UK Labour Defence Secretary visits Ukraine to back escalated war    by Robert Stevens

 

Within 24 hours of taking his ministry seat, UK Defence Secretary John Healey ensured his first foreign visit was to Ukraine to reassure the Zelensky regime of the new Labour government’s backing for war with Russia. 

Healey was accompanied by the UK’s chief of the armed forces, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin. Healey and Radakin made the Ukraine trip before Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Healey, and Foreign Secretary David Lammy flew to Washington on Tuesday to attend a three-day NATO summit centred on preparing an escalation of the war.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) issued a statement Sunday, to coincide with Healey’s trip, of a “new package of support to the country, including more artillery guns, a quarter of a million ammunition rounds and nearly 100 precision Brimstone missiles.” Also included are “50 small military boats to support river and coastal operations”; “61 bulldozers to help build defensive positions”; and “support for previously gifted AS-90s, including 32 new barrels and critical spares which will help Ukraine fire another 60,000 155mm rounds”.

Demonstrating how a government of Conservative warmongers has been seamlessly replaced, the statement explained that Healey has “directed officials to ensure that the promised package in April of military aid is accelerated and delivered in full to Ukraine within the next 100 days.”

The April support agreed by Rishi Sunak’s government was the “largest ever military aid package to Ukraine, comprising 400 vehicles, 1600 strike and air defence missiles, including additional Storm Shadow long-range precision guided-missiles, four million rounds of ammunition and 60 boats, including off-shore raiding craft.”

The MoD stated, “Having provided more than £7.6 billion of military support since Ukraine unprovoked invasion, the UK will continue to work with allies and partners to provide Ukraine with the equipment and weapons they need to win the war.”

With Ukraine having lost hundreds of thousands of lives, NATO is plotting how to reverse disastrous military setbacks that have shattered the Zelensky government.

Even while Healey was meeting with Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, they had to flee into the basement and “take cover in a bomb shelter”… “of a Soviet-era building acting as Mr Umerov’s temporary HQ” due to Russian missiles falling nearby.

Labour came to office with the backing of a ruling elite supportive of its “party of NATO” credentials and full backing for war against Russia and Israel’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinians.

Starmer won the backing of the Financial Times, the first time that newspaper has supported Labour in a general election in 19 years, since it backed Tony Blair in 2005 following his support for the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Starmer was also backed by the Murdoch dynasty-owned The Sun and The Times, both demanding stepped-up war against Russia and austerity cuts to pay for a vastly increased military budget. 

The trip to Kiev was co-ordinated with the Sun whose Political Editor Harry Cole accompanied Healey—straight after he left Starmer’s first Cabinet meeting on Saturday—to board a Royal Air Force-chartered flight. During the flight Healey gave Cole an exclusive interview.

This was published under the headline, “FIGHTING TALK: Britain will stand with Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’, declares new Defence Secretary in direct warning to Putin”. 

It read, “He [Healey] insisted the new government is ‘totally committed’ to hiking UK defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP but the ‘defence of Britain starts in Ukraine’”. Healey boasted that “within less than 24 hours after I was appointed I am on my way to Ukraine”, as it was time to “step up” Britain’s “special leadership” with Kiev. 

Healey told the newspaper, “We will deliver… an extra quarter of a million heavy ammunition for the machine guns they use to shoot down Iranian drones.” The “extra 90 Brimstone missiles” were “the most lethal bit of kit they use to take out Russian tanks and armoured vehicles.” The 50 boats were being provided “for Ukrainian marines, these are the marines we have trained, so they will use those for attacks in the Black Sea, they will use those for raids across the Dnipro river.”

The newspaper pictured The Sun’s Cole meeting Zelensky and in the room while Healey was discussing with Ukraine’s defence minister. The Sun followed up with an editorial stating, “From Day One of the Russian invasion, our last Tory Government was resolute in its support for President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people. It is hugely welcome that, in one of Labour’s first acts, new Defence Secretary John Healey travelled to Odesa to promise there would be no wavering in the UK’s position.”

The Sun welcomed “the commitment by the new Secretary of State to spend 2.5 percent of GDP on defence, even if the detail is scant.” 

