National News
Clegg gets jitters over growth
DEPUTY Prime Minister Nick Clegg is starting to panic over the failure of the Con-Dem Coalition’s policies to produce the economic growth needed to reduce the big Government spending deficit.
This deficit has been the alibi for all the Coalition’s vicious attacks on working class living standards but all the cuts in public spending, rather than improving the figures are making them worse as people have less money to spend.
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BNP faces winding up
THE BRITISH National Party is on the verge of disappearing for being unable to pay its debts.
The neo-fascist party is an urgent winding up order in 14 days, if it fails to pay the courts £45,000.
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‘Watchdog’ will become ‘monster’
MONITOR, the NHS watchdog to be set up under the Government’s restructuring of the health service, will not be monitoring patient care or levels of service provided but “fair” competition between health service providers, including the private sector.
It will act not on behalf of patients but on behalf of private companies.
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Boundary ‘gerrymandering’
THE COALITION government last week published its proposals for reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600 by changing constituency boundaries.
This means many MPs will see their constituencies merge with others, which could lead to an election battle with someone from their own party.
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Railways ‘a rich man’s toy’
TRANSPORT Secretary Philip Hammond last week claimed that the railways are now a “rich man’s toy” and that fare rises are justified because the people who travel by train are rich enough to afford them.
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Faster rise in pension age
WORK AND Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith last week said the timetable for raising the state pension age to 67 is too slow.
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Strike action at Fujitsu
THE UNIONS Unite and PCS last week announced joint strike action over unfair pay for Fujitsu workers.
More than 1,000 Fujitsu workers have voted to go on strike on Monday 19th September, following disputes over pay and a breakdown in industrial relations.
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International News
Israeli embassy stormed in Cairo
Radio Havana Cuba
RELATIONS between Israel and Egypt are deteriorating following an attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo last week that forced the ambassador and other embassy staff to be evacuated. Protesters scaled the walls of the embassy, replaced the Israeli flag with the Egyptian tricolour and seized embassy documents from a storeroom.
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US arms sales to Taiwan: political farce
by Zhong Sheng
ACCORDING to US media reports, the Obama administration will make a final decision by 1st October on Taiwan’s arms request. As the deadline is drawing near, certain US Congress members are becoming increasingly restless and are using all means to push for the arms sale to Taiwan, despite the knowledge that it will severely damage the country’s relations with China.
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Protests follow killing in Bahrain
by Gene Clancy
THOUSANDS of people marched through a village six miles from the centre of Manama, Bahrain’s capital, on 1st September for the funeral of a 14-year-old boy killed during a protest against the government the day before.
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South Koreans unite against newly exposed US crime
by Monica Moorehead
THIS MAY three US soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War — Steven House, Robert Travis and Richard Cramer — publicly admitted that in 1978 they participated in dumping hundreds of barrels of toxic chemicals, including Agent Orange, at Camp Carroll, a US military base in south Korea.
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Features
Famine and revolt in Africa
Rob Gowland
OVER THE years the people of Africa have had a rough trot at the hands of the world’s great modern empires. Long before the carve up of empires that was the First World War, Africans were being killed, brutalised or enslaved by the forces of the various European empires.
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The World after 9/11
by Alex Silva
WE MARKED one decade since the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Centre in New York, this week. While analysts try to find out how much the world has changed since then, others would also like to know what really happened on that day.
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Celebrating 100th birthday of Vietnam’s hero General Giap
by Paddy Colligan and G Dunkel
GENERAL Vo Nguyen Giap, a hero and leader in the Vietnamese people’s struggles against Japanese, French and US imperialism, celebrated his 100th birthday on 25th August.
Now frail and living in a medical facility, Giap is regarded as a national treasure and a link to the historic 40 years of war to free Vietnam from colonial and imperialist control. For his military training, Giap used political understanding and revolutionary tenacity to develop the concept of “people’s war” that defeated the vastly better armed US forces in Vietnam.
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