Monthly Archives: August 2006
THIS week, as college and school students receive their A level examination results and consider going to university, the latest survey by the NatWest Bank reveals that a three-year course will cost £33,512, on average. The main reason for this soaring cost of going to university is the Labour government’s...
Gaza marked the first anniversary of the start of Israel’s historic pullout from the coastal strip on Tuesday amid bitterness that the end of the Zionist settlements did not bring an end to occupation and bloodshed. At midnight on August 15, 2005, Israel began withdrawing 8,000 Jewish settlers and thousands...
BRITISH Airways workers are coming to the Gate Gourmet locked-out workers first anniversary march and rally in Southall this Sunday. Buying his ticket for the rally on Southall High Street yesterday, BA ramp worker and TGWU member, R Sahota said: ‘The union must fight for these members. It’s their responsibility. ‘What...
THE Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is demanding that their forces be given powers to dispense ‘instant police justice’. This is revealed in the latest issue of Police Professional, ACPO’s house magazine. Surrey’s Assistant Chief Constable, Mark Rowley, who is ACPO’s spokesman on the so-called ‘modernisation’ of police work,...
Civil rights groups yesterday slammed calls from police chiefs for summary powers to dish out ‘instant justice’. Surrey Police chiefs went on television and gave interviews to the press yesterday, saying they are considering asking the Blair government for more powers to impose on the spot punishments. The police chiefs want...
Gate Gourmet locked-out workers got great support for this Sunday’s anniversary march and rally on Southall’s busy High Street yesterday. Locked-out worker Parmjit Bains told News Line: ‘We have heard that the union and Gate Gourmet shop stewards are having a party in celebration of the anniversary at a restaurant...
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) were not distracted by their 34-day war on Lebanon to suspend their killing of Palestinian children, women and men, but exploited the war to expand Israel’s six-year onslaught on the Palestinian people into Lebanon, reported the Palestine Media Centre on Monday. In the early hours...
HOME Secretary Reid, who has been making people’s blood run cold with his tales of dozens of conspiracies and thousands of terrorists, has reduced the scale of the ‘terror threat’ to ‘severe’ from ‘critical’. According to Reid, this means that a terrorist attack, like the one he is currently alleging,...
Gate Gourmet locked out workers are campaigning every day up until their first anniversary march and rally in Southall this Sunday, 20th August. Yesterday, ex-British Airways worker AS Wangday told News Line: ‘I will come on Sunday. ‘I was a chef with BA before Gate Gourmet took over four...
A government ruling on nurse recruitment and work permits that came into force yesterday, puts over 38,000 overseas nurses and their families at risk, UNISON warned. The biggest health service union told News Line it has written to health secretary Patricia Hewitt over the issue ‘raising our concerns and asking...
YESTERDAY Home Secretary Reid dismissed the many appeals for a change in British Foreign Policy from a multitude of community and political leaders, who blamed the rape of Iraq, Palestine and now the Lebanon by the US, UK and Israel for the ‘radicalisation’ of Muslim youth, saying that there...
Israel has asked the US government to speed delivery of short-range anti-personnel rockets armed with deadly cluster munitions, for use against the Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israeli request for M-26 artillery rockets, which are fired in barrages and carry hundreds of grenade-like bomblets that scatter and explode over a...
‘Victory to Hezbollah! Israel out of Lebanon! Freedom for Palestine! Cease-fire now!’ chanted over 800 demonstrators opposite Downing Street last Friday night. The two-hour evening picket was called by Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Protesters waved Lebanese and Palestinian flags, carried pictures of wounded children and placards condemning the Israeli Zionists’ terror being...
YESTERDAY the 24 suspects accused by the state of ‘a plot to commit murder on an unimaginable scale’ by blowing up 10 airliners with liquid explosives remained uncharged, with the police unable to produce even a shred of evidence, or a drop of liquid, against them, when the attempted...
A NEW national partnership agreement signed yesterday by the AFL-CIO and the largest network of worker centres serving low-wage, often immigrant workers will help promote and advance the workplace rights of all workers, both organisations said. Approved here yesterday by the AFL-CIO Executive Council, the new partnership agreement with...
STRIKING Haringey bin men are into the second week of their action against private contractors, Haringey Accord, which plans to cut two dust crews, resulting in an impossible workload, and dangerous breaches in health and safety for both workers and the public. The strikers’ union, the Transport and General Workers...
Hezbollah said its fighters killed or wounded 15 Israeli soldiers trying to advance towards the border village of Aita al-Shaab yesterday morning, as fighting continued in towns and villages along the Lebanese border with Israel. A Hezbollah statement added: ‘The remaining soldiers retreated under the cover of artillery shelling.’ Hezbollah said...
HEZBOLLAH Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said Wednesday that the ‘resistance’ men are making miracles in the south, noting that over 60 Israeli Merkava tanks and a ‘large number, scores of military bulldozers and scores of military personnel carriers’ were destroyed in the battles. He also said that over 100 Israeli officers...
EARLY yesterday morning 21 people were arrested and charged under the various terrorism acts, while Scotland Yard said that the 21 were engaged in a plot to blow up planes and ‘commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale.’ While the state has said that it cannot be sure that it...
Hezbollah fighters yesterday took out two Israeli tanks, killing and wounding their crews, as they fought off an enemy attempt to take Marjayoun just five miles from the south Lebanon border. The attempted assault on the Christian town began with a pre-dawn artillery barrage. The town’s mayor said the Israeli artillery...
Four Israeli soldiers were killed and a number wounded yesterday in a rocket attack at a southern Lebanese village, as fighting continued to rage along the border with Israel. A Hezbollah statement said its fighters had killed or wounded ten Israeli soldiers and destroyed a tank as it advanced toward the...