The Times followed up with a demand for more. An article Tuesday, banner headlined, “Pressure on Starmer to raise defence spending,” reported that former head of the army General Sir Patrick Sanders had “warned that Britain’s armed forces were so worn down that they were only able to fight a small war for no longer than a month…

“Sanders said that even 2.5 percent of GDP was too small and called for spending to rise to ‘closer to 3 percent’.”

The General complained that military spending and security were “conspicuously absent,” from the general election campaign. “At the moment, the political debate in in the UK is trying to shield the public from the reality of the world that that we’re now finding ourselves in.”

Sanders warned, “You’ve got the potential for a conflict that won’t look like World War Two, but could spread like cancer, will be global, and will operate at different levels of intensity in all the operational domains.”

The type of war Sanders envisages being fought was clear in his grotesque relativising of the worst crimes of the 20th century, carried out by the Nazis. He designated Russia, China and Iran, “the new Axis powers”, with the Times adding that Sanders “argued that they pose an even more lethal challenge than the Nazi alliance in 1939 since ‘they are more interdependent and more aligned than the original Axis powers were’”.

The message was underscored by Lord West, a Labour-supporting peer and former First Sea Lord and ex-chair of the National Security Forum. He complained to the Times of Labour’s position: “I think we ought to say when we are going to get to 2.5 percent. ‘When the situation allows’ is not really good enough—Putin will not wait for our situation to be good enough before he attacks.”

With an eye to the November election in the United States, West stated that Labour naming a date to reach 2.5 percent mark, “would be a very good message to the Americans, not least to Donald Trump.”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/07/09/ytsp-j09.html

 

MEANWHILE:

Peace talks will begin when Ukraine ‘gets real’ - Moscow     Kiev’s current terms are a complete non-starter, a senior Russian diplomat said 

Ukraine must assume a more rational position for the peace negotiations to resume, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko has said.

A journalist with the news channel RBK asked Rudenko to comment on the recent report that presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China expect the negotiations to begin by the end of 2024.

The diplomat advised against “setting deadlines or outlining specific timetables” on the matter. He stressed, however, that “the proposals put forward by the Ukrainian authorities, which are controlled from abroad, cannot serve as a basis for any serious negotiations.”

The talks can only resume once Kiev “takes a more realistic position,” Rudenko stated.

On Wednesday, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban briefed EU officials that Putin and Xi anticipate peace negotiations before the year is out. Neither Moscow nor Beijing have confirmed this claim.

A vocal critic of the EU’s stance on the conflict in Ukraine, Orban has recently wrapped up his trip to Kiev, Moscow and Beijing, which he described as a “peace mission.”

After Orban’s visit to Moscow last week, Putin reaffirmed his June peace terms, stating that he wanted a comprehensive and final end to the conflict rather than a temporary ceasefire. Moscow’s terms include Ukraine becoming a neutral country and the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk and the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye. Russia insists that Ukraine must renounce claims on these four territories, as well as Crimea

Ukraine has rejected Russia’s terms, insisting that its territory must be restored to the 1991 borders.

READ MORE: War has become NATO’s agenda – Orban

The peace talks between Russia and Ukraine broke down in the spring of 2022, with both sides accusing each other of making unacceptable demands. Putin has said that the Ukrainian delegation has initially agreed to some of Russia’s terms, including neutrality, but then abruptly suspended the negotiations.

https://www.rt.com/russia/600830-peace-when-ukraine-real/

 

MEANWHILE: 

Russian forces have destroyed three HAWK air defense missile launchers, made and improved by the US, in the special operation zone over the past day, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

"Operational-tactical aviation, unmanned aerial vehicles, missile troops, and the artillery of the Russian Armed Forces, have destroyed an AN/MPQ-46 radar and three HAWK air defense missile launchers made and improved in the US," the ministry's daily briefing stated.

Additionally, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported the destruction of storage facilities for Ukrainian unmanned boats, and strikes on enemy personnel and equipment in 131 locations.

