HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEWS? (Zoom)

Shouting Down

Clamorous cacophony of discontent:

Public outrage finds some collective voice,

Finds its feet, finds its demagogic choice

Of blame bearer, but then does not relent

To draw breath, reflect, perhaps consider

How another view might well be taken,

One more profound, one that might awaken

Perception, challenge the highest bidder

For visceral thought to think again

About those parties who’re in contention,

Laying claim to popular dissention,

Offering their quack final solution.

While anger and shouting are in season,

They’re muting the measured voice of reason.

D. A.

 The sixteenth of October 1962 saw the beginning of the thirteen day confrontation between the United States and Soviet Russia after the Soviets had transported missiles and launchers to the island of Cuba in response to the American siting of nuclear missiles in the UK, Italy and Turkey.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday clock stands today at eighty nine seconds to midnight.

The 1962 crisis was probably the closest the planet came to a nuclear conflagration.

Santayana’s dictum that those who don’t remember the past are likely to repeat would seem to have been forgotten by many assuming that they were familiar with it in the first place.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are now in conflict.

America is threatening to use military force in Venezuela.

Israel is more than likely to attack Iran again and hope to drag in support from US.

There is a ‘peace agreement’ between Palestine and Israel but the likelihood of Israel abiding by that agreement are slim.

There is the stated intention of the US to defeat China.

The world remains a very dangerous place and becomes more dangerous every day.

The military-industrial complex continues to profit from the suffering caused by capitalist states pursuing capitalist aims.

As previously stated on this Blog, ‘How much longer before we all recognise where our collective interest lies and we abolish capitalism for ever before capitalism abolishes us?’

Being homeless is devastating, whether a person is sofa-surfing, living in a hostel or sleeping on the street.

But it’s not just a matter of insecurity and misery. Last year 1611 homeless people died in the UK, a record high. Most deaths are linked to suicide or drugs, but some die after being assaulted. Roughly one in ten of those deaths were people who were rough sleeping, and rough sleeper numbers rose by 20% in the year to over 4600.

The Homelessness Minister claimed that the government was ‘accelerating efforts to tackle the root causes of homelessness’. But the root cause is the profit motive, and no capitalist government will tackle that.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

All Socialists Now?

Adding insult to injury by not only increasing power costs as we are now in the seasons where heating becomes more necessary but British capitalism can’t even guarantee to keep the gas fires lit. Don’t blame it on those pesky Russians, Blame it firmly on a social system where energy providers cares not for its customers but only for profits.

‘Britain faces a drop in domestic gas production this winter, making it increasingly reliant on imports to keep homes warm and power plants running, the Financial Times reported citing the country’s national gas grid operator.  

National Gas UK forecasts that the UK will receive 6% less gas from its domestic offshore fields this winter than last. This will be offset by a 7% increase in imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Norway will remain the UK’s primary supplier, meeting about 36% of its winter needs, while domestic production will account for only 33%. The third key source will be the global LNG market, which is expected to supply 24% of Britain’s gas.  

“Our margins for winter 2025/2026 are tighter than we have seen in the last four years,” the FT cited the company’s annual winter outlook as saying. “This is largely due to the well-documented continued decline in supplies from the UK Continental Shelf.”

According to official government statistics, British gas production plummeted 10% between 2023 and 2024, hitting its lowest level since 1973. National Gas UK identified LNG as the “key source to meet rising winter demand.”  

Britain’s growing reliance on LNG is forcing a major re-engineering of its national gas grid, according to John Butterworth, head of National Gas UK. He explained that the system, originally built for Scottish North Sea gas, is now struggling to adapt to supplies landing at terminals in Wales and southern England. Butterworth added that domestic gas production is forecast to fall a further 6% in 2025, deepening the country’s dependence on imports.   

The vulnerability of Britain’s gas supply was highlighted this past January by a Daily Telegraph report that natural gas stocks had fallen to a “concerning” low amid a sustained cold snap. The report noted that storage facilities were only half full, holding 26% less gas than a year earlier. The supply crunch underscored a systemic reliance on gas, which fuels about 40% of the UK’s electricity and heats 28 million households – a vulnerability exacerbated by the UK’s ban on Russian LNG imports, which took effect in January 2023.’

OPTIMISTIC AND PESSIMISTIC FATALISM 

Wading Through the Motions

The great, the good, the faithful, gathering

In conference halls, to bask in oration,

Of how they’re going to save the nation

Via three or four days of blathering,

As well as much waving of flags of course:

They will have the answers, once they find them.

Now all their past mistakes are behind them,

Not that they have any cause for remorse.

Immigration? Free Trade or Protection?

All the threadbare old arguments elide

As markets, not politicians, decide,

No matter who might win an election.

Leaders speak! Delegates go home again,

While ills of capitalism remain.

D. A.

The American writer, Philip K. Dick wrote, in 1956, a sci-fi story whereby by accessing inside the heads of people crimes that have not yet been committed by them can be predicted. Precrime. The story was The Minority Report. A film of the book was made in 2002.

Capitalist states are no doubt working on the means to implement this for the purpose of identifying dissidents and ‘troublemaker’ States have historically used all types of means to distinguish such individuals and to negate them, or in modern parlance, ‘cancel’ them either through locking them up or through more drastic means.

The USA is continuing this trend of determining those who do not share the ruling class’s values.

A memorandum issued by Trump,,’NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM/NSPM-7 SUBJECT:  Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized  Political Violence,’ seeks to threaten all those who do not adhere to a blind unswerving acceptance of what the State specifies.

The memorandum can be found on the White House website.

So how do you identify a ‘domestic terrorist’ according to DJT?

‘Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.’

Look up ‘McCarthyism’ on Wiki and we get:

‘President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9835 of March 21, 1947, required that all federal civil-service employees be screened for “loyalty”. The order said that one basis for determining disloyalty would be a finding of “membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association” with any organization determined by the attorney general to be “totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive” or advocating or approving the forceful denial of constitutional rights to other persons or seeking “to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means”’

Prior to that particular states in western and eastern Europe were cracking down on those who showed ‘disloyalty’ by forcing them into camps or gulags.

Across the world, particularly those that term themselves liberal democracies, repression and suppression of free speech and dissent is under mire and more attack.

How long before Trump’s memorandum is turned into into a play-book used by more and more states for the introduction of more and more 1984 measures?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain will remain resolutely anti -capitalism and will continue to work to hasten the demise of the exploitative system which has set its face to perpetual war.

Make Capitalism History.

 Nationalism and Capitalism