Monday, February 07, 2011 – by Staff Report.

Hosni Mubarak’s power fades as US backs his deputy …
Omar Sulieman’s call for orderly reform wins backing of Hillary Clinton on day senior members of ruling NDP resign …
Hillary Clinton at the Munich Security Conference, where she backed Egypt vice-president Omar Suleiman’s call for orderly reform. America swung its support behind Egypt’s vice-president, Omar Suleiman, and the political transition he is leading, calling for a process of orderly reform. The policy, made clear by Hillary Clinton at the Munich Security …

Thursday 03 February 2011by Solomon Hughes.
What will the coalition’s “reforms” do to the NHS?
More importantly, what are we going to do about them?
Some clues as to the consequences of the current NHS reforms were in evidence outside Southampton hospital last Monday morning.
At each exit was a picket of dozens of health workers waving Unison flags and blowing vuvuzuelas.
Bus drivers and passing cars responded with honks of support.
The strikers are cleaners, demanding what they were promised in a national deal.
They work for the Medirest company …

ADDED OCT 9, 2010, at POLITICAL DYNAMITE.
When people start throwing around figures in the billions I’d be the first to admit I switch off.
If you said to me ‘so and so’ costs £12 billion, while ‘this and that’ costs $340 million – by mixing up the denominations and the units you can completely throw people off the scent. I’m certainly not thinking, that’s a comparison between £12,000,000,000 and approx £214,000,000.
Or for even easier digestion: £12 billion compared to approx £0.2 billion.
I’m going to borrow an analogy from the superb More Or …

London Morning Star, Monday 31 January 2011.
David Cameron’s case for his government’s plans to destroy the National Health Service is based on bluster and lies.
Justifying something on the basis that leaving things as they are is not an option is not an argument.
If there are weaknesses in the NHS – and there certainly are – identify those weaknesses and engage in discussion over how to overcome them.
The Tories and their loyal satraps the Liberal Democrats have not done that.
They simply gave a blank sheet of paper …

By markaprovost.
In a January 2009 ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos, then President-elect Barack Obama said fixing the economy required shared sacrifice, “Everybody’s going to have to give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game.” (1)
For the past two years, American workers submitted to the President’s appeal—taking steep pay cuts despite hectic productivity growth. By contrast, corporate executives have extracted record profits by sabotaging the recovery on every front—eliminating employees, repressing wages, withholding investment, and shirking federal taxes.
The global recession increased unemployment in every country, but the …

By the Editor.
It has begun. Using slashed public spending as a precursor and an excuse, the corporate whores in Whitehall are dismantling the NHS piece by piece and handing it to the private healthcare industry.
This from The UK Independent:
Under the proposals published in Health and Social Care Bill yesterday:
* GPs will become responsible for “buying” care from hospitals and will form consortiums to do so.
* Every hospital will be given independence from the Department of Health and will be allowed to fail and will be taken over by private operators …

By Chris Hedges.
Power does not rest with the electorate. It does not reside with either of the two major political parties. It is not represented by the press. It is not arbitrated by a judiciary that protects us from predators. Power rests with corporations. And corporations gain very lucrative profits from war, even wars we have no chance of winning. All polite appeals to the formal systems of power will not end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must physically obstruct the war machine or accept a role as …

By Jerry White, 8 January 2011.
President Obama’s choice of William Daley for the post of White House chief of staff is a clear signal to corporate America that his administration will dedicate the next two years to accommodating the wishes of big business for reduced regulations and taxes for corporations and austerity measures for the working class.
In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression—with workers facing long-term unemployment and rising personal bankruptcies, hunger and poverty—the president has picked a multi-millionaire banking executive from JPMorgan Chase for …

By Chris Hedges.
The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both …

Matthew Cassel, The Electronic Intifada, 17 December 2010.
Over the past month, journalist and activist Jody McIntyre has joined a growing number of students, workers, activists and others in the United Kingdom in protesting a government decision to cut public sector funding, especially in the field of education. Last week, as tens of thousands of students took to the streets of central London, parliament voted in favor of a plan that will raise tuition fees by 300 percent.
Jody, who spent months alongside Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip protesting …