Russian air defense systems have shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter, 4 ATACMS missiles, and 55 drones in the past day, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

"Air defense systems shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29 aircraft, 55 unmanned aerial vehicles, four American-made ATACMS operational-tactical missiles, three American-made HIMARS rocket system projectiles, and four French-made Hammer guided bombs," the statement said.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240710/russian-forces-destroyed-improved-american-launchers-in-ukraine-1119326577.html

 

MEANWHILE:

Russia’s electronic warfare capabilities have rendered precision-guided Western munitions “useless” in the Ukraine conflict, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. With their guidance systems scrambled, some of these weapons have reportedly been retired within weeks of hitting the battlefield.

When the US announced the delivery of GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shells to Ukraine in 2022, pro-Kiev outlets predicted that the $100,000-per-shot projectiles would make “Ukrainian artillery a whole lot more accurate” and “cause Russia a world of pain.”

However, the Russian military adapted within weeks, Ukrainian commanders told the Wall Street Journal. Russian signal-jamming equipment was used to feed false coordinates to the shells and interfere with their fuses, causing them to veer off course or fall to the ground as duds. 

“By the middle of last year, the M982 Excalibur munitions, developed by RTX and BAE Systems, became essentially useless and are no longer employed,” the newspaper stated, paraphrasing the Ukrainian commanders.

https://www.rt.com/russia/600809-western-weapons-useless-ukraine/

 

MEANWHILE:

UKRAINIAN NEW YORK DEFENSIVE COLLAPSE | RUSSIAN FORCES CROSS VOVCHA RIVER | YEVHENIVKA HAS FALLEN

https://www.theinteldrop.org/2024/07/10/ukrainian-new-york-defensive-collapse-russian-forces-cross-vovcha-river-yevhenivka-has-fallen/

 

AROUND 15,000 DEAD UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS PER WEEK.....

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

READ FROM TOP

 

 Starmer’s hollow victory

This Labour ‘landslide’ has everything except voters.

 

Keir Starmer, [NOW] Britain’s prime minister, is a man who thinks – and certainly speaks – in political clichés. He has spent much of this dismal General Election campaign talking of ‘rolling up his sleeves’, ‘turning the page’ and ‘getting the job done’. During his victory speech this morning – at a short, small rally at Tate Modern; organised purely for the benefit of the television cameras – he channelled Tony Blair’s 1997 ‘a new dawn has broken’ speech, torturing the metaphor to within an inch of its life: ‘Walk into the morning, the sunlight of hope – pale at first, but getting stronger through the day, shining once again on a country with the opportunity after 14 years to get its future back.’

He was certainly beaming. And with good reason. He’s just won a huge majority. At time of writing, his Labour Party has won 412 seats. With only a few left to call, Labour’s tally is just shy of Blair’s 1997 New Labour landslide of 418. The last time Labour won an election was almost 20 years ago, in 2005. And Starmer has pulled this off not even five years after the combination of Labour’s Brexit betrayal and the toxic leadership of Jeremy Corbyn delivered Labour’s worst defeat since 1935 – an 80-seat majority for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, and one assembled from the bricks of Labour’s former Red Wall heartlands. Last night, the Conservatives showed Labour how the humiliating, record-breaking defeats are really done, just about scraping 120 seats. This is their worst result… ever.

 

Still, ‘new dawns’ aside, Starmer’s victory appears to be the embodiment of one of the oldest saws in politics: that oppositions don’t win elections, government’s lose them. His ultra-cautious, policy-lite, stage-managed campaign certainly suggested this was his main strategy – to ride disaffection with the Tories all the way into No10. It has clearly worked a treat. But I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a victory as large and yet as hollow as this. Current projections suggest Starmer has secured this ‘historic’ majority on the basis of just 35 per cent of the vote, that’s five points lower than Jeremy Corbyn achieved in 2017 and only three points higher than in the disaster of 2019. As the BBC’s polling supremo, John Curtice, points out, this is ‘slightly below that secured by Tony Blair in 2005 and will be the lowest share of the vote won by any single party majority government’. Plus, the turnout, according to the BBC, appears to be around 60 per cent – the second-lowest level since 1885. Only the turnout in 2001 was lower than this, at 59 per cent.

