Monthly Archives: September 2016
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn wound up this week’s Labour Party conference with a speech that he insisted outlined policies for ‘socialism in the 21st century’. On examination they do not offer any real challenge to the rule of the bosses and bankers. Indeed, what Corbyn is offering as his vision...
‘TOP TIPS on making difficult decisions’ are being distributed to health bodies around the country to aid them in broaching the subject of hospital closures with the public. The guidance comes as sustainability and transformation plans (STPs) are being drawn up across England to make significant cuts. The STPs set...
A PALESTINIAN on Wednesday morning was forced to demolish his own house in Beit Hanina, north of Jerusalem, reported WAFA’s correspondent. Following an Israeli court issuing a demolition order for the house for being built without a license, Imad Jaber was forced to demolish his 70-metre-square house. ‘I demolished it...
‘TODAY we put ourselves on notice. Labour is preparing for a general election in 2017,’ said Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn concluding his hour-long speech at the party conference in Liverpool yesterday. ‘We hope and expect all our members to support our campaign. We will be ready for the challenge whenever...
US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter has issued a warning that legislation allowing families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia could be ‘devastating’ for the US military. The Pentagon chief wrote a letter to a senior member of Congress warning about the Justice Against Sponsors of...
PRESIDENTIAL Political and Media Advisor Bouthaina Shaaban asserted in Damascus yesterday that the Syrian Arab Army will strike wherever there is terrorism in the nation, adding that the government is resolved to restore sovereignty over the whole national soil and to respond to anyone who targets it in...
A LABOUR government will repeal the Health and Social Care Act,’ Dianne Abbott shadow health secretary said to cheers at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool yesterday. She continued: ‘The Health and Social Care Act has fragmented the system making it so much easier for the private sector to...
SHADOW Chancellor McDonnel’s speech to the Labour Party conference was remarkable for its lack of treatment of the crisis of capitalism. He focused on the 2008 banking crash, which took place under the Brown Labour government, after Brown had boasted that he had resolved the crisis of...
THE Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union began all-out indefinite strike action yesterday, alongside workers on the metros in Seoul and Busan, paralysing underground and railroad traffic nationwide. The joint action heralds the first time in 22 years that the transport workers’ union and public metro companies in Seoul...
SUNDAY’S emergency meeting of the UN Security Council witnessed the orchestrated attack on the Syrian people and Russia by the imperialist powers. The meeting was called by the US over the accusations that the Syrian armed forces and the Russians had launched a ‘scorched earth bombing campaign’ against the city...
RAIL strikes are spreading with RMT announcing yesterday a 24 hour strike action on Virgin trains East Coast over the threat to nearly 200 jobs. The strike begins at one minute past midnight on Monday 3rd October and continues until 11.59pm that evening. This comes after railway workers on Southern...
THE Junior Doctors’ Alliance has issued a statement opposing Saturday’s announcement by the BMA leadership of the ‘suspension’ of its planned five-day strike actions against Tory Health Secretary Hunt’s new unsafe and unfair contract imposition. ‘As a group of committed junior doctors, we were deeply concerned and disappointed to learn...
313,209 Labour Party members and supporters with their leadership vote for Jeremy Corbyn, have driven back the right wing coup attempt that was underway, backed by all sections of the Tory media, to make Labour safe for the bosses by removing Corbyn and making Labour the private property of...
NEARLY 14,000 Uber and Lyft drivers in New York have signed up to join the local branch of the Amalgamated Transit Union, according to a union spokesperson. The group plans to rally at the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) headquarters next week to demand a formal vote on unionising....
SANA, the Syrian state news agency, is showing an interview with President Assad by Associated Press and the current ceasefire crisis. We are very pleased, thanks to Sana, to be able to print its most important sections. Question – ‘This week, the US has said the coalition attack on Syrian...
THE US National Guard have arrived in Charlotte, North Carolina, with armed-to-the-teeth state troopers lining the streets and turning the city into a war zone against the black working class. This is after a State of Emergency was called in the wake of yet another police killing of a black...
TORY health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s decision to forcibly impose the new contract on the junior doctors was wrong because he does not have the power to do so, a court heard last week. Doctors’ group Justice for Health argued that Hunt had ‘acted beyond his remit’ in seeking to impose...
VARIOUS divisions of Iran’s Armed Forces are holding annual military parades on the first day of the Sacred Defence Week, which marks the 36th anniversary of the eight-year Iraqi war on Iran. The parade in Tehran, held in an area near the mausoleum of Imam Khomeini, features military units from...
ON Wednesday, the general secretary of the TUC, Frances O’Grady, penned another begging letter to the Tory government, this time to the Secretary of State for International Trade, Liam Fox. In it, O’Grady expressed the ‘concerns’ of the TUC over the proposed EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) which...
NEW government funding proposals will force nursery schools to close, warns the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT). Yesterday was the deadline for submissions to the government’s consultation on Early Years Funding and the thirty hours of free childcare offer to working parents and carers. Analysis by NAHT, shared with the...
THE GOVERNOR of North Carolina declared ‘a state of emergency’ yesterday after two nights of protests in Charlotte following the police shooting of an unarmed black man, Keith Lamont Scott. The National Guard has now been drafted in, which will undoubtedly escalate the crisis. A statement read out to...
‘THIS report highlights yet another case of cuts without thought for the impact on staff and patients,’ said Stephanie Aiken, RCN Deputy Director of Nursing yesterday. She was responding to the publication of ‘A false economy: Cuts to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Funding for Nursing, Midwifery and the Allied Health...
