Fowl Play,Bolivian Elections,New Planets Needed,Thailand Aids Drug Trial,Salsa

Return to CounterHeg Home
Cluck cluck! Chicken Nuggets: Fowl play USA: Amnesty International calls for investigation into Kentucky jail to be widened Expecting Taliban, but Finding Only Horror Sunshine on Sweatshops Neoliberal Policies Big Loser in Bolivian Elections Milk: A Cruel and Unhealthy Product Earth 'will expire by 2050' Sun, sand and socialism ... Tommy Sheridan's Cuban diary A disturbed Sunday Thailand set to test Aventis Aids drug June unemployment figures show US "recovery" is jobless Toronto strike at the crossroads: Answer government strikebreaking with an industrial-political offensive against the Tories! We Need a Global Declaration of Interdependence Unions vote for summer of discontent 6L's served with court order for violating worker's right to visitors Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific Sharon government scapegoats unemployed for Israel's economic crisis Salsa *** Fowl play http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,751244,00.html Guardian ...Like much of our diet today, the nugget is processed so highly that its taste and texture depend as much on engineering and additives as on any raw ingredients, making it an easy way to disguise cheap or adulterated food. And just as the nugget's form is far removed from its contents, so we have become completely divorced from the source of those contents, from the animals that provide them and from the people who transform them. The nugget is, in fact, the product of a transnational chain so fragmented and complex that even those in the business do not fully understand how some parts of it work. It depends on the industrialisation of livestock, on an endless supply of uniform factory birds to fit standardised factory machines. It depends, too, on the mass migration of workers, both legal and illegal, since adding the value to it requires an equally endless supply of low-value labour. The rise of the nugget has been dizzying. We bought 42 million packs of them - that's Ł79m worth, or 21,000 tonnes - in the UK last year, just to eat at home, according to analysts Taylor Nelson Sofres. British adults also ate 73 million meals of them away from home in the same period. Children probably ate more. Served in school dining halls, fast-food outlets, at hospital bedsides, and on the tables of harassed parents, nuggets have become ubiquitous. Mass production has created a homogeneity in our diets at a time when the origins of our food are more varied than ever. If you want to know what goes into your nuggets, you need to look to the commodity markets, exchange rates and tariffs. The label is not the place to find out. One story earlier this year highlighted just how little we know about what lies inside the golden breadcrumb coating. When Leicestershire trading standards received a complaint from a member of the public about the quality of some nuggets, they decided to test 21 samples from 17 different shops, including the major supermarkets. In one-third of the samples, the label was misleading about the nugget's meat content. One pack of nuggets contained only 16% meat, 30% less than it claimed. (And skin, of course, counts as "meat"). The trading standards officials are unable to identify the brands involved for legal reasons. Instead, they gave a warning to the worst offender. Subsequent tests recently have shown that the manufacturer has not changed its ways. Look further back down the chain, and it becomes clear that doctoring has become routine. Even if the percentage of meat in a nugget looks reassuringly high, you may be surprised by what exactly counts as meat. Nugget manufacturers source their meat in various ways. Some use British chicken. Some buy high-quality meat direct from Thailand or Brazil. Some buy whatever is cheapest on the market, which is often frozen Thai and Brazilian chicken imported into the EU through Holland's ports... * USA: Amnesty International calls for investigation into Kentucky jail to be widened Press Release 8 July 2002 AMR 51/112/2002 Following reports of further allegations of abuse at Boyd County Detention Center, Amnesty International today urged the federal and state authorities to widen their investigation into the death of Chad Boggess to include an examination of whether there is a culture and pattern of abuse at the jail. Amnesty International is calling for a specific examination of reports that some inmate witnesses to the attack on Boggess suffered retaliation or were threatened by guards. The allegations include one inmate with serious health problems having his medication delayed after making a statement about the attack; another inmate who heard the attack from a nearby cell, reported being threatened by a guard not to speak about the incident and was later placed in isolation. Amnesty International is seeking assurances that all protective measures will be taken to ensure that those inmates who witnessed the beating of Chad Boggess will not be subjected to retaliation by guards. Other allegations received by the organization include several prior incidents