Europe Follow

As European Union (EU) leaders discussed more market "reforms" and privatisation of services in Brussels in Belgium, 100,000 trade unionists marched last Thursday in protest at this "neo-liberal" Europe.

They're feeling pretty bullish in the White House and the Pentagon. A few weeks ago Tony Blair was riding high as George W Bush's favourite adviser. But last Sunday's Observer, reporting American plans to extend the war to Iraq, quoted a "European military source" just back from US Central Command HQ in Florida:

Just how bad is the economic situation? It is very, very serious indeed. You have for the first time in 20 years a simultaneous downturn in all three major sections of the advanced capitalist world. That is a recession in the US, a recession in Germany and across continental Europe, and a recession in Japan.

In three weeks time tens of thousands of people are planning to join major protests in the Belgian capital, Brussels. The protests will focus anger at the job losses mounting right across Europe as global recession bites. And they will also voice fury at European leaders' backing for the US-led war on Afghanistan.

Software Giant Microsoft launched the latest version of its Windows software on 25 October. Sting played a special gig in New York to launch Windows XP. London's Royal Festival Hall was booked for the European launch. Behind the hype Windows XP highlights Microsoft's obscene rush for profits. Company founder Bill Gates is already worth £41 billion-over £6 for every person on the planet. His company reckons that Windows XP can increase that even further.

The number of people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia living on $1 a day or less leapt from seven million to 24 million from 1990 to 1998. That is the backdrop to the conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the Gulf state of Qatar next week.

TANKER DRIVERS working for P&O Trans European called off last weekend's strikes after P&O bosses came up with a new offer in the pay dispute. The drivers, members of the TGWU union, have held national strikes for 24 hours and at weekends for the last month.

PARTICIPATING in the demonstrations in Genoa was for many a life-changing event. We saw Italian trade unionists join the diversity of the anti-capitalist movement in the biggest demo Europe had seen for many years. We knew another world was possible, and we came home and tried to tell as many people as possible.

THE GREEN Party annual conference took place in Salisbury last weekend in the wake of the party's best ever general election result. The Greens now have 49 local councillors, one member of the Scottish Parliament, two members of the European Parliament and three members of the Greater London Authority.

"WE ARE not animals. We are not criminals. We are human beings," cried hundreds of desperate and defiant refugees last week. They were fighting back against the treatment they suffer because of the policies of Tony Blair and other European Union leaders. Over 900 refugees are at a Red Cross centre in a giant hangar outside Sangatte, near the French Channel port of Calais.

"PEOPLE'S GLOBALISATION not corporate globalisation" is one of the slogans of the anti-capitalist movement. And if people's globalisation exists, it now has a soundtrack. Manu Chao is a hugely successful musician everywhere in Europe. But in Britain he remains largely unknown.

OIL TANKER drivers at P&O are balloting on strikes over threatened pay cuts. A TGWU union spokesperson says more than 100 workers in P&O Trans European's freight division will receive ballot papers.