Regarding the tumbling torchbearer:

http://news.guelphmercury.com/News/article/594745

last line:" On Dec. 28, a group of protesters ran into security personnel surrounding a torchbearer during the relay through Guelph’s downtown. Cortney Hansen, who was carrying the torch, fell as a result."

I think if she really was tripped they would have had some great footage. Every inch of this ridiculous run has been covered ad nauseum by CTV. They show a reel of runners EVERY NIGHT.

Somewhere there is film. Buried.

During the night of February 4th to 5th, 2010, on Meryem Mehdi's 56th day of hunger strike, we were harassed by police under the pretext that they had received a call concerning a person in distress. We suspect British Gas of being behind this in order to destabilize the women who were at the bedside of Meryem Mehdi. We denounce the roughness of the policemen which worsened the state of health of Meryem to a state of shock. Nassira Ghozlane had to explain to the police chief, who arrived after the departure of his men, that the striker had suspended her action following an invitation by British Gas to negotiate (for the sole purpose of making them leave). Without calling them, the Fire Brigade (paramedics) then arrived to transport her to hospital. After much negotiation, the police services left whilst reinforcements were sent to the Fire Brigade. The person in charge of SNAPAP's women's committee then contacted their commander and under threat of an official complaint, the latter ordered the firemen stationed at the entrance of the building to regain their stations.

Translation of this article on SNAPAP women's committee's blog.

Love the tone of this one:

http://www.guelphtribune.ca/news/article/201963

Titled: "Unions nix pay plan, service cuts due"

Yup, you read it right It's the city worker's unions fault that the services are getting cut. It just so happens that the amount they are attempting to save is almost the exact amount that our city has spent acquiring property to build the new mega library see:

http://www.unionbook.org/pg/blog/labourshow/read/19937/family-thrift-store-the-long-lost-article

The building is empty and the heat is off - its been almost a year now and it may sit for at least another five! A functioning popular business in the downtown was kicked out by the landlord and the new landlord is the city.  Left to rot like downtown Brantford.

http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/759021--in-brantford-heritage-treasures-or-hopeless-hovels

The Tribune is our flyer wrapper free paper and the city is one of it's largest advertisers. Many read it,  others not,  but every home gets a copy and most will parse the headline not hearing the full story. Enter the Angry Red Bloggers!

Short version is the city workers backed most of the members of the current council in the last election who are now imposing this new deal on them. Screw your collective agreement folks, you're getting furlough days whether you want them or not. Its for the best. The people love it when we spoiled public service brats get shat on. Beat on the brat the Ramones said. Oh yeah!

They are calling them "Karen Days" after the mayor:

http://news.guelphmercury.com/article/594564

But the events in our teeny tiny town have got nothing on Glasgow these days:

http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org/SSP-Trade-Unionists/labours-war-against-public-services.html

How do they keep calling themselves the Labour Party? How is our council Progressive?

Maybe its time to take a run at it in October...

Another boneheaded Republican Reform a Tory move:

http://www.cepal.ca/?p=695

And the habit of stacking EVERYTHING with whackjobbery:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/759582--harper-s-new-grim-consensus

An exerpt from this:

"...In a phrase used four years ago by Michael Van Pelt, one of Harper's new appointments to Rights and Democracy, the agency is part of the older "pan-Canadian consensus" that the present government wants to change.

Writing in the magazine Policy Options, Van Pelt (who heads the evangelical Christian think-tank Cardus) and associate Ray Penning argued that this old, small-l liberal consensus – which both Liberals and Tories ascribed to for years and which emphasizes "an aggressive rights-based polity that identifies with tolerance" – is ending."

I would say "has ended" actually.  We have been blessed with the worst kind of idealogues. Granted there are many on the left too but COME ON! The Tories are the only party that could make an "earth is only 6000 years old" believing dropout the President of the Treasury board. But he is handsome though. Wow I feel confident! You betcha!

http://www.stockwellday.com/EN/stockwell_day/

Stockwell is " identified as one of Canada's leading voices in advocating democratic reform, and presently serves as Vice Chair of the International Democrat Union. "

Truth about that gang here:

http://www.idu.org/history.aspx

Margaret Thatcher as Champion of Democracy?! I threw up a little bit in my mouth writing that.