of abuse, including excessive use of force and pepper spray. In its letters to the authorities, Amnesty International said that while it was not in a position to confirm the above allegations, the reports indicate that there may be a pattern or culture of abuse and inappropriate use of the force at the Boyd County Detention Center. Amnesty International is asking to be informed of the outcome of any investigation carried out into the allegations reported. The organization has also renewed its call on the authorities to conduct a full review of the jail's use of force and restraint policies in light of the coroner's finding that Chad Boggess died of asphyxiation due to the way in which he was restrained. The coroner also found that "blunt force" injuries to his head had contributed to his death, which he ruled a homicide last May. * Expecting Taliban, but Finding Only Horror http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/08/international/asia/08VILL.html?ex=1027151143&e\ i=1&en=40842d57af2c81bc New York Times KAKRAK, Afghanistan, July 6 - After an American plane bombarded this village on July 1, American and Afghan soldiers surrounded the settlement and advanced at first light, searching houses and detaining people, apparently expecting to find Islamic militants, residents said today. But as the soldiers neared the center of the cluster of mud-walled farmhouses, they found a horrifying scene, survivors said. Women and children lay dead and wounded in and around one big house where they had been gathered for an engagement party, torn apart by cannon fire from the American attack plane, an AC-130 gunship. Survivors said they were gathering up the bodies, picking up limbs and body parts from the streets and adjoining orchard, and carrying the wounded to the village mosque, when the soldiers arrived. What began as a major operation involving 300 to 400 American and Afghan soldiers against suspected Qaeda and Taliban positions in this isolated corner of southern Afghanistan had apparently turned into a slaughter of innocents. An Afghan delegation says the attack killed 48 people, mostly women and children, and injured 117, figures that American commanders said they accepted.... * Sunshine on Sweatshops http://www.thenation.com/docPrint.mhtml?i=special&s=stepp20020702 The Nation by JENNY STEPP It's been more than three months since twelve Florida State University students were arrested for setting up a "tent city" in front of the school's administration building. But the uproar over the arrests, and the continuing presence of a group of sweatshop activists camped out on an FSU quad, have left an indelible mark on this campus known more for holding national titles in football and "party school" rankings than for student protest activity. The tent-city protest was intended to end a long debate with the administration, which refuses to join the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), a sweatshop monitoring agency backed by the protesters and faculty, which passed a resolution supporting the students' position. Instead, the arrests marked the beginning of a long standoff between the administration and student protesters, who now find themselves living in tents and sleeping bags to protest both the sweatshop issue and the administration's refusal to tolerate the earlier protest--well after their classmates have gone home for the summer. The decision made by President Talbot D'Alemberte to arrest the students and move the protest to the school's far less conspicuous free-speech zone has drawn criticism from activists throughout Florida. But former First Amendment attorney D'Alemberte is dismissive of accusations that the school has violated the students' free-speech rights: "I've read the First Amendment pretty carefully, and I don't see any mention of tents." When it comes to discussion of membership in the WRC, D'Alemberte is similarly hostile. Florida State was one of the founding institutions of the Fair Labor Association (FLA), which has been blasted by student and labor leaders for its inclusion of vendors like Nike on its board of directors. Critics say this organizational structure has resulted in a weakened code of conduct and an inability to independently monitor the companies who sit on its board. Student activists like those at FSU believe the FLA is more of a public relations front than an actual monitoring agency... * Neoliberal Policies Big Loser in Bolivian Elections http://www.fpif.org/americas/commentary/2002/0207bolivia.html Foreign Policy in Focus This past Sunday, Bolivians went to the polls to choose their next president and elect a new Congress. In the balloting for president, nobody earned the "50% plus one" margin required for an outright electoral victory, and so Boliva's new congress now gets to decide which of the two top vote-getters will be the nation's next leader. Congress's decision is expected at the beginning of August. The lack of a decisive winner was grounded in widespread disenchantment with the traditional political parties, and was emblematic of the growing sense of frustration with Bolivia's neoliberal economic