Monthly Archives: May 2021
US President Joe Biden has released his first annual budget – a $6tn (£4.2tn) spending plan that includes steep tax increases. The bumper proposal would include huge new social programmes and investment in the fight against climate change.
But it needs approval from Congress, where Republican Senator Lindsey Graham condemned it...
IN SEPARATE messages, Iran, Russia and China congratulate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for achieving a landslide victory in the 2021 presidential race. Iran, Russia and China have separately congratulated Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for achieving a landslide victory and winning his fourth seven-year term in the 2021 presidential election.
In a...
WHEN The Daily Telegraph headlined on Saturday that ‘Reckless Hancock left care homes to fend for themselves’ the message was clear. It is that Hancock has to go, before his decision to allow untested transfers from NHS hospitals into care homes that cost the lives of over 19,286 care...
A NEW report documenting several violations of international humanitarian law committed by Israel during its recent military attack on the Gaza Strip from 10-21 May was released on Friday by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. The report concluded that the International Criminal Court (ICC) must hold the Israeli leaders and...
LOCAL councils are pledging not to co-operate with the Tories’ Home Office and its proposed ‘policy that will see non-UK national rough sleepers deported’. They are refusing too to co-operate with the Home Office’s ‘new immigration policy that makes rough sleeping grounds for deportation’.
‘We are really worried that people will...
MASSIVE demonstrations are sweeping the United States in support of Palestine. There have been big marches and rallies in New York, Chicago, Texas, San Francisco and Philadelphia, as well as in Richmond. Today (Saturday May 29) a National March for Palestine takes place in the US capital Washington DC...
COSATU Africa Day Statement May 25, 2021 THE Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) joins millions of Africans on the continent, and in the diaspora, as we celebrate the 58th Africa Day, which is our common heritage and space for reflection on the present and future of our beloved...
‘WHEN will the Prime Minister and others be investigated by the police for alleged corporate manslaughter and why did they not follow the example of New Zealand where they managed to control the virus with minimum number of deaths?’ Yasmin Qureshi Labour MP for for Bolton South East asked...
YESTERDAY marked the 10th anniversary of the BBC Panorama programme that exposed the shocking treatment of the patients at Winterbourne View, a private hospital owned and run by Castlebeck Care that was supposed to provide assessment and treatment for adults with learning disabilities. The programme showed the residents being physically...
JERUSALEM – Israeli police yesterday morning quelled a rally against the forced expulsions of Palestinian families from the Batn al-Hawa area of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem, according to an information centre and witnesses. The Wadi Hilweh Information Centre said that heavily-armed Israeli police violently cracked down on the participants...
ON TUESDAY, the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, US president Joe Biden met with Floyd family members. The meeting had been arranged in the expectation that it would mark the signing by Biden of a bill – the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act...
THE UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) has condemned the practice by countries like the UK of deporting asylum seekers for processing in the first country they arrived. The UN refugee agency warned against ‘exporting’ asylum and called for ‘responsibility sharing’ for refugees, not ‘burden shifting’.
Amid considerations by some...
‘WE THANK the US for the support given to the State of Palestine,’ President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday at a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was visiting Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank. Earlier, Blinken had met with Israeli acting Prime Minister Benjamin...
FIVE THOUSAND steel jobs hang in the balance as steel giant Liberty announced plans to sell its plant in Stocksbridge, Sheffield, as part of a ‘major restructuring process’ following the collapse of Greensill Capital. The Sanjeev Gupta-owned firm, which is the UK’s third largest steel business, has agreed a refinancing...
McDonald’s cooks and cashiers in 16 cities went on strike last Wednesday, the day before the company’s annual shareholders meeting, to demand the burger giant pay every worker across the McDonald’s system a living wage of at least $15 an hour. As fast-food workers joined together outside McDonald’s stores across...
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the unelected Zionist leader Benjamin Netanyahu held a joint press conference in Jerusalem yesterday. Netanyahu thanked US President Biden for ‘firmly supporting Israel’s right to self-defence’ and credited Blinken for having personally supported the development and procurement of Israel’s Iron Dome missile...
PALESTINIAN Prime Minister Mohammad Shtay-yeh yesterday called for a serious track to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and establish the Palestinian state. In his speech opening the cabinet’s weekly session in Ramallah, Shtayyeh called for a ‘serious and real track’ to bring the Israeli occupation of the...
AMID international efforts to de-escalate tensions in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli settlers have once again raided the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied Old City of East Jerusalem al-Quds under the protection of Israeli forces. The Palestinian information centre, citing local sources, reported that extremist settlers entered the compound...
THOUSANDS of deaths by workers who contracted Covid in the course of their jobs have gone unreported in the official figures, according to research published this weekend by the Trades Union Congress. The TUC found that employers have notified the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) of only 387 work-related Covid...
A QUARTER of a million, mainly young people, marched from Victoria Embankment to Hyde Park in London on Saturday afternoon, demanding trade union action in the UK to boycott Israel and support Palestine. As the march was assembling John Rees, National Officer Stop the War, one of the march’s organisers,...
LABOUR MP for Hayes and Harlington John McDonnell said: ‘Netanyahu must be imprisoned for war crimes. The campaign for disinvestment in Israel must be stepped up.’ CND General Secretary Kate Hudson said: ‘Make no mistake, we have seen a victory for Palestine. The young people who have led the fight...
SATURDAY saw a vast crowd of 250,000 workers, including very large numbers of enthusiastic and determined youth, take to the streets of London for a second giant march to condemn Israel’s murder of Gaza’s children, and demand the establishment of the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. The 250,000...
