Lead story
Stop the cruel sanctions
by Daphne Liddle
NICK BOLES the Tory Minister for Business, last week called on his own government to review the “inhuman inflexibility” of the current system of using sanctions — the cutting off of benefits — to punish claimants for the slightest failing of the bureaucratic tasks placed on them by the Department of Work and Pensions.
Sanctions can cut people’s only source of income for between a month and three years. They are usually applied to people who fail to keep an appointment for whatever reason.
Sometimes they fail to turn up because they did not get the letter — this happens a lot to homeless people who have no address. One single mother was sanctioned for staying at the cot-side of her desperately ill new-born baby in hospital.
Others have been sanctioned for attending the funeral of a close family member. One man was sanctioned because he had a heart attack during a Work Capability Assessment interview because he did not complete the interview.
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[ Stop the cruel sanctions ]
Russian reactionary killed in Moscow
by our European Affairs correspondent
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has vowed to personally oversee the investigation into the assassination of a prominent member of the right-wing opposition gunned down in Moscow on the eve of a mass rally against the government.
Boris Nemtsov was shot dead last Friday night while walking across a bridge in central Moscow with his girlfriend, a 23-year-old Ukrainian model.
Nemtsov was a major player in the Yeltsin regime but his pro-American stance soon put him at loggerheads with the Putin leadership. In recent years he had tried, with little success, to build a number of reactionary fronts to challenge Putin. He was a frequent visitor to the United States, where he would often meet with Senator John McCain, a leading member of the American war-lobby. In recent months he had taken the lead in opposing Crimea’s return to the Russian Federation and Russia’s support for the anti-fascist struggle in Ukraine.
Though the imperialist media have been quick to blame Putin for the death of one of their stooges it’s highly unlikely that the intelligence services would carry out a demonstrative murder right in front of the Kremlin when so many other low-profile options, like fatal “accidents”, are available to them.
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[ Russian reactionary killed in Moscow ]