Monthly Archives: March 2023
FRENCH protesters downed tools and marched once again in Paris and other cities yesterday. They have been galvanised by President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to ram his deeply unpopular pension reform through parliament without a vote, in what critics have branded a ‘denial of democracy’. More than two months into a bitter...
GRANT Shapps, the Tory secretary of state for energy security and net zero, yesterday unveiled the government’s latest strategy to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. This was immediately denounced by environmentalists as being full of ‘half-baked, half-hearted’ policies that would have nil effect in achieving the reduction in greenhouse...
FRANCE’S small and mid-size towns have been at the forefront of the battle against President Emmanuel Macron’s contentious pension reform – in some places staging the biggest rallies in living memory. In the former Yellow Vest bastion of Montargis, where protesters rallied for a tenth time on Tuesday, the deeply...
REFUGEE support campaign group Care4Calais published an open letter yesterday, signed by 30 top trade union leaders, demanding Safe Passage to the UK. Tory plans to incarcerate asylum seekers on ferries, barges and military bases were announced by Immigration minister Robert Jenrick in the House of Commons yesterday afternoon.
He was...
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the delay of his plan to overhaul Israel’s judiciary, Israeli protest leader Shikma Bressler vowed that demonstrations would continue across the occupied territories. On Monday night, far-right Israeli protesters supporting the government’s judicial overhaul attacked Palestinian passers-by amid nationwide strikes and protests. Prime Minister Benjamin...
A NOTORIOUS far-right Israeli minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has reported that he has got permission from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form his own armed force, which opponents and Palestinians have denounced as a radical militia meant to ratchet up the occupying regime’s brutality. The minister has circulated a letter signed...
ROYAL MAIL bosses are threatening to declare the company bankrupt and place it into ‘a special form of administration,’ leading to the sack for over 100,000 postal workers and the end of the universal delivery service. BBC News reported a management ‘source’ as telling it yesterday: ‘Administration is a real...
ON MONDAY night Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, blamed a wave of early retirements for forcing the Bank to make its eleventh increase in interest rates last week in an attempt to stem the inflationary spiral. Both Bailey and the Tories blame the working class, the elderly...
RUSSIA will determine the future prospects of interaction with Western countries on its own terms, when and if their leadership sobers up, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. ‘When and if they sober up, we will determine our position on the prospects for further relations with them.
‘But of course,...
RIGHTS campaign groups Liberty, Runnymede, Stonewall and INQUEST have responded to Baroness Casey’s review of the Metropolitan Police Service which was produced last week. They wrote: ‘Baroness Casey’s scathing report yet again evidences the deep-seated culture of institutionalised racism, misogyny and homophobia which runs through the Metropolitan Police Force.
‘This is...
TORY prime minister Rishi Sunak yesterday launched a ‘crackdown’ on anti-social behaviour and begging, as the centrepiece of government policies in what is a declaration of war against youth and the homeless. To enforce this crackdown, Sunak announced sweeping new powers for the police including the power to move on...
CHILDREN as young as 8-years-old are being strip-searched by the police, with black children six times more likely to be targeted than non-black. A report by Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza found that thousands of children aged from 8-16 have been strip-searched in the backs of police vans, in...
TRADE unions must build a campaign to defy the anti-strike laws being pushed through Parliament by the Tories, Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack has said. The firefighters’ leader said the Trades Union Congress should lead a campaign of ‘mass non-cooperation and non-compliance’ with the Minimum Service Levels Bill. An...
Syria has condemned in the strongest terms the United States military for carrying out multiple air strikes in the eastern parts of the Arab country against resistance groups, saying the raids are a cover-up for Washington’s ferocious attempts to further plunder energy resources there. Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and...
THE FBU has made a decisive intervention, demanding that the trade unions build a campaign to defy the anti-strike laws being pushed through Parliament by the Tories. Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack has said that the Trades Union Congress should lead a campaign of ‘mass non-cooperation and non-compliance’...
PRIME Minister Rishi Sunak met Benjamin Netanyahu at Downing Street yesterday, just as the Israeli leader faces a huge crisis at home after he has imposed a judicial dictatorship that includes known fascists, and which is opposed by many Jewish people as well as the masses of Palestine. PM Sunak...
THE WEST tried to hit Russian citizens themselves with sanctions, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Thursday in his annual government report to the State Duma. ‘In the very beginning, the West tried to assure us that the sanctions were not aimed against our citizens. ‘At that time, there were...
ON FRIDAY, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside Downing Street in central London to protest the arrival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was set to meet with his British counterpart and ally, Rishi Sunak. Netanyahu has faced escalating protests in Israel over his government’s judicial reform programme, which opponents...
THE BMA yesterday announced dates for a new 96-hour walkout by junior doctors in England after the government’s failure to make any credible offer in talks. Following discussions with the Health Secretary, the BMA has now confirmed further industrial action to be undertaken by junior doctors in England. A 96-hour walkout...
THE BANK of England’s Monetary Policy Committee met yesterday and voted to increase interest rates by 0.25%, pushing the rate up to 4.25% – the 11th consecutive increase by the Bank, hoisting the rate to its highest level in 15 years. The Bank insisted it was forced to make an...
MILLIONS of French workers, youth and their families on Thursday took part in the latest strikes and mass demonstrations across the country against the Macron government. Anger and riots erupted last weekend after the hated pension ‘reform’ to up the retirement age from 62 to 64 was imposed without a...
