National News
New immigration rules will cause NHS chaos
THE ROYAL College of Nursing last week published new research revealing that changes to immigration rules will risk intensifying the severe shortage of nurses in Britain, compromising patient safety, as well as costing the health service millions.
Under the new rules, people from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) must leave Britain after being here six years if they are not earning £35,000-a-year or more.
These rules will force many nurses to return to their home countries, leaving hospitals with nothing to show for the millions of pounds spent on recruiting them. The effects of the new rules will start being felt in 2017.
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Robin Hood benefits officer jailed
STEVEN Shaw, an officer at the Department of Work and Pensions, was jailed last week for handing out tens of thousands of pounds of public money to his friends.
Described as a modern- day Robin Hood, Shaw used his job as a housing benefit officer to make overpayments totalling £55,611.92 to people he thought were struggling to get by.
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Capita wins NHS admin contract
THE IT giant company Capita last week won a £1 billion 10-year contract to help NHS general practitioner commissioning groups with their administration and accounting work.
The deal is the latest in a run of NHS contract wins for Capita, which also manages the London congestion charge for Transport for London as well as administering military bases across Britain for the Ministry of Defence.
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Street activists fight police to defend migrant
STREET activists in Walworth, south London last Sunday engaged in a fight with police and officers of the UK Borders Agency to try to stop a shop worker suspected of being an illegal immigrant being seized and taken into detention.
They call themselves the Anti Raids Network and took action when the UKBA officers and police arrived to make random raids in the area. The police had already seized one man working in a local shop and put him in a van.
People blockaded the van, which was parked on a small side street, climbing onto it, putting wheelie bins and their bikes in front of it and letting the air in the tyres down and pelting it with fruit and eggs from the market up the road.
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Childcare users could face jail
DAVID CAMERON’S flagship election pledge to extend free childcare to 30 hours a week has run into trouble on its first airing in Parliament because concern that parents and nursery staff could face draconian criminal penalties, including a two-year prison term, if they fail fully to disclose details of working arrangements.
A senior Conservative peer and the leader of Richmond Council, Lord True, warned that the Government’s new Childcare Bill, which enshrines the 30-hour Tory manifesto pledge, contained “disturbingly wide, disturbingly ill-defined and draconian” regulations, including a provision to impose jail sentences.
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Unite urges councillors to keep Lancashire frack free
THE GIANT union Unite last week urged councillors to keep Lancashire “frack free” in a demonstration to support a “frack free Lancashire” and halt Cuadrilla’s fracking plans.
The “Don’t frack Lancs” demonstration outside Lancashire county council hall in Preston coincided with a council meeting where county councillors were deciding whether to accept or reject Cuadrilla’s fracking applications.
Chair of Unite’s executive council, Tony Woodhouse was among the speakers at the demonstration being organised by Friends of Earth. Unite North West regional secretary Mick Whitley said: “Fracking is a huge issue for communities across our region and a cause for deep concern.
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Scottish Political News
from our Scottish Political Correspondent
THE SCOTTISH National Party government has a good line about wanting to end inequality and poverty and verbally supports the Living Wage (along with Boris Johnson among others), but when it comes to turning words into action the results are mixed.
Since it was established in 1949 the Scottish Agricultural Wages Board has set minimum wages, terms and conditions for agricultural workers (presently around 25,000).
But the workers’ trade union, Unite fear that a “periodic review” ordered by SNP Rural Affairs minister Richard Lochhead will result in a serious reduction in its powers.
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Cal-Mac workers strike in defence of jobs
RAIL Maritime and Transport union members working for ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne are to take industrial action in defence of their jobs and conditions.
A work to rule and a one-day strike for this Friday are planned after workers voted 90 percent for industrial action.
For generations the now publically owned Cal- Mac has provided essential links to the western and northern Isles.
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Scottish Labour leadership election
THE SCOTTISH Labour leadership election has officially begun. It is not expected to be terribly exciting, but it might be confusing. The present deputy leader, Kezia Dugdale, who was elected on a joint ticket with departed right-winger Jim Murphy, is now seeking promotion.
She recently called for the ending of charitable status for private schools. This provoked a response from the sole challenger Ken Macintosh that this was a “very backwards agenda” which suggests that he is not exactly in the Jeremy Corbyn mould.
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Fighting for Socialism
by New Worker correspondent
LAST WEEK the Korean people marked the 51st anniversary of the start of work by Kim Jong Il at the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, at meetings and ceremonies across the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. They were joined by communists and Korean friendship activists at solidarity events throughout the world and last Saturday many of them paid tribute to the Korean communist leader at the John Buckle Centre in south London.
The commencement of Kim Jong Il’s work at the Central Committee of the WPK, on 19th June 1964, has significance in marking the period of the consolidation of the WPK as a truly leading Party whose authority is recognised by the Korean people and is fully at one with their interests and aspirations.
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Making ideology a priority
by New Worker correspondent
NEW COMMUNIST Party leader Andy Brooks welcomed comrades and friends to the Party Centre last week for the fourth in a series of seminars, called by the NCP and the Juché Idea Study Group, on the Juché and Songun politics that are the basis of Korean-style socialism.
Following the counter- revolutions in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe mass communist parties and whole sections of the world-wide movement wavered in the early 1990s. But the Workers Party of Korea remained steadfast.
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Johnson’s house launches audio tour in Chinese
by Mu Xuequan
THE FORMER house turned museum of Dr Samuel Johnson, one of the greatest British literary figures of the 18th century, launched a new audio tour in Mandarin for Chinese visitors last week. Johnson, a man who made everlasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, biographer and lexicographer, was a tenant at 17 Gough Square, just off Fleet Street in central London.
