Monthly Archives: March 2008
Admiral William Fallon, commander of the US Mideast forces has resigned due to differences with the US president on dealing with Tehran. Fallon, said on Tuesday he is stepping down because reports that he differed with President George W Bush over Iran had become ‘a distraction.’ Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced...
MEETING & FILM – Saturday March 15, 5pm @ International Student House, 229 Great Portland Street, W1 (next Great Portland St tube) speakers include: John McDonnell MP, Hengride Permal (Chair, Chagos Islands Community Association) Chagossians: Regina Mandarin, Laurina Edouard, Frankie Bontemps Joni McDougall (GMB Intern. Solidarity Officer), Zena Dodgson (Branch Sec UNISON E. Surrey)...
THE AIM of every government in 2008 is to ‘maintain stability through the world economic slowdown’, said Chancellor Darling yesterday in his budget address. In other words, the common strategic aim is to survive the developing banking collapse and slump in the only way known to capitalism – by...
LIBERATION Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Operations Command in Mannaar told TamilNet on Tuesday that 60 Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were killed on Sunday and Monday when the Tigers confronted three major attempts by the SLA to advance into LTTE territory. At Paalaikkuzhi a large ground push launched...
A JUDICIAL Review sought by the British Medical Association to challenge the government’s decision to cap the pensions of GPs will take place in the High Court, London, today and tomorrow. In 2006, Patricia Hewitt, the then Secretary of State for Health, decided to limit the pensions of...
BLACKSTONE, the world’s biggest private equity capitalist raider, has reported a collapse in its profits in the last three months of 2007. Blackstone’s chief operating officer Hamilton James said: ‘Last quarter, I described the environment as deeper, darker and scarier than we anticipated, and I still...
TUBE passengers and taxpayers remain exposed to an unacceptable level of financial risk and could face another ten-figure bill if the Tubelines consortium were to go out of business, London Underground’s biggest union warned on Monday. Calling for the Tube to be re-nationalised, the RMT said in a statement:...
THE GMB said yesterday that social care in this country has become a social disgrace, as it objected to Lord Hanningfield’s membership of a parliamentary inquiry into the long-term care and well-being of older people in this country. The GMB alleges that Hanningfield presided over the closure and demolition of...
BY JOHN COULTER IRISH POLITICAL JOURNALIST WITH the former Dr No of Unionism ‘Rev Ian Paisley’ now becoming the self-confessed Dr Go, Irish political commentator John Coulter explores if aspirations about unionist unity are myths, or achievable for the first time in 40 years. Northern Unionism is finally on the road...
PREMIER Brown’s pre-budget comment piece in the Financial Times was written so that he could talk directly to his constituency, the bosses. He pledged: ‘Over the coming weeks, starting in the Budget on Wednesday, we will set out the next steps of the government’s long-term public service reform...
The government’s forecasts for the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in this financial year have ‘increased significantly over the last three months’, says a report from the House of Commons Defence Committee published yesterday. The report, Operational costs in Afghanistan and Iraq: Spring Supplementary Estimate 2007-08, HC...
TAMILNET reports that the leader of the Liberation Tigers, Velupillai Pirapaharan, on Saturday, paid tribute to the slain Jaffna District Tamil National Alliance MP Kiddinan Sivanesan in the Vanni. LTTE’s Intelligence Wing Chief Poddu Ammaan, Political Head B Nadesan and the Head of Financial Division Thamizheanthi were also present...
US President, George W Bush, last Saturday revealed the inseparable connection between imperialism and atrocities when he vetoed Congressional legislation that would have governed intelligence funding, because it aimed to stop intelligence services, such as the CIA, torturing ‘suspects’. The bill was beyond the pale...
‘It’s unacceptable and totally undemocratic. We are having security decided by the private sector with no reference to parliament,’ Sharon Holder, GMB national officer, told News Line yesterday. She was speaking in response to British Airways’ announcement that all passengers, both international and domestic, using Terminal 5 when it opens,...
‘No polyclinics! Save our surgeries!’ shouted over fifty Rugby GPs, medical staff and supporters during a town centre protest on Saturday. Carrying banners and wearing T-shirts saying ‘save your surgery’, the protesters marched into Rugby’s Market Square, where they handed out leaflets and collected more signatures for a petition opposing...
THE battle to stop all NHS cuts is now raging up and down the country. However, the private predators are gathering. Near Horsham last Thursday night a Virgin Roadshow was picketed to make it clear that Crawley residents and NHS workers will not tolerate Branson’s national campaign to take over GP...
THE Brown government rails on about ‘breaches of human rights’ allegedly taking place in Zimbabwe and Burma, and makes all kinds of allegations concerning what the Sudanese government is doing in Darfur, yet it keeps a deadly silence over the actions of the Rajapaksa government in Sri Lanka. Sri...
The Sri Lankan government is responsible for widespread abductions and ‘disappearances’ that are a national crisis, New York based rights group Human Rights Watch said in a new report released on Thursday. Human Rights Watch urged the government to reveal the whereabouts of the ‘disappeared,’ immediately end the practice, and...
