No “peace on Earth” in 2015

Anyone who has observed the world in 2015 must expect that 2016 will be a year of unprecedented violence and social misery. But the same processes driving the world to the brink of world war are those that must give rise to social struggle by the working class.

Unlike the professional liars and opinion-makers of the financial elite and its political representatives, the working masses of humanity take the ideals of universal peace and brotherhood seriously. They genuinely hope and strive for a better world, and will fight for it. In the coming period, millions will conclude that an independent political struggle by the working class, armed with a socialist perspective of overthrowing capitalism and reorganizing society on an internationalist basis, is the only means to achieve “peace on earth.”

By Andre Damon of WSWS

This holiday season, people all over the world will celebrate Christmas by expressing sentiments of tolerance and brotherhood. They will exchange gifts and cards, and try to smile a little more, in the distant hope that their individual benevolence might somehow extricate the world, at least somewhat, from the mire it is lodged in.

These genuine sentiments are, of course, goaded on by a good deal of official promotion. Anyone visiting a shopping mall or airport in much of the world over the holiday period will hear Christmas carols piped through loudspeakers extolling “peace on Earth, goodwill to men,” and exhorting them to have a “Merry Christmas.”

The holiday season is always a time where hypocrisy is pressed into service by the political establishment, a “Christmas spirit” created from the collision between religion and frantic merchandising. But there have been few holiday seasons so unhappy for so many people, and in which the spirit of tolerance and benevolence supposedly epitomized in the “Christmas spirit” clashes so obviously with reality.

Not since the end of the Second World War seventy years ago has the absence of “peace on Earth” been so stark, or “goodwill to men” so absent. Numerous public figures, from the Pope to the Prince of Jordan to The New York Times opinion page, have declared that the Third World War has already begun.

American warplanes and drones swarm the Middle East and North Africa, bombing, killing and maiming indiscriminately and driving millions from their homes. President Obama, according to press reports, will spend his holiday mulling over plans to further expand bombing in populated areas in Syria, which will radically expand civilian casualties.

Every major combatant in the first two world wars is again on the warpath. Germany and Japan, are feverishly remilitarizing to assert their influence on the European continent and in East Asia, respectively.

The millions of human beings displaced by war and poverty are greeted by states everywhere with barbed wire and guns. At least five million people were forced to flee from their homes this year, with one million seeking refuge in Europe, as a result of the wars in the Middle East stoked up by the Western powers.

These same powers, the self-styled bastions of tolerance and human rights, have responded to the flood of people desperately in need of aid by closing off their external borders and forcing hundreds of thousands to make their way over the Aegean Sea. Over 3,000 people have died this year seeking to cross into Europe by this route, while over 1,000 of these are children.

For an enormous section of mankind, this Christmas will not be “merry.” In fact, it is hard to imagine any Christmas in recent decades that will be so miserable for so many people.

For millions in the United States and around the world, it will be another year that they are denied by poverty the happiness of being able to afford holiday presents for their friends and loved ones.

Nowhere is this more true than in the centre of world finance, the United States, where one in five US live in food-insecure households and millions of people will struggle to scrape together enough money for a holiday meal. For all the promotion of philanthropic “charity” by the media, one can scarcely imagine a more un-charitable society than contemporary America, dominated by a Dickensian level of cruelty to the poor.

In a suitable symbol of “Christmas in America,” a cafeteria worker in an Idaho middle school was fired last week for “theft” after she gave a hungry child a free meal. “My heart hurts,” she told a local news station. “I truly loved my job, and I can’t say that I wouldn’t do it again.”

All over the world, governments and the media are seeking to counter the sentiments of compassion by whipping up nationalism, xenophobia, communal hatred and paranoia. In the US, the leading Republican presidential candidate is an open bigot, declaring that Mexicans are rapists and calling for banning Muslims from entering the country. Donald Trump’s demagogy was expressed in action when a British Muslim family was prevented this month from boarding a plane to Disney World by the State Department, without any explanation.

