Solidarity 334, 3 September 2014

Sectarian impasse in Iraq

On 31 August, the Iraqi army, Kurdish troops (peshmerga), and the “peace brigades” linked to Iraqi Shia-Islamist leader Moqtada al-Sadr reached the town of Amerli in northern Iraq and lifted its siege by the “Islamic State” movement which has taken control of a big swathe of northern Iraq and of Syria. Amerli’s inhabitants are mainly of the Turkmen minority, but many had already fled the siege. It is reported that the Turkmen themselves had dug mass graves because they planned to kill their families and themselves if they lost their fight to defend the town. Otherwise they feared forced...

Swing to left on Labour NEC

The election of the constituency part of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) saw the best result for the left (55% of the poll, 14% swing) since the 1980s. Ken Livingstone topped the poll, with Ann Black, Christine Shawcroft and Kate Osamor also elected. Kate is an NHS worker and Unite political committee member. The more traditional Labour right-wing grouping Labour First got trade union lawyer Ellie Reeves elected, and it supported independent candidate Johanna Baxter, who was also returned. Florence Nosegbe and Kevin Peel, candidates backed by the explicitly Blairite caucus Progress...

Another Yalta conference

Less than two months ago Richard Brenner (Workers Power) and Alan Freeman (Socialist Action) and other Western leftists were feted in the Hotel Yalta-Intourist by Russian fascists and ultra-nationalists at a conference to boost Russian imperialist designs in Ukraine. The same initiative met again on 30-31 August, but dispensed with the left-wing decoration. Members of the following European fascist or far-right organisations were invited to the conference: British BNP, French National Front, Hungarian Jobbik, Belgian Vlaams Belang and National-European Communitarian Party, Bulgarian Ataka and...

East Ukraine: Russia installs a new leadership

In mid-July Denis Pushilin resigned as chair of the Supreme Soviet of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). In early August Alexander Borodai resigned as Prime Minister of the DPR. In mid-August Valery Bolotov resigned as head – he was always simply referred to as “the head” – of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) and Igor Strelkov-Girkin resigned as Minister of Defence of the DPR. According to Boris Kagarlitsky (a longstanding Russian socialist who has turned cheerleader for the separatists), the resignations were the result of pressure by the Kremlin, in preparation for a deal with the Kiev...

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