National News
IMMIGRATION: BRITAIN COPIES AUSTRALIA
by Floyd Kermode, Guardian Australian communist weekly
That’s right, you read the headline correctly. Normally it’s the other way round. Australians copy the UK, at least when we’re not copying the Americans. A lot of our culture derives from the UK. That’s why we have a foreign monarch’s face on our currency and lawyers who wear wigs
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Strikes Settled or Sell-out?
by New Worker correspondent
Britain’s recent strike wave is winding down as unions accept improved employers’ offers to settle. Some on the left have been quick to claim that in the case of the five per cent NHS pay offer for England and Wales made last week that there has been a sell-out. There are rumours circulating that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer KC has been exerting backroom pressure on union leaders to secure a speedy settlement. Whether Starmer actually has much influence amongst the leaders of the union movement is debatable, but the union bureaucrats themselves hardly need any encouragement to settle for a quiet life.
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Dons at War
by New Worker correspondent
Friday saw protests by irate members outside the London HQ of the University and College Union (UCU) by members who accused leaders of selling them out in their long-running pensions dispute in the higher education sector. They complain that what was billed as an “informal” e-mail ballot on a vague offer was taken too literally as an excuse to call off action. By some accounts, 10 per cent of the branches have passed motions of no confidence in the leadership of general secretary Jo Grady.
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Deal or No Deal
by New Worker correspondent
In the NHS an unholy trinity of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Unison and GMB all speedily accepted the five per offer almost as soon as it was made. Sara Gorton, Unison’s Head of Health, only complained that: “It’s a shame it took so long to get here. Health workers had to take many days of strike action, and thousands more had to threaten to join them, to get their
unions into the room and proper talks underway.” But she went on to let the cat out of the bag by adding: “This is better than having to wait many more months for the NHS pay review body to make its recommendation.”
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Victory on the Rails
by New Worker correspondent
To end on a positive note: Monday also saw puffs of white smoke arise from the headquarters of transport union RMT in London to announce that a ballot of 20,000 members employed at Network Rail have voted by 76 to 24 per cent on a 90 per cent turnout to accept a realistic new pay offer that also brings new conditions and improved security. This was a more positive result than those in the NHS and education.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
Whilst the battle for the throne continues amongst the biggies in the Scottish National Party, Labour looks on hoping to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of the SNP factional bloodbath that the opposition hopes will severely dent support for the nationalist cause on the street.
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International News
US crimes against Iraq still unpunished
Xinhua
Although 20 years have passed since the USA launched a blatant invasion into the sovereign state of Iraq, justice has not been done for Iraq and its people, many of whom are still suffering from the pain created by the unjust war.
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France: mass revolt to defend pensions
By G Dunkel , Workers World (USA)
With thousands of tons of uncollected garbage rotting in the gutters of Paris’s streets, hundreds of protesters arrested daily and the vast majority of the workers demanding the removal, if not the head, of French President Emmanuel Macron, his government survived a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly this week by just nine votes.
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Netanyahu pushes back judicial changes deadline
Radio Havana Cuba
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has softened his hard-right government’s judicial changes plan, an apparent concession to more than two months of unprecedented nationwide protests and misgivings voiced by Western allies.
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A tool of American imperialism
Xinhua
Despite its high-sounding rhetoric or manipulations in various forms, it is increasingly clear that ‘democracy’ has become a tool of the USA to maintain its hegemony and to instigate division.
In 2022, democratic pretensions, dysfunctional politics and a divided society continued in the USA. Corruption, identity politics, social rifts, and the gulf between the rich and poor, worsened, according to a report titled The State of Democracy in the United States: 2022.
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Features
Scott Ritter: Biden Led the Charge to Invade Iraq
by Simes Dmitri, Deputy Director of Sputnik’s English-language department
Joe Biden led the charge to push the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, according to Scott Ritter, who served as the United Nations chief weapons inspector in the country from 1991 to 1998.
In the lead-up to the war, then-Senator Biden used his position as chair of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee to help sell the George W Bush administration’s plans to a sceptical American public. He gave speeches and organised Senate hearings that promoted the administration’s false claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme. In October 2002, Biden spearheaded a joint resolution that gave Bush sweeping powers to use military force against Iraq.
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China’s legislature maps out the future
by Duncan McFarland , People’s World (USA)
Earlier in the month the Western corporate press was filled with the news of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s election to a third term and the country’s increased military spending, but the annual meeting of the Chinese legislature focused on topics that went well beyond just those two issues.
Some 3,000 delegates to China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) met in Beijing from 5th to 12th March, passing laws addressing a wide range of issues to advance towards the goal of building “a modern socialist country by 2050,” that is “green and democratic”.
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Pouring oil on the flames of war
by Xin Ping , Xinhua
As the 52nd session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) coincided with the one-year anniversary of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, the Ukraine issue inevitably came under the spotlight. The slogan "Stand With Ukraine" and weeping for the Ukrainian people more or less became mealtime prayers in the speeches, especially those from Western delegates.
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Fear of TikTok is idiotic. Will they ban chopsticks next?
by Mark Blacklock , Global Times
In my working life as a journalist I have been routinely searched many times before entering a criminal courtroom to report on a hearing. Once, an over-zealous security guard examined the backpack in which I carried my laptop, camera, digital recorder and sundry other work-related items. After peering into the bag, he reached inside and removed a charger and cable for a mobile phone, telling me that I would get it back only when I left the building. When I asked him why he was confiscating an ordinary electrical plug, he replied: "Because people come here to steal our electricity."
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