Monthly Archives: September 2011
NICOLAS Sarkozy and David Cameron, with delegations of businessmen plus NATO officers, visited Tripoli yesterday to try to shore up the split and divided counter-revolutionary NTC. It is split and divided with ex-Gadaffi ministers and Al Qaeda veterans at each other’s throats. The failure to defeat Colonel Gadaffi has sharpened the...
AS European Commission officials and European leaders prepare a Greek default, Greek ministers have outlined barbaric plans for the wholesale destruction of public services and the sacking of some 250,000 public sector workers and civil servants in the next few months. As a first immediate step, the Papandreou government is...
OVER four million public sector workers are set to strike over pensions this November, after trade union leaders announced at the TUC congress yesterday that industrial action ballots are being launched. Delegates voted unanimously for Composite motion ‘C5 Pensions’. It calls on the general council to ‘give full support to industrial...
LABOUR Party leader Ed Miliband was heckled during his speech at the Trade Union Congress (TUC) conference on Tuesday. Miliband angered delegates as he condemned unions for taking strike action over pensions while negotiations were ongoing and also declared he would not reverse Tory-LibDem cuts. The response to his speech from...
THE number of people unemployed in the UK rose by 80,000 to 2.51 million in the three months to July, official figures have shown. This is the largest increase in nearly two years, bringing the jobless rate to 7.9%. Youth unemployment also rose by 78,000 to 973,000, while the number...
MISH'AN al-Juburi, director of the Al-Ra’y Satellite Channel, has said that Libyan leader Muammar al-Gadaffi is still in Libya fighting side by side with his forces on the ground against the NATO forces and Libyan rebels. He also said that he is in direct contact with Al-Gadaffi and...
TENS of thousands of Greek university and higher education college students from all over the country demonstrated last Saturday in the northern city of Thessaloniki along with workers and the unemployed in a most defiant anti-government march of more than 40,000. The march was called by the trades unions and...
THE Office of National Statistics has given the figures on inflation rates for last month which confirm that British capitalism faces total economic collapse, while the working class and the middle class are being pauperised. Figures show the UK inflation rate for August, as measured by the Consumer Price Index...
DELEGATES passed motion 51 on ‘Southern Cross and the Care Sector’ yesterday morning at the TUC. It called for ‘robust regulation’, ‘all care homes to be returned to public control’ and for a levy on the hedge funds that made a killing over Southern Cross. In the debate Alexis Chase said:...
TRADE union delegates at the TUC Congress in London on Monday supported the call from the North East London Council of Action to occupy Chase Farm Hospital. They were responding to the news that the government has given the go-ahead for the closure of the Enfield hospital’s A&E, Maternity and...
HEALTH Secretary Lansley and the coalition have decided to close Chase Farm as a District General Hospital and move out its A&E. Maternity and Paediatric departments. Bill Rogers, secretary of the North East London Council of Action, told News Line: ‘We’ve just heard the news that they are going to...
THE TUC Congress yesterday instructed the TUC General Council to support and coordinate joint strike action against attacks on jobs, pensions, pay and public services. Composite Motion Nine: Public Services and Their Importance to the Economy warned: ‘All services are already in danger with the increasing threat of privatisation evidenced...
A LIVELY lobby of over 50 Young Socialists and supporters, chanting ‘Youth demand a future, youth demand jobs’ demonstrated outside the TUC Congress yesterday morning. They shouted: ‘TUC get off your knees – call a general strike!’ and ‘No cuts, no closures – kick this government out!’ A number of trade...
THE real essence of the capitalist crisis penetrated into the heart of the Trades Union Congress yesterday, as delegates assembled for their annual conference at TUC headquarters in London, a much smaller venue than it has used in living memory. The TUC leaders and Brendan Barber, the general secretary in...
AT A press conference last Thursday on the just published report by Sir William Gage on the Baha Mousa Public Inquiry, lawyers issued a statement on behalf of the victims of British Army torture in Iraq. Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers said: ‘The Inquiry has found that innocent men,...
