Monthly Archives: September 2019
THE SAUDI REGIME, backed to the hilt by the US and the UK, yesterday admitted that the Houthi movement’s drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s key oil facilities have shut down 50 per cent of its production. Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman acknowledged that the attacks had cut the state...
THE EUROPEAN Central Bank (ECB) has announced its biggest package of rate cuts and economic stimulus in three years as EU President Mario Draghi warned governments on Thursday that they needed to act quickly or face another economic collapse. Interest rates are to be cut even further below zero. They...
THE TRADES Union Congress (TUC) has backed the global school strike on 20 September and pledged to support the efforts of school youth striking for climate justice. They turned to the working class for support for their struggle, lobbying the first day of the annual Congress in Brighton last Sunday. TUC...
NEXT Tuesday the Supreme Court is to hear the government’s appeal against last Tuesday’s verdict of Scotland’s highest civil court that PM Johnson’s proroguing of the UK Parliament is unlawful, since its aim, the court found, was to ‘stymie’ Parliament to prevent it holding the government to account ahead...
WE ARE of the opinion that the advice given by the government to Her Majesty the Queen to prorogue Parliament was unlawful and that the prorogation itself was unlawful,’ Lord Carloway said, announcing the ruling of Scotland’s highest civil court yesterday morning, a decision made by three judges, chaired...
THE WORLD’S biggest arms companies have set up shop at Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI), one of the world’s largest arms fairs, taking place in London between 10-13 September. To coincide with this, Amnesty International contacted 22 arms companies and asked them to explain how they meet their responsibilities...
YESTERDAY, Scottish appeal court judges ruled that the decision by the Tory government to suspend parliament for five weeks in the run-up to the deadline for leaving the EU on October 31 is ‘unlawful’. This overturned earlier findings by the courts that they did not have the power to prevent...
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn made a ‘project fear’ speech at the TUC in Brighton yesterday, in which he described a No-Deal Brexit as a ‘Trump Deal Brexit’. Corbyn claimed: ‘A reckless No-Deal would destroy jobs, push up food prices in the shops and cause shortages of everyday medicines.’ Warming to the...
‘TROTSKY wrote about the prospects of the European capitalists uniting Europe,’ Dave Wiltshire, National Secretary of the All Trades Union Alliance told the YS/WRP meeting in Brighton on Monday afternoon, following their successful lobby of the TUC (Trades Unions Congress). Wiltshire said Trotsky described the European capitalists as ‘a gang...
WHAT has emerged out of the bankruptcy of Parliament this week is that the Labour leadership, along with the other opposition parties and rebel Tory Remainers, have decided a No-Deal Brexit is ‘illegal’ and that there must be no general election until Brexit is killed off completely. A general election...
LARGE numbers of TUC delegates in Brighton yesterday stopped at the 60-strong WRP and Young Socialists lobby to say that they want the TUC to ‘fight for Brexit now’. Paul Reilly, RMT National Executive Midlands Rep, told News Line: ‘Our delegation voted against the pro-EU motion that the TUC passed...
‘UNCEASING fatalities’ continue in the Bangladesh shipbreaking industry, as two more workers were killed and thirteen injured in yet another incident at the Ziri Subedar Shipbreaking Yard at Sitakunda on 31 August. The tragedy occurred at around 5.45pm as a heavy metal cable collapsed on the workers who were scrapping...
THE US ruling class and its leader President Trump (allegedly much versed in the ‘art of the deal’) are now up to their necks in the Afghan quagmire. They have discovered, as the British imperialists did before them, that it is much easier to get your armed forces into Afghanistan...
SHADOW Chancellor John McDonnell spelt out yesterday that Labour wants to form a ‘caretaker government’ with the other opposition parties which would organise a second EU referendum in which a No Deal Brexit would not be on the ballot paper. Appearing on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, McDonnell said: ‘I...
WITH 21 TORY MPS having the whip removed from them, now being joined by more Tory defectors like Amber Rudd, and while Labour makes it clear that it is only prepared to agree to a general election once leaving the EU has been made illegal, it is crystal clear...
