Monthly Archives: January 2017

POWERFUL Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Spokesman of Hashd al-Sha’abi (the Iraqi popular forces) Ahmad al-Assadi, deplored US President Donald Trump’s decision to ban citizens of seven Muslim nations, including Iraq, from travelling to the US, calling on Baghdad to reciprocate the move. Sadr reacted to the order on...

THE STRIKE wave sweeping across Britain has a revolutionary content. Since the capitalist crisis first burst into the open with the banking collapse of 2008 the capitalist class have used austerity cuts to pay the cost of bailing out the banks. In Britain, this has meant a full scale war...

PARENTS are being forced to remortgage their homes in order to pay for their sons’ and daughters’ tuition fees. ‘My Home Move’ analysed figures which show that 57% of remortgage cases in 2016 were capital raising. This suggests that homeowners wanted to release equity for home improvements, to consolidate debt...

US FORCES at dawn yesterday carried out a series of ground and air raids against a village in the Yemeni province of Bayda, killing a total of 57 people, among them many civilians. US paratroopers parachuted in Bayda’s Qifah district and raided the Yakla village there, with some 30...

‘SERVEST OUT!’ shouted striking cleaners and supporters at King’s College London during a lunchtime rally on Friday. The cleaners, members of Unison who work for contractor Servest, went on strike on Thursday and Friday in protest at cutbacks, after 98% of workers balloted voted in favour of industrial action. More than...

LABOUR Party deputy leader Tom Watson yesterday claimed that right wing shadow ministers who quit Labour’s front bench in a row over the party’s approach to Brexit should be back in top positions ‘within months’. Watson said Jo Stevens, who quit as shadow Welsh secretary, had a ‘very great...

UNITE, Community and GMB trade unions yesterday called on Tata steel workers at Port Talbot to vote ‘YES’ when the proposed deal with Tata is put to ballot on Monday. Many workers oppose the deal which will slash their pensions and not guarantee their jobs. Up...

RAMZY Baroud, an internationally-syndicated columnist, author, and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com, has written about his thoughts in an article called ‘The Paris Peace Talks: Signalling an end to a Western dominated era?’ He began: ‘No, it was not just another Middle East peace conference, as a columnist in Israeli...

WHEN at the beginning of the year the Red Cross, known for going into countries plagued by war and epidemics, declared a ‘Humanitarian Disaster’ in the NHS, it hit the nail on the head. The NHS is now a war zone and it is the Tory government which has...

ALL this week, poor Greek farmers intensified their struggle against the government’s policies of high taxation and pension cuts by setting up dozens of road blockades with their tractors throughout Greece. At the two biggest motorway blockades, at Nikea junction in central Greece and at the Lefkonas junction near the...

LABOUR Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has ordered Labour MPs to back the Bill that allows the government to trigger the Brexit process. The Bill asks parliament to give government the right to evoke Article 50 triggering the process of leaving the European Union. After days of equivocation Labour Leader Jeremy...

ON the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, many Americans wrung their hands. Some took to social media to express their discontent while others protested. But, perhaps, the most dramatic and important action was taken by dockworkers in Oakland, California: They stopped working. Their strike demonstrated the potential power ordinary...

LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn finally bit the bullet yesterday afternoon when he announced he would issue a three-line whip to Labour MPs instructing them to vote for Article 50 triggering the EU exit. or over a week Corbyn has vacillated on this issue, first suggesting he would impose the whip,...

EMBOLDENED by the inauguration of President Trump, and awaiting his decision to go ahead with moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Israeli forces in occupied Palestine have stepped up their campaign of house demolitions, and raids and arrests by the Israeli army. sraeli forces on Wednesday detained...

ROUGH sleeping is rising at ‘an appalling rate,’ said the homelessness charity Crisis yesterday, as it emerged that more than 4,000 people a night have been sleeping rough on England’s streets this year – a 16% increase on last year. As freezing conditions continued to grip the country, figures issued...

