Monthly Archives: February 2011
Over 2,000 celebrated the ousting of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak at a rally in Trafalgar Square, central London, on Saturday organised by Amnesty International and supported by UK and international trade union federations. Egyptian socialist Waseem Wagdi told the rally: ‘I come to you from spending a week in Tahrir...
ACCORDING to the latest figures, factory input inflation – that is the increase in raw materials paid for by manufacturers – rose by a staggering 13.4% in the year ending January 1st, 2011, driven up by the soaring cost of oil and metal, along with other imports. All this makes...
The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) has called for ending the Israeli siege on Gaza Strip to end the suffering of its inhabitants, warning that the situation in the coastal enclave was worsening. Christopher Gunness, spokesperson for UNRWA, told a press conference at UNRWA headquarters in Gaza on Wednesday...
THE Greek Army’s 71st airborne brigade, ‘Pontos’, carried out a large ‘civil war’ exercise code-named ‘Kallimachos’ on February 3rd and 4th at a specially designed military camp in northern Greece. The exercise involved simulated ‘battles with civil demonstrators’. A video made available shows soldiers in riot police gear using dogs in...
President Hosni Mubarak has stepped down and fled from the capital, Cairo. Vice-President Omar Suleiman announced on Egyptian state television yesterday afternoon: ‘In these grave circumstances that the country is passing through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave his position as President of the Republic. ‘He has mandated the Armed...
Sri Lanka is now waging a new genocidal war on unarmed and demographically weakened Tamils after converting their country imperceptibly into an open concentration camp, TamilNet say. The new war is focussed on the Jaffna Peninsula. Many Tamils believe that India and USA continue to encourage Colombo, providing a...
Over 3,000 medical doctors and health workers demonstrated on Wednesday through the Athens city centre against the government’s Health Bill, shouting ‘Loverdo (Health Minister) you will go like Ben Ali’ and ‘People rise up against the junta of the EU and IMF’. Doctors said that it was the biggest rally...
THOUSANDS of striking doctors and medical students, dressed in their white coats, marched through central Cairo yesterday to join the movement of millions of people demanding that Mubarak and his regime must go. Calls have gone out across the country for a ten-million strong demonstration throughout Egypt to take place...
LORD Oakeshott is the senior Liberal Democrat who quit their front bench in protest at the Tory-LibDem coalition’s decision to allow the bankers to opt out of any hint of austerity, and to award themselves billions of pounds of bonuses. He spoke for the Lib Dems on Treasury matters in...
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange has called for US politicians and commentators who engage in violent rhetoric to be prosecuted, after the attempted assassination of a Congresswoman in Arizona. Assange drew parallels between the rhetoric that some have blamed for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscon and that directed at...
Westminster MPs heard calls for the government to ‘Stop, Listen and Think Again’, as trade unionists and community groups lobbied Parliament asking them to vote against The Public Bodies Bill which would see non departmental public bodies (NDPBs) abolished, merged, privatised or drastically changed. Equity, Unite, Unison, and...
Tens of thousands of anti-Mubarak protesters gathered outside Egypt’s parliament yesterday, bringing business to a halt, just several hundred yards from the continuing mass protest by hundreds of thousands in Tahrir Square. At least three people have been killed and 100 others injured in clashes between police and anti-Mubarak protesters...
THE UNITE trade union leadership announced yesterday that after the cabin crew membership ‘voted last month overwhelmingly, and for the third time, to take industrial action against their employer on a number of issues relating to the company’s conduct of industrial relations’, the union was cancelling the strike action. The...
WORKERS and youth in Cairo held mass demonstrations yesterday following the release of the detained Google executive and facebook radical Wael Ghonim. The demonstrators in Tahrir Square remain determined not to be forced out of the Square by the army, and have condemned all the groups who are now negotiating...
Unite yesterday cancelled plans for another strike at British Airways, and announced there will be a fresh industrial action ballot. In a statement, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: ‘British Airways cabin crew voted last month overwhelmingly, and for the third time, to take industrial action against their employer on...
The University and College Union yesterday slammed the government after it emerged that Cambridge University plans to charge students £9,000 a year fees. UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: ‘The new fees regime exposes just how far out of touch the Cabinet is with hard-working families in this country. ‘We will...
The government will spend more than £850 million in redundancy payments to NHS managers and staff to pave the way for the privatisation of the health service, the Unite union said yesterday. Unite, which has 100,000 members in the health service, has repeatedly warned that the Health and Social Care...
Trade unions yesterday reacted angrily to demands from the Institute of Directors (IoD) to end national collective bargaining in the NHS and Education sectors, and to put employment tribunals beyond the reach of workers. Responding to the bosses’ attack, Unite assistant general secretary for public services, Gail Cartmail, said: ‘The IoD’s...
The Institute of Directors (IoD) has proposed a 24-point plan to the Tory-led coalition government to save British capitalism. Central to their ‘blueprint for growth’ is the assertion that what British capitalism requires, above all, is the ending of collective bargaining in the National Health Service and in Education, a ban...
‘I WISH all Sri Lankans around the world a happy celebration and continued peace and prosperity in the coming year,’ said a statement harping on ‘post-war reconciliation’ released from the office of the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, on the eve of Sri Lanka Independence Day on 4th...