In Germany, Angela Merkel, the supposed promoter of the “welcoming culture,” declares that “multiculturalism is a sham.” In France, the ruling Socialist Party, seeking to enshrine a permanent state of emergency into the constitution, is bent on obtaining the power to strip dual citizens of their nationality, a measure last used in France during the mass deportation of Jews under the Vichy Regime during the holocaust.

Anyone who has observed the world in 2015 must expect that 2016 will be a year of unprecedented violence and social misery. But the same processes driving the world to the brink of world war are those that must give rise to social struggle by the working class.

Unlike the professional liars and opinion-makers of the financial elite and its political representatives, the working masses of humanity take the ideals of universal peace and brotherhood seriously. They genuinely hope and strive for a better world, and will fight for it. In the coming period, millions will conclude that an independent political struggle by the working class, armed with a socialist perspective of overthrowing capitalism and reorganizing society on an internationalist basis, is the only means to achieve “peace on earth.”

Read More Here

Senior UK Labourites Darling and Brown join the gravy train

By Margot Miller of WSWS

Former Labour Party chancellor of the exchequer Alistair Darling is to join the board of directors of Morgan Stanley, following closely on the heels of ex- prime minister Gordon Brown, who is to act as an advisor to the global investment firm Pimco.

Brown led the Labour government from 2007 until its general election defeat in 2010, after being chancellor in Tony Blair’s government for 10 years.

Darling, who served in Brown’s cabinet as chancellor, has also been awarded a peerage and will sit in the House of Lords. He was one of only three people to serve in Labour cabinet continuously from 1997 until 2010.

The American multinational bank Morgan Stanley, which operates in 42 countries, is known for rewarding its board members handsomely. Last year, the 11 non-employees on the board of directors were paid between $85,000 and $115,000 as well as another $250,000 in stocks.

Darling will be cashing in at the same time that many of Morgan Stanley’s workers are being laid off, with an additional 1,200 job cuts recently announced. In the second consecutive quarter of this year, the firm’s profits fell amid uncertainty about a possible rise in US interest rates and concerns about China’s slowdown, driving investors out of bond, currency and commodity markets.

James Gorman, chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley, welcomed Darling’s appointment, saying, “He brings strong leadership experience, as well as insight into both the global economy and the global financial system.”

He added, “As chancellor of the exchequer he played a central role in responding to the [2008] financial crisis,” and the bank, would “greatly benefit from his experience.”

Gorman has reason to laud Darling.

In October 2008, as the global capitalist economy was teetering on the abyss in the greatest financial collapse since 1929, he organised a massive bail-out operation to save the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds Bank and HBOS from bankruptcy. The Bank of England provided £45 billion in loans to RBS, and the government agreed to underwrite its debts should it default.

Having bailed out the banks at a cost of more than £1 trillion and effectively nationalised their debts, the Labour government began implementing a massive looting operation against the working class to pay for this crisis.

RBS was later exonerated of any wrongdoing by a parliamentary investigation in 2009. In August of this year, the government sold off the first stake of RBS shares at a £1 billion loss to the taxpayer. The beneficiaries were mainly hedge fund owners who bought the shares at 330p, compared to the 502p paid by the government in 2008.

Brown will join a team of five “well known experts in economic and political issues” at Pimco, including former US Federal Reserve Bank chairman Ben Bernanke and Jean-Claude Trichet, former president of the European Central Bank.

According to Brown, all the remuneration he receives from Pimco will be transferred to the charitable foundation run by his wife, Sarah Brown.

The US-based Pimco, one of the world’s largest asset managers, was sold to German asset manager Allianz in 2000 and administers $1.4 trillion of assets for its clients.

In joining the world of high finance, Darling and Brown are emulating the unindicted war criminal Tony Blair, now estimated to be worth more than £125 million.

In 2003, he took Britain to war against Iraq on the basis of a “dodgy dossier” warning of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. After the war, JP Morgan was chosen to run the new trade bank of Iraq, anticipating millions from the trade in oil.

In 2008, shortly after leaving office, Blair became senior advisor for US investment bank JP Morgan, for which he was paid $2 million a year.

