Interesting Times

Soaring energy prices; fears of a new winter lockdown as the new Omicron Covid variant spreads through Britain and almost daily reports in the mainstream media of the hypocrisy and sleaze that surrounds the Johnson administration. It’s not surprising that the Tory vote crashed at the Old Bexley & Sidcup by-election last week.
    Though the Tories held this true blue bastion in the commuter belt of south-east London the Conservative majority was slashed from almost 19,000 to just 4,478 votes. Reform UK, the successor to Nigel Farage’s old UKIP party bagged 6.6 per cent of the poll and there was even a 7.4 per cent swing to Labour – though some say this was largely due to the fact that Sir Keir Starmer had not shown his face during the campaign.
    Now we’re told of a Christmas party at Downing Street last year, despite gatherings being forbidden under Covid rules at the time and that while Afghan servants of British imperialism were left stranded at Kabul airport when the Taliban took over Boris Johnson personally intervened to ensure that dogs and cats of a British-run animal rescue charity were safely evacuated out of the country.
    All of this is coming from sections of the bourgeois media that, until recently, were praising Johnson to the hilt. And what this shows is while Johnson may well have a plan to deal with another Covid upsurge others clearly have an alternative “Plan B” to push him aside before the next election.
    It’s not just the Tories Remainers – though they’ve clearly got a lot of old scores to settle with Johnson – its the others in the corridors of power who increasingly see Johnson as anh electoral embarrassment as well as a barrier to restoring the “special relationship” with US imperialism.
    Labour should be having a field day over this crisis of confidence within the ranks of the ruling class but all Starmer seems interested is in hounding out what’s left of the Corbynistas inside the Labour Party he claims to lead.
    Anger at his incompetent and useless leadership has now spread throughout the labour movement as a whole. Sharon Graham, the new leader of Unite, has already told Starmer & Co that they can expect no more than the affiliation fees from her union in the future and the demand to cut financial support to Labour is growing in other unions as well.

Grovelling to the White House

In the past crawling to the Americans was almost compulsory for Tory and Labour leaders who would drone on and on about “partnership” and the “special relationship” to justify British imperialism’s slavish support of American power throughout the world. But Johnson has taken it to a new level in a bid to restore his government’s credibility in the White House.
    Last week British envoys joined the Americans in a diplomatic offensive in Kiev to try and push their Nato allies into supporting more sanctions against Russia to prop up the Ukrainian puppet regime. Now they’ve joined hands with the Americans and Israel to support the continued Zionist occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights, which were captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
    The resolution reaffirmed that settlement construction and any other Israeli activities constitute a change in the demographic nature of the occupied Syrian Golan. It called on Israel to resume peace talks and withdraw from the occupied Syrian Golan in accordance with the border lines of 4th June1967.
    At the UN General Assembly members overwhelmingly affirmed Syria’s sovereignty at a session last week in vote carried by 94 with 69 abstentions
    Israel was supported by just seven other states : the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and three tiny Pacific island states – the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau – that are little more than American protectorates.

Trump in Wonderland

Donald Trump, the US president, has signed a declaration recognising Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights seized from Syria during the Arab-Israeli war in 1967. At a joint press conference in Washington with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, the chief American war-lord hailed what he called the “powerful” relationship between the USA and Israel, whilst Netanyahu called the signing “historic justice” and a “diplomatic victory”.

This pointless and meaningless gesture was in fact neither “historic” nor a “victory”. It may garner a few more votes for Netanyahu in the Israeli elections next month but it does nothing to change the status of the Heights, which is the home to 27,000 Syrians.

The United Nations has long ruled that Israel’s unilateral annexation in 1981 was “null and void” and the Arab League says: “The American announcement does not change the legal status of the Golan in any way.” Not one of Trump’s European allies has backed the Americans over the Golan Heights. It was even too much for America’s feudal Arab clients to swallow; Qatar and Kuwait have condemned Trump’s action together with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Donald Trump may have shocked the world by winning the US presidential race in 2016 but what has he achieved since then?

Congressional opposition has thwarted his plans to tear up Medicare, the American national health insurance programme, and blocked funding for ‘Trump’s Wall’ that he vowed to build to keep out illegal immigrants. He did get the promised tax-breaks for the big corporations and the elite through, but only because that was the only thing that unites the two major bourgeois parties in the American legislature.

Trump’s band of followers make no secret of their leader’s lust for glory. He claims to be a great negotiator. He wants a Nobel Peace Prize. But he’s achieved nothing in the international arena.

Like a lot of other vain men, Trump assumes everyone is as stupid as himself. He therefore cannot understand why he came back empty-handed from the last summit with Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Un nor why his crude attempts to replace the Venezuelan leader with a craven puppet of his own have come to nothing.

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and White House senior adviser, has spent the last two years trying to cajole the feudal Arab oil princes into supporting a Middle East “peace plan” that Trump calls the “deal of the century”. Although nothing has been published, leaked details suggest that it will give nothing of any substance to the Palestinians apart from some monetary compensation that the Saudis were expected to provide. Now even that may not be forthcoming.

The US decision to recognise Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights has been condemned by the Speaker of the Russian Duma. “All members of the international community should voice their stand on the matter,” Vyacheslav Volodin said during the meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun in the Kremlin this week. Such a development could lead to a situation where “everyone is fighting each other”, he said. “The rule of force would dominate. This is a highway to war.”

Trump’s stance on the Golan Heights, like his earlier recognition of Israel’s annexation of Arab Jerusalem, is a threat to world peace. It is an illegal, criminal act. Arab land belongs the Arab people. It is not Trump’s to give.