Monthly Archives: January 2009
THE News Line hails the heroic resistance of the Tamil Tigers to the armed forces of the Rajapakse military dictatorship, which is seeking to smash and destroy the Tamil people. This is proven by the enthusiasm that the Rajapakse regime and its military chiefs have shown for shelling and bombing...
Merseyside fire crews have branded the latest round of cuts planned for the local fire service as ‘irresponsible and maso-chistic’. Merseyside Fire Brigades Union (FBU) accused senior managers of testing the limits of health and safety and significantly cutting the number of firefighters. The FBU says Merseyside fire service has already...
LIBERATION Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Political Head, B Nadesan, yesterday blamed the Colombo regime for the stepped up genocidal artillery attacks on civilian targets, reports TamilNet. This was ‘after committing a war crime by issuing ultimatums to civilians to move against their will into the hands of the genocidal...
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said yesterday she was deeply concerned by reports of the rapidly deteriorating conditions facing a quarter of a million civilians trapped in the conflict zone in northern Sri Lanka. There have been many reports of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) troops shelling and...
OVER five hundred students and staff of the London Metropolitan University gathered outside the building in Holloway road in north London yesterday to protest against the planned programme of cuts. They chanted ‘Save Our University!’ and ‘Save the Met!’ as the pavement outside the university was blocked with students with...
THE Academy school project – to replace state owned schools, with ‘independent’, millionaire sponsored, and privately run schools, who hire the staff that they want, decide on the syllabus, and decide on rates of pay – is crashing down around the Labour government which created it. The millionaire...
‘We have made it clear that yesterday’s announcement was a good start but it will not in itself be quick enough to offset potentially tens of thousands of job losses,’ said Unite joint general secretary Tony Woodley yesterday. He was speaking to reporters after yesterday’s tripartite meeting on the government’s...
LAST October the IMF predicted world output would increase by 2.2 per cent in 2009. Yesterday it changed its tune saying that world output is set to grow by just 0.5 per cent, ‘strangled’ by more than $2 trillion of bad banking assets in the United States. It stated that...
TWO Palestinians were wounded in an Israeli air strike targeting a Palestinian motorcyclist in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, witnesses and medics said. The Palestinian hit by the strike in the southern town of Khan Younis was seriously wounded, they said. A passer-by was also wounded. The raid came few...
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), in an urgent press statement, has called upon the international community to use all its influence with the Sri Lankan state to bring an immediate end to the massacre of Tamil civilians, TamilNet reports. The TNA further appeals to the international community to intervene...
SUPPORTED by the US, the UK and India the Sri Lankan army is bombing and shelling Northern Sri Lanka in a frantic, ruthless and bloody campaign to wipe out the Tamil Tigers, the self defence organisation of the Tamil people that has defended them against Sinhala chauvinism for the...
TAMILNET reports that the Sri Lankan army is massacring Tamil civilians in heavy fighting in the North of the island. Initial reports, emerging from Udaiyaarkaddu hospital as the ICRC (Red Cross) representatives came out of their bunkers and started helping the medical authorities, said that many...
Over 8,000 tractors and tens of thousands of small farmers have occupied sections of motorways and national roads in central and northern Greece, setting up blockades and halting all traffic except for emergency vehicles. Blockades have also been set up at all border crossings between Greece and Bulgaria and Turkey. Last...
TRADE unions yesterday called on the government to bail out the manufacturing bosses in the wake of steelmaker Corus’ confirmation that it is cutting 3,500 jobs, 2,500 in the UK. Corus, a subsidiary of India’s Tata Steel, currently employs 24,000 people in the UK and 42,000 worldwide. It said it would...
STEEL firm Corus, a subsidiary of India’s Tata Steel cut 3,500 jobs yesterday, 2,500 in the UK out of its 24,000 employees here. In its statement Corus described the sackings as ‘a series of strategic measures that will improve its competitive position’, that includes the ‘mothballing of...