Starmer’s ‘historic’ parliamentary majority, then, is based on a historically low turnout and a historically low vote share for a victorious party of government. This Labour victory seems to have everything – except voters. Labour’s modest, roughly two-point rise in vote share is almost entirely down to its stunning surge in Scotland – where Scots are returning to Labour, their traditional political home, following the total collapse of the once hegemonic, but increasingly scandal-hit and deranged, SNP. In Wales, Labour’s vote share has fallen by four points. In England, it has not budged at all. So, the Labour Party has more or less stood still, while the Tory vote has collapsed, thanks to an insurgent Reform UK to its right. Nigel Farage’s new populist outfit has secured four seats – including his new home of Clacton – on a whopping 14.3 per cent of the vote. The party also came second in almost 100 seats. This is an astonishing achievement for a new, underpowered party that was barely on the field when this election campaign began.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/05/starmers-hollow-victory/

 

READ FROM TOP.

Why we must have proportional representation
Labour’s phoney landslide has made a mockery of the principle of ‘one person, one vote’.

 

After such a dispiriting and lacklustre General Election campaign, fought between two empty suits, it can be easy to lose sight of the radicalism of democracy. Indeed, the idea that all citizens must have the equal right to determine the affairs of the nation, that everyone’s views and interests should be taken into account, is downright revolutionary. After all, the vote of the plumber and the professor, builder and banker, trainee and TikTok influencer all have the same weight. Or, at least, they should, in a properly democratic system.

If you had any doubts that the UK’s first-past-the-post system for electing our MPs is dysfunctional, those ought to have been shattered by last week’s election results. This was Britain’s least-representative General Election of the modern democratic era.

 

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/11/why-we-must-have-proportional-representation/

 

READ FROM TOP......

 

NGOs Urge UK Labour Government to End 'Complicity in Israeli Crimes' in Gaza

"We are asking this government for leadership and to take a just decision, for the sake of Palestinians in Gaza who are living through 'hell on Earth,'" said six rights groups.

 

BY Julia Conley/COMMON DREAMS

 

A week after the British Labour Party won control of the United Kingdom's government, six rights organizations called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to bring the country "back from the brink" and restore its "credibility on the international stage" by ending its military support for Israel. 

"The Labour Party now has the chance to start restoring some credibility by ensuring the U.K. abides by international law, thereby extricating the U.K. from the indelible stain of complicity in Israeli crimes that deeply shock the conscience of humanity," wrote the British Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and Al-Haq, based in Palestine.

The groups wrote the letter with the support of the International Center of Justice for Palestinians, War on Want, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Addressing Starmer along with newly appointed Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds, the groups reminded the prime minister that following his election, he promised Britons that the "sunlight of hope was shining once again" after 14 years of Conservative rule, and called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to say there is a "clear and urgent need for a cease-fire."

"Calls for a cease-fire are evidently not enough, in particular when the U.K. is arming one party to the conflict," wrote the groups, pointing out that earlier this week Palestinians in northern Gaza reported that recent bombing there has "matched October 2023 in its intensity—with levels of destruction not witnessed since World War II, nearly all civilian infrastructure is completely destroyed."

"We are asking this government for leadership and to take a just decision, for the sake of Palestinians in Gaza who are living through 'hell on Earth,'" they wrote. "The world should have put an end to their unimaginable suffering a long time ago. Labour must suspend, revoke, and refuse all arms licenses for Israel now."

The U.K. licensed about £859,381 ($1.09 million) of weapons to Israel in the last three months of 2023, as the Israel Defense Forces relentlessly attacked Gaza and blocked nearly all humanitarian aid, leading to what 10 independent United Nations experts this week said is now famine across the enclave.

"The new Labour government's calls for a cease-fire are meaningless while it continues to arm Israel. British weapons have killed too many Palestinians," said GLAN lawyer Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe. "This government knows that the only lawful and moral decision is to stop arming Israel. Britons have voted for change: This government must deliver that change."

On social media, GLAN amplified a video posted by Starmer on Sunday in which he pledged to "restore politics as a force for good."

