EASTERN UKRAINE - US-BACKED UKRAINE ARMY TORCHING HOMES

EAST UKRAINE INDEPENDENT PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC US-BACKED UKRAINE ARMY TORCHING HOMES After shelling the Ukrainian army burning houses in the village under Aksёnovka Gorlovka  April 8, 2014  [ VIA GOOGLE TRANSLATE ]  http://youtu.be/EtXgxZ-J3Uk  View media https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EtXgxZ-J3Uk

UK POLITICS - ED MILIBRAND

Looks like Ed's making the most of twitter ATM -- or his assistant is.  LOL.

Good move.

AFGHANISTAN - NATO TROOPS SHOT

Afghan soldier 'opens fire' at NATO troops in Kabul AFP Tuesday 5 August 2014 04:44:53 AM  ... Incidents in which Afghan forces turn their guns on their allies have killed scores of US-led troops in recent years, breeding fierce mistrust and forcing joint patrols to be monitored by so-called "guardian angels" to provide protection. "We can confirm that an incident occurred involving local Afghan and ISAF troops at Camp Qargha," NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement. "The camp, also known as the Kabul ANA Officer Academy, is an Afghan National Security Forces facility. We are in the process of assessing the situation." Western officials say that most "insider attacks" stem from personal grudges and cultural misunderstandings rather than Taliban insurgent plots. FULL ARTICLE @ SOURCE http://www.news.net/article/1718102/Top+Stories?referid=302

Sounds like there's a lot of misunderstandings in Afghanistan, then?

ISF troops are 'International Security Assistance' troops, which are:

... a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan that was established by the United Nations Security Council in December 2001 by Resolution 1386,  as envisaged by the Bonn Agreement.  Its main purpose is to train the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and assist Afghanistan in rebuilding key government institutions but is also engaged in the 2001–present war with insurgent groups. [wikipedia]

The ANA stands for 'Afghan National Army', so it's at that officer-academy/camp that the shooting took place.

The ethnic composition of the army as at 2012 is:

Pashtun             43% - Primarily Afghanistan (some in Pakistan) - speak Pashto (Eastern Iranian language, descendent).
Tajik                   32% - Persian (Dari) speaking; Iranian origin; live Tajikstan, Uzbekistan; Afghanistan. aka 'Farsi' (Persian).
Hazara              12% - Persian speaking; mostly Twelver Shia - largest branch of Shi'a Islam; possible Mongolian ancestry.
Uzbek               10%  -Turkic origins; Turkic language (Karluk) - mainly Sunni Muslim

Other                   3%

Pashto and Farsi (the official languages) are both spoken in the Afghan army, according to Wikipedia.

.....................................

Sorry about the typos.
Keep having to make typo corrections today.   LOL

UK LABOUR - DIVISIONS?

Diane Abbott: Most Labour MPs think Ed Miliband is set for defeat in 2015  Published: 05 August 2014 Updated: 11:36, 05 August 2014  Diane Abbott has admitted that “most” Labour MPs are worried that Ed Miliband is heading for defeat in next year’s general election, the Evening Standard can reveal.  ... She said: “Most MPs are worried that we won’t win in May — and that’s not based on figures.  Let’s say a substantial minority of Labour MPs don’t think we can win in May — despite the fact that statistically it can look like that. But then they tend to be MPs from outside of London.  “Ed’s problem, one of his problems, is that he has a shadow cabinet and most of them didn’t vote for him, so that is problematic.”  Asked by Mr Donnelly about shadow chancellor Ed Balls, Ms Abbott said that he “reminds people of the Brown years, and it allows the Tories to say over and over again, ‘These were the people who crashed the car.’ But actually he is very able.”  She said there would be tax rises and spending cuts if Labour was elected. “Whoever wins will have to put up taxation if they are serious. They won’t admit it, but they have to.”   Ms Abbott today confirmed that she recognised the remarks but said they were taken out of context. She insisted that she and most Labour MPs were very confident Labour would win next year’s election. “All the polls point steadily in the direction of Ed Miliband winning the election,” she said.  “I did say some Labour MPs are worried, but I don’t think they are a substantial minority.”  Source - Standard (UK) - here.

OMG!

Poor Milibrand.  What chance does he have with this kind of backstabbing going on.

Can you throw people out of your political party? 

I'd be wanting to ditch the talk-to-media dissenter if I were in the Labour party.

Unlikely, seeing they're voted in. 

