Monthly Archives: August 2006
NEW ORLEANS was allowed to be destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. US capitalism and its Bush administration had on the top of their agendas massive tax cuts for the rich, the privatisation of all remaining US state services, and the diversion of all US resources to the conquest of Iraq and...
‘It seems management are hell-bent on taking on the FBU and cutting 120 jobs’, Merseyside Fire Brigades Union Brigade Chairman Mark Dunne told News Line yesterday on the eve of eight days of strike action due to commence today. Merseyside FBU members are due to strike from 10am today to...
Nearly 300 porters, cleaners and switchboard staff employed by Rentokil Initial at Whipps Cross Hospital in East London began another three days of strike action yesterday. Pickets were out from 6am in a dispute over management’s failure to honour an equal pay deal agreed after a strike three years ago. UNISON...
Four out of ten older people admitted to hospital have malnutrition on arrival, says a new report by Age Concern. The Royal College of Nursing backed the report, saying it was not nurses’ fault, but that cuts and staff shortages meant for many nurses, time had become a luxury. Pauline...
DEFENCE Secretary Browne has just visited Baghdad where he declared that the pace of the British rout in Iraq is to be accelerated, with the handover of all formal control of security to Iraqi forces in the south of the country, including Iraq’s second city Basra. The Chief of Defence...
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has stressed that the Lebanon cease-fire UN Security Council Resolution 1701 has to be implemented in full. He has made it clear that the resolution does not call for stationing international peacekeeping forces on the Syrian border, unless that is requested by the Lebanese government. He...
A seventeen-year-old boy arrested by police in connection with an alleged plot to blow up airliners has made a second appearance in court. The youth is charged with possessing articles useful to a person preparing terrorism acts, allegedly including a book on bombs and suicide notes. A bail application was...
Ancillary workers at Whipps Cross Hospital north London were yesterday organising for three days of strike action from today in a dispute over equal pay and conditions. ‘Unless Initial make an offer by midnight tonight, the strikes are going ahead tomorrow,’ UNISON regional organiser Maurice Sheehan told News Line yesterday. He...
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas last Saturday condemned the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in the wake of a deadly attack in the West Bank city of Nablus. In a statement, Abbas pointed to the continuation of Israel’s killing, destruction and arrest, referring to the killing Saturday of...
IN a motion for next month’s Trades Union Congress, UNISON correctly says the use of private firms in public services is ‘harmful, wasteful, and unjust’. However, the motion does not address the issue that is being discussed everywhere in the workers’ movement. This is that the trade unions must...
TWENTY-FIVE soldiers in the puppet Iraqi army were killed yesterday in fierce fighting with the Mahdi Army militia, which is opposed to the US-UK occupation of Iraq. The fighting broke out in Diwaniya, south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Five soldiers in the puppet forces also went missing during the fighting, which...
The organisers of the biggest demonstration so far in defence of the NHS, a huge 30,000-strong march against NHS cuts in Cornwall, yesterday slammed as ‘arrogant’ the response of management of Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust. People from all over Cornwall, including local residents and hospital staff, joined in...
ANOTHER British soldier has died in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed yesterday. The MoD said the soldier was ‘shot and killed’ in a clash with insurgents in northern Helmand – the eighth to die in Afghanistan this month. The MoD refused to confirm if the soldier...
ONE of Opus Dei’s members in the Labour Cabinet, Ruth Kelly, yesterday made a call to close down Muslim schools that promote ‘isolationism’. Opus Dei is the reactionary Catholic secret group that seeks to drag society backwards towards the ‘glory’ of the Catholic Church’s feudal past, which was shattered by...
The US State Department said last Friday it has launched an inquiry into whether Israel misused US-made cluster bombs in Lebanon during the US-backed recent war. Cluster bombs spray large numbers of bomblets over a wide area – which can remain unexploded and endanger civilians long after they are...
Lawyers for Umar Hussain and his brother Mehran Hussain, yesterday said ‘we will be making a challenge’ to charges made against the brothers under the Terrorism Act. Umar Hussain, 24, from east London, was remanded in custody until 1 September, after becoming the twelfth person to be charged in...
Thirty-seven Labour Party members in Foreign Secretary Beckett’s Derby South constituency yesterday announced their defection to the Liberal Democrats at a press conference at the Pakistani Community Centre in Derby. The Labour Party members and branch officers are furious over her support for Israel’s war against Lebanon. The defectors include Mohammed...
THE decision of up to 40 members of Foreign Secretary Beckett’s local Labour Party branch, Derby South, to quit the party, concretely proves that the three imperialist politicians, Blair, Beckett and Brown are destroying the Labour Party and engineering the return of a Tory government. The Derby South defectors say...
Yesterday’s immigration panel ruling to deport an Algerian man as a threat to national security is ‘an affront to justice and a green light to torture’ said Amnesty International UK. The human rights organisation added in a statement: ‘Amnesty International is deeply dismayed at today’s decision of the Special...
COMMUNITIES Secretary Ruth Kelly, launching a Commission on Integration and Cohesion yesterday, declared: ‘I believe that we should celebrate and clearly articulate the benefits that migration and diversity have brought’. Kelly, a member of the reactionary Catholic secret society the Opus Dei, however qualified her remarks by saying: ‘But...
Hezbollah on Wednesday held a memorial service in the township of Majdal Silm in south Lebanon. During the service, Shaykh Nabil Qawuq, Hezbollah’s official in charge of the southern area, said: ‘The state of frustration and despair dominating the US Administration and Israeli leaders, as a result of the resounding...
