CO-OPS, AN UNTAPPED RESOURCE.

       Another interesting article from The Commune. Though the honour of the first co-op can be disputed, as recently details were found that gave this honour to Ayrshire in Scotland. I have no doubt that other places will stake their claim to be the first Co-op, as I'm sure the idea is a natural tendency among us social creatures called humans. Whoever was first, co-ops, large and small are an important form of community organisation that can help take us away from the capitalist model. 

Extract:

          The late development of theory around worker, producer and community co-operatives could be one explanation for the widespread indifference of communists to this part of the working class movement.(1) In the UK, ignorance about its reach, nature and significance contrasts with an apparently inexhaustible, tailending-the-left fascination with party or group politics and rank-and-file trade unionism. Yet people are often ready with an ideological view of co-ops; they are self-exploitation, or bourgeois, or prefigure communism, or impossible, and so on.

        The International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) defines a co-op as an “autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprises”. Co-operatives are a type of collective organisation for the satisfaction of needs unmet by private enterprise and the state – for work, shelter, access to markets, land, leisure activity, credit, clean water, food, health, education. 

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 ann arky's home.

HOW MUCH WILL WE LOSE BEFORE WE FIGHT?

           One reason I go on about the plight of the Greek people is because I don't see it as a unique set of circumstances. I tend to see Greece as a forerunner of what is about to happen to more European countries as the financial Mafia try to make up their gambling losses by plundering the public assets of country after country. Their policy of paying off debt with debt and getting the taxpayer to take care of the “deficit” is bound to end in disaster. What we should be doing is organising to take control of the crumbling capitalist edifice before the financial Mafia can re-group and start their casino all over again. Now is the perfect opportunity to organise to shape society the way we want it to be, one that sees to the needs of all our people. Occupations and people's assemblies must play a large part in our strategies. Organising in the community to circumvent and undermine the rules of their game of greed and exploitation. Hopefully that anger will make its self apparent long before we reach the situation in which the Greek people find themselves. In Greece they are now running out of medicines, people are finding it increasingly difficult to get medication for serious health problems from cancer to mental health problems. The usual capitalist compassion rules, the pharmaceutical companies are demanding payment up-front before they will ship any medication to Greece. Anger will grow, people will be looking for answers, and if our answers are not on the table, then they will pick up what is there. The state is preparing for public unrest, they expect trouble as they slash at the living standards of the people at the behest of their masters the financial Mafia. We either accept the situation where we watch our friends and relatives die a slow death from the lack of available treatment or we take control of the situation. Society doesn't have to be modeled on the capitalist greed plan. There are alternatives based on co-operation, and justice. We can build a society where we take care of all our people, we have the resources, the ability and the imagination, all we need is the will to come together and start the demolition job, then build that better world.

 ann arky's home.

DIRECT ACTION, - THE ONLY ROUTE.

        It should be obvious by now that if the workers play by the bosses rules, we will always lose. Two recent disputes highlight this, showing once again that direct action by the workers gets results. This from The Commune

          The wildly different trajectories of two recent industrial disputes provides us with an almost perfect lesson in both how they can be won and how they are generally lost. In both cases, the workers were members of the Unite union, as are around three million others in the UK, and in both cases the industry concerned was what might be called a ‘blue collar’ one. But one won, and is winning, while another lost badly.

         The ‘threat’ of a one day stoppage by oil haulage drivers gripped the ruling class just over two months ago, when Unite announced that 69% of respondents had voted for strike action over worsening working conditions and pensions raids. The media went into a frenzy of contrived scaremongering, and the government – sensing what a Tory memo called a “Thatcher moment” – went on the attack. Infamously, Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude told motorists to store “a little bit in the garage as well in a jerrycan”, even though Unite had not named a strike date, and they had to give seven days of notice under the anti-union laws.
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EUROPEAN FINANCIAL MAFIA'S SCAM.

