Monthly Archives: September 2023
THE BIDEN administration has formally included Israel in the US Visa Waiver Programme. This decision has ignited a heated debate surrounding issues of discrimination, American civil rights, and the intricate geopolitics of the Middle East. The Visa Waiver Programme permits citizens of participating nations to travel to the United States...
THE only way that bankrupt capitalism can survive is through making the working people of the world pay for its crisis with their jobs, their lives, their living standards and the futures of their children, and the generations to come. Yesterday, the capitalist press was full of the latest manifestation...
LOCAL councils have a hole in their finances exceeding £3.5bn collectively for the coming financial year, making it extremely likely they will have to make huge cuts in essential services and jobs, says a report published yesterday by Unison. The figures, based on information gathered from local authorities in England,...
WORKERS blame the government for the 7.7m-long waiting lists in England, finds a survey. As doctors in England begin the longest period of combined industrial action by consultants and junior doctors yet, a new survey findings show that government attempts to blame medics for cripplingly long waiting lists have not...
IN 2005, the Metropolitan Police introduced a trial of body-worn cameras for police officers, a move that was quickly rolled out by forces throughout the country. The use of body cameras, able to record the interactions of police with members of the public, was heralded as a massive step in...
THE Cuban government last Tuesday, September 26th, released images from the security cameras of its embassy in the United States, where an attack with an incendiary bomb was registered last Sunday night. ‘Moment in which the terrorist arrives in front of the Cuban embassy in the US and ignites the...
TORY Home Secretary Braverman came under fire for her rabid attack on refugees and asylum seekers yesterday, with charity ActionAid UK calling her comments ‘a direct affront to gender equality and human rights’. Braverman told an audience at the right wing American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC on Tuesday afternoon...
Iran’s full-scale involvement in BRICS’ activities was the focus of a telephone call between President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran, the Kremlin press office said on Tuesday. The statement from the Kremlin said: ‘Ebrahim Raisi gave thanks for supporting Iran’s application for BRICS membership. The...
THE White House National Security Council spokesman has sounded the alarm about the looming US debt default and the way that it is putting the US’ Ukraine war effort in jeopardy. Spokesman John Kirby told CNN in an interview on Monday that Washington could only support Kiev for a ‘few...
PALESTINIAN resistance movement Hamas on has called on Palestinian people at home and abroad to continue their struggle, by all possible means, in defence of the Palestinian national constants, land, and Islamic and Christian sanctities. Commemorating the 27th anniversary of the tunnel uprising in a statement on Monday, Hamas called...
ON MONDAY, the BMJ health journal published the results of its research into the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and the austerity policies ruthlessly pursued by the Tories since 2010 on the life expectancy of workers, especially the poorest section forced to live on poverty level wages and benefits. While...
HOME Secretary Braverman issued a vicious onslaught against refugees yesterday, seeking to establish her ultra-right wing credentials ahead of the Tory Party Conference in Manchester next week. Speaking to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, Braverman called for the United Nations Refugee Convention to be scrapped. Quoting a report by...
Iran has paraded its military hardware including ‘the longest-range drone in the world’ along with ballistic and hypersonic missiles. Last Friday, to mark the anniversary of the start of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the Iranian military held parades throughout the country and in the waters of the Persian...
FOLLOWING a mass walkout by armed police over the decision to charge an unnamed armed police officer with murder over the shooting of 24-year-old Chris Kaba last year, the Tories wasted no time in declaring their full support for total immunity from prosecution for the police. Home Secretary Suella Braverman...
Over 20,000 staff at scores of universities are striking for five consecutive days this week in their fight for pay and working conditions and against zero hours contracts. At Westminster University near Oxford Street, striker James Spence, lecturer in English, told News Line: ‘Today we start again but there have...
THE TORIES are set to mobilise their new anti-strikes law against railway workers and their unions as further strike action takes place during the coming weeks. Last Friday, the Parliamentary Transport Select Committee announced what it described as ‘principles’ that should be applied in the implementation of the new Strikes...
Haringey Right to Food, organised a Hunger March through Tottenham on Saturday, 23 September. A large crowd gathered outside the Spurs Football Stadium from 12 noon to hear speeches before the march set off down Tottenham High Road to Tottenham Green, big banners waving. Chris Anglin, Tottenham College UCU branch chairman...
SCOTLAND YARD’S firearms command has hit the rocks with their police gunmen refusing to do their duty and carry their firearms against ‘enemies of the state’ unless they get immunity from any prosecution. The gunmen of the SCO19, the specialist firearms unit, have handed back their weapons after a fellow...
CONCERNS are rising over restrictions to free speech, academic inquiry, and student activism related to Palestine at universities across the UK. This trend has been attributed to the mandated use of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism by the government. This definition, originally linked to a project backed by Israel’s intelligence...
LABOUR has promised to hand more powers to Britain’s capitalist state, and to the OBR, the Office for Budget Responsibility, to hold down wages and benefits, to try to make sure that the working class pays the full bill for the bosses’ crisis. The move comes after Liz Truss’s mini-budget...