Now...there are stellar dropouts and fantastic Christian people. You know who you are. Hearts.

Please run for office if only to proove that the current regime does not represent you. Back somebody that isnt a balloon.

Folks, they have to go. I have accepted the fact that our riding will be Liberal and Im only just okay with that because it isnt the Tory and I also accept that the electoral system is damaged goods.

So do what you have to - the coalition wasn't so bad an idea, was it? Is that not how we got Universal Health Care? A national pension plan? The Tory wags keep calling it the attempt to "seize control", as if Castro was backing it.

30% + 10.5% + 17.5% = 58% (of seats) is a D on an exam but a true majority nonetheless. Add in the Green vote and I believe its a "C".

37.65% is a failure in anybody's book.

A historic gathering of workers and peasants in Pakistan

By: Farooq Tariq

On 29^th January an historic gathering took place at Faisalabad, the third largest city in Pakistan. The event was jointly organized by the Labour Qaumi (National) Movement and the Anjuman Mozareen Punjab (Punjab Tenants Association) , two movements of workers and peasants that, by their defiant activities in several Punjabi districts, have caught the imagination of thousands. For the first time, these two important movements of workers and peasants in Punjab shared a common platform.

The famous Dhobi Ghat parade ground was a sea of red flags that caught the attention of the incoming crowd. Several bookstalls by left-wing organizations and publishers reminded me of the 1960s. Many hundreds visited the book stalls.

The high point of the conference must have been the arrival of peasants from areas including Lahore, Okara, Depalpur, Renala Khurd, and Kulyana Military Estate. After travelling from different areas of the country, over 3,000 peasants joined one procession. They wore their traditional dress and carried Dhool Damaka (drums).

Earlier on 27-28 January, 140 delegates from Labour Party Pakistan held their 5^th congress in the same city and leaders of the two movements participated in the congress as delegates.

For two weeks prior to the conference, the city was decorated with the red flags of the Labour Party Pakistan and of the LQM. LQM activists worked day and night for two weeks in order to cover all the roads with signs. Normally only the parties of the rich are able to muster resources enough to color the city. In this case, however, activists’ sheer determination to reach as many as possible got out the message of a new labour-peasant movement. Banners, posters and wall chalking signaled the message.

During a time of daily suicide attacks and bomb blasts, holding the workers-peasant conference was a significant development, uniting the under-privileged class under their own leadership. Aside from religious gatherings and rallies, it had been a long time since that many workers and peasants had gathered together in Punjab.

The conference took place in a tense atmosphere, so only committed activists and workers of the two movements participated. Altogether there were over 10,000 participated. Local city officials prepared for any unwanted incident by installing security doors and placing ambulances and fire brigade buses on the site. (We had hoped to mobilize 30,000 but in this atmosphere many local sympathizers stayed home.)

Following the end of the conference, a young worker from Faisalabad told me, “I have come here to see what a labour and peasant conference is. Now I have a telephone number of Mian Abdul Qayum, the LQM leader; I am going to organize workers in my factory”. At present, there is no union at his textile factory in Faisalabad.

Several social organizations including South Asia Partnership (SAP), Pakistan Institute for Research and Education (PILER), Patan Taraqiyati Tanzeem, Women Workers Help Line and others mobilized the women for the event alongside with AMP and LQM. Over 1000 women participated: peasant women from Okara Military Farms and other areas as well as women workers from different factories.

The two main conference slogans were the issuing of social security cards to all industrial workers and land ownership rights to the Mozareen of Military Farms. But solidaritistic and revolutionary slogans were very prominent: “Workers of the world unite,” “One’s sorrow is everyone’s sorrow,” “Long live working-class solidarity,” “Those who cultivate should sow,” “Asia is red,” “Give one more push to demolishing walls,” Socialism is the only answer,” “Revolution is our path,” “Struggle is our strategy,” “Ownership of land or death,” “Trade union rights, our human right,” “Issue social security cards,” “Down with capitalism and feudalism,” “No to the IMF and World Bank,” “Down with American imperialism,” “No to drone attacks and religious fundamentalism,” “For a peaceful democratic Pakistan,” “Equal rights for women,” “No to discriminatory laws,” “Stop violence,” “Give peace a chance.”

