Some 20 trade union women from eight countries gathered in Amman, Jordan, this week for a three-day seminar focusing on strategic campaigning and organising methods. The event, in which women from newly affiliated unions from Bahrain and Algeria also participated, provided the women with the opportunity to discuss ways of strengthening their unions to tackle the problems of globalisation.

International Transport Workers’ Federation: News online.

On 6 September 2006, US President George W Bush confirmed an open secret that the CIA was operating a programme of prolonged incommunicado detention in secret locations. This practice has involved governments around the world to varying degrees.

Those held in the programme are victims of enforced disappearance. They are being held without anyone knowing where they are and are at risk of torture and death. President Bush reauthorized the programme in 2007.

25 years remembering the disappeared.

–In the Labour Day message from the CLC, they tell us that if you want change you have to fight for it, but you also have to vote for it.

–The Canadian Auto Workers Union Labour Day message.

–United Steelworkers’ Labour Day message.

–The Canadian Union of Public Employees’ Labour Day message.

–A message from the PSAC this Labour Day.

Is it any wonder manufacturing is having trouble recruiting workers? A whole generation of students, and even former employees, learned to avoid industrial jobs. We learned that they were not secure and would be dead ends. We were taught to get university educations, even though it meant rising debt levels and, I would argue, fewer ‘marketable’ skills. A real economy requires a workforce with diverse skills and training, and stable and well-paying jobs to accommodate them.

Watch it if you haven’t already.

The Conservation Council of New Brunswick today welcomed the release of the Task Force report on Forest Diversity and Wood Supply. The report is the outcome of three years of work, chaired by UNB Forestry professor Thom Erdle, and including the participation of the Conservation Council’s policy director David Coon. The government today is also publicly releasing a summary of the CIBC-Woodbridge report that deals with New Brunswick’s forestry industry’s place in the global market place.

— Don Roberts (the CIBC analyst) began his press conference statement yesterday by saying “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” —

Read more on the options being proposed in the Erdle Task Force and how they rank in terms of conservation here: http://www.conservationcouncil.ca/files/Publications/Options_Rank_En.pdf

–Some analysis of the Obama-Biden foreign policy positions. There is also a longer and more detailed analysis here.

–A final sum-up of the hypocrisy of the West’s response to the conflict in Georgia.

–The (liberal) elites in the West continue to be guided by lack of coherent analysis and an underlying guilt of not dealing with their own racism.

–Canada continues to be one of the countries that is not spending enough on basic public infrastructure and social services. As our governments move further along the neo-liberal road to ruin the working people and the disadvantaged end up paying the price. We need services run by the public for the public.

–It is time the governments of the world kick the monopoly proprietary-software habit and start supporting open source programs and programmers. There is no reason that the we should not all benefit from home-grown development, especially if we are paying for it anyway.

–If you watch or listen to anything today about the election going on south of our boarder, you have to make it this.

–The system produces poverty, fosters poverty, profits off poverty. We must struggle against it.

–Not much to be happy about when the conservatives are in power.

–The system produces poverty, we must fight to end it.

–What is clear is where the Venezuelan government stands: with the people.

–The election campaign is underway in Venezuela for regional seats.

–It is straightforward. Colombia must stop the persecution of trade unionists. Please sign the statement.