The US and UK attack on Yemen is essentially a diversionary tactic. It comes just as the genocide being committed by their Zionist proxy, in Israel, is being hauled before the world's court, and exposed for its crimes, crimes for which the US, UK and EU imperialism also have blood on their hands. It comes, also, as their other proxy, the reactionary, corrupt capitalist regime in Ukraine is itself again being exposed, both for its corruption, as £265 million goes missing, and for its incompetence in fighting the war against Russia, despite the massive backing of NATO.
At the start of the war on Palestinians, launched by the Zionist state, in October, I noted that it would not be limited to simply a war against Palestinians. From the start, the Zionists not only launched their genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, but also stepped up their continual attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, clearly exposing their lies about targeting Hamas. But, also, they clearly had their sights on expanding the war into Lebanon, as they have done in the past, into Syria, where they continue to illegally occupy the Golan Heights, into Iraq, and eventually their main goal, a war with Iran, for which they require the involvement directly, of US imperialism, and its NATO allies. They have repeatedly struck Lebanon, bombed airports in Syria, and with US imperialism, also, bombed Iraq.
US imperialism, fighting, and losing, a war with Russia, in Ukraine, is not ready yet to engage in a new global all-out imperialist war, as with WWI and WWII, to assert its hegemony, especially as such a war, currently, would be likely to quickly accelerate into a nuclear holocaust that would end humanity itself. Instead, it seeks to use these regional proxies to engage in conventional warfare to try to deplete and diminish the forces of its global rivals – Russia/China/BRICS+. But, that strategy is also going very badly. The corrupt, reactionary regime in Ukraine is like a bottomless pit, sucking dry the resources of NATO, both in terms of their own military hardware, much of which goes almost directly into the black market, having reached Ukraine, and in terms of money, which likewise goes directly into the pockets of Ukrainian oligarchs, and politicians. The attempts to stir up trouble between China and Taiwan, are also not going well for the US, and in the Middle East the Zionist genocide against Palestinians has exposed the duplicity and hypocrisy of western imperialism even more starkly.
The judges on the ICJ Panel adjudicating over the case against the Zionists are appointed by governments, and so its clear that those appointed by states part of the US/NATO imperialist bloc will be under pressure to deny reality, and proclaim that what everyone can see with their own eyes is in some way an illusion perpetrated upon them by a world of anti-Semites, as some form of global conspiracy. Yet, the lies put forward by the Zionists in the Hague were so transparent, so grotesque, as befits a regime that has grown used to telling such lies with impunity for decades, and of ignoring international law, backed by its US imperialist sponsor, that even those paid for judges will be hard pressed to deny the reality of the genocide without exposing the sham nature of the court, and of the bourgeois-democracy it purports to uphold and defend.
But, whether it does or does not, the fact is that the world itself has, now, seen what the Zionists and their imperialist sponsors have sought to keep hidden. Only Al Jazeera provided live coverage of the proceedings, both the case presented by South Africa, and that presented by Israel. Western media, which is simply the propaganda arm of the imperialist state, did not, providing only its own selected and edited highlights. In doing so they simply consigned themselves even more to the dustbin of history, in the age of global news networks like Al Jazeera (which, of course, itself, acts as propaganda arm for its own state), as well as the availability of social networks and citizen journalism to show what state media will not.
So, US/NATO imperialism needed a diversion from the fact that it, and its Zionist proxy have been exposed for the genocidal butchers they are. Expanding the war into Lebanon, Syria and Iraq gives cover for the fact that what the Zionist state is doing in Gaza, is not a war but simply genocide against a people, and the US bombing of Yemen, is part and parcel of that. The US/NATO says that it needed to take action, because of the attempts to block shipping through the Red Sea to Israel, by the Houthis. Of course, US imperialism and its allies are past masters at blocking and seizing ships across the globe, in support of its own self-decreed sanctions against various nations, as, now, with its sanctions against Russia. In the past, it has also seized Iranian ships. But, of course, the reality is that if the US and its allies did not send war supplies to the Zionist regime, in the first place, used to carry out the genocide in Gaza, there would be no need for the Houthis to stop them! Especially, if the ICJ rules that the Zionists are committing genocide, the Houthis will be entirely vindicated in saying that they are acting according to international law to block such supplies, in pursuit of preventing genocide.
