Young Master Smeet
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“The slave and plantation trades were the hub around which many other dynamic and innovatory sectors of the economy pivoted. Slavery, directly and indirectly, set in motion innovations in manufacturing, agriculture, wholesaling, retailing, shipping, banking, international trade, finance and investment, insurance, as well as in the organization and intensification of work, record keeping and the application of scientific and useful knowledge. Slavery certainly was formative in the timing and nature of Britain’s industrial transition.”
Slavery, capitalism and the industrial revolution / Berg & HudsonThe BBC continue to cover ukrainian draft evasion, this is a new version of substantially the same story they’ve told before, but with added stats: 20K have escaped, 20K have been caught, and maybe more that aren’t picked up in these stats. (As an aside, Engels was keen on universal conscription – the end section of the pamphlet is an interesting read). Others have noted the demographic cliff in Ukraine where under 35 the population plummets: also, looking at the heat map of population, Russia has taken out some of the more populous districts already.
I don’t know if the BBC is teeing up for a narrative to blame Ukraine for its defeat because they weren’t willing to fight…
300 leaflets were handed out in about an hour (I’m afraid that was all my feet could stand) on Park lane: the march was loud, friendly and well organised, best placard read ‘This is a Love March’, although Palestine flags abounded, I didn’t see anything overtly anti-Jewish or that could be seen as such. I ran across the CWO and did a leaflet swap, theirs was a little wordy, but made some good points about other similar conflicts.
I popped over to Whitehall afterwards, and couldn’t see any sign of trouble, except some old gadgee shouting at the door staff of the Whitehall theatre saying ‘It’s our! Ours!’
Israel seems to be drawing up its war aims:
“Speaking to U.S. television’s Fox News on Thursday, Netanyahu said: “We don’t seek to conquer Gaza, we don’t seek to occupy Gaza, and we don’t seek to govern Gaza.”
“Netanyahu said a civilian government would need to take shape in Gaza but that Israel would make sure an attack like Oct. 7 does not happen again.
“So, we have to have a credible force that, if necessary, will enter Gaza and kill the killers. Because that’s what will prevent the re-emergence of a Hamas-like entity,” Netanyahu said.”
So, a Bantustan, totally subordinate but not the ‘responsibility’ of Israel (except, of course, that any Gaza entity created after this war will be wholly a creation of the Israeli state).
Note the options excluded: international peace keepers, a treaty with a fully fledged Palestinian state, a Marshal plan to rebuilt and drain the swamp of Palestinian radicalism.
Good idea, done. Tough on the proliferation of threads, tough on the causes of the proliferation of threads.
This is a fascinating story Israel is running short of labour because of its previous reliance on Palestinian workers, and so is looking to India:
““Right now we are negotiating with India. We are waiting for [the] decision of the Israeli government to approve that. And, we hope to engage 50,000 to 100,000 workers from India to be able to run the whole sector and bring it back to normal,” he told the publication on November 1.
“Earlier this year the two countries had inked an agreement that allowed 42,000 Indians to work in the Jewish state. in the fields of construction and nursing. As per the press statement from the Israeli foreign ministry, 34,000 workers will be engaged in the construction field and another 8,000 for nursing needs.”
Forums › General discussion › Anti-Zionism is not anti-semitic
#248284
#248286Binned, Off-topic (rule 1)
Forums › General discussion › Anti-Zionism is not anti-semitic
#248172Unapproved, off-topic, speculating about user identity (Rules 1 & 7)
@Lizzie: please stop derailing threads with posts about the success or otherwise of the SPGB. Please stick to the topic of the thread. Feel free to start a thread on that topic if you wish. The topic of this thread is the content of an SPGB statement, please stick to that.
We do need some perspective, what is happening is Gaza now is what happened in Aleppo, Mosul, Fallujah (each city, admittedly, less densely populated than Gaza city, but still with horrific civilian death tolls. 23,000 civilians died in the battle of Aleppo.
For several reasons, Palestine draws more attention than these horrors, but is in principle no different, a part and parcel of the ongoing capitalist world war. The interest of various ruling groups calls on us to pay attention to what is happening in Gaza, but equally horrifying wars are being fought in Tigray, Yemen, Ukraine (and other places, I’m sure, if I put the time into finding them all).
But the horrors of the siege of Gaza pale compared to the war that is waged through poverty, 9 million die every year from hunger (and that isn’t an overnight death, it’s a long slow process of being exposed to hunger). That’s about 25,000 every day.
I popped along (for reasons, I wasn’t in much shape for an intervention), there wasn’t a lot of leafletting going along, this was overwhelming a pro-Palestinian march: I doubt if a leaflet against nationalism would have got any traction at all (and might have caused ructions, in fact). the Millies were there, with an ingenious ‘For a Socialist Intifada’ leaflet, calling for a working class movement in the UK and in the Arab world, I didn’t see much else (Fight Imperialism/Fight Racism were there).
On a small side point, I don’t think the bomb needs to be that big. This video shows the effect of 2kgs of high explosive, Hamas’ rockets can hold up to 20kgs (probably more likely 5 or 10).
Now, the balance of probability is that it was an Israeli bomb, but from our POV it is the war that is to blame, not the Israeli, and the war stems from capitalism.
If the carpark was as packed with people as seems to be claimed, then even a relatively small bomb could cause those casualties, and the big looking fireball.
That said, looking at the crater, it looks to me like the rocket was under power, not falling under gravity, but I am *not* an expert.
Further, I only recently read about the Eilat-Askelon pipeline which, as a route to circumvent the Suez Canal, is sufficient interest to back Israel (for the US) and also for Israel to deny a contiguous Palestine in the south. More complicated than that
