IT is almost as if the Israeli army is trying to gather as many Palestinians as possible in one place and then kill them all. Ahmed Abed and his family fled the Dalal al-Maghribi school in early August after an Israeli airstrike displaced them. That airstrike killed 15 Palestinians, who had taken refuge there after Israel had bombed their homes in the Shujaiyah neighbourhood of Gaza City. The family arrived in the al-Taba’een school, a private school with an attached mosque, that sheltered 2,500 people.

THE simmering economic and social discontent that began under the monetarist Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980’s has now boiled over into a violent reaction on British streets. In order to break the backbone of the trade union movement, the Tories at the time, privatised anything and everything; selling the state resources to their crony friends. The manufacturing base of Britain was permanently erased. Mines closed. The once powerful global brand of British Steel saw its works reduced to ash with a few smouldering units left in ruins.

To Lam(President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Polit Bureau member)GENERAL Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong, a thinker, a culturalist, a theoretical flag of the Party, and an eminent student who has constantly studied and followed great President Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, morality, and lifestyle, has devoted his lifetime to the revolutionary cause of our Party and nation, as well as the country and the people.

The French Left Unites to Build a Barrage against the Fascist Far Right THE results of France’s recent legislative elections have come as a surprise not just to the French political establishment but also to much of the world. The consensus among polling organisations, political pundits and the mainstream media was that France’s major force on the fascist far right, the Rassemblement National ((National Rally: RN) led by Marine Le Pen, would win the largest number of seats.

IT is impossible for a political party committed to policies of austerity to remain in office forever. Austerity policies cannibalise social life, cutting everything that makes it possible for humans to live in the modern world. When the Conservative Party’s David Cameron became the prime minister in 2010, after thirteen years of New Labour rule which had already pursued an austerity strategy, he pushed an ultra-austerity budget that cut investments in health and transportation, in education and community life.