Sunday 26 July 2020

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 124

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Israel destroys health posts to combat Covid in Palestine

On July 20 and 21, Israeli occupation forces destroyed health posts that had recently been built as part of the strategies to combat the Covid-19 pandemic in the cities of Jenin and Hebron, respectively, in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Zionism.

In the first case, in Jenin, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli soldiers had invaded the city in a local refugee camp to arrest people involved in resistance to the occupation, which led to a confrontation with residents, who resisted attack, and ended with one of the residents shot in the leg by the soldiers. At the end of the reactionary military incursion, the soldiers took two detainees and destroyed the sanitary checkpoint outside the city, out of pure sadism.

In the second case, according to the Anadolu press monopoly, the Israeli occupation forces brought down a health center with excavators at the entrance to the city of Hebron, which was being built by the residents themselves about three months ago, in an attempt to contain the advance of the disease on the population.

A Palestinian who participated in the initiative in Hebron told the Middle East Monitor website, while walking through the wreckage left by the Israelis after demolishing the center: “[The demolition] is proof that they are not concerned with containing [the virus]. The facility was prepared to test residents, so that infected people would be quarantined here for a while and then transferred to quarantine centers, and to detect uninfected people and let them into the city. It had been under construction for 3 months, but in the later stages the Israelis were no longer allowing it. ”

Read more: “Vulnerability of Palestinians to coronavirus opens the war of imperialist aggression”
These cases add up to previous episodes, such as when, on April 15, Israeli soldiers invaded and closed a testing clinic for Covid-19 that had been improvised in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem, where four people were still arrested. , accused of involvement with the Palestinian Authority, which reportedly supplied the kits for testing the disease.

In the previous month, another similar case occurred in the Palestinian village of Khirbet Ibziq, in the north of the Jordan River valley, where Israeli officials, accompanied by a military escort, confiscated materials and equipment that had been used to set up tents in field hospitals. and for emergency accommodation that would serve local residents.

In the midst of all this situation, the most violent and perverse face of Zionist colonialism, which perpetrates its crimes against the Palestinian people, whether in occupied territories or not, is wide open. In June, Israel reached a peak in the number of demolitions carried out against homes of Palestinian families in the West Bank, reaching more than 200 Palestinians, of whom 115 are minors.

The total number of houses demolished was more than double the monthly average in the first five months of 2020.

- Partido Nacional-Bolchevique Brasileiro

(original text below)

Israel destrói postos de saúde para o combate à Covid na Palestina

Nos dias 20 e 21 de julho, forças da ocupação israelense destruíram postos de saúde que haviam sido construídos recentemente como parte das estratégias de combate à pandemia de Covid-19, nas cidades de Jenin e Hebron, respectivamente, na Cisjordânia, território palestino ocupado pelo sionismo.

No primeiro caso, em Jenin, a agência de notícias palestina Wafa noticiou que soldados de Israel haviam invadido a cidade um campo de refugiados local para prender pessoas envolvidas em ações de resistência à ocupação, o que levou a um confronto com os moradores, que resistiram ao ataque, e terminou com um dos residentes alvejado na perna pelos soldados. Ao fim da incursão militar reacionária, os soldados levaram duas pessoas detidas e destruíram o posto de controle sanitário que ficava na saída da cidade, por puro sadismo.

No segundo caso, segundo o monopólio de imprensa Anadolu, as forças da ocupação israelense colocaram abaixo com escavadeiras um centro de saúde na entrada da cidade de Hebron que estava sendo construído pelos próprios moradores há cerca de três meses, na tentativa de conter o avanço da doença sobre a população.

Um palestino que participava da iniciativa em Hebron declarou ao site Monitor do Oriente Médio, enquanto caminhava pelos destroços deixados pelos israelenses após demolirem o centro: “[A demolição] é uma prova de que eles não estão preocupados em conter [o vírus]. A instalação estava preparada para testar os moradores, para que as pessoas infectadas ficassem quarentenadas aqui  por um tempo e então serem transferidas para centros de quarentena, e para detectar as pessoas não infectadas e deixá-las entrar na cidade. Ele estava sendo construído há 3 meses, mas nos últimos estágios os israelenses não estavam mais permitindo”.

