Solidarity 257, 19 September 2012

The violence of some of protests outside US and other embassies against the 'Innocence of Muslims' film will have horrified all democrats and socialists. So dismayed were secular-minded Libyans with the killing of American diplomats in Benghazi they organised counter-demonstrations. The protests were relatively small in most cities in the Arab world, Africa, and south-east Asia, but larger in some places (like Kabul, Monday 17 September). The Kabul protest will have been fuelled by resentment against the NATO forces, the corruption of the Afghan government, and much else. But the religious...

Fernanda Milan is a 22-year-old transgender woman and activist from Guatemala. In 2009, Fernanda fled persecution to seek safety and asylum in Denmark. Fernanda has now been told that Danish law does not recognise gender identity as a motive for persecution. This is despite a 2011 Directive of the European Parliament (2011/95/EU Article 10d), which specifically mentions gender identity as a reason for persecution. Fernanda has been informed she will be deported back to Guatemala on 17 September. During her detention in the Sandholmlejren Centre for asylum seekers, Fernanda suffered appalling...

Friern Barnet Library in Barnet, north London has been occupied by campaigners and re-opened to the public. Ironically it was the new law criminalising squatting in residential properties which seems to have prompted the occupation and re-opening (temporarily under activist-volunteer control) of the library in Friern Barnet Road. Squatters made homeless by the new law were looking for commercial properties to squat and found windows left open (and the heating turned up very high) in the library which was closed by Barnet Council in April this year. There was a very active campaign to save the...

The election in the Netherlands on 12 September produced an increased vote, and victory, for the main right-wing party, VVD. The Socialist Party, a left social-democratic group originating from Maoism, which had led the polls for large parts of 2012, slumped badly in the last weeks before the election and ended up with the same number of seats, and a smaller vote (9.2%) than in 2010. Solidarity asked Peter Drucker, a socialist based in the Netherlands, to explain. On the election result itself, Peter referred us to an article by Alex de Jong . The result, wrote de Jong, "shouldn't come as a...

On Saturday 15 September more than 100 people joined a march against NHS cuts through Harlesden to the Central Middlesex Hospital (aka Park Royal Hospital). Along with Ealing and Hammersmith Hospitals, Central Middlesex is set to lose its A&E department under proposals put forward by NHS North West London (NHSNWL). The deadline of the NHSNWL consultation “Shaping a Healthier Future” is 8 October. Central Middlesex is a busy hospital, in an area with significant industry, close to Wembley Stadium, but already the A&E is closed at night. If the A&E closed permanently, patients from this area of...

The questions that Eric Lee raises in his opinion piece, “Why American unions support Obama and why they're right to do so” have been long settled for revolutionary Marxists in the U.S. Debate over the viability of a “realignment” strategy like that carried out by Max Shactman’s followers was largely settled by the Vietnam war and the abandonment by Shachtman’s formerly third camp socialists of an independent working class perspective. Since the mid-1970s, as U.S. capital shifted away from accepting the regulated capitalism of the New Deal to driving an aggressive neoliberalism, lingering...