The conference was chaired by Mian Abdul Qayum and the proceedings were conducted by Aslam Meraj, LQM’s secretary. Speakers stressed the need for worker and peasant unity to defeat the politics of the rich and feudal. They demanded that all agriculture land occupied by the Military Farms administration must be given to the tenants working on these lands for over 100 years. They called for implementation of the minimum wage in all factories and for a 15,000 rupees ($160) monthly wage. They announced their intention to participate in the coming local government elections at Faisalabad and other cities. They condemned the atrocities by the military in Baluchistan and announced full solidarity with Baluch people in fighting exploitation and injustice. And they demanded the recovery of the missing persons.

Speakers came from all over Pakistan as well as from France and Australia. They included Rasul Buksh Paleejo, leader Awami Tehreek, Pierre Rousset of France’s NPA, Simon Butler of the Socialist Alliance Australia, Mehr Abdul Sattar, secretary Anjuman Mozareen Punjab, Bushra Khaliq, secretary of the Women Workers Help Line, Asim Sajad Akhtar organizer Peoples Rights Movement, Younas Rahu, secretary Labour Party Pakistan, Sindh Chapter, Mohammed Yousaf Baluch, chairman National Trade Union Federation, Safdar Sindhu, secretary Pakistan Trade Union Federation, Ayub Qureshi All Pakistan Trade Union Federation, Atif Jamil Pegan of Harmony Foundation, myself and several others.

Several more on the platform included Jamil Umer of the Awami Jamhoori Forum and leader of the  Coordination Committee of Progress parties, Mohmmed, Tehseen executive director of the South Asia Partnership, Sarwar Bari, executive director Patan Taraqiyati Tanzeem, Khalid Mahmud director Labour Education Foundation, Begum Sabeeha head of Khaksaar Tehreek, Nasim Bajwa, an eminent human rights lawyer from the United Kingdom, Zulfiqar Shah of PILER, Ashraf Nadeem, Mian Ashraf, Noor Nabi, Shabir Ahmad and Malik Saleem Jakar of AMP, Baba Jan LPP Gilgit Baltastan, Abdul Jalal, LPP Swat. Nasir Mansoor, LPP national labour secretary.

Speakers saw the conference as an historic beginning of today’s working-class politics in Pakistan. “It is new start and it will not be the last event in this regard, we reject the economic and political policies of the present government, which are dictated by American imperialism.” They noted that Washington stands empty-handed before the people of Pakistan.

They commented that IMF and World Bank policies are adding misery and poverty to the everyday life of the working class. They refused to accept the dictates of IMF and World Bank. They demanded that the government stop privatization and provide subsidies for agriculture’s input. At the same time they demanded that the government must end discriminatory legislation: All citizens of Pakistan must be treated equally in the eyes of the law and constitution. Finally, they noted they were sick and tired of the in-fighting of the Pakistan People’s Party and the Muslim League Nawaz. They do not battle over issues of concern to the working class but only on how to share power and status.

Speaker after speaker stressed the need for an independent politics from those parties of the rich. Many pointed to worker and peasant unity at the conference as a practical alternative. Speakers urged the government to control poverty, price hikes, unemployment and the power crisis.

Pierre Rousset, a leader of New Anti Capitalist Party France (NPA) and organizer of Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres (ESSF), said that the French workers had secured their social security rights after years of struggle. Nonetheless, aided by the WTO, multinational companies were trying to deprive ordinary people throughout Europe from their basic rights. The response is concrete international solidarity by the workers of all countries.

Simon Butler of Socialist Alliance Australia conveyed revolutionary greetings from socialists in Australia, mentioning that Pakistan and Australia might be opponents in the cricket match but the workers of both countries will unite to fight poverty and unemployment together.

For all those attending, the conference was very positive. Most felt the power of unity: “We did this despite all the threats of security. The police kept pushing us to restrict the event inside the grounds, however, we carried out our own plan and we did well” Rana Tahir, one of the main LLQM leaders, told me.