PRIVATE firms have been paid a ‘shocking’ £2.3m to draw up controversial plans which will cut health and social care spending by more than £1bn in a part of London. According to health leaders drawing up the North Central London STP (sustainability and transformation plan), six-figure sums were paid to...

AN ATTEMPT yesterday by the Tories to introduce a bill which would ban the right to strike in critical services, was overwhelmingly defeated in parliament. Yesterday afternoon Tory MP for South Croydon, Chris Philp, introduced his proposed Industrial Action (Protection of Critical National Services) Bill. The proposed bill was...

FOUR years after the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh, in which more than 1,100 textile workers were killed when the garment factory they were working in collapsed, a brutal crackdown on garment trade union activists is underway. Bangladeshi security forces have raided the houses of trade union leaders and volunteers,...

AS EXPECTED, the Supreme Court has ruled against the government’s appeal, challenging its previous verdict that Parliament must vote on whether the government can start the Brexit process. This time there was an 8-3 division amongst the judges. The court also ruled the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland...

YESTERDAY Tory prime minister Theresa May announced a new era of state intervention to ‘save’ British capitalism. According to this strategy, selected sectors will be considered for receiving special government support. There was no mention of the heavy industries like steel that have been systematically wiped out since the 1980s...

‘RMT guards on Southern Rail remain rock solid and absolutely determined in their action in defence of rail safety,’ General Secretary Mick Cash said during their 24-hour-strike which ended at midnight last night. He added: ‘Their resilience is a credit to the entire trade union movement.’ On the picket line...

OVER 150 UCL students went on rent strike yesterday against what is one of the most expensive student accommodations in the country. They are now calling on the rent strike to spread nationwide. Between 2009 and 2015 UCL increased the median rent by 56%. This will earn the university...

A SENIOR Turkish official said last Friday that it was no longer ‘realistic’ to insist on a solution to the Syria conflict excluding President Bashar al-Assad, just three days before new peace talks. ‘We have to be pragmatic, realistic. The facts on the ground have changed dramatically,’ Deputy Prime Minister...

BRITISH AIRWAYS mixed fleet strikers on Saturday called for the TUC and other unions to take action in support of their fight against poverty pay. Chanting ‘Willie Out!’ over 600 BA strikers arrived for a short meeting at the TUC on of Saturday before marching through central London. The...

TORY PM Theresa May yesterday refused four times to say if she knew about a Trident nuclear missile misfire just weeks ahead of a crucial vote on the renewal of Trident. May told the BBC’s Andrew Marr she has ‘absolute faith’ in the UK’s nuclear weapons system despite reports...

IT’S BEEN a lightning courtship. PM May is to meet Trump on Friday. May opposed the Brexit pre-referendum and was appointed PM by the 1922 Committee, after it decided that the Tories could not risk a leadership election in light of the Brexit result. She was amongst those who applauded...

STRIKING British Airways Mixed Fleet Cabin Crew are travelling up to the TUC headquarters in central London this morning to garner support from the TUC for their strike against poverty pay. Speaking on the picket line at Hatton Cross Tube Station on the perimeter of Heathrow Airport yesterday...

RIGHT-WING Labour MPs, with the enthusiastic support of the Tory press, are manoeuvring once again to split the Labour Party so that they can create a new right-wing political grouping alongside the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and pro-EU Tories. This manoeuvre has been encouraged by the refusal of the left-reformist...

‘WE will not stand down! We are here with our “street friends”,’ Sister Catherine, lead organiser for Divine Rescue Charity said inside the occupied Thurlow Park Community Centre. ‘We are NOT going nowhere!!! And we are going to fight for our “street friends”,’ she added. Homeless people, volunteers and organisers...

ONE in five new drugs will be rationed on the NHS under new plans to ‘save the health service money.’ This is the latest attempt to cut the throat of the NHS, denying drugs to patients on the basis that saving their lives is too expensive! Even cancer patients...