model. Indeed, the most distinguishing aspect of this year's elections in Bolivia was that virtually all the candidates lashed out to attack neoliberal strategies. After seventeen years of neoliberalism, Bolivia's economy is faltering, unemployment is on the rise, the rich-poor gap has widened, and corruption and social exclusion remain serious problems. Candidates of all political stripes--including the right--tapped into anger over the failings of neoliberalism and made opposition to it central to their discourse... * Milk: A Cruel and Unhealthy Product http://www.peta.org/mc/facts/fsveg8.html PETA ...Cow’s milk is suited to the nutritional needs of calves, who, unlike human babies, will double their weight in 47 days (as opposed to 180 days for humans), grow four stomachs, and weigh 1,100-1,200 pounds within two years. Cow’s milk contains about three times as much protein as human milk and almost 50 percent more fat. No other species besides humans drinks milk beyond infancy, and no other species drinks the milk of another species (except domestic cats and dogs, who are taught the habit by humans). After four years of age, most people develop lactose intolerance, the inability to digest the carbohydrate lactose (found in milk), because they no longer synthesize the digestive enzyme lactase. Lactose-intolerant people who drink milk can experience stomach cramps, gas, and diarrhea. By some estimates, up to 70 percent of the world’s population is lactose intolerant.(1)... * Earth 'will expire by 2050' http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4456418,00.html Observer Sunday July 7, 2002 Earth's population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a report out this week. A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to be released on Tuesday, warns that the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life. In a damning condemnation of Western society's high consumption levels, it adds that the extra planets (the equivalent size of Earth) will be required by the year 2050 as existing resources are exhausted. The report, based on scientific data from across the world, reveals that more than a third of the natural world has been destroyed by humans over the past three decades. Using the image of the need for mankind to colonise space as a stark illustration of the problems facing Earth, the report warns that either consumption rates are dramatically and rapidly lowered or the planet will no longer be able to sustain its growing population. Experts say that seas will become emptied of fish while forests - which absorb carbon dioxide emissions - are completely destroyed and freshwater supplies become scarce and polluted. The report offers a vivid warning that either people curb their extravagant lifestyles or risk leaving the onus on scientists to locate another planet that can sustain human life. Since this is unlikely to happen, the only option is to cut consumption now.... * Sun, sand and socialism ... Tommy Sheridan's Cuban diary http://groups.yahoo.com/group/socialistcomrade/message/558 'THE most beautiful land the human eye has beheld' was how Christopher Columbus described Cuba when he 'discovered' it on behalf of the Spanish royals in October 1492. Despite several hundred years of Spanish colonisation and American domination, Cuba still deserves that description. My wife Gail and I have returned to holiday in Cuba. We are in love with her -- her people, her beaches, her sunshine, her spirit of resistance and defiance. For me Cuba provides a form of socialist rejuvenation -- a small country that has refused to join the free market casino economy that prioritises profits over people but manages to construct a health service and education system that are universally free and the envy of increasing numbers of countries in both the so-called first and third worlds. For Gail the attraction is less political. After more than 17 years in the airline industry she has sampled holiday resorts in many of the most talked-about regions of the world. Varadero here in Cuba tops them all and for the last three years she has insisted on returning to the Beaches Hotel in Cuba's tourist capital . And this is where the political merges with the social. Cuba has been subjected to an illegal and extremely damaging economic, commercial and financial blockade by the US for 41 years, designed to cause hunger and shortages of essential materials and thus social disorder. It has failed miserably in relation to hunger and social disorder but shortages of essential materials such as oil, cement, glass and bricks are an everyday reality. It is very difficult to secure foreign currencies when so many countries are frightened to trade with Cuba for fear of incurring the wrath of the mighty US. That is why the Cuban government has invested so heavily in its tourist sector. Countries may not trade but people who decide to visit bring much-needed currencies, including dollars. But these dollars are not brought in by Americans as it is illegal for US citizens to holiday and spend money in Cuba... * A disturbed Sunday http://groups.yahoo.com/group/socialistcomrade/message/559 ...There is something depressingly ugly about hymns. The men who wrote these dirges to god must have been possessed by a degree of melodic dysfunction unequalled until Bros went on their first world tour. There is nothing intrinsically bad about religious music (Mozart's Mass is the best work he composed and cantorial tenors can put Pavarotti through his paces), but hymns are relentlessly miserable in their transparent propagandism. In the early part of this century militant American workers (known as Wobblies) were refused the right to advocate socialism from street platforms while the Salvation Army (referred to by them as the Starvation Army) were left alone by the cops. So the Wobblies took on the Army at their own game (Why should the bosses have all the bad tunes?) and Joe Hill, their greatest songsmith, wrote some of the most joyful workers' songs ever sung. Only the barmiest socialist would favour standing in residential areas on Sunday mornings with loud wind instruments and a megaphone singing Wobbly songs. So what gives these Christian manic street preachers the right to try and drive us all mad? And come to think of it, who needs the nauseating tintinnabulation of their wretched Sunday bells? Why must our children having morning assemblies were holy hogwash is forced upon their innocent minds? And why can't you switch on the TV on Sundays and national holidays without choirs recruited from “The Addams Family” imposing their lousy liturgies upon us? These thoughts were passing through my throbbing head when the rat-tap-tap of an unwelcome visitor propelled me to the cave door with a club in my hand (a rolled-up “War Cry” was the only weapon available in the frenzy of eagerness to settle scores with the salvationists.) "Do you believe in a world where there will be no more wars and everyone will live as one like brothers and sisters?" The question was posed in unison by two young women (possibly sisters, possibly from the planet Belch) who both held tracts in their hands. "Yes, I do." I said. This was not the answer for which they had been pre-programmed. They looked at each other and prayed as they panicked. "So you're a Christian?" said the first one, divinely guided in her quickwittedness. I responded by giving them a lengthy lecture on why religion is a reflection of humanity's former ignorance of causation, how the world we live in is unmistakably material and why my head was by now severely aching from the Salvationists' cacophony. "But we're nothing to do with ‘them’" they asserted in once voice, as if they had just been invited to associate themselves with the British Natiomal Party's Satanic Section. "They're not ‘real’ Christians," they reliably informed me, "although we respect them for what they do and hope that one day they will come to see . . . "... * Thailand set to test Aventis Aids drug http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=312758 Independent By Leo Lewis 07 July 2002 French drugs giant Aventis and the Thai government will jointly unveil the world's biggest Aids vaccine trial at this year's World Aids Conference, which starts today in Barcelona. A total of 16,000 Thai volunteers aged between 20 and 30 will be given doses of the Alvac vaccine in a test expected to last for three years. The drug will be used with another treatment made by the US group VaxGen, representing the third and final phase of clinical trials. Previous trials have delivered impressive results, but there remains the difficulty of producing a treatment that stays one step ahead of the rapidly mutating HIV virus. It is the first time a government has offered this sort of co-operation to a drugs company. The vaccine is the first to reach phase III trials, and has aroused huge interest among pharmaceutical analysts. As one explained: "Other vaccine attempts have fallen at this hurdle, but Aventis seems to have made it further than anyone else." Rival pharmaceutical giants such as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Merck are in only the earliest stages of experimental research. The conference is also expected to hear about Roche's ground-breaking T-20 virus treatment, and a GSK treatment that blends existing drugs into a single product. Though Aventis's announcement is sure to win admiration, it is likely to be swept up in the wider issues at the conference. A United Nations survey estimates that another 68 million people will die of the virus by 2020. On Friday a study was published suggesting the pharmaceutical industry is at least 10 years away from producing a working vaccine. Aventis will now almost certainly be drawn into the issue of whether drugs companies have a duty to sell their products below cost price to nations where the disease is rife. Last year, GSK, Roche, Merck and others were condemned for a joint attempt to sue the South African government over patent protection rights and the threat of generic copying. Drugs companies have consistently argued their patents need to be protected to maintain the incentive to continue pumping money into expensive research. * June unemployment figures show US "recovery" is jobless