“It was like an Eid day for the Faisalabad power looms workers. We are all happy with the outcome. It is beginning of working class politics in the city. Just, six years on, LQM did what the big parties cannot do. It was a challenge to fill the ground and we did it. “We feel the power, the power of the working class to change the society. If we can do this, we can do many more things in support of the workers. Now the administration has to listen to us and take us seriously” he commented after the rally.

The conference also passed several resolutions.

labour_party@ yahoo.com  www.laborpakistan. org  www.jeddojuhd. com 

People sometimes ask me “John, why should trades unions get involved with Twitter?” No, honest, they really do, my life is *that* exciting at times…

My standard response is that it all depends. The microblogging service Twitter is potentially attractive to unions as it's something of a liberal and Labour ghetto, and it gets a lot of column inches for being flavour of the moment and making people look modern. However, Twitter is almost a platform in search of a utility, and different people/unions might get very different things out of it, or of course nothing at all, depending on how they naturally want to communicate.

Before deciding how you might use Twitter in your union, it's worth thinking a bit about how your members and other people that you want to connect with will be using it themselves. Have a look at the profiles of some key people you’d want to communicate with - who they follow and who follows them. You can see patterns emerge that suggest the way they use Twitter, and how that might link in with you.

Skim-readers

Some people view Twitter as a reading list for whatever’s happening absolutely right this very moment. They follow people or organisations that interest them and when they log in, they see the latest updates - be they from Twitter celebrities, media outlets, or thought leaders in their sphere of interest.

It's not comprehensive - they'll never see more than a fraction of this 24/7 river of information that fits their interests, but that's not the point. They're more interested in the chance to get the very latest news, or tiny insights - updates too small or niche for normal news channels, but in a world of throwaway publishing, still of value to a specialist group.

The new Twitter lists feature has been really valuable to this group. They can split the people they follow into different topics – friends, profession, industry, etc – and follow just the relevant people when they want to be up to date on a particular topic.

Tweets will always be better received if you’re writing them manually, but for skim-readers, there’s also the possibility of automating your tweets, if you’ve something that you regularly produce in a standard format. Press releases might be an example here. Use a tool like Twitterfeed.com to take your website’s RSS feed of press releases (You do have one don’t you? Try open.dapper.net if you don’t), and send new items every hour to your Twitter account. You’ll get less readers than a properly managed feed, but at least some people who want to use Twitter for news alerts and who want your news will be interested in keeping tabs on you this way. If it takes off, then look at investing more time in writing original content for Twitter, but this is a fairly painless way to dip a toe in the water and see what happens.

If you’re publishing for skim-readers, try it out yourself first to see what others are getting out of it. If you’re maintaining a press room on Twitter for example, follow the journalists you’re interested in. If you’re publishing from a blog, follow other bloggers in your area. You’ll get a way of seeing the buzz amongst the people you’re interested in, and at the same time they’ll notice you in their follower lists and might be interested in checking out what you have to say too.

Beware. Being plugged into everything like this is stupidly addictive, and not always good news for nature’s procrastinators like me.

Networkers

Networkers build targeted lists like skim readers, but aim to use them to their professional advantage. They’ll follow people that they already know from their industry or interests, or influential people that they want to communicate with. They’ll use Twitter’s two-way features to follow up on other people’s tweets, making useful connections or contributing their own opinions.

Union officers with a particular specialism might like to work more in this way. An H&S practitioner could connect with other safety bodies, HR and medical sources and safety campaign groups, using retweets (where you forward on someone else’s tweet, with or without comment) to filter out interesting news from the wider community for your own readers.

It’s easy to get noticed if you’re bringing something useful to Twitter for those people who share your interests, and you may make useful new contacts you’d never normally come across, or be able to get useful responses from people who mightn’t answer (or even see) a cold email.

Chatterers

Some people prefer to use Twitter as a sort of time delay version of instant messaging, similar to Facebook status, but in a more extrovert series of interwoven conversations held in public. Chatterers will make much heavier use of replies (typing @ before someone’s username in a tweet draws their attention to it, whilst still keeping it public) and direct messages (DM - similar but hidden from anyone other than the sender and recipient).

Union branches might find this more useful, where the rep is more likely to be plugged in to members’ address books for regular conversation. Twitter gives you the ability to be contacted privately by members with concerns (if you and they already follow each other), or possibly a means for you to quickly solicit feedback on an issue.

