EU's mask stripped away

Fact two. The pound of flesh will be extracted anyway. By force.

If anything exposed the true agenda of the EU, despite the threadbare veil of impotent "democracy" represented by the European Parliament, it is Cyprus.

A matter of weeks after replacing communist president Demetris Christofias, right-wing Nicos Anastasiades has been kowtowing to the troika of the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund and the European Union in return for a bailout.

In relative terms, the figures involved are chicken feed.

Cyprus is said to need around £12 billion to stabilise the hole in its finances left by the austerity-driven collapse of Greece's economy and the irresponsibility of its and Cypriot bankers.

The island has been told by they who must be obeyed that, in order to access £8bn in finances for their country, ordinary people have to pay a blood price to make up the rest.

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The EU acts like a bully-boy operating an extortion racket by threatening to withdraw low-cost credit, meaning that the island's banks will collapse on Monday.

So much for international solidarity.

The EU is targeting its only member to have elected a communist leader, and one of the few remaining bastions not completely overrun by the greedy hordes of the free market and big business.

The Cypriot people are being played from every angle - by the wealthy bankers that failed them, and by the overlords in Brussels who seek to engineer the nation's fate in the interests of their business allies.

And they're played in much the same way by the multimillionaire gangster friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin who make up half the deposits on the island.

What is at stake here is not just a widely reviled universal tax on savings.

The clear target is the sell-off and privatisation of the country's commonly owned resources and unexploited gas fields.

That means that the Cypriot people not only have to pay now for the failings of a few reckless bankers at home and abroad, they will be paying for years to come in the form of expropriated mineral wealth that should be funnelled into collective advance.

The EU's huggy-friendly mask hasn't just slipped, it's dissolved in an acid-bath frenzy.

Turn the tide

For too long brave campaigns based in communities and fuelled by local trade unionists have fought a rearguard action against the complete annihilation of the NHS in England.

Today a senior member of the West Midlands Ambulance Service revealed more gory details of the scale of the crisis. It should act like an adrenaline injection to the central cortex.

John Lister in the pages of the Morning Star has for years charted the slow-motion car crash that is the current future of the health service.

But where is the national, co-ordinated campaign to turn the tide?

It is a question posed by activists the length and breadth of England.

The fact is that the only way to stop the rot is by linking local campaigns nationally, and articulating the people-first alternative policies to the madcap market mayhem currently being pursued.

The People's Assembly launched on June 22 will be part of the solution, but why wait until June?