Socialist Worker

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Get Israel out of Lebanon

George Bush, Tony Blair and France’s Jacques Chirac talk of peace in Lebanon. But in reality they have given Israel their blessing to continue its bombing and destruction.

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International Comment Features Reviews What We Think Other

News

Tommy Sheridan defeats injustice

Tommy Sheridan, member of the Scottish parliament for the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) and former convenor of the party, scored a fantastic victory last week when he won his defamation case against Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World.

10,000 march against hospital cuts in Worthing

Protestors marched in their thousands on Wednesday of last week to oppose cuts to health services in Worthing, Sussex, and the surrounding area.

Undervalued South Tyneside domestic staff plan week’s strike

Low paid domestics employed by South Tyne NHS Foundation Trust are escalating their dispute over new contracts.

NHS Logistics strike ballot

Workers at NHS Logistics, the not for profit body that supplies hospitals across the country, are expected to give notice of a strike ballot this week.

Strike at Whipps Cross hospital

More than 200 porters, domestics and catering staff employed by contractors Initial Rentokill at Whipps Cross hospital in Leytonstone, east London, struck for two days last week.

Reports round-up

The fight moves on at STVA Vehicle handlers who are employed by the French-owned firm STVA struck on Wednesday of last week over pay. The 35 workers, members of the T&G union, are based at sites in Scotland, Birmingham and Oxford.

Rifondazione: giving in to blackmail

It is now a little over five years since the great protests at the G8 summit in Genoa. This event put the anti?capitalist movement in Italy in the vanguard of the struggle against neo-liberalism and war throughout Europe.

All-out strike by Haringey bin workers

Haringey bin workers have been on indefinite all out strike since Monday 31 July. Members of the T&G union voted unanimously for strike action after Accord, the private company who run the service, threatened to remove two bin lorries.

Anger over DWP deal

There is growing anger among civil service workers in the PCS union in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over a new deal on job cuts recommended by union leaders in the department.

Pirelli Tyres workers vote for strike

Members of the T&G union at Pirelli Tyres have voted 66 percent in favour of full strike action and 78 percent in favour of action short of a strike on a 78 percent turnout. The union has 900 members at the Carlisle and Burton on Trent plants.

Postal workers strike ballot

Postal workers, members of the CWU union at Essex, London and Nottingham distribution centres are being balloted on whether to strike in a dispute over working practices.

Tower Hamlets Respect fury at housing Almos

Housing activists in Tower Hamlets, east London, have reacted with fury to a decision by the New Labour council executive to set up an Arms Length Management Organisation (Almo) to manage its remaining council housing.

Left gains on Labour Party NEC

Members of the Labour Party have elected Walter Wolfgang, the pensioner thrown out of last year’s party conference for heckling Jack Straw, to the National Executive Committee (NEC).

One hundred thousand marching against the Lebanon war

It’s said that Tony Blair was actually in Downing Street when we marched past on Saturday.

Voices from the London Lebanon demonstration

Hussain Ussali Hussain Ussali is from a Lebanese family. He lives and works in Manchester. He travelled down on a Manchester stop the war coach with his mother and two sisters. Hussein told Socialist Worker that it is the first demonstration that they have ever attended. He said that he felt he "must do everything in my capability to raise awareness of what is happening.

Gaza stands defiant in face of Israeli terror tactics

Israel wants to turn southern Lebanon into an area similar to the Gaza Strip, which it can raid whenever it likes to quash the resistance.

Best Internet coverage of the Middle East

Paul Rogers "Although Israel launched this war in response to a specific and relatively small border violation by Hizbollah, it is an operation that has been planned and rehearsed for months if not years."

Reports and video of London demonstration against attack on Lebanon, 5 August 2006

Some 100,000 people showed their outrage at the slaughter in Lebanon and Gaza on the march in central London on Saturday 5 August. Here are reports, photos and video of the event.