"We are calling on Keir Starmer to put these words into action," said the legal group.

 

https://www.commondreams.org/news/labour-uk-leader

 

READ FROM TOP.

BY Declan Hayes

 

Israel wins the French and British general elections

 

Britain, as the Jerusalem Post helpfully explains, will have a pro-Zionist government for the foreseeable future and France will be in electoral chaos at least until its 2027 Presidential election.

Sir Keir Starmer’s thumping majority is due to the momentum Britain’s powerful Zionist lobby, working primarily through Tony Blair’s tried and trusted power brokers, put into Starmer’s sails. Though their most obvious contribution was, as the Jewish Chronicle helpfully explains, banishing Jeremy Corbyn, and all other Labourites with a granule of common decency, to the political wilderness, New Labour’s victory was, on the surface at least and, despite the Jewish Chronice’s scare warnings about the dangers of “sanitised Islamism”, more thorough than that.

As things currently stand, unless one is a morally bankrupt supporter of Israel, of Zelensky’s rump Reich and of NATO’s perpetual war mongering, one has no place in Labour, or in government or in policy making. That is an obvious win for Rupert Murdoch, for the Jewish Chronicle and for their wide circles of friends in high places that the Labour Friends of Israel and similar fifth columnist pressure groups coordinate.

Although Corbyn and a few like minded souls did manage to retain their seats, and although a handful of Muslims, standing on pro Palestinian platforms, won, they are of no consequence as the Labour Friends of Israel ensure they have no means of gaining greater traction. Though they will get their couple of minutes a month to ask soft ball Parliamentary questions, that will be the limit of their reach; Britain’s powerful pro-Israeli lobby will see to that.

And so will Nigel Farage’s Reform lot, who owe their existence to the threat such paper tigers present. The media friendly and media savvy Farage, with his prop of a half a pint of British beer in hand, will rail, in his ever so polite way, against the threat to British values (whatever they are) those who oppose genocide in Gaza present, and Murdoch’s pro Israeli media will do the rest.

As for all of those marching for Palestine, they are like an anarchistic army of headless ants, not like a colony of ants, all working towards a common goal. The British intelligence services, with their plants in the Trotskyist and allied groups, will see they never share a common, viable goal, and that they remain just a bunch of well-meaning losers, forever marching around in circles and forever being denounced and dismissed as anti-Semitic bigots for their efforts.

It is to combat such alleged anti Semitism that Blair’s pro Israelis rule the Labour Party and undermine whatever remains of British sovereignty. Forget the genocides in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq that these same Labourites are directly implicated in. They will, their cover story goes, protect everyone in Blighty from another Holocaust.

Although Hitler never made it to Pommy Land, it is worth commenting on his armies’ body bag count in France, which also recently had a farcical election. According to the French Defence Historical Service, 85,310 French military personnel were killed; 12,000 were reported missing, 120,000 were wounded and an incredible 1,540,000 were taken prisoner, with some 940,000 being held in Germany until 1945. They are huge numbers and a testimony to the unfathomable suffering France experienced during those years.

Although the Nazis murdered around 73,500 French Jews, more than 75% of the approximately 330,000 Jews in metropolitan France in 1939 survived the War; this is not only one of the highest survival rates in Europe, but should be juxtaposed with the much larger total of 567,000 military and civilian deathsFrance suffered during the War.

Not only that, but we should also remember that large swathes of the French population collaborated with the Germans, with the Vichy regime, of all groups, executing over 2,000 of their fellow French citizens for collaborating with Hitler. Pál Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa, the father of French President Sarkozy, was an active collaborator, as was President Francois Mitterand, neither of whom suffered the indignities French teenagers did for kissing a dashing Wehrmacht conscript soldier from the banks of the river Rhine.

