National News
Anti-Muslim hate crime soars
HATE CRIMES against Muslims in Britain have risen in the last three years, according to official police figures. The figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests show that racially or religiously aggravated harassment crimes surged from 15,249 to 17,605 between 2012 and 2014.
More than 47,000 hate crimes were recorded over the same period. Many more incidents will not have been reported. In one instant in August 2014 a man hung swastikas and Ku Klux Klan symbols over the site where a mosque was going to be built, writing the words: “Burn in hell” over the flags. Other incidents involved football fans tearing pages from the Koran to make confetti.
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Thousands on Bristol march against austerity
from New Worker correspondent
THOUSANDS of people took to the streets of Bristol last Wednesday in a protest against further proposed austerity cuts. It was organised in less than a week by a group of seven sixth form students — mainly young women — who were surprised by the size of the turn-out and had to change the route to accommodate all who came.
Support grew rapidly for the group, which called itself Bristol Against Austerity, and in the evening and estimated 4,000 people packed every corner of Park Street as the demonstration snaked round the city centre.
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‘Catastrophic safety and security failings’ on Trident
FORMER Royal Navy submariner Able Seaman William McNeilly is on the run after revealing serious safety and security failings on Trident submarines.
McNeilly has served on HMS Victorious, which is armed with Trident nuclear missiles. He is now in hiding after his decision to expose what he saw as potentially catastrophic safety and security failings which could cause a nuclear explosion in dock in Faslane, Scotland, or near Britain on patrol.
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Disability activists call for new national body
DISABLED people “should come together in new national body” say leading activists who are appalled at the prospect of another five years of attacks on disability rights and pensions.
They are working on plans to set up a new national organisation of disabled people to bring disabled people’s organisations and disabled activists together under a non-party political umbrella, funded by membership fees and with elections to a steering group or executive.
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Young face 30 hours workfare per week
YOUNG people who are not in work or employment face being forced to work 30 hours a week or lose their benefits — leaving them very little time to seek proper waged work.
The proposals would put young adults who have been out of work, education or training for six months, “neets,” into compulsory community work such as making meals for the elderly or joining local charities.
Under the scheme, Jobseekers’ Allowance would be abolished for 18 to 21-year-olds and replaced with the already announced “Youth Allowance” of the same amount — £57.35 a week, or £1.91 per hour of work — a fraction of the minimum wage.
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Force the old to work for their pensions
FORMER senior civil servant Lord Bichard last week proposed that the elderly should be expected to work for their pensions.
He said fresh thinking is needed to help meet the cost of an ageing population. Retired people could be encouraged to do community work such as caring for the “very old” or face losing some of their pension, he suggested.
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Too much medicine?
THE ACADEMY of Medical Royal Colleges has launched a campaign against “too much medicine” urging doctors to withhold treatments that are “unnecessary”.
Doctors are to stop giving patients scores of tests and treatments, such as x-rays for back pain and antibiotics for flu, in an unprecedented crackdown on the “over-medicalisation” of illness.
In a move that has roused fears that it will lead to the widespread rationing of NHS care, the body representing Britain’s 250,000 doctors is seeking to ensure that patients no longer undergo treatment that is unlikely to work, may harm them and wastes valuable resources.
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Scottish News
from our Scottish political correspondent
THE SCOTTISH National Party makes noisy claims that it will be the main opposition to the Tory Government at Westminster. This suggests they cannot count very well as their 56 MPs will be greatly outnumbered by Labour’s 232.
This has as much validity as their previous promise to “Lock the Tories out of Downing Street”.
In stark contrast the party loses its tongue when it comes to boasting about its efficiency in governing Scotland. On close examination it is not too difficult to see why. The SNP is simply not up to the mark when it actually comes to delivering the goods.
Take education for example, since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament educational policy (apart from some UK grants to universities) education has been entirely devolved to Holyrood. No gold stars can be awarded to the SNP. A dunce’s cap would be more appropriate.
Free tuition is one of the SNP’s much trumpeted policies. With typical modesty Alex Salmond had a sculpture made of his boast that “rocks would melt under the sun” before an SNP government would reintroduce tuition fees.
In an ideal world that would be an excellent policy, but instead as we live under capitalism that is less than ideal, on closer examination it is not so wonderful. It is like getting two for the price of one on Saville Row suits in that you still need a great deal of money to take advantage of the offer.
When the SNP came to power in 2007 it did so with a promise to “dump the debt” accumulated by students at Scottish universities. Grants to Scottish students are very low (£1,820 for those on degree courses, and a third less than that for HNC courses).
These are in fact the lowest in Western Europe. In real terms this figure is just over half its value when the Nats came to power. As a result Student debt has in fact grown enormously, particularly among those from the poorer working class families whom the nationalists purport to seek to help.
More than 70 per cent of students take out loans; a four-year degree course can result in £23,000-27,000 of debt. The repayment rules in Scotland are tighter than in England where waivers and local bursaries are available.
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Nakba Day in London
by New Worker correspondent
SCORES of people gathered in Whitehall on Friday 15th May and in Kensington High Street, opposite the Israeli embassy on Saturday 16th May to mark Nakba Day.
To Palestinians Nakba Day is Catastrophe Day — the day on 15th May 1948 when thousands of Palestinians were attacked, massacred and brutally driven from their homes into refugee camps to create the new State of Israel.
