No arms for Israel!

Lord Cameron has come back from Israel empty-handed. The Foreign Minister went there to urge restraint on the Netanyahu government following the Iranian missile and drone attacks that were, themselves, a reprisal for the Zionist bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed eleven military advisors including two of their top generals. Though the RAF, together with the French and American air force, did most of the work in fending off the Iranian drones, Cameron got nothing in return from Netanyahu apart from demands for more Western sanctions against the Islamic Republic and unconditional NATO support for whatever revenge the rabid Zionist leader is seeking.
Though not surprising in itself – the only people Netanyahu needs to heed are the Americans – it might, nevertheless, be a step too far for the Israeli leader because Cameron was clearly speaking for Joe Biden himself when he landed in Tel Aviv this week.
Biden, or rather the shadowy cabal that pull the strings behind him, must have sanctioned the Damascus attack that started this new round of fighting. Despite subsequent White House denials it’s difficult to see why Netanyahu would have opted for such a dangerous escalation without getting the green light from his masters in Washington. Some believe the Israeli leader wants to prolong the war in Gaza to scupper American plans for a new NATO bloc in the region that would include the oil-rich Saudis – and thus considerably reduce the role of the Zionist state in the region. Others that he simply wants the war to continue to remain in office and stave off the corruption charges he will face once his immunity from prosecution is lifted. Maybe he simply miscalculated the response in Tehran and Washington.
The Zionists don’t care what the Iranians think but they are certainly concerned at what is going on in Washington. Biden, who barely knows what day it is, is just a pawn of the “deep state” – that cabal of the most venal and aggressive elements within the American ruling class is clearly divided about what to do next.
We see this openly discussed in their media. Some still believe in backing Israel to the hilt to creat the “Greater Middle East” that would break up the existing Arab states into smaller, sectarian puppet governments whose rulers would depend on American and Israeli guns for protection. Others say this is simply beyond the reach of imperialism these days and that the only way forward is to cut a deal with the feudal Arab oil princes to buy off opposition on the Arab street and impose a sophisticated surrender peace that would give the semblance of a two-state solution while reinforcing American hegemony over the entire region.
The alternative is an escalating conflict that has already drastically reduced Western traffic through the Suez Canal amid fears of another all-out Middle East war that could disrupt or even cut the oil supplies from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf that the Western world depends on.
British workers have no say in what goes on in the United States but they do have a voice in the unions and on the street. Tell the Labour and union leaders that claim to represent us that British arms to Israel must be halted. We want an end to the war in Gaza and want justice for the Palestinian Arabs. And we want it now!

All smoke and mirrors

Quite why the Foreign Office has chosen to leak details of secret talks with the Russians at this time remains a mystery to the bourgeois media that unquestioningly published the story earlier in the week.
These sort of clandestine talks were, of course, the norm during the Cold War.  Hot lines and secret diplomatic exchanges via go-betweens in neutral countries remained open during the height of the imperialist confrontation with the Soviet Union. Vital links for spy deals, prisoner swaps and back-door channels to avoid misunderstandings that could rapidly escalate into a nuclear war that neither side could win. But if we are to believe the Foreign Office the only matters raised with the Russians at a number of covert meetings around the world were on routine issues of grain supplies and nuclear safety. These are issues that could usually be dealt with at ambassador level. They certainly would not normally justify covert liaisons in all sorts of places like New York and Vienna.
The Foreign Office is at pains to stress that at no point has the UK sought to enter peace talks around finding a diplomatic end to the conflict. If so what was the point of all these cloak-and-dagger meetings?
We can only guess at what was on the agenda but one thing’s for sure, and that is that the British envoys were acting as errand boys for the Americans. Though the Americans have been quite open about their own talks with the Russians they like to use trusted allies, like Britain and Japan, to raise issues without compromising their own position  in advance of any future direct negotiations.
Though Boris Johnson liked to pose as the man who persuaded  the Ukrainians to go for total war and break off peace negotiations with the Russians last year everybody knows that Johnson was only doing the bidding of Joe Biden and the American war-lobby which has used the conflict to tighten their grip over all their European allies.
Ukraine is essentially a protectorate of US imperialism. A vassal state that fights with NATO’s guns and lives on imperialist aid only keeps up the fight because the war is still in the American interest. 
No-one, beyond the chosen few in America’s ruling circles, knows what Biden’s war aims are but he’s clearly has got most of what he wanted when the war US imperialism provoked broke out in February 2022. NATO has taken over the once neutral states of Scandinavia. Russian gas and oil exports to Europe have been cut and US imperialism is now supreme in the UK and the European Union. It has come at a price that has largely been paid in blood by the hapless Ukrainians. But it has also cost the American tax-payers plenty in billions of dollars-worth of military supplies that can never be repaid. Now that bill is coming under scrutiny in the run-up to the next US presidential election.
Donald Trump is on the come-back trail claiming he could stop the Ukraine war in a day by talking directly to Putin. On the other hand the Democrats, still unsure on whether Biden is capable of fighting the next election, want to concentrate on their domestic reform platform which they believe will secure them a second term in office. They need a cease-fire to stop this becoming a campaign issue. But only time will tell whether the Biden administration is now ready to seriously talk about ending the war.