‘DON’T think of this as your own personal job – you’re only looking after it for the next person. This is one of the first things many of us were told when we joined the fire service,’ says Tam McFarlane of Avon FBU. It is a view held so strongly...

A HUNDRED British Airways mixed fleet cabin crew, members of Unite, attended a rally at the Bedfont Sports centre at Heathrow yesterday morning to launch their three-day strike action over poverty pay. The crew members took two days of strike action last week but are stepping up their action because...

PALESTINE Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee Member Hanan Ashrawi told European diplomats on Tuesday that relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will be a disaster. ‘The relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will be disastrous and cause violence and instability throughout the...

BRITISH Airways mixed fleet cabin crew are striking against poverty pay today in the first day of a 72-hour strike. It follows last week’s two day stoppage, which saw hundreds of mixed fleet cabin crew stay away from work and mount picket lines around Heathrow airport. Operating out of Heathrow...

THE plight of the Palestinian people under the military occupation is so painful that even sometimes the citizens of Israel recount it in heartwrenching detail. Avigail Abarbanel is an Israeli born psychotherapist who migrated to Australia in 1991. Abarbanel renounced her Israeli citizenship in protest at the Israeli mistreatment of the...

PM MAY yesterday told a Lancaster House press conference of her government’s plan to quit the dictatorial EU and its Single Market. Harkening back to the days of the empire, May boasted: ‘Britain’s history and culture is profoundly internationalist.’ Her ‘message’ from Britain was: ‘June the 23rd was not the...

ALMOST every school in the country is to have its funding slashed, some by as much as £1,000 per pupil per year, under the Tory government’s National Funding Formula (NFF) it was announced on Monday. The National Audit Office (NAO) revealed that there are to be huge education cuts nationwide,...

PLANS to axe thousands of nursing, doctor and NHS staff posts under the Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) were revealed yesterday by the Health Service Journal (HSJ). Almost all of the unpublished 44 Sustainability STPs that prescribe cuts at every hospital in the country, have been leaked. Examining the leaked...

‘TO provide certainty,’ Tory PM Theresa May said yesterday, ‘I can confirm today that the government will put the final deal which is agreed between the UK and the EU to a vote in both houses of parliament before it comes into force.’ She was speaking at Lancaster House, outlining...

WORKERS have twice voted no on Honeywell’s proposals to eliminate cost-of-living increases and retiree health care, freeze pensions, curtail overtime pay, subcontract work, and void seniority rights. Last week auto workers from Chicago and Detroit made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of auto workers’ sit-down strikes to lend solidarity to...

LAST Sunday fifty Tory MPs demanded the government bring in even more draconian laws aimed at breaking the growing strike movement that is gaining in momentum across the country. They called for new anti-union laws to completely ban strikes in ‘critical infrastructure’ such as train and bus services unless a...

‘CRUDE, expensive and dangerous’ warned doctors yesterday, describing the privately run ‘Referral Management Centres’. They further warned that the Referral Management Centres act as a ‘block between the GPs and patient treatment,’ putting patients lives at risk and demanded they are scrapped. The danger is that diagnoses will be...

DOCTORS leaders yesterday hit back at PM May’s threat to cut GP funding to surgeries that did not open for longer hours and offer seven-day access. The British Medical Association (BMA) slammed the Tory government for ‘trying to scapegoat GPs instead of taking responsibility for the crisis in NHS’. Dr...

ON Saturday the Daily Telegraph disclosed to the world – ‘that moderate Labour MPs are plotting to undermine Mr Corbyn by staging resignations over coming months to force their leader to face repeated trials at the ballot box’. There you have it. ‘Treacherous Tristram’ and his Blairite pals are...

FAMILIES are being asked to care for their sick relatives, act as nurses and even administer injections, in an extremely controversial move to ‘free up hospital beds’. As the winter crisis facing Accident & Emergency departments (A&Es) reaches epic proportions, in a bid to tackle overcrowding, sick patients...