       The fraudulent nature of the European financial Mafia becomes more blatant day by day. The latest scam they have performed is the Spanish fiasco. Spain stated that it didn't need a bailout, but its banks did need about £80+ billion and suggested to the European financial Mafia that they lend that amount directly to the Spanish banking system. However the gamblers at the helm of the financial mafia wouldn't entertain that at any cost. The reason being that if the Spanish banks went bust, they would lose their money. So their policy was to coerce the Spanish government into taking the £80+ billion and for them to hand it over to the Spanish banks. This would mean that if the Spanish banks go bust, then the European financial Mafia still get their money as it is the Spanish government that owes them, so the taxpayers will have to come up with the £80+ billion and this will be done by more “austerity” cuts.

         The double edge to the financial Mafia's sword is the fact that they have forced this £80+ billion loan onto the Spanish government means that Spain is now considered to be too heavy in debt and will have to pay an unsustainable interest rate to borrow, forcing it to seek a bailout and with that will come all the restriction and conditions that put the Greek people into a state of deprivation. 

"When we gamble, you wouldn't want us to lose, would you?"

        What ever happens, whether it be the destruction of the living standards of an entire nation, or pushing half the European people into deprivation, is of no consequence as long as the financial Mafia don't lose any of their money. Capitalism, how to screw the many for the benefit of the few.

 ann arky's home.

THE OLYMPICS, THE MOST EXPENSIVE TV SHOW EVER.

         The media having overdosed on the “jubilee” it is now ramming the “carrying the torch” down our throats, they get the kids out of school to make sure they have a crowd. May I suggest to all those good folk who line the streets to see the big cigarette lighter being paraded through their village/town/city, to take a good look as it will be about all they will see of the Olympics, unless they stay seated in front of a TV. What they probably don't realise is that, that television viewing will one of the most expensive viewings in their lives. They get to see the “torch” and pick up a tab of £24 billion for a television show.

      Our millionaire lords and masters spouted about the Olympics being a mere £2.4 billion which would be mainly private capital, however the price-tag rocket and private capital evaporate, leaving the tax payer to pick up the tab. By 2007 the cost was revised up to £9.3 billion, the public funding had tripled and private capital had dwindled to less than 2%. It doesn't stop there, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee now put the cost at £11 billion with the tax payer taking the hit. While a SKY Sports investigation, including the transport upgrade put the cost at £24 billion. An awful lot of money for a TV show!! Since that is all most of the people of this country will ever see.

     The other more sinister side of this billion pound fun TV show will be the militarisation of London. The city will have surface-to-air missiles, a naval battleship moored offshore, 13,500 military personnel roaming around, which is about 4,000 more than we have based in Afghanistan. Hovering overhead will be lightweight aerial drones with elite firearms response units and snipers lurking below. All of this is not enough for the US, who will be sending their own security team which will include 500 FBI agents. This security comes at a price, £1 billion and counting. Plus it will set a precedent for drones, sniper and military patrolling our streets. Yes it will leave a lasting legacy, of debt and surveillance.

ann arky's home.

THE GLASGOW RESHUFFLE.

Reshuffle Pearce Institute Govan

Sat. Sun. 16-17th June
        The idea of the Reshuffle is that the answers and skills to resolve most of the communities needs, desires and problems, lies within the community itself. “We only need to ‘reshuffle’ our priorities to learn where the answers lie”.
      The question we are asking this year is. What would you reshuffle given the chance? Our big "R" is going to be going round the community engaging people in the questions. Looking at our community infrastructure. How can we motivate ourselves and others to think more about taking part in things, finding out what is going on and coming up with solutions to solving our own problems.
      We could also maybe look at the possibilities around us. What do we already have. How could it be improved on. What skills do we have to offer and what do we want to learn. How do we make our community and things in it visible to more people. After we collect some ideas and things we have a shared interest in we will look at places where we can gather to talk about these things. Using our community facilities and institutions, gardens centre's, libraries and local resources.
       We will of course need to make this work interesting, creative, educational and use a whole variety of media to explore ideas. We will also need to socialise the work, make it fun if the task is boring. We will also need to think about how to engage different age groups from
kids to older folk in working together.
       But that's for later. First we must identify some issues, trains of thought, germinating ideas to get us going. We would like to bring the big R to where you R and get started on discussing a few ideas, make recordings and film things.
More Pop into Sunny Govan or Pearce Institute or Dinner nights PI Tuesday from 6:30 for more info or lookout for the big "R" around Govan and beyond and at the Reshuffle. Updates soon, this part of the project is new And will be used to plan next years event.http://citystrolls.com/z-temp/z-pages/big-r.htm

