National News
Anti-fascists rout Nazis in Dover
AROUND 150 racists and fascists — some of them openly carrying swastika banners and chanting “seig heil” — descended on Dover last Saturday to stage a “refugees not welcome” demonstration and to fight with anti-fascists who were planning to stage a demonstration welcoming refugees.
The fascists included supporters of the English Defence League (EDL), the National Front, Chelsea HeadHunters, the South-East Alliance, the Scottish Defence League, the English Volunteer Force, the National Action Nazis and various “Infidels”.
They had come well prepared for a fight and fighting began at a service station on the M20 at junction eight before they even reached Dover.
Anti-fascists travelling by coach from London were pausing there to use the facilities when a coachload of Combat 18 and Chelsea HeadHunters arrived. The fascists attacked immediately as they clambered from their coach, smashing windows on the anti-fascists’ coaches, assaulting anti-fascists and smearing swastikas on the outside of one of the coaches in their own blood.
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Homelessness kills
A BRIGHTON doctor who works with homeless people last week said that there have been 50 deaths of homeless people in Brighton and Hove over the last three years and the numbers are likely to increase.
Dr Tim Worthley, who works from the Brighton Homeless Healthcare centre in Morley Street, told The Argus that his own practice alone has 1,400 homeless people in the city on its register.
He said that 21 of his patients had died in 2015 — and that all the deaths were preventable. Dr Tim, as his patients call him, said: “It’s a tragedy really that we have people dying on our streets. Unseen people, slipping away.
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Junior doctors strike again
THE BRITISH Medical Association (BMA) last Monday announced another 24-hour strike by junior doctors after talks to reach an agreement with the Government over new contracts failed. The strike will take place on 10th February.
This follows the first 24- hour strike on 12th January that was strongly supported with only accident and emergency services working as normal.
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Law students overturn 95 per cent of DWP decisions
LAW STUDENTS in Bristol have succeeded in overturning 95 per cent of decisions against 200 disability benefit claimants who had been told they were “fit for work”.
The volunteers at the Bristol and Avon Law Centre have won £1 million in compensation over the past two years after representing claimants who challenged the Department of Work and Pensions’ (DWP’s) assertion that they were able to work.
The students, from the University of the West of England, represented their clients at benefit appeals in front of a judge and doctor. Their 95 per cent success rate is significantly higher than the national rate, which is 59 per cent.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political correspondent
LOCAL government finance is not one of the most exciting subjects in politics but it is an important one given that many people depend on council services.
Local authorities face a 17 per cent shortfall over the next five years according to the Scotland’s Local Government Benchmarking Framework. The report has been published during a brief stand-off between councils and the Scottish government over proposed cuts to local government funding.
planned
Amongst those affected was Moray Council, which planned to break the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) damaging nine year Council tax freeze by raising its Council tax by no less than 18 per cent to reduce its £11 million deficit. It was forced to back down after Finance Minister John Swinney said that if they went ahead and raised the tax he would simply take every penny raised by withholding £5 million funding reserved for maintaining teacher numbers and integrating health and social care.
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Never Again, Ever!
by New Worker correspondent
LONDON comrades joined war veterans, diplomats and anti-fascists at the annual Holocaust Day commemoration in London last week. On 27th January 1945 the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, the largest death camp in the Third Reich, and every year on that day the millions of victims of the Nazi holocaust are remembered at the Imperial War Museum and the nearby Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park.
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Justice for Orgreave
by New Worker correspondent
CAMPAIGNERS in Harrogate held a public meeting on Saturday 29th January to hear Barbara Jackson from the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) and Guardian journalist David Conn talk about the brutal police onslaught against peaceful picketers during the miners’ strike in 1984.
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Solidarity with Juche Korea
by New Worker correspondent
COMRADES a n d friends marked the Day of the Shining Star, the 74th anniversary of Korean leader Kim Jong Il, at a meeting in central London last weekend called by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) and the British Juche Society. Chaired by Dermot Hudson of the KFA, the meeting began with brief contributions from NCP leader Andy Brooks, Alex Meads, Theo Russell and others, as well as an opening by Thae Yong Ho from the London embassy of the DPR Korea on the recent successful H-bomb test.
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International News
Ayesha Gaddafi leads resistance to Nato in Libya
by Maja Orlic
SHE IS back! The daughter of Muammar Gaddafi announced last week that she is going to lead the fight-back against Nato and the Libyan terrorists. Ayesha stated that she is now the leader of the Libyan resistance and she is about to create a new secret government.
Ayesha Gaddafi becomes the new leader of the resistance at a crucial moment for the country, on the eve of a new Nato intervention. As a general in the old Libyan Jamahiriya’s army she had sworn loyalty to her legendary father. Now she urged Libyans to wake up in order to win and restore the Jamahiriya government.
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Lenin lives! A failed Ukrainian sabotage stunt in Donetsk
by Denis Grigoriuk
ON THE night of 26th January there was an explosion in central Donetsk. It emerged that the explosion occurred in the central square of the city — Lenin Square. The Ukrainian media and top bloggers were quick to report it — according to them the monument to Lenin had nearly collapsed. No one gave details, of course, and that’s understandable.
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A new chapter for Cuba and France
by Leticia Martínez Hernández
AT FIVE o’clock on Monday afternoon, 1st February 2015, Cuban President Raúl Castro arrived at the Élysée Palace, the residence of the French president, to hold official talks with his counterpart François Hollande.
A battery of journalists followed him along the red carpet to the palace entry, where Hollande again embraced him and extended his hand nine months after their previous meeting in Havana.
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Syria: lies about Madaya
by Carl Lewis
THROUGHOUT December and January imperialist spokespeople blamed the Syrian government for an humanitarian crisis in the city of Madaya, about 25 miles north west of the capital of Damascus. The US corporate media spread stories of mass starvation, using false and fabricated photography, and “testimony” by opponents of the Bashar al-Assad government.
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Cuba—USA: mutual claims on the table
Havana Reporter
CLAIMS relating to US properties nationalised by Cuba and Cuban demands for damages caused by over 50 years of the Washington imposed blockade have been placed on the negotiating table.
According to Dr Olga Miranda Bravo, who was for many years head of the Legal Department in the Cuban Foreign Relations Ministry, differences between both countries did not start with the nationalisation of US properties nor in reprisal for the cancellation of the Cuban sugar quota in the United States market in 1960.
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Features
A Trade Unionist from Lugansk
Walter Tillow attended the October 2015 World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) conference in Sao Paolo, Brazil. There he interviewed Andrey Kochetov, a trade unionist from Lugansk in Novorossiya.
WT -- Tell our readers about the birth of the People’s Republic of Lugansk (PRL). What are its prospects? Full and permanent separation from Ukraine? Unification with Russia,
like Crimea? Is a federal Ukraine with autonomy for Russian-speaking regions a possible solution?
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Visas for Al-Qaeda: CIA handouts that rocked the World
by Nikolai Gorshkov
THE NEW YORK
Times has exposed a long-standing CIA partnership with Saudi Arabia, whose latest endeavour is a programme to arm Syrian rebels — authorised by President Obama in early 2013. Under the “Timber Sycamore” programme the Saudis provide funding and purchase weapons for Syrian rebels, while the CIA trains them in secret camps in Jordan.
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