TEN thousand Serbian workers demonstrated in central Belgrade on Wednesday against an austerity plan designed to meet International Monetary Fund conditions for a 3 billion euros (£2.69bn) bail-out loan.
As legislators passed a budget plan consisting of a public-sector wage freeze, higher income taxes, higher excise duties on petrol, diesel and natural gas and higher taxes on mobile phone bills, protesters flanked by riot police marched by the parliament building carrying banners reading: “We are hungry” and “Down with the government.”
Passing the government’s Privatisation Agency and Finance Ministry buildings, they shouted: “Thieves, thieves.”
Alliance of Independent Trade Unions leader Ljubisav Orbovic warned that “the government will create a small circle of profiteers and a huge number of losers.”
Mr Orbovic described the government’s approach to the economic crisis as “slow, wrong and inefficient,” slamming the apparent lack of “vision or strategy.”
And he warned politicians that the rally was a “final warning” that workers will not stand by silently as they “destroy our economy and Serbian citizens.”
Stressing that there were already a million jobless people in Serbia and that this figure was rapidly growing, Mr Orbovic said that workers were running out of patience.
Confederation of Autonomous Trade Unions of Serbia vice-president Dragan Zarubica said that, instead of bashing working people, the government should “downsize itself and cut the number of useless agencies in order to achieve sizeable savings.”
And Ljubisa Nikolic, a metal worker from the southern city of Nis, said: “The government’s measures are half-hearted, selfish, short-sighted and aimed at keeping them in power.
“For months, I haven’t been able to afford a decent meal for my children and the government is imposing more belt-tightening,” Ms Nikolic stormed.
Protesters also cheered Zoran Bulatovic, a union activist from the city of Novi Pazar who cut off his finger and ate it over the weekend to protest against unpaid wages.
The government forecasts that the economy will shrink by 2 per cent this year, but analysts say it could contract by as much as 10 per cent and ministers insist that the country needs the IMF loan to prop up its currency.
The IMF is expected to approve the loan on May 11, but the cash is contingent on Serbia slashing its deficit to 3 per cent of GDP.
The outbreak of a swine flu epidemic that threatens to assume global proportions is exposing the disastrous consequences of the subordination of all aspects of social life to the capitalist market and the competing interests of nationally-based corporate elites. The potential toll in illness, death and economic disruption is compounded by the scourges of poverty, social inequality and the lack of basic health care infrastructure in much of the world.
A rational and coordinated application of modern medical science and technological resources to deal with a world threat is frustrated at every turn by national boundaries and nationally based responses.
In the industrialized countries, above all the United States, the potential human cost from the flu epidemic is magnified by the decades-long neglect of public health by governments, beholden to financial interests, that have starved the health care infrastructure of resources.
In response to the spread of the swine flu, the World Health Organization on Wednesday raised its alert to Phase 5, a level characterized by widespread human infection and the danger of a pandemic.
The swine flu outbreak has been traced back to a pig farm in Mexico. The first known case of the virus emerged a fortnight earlier than previously thought in a village called La Gloria, where residents have long complained about the smell and flies from a nearby pig farm. Locals in the community of 3,000 believe their town is ground zero for the swine flu epidemic, even if health officials aren’t saying so. More than 450 residents say they’re suffering from respiratory problems from contamination spread by pig waste at nearby breeding farms.
Modern factory farms have created a ‘perfect storm’ environment for powerful viruses: here.
The sick face of food production under capitalism: here.
The handling of the swine flu outbreak underscores the difficulty, in the present political environment, of separating medical science from corporate interests and the political agendas of governments that are beholden to them: here.
Profiteers helped to cause swine flu threat: here.
Hogwash Alert: How to Survive the Pandemic of Swine Flu Scams and Swindle: here.
The current swine flu virus may not mutate into a more dangerous form and the danger will then subside. Scientists, however, remain concerned that the virus is poorly understood and may be susceptible to mutation.
The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal rejected the Administration’s invocation of state secrets privilege and instructed the District Court to proceed with the case.
The company is said to have supplied crucial logistical support and to have profited from a lucrative contract in transporting prisoners.
Although the District Court accepted this argument, the Appeals Court yesterday reversed their decision, stating that it is not acceptable to throw out an entire case for national security reasons.
Rather, Judge Hawkins states that each piece of evidence must be weighed separately as to the ‘danger’ it would pose if made public. The case may then proceed with whatever evidence is safe to be revealed.
‘This is a tremendous step forward in the battle to stop corporations making money from the rendition, torture and suffering of the prisoners we represent,’ said Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve.
‘Binyam Mohamed, Bisher al-Rawi and perhaps many others, are one step closer to making the CEOs of these companies stop and think before they commit criminal acts for profit.’
