Solidarity 442, 21 June 2017

After several months of deadlock, the US-led operation with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to take Raqqa has begun. Lama Fakih the Middle East director at Human Rights rightly points out, “The battle for Raqqa is not just about defeating ISIS, but also about protecting and assisting the civilians who have suffered under ISIS rule for three and a half years.” However the largest force on the ground in the Syrian Democratic Forces is the People’s Protection Units (YPG). As Raqqa is a predominantly Sunni Arab city, there are legitimate concerns about a non-Arab force helping to take the city...

In May the US mining company Freeport McMoRan sacked 3,000 workers at the Grasberg copper and gold mine in West Papua, Indonesia. Workers had just begun a 30-day strike protesting against the company’s furlough policy — the temporary laying off of workers because of breaks in production. The company has been in dispute with the Indonesian government over new conditions for its licence to mine in West Papua and this had interrupted production. Since 2011 there have been a number of strikes at the mine over wages and conditions, the backdrop to which has been continuing human rights and...

The French socialist newsletter Arguments pour la lutte sociale comments on the second round of France’s legislative elections, 18 June: "Abstentions: 57.4%. Watch out! This major fact must not be interpreted only as a “civic strike”, as Jean-Luc Mélenchon puts it. That is true for many, and for the majority of the 10% of blanked or spoiled ballots or ballots where the two candidates in the run-off were both more or less for Macron. But to see it only that way is to ignore the defeat suffered by the working class on 23 April [in the first round of the Presidential poll]. Also, many abstentions...

Last month the Israeli union federation, the Histadrut, filed a law suit against Sodastream claiming that the company was disrupting workers’ attempts to organise. One testimony is from a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem and Sodastream employee whose wife is a West Bank resident and whose children have severe medical problems. According to the testimony, an Israeli security guard at the company promised to arrange for his wife to receive entry permits, or to enter Israel without papers with the help of a contact in the Border Police — so long as the Palestinian man helped to break up...

Fifty demonstrators protested outside of Lightburn Hospital in Glasgow on Saturday 17 June to re-launch a campaign to prevent its closure. Lightburn is the last in-patient hospital in Glasgow’s East End. It provides rehabilitative care for elderly people suffering from strokes, dementia, Parkinson’s or similar illnesses. Each year it admits around 450 patients, and deals with 400 new day cases and 3,000 return visits. The hospital was last threatened with closure by the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board in 2011. After energetic local community campaigning, the proposed closure was...

The recent General Election results in Northern Ireland reflect continuing sectarian polarisation, as the DUP and Sinn Féin won 17 out of the North’s 18 Westminster seats. The background is the collapse of the fractious power-sharing Executive earlier this year, and the dramatic Northern Ireland Assembly election results in March. In that election, an increased turnout and a surge of support for Sinn Féin meant that unionists lost their majority in Stormont for the first time since the creation of the Northern Ireland state in 1921. Sinn Féin then piled the pressure on beleaguered DUP leader...