Monthly Archives: January 2014
THE Israeli Separation Wall will destroy the livelihoods and divide the population of two more Palestinian villages south of Jerusalem, locals say, after a court ruling approved its planned route. The wall is in parts eight-metres (25-foot) high – it would cut through ancient irrigation systems used by the West...
WHAT started last week as a crisis in the international capitalist stock markets is turning into a full-scale crash with Wednesday’s decision by the US Federal Reserve Bank to make a further $10 billion-a-month cut in its Quantitative Easing (QE) programme. For the past two years, the Fed, along with...
THE US Federal Reserve has further scaled back its Quantatitive Easing programme of free money for the US banks by another $10bn to $65bn a month. It was originally $85bn a month. The Fed says that the whole process will be terminated by next December. The response of banks and stock...
UNIVERSITY lecturers up and down the country came out on strike on Tuesday in the second of a series of two-hour strikes in an escalating row over pay. At 2pm the strike began and lecturers walked out on strike – at University College London (UCL), lecturers were joined by students...
PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address attempted to present an image of a presidency that was capable of achieving something for the US workers, despite the fact that it is bound hand and foot by a Congress that is determined to savagely attack the working class and...
AFTER the House of Lords accepted the Lobbying Bill by just one vote the bill is now set to become law. The TUC Congress 2013 condemned the Lobbying Bill and decided to ‘explore the potential for legal action against its implementation and co-ordinate this action with all who are willing...
Six union leaders employed by the One World Apparel garment factory in Haiti have been fired. The leaders of the Textile and Garment Workers Union are demanding an increase in the daily minimum wage of 12 dollars a day. The Haitian minimum wage was increased recently, after protests in...
THE Ukrainian Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov, of the Stalinist Party of the Regions resigned on Tuesday in an attempt to draw the EU-backed right-wing movement that has been fighting for ‘regime change’ into a government of national unity. The ‘muscle’ for this right wing is being provided by the ...
A HIGHLY critical report, published by a committee of MPs yesterday, suggests that Jobcentre staff are given targets for kicking people off benefits. The report shows that 860,000 Jobseekers had their benefits sanctioned last year, the highest ever. The report shows that many of those sanctioned were forced to go...
THE Irish trade union SIPTU has met with the provisional liquidators appointed to Mount Carmel Hospital in Dublin. SIPTU Organiser, Kevin Figgis, said: ‘We are deeply concerned by this move. We will be seeking to explore all possibilities for maintaining the operation of this landmark hospital.’ He added:...
IN a radio interview yesterday morning the Tory prime minister, David Cameron, pronounced that the UK economy was seeing a ‘balanced economic recovery.’ All this talk of British capitalism seeing a recovery is certainly not supported by the economic reality facing workers and the vast majority of the middle class...
EMERGENCY operations are being cancelled putting hundreds of critically ill patients in danger as hospitals run out of intensive care beds, official figures have revealed. Huge cuts to the NHS by the government have left hospitals dangerously short of intensive care beds. An ‘urgent operation’ is defined as an operation that...
THREE Afghan refugees who survived last Monday’s wreckage of their boat off the Greek island of Farmakonisi in the eastern Aegean, emphatically and repeatedly accused the Greek Coast Guard patrol boat of ramming their boat so as to drown its passengers. At an open air Press Conference on the pavement...
THE offer of the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to ‘opposition leaders’ to take the premiership and other key positions in his elected government has been rejected by the imperialist agents and neo-fascists that make up the leadership of the Ukrainian ‘opposition’. They are determined to have regime change in the...
LABOUR SHADOW chancellor Ed Balls yesterday rejected claims that his pledge that a Labour government will bring back the 50p top rate of income tax is part of an ‘anti-business agenda’. Responding to an accusation by Foreign Secretary William Hague that it sent ‘the wrong signal’ about Britain, Balls insisted...
MPs in the House of Commons on Thursday voted by 120 votes to three to demand that the government releases papers related to Shrewsbury conspiracy trials in the wake of the 1972 building workers strike The documents are being withheld under Section 23 of the Freedom of Information Act, the...
IT IS now obvious that the NATO-inspired and organised ‘revolution’ to overthrow the Gadaffi regime in Libya has resulted in a complete catastrophe for the Libyan people. Their country is now split up and divided, with gangs of criminals selling off its oil wealth, and with murderous gangs controlling...
US healthcare companies circling to take over the NHS are now ‘on notice’, says the TUC. Speaking after meeting EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht about the forthcoming Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) in Davos on Thursday, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: ‘US healthcare companies should know that...
THE shocking truth is slowly emerging of last Monday’s ‘several’ drownings of refugees off the Aegean island of Farmakonisi, close to the Turkish coast. The bodies of a woman in her thirties and of a five-year old child were recovered last Wednesday on the Turkish coast. Another nine refugees, all...
Syrian Deputy Premier, Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Walid al-Moallem, opened the Geneva 2 conference in Montreux on Wednesday by insisting on delivering the whole of his defiant speech despite attempts to silence him by anti-Assad delegates and UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon. Minister al-Moallem said at the opening session of...
THE imperialist-backed attempted coup to oust the Ukrainian government and replace it with a pro-imperialist regime, has now taken the open form of a struggle for power with the decision by ‘opposition’ politicians to convene a ‘People’s Council’ and declare it an alternative to the Ukrainian parliament. This open declaration...
AT 11.00am yesterday, University staff across the country walked out on strike in anger in the first of a series of two-hour strikes in an escalating row over pay. Students joined with lecturers on the picket line outside SOAS in central London. The SOAS Samba Band brought a real energy to...
