National News
Ofsted inspectors slam G4S child prison
INSPECTORS for the education watchdog Ofsted made a shocking report after visiting the Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre in Northamptonshire, run by the private security company G4S, saying that children detained there were subjected to degrading treatment and racist comments from staff who were under the influence of illegal drugs.
The inspectors, who visited Rainsbrook earlier this year, said staff had behaved extremely inappropriately towards the young people in their care, causing them “distress and humiliation”.
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Apprenticeship scheme makes little impact on unemployment
THE GOVERNMENT’S apprenticeship scheme is failing in its main purpose of reducing youth unemployment.
A survey conducted by the Local Government Association revealed that 42 per cent of the apprenticeships went to people aged over 25 and most of them were already in employment.
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March against Monsanto
PROTESTORS gathered last Saturday in Richmond Terrace as part of the global March Against Monsanto event, involving people in more than 600 cities around the world who are angry with the activities giant agricultural chemical company.
The March Against Monsanto movement, based in the United States, issued a mission statement: “Why do we march? Research studies have shown that Monsanto’s genetically-modified (GMO) foods can lead to serious health conditions such as the development of cancer tumours, infertility and birth defects.
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Chagos Islanders demand right to return
MEMBERS of the Chagos Islands chanted as they demonstrated opposite Downing Street in London on 22nd May, to bring attention to the issue of them being forced from their homes by British Forces over 40 years ago to make way for a US military base.
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BBC admits bias against Palestine
A BBC investigation has found that one of its senior presenters, Sarah Montague, breached the organisation’s editorial standards on impartiality in a radio interview she conducted with Israeli defence minister Moshe Yaalon in March.
The investigation was carried out following allegations of pro-Israel bias against Montague’s interview by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and a number of concerned individuals who complained to the BBC.
The ruling against Montague is the second time in recent months that the BBC has upheld a complaint initiated by the PSC.
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South London journalists ballot for action
THE NATIONAL Union of Journalists is balloting members employed by Newsquest South London for action against cuts and closures and to defend jobs.
Last week the company announced plans to restructure and cut staff across its South London newspaper titles. Newsquest is one of the UK’s largest regional newspaper publishers with more than 200 newspapers, magazines and trade publications, including 17 dailies.
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Kone Lift workers threaten strike
WORKERS at Finnish- owned lift company Kone plc are threatening strike action over the use of a tracker device in employees’ vehicles.
Staff at the firm’s Gateshead base are among 300 engineering service workers who are in dispute with Kone over use of the VAMS system, which they claim is unreliable for measuring workloads. Unproductive talks between the company and union officials were staged through the conciliation service Acas, and strike action may go ahead this week.
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Black students refused entry to Leicester nightclub
A GROUP of students last week were refused entry to the Ghost nightclub in Leicester “because they are black”. Since then the doorman has been suspended.
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Tribunal rules in favour of single parents on bedroom tax
THOUSANDS of separated parents are being wrongly charged Bedroom Tax and are entitled to rebates after a surprise legal ruling. A tribunal decided that a child of parents living apart is entitled a bedroom in each of their homes for visits.
And the judge said Bedroom Tax (a cut in housing benefit for tenants deemed to have too many bedrooms) should not apply.
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Scottish News
from our Scottish Political Correspondent
THE THIRD week in May is Scotland’s holiest week. It is when four of Scotland’s Presbyterian many churches hold their party congresses, or General Assemblies as they are known.
Here they do their annual housekeeping and issue stirring calls on the great issues of the day. By far the biggest is the Church of Scotland but its claim to be the true Church of Scotland is strongly contested by many others.
The Scottish Reformation of the 1560s was much a more revolutionary event than that in England; the monasteries were ransacked by the townspeople, rather than by government officials as in Henry VIII’s England.
Royalist attempts to restore some form of Episcopal structures (such as in the contemporary Church of England) were final defeated in 1690.
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International News
Japanese protest against new US base
by Ivan Martínez
THOUSANDS of Japanese demonstrators have staged a massive rally, protesting against the planned construction of a new US airbase on the southern island of Okinawa. Organisers of the demonstration said about 15,000 people formed a human chain around the parliament building in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, on Sunday.