Numerous Labourites have also profited from the ongoing privatisation of the National Health Service (NHS). In 2012, when the Conservatives’ Health and Social Care Bill was being debated, 200 MPs, including Labour members, held financial interests in private health care. This bill obligated the trusts that ran the NHS to tender out services to private companies.

McKinsey & Co, which drew up many of the proposals in the bill, paid South Shields Labour MP David Miliband £10,000 for a speech he gave at a Global Leaders Summit in Singapore. They also paid his travel and accommodation expenses, a further £10,044.

Alan Milburn, Labour health secretary from 1999 to 2003, was a consultant for the parent company of Alliance Medical, Alliance Healthcare. In 2008, he was paid around £30,000 as a member of Lloyd’s Pharmacy’s Healthcare Advisory Panel. Also in 2008, Milburn was a member of the European Advisory Board of Bridgepoint Capital Ltd, a private equity firm that acquired Care UK.

Labour’s Lord Peter Mandelson, a key adviser to Blair, was registered as late as May 2012 as a senior advisor to an international advisory investment bank, Lazard Ltd, which holds corporate interests in private health care.

Mandelson epitomised Labour’s programme with his open adulation of the acquisition of wealth by the few at the expense of the majority. “I am intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich,” he declared.

In an interview with the Guardian in 2008, Darling, while refusing to be described as a “socialist”, echoed Mandelson, saying, “I’m not offended with someone earning large amounts of money.” After all, “It’s a fact of life.”

Radicalised as a student in the 1960s and early 1970s, Darling’s move to the right is part of a general shift of upper middle class layers among the pseudo-left, in academia and local government who benefited during the Thatcher years.

Darling was formerly a member of the International Marxist Group in his youth, then the British section of the Pabloite United Secretariat of the Fourth International.

The seamless journey of Labour’s senior figures into the corridors of the financial elite underscores its character as a party of big business. The election of longstanding “left” backbencher Jeremy Corbyn as leader did not change this one iota, despite the claims of various pseudo-left groups.

The appointments of Darling and Brown are payment for services rendered, and a recognition by the financial elite that as the crisis of capitalism escalates, they can rely on tried and trusted representatives in the Labour Party.

Read More Here

Lying Media Gets It Wrong Yet Again. Labour Could Have Polled Even More Votes In Oldham Were It Not For Bombardier Benn Of Cad's Army

Britain’s odious media serves as both an echo chamber and propaganda mouthpiece for a despised ruling elite. And neither the media nor their paymasters has any basis of popular support in society or any real understanding of how out of touch and hated they are.

In Oldham, this attempt to manufacture public opinion came into headlong collision with actual public opinion.

The by-election proved that there is a clear shift to the left in the thinking of workers and young people who are angered by the destruction of their livelihoods and deeply concerned at the growing war danger in the Middle East and internationally. Far from Corbyn being the pariah they would like him to be, it is the Tories and the Blairite wing of the Labour Party who are hated and despised for the political crimes they have committed.

Labour’s Oldham by-election victory and Corbyn’s refusal to fight the right-wing

By Robert Stevens of WSWS

Thursday’s Oldham West and Royton by-election in the northwest of England saw Labour’s candidate Jim McMahon win 62.2 percent of the vote, up from 54.8 percent in May. The UK Independence Party trailed in second place on 23.3 percent.

Labour won the election by a majority of more than 10,000 votes, increasing its share of the vote by 7 percent from May’s general election. The ruling right-wing Conservatives saw their share of the vote halved to 9.3 percent, while their 2010-2015 governing partners, the Liberal Democrats, lost their deposit receiving just 1,024 votes.

For weeks, Britain’s media proclaimed that the by-election in the northwest of England would be the acid test of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.

Oldham was the first important national election contest since he won the leadership of the party in September in a landslide victory, after campaigning on an antiwar and anti-austerity ticket. With the overwhelming support of hundreds of thousands of Labour members and supporters, he trounced his three Blairite challengers.

The media declared that this was all the result of a semi-putsch by the “Corbynistas”—an unrepresentative group of left activists. Oldham would be the first occasion where the “real general public”, “traditional Labour voters” or, alternatively and in explicitly racial and racist language, “the white working class” could register its hostility and rejection of Corbyn’s “Trot”, “lefty” dreams—proving once-and-for all that Labour is unelectable under his leadership and must be replaced.

