Migrants are our fellow workers
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Osborne is a complete and utter prat.It is comical how these politicians puff themselves up into pundits when they are more often than not just a bunch of bar room bullies and buffoons The whole situation in Syria is a bizarre contradiction into which the western powers (and others) have sleepwalked. The Assad regime, despicable though it is is, in practice, ISIS's most formidable foe. I read somewhere that when Kobani was under siege it was the Syrian airforce that was inflicting by far the most damage on ISIS, not the Americans or their allies. So here is the dilemma for the West – you can attack Assad but that will surely strengthen the hand of ISIS . Or you can attack ISIS but that will to the advantage of Assad. Which is it to be? Either way the result will be more death and destruction , more brutalization and dehumanisation, and a rise in the outflow of refugees which some in Europe are complaining about while contributing to the very thing that is prompting Syrians in their hundreds of thousands to flee in terror and fear of their lives. Shamefully, it has even been suggested by some that since many of these refugees end up a relatively "peaceful" neighbouring states like Lebanon where they don't face persecution they can no longer considered "refugees" when they move on from there to Fortress Europe but rather "economic migrants" without any right to settle in Europe. Such is the duplicitous and warped logic of these disreputable politicians Of course there is another option which is not to engage militarily in the conflict at all and cut off arms as far as possible to all sides in the conflict – perhaps by means of arms blockade – in the hope that the intensity of the conflict will diminish as the supplies run out. But thats not gonna happen either. If there is a demand for weapons that wonderful, if not so, "invisible" hand of the market is gonna meet it . By hook or by crook but usually in the guise of the latter
As you say, Robbo…utter shambles…According to the theory, the UK want to impose a No Fly Zone…as ISIS has no air force this can only be meant to apply against Syrian government…so we have UK/Coalition planes bombing ISIS but when Syria bombs ISIS, UK/Coalition will act as de facto ISIS air force and deter Syrian air-attacks.Since Syrian government is not at war with the Kurds but Turkey is, we have No Fly Zone being flouted by the Turks who are then are permitted to attack Kurdish positions by its NATO allies.Since Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States are financing and supplying Al Nusra jihadists, this group too can be assumed to be under the protection of the No Fly Zone Also whenever the Israeli's decide that a stray shell from Syrian government or their hot pursuit into the Golan Heights is deserving of "retaliatory" attack, do you imagine the No Fly Zone being extended to include them and that RAF jets would engage Israli Air Force – of course, not. We do see an escalation or as they put it in their terminology – mission creep. While this is no defence of terrorists, we have Cameron authorising the use of British drones in Syria when Parliament voted against any military involvement. Of course, his argument is that he could not permit British citizens to plan and perhaps carry out terrorist acts in Britain from their base in Syria. This was deemed lawful by the government's Solicitor General, the same office that decided the Iraq invasion was legal and, as back then, the justification under law is not to be published so we don't know either if the threat was credible or what grounds there was to stop it. No doubt teams of SASA are on the ground reay to undertake assassinations when the drones are not able to. We are to take the PMs word and trust in his judgement since there will not be any oversight by the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee.And naturally the revelations of those targeted assassinations is given in a statement about humanitarian response to refugees just to create the link.And we see the 20,000 headline figure but the small print is that it is over 5 years, that it is not full refugee status and when toddlers are 18 having spent all their lives in the UK, they will get kicked out, as what have been happening with some Afghan refugee youths. shameful
Germany can cope with at least 500,000 asylum seekers a year for several years, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has said. "I have no doubt about it – maybe even more."http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34185353Confirming what i earlier posted about the capability of accommodating large movements of peoples if there is a will to do so.
robbo203 wrote:Osborne is a complete and utter prat.I just thought that was worth repeating
Vin wrote:robbo203 wrote:Osborne is a complete and utter prat.I just thought that was worth repeating
Replace the letters p and r with t and w.
Informative article here by Robert Peston as to why the German Vice-Chancellor can say, as he did yesterday, that Germany will be able to take 500,000 refugees a year over the next few years. Basically, it's because there's going to be a labour shortage there (and, we can add, where would capital be without labour?), i.e even the refugees are really economic (im)migrants. There are indeed our fellow workers.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34172729Note the criticism, from an economic point of view, at the end of the article, of Cameron's plan to take children and vulnerable people from refugee camps instead of the more enterprising and educated refugees who have made their way to Europe under their own steam: it's going to cost more to educate and maintain them. But it does provide a pretext for keeping out the others.
