Their election circus hits the road, but there’s no queue at the box-office & Yet more empty international rulings

 Their election circus hits the road, but there’s no queue at the box-office

After proposing compulsory national service for all 18 year-olds, Sunak is now talking about the poor quality of education and abolishing “rip-off” degrees.

    Given the across-the-board poor quality of educated politicians, maybe he is right. But to fix this, it would surely mean abolishing the degrees offered by Oxbridge...

    That said, he and his fellow Tories would know all about rip-offs, given their 14-year-long catalogue of policies aimed at ripping off the working class.

    They haven’t even permitted junior doctors to keep up with the cost of living, by paying back the wages they ripped off them (but also all public “servants” year after year, since 2010)! So doctors plan another 5-day strike, ending 2 days before E-day.

    This is not to imply in any sense that the Tories’ Labour twins offer anything different, other than their ugly faces. Starmer and his two latest side-kicks, Wes Streeting and Rachel Reeves, merely propose copy-cat rip-offs against the rest of us...

    Although the juvenile Streeting adds words all of his own, like for instance that veteran black Labour MP Diane Abbott (falsely accused by her own party of “racism”!) may not “come up to the standards” (epitomised by Streeting?) of the leadership and so may well not be “selected” to stand for the Hackney North seat she has represented since 1983.

    Unsurprisingly, one month before E-day, prospective voters are telling pollsters that they trust none of the politicians and many are saying they do not even intend to vote. And yes, who indeed would want to participate in this “great British democracy” which uses the electorate’s votes as a mandate for its criminal mismanagement of society?

    Why would we want to vote for a governmental system which systematically covers up its crimes - like the 50 year-old contaminated blood scandal, or the miscarriage of justice against sub-postmasters, or the lack of any safety regulation in housing construction which led directly to the Grenfell Tower fire?!

    And then, for the sake of their sacred election they halted all parliamentary business, so that for instance, the (already repeatedly delayed) bill abolishing landlords’ “no fault evictions” has vanished into thin air!

    Far, far worse even, they want us to vote into office a government which will, in the name of the capitalist world order, endorse imperialist power games like the slaughter in Ukraine and Gaza.

    In fact there’s absolutely nothing to vote for on 4 July. There is only a system to overthrow.

 

 Yet more empty international rulings, as Netanyahu’s massacre in Gaza continues

Two days after the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel must "immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah", Israeli Defence Force air strikes set fire to a refugee camp in the Tel al-Sultan district in the north west of the city, killing 45. Netanyahu called it a "tragic mishap", but less than 48 hours later, bombed to death 37 more people in the same camp.

    This camp, located in a supposed "safe zone" is overcrowded with Palestinians fleeing Rafah, where the IDF offensive already began 3 weeks ago. So much for the "legally binding" ICJ court rulings! Just like the numerous UN resolutions against “illegal" settlements in the West Bank, they are worthless. These international organisations just throw up their hands in horror, while watching the massacre unfolding!

    So why should Israeli Prime minister Netanyahu and his minister of defence Gallant, worry about arrest warrants for war crimes, issued by the International Criminal Court? They're accused of "intentional starvation as method of warfare". But Gallant was clear from the very beginning: he said he’d enforce a "complete siege on Gaza... no electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed". And that's exactly what they are implementing.

    Israel has seized the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and has since closed it to all aid. Lorries stuck in Egypt have had to destroy thousands of rotting eggs and other perishable food. The UN has had to suspend all food distribution in Rafah.

    Anyway, the ICC arrest warrants can only be enforced by its member states. And of course, Sunak has already opposed this court, saying the warrants were "deeply unhelpful" - parroting Biden, who said they were "scandalous". As if the scandal wasn’t the extermination of Palestinians in Gaza!

    But because of the general elections in both countries, Sunak and Biden cannot ignore this bloodbath. So they pretend to distance themselves from their Israeli ally, resurrecting the "two-state" solution from the dead. A "two-state" solution, where the Palestinians would be kept in their place by a Palestinian Authority, backed by the imperialist powers to run Palestine, "the day after"...

    Indeed, their "solution" just means keeping the Palestinian population imprisoned, while using the Israeli population as prison guards.

    No, ultimately all borders in the Middle East, created by the controlling imperialist powers, must be wiped out. And it's only the working class - of the whole region, regardless of "nationality" - which can and will carry out this task.