Kenyan tea workers win strike against Unilever corporation

This is a video of Wangechi making Kenyan tea in the morning.

By Ken Olende:

Kenyan strike shows trouble brewing for tea giants

by Ken Olende

A strike by more than 10,000 tea pickers in Kenya in East Africa has won an 8 percent pay increase.

The workers, members of the Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union (KPAWU) took action in more than 18 estates in the Kericho region.

The estates are owned by Unilever Tea Kenya (UTK), which produces brands including PG Tips. Unilever is the world’s largest tea producer, with 12 percent of the world market.

The strike, which started on Saturday 8 September, featured bitter confrontations with scabs.

The tea industry in Kenya employs 63,000 workers, but tea pickers were traditionally very poorly paid.

Interviewed about life as a tea picker, one worker said, “Life here is hard. We work continuously from dawn to dusk, come rain or shine.”

Another, who has worked picking tea for 34 years, said, “Age is not an issue because I need to work for my family. We are paid according to the amount of tea we pick and I try my best to hit 50kg a day.”

A third worker complained about illness: “We work in conditions which at times subject us to diseases such as malaria and pneumonia but there are no adequate health services.”

Since 2005 Kenya has been the world’s largest tea exporter.

Corruption in Kenya: here.

The shocking conditions endured by tea-pickers in India and Kenya: here.

Anti-poverty campaigners demanded a crackdown on British companies exploiting Third World labour today after allegations of “rampant” sexual abuse of workers at the firm behind Britain’s top tea brands: here.

Unilever vs. workers in Pakistan: here.

Music, poetry, and a magician

This is a video of acoustic instrumental fingerstyle guitarist Michael Berk live at Club 85, Hitchin, Britain.

Tonight in the theatre, there was, first, percussion music and poetry by Rik van Boeckel. His theme was Cuba; and he showed how claves work in Cuban music.

Then, stage magic by Tilman Andris. First, tricks with ropes; then, with oranges. Then with big metal rings; then with finger rings.

After a pause, a spoken column by yours truly on Ms Rita Verdonk and other xenophobic politicians.

Then, guitar music by Michael Berk.

Another musician, Eelco Romijn, could not come because of a sore throat.

So, there was another poet, Jaap Montagne from Leiden, whose poems included one on spam.

Fossil crocodiles and manatees discovered in Cuba

This is a video about manatees in the USA today.

From Belgian daily Het Belang van Limburg:

Cuban scientists have found the fossil remains of gigantic crocodiles and manatee relatives. The fossils are 20 million years old, scientists say.

They were found in Sancti Spiritus province in central Cuba. According to the vice president of the Cuban speleological society, Alejandro Romero, the fossils are from the Miocene. They were 20 meter underground.

Video on US creationists’ beliefs about fossils: here.

Crocodile tears: here.

Iraq war was about oil, Greenspan says. 1,2 million killed

This video is about the Australian government’s admission of earlier this year that the Iraq war was about oil.

From British weekly The Observer:

Greenspan admits Iraq was about oil, as deaths put at 1.2m

Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters in New York

Sunday September 16, 2007

The man once regarded as the world’s most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was ‘largely’ about oil.

Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and retired last year after serving four presidents, Alan Greenspan has been the leading Republican economist for a generation and his utterings instantly moved world markets.

In his long-awaited memoir – out tomorrow in the US – Greenspan, 81, who served as chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, writes: ‘I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.’ …

Greenspan’s damning comments about the war come as a survey of Iraqis, which was released last week, claims that up to 1.2 million people may have died because of the conflict in Iraq – lending weight to a 2006 survey in the Lancet that reported similarly high levels.

More than one million deaths were already being suggested by anti-war campaigners, but such high counts have consistently been rejected by US and UK officials.

‘Consistently rejected’ by politicians like Bush and Blair; but definitely not by the experts in Blair’s own ‘Defence’ Department.

It would have even better if Mr Greenspan, instead of speaking the truth about the Iraq war now that he is retired, to have spoken the truth about the Iraq war while he was still in office, and to have resigned in protest. That is a problem with many (ex-) high level people.

