Solidarity 385, 20 November 2015

By Ensemble, a revolutionary socialist group within the Front de Gauche Today is a time for mourning. The murderous terrorist attacks which took place on Friday 13 November have had numerous victims. They are a terrible tragedy. Our compassion and solidarity go to all who have been affected, to the victims’ families and everyone close to them. These terrorist attacks follow those of last January in Paris against Charlie Hebdo and the Hypercacher supermarket, and those against the Bardo Museum and in Sousse in Tunisia. They are an echo of the tragedies which have struck the Middle East, in the...

Fences in Evros (on the Greek-Turkish border), Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Austria… The Calais tunnel and the “protection” of the French and UK borders… Fences in Mexico. Walls in Israel. Visible and invisible fences through the sea, through the land, though the air. Refugees and migrants demonstrating near sunbathers on a beach in Calais, on a beach in Lesbos, on a beach in Kos. Refugees and migrants with no names stacked between borders and outside the realm of geographical boundaries and temporality. In uncharted territories, people who concretise the meaning of Michel Foucault’s...

The Solidarity 384 article on Portugal says the Portuguese SP is a “neo-liberal” party and seems to suggest that the Left Bloc shouldn’t have entered government with them. I think this misreads the situation. Whilst the Portuguese SP back in 2008-2012 implemented harsh austerity, the programme the new leader of the SP Antonio Costa ran on in this election is not neo-liberal. It seems straightforwardly Keynesian and social democratic. So they promised to match the Troika’s targets for reducing the deficit but Costa pledged to do this not through austerity but boosting disposable income to...

In the wake of events like the massacre in Paris, almost all responses seem inadequate or wrong — especially the official and establishment ones. Solidarity with the French nation is an easy sentiment, but far from a simple one. And among a wide variety of commentators and activists — predominantly on the left — it has become usual to denounce the selective mourning of Parisians, as opposed to those killed in Beirut or Baghdad. Flags are, to be sure, a bad way to remember people. Meaningful solidarity — which can only ever be and aimed at addressing real political and material problems, and...

Junior doctors in the BMA (British Medical Association) have voted by an overwhelming 98% for strikes over the unfair and unsafe new contracts, on a turn out of 76%. The huge ″yes″ vote and turnout will be a huge boost to morale for doctors and others campaigning to save the NHS. Already the press is hunting for the one or two doctors who will not strike to speak out, yet the junior doctors′ dispute has a lot of public support. The BMA set the dates for strikes in advance of the ballot result, and has confirmed the dates now as 1, 8 and 16 December. Doctors will provide emergency-only care on...

Daesh has since its evolution from Al Qaeda in Iraq concentrated on the “near enemy”, on sectarian killing of Shia Muslims, non-compliant Sunnis, and other minorities, and conquest of contiguous territory to form its “Islamic State”. The “far enemy” was not a priority for Daesh. Now there is a shift in the style and type of attack that Daesh and its supporters carry out. The downing of a Russian plane, the bombing of Beirut, and the bombings and mass shootings in Paris, are more like Al Qaeda attacks such as the 2004 Madrid bombing. Daesh do not follow the guidance issued by Al Qaeda in 2013...

The United Nations Climate Chance Conference, COP21, will be held between 30 November and 11 December in Paris. The stated aim of the conference is to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate from all the nations involved, yet previous sessions of the conference including most recently in Copenhagen, have failed to achieve such agreements. Planned demonstrations at the conference by climate activists have been banned by the French state as part of their ″state of emergency″ measures. This is a bad thing, and sets a bad precedent for anti-terror laws being used against...

On 6 November, SNP MSP Sandra White retweeted a particularly vile antisemitic “cartoon” commonly used by US neo-Nazis. The “cartoon” portrayed a pig labelled “Rothschild”. A picture on the pig portrayed Rothschild himself (above a blood-red Star of David), Bush and Obama. On either side of the picture were clawed hands and hooked noses. Such details would not have been apparent in the tweet of the “cartoon”. Even so, the very visible word “Rothschild” showed that this was “classical” 19th/20th century antisemitism. So too did other elements of the “cartoon”, including its headline: “Why...

It has been fourteen years since United States forces invaded Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks in New York. The ostensible reason for the invasion and subsequent toppling from power of the Taliban-controlled government was due to their links with Al-Qaeda and jihadist networks. Since then, though it is undeniable that large parts of Afghanistan have much improved, the country is still plagued by many problems such as corruption, and all the while the Taliban have shown recently that they are far from a spent force in the country. Last month, the Taliban managed to claim what was...

Socialist Worker of 14 November calls for the Momentum group, launched as a follow-up by members of the Corbyn Labour leader campaign team, to turn away from "internal Labour Party battles". "Some in Momentum have been quoted as saying their task is to 'turn the attention of their supporters towards the battles that will take place within the Labour Party'. "Tensions inside Labour mean there is always infighting... But the strength of Corbyn’s election campaign was based on the hundreds of thousands of people who signed up looking for radical change. "It would be a shame if that potential was...