Making this result more important still for the ruling class, the vote in Oldham was held just one day after the vote in Parliament for British military air strikes in Syria. Corbyn and anyone else who opposed air strikes were denounced by Prime Minister David Cameron as “terrorist sympathisers”.

Now the voters of Oldham would be able to echo the disgust felt by Cameron and prove that Labour must turn once again to the “sensible” right-wing pro-war cabal of 66 MPs who voted with the Tories, possibly replacing Corbyn with Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn.

Both the Tories and the anti-immigrant, anti-European UKIP fought their campaign on the basis that Corbyn’s policy of opposing war in Syria meant he was a threat to “national security.” UKIP went as far as to release a “wanted man” window poster with a photo of Corbyn and the words “SECURITY RISK” emblazoned on it in capital letters.

On the morning of the election, the Daily Mail was counting down the hours to what it had described as Corbyn’s “Waterloo” moment. “Tonight will deliver the first proper electoral verdict on Mr. Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, it wrote, adding, “It is also a timely reassessment of [UKIP leader] Nigel Farage’s aspirations to make UKIP a credible alternative to Labour in the urban North of England.” There was “no doubt” that Labour’s majority “will be slashed”, it confidently trumpeted.

As the polls closed, the Sun described Corbyn’s supporters in the Labour Party as a “moronic Marxist mob” who had denounced Benn as a “warmonger instead of feting him as a hero.” Voters “are repulsed” by such attacks on Benn, it added. “By the time you read this, we will know what those in Oldham think of it.”

The liberal Guardian waded in, commenting that Labour’s candidate “McMahon had to contend with Corbyn’s unpopularity among many voters, particularly the white working class targeted by UKIP.”

Dan Hodges, a Blairite who writes in the Conservative Daily Telegraph, cited a “northern MP” who said, “The white working class vote is haemorrhaging. And it’s haemorrhaging in our heartlands.”

Sophy Ridge, the “Senior Political Correspondent” for Sky TV, said Wednesday that she had met UKIP leader “Nigel Farage pounding the aisles at Tommyfield Market, in the centre of Oldham's shopping district.” Ridge predicted, “If the outspoken shoppers and store holders at the market are anything to go by, UKIP should win this seat.”

What then could possibly go wrong?

Britain’s odious media serves as both an echo chamber and propaganda mouthpiece for a despised ruling elite. And neither the media nor their paymasters has any basis of popular support in society or any real understanding of how out of touch and hated they are.

In Oldham, this attempt to manufacture public opinion came into headlong collision with actual public opinion.

The by-election proved that there is a clear shift to the left in the thinking of workers and young people who are angered by the destruction of their livelihoods and deeply concerned at the growing war danger in the Middle East and internationally. Far from Corbyn being the pariah they would like him to be, it is the Tories and the Blairite wing of the Labour Party who are hated and despised for the political crimes they have committed.

For this very reason, the Oldham by-election result is an indictment of Corbyn for his refusal to wage a political struggle to expel his right-wing opponents from the Labour Party.

Corbyn is betraying the very antiwar sentiment and hostility to the ruling elite that his election as party leader reflected. Since the moment he became leader he has done nothing but retreat in the face of his opponents. The nadir of this was in Wednesday’s vote on war in which he gave the Labour right a “free vote”—meaning they would not be censured or disciplined in any way for supporting war. This resulted in 66 Labour MPs backing military action, granting the Tories the significant majority they politically required to start bombing Syria.

This again allowed the right-wing Labourite cabal to go on the offensive, claiming they were being “abused” with threats of deselection as MPs, by, in Cameron’s words , “terrorist sympathisers ” supportive of Corbyn. The right-wing press was mobilised once again, with the Daily Express describing those attempting to deselect Labour MPs as “hard-line socialists” and “ anti-airstrikes bullies ” .