A rights group yesterday sought a ban on US flights carrying bombs and detonators to Israel landing at UK airports. The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) accused the UK government of knowingly assisting in ‘acts of terrorism’. The IHRC was seeking permission to bring proceedings against the Civil Aviation Authority, the...
THE imperialist powers are studying Iran’s offer of more talks to resolve the crisis that the US has created over Iran’s right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. In fact, the US and its UK ally have refused to rule out military action against Iran on this issue. Iran said...
Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert is under pressure to authorise an independent commission of inquiry into the conduct of the recently failed war in Lebanon, with the power to sack senior government and military officials. Attorney general Menachem Mazuz has presented Olmert with a list of options, including government and...
The Lebanese Hezbollah movement on Monday began paying compensation to the residents of buildings that were totally destroyed in the city of Baalbek by allocating $10,000 to each residential unit to pay the rent for one year for one apartment and to buy the necessary house furniture. At the...
Supreme spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that Iran will press on with its nuclear work. State television quoted Khamenei as saying: ‘The Islamic Republic has made up its mind, and on the nuclear programme and other issues it will continue on its path with strength.’ Last Tuesday,...
The show trial in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone of captured Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and six other co-defendants continued yesterday, over the so-called Anfal campaign in northern Iraq at the time of the Iraq/Iran war. Captured Iraqi defence minister Sultan Hashim al-Tai, who was commander of Task Force Anfal and...
OVER 600,000 workers have come to work in the UK from the eight nations which joined the European Union in 2004, said Home Office minister Tony McNulty yesterday. The figures show that 447,000 people from Poland and the seven other new EU states have applied to work in the UK....
Nearly 300 porters, cleaners and switchboard staff employed by Rentokil Initial, based at Whipps Cross Hospital in East London, will be on strike again next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, in a dispute over equal pay and conditions. Whipps Cross Hospital UNISON shop steward Len Hockey told News Line yesterday: ‘The...
DESPITE the recent heavy losses suffered by the Israeli army in trying to penetrate southern Lebanon, the objective of the US administration, its Israeli client, and its British servant remains the destruction of Hezbollah, the carrying out of regime change in Syria and ‘blooding’ Iran to prevent it from...
OVER 600 youth and trade unionists joined the locked-out Gate Gourmet workers in a demonstration through Southall on Sunday, marking the first anniversary of their tenacious and determined fight for reinstatement. Members of the RMT rail union, the CWU postal workers’ union, NUT teachers’ union, GMB general workers’ union, Amicus,...
‘VICTORY for Gate Gourmet workers!’, ‘Slavery – no way!’ shouted more than 600 locked-out workers and their supporters as they marched through Southall yesterday afternoon. The Gate Gourmet workers and supporters from trade unions across London, Oxford, and even from Germany and Switzerland, were marking the first anniversary...
THE Tory Party yesterday called for restrictions on immigrant workers from Bulgaria and Romania when these countries shortly join the EU. The Tory Party immigration spokesman Damian Green said ministers had to learn from the ‘unprecedented numbers’ who arrived in the UK after the last EU expansion, which saw Poland...
Lebanese Prime Minister Fu’ad al-Siniora condemned an Israeli commando raid early Saturday morning against a position held by Hezbollah in the Al-Biqa as ‘a blatant violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701’ to cease military operations. Hezbollah issued a statement Saturday afternoon that ‘at 0340 local time, and amid intense...
HEALTH unions yesterday slammed the government’s announcement of six new Private Finance Initiative (PFI) hospital projects costing £1.5 billion. Not only will the schemes cost the NHS billions, they will have hundreds less beds and half of them will be in private single rooms. Mike Jackson, UNISON Senior National Officer...
ON SUNDAY, hundreds of workers from Gate Gourmet, who were locked out and sacked by the company on August 10, 2005, are marching with their supporters through Southall, west London, to mark the anniversary of the beginning of their historic struggle. The determined struggle of these workers to fight against...
‘WE ARE marching for a future where no employer can sack 800 workers by megaphone at a minute’s notice and where trade union leaders fight for the interests of their members and don’t stab them in the back,’ said Gate Gourmet locked-out worker Parmjit Bains yesterday. Speaking on the eve...
RALLIES will take place across the United States on Tuesday, August 22, demanding action to tackle the country’s health care crisis. America has a system of private health insurance. Urging workers to join Tuesday’s rallies, organisers of the ‘Americans for Health Care’ campaign say: ‘Nearly 46 million Americans are uninsured. ‘At least...
POSTAL workers from the Greenford Mail Centre, one of the biggest in the country, are coming to the Gate Gourmet locked-out workers’ first anniversary march and rally in Southall this Sunday. Yesterday they bought eight tickets for the evening’s entertainment in Southall Community Centre and said that they would...
Consumer and pensioners organisations yesterday slammed massive inflation-busting gas and electricity price rises announced by energy giant Powergen. Watchdog Energywatch warned that consumers face £1,000 a year energy bills. Powergen announced it is putting up its gas and electricity prices for the second time this year, with domestic gas prices...
POWERGEN, the energy monopoly, is putting up the prices of its gas and electricity services by 18.4 per cent and 9.7 per cent, next Monday. This is the second huge increase this year. In March, Powergen raised gas prices by 24.4 per cent and electricity prices by 9.7 per cent....
‘Without exaggeration we stand before a strategic and historical victory for Lebanon – all of Lebanon, for the resistance, and for the whole nation’, declared Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in a recorded message to ‘martyrs’ broadcast by Hezbollah TV Al-Manar on 14 August. Nasrallah said: ‘I address my words...