THE Transport and General Workers Union yesterday issued a warning that one year after 800 workers were sacked at Gate Gourmet the ‘dispute could be repeated’. Its statement said: ‘On the first anniversary of the Gate Gourmet dispute, the Transport and General Workers’ Union is warning that the events that...
ON August 10, 2005 Gate Gourmet, owned by Texas Pacific, locked out in a pre-planned operation over 800 workers, an assault that was calculated to allow them to bring in a scab labour force that would be prepared to work along the lines of their company ‘survival plan’ designed...
THE Lebanese premier Fu’ad Al Siniora has urged Arab leaders at a special Beirut conference, held on Monday, to strive for an immediate cease-fire and a withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Lebanon. He told the leaders: ‘Your excellencies, dear brothers, you are meeting today in the heart of...
Hezbollah fighters killed three Israeli soldiers in fighting along the southern Lebanon border yesterday. This was after a night of air attacks by Israeli jets on the southern suburbs of Beirut when a block of flats with sleeping families in it was bombed, with eighteen dead. Rescue workers were still searching...
BOTH American generals and ex-British ambassadors have been predicting that Iraq is either on the brink of civil war or that it has already begun, and that the country is set to fracture into three entities – a Kurdish state in the north, a ‘Sunni’ state in central and...
Lebanon’s prime minister Fuad Siniora yesterday condemned the latest ‘deliberate massacre’ of over fifty innocent civilians in south Lebanon. As the UN argued over an Israeli-biased cease-fire resolution, Israeli warplanes slaughtered whole families when they destroyed several houses in the border village of Houla. Many more villagers are feared dead as...
SEVEN people were arrested at Prestwick Airport yesterday, after appointing themselves as ‘citizen weapons inspectors’, and forcing themselves onto a US cargo flight to check out whether the plane was carrying deadly guided bombs for the use of Israeli forces in their bombing campaign against women, children...
LEBANESE Al-Manar Television on 6 August carried a live news conference given by Nabih Birri, Speaker of the Lebanese Chamber of Deputies and leader of the largely-Shi’ite Amal Movement, in which he rejected the UN draft resolution on the Lebanon. Birri began with an opening statement. He said: ‘I...
THE Lebanese government yesterday rejected the UN draft resolution on the Lebanon. The Speaker of the Lebanese Chamber of Deputies, Nabih Birri, said that it would not accept Israeli troops remaining in the Lebanon, and that for an agreement to be made, all Israeli troops must cross the border and...
‘Bush, Blair terrorists!’ shouted workers and youth last Saturday as they passed the American embassy in central London on a 100,000-strong demonstration against the Israeli war on Lebanon. Marchers had set off from Hyde Park to go on to a rally in Parliament Square. There was a sit-down in the...
At least eleven Israeli soldiers were killed and dozens more were injured, some seriously, yesterday when a Hezbollah Katyusha rocket scored a direct hit on the entrance to the Kfar Giladi kibbutz near Kiryat Shmona. The rocket was part of a barrage of 80 missiles fired in 15 minutes and...
PRIME minister Blair, at the last minute, postponed his holiday to try to assist the UN Security Council efforts, headed by France, to fashion a resolution that will declare an immediate ceasefire in the Lebanon and send in a French led ‘stabilisation force’ to police its border with Israel. Blair...
Five Israeli soldiers were killed yesterday afternoon as ferocious resistance by Hezbollah fighters held off their attempts to advance into southern Lebanon. Hezbollah also said it had destroyed eight Israeli tanks in the border villages. Three of the Israeli soldiers were killed in a missile attack. Israel however continued to lash out in a frenzy. An Israeli...
GATE Gourmet locked-out workers were interviewed by the Heathrow Airport free newspaper Skyport yesterday. Parmjit Bains told News Line: ‘All Heathrow Airport workers read it. ‘They always give us a fair report. ‘We told them what happened on the day we were locked out and what has happened to us during the...
THE Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speaking on military operations, and political developments over Al Manar TV on August 3 noted that the fourth week of the ‘open war declared by Israel on Lebanon’ has started. He said that he wants to speak about some issues related to field...
All Israeli troops must leave Lebanon before we can accept a ceasefire, Hezbollah said yesterday as its fighters battled an Israeli force of 10,000 troops along the border in southern Lebanon. Israel admitted to two Israeli soldiers being killed in ferocious fighting at Ayt Al-Alta’b and Marun Al-Ra’s just a...
yesterday the capitalist state exonerated the police gunman who shot and wounded Muhammad Abdul Kahar during the dawn police raid in Forest Gate last June. At the same time Scotland Yard sought to blacken the name of Muhammad Abdul Kahar by arresting him and levelling pornography charges against him, arousing...
The US Senate could take up the so-called Pension Protection Act, H.R. 4, by today, warns the Teamsters union. A Teamsters statement said: ‘This bad pension legislation would allow vested benefits to be cut, and the Teamsters are continuing to mobilise against the bill in an attempt to stop the...
THE Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee raised its base rate by 0.25 per cent to 4.75 per cent yesterday. This was the first change for 11 months and the first increase for two years. The decision was taken amid fears over growing inflation. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) went...
Fierce confrontations continued between resistance fighters and Israel’s elite forces in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, particularly in the town of Ayta al-Sha’b where the invading Israeli forces sustained numerous casualties. ‘In the first reference to deaths among the occupation army’s ranks, the Israeli Army announced that Israeli victims, as the...
UNISON Eastern regional head of health Geoff Reason yesterday condemned Labour over £2.5m in penalties imposed on Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust for treating patients too quickly. Reason told News Line: ‘It gets from bad to worse. What we are facing is hospitals who’ve done too much work to meet government...