National News
Osborne’s budget leaves struggling parents up to £221-a-week worse off
A DETAILED analysis of the impact of Chancellor George Osborne’s summer budget published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on Monday shows that thousands of families will be left with giant black-holes in their household budgets.
The minimum wage — now called the minimum living wage — will rise to £7.20-an-hour but for thousands this will be more than offset by what they will lose in tax credits. The hardest hit will be working single parent families who will lose £80-a-week and two-parent families where both parents are out of work, who will loses £221-a-week.
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Biggest ever Burston Rally as Corbyn speaks
from New Worker correspondent
MORE THAN 3,000 people — a record crowd — attended this year’s rally at Burston in Norfolk to celebrate the famous Burston school strike and to hear Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn speak.
The [New Worker] was on display as usual at its stall along with New Communist Party and other literature.
This prompted discussions with members of the Communist Party of Britain leading to proposals to work together, running joint meetings on various issues from combating austerity to campaigning for Solidarity with Anti-fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU).
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A bad day for fascists
THE REMNANTS of the British National Party tried to stage a rally in Croydon last Saturday outside Lunar House — the UK Borders Agency Office where all immigrants have to register.
Fewer than 20 of them turned up to protest about refugees from Africa and the Middle East being allowed into Britain — while between 200 and 300 anti-fascists turned out to oppose them, including members of the PCS union, which represents civil servants working inside Lunar House.
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Rise in attacks on Muslim women
AN ORGANISATION that monitors Islamophobic attacks last week claimed women are the primary targets of Hate crimes against Muslims in London, which have risen by 70 per cent in the past year, according to Metropolitan Police statistics.
Figures for the 12 months up to July showed 816 Islamophobic crimes, compared with 478 for the previous 12-month period.
“Tell MAMA”, an organisation that monitors Islamophobic attacks, claimed women were the primary targets. The group said London women wearing a face veil were victims of more “aggressive incidents”.
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Robin Hood energy
NOITTINGHAM City Council last week launched the first local authority-owned, not-for-profit energy supply company since the nationalisation of Great Britain’s electricity supply industry in 1948.
Robin Hood Energy will be available to customers in the city and will help in the bid to tackle fuel poverty.
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National Gallery staff fight on
A PETITION of more than 130,000 signatures against privatisation at the National Gallery was handed in by strike staff, members of the civil service union PCS, last week, following a week long strike against the privatisation of staffing. A copy was also handed to culture minister Ed Vaizey.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “We do not believe the public want to see gallery services handed to a private security company. Privatisation is unnecessary and risky at what is one of our country’s greatest cultural assets.”
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Partying in Charlton
by New Worker correspondent
RAIN or shine comrades always make the effort to support the Metropolitan NCP’s annual garden party in London. They did last weekend despite the showers that marked the end of the summer sunshine to enjoy the good food made by one of our Charlton comrades with plenty of beer, cider and soft drinks to wash it down as well. There was plenty to talk about, as usual, and everyone showed their support for the New Worker by raising £50 for the fighting fund.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political correspondent
RECENTLY there has been widespread comment in such left wing newspapers such as the [Mail] and [Telegraph] criticising David Cameron for being excessively generous in handing out peerages and other gongs to businessmen who have done no political work other than write large cheques addressed to the Conservative Party.
While members of the Scottish National Party, particularly those who claim to be left, gleefully join in foaming at the mouth about this they are entirely silent about when the SNP in local and central government is equally generous in return for donations to the SNP.
The SNP does not reward its donors with gongs. But it has been noticed that businessmen who make donations to the SNP and other nationalist causes have a tendency to be well rewarded beneficiaries of public sector contracts. Two cases alone have resulted in contracts worth £11 million and a £1 million-government loan have gone to companies associated with those who donated £112,247 to the nationalists.
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International News
Troops display wartime unity in Chinese Victory Day parade
by Zhang Tao
AS RIFLE-CARRYING foreign troops marched across the Tian’anmen Square, China’s V-Day parade on 3rd September gained international gravity.
The display marked the country’s endeavour to revive the forgotten memory that China and its global allies joined hands to win a war against “the darkest forces ever” in the history of humanity 70 years ago.
Nearly 1,000 high-spirited soldiers from 17 countries marched in the wake of veterans and Chinese army formations, marking the foreign troops’ premiere in a Chinese military parade. Among them were troops from Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzstan, Mexico, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia and Tajikistan. Six other countries, including Afghanistan, Cambodia, Fiji, Laos, Vanuatu and Venezuela, marched their delegations in the parade.
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Plan B: Russian aid may by-pass Greece
Sputnik
RUSSIA may use new flight aid routes to Syria if Greece closes its airspace to Russian aircraft, first deputy head of the international committee of the Russian Federation Council Vladimir Jabbarov said.