Internet Weekly on this: here.

More on Greenspan, Iraq, and oil here.

And here.

Iraq Death Toll Rivals Rwanda Genocide, Cambodian Killing Fields: here.

Iraqi government lower estimate of death toll: here. And here.

Anti war demonstration in Washington, DC, USA: here.

British Stop the War demonstration on 8 October: here.

Women oil workers in Turkey on strike

From Labornet Turkey:

This time, the girls, the resistance, and human pride will win!

Novamed: The story of a strike

September 17, 2007

Solidarity campaigns are underway with the Novamed workers who have been on strike for a year. The editor of the Women’s magazine of the Petroleum Workers’ Union, Petrol-İş, Necla Akgökçe, gave a brief history of the women’s strike, and talked about the important features of this resistance and its current situation in the following interview.

Could you please tell us how this strike developed and the conditions surrounding the women’s labor in the Antalya Free Zone?

Necla Akgökçe: Our friends at Novamed were demanding a reasonable wage, a workplace respectful of women’s rights and to exercise their right to be represented by a union. Their wages were the lowest in the entire Free Trade Zone. Due to the sexist nature of the labor market women’s wages are always lower then men’s.

New Turkish government and workers: here.

Blair on trial for Iraq war in London play

This video is called Sexual abuse and torture by British troops in Iraq.

Reuters reports:

London Theatre Targets Blair for Iraq War

September 17, 2007

By Mike Collett-White

A London theatre has put British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the dock for waging war in Iraq, staging a mock tribunal where prosecution and defense lawyers question key witnesses.

As scrutiny over Blair’s legacy intensifies ahead of his expected resignation in a few weeks, “Called to Account” examines events leading to Britain’s participation in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that has damaged the leader’s popularity.

Based on a courtroom-style debate between lawyers to provide material for the drama, the play raises the question, asked many times before, of whether Blair and his officials deliberately manipulated intelligence to justify the 2003 invasion.

It also focuses on what pressure, if any, they put on the attorney general when he gave legal advice on the war, at what stage Blair agreed to back the use of force in Iraq and whether the aim was regime change and not weapons of mass destruction.

Some ground in the play was covered by the real-life Butler and Hutton inquiries of 2004, which cleared Blair and his government of deliberately distorting intelligence and misleading Britons.

But Richard Norton-Taylor, the Guardian journalist who wrote “Called to Account” based on transcripts of the mock legal debate, believes the remits were narrow and evidence has emerged since then that could compromise Blair.

“My personal view is that there is still a case to answer. We don’t know the full story,” Norton-Taylor said after the press night at the Tricycle Theatre on Monday.

He and director Nicolas Kent also quote from the Butler report, which said “as in the search for weapons in Iraq, one can never do too much digging.”

Arts Target Blair

Among witnesses who gave testimony was Clare Short, a fierce critic of Blair and the war, former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter and Richard Perle, ex-Pentagon official who backed the invasion but who has had doubts since. Blair does not appear.

“Called to Account” comes soon after Britain’s Channel 4 showed “The Trial of Tony Blair” in which the leader faces trial for war crimes as he steps down as leader.

New Labour ousts key anti-war MP, Bob Wareing: here.

In Bush’s ‘new’ Afghanistan, discrimination against Sikh religious minority worse than under Taliban

This video is called Afghan Massacre: the Convoy of Death.

Reuters reports:

Sikhs in Afghan funeral demonstration

Mon Sep 17, 2007 12:59 PM BST137

By Jon Hemming

KABUL – Around 100 angry Afghan Sikhs carried a coffin to the United Nations headquarters in Kabul on Monday, accusing Muslims of stopping them cremating the dead man.

Shouting slogans and punching their fists into the air the turbanned men broke through a hastily assembled police barriers until they reached the gates of the U.N. mission.

The protesters said Muslims had beaten them as they tried to bury community elder Lachman Singh.

“Aren’t we human? Isn’t God created for us as well? If God is only for Muslims, go ahead and kill us all or hand us over to the UN,” Autaar Singh, parliament’s Sikh representative, told Reuters.

