National News
Fuel poverty deepens
THE NUMBER of households in Britain in fuel poverty increased by one million during 2009, bringing the total to 5.5 million, according to a Government report published on Monday.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change regards household is in fuel poverty if it needs to spend more than 10 percent of its income on fuel to maintain an adequate level of warmth (usually defined as 21 degrees Celsius, or 70 Fahrenheit for the main living area).
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Unite launches workers’ ‘Big Society’
THE GIANT union Unite last week chose the first anniversary of David Cameron’s “Big Society” to launch their own by inviting students, single parents, the unemployed and claimants to join the union under a new “community membership” scheme for just 50 pence-a-week.
Unite is considering offering legal support and education facilities under the community membership scheme in exchange for “collective community action”, which could include supporting industrial action or campaigns against job cuts.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Trade unions remember Tolpuddle Martyrs
by Alex Kempshall
and New Worker correspondent
AROUND 10,000 trade union and labour movement activists marched through the small Dorset village of Tolpuddle last weekend in the annual commemoration of the Tolpuddle Martyrs — pioneers of the trade union movement who were exiled for trying to organise agricultural workers to fight for better wages and conditions.
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Wikileaks founder at the High Court
by New Worker correspondent
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange appeared at the High Court in London last week to appeal against his extradition to Sweden over sex allegations. The former computer hacker was arrested in December over the sex assault claims, while Wikileaks was in the process of releasing another huge cache of leaked US diplomatic cables.
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No pasarán!
by New Worker correspondent
THIS MONTH Londoners stopped to remember the struggle and sacrifice of those who volunteered to defend the Spanish Republic against General Franco’s rebels and his Nazi and Italian fascist allies during the Spanish Civil War.
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Unions protest at Thameslink contract going to Siemens
FOUR major unions have united in protest at a Government decision to award a contract for the manufacture of rolling stock for the Thameslink programme to German company Siemens rather than the Bombardier factory in Derby. The decision is likely to cost around 1,400 jobs at Bombardier.
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International News
Famine and strikes right across Africa
by Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
AS THE WORLD capitalist economic crisis accelerates, growing food deficits, poverty and imperialist militarism have prompted dislocation and unrest throughout the African continent. Africa has been subjected to the price fluctuations for raw materials and agricultural commodities sold to the West.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Making Tibet prosper
People’s Daily (Beijing)
TIBETANS from all walks of life gathered together on 19th July to take part in a grand celebration marking the 60th anniversary of the peaceful liberation of Tibet.
The peaceful liberation of Tibet in 1961 marked the unification of the Chinese mainland. Millions of Tibetan serfs stood up and became the masters of their fate, creating a new era of the prosperity and development in the region.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Arab rights within Israel!
by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
THE ARAB Bedouins of the Negev Desert have, predictably, been treated worse than dirt by the Israeli authorities, which deny them their rights to their lands, cynically taken from them through manipulation of the law and deny them the right to build settlements. The reaction is Recognition Now!
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Manuel Galban 1931-2011
CUBAN guitarist and composer Manuel Galban, founder of Los Zafiros quartet and featured guitarist of Buena Vista Social Club, died on Thursday 7th July in Havana at 80. His ashes were buried at the Colon Cemetery in Havana.
[ Manuel Galban 1931-2011 ]
Features
Hundreds gather to found Egyptian Socialist Party
by Joyce Chediac in Cairo
THE EGYPTIAN Socialist Party was founded here today before a packed auditorium of more than 400 Egyptians and international guests. What made such an assembly possible was the enormous mass revolution of last January 25th that removed the US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak and made the name “Tahrir Square” an inspiration for popular revolt worldwide.
Composed of Marxists and non-Marxists, the party is centred around a perspective that capitalism has plundered Egypt and impoverished its people and that the only way to develop Egypt and raise the standard of living is through socialist economic measures.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Who’s afraid of Jean-Jacques Rousseau?
by Ray Jones
JEAN-JACQUES Rousseau (1712-78) has long been considered to be one of the leading “philosophes” who provided the theory behind the great French bourgeois revolution of 1789 and who gave the revolutionary Jacobins their ideological basis for this world-changing event.
But these days he is largely ignored by our media and little known generally. It’s even been suggested lately by some bourgeois academics that perhaps he wasn’t so important after all.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]