Monthly Archives: December 2019
THE News Line Editorial Board sends revolutionary greetings for 2020 to all our readers, and to the working class, youth and the poor who across the world are rising up against a bankrupt capitalist system which is gripped by the greatest economic crisis in its history. This world capitalist crisis...
TURKISH Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, whose country is preparing for troop deployment to Libya, says the prolongation of the Libyan conflict could plunge the North African country into ‘chaos’ and turn it into another Syria. ‘If today Libya becomes like Syria, then the turn will come for the other countries...
NEARLY 37,000 people in Scotland were paid less than the statutory minimum wage last year, while employers across the UK owe workers an average of £6,500 in unpaid arrears, according to data published by Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) yesterday. CAS chiefs say the figures are ‘unacceptable’. The analysis suggests 36,876 workers...
THE Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has bemoaned a tough 2019, describing the entire 12 months as ‘annus horriblis’ (Latin word meaning very tough) due to a number of inconsistent government policies which led to company closures and erosion of incomes. In a festive season statement signed by its...
THE prime minister of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth has indicted the UK government for committing ‘crimes against humanity’ for refusing to allow Chagossians to return to their former homes on the Chagos Islands, despite a ruling earlier this year by the United Nation’s highest court. He described Britain’s behaviour as ‘shameful’,...
THE UK committed ‘crimes against humanity’ by refusing to allow Chagos Islanders to return to their homes on the Chagos Islands, which is now a giant US airbase and torture centre. Britain continued to defy the demand to return the Islanders despite a ruling earlier this year by the United...
THE News Line is pleased to reproduce the Christmas and New Year statement by the South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU), edited for length. THE South African Federation of Trade Unions sends festive greetings and a message of solidarity to its members and to the working class of South...
ISRAELI Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has claimed a ‘huge win’ in a vote that challenged his leadership of the Likud party. Netanyahu secured 72.5% as opposed to his rival Gideon Saar, who polled 27.5%. Saar admitted defeat, saying he would now back Netanyahu in a general election due on...
UK GOVERNMENT figures show that over 1,800 people in Britain will spend the Christmas holiday incarcerated in immigration detention centres, prompting calls to end the ‘cruel and callous’ policy. There are currently 1,826 migrants being held in detention centres. Of these, 1,152 are people seeking asylum in the UK, according...
ISRAEL has reportedly halted Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s plan to annex the Jordan Valley in the wake of last week’s decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch a probe into the regime’s war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Christmas eve that the first meeting...
ISRAELI warplanes at dawn yesterday launched a series of airstrikes against several posts across the besieged Gaza Strip, causing extensive material damage. WAFA’s correspondent reported that Israeli fighter jets pounded a post located to the west of Gaza City with three missiles, reducing it to rubble. The airstrikes caused considerable...
‘HUMILIATING, painful, depressing,’ says a new report released yesterday by homeless charity Crisis, highlighting the brutal realities of ‘sofa surfing’. The research shows that with over 71,000 sleeping on friends’ sofas for over six months, there is nothing temporary about ‘sofa surfing’. The report, based on interviews with 114 people who...
A NEW INVESTIGATION into the Brazilian coffee industry has uncovered debt bondage, sub-poverty wages, sub-standard housing, water and sanitation facilities and appalling health and safety conditions. The study, Picked by Slaves: Coffee Crisis Brews in Brazil, carried out by Thomson Reuters, provides new evidence of how coffee produced under brutally...
THE TUC yesterday published a statement that amounts to nothing less than an abject surrender to the Tory government and a grovelling offer to Boris Johnson of partnership with the TUC leaders in a pact against the working class. This statement of class betrayal was dressed up as the findings...
STAFF at Norfolk’s biggest hospital , the Norfolk and Norwich, were told to make the ‘least unsafe decision’ last week, when the hospital had no spare beds, a full accident and emergency department and 35 patients lying on trolleys waiting to be admitted. Workers at the Norfolk and Norwich University...