Derry anti-war protesters, including Eamonn McCann, arrested after Raytheon occupation

Nine anti-war protesters, including socialist and civil rights campaigner Eamonn McCann, are in jail in Northern Ireland for occupying an arms manufacturer

Derry anti-war protesters released on bail

Eight of nine anti-war demonstrators remanded in custody, including socialist and civil rights activist Eamonn McCann, have been granted bail in the Northern Ireland High Court. They had been charged following a protest at the Derry offices of US missile manufacturer Raytheon.

Demonstrations around Britain against Israel's continued attacks on Lebanon

Edinburgh There was a festival of resistance alongside the arts festival in Edinburgh as 7,000 people marched through the city against Israel's attack on Lebanon. Marchers of all ages and religions waved placards and flags, accompanied by a range of trade union banners. Children's shoes were left outside the US consulate on Regent Terrace to commemorate the high proportion of children killed by Israeli bombing.

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International

‘Civil resistance’ challenges result of Mexican election

A "civil resistance" movement, involving millions of people, has sprung up in Mexico to challenge the result of the 2 July presidential election.

An agricultural ‘revolution’ begins in Bolivia - but many obstacles lie ahead

On 2 August, Bolivia’s radical president Evo Morales and his cabinet travelled to the small town of Ucureña, where, in front of 50,000 agricultural labourers, they pledged to radicalise the process dubbed Bolivia’s "agrarian revolution".

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Comment

Eyewitness to the murder of Lebanon

Can Hizbollah unite Lebanon?

Amid the carnage and slaughter in Lebanon a new force is emerging that has confounded Israel - the tremendous unity shown by ordinary Lebanese towards each other.

The key to the crisis in the Middle East

What caused the war?

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Features

China Miéville: what’s the point of international law?

‘We are living through the beginning of the end of international law." These are the words of Irish Labour Party president Michael Higgins, faced with the carnage Israel is unleashing on Lebanon. The attacks’ brutality has led to a chorus of denunciations of Israel’s apparent disregard for international law.

Democracy and revolution in the Arab world

"How long before there’s a revolution?" This question was asked by the journalist Robert Fisk in the Independent last week as he considered the implications for the Arab world of the turmoil in Lebanon.

The Middle East’s history of resistance

The last time the Arab world saw such radicalism was in the 1950s and 1960s when a struggle against colonialism and imperialism looked like it could herald a new era for the region.

Thirty years since the Grunwick strike

Thirty years ago a small group of Asian workers at the Grunwick plant led a historic fight - and faced an onslaught from the right wing gang that would help to launch Thatcherism.

National Association for Freedom: cranks on the offensive at Grunwick

Today it is hard to imagine that sections of the British establishment, faced with a Labour government, would begin to organise to bring it down.

Cricklewood postal workers supported Grunwick strikers

Postal workers were in the forefront of the solidarity with Grunwick. Derek Walsh was one of the postal workers involved in the dispute.

Cowardice of union leaders lost the strike

I got involved with the strike on the second day. Someone in the flat downstairs who worked at Grunwick told me, "It’s a little place you’ll never have heard of, but we’re on strike."

When mass strikes showed their power

Since the start of the new millennium, a new generation of activists has risen to challenge capitalism.

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Reviews

Bertolt Brecht: ‘This chap Marx was the first to really understand my plays’

Pepijn Brandon looks back at the German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s life and work

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What We Think

Why will nobody play Brutus to Blair’s Caeser?

Tony Blair is cutting an increasingly isolated figure even within his own cabinet - we are told. His shameless support for Israel’s slaughter has shaken even New Labour diehards - we are told. Ministers are deeply embarrassed by the prime minister’s deranged remarks about a Muslim "arc of extremism" - we are told.

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Other Categories

Tim: Blair’s arc of extremism

Letters

Scots bowl Israel out In Scotland, we delivered three blows against the Israeli assault on Lebanon and Palestine last week. The first was when almost 250 people turned out for a protest called by Glasgow Stop the War and the Lebanese community at Prestwick airport on Sunday of last week.

Meetings, events and demonstrations

Meetings And Events

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