December 2003 Archive 

Revealed: horror at Tesco pig farm Undercover video at supermarket’s main supplier shows suffering animals and maggot-covered corpse.

Unity coalition to take on Labour in euro poll George Galloway has announced plans for an anti-war coalition to stand in next year’s European elections. Galloway has also declared that he had no intention of seeking readmission to the Labour Party.

UK farming union in bed with multinationals, say pressure group The National Farmers Union fails its members, is elitist, undemocratic and deeply embedded with multinational businesses, according to a new report by pressure group Corporate Watch.

GM: where do we go from here? The GM field trials were deliberately rigged to prove it was safe to go ahead with the cultivation of genetically-modified crops. The tactic failed. So what will the government do now?

Gross profits Junk food is now responsible for more death and illness in the West than tobacco, but don’t expect business-compromised governments to do anything about it. Reform of the food industry is more likely to be driven by financial institutions.

Interview: Grace Livingstone on Colombia The war on terror is a recent global phenomenon, yet in Colombia the idea is at least 40 years old. Colombia’s internal conflict has attracted US interest since the early 1960s and, now, Colombia is the third largest recipient of military aid after Israel and Egypt. Mariela Kohon interviews Grace Livingstone, author of Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy and War on Colombia’s version of state terrorism

Defending the Right to Protest In December 1999 then home secretary Jack Straw unveiled to the House of Commons his plans to combat terrorism. The perceived threat came not from Islamic fundamentalists but from IRA splinter groups and animal rights activists.

Was High Court DSEi ruling aimed at stifling Bush protests? Activists are increasingly worried that a High Court ruling made in October has given police the green light to use anti-terrorism laws to clamp down on people’s right to peaceful protest.

Choosing independence over apartheid After decades of struggling to get Palestinian national rights recognised at the international level, any new initiative to abandon what has been achieved should be viewed with scepticism.

Two states are neither possible nor desirable While still small, the percentage of activists supporting a single-state solution to the Israel-Palestine question is, for the first time in decades, growing.