National News
Navy whistle-blower blames MoD for faulty Trident cover-up
WILLIAM McNeilly, a Royal Navy whistle-blower, has fought back against Ministry of Defence (MoD) attempts to discredit him and to cover up alarming technical faults in the Trident nuclear missile system.
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Protesters angry at Netanyahu visit
by New Worker correspondent
MORE than 200 protesters gathered outside Downing Street on Monday to protest at the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for discussions with our Prime Minister Theresa May.
The protest was organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and supported by many other progressive groups and trade unions who are all outraged at the ongoing Israeli efforts to eradicate Palestine both geographically and from the historical record.
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Derby school action continues
TEACHING assistants at Derby schools who are members of the public sector union UNISON are continuing to take strike action this week in their fight against pay cuts.
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Shocking rise in mental health deaths
THE NUMBER of unexpected patient deaths reported by England’s mental health trusts has risen by almost 50 per cent in three years, according to official figures.
The findings, for the BBC’s Panorama programme, are based on Freedom of Information results from over half of the mental health trusts.
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Proposal to means test childcare
THE INSTITUTE of Economic Affairs has issued a report claiming that the current entitlement for parents to have 15 hours free childcare per week has “distorted the market price”.
It also claims that increases in regulations, to safeguard the health and safety of the children, have made the care more expensive, meaning that those parents on average earnings who are paying for extra hours are spending more than a third of their income on childcare.
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Stop Trump’s Muslim Ban
by New Worker correspondent
ANGER at Donald Trump’s Muslim ban erupted on the streets of London last week when thousands rallied outside the American embassy in Grosvenor Square to protest at the new US president’s racist travel ban, which is now being challenged in the American courts.
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An “Independent Advisor”
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
The SNP government employ Naomi Eisenstadt, an Oxford academic, as their “independent advisor on poverty and inequality” on a salary of £100,000. She has over 30 years of experience in this field and was the first director of the Labour government’s Sure Start Unit in Tony Blair’s day.
In January of last year she published a 32 page report containing 15 pious recommendations, entitled Shifting the Curve: A Report for the First Minister.
Thanks to The Times fighting a year-long freedom of information battle we now learn that this “independent advisor” is not very independent at all. Indeed, the name of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon should have been on the title page as the joint author of the report purportedly addressed to her. It was her red pen that ensured that serious criticism of SNP policies contained in the first draft were deleted before the great unwashed were allowed to read it.
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Anti-Racism SNP Style
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
While thousands of people have been marching against Donald Trump’s ban on citizens of some Muslim countries entering the United States, Scottish nationalists have taken up arms against what they deplore as a particularly shocking case of racism.
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Denial
Denial: A Holocaust court-room drama
reviewed by Daphne Liddle
Directed by Mick Jackson. Starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Spall, Andrew Scott, Jack Lowden, Caren Pistorius, Alex Jennings and Mark Gatiss. Cert 12A; 110 mins.
THE FILM Denial was released in Britain on 27th January, Holocaust Memorial Day. It is an account of an extraordinary libel case brought by the notorious pro-Hitler writer and activist David Irving against Prof Deborah Lipstadt, an American historian, who mentioned him in her book Denying the Holocaust as a Holocaust denier, falsifier and bigot who manipulated and distorted real documents, and was an anti-Semite and a falsifier of history.
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International News
Top British military mired in Japan’s anti-China propaganda
Xinhua
A FORMER head of the British Royal Navy and one of the best known British army chiefs have been unwittingly dragged into an anti-China campaign by a London think tank being paid by the Japanese government, it was reported on Sunday.
Admiral Lord West, former First Sea Lord and chief of all British Royal Navy staff, and Colonel Bob Stewart, a former British army officer, were both used in the war of words organised by the think tank, the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), the London-based Sunday Times newspaper reported.
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The blood of Donbas on Trump’s hands
Statement of the International Action Centre on 31st January on the resumed assault on the Donbas republics.
DONETSK and Lugansk are again under fierce attack from the US-funded and US-armed Ukrainian junta. Civilians and troops are being killed again in greater numbers near the front line as the Ukrainian fascists and military try to advance.
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Irish remember massacre
by Peadar Whelan
LED BY FAMILY members of those gunned down in the 1992 Ulster Defence Association (UDA) attack on customers in Seán Graham bookmakers, hundreds of people gathered on the Ormeau Road in south Belfast on Sunday 5th February to remember the onslaught that left five nationalists dead and many more wounded. Although it was loyalist paramilitary fingers that pulled the triggers, the British Government and its agents were the source of the weapons.
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Iran warns against Zionist intervention
by Pavel Jacomino
A senior Iranian official has warned against Israeli interventionist plots in the region, calling for vigilance in the face of attempts by outsiders to wage war.
Ali Akbar Velayati, the senior adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, made the remarks in a meeting with Armenian Defence Minister Vigen Sargsyan in Tehran last week. “We should be vigilant in the face of infiltration by some foreign elements, including the Zionist regime, and be watchful so that foreigners could not ignite the flames in our region,” Velayati said.
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Romania — why half a million people took to the streets
Sputnik
With about 500,000 people taking to the streets across Romania on Sunday, political analyst Andrey Veselov looks into what became the largest street protest in the country since the fall of Communist rule there in 1989.
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New CIA Deputy Director ran ‘Black Site’ prison
by Pavel Jacomino
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has named Gina Haspel, a veteran CIA clandestine service officer who once ran a “black site” prison, deputy director of the spy agency. Haspel’s selection has won applause inside the CIA and from many career intelligence officials as the first woman to reach the agency’s second-highest position.
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Features
BBC journalist goes overboard: “Trump’s arrival a ‘win win win’ for Putin”
Sputnik
BBC NEWS Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg has taken to social media to explain why the current international situation is shifting in Moscow’s favour — but he may have gone a bit overboard.
Rosenberg, known by Twitter users for his regular tweets featuring short videos reviewing Russian media analysis of world events, has presented an intriguing explanation of why he thinks having Donald Trump as the US President is a “win win win” situation for Russia
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Oh what a lovely war!
by Rob Gowland
ONE OF the defining characteristics of our era is the way the USA stomps around the world daring anyone to get in its way. Its people are saddled with a truly huge “defence” budget that consumes a hideous amount of their production and resources, but which is justified to them with assurances that because their military is so huge, no one dares even to defy them, let alone threaten them.
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Tragic death of immigrant workers inspired a song of solidarity
by Chris Mahin
THE FIRE began over Los Gatos Canyon. It started in the left engine-driven fuel pump. The plane crashed 20 miles west of Coalinga, California, on 28th January, 1948. It came down into hills that, as one commentator noted, at that time of year are “a beautiful green, splendid with wildflowers ... a place of breath-taking beauty.”
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