She's Shadow Minister for Health at the moment.  Maybe he could find her something worse ... like Education.  LOL ... all those unionist teachers demanding a pay rise to contend with. 

Oh, wait, Cameron was going to fix them with a new set of no-strike and no-picket laws, so that won't work.  Add that to the against Cameron's chances list.

Ed might have a chance because Cameron looks an idiot:

• he's dumped experienced ministers for a bit of an 'affirmative action' swap;
• he's proposed draconian anti-strike and anti-picket laws;
• he's failed to make a stand on Gaza; *
• he's had the failed photo-op, on the immigration-bust rounds; 
• he parrots whatever Clegg and Obama say; and
• people want out of EU;

so all of that goes against him, surely.

Milibrand needs someone to polish his image:  give him a haircut, pull his outfits together ... and he needs someone media savy behind him, getting his profile out there and keeping him in the public eye in a positive way.

But bear in mind, I've only just started watching pollies, so I'm not necessarily on the money about that.

Get the impression that Cameron gets better press than Milibrand.

'Ed Balls' needs to change his name.  LOL.

Finally, judging from the British Prime Ministers list I was editing, Labour don't spend all that much time in office.  Too lazy to double check; but it was the first impression I had.

UPDATE

*    Cameron no stand on Gaza.  Doesn't need the Muslim vote - http://goo.gl/w30SFF

GAZA - UK CONSERVATIVES - DAVID CAMERON'S MINISTER QUITS

UK minister quits over gov’t Gaza policy Tue Aug 5, 2014 Sayeeda Warsi, a British Foreign Office minister and the first Muslim to sit in the UK cabinet, has resigned over the UK government’s policy on Gaza. Warsi wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that, “With deep regret I have this morning written to the Prime Minister (David Cameron) and tendered my resignation. I can no longer support Govt policy on #Gaza.” Warsi is the first minister to resign on principle from the British government since the coalition was formed between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats in 2010. This comes as Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government has drawn criticism, including from the main opposition Labour Party, for not taking a tougher line against Israel over its military attacks on Gaza. On August 3, Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband criticized Cameron for failing to take a firm stance on Israel’s aggression against Gaza, saying the prime minister had failed to speak out about the Israeli atrocities. In addition, the British government recently came under fire after reports showed that the Israeli regime has been using weapons containing British-made components in the fatal aggression against the Gaza Strip. According to British media, arms export licenses worth $70 million have been granted to 130 British defense manufacturers since 2010 to sell military equipment to Tel Aviv. The Israeli military launched its recent offensive against the Gaza Strip on July 8. At least 1,867 Palestinians, including around 430 children, have so far been killed and over 9,500 others injured during the onslaught. Tel Aviv says 64 Israelis have been killed in the war, while Hamas puts the number at more than 150. Source - Press TV - here.

Good for her.  Right thing to do.

Unlikely Cameron's going to win the Muslim vote next election.

GLOBAL OFFENSIVE BY U.S. IMPERIALISM

Crimea Referendum: the Hidden Truth Behind the U.S.-Russia Rivalry The next stage in the global offensive by U.S. imperialism  Brian Becker Imperialism, however, isn’t fundamentally an ideological program or project. It is a global economic system that compels the banks and corporations to dominate every piece of potential real estate for the benefit of those same entities. ... Source - Global Research - here.

Lenin Characteristics of the imperialist epoch - concentration of production growth of monopolistic trusts and cartels importance of the export of capital (compared with the export of commodities) internationalisation of capitalist economic relations struggle between the rival European powers to partition the world market parasitism and decay of capitalism Kautsky Argued wrong to "identify with imperialism all the phenomena of present-day capitalism — ": cartels protection domination of the financiers colonial policy According 'to Kautsky, imperialism was not a "phase" of capitalist economic development but a "special policy" of capital ...': "striving of every industrial capitalist nation to bring under its control or to annex ever bigger areas of agrarian territory irrespective of what nations inhabit them". 'Kautsky argued that this "special policy" might be superseded after the world war by a new policy': 'the extension of the policy of the cartels to foreign policy, the phase of ultra-imperialism' "i.e., the peaceful uniting of all the rival finance groups into a single,world-wide trust and the "abolition of imperialism through a holy alliance of the imperialists". 'Lenin sought to counter this argument by demonstrating that imperialism was the highest and last stage of the development of capitalism.' Source - DSP - here.