The US is sending warships, including one with 800 troops, and other military assets to Egypt as the revolution in the North African country gains momentum, it emerged yesterday. The Pentagon has dismissed widespread assumptions that military intervention in Cairo is being contemplated, asserting that the objective of the deployment...
WHEN Lenin saw, on his return to Russia in April 1917, that the ‘democracy’ in Russia proved even less capable of assuming the power than in Germany he was able to recognise and actually diagnose in writing this revolutionary situation of dual power as it unfolded. The conditions of revolutionary...
Anti-Mubarak protesters in Cairo yesterday have called for another ‘million strong protest’ in Tahrir Square today. This call was made as the Egyptian government and opposition groups announced it had been agreed to release all those detained since the beginning of the protests, and the lifting of the emergency law. The...
UP to 1,500 English Defence League racists, plus foreign supporters, marched through Luton on Saturday, escorted by police from 27 forces as well as by mounted police. A sixth of Luton’s population is Muslim, but in fact it is not the town’s biggest immigrant group. This falls to the...
EXILED once again in 1929, but this time banished from the entire USSR by the Stalin-led counter-revolution which followed Lenin’s death, Trotsky in his History of the Russian Revolution deepened his analysis of both the English revolution and the years 1789-93 in France in the light of the establishment...
YESTERDAY, millions of Egyptian workers and youth, from Alexandria to Cairo’s Tahrir Square and the city of Luxor and Ports Said and Suez, marched and rallied demanding the immediate departure of President Mubarak from Egypt. Their huge numbers put the secret police and the regime’s hired gangs of thugs to...
The British Medical Association will put ‘absolutely everything’ on the table including strike action when members determine their response to the government’s NHS Health and Social Care Bill at a BMA Special Representative Meeting (SRM) next month, Dr. Steve Hajioff has said. In an interview with Pulse...
Millions of Egyptians converged on Cairo’s Tahrir Square and massed in the cities of Alexandria, Port Suez and Luxor yesterday, which they had dubbed ‘departure day’ for President Mubarak. There was a heavy military presence surrounding the defiant crowd in Tahrir Square, some of whom were sporting bandaged wounds from...
EGYPTIAN anti-government protesters yesterday fought the regime to a standstill and pushed the supporters of President Hosni Mubarak out of the streets near Cairo’s Tahrir Square which they had controlled. Stones were thrown and there was sound of gunfire. As the workers occupying the square refused to move the crisis...
AHEAD of today’s summit of the European Union the Greek transport minister issued an open threat that unless striking transport workers returned to work immediately they would feel the ‘full force’ of the capitalist state. The summit is crucial for the survival of Greek capitalism as it is here that...
Without the Affordable Care Act, up to 129 million non-elderly Americans who have some type of pre-existing health condition, like heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis or cancer, would be at risk of losing health insurance when they need it most, or be denied coverage altogether. Obama’s Health and Human...
TENS OF THOUSANDS of anti-Mubarak protesters in Tahrir Square, Cairo were attacked by pro-Mubarak thugs and plain-clothes police yesterday afternoon, as Egyptian Army soldiers looked on. Although the army had put up barricades around the square, they let the pro-Mubarak thugs through. Witnesses of pro-Mubarak rallies held away from the square...
AFTER the dictator Mubarak’s insistence, on Tuesday night, that he will remain president of Egypt until next September, the ‘managed change’ for Egypt, favoured by imperialist politicians such as Tony Blair and President Obama and supported by Israel, began to emerge. The army command followed up the declaration of Mubarak...
‘THIS IS our revolution, Mubarak is a tyrant, not a president any more!’ said angry Egyptians demonstrating in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Tuesday. The chanting and whistles from Tahrir Square could be heard more than a mile away. On Tuesday night, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak emerged to make a statement on...
THIS was the defiant and revolutionary message that came out of Egypt from demonstrators, and was shown in the western media, in response to the intervention of the ‘Butcher of Iraq’, Tony Blair, into their affairs. Blair had insisted that the situation in Egypt has to be ‘managed’ to...
After more than 20 years in exile, Tunisian Ennahda movement leader Rached Ghannouchi returned from London on Sunday, with thousands of supporters greeting him. Ghannouchi walked into the arrivals hall of Tunis, raising his arms in triumph and eyeing a political future for his movement after the ousting of President...
MASSES of Egyptians flooded into Cairo’s Tahrir Square yesterday, responding to the calls for a million-strong march to demand the removal of President Mubarak. Simultaneously, another massive demonstration was taking place in Alexandria, at the start of an indefinite general strike to topple Mubarak. Tahrir Square was completely filled, with more...
Tens of thousands of defiant Egyptians occupying Cairo’s Tahriri (Liberation) Square chanted ‘Mubarak, Mubarak, the plane awaits’ on the sixth day of their people’s revolution against President Husni Mubarak’s regime. Embattled Mubarak on Saturday named military intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as his first-ever vice-president and also a new premier, Ahmed...
‘NHS not for sale,’ angry health workers chanted outside parliament yesterday, as the Health and Social Care Bill got its second reading. ‘This bill is one further step towards NHS privatisation,’ midwife Rachel Voller told News Line. ‘People are not seeing what’s round the corner. There is commissioning, but the...
Yesterday saw the second reading of the Tory-led coalition’s Health and Social Care Bill in Parliament, a bill designed to facilitate the wholesale closure of hospitals and the privatisation of the NHS. This is the bill that will hand control of £80 billion of NHS funding to GPs who will...