Monthly Archives: August 2014
PRIME Minister Abdelmalek Sellal has reaffirmed Algeria’s firm intention not to intervene militarily in Libya, citing the Algerian Constitution ‘which prohibits our troops from crossing the borders’. Algiers is clearly stating once again, its position on the Libyan security issue and advocating the path of dialogue to put an end...
CAMPAIGNERS against the closure of four west London hospital Accident and Emergency Departments expressed fury yesterday at the declaration by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust that it intends to double its £39 million annual private income. Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter said: ‘Despite claims that the West London closures ...
ON Thursday, a member of the powerful Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, in an unguarded moment, blurted out the truth that exports from the UK to its largest trading partner the EU are ‘dead in the water’. In fact, it is not just exports that are dead in the...
POLICE in the US state of Missouri, in the town of Ferguson, St Louis, are continuing to clash with protesters nightly, amid growing anger at the execution of a black teenager, 18-year old Michael Brown, by police. A number of local workers have said that they have been arrested and...
EXPORTS to the EU, the UK’s biggest trading partner, are ‘dead in the water’, a member of the Bank of England’s interest rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) blurted out yesterday. The coalition government has set the target of doubling the value of UK exports to £1 trillion by 2020, but...
THE Howard League for Penal Reform has responded to the Prison and Probation Ombudsman’s learning lessons bulletin on young adult prisoners who died by suicide, published on Wednesday. The report reveals that, between April 2007 and March 2014, 89 young people aged 18 to 24 took their own lives in...
THE families of thousands of Afghan civilians killed by US/NATO forces in Afghanistan have been left without justice, Amnesty International said in a new report released on Monday. Focusing primarily on air strikes and night raids carried out by US forces, including Special Operations Forces, Left in the Dark finds...
THE Office for National Statistics said the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.4%, down from 6.5% in May, with the number of people unemployed falling by 132,000 to 2.08 million, while the number of ‘self employed’ rose to a gigantic 4.5 million. At the same time, average wages fell...
NHS England’s announcement of short-term help for a limited number of under-threat GP practices in London needs to be followed by a national, long-term plan to help all GP services affected in England, warn GP leaders. The plan is aimed at helping certain GP practices in London which have been...
THE US on Tuesday organised its own coup in Baghdad, attempting to place the previous long-term Maliki ally, Haidar al-Abadi, into the office of Prime Minister. This was the American response to Prime Minister Maliki’s move on the Monday when he referred Iraqi president Fouad Massoum to the Supreme Federal...
GOVERMENT cuts plunge youth work into crisis, warns a Unison report. More than 2000 youth workers have been axed and 350 youth centres closed since 2012 as a direct result of coalition government cuts, a new report by Unison has found. The study, released ahead of International Youth Day, reveals a...
UKRAINE''S coupist regime says it will stop a 280-truck Russian aid convoy containing 2,000 tons of goods including baby food and sleeping bags from coming into the country. International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Ukraine mission spokesman Andre Loersch said it had reached a general agreement with Russia about...
OVER the past few months there has been an increasing concern being expressed in the pages of the financial press about the huge bubble of debt that has been created in the so-called ‘junk bond’ market internationally. The headlines in yesterday’s bourgeois press screamed of a panic situation gripping the...
PALESTINIAN child victims of Israeli aggression are arriving in Venzuela to be house in shelters named Hugo Chavez after the former Venezuelan president, aimed at hosting children who have lost their parents after Israeli bombs. Minister for Foreign Affairs, Elias Jaua, said on Friday that the first children would be...
A SECOND Foreign Office Minister, Mark Simmonds, has resigned from the government, 10 Downing Street said yesterday. His resignation follows that of Foreign Office Minister Baroness Warsi, who quit over the UK’s unconditional support for the Israeli massacre of the people of Gaza. 10 Downing Street said yesterday that Simmonds...
UNISON has condemned calls by a right wing ‘think tank’ for benefit cuts for all claimants living outside of London, and for child benefits only to be paid for a maximum of four children per family. Policy Exchange has written a report urging that the current benefits cap of £26,000...
A-QUARTER-of-a-million workers and youth, including whole families, marched and rallied in central London on Saturday demanding ‘stop the killing’ of Palestinians in Gaza. Demonsterators shouted ‘Free Palestine!’ ‘Lift the siege!’ ‘Israel is a terror state!’ ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free!’ and many carried placards calling...
About 300,000 ambulances were left queuing outside hospitals last year, with patients waiting up to eight hours, or even longer, to be transferred into A&E, according to research by the Labour Party. Freedom of Information requests to English Ambulance Trusts produced figures showing that the number of patients waiting in...
THE USA and the UK have launched their new crusade on the pretext of saving the Christians and the Yazidis of Iraq from the ISIS Islamic State group, with their diktat, straight out of the 10th century, of convert or die. However, the essence of the crusade is that...
PALESTINIAN negotiators in Cairo said yesterday they were examining an Egyptian proposal for a new, three-day cease-fire with Israel. ‘There is a proposal for another 72-hour truce to allow for the continuation of negotiations,’ Sami Abu Zuhri said in Gaza. ‘This proposal is being studied,’ he said, indicating the Palestinian...
THREE NUMSA shop steward leaders were gunned down late on Wednesday 6 August 2014 in the KwaZulu-Natal province. A National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) statement said the union ‘outrightly condemns what looks like a well-calculated and dastardly killing of the secretary of Isithebe NUMSA Local NjabuloNdebele, his...
ISRAELI warplanes struck multiple targets across the Gaza Strip on Friday after a 72-hour ceasefire agreement ended at 8am, killing a child and injuring 11 Palestinians. The ceasefire ended after Israel refused to make a single concession to Hamas’ very moderate demands, and insisted that before anything else can happen...