Karl Johann Kautsky ( 1854 –1938) was a Czech-German philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the coming of World War I in 1914 and was called by some the "Pope of Marxism." Following the war, Kautsky was an outspoken critic of the Bolshevik Revolution and its excesses, engaging in polemics with V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky on the nature of the Soviet state. He saw the Bolsheviks (or Communists) as a conspiratorial organization that had gained power by a coup and initiated revolutionary changes for which there was no economic rationale in Russia. Karl Kautsky died October 17, 1938 in Amsterdam. His son, Benedikt Kautsky (de) spent seven years in concentration camps, while his wife Luise Kautsky died in Auschwitz.  Kautsky is remembered, in addition to his anti-Bolshevik polemics, for his editing and publication of Marx's Capital, Volume IV (usually published as "Theories of Surplus Value"). Source - Wikipedia - here. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) (1870 – 1924) was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He served as the leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917, and then concurrently as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1922-[1924]. Under his administration... Russian Empire ... replaced by the Soviet Union, a single-party constitutionally socialist state; all wealth including land, industry and business were nationalized. Based in Marxism, his theoretical contributions to Marxist thought are known as Leninism. Died aged 53. Chinese premier Sun Yat-sen ... said: Through the ages of world history, thousands of leaders and scholars appeared who spoke eloquent words, but these remained words. You, Lenin, were an exception. You not only spoke and taught us, but translated your words into deeds. You created a new country. You showed us the road of joint struggle... You, great man that you are, will live on in the memories of the oppressed people through the centuries. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honour. Source - Wikipedia - here.

So are we living an an age of ultra-imperialism?

I think we are, but I don't think it matters whether it is a progression of capitalism to it's logical conclusion or if it is the result of a 'special policy'.

How amazing is it that people sat around working out these theories?  

Unsure what the mutual disdain was about:

Kautsky ... castigated Lenin in his 1934 work Marxism and Bolshevism: Democracy and Dictatorship: "The Bolsheviki under Lenin's leadership, however, succeeded in capturing control of the armed forces in Petrograd and later in Moscow and thus laid the foundation for a new dictatorship in place of the old Czarist dictatorship."

Both Lenin and Trotsky, however, defended the Bolshevik Revolution as a legitimate and historic social upheaval akin to the French Revolution, casting themselves and the Bolsheviks in the role of the Jacobins, and viewing the "opportunism" of Kautsky and similar figures as a function of "social bribery" rooted in their increasing intimacy with the privileged classes. [wikipedia]

Even though I have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm going to side with Lenin and Trotsy, because Lenin got past the theorising and actually got the job done.

Why do these guys take this stuff so seriously?  

What's wrong with trying something just to see if it works, without over-thinking it or expecting it to be some absolute solution?

So is it possible to escape 'imperialism'?  

To my way of thinking, it's impossible.  All you can change is the rulers and the rules.

Trying to picture global communism but it's impossible for me to imagine.  

What would happen?  

Wouldn't it still be the same thing, in that nations would still be vying for resources, profit, territory, military supremacy ... etc?

The articles are worthwhile looking at.  Might have to revisit the 'Imperialism Highest Stage ...' article (Source - DSP - here) because my concentration and ability to take things in is fairly limited.  LOL

P.S.  Thought about it some more doing the dishes ... I'm with Lenin again.  

It's a progression:   imperialism is the final stage of capitalism.

The very nature of capitalism is MORE, MORE, MORE ... more stuff, more consumption, more sales, more profits, more markets ... and, as cartels and monopolies grow out of that, doesn't that just feed into the MORE, and MORE, and MORE nature of the beast (only the MORE is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer powerful players) ... so it's a cycle that feeds on itself to a logical conclusion:  concentration and control.

After bashing that out, I'm having second thoughts ... what if I'm wrong?  LOL.

Nope, I'm sticking with that. 

US - Deliberatly provoking WW3

Source - Blog, We Must Know - here.

Check out the blog - here.
Great information.

This is also from the blog:

"The same countries [NATO members] that dropped 23,000 bombs and missiles on Yugoslavia in 1999 demanding that Kosovo be separated from Serbia and Yugoslavia — and also invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and bombed Libya in 2011 — are crying about Russia’s flagrant ‘violation’ of Ukraine’s sovereignty by virtue of encouraging and supporting the Crimean referendum." [credited to - here]

US-NATO dropping bombs all over the place but pointing the finger at Russia:

• Yugosavia
• Afghanistan
• Libya

Just itching to drop bombs on Russia now.