Monthly Archives: June 2022
PRESIDENT Emmanuel Macron is set to lose his outright majority after a strong challenge from a coalition of left-wing parties in National Assembly elections. Socialist Jean-Luc Melenchon, leading the left-Green alliance, finished neck-and-neck with Macron’s Ensemble (Together) alliance, in terms of votes cast in Sunday’s first round. The president now...
BY YONATAN MOSQUERA NEXT Sunday 19th of June the final round of presidential elections will take place in Colombia. After having defeated the establishment candidates in the first round, the runners up are Gustavo Petro and Rodolfo Hernandez.
The first-round vote reflected widespread weariness with the traditional political parties, repulsion at...
‘Grant Shapps needs to stop smearing the RMT and unshackle the rail operating companies so they can come to a negotiated settlement that can end this dispute.’ This was RMT general secretary Mick Lynch’s response to the Tory Transport Secretary’s threat to change the law to allow agency workers to...
PALESTINIAN Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki has handed the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor the official outcome of the Palestinian investigation into Israel’s murder of veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin last month. During a meeting in The Hague with ICC Public Prosecutor...
THE TUC leaders will be meeting in Blackpool on Wednesday evening June 15th just three days before their huge 100,000 plus ‘March for Change’ in London on June 18th. This march will be a prelude to a major strike action on 21, 23 and 25 June by 50,000 RMT members...
PM JOHNSON in his Thursday speech in Blackpool unveiled his war on two fronts against the Russian workers abroad, and at home against the UK working class, that is currently being pauperised by massive price rises, and is preparing to respond with historic strike actions. With the war in the...
UKRAINE has rejected calls from Russia to de-mine its ports around the Black Sea to resume grain shipments. Ukraine accuses Moscow of trying to ‘attack’ the port of Odessa, the largest seaport in the crisis-stricken country.
Sergiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for Odessa’s regional administration, in a statement on Wednesday, noted that...
THE Fire Brigades Union has written to the government to demand it rethinks its decision to reject a key Grenfell Tower Inquiry recommendation, on the evacuation of disabled residents of high-rise buildings. The inquiry recommended that ‘that the owner and manager of every high-rise residential building be required by law...
PM JOHNSON said yesterday in Blackpool: ‘Today we are living in the aftermath of the worst pandemic for a century, and once again we are steering into the wind. ‘We face global pressures on prices caused by the lingering effects of Covid and the shock of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. ‘We...
HEALTH workers demonstrated in cities across France on Tuesday to demand higher pay and more staff for services stretched to breaking point, just days before the country votes in parliamentary elections on June 12 and June 19. Recently-re-elected President Emmanuel Macron has ordered a probe into which emergency units need...
TORY Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared in Blackpool yesterday to deliver what was billed as his great ‘reset speech’, to shore up his leadership after Monday’s no confidence vote. Following this vote, where 41% of his own MPs voted to dump him, Johnson has embarked on a series of speeches...
£4 BILLION of unusable PPE bought in the first year of pandemic will be burnt ‘to generate power’. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also voices concerns about risk of further questionable payouts by NHS commissioning restructured under upcoming reforms. The Department for Health & Social Care (DHSC) lost 75% of the...
THE RECENTLY held two-day national meeting of the All India Coal Workers’ Federation in Jharkhand’s Ranchi decided on launching a month-long series of actions over the break-up and privatisation of Coal India Ltd (CIL), the largest coal producer in the world. CIL is an essential energy source for India’s industrialisation...
WITH a Civil War raging inside the completely split Tory Party there could be no better time for taking on the Tory regime, defeating it and going forward to a workers government and socialism. The law-breaking activities of the government’s leaders are now well documented, and fines have been paid...
THE RMT has called a National Rail Strike on Tuesday June 21st, when over 50,000 railway workers, including Network Rail, 13 train operating companies and London Underground will bring the country to a standstill. Yesterday afternoon, the RMT announced three days of national strike action across the railway network in...
St George’s Hospital workers employed by the public services privateer Mitie are escalating their action with a week-long strike commencing on Monday 20th June. On their third day of three days of strike action yesterday, they held a powerful picket and rally. The 600 domestics, hostesses and cleaners employed by the...
4,000 striking station and revenue control staff shutdown London Underground on Monday in a show of strength to oppose pension attacks and job cuts. Trains remained in depots across the network and RMT union members reported huge attendances at picket lines despite heavy rain across the capital. 600 station staff jobs...
GERMANY, the EU’s biggest economy, is fast heading into recession according to economists who are growing increasingly fearful that inflation fuelled by the EU sanctions on Russia will crash the economy of the eurozone. Germany, for years the economic powerhouse of the EU, is facing the nightmare of the highest...
