National News
State of the Unions
by New Worker correspondent
HOW ARE trade unions responding to the pandemic? This has been the subject of a recent report by the Labour Research Department (LRD), which has surveyed local union branch representatives on how they and their members are handling the increased volume of union business at a time when shops, offices and workshops were being abandoned.
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Disputes update
by New Worker correspondent
WE CONCLUDE this section of the paper with a look at two of the industrial disputes that featured in recent issues.
In Banbury, workers at Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) will be balloting on a new offer by management after they binned plans to enforce a ‘Fire and Rehire’ contract on the 291-strong workforce.
Joe Clarke, food industry officer for Unite the union, said: “We have had three weeks of intensive negotiations with the management. We believe that this is the best deal that can be achieved through negotiations and we will be recommending acceptance to our members.”
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
MUCH HAS happened in the exciting world of Scottish politics since the previous New Worker appeared. Perhaps the most earth-shattering was the announcement by William Rennie that he was standing down as leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats after a 10-year stint.
This will generate a truly titanic leadership contest, although the next leader will come from a very exclusive pool. The party has only four MSPs at Holyrood and the same number of MPs at Westminster. As one of the four MSPs is Rennie himself the pool is effectively one of three, but it remains to be seen if the winner or loser becomes Leader.
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COVID Champions
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
On the day when the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Scotland the COVID‑19 capital of Europe earlier this month, no ministers were on hand to accept the trophy.
The First Minister, who has spent much of the pandemic in front of TV cameras to issue warnings and announce the imposition or lifting of restrictions, was on holiday. Nobody can begrudge her that – but thanks to the organisational genius of the SNP, both her deputy and the Health Minister were on leave at exactly the same time.
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Two Battles for Jobs
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
The class struggle continues across Scotland. In Glasgow 500 job cuts are being sought by Glasgow Life (GL), the ‘charity’ which runs the city’s libraries, museums, parks and sports facilities.
Glasgow Life is an ALMO or ‘Arm’s Length Management Organisation’, which are set up by councils to allow councillors to become highly paid directors, whereas when they were council departments, they could only claim expenses for attending meetings.
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More dirt on Johnson from Cummings
by Aleksandra Serebriakova
DOMINIC Cummings has accused Boris Johnson of placing his “political interests ahead of people’s lives” because the prime minister apparently didn’t want to ruin the British economy with stricter COVID‑19 restrictions simply in order to prevent deaths amongst the elderly.
Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings left his powerful post in November 2020 and since then has fired several shots at the government of his former boss, criticising his response to the COVID‑19 pandemic.
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International News
Riots sweep South Africa following Zuma jailing
Sputnik
SUPPORTERS of former president Jacob Zuma have taken to the streets following his jailing on corruption charges last week. His arrest triggered massive protests, accompanied by looting of businesses in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, South Africa’s two most populous and urbanised provinces. The looting and violence by Zuma’s supporters prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to send in the army to patrol the streets of major cities, including Durban, Pietermaritzburg and the capital Johannesburg.
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Die Linke supports communist ban
IDoC
EARLIER in the month the German Federal Election Commission announced that the German Communist Party (DKP) will not be allowed to participate in September’s Bundestag general elections and at the same time will be deprived of its status as a political party. The pretext for this shameful decision was the alleged late submission of financial statements.
Communist and Workers’ Parties from across the world have strongly condemned the decision of the Commission and expressed their solidarity with the DKP.
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Zionist settlers now a target
Radio Havana Cuba
FOLLOWING recent reports of settlers and occupation forces co-operating in attacks that killed a number of Palestinians, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement says Israeli settlers are now the “legitimate target” of the Palestinian resistance.
“What the Hebrew-language media revealed about the involvement of settlers in the killing of 11 Palestinians in the West Bank over the last month is clear evidence of the level of terrorism to which our nation is exposed,” says Tariq Salmi, the movement’s spokesperson.
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Americans move from Afghanistan to Yemen
Radio Havana Cuba
US forces moving out of Afghanistan have been sent over to Yemen, where they have occupied a strategic south-western airbase.
The US troops landed at Aden International Airport in rebel-held southern Yemen. They were then taken northwards to the neighbouring province of Lahij and stationed at the al-Anad airbase.
The USA has long provided strong political and material support to the Saudi Arabians, who invaded Yemen, the Arab world’s already poorest country, in 2015.
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The Chinese Dream through British eyes
by Ji Yuqiao
MALCOLM Clarke, an Oscar-winning British filmmaker, has once again come to China to film a documentary about China’s path to achieving xiaokang (a moderately prosperous society). His third visit to the country, Clarke says that each time he arrives he has seen for himself China’s great breakthroughs: reforming and opening up, building the ‘Chinese Dream’ and the completion of a moderately prosperous society.
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Features
A man’s man - Tinseltown’s gay star lives again in new play
by Ed Rampell
BY TRADE, I’m a full-time film historian/critic who has authored/co-authored four movie history books. I say this because at one point in the new play Taming the Lion, Joan Crawford (as depicted by Marie Broderick) tells William Haines (Landon Beatty) he’s the top box office movie star on Earth. Yet until I was invited to cover Taming the Lion this reviewer had never even heard of Haines, who also is not listed in David Thomson’s The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. The world premiere in the USA of playwright Jack Rushen’s two-act dramatisation of real-life Hollywood history and personalities explains why.
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Cuban - US Mafia plotted coup in Havana
Sputnik
PROTESTS broke out around Cuba, ostensibly over the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and economic problems. Díaz-Canel met with protesters on Sunday 11th July whilst large counter-demonstrations in support of his government assembled in various areas of the island.
Cuba’s president said that US-based émigrés are attempting to direct a “soft coup” in the Caribbean island nation under the guise of protests.
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Cuba’s streets belong to revolutionaries
by Juan Diego Nusa Peñalver, Yudy Castro Morales and Milagros Pichardo Pérez
“WE ARE HERE because the streets belong to Fidel, because the streets of Cuba belong to revolutionaries.” This was the phrase we heard the loudest walking along several Havana avenues Sunday afternoon, 11th July, when an entire people came out to defend their Revolution.
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How the imperialist media campaign against Cuba works
by Ed Newman
A HUGE media war is underway against Cuba from the USA says Julian Macias, a social media analyst, who told Telesur, the Venezuelan TV network, how the current campaign against Cuba has been waged on digital platforms in recent days.
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