I think there is another angle to this 'economic migrant', issue about very little is said by the xenophobic little Englanders in the Tory party. The capitalist class are quietly much more liberal when it comes to skilled, or what really matters higher paid, economic migrants. In those cases they operate an almost open door policy. If price of some concrete labour power as a commodity eg computer programming is demanding a relatively high price on the market say circa £25,000 anybody from anywhere, including outside the EU, is ‘allowed in’. With even the opportunity of permanent ‘citizenship’. The ideology of a ‘skills shortage’ is a transparent veil to the real interest of driving down the wages of the ‘indigenous’ members of the skilled working class. A skilled job will be advertised at say £25,000 which used to get no takers due to, if nothing else, the resistance of the skilled workforce, who used to refuse ‘to get out of bed’ for less than £30 per hour and used to think £50 per hour rates in London an insult.I am not one!Many of them used to be 'contractors' and were 'directors' and sole employees of there own companies in the IR45 'disguised employees'; as part of the national issurance PAYE tax and National Inssurance dodge scam.They paid themselves the minimum wage, increasing the profits of the company as it does, and took solace in the generous dividends on thier company's profits, that fortutiously had a lower rate of taxation than income tax. Some of them 10 years ago used to tell me there were not workers but capitalists and had the 40K Mercedes to prove it. I have been told that one tier level has just been raised from 25K to 29K? There is something on the general thing below from a quick google search. http://www.workpermit.com/news/2012-03-23/uk/uk-immigration-changes-6-april-2012-affects-tier-1-2-4-visas-apply-now.htm It works quite well in practice in another way for the capitalist employers apparently, as if you pack your job in or get terminated you don’t have very long before you get kicked out the country again. Which sort of focuses the mind somewhat for the workers who come from outside the EU. The unskilled economic migrants are a somewhat different issue. They are likely to be getting a minimum wage which can’t be driven down any further and thus theoretically they are likely to just displace ‘indigenous’ unskilled workers into the expensive social insecurity net. However it can result in the general ‘market’ increase in the intensity of minimum wage labour eg split shifts cleaning jobs and running around like a blue arsed fly in restaurant jobs etc. As German economic migrants of the 1950’s has been mentioned there was something related to it re skilled labour in volume III of capital I think. The universality of public education enables capitalists to recruit such labourers from classes that formerly had no access to such trades and were accustomed to a lower standard of living. Moreover, this increases supply, and hence competition. With few exceptions, the labour-power of these people is therefore devaluated with the progress of capitalist production. Their wage falls, while their labour capacity increases. The capitalist increases the number of these labourers whenever he has more value and profits to realise. The increase of this labour is always a result, never a cause of more surplus-value. How well this forecast of the fate of the commercial proletariat, written in 1865, has stood the test of time can be corroborated by hundreds of German clerks, who are trained in all commercial operations and acquainted with three or four languages, and offer their services in vain in London City at 25 shillings per week, which is far below the wages of a good machinist. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch17.htm#2a
Refugees are forbidden by regulations from working while their application is in the pipeline but here EU mandarin Juncker calls for this prohibition to be lifted from Day One of their arrival so refugees can get employment. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34196378As been said elsewhere, the number of skilled and professional within this exodus is high and for some gaining work will not be such a difficulty. The poor are stuck in the camps in Jordan and Turkey and Lebanon, what we are witnessing is the movement of the relative wealthier refugee…those who can afford the price of transit. I might well be wrong, no one is doing a wallet-check to verify this, it is all anecdotal. (i keep thinking of the movie Casablanca for some odd reason…i doubt very much if Hollywood will try anything similar)I also note Farage is stirring hate again…they are economic migrants…they are ISIS,,,there are too many…sink their ships…
Forgot to add this bit by Cameron
Quote:Assad has to go, Isil has to go. Some of that will require not just spending money, not just aid, not just diplomacy but it will on occasion require hard military force.Soften the public up with some emotional scenes, shed a crocodile tear or two and now to take advantage and say more war is the solution… and the media will leap upon the bandwagon in support…
When refugee charities might not be impartial.As an example of the complexity we face in understanding the background events, this article which i genuinely don't know how reliable it is but exemplifies the problem.https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/uk-charity-which-shares-syrian-opposition-aims-and-objectives-benefits-from-aylan-kurdi-tragedy/
A worrying developmenthttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34206924Imagine the chaos of an escalation between Turks and Kurds would have on refugee numbers and also the security of the existing refugee camps
Did we miss another opportunity by not being active and a visible presence on the refugee solidarity rallies throughout the UK?It did seem to be a non-political party affair by looking at the media coverage, not too many visible party banners, but then, there weren't too many trade union banners and there should have been lots of those. A few lit stalls with a themed leaflet signed off the World Socialist Movement to distribute would not have gone amiss, imho. The emphasis that we are for world socialism, that we still stand by the slogan workers of the world unite.And that our party history has been one of consistently being anti-war and anti-nationalist, not one of picking and choosing those conflicts to support or denounce. We could have offered an expression of solidarity and support for fellow workers that is not dependent upon deciding who is deserving and who is undeserving but universal. But we weren't there and nobody heard our message. It was a shame and pity that we were absent.
How do you know members weren't present? As a matter of fact at least one member was present at one, in Newcastle. Watch out for his article on the war-caused refugee crisis in next month's Socialist Standard.
Perhaps you are right that there may have been some members who attended as individuals (hopefully they will provide observations on the rallies they went to.)My comment was all about a party presence with a leaflet presenting our attitude towards the refugee crisis and a contact point which i see lit. tables being. Corbyn certainly took party and personal advantage at being present, i merely suggest that we too could have, as well. There are not too many public political events where we can make our case heard and we should avail ourselves of them when they arise, particularly if our slant on the problem and the solution is going to be unique, at least from the usual explanations and remedies.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Corbyn certainly took party and personal advantage at being present, i merely suggest that we too could have, as well.I know I am in the minority but we should attend anti-austerity etc marches- after all we are not in favour of austerity – The banner should say "revolution not reform"Would remove the criticisms of sitting on the fence, sectarianism and impossiblism
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