Leia mais: “Vulnerabilidade de palestinos ao coronavírus escancara a guerra de agressão imperialista”
Esses casos somam-se a episódios anteriores, como quando, em 15 de abril, soldados israelenses invadiram e fecharam uma clínica de testagem para a Covid-19 que havia sido improvisada no bairro de Silwan, na Jerusalém Oriental, onde ainda levaram presas quatro pessoas, acusadas de envolvimento com a Autoridade Palestina, que teria fornecido os kits de testagem da doença.

No mês anterior, outro caso similar ocorreu na aldeia palestina de Khirbet Ibziq, no norte do vale do rio Jordão, onde funcionários israelenses, acompanhados por uma escolta militar, confiscaram materiais e equipamentos que haviam sido destinados para a montagem de tendas de hospitais de campanha e para alojamentos emergenciais que atenderiam aos moradores locais.

Em meio a toda essa situação, fica escancarada a face mais violenta e perversa do colonialismo-sionista, que perpetra seus crimes contra o povo palestino, seja em territórios ocupados ou não. No mês de junho, Israel atingiu um pico no número de demolições perpetradas contra casas de famílias palestinas na Cisjordânia, atingindo mais de 200 palestinos, dos quais 115 são menores de idade. O número total de casas demolidas foi mais que o dobro da média mensal nos primeiros cinco meses de 2020.

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What or who is a ‘’ National-Bolshevik ’’?

A propagandist for a new Great Russian Empire?
A dogmatic Leninist or a worshiper of Stalin?
A ‘’ National Socialist ’Hitlerist or simply a Nazi?
An atheist or materialist?
The answer is no, no, no, no and again no!
A true national-Bolshevik is anyone who believes that all large or small nations should be governed directly by those and for those who make up the 'majority' (which is the literal meaning of the Russian word 'Bolshevik') and not be governed by a tiny minority of state despots, puppet parliamentarians or corrupt and bureaucratic bankers, who only serve the Money Empire of the International Capitalist Financial System.
The role of Bolshevism in each nation today is to work for the interests of the majority (Bolsheviks), for example, the 99% and in particular, to free that majority from the servitude of the current global banking system.
This calls for the creation of new types of ‘‘ Popular Banks ’’, both communal and national, providing interest-free money that outweighs the needs of most ordinary people and not the needs of 1% of super-rich bankers.
Private commercial banks can and do create ‘‘ money out of thin air ’’ every second just by getting virtual money into borrowers ’accounts. Money that counts as their money and so they make prodigious profits through speculation.
They constitute an empire of money that governs the policies of all nations, in which all political empires are nothing but an instrument, and whose only god is the god of money.
If private banks can create virtual money, Popular Banks could also, however, the main difference is that the money created by these banks would belong to the people and the community, so that governments could spend money in the interests of the people (the majority) and not for the private profit of the few.

- Peter Wilberg

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Money destroys roots everywhere it penetrates by replacing all motivations with the desire to earn.

 - Simone Weil

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How capitalism uses immigrants
By Lance Selfa and Helen Scott | April 21, 2006 | Page 7

IN HISTORY books, we're reminded that the United States is a "nation of immigrants," and that immigrants played a key role in building the U.S. Yet right-wing politicians tell us today that immigrants are responsible for crime, economic decline and other problems in the U.S.

This love-hate view of immigration and immigrants stems from the role that immigration plays in the capitalist economic system under which we live.

The capitalist system is international, with products manufactured and sold worldwide. Capitalists--the tiny minority that owns and controls the international banks and multinational corporations--rely on a global pool of labor. To enable the capitalists to fill their demands for labor, this labor pool has to be somewhat mobile.

The central mechanism of control over the movement of labor is the nation-state. National border controls ensure that capitalism, through its state, maintains control over labor, rather than allowing people to move at will.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Canada and Mexico aimed to promote easy transport of goods and services across the three countries' borders. But NAFTA explicitly bars free immigration.

When economic growth produces a demand for workers that can't be satisfied by the existing workforce, a "labor shortage" results. During the Second World War, women filled the labor shortage in military industries created because millions of men entered the armed forces.

It is likewise with immigration. When the domestic workforce can't fill demands for labor that capitalists need, governments often promote immigration. Immigration is not an accident.

Nor do rich countries accept the world's poor out of generosity. Labor migration is essential to the capitalist system. The purpose of immigration policy, then, is to regulate the flow of labor--to control the borders so as to control the workers themselves.

