Monthly Archives: April 2010
ISRAEL has decided to expel more Palestinians from their own homes and lands without taking into consideration any objection from any side, especially the Arab governments! In fact, the weak Arab stance in the Libyan Summit that took place last month has encouraged Israel to take such a decision. Hamas...
BRITAIN’S top counter-terrorism officer, Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner Yates, has demanded that paramilitary police forces be established in the UK, and insists that they must be armed with heavy weaponry and be prepared to kill. Speaking at an anti-terrorism conference in London about the need for this force, he said...
The Gaza government is facing a financial crisis in light of a ban imposed on bank transfers to the Hamas-led government by Egypt and resulting from the Israeli siege, the head of budgetary and financial affairs for Gaza’s Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), said on Wednesday. Gaza PLC official Jamal Nassar...
Legal charity Reprieve has accused the Brown government of attempting to intimidate it into dropping legal action on behalf of torture victims. Reprieve said in a statement: ‘After misleading Parliament and the public and forcing innocent families to suffer for six years, the British government is now attempting to intimidate...
GORDON Brown was putting on a show of humbleness last night when he admitted on TV that he was not perfect but had made errors. His principal admission was that he became the minister for the bankers when he insisted, from 1997 to 2008, that the bankers were right when...
The United Steelworkers (USW) Union on Monday said that the US refinery industry has failed to learn from past disasters. The USW said that its 2007 report, Beyond Texas City: The State of Process Safety in the Unionised US Oil Refining Industry, is more relevant than ever in light...
WORLD leaders at the Washington summit on nuclear security have heard the direst warnings yet from President Obama of the danger of nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands, such as Al-Qaeda who, we are told, would not hesitate to use them. However, so far the only governments who...
THE government has rejected demands for new laws against ‘extraordinary rendition’: the practice of kidnapping and flying detainees to secret sites around the world, to be tortured. Justice Secretary Jack Straw has rejected legislation to ban unlawful transfers of detainees through British airspace, on the grounds that it would be...
Commander of the Iranian Army’s Ground Forces Brigadier General Ahmad-Reza Pour-Dastan said on Monday that if its enemies dare to commit any mistake and launch a military assault on Iran, they will be given a crushing and humiliating response. Speaking to reporters on the occasion of ‘Army Week’, he said...
THEY say that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and Gordon Brown proved the point yesterday when he began his forward to Labour’s multi-page election manifesto/book,(which very few Labour voters will read), by wrapping himself in the Union flag (the ‘Butcher’s Apron’). He stated that ‘This General...
ISRAEL’S latest military orders facilitating the illegal expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland are simply the latest in a string of Zionist attempts to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians, Islamic Jihad officials stated Sunday. The statement was issued only hours after Israeli media and human rights organisation HaMoked made public two...
‘We want the next strike dates set now,’ a female British Airways cabin crew member at Heathrow told News Line yesterday. She was responding to figures released yesterday by the airport’s owner, BAA, which showed that Heathrow saw 180,000 fewer passengers in March because of the strikes by BA...
Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday launched the Labour Party’s election manifesto – which pledged to cut billions from public spending, whilst ‘securing the recovery’. Brown launched the manifesto at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital PFI project in Edgbaston. He boasted that there had been over 100 NHS PFI projects under Labour, like...
‘NHS NOT FOR SALE – Keep Our NHS Public!’ declared the banner which led the Defend the Welfare State march on Saturday, alongside that of the National Pensioners Convention. Ten thousand public sector workers marched from Temple on the River Thames Embankment to a rally in Trafalgar Square. Every public sector...
New Israeli military orders target tens of thousands of Palestinians for deportation, a rights group reported yesterday. Two signed military orders come into force this week. They give Israeli military officials broad and almost total control over the deportation of Palestinians whose residency status in the West Bank is called...
AT SATURDAY’S march to defend the Welfare State, workers from across the country were clear that action will have to be taken to defend jobs and stop savage cuts destroying the NHS, state education and the social security system. However, the present leaders in the trade unions don’t...
thousands of workers, trade unionists, students and youth are marching through London this afternoon, against 13 years of Labour attacks on public services and against Tory plans to finish the job and smash up the Welfare State completely. The ‘Protect our Welfare State and Public Services’ march and rally is...
THOUSANDS of workers, students and youth will be marching today to defend the ‘Welfare State’ from the attacks of the current Labour government, and to keep the Tories out on May 6, since they are planning the complete destruction of the Welfare State. There is however no doubt that...
TAMILNET reports that voting at Thursday’s Sri Lanka’s Parliamentary Elections ended on schedule at 4.00 pm local time as independent monitors placed the voter turn out to between 50 to 55 per cent. Keerthi Tenakoon with the Campaign for Free and fair Elections (CaFFE) said the maximum average was...
America’s central banker, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, has warned that the US economy is ‘not out of the woods yet’. In a speech delivered in Dallas, Texas, Bernanke said: ‘Many Americans are still grappling with unemployment or foreclosure, or both,’ adding that bank lending remains ‘very weak’. The Fed chairman...