The actions of the US and UK, not only expose their hypocrisy as they increase their supply of arms to the Zionist regime to carry out its genocide and slaughter of Palestinian babies, in Gaza, but shows the extent to which they will go to be able to continue to do so, by expanding the war into the rest of the Middle-East, and Horn of Africa, where the history of US involvement has itself not been a happy one. In addition, as US inflation again shows a tick up in the latest data, such action provides a further distraction from Biden's failed domestic policies, and those of the Federal Reserve, whose wild printing of money tokens has trashed the Dollar as standard of prices, solely in order to inflate asset prices, as the form of wealth owned by the ruling class. Already, they can be seen blaming higher oil and gas prices for the up-tick, whilst it is their own policies, across the globe that have fed into it.
The world is marching at an increased pace towards WWIII. If the Houthis, and/or their Iranian backers were to use any ICJ judgement against the Zionists to step up their actions in the Red Sea, it would simply be a further step along that road. Whatever the ICJ may rule, socialists cannot call on the Houthis or any of their backers to take action to prevent arms going to the Zionists, any more than we would demand that imperialism supplies arms to the Palestinians, or Ukrainians. The US imperialists supply arms to the Ukrainian state, and to the Zionists state, because they are its puppets and proxies. But, similarly, Russia, China, Iran and others supply arms to various states, and organisations with similar intent. In neither case is this intent to further the cause of the working-class.
War supplies to the Zionists should be stopped, but the method for doing so, is not to line up behind the BRICS+ imperialist camp, and its actions, against the NATO imperialist camp, but is to rely upon and build global, working-class opposition to the drive to war, to use the methods of proletarian class struggle, to black those war supplies, in their production and distribution. We need a global general strike against the war, occupation of arms producing companies, and the placing of them under workers' control, and development of workers' plans of useful production. Where weapons are produced, they should be directed to workers' themselves engaged in class struggle, so that they can defend themselves against their class enemies. But, as Trotsky pointed out, in relation to the Chinese Revolution, before any such calls for arming the workers can be made, it is necessary to first establish revolutionary workers' soviets, so that they can ensure that the weapons go only to revolutionary workers, and not to their class enemies, or reactionary sections of workers.
“26) The arming of the workers and peasants is an excellent thing. But one must be logical. In Southern China there are already armed peasants; they are the so-called National armies. Yet, far from being an “antidote to the counter-revolution”, they have been its tool. Why? Because the political leadership, instead of embracing the masses of the army through soldiers’ soviets has contented itself with a purely external copy of our political departments and commissars, which, without an independent revolutionary party and without soldiers’ soviets, have been transformed into an empty camouflage for bourgeois militarism.
27) The theses of Stalin reject the slogan of soviets with the argument that it would be a “slogan of struggle against the government of the revolutionary Guomindang”. But in that case, what is the meaning of the words: “The principal antidote to the counter-revolution is the arming of the workers and peasants”?Against whom will the workers and peasants arm themselves? Will it not be against the governmental authority of the revolutionary Guomindang?
The slogan of arming the workers and peasants, if it is not a phrase, a subterfuge, a masquerade, but a call to action, is not less sharp in character than the slogan of workers’ and peasants’ soviets. Is it likely that the armed masses will tolerate at their side or over them the governmental authority of a bureaucracy alien and hostile to them? The real arming of the workers and peasants under present circumstances inevitably involves the formation of soviets”.
This also exposes the “bourgeois militarism” of the social-patriots and social imperialists, who demand the arming of the Ukrainian capitalist state, as against the creation of workers soviets, and the arming of them AGAINST that state, as part of their fight, also, against Russian aggression. But, it also exposes the fallacy of the petty-bourgeois nationalists, who claim that socialists must support unconditionally our class enemies amongst the nationalist bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, on the basis of their supposed “anti-imperialism”, i.e. precisely the line adopted by Stalin in China, in 1927.
As Marxists we are not nationalists, we do not support or promote bourgeois-nationalism whether in the guise of “defence of the fatherland”, or “anti-imperialism”, we support and promote the interests of only the working-class, and, thereby, of international socialism.
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