The relevance of this is to say that when the French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, whose Jewish father survived Auschwitz, described the Rassemblement National, which was then led by Marine Le Pen’s father, as the ideological “heir of Pétain,” she was, as even Macron admitted, largely talking through her derrière, as the skeletons uncovered during and since the trial of Marshal Pétain clearly showed. Not only did the French invent the misleading concepts of left and right during their bourgeois 1789 Revolution but their leaders have been muddying the lines between them and scrambling the brains of French citizens ever since. As regards French collaboration and French complicity with the fate of the Jews and other minority groups, because there is far too much blame there to go around, the French wisely kept quiet about it for decades after 1945.

If France is ever to make headway, she must ditch those obsolete political clothes pegs and find herself even the most primitive of moral compasses. Such a compass is not to be found in the hands of Macron, of Borne or of their Trotskyist fellow partners in crime, who have no concept of the meaning of work, of toil or of wealth accumulation. Although the weaknesses of Le Pen’s hand are obvious, so also are those of the rag tag of opportunists and self-servers who oppose her.

France is in the same sort of political chaos she was in before Germany’s 1940 invasion and cheap hucksters like Borne and opportunists like Macron will not save her, no matter how many knock off 1930s’ style popular fronts they concoct to save what remains of their own political skins.

Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) is a popular front in its own right, as it has largely supplanted the French Communist Party amongst the French working class and allied rural groups. As things currently stand, the RN has a solid and united bloc of 143 MPs, whereas the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) and Macron’s Ensemble, though they respectively have 182 and 168 seats, cannot agree on anything, except that RN must be deprived of power. This is the chaos of 1940 all over again, the difference being that the Wehrmacht has been replaced by the no less loathsome von der Leyden and that Estonian Kallas cuckoo.

On top of all that, France not only stands divided but paralysed and, as with the United States and Britain, France’s pro-Israeli lobby is happy with the result. Although the CRIF, France’s main Zionist lobbying group, tends to be more discreet than their more obviously obnoxious American or British equivalents, they are just as effective. Although CRIF and Consistoire, which provides religious services and employs the country’s chief rabbi, have consistently plumped for Macron, they are just as able to hedge their bets, as are their confreres in the Anglophonic world.

Although Jewish far-right politician Éric Zemmour, who commands the support of both the CRIF and Consistoire, is no less loathsome than the worst of Le Pen’s knuckle draggers, most French Jews consider his policies to be kosher. If Zemmour serves any purpose, it is to show that France’s thuggish Israeli lobby are as nakedly hypocritical as are their British and American partners in crime.

But it is not just Zemmour. The Times of Israel here reports on France’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, like a somewhat dim-witted schoolboy, sheepishly telling CRIF’s command staff that the “anti-Semitic Mélenchon and their other new-found left-wing buddies are “encouraging the stark rise in antisemitism” and taking “us back to the dark times when we saw that such actions can lead to a great disaster.”

But it was not anti-Semitism that led to all the collateral damage of France’s 1940 fall, but France’s lack of national unity and national purpose, traits which remain as absent on this 2024 Bastille Day, as they were 84 years earlier, when the swastika and not their own tricolour flew from Paris’ steeples on 14th July.

As the French, along with their old British sparring partners, dust themselves down from these latest elections, they should give consideration to what flag they wish to serve and who best to give their loyalty to. Although those flags should be those of their national countries, and their leaders should be those, who can best promote and defend their interests, the results in both elections have shown that the interests of Biden, von der Leyen, Netanyahu and Zelensky have emerged triumphant and, ipso facto, that the British and French have both lost. And so it will remain until those foreign forces like Labour Friends of Israel, CRIF and all those who fund them, have their wings well and firmly clipped. Unless and until that day arrives, the political landscape of both Paris and London will be every bit as grimy as the swamp POTUS Trump falsely promised to drain by the banks of the Potomac prior to the Yankees’ long-forgotten 2020 election.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/07/12/israel-wins-the-french-and-british-general-elections/

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

Lindsey German considers the bigger picture as our side advances

 

The fascists’ continued attempts to mobilise with their messages of hate against migrants and Muslims were dealt a major blow last Wednesday when huge crowds of counter demonstrators turned out on the streets, stopping a repeat of last weekend’s pogroms in places like Rotherham and Liverpool and making it very clear that a majority of people did not agree with them.