Earlier on Monday, a source told Sputnik that Greece had received a request from the United States to deny Russian aircraft providing humanitarian aid to Syria use of the country’s airspace.
“This is an absurd move and if it is supported by Greece, it will be an unfriendly move toward Russia,” Jabbarov said.
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Turkey provided chemical weapons to ISIS?
Sputnik
TURKISH intelligence agents and scientific experts might have been involved in helping ISIS to acquire or produce chemical weapons recently used in attacks in Syria and Iraq.
US authorities have seen reports that ISIS used a chemical “blistering agent” during clashes in Iraq and Syria last week, and claim they are conducting a “serious” investigation into the incidents.
The United States has consistently blamed Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government for using chemical weapons while downplaying suggestions that opposition forces, including the ISIS, might be culpable.
Veteran’s Today (VT) Senior Editor and security consultant Gordon Duff says that Turkish agents have not only distributed chemical weapons to the ISIS, but have helped the militants manufacture them.
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The battle that saved 7,000 Britons in WWII
by Wang Chenxi and Ming Xing
AS CHINA marks the 70th anniversary of the Second World War victory over Japan, Yang Yumei is still learning about her grandfather, a hero who died in one of the most desperate battles in Burma (now Myanmar).
Yang’s grandfather, Zhang Qi, was the most senior Chinese officer to die in the Battle of Yenangyaung, a bitterly fought campaign to save almost 7,000 British troops from encirclement by the advancing Japanese army in April 1942.
The battle took on the legend of an epic retreat on the scale of Dunkirk, and Zhang Qi, Commander of the 3rd Battalion, 113th Regiment, New 38th Division of the Chinese Expeditionary Army, played a key role in smashing through the Japanese line.
Altogether 202 Chinese soldiers, under the command of General Sun Liren, died rescuing General William Slim’s British First Burma Division.
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A cup o’ Joe with a drop of English
VNS
A SMALL cafe in downtown of the central coastal city of Quy Nhon, Vietnam, attracts many young customers not just because of its extensive menu of beverages, but also for another reason: many English-speaking customers patronising this Language Cafe are willing to help local students practise their English.
On a Saturday evening, Le Thi Hong Cam, third-year student of Quy Nhon College, fixed a date with her friends at this language cafe, 237 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street, to practise English.
Tonight, a British man, Nic Cumiffe, prepares to speak to the students on the subject of difference between British and Vietnamese cultures. Using his laptop, Cumiffe takes the students to various tourism destinations in Britain and explains the distinct features of British people, their culture and cuisine.
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English now a major requirement for Cuban graduates
ACN
THE ENGLISH language will be a major requirement for Cuban university graduates in the near future, said Higher Education Minister Rodolfo Alarcon at a recent news conference.
Although the new measure will not be applied in the current or next school years, it will be implemented as conditions to achieve such a goal are created in all provinces, said the minister.
He added that even if the students pass all other exams relevant to their curricula, they will not be granted a university title if they do not prove their mastery of the English language.
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Features
Why the US ruling class wants an Iran deal
by Deirdre Griswold
SINCE the 18-month season of bourgeois national elections in the United States has already started, it’s not surprising that an agreement negotiated between the Iranian government and the P5+1 — the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany — has become a big political issue.
The Obama administration says the agreement will keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons for at least 15 years. In return the western imperialists say they will lift some — not all — of the sanctions that have been imposed on Iran since 2005. By preventing Iran from selling oil on the world market, among other strictures, they have hobbled its economy.
The agreement is being attacked by all the Republican would-be candidates as little short of “treason”.
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Crocodile tears for Sentsov and Kol’chenko
The silence about hundreds of criminal cases against oppositionists in Ukraine is the height of hypocrisy
by Victor Shapinov
THE CROCODILE tears of the liberal and left-liberal public after the verdict against Oleg Sentsov and Alexander Kol’chenko are in stark contrast to the determined silence of this same group about the fate of communists accused of terrorism by the Ukrainian state — for example my comrades Andrei Sokolov and Vladislav Wojciechowski.
I knew Alexander Kol’chenko personally. A subcultural anarchist known by the nickname “Tundra”, leader of a small Crimean anarchist group. Now — a former anarchist. After all, the people who sang the (Ukrainian) national anthem during his sentencing are unlikely to belong to a political trend that rejects the state altogether.
But Maidan and the start of the civil war changed many people. Or didn’t change them — just peeled off political labels and bared the ugly essence. Maidan reconciled many who called themselves anarchists and anti-fascists, not only to the Ukrainian state, but also to those who once seemed irreconcilable enemies — the Nazis.
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