Solidarity 129, 20 March 2008

Stop deporting Iraqi refugees

The first two weeks of March saw dozens of shootings, roadside bombs, car bombs and discoveries of mass graves in Iraq. Five years into the war, the country remains torn apart by sectarian violence, which marks its toll not only in bodies but also in destroyed basic infrastructure, power and supplies shortages and a grave lack of hospital beds. Yet on March 13 it was revealed that the Home Office now considers Iraq ‘safe’, and will therefore give 1,400 Iraqi asylum seekers an ultimatum – go back, or stay in Britain but with no benefits and no home. They have three weeks to make up their minds...

Anti-Imperialism and the trap of "paint by numbers" — Part 2 of "AWL's Record on Ireland"

This series: The Northern Ireland crisis of 1968-9 and the left Part 13 Part 1: Why Northern Ireland Broke Down Part 2: The Irish Workers' Group, IS and the "Trotskyist Tendency" Part 3: Why Northern Ireland Split on Communal, Not Class, Lines Part 4: When militant sloganeering meant promoting communal war Part 5: When socialists looked to "Catholic Power" ; and Part 5 Section 2 Part 6: SWP (IS) and Northern Ireland in 1968-9: Advocating civil war — until it starts! ; and Section 2 Part 7: The end of the old order in Northern Ireland ; Section 2 ; Section 3 Part 8: IS/SWP conference, September...

A new lurch into crisis

It is now "arguably the worst financial crisis in seven decades", according to Gillian Tett in the Financial Times (18 March). On 17 March the US investment bank Bear Stearns went under. It had been credited as worth $18 billion only months ago. Right up to the collapse its bosses claimed it had plenty of cash to meet its commitments. Actually, the banking business was worth much less than nothing. J P Morgan paid $230 million - petty cash in bankers' terms - to take it over, about $800 million less than the physical value of Bear Stearns' offices, and that only after getting a $30 billion...

Marxists on the capitalist crisis: 1. Fred Moseley - The Long Trends Of Profit

With this issue of Solidarity we begin a series of interviews with Marxist economists on the current crisis and the current stage of capitalism. Fred Moseley is the author of a distinctive Marxist account of the decline in profit rates which brought crisis in the 1970s and 80s, one has spawned a whole series of further studies. He is professor of economics at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, USA. His books include The Falling Rate of Profit in the Postwar United States Economy (1991), and he edited the English edition of Enrique Dussel's Towards an Unknown Marx: A Commentary on the...

French local elections: defeat for Sarkozy, revolutionary left makes gains

The French Parti Socialiste (PS) has defeated President Sarkozy's right-wing UMP party in local elections. In the same poll, the revolutionary socialist LCR made small but significant and impressive gains. Since his election last year, Sarkozy has been battered by waves of working-class action - by rail workers, civil servants, students and more recently strikers in the private sector too. Now the working class has delivered another blow at the ballot box (unfortunately using the soft, blunt weapon of the PS). Rouen, Amiens, Metz, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Reims, Caen, St-Etienne and numerous...

Free Tibet! Back China's workers and oppressed

Since 10 March, Tibet has been convulsed by protests against Chinese rule. The arrest of a small group of monks attempting to demonstrate on the site of a failed 1959 uprising against China has led to protests by many thousands of Tibetans, and a major crack down by China's Stalinist-colonial regime. On 17 March, thousands of paramilitary police were massing in the capital Lhasa and other areas of unrest ahead of an ultimatum for protesters to hand themselves in or face "severe punishment" - but the arrests had already begun. Hong Kong journalists were ordered to leave Lhasa, and foreign...

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