Let's get doon theer an' help!!

Help needed on Saturday:To help run the cafe and move stuff around. Some leaflets to put out this week to. Can be collected at Pearce Institute.
http://citystrolls.com/reshuffle12/index.html

--www.citystrolls.com

ann arky's home.

GET OLDER, SUFFER POVERTY.

            One way to measure a civilised country is to look at how it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. First we should remember that in spite of all the crap poured out by our millionaire lords and masters, this country is a very rich country. As we get older we take our place among the vulnerable, so how does Britain, a modern rich country, care for its elderly? Well British pensioners are among the poorest in Europe, in this country more than two million older people are at risk of poverty. In 2010 21.4% of elderly British were classed as being at risk of poverty, dwarfing the European average of 15.9%. The only nations in Europe who treated their elderly worse were Cyprus with 45.2%, followed by Bulgaria at 32.3%, then Spain at 21.7%. We are shamed by such figures as Hungary 4.1%, the Netherlands, 5.9% and Luxembourg, 5.9%. Of course it is not just the elderly that are at risk of poverty in this country. In 2010, 10.7 million people, 17.1% of the population, were at the risk of poverty, where as the European average is 16.4%. So all the nonsense pumped out by the media and the establishment, that we in this country are better off than everybody else is bullshit. What these figures show is that almost a sixth of the entire population of Europe is living with the risk of poverty and that risk rises as we get older. This is the best that capitalism can do, from this dismal position, thanks to the “austerity”, “deficit reduction” plans, we are heading in a downward direction. The system can only deliver poverty for millions while the financial Mafia grow fatter on salaries that have shown a 51% increase in the last couple of years. I find it strange that we tolerate a system that hands astronomical bonuses to parasitical fat-cats and sinks the rest of the population into Victorian deprivation. It doesn't take much imagination to come up with a system that would see to the needs of all our people, but first we have to get the fat-cats and the parasitical financial Mafia off our backs. Shed that burden and we are almost there.

ann arky's home.

THE CRIME OF CHILD POVERTY.

 

            Scotland is a relatively rich country yet one in four of Scotland’s children are officially recognised as living in poverty. In some areas over one in three children grow up in poverty, in Springburn Glasgow it is over 50%. With Scotland’s undoubted wealth this is an unacceptable crime against future generations. Our child poverty rate is considerably higher than other European countries. In Denmark and Norway approximately 10% of children live in poverty, whilst Germany the rate is 15%, even these rates are unacceptable in any modern, supposedly civilised, country. All of these countries are wealthy yet they have children living in poverty, so it isn’t the lack of resources, it is the system we live under, that breeds poverty and then traps people in that poverty. It is an indictment of that system that poverty remains one of the most serious problems facing children today. Its effects last a lifetime, negatively impacting on health, education, social and physical development and seriously harming future life chances and opportunities.

            There is a need, we have the resources, but money dictates that children live in poverty, that is not an economic system, that is a crime.

ann arky's home.

SOCIAL SERVICES AT No.10.

