Trump on Gaza, OMG

It may have come to your attention that recently President Trump of the USA met with PM Netanyahu of Israel at the White House, and the outcome was some statements to the press that seemed to surprise and shock many commentators. He said, in short, that Gaza should be run and owned by the US. He suggested Gaza had potentially some good real estate and it could be a nice place if so, a kind of new Riviera. But the Palestinian indigenous residents should leave and go to other countries, Egypt and Jordan were mentioned.

This mooted war crime of ethnic cleansing was softened a little by his apparent concern that Gaza was now a pile of rubble (no mention of the extensive bombing by Israel which caused this or the bombs being from the US, and no mention of the thousands killed, with many bodies still under this rubble) in which people unfortunately could not have a nice time and it needed to be flattened and building start afresh, which the US could do.

Later ‘interpretations’ of what Trump meant said his idea was temporary displacement of Palestinians. Most of Trump’s comments fulfilled Netanyahu’s every dream and he could not help smiling throughout the meeting, that is, except when Trump said the bit about the US and not Israel running Gaza. This must have irked him. Should he not be wondering whether the war was actually supported so enthusiastically by the US just to allow the US to fulfil certain imperialist ambitions in the Middle East?  Was Irael only being used as a tool in this respect? Who knows, but that little moment was perhaps revealing.

The problem that lies at the heart of all this conflict and strife is the founding of Israel not as such, but as an exclusively Jewish state in a land that had a mixed religious population. The reason for this was the US support for the project of the religious extremist Zionists to get a western orientated foothold in the Middle East near to the oil fields and the Suez Canal. This new state could function as a police and security presence for its interests in the region.

To have this work, and for its presence to be able to expand, it was necessary for there to be some friction inbuilt to the state that would cause continual strife, terror, and wars in which the US, which was after all a country a long way away, could interfere profitably. Fundamentalist Islamists obliged, countering one fascism with another from a different religion.

All these shenanigans were just continuing the old imperialism of the earlier European powers, but now the US was the main superpower.

Trump’s comments were therefore not really a surprise in their content and meaning, but only in that the aims were said so openly and brazenly, not shrouded and cushioned by pseudo humanist caring waffle as the earlier president Biden often did.

As the media digested and reported Trump’s remarks, they tried various framing tactics, and the one the liberal ‘progressive’ bourgeois press settled on was to report them in a matter-of-factual manner as if they were quite normal, like the Guardian:

“…Donald Trump’s controversial idea, which has sparked anger around the Middle East, comes as Israel and militant group Hamas are expected to begin talks on the second round of a fragile ceasefire plan to end almost 16 months of fighting in Gaza….” *

These remarks did not just spark anger in the Middle East, this is misinformation, they sparked condemnation around the world, and calling them merely controversial ideas was just trolling the Left on behalf of the leader of the free world, just as they and other members of the ‘free press’ had done while looking on at the genocidal bombing campaign in Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’s 7 October massacre of Israelis, an escapade by Hamas of adventurist terrorism that could not have been better designed to achieve this exact response. Who suffers? - Ordinary working class people on both sides, and also in the US, whose vast amounts of wealth which are being spent on weapons for foreign regimes are not being spent on them, they will have to deal with another rise in their cost of living.

*From <https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/feb/06/middle-east-crisis-live-white-house-walks-back-trumps-gaza-takeover-comments-in-face-of-widespread-international-anger>

 

  

To Whom is State or Government Debt Owed?

The state, for example, of Britain or France or the USA, to function and govern, needs to have money, it needs financing.

You might think that the state need not owe anybody, since it holds the power of the land, but this is not the case.

Where does is get its money?

It gets it from the public and public/private entities.

In a capitalist economy the state acts like a regular private enterprise, it must have an income, revenue, accounts, and it can and does borrow money and lend or give financing for projects.

The state borrows money from the private sector. The state usually raises money by issuing kinds of debt, government bonds or promissory notes, to investors who buy these to store and increase the value of their wealth over time in this usually safe manner.

The government of the day therefore becomes like a bank manager and the administration like a bank (hence the department of the Treasury), which must itself borrow money from larger banks.

You can see from this that the state and government is embedded thoroughly in the capitalist economic system and is not a distinct entity.

It is, however, rare that the state makes a profit on its social investments.

This is because for politicians and media commentators the ideal state is one that balances its books or is in debt to a manageable extent, so has a ‘deficit’.

Why? – Well, a deficit means safe long-term payments on the debt to some big bourgeois entities, so an income. It also implies some control by these enterprises over the government.

If on the contrary the government made a profit, a surplus, this would belong theoretically to the system chosen by the voters, so will be seen as a loss to private wealth and considered unfair competition and an example of socialism.

Considered as an enterprise, the state is of course unique in that it can make and repeal the laws of the land. So, the potential obviously exists for the state to create an uneven and biased market for itself or for certain enterprises.

But this does not usually happen. It tends instead to denegate its own authority. The politicians do not usually drastically change the financial laws which also set the limit on its own actions as an enterprise.

Why? It is partly because the government is, as said already, fundamentally a capitalist enterprise, not a socialist entity, but the government can always be threatened by the broader capitalist economy if it does not act in the interest of the capitalist class in general.

A state that is capitalist thus has a kind of dual personality. It is a state and therefore a social entity but is capitalist and therefore must act like a private entity.

The social nature of the state is why many elected administrations can be heard wanting to reduce the government and state powers, like Musk’s current 2025 Doge, for whom these powers are characterized as socialist and against free enterprise.

Ironically, this can often be the stated government policy, a policy of the state to dismantle the state. At the same time, this same state rarely reduces its police or military, its basis of state authority. On the contrary, it usually wants to extend this strength, a hard shell over civil society, and it claims that it needs it to make its reforms. This can become corrupt and end up supporting certain enterprises over others.

This kind of state, in extreme circumstances, always requires enemies to fight against who oppose it and seek a socialist state. It becomes an aggressive overbearing authoritarian state, a fascist state, even while posing itself as dissolving the state.

Wood for Heating: Is it Good, Clean, Sustainable, What’s it Like?

Let me get straight to the point: using wood is not a fossil fuel and can be carbon neutral because the tree it comes from took in the carbon before it gave it out when burnt. 

But yes, it being a sustainable and clean fuel depends on a few crucial things: the forests that the wood comes from must be managed well, the wood must be dried before burning which takes about two years just leaving it in an airy location, and the stoves and the chimneys must be of the kind that minimise the smoke and the particulates that are harmful.

All the processes and transport necessary to cut, sort, and deliver logs may not run on sustainable fuel of course, but this is nitpicking. In the best case, despite the small amount of pollution that occurs, which is unavoidable to some extent, burning wood is much better for the environment than using other sources of energy for heat, and to repeat, it does not contribute so much to climate heating. The increasing forest fires due to climate heating caused by burning fossil fuels is a far bigger source of particulate pollution, or smoke. Ironically, if this wild wood had been destined for heating homes in wood burning stoves these forests might have been managed better and therefore prevented the wildfires in the first place.

There are other technologies that can come into play with using wood as fuel. Pyrolytic converters can burn and convert wood into wood gas that can function as a fuel even in conventional internal combustion engines. Wood can also be made into a liquid fuel. We will ignore these usages here, but they do have some potential I think. The main thing to remember is that the current priority is trying to reduce climate heating effects, not get a totally perfect fuel source.

Wood as a fuel has been criticized in the press, however.

For instance, in the Guardian, George Monbiot has thoroughly denounced his installation of a wood burning fire in his well-insulated home. It seemed like he was almost going to kill himself with the fire. But this was mainly because he did not make allowance for it to get enough fresh air. I suggest these kinds of articles are just subtle help to the fossil fuel industry, an attempt to ‘balance’ the narrative when there is no balance.

But for the sake of safety, let us look at what you need to do to successfully use a wood burning stove. It is not all plain sailing.

By stove I mean a metal enclosed log burner with a stainless-steel chimney that goes up through the roof, usually via an existing brick-built chimney. Some wood stoves allow you to cook on them, some do not provide a surface for this; some stoves use pellets of wood, but this requires extra processing of the wood that may not be sustainable and of course you pay for this, and also you cannot usually just sort of chuck on a log from the garden on them. But they can make the fire last longer using a hopper system.

Firstly, and most importantly, what you must have if you are to stay alive while using a log burner is a source of fresh air to the stove. If your house is insulated so well that all draughts of air have been prevented, you will probably stifle any log burning fire and cause yourself to die from carbon monoxide poisoning, because the fire will use up all the existing oxygen in your home, which you also need to breathe.

Modern insulated and double-glazed houses might have an air supply problem for fires, but older houses tend to have open chimneys and imperfectly fitting doors and windows that allow in fresh air; the problem is that obviously this air can be cold, and it will push out the warm air making you colder. An efficient wood burning stove can quickly use this air and turn it into heat, so this may not matter in an old house, but still, especially these days of the cost of living crisis, you will probably want to keep all the heat that you can in the house to reduce costs. All other forms of heating in my experience are more expensive.

For safety, it might be necessary to rig up a ventilation system especially for your fire. This can be as simple as installing an air vent near to or a small pipe directly into the stove. You could make this closable manually by the user, but for safety it would be better if it were at least partially passive and permanent. There are existing ventilation systems, ducting, which will exchange the air and keep it warm, but these tend to be more expensive and complicated and can require electricity. But remember, you will need ventilation if you are in a well-insulated house.

What do we do? In our old French stone house I have been installing some wooden double-glazing which has made it more air-tight, but it has open chimneys and some passive air vents so I am not worried. We get logs delivered and we use them usually only in one or two stoves, although we have more in different rooms. We also have a mini split ductless air conditioner (they are often called heat pumps but if they are reversible they can also supply cooling), plus some electric radiators that we rarely use but are there in case we go away and need to keep some heat on (such as to stop the water pipes from freezing in winter).

We rarely need to use the air conditioning for cooling, but it has been great on a couple of occasions recently when it was extremely hot. We do not use it when the wood stoves are burning because no matter how efficient your wood stove is, it will produce some smoke and therefore sooty deposits, especially on start up for the first time in the year, and this is not good for the heat pump.

Of course, there are drawbacks of burning wood and they need to be considered if you are thinking of going this route.

One is that it produces ash as a byproduct. We use this on the garden and put it on the compost heap, so it is ok and even a benefit, but it is a chore, and the fires need maintenance, and cleaning, and tend to be dirtier than other heating systems. The fire will last if we go out for a day but any longer it will go out. This can be irritating. It needs tending, stoking, and feeding.

Wood stoves can be temperamental, they respond to the weather and air pressure, sometimes it can be a devil to get the fire going, especially if the chimney has not been used for a while and if it has been cold and wet weather, it all needs to dry out and heat up. This difficulty is common on starting up the fire but if it persists you may have a blockage or not enough air. Because of this problem, I start a little fire in the stove occasionally, even in the summer when I do not need it, because this will help keep the chimney dry and discourage birds and bats from nesting in it and blocking it.

It is worth bearing in mind that houses can be fickle, some have wood stoves in them that never seem to heat well, for reasons unknown. It is hard to assess a house for this without actually installing a stove, unfortunately. Our house seems to work well with a log burner, but it is old and designed for it I suppose.

Sometimes you might need to put this special chemical stuff on the fire when burning, or special logs, which clean the chimney pipe, making the soot and tar come off and fall down, but you might still need to dismantle the pipes to empty and clean them out, maybe once a year, and this can be a pain and it gets you dirty.

We installed a double skinned stainless steel flexible pipe that keeps the fire hot all the way up the chimney, reducing smoke, so we have few problems with soot, but it was expensive, more than the stove in fact.

Oh, I need to use an axe sometimes to split the bigger logs, very macho but you get more heat with more surface area on the logs, the downside is that it burns quicker so you use the big logs to last the night. You need a place to do this chopping, and this can lead to wood chips going all over, quite messy. Logs have bark which flakes off everywhere, and of course you must get the logs to the stove somehow, and they can be heavy. You will be going in and out often. In the house you will need a place near the fire to stack them, but not too near because this would be a fire hazard. This place will get dirty with bits of sawdust and bark that always needs brushing. I also use a big bowsaw with an ‘americaine’ sawblade which is good for cutting logs, you need this because sometimes the logs are a bit too long to get in the fire. You need the biggest heaviest axe and the biggest bowsaw that you can get, this makes life easier.

Personally, I quite like doing all this work, but sometimes when it is early in the morning and it’s frosty and dark outside (ah yes you need exterior lighting) and I need to get the logs in, it is horrible; I have to put on some old coat that does not matter if it gets dirty; I always forget gloves, and if it is raining, ugh. I used to have a log basket that could carry about four, but it eventually broke, so I just carry them, but it means more trips, and opening and closing the door repeatedly lets out the heat. All this might help keep me fit perhaps but as I get older this is not going to be as easy.

Nevertheless, I love looking at a real fire, it is so restful and seems to somehow be better as heat than any other kind. There is something almost primeval about watching the flames, much better than doomscrolling your mobile or watching TV. And it is cheap as a fuel, relatively. We live, however, in a rural forested area of France where wood heating is normal. Here, it is sold by the ‘stere’ which is about a square meter in stacked logs. We get 500cm logs that just fit the stoves.

But, yes, there are dirty jobs to do with a wood fire and it requires some tools, space, and some basic skills, and it is not a perfect fuel, you do get some smoke and soot even when doing it all properly. But it is not adding to the climate emergency as much as the other fuel sources, and every energy source has drawbacks.

You will already know that not only does burning oil cause climate heating it also has a by product which is cheaply produced plastic that is polluting the environment. Oil has been great for humanity in the past, it has to be said, it has made our great advances as a species possible, but now it is having some dangerous outcomes and using wood for heating is a small way to counteract this.

 

 

Critique immanente contre activisme en politique d’un point de vue communiste

Nous savons ce qu’est l’activisme, mais qu’est-ce que la critique immanente ?

Contrairement à l’activisme, qui se déroule généralement « dans la rue », la critique immanente signifie agir, politiquement, dans le cadre de votre entreprise, de votre travail ou de votre profession habituelle.

Les deux choses ne sont pas nécessairement opposées et peuvent être complémentaires, mais beaucoup plus d’attention est généralement accordée à l’activisme, comme si c’était le seul choix révolutionnaire.

Cela a quelques effets néfastes :

Tout d’abord, il tend à privilégier une approche humaniste de l’engagement politique, car il se concentre sur le légendaire « homme de la rue », la personne en dehors de l’activité professionnelle qui décide de leur base de classe. Nous parlerons d’humanisme un peu plus loin ici.

Deuxièmement, en se concentrant sur ce type de personne, il a tendance à la projeter comme le type d’individu le plus important pour vous et attire donc ce genre de personne.

Troisièmement, il n’y a pas grand-chose que l’on puisse faire dans la rue parce que ce n’est pas là que se situe le pouvoir ouvrier, qui est bien sûr à l’œuvre ; Par exemple, les grèves et les stratégies de grève sont en fait des critiques immanentes qui sont généralement plus efficaces que les manifestations et les protestations.

Quatrièmement, les manifestations de rue mènent le plus souvent directement à la confrontation avec les forces de l’ordre comme la police et peuvent conduire trop rapidement à la violence. Cependant, ces forces doivent également être attirées par notre cause politique si possible.

Cinquièmement, l’activisme tel que les manifestations se termine généralement sans conclusion évidente et par un manque d’unité et de compréhension des objectifs à moins qu’il n’y ait un parti politique représentatif accompagnant une stratégie, en d’autres termes, à moins qu’il n’y ait une lutte immanente parallèle.

Sixièmement, de nombreuses protestations et manifestations de grande envergure n’ont réussi qu’à agir comme une « libération » (catharsis) des frustrations (comme contre la guerre en Irak au Royaume-Uni qui a attiré des millions) et ont donc peut-être même été nuisibles aux causes qu’elles ont promues.

Septièmement, l’activisme promeut souvent une image de volontarisme et de charité, comme si l’activiste agissait à partir d’une morale émotionnelle, d’une tendance humaniste.

Or, l’humanisme est l’une des philosophies centrales de la classe bourgeoise, qui fait toujours appel à un « esprit humain » semi-religieux dans lequel il trouve ses morales et causes universelles, comme la « liberté » (exploiter les autres), mais la philosophie marxiste n’est pas une branche de l’humanisme, c’est le matérialisme dialectique. L’humanisme est plus un amalgame de différentes philosophies appréciées par les classes bourgeoises plutôt qu’une position unique bien définie, il est donc éclectique, un méli-mélo et adopte et justifie presque n’importe quelle idéologie si elle soutient ses intérêts en tant que classe.

Je pense qu’il est nécessaire de dire ces choses parce qu’aujourd’hui la gauche est fortement imprégnée de sentiment humaniste et que cela la fait échouer à plusieurs reprises dans ses luttes. Par exemple, le PCF (Parti communiste français) s’est récemment joint au PS (Parti socialiste) dans une alliance électorale, mais ce dernier est humaniste et trahira généralement ses principes socialistes apparents.

