Monthly Archives: July 2011
WHAT bourgeois economists thought was unthinkable just a few days ago is now about to happen. In just four days time the United States is going to default on its massive debt repayments. Next Tuesday is the absolute deadline for both the US Congress, dominated by the Republicans, and the Senate,...
THE Libyan counter-revolutionaries, Hague’s would-be government of Libya, have begun to kill each other off. Gen Abdel Fattah Younes who was an ally of Col Gaddafi for many years till last February, and then defected to become the military commander of the Libyan rebels, has been murdered by a rebel...
MPs on the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sports Committee are writing to James Murdoch, ex-News of the World editor Colin Myler and the paper’s ex-legal manager Tom Crone. This came after the committee voted against a request by Labour MP Tom Watson, who had wanted the committee recalled...
2.5 million public service employees are being told how much extra the coalition government intends to force them to pay in pension contributions from April 2012, but not the increases that they intend to impose from 2013 and 2014. The government states that public sector workers who earn between £15,000...
THE PLO will in September approach the UN Security Council to seek full membership in the global body, President Mahmud Abbas said on Wednesday. ‘We are going to the Security Council through a request to the secretary-general of the United Nations to seek full membership in the UN and recognition...
FOREIGN Secretary William Hague yesterday ordered the Libyan charge d‘affaires out of the UK along with all Libyan diplomats. Hague said: ‘We’re inviting the national transitional council to appoint a new Libyan diplomatic envoy’, and that the UK will recognise the Libyan rebel council as the ‘sole governmental authority’. The...
FOREIGN Secretary Hague announced the expulsion of all Libyan diplomats from the UK yesterday. He also announced that the counter-revolutionary NTC (National Transitional Council) ‘rebels’ were now the Libyan ‘government authority’ and invited it to send an envoy to occupy the Libyan Embassy in Knightsbridge, west London. He added that...
AFTER months of bombing and killing civilians, the Libyan imperialist adventure is nearing its end after both the UK and French governments have stated that Colonel Gadaffi and his family can continue to live in the country. This is after feverishly trying night and day to murder both,...
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has responded to being forced to close its offices in Gaza City last week as protesters blockaded its entrances, angry at the slashing of UNRWA’s emergency programmes, by calling for an end to Israeli ‘collective punishment’. Demonstrators physically blocked the entrances of the agency’s...
AMNESTY International has urged the Egyptian authorities to ensure that an activist thought to have been arrested on 23 July is immediately freed and that he is not subjected to torture or other ill-treatment. Blogger and human rights activist Amr Gharbeia, a former Amnesty International staff member currently working with...
AN independent inquiry into the unusually large number of maternal deaths in London over the past two years has confirmed that the government policy of cutting the NHS to the bone to ensure the survival of the banks is killing not just the sick but healthy women as well. The inquiry...
THE Health and Social Care Bill will increase the number of deaths on maternity units, Unison warned yesterday. A leaked NHS report revealed that there were 42 maternal deaths in London units between January 2009 and June 2010 – double the number expected. Of the 42 mothers who died half...
Both US President Barack Obama and the Republican leader in Congress John Boehner raised the spectre of a market crash today if the political battle to raise America’s $14.3-trillion debt ceiling is not settled. The crisis sharpened over the weekend after long running talks between Obama and House Speaker Boehner...
THE fascist, Breivik, who carried out the mass murder of up to 100, mainly youth in Oslo and attempted to murder the Labour Prime Minister, was neither acting alone nor is he a lunatic. This coward, who laughed as he shot his innocent victims, values his own life and refused...
LIBYAN leader Mu’ammar al-Gadaffi rejected any dialogue with his enemies in a speech broadcast by Libyan TV, captioned as a ‘live’ audio address, at 18.46 gmt on 21 July. Al-Gadaffi’s defiant, 10-minute speech to a rally in the city of Sirte, on the coast between Tripoli and Benghazi, was received...
ON Thursday the heads of the Eurozone met in emergency session in a desperate attempt to head off Greek state bankruptcy leading to the collapse of the EU banks, the euro and the European Union. In the end, what was produced amounted to imposing an organised default onto Greece. It...
JAMES Murdoch came under further pressure yesterday as two Labour MPs suggested he may have lied to the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee on Tuesday. This came in the wake of a statement issued by two former top executives of News of the World. The editor of...
Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouthi has called for large-scale peaceful protests in support of a Palestinian bid for United Nations membership in September. In a statement released from his cell in Israel’s Hadarim prison, West Bank Fatah leader Barghouthi, who is widely considered as the architect of the second Palestinian...
THE High Court yesterday rejected the disgraceful British government attempt to strike out the claims of Kenyan victims of British Colonial torture and terror on the grounds of ‘state succession’. This was that the Kenyan governments that followed on from the ending of the colonial administration, and its foul deeds,...
FIFTEEN activists held after Israeli forces intercepted their boat as they attempted to sail to Gaza will be deported today, an Israeli official said. Sabine Hadad, spokeswoman for Israel’s immigration service, confirmed that the 15 passengers, including 11 French citizens and others from Sweden, Canada and Greece, would be...
PUBLIC sector union Unison yesterday reiterated its call for the government to take action to tackle fuel poverty. It was responding to Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) becoming the third major UK energy supplier to announce double digit price increases. Scottish and Southern announced that its household electricity bills will increase...
