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Revealing article here (from Hong Kong) about one of the vultures waiting for the end of the war to invest in Ukraine, whether in the part ruled by the government there or in the part controlled by Russia. They want to know where the line of demarcation will be as, wherever it is, it will pass through the area where the rare earths and the rich agricultural soil are.
Yes, Starmer’s “coalition of the willing” is (fortunately) more a coalition of the silly than a coalition of the killing.
Actually, the anti-Gaza war demonstrations in London haven’t entirely petered out. In fact there’s one today. We shan’t be leafletting it as the majority of those left on them now are Muslims concerned about the fate of their co-religionists, not a group likely to be interested in socialist ideas.
According to Wikipedia the ongoing but slow-moving Undercover Policy Inquiry:
“As of April 2018 the inquiry has confirmed that undercover police had infiltrated the following groups and movements:
Anarchist groups, Animal Liberation Front, Anti-Apartheid Movement, Anti-Fascist Action, Big Flame, Black Power movement, Brixton Hunt Saboteurs, Anglia Ruskin Churchill Society (Young Conservatives), Colin Roach Centre, Dambusters Mobilising Committee, Dissent!, Earth First!, Essex Hunt Saboteurs, Friends of Freedom Press Ltd, Globalise Resistance, Independent Labour Party, Independent Working Class Association, International Marxist Group, International Socialists, Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front, London Animal Action, London Animal Rights Coalition, London Boots Action Group, London Greenpeace, Militant, No Platform, Antifa, Operation Omega, Reclaim the Streets, Red Action, Republican Forum, Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation, Socialist Party (England and Wales), Socialist Workers Party, South London Animal Movement (SLAM), Tri-Continental, Troops Out Movement, Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, West London Hunt Saboteurs, Workers Revolutionary Party, Young Haganah, Young Liberals, Youth against Racism in Europe.”By “normal profits” I meant the profits that a capitalist would normally expect to make in whatever line of business they chose to invest.
The situation envisaged is that of a protective tariff, ie one imposed to protect domestic producers from cheaper imports. The assumption is that the call for this will have arisen because the domestic producers are being outcompeted by imports and so have been unable to make the profits they once made or would normally expect to make.
A tariff always makes imports more expensive. If the importers wanted to continue to sell the same amount they would have to reduce their price by the amount of the tariff; which would reduce their profits. They are more likely to reduce or even stop importing. This would reduce the supply and so lead, in the first instance, to an increase in the market price of the product in question.
An increase in its price would mean that domestic producers would be able to make the “normal” rate of profit again. Their profits would be protected.
That’s the theory and logic behind protective tariffs.
Tariffs can be imposed for other reasons. For instance, to raise revenue for the government. The aim then would not be to keep out imports as that would reduce the revenue. So, this type of tariff would be imposed on a product that can’t be produced locally or not in sufficient quantity.
The situation before the tariff is imposed is that domestic producers cannot make a normal profit if their product has to sell at the same price as the imported product.
After the tariff has been imposed they no longer have to compete with cheaper imports but unless the price rises they will still not be able to make the normal profit.
The imposition of a tariff by reducing the profit of the importers will lead to them importing less and to total supply falling. In these circumstances prices will rise.
Once prices have risen then the domestic producers (old and maybe new entrants) will produce more as they can now make the normal profit, though not necessarily as much as the previous total as with a higher price market demand might not hold up. On the other hand, it might but in any event the price will have to have gone up.
https://www.rt.com/russia/613940-russian-troops-seize-constantinople-dpr/amp/
On the face of it, Putin has achieved what the Tsars tried to do for centuries. Not that the British Empire would have allowed it. Or his present-day equivalent, Lord Starmerston.
“Labour MPs claim ‘moral duty’ to reform welfare” (headline in today’s Times).
“More than £5 billion will be saved by restricting eligibility to personal independence payments, separate disability benefits paid whether or not someone is working.”
How much deeper can they sink? It’s now not just to save money but their “moral duty” to cut the welfare payments to the sick and disabled.
Oozing sanctimoniousness Pat McFadden, who holds the sinecure of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said:
“We are the Labour Party. The clue is in the name.”
Indeed it is. The party of forced labour for an employer.
If the workings of capitalism are forcing you to cut benefits to spare taxing profits, just do it. Don’t add insult to injury by saying you are doing this for some moral reason.
These people deserve all the contempt they are getting.
NATO “democracy” in action:
Remember the hue and cry when the Putin government did this in Russia?
Both sides are engaging in dirty tricks to ensure they have a favourable government in this part of the world. Russia gets all the blame but NATO is at it too. Gerrymandering the electorate in Moldova by allowing Moldovans abroad to outvote those living in the country. Organising protests in Georgia at the outcome of elections there which those they favoured didn’t win. The coup in Ukraine in 2014 when pro-western democrats united with Ukrainian fascists to overthrow the pro-Russian President — and which began the countdown to the present war — could also be included.
The issue was never democracy versus dictatorship but into whose sphere of influence the states of the area should fall.
After losing elections in Hungary and Slovakia NATO is now afraid of this happening in Rumania too. What a bunch of cynical hypocrites the pro-NATO politicians in Britain, France and Germany are. Trump is cynical too but at least he’s not a hypocrite.
Some interesting background historical facts here:
Here’s how TUSC misinterprets the result:
West London council by-election victory a rebuff to Starmer’s Labour
Dennison was certainly standing on an anti-Labour platform but not a left of Labour one. He presented himself as a rallying point for all those against the Labour Party.
In another local by-election in Brentford, last May, TUSC stood against him.
There’s another good letter from Robin in this week’s Weekly Worker:
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1528/letters/
The immediately preceding letter from Moshé Machover makes a couple of valid points on a different issue.
It would seem to be a difference of style rather than of substance in that most modern wars have always arisen from conflicts of economic interest between rival capitalist groups over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investment outlets and strategic points and areas to protect these.
Various terms have been used to describe this such as “imperialism”, “colonialism”, “neo-colonialism” but the best term is simply “capitalism” as these conflicts of economic interest and wars are an inevitable result of the competitive struggle for profits that is at the heart of the system..
Trump is being “transactional” rather than diplomatic. In other words, telling it as it is rather than disguising it as crap about the free world, democracy, human rights, rights of small nations, etc.