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Cuban Medical Brigade in Nepal
by Lisandra Fariñas Acosta
ONE MONTH has passed since the devastating 25th April earthquake in Nepal, and two weeks since the powerful 12th May aftershock, the same night Cuba’s Henry Reeve Medical Brigade arrived in the country. Forty-nine Cuban medical professionals are taking on the population’s needs, defying the damage, fear and grief around them.
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US police brutality continues
by Lu Jiafei
WHEN Cleveland white police officer Michael Brelo walked out of the courtroom on Saturday without any conviction for his role in the 2012 shooting spree by 13 officers at two unarmed black motorists, an eerie sensation of witnessing a hideous serial with an almost duplicate plot line inevitably descends on you.
Inside the courtroom, Brelo cried out in relief and hugged his attorney who later called the prosecution “ruthless”. Outside the courtroom, relatives of the slain couple, Timothy Russell, 43, and Malissa Williams, 30, cried out of despair and outrage and protests were once again ignited.
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Bandung at 60
by Norman (Otis) Richmond, aka Jalali
INDIAN Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s arrival in Canada in April was major news. Modi was greeted as if he was a music star like Bob Marley or Bruce Springsteen. India has a long history of leaning left and not being a servant of western interest. It is no surprise that this Asian nation is a foundation member of BRICS.
The new kid on the economic block is BRICS, an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The grouping was originally known as “BRIC” before the inclusion of South Africa in 2010.
They are distinguished by their large, fast-growing economies and significant influence on regional and global affairs; all five are G-20 members. Since 2010 the BRICS nations have met annually at formal summits. Russia currently holds the chair of the BRICS group, and will host BRICS seventh the summit in July 2015.
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Alexey Borisovich Mozgovoy 1975—2015
Alexei Mozgovoy, the commander of the Ghost Brigade partisans in Novorossiya, was killed when his car was ambushed in the Donbas last week. No one, so far, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
by Boris (Colonel Cassad) Rozhin
I FIRST learned of the existence of this man in April 2014, when he began appearing on the TV screens as one of the leaders of the uprising in Lugansk. Very quickly two centres of power emerged in Lugansk — the groups of Bolotov and Mozgovoy, who had systemic disagreements.
Alexey Borisovich Mozgovoy 1975—2015
Features
The killing of Osama bin Laden: US lies exposed
by Gene Clancy
ON 2ND MAY 2011, a team of US Navy SEALs, acting under the direction of the CIA, carried out a raid on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and assassinated Osama bin Laden.
Although it violated international law as well as Pakistani national sovereignty, the assault, which included the killing of several civilians, was lauded by the US government and most of the big business media as a victory in “the war against terrorism”.
Four years later, this “victory” has been challenged by a narrative that is stunningly different than the official one released by the US government immediately after the raid.
The new report, written by Seymour Hersh and published by the London Review of Books, basically asserts that almost everything the public was told about the raid was a lie.
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Solidarity with Donbas
Report from Banda Bassotti from the second antifascist march in donbas
WE ARE back from the second Anti-fascist Caravan in Donbass and it’s time for us to share with you our sincere thoughts.
All the targets we have set for our second Anti-fascist Caravan have been achieved. We aimed to bring the international and internationalist solidarity in Donbas breaking the noisy wall of silence.
In detail:
1) In this second Anti- fascist Caravan we wanted to bring with us delegations from parties, political associations, members from solidarity committees and comrades in order to meet and feel the situation in Novorossiya. We wanted to do this so that all of us could bring home, in their party, organisation, family, among comrades what they could see with our own eyes. Furthermore we wanted to build strong relationship among these different areas. We could do it, fully.
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Candidates and capitalism
by Rob Gowland
“CAN SOMEBODY who is not a billionaire (and) who stands for working families actually win an election in which billionaires are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the election?” That’s the question posed by US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont who is seeking to become the Democratic nominee for President.
“I think I’m the only candidate who’s prepared to take on the billionaire class which now controls our economy, and increasingly controls the political life of this country,” Sanders said in a TV interview. In addition, he championed “bold leadership” to tackle the climate crisis, and voiced clear opposition to the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact.
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