          Prime Minister David Cameron left his eight-year-old daughter in a pub following a Sunday lunch, after a mix-up with his wife Samantha. The couple's daughter Nancy wandered off to the toilets while they were arranging lifts and they only realised she was not with them when they got home, The Sun said. The media goes on to put a nice friendly spin on the matter, however our ”family orientated” millionaire prime Minister would no doubt be filled with indignation if he read about such an event happening in a housing scheme, the media would have a field day abusing the parents and calling for the social services to move in and care for the child. I hope the social services will make a call at the millionaire parents home to see where else the poor child may be being neglected. Whether the pub staff looked after her well or not is not the question, to go home from anywhere leaving your child behind is neglect of the highest order, where was their "duty of care". It shows their priorities.

ann arky's home.

THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

The Universal Language:

 “Fuck the Police” (Montreal, Night 47)

This from, Outside the Circle: 

            I feel like I probably saw and was in the middle of only a fraction of all the tides of popular protests against the Grand Prix tonight. But to likely understate it, the police (SPVM to SQ) totally lost control and the people totally held the streets. And as one person said to us on the streets as riot cops swarmed by us for the umpteenth time–after about the umpteenth time that nearly everyone (and by nearly everyone, I mean an eclectic mix of thousands and thousands of people, many dressed in fancy Saturday night party clothes, far from “the usual suspects” and not a black bloc in sight) pushed the police back or for all intents and purposes kettled the cops, and after the many umpteenth times that nearly everyone booed at and many threw plastic bottles (or a beach ball) at the police–there’s a universal language on the streets this evening, and it’s “fuck the police.”

          Of course, there was plenty of good reason to speak this global language on Montreal’s streets this evening: tear gas, batons, the incessant beating on shields, pushing, harassment, pepper spray, injuries, arrests. But none of those tactics worked. Nor did the tactic of attempting to divide the thousands of people “marching” or simply filling the streets. Each time the police managed to split enormous amounts of people into two, three, or four groups, or seemed to have dispersed people altogether, seconds or minutes later, there was a new massive group, or several, or another hot spot, with no rhyme or reason, and definitely no coordination. The sheer beauty of a mysterious spontaneity birthed of some sort of popular will and determination. Whether tourist or local, student or person in their seventies, a kid a stroller or an adult in a wheelchair, white or black, out for a drink or out for a protest, and on and on, people just kept coming at the cops again and again and again, with little fear and lots of animosity.

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THIS LAND IS OUR LAND.

Spread the word.

Dear all

      I have put a petition to the Scottish Parliament - asking for the Scottish Government to consider allowing people to use underused land for fruitful food growing. This is before the Scottish Parliament petitions committee on 12th June. The petition is at

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_PublicPetitionsCommittee/Petitions/PE1433_Final_Version_22.5.12.pdf (unfortunately their petition software doesn't work! -

      So I've had to set up a separate petition that people can actually sign) I'm hoping to get 1000 signatures to present on the 12th June - so please do this now. Please encourage people to sign the e-petition below - and pass it on.

      Please sign the petition HERE;http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/land-for-landless-scots-for-grow-your-own

All best John
John Hancox

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DAY OF ACTION.

This from 325:

From ABC LEEDS:

Day of Action in Support of John Bowden

Monday 11th June

       John Bowden is a militant prisoner who has been inside since 1980 (and in fact for most of his life before then). He is serving time for a murder which happened 32 years ago, but John’s two co-defendants have been free for 20 years. John has been writing about, and fighting against, injustice throughout his time behind bars, building up a huge and impressive portfolio of articles about every aspect of the prison struggle. He has paid a heavy price for speaking out though, spending years in the most brutal segregation units, and being targeted for repression time and time again. We do not define John, a good comrade, by the crime he committed 32 years ago, and neither do the State. He is not in jail for what he did then, but for what he has done since. If he did not have anti-authoritarian politics, if he was not a man of integrity who always comes to the defence of his fellow cons, John Bowden would have been out years ago.

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ann arky's home.

GLASGOW CRANE ANTI-NUCLEAR BANNER.

