Middle East Solidarity Day School 2016

Middle East Solidarity Day School 2016

Speakers include: Omar Barghouti, Ala’a Shehabi, Sameh Naguib, Joseph Daher, Adam Hanieh, Muzna al-Na’ib, Anne Alexander and others

This dayschool will provide an essential guide for activists and trade unionists who want to understand more about how ordinary people across the Middle East continue to resist military intervention and dictatorship in their day-to-day struggles for justice and dignity. Join the debate with leading activists from Palestine, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria who offer analysis of the region which cuts through the picture of confusion and despair in the mainstream media. We will also hear hidden stories of courage and resilience which continue to inspire, five years after the revolutions which shook the region and beyond.

Sessions on:

• Palestine and the struggle for justice
• Counter-revolution, military intervention and crisis in Syria
• Egypt: strategies for resistance
• Sectarian polarisation in the Gulf

Djam Lecture Theatre, SOAS, Russell Square, London, WC1H 0XG

£5 unwaged / £10 waged
Organised by Middle East Solidarity magazine with support from SOAS Unison, Egypt Solidarity Initiative, MENA Solidarity and Bahrain Watch

International Socialism #149 out now

The latest issue of International Socialism is now online, and while there is a host of material relating to Marxist theory and history, from debates about the level of class struggle in Britain to the struggle for climate justice, and discussion of figures from Erich Fromm to Leon Trotsky and E.P. Thompson, it leads with Mark L Thomas on the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, while Jane Hardy looks at debates in radical and Marxist economics. Other key pieces include Anne Alexander writes on ISIS, imperialism and the war in Syria, and Alex Callinicos analyses the strategy and tactics for anti-imperialists in the West as they set about resisting the long war on 'terror' underway, in Britain through re-building the Stop the War Coalition. As he concludes:

One thing is clear, amid the chaos, confusion and bloodshed in the Middle East: imperialism is a key part of the problem there. The US, Britain, France, Russia and the rest, can do no good there. They should get out of the Middle East and leave its peoples to find their own way to the goals of democracy and social justice that inspired the revolutions of 2011. In the meantime, the task of the Western left is to rebuild the anti-war movement, and mobilise as many people as possible in a campaign to force our governments finally to end the long war.