“We want our rights and freedom,” he said. “We weren’t even stopped performing our religious ceremonies by the Taliban.” …

“We have owned this land for more than 120 years to perform our sacrements, but it is the first time we were stopped and beaten by the people,” said Autaar Singh.

“Even the Taliban did not oppress us as we are oppressed by the people and government right now.”

Hindu priest feels victimised in Kabul: here.

Illegal killing by US Special Forces in Afghanistan: here.

Corruption in Afghanistan: here.

Alleged war criminals in positions of power in Afghanistan: here.

Iraq: Baghdad residents protest US-erected segregation wall

This video ‘shows you the reality of Baghdad wall’.

By Naomi Spencer:

Baghdad residents protest US-erected dividing wall

18 September 2007

Hundreds of Shiite and Sunni residents staged a protest on September 12 against a wall being constructed by US troops between their adjoining neighborhoods in northwest Baghdad. Construction on the two-kilometer long wall, part of a deliberate US effort to divide Iraq’s population along religious lines, began last week without the consultation of local residents and continues despite their opposition.

The protestors demanded the Maliki government put a halt to the wall’s construction and remove the completed sections dividing the Shiite neighborhood of al-Shuala and the Sunni-majority al-Ghazaliyah. The demonstrators, including clerics, tribal leaders, and workers, marched from one neighborhood to the other carrying signs declaring, “The wall is US terrorism” and “No to the dividing wall.”

See also here.

Baghdad revealed as bank robbery capital of the world: here.

Permian fossil tracks and their makers

This video is about ‘The Permian Mass Extinction which occured 250 million years ago, wiped out 95% of the existing species, and began the age of the Dinosaurs’.

Mass extinctions past and future: here.

From Science Daily:

Who Went There? Matching Fossil Tracks With Their Makers

Science Daily — Fossilized footprints are relatively common, but figuring out exactly which ancient creature made particular tracks has been a mystery that has long stumped paleontologists.

In the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, a team of researchers overcome this dilemma for the first time, and link a fossil trackway to a well-known fossil animal.

Sebastian Voigt, a trackway expert from the Institute of Geology, Freiberg University of Mining and Technology, Germany, and David Berman and Amy Henrici of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, who study fossil skeletons, took a close look at an exceptional fossil collection from 290-million-year-old sediments of central Germany known as the Tambach Formation. The Bromacker locality in the Tambach Formation has been famous for its fossil footprints for well over a century, but “identifying the animals that made the tracks proved challenging,” commented Voigt.

Fortunately, the Bromacker locality offered clues to solving the problem for the paleontologists. Superbly detailed trackways were found in concert with exceptionally preserved skeletons, in the same sediments. “To have beautifully preserved trackways and skeletons at the same site is a unique situation for paleontologists — it provides a wonderful opportunity to better understand how these extinct animals lived,” noted Berman.

The team combined their expertise in anatomy and ichnology (the study of tracks) to match up the most common tracks with their makers. Detailed measurements of the tracks, combined with measurements of the legs, feet and backbones of the skeletal material allowed the team to pinpoint the trackmakers. The two most common skeletal fossils, Diadectes absitus and Orobates pabsti, grew to approximately 3 or 4 feet.

These closely related reptile-like creatures were some of the first four-legged plant eaters on land, and have no close living relatives. Their limb skeletons and size match them well to the Bromacker locality’s two most common types of trackway, scientifically named Ichniotherium cottae and Ichniotherium sphaerodactylum.

Sebastian Voigt said, “Now that we have matched the two most common skeletons to their trackways, it is time to turn our attention to the rarer animals. Our work opens new doors for delving into other paleobiological questions, including how Diadectes and Orobates walked.”

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Permian fusulinids: here.

Mass extinctions: here.

The now fossilized supervolcano last erupted about 280 million years ago, leaving behind an 8-mile-wide (13-kilometer-wide) caldera, which was recently discovered in the Italian Alps’ Sesia Valley. here: