Monthly Archives: February 2008
The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) condemned yesterday’s announcement that Labour will slash a further 12,000 jobs and close an additional 200 offices in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). The union also accused the government of ‘pursuing a dogmatic policy of privatisation’ of the welfare...
The 6th Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council ‘on human rights violations emanating from Israeli military incursions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the recent ones in occupied Gaza and West Bank town of Nablus’ took place in Geneva on 23-24 January 2008. A written statement submitted by...
AT the same time as the Fatah leader, President Abbas is meeting the Israeli Premier Olmert for the continuing ‘peace talks’, that were launched by President Bush with ex-Premier Blair as their chief ‘fixer’, the Israeli military has been slaughtering Palestinians with a terrible determination to kill the...
The dollar plunged to another record low against the European single currency yesterday in the face of new US recession fears. In morning deals, the euro surged as high as $1.5088, after smashing through the $1.50 barrier for the first ever time in US trade on Tuesday. Global Insight analyst...
NO sooner has the US’s man, Musharraf, been decisively beaten in the Pakistan elections, than the US through its Defence Secretary Gates is issuing its orders to any new government that there cannot be any negotiations with the Taleban leaders. The Pakistani military has been battling tribes near to the...
HAMAS leader Dr Usamah al-Muzayni gave a wide-ranging interview to the Gaza newspaper ‘Filastin’ last weekend, warning that ‘the continuation of the siege of Gaza means explosion’. Dr al-Muzayni stressed that his movement will continue to kidnap Israeli occupation soldiers if the enemy does not answer the demands made in...
THE LABOUR government is proceeding with its disgraceful closure programme of Remploy factories for disabled workers. Twenty-eight of the 83 Remploy factories around the country are currently being stripped out and closed by the government. Phil Davies, Secretary to the Remploy Consortium of Trade Unions has written to James Purnell, the...
AT a press conference called by the Stop The War Coalition in London on Monday, ex-British SAS soldier Ben Griffin read out the following statement: ‘Our government would have us believe that our involvement in the process known as Extraordinary Rendition is limited to two occasions on which plans carrying...
THE Brown government has been told by the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, to release the minutes of two cabinet meetings, from March 7th and March 17 2003, just days before the invasion of Iraq by the Anglo-US armies. Thomas said that production of the minutes would ‘allow the public to...
DEPUTY Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was in Belgrade yesterday for talks with Serbian President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. Medvedev is due to succeed Putin as President of Russia next Sunday. He told his audience: ‘We proceed from the assumption that Serbia is a united country, whose...
THOUSANDS of people in Afghanistan and Iraq have been secretly detained by British armed forces and handed over to the United States for torture, from 2001 up to the present day, a press conference called by the Stop the War Coalition was told yesterday. The revelations were made by ex-SAS...
Israel strengthened its forces along the border with the Gaza Strip last Sunday, fearful that thousands of Palestinians may march on the border against Israel’s economic siege, as they did recently in Rafah. Israel fears that crowds of Palestinians might rush the border, and that large numbers of casualties will...
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) has said a report from the right-wing think tank Reform, has exposed the academy schools programme’s ‘real agenda’, i.e. the drive to privatise and de-unionise education. Commenting on the report, titled ‘Response to “Academies: A Model Education?”’, NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott said today:...
LAST week, the House of Commons was told by the Foreign Secretary, Miliband, that it had been deceived in numerous statements by Labour government leaders. They had denied, point blank, that the US had flown ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights into British airports or air bases, and over British territories, carrying ...
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad yesterday warned of ‘firm reprisals’ against any country leading the way to impose new sanctions, adding that Iran was ‘not joking’. Britain, France and the United States are pushing for a new sanctions resolution this week, after UN atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),...
THOUSANDS of Turkish soldiers, backing a number of tank led armoured columns, crossed into northern Iraq on Thursday evening, after a massive artillery bombardment of the area. There is no doubt that this is a major military operation and part of a strategic plan of the Turkish government and military. It...
Lawyers yesterday revealed shocking allegations about the behaviour of British troops in Iraq. Martyn Day, senior partner at law firm Leigh Day & Co, and Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, have taken detailed statements from a number of Iraqi citizens over the past weeks about events that are alleged to have taken place in a British...
There is no good evidence that independent sector treatment centres have provided additional capacity, value for money, or high quality care, argue researchers in this week’s British Medical Journal (BMJ). Despite this, says the BMJ, the government is continuing with the programme. Commenting on the paper, Dr Jonathan Fielden, chairman of...
FOREIGN Secretary Miliband yesterday admitted in the House of Commons that previous government denials that the island of Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Islands group, had been used by the US for extraordinary rendition flights were false. One of these denials was made by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair,...
A SENIOR aide to Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has said that Palestinians should follow the example of Kosovo and unilaterally declare independence if Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations fail. Yasser Abed Rabbo, a member of the Palestinian negotiating team, said: ‘If things are not going in the direction of actually...
‘This greed has got to be stopped and the government should step in now and levy a windfall tax on the company,’ said UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis yesterday, after British Gas announced a 500 per cent profit hike. Energy supplier British Gas reported annual profits of £571m at...
Cuban President Fidel Castro on Monday delivered the following message announcing his resignation from the presidency. It said: ‘Message from the Commander in Chief ‘Dear compatriots: ‘Last Friday, February 15, I promised you that in my next reflection I would deal with an issue of interest to many compatriots. Thus, this now...