         For 30 years the Faslane Peace Camp has kept up a steady and relentless campaign against Britain's nuclear weapons of mass destruction and June being the camp's thirtieth birthday they are having a series of celebrations. It started to day with a massive banner being hung from the large crane at Finnieston Glasgow. The crane has stood there rather sad as one of the last remnants of the Clyde's shipbuilding era. Well now it has sprung to life and joined the anti-nuclear movement. The large banner reads, "Nuclear Disarmament. If Not Now, When?"!

        It is typical of the type of society we live in, a millionaire cabinet slashing at the living standards of the ordinary people, shouting "AUSTERITY, AUSTERITY" while at the same time pouring billions of pounds into keeping, developing and upgrading nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Let's all join in the Faslane Peace Camp's thirtieth birthday celebrations by raising our voices against these illegal horrendous weapons and join and support them in any way we can. 

This release from the Faslane peaceCamp:

        A Peace Camp banner drop is currently underway at Clydebank landmark gantry crane in Glasgow

 

 

      In a public display to commence our 30 Days of Direct Action Campaign, three Faslane Peace Campers are currently dropping banners from the Clydebank landmark gantry crane in Glasgow. The banner reads, "Nuclear Disarmament. If Not Now, When?"!
       Planning to make a day of it, they have taken a lovely packed lunch and some literature. However, quite a few police vans were on scene almost immediately and are making efforts to remove them. This is the first of many anti-nuclear actions planned to mark the 30th anniversary of the Camp. In this run up to a Scottish Independence Referendum coupled with the Westminster vote on Trident replacement in waiting, we have a very real chance to affect the shape of the future UK nuclear defence policies. Scotland could hold the key to UK nuclear disarmament.
      Now is the time for a renewed anti-nuclear insurgency. Come to the camp and join in our 30 Days of Direct Action.

Faslane Flossie
e-mail:faslane30@riseup.net

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DEATH OF THE BEAST.

Taken From Anarchist News dot org.

          “On the daily 8 o’clock newscasts, the voice of the regime’s spokesmen has lost all confidence it used to have in the past. The state representatives attend fiestas, parades, restaurants and public streets only as long as they have assured an escape route, just in case they will have to run. Supermarkets are full of commodities and empty of consumers. The government’s people are trying on khaki clothes, military jackets and quotients and make their voice sound squeaky and metallic, just like the one of Michaloliakos¹or of Papadopoulos². The numbers of suicides are dashed. Some other farfetched guys pretend to be political messiahs, create parties and climb on TV crates to talk about the salvation of the people. The streets of the Metropolis are filled with cops and homeless people, cops and laid-off people, cops and protesters.

        The Beast, which all these years had swallowed us, is now ill and at the same time pregnant. Corpulent and aged, it slowly dies out with the threat either to take us with it or to offer us to its newborn child as its legacy. Some have already loved the beast and refuse to face its upcoming end; some, having been trapped in its stomach for so long, cannot imagine any possibility of living without it; some others felt quite comfortable all these years with the safety it provided them and suddenly got terrified. Nobody knows what is there, outside the Beast’s stomach. Yet, the Beast is either going to die, or give birth, or both, and it’s getting ready for all cases. Now it’s our turn to start getting ready. In order to have the upper hand, we have to catch to kill it. At the same time, we must learn to live without it.”

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TORTURERS IN TOWN.

 

              Athletes a part, we all know that the Olympics will be the gathering of all the pompous, arrogant, parasites, such as heads of state, dictators, monarchs, princes, etc. from all shades of the authoritarian spectrum, some worse than others. Though on the whole, the entire ratbag should be classed the same, but it does no harm to single out one who might stink a bit more than the others.

