Bijou Drains
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Don’t just take our word that the BRI is a form of imperialism:
“Tanzanian President John Magufuli said the loan agreements of BRI projects in his country were “exploitative and awkward.” He said Chinese financiers set “tough conditions that can only be accepted by mad people,” because his government was asked to give them a guarantee of 33 years and an extensive lease of 99 years on a port construction. Magufuli said Chinese contractors wanted to take the land as their own but his government had to compensate them for drilling the project construction.
Indian commentator S. K. Chatterji considers debt traps an economic dimension of China’s salami slice strategy. According to Chatterji, China’s sovereignty slicing tactic dilutes the sovereignty of the target nations mainly using the debt trap. An example provided is Beijing pressuring Tajikistan to handover 1,158 km2 territory, which still owes China US$1.2 billion out of a total $2.9bn of debt. Other nations with a similar risk of sovereignty slicing are Pakistan, Madagascar, Mongolia, Maldives, Kyrgyzstan, Montenegro, Sri Lanka, and Laos which have borrowed large sums from China.
The apologists of Chinese state capitalism (you included) look frighteningly similar to the apologists of Stalinism, dressed in the same disguise of Marx and Engels, with the same language of comradeship, but the same familiar policy of exploiting the workers and supporting the imperialist and expansionist interests of the ruling class.
I wonder who it was that installed Pol Pot?
Perhaps the following might help us decide:
“it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which was provided to the Khmer Rouge came from China.”
Or perhaps we should look at Kim Jong-Un
As Xi Jingping states:
“No matter how the international situation changes”, China would “firmly support Chairman Kim Jong-un to lead the North Korean party and people to implement the new strategic line”,
Yes, the Chinese “Communist Party” is clearly a great friend to the oppressed workers of North Korea, no self interested foriegn policy there.
(just a note of clarification I am being ironic, just that your use of the spelling color indicates that you are probably not a Scot and maybe even from the good old USA, so you may be unfamiliar with my use of irony)
Yes it is clear that China’s “Communist Party” is ensuring the profits from China’s industry are being invested in its population, a very small percentage of the population, unfortunately:
“Conspiracies are happening everywhere all the time. The Holocaust was a conspiracy, the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Iraq war were conspiracies.”
You forgot to mention the Apollo Landings, QAnon, that Dinosaurs built the pyramids, Paul McCartney is dead, the Queen is a lizzard, Adolf Hitler lives in South Shields and the Arsenal 1919 promotion debacle.
God bless Lenny Bruce
https://www.geocities.ws/dontforgetyourpubes/images/lennybruce/bruce1.jpg
Gavin Williamson is the first Tory in the new session of parliament to parrot a response about the brilliant UKcovid Vaccine Programme.
The brexiteers are very quiet about the fact that Malta, Spain, Portugal, The Republic of Ireland, Denmark, France, Belgium and Finland all have a hgher level of 1st jab administration, and most of them have a higher level of double jabbed citizens.
“Facebook was swamped with middle aged (too young to receive the state pension) overweight(due to years of working unsocial hours), white males,”
As a middle aged, white, male, fat bastard, I plead not guilty
‘In any event, scandals involving the ruling class are of no interest to socialists. Even if they were all saints they would still be exploiters and privileged parasites.’
I think the events involved in the Epstein and the Maxwell situation are far more substantial than the allegations against Ted Heath, et al. Epstein was in prison and had previously been convicted of offences, whereas Maxwell is currently remanded on very serious offences. With regard to conspiracy theories, most of them relate to Epstein’s death rather that the fact that these two wealthy perverts preyed on children.
Similarly in terms of Prince Andrew, judging from the evidence of the photographs and other testimony, in legal terms there appears to be a case to answer. That is not an issue of conspiracy, other than the fact that the legal system conspires to treat the rich in a different way to the poor. WHat I was pointed out was that there seems to be a prima facia case for Prince Andrew to face thorough investigation based on the existing capitalist laws.
Does this have any implications for Socialists?
If the allegations related to themselves and their own behaviour, no.
However these allegations relate to a number of vulnerable members of the working class! These young girls appear to be have been targetted on the basis of their social class and the fact that they can be exploited due to their ecomomic Susceptibility.
The way that Epstein and Maxwell are able to carry out these vile acts has its foundations in class society. This appears to be compounded becasue it appears that the wealthy and the powerful appear to be escaping justice, whilst the long arm of the law is quickly brought to bare on trivial transgressions of the working class.
If these kinds if actions are not the business of socialists then what is our business?
Although I understand that we are not in the business of reforming the inadequacies of the capitalist system surely we must be in the business of exposing another example of the ongoing unfairness and exploitation which is hard wired into the class system.
I think perhaps you meant Prince Andrew rather than Prince Charles?
With regard to Epstein, what no one in the press or media in the UK has raised the issue of Section 72 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 amended Section 72 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 this amendment removed the aspect of ‘dual criminality’ for sexual offences.
This means that UK nationals who commit sexual offences against children abroad are criminally liable for the offence, regardless of whether the exploitation is classed as a criminal offence overseas.
In other words, there is no requirement for the crime to be an offence in both countries. The Act extended extraterritorial jurisdiction for the offence of grooming of children for sexual exploitation.
Although Virginia Giuffre was 17 at the time of the alleged liason with Prince Andrew, the law in the UK regarding prostitution outlaws use of prostitutes under the age of eighteen, see below:
Paying for sexual services of a childSexual Offences Act 2003
(1)A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a)he intentionally obtains for himself the sexual services of another person (B),
(b)before obtaining those services, he has made or promised payment for those services to B or a third person, or knows that another person has made or promised such a payment, and
(c)either—
(i)B is under 18, and A does not reasonably believe that B is 18 or over, or
(ii)B is under 13.Big question is why have the CPS not sent a bobby off to Buck House to knock on Prince Andrew’s door?
