Solidarity 392, 3 February 2016

Class not nation

The Maritime Union of Australia has launched a campaign about employment in coastal shipping following the removal of the Australian crew from MV Portland. Bob Carnegie, Secretary of Queensland MUA, has written to the national MUA about the presentation of the campaign. Dear Comrades, congratulations on the start of what I hope is a successful campaign. However, I have immense concerns of the title of the campaign “Sacked for being an Australian: Sacked for being an Australian unionist... yes. Sacked for being an Australian seafarer... yes. Sacked for being an Australian MUA member... yes...

The other gougers

I enjoyed Ira Berkovic’s review ( Solidarity 390, 20 January 2016), but he may have short changed the big shortcoming of The Big Short. The Michael Lewis source material gives too much hero status to the subjects of this movie (and book) who created a far wider crisis by creating yet another, and hitherto nonexisting, market to short the worst of the subprime securities. These outliers didn’t just enrich themselves, but enriched themselves at the expense of the very same people that the movie argues were fleeced entirely by other gigantic, too big to fail, Wall Street firms and their rating...

The problem with Bernie Sanders

Eric Lee (“A socialist President in the White House?”, Solidarity 390, 20 January 2016) is right that, were Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic presidential nomination, it would represent an “earthquake” in American politics. But is he also right to argue that the success of Sanders’s campaign is a vindication of those on the American left who attempted to orient it away from independent party-building, and towards intervention in the Democrats? I’m not sure. Sanders has committed in advance to supporting Hillary Clinton if she wins the nomination. That was an effective precondition of being...

The magnates worry

The international gathering of capitalist magnates and rulers in Davos on 20-23 January worried about “global risks”. Among those it noted “elevated protest activity” in comparison to the previous “two decades of relatively reduced protest action”. Since 2010, “protest intensity has reached a new and higher plateau... We are again approaching 1980s protest levels, when causes of social turmoil ranged from cold war tensions and anti-apartheid sentiment to the Tiananmen Square protests”. Maps of protest, collated from media reports, show the biggest concentrations in Europe, the eastern United...

The good credit class

Beijing International Airport offers faster security screening if you have good credit rating. On the same criterion, Luxembourg and Singapore offer a fast-track visa service, Chinese animal shelters give preference for adopting a pet, and a Chinese dating website gives you better placement. (Financial Times, 20 January). In principle, the capitalist market opens things out. If you can afford it, or if you choose to skimp on other things to splash on clothes, for example, you can wear what you want. But a new hierarchy may be emerging, with echoes of thee Middle Ages, when, in some times and...

Big Iowa score for Sanders

Hillary Clinton had a tiny majority in the Iowa caucus vote for the Democratic presidential nomination on 1 February, but morally the winner was socialist Bernie Sanders. According to entrance polls, Sanders got 86% of the Democratic vote in the 17-24 age group, 81% in 25-29, and 65% in 30-39. Clinton relied on older voters. One Democrat voter, housepainter John Dallas, told journalists: “I’m also a socialist. I mean, how’s that capitalism working out in the United States? It’s fine for the top one-tenth of one per cent, but the other 90 per cent of us aren’t doing so well”. The US...

Little hope for Syria talks

The UN-convened Syria peace talks started on 1 February, but the opposition, or rather the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) selected by Saudi Arabia and the “Sunni Axis”, is meeting in separate sessions from the Syrian government team.. The largest Kurdish organisation, the PYD, and their leader Salih Muslim, are not there. The US wanted them in, but Turkey’s president Erdogan barred them. Arab forces involved with the PYD in the US-backed Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) have consequently refused to take part. Turkey insists that the PYD is part of the same organisation as the Turkish-Kurdish...

Oppose Tusk-Cameron, oppose Brexit

On 2 February EU president Donald Tusk published proposals to placate David Cameron. They will be ratified, or not, at an EU summit on 18-19 February. Cameron wants to hold an in-out referendum quickly, possibly in June. The chief plan is for the UK (or any other EU state) to be able to cut EU migrants’ rights to in-work benefits (tax credits, child benefit, etc.) for four years. East European states have objected to the proposal, since it discriminates mainly against their citizens travelling to the UK for work. They are right to do so. We have too many “two-tier” workforces already, with...

Health campaigns plan new initiatives

On Saturday 30 January the Health Campaigns Together took a very positive step forward for the movement to save the health service. Against a backdrop of junior doctors’ and student nurses’ struggles opening up new possibilities for a fight, about 200 people came together from a wide variety of local and national campaigns. Most were older NHS campaigners, but there was a good number of junior doctors and trainee health workers too, bringing something new and distinctive. Many of the established activists gave excellent speeches and made useful proposals. The NHS industrial disputes, the turn...

Fighting Brighton’s cuts

On 30 January around six hundred people joined the first major protest against the latest round of cuts in Brighton on 30 January. They were trade unionists and seasoned campaigners. The one group notable by its absence was the local Labour Party. Just a couple of weeks before, a lively debate at a meeting of around two hundred Labour members voted for a weakened motion to campaign agains the “Tory” cuts, but fell short of committing to opposing them at council level. The Labour administration is proposing a budget that will make £68 million of cuts to vital services, shedding jobs and...

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