Monthly Archives: May 2018
THE TRUE nature of PM May’s ‘hostile environment’ has come to light after it emerged that legislation designed to tackle terrorism has been misused to deport highly skilled teachers, doctors and scientists. The government yesterday after the underhanded tactic was exposed, finally agreed to stop deporting people through wrongly using...
Hundreds of staff working at two of Australia’s private hospitals set to be closed over the next few weeks were notified of the closures via text message just hours after the company’s statement was posted to the stock exchange, says the Health Workers Union (HWU). Geelong Private Hospital – formerly...
US-HUNGARIAN billionaire George Soros has denounced Brexit as an ‘immensely damaging process’ for both the United Kingdom and the European Union, and has arrived in the UK announcing that a campaign for a second Brexit referendum will be launched within the next few days. Soros made this pledge at...
KENSINGTON and Chelsea council’s response to the Grenfell Tower, which claimed the lives of so many men, women and children was ‘badly flawed’ leaving volunteers and charities to provide clothes, food and shelter for survivors in the aftermath of the fire, a new report released yesterday has confirmed. The report...
ISRAELI war planes pounded Hamas positions in Gaza yesterday with a series of air strikes. They said they were responding to the launch of 28 mortars by Hamas, most of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile defence system. Israel responded with multiple air strikes. Israel also fired at least...
TRAIN services were hit in France once again on Monday morning due to the latest two-day rail strike. The rolling two-day strikes, which began on April 3rd, are still being held by rail workers. Last week’s two-day strike began on Wednesday May 23rd and there was another on Monday May...
A NUMBER of Palestinian activists yesterday set off in two boats on a sea journey from Gaza towards the naval limits set by Israel, to protest against the regime’s crippling siege of the coastal enclave. Earlier, Israeli warplanes had carried out airstrikes on bases belonging to Palestinian resistance movements...
THE South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) is not joining in the euphoria over President Ramaphosa’s completion of 100 days as President of South Africa. This ‘Ramaphoria’ is misplaced. SAFTU continues: The federation welcomed the resignation of former President Zuma, but immediately warned that the new president would not...
THE RAPIDLY unfolding crash of the EU drove the ruling class to take unprecedented action on Sunday to overturn the Italian election result and impose on the working class an unelected government of pro-EU ‘technocrats’. The coup to remove the anti-EU coalition government, that was only announced last week...
FACING calls for his impeachment, Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella yesterday appointed former International Monetary Fund official Carlo Cottarelli as interim Prime Minister. Known as ‘Mr Scissors’ for his cuts in public spending, Cottarelli was tasked with forming a new appointed government after Mattarella refused to appoint Paolo Savona, a...
TOP nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi has said Iran will decide soon whether to stay in the 2015 nuclear deal as he urged the Europeans to guarantee Tehran’s interests under the accord after the US withdrawal. Araqchi arrived in Vienna on Friday to meet his counterparts from Europe...
THE Catholic Church-dominated state of the Irish Republic was rocked to its foundations on Saturday when the results came through after the referendum on abortion. This showed that the 23 May 2015 shock for the state when a referendum agreed to ‘same sex marriage’, was not a one-off, and that...
JEREMY Corbyn has put Labour activists on ‘permanent notice’ amid rumours in Westminster of another general election. He said he would ‘absolutely welcome’ a chance to take on Prime Minister Theresa May at the ballot box. Speaking on a visit to Northern Ireland, Corbyn said: ‘I would absolutely welcome an...
THE IFJ (International Federation of Journalists) has strongly condemned a 10-year prison sentence handed out to researcher and investigative journalist Ismail Alexandrani in Egypt. The North Cairo Military Criminal Court sentenced Alexandrani on May 22 for having allegedly published military secrets and joined the Muslim brotherhood. The IFJ expressed serious...
THE SUMMIT between North Korean President Kim Jong-un and US President Trump was cancelled by Trump on Thursday. It was US National Security Adviser John Bolton who threw the first spanner into the works. He said North Korea would follow a ‘Libyan model of nuclear disarmament’. Trump was then asked...
THE Israeli Supreme Court rejected on Thursday night two petitions and fully adopted the Israeli military’s position, giving a green light to its continued use of snipers and live firing of explosive bullets against Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip. Three Supreme Court justices unanimously rejected the two petitions –...
THURSDAY was Unite’s National Day of Action against Universal Credit! There was a rally at 1pm in Old Palace Yard and a march to the DWP office, 12 Tothill Street, Westminster, London SW1H 9LH. Hundreds of thousands of families in the UK claiming the government’s new all-in-one benefit, Universal Credit...
THE GIANT German Deutsche Bank announced yesterday that it was slashing more than 7,000 jobs from its global investment arm as part of a major restructuring exercise; they were reluctant to reveal the exact number. Calling this ‘restructuring’ is a lame attempt to cover up the fact that Deutsche, the...
SURGERIES are in such crisis that one in six GPs have cancelled all routine appointments at some point over the last year, seeing emergency appointments only! Receptionists at some GP surgeries were telling patients that they would have to wait at least four weeks for a routine appointment. Other GP...
SYRIA’S deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, has hailed Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement’s assistance to Syria, and its struggle for survival, saying the pair’s withdrawal from the Arab country is not up for discussion. ‘This topic is not even on the agenda of discussion, since it concerns the...
