Solidarity 349, 14 January 2015

Give them all €10,000!

The economists John Muellbauer and Willem Buiter have proposed that the European Central Bank fixes the euro-depression by handing out €500 to each citizen or resident of the eurozone. Wolfgang Munchau, in the Financial Times (12 January), argues that a handout of €10,000 per person would be more realistic. It won't happen, but these are all conservative, mainstream economists, trying to think outside the box. Hand out the cash, and people would spend more and be less debt-crippled. Demand would rise, quickly. New jobs and new economic output would be elicited. Price deflation would turn into...

Just two seconds

In the first week of January, the full video footage of the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice was released. It reveals for the first time the treatment Tamir’s 14 year old sister Tajai received. Tajai was in a nearby playground when she heard a shot. She was told by someone that Tamir had been shot. She rushed to his aid. The video shows one of the officers tackling her, handcuffing her and stuffing her into the back of the police car. She was denied the ability to comfort him in his last moments and treated like a criminal. The footage also confirms earlier evidence that shows that...

Syria: four million refugees

Lebanon has now revoked the six month residency that it granted Syrians and is enforcing new visa restrictions. Since 2011 four million Syrians have been forced to leave Syria. Almost half Syria’s population of 11 million people have been displaced. Lebanon alone has taken in 1.5 million refugees. Many refugees are now living in only slightly worse conditions than the local population and competition for work, aid and resources is now provoking a backlash among Lebanese; a further 220,000 became unemployed in the last quarter of 2014. In comparison, the UK has taken just 1,500 asylum seekers...

March for homes!

On 31 January, marchers from South and East London will converge on City Hall to demand better homes for Londoners and an end to the housing crisis. The action, called by Defend Council Housing, South London People’s Assembly, Focus E15 campaign and Unite Housing Workers branch and others, has published a list of demands: • Control rents • Hands off council housing • Stop demolition of quality council homes • Affordable and secure homes for all • Cut rents not benefits • No scapegoating immigrants • No racist landlord checks • End Bedroom Tax and welfare caps • Build new council houses •...

She was not “asking for it”!

Should Ched Evans have been given a job at Oldham Athletic Football Club? No, of course not! Should he have the chance to rehabilitate, be employed, live his life? Yes. But rehabilitation for a convicted rapist should not mean walking into a £2,500 a week job where he is, because in the public eye, a role model for boys and young men. If this crime can be so easily forgotten about then it also sends a message that rape is a trivial matter. Ched Evans claims he is innocent. On TV, Gordon Taylor, the head of the Professional Footballers’ Association, claimed that sometimes people who seem to be...

Tesco takes it out on workers

News that supermarket giant Tesco is to close forty-three of its UK stores will come as a devastating blow for the staff in the affected shops when the locations are revealed. The announcement that the retailer will not be proceeding with 49 other planned stores will also be badly received by communities who were hoping to get the construction and in-shop jobs to help them survive at a time when inflation is outstripping wage increases. Tesco is not doing badly by ordinary measures of success. The announcement came because the overall group’s business profits will “not exceed” £1.4 billion...

Homophobia and resurgent Russian nationalism

Attacks on LGBT people in Russia have increased as much as tenfold since the Russian Duma voted in June of 2013 to outlaw “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors.” A recent Human Rights Watch report documented physical attacks, abductions, aggressive harassment and verbal abuse of LGBT people and activists in 16 Russian cities. LGBT employees working with children were routinely sacked from their jobs if their sexual orientation became known. Another report, by a Russian LGBT-rights group, reported 300 homophobic attacks during 2014, a tenfold increase compared with the...

The Greek left outside Syriza

On 25 January Greece elects a new parliament, and the left-wing party Syriza leads in the polls. Theodora Polenta discusses the attitudes of Antarsya, a major left grouping outside Syriza. Antarsya — the Anti-capitalist Left Cooperation for the Overthrow — is a coalition of left organisations founded on 22 March 2009. The Greek word Antarsia (pronounced the same as the acronym Antarsya) means "mutiny". The currents inside Antarsya range from ex-Communist Party (KKE) and KKE-Interior splinters to Maoists and Trotskyists. Antarsya got 0.36% of the vote in Greece's 2009 election, and 0.33% in...

The issues after Charlie Hebdo

This article will not deal in detail with the facts about the two murderous attacks, on 7 January at the headquarters of the weekly Charlie Hebdo and on 9 January in a Parisian kosher supermarket, which have been widely explained in the media; but with some of the problems and discussions inside the radical left and anarchist circles Most of the left and the anarchist groups, in France, as in other countries, have adopted one of two opposite and wrong attitudes. One part of the left sees “Islamophobia” everywhere. It has closed its eyes when it has faced antisemitism. That is shown by their...

Paris, and other atrocities

After the murder of twelve people at the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, we are once again having to deal with questions of free speech, of Islamism, and reprisal attacks by the neo-fascist far-right. The first job of any principled socialist should be to unequivocally condemn the attacks on the journalists. Some have accused the newspaper of being needlessly provocative or even Islamophobic. But the cartoonists who were murdered at their place of work were killed for no other reason than they drew images that were considered blasphemous by the killers, and the right...

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