Prior to the vote on war, Corbyn commissioned a vote of Labour Party members showing that 75 percent were opposed to British military action in Syria. The vote in Oldham proves that if Corbyn had backed the demand to kick the right wing out of the party, he would have won mass support not only in Labour’s ranks, but throughout the country.

Prior to allowing nearly 30 percent of Labour’s MPs to vote for war, Corbyn said those that did would have to face “consequences”. In reality, the immediate response of Corbyn and his closest supporters to calls for deselecting the party’s hated warmongers has been to oppose any action against the right wing.

In a letter to party members from Corbyn and Labour Deputy Leader Tom Watson, one of the 66 MPs who voted for military action, they described calls to remove pro-war MPs as “abuse and intimidation” that “have no place in politics. And the party as a whole will not accept such behaviour, from whatever quarter it comes.”

On Thursday, Corbyn’s supporters in the Momentum group dutifully pledged, “Momentum is not a threat to MPs who voted for bombing. We have made clear that we will not campaign for the deselection of any MP and will not permit any local Momentum groups to do so.”

Read More Here

Anonymous: - ISIS - What You're Not Being Told.

ISIS Don't Like It Up 'em

UK parliament sanctions Syria bombing as Labour right votes with government

It is not the Paris terror attacks, but Russian military intervention in Syria that has spurred a significant section of the British bourgeoisie to force a parliamentary vote despite significant misgivings. By joining military action, the UK government aims to solidarise itself with the US war drive against Russia. In doing so, it is dragging working people in Britain into the vortex of a potential Third World War involving nuclear powers.

By Julie Hyland of WSWS

The UK parliament voted in favour of bombing Syria late Wednesday night. The support provided by 66 Labour MPs, the Democratic Unionists and the Liberal Democrats meant that the government motion was carried by 397 to 223, a majority of 174.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn cleared the path for war when he capitulated to his right wing and agreed to a “free vote” on military action. This ensured that it was Labour that handed Prime Minister David Cameron the majority he sought, reversing the defeat he suffered two years before.

So complete has been Corbyn’s surrender to the pro-war lobby that a cross-party amendment opposing military action was tabled by the Scottish National Party, as Labour declared it had no official position on bombing. This was defeated by 390 votes to 211, a majority of 179.

The pro-war motion tabled by Cameron was modelled on that passed by the Labour Party conference in September. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote at the time, Labour’s motion gave “carte blanche for the military carve-up of Syria.”

Just weeks after winning the Labour leadership on an anti-austerity, anti-war platform, Corbyn agreed at the party conference to abandon any discussion on Britain’s Trident nuclear programme in the face of trade union opposition to its scrapping. A debate on whether to support the bombing of Syria was allotted just 20 minutes, followed by a non-binding motion opposing UK bombing missions unless backed by the United Nations.

Now, under the pretext of the November 13 terror attacks in Paris, the imperialist powers, with UN support, are deepening their neo-colonial war campaign in the Middle East.

In August 2013, Cameron unsuccessfully sought parliament’s backing for military action aimed at deposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The motion carried yesterday makes no mention of this goal. It claims instead that the target of British air strikes is Islamic State (ISIS), and that the bombing is in support of the so-called Vienna “peace process” involving the United States and Russia.

It is not the Paris terror attacks, but Russian military intervention in Syria that has spurred a significant section of the British bourgeoisie to force a parliamentary vote despite significant misgivings. By joining military action, the UK government aims to solidarise itself with the US war drive against Russia. In doing so, it is dragging working people in Britain into the vortex of a potential Third World War involving nuclear powers.

The parliamentary debate was a carnival of reaction. Even before it began, Cameron described those opposing the bombing of Syria as “terrorist sympathisers.” He made this smear in remarks to a meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, in which he urged them to vote with the government rather than walk “through the [voting] lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers.”

The Tory leader has repeatedly described Corbyn as a threat to national security and an apologist for terrorism. In the face of this abuse, Corbyn lamely referred to Cameron’s “unfortunate remark” and declared his hope that the prime minister would apologise so as to “improve the atmosphere of this debate.”

