National News
Derby and Durham school workers inspire Unison
A CAMPAIGN for change fought by Derby and Durham school support staff brought inspiration to delegates at the public sector union UNISON’s local government conference in Brighton last week.
The school support workers from both areas were faced with huge cuts to their pay and conditions. Becky Everett from Derby told conference that she lost £264 per month and explained how this affected her life.
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Grenfell victims demand justice
IN THE 1990s Tory grandee Lord Heseltine declared that his party would make “a bonfire of red tape” — getting rid of rules and regulations that hindered maximum profit-making and including health and safety regulations.
In 2009 Boris Johnson, as mayor of London, declared that “safety fears” were “making the UK safe for extremely stupid people”.
And in 2011 the then Prime Minister David Cameron said: “I will kill off safety culture; we need to realise, collectively, that we cannot eliminate risk and that some accidents are inevitable.”
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Finsbury Mosque attack is terrorism
THE CONGREGATION at Finsbury Mosque have said they are “extremely unhappy” that the attack on them by a man deliberately driving a large van into a crowd of them, killing one and injuring 10, has been misreported as an isolated instance of insanity and not as a cold-blooded terrorist attack like those in Manchester and London Bridge in recent weeks.
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RMT demands immediate publication of Gibb Report
THE RAIL union RMT last week demanded that the Government immediately publish a detailed report into the basket-case Southern Rail franchise, which has been kept under wraps by the Department for Transport since the back end of last year.
The report, commissioned in September 2016, was written by Chris Gibb, a non-executive director at Network Rail with 35 years of experience in the industry.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
SCOTTISH Labour leader Kezia Dugdale is basking in unexpected glory following the general election in which her party was expected to come a poor third behind the Nationalists and the Tories. The Tory media gurus expected her party to get slaughtered in June but, to their dismay, Labour not only defended its existing seat, Edinburgh South, but gained six more.
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Sinn Féin to confront a “despicable alliance of bigots”
by Theo Russell
THE SEVEN new Sinn Féin MPs from northern Ireland held a meeting for members and supporters last Wednesday at the London Irish Centre in Camden Town, attended by over 70 people despite less than 12-hours notice of the event being given.
The MPs, along with Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams and MEP Martina Anderson, were also in London to sound alarm bells about the threat to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) posed by the planned Tory—DUP [Democratic Unionist Party] deal.
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Working for Korean friendship
by New Worker correspondent
FRIENDS and comrades met last weekend for the annual general meeting of the UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA) at the Chadswell Centre in central London that elected new officers to the committee and heard reports of work over the past year.
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Remember Brian Haw
by New Worker correspondent
PEOPLE gathered in Parliament Square last Sunday to mark the sixth anniversary of the death of Brian Haw — the peace campaigner who spent almost a decade camped in the Square facing the House of Commons with an array of placards, posters, banners and a microphone reminding MPs of the horrors of war, especially to children.
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International News
Israel Attacks Muslims in Jerusalem
by Pavel Jacomino
Muslim worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem attacked by Israeli forces on Sunday were left suffocating and injured after tear-gas grenades and rubber bullets were fired.
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Cuba: Trump’s Policy Will Backfire
Telesur
CUBAN Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez slammed US President Donald Trump’s policy reversal against Cuba on Monday as a “grotesque spectacle,” arguing that the move will affect US citizens and result in the opposite of what Washington seeks by ultimately strengthening Cuba’s resolve to defend its sovereignty.
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American Vet fights for Donetsk People’s Republic
by Mike Kuhlenbeck
RUSSELL Bonner Bentley was born in the United States and is now an ‘Information Warrior’ for the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), which declared its independence from Ukraine in 2014. This former US soldier went there to fight against fascism in Ukraine and around the world.
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Cuban medicos return from Peru
by Yaditza del Sol González
ON THE evening of 15th June, the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade returned to Cuba from Peru. Two and a half months ago they left to save lives, and treat those most in need. For some, it was their first mission as part of the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade, whilst others, more experienced members, were already familiar with the challenging yet gratifying work that lay ahead. They were 23 in the team including 12 doctors; men and women who offered medical services in the region of Piura, Peru, after the country was hit by intense rains.
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Features
Syria: A step closer to victory
Last Friday, the Russian Defence Ministry said that the Russian aerospace forces’ strike conducted on 28th May had allegedly killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi south of Raqqa. The report is yet to be confirmed.
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Jose Carlos Mariategui after 87 years
by Marc Becker
IN 1930, Waldo Frank wrote in the left-wing US weekly the Nation that the 16th April death of Jose Carlos Mariategui had plunged “the intelligentsia of all of Hispano-America into sorrow; and nothing could be more eloquent of the cultural separation between the two halves of the new world than the fact that to most of us these words convey no meaning.”
His funeral turned into one of the largest processions of workers ever seen in the streets of Lima, Peru, but in the United States his death was hardly noticed. Unfortunately, 87 years later Mariategui is still largely unknown in the English-speaking world, even as his status as the founder of Latin-American Marxism remains as relevant as ever for understanding political changes sweeping across the region.
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The Stratolaunch
American rip-off of an old Soviet project
Pravda.ru
THE RECENT roll-out of the Stratolaunch aircraft — the world’s largest aeroplane designed as an air platform for launching carrier rockets — has fired controversy in Russia. The photos and videos of the new American aircraft provoked many questions amongst aerospace experts.
This development of the US space industry, supposedly following the new shuttle and the equivalent of RD-180 engines, turns out to be a rip-off of an old Soviet project. According to experts, the new development of the US space industry is remarkably similar to a similar development of Soviet engineers in the past.
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