UK
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Video: Act of Terror
An animated journey through the labyrinthine world of English Justice, the sinister caveats of Terrorism legislation, and the shocking cronyism of the police complaints system, Act Of Terror is about strength in the face of powerlessness and finding the courage to fight back. Continue reading
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Dance on Thatcher’s grave, but remember there has been a coup in Britain By John Pilger
The corruption and inhumanity under Thatcher knew no borders. When she came to power in 1979, Thatcher demanded a total ban on exports of milk to Vietnam. The American invasion had left a third of Vietnamese children malnourished. I witnessed many distressing sights, including infants going blind from a lack of vitamins. Continue reading
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Silencing the British People: The Legacy of Thatcherism and the Iraq War By Jason Langley
February 2003 saw the largest political protest in British history. An estimated two million Britons took to the streets of London as part of a wider global movement to march against the looming Iraq war. The protest united people of all ages, ethnicities, faiths and political persuasions. The noise was deafening. A rolling forest of… Continue reading
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Do you live in a Rotten Borough?
Any decent democracy requires a viable opposition. But the 21 million living in local One Party States don’t have that luxury. These authorities enjoy power without real accountability – and council taxpayers deserve better. Continue reading
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Thatcher’s Record: It’s All Smoke and Mirrors By Tim Holmes
Beneath the tide of stirring political rhetoric, it is worth taking a careful look at the woman’s true record in and out of office. What follows is an attempt to shed light on several key areas of that record. Continue reading
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New World Order Political Puppets: How Thatcherism Paved the Way for Tony Blair and “New Labour” By Colin Todhunter
Affable Tony could always ham it up with a good dose of media-friendly mock sincerity and tough talking. Thatcher and her PR people cynically forged the template for that. And both had a tendency to ignore that damned nuisance called public opinion and to land the country into a gruesome mess not of its own… Continue reading
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Death of Margaret Thatcher Reopens the Debate Over Her Cruel Legacy By Roger Annis
The death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on April 8 has renewed an intense political debate in Britain and internationally over her legacy. For her ruling class sycophants, Thatcher was a heroine, “one of the greatest” prime ministers Britain ever had. Continue reading
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The Ironic Lady: Margaret Thatcher, Supposed Champion of Freedom and Democracy, and Her Dictator Friends By Nima Shirazi
It should be remembered that, throughout her career, Thatcher was a staunch supporter of many of the world’s most brutal regimes, propping up and arming war criminals and dictators in service to Western imperialism, anti-Communism and neoliberal hegemony. Continue reading
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“Let us glory in our inequality.” By Michael Hudson
As in Chile, privatization in Britain was a victory for Chicago monetarism. This time it was implemented democratically. In fact, voters endorsed Margaret Thatcher’s selloff of public industries so strongly that by 1991, when she was replaced as prime minister by her own party’s John Major, only 35 percent of Britain’s voters supported the Labour… Continue reading
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Video: Under Thatcher, the Poor Became Poorer
John Weeks: Thatcher and Reagan set out to crush the union movement and assert the power of capital Continue reading
bourgeoisie, capital, class, coal, London, progressive, Reagan, Real News, Thatcher, TRNN, unions, United States, Video -
Video: Michael Hudson – Thatcher Gave More Power to Finance
Michael Hudson: Thatcher deregulated banking and made London the center of speculation and financialization – April 9, 2013 Continue reading
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Mrs. Thatcher’s Mean Legacy By Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers
We typically honor the convention to refrain from to speak ill of the recently departed. But Margaret Thatcher probably would not object to an epitaph focusing on how her political legacy was to achieve her professed aim of “irreversibly” dismantling Britain’s public sector. Continue reading
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The Stop the War Coalition, The Socialist Workers Party and Iraq By Ian Sinclair
STWC has been the leading organisation in the UK anti-war movement since its establishment in 2001. In particular, it was the most significant member of the tripartite coalition that led the movement against the Iraq War – the other members of which were the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).… Continue reading
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Going once, going twice—private firms bid for NHS By Sarah Ensor
Huge changes across the health service make a mockery of the Tory claim that the NHS is safe in their hands. New commissioning structures came into force on Monday of this week. They mean GPs can offer services from private companies instead of the NHS. Continue reading
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The actuality of a successful capitalist offensive By Richard Seymour
We’ve been waiting five years for a coherent left-wing response to the recession. We’ve been waiting three years for a coherent left-wing response to the cuts. Two years ago, I was asked at a talk how we could communicate the socialist solution to the crisis; I said it would be nice if we had one.… Continue reading
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Demise of Britain’s Welfare State: Largest ever Welfare Cuts. Millions of Families Affected By Paul Mitchell
For the next three years, most welfare benefits will be limited to just a 1 percent rise a year—well below the expected inflation rate and equivalent to a 4 percent cut in real terms. Other benefits have been frozen including Child Benefit and the Working Tax Credit available to low-paid workers. Over nine million families… Continue reading
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BBC defends false claims linking Rachel Corrie to killings of Israeli soldiers By Amena Saleem
The extent to which the BBC is prepared to misreport on the Israeli occupation has been made clear once again. A new ruling by the BBC Trust has defended the corporation’s coverage of the Rachel Corrie case, even though it falsely implied that the unarmed activist was in some way responsible for the deaths of… Continue reading
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What If They Held A Constitutional Convention and Everybody Came? By Dan Hind
As it happens a coalition of left-wing groups have recently announced their plan to establish People’s Assemblies Against Austerity. Everyone has their own hopes, wishes and fears for the assemblies. For myself, I hope that people pick up on the idea of a constitutional convention and use the assembly form to discuss the fundamentals of… Continue reading
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It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors By Ellen Brown
Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the… Continue reading