http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jul2002/jobs-j08.shtml WSWS The June unemployment report released Friday by the US Labor Department gave a snapshot of an economy hovering on the brink of renewed recession, with the much-vaunted recovery of the past six months having done little to staunch job-cutting in most economic sectors. The report contained many indicators of growing social distress within broad layers of the population. The official jobless rate rose by 0.1 percentage point from May, to 5.9 percent. The net increase in new jobs for the month of June was only 36,000, less than half the 75,000 predicted by most economists. Manufacturing employment continued its downward trend, with a loss of 23,000 jobs. But the job-cutting affected white-collar and professional workers as well, with a decline in engineering and management services of 21,000. In all, 8.4 million Americans were looking for work last month. Particularly ominous, from the standpoint of future economic growth, was the Labor Department’s downward revision of its previous estimates of job growth for April and May. What had been billed as an increase of 47,000 jobs over the two months was downgraded to a mere 3,000. The public sector accounted for almost two-thirds of the 36,000 new jobs created in June. This is considered an especially negative sign, because growing budget deficits at the state and municipal level portend a drying up of new government jobs. The official jobless rate has soared from 3.9 percent in late 2000. Over the past year it has risen from 4.6 percent. In all, there were 1.4 million fewer jobs than in June of 2001, and 2 million more people are on the jobless rolls than a year earlier. This year, companies have cut payrolls by 250,000, while government agencies, including the military, have added 100,000 new jobs. The Labor Department’s figures did not take into account the biggest single corporate downsizing announced in June, that of the scandal-ridden telecom giant WorldCom, which announced it was eliminating 17,000 positions. Not counting WorldCom’s job-cutting, 150,000 jobs have been lost in the US economy since the beginning of the year.... * Toronto strike at the crossroads: Answer government strikebreaking with an industrial-political offensive against the Tories! http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jul2002/tor-j08.shtml WSWS The strike by 24,000 Toronto city workers is a pivotal struggle for workers throughout Ontario and across Canada. The right-wing administration of the country’s largest city provoked the strike by demanding the elimination of contractual restrictions on the privatization of municipal services. Outside workers, including trash collectors, parks and recreation employees, and ferry service workers, began the walkout on June 26 and were joined July 5 by 15,000 inside workers, including day care workers, public health nurses and clerical staff. The strikers, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), have stood firm in the face of a concerted drive by the media to turn the general public against them. Trash collection and other critical public services have been sharply curtailed or completely shut down. But the strikebreaking efforts of the authorities and the press have fallen flat, with broad sections of the public siding with the workers. Behind Mayor Mel Lastman stands the provincial Tory government. Since coming to power in 1995, the Tories have spearheaded corporate Canada’s offensive against the working class, gutting public and social services and rewriting labor and employment standards legislation to facilitate strikebreaking and the imposition of 50- and 60-hour workweeks. The Ontario Tories set the stage for the current conflict by downloading provincial responsibilities onto Ontario’s municipalities without providing the local governments with adequate funding. Now, in the name of averting a public health crisis which they themselves have provoked, they are preparing to rush through legislation making the strike illegal. According to Public Security Minister Bob Runciman, who is serving as Ontario Premier while Ernie Eves vacations, “There is legislation ready to go so that it would be short notice to call the legislature back and deal with the situation.” Toronto workers should defy any strikebreaking legislation enacted by this discredited and hated provincial government. They should fight to broaden the struggle, calling on workers throughout the province, including the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) strikers at the Chatham Navistar plant, to mount a united industrial and political struggle to defend the jobs, wages and conditions of all working people. This is a political struggle against a government that has waged a non-stop offensive against all of the past social gains of the working class. Its aim, therefore, should be the removal of the Tories from power. * We Need a Global Declaration of Interdependence http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0706-01.htm Common Dreams ...For much of the Middle East, in particular, the West is synonymous not only with