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This is a bit of a sensational news-report which does not match with reality in Belgium. The presence of nuclear weapons in Belgium has been subject to a political and public debate for many years now. For the past 15 years there have been many debates and actions organized by NGO's, the Belgian section of PNND (Parliamentarians for Non-prolieration and Nuclear Disarmament) and an increasing number of Belgian Mayors for Peace (with 302 members 51% of Belgian Mayors have joined).

The presence of nuclear weapons in Belgium has been revealed at several occasions, with even both houses of the Belgian parliament asking in 2005 for the withdrawal of the suspected 20 B-61 US nuclear bombs from the airbase of Kleine Brogel, Belgium ... and Europe. A majority of Belgian people have responded to be aware of the presence of US nuclear weapons in Belgium in a survey by Greenpeace International in 2006.

Belgium was the only country where a majority of the people seem to be informed about presence of US B-61 on their territory. In the Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy and Turkey most people live in ignorance about this. This is of course the result of mass-media giving very little attention to this issue, applying the official NATO policy of "nor confirm nor deny". Reporters prefer to spread political propaganda about WMD in Iraq and Iran.

Solidarity with the Council of Europe Defendants!

We demand the immediate release of our comrade, Adam Pazuryna, from arrest. Adam has been held in Bialoleka jail in Warsaw since late December. He was arrested on bogus charges during a useless and unprovoked police action on May 16, 2005. Protestors had just finished a demonstration during the Council of Europe Summit in Warsaw and were about to just go home when the clowns in badges decided to arrest people. As usual, nothing at all was going on at the moment of arrest, so cops were just harrassing people at the end of the protest and looking to pick up some random people just to score some arrests and to show that protesting is not to be tolerated.

The police drove the arrested to an unusual holding place where they denied that anybody was being held, despite the fact that the police van was seen entering the place. The 11 arrested were kept in detention in a garage overnight and many standard arrest procedures were ignored. Adam was beaten at the police station; a cop smashed his head against a chair. He was given medical treatment afterwards for these injuries.

Police claim among other things that they started to arrest Adam because he refused to identify himself. Although initially none of the activists wanted to identify themselves, Adam is shown on video to be idenifying himself to the police.

The police had wildly different accounts of the events. On the video produced as evidence, police are shown to be videotaping the incident. The court asked the police to provide their videos and substantiate their claims, but they haven't done it. A court then decided that Adam was wrongfully arrested.

According to Polish Radio 300 Polish soldiers have departed their barracks to participate in the occupation of Iraq with their U.S. overlords. They flew from the airport in Goleniów, north-western Poland. As part of the tenth rotation of the Polish contingent they may very well be the last if the current government hold to their promise to withdraw the Polish military by Autumn 2008. Watch this space and don't hold your breadth. Governments in Poland are also full of shit so it wouldn't be surprising if they stage a British type 'withdrawal' (to barracks within Iraq) rather than the Spanish model (to barracks in Spain).

This year is the 63rd anniversary since the German Nazi concentration camp in Oswiecim (Auschwitz) was liberated on January 27th 1945. Commemorative ceremonies will be held worldwide to mark the occasion, including those at the site of the former camp which is now run as a museum and educational centre. The nearby and much larger camp at Birkenau will also stage a series of events.

Members of the Union of Syndicalists along with comrades from the Anarchist Federation and some others held an action / solidarity picket in and in front of an Auchan supermarket in Warsaw on Jan. 25. The action was held because of Auchan's poor labour practices which include:

- low pay
- wide use of contract labour in their supermarkets and incidents of using work agencies which did not signvalid contracts with employees, among other abuses
- bad social policy
- bad working hours including the illegal use of underaged workers forcing them towork overnight shifts
- forcing people to perform physically dangerous work, for example dragging pallets which are too heavy, and work which causes repetitive strain injury
- repression of people agitating for the creation of unions, including the recent firing in Zielona Gora of one activist from the group Workers' Initiative.

Yesterday's talks between unionist representing the striking workers of Budryk and the Board of JSW mining holding company ended with no agreement.

The unionists said that they have to go back to square one with the negotiations. Miners in Budryk earn less than in other JSW controlled mines. Originally, their demands were to get raises so that the workers would receive pay equal to the average salary in JSW. Most recently, they have been negotiating to achieve equal pay levels with the Krupinski mine which, before Budryk joined, had the lowest levels of pay in the JSW group. However, the director of JSW has claimed that the information on wages in the Krupinski mine is not true. The management of JSW has been very unclear about wages in other mines. Therefore the unionists went back to demanding that the earnings of workers in Budryk be raised to the average in JSW.

On May 16, 2005, a demonstration was held during the Council of Europe Summit in Warsaw. At the end of the Summit, 11 people were arrested on bogus charges by agressive police. The 11 were held overnight in a garage next to a police station. One was beaten and has his faced smashed against a chair, for which he required medical attention upon release. They were charged with, among other things, not following police orders, violating the "untouchability of police" and using bad words. One Indymedia activist was charged with assaulting an officer.

A group of workers at the Frunze Machinery Plant and Scientific Institute in Sumi have refused to work since Monday. They have not been provided with safety clothes and equipment needed to protect themselves on the job.

