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Delegates from Community, a trade union representing workers in iron and steel, clothing, textiles, footwear and betting industries, delivered a crushing blow on June 7. They opposed the union executive's attempt to force through a resolution aimed at undermining the Trade Union Congress's policy of boycotting Israeli goods produced in illegal settlements. At the union's biennial conference in Southport, members accused the leaders of seeking a “retrospective mandate” to support Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine (Tulip), which they labelled “an apologist” for Israeli war crimes.

Pity the stressful life of police ministers in Spain and its autonomous communities (states).  For weeks, the central plazas of big cities and towns across Spain have been the site of the camps of the “outraged” (los indiganados) of the M-15 movement — so-called after the large May 15 national protests that sparked the movement. The movement, which opposes the savage austerity imposed on ordinary people to pay for the crisis and the undemocratic nature of the political system, is now spreading into the suburbs of the larger cities and out into smaller regional towns.

“The troubled sky reveals/The grief it feels.” Those two lines were written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem “Snow-Flakes”, published in a volume in 1863 alongside his epic and better-known “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”. Much of the news chatter this week has been about Sarah Palin’s flubbing of the history of Revere’s famous ride in April 1775. Revere was on a late-night, clandestine mission to alert American revolutionaries of an impending British attack.

The Venezuelan News Agency published the article below on June 5. The decision to freeze relations with the US government came after the US imposed sanctions on Venezuela's state-owned oil company, PDVSA, over economic ties with Iran. * * * Relations between Venezuela and the US are frozen, said Venezuela's foreign minster Nicolas Maduro. Maduro said the government of President Hugo Chavez has tried to restore respectful dialogue with Washington. Maduro said the Venezuelan government aspired to have relations of respect and open communication.

Opposed to carbon tax I am a committed greenie, but I was not one of the thousands who rallied on the weekend. I am opposed to the carbon tax because it hurts the poor and lines the pockets of the rich, without doing anything real for the climate. Just 10% of this tax is earmarked for funding for renewable energy, with more than this amount (the government is very coy about the exact figure) to be given to the biggest polluters, as “compensation”. This is just business as usual — lots of money for the worst polluters and a few crumbs for renewables.