Britain: Three Tax Avoidance Schemes and you’re out, Cameron
by DOWLING Felicity
Cameron has tried – but failed – to distance himself from the Panama papers, says Left Unity Principal Speaker, Felicity Dowling.
The recent revelations and admissions show that he has dissembled the sources of his wealth. He has profited from offshore banking, inheritance tax management and the tax avoidance schemes that are the preserve of the very rich. He has criticised others for tax evasion but now the mask has slipped and his hypocrisy is exposed. He is revealed for what he is: both a beneficiary and an agent of extreme class privilege. And while profiting himself he has driven forward the most savage attacks on working people and the poorest in our society.
The Panama papers show clearly that offshore banking and the complex system of tax evasion have been carefully constructed by the very rich and their political representatives. They have been developed and established over years, in law and in tax regulation. And it is not something confined to corrupt individuals and regimes elsewhere – as some would have us believe. Britain is at the very heart of it: the whole legislative framework of the Virgin Isles, laws in the Channel Islands and in the Isle of Man and more. Tax minimisation lawyers have been “consulted” by HMRC while tax collection employees have been reduced in numbers.
Un millón de personas se echó a la calle el 31 de marzo para expresar su rechazo a la “Ley del trabajo” del gobierno Hollande. Ya el 9 de marzo, cerca de 500.000 personas habían marchado por las calles de más de 250 ciudades. Se trata de una movilización popular nacional, en proceso de construcción y ampliación, de la juventud, de las personas mayores, de la gente asalariada, de los estudiantes de bachiller, de los universitarios y de las paradas y parados. Pero sobre todo, y es lo más importante, se ve como emerge una nueva generación, no sólo en las huelgas y manifestaciones de la escuela secundaria y universitaria sino también en los cortejos de los asalariados y asalariadas y de los sindicatos. Aunque en cada país el movimiento tiene sus propias características, ¿cómo no acordarse de esos miles de jóvenes que ocuparon las plazas de las grandes ciudades en el Estado español, de los “indignados, sin los que no se puede explicar el surgimiento de Podemos, o de esas luchas de la juventud de “Occupy Wall Street” en EE UU? Esta nueva ola de radicalización de la juventud ya se había expresado también con anterioridad en la manifestación del pasado diciembre, durante la COP21 organizada por la ONU, exigiendo soluciones a los gobiernos ante los efectos y amenazas del cambio climático.
NEW YORK – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders issued the following statement today calling on Congress and the Obama administration to put the people of Puerto Rico over the interests of financial firms in any legislation to address the Puerto Rican debt crisis:
When I was a child, they said there was no way this majority-Protestant country of ours would ever elect a Catholic as president. And then John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected president.
Depuis cent ans, l’insurrection républicaine irlandaise donne lieu à diverses interprétations plus ou moins malveillantes : du sacrifice sanglant au putsch raté en passant par une escarmouche inutile. Or, ce soulèvement armé en pleine guerre mondiale, ne prend sa signification que si on l’englobe dans une période révolutionnaire en Irlande qui s’étend sur plus de dix ans, de 1912 à 1923, et que si l’on tient compte de l’environnement international d’alors.
Geoffrey Bell writes about the Easter Rising and the response of the British left. His latest book, Hesitant Comrades, the Irish Revolution and the British Labour Movement, has just been published by Pluto Press.
Les autorités ont poussé des cris de victoire à l’arrestation de Salah Abdeslam. « On l’a eu ! »… Quelques jours plus tard, les criminels de Daesh frappaient en plein cœur de Bruxelles. Trente-deux morts, des centaines de blessés, des enfants mutilés. Un carnage horrible. Aurait-il pu être évité ? Peut-être. Le dysfonctionnement des services de sécurité dans le cas d’Ibrahim Barkhaoui est flagrant, et fait penser à l’affaire Dutroux.
The fascist movement is usually on the rise in situation of political and economic crises with a specific mandate to train the dissatisfied, rebellious masses docile or even enthusiastic servers of capital. At the same time the dispossessed people and their capitalist owners must be convinced that no one can defend their interests better and more consistently than the fascists. Antagonistic interests are to be harmonised. The program of the fascist movement in this respect resembles to the one of social democracy, but its methods are brutal and primitive.