THE class message of the Labour government is clear. It is that if you’re a banker, you can do no wrong and are eligible for unlimited aid from the public purse to keep you and your bank afloat. However, if you are a worker, especially a public sector worker,...
Yesterday the government launched major attacks on workers and immigrants. Ministers announced plans to strip unemployed people of their benefits, force long term sick and injured people back into work, make doctors issue well notes instead of sick notes, and to charge non-EU immigrants for healthcare and education Home Secretary Jacqui...
‘We have to keep this hospital open,’ said workers and youth taking part in a fifty-strong picket of Chase Farm Hospital, yesterday, organised by the North East London Council of Action. A lively contingent of Young Socialists members took part handing out leaflets calling for an occupation to stop...
THE Tory Party has been driven to the brink of hysteria by the fact that the capitalist world banking system is on the brink of collapse, with banks too frightened to lend to each other, in a world that is dominated by a capitalist crisis where production is falling...
UK military chiefs are screaming for more money to be spent on defence, as a desperate imperialism is driven to launch more wars for resources and take on an undefeated working class at home. ‘The security of the United Kingdom is at risk and under threat’, claimed the Royal United...
Unite (Amicus section) yesterday expressed fears for the jobs of thousands of its members currently working at Northern Rock, as Chancellor Darling introduced emergency legislation to place the troubled bank under temporary public ownership. Graham Goddard, Unite Deputy General Secretary says: ‘The decision to bring Northern Rock into temporary public...
HASHIM Thaci, the former leader of the American-backed terrorist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and the Prime Minister in the Serbian province, declared on Sunday that Kosovo was ‘proud, independent and free’. He said: ‘As I feel the heartbeat of my ancestors I will read the declaration of independence...
AXED children’s theatre workers expressed outrage at Culture Secretary Andrew Burnham’s proclamation last Wednesday that ‘every schoolchild will get five hours of culture a week.’ Two hundred arts organisations, including a number of very highly-valued children’s theatre companies, were given the death-sentence on 1st February, when the Arts...
Thirty four civilians were taken into custody in a cordon and search operation conducted by the government security forces at Gampaha town from Saturday night till Sunday morning, said TamilNet yesterday. Twenty nine of those arrested are Tamils, the majority of them plantation workers. Three are Muslims and two are...
By John Coulter, Irish political journalist THE starting gun on the most important realignment in Irish unionism for 40 years was fired when First Minister Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party failed to romp home in a council by-election in one of the North’s safest Paisleyite constituencies. The Paisley camp is now...
Public sector union UNISON yesterday joined doctors in opposing government plans to replace NHS-run GP surgeries with ‘polyclinics’. ‘We are opposed to privately-run polyclinics,’ A UNISON spokeswoman told News Line yesterday. ‘We do not want to see GP surgeries overrun by the private sector.’ The British Medical Association condemned Saturday’s attack on...
PRIME Minister Gordon Brown’s government is targeting General Practitioners (GPs) in its rush to privatise the National Health Service (NHS). Two key barriers to a takeover of the NHS by large corporate healthcare companies are the self-employed GPs’ contract with the NHS and the state-owned District General Hospitals (DGHs). GPs...
‘The skyrocketing costs of our nation’s failing health care system are hitting employers hard and that means higher costs for all of us,’ says America’s AFL-CIO trade union federation. A look at some of the stories submitted to the AFL-CIO/Working America 2008 Health Care for America Survey shows just how...
Chief of Defence Staff Lord Guthrie yesterday gave his backing to a call from right wing think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, for ex-servicemen and women to be retrained as teachers to bring military style discipline to inner city schools. Guthrie raised the spectre of daily reports of knife crime,...
THE leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, on 14 February warned Israel that it will respond to the killing the previous day of one of its senior commanders, Imad Mughniyah. Addressing mourners at Mughniyah’s funeral in Beirut via a video link, Nasrallah said: ‘Leader and martyr...
THE capitalist state used to be the mailed fist concealed within the velvet glove in Britain. Its real power was covered by the parliamentary veneer of the primacy of the House of Commons. This regime is fast disappearing. Today police chiefs and army officers are entering politics. In fact they...
Some 100,000 workers demonstrated through the Athens city centre last Wednesday as part of the one-day general strike called by the GSEE (Greek TUC) and ADEDY (public sector trade unions federation) against the government’s ‘pensions reforms’. Rallies and marches took place in every Greek city and town. GSEE estimated that...
THE Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King has proclaimed that the crisis of capitalism means huge ongoing cuts in the standard of living of the working class and the middle class. He added that ‘we’ will have to grin and bear it since ‘We have to understand...
VLADIMIR CHIZHOV, The Russian ambassador to the EU, has warned that Moscow will react negatively to countries which recognise Kosovo independence. ‘This, above all, refers to the EU which does not have a consensus on this issue,’ he said in an interview with the Vienna daily Die Presse, when...
‘They were sending me to the US for an execution, I will never forgive that,’ said Algerian pilot Lofti Raissi yesterday, after winning the right to claim damages from the UK government. Raissi was held for over four months in Belmarsh Prison while being considered for extradition to the US,...
FOREIGN Secretary Miliband declared to his audience, right at the start of his Oxford College speech last Tuesday evening, that ‘we’ must not let ‘the doubts’ and ‘the concerns’ over the Iraq and Afghan wars ‘obscure our national interest, never mind our moral impulse, in supporting movements for democracy’. That...