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Maciej "Neanderthals are Among Us" Giertych has written another brochure and delivered them to Europarliamentarians. His newest title, "Gender equality and life issues in the European Union" is apparently even more popular than his previous "Civilizations at War in Europe" which claimed that Jews chose to create their own ghettos or his booklet on evolution which claims that Neanderthals live among us.

According to Giertych, the EU foolishly promotes gender equality. Giertych believes that men and women are naturally different, women are made for child bearing and being secretaries while men should go to work and manage the world. In short, a typical far-right rant about the evils of feminism and in support of sexist stereotypes. Giertych's book even includes a chart which shows the natural order characteristics of the sexes:

A delegation of AFL-CIO leaders to Colombia told Colombian President Alvaro Uribe the U.S. union movement cannot support the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement until real progress is made to protect the lives and rights of trade union members.

Colombia’s unionists live in a climate of fear; at least 40 trade unionists were murdered in 2007.

The AFL-CIO leadership has criticized the government's lack of action in this area. AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Emerita Linda Chavez-Thompson said:

Despite the Colombian and United States governments’ assertions to the contrary, there has been too little real progress in ending the brutality that trade unionists face in Colombia. In 2008 alone, five trade unionists have been murdered—almost one per week.

600 seasonal workers at the Xinavane sugar plantation in Maputo province of Mozambique have been on wildcat strike since last Friday (15th February).

The workers are demanding a wage increase of over 100%, from 1,100 to 2,500 meticais (from US$46 to US$104), as well as protective clothing, overtime for working on Sundays and the right to a day off in the event of the death of a family member.

Last Friday, workers have caused serious damage to the company offices and the homes of company managers as well as set 20 hectares of sugar cane ablaze. The Friday and Saturday clashes resulted in injuries to 20 people, five of whom had to be transferred to Maputo Central Hospital. Xinavane bosses had hoped that workers would have returned to their jobs on Monday but the strikes continued with the strong presence of the riot police around the sugar factory and homes of managers, to deter a repetition of last weekends violence.

Leaders of imigrants groups in Moskow - Turkmen, Tadziks and Kyrgyz - during a meeting with Moskow's authorities 18th February stated a sharp protest against a growing wave of murders of national minorities.

They accused the Russian law authorities of tolerating crimes against on ethnic minorities by describing them as hooliganism and giving the feeling of impugnity to the murderers.

They warn that the consequence of racist aggression can be change of attitude in countries which were former Soviet Republics, and retaliation attacks in the Commonwealth of Independent States. According to information which was cited, last year Russian nationalists killed 50 Azeris, 30 Georgians and about 100 people from the Central Asian republics. And only in the last month in Moskow 7 people from the Commonwealth of Independent States were killed.

According to : Free Caucasus Committee

We would like to announce that there will be for the third time an international A-Camp in Austria, taking place from the 18th to the 27th of
July 2008. An anarchistic summer camp, where we can exercise a liberated life beyond the constraints and structures of domination that shape our daily existence in our societies; a place where we can try to transpose that what we are fighting for into a common practice.

On Wednesday, February 20, workers at TESCO in Tychy will hold a two-hour strike. The management of TESCO consider such a strike illegal.

Workers at TESCO make the mininum wage. Despite working weekends, TESCO employees take home from 800-1100 zloties a month - that is between about 220 and 300 euros a month. The workers at the Tychy market are demanding a 700 zloty a month pay increase.

TESCO employs 28,000 people in Poland. There are over 300 TESCO supermarkets plus gas station markets and other markets called Savia. TESCO enjoys extremely healthy profits in Poland.

Common Call for a Transnational Chain of Migrationrelated Actions In the "heart of the monster": Amsterdam, Sevilla, Torino, Bamako, London, Athens, Warsaw, Hamburg, Malmoe, Ceuta ...

