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In just over two years time London will be staging the 2012 Olympic
Games. However, before then we have the Winter Olympics, taking place
this year in Canada. So how does the Canadian working class view this
‘great event?’
The Capitalist crisis has plunged the
state of California into its worst budget crisis in history. Billions
of dollars have been already slashed from the budget and billions more
will be cut this year in order to“fix” the shortfall of $20.7 billion.
Unable to find any other solution on the basis of Capitalism, workers
and students will bear the brunt of these cuts. The students have
already fought back on several occasions with strikes and occupations.
On January 4th a consultation meeting at
Ashington Leisure Centre in Northumberland was held by the Lib/Dem leadership
of the County Council to "discuss" the question of its closure. The council has to find £33m worth of cuts
this year and amongst the many services being targeted is the town’s very
popular and highly used leisure centre.
Recently we have seen many important events
happening in Venezuela, such as the devaluation of the bolívar and the
nationalisations in the banking sector, which needs to be analysed
carefully. The movement of occupied factories made important steps
forward last year, but still faces sabotage by counter-revolutionary
managers and workers are still struggling for nationalisation under
workers’ control. In order to defend the conquests already made, the
revolution must put the nationalisation of the commanding heights of
the economy on the agenda. Only this can destroy capitalism and provide
the necessary prerequisites for a socialist planned economy.
The nation of Haiti was hit with a
devastating earthquake. The governments of Cuba and Venezuela responded
within hours with medical brigades, firefighters, fuel and supplies,
and there has been massive sympathy, generosity and volunteerism from
workers around the world. What a difference compared to the response
from the United States. The U.S. government has pledged assistance
in the way of one hundred million dollars – less than is spent on the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in just two days.
There is a manmade element to the
catastrophe now confronting the Haitians. The country doesn’t just happen to be
poor; it has been made poor and kept poor. Haiti is the poorest country
in the Western hemisphere, with the worst infrastructure and a people
most vulnerable to disaster and disease, because of the machinations of
imperialism. Although the earthquake could not be avoided, the scale of
death and destruction clearly could have been.
In the Labour Party and among Trade Union leaders here in Wales, it is
thought defeatist and almost traitorous, to express the belief that
Labour may lose the General Election this year. We look at how things are panning out in Wales and what Labour really needs to do to avoid defeat in the coming elections.
This year, Britain experienced its coldest winter in over 30 years, and
as temperatures dropped below -20ºC in some parts of the UK, thousands
of people suffered the effects of one of society’s gravest ills: fuel
poverty.
According to official definitions, “a household is said to be in fuel
poverty if it needs to spend more than 10% of its income on fuel to
maintain an adequate level of warmth”; current figures estimate that
there are approximately 4.6 million “fuel poor” households in the UK.
The severity of the problem is such that the Office for National
Statistics calculated that there were 36,700 deaths in the winter of
2008/09 due to the cold weather.
Kingston upon Thames has become the latest target in ongoing attacks against the National Health Service.
Segments of the NHS are to be subject to renewed cuts and transfers
that will see medical care placed in the hands of the private sector.
The news that Cadbury, the iconic chocolate making firm, has accepted a hostile bid from US based Kraft is clearly not good news for Cadbury workers given the huge debt Kraft is currently carrying. In an article wriiten just before the news broke we look at what all this could mean.
Just about a month ago in
Coventry we were treated to a public meeting on the Road to Peace in
Afghanistan with local MP Bob Ainsworth, MoD, versus Bruce Kent of CND. For Bob
the issue was simple. We are there to help the Afghan people, to stop the
country becoming a failed state, to protect British interests, to fight
terrorism and to stop Pakistan collapsing as withdrawal of UK forces would mean
precisely that. Members of the audience asked a number of questions, all of
which failed to get an adequate answer.
Exploitation and robbery – colonial style – is alive and well and now, more than ever
mercenary soldiers are doing the dirty work. Unaccountable and secretive,contracted armies are the preferred method powerful western states use to destabilize governments and secure control of natural resources. With state complicity, soldiers for hire are uninhibited by fear of prosecution and use what ever means necessary to undermine national liberation movements and impose imperialist chains and the rule of Western big business.