Solidarity 303, 13 November 2013

Remembering Azad Ahmed

On Saturday 2 November a memorial service was held in London by the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan in memory of their fallen comrade Azad Ahmed. Azad was kidnapped and killed a week previously in Kirkuk, Iraq by unknown assailants. Members of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, Kurdistan and Iran were all present to pay tribute to Ahmed, a longstanding member of the Iraqi party’s Central Committee, who had long been a prominent advocate of secularism, pluralism and workers’ rights in Iraq. Workers’ Liberty also sent a solidarity message of condolence and support, remarking...

French Marxists warn of NF danger

“There is a real danger that the National Front might seize control at the local level (city councils for example) and perhaps even join the government”. This is the view of the French revolutionary socialist group L’Etincelle in the perspectives document for its congress on 9-10 November. The danger, so the comrades argued, cannot be countered by seeking a catch-all left unity with the Socialist Party, now in government. The electoral rise of the National Front comes from people’s discontent at the unrelievedly pro-capitalist policies of the Socialist Party government and the chauvinist...

Solidarity with Iranian workers

Most of the information that has come out of the meetings in Geneva on 7-8 November (to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme) point to the French side taking a much tougher stand than the other imperialist countries. Some even blame them for the failure. They are all going to meet again on 20 November; meanwhile the Iranian regime has agreed to more inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The reason the Iranian regime is at the negotiating table is the collapsing economy. The ever-increasing and tightening sanctions, coming on top of decades of incompetence and corruption...

Hope for Geneva, less for Syria

The big powers are pleased because on Monday 11 September the exile Syrian National Coalition said it would participate in the planned second Geneva peace conference for Syria. This version of the article is longer than the version in the printed paper. Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations official for Syria, says that he hopes that a date for the peace conference can be fixed before the end of the year. The chances of the conference ending the civil war look small, though. Syria expert Joshua Landis writes: "talks to end the Syrian conflict will be sterile without [the main military]...

African Americans, 1947: We want to be free!

The US Army which won World War Two, and prided itself on its victory over the Nazi racists, was itself segregated. African Americans were hived off into separate units, often working as cargo handlers or cooks, and commanded by white officers. Not until 1948 did the US government decide to desegregate its armed forces. Not until after the end of the Korean war, in 1954, was desegregation carried through. Since the defeat of radical reconstruction in the Southern states after the US civil war of 1861-5 which abolished slavery, the now-formally-free African Americans in the South had faced an...

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