Cameron had no intention of doing any such thing and flatly rejected a retraction. In this, as in everything, he was supported by the Labour right wing. After Corbyn’s snivelling appeal to the prime minister to do the right thing, Labour MP John Mann rose to attack Corbyn and demanded that he withdraw his criticisms of those in his party who were voting with the government.

Before the debate, Corbyn had made a play of opposing the Labour right, warning there would be “no hiding place” after the vote for those who supported military action. The reality is that the war-mongers have a place. It is the Labour Party. And they have no need to hide since Corbyn has effectively thrown a cordon sanitaire around them.

In a survey of the party membership, 75 percent registered their opposition to the bombing of Syria. But this is of no consequence to Corbyn, who has repeatedly assured the right wing that they will not face disciplinary action or the possibility of deselection.

In his opening statement, Corbyn could only parrot the claim that IS represented an existential threat to the UK, while complaining that Cameron had failed to make the case for air strikes and had failed to achieve a “consensus” in parliament.

He glorified the Vienna “peace” talks, avoiding any reference to Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet, while holding out the fiction of a “negotiated political and diplomatic endeavour” that would bring peace to Syria.

While warning of the danger of “mission creep” and the “real possibility” that Western boots could be on the ground in the future, he made no mention of the US decision, only the day earlier, to deploy Special Forces in Syria.

In an unprecedented move, Corbyn had agreed to allow Hilary Benn, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary and a leading advocate of military intervention, to close the parliamentary debate for the party.

Benn is openly being touted as a potential replacement for Corbyn in a future palace coup. He used his closing statement to make a pitch for that role, farcically claiming that in bombing Syria, the UK was carrying out a struggle against a “fascist” threat akin to Franco in Spain and Hitler in Germany.

While evoking party “unity” in his remarks, Benn had been tweeting against the Labour leader during the debate. When a spokesperson for the party leader sent a message that air strikes could increase the terror threat against Britain, Benn fired off a riposte rejecting the claim.

Having been given free rein by Corbyn, various Labour right-wingers were first up in the debate to pledge their fealty to the government and war. One after another, leading Blairites, who already have blood on their hands from the Iraq war, spoke in favour of military action.

Yvette Cooper, who came in third in the leadership contest, announced that she would vote with the government despite the fact that the prime minister had not “made the most effective case.” Declaring that he too would back the government, Alan Johnson said it was a “difficult” decision to make and went on to attack “the self-righteous certitude” of those opposed to war.

Other Labour MPs, such as John Woodcock, used the debate to complain of the “bullying tactics” they faced from constituents threatening to deselect them over their vote for war. He denounced a “sort of angry, intolerant pacifism” as he prepared to authorise the dropping of tonnes of bombs on Syria.

In a simultaneous debate taking place in the House of Lords on UK military intervention, Labour peer Jeffrey Rooker called on Labour to “get rid” of Corbyn. Stating that members of the Tory cabinet would make better prime ministers than his own party leader, Rooker identified ISIS’s “innate intolerance” for the “British way of life” with the “anti-British Trots in the Labour Party” who were “using our tolerance to try and get control” of the party.

Corbyn responded to the complaints from the right by posting a Facebook message during the debate opposing “bullying” and calling for “all of us in the Labour Party” to focus on building the party “in a comradely fashion.”

The bourgeoisie is acutely conscious of growing social and political tensions. Even the Times newspaper, which backed bombing, led its front page with polls showing that more than half the population is opposed to military action in Syria—despite the torrent of pro-war propaganda.

The assembled parliamentarians are well aware that their debate is a fraud, based on a tissue of lies. Only the day before, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee voted four to three in favour of a motion that Cameron “had not adequately addressed concerns” about military action. All the more reason that, notwithstanding Corbyn’s pleas and retreats, the bourgeoisie is determined to do all it can to silence opposition to war.

Read More Here

Looks Like I'm A Terrorist Sympathiser

I'm half expecting Cameron's 'thought police' to be knocking on my door at any moment and carting me off to the Tower for being a 'terrorist sympathiser'. And for why? Because I'm one of those people who oppose the bombing of Syria. One of the majority.

But I'll be in good company because more than half the population of England will be squeezed into the Tower as well, if that's possible. Some three quarters of Scots will also be locked up in some dungeon north of the border.