THE LEADERSHIP of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement announced on Tuesday 21 March, that they would begin the collective hunger strike with up to 2,000 prisoners and more on the days to come. 36 days ago the freedom fighters started steps against the repressive measures, refusing to abide by certain rules.
They...
THE UK government is sending depleted uranium shells for use in the Challenger 2 tanks gifted to Ukraine, a move CND has condemned as an additional environmental and health disaster for those living through the conflict. First reported by Declassified UK, Defence Minister Baroness Goldie admitted in the answer to...
THE EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) ‘rejected’ the deployment of members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) across the country, during Monday’s national shutdown which was called for by the opposition party led by Julius Malema. Parliament has revealed that the deployment of the SANDF will cost the taxpayer...
THE report by Baroness Louise Casey into the Metropolitan Police yesterday damned the force as ‘institutionally racist, sexist and broken’. The report was commissioned by the Met in the wake of the massive tide of anger from the public over the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard in March...
DOZENS of banks in the United States are on the verge of collapse despite the Biden administration’s recent measures to calm the turbulent markets, according to a new study. Nearly 200 American banks face similar risks to those that led to the implosion and bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB),...
THE CAPITALIST world banking system hurtled even deeper into a massive crash this weekend when the central banks of Europe, UK and US forced through a takeover of the Swiss bank Credit Suisse. Late on Sunday, it was announced that Credit Suisse had been bought by its Swiss rival UBS...
IRAN’S Foreign Ministry spokesman has condemned the violence by the French police against anti-government demonstrators in the European country as demonstrating France’s non-adherence to democratic principles and freedom of speech. Nasser Kana’ani made the comment in a post on his Twitter account on Sunday following widely-reported excessive force exerted by...
OVER 70,000 UCU members at 150 universities are striking again today in a three-day action which began yesterday and is due to conclude tomorrow, with lecturers on the picket lines alongside colleagues in other roles, including librarians, technicians, security staff and catering workers. The dispute is over pay, working conditions...
‘EVERY day junior doctors despair as they see operations cancelled and treatment postponed for the millions on the waiting lists because our health services are in crisis.’ BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson were responding yesterday to new data published by NHS England which...
NAVAL forces from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Russia and China have practised shooting at aerial targets during a night-time operation over an area in the Sea of Oman, where the three countries are carrying out large-scale maritime manoeuvres involving various divisions of their military forces. The spokesman for the...
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has visited Mariupol and vowed that new comfortable residential quarters for the people will continue being constructed in Mariupol in the future when speaking with a local resident, who referred to the place as ‘a small corner of paradise’. Mariupol was seized from the fascists of...
ARGENTINA’S National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec) said on Tuesday that inflation in February was 6.6 per cent, while the cumulative year-on-year figure reached 102.5 per cent. At 102.5 per cent, cumulative year-on-year inflation exceeded 100 per cent for the first time since 1991.
The effects of soaring inflation have...
THOUSANDS of French workers have blocked a key highway around Paris and have stepped up strike action at oil refineries in a new massive demonstration of anger after ‘dictator’ Emmanuel Macron and his government adopted a pension cutting reform plan without a parliamentary vote. Furious French workers have condemned Macron...
‘DOWN with the government of murderers’ shouted over 50,000 enraged workers and students last Thursday in Athens in a most militant march on the 24-hour General Strike called by the GSEE (Greek TUC) and ADEDY (Public Sector Federation of Unions). Once again the K. Mitsotakis government unleashed the armed riot...
LAST Friday, the US Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was forced to close down and had its assets seized by the US Federal Reserve following a rush by investors to withdraw money that the bank didn’t have. US president Joe Biden was forced to guarantee the deposits of all the companies...
NEARLY three-quarters of a million public sector workers from eight unions went on strike against the Tory government on Budget Day, Wednesday 15th March, determined to smash its attack on their pay, conditions and the services they provide. There were thousands of picket lines outside schools, hospitals, government offices, Tube...
‘A CONSERVATIVE government believes those who can work should work, so sanctions will be applied more rigorously to those who fail to meet strict work search requirements,’ Tory Chancellor Hunt warned yesterday. Delivering his ‘back-to-work’ budget in the House of Commons, multi-millionaire Hunt threatened the most vulnerable in society –...
OVER half a million public sector workers from eight unions were on strike yesterday, fighting against the Tory government’s attack on their pay, conditions and the services they provide. The 75,000 BMA junior doctors, who began a 72-hour strike on Monday and finished it at 7am this morning, were joined...
TORY Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivered his Budget speech yesterday in the middle of a massive strike action across the country of up to a million workers. 250,000 members of the teaching union NEU began two days of strikes in the fight for the union’s demand for a ‘fully funded above...
HEALTH workers in in the Ver.di trade union in Germany have been out on a 48-hour strike which started on Tuesday which and continued yesterday. Hospitals, psychiatric clinics, care facilities and emergency services have been affected nationwide.
In Bavaria alone, more than 30 municipal hospitals and district clinics, as well as...
A HUGE CROWD rallied in Whitehall, opposite 10 Downing Street on Monday afternoon, the first day of the British Medical Association’s three-day strike of its 75,000 junior doctor members which concludes tomorrow at 7.00am. Doctors on the 2,000-strong rally carried BMA placards and self-made posters and every time a double-decker...
TORY Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will be delivering his Budget speech today in the middle of a massive strike action across the country of up to half a million workers. 250,000 members of the teaching union NEU began two days of strikes in the fight for the union’s demand for a...