PALESTINIAN premier Mohammad Shtayyeh yesterday pledged to file charges with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli leaders responsible for the Gaza onslaught. This came as Shtayyeh praised international efforts, including the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement, that stopped the Israeli aggression on Gaza.
He said that as part of the onslaught that...
ACCORDING to witnesses Israeli police, on Thursday afternoon of last week, stormed the Al-Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem’s al-Tur neighbourhood. They said that Israeli police and intelligence officers, including at least a masked officer, had forced their way into the hospital and occupied its rooftops as they harassed and interrogated...
HAMAS declared a ‘historic victory’ of Palestinians in their struggle against the occupying regime of Israel yesterday, after the Israeli regime conceded an unconditional ceasefire. For the last two weeks, heavily armed Israeli military police have shot Palestinian teenagers dead, seized Palestinian homes, destroyed infrastructure like power lines, water and...
A NEW report on local pay and teacher retention in England, published at the beginning of the week by the Education Policy Institute (EPI), has highlighted the severe problem of staff shortages as teachers are driven out of the profession because of over-work and underpay. Dr Mary Bousted, Joint General...
THE international community has a responsibility ‘to put an end to Israel’s aggression on our homeland, and to enable our people to establish our state on the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital,’ Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said yesterday, addressing a special session of the United Nations...
COLOMBIA, the country that has been hailed by the US as the second most populous ‘democracy’ in South America and a key partner in US attempts to overthrow Nicolas Maduro, the democratically elected leader of neighbouring Venezuela, is on the brink of social revolution. On Wednesday, trade unions along with...
THE TUC stands in solidarity with all Palestinian workers and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) who on Tuesday took part in a general strike on both sides of the Green Line. This was in condemnation of the Israeli government’s violence in Gaza and the planned evictions of...
NEARLY 130 workers are facing the sack at Shannon Airport while almost 200 others are to be laid off for three months without pay at Cork Airport, Aer Lingus announced on Tuesday. Aer Lingus said it intends to permanently close its Shannon Airport cabin crew base where it employs 126...
YESTERDAY the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that the UK inflation rate had more than doubled in April this year as energy costs soared and the prices of goods in retail shops increased. ONS figures show that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate jumped from 0.7% in March...
‘THIS MUST be the end of “fire and rehire”. We now have a collectively bargained agreement,’ Unite NW-54 Branches Communities Rep Sam Harvey told News Line yesterday at a rally to celebrate the bus drivers huge victory outside Manchester’s Queen’s Road Bus Depot after winning their indefinite strike. ‘This is...
DOZENS of air strikes pounded Gaza yesterday while a new front in the conflict opened up as the Israeli military also shelled Lebanon in response to six failed rocket launches from southern areas in the neighbouring country. At least 213 Palestinians, including 61 children, have now been killed in Gaza...
SYRIA’S Minister of Health, Dr Hassan al-Ghobash, inaugurated the rebuilt General Authority of Aleppo Eye Surgery Hospital on Monday. The hospital, which was destroyed by terrorists but rebuilt and equipped with all the necessary medical equipment, consists of two floors, with an area of 1,800 square metres, and a capacity...
THE HEROIC masses of Palestine have stood fast in the face of desperate Israeli terrorist missile attacks calculated to break the spirit and the bodies of the masses of the Gaza Strip – men, women, youth and very young children. Palestinian men and women have said publicly that they sleep...
A GENERAL strike has been called for today across the whole of Palestine. The call began from Palestinians living and working in Israel and was then taken up by Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh who confirmed that all businesses, industries and services in the West Bank will strike. Gaza will also...
THE IRANIAN Judiciary’s High Council for Human Rights says ambiguous positions adopted by international bodies, including the United Nations, over the ongoing massacre of Palestinians by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip are aimed at legitimising Tel Aviv’s crimes and encouraging the occupying regime. In a letter last Sunday to...
THE LATEST dire prediction on the precarious economic state of the eurozone came from three former chief executives of the European Central Bank (ECB), who warned that the zone is heading into a ‘debt trap’ as raging inflation takes hold of the world capitalist economy. One of these, Peter Praet,...
THE Palestinian Ministry of Health (MoH) announced on Sunday afternoon that a total of 202 Palestinians have been killed and 5,588 others injured by the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and in the crackdown on West Bank protests. The MoH said that in the Gaza Strip, 181 Palestinians...
SATURDAY saw the concrete proof of just how much support the brave Palestinian people have won in their battle to undo the dirty work of British imperialism, whose Balfour Declaration handed over Palestine to the Zionist Federation and sent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into exile, into refugee camps...
A PALESTINIAN mother and her three children were among the ten latest victims of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip. A barrage of Israeli airstrikes at dawn on Friday destroyed several homes in the town of Beit Lahiya, in the north of the Strip. Four deaths were identified in...
JOHANNESBURG – The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) condemns the continued attacks on the people of Palestine by the Israeli apartheid forces. Its statement says: ‘The residents of the Gaza Strip continue to be fired upon, and the Zionist leader Binyamin Netanyahu pronounced Israel’s murderous intent, to impose...
MISSILES are raining down on the people of Gaza, as the Israelis step up their war to prevent the establishment of the state of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital. Over 100 Palestinians have been killed in airstrikes over the last week including at least 23 children. The Israelis are...
ISRAELI fighter jets continued bombarding high-rise buildings and other targets in the Gaza Strip using F-15 fighter jets yesterday, as Palestinians marked the Eid al-Fitr religious holiday under the relentless aerial bombardment. More Israeli tanks massed on the Gaza border as Israel prepares for a ground invasion. Israel’s military spokesman Jonathan...