questionable values and a flood of commercial products, but also with failure. Gamel Abdul Nasser's notion of a Pan-Arabic state was based on a thoroughly Western and secular model of socialist development, an economic and political dream that collapsed in corruption and despotism. The shah of Iran provoked the Iranian revolution by thrusting not the Koran but modernity (as he saw it) down the throats of his people. The Western model of development has failed in the Middle East and elsewhere in good measure because it has been based on the false promise that people who follow its prescriptive dictates will in time achieve the material prosperity enjoyed by a handful of nations of the West. Even were this possible, it is not at all clear that it would be desirable. To raise consumption of energy and materials throughout the world to Western levels, given current population projections, would require the resources of four planet Earths by the year 2100. To do so with the one world we have would imply so severely compromising the biosphere that the Earth would be unrecognizable. In reality, development for the vast majority of the peoples of the world has been a process in which the individual is torn from his past and propelled into an uncertain future only to secure a place on the bottom rung of an economic ladder that goes nowhere. Consider the key indices of development. An increase in life expectancy suggests a drop in infant mortality, but reveals nothing of the quality of the lives led by those who survive childhood. Globalization is celebrated with iconic intensity. But what does it really mean? The Washington Post reports that in Lahore, one Muhammad Saeed earns $88 (U.S.) a month stitching shirts and jeans for a factory that supplies Gap and Eddie Bauer. He and five family members share a single bed in one room off a warren of alleys strewn with human waste and refuse. Yet, earning three times as much as at his last job, he is the poster child of globalization. Even as fundamental a skill as literacy does not necessarily realize its promise. In northern Kenya, for example, tribal youths placed by their families into parochial schools do acquire a modicum of literacy, but in the process also learn to have contempt for their ancestral way of life. They enter school as nomads; they leave as clerks, only to join an economy with a 50-per-cent unemployment rate for high-school graduates. Unable to find work, incapable of going home, they drift to the slums of Nairobi to scratch a living from the edges of a cash economy. Without doubt, images of comfort and wealth, of technological sophistication, have a magnetic allure. Any job in the city may seem better than backbreaking labor in sun-scorched fields. Entranced by the promise of the new, people throughout the world have in many instances voluntarily turned their backs on the old... * Unions vote for summer of discontent http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4456118,00.html Guardian Saturday July 6, 2002 Downing Street last night faced the embarrassment of the first 'dirty jobs' national dispute since the 1979 winter of discontent helped defeat the last Labour government, after 1.3 million council workers overwhelmingly rejected a 'final' 3% offer and voted to strike. Leaders of three of the biggest trade unions affiliated to the Labour party - Unison, T&G and GMB - authorised a 24-hour stoppage on July 17, the day or day after the chancellor, Gordon Brown, is due to unveil his three-year spending plans. The walkout would be the biggest industrial demonstration in Britain for more than two decades and the first national action by local government manual workers, such as street cleaners and refuse collectors, since 1979, and by white collar grades, including housing and environmental health officers, since 1989. Bins could go unemptied and schools, libraries and offices shut... * 6L's served with court order for violating worker's right to visitors Hello friends, Here's an excellent indication of how one of Taco Bell's suppliers views the fundamental rights to liberty and freedom of assembly: on May 16, 2002, in the 21st century, a Florida judge had to issue an emergency injunction in order to force Six L's (Farm-Op) to allow their employees in company labor camps to have visitors. Six L's is one of the East Coast's largest tomato growers. While many of their workers live in Immokalee, others also live in 6Ls-owned labor camps on rural land in Florida and other states. These camps are remote, isolated, and most workers who live there have no cars. At the labor camp in question, the 200 or so workers were refused the right to have visitors -- including personal friends, the Catholic priest, and farmworker legal services staff. Guards at the camp entrance turned these visitors away at the guard gate. A labor camp farmworker resident and the farmworker legal services went to court, and the judge found "the likelihood of irreparable injury if an order of injunction is not issued." The fundamental right to have visitors of your choice in your own home is viewed as essential by the courts, if not by Taco Bell's