PRIME Minister Cameron was repeatedly challenged yesterday over his hiring of Andy Coulson during the discussion on his statement over the News International crisis. Cameron had flown back from Africa to make the statement with parliament extended for an extra day. Parliament was recalled to hold an emergency...
TORY leader Cameron was allowed to bluff his way through yesterday’s debate, on his special statement on the Murdoch-Coulson scandal, held after it caused the resignation of two police chiefs, and a major crisis in the government and the state. He was able to do this after Labour leader...
THE GMB has commented on the written ministerial statement in the House of Commons yesterdayday on public sector pension talks. Brian Strutton, the GMB National Secretary for Public Services said ‘GMB and other trade unions have engaged positively in the central talks about public sector pensions reform and...
LEGAL action charity Reprieve and Islamabad human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar on Monday announced the publication of the first large array of photographs depicting the devastating impact of US unmanned aircraft (‘drone’) attacks on innocent civilians in Pakistan. The photographs are the work of Noor Behram, a 39-year-old photographer from...
YESTERDAY’S parliamentary committee sessions saw News International stand brazenly in denial of any knowledge of the phone hacking that took place at the News of the World, while the just-resigned Police Commissioner Stephenson and his deputy Yates, now both under investigation, remained in a state of denial. Stephenson said that...
RUPERT and James Murdoch yesterday sought to stonewall MPs questioning them about phone-hacking at the ‘News of the World’, denying any responsibility or knowledge of what was going on. The Murdochs were questioned at length, with MPs asking them about ‘blackmail’, phone-hacking and a file of ‘paper’ that was apparently...
AT 1636 gmt on 15 July, Libyan state TV Al-Jamahiriyah broadcast a ‘live’ audio address by Libyan leader Muammar al-Gadaffi directed at a ‘one-million’ rally in Zlitan. Al-Gadaffi began his 27-minute audio message by addressing the people in the square saying: ‘Dear rebellious people, dear challenging people, may glory,...
PRIME Minister Cameron came under increasing pressure yesterday to follow the two top London police officers who have quit in the past two days, and go himself. Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates resigned yesterday, following the departure of his boss, Commissioner Paul Stephenson, on Sunday. Yates had checked the credentials...
LAST Friday the European Banking Authority released the findings of this year’s Stress Test for European banks. These stress tests, introduced one year ago, are supposed to assess whether banks hold a sufficient reserve of funds to enable them to cope with a deteriorating economy and falling house prices. They were...
FORMER News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks was yesterday arrested ‘on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications’ and on ‘suspicion of corruption allegations’. In a statement the police said: ‘The MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) has this afternoon, Sunday 17 July, arrested a female in connection with allegations of corruption...
LABOUR leader Miliband, true to form, has spoken up for new media ownership rules to limit Rupert Murdoch’s ‘dangerous’ and ‘unhealthy’ concentration of power. He is not for ending that power, only for creating the conditions where that power can continue to be exercised on behalf of the ruling class...
THE Court of Appeal will on Monday 18th July 2011 commence a three-day hearing to consider the lawfulness of the refusal by Liam Fox, Secretary of State for Defence, to hold a public inquiry into allegations of torture and inhumane treatment of Iraqis by British forces. The claim, in...
NEWS International chief executive Rebekah Brooks resigned yesterday morning, thrown overboard by Murdoch as he sought to get a grip on News International’s runaway crisis. This action cut no ice with those who have been the victims of hacking, such as former Labour government deputy prime minister John Prescott. He said:...
THE Libyan leader has vowed not to surrender and to fight till the end. He urged the ‘masses’ to march on the rebel-held areas in order to ‘liberate them’. Addressing a march staged in his support in Al-Ujaylat town, southwest of Tripoli, Muammar al-Gadaffi said NATO and the European...
THE historic crisis of world capitalism has come to a head with a vengeance, with both the once mighty US economy and the European economies teetering on the brink of catastrophic collapse. In the US, President Obama has stated that, if there is no agreement between the two bourgeois parties...
The family of Jean Charles de Menezes yesterday called upon Prime Minister Cameron to extend the remit of the inquiry into the phone hacking scandal. They demanded it scrutinise whether police officers involved in the Menezes investigation were leaking information to the press, either for financial benefit or in an effort to...
THE number of UK households in fuel poverty rose by one million in 2009 to 5.5 million. The figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) predict that the numbers for 2010 and 2011 will rise markedly because of the continuing large increases in the price of...
Political groups participating in the Tahrir Square sit-in issued two statements Sunday underlining their demands. The statements were issued separately, but the demands are almost identical. One statement was issued by the Revolution Youth Coalition, The Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the Revolutionary Socialists, the Democratic Workers Party, the National Front for...
PRIME MINISTER Cameron announced a public inquiry into the News International hacking scandal yesterday, just before the Murdoch organisation announced that it was withdrawing its bid for BSkyB. The inquiry will be led by Lord Justice Leveson, who will have powers to call media proprietors, editors and politicians to...
YESTERDAY the Prime Minister announced that a judge-led phone hacking inquiry will have powers to call media proprietors, editors and politicians to give evidence, but not the power to enforce their attendance. Cameron did say that those who sanctioned wrongdoing should have no further role in running a media...
MEMBERS of Palestine’s original communist party are urging the Palestinian National Authority to withstand intimidation from the US over a plan to seek recognition of statehood at the UN in September. The head of the Palestine People’s Party, Bassam As-Salhi, says a threat by American lawmakers to suspend...