ONE OF Spain's longest running industrial disputes has ended in victory for the workers. Telephone engineers celebrated in the centre of Madrid last weekend after their fight forced the country's Tory government to concede most of their demands.
TONY BLAIR toured Latin America last week preaching the virtues of the market and neo-liberal economic policies. As he did, those very policies were bringing misery to millions across the continent. But workers and the poor are fighting back.
Over 4,000 riot police stormed into a Daewoo Motors plant in South Korea last week. They stormed the building to smash up a four day long sit-in by 700 sacked workers and their families fighting for their jobs. The security forces broke down barricades with forklift trucks and excavators.
Revolt against the "neo-liberal" policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) swept the South American country of Ecuador last week-and won. Thousands of indigenous people from the countryside marched on the capital, Quito, and occupied the city's university and the headquarters of a visiting IMF delegation.
When the leaders of the IMF and World Bank arrive in Nigeria, West Africa, next Wednesday they might find up to two million protesters on the streets across the country. One of the biggest demonstrations will be against job losses and workers being forced to pay for the country's crisis. Nigeria is in turmoil.
The discussions between Ariel Sharon, the new right wing prime minister of Israel, and leading figures of the Israeli Labour Party show how neither main Israeli party wants peace with the Palestinians.
At the recent Globalise Resistance conference in London one of the packed workshops was about what is happening in the South American country of Colombia. The discussion was introduced by JONATHAN NEALE, author of a book on the US war in Vietnam. He spoke of how the Colombian and US governments were pushing their Plan Colombia. The plan involves billions of dollars and US military "aid" to Colombia.
Workers and bosses in France were set for a major trial of strength on Thursday. All the country's major union federations have called for strikes and demonstrations against a "frontal assault" on workers' pension rights. It comes as the social and political temperature in France is rising. Strikes and demonstrations have been multiplying in recent weeks. Now the Les Echos business paper worries that bosses are playing "a dangerous game". Thursday's action centres around a provocative move by the Medef employers' organisation.
Tens of thousands of people protested against the inauguration of US president George W Bush last weekend. They took to the streets in Washington, Florida and Seattle to show they are opposed to how Bush and the Republicans stole last November's election.
Mass demonstrations forced the resignation of the president of the Philippines, Joseph Estrada, on Friday of last week. Over 200,000 people took to the streets of the capital, Manila, for several days last week after court proceedings against Estrada over corruption effectively collapsed.
Bill Clinton was attempting to secure a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority as Socialist Worker went to press. But many Palestinians are suspicious of a deal.
Lawyers, doctors and human rights activists in Turkey are cataloguing hundreds of reports of torture and assaults on left wing political prisoners-despite state censorship.
