London Underground prepares mass closure of ticket offices By James Hatton and Paul Bond

3 September 2013 — WSWS

Recent disclosures have again confirmed London Underground management is planning to close all its 268 ticket offices over the next two years. Around 2,000 jobs are expected to be lost during that period, with job losses across the rail and underground network rising to 6,000 by 2020. The job losses are part of Transport for London (TfL) and London Conservative mayor Boris Johnson’s £7.6 billion cuts programme to the London transport budget.

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South Africa: Sectarian shame of the SACP By Terry Bell

16 August 2013 — Terry Bell

Shortly after the column below was written and blogged, the SA Communist Party issued its statement on Marikana that reveals the deep and dangerous sectarianism of this organisation. Here, I feel, is exposed one of the roots of the problem. I include here the final paragraph of that statement as an introduction to a repeat of the Inside Labour column that appeared here yesterday: Continue reading

The Class Struggle Platform

3 August, 2013 — Left Unity

[See Socialist Platform Statement of Aims and Principles and The Left Party Platform, the two other ‘platforms’ proposed by ‘factions’ within Left Unity.

CStruggleIntroducing – the Class Struggle Platform

We have drafted a third ‘platform’ to extend the debate within Left Unity. Having read the two platforms currently circulating – the Left Party Platform and the Socialist Platform – we were struck by an obvious similarity between them. Neither address the immediate issues confronting the working class in Britain today, which are not run of the mill concerns, but critical to all our futures.

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Billion-pound NHS contract offered to private health care providers By Joan Smith and Paul Mitchell

8 August 2013 — WSWS

The biggest ever contract for the sell-off of public health services in England, worth between £700 million to £1.1 billion, is being offered to private health care providers by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) as part of its “Older People’s Programme”. From July 2014, six National Health Service (NHS) contracts that include four hospital trusts, one mental health trust and one community service trust will be replaced.

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Zimbabwe: Why Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC 'lost' the election By Munyaradzi Gwisai

7 August 2013 — Links – International journal of socialist renewal

August 6, 2013 — For a good part of his 33 years in power, Robert Mugabe has presided over a ruthless dictatorship. From the thousands killed in the 1980s Gukurahundi massacres and misery for millions under ESAP [structural adjustment plan], Operation Murambatsvina and hyper-inflation of 2008.

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Disturbances Continue, Schism in Society Intensifies By Dimitriy Sedov

21 June 2013 — Strategic Culture Foundation

The events on Istanbul’s Taksim Square are presented in the world media as the consequences of an «ecologically incorrect» decision by the government to clear a landscaped area in a park located on the square. This is far from the truth and raises questions about the real interests of the West in the spreading conflict.

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Ireland and the Basque Country By James Petras

30 May 2013 — James Petras

Massive Flight (Emigration) or General Strike?

Many billions of Euros are being extracted from Europe’s vassal-debtor nations – Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland –and transferred to the creditor banks, financial speculators and swindlers located in the City of London, Wall Street, Geneva and Frankfort. Continue reading

South Africa: Pro-government faction attacks COSATU's Zwelinzima Vavi By Benjamin Fogel

12 April 2013 — Amandla!

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is in the midst of the biggest crisis in its 27-year history. This crisis has arisen from a South African Communist Party (SACP)-driven attempt to oust democratically elected COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, under the guise of corruption charges. The conflict’s roots are in longstanding political contradictions and ideological tensions between COSATU and its Alliance partners – the ruling African National Congress and the SACP. At stake is not only the leadership of COSATU, but its political and moral direction.

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Financial Cleansing: The Cyprus Bail-in Template By grtv

11 April 2013 — grtv

The recent bail-in in Cyprus has given the world a glimpse at the future of the banking landscape. Now, as Canada gets set to hardwire the bail-in process into law, analysts like Michel Chossudovsky are warning how the big banks can use this template to further consolidate their monopoly of economic control. This is the GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV.

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“Let us glory in our inequality.” By Michael Hudson

8 April, 2013 —

Failed Privatizations – the Thatcher Legacy

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “The Bubble and Beyond”.

This is from my book on privatization, written some 15 years ago, never published.

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