September 2003 Archive 

Derailing the WTO At one level, an unprecedented unity has emerged across the nascent "global justice and solidarity movement" towards the trade talks in Cancun. Conservative trade union organisations like the TUC and its international lobbying body the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) can now agree on a basic platform of demands with radical Southern-based NGOs and social movements of the "Our World is not for Sale" network.

The bluffer’s guide to... The WTO

Free trade on a knife edge Aileen Kwa outlines the issues that could make or break the WTO at Cancun:

Report on Venezuelan Labour: the Process Continues Nationalise the Banks! Take over enterprises that have shutdown and run them instead by workers! Refuse to pay the external debt and use the funds to create jobs! Reduce the workweek to 36 hours! Create new enterprises under workers" control! These were some of the demands that emerged from the action programme workshop, which were enthusiastically endorsed by delegates to the first National Congress of the National Union of Workers (UNT) of Venezuela on August 1-2 2003.

PFI, GATS and secondary action all up for discussion at the (...) It gives an annual snapshot of what’s on the minds of Britain’s trade unionists, and the agenda for this year’s TUC conference shows a union movement widely at odds with its Labour government.

Revealed: snooker link to illegal logging Snooker and pool cues used in thousands of Britain’s pubs and clubs are made from illegally logged timber linked to violence, corruption and human rights abuses in some of the world’s most ecologically important tropical forest regions, Red Pepper can reveal.

The fire sometime Baghdad is choking in a 57 degree heat and a sweltering sense of fear. Water shortages and pollution are dehydrating the city and diseases such as diphtheria, hepatitis and typhoid are rife. Raw green sewage bubbles in the streets.

They still don’t get it: the IMF and poor country debt The International Monetary Fund says it wants to find a new framework for dealing with the debt burden of low-income countries that helps those countries meet international goals on poverty reduction. But recent proposals by the IMF for a new strategy on overseeing poor country borrowing that does just that have been given a damning verdict by leading development NGOs.

The people’s republic of south London Guest editor NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear begins Red Pepper’s trade union special with a celebration of the uniquely holistic approach to workplace, cultural and consumer activism of the Battersea and Wandsworth TUC. And the BWTUC’s Geoff Martin describes how his organisation developed the Left Field at Glastonbury.

Home Office undermined and accused on asylum claims Home Secretary David Blunkett has been left humiliated after UN figures showing a drop in asylum applications across the industrialised west undermined his boasts last week to have cut the number of asylum applicants in the UK.