It’s always good to make yourself open to members to communicate in the ways in which they’re most comfortable communicating – and for many this is now Twitter. The downside is that people might expect DM responses even more quickly than they’d get from email, and you’d end up putting in a lot of effort for only a smallish group of members who want to communicate that way.

Another issue to bear in mind is that anyone (such as an employer) could see all the people following the union, which some people might be reluctant to reveal, or worse might end up getting people into trouble.

Social searchers

Some people like to use Twitter to find out what the buzz is about a topic at any point, without necessarily building their own lists or followerships. They watch for and follow trending topics (Twitter lists the most popular topics at any one point for different countries) and hashtags (a convention in Twitter where you add a # in front of a word as a way of standardising keywords, so people can more easily find your tweet in searches – eg #trafigura).

Or they might use ‘social search’ engines like Topsy.com to find not the most relevant pages overall for a subject (as a traditional engine would provide) but the most relevant right now. Even the mainstream search engines like Google are moving towards factoring in this kind of social search (see Google's "latest results" box).

A union can make use of this technique by tweeting about topical news they may have, but first searching to see if other people talking about the issue are using a hashtag, and including that too. This will bring extra people to your tweets – only a few, but they’re guaranteed to be interested in the issue you’re talking about, which counts for a lot.

If you’re engaged in a campaign or dispute and will be sending a stream of tweets on it, invent your own hashtag for it. That way you can monitor more easily what others are saying about the issue (if the hashtag spreads), and find potential allies, as well as making sure your own tweets are all front and centre for anyone following the tag.

If you can co-ordinate supporters to all use the same hashtag, you might notice your issue trending, and you’ll get a lot of interest. Try to make clear how people can translate that interest into some kind of action. The flip side to trending of course is that it lasts for hardly any time at all before some celebrity does something funny, or someone invents a new 140 chars meme to spread, and that displaces you from the charts.

Hecklers

Twitter’s wide-open nature makes it an ideal space for people who want to say something publicly. Addressing a message @ someone – be they a union, individual or campaign target – lets everyone else see what was said. If you start an organisational Twitter account, you’ll get people who disapprove of particular decisions/personalities/whatever sending you slightly narky messages that they don’t really want you to respond to – It’s more like a form of cyber-heckling.

Don’t lose sleep about engaging with anything you find offensive – it’s very easy to get wound up about criticism appearing on the web, as it’s there for ever, but in Twitter’s case, people move on after about fifteen minutes. Most people aren’t expecting a reply, they’re just venting, but will be happy to get one. The handy thing about being so restricted in what you can write is that people don’t expect you to reply with volumes. It doesn’t take a long time for any organisation that issues press releases to find a web link to a statement that shows you do care about their issue (or gives an honest reasoning for why you disagree), and whilst it’s unlikely to sway them on the issue, many will appreciate that you at least took the time to respond.

Of course, all this applies to messages you yourself send out to public targets too. You can tie a union’s message to a target’s Twitter account by sending it @ them, but for more popular companies, it will be tomorrow’s chip paper within minutes.

An interesting Twitter application for unions is the Twitter petition – Act.ly has a great tool that lets you petition Twitter users. You write a short demand (actually pretty tricky!) and it sends from your account, tracking a page of people who retweet it. This results in lots of @ messages to the target, making sure they notice it. They have the opportunity to reply, and have that reply appended to the petition on Act.ly. Numbers taking these petitions are low so far, but given the low number of @ messages that most companies will be receiving compared to emails, it may be noticed more than a low volume email action, and has the benefit of every signature bringing a viral effect.

You can reflect on-side heckler activity in other ways too. A Twitterfall is a stream of content published in real time by other users about your issue – it can be a nice web feature to show just how often people are interacting with your ideas. Just make sure you’re not opening yourself up to a spot of griefing. There are Tweet moderating services out there – betas of Tweetriver and Tidytweet are both nice tools – which might sacrifice speed, but will spare your blushes.

Obsessives

And of course there are a large number of people who want to use Twitter for things precisely because they can. The kind of people who will wrestle with an iPhone app for 30 minutes to order a pizza, because it's more fun than ringing up in 2 minutes. These people love Twitter's extensibility, and are the reason there are so many thousands of lovingly coded apps out there that actually do very little other than make you think "that's pretty neat". When you're doing something clever with Twitter - run it past the "pretty neat" test to see if anyone in the real world might use it.

