Monthly Archives: June 2013
TENS of thousands of Greek workers and youth rushed to the state Greek TV and Radio corporation (ERT) building on Tuesday afternoon following the government spokeperson’s announcement that ERT is to be completely shut down immediately and all 2,850 personnel sacked. The Greek tripartite government was ordered by the...
DISABLED People Against Cuts (DPAC) organised a lively demonstration near Parliament on Monday, to mark the 25th birthday of the Independent Living Fund, which has enabled disabled people to live independent lives in the community outside of institutions. With car horns beeping in support, and chanting, ‘Happy Birthday Independent Living...
ANTI-GOVERNMENT protesters confronting riot police in Istanbul’s Taksim Square and its adjoining Gezi Park yesterday, issued a call for Turkish citizens to join them at 7.00pm last night for a mass mobilisation in defence of the square. At 4.00pm yesterday troops were being moved into the square. Prime Minister Erdogan had...
THE news that the US secretary of state, John Kerry, was forced to scrap a planned visit to Israel in order to attend an emergency meeting at the White House, is a measure of the acute crisis the Obama regime has been plunged into by the victories won by...
‘DISABLED people are getting into debt to pay for essentials. What’s the government’s response? It is cutting the very financial lifeline designed to help them meet the extra costs they face.’ Richard Hawkes, chief executive of disability charity Scope, was speaking out against yesterday’s abolition of the Disability Living Allowance...
WHEN it comes to desperate, mindless optimism the French president, Francois Hollande, is a world leader. In a speech given in Japan over the weekend, Hollande confidently declared that the debt crisis in the eurozone had ended, insisting that: ‘You must understand the crisis in the eurozone is over’ before...
PALESTINIAN Arab and Bedouin residents in the Negev announced Sunday that they would be rallying against a legislative proposal to be put before the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, that would see the dismantling of ‘unrecognised’ villages and the forced displacement of residents. The Al-Naqab Association for Land and Human Beings...
FOREIGN Secretary Hague yesterday refused to confirm or deny that GCHQ ‘circumvented the law’ to gather data on British citizens, only describing such claims as ‘fanciful nonsense’. Hague is to give a statement to Parliament on the allegations today, where questioning over UK access to the American Prism snooping system...
THE Tory foreign secretary, William Hague, appeared on television yesterday morning to give a less than convincing pledge that ‘law abiding citizens’ have ‘nothing to fear’ from British intelligence services. Hague was on the Andrew Marr programme to try and head off the mounting tide of anger over the revelations...
UP TO 800 firefighters and their supporters on Saturday marched and rallied against the closure of fire stations in London. One march set off from from Kingsland fire station in Hackney and was joined by marchers from Clerkenwell fire station in Islington. Firefighters carrying FBU banners led the Hackneymarch, with banners...
THE House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has warned that ‘multiple’ local authorities are facing financial collapse due to government spending cuts. The PAC said ministers ought to be drawing up contingency plans to cope with councils in difficulty. In fact, ministers are deliberately destroying services and hundreds of...
SPEAKING in Moscow, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said said on Thursday that the ‘international community’ has to decide with whom it will stand by in Syria. He continued that the West had to decide whether to stand with those who want ‘forced regime change’ or those who want...
‘MULTIPLE local authorities’ are facing financial collapse due to government spending cuts, MPs on the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) have warned. The committee’s latest report, published yesterday, says ministers should be drawing up contingency plans to cope with councils in difficulty. The central government grant to local authorities...
A legal opinion by a leading QC has found that the Government’s proposed changes to legal aid – for which the consultation closed this week – are unlawful. The opinion, prepared by leading public lawyer Michael Fordham QC, argues that the proposed ‘residency test’ would amount to unlawful discrimination against...
LABOUR Party leader Miliband’s speech on the party’s economic strategy showed conclusively that the Labour Party leaders are prepared to completely destroy the Welfare State on behalf of the bankers and bosses. Miliband was clearly speaking directly to the bankers and the capitalist class when he formally announced that the...
UK Foreign Secretary Hague yesterday expressed ‘sincere regret’ and announced compensation totalling £19.9m for Kenyans who were tortured during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s and 60s. In a statement to MPs, Hague also announced plans to fund a permanent memorial to the victims in the Kenyan...
