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The Cadbury Company plans to shut down its Keynsham plant, which would result in 500 lost jobs. Another 200 jobs will be cut in Bournville. These jobs are to be transferred to Poland by 2010. (The company plans to start additional chocolate production in Poland in 2008. It has also signed a deal with Barry Callebaut in Poland to outsource some production. Callebaut outsources about 1/3 of Cadbury's total production.)

As Cadbury opens a new chewing-gum factory in the Walbrzych Special Economic Zone this January, the company has been negotiating for even more taxpayer sponsored financing and tax breaks to accompany the opening of a new chocolate factory. If all goes as they want, more jobs may eventually be transferred to Poland.

(Warning: Mainstream Media Report!) The Köpi in Berlin is famous as one of the last remaining remnants of the city's squat culture from the early 1990s. The building, which is in a desirable location, has now been sold to a property developer -- but the residents aren't giving up without a fight.

Today the Youth Department of the city of Helsinki decided not to rent the squatted house in the Vallila district to be used as an autonomous social centre. The private insurance company, Etera, that owns the house has declared that it will not negotiate the matter any more. This means that
an eviction is only a matter of time.

Prime Minister Tusk is squaring up for a 'celebrity death match' with his nemesis, the one and only (oh no wait, he's got a doppelganger) President Kaczynski. Yesterday in the Sejm (parliament) his cabinet officially requested an extension to the Polish mission in Iraq, until the end of October 2008. Wait a minute, haven't we heard all this shit before?

March 20th, 2007 was the 4th anniversary of the U.S./Coalition forces invasion of Iraq. For the three gay men photographed above by Bilal Hussein of Associated Press it was to be their final day on earth, gunned down in the city of Ramadi by anti-homosexual death squads.

One can hazard a guess at how fucked up Iraq is at the moment when you have the Bush Administration calling the significant Shiite religious leader, the Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani, a moderate voice in Iraqi political affairs. This is the same man who issued a fatwa last October calling for the killing of gays in Iraq.

This Iraqi blog reports that "Ali Hili, founder and spokesperson for the exile group LGBT Iraqis U.K., said Islamic death squads came to life in response to Sistani's fatwa and brought about an atmosphere of terror among gays." Furthermore he claims that "some death squad members arranged meetings with gays through chat rooms by posing as gays themselves, then captured and sometimes assaulted or killed their targeted victims."

The U.S.-based International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission was amongst human rights groups who complained that the U.S./Coalition occupation forces aren't doing anything to put pressure on their Iraqi partners to stop the gay-hunt.

Regarding the estimated 400 innocent gay people murdered since the invasion in March 2003 merely as a result of their sexual preference, Ali Hili comments, “We thought that with the presence of Americans, life would become paradise, that Iraq would be Westernized, but unfortunately the way things were before was so much better than where we are now.”

Well, in all fairness, why the fuck would you be relying on an army whose actions have led to the deaths of up to a million Iraqis (According to the U.S. John Hopkins Institute and the British 'Lancet' medical journal) since the illegal invasion of 2003?

To learn more about the situation of sexual minorities in Iraq please refer to the blog linked to above.

United Press International reported today that a 30 kilometre-long oil slick continued to flow down the Vistula River towards the Baltic Sea.

Polish Radio reported that environmentalists are increasingly concerned as this is the second time in just a week when oil has leaked from a crude oil pipeline into the main Polish river that connects the cities of Krakow, Warsaw and the tri-city region of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot. They are expecially concerned about the effects on birds that gather around the river during the current cold period.

Firefighters were engaged in emergency work to gather huge amounts of crude oil that spilled in the Vistula Sunday near Plock.

A Russian watchdog group has said an ecological disaster is pending if the oil reaches the Baltic Sea.

Note: Another Killer Coke Christmas street action is planned for 12 noon next Saturday, December 22nd, at Galeria Centrum (opposite H&M)

"Ho, ho, ho - have some bloody Coke"

Murder, torture, kidnapping and illegal detention by violent paramilitaries, frequently aided by bottling plant management, has been the tragic reality for Coca-Cola's Colombian employees for 2 decades now. Members of the SINALTRAINAL trade union ordinary employees carry a death sentence around their necks. Yet an appeal from Javier Correra, president of their union - “We want justice. We want people to know the truth about what is going on in Colombia against Coke workers. Now that you know, will you please help us?” - has not fallen on deaf ears.

Killer Coke Action Ingredients
Responding to this call on Saturday afternoon, activists in Warsaw decided to bring together the key ingredients of a well-known recipe, long-proven to scare the underpants off Coca-Cola's corpocrats:

Dutch denim brand G-Star has ended a contract with Indian manufacturer Fibres and Fabrics International (FFI) over problems with working conditions at the company's factories.

