Solidarity 342, 5 November 2014

Solidarity with Iranian women facing attack!

Women in the central Iranian city of Isfahan have been attacked with acid because of the way they were dressed. The official press reports four women were attacked, but some put the number as high as 15. This attack comes as Iranian government is discussing measures to address “bad hijab”. Proposals would give confidence to the “morality police” and encourage semi-official militias to harass women. Regime officials claim the attacks are unconnected. However the attackers all used a motorcycle and many litres of acid, suggesting a connection. Paradoxically regime officials also claim that...

NHS staff to strike again

Health unions have announced a further four hour strike on 24 November in their ongoing pay dispute. Since 2010 the NHS has been starved of £20 billion. By 2020 the gap between funding and necessary expenditure will be around £50 billion. Last month the new Chief Executive of the NHS Simon Stevens made a spurious claim that with an extra £8 billion investment he could redesign the service and make £22 billion savings by 2020. If we do not win a decent pay settlement and build a union movement capable of defending our already much degraded terms and conditions, then we will have helped speed on...

Ukraine: undemocracy and pluto-democracy

Neo-Nazis, fascists, and other ultra-nationalists from throughout Europe converged on Lugansk and Donetsk on 1-2 November to act as observers in the “elections” staged by the so-called People’s Republics of Lugansk (LPR) and Donetsk (DPR). Vlaams Belang and the National-European Communitarian Party (Belgium), Jobbik (Hungary), Forza Italia (Italy), the Rassemblement bleu Marine (France), Attaka (Bulgaria), “Zuerst” (Germany), and “No to Brussels, Yes to Popular Democracy” (Czech Republic) were all represented among the election observers. So too, from countries closer to Ukraine, were the...

How war changed them

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson was born in Hexham, Northumberland in 1878. He made his living as a poet after leaving school, at first writing poetry in the standard, Victorian-Romantic style. But during his twenties he grew more socially aware, and became well-known for writing about workers and poor people in accessible, everyday language. Once war started in 1914, Gibson — now living in London, and friends with other poets including Edward Marsh and Rupert Brooke — applied his writing style to soldiers' experiences of the trenches. He did not fight in the trenches himself: he volunteered, but was...

Is Facebook changing our brains?

Susan Greenfield is a leading neuroscientist and her book on how the new electronic media, “cybertechnology”, impacts brain development and human behaviour, makes for fascinating and alarming reading. The latest research and statistics are clearly summarised and deftly employed to pursue her analysis. Although the jury is “still out” on many of the issues she raises, it can be said with some degree of certainty that cybertechnology and the culture surrounding it (iPhones, ipads, e-mail, computer games, chat rooms, Facebook, blogs, snapchat, twitter etc.) is impacting on brain development and...

How to be more assertive in politics

If workers in the NHS (the area I work in) were able to get more insight into how we all respond to “authority” they would be better able to rely on their own skills and knowledge and be more assertive about resisting the current reforms. My argument (which could be extended to other workers) is that in order to do this it is vital we extend Marx’s micro analysis of the relationship between the worker and the capitalist in the light of advances in psychological theories and therapies. The nature of politics requires developing a forcefulness in response to the power of the capitalist system...

Scottish nationalism is a dead end

The Scottish referendum has to be understood in the context of a capitalist society which is now not merely somewhat rotten, but actually in a state of decay and threatening to disintegrate in many parts of the world. The move to finance capital effectively announced by the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 resulted in Britain and other advanced capitalist countries removing much of their industrial base and marginalising from society large sections of the working class. The parasitic nature of the dominant finance capital is absolutely clear to anyone with a basic Marxist understanding...

Jim Murphy would be a disaster

Neil Findlay, the left candidate in the contest now opening for leader of the Scottish Labour Party, is a "list" MSP, elected in 2011. He has an established record of taking up trade union issues, such as blacklisting, the role of the police during the miners' strike, and the Living Wage. He has the support of the Campaign for Socialism. Unison, ASLEF and the TSSA have already agreed to nominate him, and Unite is expected to do likewise. In the deputy leader contest Katy Clark MP is standing as the left candidate, while Kezia Dugdale MSP will probably be the candidate of the right. Actvists...

Solidarity with the Kurds, or NATO-bashing?

At the 1 November demonstration in Trafalgar Square in support of besieged Kobane, it struck me that the speakers — and more broadly, the left — were not singing from the same page. On the one side there were those who were demanding that Britain and NATO do more to help the Kurds fighting against the Islamic fascists of IS. For example, Peter Tatchell led the crowd in chants demanding that David Cameron authorise the dropping of more aid to the Kurds, including weapons. There were calls for Turkey to be suspended from NATO because it, unlike other NATO countries, was not prepared to help the...

ISIS threat is still strong

ISIS (Daesh, the “Islamic State” movement) now governs over six million people across Iraq and Syria and despite an apparent slowing of new foreign fighters coming to join them they have maintained a large group of fighters and a formidable military capability. The Albu Nimr tribe, a Sunni group in Western Iraq, had continued to fight ISIS in Anbar province despite Abadi's Baghdad government failing to provide arms. ISIS has now executed almost 400 members of the tribe as a punishment for its resistance. ISIS is now closer to the Haditha Dam and the largest airbase in Anbar. The Iraqi army and...

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