Some parting thoughts. In practical terms, I’d also recommend you use a Twitter client rather than the Twitter website itself. I like Hootsuite.com myself. And of course If you’re posting URLs to Twitter, do so with a URL shortener (otherwise they take a lot out of 140 chars) – ideally one like bit.ly that tracks clickthroughs so you can see if your tweets are being picked up and acted upon, or if you’re just talking to an empty room.

Twitter is low risk. If it doesn’t work out for you, just scrap it. You didn’t pay anything for it or need to drastically alter your comms strategy to make use of it, and most of your followers don’t really expect anything of you – they’re used to new people coming every day, and just as many old people leaving. Experiment with it – there are probably many other types of Twitter users out there amongst your membership or stakeholders, and actually putting a toe in the water may show you for the first time how you could be go about communicating with them.

Heck, here I am commenting on another conference at our beloved University. I have a stronger link to this one as I have been to it about 18 times. The 29th Guelph Organic Conference is taking place this weekend. This is the first year I have gone as "media" but no matter. I didnt attend a single seminar.  Nothing for a labour reporter to report, really. Well there is and I might track that down this afternoon but Im feeling a bit woozy....

Good friends of mine are organic farmers. It was my time on their farm that led me here in the first place and let me sort out a direction, another way of approaching living that was a great help to an angry 20 year old gen xer with no prospects, skills or bearings. They are still doing it, taking on apprentices every year and passing on a skill set and way of life that is rapidly disappearing in this country. We need more of them, and fast.

Like most Gen Xers, I hate when things are co-opted. Things truck along merrily for a time and then you realise that something you supported and loved is just not the same, not what it was and not in a good way; we always used to say it had "sold out"  Such is the case with the Organic Conference.

I used to always get the dirty hippy label.  One day heading to work two detectives drove up on to the sidewalk and searched me and my stuff, illegal I know now but what do you do.  I was just some schlub going to work. Fresh back from the farm and sporting an Amish-y beard. Part beatnik, part biker. I had a  great part time union job in a supermarket. I knew which side I was on...

So when a very loaded ($ wise) woman in a Ford Escalade and a massive rock on her finger waved me down and asked me for directions to the Organic Conference yestreen, as she was a volunteer, I gave her directions but I have to say, yes I did judge.  Not a personal judgement really but a demographic one in that the organic food movement has been hijacked by corporate interests. Whole Foodism. Yes we are great and fair trade and organic etc but only the elite can afford our stuff and we treat our workers like shit but hey, its worth it! There is something about a vehicle that seats eight being driven by one person that just doesn't square with me in an organic sense.

This sums it up- the $11 organic stuffed pepper entree at the conference was sold to the students today for $4.39.  Same food! Why pay more? Why charge more? Because its organical and perhaps ecobio. Better. Higher yum factor! Or is there a captive audience caught by the yarbles here?

Tis probably just me though. I tend to run when I smell money. Hence my lack of seminars. And a pathetic lack of media availability was evident. Put it this way- six interviews booked, one successful chat. They all stiffed me. I tried. Fair Trade, Co-ops, literacy among migrant workers, I had it all covered.  But I bring in zero $. What is it all about, really?

And trying to be coherent on a blog after a couple of tinnies (and I mean that in the old sense) is just ridiculous.

Good fresh reasonable organical food for all!

Reprise d'un article par Makhlouf Ait Ziane dans "La Tribune des Lecteurs" - Algérie - 31/01/10