This appeal from AVAAZ

Dear friends across the UK and the Middle East,

         The British government is about to reward a torturer with a luxury hotel and chauffeur-driven BMW at the London Olympics -- unless we demand they stop this outrage.
        Prince Nasser bin Hamad Al-Khalifa is a chief architect of Bahrain’s brutal suppression of the Arab Spring, accused of personally torturing protesters, and persecuting athletes who have stood up against his father’s dictatorship. Gifted the presidency of the Bahrain Olympic Committee, Nasser now stands to receive VIP treatment at the London games. British Foreign Secretary William Hague has said that Nasser will be “closely assessed”, but hasn’t yet committed to keep out this human rights abuser. If enough of us raise our voices, we can ensure Nasser is kept away from the London games.
         Avaaz members in the UK and Bahrain have come together to start a campaign to force Secretary Hague to keep this torturer away from the Olympics, but they need our support. Sign the petition now -- when we reach 30,000 signatures, we’ll work with Bahraini activists to deliver the message to Secretary Hague and PM David Cameron in London:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_torturers_at_the_olympics/?vl

          Nasser is the son of Bahrain’s ruling King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, one of the Arab World’s most brutal dictators. Intimately involved in the crackdown on the Arab Spring pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain, Nasser has used his platform as head of the country’s Olympic Committee to ensure that athletes in particular have been punished if they dissent.
        He installed himself as head of a committee that targeted 150 athletes and sports officials for their democratic views, including a disabled athlete, personally ensuring that two of Bahrain's national football team star players were also arrested and imprisoned. When Mohammed, capped 52 times for Bahrain, was sentenced to 2 years in prison, Nasser tweeted, “If it was up to me, I’d give them all life.” Several of the protesters have also claimed that they were personally tortured by Nasser after their arrests for peaceful demonstrations.
        Foreign Secretary Hague and PM Cameron have the power to block Nasser’s entry into the UK, but right now, they stand set to reward him with publicly-funded VIP treatment for the duration of the London games. Let’s stand with Bahraini athletes and protesters to demand that Hague and Cameron prevent Nasser’s attendance at the games. Sign the petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_torturers_at_the_olympics/?vl

ann arky's home.

SPIRIT OF REVOLT.

               I don't know the poet, but I pay homage to him/her, and I can't remember where I got the poem, but I like it very much, it captures the spirit of revolt and the determination of the ordinary people. The title is my own idea as it didn't have a title when I copied it away back. 

WE ARE THE PEOPLE.

If You Beat Us, We Will Revive ourselves.

If You Suppress us, We Will Arise Again.

If You Defeat Our occupation, Of Streets We built,

We Will Occupy Our Jobs, And Our Communities.

You Cannot Destroy Us, For We Are,

Manifest, The IDEA That You Created.

You

Created Us With Your Arrogance.

You

Created Us With Your Exploitation.

You

Created Us With Your Prejudice And Your Greed.

You Created us with Your destruction

Of The World We love.

Your

Ill-considered Occupations

Begat And Inspired Our Occupations.

You

Have Sown The Seeds Of Dissent.

We Grow Like Wildfire,

And We Bring Forth The Whirlwind.

Look To Your Barricades, Your Badged Lackeys,

Your Fawning Courts, Your Corrupt Officials,

Your Long held Illusions Of Divine Right.

None Of These Matter, You’ve Earned Defeat,

And You Will Take The Fall.

We are The people, Newly Awakened.

ann arky's home.

PRISON LABOUR INCREASES UNEMPLOYMENT.

This information wasgained from The Independent

          This cry for austerity as a deficit reduction plan is a wonderful excuse for employers to squeeze wages. Unemployment rising and wage freezes/cuts, it's bonanza time for the corporate world as they tell the workers to like it or lump it. While they are forcing down wages and ripping up contracts on conditions, the Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke is opening up new avenues of exploitation to help their profit margins. He has plans to increase to 20,000 the number of prisoners doing cheap labour in prisons. He wants to turn the prisons into profit making machines before handing them over to the private sector to be milked.

