Editorial

Following recent press reports about a possible amnesty for “illegal” migrants, discussions are taking place between Turkish, Kurdish and Iraqi refugee organisations and other anti-deportation groups around the launch of a network to campaign for migrants’ rights including an amnesty.

 

Asylum

Readers may have noticed the recent flurry of media debate around an “amnesty for illegal immigrants”.

 

Civil liberties

On Bush’s Guantanamo hell-hole

Former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg spoke to a packed room of around 80 people at Oxford house in Bethnal Green at a meeting organised by Youth Respect in Tower Hamlets on June 28th along with two recently elected Respect councilors.

 

Civil liberties

The US Supreme Court has found that article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to all detainees, whether prisoners of war, civilians or so-called unlawful combatants in the “war on terror”.

 

Health

Second False Start to PCT Privatisation

July began with health ministers once more on the back foot. They were caught out for a second time trying secretly to hand control of the £64 billion NHS commissioning budget to private insurance companies, being forced to recant, and then frantically denying the patiently obvious – that Blair’s market-style “reforms” to the NHS are driving a rapid and widespread process of privatisation.

 

Labour

Plans are underway for the next national anti-war demonstration to take place on the Saturday before the Labour conference on September 23.

 

Latin America

The Socialist Resistance Day School on Latin America on June 24 drew an audience of over 100, and heard an impressive panel of speakers including author Michael Lowy, Cuban “freelance Trotskyist” Celia Hart, Edouardo Diago from the French LCR along with speakers from Hands Off Venezuela and the Bolivia Solidarity Campaign.

 

Latin America

Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, reported to a meeting of Hands Off Venezuela in London his impressions as part of a TUC delegation to Venezuela. The text below was transcribed by SR and contains the full speech. An edited version appears in SR issue No. 37.

 

Supplement on Lebanon

Socialist Resistance Statement

The Israeli Defence Force actions cannot be explained as “self defence” against the Hizbollah missile attacks. In any event they were grossly disproportionate, deliberately targeting densely populated civilian areas and basic infrastructure.