Monthly Archives: April 2017
FIERCE clashes erupted across the West Bank in Palestine during Friday’s ‘Day of Rage’ protests which were attacked by Israeli forces. Protesters marched in solidarity with hunger-striking detainees, who entered their 12th day without food. Palestinians gathered at many solidarity tents that were set up across various West Bank cities,...
LEGISLATION has been raced through Parliament before it breaks up for the general election which allows universities to raise tuition fees every year until 2020. To make matters worse the legislation gives the green light for the interest rates on student loans to be sharply hiked up from 4.6% to...
LAST Wednesday US president Donald Trump unveiled what he called the ‘biggest tax cuts in history’ – tax cuts only for the giant corporations and super rich; cuts that will inevitably stoke a crash in the world capitalist system that will be truly historic. Trump is proposing to slash taxes...
THE DEFENCE chiefs of Iran, Russia and Syria have called for closer trilateral co-operation in the battle against terrorism, emphasising the need to keep up the fight until the eradication of violence and terror threats. On Wednesday night, Iranian Defence Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan, sat down for three-way talks...
UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson spoke up yesterday to attack Jeremy Corbyn and to announce that it will be very difficult for the UK to refuse the US if it asks for support for another military strike on Syria. For good measure, he added that MPs would not necessarily have...
A GENERAL strike across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem was solid yesterday, with all Palestinian workers on strike and shops and businesses closed in solidarity with the 1,600 hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The general strike was organised in support of the ‘Freedom and Dignity’ hunger...
AS the Federation of Palestinian Communities in Europe and the Fatah movement in London prepare to screen the film ‘Marwan,’ a biopic telling the life story of the imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, members of the federation have reported that ‘the Zionist lobby’ in London had attempted to carry...
LEADER of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has warned that the United States and Zionists are especially targeting Iran because it is the most prominent Islamic republic. ‘Today, all these animosities targeting Iran and Islam are spearheaded by the US and Zionists,’ he told candidates contesting the upcoming...
THE NHS is the greatest of the gains that the working class made in the period immediately after the Second World War. It was brought in by Labour and its Health Minister Aneurin Bevan on July 5 1948 to provide free health care at the point of need for everybody...
‘DOO Has to Go!’ chanted over 150 RMT members and their supporters from around the country outside parliament yesterday. On the national demonstration to mark one year of the Southern rail guards strikes there were RMT banners from South East Regional Council, Watford Branch, South West Regional Council, Liverpool No...
SHADOW Health Secretary Jon Ashworth pledged yesterday that a future Labour government would ditch the Tory 1% pay cap for NHS staff and restore bursaries for student nurses and midwives. Speaking at the Unison Health Conference in Liverpool, Ashworth also said Labour would ‘outlaw’ low staffing shortages that have...
IMPRISONED Palestinian parliamentarian and Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, who has been leading a large-scale hunger strike in Israeli prisons, has suffered a serious deterioration in his health after forgoing food for eight days. Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs chairman Issa Qaraqe said that Barghouthi is suffering from a severe drop...
PALESTINIAN ambassador to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, said yesterday that Britain has officially refused to apologise for the infamous Balfour Declaration, and instead has taken measures to punish the Palestinians for demanding this. Speaking to Voice of Palestine radio, Hassassian said Queen Elizabeth and the British government have refused to...
THE wiping out of the Socialist Party and the Republican Party in France, the ruination of the Fifth Republic and the elevation of the National Front’s Le Pen to the brink of the presidency is a product of the havoc that EU membership has brought to France and Europe. France,...
‘CHRONIC understaffing across the NHS is putting patient lives at risk,’ a UK-wide annual survey of nurses published yesterday at the start of Unison’s health conference in Liverpool has confirmed. The 2017 survey found that the situation has not improved over the last twelve months. Almost two-thirds (63%) of respondents...
THE RESULT of the first round of the French Presidential election has justly been described as a ‘seismic’ shift in the country. For the first time since the founding of the 5th Republic in 1958, the candidates of the two main parties, the Socialist Party (PS) and the conservative Republican...
‘DOCTORS will not be forced to act as border guards,’ medical charity Doctors of the World declared. The charity reacted angrily to the Home Office practice of accessing the personal details of patients in order to deport those it deems as ‘illegal immigrants.’ The charity has launched a campaign...
AT LEAST 40 Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prison of ‘Megiddo’ have joined the prisoners’ open-ended mass hunger strike, said the strikers Media Committee of ‘Freedom and Dignity’. The mass hunger strike launched by more than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails entered its seventh day on Sunday. Palestinian prisoners...
IN an interview given to Russia’s RIA Novosti and Sputnik news agencies, Syria’s President al-Assad said that we always announce that we are ready to cooperate with any country who is genuinely ready or wants or has the will to fight terrorism. He added that we already know that the...
GMB holds fruit-picking giant Fyffes ultimately responsible for a brutal machete attack which left a young man with life-changing injuries. Misael Sanchez was slashed across the face with the blade when he tried to stop two armed thugs abducting his brother Moises. The men targeted Moises because he is branch...