Renditions investigator Clara Gutteridge said: ‘It is a relief that the United States’ courts are finally taking these torture claims seriously. However, we are only beginning to uncover the truth of exactly how these torture flights were allowed to happen.
A federal appellate court has unanimously reinstated the lawsuit brought by five men against a Boeing subsidiary for allegedly flying them to secret prisons to be tortured as part of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program, rejecting arguments by Bush and Obama administration lawyers: here.
Spain and the United Kingdom have already initiated investigations of Bush administration officials over torture — to continue to ignore the mounting evidence of clear wrongdoing is a national humiliation: here.
Last month, Canadian soldiers were required to escort newly arrived journalists everywhere on the airfield, including to the dining hall and showers. A photographer from the Reuters news agency and a handful of Canadian journalists were escorted between buildings and confined to their sleeping quarters when not working.
The practice has been temporarily suspended under pressure from the Canadian military, which has tried unsuccessfully to have the policy reversed.
Using over polite words, like “managing reporters” instead of “censoring reporters”, this item may be the maximum one may find in the mainstream media about those media being not free, but under military dictatorship. It may be a code message from the journalists involved to say: “Next time, when you read a pro NATO report on the Afghan war by me, don’t trust me. It will be untrue.”
Afghan paper accuses government of internet censorship: here.
The New Zealand National government of Prime Minister John Key revealed on April 19 that it had received an official request from the United States for the highly trained Special Air Services combat unit to return to Afghanistan: here.
Tens of thousands of Pashtun-speaking villagers have been forced to flee from their homes in recent days as the result of the punishing offensive the Pakistani military has mounted, at Washington’s urging, against pro-Taliban militants in the country’s North-West Frontier Province: here.
Kabul’s new elite live high on West’s largesse: here.
Australia and Afghanistan: here; and here. Spain and Afghanistan: here.
Pakistan: The US political and military establishment and the American media have been mounting an increasingly shrill campaign to bully Islamabad into fully complying with US diktats in what Washington has redefined as the AfPak war theater: here.
AfPak war depopulates and devastates north-west Pakistan: here.
Teachers at the school for children of NATO officers in Bydgoszcz Poland went on a wildcat strike yesterday after several weeks of protests due to non-payment and lack of contracts.
The Polish government, which is obliged to finance the school, hadn’t sent any money since December. The teachers working there did not receive work contracts and had not been paid since March. They called an indefinite strike. Already interruption to the work in the school started before Easter when a few teachers decided not to come back to work.
The school is not free but must be heavily financed by the state because, unlike other schools, there is a student - teacher ratio of one teacher per 1.25 children. Besides the children of NATO officers, a couple of Japanese children of nearby corporate executives had studied there but resigned due to the problems in the school.
Tories in Lancashire have scored an own goal by attempting to co-opt a BNP activist as a council candidate at the forthcoming elections.
The Conservative grouping on Darwen Town Council, near Blackburn, approached Nick Holt, a long-term BNP activist and former election candidate for the fascist party, to join their council grouping.
The Morning Star understands that Mr Holt was approached by Conservative members over two months ago and was successfully selected by the party as a Tory candidate for the forthcoming council election.
The fact that the party attempted to run a well-known fascist and anti-trade unionist as a candidate has caused major embarrassment to the party both locally and at national level.
Conservative Party head office stated on Wednesday that it had been unaware of Holt’s BNP involvement.
A Conservative Party spokesman said: “As soon as Mr Holt’s history with the BNP was discovered by the party action was taken to immediately suspend him with the intention of expelling him. There is no room in the Conservative Party for racists.”
When pressed as to who had made the decision to approach a well-known BNP member to stand, a spokesperson declined to comment. The party also declined to comment as to whether any form of disciplinary action would be taken against those responsible.
Councillor Kate Hollern, leader of the Labour group in Blackburn with Darwen council said: “Nick Holt is one of the most notorious BNP activists in the north west.
“That this man was shortlisted by the Conservatives simply beggars belief. He ran the BNP’s Blackburn office and has stood in every single local and national election for the last five years.”
A spokesman for Hope not Hate welcomed the Tories’ action in suspending Holt.
THE 10th anniversary of the bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub in London’s Soho was marked by anti-fascist and gay rights campaigners on Thursday: here.
LABOUR called on Saturday for Margaret Thatcher to apologise for her policies before the former prime minister attends a dinner in Glasgow to mark the 20th anniversary of her coming to power: here.
AN anti-fascist campaign group has lambasted the BBC flagship Newsnight programme for a “disgraceful” news report on the BNP which it argues was closer to a propaganda exercise for the far-right party: here.
