Solidarity 612, 3 November 2021

The COP26 talks (Glasgow, 31 October to 12 November) are an embarrassment for the capitalist class. On the one hand they cannot simply ignore the reality of climate change. On the other hand, they are aware of years of failure, the fossil fuel industries’ current plans for a multi-trillion dollar expansion, and the complete absence of a carbon drawdown infrastructure. In 1992, when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was established, leading to the COP process, 78% of primary energy generation was from fossil fuels. In 2019, twenty-four COP summits later, it was 79% . And 79% of a 60...

The world’s biggest 60 banks have provided in the order of $4 trillion of finance for fossil fuel companies and projects since the 2015 Paris Climate Deal. The UK’s Barclays is the worst European culprit. In 2020 it provided $27 billion (£19.4 billion) of fossil fuel funding. Four other UK banks are in the list of 60, including Natwest , still majority government-owned. Climate campaigners have rightly targeted the UK financial sector and the City of London, highlighting their continuing fuelling of climate change. But the dominant demands are essentially for the existing private, deeply...

On Saturday 30 October many cities in Sudan saw huge demonstrations against a new military coup, with around a million people on the streets. In 2019 mass protests, including significant workers’ mobilisations, resulted in the ousting of 20-year Islamist-influenced dictator Omar al-Bashir, and a sort of power-sharing agreement between civilian representatives and the military. The military was supposed to handover the chairship of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council by 17 November this year. Now, following the attempted military takeover on 25 October, civilian politicians including prime minister...

Proceedings began at the High Court in London on 27 October for the US government’s appeal against a court decision in January 2021 to block extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on charges of violating the USA’s Espionage Act. In 2010 Wikileaks published thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, revealing what look like war crimes. The US government has provided various assurances about how it will treat Assange. Given that the UN special rapporteur on torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment believes he has already...

Michael Elms’ article “Couriers’ strike threat forces u-turn” ( Solidarity 611) is inspiring and informative. But one section of it misses the point and is bad in its implication. Michael writes: “Moreover, where Scoober has taken over delivery operations, drivers have been obliged to switch from cars to electric bicycles. That means harder work, more danger from crime and more risk of death by road collision.” Contrary to widely held beliefs, cycling is safer than driving. People who commute to work by bike instead of driving have substantially lower risks of death, and longer life expectancy...

Lewis Joyes in Solidarity 611 calls on readers to join the Girls Night In Protests, the one-night boycott of venues in over 30 towns and cities, called in response to a worrying increase in reports of women having drinks spiked, or being drugged with syringes. The nationwide movement began following several police reports of female students being injected with needles while on nights out in recent weeks. Solidarity reports they are making a range of demands for more thorough searches on entry, improved training for nightclub staff, anti-spiking devices to be made available, and increased CCTV...

It was great to have the exceptional film Queimada flagged up for essential viewing in Kino Eye ( Solidarity 611 ), but the article missed relating the film’s positive ending following on the execution of the revolutionary leader Jose Dolores. As the cynical British agent William Walker makes his exit from the island, he encounters a black dockworker who reminds him of his first meeting with Dolores. This time Walker gets his come-uppance when the docker stabs him to death. The end “message” of the film is that the people have learnt a valuable lesson through struggle and their fight goes on...

Matthew Thompson writes ( Solidarity 611 ) that my article criticises the “report into clerical abuse in France” on the grounds that it doesn’t call for the “far-reaching reforms demanded by some campaigners such as the ordination of women as priests or the abolition of clerical celibacy” That was not necessarily the intention of what was quite a flat and neutral factual account. It merely noted that “some campaigners” had demanded measures such as “the ordination of women as priests or the abolition of clerical celibacy” and that these recommendations were not included in the final report. It...

The BBC website article “We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women” has caused a backlash, with 20,000 people signing an open letter against it. The article used a survey of just 80 people, conducted by the anti-trans pressure group Get The L Out, to claim that trans lesbians are routinely pressuring cis lesbians into sex. The article intersperses LGB Alliance anti trans propaganda with testimony by cis lesbians describing rape and coercive sexual relations with trans women, along with women claiming they have been pressured by a societal messaging against transmisogyny into sex which...

Military coups are, sadly, a fairly regular occurrence in Africa. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen the military seizing or attempting to seize power in Mali, Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon and Sudan. What makes the recent military coup in Sudan of particular interest to us is the extraordinary role played by the country’s trade unions in the fight to defend democracy. The coup began, as might be expected, by a crackdown on journalists. According to reports from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), “Bloomberg/Al Sharq correspondent Maha Al-Talb and her crew were arrested and held...