NEW Guantanamo Bay-style jails-within-jails are being opened for the first time in the UK to incarcerate ‘extremists of all kinds’, while police are being issued with assault rifles and given permission to fire at moving vehicles that they deem to be a threat to ‘shoot the driver’. These are police...
JEREMY Corbyn speaking in Swindon yesterday confirmed that Labour will abolish zero-hours contracts. He said that, ‘Some one million people are on zero-hours contracts’ and that ‘They do not know how much they will earn from one week to another.’ He asked: ‘Why do we allow this form of...
IN HIS first election speech, Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, expressed his anger and indignation over the policies of austerity ruthlessly carried out by the Tories, policies that have brought misery and poverty to millions of working people and youth throughout the country. He damned the Tories as ‘the party...
ARMED police have adopted a new shoot-to-kill tactic: fire sub-automatic assault rifles at moving vehicles to ‘neutralise’ the driver, sparking fears that many more innocent people will be shot dead by the police. Officers were previously told not to shoot drivers of moving vehicles because of the additional dangers it...
MANY HUNDREDS of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners entered the third day of the ‘Freedom and Dignity’ hunger strike on Wednesday, with imprisoned Palestinian women launching protest measures, as lawyers representing the hunger strikers announced they were boycotting Israeli courts. that Israeli prison authorities grant them basic rights, such as receiving regular...
THE RMT will hold a national protest outside Parliament at noon next Wednesday, 26th April, to mark the one year anniversary of RMT industrial action against the extension of Driver Only Operation (DOO) on Southern Rail. RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said yesterday: ‘Heroic RMT members working for Southern Rail...
ISRAEL has detained one million Palestinians since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in 1967, says the joint statement released last Saturday by the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs on...
AT THE Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) annual congress in Belfast on Tuesday, primary teachers condemned the lack of adequate funding to primary schools and the failure of the government to restore any of the cuts made to funding over the past five years. INTO represents more than 40,000 teachers,...
MORE THAN 1,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody launched an open-ended mass hunger strike on Monday morning on Palestinian Prisoners Day, led by imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, under the banner of ‘Freedom and Dignity’ for prisoners. Prisoners purged all food products from their cells and shaved their heads in...
ON JUNE 23 2016 the adventurers Cameron and Osborne, the then PM and Chancellor, came unstuck when they lost their EU referendum and were forced to quit. The unelected May then took over the Tory leadership when she was appointed PM by the Tory Party’s 1922 Committee, who were anxious...
‘WHAT do we want – the living wage!’ ‘When do we want it – now!’ shouted over a hundred striking BECTU members and supporters outside East Dulwich Picturehouse on Saturday. Five Picturehouse cinemas were on strike simultaneously on Easter Saturday 15 April. Workers at Picturehouse cinemas have been striking since...
IN SYRIA a massive car bomb deliberately targeting people awaiting evacuation from Syrian towns being besieged by the so-called ‘rebel’ forces, in reality a mix of jihadist terrorists, blew 126 people to pieces on Saturday. Amongst the dead were 70 children. The terrorist target was a number of buses...
MORE than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody launched an open-ended mass hunger strike yesterday morning on Palestinian Prisoners Day, led by imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, under the banner of ‘Freedom and Dignity’ for prisoners. Prisoners purged all food products from their cells and shaved their heads in Israeli...
NUT/CPAG research confirms that schools with the poorest children will be hit hardest by the May government’s school funding proposals The research using DfE data, has confirmed that schools with the poorest children face much greater cuts in funding per pupil than schools generally under the Tory government’s National Funding...
THE TORY government have turned their fire against one of the most vulnerable sections of society: disabled people. The government has launched a three-pronged attack: Firstly they have cut disabled people’s money by £29 a week; Secondly they have seized their mobility cars, leaving them isolated in their homes;...
IN A REPEAT of one of the largest strikes in UK cinema history, that took place in February, five Picturehouse cinemas will be on strike simultaneously on Easter Saturday 15 April. Workers at Picturehouse cinemas have been striking since last September for the Living Wage (currently £9.75 in London, £8.45...
THIS WEEK has seen a dramatic upsurge of support amongst workers and youth in France for the outsider left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in the Presidential election. This election had until now been reduced by most political commentators to a two-horse race between the extreme far-right National Front candidate, Marine Le...
PALESTINIAN prisoners being held inside Israel’s Nafha prison have announced that they will be joining an upcoming mass hunger strike on Monday April 17, Sawt al-Asra (Voice of Prisoners) Radio reported on Wednesday. The prisoners – who are being held in sections three, four, 10, 13 and 14 of Nafha...
THE RMT has announced strike action against two of the country’s rail privateers – a 48-hour strike on Virgin Trains East Coast and a 24-hour strike on Arriva Rail North, both commencing at 00.01 on Friday 28th April. The union executive registered its disgust at the ever-increasing contempt being displayed...
SYRIAN army units have established control over large areas to the south of Palmyra City in their continued operations against ISIS terrorists in the eastern countryside of the western province of Homs. The army units, in cooperation with reserve forces, advanced about 10 kilometres towards Khnaifis mines in countryside to...