Issue: 1967
Dated: 10 Sep 2005
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The hurricane that hit New Orleans was a natural disaster. But what followed was pure criminality on the part of George Bush and his administration.
Some 2,000 council workers in Sefton, Merseyside, struck on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. They were demanding the reinstatement of two leading trade union activists suspended by Sefton council on trumped-up disciplinary charges.
Council tenants in Sefton and Sedgefield are the latest to vote against the transfer of their homes to a private sector housing association landlord.
The Unity Against Racism festival in Liverpool on Sunday was truly a day to remember.
Activists from Unite Against Fascism demonstrated against the National Front in Manchester and Medway, Kent, on Saturday 27 August.
Up to 5,000 refugees face eviction from their homes, all their benefits and support removed and their family split apart as social services take their children into care.
A ballot for industrial action among First Eastern Counties bus drivers in Norfolk has seen 93 percent of staff vote for strikes. Drivers say they have now been pushed to the limit by their employers.
Staff at Scottish Enterprise were considering a new pay deal as Socialist Worker went to press. If it is not acceptable then 1,000 workers were to strike on Thursday this week.
Fight over pay and reprivatisation The RMT union is balloting 1,350 members on South East Trains for strikes to protect pay and conditions at the firm, which faces reprivatisation next year.
Jack Dromey, deputy general secretary of the T&G union, was to speak at a rally in Glasgow alongside Gate Gourmet workers on Wednesday of this week to build support for the dispute.
Robin Cook's death means there will be a by-election — the first since the general election — in the Scottish constituency of Livingston.
We are very hopeful that this rally will be the launch pad for an intensified and powerful campaign.
A preparedness to take industrial action has won a significant victory for council workers in Aberdeen.
The National Union of Students (NUS) executive met last week to discuss this year’s education funding campaign.
Public sector union leaders met government ministers last week and again rejected moves to raise the pension age to 65.
If we accept that a fourth world war has begun — launched through globalisation and neo-liberalism by the economic and political powers of the "developed" North — then the strength shown by the Bolivian social movements has made this country a frontline in that war.
Workers at the centre of two disputes that go to the heart of Labour’s anti-union, pro-boss policies came together on a confident, militant protest through Bristol on Friday of last week.
Over 400 postal workers rallied in London on Wednesday against plans for privatisation and "liberalisation".
Ever Since its launch in July, Linkspartei has been picking up significant support across the German working class. This has predictably led to a concerted smear campaign against Oskar Lafontaine, the party’s best known leader.
Some 600 construction workers in the Gulf state of Qatar were celebrating last week after they won the first legal strike in the country’s history.
Turkey’s most acclaimed novelist, Orhan Pamuk, faces a possible three years in jail after being charged last week with "publicly denigrating Turkish identity".
Waleed Khaled was shot by US troops last week while working for Reuters TV. In response US army spokesman General Rick Lynch claimed that the US soldiers "took appropriate measures".
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is about to unleash an economic nightmare on Iraq, warn debt campaigners Jubilee Iraq.
When Dominique de Villepin was appointed prime minister of France following the vote against the European Union (EU) constitution in the referendum in May, he promised his first 100 days in office would give confidence back to the French.
Whenever there is occupation there is resistance. All nations have experienced this. Resistance to occupation is legal, legitimate and acceptable.
In 1919 British prime minister Lloyd George warned the world’s statesmen at the Paris peace conference, "The whole of the existing order is being called into question by the masses from one end of Europe to the other."
The US 82nd Airborne Division was deployed to New Orleans last weekend, the first time it had been sent into an American city since the Los Angeles rising of April 1992.
I’m originally from New Orleans. I know my immediate family there is safe after a few anxiety ridden days of not knowing their situation. The fate of members of the more extended family is not known and we hope for the best.
New Orleans will not be forgiven. It is a turning point in history. Today tens of millions of Americans hate George Bush with an endless, ragged, bleeding rage. I am one of them.
"Is this what the pioneers of the civil rights movement fought to achieve?" historian Mark Naison asked as Katrina presented the world with images of a desperate, impoverished US seldom seen in the media, "a society where many black people are as trapped and isolated by their poverty as they were by segregation laws?"
Imagining 20th century music without New Orleans is like imagining painting without Picasso. The city has a rich and varied musical tradition, but it is above all the birthplace of jazz.
With hurricane Katrina, class and race divisions have surfaced in the US for everyone to see. Socialists have known about these for some time, but for many others it was a clear expression of what US capitalism has done to black people and the poor.
I’m surprised that in all of the press coverage of Hurricane Katrina there is no mention of Hurricane Ivan, which hit New Orleans, Louisiana, about a year ago.
The scenes from the stricken city almost defy belief. Many, many thousands of people left to die in what is the richest, most powerful country on earth.
The population of New Orleans is 67 percent black. 35 percent of black households do not own a motor vehicle, compared to 15 percent of white households.The city has the second highest rate of child poverty in the US. It is the tenth poorest city in the US. The population of the devastated Lower 9th ward has an average household income of £14,600. A quarter of the households there survive on less than £5,400 a year.Across the state of Louisiana, where New Orleans is located, the equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop out of education every day. Many young black men from New Orleans end up in Angola prison, a former slave pla
Halliburton poised to profit Earlier this year US multinational Halliburton confirmed that it had hired the former head of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), Joseph Allbaugh, as a consultant on issues including disaster relief and homeland security.
"It appears that the money has been moved into the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."Walter Maestri, a former Louisiana emergency management chief
Manet painted this picture in Paris in 1882, only a decade after the working class had been battered in the repression which followed the Paris Commune. It was a time when the expansion of capitalism in western Europe meant rapid industrialisation and mechanisation.
Who Shot the Sheriff?Directed by Alan MilesLondon Launch, 7.30pm,Thursday 15 SeptemberThe Scala, London, £15<a href="http://www.lmhr.org.uk" target = "_blank">www.lmhr.org.uk</a>
The Night of TruthDirected by Fanta Régina NacroReleased 9 September
My Name is Rachel Corrie11-29 OctoberThe Royal Court, LondonPhone 020 7565 5000
Life had a price in New Orleans last week. The rich survived. The poor — and especially the black poor — were abandoned to their fate.
Vince Rutterford, who died recently, joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) at the beginning of the miners’ strike in 1984.
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