Solidarity 356, 11 March 2015

The government portrayed the agreement with the Europeans as a matter of necessity, caused by the position it was left in by the previous government and the imminent expiration date on the bailout of February 28. They claim that they won time — four months to prepare for further negotiations where they can make more gains. But the truth is that they didn’t prepare for any other option... They signaled their willingness to compromise from the beginning, with the formation of the government. The alliance with the Independent Greeks was a unilateral decision of the party leadership, without any...

On Thursday 5 March European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi refused to increase the limits on the Greek government’s issuing of treasury bills. He extended the provision of emergency liquidity to Greek banks via the ELA by only 500 million euros, to €68.8 billion. Draghi reiterated that “Greece will not participate in the QE program [Quantitative Easing, that is, ECB buying-up of government bonds]... a country in an economic program [i.e. Memorandum] under evaluation cannot be included. “The ECB cannot until July or August purchase Greek securities under the program of QE since...

Bitter Lake is a highly unconventional documentary, in equal parts haunting, chilling and moving. Like some of Adam Curtis’ earlier pieces, narration is kept to a minimum — quite fitting, considering the touching meta-narrative it tells. At over two hours long, it is like falling down the rabbit hole. Bitter Lake is titled after the one-time meeting place of President Roosevelt and the Saudi royalty. Curtis painstakingly puts together an array of scenes like a jigsaw puzzle, to create the story of our lives, with all of modern western civilisation and global socio-economic geo-politics as its...

Few adherents of the radical tradition need to be convinced of the importance of Rosa Luxemburg. A committed Marxist who opposed the dead-ends of both parliamentary reformism and “revolutionary” dictatorships imposed from above, her writings have been read and reread by generations of activists striving to find a pathway out of existing society. A brilliant economist who is widely authored the most in-depth treatment of the integral connection between capitalism and imperialism, her Accumulation of Capital and Anti-Critique is pivotal in understanding the dynamic that explains capital’s...

The year before last, President Napolitano gave an address on the anniversary of the Liberation of Italy, remarking “When the country is at a crucial juncture, and in times of crisis, memory is fundamental”. He insisted the coalition administration he’d appointed the previous day would “need courage, resoluteness and a sense of unity, all of which were decisive to winning the Resistance battle”. Cynics might suggest that this coalition of the Democratic Party, neoliberal technocrat Mario Monti and Silvio Berlusconi embodied a rather different idea of courage and unity than the partisans. This...

On Saturday 28 February women in Workers' Liberty hosted All the Rage — a socialist feminist conference. Over 130 people attended the event and took part in a broad range of discussions, including: Women against Fundamentalisms, Greece, women and austerity, women in India and how to organise a community fightback. In the evening we held a social jointly with the Kurdish and Middle Easten Women's Organisation with poetry from Janine Booth and Emily Harrison, as well as theatre performances and music. We raised over £100 for Kurdish women. Recordings of some of the sessions can be found here and...

New anti-union laws which would effectively ban large strikes in public services by requiring impossibly high ballot votes for them. A drive to abolish union check-off and facility time. 153 new free schools. About £50 billion further cuts in the next five years, including £21 billion welfare cuts (according to analysis by the conservative Institute for Fiscal Studies ). A renewed pledge to cut immigration, and maybe, by referendum, to tip Britain out of the European Union and end free movement of people between Europe and Britain. If, after all they’ve done since 2010, the Tories win in May...

A concert by the controversial Israeli-born jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon has been cancelled by the Royal Northern College of Music on the spurious grounds of threats to “safety” of the audience. This followed a petition from the North West Friends of Israel calling for cancellation on the basis of Atzmon’s anti-Semitism. This attack on the principle of free expression should be condemned, particularly as it is part of a growing wave of actions by University authorities responding to speakers or acts that may cause controversy or protest by banning them. It also precedes government moves to...

It’s ironic that Andy Forse begins his article “Why I am not voting Green this May” ( Solidarity 355) by saying that the world he wants to live in “would have things ... like rail...socialised”. He then goes on to advocate NOT voting for a party that DOES propose the socialisation of the railways and voting FOR a party that not only does not want to socialise the railways but actually ignored its conference policy when it voted for renationalisation! This party (Labour of course) also continued the selling off of industries started by Thatcher, even the RAF air and sea rescue service wasn’t...

Reports of an economic revival in Italy produced the predictable whoop of euphoria and triumph from the political and cultural establishment, only too happy to laud the passing of the (anti-worker) Jobs Act as the miracle to put the country on the yellow-brick road to full recovery. The news that employers like Fiat are taking on hundreds of workers, that unemployment is falling, investment rising and the public finances getting the nod of approval from Brussels are all true. Why wouldn't they be? The Jobs Act alone has pulverised the conditions of protection workers won 40 or so years ago...