women have children.

Women in paid employment earn on average £29,684 a year, compared with the £35,260 a year earned by men.  This meant women, on average, effectively work for free for 54 days.

The analysis of figures from the Office for National Statistics found the gender divide on pay was widest for older women. Those aged between 50 and 59 suffered a pay gap of 20.8% – the equivalent of working 76 days a year for free – while women aged over 60 had a gender pay gap of 18.4%.

The TUC’s research found big variations in the gender pay gap across different industries and regions. Women working in finance and insurance suffer a 31.2% pay gap – the equivalent of 114 days, meaning they effectively work for free for nearly a third of the year.

Even in jobs that tend to be dominated by female workers, such as education and healthcare, the gender pay gap persists. In these sectors women get paid much less per hour on average than men, because they are more likely to be in part-time jobs or less senior roles.

In education, the gender pay gap is 22.2%, while in health care and social work it is 14%.

“Working women deserve equal pay. But at current rates of progress, it will take more than 20 years to close the gender pay gap,” Paul Nowak, the TUC’s general secretary, said. “That’s just not good enough. We can’t consign yet another generation of women to pay inequality.”

Joeli Brearley, founder of the campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed, said: “This is a motherhood penalty. Women face maternity discrimination because they are seen as distracted and uncommitted to their jobs when they have children, whereas men actually get paid more after they have children.”

Women work two months for free, reveals TUC analysis | Business | The Guardian

Capo di Tutto Capis

 

Two mobsters holed up, each in his own fastness,

Like Moran on the North Side and Capone

In the South. There’s the Bear who claims to own

The East, while the one who’s tame hoods address

As the Eagle, keeps the West Side firmly

In his grip through the protection racket

He runs. Each of them knows what to expect

Straying on the other’s territory,

But both harbour an insistent desire

To encroach, snatching at their rival’s patch,

Utterly careless, in the plans they hatch,

Of bloody casualties caught in their crossfire.

Each feels exalted on his lofty perch,

Loved by his people and blessed by his Church.

 

D. A.

 

The black cloud of war darkens the sky across the world. Working peoples feel the growing danger of a new world war. The threat of global war  arises inevitably out of the very nature of capitalism — the ownership of the means of production by a small capitalist class and the complete domination of government by this class. The imminent war danger is only another expression of the fundamental crisis of the capitalist system, which continues its existence only at the cost of intensification of exploitation and oppression.

The ever-sharpening conflict between the superpowers, NATO and Russia, the continuing acts of aggression and the very real possibility of a nuclear world war is a fact which cannot be ignored. A key part of both sides preparations includes an ever-increasing effort to sway public opinion. To accomplish this they are waging an ideological and political battle of ideas which takes many forms. Beyond the more obvious back and forth saber-rattling and ranting and ravings that of politicians they all talk of  intervention to protect “our” interests. It is not Putin’s imperialism or Biden/Zelensky’s fascism (or vice versa) that means war. Rather it is the continued existence of capitalism that means war. There can be no “good”, no “peace-loving” capitalist states. The interests of the working class within any country is never under any circumstances to patriotically defend “the nation” – that is, the political executive of the class enemy – but always to fight for its overthrow. 

A feature of the present war revolves around the question of “sanctions”. The United Nations provides that when a country has been deemed the aggressor against another member state, financial and trade embargo measures shall be – following an elaborate procedure – invoked by the other member states against the aggressor nation. These measures are called “sanctions”. It is a method for turning opposition to war into support of war. All that is necessary is to call the war an “application of sanctions”. Then it becomes the duty of all “friends of peace” to support it. This, indeed, is the real meaning of the doctrine of sanctions. UN sanctions are, of course, nothing else than sanctions undertaken by the leading member states of the UN which is only the instrument of its dominant members of the Security Council.

Support of  sanctions, therefore, is exactly the same as support of sanctions applied by individual nations – e.g., by USA, UK or EU. But sanctions are war measures. They include withdrawal of financial credit, a ban on trade, various forms of boycott. To enforce them genuinely would require a blockade of the country against whom the sanctions were invoked. The probable, the almost certain outcome of such a blockade, as history has so often proved, is war – since the blockaded nation cannot accept such a measure peacefully without surrendering political sovereignty. Thus it follows that sanctions must be either ineffectual – a bluff – or they must lead to war. If they are ineffectual, support of them is certainly no aid to peace . If they lead to possible more war, support of them – no matter with what verbal reservations – means nothing else than support of war undertaken by the governments applying the sanctions.

 Advocating sanctions in any form necessarily binds the working class to the state and the class enemy, necessarily weakens the class position of the workers and thus the workers’ struggle for power, and necessarily prepares for turning the workers over to the sanction-applying government when the sanctions find their natural outcome in war. If we support sanctions, and the sanctions lead to war, then we have already by supporting the sanctions supported the war. The disastrous consequences of support of sanctions are already apparent with a global cost of living crisis.

The Socialist Party is  not afraid of war but our war is against this capitalist system and all the wars and pain that it creates. The Marxist knows that we can never “use” capitalist governments for the interests of the working class, because what these governments are is instruments to be “used” for the interests of the ruling class. On the contrary, we must always fight inexorably against governments and their actions.