Britain

Come and hear Jesus Pino from the
Revolutionary Front of Steel Workers (SIDOR). He is speaking at the Hands Off
Venezuela National Conference in London
in less than two week’s time. He will speak about the struggle to nationalise
the steel industry and the fight for workers’ control in Venezuela. The
nationalisation of SIDOR earlier this year was a direct outcome of a militant
struggle by the steel workers themselves. This shows the direction that the
Venezuelan Revolution is taking and highlights the need to complete the tasks
of expropriating the Oligarchy.

After a long drawn out process the Scottish
Government has controversially granted infamous American tycoon turned
television celebrity Donald Trump permission to build a luxury golf resort in
rural Aberdeenshire. It will feature two golf courses and hundreds of private
homes and is set to be the most expensive golf resort in the world. The plans
have faced widespread opposition and the means used to finally secure their
approval has only exposed the reality of our allegedly democratic system and
the slavish attitude of the SNP government towards big business.

The case of Binyam Mohamed is a national disgrace. Binyam
faces trial before the Military Commissions at Guantamo, which all fair-minded
people regard as kangaroo courts. The US administration is desperately trying
to wangle a few convictions in order to justify keeping suspects locked up for
years and torturing them at Guantamo Bay. Binyam faces the death penalty, but
his defence has a problem. They cannot procure the evidence that could save
him. The US government refuses to release the documents.

Sooner or later the financial tsunami will run into the sand, but in
its wake the real economy will be left in recession. The immediate
crisis will have abated, but the sludge, mud, sewage and devastation
lasts much longer. They’re still mopping up the mud from the 2007
floods… how long will the recession last and how deep will it go?

New Labour has climbed down before big business again, on the issue of a windfall tax on the energy companies. Brown’s pathetic advice, that the elderly should wrap up warm and
switch off lights when prices go up, makes you wonder whether we voted
for Labour or the Big Six gas and electricity companies to run the
country in the last election.

Parliament will once again be discussing the Human Fertilization and
Embryology Bill in October. Once again battle is joined between those
who defend the right for women to decide over their own bodies, and
those who want the state to do it for them. This time, however, there
is room for improvements to existing legislation – not just calls to
turn the clock back fifty years.

The Banks are going down like ninepins. It’s just over a year ago that
Northern Rock went bust. That was the first time we heard of the
‘credit crunch’ – the fact that banks were nervous of lending to each
other. Why? Because they realised the whole financial system was stood
on an unstable house of cards of credit. The pyramid had been built up
over years of mad speculation. They had got to the stage where they did
not know which bits of coloured paper in their vaults were sound and
which were non-performing toxins.

Boris Johnson defends capitalism. 
“Go on.
Admit it. You don’t feel altogether sorry for those bankers, do you? When you
read about the collapsing pillars of the temples of mammon, you don’t feel the
tears beginning to prick the corner of your eyes. 

“When you
read that the masters and mistresses of the Universe are being expelled from
their glass palaces, ferrying their possessions in cardboard boxes, you can’t
quite find it in you, somehow, to mourn…”