THE Foreign Ministry on Saturday welcomed the announcement by the Prosecutor of the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) on opening an investigation into the situation in Palestine and Israeli crimes against the Palestinians in the occupied territories. ‘The State of Palestine welcomes the announcement of the Office of the Prosecutor...
THE US, Israel’s major backer and armer, has condemned the International Criminal Court (ICC) decision to launch a full investigation into Israeli war crimes. In a statement on Friday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US did not believe Palestinians qualify as a sovereign state and ‘they therefore...
FIVE judges of the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal have given a divided ruling over a secret MI5 policy allowing security service agents to commit serious crimes on UK soil. The judges decided 3-2 that MI5’s policy was lawful. The claimants in the case confirmed they would immediately seek permission...
‘RE-OPEN maternity! Re-open Children’s Ward! Save Ealing Hospital!’ rang out early yesterday morning as over 50 people joined the mass Xmas picket of Ealing Hospital. A lovely cake with the message: ‘Reopen Ealing maternity and children’s wards 2020’ was donated by a Paul’s bakery in Southall and a Southall restaurant’s...
MEMBER of the Executive Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation Hanan Ashrawi has met the Swedish Consul-General to Palestine, Jessica Olausson, in Ramallah. The two leaders stressed the need to conduct comprehensive elections while defying all obstacles – including Israeli obstructions – in occupied Jerusalem.
She briefed the Swedish diplomat on...
HOURS after winning the December 12 election, Tory leader Johnson at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in central London announced that ‘We now speak as a One Nation Conservative party’, adding: ‘Parliament must change so that we in parliament are working for you, the British people.’ This, as everyone knows,...
OVER one hundred RMT members, along with members of the PCS, UCU and Unite rallied outside Parliament yesterday to defend the right to strike. This was after an unprecedented attack by Tory PM Johnson, set out in the Queen’s Speech yesterday, which fundamentally attacks the right for public sector workers...
UNITED Nations peacekeepers fathered hundreds of children while deployed in Haiti then abandoned their young mothers to lives of poverty, a damning new report has said. The study into the UN’s longest peacekeeping mission said girls as young as 11 would trade sex for food or ‘a few coins’ so...
THE FIRE Brigades Union (FBU) won a massive victory not only for their members but for all public service workers when the employment tribunal upheld a ruling in December 2018 by the Court of Appeal that Tory-imposed changes to firefighters’ pension schemes constituted age discrimination and was therefore unlawful. This...
FIREFIGHTERS have won back their pensions, dealing a mighty blow to the government with far reaching implication for all public sector workers, in particular, doctors and lecturers who are in the middle of a similar pensions battle. The judgement sets a precedent that any new recruits must be entitled to...
NURSES in the RCN union came out on strike for the first time in the union’s 103-year history in the north of Ireland yesterday, joining other health workers at 21 locations demanding that the severe shortage of staff is urgently addressed as patients lives are being put at risk. Outside...
SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad has given a comprehensive interview to Phoenix Television in which he stressed that America is stealing Syria’s oil and selling it to Turkey, which is an accomplice with all terrorist groups in stealing and selling oil. He emphasised that there is no prospect for any American...
TODAY’S Queen’s speech includes plans by the Tories to make all-out strikes by rail unions and other transport workers illegal. Tory transport secretary Grant Shapps announced beforehand that the laws would force workers on rail and buses to run services during any strikes – in effect, a law forcing workers...
FRANCE was totally paralysed yesterday with flights, trains, the Metro and buses all cancelled during the mass ‘Day of Rage’ over President Emmanuel Macron’s attack on public sector pensions. After 13 days of strike action, Tuesday marked another round of street protests, including a major demo in Paris, with doctors,...
On 12 December Algerians went to the polls to elect a new president – or did they? Millions boycotted the election, which they saw as illegitimate. Since February 2019, a huge protest movement has developed against the corrupt regime. Weekly demonstrations involving millions across the country keep demanding system change, a...
