Monthly Archives: November 2014
THE jailed Palestinian leader of the Second Intifada, Marwan al-Barghouthi, has written from his prison cell in Israel to urge the Palestinian leadership to organise armed resistance to the Israeli army of occupation and the gangs of armed settlers. The occupiers earlier this year attacked Gaza for 51 days...
JAILED Palestinian leader Marwan al Barghouthi urged the Palestinian leadership to give its backing to ‘armed resistance’ against Israel in a letter published on Tuesday as a wave of violence surged. The call came after months of clashes in and around occupied East Jerusalem and a growing number of deadly...
ONLY one in every forty new jobs since the onset of the crash in 2008 is full-time, with the other 39 either part-time or so-called ‘self-employed’, the TUC reported yesterday, as government figures again claimed a fall in unemployment. TUC analysis shows that the share of full-time employee jobs...
GLOBAL youth media company ‘Vice’ on Monday launched a week-long special edition of their website Vice.com about Guantanamo Bay, featuring testimony from clients represented by human rights organisation Reprieve. The special edition includes first-hand testimony from detainees Shaker Aamer, Emad Hassan and Younous Chekkouri, who have been cleared for release...
BANK of England Governor and chairman of the Financial Stability Board Mark Carney understands both that another major banking crash is on the way and that the working class of the world will respond to attempts to make them pay for a second major banking crisis within 10 years...
THE UK Treasury has told senior Whitehall officials that a post-2015 election government will have to make £25bn-£30bn worth of spending cuts. Cuts are being sought from permanent secretaries to cover the financial years of 2016-17 and 2017-18. The planned cuts would have a massive impact on departments – the Department...
HEAD of the midwives union RCM slammed the Tory government’s attack on NHS workers’ pay in her speech to the RCM conference that began this morning. The conference which is taking place at the International Centre in Telford today and tomorrow comes after RCM members last month organised the...
McDonald’s employees are planning a global strike next week. McDonald’s workers from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles will travel to eight countries on three continents beginning Monday as part of their protest for higher wages. ‘This fast food worker movement is teaching a lot of people like me that we...
THE bosses organisation, the CBI, yesterday unveiled a report entitled ‘Better Off Britain’ which it claimed offered a radical blueprint to raise living standards for low paid workers. This blueprint – which the CBI’s director general, John Cridland, boasted contained recommendations that could have come from trade unions – calls...
NINE rights groups have said they will boycott a parliamentary inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the CIA’s torture and rendition programmes. Amnesty International, Reprieve, Liberty, Cage, Rights Watch UK, Freedom From Torture, Redress, Justice and the Aire Centre have written a strongly-worded letter to the Intelligence and Security Committee...
PRESIDENT Obama is to send 1,500 more troops to Iraq to boost the Iraqi forces fighting the Islamic State (IS) militants, nearly doubling the US presence. The Pentagon said the troops would train and assist Iraqi forces throughout the country, and are in addition to the 1,600 US troops who...
STRIKING FairPoint workers and their supporters from across the Northeast of America held a major rally in Portland, Maine, on Saturday, November 8. Negotiators from striking union workers and from FairPoint Communications management will return to the bargaining table on November 18 under the auspices of a federal mediator. The nearly...
SACKED Greek ERT state TV and radio workers held a rally last Friday evening outside the main administrative and production building in a suburb of Athens on the first anniversary of the armed riot police’s invasion which broke up the workers’ occupation. Over 1,000 workers and youth participated in the...
THE bourgeois press is awash with the news that Labour leader, Ed Miliband, is facing calls from within his own shadow cabinet for him to get out or be thrown out before the next general election. Despite all the denials that the knives are out for Miliband, the fact that...
THOUSANDS of school pupils and student protesters in Athens tried to breach the barricades in front of the parliament building last Thursday. They faced a large security presence from police, as mass demonstrations once again engulfed the Greek capital. Up to 10,000 students, university staff and teachers from a number...
WORKERS throughout Europe are taking strike actions against austerity measures in defence of their jobs, pay, pensions and public services. Following last month’s rail, metro and Air France strikes by French workers, German train drivers launched a four-day strike on Wednesday, their longest in 20 years, over a...
ON April 30th 2009 the British army left Basra in Iraq for Afghanistan. This was after negotiating their retreat from Iraq’s second city with the victorious Iraqi militia forces that they had failed to defeat, and to whom they conceded victory. While in Basra, British troops were involved in attacks...