Let's face it, we have a prime minister in the UK who has lost complete touch with reality.

The only terrorist sympathisers I know about are the three pictured below - Erdogan of Turkey who buys cheap ISIS oil, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia who supplies ISIS with weapons and Obama of the US who organises it all.

The big three terrorist sympathisers.

Smeared With ISIS Oil

The liar Erdogan smeared with ISIS oil

On Corbyn's Spinelessness

One of the first things Corbyn should have done after being elected leader was to root out all unreconstructed Blairites who have no support in the Labour party at large - not in Scotland, not in Wales and not in England. A simple process of deselection would have silenced them all by now. But spinelessness paved the way to war in Syria.

One of the few journalists I admire is Julie Hyland of the editorial board of WSWS and here is her take on Corbyn's abject failure to control the right wing of his party. 

Corbyn’s spinelessness is not simply a matter of personal inadequacy or misplaced party loyalty. The Labour leader and his supporters in the pseudo-left groups are acutely aware of how sharp class tensions are. Under conditions of deepening austerity and a sharp turn to militarism, they are determined to do all they can to contain and silence the voice of working people. It is this that accounts for the ability of the Tories to go on the offensive, despite the narrowness of the government’s majority.

The Strange Phenomenon Of Hilary Benn

Is Hilary Benn a 'chip off the old block'?

Certainly there is a bit of a resemblance to his father, but as soon as he starts his political pontificatiing you begin to suspect that he might have been sired by the milkman.

Or maybe his father wasn't all he was cracked up to be. Just maybe he was one of those aristocratic politicians whose job it was to disarm the working class and fool them into thinking that here was a man looking out for their interests. It's a common enough tactic.

Maybe then Hilary has just reverted to type.

Milkman or something more sinister?

Brainless Politicians

This morning as the vote about bombing Syria grows ever more imminent I wrote to my MP saying that I needed a politician with a few brain cells to explain to me what Cameron with his tin-pot little airforce hopes to achieve which the mighty Russian airforce can’t deliver?

By implication this politician was him, although let me reserve judgement on that matter for the time being.

Douglas Carswell of UKIP

Corbyn's Betrayal

Corbyn opens door to Labour backing for British bombing of Syria

By Chris Marsden of WSWS

The decision by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to allow a free vote on UK participation in bombing missions in Syria is a total capitulation to the right-wing, pro-war forces in his party.

Corbyn has done everything possible to ensure a “yes” vote on Wednesday, given that Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron did not have a majority without the support of Labour MPs and had said he would proceed to a vote only if there was a “consensus.” At least 15 Tory MPs are said to be opposed to the extension of bombing to Syria on the pretext of defeating Islamic State (ISIS).

Now, a supposed “consensus” has been handed on a plate to Cameron by Corbyn. If the Labour leader had imposed a party whip, those voting for bombing would have had to do so in defiance of their party. Instead, Corbyn has given the green light for more Labour MPs—free from censure—to back Cameron’s policy. The Tories are now boasting that up to 100 Labour MPs will vote with them.

In September, Corbyn was elected by a landslide to lead the party based on his declared anti-austerity, anti-war stance. A reported 300,000 people signed up to the party to support him. Yet at every major turn, Corbyn has betrayed his mandate in the name of maintaining unity with the militarist, pro-business, anti-working class cabal that dominates the Parliamentary Labour Party and its local government apparatus.

Of all the ignominious retreats he has made under fire, this is the most fundamental.

Millions of workers and young people oppose military action in Syria, and Labour’s annual conference ruled that the party would not back action in Syria without “clear and unambiguous” United Nations support.

Prior to Monday, Corbyn said that Cameron had not made the case that the UN supported air strikes, so he was opposed to a free vote that would allow MPs to contradict party policy. He went on television Sunday to declare that “the leader decides,” implying that he was considering a three-line whip instructing MPs to vote against bombing Syria.

He then organised a poll of over 100,000 party members and supporters that showed 75 percent opposed and just 13 percent in favour of air strikes. Corbyn was reported by the Guardian as telling his allies that he believed he had sufficient backing from MPs and his grassroots supporters to try and “stop the war.”