‘BELFAST, Liverpool and London must unite against hunger during the Right To Food Week 2023’ says Sarah Wooley the general secretary of the Bakers Union. ‘The signs of deepening hardship can be seen in every part of the UK, with longer and longer queues at foodbanks and baby formula under...
UK interest rates have been left unchanged after the Bank of England said price rises were slowing faster than expected. Interest rates were held at 5.25%, already their highest for 15 years. It comes after figures on Wednesday revealed an unexpected slowdown in inflation in August. ‘Inflation has fallen a lot in...
THE Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) yesterday made the surprise decision to hold UK interest rates at 5.25% instead of the widely predicted increase to 5.5%. Since December 2021 the Bank has made 14 consecutive interest rate increases with the aim of dragging the UK economy out of...
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced on Wednesday that the Metropolitan Police Officer who shot Chris Kaba is being charged with murder. Chris Kaba, 24, was fatally shot by a firearms officer from the Metropolitan Police over one year ago on 5 September 2022 in Streatham, London. He was an...
STRIKING consultants and junior doctors held mass pickets outside hospitals around the country yesterday in a show of strength in defence of the NHS against vicious Tory government attacks. Yesterday was the first day that both junior doctors and consultants have taken strike action together, defiantly rebuffing Tuesday’s announcement by...
The Federation of Greek Public Sector Trade Unions (ADEDY), the Athens and Piraeus Trades Councils and dozens of trade unions have called a 24-hour national strike today against a most reactionary anti-working class government Bill that obliterates most basic workers’ rights. Strike marches have been organised in all Greek cities. The...
AS LONG AGO AS LAST FEBRUARY, the Regulatory Policy Committee’s report on the Tory proposed anti-strike legislation found the government had not fully assessed the impact of the Bill. RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive, Pat Cullen, said then: ‘This is a damning assessment of the government’s attempt to stifle...
BY SHABBIR RIZVI AMERICANS are well aware of the value of the dollar, at least when it comes to their own purchasing power at home. If they didn’t know before, then they certainly learned this year.
The year 2023 has so far marked rising costs of living for everyday items amidst...
YESTERDAY, NHS consultants began a 48-hour strike that has propelled a head-on confrontation between doctors and their union, the BMA, and a Tory government that is determined to destroy the NHS and destroy the trade union movement. Consultants are joined today by junior doctors who are walking out alongside them...
'WE are striking to defend the NHS,’ consultants told News Line on their picket lines as Tory Health Secretary Barclay issued a declaration of war against the British Medical Association (BMA) and its members yesterday. Barclay announced that the Tories’ new Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, under which strikers...
AS EUROPE’S migrant crisis grows right across the continent, many in the Russian media are recalling the late Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi’s prophecy made several months before his violent death. ‘Now listen you, people of NATO. You’re bombing a wall which stood in the way of African migration to Europe,...
IT was almost exactly one year ago that the then Tory prime minister Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng delivered a mini-budget that promised to turbo charge economic growth and drive crumbling British capitalism into a bright new future. The way to achieve this miracle was simple – massive...
STRIKE ballots will open at 143 universities across the UK from today in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions. The University and College Union (UCU) ballot will run until Friday 3rd November and is aggregated. A successful ballot will renew the union’s existing strike mandate and allow staff at...
THE leader of Birmingham City Council has apologised to the people of the city and insisted he had ‘no prior notice’ or knowledge of its ‘bankruptcy’ crisis. Councillor John Cotton said he had met with Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove this week to discuss support. He confirmed ‘all council activity’ was...
OUT OF DESPAIR or delusion, the US government has been inventing new ways to destroy the Russian economy, but its attempts will fail, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said on Friday, commenting on another wave of anti-Russian sanctions. ‘Washington, once again, has ramped up its futile efforts to...
THE Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has categorically rejected UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who labelled and condemned the revolutionary resistance of the Palestinian people against the Israeli regime as ‘violence’, saying what takes place in the Palestinian territories is the right to self-defence against the ‘occupying entity’, that is attacking...
THE IOPC (Independent Office for Police Conduct) has begun an investigation as a result of its review into the way Greater Manchester Police handled complaints from Andrew Malkinson’s legal team. Malkinson, who served 17 years in prison for a rape he never committed, had his conviction overturned by the Court...
THE US Treasury Department has announced new sanctions targeting seven individuals and entities linked to the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah. The new sanctions target Hezbollah’s revenue-generating ‘operatives and financiers’ in South America and Lebanon, the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said in a press release...
A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE Australian property tycoon, Tim Gurner, speaking at a property summit on Tuesday, spoke out clearly revealing the contempt these mega rich bosses have for workers and the vision they have of a very near future where the working class is forced, under the whip of mass unemployment,...
THERE was a very lively and well-attended rally at the front of the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel yesterday lunchtime, with delegations of Unite strikers attending from four different NHS trusts. Strikers from Barts Health, East London Foundation (ELF), Barking, Havering and Redbridge and Guys and St Thomas are fighting...
TUC Congress delegates in Liverpool on Tuesday voted for composite motion C22: ‘Right to boycott’ from the National Education Union. Moving the motion, Louise Regan, NEU, said: ‘Congress, we have a very proud history in the trade union movement of standing in solidarity with the Palestinians.
‘Today, Palestinians need that solidarity...