Thousands on the streets in town after town and across parts of London meant the right either did not turn up or were completely and humiliatingly outnumbered everywhere. Right wing papers like the Daily Mail praised those who turned out to demonstrate against them in what was a remarkable level of consensus from bourgeois media, which has done its best to encourage and amplify some of the scapegoating of migrants.

Demonstrations on Saturday also appear to show that the wind has gone out of the far right’s sails at least for this current phase of mobilisation. There were very large mobilisations of anti-fascists while only a few if any miserable specimens of the supposed master race turned up at designated demonstration points.

But we would be very foolish to believe that this is anything other than a temporary setback from which those like Tommy Robinson, fascist groups like Patriotic Alternative and behind them the shadows of Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson and Richard Tice, are at this very moment trying to find ways to recover.

The problem that they have is that most people – including many who might have some racist views on migration – do not like arson attempts on hotels housing migrants, do not like physical attacks on Muslims, and do not want the far right ideology to take hold.

So it is hard for the right to get support when it shows its true colours. However we should not be complacent: far right ideas are growing in many countries because of the failures of neoliberalism, the attacks on working class living standards, the destruction of public services, including public housing. The failed system is increasingly turning towards a form of liberal authoritarianism which is hated by those suffering.

Those politicians and media so aghast at the far right riots have themselves paved the way for this situation by stressing the ‘problem’ of refugees, and by demonising and insulting the Muslim community. So those on the left have to be independent of those forces, stressing that racism and fascism cannot be fought in conjunction with those who have helped to create and support the system on which they feed.

Keir Starmer has swung into authoritarian action demanding more policing and prison sentences, and claiming this is what has succeeded in stopping the fascist actions. He and his ministers do not want to give any credit to the counter protests or to protest in general. Some media outlets compare the peaceful counter protests to the hate marches on left and right – referring to the Palestine marches which have never been anything other than peaceful and aimed at stopping a genocide. In this they represent the best of humanity as opposed to those who terrorise people who have already suffered more than most of us can imagine.

The left must beware of false friends here and chart a path away from those who profess to oppose racism but while at the same time ignoring it when it suits them.

The anti-fascist protests of the past week were composed of a range of different forces including many who had been on the Palestine demos. A number chanted Palestine slogans and waved Palestine flags. They understood that the far right has been campaigning against our demos from the beginning and used the lies about them to boost their Islamophobia. Therefore Palestine is in the mix here when it comes to fighting against racism and fascism and it cannot be ignored.

The Jewish Chronicle is trying to prevent such protestors being on the anti-fascist marches, claiming their flags and chants will drive Jews into the hands of Tommy Robinson. This is offensive and dangerous nonsense. If Jews want to back Robinson – and most of them will not – this is because they have right wing politics and support the apartheid system created by Israel against the Palestinians. Those showing solidarity with Gaza should not be blamed for this.

Worse, the racists and far right gaining traction in much of Europe at the moment also support Netanyahu and his attacks on the Palestinians. The Melonis, Le Pens and Farages all back the Islamophobia which has become such a part of the demonisation of the Palestine movement. So it isn’t rocket science to see how important linking the issues is. Of course there are some people who oppose racism but don’t support Palestine solidarity. But just as we had to win the argument about why opposition to apartheid South Africa was crucial for all anti racists so we have to put that argument again in calling for a vibrant movement from below which links racism, fascism and imperialism.

Of course you don’t have to sign up to anti-imperialism, Palestine solidarity or indeed socialism to be an anti-fascist. But there has to be an element within the anti-racist movement putting those arguments in order to win people to the understanding that capitalism and imperialism are very much part of the problem here.

In a week where Netanyahu has committed another atrocity by massacring people including many children at a school in Gaza, and where he is gearing up for a much bigger war with Lebanon and Iran, it is the very least we can do.

This week: I will be attending the emergency demo against the latest killings in Gaza on Monday night in Whitehall, going to a planning meeting on zoom of Glasgow Stop the War, and watching what is happening in the Middle East with some trepidation.

 

https://www.counterfire.org/article/anti-zionism-is-part-of-anti-racism-weekly-briefing/

 

READ FROM TOP

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.