THE TORY coalition government has rejected demands that it hold an urgent review into the student loan system, despite the system reaching ‘tipping point’, with a ‘black hole’ of £330bn opening up by 2044, making the entire system ‘financially unviable’. The National Union of Students (NUS) responded by...
ON 3 November Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah spoke in Beirut’s Southern Suburb to mark the occasion of Ashura – a major Shi’i festival to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Al-Husayn Bin-Ali, grandson of Prophet Muhammad. Nasrallah said: ‘The region is witnessing major and serious conflicts on the military,...
THE Republican Party has won control of the Senate in the US mid-term elections, and now controls both Houses of Congress, turning the final two years of Barack Obama’s rule into a completely hobbled ‘lame duck’ presidency. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, is now poised to lead the Senate. He commented...
THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) is going to court on Thursday to stop Cosatu (Confederation of South African Trade Unions) from holding an extraordinary meeting later in the week which could result in its expulsion from the federation. According to union insiders, Numsa will argue that...
ISRAELI police clashed with Palestinian worshippers inside Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound yesterday. Palestinian guards of the mosque said dozens of Israeli officers raided the compound, entering through the Moroccan and Chain Gates and firing stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets to disperse Muslim worshippers. The guards said several youths suffered from excessive...
THE victory of the people of Gaza in the 51 day war, imposed on them by Israel’s attempt to completely destroy Gaza has changed the situation in occupied Palestine. The world wide support for the Palestinians and the widespread horror and anger at the way men, women and...
THE firefighters union, FBU, yesterday said that they are considering strike action to defend Buckinghamshire firefighter and FBU executive committee member Ricky Matthews. He was sacked after ‘failing to attend work’ after ‘not working his Saturday shift’ despite the fact that the current 4-day strike nationwide strike was in full...
TRANSPORT workers in three unions descend on the Tory Mayor Boris Johnson’s Office this morning to fight the ‘all-out savage attack’ on their pay and conditions. The RMT, TSSA, the union for ticket office staff, and Unite, lobby the TfL Board meeting at City Hall between 9am and 11am. The RMT...
THE revelation from the accountancy firm KPMG that their research has shown that one in six people, over 5 million, in work earn less than the ‘living wage’ will certainly come as no shock to most workers. For years, ever since the onset of the banking collapse in 2008, the...
THE AFL-CIO trade union federation considers that the Fast Track trade policy has has helped depress wages for America’s workers over the past 20-plus years. It states that ‘Fast Track is a trade policy in which Congress cedes its accountability over trade policy (the Constitution calls it ‘regulating Commerce...
‘£10 AN HOUR is the bare minimum that the trade union movement should demand as a minimum wage’, the Bakers Union said yesterday, as the ‘new living wage’ rates were announced. The ‘new Living Wage’ rates, announced yesterday of £9.15 in London (up from £8.80) and £7.85 nationally (up from...
THE Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has accused the coalition government of ‘truly incompetent planning’ over NHS spending on agency nurses and staff. It has spiralled to more than £5.5bn over the past four years and is continuing to rise. New figures released by the Department of Health following a...
OVER 150,000 people took part in nationwide protests last Saturday against the introduction of savage water charges throughout the Republic of Ireland. Up to 100 separate demonstrations were staged in towns and cities on Saturday. The austerity measure is a key part of the government’s plan to pay back the international...
STRIKING firefighters were in a determined mood on Friday evening at the start of the Fire Brigades Union’s (FBU’s) four-day action in defence of pensions. At Stoke Newington fire station, east London, FBU member and watch manager Richard Barron told News Line: ‘This latest strike is stepping up our campaign...
THE dispute over pay and staff cuts affecting Greenwich’s 12 libraries has been settled in what the Unite union described as ‘a great victory for employee solidarity and for the preservation of an important public service’. More than 80 senior library assistants and library assistants were taking strike action on...
THE world crisis of capitalism is being hit by a convergence of the crisis to which all the central banks, economists and politicians have absolutely no answer. Last week, the European Central Bank revealed that under its own less than stringent ‘stress tests’ – designed to prove that Europe’s leading...
A GMB union survey has found that the majority of Remploy workers did not get another job, one year on from the last of 51 factory closures. Disabled charities aided and abetted the government, so that a huge percentage of those made redundant now sit at home depressed and isolated...