SYRIA’S President Bashar al-Assad, speaking in Damascus on Monday, said: ‘The Geneva Conference should produce clear results with regard to the fight against terrorism in Syria’. He made his remarks during an interview with Agence France Presse. He added that the conference ‘In particular, needs to put pressure on...
Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS medical director, has said that private companies will be asked to carry out routine operations to relieve pressure on hospitals ‘when the going gets rough in winter’. NHS managers have already been warned that emergency services are on a knife-edge, while Dame Barbary Hakin, NHS...
‘SEATED amongst us today in this room, are representatives of countries that have the blood of Syrians on their hands, countries that have exported terrorism along with clemency for the perpetrators.’ This is what Syrian Deputy Premier, Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Walid al-Moallem told the opening session of the Geneva...
‘TODAY, as we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and working families all over the country are coming together in marches for civil and workplace rights, we ask you to join them in a simple pledge,’ said the AFL-CIO US trade union federation on Monday. ‘Wherever you are, you...
RUSSIA’S Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s decision to cancel Iran’s invitation to the ‘peace talks’ on Syria, due to start today, was a mistake. Iran’s invitation was withdrawn on Monday after the US-UK backed Syrian National Coalition threatened to boycott today’s conference if...
ALMOST 13% of young people worldwide are out of work, and their situation is unlikely to improve for four years, a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has said. Released ahead of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, the UN agency report said there was, ‘a potentially dangerous gap...
UNIVERSITY lecturers union UCU warned yesterday that they will take any university management to court if they dock a full day’s pay from their members during Thursday’s two-hour strike. The University College Union (UCU) said in a statement: ‘Any university that tries to dock a full day’s pay from staff...
THE International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) have expressed their deep concern about the Greek government’s ‘unacceptable’ plans for the new public broadcaster NERIT, stating that the move will mean the loss of many journalists’ jobs and create a sub-standard, Athens-focused organisation. The Greek...
THE death of 2-year-old Muhammad Hashir Maveed last Wednesday is a tragic warning of the cost to human life that must inevitably result from the savage cuts inflicted by the coalition government on the NHS. At 3am in the morning the little boy’s mother, on discovering he had a dangerously...
‘AXE, axe the Bedroom Tax!’ chanted protesters outside the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday morning, before the opening of an appeal against the hated tax being brought by five disabled men and women. Claire Glasman of disabled group WinVisible told News Line: ‘We’re here to support people like Charlotte and...
LABOUR launched a new extreme attack on the unemployed yesterday, announcing that if they do not find a job within a year they will be kicked off benefits. The Labour Party are vying with the Tory Coalition over who can attack the unemployed people more viciously. In a speech to the...
BLAYDON Labour MP Dave Anderson has secured a parliamentary debate on behalf of the Shrewsbury 24 campaign this Thursday, 23 January, over the government’s continued refusal to release papers related to the 1972 building workers strike. Campaigners are urging the government to release papers which have been suppressed for almost...
DOZENS of Israeli settlers accompanied by Israeli forces early Friday began farming on lands confiscated from Palestinian farmers in a village south of Hebron, a popular committee coordinator said. Ratib al-Jbour said that the settlers began planting saplings on land that was confiscated from the village of al-Hathaleen. Approximately 150 dunams...
EGYPTIAN voters have approved a new constitution by 98.1 per cent, in a turn out of 36.8 per cent of those eligible to vote. Millions of Mursi supporters boycotted the poll. This result is being presented as the overwhelming popular endorsement of the overthrow of the Mursi regime by the...
A PLANNED £5 million cuts will devastate Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service, say local firefighters. The Fire Brigades Union has warned that proposed cuts of £5m to local fire and rescue services will have a massive impact upon firefighter and public safety in Tyne and Wear. Tyne and Wear...
EVIDENCE of human rights and labour abuses taking place in the Bangladesh Shrimp industry is revealed in a report released on Thursday by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF). Bangladesh is among the top ten exporters of shrimp, making it the Asian country’s second largest foreign currency earner after the ready-made...
THERE was a 17% fall in the number of first-year undergraduates at UK universities in the first year of higher tuition fees, the latest figures show. This ‘first year’ was 2012-13 when universities were allowed to treble their yearly fees to £9,000. The Office For Fair Access says it is also...
THE Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has apologised to Mark Duggan’s family for ‘wrongly’ telling the media he had fired at police before he was shot dead in August 2011. Last Saturday, there was an over 2,000-strong vigil outside Tottenham police station to remember Mark and all those who have...
AFTER overthrowing the Mursi presidency at home to stop a workers revolution, the Egyptian army is planning to undermine the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs the neighbouring Gaza Strip, senior Egyptian security officials have said. The aim, which the officials say could take years to pull off, includes working...
THIS week, in an attempt to cash in on the universal hatred felt by the working class and middle classes towards banks and bankers, Labour leader Ed Miliband has been busy floating suggestions that any future Labour government would be prepared to ‘tame’ the banks and seriously cut the...
FOR the first time, the High Court has blocked an attempt to force a comprehensive school to become an academy. Teachers union NASUWT said yesterday that the decision reflects the growing anger amongst parents, teachers and students at the Tory coalition government’s ‘agenda to privatise and marketise our public education...
A DOSSIER relating to a complaint delivered last Friday to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court regarding the responsibility of UK officials for war crimes in Iraq, was launched at a packed news conference on Tuesday night. The complaint deals with ‘The Responsibility of UK Officials...
THE crisis of British capitalism deepened yesterday with Chancellor Osborne warning the EU ‘We can’t go on like this’, while the Ford motor company warned the UK government that if it quits the EU it will re-assess its UK presence. Nissan has already made the same point, while...