Around 350 people attended the Scottish Socialist Party's Socialism 2001 event in Glasgow last weekend. It was lively, informative and exciting with speakers ranging from novelist James Kelman to Tony Higgins from the Scottish Professional Footballers Association.
"In the villages around Kandahar there is a name that provokes horror and fear. It is not Taliban leader Mullah Omar, nor is it Osama Bin Laden. It is Gul Agha, the former Mujahadeen governor of Kandahar, whose tribal militia is backed and advised by the US."
Behind the three month long all-out strike by Benefits Agency and job centre workers lies the crisis which has been created by New Labour's draconian benefits system.
Shock waves rocked the key institutions of global capitalism last weekend. The crash of US-based energy multinational Enron is one of the biggest ever corporate collapses in the history of capitalism.
The scenes of hundreds of dead Taliban soldiers outside the fortress in Mazar-e-Sharif last week showed the brutality of US power. US warplanes bombed the fortress, killing around 400. Then the US allies in the Northern Alliance scavenged from the dead bodies.
The day started at 6.30am for most of the 350 or so homecare workers, organisers and clerks who are employed by Rochdale council. Picket lines throughout the borough were manned before the full light of day on Tuesday of last week.
Workers who print many of Britain's national newspaper titles voted last week to ballot on strikes against job cuts and a pay freeze. It is the first such vote in the national newspaper printing industry since the great defeat of the print unions at Wapping in the 1980s.
Three council by-elections in Burnley during the last two weeks have seen the Nazi BNP build on its general election performance but not yet break through to win a seat. In the latest election in Rosehill ward on Thursday of last week the BNP grabbed 230 votes (19 percent).
Over 150 people packed out the debate on the war in Afghanistan organised by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Stop the War group last week. Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee and writer on the Independent David Aaronovitch presented their pro-war position.
Members of NATFHE, the university and college lecturers' union, were due to strike at Middlesex University in north London on Wednesday of this week over compulsory redundancies.
Around 200 people marched in Northampton recently to demand justice for Abdi Dorre.