suppliers. From the order... "Farm Op, Inc. [6-L's], may not prohibit or attempt to prohibit an invited guest access to or egress from the living quarters of the resident who invited the guest by the erection or maintenance of any physical barrier, by physical force or violence, by threat of force or violence, or by verbal order or notice given in any manner..." "Farm Op, Inc. has improperly restricted and denied access to "invited guests" and "other authorized visitors. . ." Tricon Global (Taco Bell's parent company), assured its shareholders that they only deal with suppliers that obey the law. Ignorance of their suppliers' conduct is no longer an available excuse, so we'd like to hear Tricon's response to this shocking information. Stay tuned for more breaking news on the fight for freedom and basic liberties for farmworkers. Also be sure to visit our website at www.ciw-online.org. For justice, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers * Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jul2002/lab-j06.shtml WSWS Chinese textile workers fight three-day battle with security guards + Retired women workers demand pension increase + Indonesian security guards demand better conditions + Teachers dismissed for striking + Indian veterinary workers oppose changed working hours + Sri Lankan tea estate workers demand higher wages + Teachers maintain protest for job permanency + Nurses threaten further action over pay + Construction workers strike after wall collapse + Nurses walk out at five Perth hospitals + Alcoa contract workers protest exclusion from health study + Miners demand restoration of lost conditions + Qantas staff protest icy working conditions + New Zealand pilots to strike over job security + Sawmill workers lobby over dioxin poisoning + Fiji doctors’ dispute enters sixth day + Strikers not reinstated * Sharon government scapegoats unemployed for Israel's economic crisis http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jul2002/isra-j06.shtml WSWS The Israeli social-economic cabinet agreed on July 1 to a nationwide pilot scheme for a proposed workfare programme. The pilot scheme, modelled on the Wisconsin Plan in the United States, will be run by private contractors and so constitutes an initial step towards the privatisation of the benefits services. It will go into operation between March 1, 2003 and the end of 2004 and will obligate over 14,000 unemployed people to participate or have their benefits withdrawn. Amongst those targeted will be single mothers with children over the age of three who are currently exempt from looking for work until their children reach the age of seven. The cabinet meeting was characterised by vitriolic attacks on the unemployed. According to a report in Haaretz, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is said to have, “pounded on the table several times and declared that those unwilling either to work or at least to volunteer for the community should not receive welfare payments. ‘Let them clean the streets—our cities are filthy—or work in hospitals or guard kindergartens,’ he said. ‘Even if the work is unpaid, at least the person will be doing something in exchange for his stipend. From this point on, we should not give to anyone without receiving something in exchange,’ Sharon said.” A senior finance ministry official said that no one should be paid to sit at home, “except perhaps for drug addicts or alcoholics”. Claimants are being scapegoated for the parlous state of the Israeli economy. The government’s target for economic growth in 2003 will be only one percent, which represents negative per capita growth, since the population is expected to increase by 2.5 percent next year. The Finance Ministry plans to slash at least NIS8-9 billion from the state budget for next year, in order to meet this target. This will be taken out of the backs of the working class. Sharon has promised only a small reduction of about NIS2 billion ($US2.49 billion) in defence spending and an additional across-the-board cut of about 2 percent in ministry funding. The main reduction will be based on cutbacks in benefits provided by the National Insurance Institute. The continuing slump of the Israeli economy will add tens of thousands of Israeli workers, youth and immigrants to the unemployment rolls. In Israel there are officially 271,000 unemployed workers, or 10.6 percent of the workforce. But only 54 percent of the potential labour force is actually employed. Only 76 percent work in the key 25-54 age group, compared to a Western average of 82 percent.... * Salsa Shawn's Homemade Salsa 1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes in tomato puree 1 14 oz can chunky tomato sauce 1 small white onion chopped 1 1/2 tsp black pepper 1 tsp basil 2 1/2 tsp parsley 1 tsp paprika 1 tsp garlic 2 tsp sage 4-5 tsp A-1 Sauce (We used mesquite) 4 squirts lemon juice 20 large leaves fresh spinach torn salt to taste Makes about five cups -- Enough for rice pilaf five times! Cook all ingrediants together about 20 minutes onions are soft and flavorful. Use for rice pilaf (recipe in files) or with chips. Return to CounterHeg Home