‘Free, Free Palestine!’ ‘Shame on you BBC!’ shouted 7,000 protesters at a rally for Gaza outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House at Portland Place in central London, before marching to Trafalgar Square for a second rally. The protest, organised by Stop the War Coalition and Palestine Solidarity Campaign in conjunction with...
More than 50 MPs have signed a House of Commons Early Day Motion (EDM) condemning ‘the refusal of the BBC and other broadcasters to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza Crisis Appeal’. The EDM, tabled by the Labour MP Richard Burden, ‘notes the unconvincing and incoherent explanations given by BBC...
THE BBC is part of the British capitalist state whose job it is to look after the interests of the ruling class. It has proven the point by refusing to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) aid appeal to feed the hungry and the homeless in Gaza, who have...
THE BBC has blocked the nationwide broadcast of a fundraising appeal for Gaza by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) this weekend. The DEC comprises the 12 biggest aid charities, including the British Red Cross and Save the Children. The BBC has sought to spread the blame for its action, claiming that...
ON Thursday midwives handed in a petition to 10 Downing Street condemning the government on the grounds that it was putting the lives of mothers and babies at risk by its failure to provide adequate funding for midwifery services in the UK. They were demanding that 10,000 additional...
BRITISH capitalism is staring disaster straight in the face. Motor car sales in December 2008 were 47.5 per cent lower than in December 2007. Yesterday, Ian McCafferty, the CBI’s Chief Economic Adviser, said ‘Demand for goods in the manufacturing sector has plummeted dramatically in the last three months. . ....
TWO major health unions have reacted cooly to the Labour government’s new NHS Constitution, launched last Wednesday, which contains ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’ for both patients and health professionals. Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of Council at the British Medical Association (BMA), said: ‘The patients who depend on the NHS and the...
‘We have to be bold and honest in our fight to stop Royal Mail privatisation,’ Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) Eastern Region Secretary Paul Moffat told News Line yesterday. Asked to comment on Royal Mail’s £900,000 a day profit over the past nine months, Moffat said: ‘making this amount of profit...
United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon called on Tuesday for those responsible for the bombing of UN-run buildings and schools in Gaza to be held accountable following Israel’s 22-day war on Hamas. He said the situation in Gaza was ‘heartbreaking’. ‘It is an outrageous and totally unacceptable attack on the United...
PRESIDENT Obama’s inaugural address was Churchillian in tone, but lacking in concrete content, limiting itself to spelling out that the US ruling class was threatened and was at war, at a time when many saw the decline of US imperialism as being inevitable, and that very tough decisions would...
Palestinian resistance movement Hamas yesterday called on President Barack Obama to learn lessons from the mistakes of his predecessor George W Bush and said it would judge the new US leader by his acts. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told a press conference in Gaza City: ‘We will judge him by...
UK unemployment rose by 131,000 to 1.92 million between September and November, the highest total since September 1997, figures from the Office for National Statistics revealed yesterday. The unemployment rate was 6.1 per cent for the three months to the end of November, compared with 5.2 per cent in the...
THE crash of the British banks continued yesterday after Royal Bank of Scotland declared a £27bn loss for 2008 on Monday and its share price collapsed by 67 per cent. The share prices of HSBC, Barclays, and Lloyds TSB fell by 42 per cent, 68 per cent, and 33 per...
The Unite trade union yesterday confirmed it is in talks with Jaguar Land Rover over fears of a further 1,300 job cuts. Unite sent News Line a statement by joint general secretary Tony Woodley which fell far short of unconditional rejection of redundancies. Woodley said: ‘At this point in time we...
Palestinian resistance movement Hamas leader Ismail Haniya on Sunday hailed an ‘historic and strategic victory’ in Gaza. In his televised speech, he said: ‘We achieved victory by the resistance’s firmness, its position, and its ability to defend our people, and its cohesion and unity in the field. ‘They have proved that...
