National News
Build it in Britain!
Sputnik
IT IS a clean a break with Thatcherite neoliberal dogma that you could wish for. Speaking in Birmingham last week, Jeremy Corbyn lambasted the government’s industrial policy and promised that the next Labour government would “reprogramme” the economy so that manufacturing — and not the financial services sector — came first.
“For the last 40 years… we’ve been told that it’s good — advanced even — for our country to manufacture less and less and rely instead on cheap labour abroad to produce imports, while we focus on the City of London and the finance sector,” Corbyn declared
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Navy rescued terror bomber
Sputnik
SALMAN ABEDI — the suicide bomber who killed 22 people at Ariana Grande’s concert in Manchester in May 2017 — was known to the security services, which had monitored him at the time of his trip to war-ravaged Libya.
The Manchester Arena terrorist was rescued by the Royal Navy from the civil war in Libya three years before he committed the attack.
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Keep tabs on the Reds
by New Worker correspondent
HR departments these days are apt to protest that there is no blacklisting in the civil service and that people of all political views can join the civil service. This was not always the case however
Documents released by the National Archives on the 24th July revealed that the Thatcher government drew up a secret blacklist of its own civil servants thought to be “subversives” in order to keep them under observation and block their promotion.
Whitehall departments worked with MI5 to identify 1,420 civil servants to be watched closely and, where possible, kept away from computers and revenue collection roles.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
THE SHORTBREAD Senate or the Scotland County Council, as its critics call the Scottish Parliament, is presently on holiday. But just because the first Minister will be heading off to sun herself in Portugal that does not mean that politics have completely ground to a halt.
Labour Pains
Within the Scottish Labour Party factional warfare continues for the simple reason that the right wing has not gone away any more than the left did during the bleak Blair years.
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Flying the Flag
The homeless should forget their worries and rejoice in the news that Scotland now has a brand new official vexillologist.
He was appointed on Monday by the Court of the Lord Lyon, which is responsible for heraldic matters. This is a sort of feudal trademark court and has now branched out in to flags. It also does good business approving coats of arms for town councils and pretentious lottery winners
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Victory Day in Korea
by New Worker correspondent
NEW Communist Party (NCP) leader Andy Brooks joined other supporters of the Korean revolution at the historic Lucas Arms last weekend, to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the Korean people’s victory over US imperialism in the Korean War. The meeting, called by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA), was held in the Kings Cross pub that has been a working class venue for many years. It was here that the Committee to Defeat Revisionism for Communist Unity was founded to challenge the leadership of the old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1963.
This event marked the armistice between US imperialism and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) that was signed on 27th July 1953. That was the day when the Korean people, led by great leader Kim Il Sung, defeated and humiliated the US imperialists and their puppet forces.
KFA Chair Dermot Hudson said we were here to celebrate a great victory, the victory of the Korean people in the Fatherland Liberation War
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Sinn FÉin MP honoured at Westminster
An Phoblacht
A PORTRAIT of the first female MP elected to the British parliament, Sinn FÉin’s Constance Markievicz, has been unveiled at Westminster, 100 years on from her election.
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India Club saved
by New Worker correspondent
LONDON’S iconic India Club has been saved from redevelopment after Westminster council refused planning permission to developers who would have swept the iconic restaurant away to make way for an upmarket hotel.
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Assange’s days in embassy are numbered
Radio Havana Cuba
ECUADOR’S former president Rafael Correa said in an interview that Julian Assange’s days in the Ecuadorean embassy in London are numbered, a claim which contradicts the statements made by Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno last week.
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International News
Ahed Tamimi freed
CP Israel
AHED TAMIMI, a Palestinian teen activist, was released on Sunday morning from a prison in the centre of Israel, nearly eight months after she slapped and hit Israeli soldiers outside her home in the village of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank. Ahed was taken from HaSharon Prison to a West Bank border crossing together with her mother, Nariman, who was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced along with her daughter
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Imran Khan wins Pakistani election
Xinhua
FORMER Pakistani cricket star Imran Khan is poised to become Pakistan’s next prime minister following his party’s victory in last week’s general election. His Pakistan Justice Movement (PTI) defeated its rivals in the poll and it is now in a strong position to form the central government
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Britain Pushing for Brexit deal With China
Sputnik
JEREMY HUNT expressed Britain’s interest in securing a trade deal with Beijing during a visit to the East Asian economic superpower, as Brexit talks continue to yield little progress.
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Raul Castro calls on Cubans to be vigilant
Radio Havana Cuba
THE 65th anniversary of the start of the Cuban revolution began at 5:12 in the morning — the exact time that the assault on the Moncada Barracks began in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba on July 26th 1953. The the leader of the guerrillas who overthrew the dictatorship five years later was fidel Castro — and his deeds were remembered across the grounds of the former barracks, where the top leadership of the island was joined by over 10,000 local residents celebrating National Rebellion Day.
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Features
The toad war
Guardian
Australian communist weekly
Richard Morecroft presented a nature documentary on the ABC called Goannas And The Rubbish Frogs. It dealt with an environmental disaster right here in Australia. My write-up of the programme in Worth Watching began with this statement: “While Johnny Howard splurges money on the military, very little money is being provided for stopping the devastation being caused by the steady advance across the Top End of the toxic Cane Toad
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Scottish victims of the secret police demand justice
Sputnik
ON THE 19th and 20th of July Scotland’s highest civil court considered a judicial review of the British government’s decision to limit the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s terms of reference to England and Wales. For the innumerable victims of political spying within and without Scotland, it may prove to be a pivotal step in their ongoing battle for truth and justice.
In March 2015, following five-years of shocking revelations about police espionage in the UK since 1968, then-Home Secretary Theresa May established the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI). The use of dead children’s identities as cover names, deceiving women into long-term relationships, fathering children with activists and committing a wide variety of crimes are just some of the scandalous activities in the Inquiry’s investigative cross-hairs
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The horror story called Brazil
Pravda.ru
THOSE who know Brazil speak highly of a fine country with friendly people, a land imbued with natural charm mirrored by its peoples. There is a darker side.
This story does not filter through the Brazilian media to the outside. You will find it in socioambiental.org — a Brazilian environmentalist site and a very good one — speaking about the peoples of the interior and their fight to survive, and the systematic desecration of Brazil’s resources by those with ties to the exterior. Yes, the hand of Uncle Sam reaches the Amazon and the Amazonians.
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