Solidarity 339, 8 October 2014

Strike to end low pay

Public sector workers from health, local government and civil service will strike over pay in the week beginning 13 October. Unison, GMB and Unite local government workers (and some school workers) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will strike on 14 October. PCS (the civil service union) will strike across Britain on 15 October. Members of the lecturers' union UCU in Further Education colleges in England have rejected their 1% pay offer by 85%. They will strike on 14 October, on the authority of a previous ballot. RMT members on London Underground will strike over job cuts on 14-16...

FireChat: yet another spurious techno-panacea

Hardly a day doesn’t go by when we don’t hear about some new “revolutionary” technology that is going to make the world a more open, transparent, and better place. There have been a few high profile ones in recent days, including the new social network Ello, which is being pushed as the “anti-Facebook” (it’s nothing of the sort). Ello claimed that 30,000 people per hour have been trying to sign up to be users of the beta version of its software. And the mass street protests in Hong Kong have focussed attention upon an app for smartphones called “FireChat” which is, apparently, going to bring...

Syrian Kurds face ISIS massacre

Tuesday 7 October: Forces of the “Islamic State” movement (ISIS) have entered the Kurdish city of Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border. After taking a hill commanding the city on 5 October, ISIS has now begun to enter at ground level. Kobani had taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees and was touted at one time as a safe haven for those escaping IS. Previous incursions of IS members into Kobani had been quashed by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), but it looks like street by street fighting will now see the city taken, leading to a massacre of Kurds and other minorities who have...

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