IRAN says it has started up advanced centrifuges to boost the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium, warning signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal that the clock is ticking for them to salvage the landmark agreement in the face of pressure by the United States. As a third step in Iran’s...
‘SINCE 1967, Israel has applied an inconsistent policy of refusing to deliver the mortal remains of hundreds of Palestinian combatants to their families,’ an official letter from the Retrieval of the Bodies of Palestinian and Arab War Victims sent to the UN on Thursday stated. The National Campaign for Retrieval...
THE BRITISH AIRWAYS pilots strike is on for both Monday and Tuesday in an escalating battle over pay. British Airline Pilots’ Association (BALPA) BA members have backed strike action by more than nine to one, on a turnout of 90% of BA’s 4,000 pilots. This comes a day after Ryanair...
TORY PM Boris Johnson’s brother Jo Johnson has quit as Tory MP and minister yesterday, saying he is ‘torn between family loyalty and the national interest’ as the battle for Brexit rages. Dealing a bitter blow to his brother, business minister and Tory MP for Orpington cited an ‘unresolvable tension’...
SYRIAN air defence forces have reportedly managed to foil an attack by foreign-sponsored Takfiri militants against the country’s strategic Hmeimim air base in Syria’s western coastal province of Latakia. Syria’s state-run al-Ikhbariyah Syria television news network reported that the country’s anti-aircraft defence systems intercepted unmanned aerial vehicles attacking the base...
WITH THE annual conference of the TUC opening on Monday the leadership of the trade unions have produced a report detailing the catastrophic effects of austerity cuts and attacks on jobs imposed by the Tories on workers and their families since 2010. The report revealed that 3.7 million people have...
OVER a thousand supporters of jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange rallied outside the Home Office on Monday evening to hear Roger Waters perform ‘Wish You Were Here.’ The crowd was addressed by journalist John Pilger and Julian’s brother Gabriel Shipton. Opening the rally John Pilger said: ‘As well as making brilliant...
NEW RMT research has revealed that the private companies responsible for supplying trains to the railways have been paying massive dividends to their shareholders – money that could have funded hundreds of new vehicles – while shuffling money away into overseas companies based in Luxembourg to avoid paying tax. Three...
THE UNITED States, Britain and France may be complicit in war crimes in Yemen by arming and providing intelligence and logistics support to the Saudi-led coalition which starves civilians as a war tactic, the United Nations said on Tuesday. UN investigators have compiled a secret list of possible international war...
BORIS Johnson’s Tory government suffered a massive defeat in the House of Commons on Tuesday night when 21 of its MPs rebelled and voted for a motion designed to prevent a no-deal exit from the EU on 31 October. The motion was passed by 328 votes to 301 with the...
ISRAELI authorities and their heavily armed police force demolished the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the Naqab desert in southern Israel for the 157th consecutive time on Sunday afternoon. Israeli police broke into the village and dismantled and confiscated the tin homes residents build every time their village is demolished,...
LAST week the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said Washington is not seeking a permanent military presence in Afghanistan, after the Taliban said it was close to finalising a peace agreement with the United States. Yesterday Washington’s top negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad confirmed that the US will withdraw 5,400 troops...
YESTERDAY the Department for Education announced that it will be pushing for higher pay for newly qualified teachers as part of the Tory government’s ‘back to school’ policy unveiled last week. The education secretary for England, Gavin Williamson, will be asking the School Teachers’ Review Body for an increase of...
SOUTH Africa’s trade union federation COSATU has expressed concern over ongoing factional battles in the governing ANC party, allegations of vote buying by the CR17 campaign going into the party’s 54th elective conference in 2017, and the rise in political killings in Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal. These concerns were raised by...
‘WE MUST come together to stop no-deal. This week could be the last chance. We are working with other parties to do everything necessary to pull our country back from the brink, then we need a general election,’ Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said yesterday. ‘When a government finds itself without...
THE EU’s Brexit negotiator Barnier has set the scene for this week’s ‘Brexit showdown’ in the House of Commons by rejecting out-of-hand PM Johnson’s demand for the Irish backstop to be scrapped. Barnier said: ‘On the EU side, we had intense discussions with EU member states on the need to...