Between February and October 2008 a series of events, protests and actions will take place in various cities and countries all over Europe and beyond : against the border regime, against detentions and deportations, against the exploitation of migrant labour and for legalization of all migrants. This transnational chain of struggles builds on the three action days for freedom of movement and the right to stay, which happened in previous years. But with this chain of events we are aiming for something more. We strongly believe that the transnational expression of migrants’ struggles against the “monster” of migration controls must be something more than a one day event once a year. We believe that the transnational space must be understood as an unified space of migrants’ struggles, happening everyday and right now.

This transnational chain of struggles is our attempt to find out what is “common” among the manifold differences experienced by migrants in Europe and beyond. Ranging from temporary seasonal workers who are exploited in the fields of Andalusia in Spain; to "legal" migrants who live and work everyday in Eurospace; undocumented migrants working in irregular jobs in Italy or the UK, in factories or in the home, as many women do; "tolerated refugees" living in an isolated "junglecamp" in Northern-Germany; migrants detained in a camp in Greece or Poland, or even in front of the externalized EU-borders in Marocco or Ukraine. They all are crossing and forcing the boundaries living inside and struggling against the same “monster” which is the migration-regime!

* Issue #52 of El Libertario is out www.nodo50.org/ellibertario. In its editorial we reaffirm the commitment of this voice of Venezuelan anarchism to maintain a critical viewpoint on the country's realities, as well as our stand in solidarity with the struggle for liberty and equality.

[TN: (B)oligarchy is a play with words meaning Bolivarian oligarchy]

The year begins and it's already clear that the electoral circus will be used once again to tame the social struggle in Venezuela, a script routinely applied with success for the last 10 years. Elections for governors, state representatives and mayors are set for November 16, so the official politicos and the opposition started campaigning right after the Constitutional Referendum of December 2nd, again with the sneaky proposal to postpone collective demands in order to be elected to the contested positions. Both sides continue to sell the canard that given the importance of these elections to regain freedom or to advance the revolution nothing matters more in 2008 than to clear the road to victory at the ballot, after which these enlightened representatives of the people will work tirelessly and expertly to satisfy the electors' demands.

Well, if it isn't US missiles pouring into Poland it's flocks of exorcists. Or is it 'murders' of exorcists?
Europe is to have it's very own exorcism headquarters, and where better than demon-possessed Poland to play the ever-willing host. The Catholic archbishop who governs Poczernin, a village near the North west Polish city of Szczecin, has given his imprimatur while the Vatican have nodded their heads and granted a seal of approval.

GENEVA (AFP) — Russia and China have proposed a new treaty to ban the use of weapons in space, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday, amid concerns of growing anti-satellite missile rivalry.

"Without preventing an arms race in space, international security will be wanting," Lavrov told a conference on disarmament in Geneva.

"The task of preventing an arms race in space is on the conference's agenda. It's time... to start serious practical work in this field," he said.

Washington, Feb 12 (DPA) US fighter jets intercepted two Russian bombers that approached an aircraft carrier on the weekend over the western Pacific Ocean, a US Navy spokesman said.

Four F/A-18s took off from the USS Nimitz as the Tupolev 95s neared the carrier. One of the Tupolevs flew over the Nimitz at an altitude of about 600 metres, said Mark Matsunaga, a spokesman for the US Pacific Fleet in Honolulu Monday.

The bombers were each trailed by two F/A-18s, which picked up the course of the Russian planes as they neared the carrier fleet early Saturday, Matsunaga said.

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

Please have a look at the mcmilitary.org-website. On the mcmilitary.org-website action groups and activists can bring their knowledge together on military bases in Europe and deployments for war. It is a collaborative research effort, based on a wiki. It is meant as a source for organizing actions and campaigns against military globalisation and war policies.

This website is now set up as a preparation tool for the conference on Military Globalisation and Nonviolent Resistance in Brussels on March 23-24 2008, just after the NATO Game Over-action. The results will be used in the 'mapping' workshop. But it can continue to be used after the conference as a collaborative effort to bring source material and information together.