National News
Celebrating Red October!
by New Worker correspondent
Comrades and friends braved the weather on Saturday to mark the Russian revolution that was, undoubtedly, the greatest event in the 20th Century. Representatives from solidarity movements and members of the Chinese embassy gathered at the Party Centre to salute the Bolsheviks that established the first workers and peasants’ republic in November 1917.
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Save ScotRail ticket offices
by New Worker correspondent
The RMT transport union is campaigning against plans by Scottish Government owned ScotRail to reduce ticket office hours at 101 of its 143 staffed stations.
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Halt escalation in Ukraine
by New Worker correspondent
Demonstrators were in Whitehall on Saturday protesting against the supply of British long-range Storm Shadow missiles to the Ukrainians to fire the flames of NATO’s proxy war against Russia. The picket opposite the Prime Minister’s residence in Downing Street was organised by the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign, which has been supporting the people of the Donbas and the anti-fascist Ukrainian resistance on the street since 2014.
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Clean energy co-operation with Vietnam
by New Worker correspondent
There is a huge potential for the UK and Vietnam to enhance co-operation in clean energy, as both countries have set ambitious goals for carbon neutrality moving towards a sustainable future, experts have said.
At the United Nations COP29 climate change conference in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan earlier in the month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a new climate target: to reduce the country’s emissions by 81 per cent against 1990 levels by 2035
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The truth about Xinjiang
by New Worker correspondent
A meeting organised by Friends of Socialist China at the Marx Memorial Library in London last week heard eyewitness accounts from a group of activists, journalists, publishers and businesspeople from a tour of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the far west of China.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
This week we’ve seen our SNP government pull one over Labour on winter fuel grants to pensioners. The Scottish government originally said they would match the UK government’s decision to harshly means-test the winter fuel payment to older people in receipt of Pension Credit. Now they’ve pledged to help the poorest households meet their energy bills this year and promised all Scottish pensioners a winter fuel grant of at least £100 next year – with the poorest continuing to receive a £200 or £300 payment
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International News
Not ‘soft’ just pragmatic
Global Times
Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who just wrapped up his China visit last month, was quizzed over the UK’s China strategy by MPs when he spoke to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee while the Labour government is being slammed for “going soft on China”.
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Fast forward: China’s high-speed rail network
by Li Chang’an, Global Times
The operating mileage of People’s China’s high-speed railway now exceeds 46,000 kilometres, nearly 30,000 miles. Needless to say, some Western media outlets have slandered China’s high-speed railway, questioning the necessity of such an extensive network. They cannot accept the remarkable advantages of China’s high-speed railway system in terms of technology, construction efficiency and quality. Their purpose is nothing more than to smear China’s development achievements and attempt to “re-gain respect” for Western countries in the field of global infrastructure construction by be-littling others. In light of reality, such smears are absurd.
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Playing with fire on the Ukrainian front
South Front
The Russians have confirmed new Ukrainian attacks with NATO missiles in the Russian rear. Kiev should now get ready for Russia’s revenge. Last week the Ukrainians launched two attacks with Western weapons on targets in the Kursk region. On 23rd November, the Ukrainian military launched five US-made ATACMS missiles on the area of deployment of the S-400 anti-aircraft missile division near the village of Lotarevka located 37 kilometres north-west of Kursk. But Russian missile defences destroyed three ATACMS missiles. The two other American missiles reached their target. The Russian military confirmed that a radar installation was damaged as a result of the strikes and there were casualties among the military personnel.
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What ICC warrants against Israel really mean
by Monica Moorehead, Workers World (USA)
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on 21st November for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza. The charges address crimes that began on 8th October 2023, the day after the heroic Al-Aqsa Flood offensive initiated by Hamas. The war crimes in question continued up until 20th May 2024, when the ICC’s prosecutor first made the requests for the warrants based on overwhelming evidence produced by South African officials during hearings at The Hague in the Netherlands
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Features
Bye Bye Biden…
by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey , Pravda.ru
Marcus Licinius Crassus…2077 years ago. Desperate to make his mark and find a foe large enough to defeat and ride back into Rome in triumph, this idiot led his legions to almost total destruction against the Parthian Empire (modern Iraq and Iran), arrogantly ignoring the advice of his officers to take an alternative route, refusing the offer of thousands of infantry and archers from Armenia and then marching into the desert with no protection against the combined force of powerful Parthian cataphracts, heavily armed cavalry and light cavalry, led by General Surena.
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Trade war, Trump and decaying capitalism
by William Briggs, (Guardian - Australian communist weekly)
The world is bracing itself for the coming war. No a shot will be fired, at least not immediately. No troops will be paraded, but the incoming Trump administration has already declared war: trade war. The president-elect has announced that he will be imposing tariffs on all imported goods from all countries. He has declared war on the global economy but has marked out China as enemy number one. It is a war to preserve US dominance and for the survival of a moribund capitalism.
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The British volunteers who fought apartheid
Film Review by Theo Russell
London Recruits (2024). Dir: Gordon Main. 12A.
A major new documentary has just been released and is now showing at community cinemas around the country. But London Recruits is unlike any other documentary I’ve seen. In fact, it is more nail biting than any thriller film I’ve seen, and extremely powerful and moving. It tells the story of the British volunteers who were recruited to travel to South Africa to distribute propaganda for the African National Congress (ANC) and to deliver funds.
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Who’s a threat?
by Nathan Barnes, Guardian (Australian communist weekly)
Michael Moore, in his excellent film Bowling For Columbine, remarks upon the culture of fear in the USA. It is the most discernible link to and justification for the country’s equally prevalent gun culture.
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