National News
Fighting to save the Agricultural Wages Board
FARMWORKERS throughout the country are engaged in a mighty struggle to defend the Agricultural Wages Board that has pay levels for agricultural workers since 1948 — a wage level that set a benchmark for many other skilled and semiskilled workers in rural areas.
The Government want to abolish it and MPs will vote on it very soon.
If the AWB is abolished, landowners, including a Prince Charles who owns land in 24 counties, will share a £235 million jackpot at the cost of 150,000 farm workers.
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Osborne’s comments over Philpott
Len McCluskey, Unite general secretary, said: “It is sickening to see George Osborne exploiting the evil of one man and the death of six children to try and demonise ordinary law-abiding people who are struggling to get by.
“He has demeaned his high office to sow hate in a desperate attempt to sell his so-called “reforms” which are making 11.5 million households poorer while millionaires get tax breaks averaging £100,000.
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Police justify assault on handcuffed teenager
A WOMAN who witnessed a brutal assault on a teenager was shocked when the police Professional Standards Unit ignored her, dismissed the victim’s complaints and justified the attacked a “proportionate”.
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University of Sussex privatisation
UNISON, the public sector union, last Monday warned bosses at the University of Sussex that they are running the risk of industrial action. The threat comes in response to their failure to consult on plans to privatise the university’s facilities and catering services.
The proposals will affect 235 staff — more than 10 per cent of the university’s workforce — and are deeply unpopular with both university workers and students. As well as threatening services, the plans could involve the loss of staff pension rights, as well as lead to changes to their working conditions, pay and job security in the future.
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Civil service strikes success
TENS OF thousands of civil servants throughout Britain staged a well-supported half-day strike last Friday in protest at cuts to pay, pensions and working conditions.
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Controlling the past
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange last Monday formally unveiled a new very big tranche of leaks, Project K, on the whistle-blower site.
He was speaking from the Ecuadorean embassy in London via Skype to a press conference of the National Press Club in Washington DC and described the release as “the single most significant geopolitical publication that has ever existed”.
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Fascists hang black doll
A GROUP of hard-line neo-Nazis hanged a golliwog black doll at a far right music gig in Swansea, South Wales last week, according to a report in the Daily Star.
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HSE laws scrapped
CONSTRUCTION workers are alarmed that the Health and Safety Executive has scrapped laws protecting construction workers, allowing employers to recommend rather than insist their workers wear hard hats.
The decision has been condemned by the union Ucatt, which says since the mandatory wearing of safety equipment was introduced, the average number of construction workers dying as a result of a head injury has fallen from 48 a year to 14 a year.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Unions take on Morrison
MEMBERS of GMB, Ucatt and Unite are voting for industrial action after Morrison Facilities Services bosses refused to consult over potential redundancies and changes to pay.
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Supporting Democratic Korea!
by New Worker correspondent
FRIENDS and comrades returned to the Marchmont Centre in central London last Saturday to show their solidarity with Democratic Korea under threat from US imperialism. Though the meeting called by the Friends of Korea committee had been originally been intended to simply celebrate the 101st anniversary of the birth of great leader Kim Il Sung, much of the discussion naturally focused on the current crisis on the Korean peninsula that threatens to plunge all of northern Asia into war.
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International News
Cold War to Korea: Western lies
by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
WESTERN diplomacy is based upon lies, more lies, and yet more lies, a manipulation of the truth, half-truths, a cynical representation of manipulated facts, screenshots, soundbites and video clips to sway public opinion, while the lobbies do what they do to grab what they want and nobody bats an eyelid.
Remember President Ahmadinejád of Iran threatening to wipe Israel off the map? He didn’t.
His statement was manipulated and misquoted but the western coverage and publication of the lie was enough to brand him a monster and his country a pariah. Remember Nato’s promises to the USSR that if the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, they wouldn’t encroach eastwards?
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
China to sustain “relatively high” growth
by Lena Valverde
CHINESE President Xi Jinping said on Monday that his country will keep a “relatively high” economic growth but refrain from only seeking speed in growth.
During a meeting with representatives of about 30 well-known enterprises from China and abroad at the ongoing Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2013, Xi said: China’s development is generally in good shape and the country will move upward for a long time. With our efforts, China will sustain relatively high economic growth, but not super- high economic growth. It is not necessary.” The country’s GDP grew by 7.8 per cent in 2012, the slowest pace in 13 years.
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Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Cuba
Workers World (US)
BEYONCé Knowles- Carter and Shawn Carter celebrated their fifth anniversary in Havana, Cuba, this week.
And why not? The couple, better known as Beyoncé and Jay-Z — two of the most popular, most recognised entertainers in the world — certainly have the right to celebrate their legalised union wherever they want without undue media or, for that matter, congressional attention.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Who profits from global climate change?
by Yuri Skidanov
HEAVY snowfall this April that came as a surprise for many may soon become a grim annual routine. Of course, meteorologists- old-timers will remember frosts in June and blizzards in August, but one thing remains indisputable: the Earth’s climate has changed significantly over the past years, and not for the better. Why is this happening and who benefits from it? There are different opinions in this regard.
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Gerry Adams on Margaret Thatcher
An Phoblacht
MARGARET THATCHER, Britain’s ruthless Prime Minister during the H-Blocks Hunger Strikes in 1980 and 1981, has died at the age of 87 following a stroke.
She was the most reactionary and reviled premier in modern British history. She was also the longest-serving Prime Minister, being in power from 1979 to 1990.
A close friend of fascist dictator President Pinochet of Chile, the “Iron Lady” was loathed by large swathes of the British people for her ruthless suppression of the trade unions and particularly during the miners’ strike of 1984 to 1985.
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The disobedience revolution
by Manuel E Yepe
THE TRIUMPH of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 was the first case of a sustained act of disobedience to US imperialism that managed to successfully resist retaliation, revealing the cause of the aggressiveness, intensity and persistence of the United States’ policy against this small Caribbean country, lacking any other possible explanation or reasonable theory.
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Features
Cuba celebrates its first Tartan Day
by Leandro
Musicians and fans of Celtic music and traditions celebrated the Scottish festival of Tartan Day last Saturday, as the cultural manifestations from the “Celtic nations” continue to strengthen their presence in Cuban musical scene.
Havana’s Tartan Day fest, an initiative of Canadian fiddler María Watson and the Cuban cultural projects Celtic Spirit and the Canada- Cuba Celtic Society, brought together musicians from Canada and Cuba to celebrate their rich heritage and their passion for the culture of the Celtic peoples, who are widely represented in Cuba through the descendants of Asturians and Galicians in Spain.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
DPRK: the country Ché admired the most
by Theo Russell
NEW COMMUNIST Party of Britain comrades joined millions of Koreans in Pyongyang last year to celebrate the centenary of the birth of great leader Kim Il Sung and take part in the World Congress of the Juché Idea that opened in the Democratic Korean capital on 12th April 2012. NCP leader Andy Brooks, together with Peter Hendy and Theo Russell from the Central Committee, held talks with Choe Thae Bok, member of the Political Bureau and secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), and took part in other events and ceremonies throughout the week.
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