Immigration laws serve capitalism in two ways. First, they ensure cheap foreign labor when the domestic economy needs it. Second, they allow for greater control of the whole workforce.

Most of the advanced economies of the capitalist world were built on migrant labor. They have actively sought foreign-born workers in some historical periods. The same countries have also clamped down on immigration at other times.

The U.S. government's previous bracero program shows clearly how immigration policy is shaped to the needs of capital. The bracero program was initially implemented as a wartime emergency program in 1942 to fill a labor shortage in agriculture by importing farm workers from Mexico. The program became the largest foreign-worker program in the history of the U.S., contracting over 5 million braceros to growers and ranchers over the next 22 years.

Yet the government maintained control over the movements of these workers, and at any time could (and did) restrict the numbers of Mexicans crossing the border and clamp down on Mexicans in the U.S. The passage of workers from Mexico was crucial to the economy, but the workers themselves, at any given moment, could be treated like unwanted criminals, refused entry or deported.

Reducing labor costs, a key aim of capitalists at all times, can be achieved by paying lower wages. To this end, companies can either move production to sites with cheaper labor supplies, or they can bring cheap labor supplies to production sites.

A perfect illustration of moving production to the labor supply is the maquila zone along the U.S.-Mexico border, created after the bracero program ended. Here, advanced country multinationals gain immigrant workers' skills without having to pay to develop them. The social costs of child benefits and education have been provided by another state (in this case, Mexico).

But if the workers come across the border to work as undocumented labor in the U.S., employers gain the same advantages.

What are the specific conditions that make immigrant labor especially attractive to business? Immigrant workers are less likely to be unionized, and an immigrant workforce is often more controllable. Employers use the threat of deportation and criminalization to exploit immigrants ruthlessly and quell immigrants' efforts to fight for their rights.

Legal immigrants waiting for confirmation of citizenship are subject to this pressure, as well as undocumented workers. The presence of a criminalized section of the workforce is crucial for the employers to maintain their control.

New immigrants often don't speak English and are desperate for work. Employers exploit this vulnerability to the fullest--paying below-average wages, violating safety standards and workers' rights.

Meatpacking companies in the Midwest, for example, send personnel managers on tours of the U.S. to recruit Asian and Latino immigrants from California and New York, according to sociologists Louise Lamphere, Alex Stepick, and Guillermo Grenier. One company representative for Dupaco, a meatpacking firm in Nebraska, was typically up-front about the aims of recruitment: "We need to get us a minority group in here."

The Dupaco executive's statement illustrates another important benefit employers gain from hiring immigrants: keeping the workforce divided. Employers use every possible difference between workers--sex, race, sexual orientation, skill and citizenship status--to sow division in the workforce. Employers know that a divided workforce is less likely to unite to demand union representation and higher wages and benefits.

It's clear that when it comes to making profits, U.S. business sees no borders.

That's why it's even clearer that the U.S. labor movement needs to continue organizing among immigrants. Improving wages and conditions for immigrants shouldn't be seen as a way indirectly to boost "American" wages and conditions, separate from immigrants' conditions. On the contrary, jobs performed by immigrants are crucial to the U.S. economy. Improving their wages and conditions will benefit all workers, no matter what side of the Rio Grande (or Rio Bravo) they were born.

- International Socialist Organization (U.S.)

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Someone should take Machiavellian elite class theory in the vein of James Burnham and use it to critique the occult activity of our ruling classes. I already establish some of the connections between the historic rise of organized cabalism and that of modern capitalism in my small book Faust Without Mephistopheles. Coining the phrase "economic occult forces," I show that the phenomenon that term describes was indispensably influential on modern Western science. But what I am proposing in this post is a little different; I am suggesting a combination of class theory and occult war theory. It seems that most people who like the one do not really like the other, but I believe they can be synthesized nicely. Faust Without Mephistopheles combines some of the economic-historic insight of Werner Sombart, from which the title actually derives, with my findings about organized cabalism in Western history. But by combining the two fields of study, I have only scratched the surface of a new possibility for a synthesis.

- Amory Stern

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We social revolutionary nationalists demand an alliance with the Soviet Union. We see in all oppressed peoples, to whatever races they belong, our natural allies "

- Karl Otto Paetel

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“Today nothing is more modern than the onslaught against the political. American financiers, industrial technicians, Marxist socialists, and anarchic-syndicalist revolutionaries unite in demanding that the biased rule of politics over unbiased economic management be done away with. There must no longer be political problems, only organizational-technical and economic-sociological tasks. The kind of economic-technical thinking that prevails today is no longer capable of perceiving a political idea. The modern state seems to have actually become what Max Weber envisioned: a huge industrial plant.”

- Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty

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Countries can lose access to affordable financing. But not countries like the UK that have the capacity to print their own currency. The government is talking about reintroducing austerity to cut back on its deficit: in the face of this crisis, this is dangerous nonsense based on fallacious notions that equate governments with households and ignore economic history.

In 2010 Greece experienced collapsing tax revenues with heavy budgetary obligations and its budget deficit rose to 15% of GDP. To cover this deficit the Greeks had to borrow, but now they really did have to “find the money” because they had no Greek Central bank able to issue Drachmas any more. Lenders were not willing to buy Greek government bonds denominated in euros unless they received a substantial premium for the risk they were in taking in lending billions to a currency user, not issuer, that might not be able to raise the funds in future to pay it back.

From 2009 to 2012 the interest rate on 10-year Greek government bonds rose from less than 6% to over 35%.

Compare that with that with the USA and UK experience: fiscal deficits in both countries tripled from 2007 to 2009 as a result of the crash. Deficits went from around 3% to 10% of GDP in both countries, over the same period the average interest rates on ten-year government bonds fell from 3.3% to 1.8% in the USA and from 5% to 3.6% in the UK.

Both countries have the backstop of a central bank that acts for the government as a monopoly supplier of the currency. This reassures investors that bills can be paid and that the central bank has ironclad control over its short-term interest rates and substantial influence over rates on longer-dated securities.

If you’re thinking this all betrays the basic lie at the heart of Austerity, that the only thing that mattered was to cut the deficit or the country would go bust: you are 100% correct.

But some politicians genuinely do not get it and talk as if the government were a household. In 2010 some American politicians were urging their government to cut the deficit or risk a Greek-style debt crisis. Investors like Warren Buffet knew better, Buffet said: “the US cannot have a debt crisis of any kind as long as we keep issuing our notes in our own currency….Greece lost their power to print their own money, if they could print drachmas they would have other problems but they would not have a debt problem."

To finish, it’s also worth noting that interest payments on the UK national debt are not high by historical standards as interest rates are so low.

Also be aware that the Bank of England owns around 25% of the UK government’s debt: so a quarter of the headline debt figure they use to scare you has been effectively retired already.

Austerity is a device to keep us in our place and compliant.

- South East London Communist Party

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 'intersectionality' is typical middle class trotskyism. It is here to take socialism away from 'class struggle', to disempower and alienate the working class. It is here to allow the middle class to gain control. United we stand, divided we fall. Trotskyite middle class intersectionality is middle class capitalist marketing.

- Paul Moor

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The chance of having a left wing government was destroyed from within the Labour party, both deliberately and out of sheer ignorance. It wasn’t so much that the Tories won, it was because Labour lost big time, lost the plot. And the main issue was democracy/Brexit, FACT: no socialist would contemplate supporting a right wing, pro privatization, pro capitalist, undemocratic political monster such as the E.U. but the labour membership is made up of mostly Liberals who had/have a blind almost religious belief that the E.U. is the best thing since sliced bread.

I would say Corbyn and his cohorts, Abbot, McDonnell  and the pro E.U. momentum gang have enabled the situation we are now in with another Tory Blairite running it, they blew their chance big time, even with the massive support they had, and after a decade of Tory austerity it should have been a walk in the park. These so called left wing people of principles ignored democracy and ignored its traditional working class voters who overwhelmingly and rightly voted to leave the E.U. Labour is obsessed with its membership, it’s not the membership that puts you in government its VOTERS!

Not only this but many in the Westminster bubble and of course many of its Liberal campaigners, supporters looked down their noses at the working class who were too thick and ignorant to see just how wonderful and what a force for good the E.U. is NOT! I heard one campaigner on the streets of Leeds saying she was incredulous, she “couldn’t get through” to these deplorables who voted OUT, most working class people who voted OUT are decent people, not ignorant, flag waving, xenophobic little Englanders as portrayed by the pro E.U. media and repeated by these Liberal Clowns.