AMID banks posting further huge losses and their share prices collapsing, after the near extinction of the world’s largest banks last October, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced a new multi-billion-pound bail-out from the government yesterday. Worldwide, over the last week, banks have revealed losses of billions over the last three...
Today, January 20th, UNITE HERE will launch its UNITE HERE for Change campaign, an ‘effort to work with President Obama and Congress to make real progress on jobs, health care, immigration, and the right of every worker to form a union’. UNITE HERE General President Bruce Raynor said: ‘Our...
Confirming the extent of the Israeli rout, Hamas’ armed wing said yesterday it lost only 48 fighters during the 22-day bombardment of Gaza and vowed to fight on unless the Zionist state withdrew its forces. Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya said the Gaza war with Israel amounted to a ‘great...
‘Free, free Palestine!’ shouted crowds at a 10,000-strong rally for the women and children of Gaza on Saturday, called by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War Coalition. It was one of dozens of events across the country. Placards read ‘Stop the genocide in Gaza’, ‘Stop killing children’, and ‘Justice...
Over 15,000 Tamils and their supporters held an angry vigil opposite Downing Street on Saturday evening demanding ‘Stop the war. Don’t kill Tamil people – We want Tamil Eelam!’ They carried a banner saying ‘International Community Rewards Sri Lankan State Terror on Tamil Civilians & Children.’ They waved flags and...
PALESTINIAN resistance movements and their fighters remained defiant after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared on Saturday that the Israeli War Cabinet had decided to implement a unilateral ceasefire from 2 am yesterday morning. Early yesterday, 10 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza, four landing near the Zionist settlers’ town...
Palestinian resistance movements yesterday announced a ceasefire giving Israeli troops one week to get out of Gaza. This came after Israel declared a ‘unilateral ceasefire’ at midnight on Saturday (2am local time), and as medics pulled at least 95 bodies from the rubble of bombed-out homes, including those of several...
Hamas officials headed to Cairo for ceasefire negotiations yesterday after tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them Hamas supporters, attended a mass funeral procession in Gaza for Interior Minister Sa’id Siyam. He was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike on Thursday. The funeral was also in honour of Siyam’s son Muhammad,...
The Health Bill introduced by the government yesterday ‘undermines the founding principles of the NHS’, warned Unison – while the BMA said the bill ‘turns healthcare into a commodity’. Condemning the introduction of ‘personal budgets’ for patients, Unison Head of Health Karen Jennings said: ‘We are in real danger of...
Mohammed el Gharani (imprisoned aged 14) is to be released from Guantánamo Bay, legal charity Reprieve reported on Thursday. It said: ‘Reprieve is thrilled that our client Mohammed el Gharani is to be released from Guantánamo Bay following a federal court order obtained yesterday. ‘Judge Leon ruled that Mohammed, who...
TWENTY THREE bodies were recovered from destroyed buildings in Gaza City yesterday in the wake of the latest bombardment by the Israel Defence Force (IDF). More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed and 5,100 wounded by the IDF in Gaza since the Zionist regime began its aerial bombings, and later...
THE Standard and Poor (S&P) credit rating agency downgraded Greek government bonds on Wednesday sending government stocks and share prices on the Athens Stock Exchange plummeting. The exchange rate of the euro was driven down to $1.31. This is the first time government bonds in an advanced European capitalist country...
PALESTINIAN Legislative Council member Mustafa al-Barghouti challenged the head of the United Nations to personally go into Gaza, after Israel shelled the UN’s humanitarian aid headquarters there yesterday. ‘This is where the onslaught has to be witnessed and to discuss the prospects of a de-escalation following the previously ignored UN...
‘I don’t feel I should apologise,’ said Hayes and Harlington Labour MP John McDonnell yesterday after being ordered out of the House of Commons and suspended for a week after dramatically halting the debate on the government’s go-ahead for a third Heathrow runway. McDonnell, whose constituency borders Sipson, where hundreds...