Monthly Archives: August 2021
A BLAZE on the scale of the Grenfell Tower Fire broke out around 5:30pm local time on Sunday at the Torre dei Moro building on via Giacomo Antonini in the southern outskirts of Milan, and was tackled by 15 fire engines and over 100 emergency service personnel. Evacuees from the...
THE PALESTINIAN resistance movement Hamas says the Israeli regime must be held fully accountable for any consequences of tightening the years-long all-out siege on the Gaza Strip that has aggravated the humanitarian crisis of its Palestinian inhabitants. In a statement on Sunday, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum warned that Israel’s extremist...
IT HAS been confirmed that the Home Office is determined to keep the dilapidated and dangerous Napier Barracks open for a further four years. The former military barracks in Kent has been used since September last year to keep asylum seekers in cramped and filthy conditions. In June 2021, a High...
SIX people, including four children, were killed in a US drone strike in Kabul, Afghan TV reported yesterday, citing eyewitnesses. Earlier, US officials said that the strike had targeted ‘multiple Daesh suicide bombers’ who were believed to be on their way to Kabul’s airport as the American evacuation effort continues. The...
MINEWORKERS who have been newly recruited to the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa attended a meeting at Impala Platinum’s shaft 9 in Rustenburg, North West. It is 9.25am on Sunday 22 August. A few office-bearers of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) are gathered in...
THE HUMILIATING hiding that the UK ruling class has taken from the Taliban in Afghanistan, where the US and the UK have squandered tens of billions of pounds and dollars to end up with a historic defeat, leaves only one way out of this crisis, and that is to...
‘IT IS OVER,’ Tory defence secretary Ben Wallace admitted yesterday over the UK’s Afghan debacle. He added: ‘It is with deep regret that not everyone has been able to be evacuated during this process.’ He conceded that around 800 to 1,100 eligible pro-British Afghans would be left behind, as well as...
TWENTY-SEVEN Unite members have won their tribunal claim over calculation of a redundancy payment at Rosyth Royal Dockyard in an Employment Tribunal decision. The members were part of a successful joint legal claim involving forty-eight workers, and are now set to receive between £1,300 and £4,500 compensation. They worked at Rosyth...
THE US and UK’s military and political defeat in Afghanistan has laid bare the crisis of imperialism for the workers of the world to see, and take advantage of. After the US trained and financed Afghan army refused to fight the Taliban, the last two weeks has seen a mad...
THE CUT PRICE hotel where Afghan refugee, five-year-old Mohammed Munib Majeedi, plunged to his death from a ninth-floor window had ‘multiple fire risks’ the fire service confirmed yesterday. South Yorkshire Fire Service confirmed that, in November last year, it had ordered the hotel to carry out improvement works to remedy...
THE TALIBAN say the United States could now step forward and participate in the reconstruction of Afghanistan given how it contributed to the destruction of the country, amid the withdrawal of US-led forces after two decades of war. ‘If they want, they can participate in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and...
THE DECISIVE defeat of world imperialism at the hands of the Afghan people has caused a complete breakdown amongst the most ardent defenders of capitalism and its historic ‘right’ to rule the planet. While PM Boris Johnson attempts to bluster and bluff about the ability of Britain to dictate to...
THE WORLD BANK has halted all funding for projects in Afghanistan in a major attack on the Afghan people. It cited ‘concerns’ over how the Taliban’s takeover will impact ‘the country’s development prospects, especially for women’. The move comes just days after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suspended payments to Afghanistan. The...
SHARON Graham yesterday was elected as general secretary of the Unite union to replace Len McCluskey securing 37.6% of the vote. Graham, who was considered a rank outsider at the start of the campaign, defeated McCluskey’s preferred candidate Steve Turner. The other candidate, who trailed in third, was right-winger Gerard Coyne...
LIBERTY, Privacy International and 30 organisations have called for Parliament to ban the use of facial recognition technology, one year after judges found the technology breaches civil rights in Liberty’s ground-breaking legal case. In an open letter coordinated by Privacy International and Liberty published on 21 August, the organisations say...
IF THE Americans ask for an extension on the withdrawal from Afghanistan the answer is ‘No’ Taliban spokesperson Dr Suhail Shaheen reconfirmed yesterday at a press conference. Asked by a British journalist if the Taliban have been asked to extend the 31st August end date for ‘evacuation’ and if there...
TURNOVER in General Practice doctors has seen a steady increase over the last decade, according to researchers, who have warned policymakers that support measures must be put in place to improve retention. The University of Manchester study used NHS data from all English GP practices, which totalled 8,085 in 2007...
THE RULING US Democratic Party, led by President Biden, was yesterday being pressed by its NATO allies to delay the US rapid retreat (rout) from Afghanistan due on August 31. The US is getting out after its massively equipped and expertly trained Afghan army, costing the USA some $85bn,...
AN AFGHAN security forces member has been killed in a gunfight by ‘unknown assailants,’ as US and German troops joined the fighting at Kabul airport yesterday. One Afghan security forces member was killed and three others wounded, the Bundeswehr (the German military) said in a tweet yesterday, adding no German...
PALESTINE Action scaled the roof of another Israeli arms factory yesterday, morning holding ‘Shut down Elbit’ banners. They announced: ‘We’ve taken to the roof of Israel’s arms factory in Oldham once more, spraying it blood red with fire extinguishers, laying bare the profits of a military occupation and extinguishing Elbit...
ran will only import coronavirus vaccines from countries whose products are certain to be safe, or use vaccines it produces itself, Major General Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), has said. Speaking to a meeting on the pandemic in the southeastern province of Kerman on Sunday,...
IT EMERGED yesterday that desperate UK food companies are begging Tory ministers to let them use prisoners to work in meat processing plants as cheap labour. According to a report in the Guardian newspaper, the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS), which represents abattoirs and processors, is meeting with the...