TORY PM Boris Johnson was mortally wounded in the no confidence vote in parliament last night, with 40% of Tory MPs voting against his leadership of the party. Yesterday morning, Sir Graham Brady, Chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs announced that he had received more than the required...
‘I HOPE this action is the beginning of a wider movement of the working class standing together in solidarity and working towards a general strike against this tyrannical government,’ said striking Tube worker and RMT member Robert Jones. He was speaking on the picket line outside Arnos Grove Station in...
TWO MEN will be executed in Myanmar after the military junta rejected their death sentence appeals last Saturday, in what will be the first judicial executions in the country in decades. ‘It’s confirmed that Phyo Zayar Thaw and (Ko) Jimmy are on the execution list,’ junta spokesperson Zaw Min Tun...
BORIS JOHNSON is being dumped as prime minister, as Tory MPs held a vote of no-confidence in his leadership last night. Yesterday morning, the chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, Graham Brady, announced that he had over 54 letters calling for Johnson’s removal submitted by Tory MPs, the threshold...
IRAN on Saturday started ceremonies of commemorating the 33rd anniversary of the demise of late founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, in the presence of senior Iranian officials and other officials from various countries of the world ‘Imam Khomeini was the spirit of the Iranian Islamic Republic, and therefore,...
London Underground is closed down today as Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) members staged another 24-hour strike over jobs, pensions and in defence of their agreements. Transport for London issued their usual disclaimer for any responsibility, claiming that they haven’t ‘proposed any changes to pensions and nobody has or will...
‘MONDAY’S action will be immense and there will be more of the same if London Underground (LU) continues its attacks,’ leading RMT officer Carlos Barros warned last Friday ahead of today’s 24-hour London-wide Tube station staff strike. More than 4,000 station staff are on strike today against LU’s declaration of...
HUNDREDS of people marched in the funeral processions of two of the Palestinians, out of three killed by the Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in 24 hours. The latest killing of a Palestinian by Israeli forces took place earlier on Thursday, in a raid by Israeli forces in...
SIX people have been charged by the Met police for allegedly breaking Covid-19 lockdown rules while attending the Sarah Everard vigil in south London. Many hundreds went to the vigil-mass demonstration at Clapham Common in March 2021 after Ms Everard was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a serving Met police...
TUBE staff have called for urgent talks with London’s mayor to avert a strike expected to cause severe disruption. Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union workers are due to walk out on Monday for 24 hours, the first working day after the Platinum Jubilee weekend.
Transport for London (TfL) apologised and...
THE official Palestinian presidential spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, yesterday condemned what he described as ‘the dangerous Israeli escalation against our people’, which resulted in the killing of three Palestinians during the last 24 hours. He stressed that ‘we are at a crossroads’, and that the policy of denunciation and condemnation...
Russia has once again warned the United States against sending advanced rocket systems to Ukraine. Three months into the war in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden said he will send more medium-range high mobility artillery rocket systems to Kiev.
On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow believes the White House...
THE national demonstration and march on Parliament called by the TUC on Saturday June 18th has met with a massive response throughout the working class. This national demonstration started as a vague promise by the TUC leaders back in March in order to placate the growing anger of workers at...
AS the crisis across UK airports deepens, the leading aviation union, Unite, is blaming businesses for taking public money but then slashing jobs during the pandemic. However the union did not fight to save these jobs, as a leading BA worker told News Line yesterday. Gurjit Singh, Heathrow Airport BA Ground...
RUSSIAN forces have taken control of half a key industrial city in eastern Ukraine, as they continue an unrelenting push deeper into the Donbass region. A Ukrainian military official said on Tuesday that Russian forces now controlled half of the eastern Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk.
‘Unfortunately, the front line divides the city in...
ON SUNDAY, thousands of right wing Israeli settlers stormed Damascus Gate in occupied East Jerusalem to mark the so-called flag march in the Old City. Israeli settlers chanted racist slogans such as ‘Death to Arabs,’ as they marched through the streets of the old city. Israeli forces dispersed Palestinian protesters after...
The TUC (Trades Union Congress) has called a summit at the Winter Gardens, Blackpool on Wednesday, June 15. ‘to bring together union leaders and workers who are affected by the cost-of-living crisis.’ The summit is being held three days ahead of the TUC’s march on parliament which takes place on...
A Day of action against the US blockade on Cuba has been held in several countries, with supporters of the Latin American nation determined that the imperialistic counter-revolutionary blockade and sanctions must end now. According to the Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, the blockade is the main...
THE BRITISH pound is facing an ‘existential crisis’ that is only going to get worse according to the Bank of America and the outlook is ‘grim’. With the price of oil driven through the roof this week, and set to soar even further following the EU announcement of further bans...