Mr Brown shocked left Labour MPs in the Commons when he refused to rule out sending British troops into Pakistan in a dangerous extension of the war in Afghanistan.
He launched a new strategy document on “the way forward” in Afghanistan and Pakistan, revealing that the cost of the war is expected to rise to £3 billion this year - compared with £750 million three years ago. …
Left MP Alan Simpson put Mr Brown on the spot by demanding an assurance that neither British regular forces nor British special forces would be crossing the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan.
His face grimmer than ever, Mr Brown could only mumble: “That is not the issue.”
Failing to give an assurance, he simply waffled on about the importance of giving support to the Afghan and Pakistan armies in their fight against terrorism.
An angry Mr Simpson told the Morning Star afterwards: “It is very worrying if the Prime Minister cannot rule out British troop activity that would be illegal under international law.”
He added: “If this is what British troops get sucked into, it will be a quagmire for us all.”
Left MP Jeremy Corbyn also received a shifty answer from Mr Brown when he asked the Prime Minister: “Is it not just a matter of time before the conflict spreads over to Pakistan, and British troops will be deployed there?”
Mr Corbyn warned that the situation was beginning to look just like the way that the US was “sucked deeper into Vietnam and ended up in a humiliating retreat 15 years later.”
Mr Brown told MPs that he was launching an “updated strategy for our actions in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
He confessed that “our strategy is exactly the same as the American strategy announced a month ago.” …
A few minutes earlier, he [Brown] had offered condolences to the family of the 153rd British soldier to die in Afghanistan, who had been serving with the 1st Battalion of the Welsh Guards.
British aid for Pakistan’s development programme would be increased to £665 million over the next four years, he said.
Stop the War convener Lindsey German warned that Mr Brown had launched the most serious development in the so-called “war on terror” since the invasion of Iraq.
During the real Vietnam war, the British Prime Minister then, Harold Wilson, though stupid enough to support the US government politically, at least was intelligent enough not to send British soldiers to Vietnam …
With her triumphant espousal of the Gurkhas‘ cause, a much-loved actress [Joanna Lumley] has added political clout to her very English brand of charm: here.
PEACE campaigners have demanded an immediate full inquiry into the war against Iraq as Britain ended its military operations in the war-torn country: here.
ARMS manufacturer BAe Systems has said that it is to close three factories with the loss of 500 jobs because of the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq: here.
THERE were warning signs of another “Gurkha-type injustice” yesterday as the government announced the closure of a resettlement programme for Iraqi workers: here.
Britain: A NUMBER of bravery medals awarded to troops who fought in Afghanistan may be reviewed after a decorated army officer was arrested as part of a probe into false battle write-ups, it was revealed on Sunday: here.
This interview was done in Colombia in November 2006 by the US Labor Education in the Americas Project. Gloria works on a plantation outside of Bogota which produces flowers for Dole.
The victims were either involved in trade union organising or were small farmers fighting attempts by Dole to obtain their land to plant bananas, the suit claims.
In a statement, Dole said on Tuesday that it “categorically rejects the baseless allegations accusing the company of illegal activity in Colombia.”
But the claimants’ lawyer Terry Collingsworth claimed that Dole bosses made a total of about $10 million (£6.8m) in regular payments from 1997-2007 to local AUC commanders in order to “keep unions out of Dole’s banana plantations by murdering effective union leaders and using terror tactics to discourage workers from joining.”
Mr Collingsworth, who is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from Dole, declared that the transnational acted “with malice and oppression.”
A key witness for the claimants is jailed AUC commander Jose Gregorio Mangones, who demobilised as part of a peace deal with Colombia’s government and who has admitted to more than half the killings cited in the suit.
At least three other former senior AUC commanders have said that foreign banana companies operating in Colombia, including Dole and Chiquita, made regular payments to their militias.
The four commanders have confessed to ordering several thousand murders and specifically targeting union organisers and people allegedly sympathetic to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Chiquita was ordered to pay a $25m (£16.9m) fine by the US Justice Department after admitting to making regular payments to the AUC, which the State Department designated as a foreign terrorist organisation in September 2001.
Mr Collingsworth, who also represents claimants in the Florida court case against Chiquita, said that the claimants in the Dole case have asked to remain anonymous under pseudonyms because right-wing death squads continue to operate where they live.
Mr Collingsworth went on to say that the claimants would prove that Dole’s managers in the region were not “innocent bystanders paying extortion” but rather active partners in a “bloody conspiracy” to keep wage costs down.
Meanwhile, Colombia’s domestic intelligence agency has fired another 11 people in a scandal over illegal eavesdropping of judges, journalists and politicians.
That brings to 33 the total number of people dismissed from the Department of Administrative Security, which reports directly to President Alvaro Uribe, since the scandal broke in February.
