Solidarity 205, 25 May 2011

Obama's peace plan for Palestine: going through the motions

Are the prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace any more immanent after President Obama’s recent speech? Does it break any new ground? The short answer would have to be no. Not because American imperial interests would not be better served by a two state solution. Brokering such a deal would enormously enhance America’s prestige and credibility with an awakening Arab street, a public justifiably suspicious of Western intentions given imperialism’s history of sustaining their oppressors. The world of imperial puppetry, where elite interests are manipulated through authoritarian surrogacies -...

Enthusiastic response as Egyptian working-class revolutionary tours Britain

Between 18 and 21 May, Kamal Abbas, an Egyptian trade unionist and socialist activist since the late 70s, and one of the leaders of Egypt's new independent labour movement, toured Britain, hosted by the Egypt Workers Solidarity campaign . Kamal is the general coordinator of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers' Services ; he was accompanied by the CTUWS international coordinator Tamer Fathy. Sacha Ismail reports on discussions which he, Paul Hampton and Elaine Jones had with Kamal and Tamer. Kamal Abbas has been active in Egyptian workers’ struggles since the mid-1970s. His thirty three year...

GMB and Welfare to Work

A report produced by the University of Portsmouth and accountancy firm PKF, “Welfare to Work in the 21st Century”, is based in part, it says, on interviews with “23 clients from difficult to employ groups: 18 of who were identified via Kennedy Scott and 5 via the GMB”. Kennedy Scott is an employment training provider currently delivering the New Deal programme for the Department for Work and Pensions in London and the South East. The report recommends that “the DWP pilot a US welfare-to-work programme developed by America Works". The same US workfare company is known for the draconian regime...

Thatcher's health service dream realised?

Stuart Jordan interviewed David Price, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Sciences, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. You have said previously that the Health and Social Care Bill means handing £100 billion of NHS money to the private sector. Could you explain how this would work? The public planning system, which ensures that resources are allocated according to health needs in geographical areas, will be broken up. We will see increasing private sector control over the allocation of resources or allocation driven by financial incentives. At the moment...

Dylan at 70: his 1960s "Protest Songs" revisited

This month the American singer and songwriter Bob Dylan marks his 70th birthday. In the early 1960s he was reckoned to be a “protest singer”, a direct voice of the left. His songs referred straightforwardly to political issues — the black civil rights movement in the USA, anti-militarism — and he performed at political events like the 1963 civil rights March on Washington. Since then he has produced a long stream of new songs, and repeatedly been charged with “selling out”, first when he used an electric rather than an acoustic guitar in 1965. He was largely off the public stage in 1966-74...

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