He compiled the famous work A Dictionary of the English Language, or Johnson’s Dictionary, which was the first comprehensive English dictionary, a tome which is currently dubbed as the “The Cradle of the Modern English Language”.
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International News
Ukrainian general defects to Donbas
Sputnik
A FORMER aide to the Ukrainian defence minister has defected to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, taking along his entire family and a wealth of classified information.
“I am Alexander Kolomiyets, a Major-General of the Ukrainian armed forces... My latest position was that of an advisor to the Ukrainian Defence Minister and a senior defence analyst,” the general said during a news conference at the Donetsk News Agency headquarters on Monday.
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Israel arrests and illegally deports WFTU activist
CPI
THE WORLD Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) has denounced the illegal and undemocratic acts of airport security officials in Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport against Alexandra Liberi, a Greek journalist, who was travelling legally with all necessary documents to her destination in Palestine.
Liberi was arrested on Saturday 13th June, while en route as part of a mission of the WFTU to Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank, Palestine, to participate with other WFTU representatives in a seminar sponsored by the federation for IT and Internet training of young trade unionists.
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Why the BBC cut Yanukovych’s interview
Sputnik
A SPOKESPERSON from the BBC has now explained to Sputnik why certain portions of its Yanukovych interview, such as dealing with his personal zoo were aired while those dealing with political issues such as Crimea were not.
The BBC spokesperson told Sputnik on Tuesday that it did not include ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s views on Crimea’s 2014 reunification with Russia because they were not considered “most newsworthy”.
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Miami Five warmly welcomed in South Africa
ACN
THE FIVE Cuban heroes that were imprisoned in the US for over 16 years for fighting terrorism, received on Sunday a warm governmental and popular welcome in Pretoria, South Africa, where they arrived for a visit that will run until 3rd July.
Traditional South African songs and dances enlivened the reception at the airport to Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, who arrived on a flight from France.
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In Bush’s footsteps: US bogged down in Middle East
by Ekaterina Blinova
THE SPECTRE of the United States’ infamous Iraqi war still haunts Washington; following in the footsteps of George W Bush, US President Obama is getting bogged down in another controversial Middle Eastern war with no end in sight.
The Iraqi Prime Minister’s spokesperson Saad Hadithi highlighted Baghdad’s growing dissatisfaction with the US-led coalition’s military campaign against Islamic State, slamming it for poor results.
“The Iraqi government believes that international efforts to prevent ISIS penetration into the country are insufficient. The Iraqi government’s assessments show that the anti-ISIS coalition efforts have not been enough since the terrorists are still infiltrating Iraq and their number has not reduced,” Saad Hadithi declared.
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Features
Ukraine: opportunist ‘left’ adapts to fascism
Union Borotba (Struggle)
RECENTLY two events were held in Kiev to unite the left. First was the creation of the “Left Opposition” coalition of the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU, led by Peter Simonenko) and the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU, led by Natalia Vitrenko). Second was the founding congress of the “Social Movement” party.
These events are not equal — the KPU with several thousand members and the PSPU with a few hundred are political forces with their own history and branched structure. “Social Movement” has a few dozen members. But associations are important as characteristic consequences of certain left-wing tactics in the face of the coup and the repressive regime of the extreme right.
The Left Opposition of Simonenko-Vitrenko clearly defines the events of February 2014 as a coup, speaks very negatively about association with the European Union and the policies dictated by the International Monetary Fund. The Left Opposition demands an immediate end to the war in the Donbas, while relying on the terms of the Minsk accords.
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Prague picks followers of Nazi collaborator to represent Russian community
Sputnik
WHEN Prague’s House of National Minorities celebrated the city’s Museum Night, with concerts, dancing, and national dishes, the Russian minority was represented by a group that is known for its glorification of Second World War Nazi collaborator General Andrei Vlasov.
The bizarre story unfolded on Saturday 13th June, when Prague residents and the city’s guests came out to enjoy Museum Night, a free cultural event promoting museums and galleries. Alongside nearly 50 cultural institutions participating in the festival was the House of National Minorities, a government- supported project aimed at “facilitating inter-ethnic understanding and overcoming any prejudices that citizens might have regarding certain ethnic groups and nationalities”.
While other minorities, among them Slovaks, Poles, Germans, and others, offered the kinds of cultural events one might expect, including concerts, dancing, traditional food, and literature, the Russian minority, represented by the conservative organisation “Russian Tradition,” had something completely different in mind. They decided to use the cultural evening to present a book on the so-called Prague Manifesto of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (CLPR), a coalition of ultranationalists and anti-communists which collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The CLPR’s aim was to create a German-friendly “Free People’s state without Bolsheviks and exploiters”.
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Atrocity in Charleston: ‘Let this trauma drive the struggle for Black Liberation’
by Lamont Lilly
WHEN nine defenceless people are killed in a church, it’s not a “shooting,” it’s a massacre. When a 21-year-old white male who wears racist hate badges on his jacket walks into a church and murders nine unarmed Black people, I don’t call that just a “hate crime” by a lone wolf. It’s a terrorist attack by a white supremacist.
Unfortunately the following description is exactly what happened on 17th June in Charleston, South Carolina, between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m.
According to witnesses and recent reports , the accused 21-year-old gunman, Dylann Roof, walked in to Emanuel AME. Church around 8:00 pm. Local police were called around 9:00 pm. According to witnesses and on the scene survivors, Roof reloaded five times. Eight people died at the scene, including the church’s pastor, Rev Clementa C Pinckney.
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