Monthly Archives: March 2024

Morning Star: Sewage at the boat race: it’s well over time we take water back into public hands

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Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-take-water-back-public-hands

A rowing boat on the River Thames Putney, London, March 27, 2024

THE crisis of capitalism is running out of your taps and pouring into our rivers. Britain’s water industry is lurching towards calamity, poisoned by the priorities of profit and abetted by politicians in the pocket of the privateers.

The largest water company in the country, Thames Water, appears to be on the edge of insolvency after its investors refused to pump in cash essential to the company’s survival — apparently because the reluctance of regulator Ofwat to authorise even steeper increases in bills to households made it an unattractive bet.

And alarm was spread about the annual Oxford-Cambridge boat race on Saturday having to row through the sewage-ridden Thames, with doubts being cast on maintaining the tradition of throwing the cox of the winning crew in the river on health and safety grounds.

Now there are calls for the government to declare a national emergency as discharges of raw sewage into rivers and seas across Britain reach a record high.

These are the fruits of the handing over of the most basic resource to the tender mercies of monopoly capital. The sewage in the rivers is one side of the coin, the riches sitting in shareholders’ bank accounts is the other.

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Nationalisation may be forced on the government in the case of Thames Water. But state control can only work in a context of planning, investment and a role for both workers’ and consumer interests.

That was Labour Party policy until Keir Starmer abandoned it. It is time the labour movement demanded its reinstatement.

Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-take-water-back-public-hands

Continue ReadingMorning Star: Sewage at the boat race: it’s well over time we take water back into public hands

Israel using famine as ‘a weapon of war,’ UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warns

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Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/israel-using-famine-as-a-weapon-of-war-un-high%20-for-human-rights-warns

Parachutes drop supplies into the northern Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, March 28, 2024

‘Arms exports must cease, the occupation and settlement policy must end,’ former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says

THERE is “nothing natural” about the famine in Gaza and Western pressure on Israel through a total arms embargo is urgent, left MPs and campaigners said today.

They spoke out as the UN’s top human rights official said Tel Aviv could be using starvation as “a weapon of war” in the overcrowded territory as its invasion enters its fifth month.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk told the BBC that if the intent to do this was proven it would amount to a war crime.

Mr Turk condemned the Hamas attack of October 7, during which 1,139 people were killed and about 250 others were taken hostage. But he also said that no side in the war should evade accountability for its actions, including for any attempt to withhold aid supplies from the people who need it in Gaza.

He told the BBC: “All of my humanitarian colleagues keep telling us that there is a lot of red tape. There are obstacles. There are hindrances. Israel is to blame in a significant way.”

“When you put all kinds of requirements on the table that are unreasonable in an emergency that brings up the question, with all the restrictions that we currently see, whether there is a plausible claim to be made that starvation is, or may be used as, a weapon of war.”

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Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/israel-using-famine-as-a-weapon-of-war-un-high%20-for-human-rights-warns

Continue ReadingIsrael using famine as ‘a weapon of war,’ UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warns

Complicit in genocide: where Israel gets its weapons from

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Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/complicit-genocide-where-israel-gets-its-weapons

Far from ‘standing alone’ Israel is fully supplied with military hardware from various Western and non-Western countries, writes RAMZY BAROUD

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Though many of Israel’s traditional allies in the West are openly disowning its behaviour in Gaza, weapons from various Western and non-Western countries continue to flow, feeding the war machine as it, in turn, continues to harvest more Palestinian lives.

This compels the question: does Israel truly stand alone when its airports and seaports are busier than ever receiving massive shipments of weapons coming from all directions? Not in the least.

Almost every time a Western country announces that it has suspended arms exports to Israel, a news headline appears shortly afterwards, indicating the opposite. Indeed, this has happened repeatedly.

Last year, Rome had declared that it was blocking all arms sales to Israel, giving false hope that some Western countries were finally experiencing some kind of moral awakening.

Alas, on March 14, Reuters quoted the Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto as saying that shipments of weapons to Israel are continuing, based on the flimsy logic that previously signed deals would have to be “honoured.”

Another country that is also “honouring” its previous commitments is Canada, which announced on May 19, following a parliamentary motion, that it had suspended arms exports.

The celebration among those advocating an end to the genocide in Gaza were just getting started when, a day later, Ottawa practically reversed the decision by announcing that it, too, will honour previous commitments.

This illustrates that some Western countries, which continue to impart their unsolicited wisdom about human rights, women’s rights and democracy on the rest of the world, have no genuine respect for any of these values.

Canada and Italy are not the largest military supporters of Israel. The US and Germany are.

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Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/complicit-genocide-where-israel-gets-its-weapons

Continue ReadingComplicit in genocide: where Israel gets its weapons from

Activists occupy government department to demand halt on Israel arms exports

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Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/activists-occupy-government-department-demand-halt-israel-arms

London for a Free Palestine activists outside the Department of Business and Trade Photo: Guy Smallman

ACTIVISTS from London for a Free Palestine occupied the Department of Business and Trade today, [yesterday] demanding that the British government stop arming Israel.

The campaigners took over the lobby in the Old Admiralty Building, chanting: “British government you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”

One protester, Maria, said: “We are going here today because the Department for Business and Trade is where the licences for British arms exports to Israel are signed and approved.

“The UK has been giving Israel diplomatic, military and economic support, which has enabled it to carry out and continue its genocide and long-term colonisation of Palestine.”

Another participant, Cynthia Allett, said: “This department arms genocide.

“As Israel prepares a ground invasion in Rafah, we won’t allow the weapons used to slaughter more Palestinian people to be supplied in our names and funded by our taxes.”

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Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/activists-occupy-government-department-demand-halt-israel-arms

Continue ReadingActivists occupy government department to demand halt on Israel arms exports

On the streets to say ‘never again’

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Many articles from the Morning Star featured today https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/streets-say-‘never-again’

After 100 days of a Javier Milei presidency, hundreds of thousands of Argentinians marked the anniversary of the 1976 coup amid growing revisionism of the brutal dictatorship years. BERT SCHOUWENBURG reports

EVERY March 24, hundreds of thousands of Argentinians flood the streets of Buenos Aires and other cities to commemorate those who were killed, tortured or simply disappeared during the military dictatorship that took power on that date in 1976.

This year the marches and demonstrations had particular significance because they took place just after President Javier Milei’s first chaotic 100 days in office following his shock election victory in November of last year.

Until now, it has been widely accepted that during a dictatorship that lasted until 1983, some 30,000 people were taken from their homes, workplaces or from on the streets and were never seen again.

They were put in clandestine detention centres where they were interrogated, tortured and in most cases, killed. Some were put in aeroplanes, flown out to sea and dumped into the ocean.

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Following the return of civilian rule, the leaders of the coup and other perpetrators of these crimes against humanity were tried and imprisoned, though many of them have been permitted to remain under house arrest rather than go to jail.

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However, since Milei’s election, the consensus that the sentences being served by those guilty of the atrocities are more than justified is being challenged by his government who say that they have been wronged.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/streets-say-‘never-again’

Continue ReadingOn the streets to say ‘never again’