Monthly Archives: December 2008
STATEMENT BY THE NEWS LINE EDITORIAL BOARD WELCOME to 2009. It is the year for getting rid of capitalism and the capitalist world order. Capitalism is now gripped by the greatest banking, industrial and political crisis in its history. Its explosive impact is absolutely atomic, especially since the bourgeoisie and its legions...
Over a thousand demonstrators, gathered outside the Israeli Embassy for the second day running on Monday, determined to show solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza, calling for actions from the trade unions and other organisations to thwart the murderous Israelis attacks. Although the picket of the Israeli embassy was...
ISRAELI shells hit the Gaza tunnels last Sunday evening, killing two and injuring 22. The blasts also prompted hundreds to race for new gaps in Egypt’s border wall. But refugees were met by Egyptian security forces, who used force to repel the crowds. Airstrikes damaged the border wall between...
Israeli warships shelled Gaza from the sea yesterday as jets continued to bomb Gaza from the air for a third day in an ‘all-out war’ on Hamas. Tanks remained massed at the Gaza border, and 6,500 Israeli reservists have been called up as the Olmert government prepares a ground invasion...
ISRAELI air raids are pounding the Gaza Strip for a fourth day. At the same time Gaza is being shelled from the sea by Israeli naval units! Gaza’s interior ministry and Islamic University were heavily hit yesterday. Hamas says 300 Palestinians have died since Saturday, and that 1400 have been...
YESTERDAY, not content with killing over 300 Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza, and seriously wounding 900, Israel was massing tanks on the Gaza border and calling up 6,000 reservists in order to step up their mass murder campaign in Gaza with an armoured invasion. Such an attack...
ISRAELI airstrikes continued on Gaza throughout Saturday night and into Sunday morning, with the death toll rising to 271, with 900 injured – 120 seriously so. Israel began attacks on Gaza at 11.30am Saturday, ostensibly to root out Palestinian military groups launching rockets at Israeli targets. Two massive waves...
Demonstrators pushed through the police barricades shouting ‘Free, Free Palestine’, as several thousand people protested outside the entrance to the avenue leading to the Israeli embassy in west London yesterday. Crowds surged forward when police surrounded a man who had thrown a shoe and started hitting him. The metal railings scattered...
JAPAN is the second biggest power in the capitalist industrial world, behind the United States. It has just announced that its industrial output dropped by a colossal eight per cent in November the biggest fall ever of the Japanese economy. This comes on top of the shock that...
Israeli officials have warned that the Israeli military is preparing to attack Gaza in the coming days. On Wednesday Israeli airstrikes and ground invasions killed three fighters in Beit Lahia, and two in southern Gaza. Last Saturday one fighter was killed and three injured at a projectile launch pad in...
Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people, yesterday warned of a potential surge in homelessness in 2009 as it opened the doors of Crisis Christmas to hundreds of homeless people. Following official figures showing record unemployment levels, a YouGov survey on behalf of Crisis has revealed that 41% of...
CRISIS, the national charity for single homeless people, correctly fears that a massive surge in homelessness is ahead, as it opens its nine Crisis Christmas refuges. Following official figures showing record breaking unemployment levels, a YouGov survey on behalf of Crisis has revealed that 41% of adults in Britain...
THERE is very heavy fighting around the Tamil Tigers’ stronghold of Ki’linochchi on the eve of Christmas as the Tamil Tigers are defending the Tamil people with tremendous bravery and determination. Tamil Net reports that more than 100 Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were killed and at least 250...
SIR John Gieve, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, yesterday admitted that he was a victim of the historical blindness of the bourgeoisie, and that he and the bank’s other leading officials could not grasp the depth of the crisis of the capitalist system, even when...
Defence Secretary Hutton has said that further increases in UK troop levels in Afghanistan cannot be ruled out. He said that Britain would consider ‘very carefully’ any request from US President-elect Barack Obama for more forces. Last week, Prime Minister Brown said the number of UK troops was to...
PALESTINIAN prisoners declared a hunger strike in an Israeli prison camp in the West Bank on Sunday, a day after clashes with prison guards left ten people injured. ‘The strike is ongoing until the prisoners’ demands are granted by the prison administration. Otherwise, escalating actions will be taken,’ said Mahmoud...
LABOUR’S leaders love the rich and have no time for the poor. As a government, Labour turned Britain into a second tax-free home for Russian billionaire oligarchs who had managed to get their hands on Soviet property under the Yeltsin regime. At the same time, it championed the export of millions...
Action to end the inhumane Gaza siege has started from Lebanon, says the Hezbollah resistance movement. On Friday, Lebanon, the country of resistance and patriotism, raised its voice in response to Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s call, expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people amid a ‘suspicious’ Arab and international...
GREEK school and university students and young workers staged various anti-government and anti-police mobilisations over the weekend throughout Greece. Dozens of local rallies were held and a number of radio and television stations were occupied for students to broadcast their messages. On Saturday night, thousands of youth gathered at...
Postal workers were yesterday left confused and angry after the Communication Workers Union (CWU) Postal Executive called off strikes at five mail centres late on Thursday. A CWU spokeswoman said it had been a unanimous decision. CWU deputy general secretary Dave Ward said in a press statement late Thursday: ‘We...
The Greek university students’ occupation committees have called for a mass demonstration next Tuesday in Athens. Marches are to be held in other cities as well. Students held an open air concert yesterday in Athens city centre and the GSEE (Greek TUC) held a rally against the government’s 2009...
AS 2,000 postal workers were gearing up for a 24-hour strike on Friday against Royal Mail’s plans to close mail centres, Dave Ward, the Communication Workers Union’s (CWU) Deputy General Secretary and the union’s Postal Executive called off the strike on Thursday afternoon. CWU members at five mail centres, in...
