Monthly Archives: December 2010
Haiti’s post-election crisis deepened on Sunday after opposition presidential candidates prolonged the political uncertainty by refusing to participate in a proposed recount. President Rene Préval’s handpicked protégé Jude Celestin made it through to a second round run-off in flawed elections, officially pipping a popular opposition candidate by less than 7,000...
THE Metropolitan Police is considering its tactics after the failure of its containment and ‘kettling’ policies in Parliament square last Thursday, when masses of angry workers and youth refused to be intimidated by charging horses and truncheon swinging riot policemen. What the authorities found to be most shocking...
TAMILNET has reported on the ensuing crisis following the cancellation of the speech due to be given at the Oxford Union by the Sri Lankan president, Rajapakse. Cabinet spokesman and Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, in a media interview conducted in Sinhala, has pointed to the ‘weakness and inability...
Politicians, trade union leaders and hundreds of postal workers will come together at a national rally to protest against government plans to privatise Royal Mail on Wednesday. The rally will take place from 11.00am-2.00pm at Central Hall, Westminster. Speakers include shadow Business Secretary John Denham and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas. CWU...
WE’RE here over Christmas,’ BA painting student Tobias Newbigin said at the occupation of the Camberwell College of Art yesterday. The occupation of the Wilson Road site of the college, which is part of the University of the Arts London (UAL), was begun on Monday by around 60 students, with...
LAST Tuesday night it was confirmed by the United States that its much-vaunted ‘peace’ initiative over Palestine had collapsed. The State Department was forced to admit that hopes of recommencing talks brokered by the US, between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, had been abandoned after Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu...
YESTERDAY huge masses of youth marched on the House of Commons, which was deciding to bring in tuition fees of £9,000 a year, turning higher education into a commodity which only the very rich can afford, and destroying the university system that has been built up in the UK...
WASHINGTON – Saudi Arabia proposed setting up an Arab force to fight Hezbollah militants in Lebanon with the help of the United States, UN and NATO, a US diplomatic cable posted on WikiLeaks said on Tuesday. In a meeting in May 2008 with US ambassador to Iraq David Satterfield, Saudi...
Tens of thousands of students and youth marched from University of London Union (ULU) near Euston down to parliament yesterday lunchtime, shouting against the Tory-Lib Dem coalition’s attacks on state education. On several occasions police tried to form lines and kettle marchers to stop them and re-direct their route. At Trafalgar...
TRANSPORT UNION RMT has called on its members and the entire trade union movement to get out on the streets in full support of the student fees protests ‘as the first signs of major cracks in the ConDem coalition begin to open up’. The RMT has written to all its...
Tens of thousands of school and university students and workers participated in profoundly anti-government mobilisations in all Greek cities last Monday. The demonstrations marked the second anniversary of the killing of 15 year old schoolboy Alexis Grigoropoulos by police which led to a two-month spontaneous youth uprising in Athens...
COSATU President Sidumo Dlamini addressed the COSATU union federation’s 25th anniversary celebration last Sunday. He told his audience: ‘Comrades and friends, we are here today to celebrate 25 years since the launch of COSATU on December 1st 1985. ‘Cyril Ramaphosa was prophetic when he declared that “a giant has arisen!”...
THOUSANDS of students and workers will be marching from the University of London Union (ULU) to parliament tomorrow, when the Tory-LibDem Coalition government aims to pass a vote raising tuition fees to £9,000. The march, which assembles at 12 midday in Malet St, is organised by the ULU Students...
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange was arrested in London yesterday and is now in jail, awaiting hearings to extradite him to Sweden where he will face frame-up charges, and if convicted, being handed over to the US administration, that already has the blood of Guantanamo Bay prisoners on its hands. Everybody...
Israel says it is ‘disappointed’ by the Brazilian government’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. The Israelis accused Brazil of going against the efforts to find ‘peace’ in the Middle East. A letter by outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to Palestinian Authority head Mahmud...