THE Palestinian Minister of Finance, Shukri Bishara, has just addressed members of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC) in New York, telling it that five years after the World Bank and the IMF said the Palestinian Authority (PA) was fully ready for statehood, Palestinians were ‘still waiting’. The AHLC is...
NATIONWIDE student rent strikes have been called for by more than 25 universities who gathered in London over the weekend of the 16th-18th September. Activists discussed and prepared for nationwide student rent strikes which have become even more necessary as student rents are spiralling out of control. The following statement...
‘THE cowardly US aggression against positions of the Syrian Arab army in the surroundings of Deir Ezzor Airport is evidence of the support provided by the US and its allies to the ISIS terrorist organisation.’ Bashar al-Jaafari, Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN and Head of the Syrian delegation to...
FIREFIGHTERS are furious at plans to sack the entire workforce of Greater Manchester. All 1,250 firefighters in the area are to be sacked. Only those who agree to new imposed conditions of service will get their jobs back. Using the most vicious anti-trade union legislation, Section 188 of the Trade...
‘THE hope that the ceasefire in Syria will be reinstated is very little now,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted on Tuesday. ‘We are expressing serious concerns here,’ Peskov said, commenting about the offensive launched by the Jabhat al-Nusra in Aleppo on Monday. The group had apparently ‘used the ceasefire to...
LONDON NHS workers have called a demonstration today outside The Old Town Hall in Stratford to protest about hospital workers being forced into abusive zero-hours contract jobs by Barts Hospital. Cleaners, porters and workers serving food at Barts Health NHS Trust begin their protest at 5.30pm outside the Trust’s annual...
OVER 2,500 lifejackets were placed on the lawn outside parliament, in Parliament Square yesterday, each representing the life of a refugee man, woman or child who braved the dangerous Mediterranean sea fleeing from the horror of war. More than 7,000 refugees have drowned in the sea while trying to reach...
THE BRITISH airforce has admitted its involvement in the US-led airstrikes which killed over 60 Syrian Army troops and injured over 100 more. It has been confirmed that a UK Reaper drone was part of the American-led raid on Dayr az Zawr last Saturday. The Reaper is an unmanned British...
THE Bank for International Settlements, the central bank of central bankers, in its latest quarterly review of the world banking system has just issued its bleakest assessment yet on the prospect for a worldwide banking collapse. Central to this report is its mortal fear that the Chinese banks are in...
MARKING 34 years since the 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon last Friday, Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), said the victims are still awaiting justice. ‘Thirty-four years ago an Israeli general, Ariel Sharon, violated an Israeli obligation...
THE United States might have lost control over the situation in Syria and cannot fulfill their pledge to separate the opposition from the terrorists, Russian Ambassador to UN Vitaly Churkin stated on Sunday. This must be the understatement of the year. Churkin spoke after US planes bombed Syrian troops fighting...
FIERCE battles broke out between French workers and police as over 170,000 workers, students and youth took to the streets in 110 cities across the length and breadth of the country last Thursday. The entire population of France is up in arms at the so-called ‘Socialist’ government of Hollande’s new...
THE UNITED States air strike on Deir Ez-zor on Saturday, which killed 62 Syrian soldiers, means the US has lost control over the situation in Syria and cannot fulfill its pledge to separate between opposition and terrorists, Russian Ambassador to UN Vitaly Churkin said yesterday. ‘Firstly, they violated commitments to...
‘THIS SORT of service is the slippery slope towards the privatisation of the NHS,’ Dr Applebee, chair of Tower Hamlets Local Medical Committee warned yesterday, referring to the new private health company that boasts an ‘Uber’-style GP service. Despite the ‘Uber’ model of business being exposed as promoting the worst...
A REPORT released yesterday by the Iraq Fatality Investigations, led by former High Court judge George Newman, has condemned the actions of four British soldiers who forced an Iraqi boy at gunpoint into a canal and then watched him drown. The report shows that 15-year-old Ahmed Jabbar Kareem Ali was...
‘PROMISES and apologies always follow these disasters, but there is no real commitment to fix the problem. It’s about greed, plain and simple,’ Larry Brown, President of Canada’s NUPGE (National Union of Public and General Employees) said on Wednesday. He was commenting following the tragic deaths of over 31 workers...
SEVENTEEN home care workers, Unison members employed across the London Borough of Haringey, are taking care company Sevacare and the council to court in a dispute involving illegal wages over the widespread non-payment of the minimum wage. The women visit people in their own homes and in some cases provide...
DESPITE enormous pressure being piled onto the junior doctors to capitulate and either shorten their strikes or call them off altogether, the BMA has voted to hold fast and continue with the five-day strikes as planned. The ruling council of the BMA, comprised of around 30 leading doctors, decided on...
THIS year’s annual Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference marked a historic lurch to the right by the leadership of the trade unions. At a time when the working class is moving rapidly to the left and demanding action to protect jobs, wages, conditions and the very existence of the welfare...
FIVE years after US imperialism, aided by their stooges in Britain and France, launched their bombing campaign against Libya and its leader Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, the Foreign Affairs Committee has produced a report damning Britain’s role. MPs on the committee placed the blame for the campaign that effectively destroyed the...
OVER 15,000 workers and youth marched last Saturday in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, on the opening of a trade fair, demanding an end to the barbaric austerity policies of the SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) and ANEL (Independent Greeks) coalition government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. The angry marchers attempted...