They have never been allowed to return to their homes, in violation of international law.
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International News
Saudi war jets launched three airstrikes on UNICEF aid vessels
Sputnik
SAUDI war jets made three air-strikes on UNICEF vessels ferrying humanitarian supplies to the north-western Yemeni province of Saada, Yemeni television reported last Sunday.
According to UNICEF, the delivery of aid to Yemen was made during a five-day humanitarian ceasefire, which took effect on 12th May.
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Wisconsin protests demand US war from Australian soil ‘Justice for Tony Robinson!’
Workers world (US)
HUNDREDS took to the streets of Madison on 13th May in response to the non-indictment of Matt Kenney, the killer cop who on 6th March murdered Tony Robinson, a 19-year-old Black student.
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US war from Australian soil
by Tom Pearson
A UNITED States defence department official has made clear that US plans to build up its military presence in the north of Australia, including surveillance bombers and an increasing numbers of marines and other personnel, is to target China.
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In Equating USSR to Nazi Germany West covers up own shameful history
by Ekaterina Blinova - Sputnik International
BY EQUATING the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin to Adolf Hitler, Ukrainian politicians and their western supporters are trying to cover-up their own shameful history, American professor Grover Carr Furr told Sputnik.
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Thousands come to Soviet War Memorial in Berlin on WWII Victory Day
Sputnik
AT LEAST 15,000 people came on Saturday 9th May to the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park to commemorate those who fell while liberating Europe during World War II.
On 9th May Russia and former Soviet states celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Victory over Nazi Germany. The day also commemorates the end of war in Europe.
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Nothing Sacred: Ukrainian nationalists pledge to destroy Babi Yar monuments
Sputnik
NATIONALISTS decided to demolish monuments to the victims of the Babi Yar WWII massacre, Ukrainian newspaper Vesti reported on Monday.
Petro Poroshenko’s decree on “de-communisation” of Ukraine and recognition of Nazi collaborators as freedom fighters gave a go-ahead to radicals who want to erase all monuments and symbols of the past with hammers and crow-bars.
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Features
Ernst Thälmann hero of the working class
by Rob Gowland
AMERICAN academics who have a left-wing perspective on their chosen subject do not have an easy road. Any attempt to present their students with a viewpoint that reflects a working-class interpretation of events or phenomena runs the very real risk of being held up by right-wingers (students’ parents, other academics, local “opinion makers”, and church leaders) as “Communist propaganda”, and we all know how despicable that is!
For many US academics the prospect of being mired in battles with their university’s administration until eventually being forced out is just too much to face. They take the easier option and keep their opinions private, not rocking the boat and feeding their family instead. It is sad, but understandable.
So when a comrade sent us a copy of a book by an American academic on Ernst Thälmann, the German Communist leader murdered by the Nazis, I was naturally curious to see what approach it took. It didn’t take long to find out.
The book is Hitler’s Rival by Russel Lemmons, Professor of History at Jacksonville State University in Kentucky and published by the University Press of Kentucky. It is subtitled, Ernst Thälmann in Myth and Memory.
Thälmann was the respected and popular leader in the 1920s of the German Communist party (KPD), the largest outside the Soviet Union. It was in part because of the growing success and influence of the KPD that the German ruling class turned to the Nazis. They knew that whatever else he did, Hitler’s rabble-rousers and uniformed thugs would save them from Bolshevism. He would also lead them to war, which they thought was no bad thing, promising huge profits, conquest, raw materials, and power. But especially profits.
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Tories back in power What next for the north of Ireland?
by Declan Kearney - An Phoblacht
THIS Westminster election was always set to be both politically and economically significant, for the British state and the Six Counties.
The landslide in support for the Scottish National Party has changed the Scottish political landscape, perhaps irrevocably. In the North (of Ireland), the contradictions of the Union and partition have been deepened by British Government austerity.
The new Tory Government’s legislative and economic policy programme will be in conflict with both the Northern Executive’s Programme for Government and the Good Friday Agreement.
A likely referendum on EU membership could also have far-reaching ramifications, jeopar
Sinn Féin said consistently, before and during this election, that it was about a choice between austerity and equality. We said austerity under either the Tories or British Labour would have a detrimental economic and political impact in the North. That message was vindicated by the massive Sinn Féin share of the popular vote in the North.
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On lynching and the Ku Klux Klan
The 19th May will mark the 125th birthday anniversary of the great anti-imperialist leader, Ho Chi Minh. “Uncle Ho” was a leader of the National Liberation Front, a people’s army that defeated both French and US military invaders in Vietnam. The Vietnamese communist leader died in 1969. Six years later US imperialism was driven out of south Vietnam and the country was reunited. In 1924 he wrote this article on racism in America.
by Ho Chi Minh
IT IS well-known that the Black race is the most oppressed and the most exploited of the human family. It is well-known that the spread of capitalism and the discovery of the New World had as an immediate result the rebirth of slavery, which was for centuries a scourge for the Negroes and a bitter disgrace for mankind. What everyone does not perhaps know is that after 65 years of so-called emancipation, American Negroes still endure atrocious moral and material sufferings, of which the most cruel and horrible is the custom of lynching.
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