THAT the record £2.1 billion NHS surplus should coincide with press headlines that the NHS is at breaking point is no accident. The winter has brought a sickness epidemic with it that has seen A&Es up and down the country overrun with seriously affected patients, while once again ambulances are...
Greek workers and youth have occupied the Greek TUC and are demanding it recalls a general strike. Hundreds of young workers and students stormed the GSEE (Greek TUC) building on Wednesday morning in protest against the reactionary position of the trade union bureaucracy in the current uprising of the school...
TAMILNET reports that officials of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said that 130 Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were killed in the multi-front offensive push by the SLA in Ki’linochchi last Tuesday. More than 300 soldiers were wounded in the heavy battle that raged throughout the day...
Postal workers at five mail centres – Bolton, Coventry, Crewe, Oxford and Stockport – are striking today against plans to close them and to save their jobs. ‘Strikes are going ahead on Friday at Bolton, Stockport and Crewe,’ Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) North West regional secretary Carl Webb told News...
THE number out of work in the UK rose by 137,000 to 1.86 million in the three months to October – the highest level since 1997. The unemployment rate rose to six per cent from 5.8 per cent, the Office for National Statistics said. The number claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance in...
Passing cars tooted their horns at the 20-strong, 21st monthly mass picket of Chase Farm Hospital on Tuesday. And hospital workers, outpatients and local residents all supported occupying the hospital to keep it open as a fully-functioning District General Hospital. The pickets have been organised by the North East London Council...
‘We are fighting the government and business now,’ said Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) Eastern Region No.6 branch secretary Paul Olden yesterday. Commenting on the government’s decision to part-privatise Royal Mail, he told News Line: ‘In my view, we should withdraw CWU finances to the Labour Party. ‘We should sever all links,...
Throughout Greece last Tuesday school and university students continued with demonstrations and occupations against the right-wing government of Kostas Karamanlis. Virtually all schools and all university departments are occupied in the Athens-Piraeus area. Once again students marched through Athens districts demonstrating outside police stations. In the Exarchia district of Athens, where...
THE Brown government is organising a £3bn sell-off of up to one third of the Royal Mail, a privatisation that will cost up to 50,000 Royal Mail workers’ jobs. The return of Mandelson to the Labour government has seen Brown’s pledge to keep Royal Mail as a publicly owned service...
‘We have to strike to defend Royal Mail, to defend our jobs and to defend our pensions,’ CWU HP Section Chairman, South Central No 1 Branch, Rob Bolton said yesterday. He was speaking in response to the Labour government’s announcement that it intends to take over the Royal Mail pension...
AFTER over a month of inhuman Israeli siege against the Gaza strip, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah delivered a speech, on Monday, in which he tackled the situation in Gaza and called the whole world to express complete solidarity with the Palestinian nation. Sheikh Nasrallah started his speech by...
YESTERDAY Iraqis of all of the different sects and persuasions were united and marching and demonstrating in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf, Kerbala, Tikrit, Fallujah, Mosul and in many other cities and towns for the immediate release of their hero, Muntazer al-Zaidi, who on all their behalfs threw his shoes at...
Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets yesterday demanding the release of the al-Baghdadiya TV reporter who called Bush ‘you dog’ and threw his shoes at the US President at a Baghdad news conference. Crowds gathered in The Iraqi capital’s Sadr City district calling for ‘hero’ Muntazer al-Zaidi to be...
Over 200,000 flag-waving Palestinians attended a mass rally in Gaza on Sunday marking the 21st anniversary of the founding of the Hamas movement. Addressing the crowd, Prime Minister of the Hamas-led government in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, vowed once again not to recognise the authority of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after...
GREEK police made hundreds of arrests as students and youth continued the mass demonstrations against the government in Athens and all major cities. On Saturday thousands of school and university students occupied the Constitution Square in front of the Vouli (Greek parliament) demanding the resignation of the right wing...
THE Justice4Jean Campaign said on Friday that Coroner Michael White ‘has presided over a complete whitewash’, following the conclusion of the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot seven times in the head by armed police at Stockwell Tube Station on July 22, 2005. However, the campaign...
THE daily demonstrations of youth and workers are continuing in Greece, over a week after the assassination of the 15-year-old school boy Alexis Grigoropoulos by the forces of the capitalist state. The struggle has now reached the point where the state forces are reported to be running out of gas...
General Motors, the owner of Vauxhall, has put forward a plan for its Merseyside workforce to ‘take a break’ from two to nine-months from work on 30 per cent pay from January to September 2009. The ‘sabbatical’ scheme was put to unions at its Ellesmere Port plant, Cheshire, on Thursday. A...
‘THE news that General Motors is heading into bankruptcy means that the future of all GM plants is in the balance, especially the two in the UK, Luton GM and Vauxhall Ellesmere Port’, said All Trades Union Alliance (ATUA) National Secretary Dave Wiltshire yesterday. He added: ‘With the Luton van...
THE FAMILY of Jean Charles de Menezes yesterday vowed to continue their struggle for justice, and while denouncing the conduct of the coroner at the inquest into his death as a ‘whitewash’, said they very much appreciated the ruling of the jury. Although the jury was denied the option of...
THE $14bn (£9.4bn) bail-out deal for the Big Three US car giants has failed to get the support of the US Senate. Its refusal came after the UAW motor car workers union negotiators, who had been talking with Senate representatives while the issue was being debated, refused to agree to...
FOR the fifth consecutive day Greek school and university students and workers continued to demonstrate in the capital Athens and in virtually all cities against the government seeking revenge for the killing of the 15-years old school boy Alexis Grigoropoulos by a police Special Guard last Saturday night. Schools...