The workers have also complained that the management is making all sorts of savings, including on the heat. Temperatures at work are under 10 degrees Celsius. Management had promised to resolve the problem by the beginning of the New Year, but instead gave the workers gloves to keep warm.

Management has threatened to fire the strikers.

Bangladeshi workers continue the protests and strikes that have been escalating in recent weeks.

Trouble in the garment industry has continued in Dhaka; on Tuesday several thousand workers again fought cops in the Dhaka Export Processing Zone (DEPZ). Workers gathered at 8am outside MBM Garments factory to continue pressing their demands for improved pay and conditions. They also called for the release of a worker, Shakhawat, arrested yesterday, who was prominent in drawing up the eight-point list of demands presented to the MBM bosses. Other workers nearby also clashed with police at around the same time when they arrived to find themselves locked out of their workplace.

Cleaning Metro workers at Madrid, have given an example of fight with a very combative strike, in which pressure against employers have gotten a part of the reivindicated rights included in their reivindications. At the last meeting, companies offered an acceptable minimum, and despite of this, workers were a reason of laughing. Once more, thank to this fight, fired workers have been readmitted and complaints have been cancelled.

A few minutes before signing the end of the strike, employers show a letter call “social peace”. According to this clause, “workers should compromise to a social peace climate, resigning to make mobilizations and new strikes until 2012”. Workers signed a reasonable agreement, but they are obligated not to organize by themselves and re-starting new collective strikes against employers. That´s the reason why CNT have not signed this agreement and we have defended until the last workers assembly continuing the fight while exist “social peace”, posture that only a few workers have defended. Among to different classes any “social peace” can´t be signed. That is castrating fight during for a long period of time, and finishing the right of being in disagreement. Statal unions are used to sign “social peaces”, as they signed Moncloa Pacts in 1978 to ensure the existence of capitalism and social, economical and cultural exploding. That´s why official syndicalism uses: elections, subsidies, releaseds, permanent negotiations, social peace, etc.

In a recent article released by Reuters we read that "Fears that hordes of illegal immigrants would pour into the European Union once border controls for nine mostly Eastern European nations were abolished a month ago appear, at least for now, to have been unfounded." [1] According to the German Interior Minstry, some 6,000 police operate in mobile patrols in a 30-km (18-mile) wide strip at the German frontier, randomly checking one in 2,000 vehicles.

What they mean by "random checking" is nothing more than racial profiling. There is nothing "random" in it; people who are light skinned and "European looking" go through the borders without ID check. It is enough to look at ones face, hair and clothes. If one speaks a strange language, is dark-skinned, or for women in dressed in modest clothing typical for practicing Muslims or has a number of children with her, it is a clear signal for the police that a "random check" should be made.

In this way, among the many many people caught trying to freely move through the Schengen zone, there have been hundreds of reported cases of Chechen refugees from Poland being stopped and sent back to this country. According to the German Interior Ministry, 564 people, most from Chechnya, were caught in German border regions or on the border between Dec. 21 and Jan. 13. and sent back to Poland. [2]

A solidarity picket for the striking miners in Budryk Mine was held outside the Polish Consulate in Irkutsk. The consular officials refused to take the protest, but the comrades sent it anyway. They send their solidarity greetings to the Budryk miners.

This is from the test of their protest letter:

We are the group Autonomous Action of Irkutsk and we are expressing our solidarity with the striking miners from Budryk Mine. We demand an end to the economic and social injustice with respect to the miners who have less wages than in other mines in this industry, In our viewpoint there are no legal reasons for such discrimination. The mine is the third most profitable one in Poland. Despite this, the Workers are forced to strike in order to support their families. Undoubtedly this does not speak well of the Polish Ministry of the Treasury which owns the mine. We suggest that the Ministry remember the so-called "Railway Wars" - the strikes and blockades of railway lines that took place in Russia at the beginning of 90s. The Ministry should not allow such events to occur because of the persecution of Workers but should fulfill their demands!

In 1998, Russian miners blocked the railways in Siberia in a protest over unpaid wages. This was one of many miners' protests to occur in Russia over the past ten years. People in Irkutsk still have vivid memories of these events.

Cadbury has today been branded an environmental hypocrite for insisting suppliers meet the highest green standards whilst the board prepared to add millions of food miles to Crunchie, Fudge and other brands by moving UK production to Poland.

Brian Revell, Unite the union national organiser for food and agriculture, said Cadbury's signing up to the Carbon Disclosure Project's Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration was a real case of "do as I say not as I do." Closing the profitable Somerdale factory at Keynsham, between Bristol and Bath, and sacking 500 loyal workers, flew in the face of the aims of the environmental initiative.

"The hypocrisy of the Cadbury board is breathtaking," he said. "By closing its factory at Keynsham and moving its production to Poland Cadbury will be adding seven million food miles, if not more. That's not green that's ghastly."

Five senior military officers and strategists from NATO's heart have called on the Pentagon and current NATO leadership to recognise the "first strike" nuclear option as an "indispensable instrument" and to reform the military alliance in line with this principle. Furthermore they state that there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world."

Five senior military officers and strategists from NATO's heart have called on the Pentagon and current NATO leadership to recognise the "first strike" nuclear option as an "indispensable instrument" and to reform the military alliance in line with this principle. Furthermore they state that there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world."