By Bill Van Auken, 23 June 2011.
In his nationally televised speech Wednesday night, President Barack Obama announced a minimal withdrawal of US troops from the nearly decade-old war in Afghanistan. Obama’s proposal represented a tacit admission of the failure of the US intervention in Afghanistan and of the immense crisis of American capitalism to which a decade of multi-trillion-dollar expenditures on militarism has substantially contributed.
In concrete terms, Obama’s withdrawal proposal was crafted to give the US military command nearly everything it wanted, while helping him to get through his next …

Lenin’s Tomb, Tuesday, July 13, 2010.
This is the shock doctrine in action. What with the recession and the barrage of propaganda misdirection, and with relatively little militancy in response to job losses and pay cuts so far, the Tories are hoping that people are too busy worrying about their jobs and houses to notice most of what they’re doing – such as the latest example redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, and the neoliberal reforms of the NHS, which are tantamount …

By Robert Stevens, 5 March 2011.
Local authorities throughout Britain are currently voting on budgets for the coming year and imposing cuts of tens of millions of pounds in public spending.
As part of the Conservative/Liberal-Democrat government’s £83 billion austerity programme, council spending has been cut by 28 percent over the next four years. Councils across the official political spectrum are not only passing these cuts onto the local population but also using them to restructure jobs, wages and conditions.
A Channel 4 News report found that some local authorities in England and …

By Walter Armbrust.
On February 15th at 9:45 AM a comment was posted on the wall of the Kullina Khalid Sa’id Facebook page, administered by the now very famous Wael Ghoneim, referring to a news item reporting that European governments were under pressure to freeze bank accounts of recently deposed members of the Mubarak regime. The comment said: “Excellent news … we do not want to take revenge on anyone … it is the right of all of us to hold to account any person who has wronged this nation. By …

Thursday 24 February 2011by Louise Nousratpour.
British Gas was accused of engaging in “grotesque” profiteering while pensioners died from the winter cold after it revealed annual profits of £742 million today – just months after hiking its prices by 7 per cent.
British Gas’s 24 per cent increase in shareholder profits will anger millions of consumers who saw the average dual-fuel bill increase from £1,157 to £1,239 last December.
The 7 per cent rise came as customers were forced to reach for the thermostat when the coldest weather in 100 years …

Monday 21 February 2011by Louise Nousratpour, Equalities Reporter.
David Cameron let the Tory cat out of the bag today when he revealed that privatising Britain’s entire public sector was at the heart of his Big Society agenda.
In an article for the right-wing Daily Telegraph Mr Cameron said he wanted to end the “state monopoly” on public services by removing all barriers to private companies taking over schools, hospitals, transport and all other council services.
But trade unions and public-sector campaigners warned the Prime Minister that he would have a “bare-knuckle …

By the Editor.
The UK Independent is today reporting that globalist David Cameron is flying to Egypt for ‘talks’.
Free-market fundamentalist Cameron takes every opportunity to wax lyrical about how we must ‘open markets’ and deregulate economies in order to prosper. Further, in his recent speech to the Kuwaiti national assembly he stressed the need for economic reform in the Middle East:
“In the end, 21st century economies require open societies. I am convinced that the best guarantor of prosperity and stability is for economic and political progress to go in …

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 …