Whoever came up with that contradictory, ridiculous Brexit policy of “getting a better deal” with the E.U. and then holding a second referendum on it, in which they would campaign against their imaginary better deal and campaign to remain (to please its Liberal membership and its Tory Blairite MP’s) should be hanging their heads in shame, I don’t know how they can show their faces in public!

Maybe they thought the electorate are so thick they would buy it! The E.U. doesn’t do deals, it’s a dictatorship! The E.U. wants the worst deal possible for the U.K. lest any others have the audacity to exercise their democratic right. Corbyn should have stuck to his life long ideology and backed the Leave campaign, he should have defended the right to criticize the Israeli apartheid regime, he should have defended Chris Williamson against FALSE allegations of anti-Semitism, he should have purged the party of Tory Blairites, (Boris even sacked people like Ken Clarke because they were not with the program) Labour only need look in the mirror for answers as to why it lost big time!

- Tim Everett

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The Blair Babes that took over the Labour Party in the 1990s were essentially the bastard children of Neil Kinnock. The 'modernists' have enjoyed an almost unbroken monopoly on power for well over 30 years now. To call it a cult would not be in any way an exaggeration.

The fervour that the Blair Babes - and now the Starm-Troopers - embrace the European Union is that of the religious devotee. They regard the EU as a kind of modern-day Holy Roman Empire, and themselves as goodly folk who fear Wrath of the Lord. In this particular case, he would be Lord Kinnock.

The EU-rophiles no longer see membership as a vote-winning signifier of political moderation, but as a DUTY. The Union is the bastion of civilisation, human rights and diversity. Only the worst kind of Alt.Right knuckle-dagger in the pay of Vladimir Putin would wish to leave it. For the Starm-Troopers, stopping Brexit really IS like stopping Hitler. They support the EU not because it is expedient, but because it is the RIGHT thing to do!

You cannot argue with people like that. I have a EU-rophile friend who has been in tears for the last six months, she claims that 'Europe is now closed to us forever'. This is like the despair of a devout Catholic upon hearing of England's collective excommunication by the Pope following Henry Tudor's break with Rome. She tells me that neither Bercow or the BBC should be 'unbiased' between Remain and Leave - because some things are Right and some things are Wrong. When someone is 'unbiased' between Right and Wrong they are in fact taking sides - because to remain neutral is automatically to be on the side of Wrong. The only thing it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. In other words, Stopping Brexit Is Like Stopping Hitler!

When I pointed out that the British people had rejected the European Union in the largest (and longest) referendum in history, she told me she thought it had been 'fixed' somehow, presumably by Vladimir Putin and his legions of SVR hackers. When I pointed out that the Labour Party had gone into meltdown after it was taken over by Starm-Troopers committed to the Remain position, she said that the people of Britain were in favour of the EU but did not trust Corbyn. He was - in his heart - a Leaver who was parroting the Remain line. Apparently if the party had a leader who was a true believer in the Blue & Gold then a host of working-class EU-rophiles would have materialised out of thin air and swept Labour to power - banishing the spectre of Brexit for all time. I told her that l believed that her judgement was in question - and that she may in fact be thinking of crucifixes and vampires. We have not spoken since.

The only way to deal with people who think like this is to crush them. Kinnock drove the Militant Tendency out of the Labour Party and established his unquestionable authority. Corbyn tried to be NICE. He tried to bring them on board, to win their approval, to earn their trust. All the time they were in open revolt against him. Fair dues, the man was a Nazi wasn't he? He had to be. After all, Corbyn was pro-Brexit - and everyone knows that Stopping Brexit Is Like Stopping Hitler.

Corbyn was a fool who paid a steep price for his delusional belief in the essential decency of his opponents.

Regrettably so are the rest of us...

- Owen Carpenter

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"First, let’s handle the question of vaccination.
There is a measles vaccine, yet it kills 140,000 a year.
There is a pneumococcus vaccine, yet it kills between 2 and 2.5 million a year.
There is a hepatitis B vaccine, yet it kills 140,000. There is a tetanus vaccine, yet it kills 89,000 annually. There is a retrovirus vaccine, yet it kills 800,000. There is a HPV vaccine, yet it kills 250,000.
There is a tuberculosis vaccine, yet it kills 1.5 million.
There is an influenza vaccine, yet it kills 650,000 to 1 million deaths a year.
None of these are considered pandemics, cause entire economies to be shut down or, or call for any extraordinary measures at all."

- Jonn Mnemonik

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