THE Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, spoke by phone Thursday with the new interim leader in Kyrgyzstan whose ‘peoples government’ has been placed in power by an uprising of the Kyrgyz masses. Putin offered aid to the central Asian state that had been part of the...
The WRP is standing seven candidates in the May 6 parliamentary elections and below is the party’s election manifesto. VOTE WRP ON MAY 6th! VOTE FOR YOUR FUTURE! VOTE TO BURY BACKWARD OUT-OF-DATE CAPITALISM! VOTE FOR SOCIALISM! THIS is a decisive vote for your future! Capitalism has crashed, and the parties that base themselves on it,...
THE situation in Afghanistan has gone from bad to worse as far as the imperialist powers and their plans for the region are concerned. Last Tuesday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs hinted that any future anti-American remarks by President Karzai, who has recently been openly condemning his US and...
FOUR Palestinian youths from Nablus, aged 19 and under, were killed by the Israeli occupation army on March 20 and 21. An Israeli military statement on Monday, detailed the results of two investigations it said were carried out into the circumstances around the deaths of the four. The first death was...
PM Brown yesterday announced that the general election will be held on 6 May and told voters Labour will take the ‘big decisions’ that will secure the future of the British economy. What he meant was that Labour will make all the big decisions that will be required to secure...
NATIONAL Union of Teachers leader Christine Blower has reacted to the remarks of Education Secretary Ed Balls, who addressed the NUT’s conference in Liverpool on Monday. ‘While Ed Balls is right to say there is a big choice for parents and teachers at this election, there is also a...
Prime Minister Brown confirmed yesterday that the general election will be held on Thursday 6th May. Flanked by the cabinet outside 10 Downing Street, following a 20-minute meeting with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, Brown said that he wanted a ‘clear and straightforward mandate’ to continue the work of economic...
ISRAEL over the weekend continued to threaten a wide-scale military operation against the Gaza Strip after a series of air strikes which injured three Palestinian children and destroyed a number of industrial installations. Israel’s deputy prime minister, Silvan Shalom, warned that the Israeli occupation military would soon launch a...
THE National Housing Federation (NHF) complains that the government has missed its home-building target for the last seven years and that the housing crisis will continue and worsen. But the NHF’s demand for private housing will make waiting lists even longer and lead to even higher rents. The Thatcher policy of...
THE privatisation of housing has been a complete disaster. Completely inadequate numbers of new homes have been built in every region in England since 2002, the National Housing Federation says. This has left 4.5 million people marooned on housing waiting lists. This news comes a week after a report revealed that...
‘IT’S UNACCEPTABLE. All they are doing is making their own decisions and taking away our rights,’ the chair of the Chagos Islands Community Association said yesterday. Hengride Permal reacted angrily to the announcement by Foreign Secretary David Miliband that the government is establishing a ‘Marine Protection Area’ of 545,000-square kilometres...
PRESIDENT Mahinda Rajapakse was displeased with the tiny crowd that was assembled to ‘greet the leader’ at his election rally in Jaffna on Wednesday, reports TamilNet. Up to 60,000 police and 20,000 troops have been mobilised to see the April 8 election through and to take control of the ballot...
THE RMT has called off its Network Rail strike action of signal workers after the judiciary declared it to be illegal, using the ruling class’s anti-union laws to do so. Lord Adonis, the Labour Transport Secretary, applauded the action of the judiciary and said that its decision was a ‘huge...
THE House of Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee report on the government’s plan, to replace 46 Fire Control centres with nine new regional centres, condemns the project, saying that it has been ‘poorly executed and badly managed’. The committee added that the project had put the future...
500 sacked Visteon workers demonstrated outside the Unite London headquarters on Wednesday to demand the union immediately takes out a writ against Ford motor company. ‘Ford is stealing our Pensions!’ and ‘Ford = Fraud!’ read placards carried by the ex-car parts workers as they then marched to Downing...
THE High Court yesterday followed up its decision to ban strike action at British Airways at Christmas by banning strike action at Network Rail this Easter. ASLEF train drivers’ union member Bill Rogers told News Line: ‘It’d be easier to have a revolution than to have a legal strike! That’s...
More than 100 members of the three local government unions, Unison, GMB and Unite, held a noisy demonstration over pay, job and service cuts outside the central London headquarters of the Local Government Association on Tuesday. The unions are accusing Tory-Led councils of using the recession as a smokescreen to...
LABOUR Prime Minister Brown is the choice of the capitalist state should there be a hung parliament on May 7, even if the Tories have the biggest party in the new parliament, it emerged yesterday. This is a continuation of the situation in the first of 1974’s two...
UNITE cabin crew members at British Airways yesterday called on their union to ballot BA ground staff on strike action. They also said BA’s ‘bullying’ and harsh pay penalties for striking should be met with longer strikes, of 12 days. ‘We should strike at Easter,’ said one Unite member. They told News...