Len McCluskey, head of the Unite union, Labour’s biggest financial backer, came out to warn members of the Shadow Cabinet, “Any attempt to force Labour’s leader out through a Westminster Palace coup will be resisted all the way by Unite and, I believe, most party members and affiliated unions.”

This was all for show. Behind the scenes, Corbyn was already in secret discussions with Deputy Leader Tom Watson and Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn, two of the overwhelming majority of his Shadow Cabinet in favour of air strikes. He agreed to a free vote in return for a non-binding, and therefore meaningless, statement that “party policy” was to oppose bombing.

Corbyn has rolled over before a bloodthirsty and politically discredited rump that enjoys little popular support outside the UK’s big business media. And he did so as he and his right-hand man, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, spoke of “democracy” and allowing MPs to vote “according to their conscience.” McDonnell said a free vote would mean that “people will hold together.”

“Democracy” now means the right to defy your party’s members, defy the wishes of the electorate, openly collude with the Tories, and threaten legal action to depose an elected leader. “Voting with your conscience” means not having one.

Yesterday’s Shadow Cabinet meeting saw this venal layer in the ascendant, shouting at Corbyn that his position that party policy was to oppose bombing was “absurd.” The meeting of the entire Parliamentary Labour Party in the evening was little different.

Corbyn was left with nothing other than to write a letter to Cameron urging a two-day debate before a vote is taken. Cameron dismissed this demand within hours, saying instead that Wednesday’s debate would be extended by a few hours. Benn has been given the right to close the debate for Labour.

Once again, events have supplied a devastating rebuttal to the claims made by Corbyn that he and his supporters could refashion the Labour Party as an instrument for opposing austerity and war by giving voice to its members and insisting on a “new politics” of democratic debate. This, he claimed, could bring change without threatening Labour’s “broad church.”

Instead, Labour continues to be a party of austerity and war. Its support for Cameron means that the bombs that will rain down on Syria, like the hundreds dropped by the Royal Air Force in Iraq since September 2014, will be Labour’s bombs. Syria will be labour’s war just as was Iraq in 2003.

Labour’s political and class character can never be changed by installing a new leader. It is determined by the party’s pro-capitalist programme and a history stretching over a century of defending the fundamental interests of British imperialism—not only against foreign capitalist rivals, but against the threat from below posed by the working class.

Corbyn’s mealy-mouthed reformist rhetoric never offered a political alternative to the party’s control by the right wing. Rather, his role has been to prevent the hostility to austerity, militarism and war that brought him to office from assuming the form of a political rebellion against Labour’s despised leadership. Indeed, without his defence of their position in the party, even including them in his Shadow Cabinet, many would have already been deselected by their local parties.

The exposure of Corbyn is at the same time a devastating indictment of Britain’s pseudo-left groups, all of which proclaimed his leadership to be a fundamental turning point in Labour’s fortunes. A week ago, Left Unity, the party formed just two years ago as a supposed alternative to Labour, declared at its conference it would no longer stand candidates against the party led by Jeremy Corbyn. On Saturday, the Stop the War Coalition held a protest against bombing Syria at which the central message from the organisation’s chair, Andrew Murray, was to urge Labour MPs to “stand behind Jeremy Corbyn.”

All these tendencies are guilty of disarming the working class and paving the way for war.

The struggle against war cannot proceed through the Labour Party and under the leadership of Corbyn. He will not move against the right wing of his party because he shares their pro-capitalist programme. He calls for a change in policy on austerity and war from the ruling class when both are the inevitable products of the capitalist system at this time of acute crisis.

The bourgeoisie needs austerity because maintaining its obscene wealth is dependent on ramping up the exploitation of the working class and destroying the social provisions on which millions depend. War is the product of the drive by the imperialist powers to seize control of oil and other valuable and essential resources on behalf of the super-rich.

What is required is the building of a new mass anti-war movement that seeks to mobilise the working class in Britain and internationally against the capitalist system and for socialism. That requires the building of the Socialist Equality Party to lead this struggle.

Read More Here