TENANTS on the Heygate estate in south London’s Elephant and Castle are being sent ‘take it now or face eviction later’ letters, as part of a drive to empty the council estate to make way for private developers. Southwark Council has plans to demolish Heygate and Aylesbury estates, housing thousands...
TAMILNET reports that fatigue uniform clad armed men who came in a white van abducted a 16-year-old girl student last Monday night around 11.30 from her house in Karungkaalichchoalai in Vaazhaichcheanai police division in Batticaloa district. They also abducted another 16-year-old girl student from the same area on Tuesday night...
AN Israeli soldier was killed and another injured on Thursday during renewed clashes with Palestinian fighters near the Kisufim military post east of Al-Qarara in the southern Gaza Strip. Witnesses said that fierce fighting between Palestinian fighters and Israeli soldiers took place 200 metres from the Israeli military installation. They added...
YESTERDAY Home Secretary, Smith was having a go at presenting the introduction of biometric identity cards as a matter of personal convenience, and even individual freedom, not as a capitalist police state security measure, in tandem with the increasingly national DNA database, to criminalise the whole working class and...
OVER 200 people, including MPs and union leaders, took part in an emergency demonstration opposite parliament yesterday, to condemn the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. MPs went to Downing Street to deliver a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, signed by leading actress Emma Thompson, ...
Over 200 striking Shelter workers demonstrated outside the housing charity’s head office in London yesterday. For the first time in Shelter’s 41-year history the workers, members of Unite (TGWU section), took part in a one-day strike against cuts in pay and conditions. Several hundred workers are on notice of dismissal...
By Irish political journalist JOHN COULTER Rev Ian Paisley, a political messiah to Protestant Unionism, has shockingly quit as both Stormont First Minister and leader of the party he founded, the Democratic Unionists. But there is no threat to the power-sharing Unionist/Republican power-sharing Executive as a Gang of Four will fast...
RETROSPECTIVE changes to the Highly Skilled Migration Programme (HSMP) which originally passed into law in 2006 will mean thousands of non-EU migrants being forced out of the UK. The HSMP Forum, which is seeking a judicial review of these retrospective changes says that 90 per cent (44,000 people) who...
TRUE to form the CWU leadership is declining to give any kind of leadership to its massive membership on the vital issue of the Royal Mail pension. Yesterday they informed their members that they are going to hold a consultative ballot of the membership and that they...
one in five mortgage holders is worried about meeting their repayments over the next 12 months, while a quarter of these haven’t any idea of what to do about the situation, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) reported yesterday. Responding to the survey a TUC spokesman told News Line: ‘This...
By Irish political journalist JOHN COULTER THE three unarmed Provisional IRA members shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar two decades ago were allegedly sacrificed to prevent a loyalist no-warning bombing campaign in the Republic, according to well-placed security sources. Thursday, March 6th marks the 20th anniversary of three of the...
Human rights group Liberty will tell the High Court today that vulnerable detainees were left in overcrowded, flooded cells without food or water while fires burned during a disturbance in Harmondsworth detention centre. Liberty will also call for a public inquiry into the incident. The human rights group is...
THE Bank of England is acting like a rabbit frozen in the headlights of a powerful car. It knows that, this Thursday, it wants to cut interest rates to try to slow up the rapid decline of the British capitalist economy, just as the CBI and the TUC...
US trade union federation AFL-CIO last Saturday condemned the Bush administration for seeking a free trade deal with Colombia, the most dangerous country in the world for trade union members. The AFL-CIO said there should be no trade deal with Colombia ‘until the violence stops’. The AFL-CIO said: ‘Over the past...
HEZBOLLAH MP Hassan Fadlallah on Friday condemned the sending of a US warship, the USS Cole to the eastern Mediterranean. He said Hezbollah would not give in to threats. Fadlallah told reporters: ‘It is clear this threat and intimidation will not affect us. ‘The American move threatens the stability of Lebanon and...
PALESTINIAN President, Mahmud Abbas yesterday belatedly suspended the ‘peace negotiations’ and other contacts with Israel until the Israeli ‘criminal aggression on Gaza stops’. With 95 Palestinian people killed on the Gaza Strip and hundreds injured since last Wednesday, President Abbas, and the Fatah leadership were left with no alternative but...
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas yesterday suspended the ‘peace negotiations’ and contacts with Israel until the Israeli ‘criminal aggression’ on Gaza stops. An emergency meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) yesterday endorsed Abbas’s decision and urged the UN Security Council to provide international protection for the Palestinian people in the...
‘As of 1940hrs 29/02/08 I have been placed under an injunction preventing me from speaking publicly and publishing material gained as a result of my service in UKSF (SAS)’, said ex-SAS trooper Ben Griffin yesterday. The former UK Special Forces trooper earlier this week revealed the extensive British collaboration with...
THE ‘biggest shake-up of the immigration system in 45 years’ got underway yesterday, according to the Brown government. The ‘shake-up’ is that the British ruling class is going to shut the black and Asian masses from its former empire – now Commonwealth – out of the UK, and in their...
TENANTS on the Heygate Estate in south-east London have alleged that ‘Rachman tactics’ are being used to try and drive them off the estate as part of the ‘regeneration’ of Elephant and Castle. Southwark Council has plans to demolish the estate and the neighbouring Aylesbury estate – one of the...