Les débats sur l’impérialisme et les enjeux stratégiques combinent plusieurs exigences : d’une part, le besoin d’actualiser la dimension analytique des concepts : comprendre comment s’est transformé le monde capitaliste que nous combattons ; d’autre part, la nécessité de prises de position face à des conflits.
Mercredi 9 mars se sont tenues dans plus de 170 villes des manifestations de masse unifiant la jeunesse et les salarié-e-s contre la politique du gouvernement Valls. Une situation politique et sociale nouvelle s’ouvre en France
- El encuentro del Plan B en Madrid sirvió para reforzar el contacto entre los ayuntamientos de Manuela Carmena y Ada Colau y el Comité para la Anulación de laDeuda del Tercer Mundo (CADTM)
On 8 December 2015, at the end of his visit to Greece, the UN Independent Expert on Debt, |1| Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, advised the Hellenic Government “to establish better judicial and administrative accountability for Government officials and decision makers in the private sector” citing the example of Iceland. |2| That small country of 320 000 inhabitants has indeed shown that it is perfectly possible for those responsible for the financial crisis to be prosecuted and condemned to prison sentences. The CADTM interviewed Eva Joly who played a key role as advisor to Iceland’s Special Prosecutor in the criminal investigation and is now MEP for the “Europe Ecologie-The Greens” party. Eva Joly, whom we presented with Éric Toussaint’s latest book, Bancocracy, also discusses how the crisis was managed in Iceland and the pressures brought to bear by its creditors to try to obtain repayment of illegitimate debts.
Donald Trump as Adolf Hitler -- absurd, over the top right?
Source Resumen Latinoamericano / The Dawn / February 7, 2016.- Interview with Franck Gaudichaud, researcher and teacher, editor of the book “Latin America. Liberation in progress”.
Répondant à l’appel du collectif Solidarité France Grèce pour la Santé et de l’association Bretagne Grèce Solidarité Santé, plus de 80 personnes de 23 collectifs locaux venant de plus de 20 villes et départements (*) se sont retrouvés le 20 février 2016 pour faire le point sur la solidarité avec les dispensaires sociaux grecs et le combat du peuple grec contre les politiques d’austérité imposées par l’union européenne et mises en œuvre par les autorités grecques.
Depuis 7 ans, la Grèce est un pays ruiné, avec un peuple épuisé et une démocratie bafouée...
For the casual reader, Poul Thomsen’s recent piece |1| on the role of the IMF in the bailout review negotiations currently taking place between Greece and the Troika would seem balanced and reasonable. At the end of the day, as he has argued elsewhere, |2| the numbers simply need to add up. For that there is a tradeoff between the “ambition of the reforms” Greece needs to impose and the amount of debt relief that can be granted by its European partners. In blunt terms, more austerity implies less debt relief and vice versa. Thomsen argues that given the contentious character of the negotiations the IMF is simply there as a friendly companion that supports both its Greek and European partners to help them make the tough decisions required to develop a program that adds up. However, for someone who is more familiar with the role that the IMF in general, and Thomsen in particular, has played in placing Greece in the precarious situation that it finds itself today, his piece can only be defined as brazen and cynical.
En EE UU Estamos asistiendo a un movimiento importante y muy significativo.Por primera vez desde los años 1930, asistimos a debates sobre el socialismo y el fascismo en los medios de comunicación de masas. Bernie Sanders se define, de forma franca, como un socialista democrático, al mismo tiempo que la candidatura de Donald Trump alimenta el debate sobre el fascismo.
Atónita asisto al último esperpento madrileño centrado en la obra de títeres que ha terminado con el encarcelamiento de los titiriteros.
The richest 62 persons now control more than half of the world’s money, according to a new Oxfam report. Total wealth of these individuals is the same as that of the world’s poorest 3.6 billion people. The rich-poor gap is growing wider. The ultra-wealthy group of persons is getting wealthier.