Perhaps the Party should gain a bit of publicity by asking the same question in the Standard?Apologies, ALB, I have now edited the contribution.
The presentation of the article by the anti vaxers was a little alarming, but the comments underneath show the bizarre thought processes some of the anti vaxers have. I am not being insulting by saying that it appears that some of the respondents have serious mental health issues.
As you say the article you cite, it is not exactly an anti vaxer article, it is saying that herd immunity is both possible and distributing vaccines on the basis of the likely outcomes of having Covid infection, i.e. give the vaccines to the most vulnerable throughout the world population, rather than give it to younger healthy people with very low chance of having serious and life threatening illness. I doubt that any Socialists would argue against that, however as we know fair distribution on the basis of need is unlikely to occur in a capitalist Society.
However the evidence that the paper presents about the level of protection offered by natural infection to Covid is, to my mind, nowhere near as clear cut as they present. For example the authors state that “Among the millions that have recovered from COVID19, exceedingly few have become sick again”, citing the study “SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in a cohort of 43,000 antibody-positive individuals followed for up to 35 weeks”. As the title of the study indicates this is a follow up study lasting 43 weeks, and stated that rates of re-infection had not shown any change at that point. So what we actually know is that it is uncommon for those who have had Covid to show signs of re-infection at the 7 month point. What happens after the 7 month period, is not at that known.
Similarly the authors also state that “While natural infection may not provide permanent infection-blocking immunity, it offers anti-disease immunity against severe disease and death that is likely permanent. “ However the study they cite to support this assertion states in its conclusion states “To our knowledge, the current study provides the first direct evidence for the induction of antigen-specific BMPCs after a viral infection in humans. However, we do acknowledge several limitations. Although we detected anti-S IgG antibodies in serum at least 7 months after infection in all 19 of the convalescent donors from whom we obtained bone marrow aspirates, we failed to detect S-specific BMPCs in 4 donors. Serum anti-S antibody titres in those four donors were low, suggesting that S-specific BMPCs may potentially be present at very low frequencies that are below the limit of detection of the assay. Another limitation is that we do not know the fraction of the S-binding BMPCs detected in our study that encodes neutralizing antibodies.”
The “Herd Immunity Hypothesis” also ignores very serious issues. For example the high level of infection amongst the healthy population who are supposedly at low risk of infection includes those young people with serious health conditions who do not know it. The levels of underdiagnosis of type 2 diabetes and also of monogenic Diabetes are well reported as conditions such as cardiomyopathy. Those considered healthy, may not actually be that healthy. Similarly the long term impact of long covid is not discussed. The ONS reported that :
• Self-reported long COVID symptoms were adversely affecting the day-to-day activities of 674,000 people in private households in the UK, with 196,000 of these individuals reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been limited a lot.
• Of people with self-reported long COVID, 697,000 first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, and 70,000 first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least one year previously.
• Prevalence rates of self-reported long COVID were greatest in people aged 35 to 69 years, females.Another factor that has not been addressed with the hypothesis is that a higher number of infections leads to a higher number of mutations, offering the virus the chance of escape from immunity from the very people that the writers suggest that it is important to vaccinate.
There is also an argument (and I am not saying I support it) that the process of creating areas that are more or less vaccinated and clear from Covid (as it appears is likely to happen in Western Europe, North America and possibly South America) is a more effective strategy than vaccinating the world population of vulnerable people before moving on to the less vulnerable people. The argument runs that creating areas of the world that are infection free and then spreading that infection free zone, is a bit like putting out areas of a fire and then consistently increasing the fire free zone, as opposed to the approach of trying to put out the most flammable parts of the fire and then working through the less flammable, with the risk of the bits you have put out are going to reignite. To be fair to that approach, historically, the eradication of small pox and the near eradication of polio followed the approach suggested.Clarkson is now hosting “Who wants to be a Millionaire” with a new option of asking the host (i.e. him). When he has been asked to help the contestant to answer a question, he has unsurprisingly revealed himself as having a practically non-existant store of general knowledge. Why he thinks that anyone should turn to him for advice, information and guidance is beyond me. I have met several journalists through work and other situations and have been surprised how ill informed and lacking in insight they generally are, but Clarkson trumps them all.
Here’s a link to Stewart Lee’s put down of Top Gear, which sums up the whole of Clarkson, et al.
MustaphaMond – “Thank you for your detailed responses, MovimientoSocialista – what do you mean by “we don’t have the subjective conditions”? Are you referring to the idea that the people are not ready for a socialist revolution?”
Our Party have consistently explained that Socialism is only possible in a situation where the economic circumstances exist, i.e. a developed capitalist economy, and where a majority of workers understand and want a socialist society.
In the case of the 1917 Russian revolution, objectively neither of those situations was possible. The Russian economy was generally pre capitalistic (there were pockets of capitalistic production but by and large Russia was a feudally based economy) and as was demonstrated by the outcome of the constituent assembly there was not a majority of workers who understood what socialism is and wanted it.
Despite the romantic daydreaming of Trotsky and the attempts to manipulate, hoodwink and bellicose name calling of Lenin, the reality of material conditions (as any student of Marx will know) cannot be overcome by rhetoric and militancy. Our party knew that in 1917 and as a result the Bolshiviks and their comrades in arms did everything they could do discredit, intimidate and slander us. They failed to silence us in the same way that they failed to turn Marx’s theories upside.