Musk makes Hitler Salute, Twice, the Media Don’t See It

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, made a Hitler salute, twice, at a Trump inauguration rally, on the telly, in front of everyone.

The media though did not quite see it; the Anti-Defamation League described it as an awkward gesture. Two awkward gestures would be more precise. Maybe, after all, Hitler was also just making awkward gestures, waving to his stormtroopers at the back of the hall perhaps, or wanting to show everyone his armpits. It is all very vague and uncertain. Maybe it was only a Roman salute. Not that the Romans ever did this. But the Neo Nazis seem to recognize it as something for them. They alone, what a surprise, can see clearly.

What are Trump's Tariffs?

Tariffs have been put forward as an economic balm for the US by President Trump. It is not so clear what exactly he means by tariffs, or whether he will stick to this policy, but we can make a stab at an explanation.

Most economists regard tariffs as a bad thing, but they are usually short on explanations why.

Tariffs seem to be understood by the new US administration as a way to bring in money, to, in a sense, punish foreign producers who undercut US prices, and to encourage the manufacture and purchase of US made goods and services.

But tariffs are usually placed upon the importer of the foreign goods, not the exporter, and this means in this case the US side, because the exporter is a foreign market, and their prices cannot normally be set by the importing country (the US here). Tariffs are therefore imposed at the point of the local importer. This has consequences: it usually leads to a rise in prices for the imported goods, because the importer now needs to make more money to cover costs.

It is possible that this could encourage more local production and help the local competition for this market, but there are usually good reasons for the foreign produced product being cheaper which may not be able to be repeated locally, it of course depends on many factors, but in any case this is unlikely to happen quickly. So, the immediate result of tariffs would be the inflation of prices in the US.

US citizens are already complaining about high inflation and the cost of living, and this is likely to make things worse.

Tariffs can be understood as a part of economic protectionism, and so perhaps of socialism, but in the capitalist economy it cannot really be socialist unless you also subsidise the local industries that you want to support with help from the government (or go the full route and nationalize them). However, this is obviously not the policy in the current US, where the federal government is under attack for being wastefully ‘too socialist’ or ‘woke’. Trump supports the free market inside the US apparently but is not a free marketeer globally.

The hope of this government is that tariffs will help boost local US productivity, somehow left unexplained, in the context of simultaneously stimulating other aspects of the market. The big idea, not a very new one, is to give tax cuts to the rich, who are described here as the ‘wealth creators’ (not oligarchs), and hope that these invest and employ people. Mere hope is not a great policy.

Unfortunately, this is what already failed to happen, by and large, in the last economic crisis when money was printed and interest rates were held very low, and which has led us to this crisis. Investors, of course, may not invest, instead they might squirrel away their wealth, which they are likely to do if they sense a crisis and if there is market uncertainty and volatility.

Meanwhile in the US there is also a parallel attack on illegal or undocumented immigrants, the cheaper labour that the US enjoys. This attack seems to be the partner with tariffs as a mooted solution to the economic crisis. Immigrants and refugees are said by the administration to be stealing US jobs and bringing in harmful drugs and criminality. The wall of tariffs mimics Trump’s border wall supposedly keeping out the immigrants.

However, it is the ruling class that benefits from employing this cheaper and easier to manipulate labour force. And now they also benefit from deflecting any possible blame for the crisis onto these vulnerable people and the ‘weaknesses’ of those on the left who are supposed to have ‘let them in’. It is quite despicable for the rich and powerful to target these unlucky people in this way, but they do it with the help of their media.

The rich class must feel that they have especially lost out on capital since the last crises and the pandemic and wish to claw back this apparently missing wealth and are seeking someone and something to blame for the problem other than themselves and the economic system. This is also an extension of the laying of the blame for the high cost of living on other countries and other persons, old allies and old enemies alike.

The last president, Democrat Joe Biden, did not remove most of Trump’s earlier tariffs, so this policy is not only that of this administration, but of the US bourgeoisie as a whole.

Tariffs are unlikely to stay isolated to one country. Other affected countries will have to respond in some way, the most likely being with their own tariffs, leading to a freezing up of the global capitalist market. The US is the world’s biggest economy though, so perhaps the US administration sees this fact as a buffer in the sense that it is likely to hurt others more than them.

But this can mean a trade war will result. A trade war can lead to greater friction between nations politically, and even eventually to actual war. One can already notice a more aggressive US policy towards foreign parties.