Les intentions malhonnêtes des responsables de la société British Gas se sont confirmées avec le temps. Après avoir promis, lors d'une réunion avec le comité national de soutien aux travailleurs algériens la semaine passée, la réintégration et le paiement des dommages et intérêts à Meryem Mehdi, nous apprenons d'un communiqué rendu public hier par le comité de femmes Snapap que la société en question a renoncé à ses engagements. " Nous apprenons ce matin même par le biais de l'avocat de Mme Meryem Mehdi que British Gas a renoncé à négocier après avoir eu même à saisir l'avocat de cette dernière pour arranger la situation ", a indiqué le communiqué. Suite à ce renoncement le comité de femme de Snapap, en tant que porte parole de Mme Mehdi, ont démonté toute ouverture dans les négociations étant donné que rien d'officiel ne leur est encore parvenu. Cela se passe malheureusement selon elles sous les yeux du ministre de la tutelle. " Pourtant, c'est le ministre du Travail nous a annoncé l'intention de BG à négocier lors de la rencontre des représentants du CNSTA ", se sont-elles indignées, avant de revenir sur l'état de santé critique de la gréviste de la faim. Sur ce point le communiqué, a souligné que Mme Mehdi renonce à la prise de tous médicaments prescrits par ses médecins ainsi que les perfusions glucosés, salés ou enrichis en aminoven et autre nutrison dont on la soulageait pour tenir jusqu'à présent. Et son état de santé est très critique. " Bien que son entourage familial, ses amis, les médecins qui l'entourent et le comité de femmes craignent pour sa vie, nous ne pouvons que la soutenir et entamons d'autres actions pour dénoncer les pratiques néocoloniales et aussi dénouer le stato-quo dans les plus brefs délais car nous savons que ses revendications sont légitimes ", ont-elles encore mentionné. Bien que fatiguée et irritée par l'absence de répondant de l'Etat et de désintéressement total des premiers responsables du pays concernant son cas, le comité de femmes a indiqué que la contestatrice est déterminée à aller jusqu'au bout dans son action. " Mme Mehdi est déterminée à prouver aux responsables algériens, à British Gas Algérie et à l'international que son but est de dénoncer les pratiques de certaines compagnies étrangères à se comporter en terrains acquis ayant tous les droits ", a conclu le document. Notons enfin que Meryem Mehdi est en grève de la faim depuis le 8 décembre passé pour contester son licenciement abusif par les responsables de la société British Gas. Hier, elle a bouclé sa 52ème journée de grève.
M. A. Z.

The US Supreme Court has shown supreme arrogance (dare we call this "judicial activism?") with its recent ruling about corporate political campaign contributions. This is another aspect of "socialism for the social register," "welfare for the wealthy." I saw we dig in for as fight. 

The dishonest intentions of the persons in charge of British Gas are now confirmed. After having promised, at a meeting last week with the National Support Committee to Algerian workers (CNSTA), to pay damages to Meryem Mehdi, we learn from an official statement made public yesterday by the SNAPAP women's committee that the company has retreated from its engagements: "We learn this morning from Mrs. Meryem Mehdi's lawyer that British Gas has quit negotiations after approaching the latter with a proposition to arrange the situation", says the official statement.
Following this renouncement, SNAPAP women's committee, as a representative of Mrs. Mehdi, dismisses any account related by BG of an opening in negotiations since anything official has still to reach them. Unfortunately this occurs, according to SNAPAP, under the eyes of the government: "It is the Labour Minister who announced to us, BG's intention to negotiate during a meeting with representatives of the CNSTA", they say, angrily, before reiterating the critical state of health of the hunger striker.
On this point, the official statement stresses that Mrs. Mehdi has issued instructions giving up on all drugs prescribed by her doctors as well as glucose perfusions, salted or enriched in amino-acids and other nutritional elements which helped her hold on until now. Her state of health is very critical.
"Her family, her friends, her doctors and her support committee can only help her through actions to denounce the neo-colonial attitude of British Gas and try to reverse the status-quo. We know her claims are legitimate", they say.
Irritated by the absence of government reaction and the complete silence of the heads of state, SNAPAP's women's committee indicates that Meryem Mehdi is determined to fight to the end. "[She] is determined to prove to Algerian heads of state, to British Gas Algeria and to the whole international community that her only goal was to denounce the practices of foreign multinational companies behaving as though they were in conquered territories, the owners of law", the document concludes.
Let us note finally that Meryem Mehdi is on hunger strike since the 8th of December, 2009, protesting against her abusive dismissal by the persons in charge of the British Gas company. Yesterday, she completed her 52nd day of hunger strike.

Translation of an article by Maklouf Ait Ziane pour "La Tribune des Lecteurs" - 31 janvier 2010 http://www.tribune-lecteurs.com/event.html