THE GIANT US aircraft manufacturer Boeing has finally called a halt to all production of its 737 Max aircraft after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told the company last week that it is withholding safety approval on the plane until 2020. The 737 Max, Boeing’s best selling plane, caused two...
RAIL CHAOS rapidly spread across the length and breadth of the UK as new train timetables coming into force yesterday hit serious problems, leaving passengers stranded and prompting trade union TSSA to call for rail renationalisation. Cancellations and delays caused havoc for rail commuters on the first working day of...
THE NEW Tory government with its majority of 80, plans to ask MPs to vote on PM Johnson’s Brexit bill as early as this Friday, Downing Street said yesterday. The PM’s spokesman said the government planned to start the process in Parliament before Christmas and will do so ‘in discussion...
THE NHS was a key issue in the general election. US-HMO-style (Health Maintenance Organisations) integrated care systems are being set up all over England. Provided largely free at the point of use since 1948, and funded by taxation as a publicly provided service with nationalised hospitals, – the NHS provided healthcare...
THE MASS strikes and demonstrations throughout France today mark the sharp escalation of the confrontation between French workers and the ‘bankers’ government of president Emmanuel Macron. This confrontation started 13 days ago with a massive strike wave against the drive to push up the retirement age and slash pensions for...
LABOUR leaders Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell yesterday delivered abject apologies for the party’s defeat in last Thursday’s election, which saw them lose 59 seats. Both of them have said that they are quitting the Labour leadership, McDonnell immediately, Corbyn after a leadership election in the New Year. Corbyn said in...
CHRISTIANS from the Gaza Strip will not be allowed to visit holy sites in Bethlehem and Jerusalem to celebrate Christmas this year, the so-called Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) announced yesterday. This means that this Christmas, Gaza’s Christians will be denied access to the holy sites...
LABOUR’S defeat in the 2019 general election is a historic one, since its central feature was the way that the safest Labour seats in the country, some 60 in all, went over to the Tories leaving the Tories with a majority of 80. In fact the wounds were self-inflicted. The...
THE WEST London Council of Action has called a 7am-9am Xmas Mass Picket of Ealing Hospital on Friday 20th December to step up the fight to force the Johnson led Tory government to reopen Maternity and Paediatrics. It invites all workers, trade unionists and local residents to come along. ‘I am...
ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to relinquish the four ministerial positions he currently holds in the face of his indictment on charges of corruption, bribery and breach of trust – but will remain premier. ‘He will cease being a minister by January 1st, 2020 and appoint other ministers...
ON Thursday the Labour Party suffered its worst defeat in a general election since 1935 and handed Boris Johnson’s Tory party a majority in Parliament of 78 seats. This was a dramatic reversal of the gains made in the last election when Labour destroyed Theresa May’s majority. The huge difference between...
THE collapse of construction firm Clugston has halted work on Newcastle University’s new £39m extension and £25m sports centre. Clugston, which employs more than 600 people, called in administrators KPMG last week.
KPMG said the two projects were ‘on hold pending the outcome of current discussions’. The university said it was...
EXECUTIVE Director of Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, Hagai El-Ad, has slammed the Israeli government’s record saying: ‘We’ve learned that there is no Palestinian victim – a three-year-old child, a fourteen-year-old youth, a whole family – whose killing the Israeli system cannot expertly whitewash. ‘There will be an investigation, there...
THE US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which has the responsibility for aircraft safety, did nothing to ground Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft despite their own analysis that the plane was inherently unsafe. After the first crash in October last year of an Indonesian Lion Air 737 Max, in which 189 people...
TURKEY and Libya have begun implementing agreements on maritime boundaries and military cooperation – inciting an angry reaction from Greece which insists that the measures clearly violate its sovereign rights. The pacts were signed by Ankara and Libya’s Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) last month. They took effect over...