THE PCS trade union responded to the breakdown of the ceasefire in Gaza with a declaration that ‘We support the trade unions enforcing a total arms and trade embargo on Israel’. Israeli warplanes struck multiple targets across the Gaza Strip yesterday morning after the 72-hour ceasefire ended at 8am, killing...
PRESIDENT Obama has hailed the ‘new Africa that is emerging’, as US imperialism seeks to re-grab Africa after its destruction of the Libyan Jamahiriyah. It is is seeking to restore order in Africa and evict China which has filled the gap left by Libya in providing cheap loans and...
THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) says it has ‘every intention’ of mounting a court challenge to the lock-out by the National Employers Association of SA (Neasa). Last week, the employers association announced that its members would engage in a lock-out of union members who participated in...
EGYPTIAN officials said yesterday that Israel was demanding that the Gaza Strip be ‘demilitarised’, and Hamas be disarmed, creating uncertainty over whether the 72-hour truce would be extended. Officials said the Israeli delegation expressed reservations about building a seaport and airport in Gaza, but showed greater flexibility in discussing...
UK house prices in July were up 10.2% from a year earlier – the biggest annual change since September 2007. Halifax said that property prices grew by 3.6% in the three months to the end of July compared with the previous quarter, a truly massive rise. The monthly increase was 1.4%...
LYING on his bed in a Gaza hospital, three-year-old Yamin now sees the world from behind burns which have disfigured him for life. The tiny boy is just one of hundreds of burn victims and those wounded by Israeli shell fire, overwhelming Gaza’s sole working operating theatre for plastic surgeons. He...
GP LEADERS yesterday handed in a 16,000-strong petition from patients to Downing Street demanding ministers act urgently to help GP practices under threat of closure due to funding cuts. A number of GP practices across England are facing drastic funding shortfalls following the government’s decision to phase out the Minimum...
ISRAEL on Tuesday completed the withdrawal of its troops from Gaza, as a 72-hour humanitarian truce took effect, and made preparations to take part in peace talks in Cairo, sitting across the table from Hamas, as part of a united Palestinian delegation. Oh how the would-be mighty have been...
TORY Foreign Office Minister Baroness Warsi has quit the government, saying its policy on Gaza is ‘morally indefensible’. In her resignation letter, Warsi spoke of her support for recently sacked ministers such as Hague, Clarke and Grieve, emphasising the explosive split currently underway in the Tory Party that has been...
OVER 300, mainly youth, shouting No Justice! No Peace!, marched through Tottenham on Monday evening to Ferry Lane, the place where Mark Duggan was killed. They demanded an end to the killings and that police be prosecuted for the murder of Duggan, and all the others who have been...
NURSES, doctors and other health workers were ‘slapped in the face’ by the coalition government yesterday, as it emerged that NHS workers are to be handed yet another zero pay rise next year. Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has written to the Public Sector Pay Review...
The United States has confirmed that it is supplying new ammunition to the Israeli occupation army. The US decision has angered the Palestinians and Palestinian officials have condemned the US move. Fatah Central Committee Member Nabil Sha’th has said: ‘The United States has announced that it allows Israel to use the...
Israeli forces targeted a home in Gaza City early Monday, killing a young girl and injuring dozens of Palestinians just minutes after a humanitarian ceasefire came into effect, health officials said. Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said an airstrike hit the home of the al-Bakri family in al-Shati camp,...
YESTERDAY, August 4th, saw the leaders of the major imperialist powers remembering the centenary of the start of the first great imperialist slaughter, the 1914-18 world war. This saw tens of millions of workers and colonial slaves organised to sacrifice their lives to see whether German or Anglo-French imperialism...
The BMA yesterday accused Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt of rationing health care. Hunt has announced a £250m drive to eliminate ‘unacceptable’ 12-month waits, with more than 100,000 additional treatments to take place in the NHS over the summer. He is demanding the NHS prioritise treatment for people who have been waiting...
TEN Palestinians were killed on Sunday after Israeli shells hit a UN school in Rafah where thousands of people were sheltering from the ongoing Israeli offensive. At least 30 were injured in the strike, according to Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra. Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian...
HMS Enterprise has arrived near to Tripoli to evacuate any remaining British people who want to leave Libya, after the British embassy was shut and its staff fled. The British action followed on from the US closure of its embassy, when the US ambassador and his staff fled by...
STATE of Palestine President Mahmud Abbas, last Wednesday declared the Gaza Strip a humanitarian disaster area. In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Abbas said: ‘In light of the immeasurable destruction and suffering, I have decided to declare the Gaza Strip a disaster area. ‘Consequently, I urge you to...
US and European leaders on Monday called for a ceasefire in Libya and for the United Nations to take a leading role in helping to stop the spiralling violence and lawlessness. The appeal came after a conference call between US President Obama, German Chancellor Merkel, French President Hollande and the...
FOR workers in Britain, Argentina may well appear to be a far off country in South America whose sovereign default on its debts to the international financiers this week is of little interest and even less consequence. In truth, the unfolding crisis – involving the US legal system right from...
INTENSE clashes erupted yesterday morning between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in the southeastern Gaza Strip amid confirmed reports that an Israeli soldier has been captured. The clashes came after Israeli forces had shelled Gaza multiple times since the commencement of a ceasefire, killing four Palestinians. Before the ceasefire came...
OVER a million council workers and school support staff are to strike on 14 October over the government’s 1% pay ‘offer’. Unions representing over a million local government workers – GMB, Unison and Unite – have agreed to escalate their dispute over pay with a campaign running into the autumn. The...