LAST WEEK Tory minority government Transport Secretary Grayling announced that the privately-run East Coast Mainline has collapsed again and will be ‘temporarily renationalised’ – to which the rail unions were united in their response and demanded the permanent renationalisation of the entire network. This week started with what the...
WITH services collapsing into chaos the RMT has demanded publication of contract documentation which shows that Northern Rail get paid whether they run services or not. The breaking scandal of taxpayer bail-outs for the basket-case Arriva Rail North (ARN) has come on the eve of the latest phase of strike...
A SEVERE shortfall of both A&E doctors and hospital beds must be tackled, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) said in response to a new report released yesterday which showed that emergency admissions have increased by 42% in just a decade. One hundred Indian doctors, recruited by the...
Australia is a global pacesetter in the creation of various forms of insecure employment, leaving only 60% of the workforce in standard, secure work, says a new report from the ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions). The report: Australia’s insecure work crisis: Fixing it for the future reveals that the...
PRESS reports this week revealed that vulnerable members of the Windrush generation are still being forced to live in conditions of complete destitution, forced to live on the streets or in temporary accommodation while the threat of deportation hangs over them. Denied any benefits, unable to obtain any work and...
SAFTU (South African Federation of Trade Unions) is planning ‘a two to three day total shut down of the economy’ during which ‘the working class as a whole will occupy all city centres’. SAFTU held a press conference last Friday where it announced that it is to hold another press...
FRANCE, the former colonial power in Syria, has expanded its military presence in the country, supporting the United States which is organising Kurdish forces in an attempt to lay the basis for partitioning the Arab country, and continuing the war with President Assad. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported on...
BEREAVED Grenfell relatives were unable to attend the start of public inquiry yesterday due to Home Office visa delays, with family members who have been granted ‘core participant status’ left waiting months for the right to enter the UK. One of those left out is Karim Khalloufi. His sister perished in the...
SAEB Erekat, the Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Chief Palestinian Negotiator, wrote the following opinion article on Friday. ''THE US administration’s moral bankruptcy and complicity with Israel was never clearer than when Jared Kushner blamed the Palestinian victims for the massacre in Gaza. Last week,...
THE TORY Party is now on the brink of a split as pro-Remainers plan to unite with Labour, Liberal Democrat, Scottish and Welsh Nationalist MPs to defeat Brexit, even if it means bringing down the May government, and going forward to some national government that will ‘save the nation’...
THE BMA (British Medical Association) announced at the annual junior doctors committee meeting on Saturday that it is participating ‘in a collaborative review and bargaining process to improve the imposed 2016 contract’. This came as junior doctors made it clear they are determined to end exhausting working conditions that...
THE COLLAPSES of Carillion, of East Coast Rail, of academy chain after academy chain, and now with the NAO report that private outsourcing giant Capita is ‘putting NHS patients at risk’, the Tory privatisation plague is clear for all to see. Yesterday, Unite warned that Capita may well be...
UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis has joined others in condemning the ‘brutal massacre in Gaza’. Writing on the union’s website, Prentis said on Wednesday: ‘On Saturday our union marched through the streets of London to call for change. We did not face physical attack nor did we fear it. ‘We certainly...
THE EU has officially adopted measures to protect European companies working in Iran when the US reimposes sanctions against Tehran. The EU will remain committed to the Iran nuclear deal, the European Commission (EC) said yesterday. EC President Jean-Claude Juncker said: ‘In Sofia, we saw a show of European...
AHEAD of this Sunday’s presidential election, the Venezuelan government has called on workers to occupy the Kellogg factory in Maracay after the firm announced it was closing the plant and pulling out of the country. President Nicolas Maduro accused the US government of being behind the Kellogg move as part...
THIS WEEK, the final nail was driven into the coffin of the political and economic consensus that has dominated world capitalism from the end of WW2. In a vitriolic speech by Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, to EU heads this week, he tore into US...
NORTH Korea has said it may pull out of a summit with US President Donald Trump that was due to take place on June 12 if the US insists it gives up its nuclear weapons, and continues with military exercises around the Korean peninsula. In its statement, North Korea’s vice-foreign...
Over 1,500 workers and youth marched through Athens on Tuesday evening to the US and Israeli embassies in commemoration of the Nakba and against the Zionist killings in Gaza. Demonstrators shouted ‘SYRIZA (the ruling party) is an accomplice to Zionism – war to the imperialists’ war’. Palestinian students who joined...
RENATIONALISE the Railways now, the RMT, Aslef and Unite trade unions demanded yesterday, after Tory Transport Secretary Chris Grayling announced that East Coast Main Line is being brought into ‘temporary state ownership’ and renamed London and North Eastern Railway (LNER). The London to Edinburgh line has been run as...
A JOINT statement by 27 international organisations has called for urgent international action to stop Israeli ‘mass murder’ of Palestinians in Gaza. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) said at a press conference held at Shifa Medical Compound in Gaza on Tuesday that 27 different international organisations have signed a...
THE occupied Palestinian territories observed a general strike yesterday, affecting all aspects of life. It was called for by President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian government marking the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, the dispersion and uprooting of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948, and in mourning of the...