Not just the liars, but the whole inhuman, warmongering system has to go!
The plan to physically turn back refugee boats crossing the Channel - the so-called “pushback” by Border Force patrols - was dropped by the government this week, after a High Court challenge described it as “inhumane”. But not so for Patel’s inhumane proposal to send asylum-seekers on a one-way ticket to Rwanda - even though it seemed far too absurd to be taken seriously; an ill-advised ploy to divert attention from Johnson’s Partygate lies and his PCN(s)!
As it happened, Patel-le-Pen stood up in parliament and defended her policy tooth and nail. Rwanda was a “suitable place” to send refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, etc., fleeing from persecution, abuse and violation of their human rights... where they would be “given the support, including up to five years of training with the help of integration, accommodation, healthcare, so that they can resettle and thrive”. And what’s more, this threat of a Rwandan prison camp was going to act as an “effective deterrent” (she said) against people smugglers, who send asylum seekers across the Channel in dangerous rubber dinghies.
Kagame’s Rwanda: Devil’s Island
Apparently Marine Patel counts on British people having no sense of why asylum seekers resort to rubber dinghies, nor any clue about what goes on in Rwanda.
That Rwandan President Paul Kagame routinely assassinates (preferably by poisoning and strangulation) his rivals, critics and “traitors” - like former officers of his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) who can no longer stomach his methods, is well known. He is a practitioner of non-judicial killing, state-sanctioned beating and torture; he is 100% in control of the media; employs highly sophisticated computer/internet hacking, and presides over a de facto one-party state.
True, in 1994, after the genocidal massacre of half a million Tutsis by unofficial/official militias allied to the former Hutu-led regime, it was Kagame’s Tutsi regime which came into power, seemingly - at the time - occupying the only moral ground.
But when his RPF proceeded to pursue, in revenge, fleeing Hutus into the Great Lakes region of Eastern Congo, this precipitated a regional war which has, to date, killed 6m people and displaced at least 3m.
The brutal violence, torture and rape continues today - although transformed into smaller wars to gain the lion’s share of the Congo’s rare metals, essential to the world’s computer-ware. But since these horrific wars are in Africa, (not Ukraine!), Patel and the rest of Johnson’s government do not give a damn. Today Patel relies on assumed public ignorance to get away with her “New Plan for Immigration” which cynically proposes Rwanda as a “safe haven”! Kagame has already been given £120m up front, in anticipation.
What said it all about Labour’s “opposition” to Patel’s plans was the fact that all they really objected to was the cost of the scheme!
In the end, however, Le Patel’s outrageous plan was not enough to suppress the loud calls for Johnson’s resignation. So last Thursday, his Partygate lying was again under scrutiny. And this week, the calls for his scalp from his own side are getting louder. Never mind Johnson’s major porkpie, the Big Brexit lie, which gave him his premiership in the first place!
A system based on lies
No, the purpose of this debate is all about trying to fool the public into thinking there is still a shred of integrity to be found in the British political system, if not among Johnson’s followers, whose lack of it is so overt!
It’s worth recalling the Blair lie, which began the slaughter in Iraq, whose deadly blow-back continues today in the Middle East. And how this “mother of all parliamentary systems”, nevertheless allowed Blair’s re-election in 2007! This same “system” may well allow Johnson to remain in Number 10, since it’s really just a carefully-manipulated numbers game!
And it’s not just the political system which is based on a lie. What about the primary lie of the capitalist system itself - that workers get “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”? Yes, the economic basis of the capitalist system is the exploitation of human labour for a profit: if workers were paid the equivalent value of what they produce, there would be no profits.
Indeed, it’s an economic system based on cheating workers! No wonder it stinks. And today, its rottenness is brought home vividly with this grotesque Ukraine war being played out, minute by minute, on everyone’s screens, and which normal, ordinary people wish desperately would stop!
But instead, Washington and London are fuelling it, by sending more and more “lethal aid”, in the form of heavy weapons, glorifying the killing, and encouraging Ukrainian nationalism. They have even rehabilitated the fascistic Azov Battalion. Because all this, in turn, fuels the profits of the arms and oil trade.
As a direct consequence, the cost of living of the working class (worldwide, in fact!) is soaring even more. So yes, the only solution is to put an end to this increasingly corrupted, lethal system and the politicians it produces as a mirror image of itself.
A first step could be to turn the national railway strike which railworkers start voting on this week, into a general strike, involving all workers, and not just against the pay freeze, but against the whole rotten system.