IN A savage attack on workers, youth and disabled people, Labour party leader Ed Miliband yesterday indicated that if Labour wins the next election its main aim will be the destruction of the Welfare State. He said that a cap on social security spending would allow a future Labour government...
THE Hezbollah TV channel yesterday showed a fighter planting a Syrian flag on Al-Qusayr’s clock tower while the Western powers’ surrogate, the Free Syrian Army, admitted that the strategic town had been taken, and that they were in full retreat, and threatening to extend the war to Lebanon. Syrian...
THE General Command of the Syrian army said yesterday that ‘Our armed forces succeeded early on Wednesday to restore security and stability to the city of al-Qusayr and clear it of the terrorists.’ The statement clarified that the army seized full control of al-Qusayr after ‘a series of...
The Turkish government split yesterday in the face of mass uprisings and a general strike by Turkish workers and youth. In Ankara, the Deputy Prime Minister, Bulent Arinc, called the protests against the regime ‘just and legitimate’ while the Turkish Premier, Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaking in Morocco, dismissed those...
IT IS now becoming obvious that the furore over parliamentary expenses and their alleged misuse, involving at least one leading Tory MP, was just a Trojan Horse to allow the Tory-led government coalition to mount a major attack on the workers movement, and bring in new anti-union laws including...
CANADIAN Union of Public Employees (CUPE) school worker members in the City of Nanaimo’s Ladysmith school district, British Columbia, have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action. Members of CUPE local 606 voted 89 per cent in favour of job action after contract talks stalled. The main issues are job...
PRESIDENT Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to al-Manar TV broadcast on Thursday. We are very pleased to publish it in two parts PART TWO Al-MANAR: Mr President, we have talked about the steadfastness of the Syrian leadership and the Syrian state. We have discussed the progress being achieved on the battlefield,...
YESTERDAY the Labour shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, announced that the Labour Party has officially abandoned the principle of universal benefits in the interests of paying off the huge national debt created by the banking crisis. In a speech on the Labour Party’s economic strategy to ‘save’ bankrupt British capitalism, Balls...
AS THE mass uprising swept Turkey for a fourth day yesterday, Turkish trade unions called a three-day general strike against prime minister Erdogan’s AK Party government. The main trade unions, including the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions (DISK), the Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions (KESK), and the Education and Science...
LABOUR will bring in a means test for winter fuel payments for the elderly if they win the next general election, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls announced yesterday. In a fundamental shift of Labour Party policy to the right, Balls said that more than 600,000 pensioners over the age of 61...
PRESIDENT Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to al-Manar TV broadcast on Thursday. We are very pleased to publish it in two parts PART ONE AL-MANAR: In the battle for the homeland, it seems that the Syrian leadership, and after two and a half years, is making progress on the battlefield. And...
THE uprising of the Turkish masses, which began over the future of a park in European Turkey and rapidly spread across the country, including the capital Ankara, forced the withdrawal of the massed ranks of the riot police with their poison gas and rubber bullets, and an apology from...
PLAID Cymru Assembly Members have accused the Labour-led Welsh government of supporting the huge salaries of council chief executives. The chief executive of Wales’s biggest local authority, Cardiff Council’s Jon House, currently earns almost £184,000, which is £50,000 more than First Minister Carwyn Jones. In March, Caerphilly council suspended its chief...
PUBLIC Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge has revealed that the Office For Fair Trading (OFT) ‘have never fined a lender for exploiting individual clients’. In fact, a whole mass of ‘payday lenders’ are super-exploiting millions of working class and middle class poor, and getting away with imposing hundreds of per...
THE GMB yesterday condemned the forced transfer of nearly 700 northwest London NHS pathology service staff to a private company. The service carries out blood tests for the Royal Free Hospital and University College London Hospitals (UCLH) and Camden area GPs, handling around two million samples per year from blood,...
Around 4,000 Palestinian workers from Hebron face an arduous journey every day as they try to cross into Israel via the Tarqumiya checkpoint. The luckiest workers can make it through the airport-like security inspection in a few hours, while some return home after hours of waiting, and others decide to...