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Nearly two decades ago. Robert Maxwell – former Labour MP, newspaper
tycoon and (so it turned out) conman died after ‘falling’ off his luxury
boat. Soon after all the scandals he was involved in were revealed to
an amazed world. He was living a great big lie and – worst of all – it
was at the expense of those former and then-current employees of the
Maxwell-owned Mirror Group who discovered that their pension fund had been milked dry by Maxwell.
You
couldn’t make it up! About two years ago the banks in Britain, the USA and all over the world began to
go bust. It started over here with Northern Rock and culminated in the USA with the
collapse of the giant Lehman Brothers, the biggest corporate bankruptcy in
history. The problem for governments was that the banks were threatening to
take whole chunks of the capitalist system over the precipice with them. The
banking collapse and the ‘credit crunch’ were the triggers for a general crisis
of capitalism.
Yesterday morning police and army
forces violently attacked thousands of supporters of Honduran president
Mel Zelaya and removed them violently from outside the Brazilian
embassy in the capital Tegucigalpa. However, this brutal repression did
not crush the will of the Honduran working people to resist against the
coup. Following the lead given by the National Front of Resistance,
there were mass demonstrations and barricades in all of the working
class neighbourhoods of the capital and in the main cities throughout
the country. Jorge Martin from www.marxist.com continues his analysis of the unfolding events in Honduras.
Cuts, cuts and even more cuts. This is the
message now being shouted by the leaderships of the Tories, the
Liberal-Democrats and – disgracefully – Labour. Indeed they are all trying to
outdo each other in presenting ever more severe programmes of public spending
cutbacks as part of what has been called a ‘race to the bottom’ on the part of
the three parties.
Yesterday morning it was confirmed
that Mel Zelaya was in the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. He made an appeal to
the people to come out to protect him. The masses responded by the tens
of thousands. The next few hours will be decisive. The balance of
forces is on the side of the masses. They can deal the last blow to the
coup regime and start the building of a new political regime based on
the organisation of the masses.
This Thursday 17th Sept will see a Day Of Action taking place in
support of the sacked Vestas workers. Meetings and rallies will be
taking place all around the country. 600 jobs have been lost at the Vestas
plant on the Isle Of Wight. Workers from the closed factory were at the
TUC in Liverpool this week and got a great reception. The demand
remains: nationalise the factory, keep the jobs.
The coup in Honduras and the stepping
up of a US military presence in Colombia are serious warnings to the
masses of Latin America. On top of this the present world economic
crisis is having an impact on the Venezuelan economy. All this is
posing very sharply the need for a turn to a genuine revolutionary
programme on the part of the Bolivarian movement.
During his election campaign,
President Barack Obama promised to be all things to all people. After
eight years of Bush and Cheney, Americans desperately wanted to believe
that real change was coming. In this statement from the Editorial Board of the US Marxist paper, Socialist Appeal, they ask – what change and who is benefiting?
In Will Hay’s classic farce ‘Oh, Mr Porter!’ the new stationmaster arrives to
be greeted at Buggleskelly ticket office with the words “Next train gone.” For thousands
of travelers on the modern day farce of London Midland network last Sunday it was a case of “No
trains coming.”
As
the consequences of the capitalist crisis continue to unfold before our eyes,
it is becoming clear just how much of an impact this recession is having on
education. The main focus of this article
is on just how much of an impact debt forced on parents is having on their
children’s education and therefore their future.
Hard on the heels of Donald Trump’s Aberdeen golf complex for
the rich and famous comes an even more exclusive playground, not for the rich,
poor things, but for the super-rich! According to a report in the Scotsman newspaper: ‘The Dall
Estate, on the shores of Loch Rannoch, is set to become a "mini
Monaco" in the heart of the Scottish countryside – a home from home for
billionaires, Russian oligarchs, heads of state, the international glitterati
and Hollywood and sporting superstars.’
With our own NHS once again under attack, not least from the Tories who see huge profits for their big business
chums in the private healthcare sector once they are back in office, many health workers have been
looking at the debate taking place in the USA over the future of their
healthcare system. Paul Poposky from In Defence Of Marxism takes a stateside look at how things are actually shaping up and whether Obama is delivering on his election promises.