IT WAS CLAUSEWITZ who said that war is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means. In unveiling a large number of sites scattered all over the globe from Russia to the UK and the Congo, which the US characterises as being of ‘vital interest’ for the...
The euro fell sharply in morning trading yesterday, as bond yields on the debt of eurozone periphery countries began to push higher. This came after Germany rejected a call to issue a single eurozone bond, knowing it would be left as the final guarantor. By late morning in London, the euro...
THE WikiLeaks revelations prove once again that British imperialism, although greatly weakened, remains just as poisonous and rotten as ever. This comes out clearly in its treatment of the Chagos Islanders, who were driven from their homes in the late 1960s and early 1970s to make way for a gigantic...
MORE than 400 people joined Saturday’s march through Enfield by the North-East London Council of Action to keep Chase Farm Hospital open. The march was held to call for an occupation of the hospital, to stop it being shut by the Tory-Lib Dem coalition and its local agents. As the demonstration...
The personal budgets being introduced for social care are being used to implement the government’s spending cuts, charities warned yesterday. On November 16, Care Services Minister Paul Burstow unveiled the government’s ‘Vision for Social Care’, pledging that one million older and disabled people who were eligible for social services support...
THE News Line fully supports the call by the secretary of the Young Socialists Student Society for next week’s lobby and rally by the NUS and the UCU to be supported by a general strike of all trade unions. The action has been called for Thursday 9th December –...
Greek university students staged a militant march last Thursday in Athens against a government Bill that will impose huge spending cuts in education. Over 4,000 students from the Athens, Patras and Volos universities marched to the Vouli (Greek parliament) where they were viciously attacked by the riot police with tear-gas...
AFTER President Obama’s announcement that he intends to impose a two-year wage freeze on Federal workers, the Obama appointed US deficit commission has called for deep cuts and tax rises. The proposals of this National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform will cut $4.1 trillion (tn) (£2.62tn) from...
America’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses has condemned the Obama Administration’s decision to impose a two-year wage freeze on Veterans Affairs (VA) nurses and other federal employees. ‘This is a slap in the face of the nurses that we, as a nation count on to care for...
THE Young Socialists Students Society yesterday called for a general strike on December 9th when the House of Commons will be voting on increasing tuition fees to up to £9,000 a year. Young Socialists Students Society secretary Joshua Ogunleye told News Line: ‘Youth have shown that they are completely opposed...
STAFF and students at the University of Reading held a special demonstration yesterday against government cuts to higher education. The lobby was organised by members of the University and College Union (UCU), began at 1pm outside the Carrington building at the university’s Whiteknights campus The government has signalled its intention...
Tuesday’s student demonstration in London ended in a mass arrest of 144 people, being described by students and legal groups as an exercise in information gathering by the Metropolitan Police. In Bristol, ten people were arrested out of approximately 1,000 protesters, five were arrested in Manchester and in Liverpool there...
THE Tory-LibDem coalition is set to introduce a ‘reform programme’ for the police that will establish regimes of elected police commissioners, who will have the right to hire and fire police chiefs. This reform will be the means of putting the police under the direct political control of right wing...
MORE than 200 students marched from Goldsmiths College to Lewisham Town Hall on Tuesday evening in solidarity with council workers facing mass sackings and to oppose the savage budget cuts facing both universities and local services. Motorists tooted their horns, pedestrians cheered and as they went passed Lewisham Hospital many...
LAST Sunday the president of the National Union of Students (NUS), Aaron Porter, made a surprise visit to a meeting of students occupying University College London and made an abject apology for his ‘spineless’ lack of support for occupations and demonstrations by students against the massive increase in tuition...
Students demonstrated and marched in towns and cities across Britain yesterday in the third day of protests against tuition fees, university cuts and the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance. In London tens of thousands of school pupils and college and university students gathered in Trafalgar Square. They started their march...