NINE Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention currently remain on hunger strike in protest against their unfair administrative detention without charge or trial, says the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS). PPS said the longest hunger-striker of the nine prisoners is prisoner Salem Ziadat, 40 years old, who has been on hunger strike...
FIGHTING against the repression of trade unions is bringing democracy to life, says the CGT French trade union federation. Ikéa lawsuits, dismissals, legal attacks against mobilised employees, new repressive laws ...
Freedom of association, more than ever necessary, is under attack in many ways. the CGT warns.
The trial of the surveillance...
THE success of the Taliban movement and the mass of the Afghan people in securing a US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the acceptance of the fact that the Taliban will organise the next Afghan government, is a huge victory, not just for the Afghan people, but for...
PM JOHNSON is facing growing pressure to sack his Foreign Secretary Raab, or if he won’t to resign himself. It has now emerged that neither Raab or any of his aides made any attempt to contact the Afghan government during the current crisis. The government had said Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab...
THE NHS in Scotland is ‘on the brink’ as A&E hospital waiting times are the worst since records of them began, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has warned. The situation in Scotland’s accident-and-emergency departments is ‘unsustainable’ and ‘cannot continue,’ the RCEM said, as the percentage of people seen...
THE LABOUR Party is facing strike action by staff who work at the party offices who are members of the GMB and Unite trade unions. The staff are being threatened with the sack and a strike is looming. Unite and GMB are holding ‘indicative ballots’, opening Monday on whether workers...
SEVENTY thousand council workers are to be balloted in every borough in England and Wales in preparation for a strike action against a ‘derisory’ pay offer of 1.75 per cent, Unite announced yesterday. Unite is furious at the 1.75 per cent offer earmarked for council staff in England, Wales and...
FORMER US President Donald Trump has attacked President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan as the ‘greatest embarrassment’ in the history of the United States. In a Fox News interview Trump also claimed Biden had ‘humiliated’ the US more than any president in the country’s history – and added that the...
THE ANNUAL pay of FTSE 100 chief executives fell during the pandemic but still equates to more than a key worker would earn in a lifetime. A report from the High Pay Centre has highlighted the fact that although there was a fall in the take home pay of bosses...
Unite announced on Tuesday that ‘if remote sign-on is not taken entirely off the table for all bus operators then Unite, which represents over 20,000 bus drivers in London, will begin the process of balloting for industrial action.’ A survey of London’s bus drivers by Unite has found overwhelming opposition...
WHILE the Taliban’s top political leaders arrived in Afghanistan to take control of the country, British MPs held an emergency debate in Parliament yesterday that consisted of nothing more than impotent whinging at the historic defeat of US and UK imperialism at the hands of the Taliban. Prime Minister Boris...
THE TALIBAN announced a ‘general amnesty’ yesterday for government workers across Afghanistan and urged women to join its government. ‘We must congratulate the victorious struggle we have undertaken,’ Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen said at a special press conference in Kabul yesterday afternoon. He continued: ‘I would like to welcome the journalists...
THE MOTHER of a mentally ill black man who died after being restrained by up to nine Metropolitan Police Service officers has said she hopes those involved in her son’s death will finally be held accountable after the case was reopened by the police watchdog yesterday. Kevin Clarke gasped ‘I...
‘WILL VICTIMS of Marikana ever get justice under the ANC (African National Congress) government?’ asked the South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) on Monday. On 16 August 2012, striking mineworkers at Lonmin in Marikana were mowed down in a bloody massacre, leaving 34 miners dead and about 78 injured....
PALESTINIAN Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has condemned the Israeli army killing of four young Palestinians in the northern West Bank city of Jenin and demanded international protection for the Palestinian people living under the illegal Israeli occupation. He called on the United Nations and international humanitarian organisations to condemn this...
AN NHS hospital has commissioned a report into the risk of corporate mans-laughter charges should a fatal roof collapse occur, leaked documents exposed yesterday. West Suffolk Hospital is spending tens of millions of pounds making dangerous reinforced concrete planks in its main building safe. And Hinchingbrooke Hospital, which is of similar...
RUSSIA and China have wrapped up their five-day joint strategic military drills in Northwest China which involved over 10,000 troops and advanced weaponry. Top officials in both countries vowed further collaborations amid rising US-led provocations in eastern Europe and the Pacific. The last day of the drills – dubbed Zapad/Interaction-2021 –...
SUNDAY August 15 marked the 50th Anniversary of the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement which shattered any illusions about the ability of world capitalism to achieve stability. The Bretton Woods Agreement was signed at a conference of 44 nations at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire in July 1944, with...
IN WASHINGTON on Friday, August 13th, numerous US organisations signed an online petition demanding Tampa General Hospital end their partnership with an Israeli business. Seventeen US organisations, including Dream Defenders, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Florida Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, signed the online petition, ‘Denounce TGH...
THE US AND UK imperialist powers have just suffered a historic defeat in Afghanistan. Last week, even as they scuttled out of the country, the US and UK governments estimated that it would take six months for the Talebs to take Kabul. Further, that they would be able to send...
THE Taliban took control of Afghanistan yesterday, with the collapsing NATO-backed government shrieking in its fear that they are entering the capital, Kabul, ‘from all sides’. The NATO-installed President Ashraf Ghani scuttled out of Kabul for neighbouring Tajikistan.
Yesterday morning, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said: ‘Taliban fighters are to be on...
THOUSANDS of civil service jobs are under threat in the wake of plans to cut numbers swollen by both Brexit and the Covid crisis – which has placed pay cuts and a jobs ‘headcount’ under ‘expenditure review’. The number of civil servants has increased every year since 2016, it is...