AHEAD of today’s TUC Congress, the leaders of two of the country’s biggest unions warned that their members’ anger over cuts in their jobs, living standards and pensions is driving the calls for strike action. Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said the government’s plans to cut public sector workers’ jobs...
PALESTINIANS are poised to march in their millions on 15th September both inside and outside the occupied territories, and throughout the world, including past the UN assembly building in New York. They will be demanding that the UN recognises their state, on the 1967 boundaries, and reiterates...
TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber yesterday warned of ‘widespread industrial action’ over public sector pensions. Speaking at a press conference in Congress House, central London, in advance of next week’s Congress, he said the government ‘should look at the damage it has done through its arbitrary actions.’ Asked about the current...
LAST Thursday night US President Barak Obama addressed a joint session of the US Congress where he outlined his new initiative that would, he boasted, ‘solve’ the huge unemployment crisis. In unveiling his American Jobs Act it became clear, however, that the only job Obama is interested in is that...
GREEK students are deepening and extending their fight against the government’s Education Law passed by the Greek Vouli (parliament) last month. Over 300 university departments were under students’ occupation throughout Greece last Thursday when the Athens students mounted a most militant demonstration of over 4,000, including a large contingent...
COLONEL Gadaffi made a six minute statement over Al-Ra’y TV on Thursday. He said: ‘The Libyan soil is yours since the days of your forefathers. Those who are trying to take it away from you are intruders, mercenaries, stray dogs, infidels and foreigners residing in Libya for some time now....
LIBYAN leader Muammar Gadaffi issued a defiant audio message which was aired by the Syrian Arrai television channel yesterday. Colonel Gadaffi said: ‘Youth are ready in Tripoli and everywhere to intensify attacks against the rats, the mercenaries, who are a pack of dogs. ‘Do not waste time on this weak and...
BAHA MOUSA died as a result of ‘appalling and gratuitous violence’ by members of the British Army, the year-long Public Inquiry into his death reported yesterday. The Inquiry’s chairman, Sir William Gage, blamed ‘corporate failure’ at the Ministry of Defence for the ‘grave and shameful events’ surrounding his death. Baha Mousa,...
TWO Hundred Bombardier workers and their supporters descended on parliament on Wednesday to urge the Tory coalition ‘to save British train manufacturing’. The government has already awarded a train-building contract to Siemens resulting in 1,440 Bombardier redundancies with 3,000 more jobs in the balance. The workers had travelled down from Derby...
THE third reading of the Health and Social Care Bill was approved by MPs by 65 votes on Wednesday evening, with just four LibDem MPs voting against. So much for the LibDem revolt and the Labour-trade union leaders’ policy of keeping the working class quiet, while pleading with the...
DAMASCUS – Musa Ibrahim, the Libyan government spokesman, gave a telephone interview last Monday with Iraqi businessman and owner of Damascus-based and pro-Al-Gadaffi Al-Ra’y TV, Mish’an al-Juburi. Ibrahim alluded to the clandestine oil deal between Libya’s counter-revolutionaries of the National Transitional Council (NTC) and France. Ibrahim said sarcastically that the ‘attack...
THE CLC (Canadian Labour Congress) in Canada have produced a report exposing the fact that youth are bearing the brunt of the mass sackings, wage cuts and economic collapse in Canada. The CLC (Canadian Labour Congress) report calls on young people to join the union and get organised to defend...
TWO hundred Bombardier workers and their supporters descended on parliament yesterday to urge the Tory coalition ‘to save British train manufacturing’. The government has already awarded a train building contract to Siemens, resulting in 1,440 Bombardier redundancies, with 3,000 more jobs in the balance. They had travelled down from Derby for...
HUNDREDS of thousands of Greek workers, students and unemployed are expected to take part in rallies and demonstrations in Athens and Salonica on Saturday against government plans for mass sackings and privatisation. Speaking in the Reichstag on Tuesday, the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble called on the Greek government...