G-Star issued a statement saying that it had been unable to achieve constructive dialogue between FFI and labour rights campaigners, including the Clean Clothes Campaign. FFI is pursuing a defamation case against some of the campaign groups, in the face of G-Star's wishes.

The overall strategy, at governmental level, for the EU-Africa summit on the 7th and 8th December in Lisbon, presents itself in a very clear form. It consists of co-opting the NGO’s, be they international ones or from European and African
countries, in order to pursue a series of strategic partnerships. What is being pursued, after all, is a development model for aid to Africa, a policy which forgets the EU states' promises concerning aid to Africa voiced at
countless summits, the barriers abolishing promises for African agricultural goods in European markets, the promises to cancel debt, and the achieving of the so-called "millennium goals".

I The Situation in Russia

The strike movement in Russia is inseparably connected with horrible inflation. All prices for food and some other things have increased 50-70% since the beginning of 2007 and this is far from the end. Economists say prices will rise again by 50% during the winter!

Two Belarusian comrades visited Next To Nowhere last night, to show an
Indymedia video of the mass protests in Minsk last year, and to discuss how west
European activism compares to that of the former eastern bloc. --- The video
contained footage from the abortive 'denim revolution' of March 2006, which followed
the re-election of Russia-leaning president Alexander Lukashenko, over his US
and EU-backed rival Alexander Milinkievic(. As the Bush administration alleged
voting irregularities (pot, kettle, black), a large group of protesters set up a
tent city in the October Square, in an echo of what had happened during Ukraine's
'Orange revolution'. However, there was to be no victory for Washington
here, because massive police repression was able to overcome the protests, which
seemed to lack the working class base of their Kiev equivalents.

On December 1, the Bangalore magistrate court ordered the arrest of seven Dutch human rights activists from the Clean Clothes Campaign and the India Committee of the Netherlands. Please take action now and write to G-star today.

Take action now at: http://www.cleanclothes.org/urgent/07-12-04.htm#action

Join the International G-Star action day on December 17

The Campaign against Militarism, Poles for a Referendum, the Anarchist Federation and other groups are calling for a large-scale mobilization against the installation of missiles and the building of the US base in Poland. The action, called for March 29, can be seen as part of a larger anti-militarist struggle which is taking place throughout Europe, including the NATO Game Over action to be held in Brussels on March 22 and the anti-NATO Summit to take place in Bucharest at the beginning of April. Let's come together and show that we are not indifferent to the politics of militarism!

Over the past forty five years, the US has been developing various missile defense systems in its pursuit of global military domination. The basic idea is to combine satellite technology with the use of anti-ballistics missiles (ABMs)which would counter first strike missile attacks. The most famous of the US projects was SDI, Reagan's infamous "Star Wars" program. Its current incarnation, the US National Missile Defense Program, is being sold to the world as a necessary element in the "war against terror". The US claims that, in order to protect itself from missile attacks from such "rogue states" like Iran, it needs to install elements of its anti-missile defense system on bases in Europe. Most notably, it wants to build two bases in Central Europe, one in the Czech Republic to house radars, and another in Poland to house missiles with nuclear warheads.

For decades the Coca-Cola company has been embroiled in controversy for breaching the basic human rights of its workers and harming the environments in which it operates.

For instance, they have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits to settle claims of race discrimination. Disturbing allegations and growing evidence has transpired that it has actively colluded in or just turned a blind eye towards the violent repression of its unionized members in Colombia . Communities and NGO's in India have accused the multi-national giant of water depletion and pollution.

As a result of these abuses, many human rights organisations and delegations - including Amnesty International , Human Rights Watch and a fact-finding mission led by a New York City Council member - have appealed to Coca-Cola to better defend their workers 'rights and to radically reduce the damaging environmental fall-out of its factories.

Therefore, it is with great concern that we have learned of the well-respected Polish non-governmental organisation, Polska Akcja Humanitarna’s (PAH) current Christmas campaign with Coca-Cola. While the beverages giant appeals to its drinkers this Christmas to help feed hungry Polish children through PAH’s ‘Wooden Puppet’ programme, the brutal irony exists that children as young as 8 years old work for Coca-Cola’s suppliers in the sugar cane fields of El Salvador . Is not their hunger for the universal right to education, and freedom from bonded labour, as equally important to the rights of Polish children?

Various organizations and individuals within Venezuela, each with a history of social struggle and each bringing with them diverse proposals from the anti-authoritarian and critical left, have assembled in the space of INSURGENTES (INSURGENTS) to forge a position against the proposed constitutional “reform” offered by the republic’s President, Hugo Chavez Frias.