        Under this scheme prisoners wages are approximately £2 per hour, of course the prisoners don't get the full £2, as the prisons take variable amounts from that. It is obvious that companies will increasingly out-source their work to the prison service via a new company, One3One. One of the companies taking advantage of the captive slave labour facilities offered by One3One, is Speedy Hire a tool hiring company which in 2010 closed 75 of its repair depots, paying off 800 staff. The company increased its prison contract by approximately 10%, using almost 100 prisoners and handing, during the financial year 2010-2011, £114,012 to Pentoville, Garth and Erlestoke prisons. Approximately 800 more people looking for work in that area while the company rips-off approximately 100 prisoner who have little or no say in the matter. Another company that has grabbed at the cheap labour in prisons is Calpac, a food packaging firm. Its contract with Kirkham prison has increased from £34,321 in 2010 to £154,267. according to the company pay roll the highest paid job was office manager on £40 for a 40 hour week, while a manual packing operative would be paid 55p an hour. Many of the workers work overtime taking their working week to 60 hours. With pay and conditions like this we can expect to see many more firms pay-off hard working people on the outside to employ more cheap trapped labour on the inside. All with the governments blessing, this is how a capitalist government helps the economy.

ann arky's home.

TRADE UNION RIGHTS.

An appeal from Labour Start.

       Every June, trade union leaders, employers and government officials meet in Geneva for the International Labour Conference. And every year since 1926, that conference has set aside some time to discuss the worst violations of trade union rights. But not this year - because this year employers have put down their foot and said "no". As I write these words, unions have issued some strong statements (here's one example) and we're monitoring the situation.

         To coincide with the conference, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has just issued its annual report on violations of trade union rights -- and it makes for chilling reading.

        "Colombia is once again the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists," says the ITUC. "Of the 76 people murdered for their trade union activities, not counting the workers killed during the Arab Spring, 29 lost their lives in Colombia. And in Guatemala yet again trade unionists paid a heavy price, with 10 assassinations committed with impunity. A further eight trade unionists were murdered in Asia."

You can read the report in full here.

As if to highlight those issues, two of the global union federations have launched major appeals in the last 24 hours.

1. One is in support of oil workers in Iraq - please make sure to add your name to the online campaign here.
2. The other supports nine trade union leaders in Algeria, five of them women, who have been on hunger strike since 6 May. They too need your urgent support - please click here.

The employers' representatives in Geneva may want us to stop talking about workers rights, and maybe they'll succeed in doing so at the ILO conference. But they can't stop us from campaigning -- as we will show them in the next few hours. We are going to fill the inboxes of political leaders in Iraq and Algeria with our messages of protest. And we're going to show the world once again what solidarity means.

I know that I can count on your support - thank you!

Eric Lee

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NO EXPNSE SPARED, - WE'RE RICH!!

           Well you have to admit, when it comes to spending money in a big way the Jubilee takes the biscuit. What a lavish pouring out of public money to titillate the egos of our lords and masters. No expense spared, heads of state from across the world, banquets, and luncheons fit for a queen, probably as many troops playing at pomp and circumstance, parading up and down central London as we have in Afghanistan. However at the other end, there's money to be made. It seems that a stewarding company called Close Protection UK had a contract to help steward this lavish event, but when it comes to the wages of the stewards, well it wasn't quite no expense spared. For the event this company took on 80 unemployed, under the governments apprentice scheme, 50 were under 25 and paid £2:60 an hour, the other 30 either accepted the same rate or refused payment as it would adversely affect their benefit money. Now that's a good deal if your a business. It was a 14 hour shift with no access to toilets during their shift, they were brought in by bus from Plymouth, Bath and Bristol, dumped in the middle of the night in London with no shelter.

I'm not over dressed for this little do, am I?

         Compare this treatment of “Her Majesty's Loyal Subjects” with the treatment of all those millionaire/billionaire parasites being pampered at our expense. It was a glorious display of what this society is all about, wealth and power separated from the adoring poverty stricken hordes. It was displayed for all the world to see, Britain is still a wonderfully class divided society, a great place if your a millionaire and a place in the adoring crowd if your not.

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