TWENTY five right wing ruling class economists have worked out the way to revive the dying capitalist economy, and it is, while continuing the hammering of the workers and the poor, to get rid of the 50p tax rate for the rich. These right wing economists say that this massive...
THE former News International legal manager Tom Crone was yesterday accused by Labour MP Tom Watson of ‘trying to conceal widespread criminality’ at the News of the World. Crone, former Legal Manager of News Group Newspapers, contradicted evidence given by James Murdoch to the parliamentary committee in July. Murdoch...
THE INABILITY of the US economy to recover from its jobs slump, alongside the colossal indebtedness of the EU banks – German, Italian, French and British – in the wake of the Greek, Irish and Portuguese ‘rescue operations’, has qualitatively deepened the world crisis of the capitalist system. This has...
OVER 200 migrant domestic workers and their supporters rallied at Old Palace Yard, opposite the House of Lords, from 11am to 1pm on Sunday. The protest was organised by Justice 4 Domestic Workers, and supported by the Unite union, the TUC and Filipino organisation Kalayaan. Justice 4 Domestic Workers (J4DW) is...
THE oft repeated claim by Tory prime minister Cameron that the coalition will not privatise the National Health Service has finally been exposed for what it is – a downright lie. On the eve of today’s vote in parliament on the coalition’s health bill, previously secret e-mails have been produced...
AT 2109 gmt on Sunday, pro-Gadaffi Damascus-based Al-Ra’y TV reported that Bani Walid, 150km southeast of the Libyan capital Tripoli, had rejected negotiations with NATO’s counter-revolutionaries. Al-Ra’y TV (owned by Iraqi former MP Mish’an al-Juburi) broadcast a short news bulletin summarising the main events that took place on Sunday. Below...
BEDFORDSHIRE Council’s ultimatum to employees to sign new wage-cutting contracts or face the sack has been met with defiance by council workers, who have refused to sign. The GMB stated yesterday: ‘GMB is concerned that Central Bedfordshire Council, as a result of the council’s ultimatum to staff to sign...
A CONCERNED Palestinian family has called on the Red Cross to obtain news of Hudhayfah Jarrar, 21, from Jenin, as Israeli occupation authorities have detained him for over a week and prohibited him from receiving visits by a lawyer. The Jarrars have called on all human rights organisations to ensure...
FROM the early 1980s, the CIA and MI6, directed by the US and UK governments of the day, supported and armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden and his supporters, in order to overthrow the pro-Russian government of Najibollah. They brought the Taleban to power and then fell...
‘ANY MP who votes for the Health and Social Care Bill next week is voting for the end of the NHS,’ said Christina McAnea, Unison Head of Health yesterday. Her comment follows revelations in leaked emails from senior officials at the Department of Health, discussing plans to bring in international...
‘NO return to slavery, we are workers!’ chanted over 200 migrant domestic workers and their supporters outside Parliament yesterday. The protest from 11am-1pm, Old Palace Yard opposite the House of Lords, was organised by Justice4DomesticWorkers, and supported by the Unite union, the TUC and Filipino organisation Kalayaan. Justice 4 Domestic Workers...
BMA Council Chairman, Dr Hamish Meldrum, yesterday wrote to all MPs warning them that the government’s health reforms still present an ‘unacceptably high risk to the NHS, threatening its ability to operate effectively and equitably, now and in the future’. He reiterates that BMA policy is that the Bill must...
HUNDREDS of migrant domestic workers will be gathering in Old Palace Yard, Westminster at 11.00 am this Sunday to demonstrate against the government’s proposed changes to the domestic workers visa. The Cameron government plans to change the visa and remove some of the most fundamental rights of migrant domestic workers...
THE Libyan leader Muammar Al-Gadaffi has made a defiant 12-minute statement on the anniversary of the ‘1 September Revolution’ that was broadcast by Al-Ra’y TV on Thursday evening. He said: ‘Oh, Great Libyan People! It is forty-two years after the revolution, after your victory over colonialism, liberating Libya and...