The history of Israel's refuser movement

From the formation of the State of Israel in 1948, service in the military has been a politicised issue. Given the country's small size and population, the state has relied on conscription to maintain its military capacity.

When the policy was first implemented, exceptions were made for Arabs. Then an arrangement was arrived at by which ultra-Orthodox Jews were exempt from service if they were enrolled in religious study. There were also occasional examples of people refusing to serve on pacifist grounds, such as the lawyer Amnon Zichroni in the 1950s.

Fight anti-Roma racism!

The French philosopher Michel Foucault once said that the way those with most power talk about those with least power always shines new light on the nature of power. We have learned a lot about power in the last week.

On 11 November, Sheffield Brightside MP and former Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett claimed that the influx of central European Roma migrants into the Park Hall area of his constituency was causing so much friction there could be riots. He blamed the Romani migrants. He said:

Railway workers win in Georgia

Over the course of two days earlier this month, a drama played on the Georgian railways that showed the labour movement at its best.

This has not always been the case in Georgia, a country whose most famous sons in recent times have been Stalin and Beria.

And yet Georgia has a long tradition of working-class struggle, and Georgian labour and social democratic leaders punched far above their weight in the Russian Social Democratic Party and the Second International in the years up to 1917.

Climate failure, capital failure

The failure of capital to get to grips with the threat of climate change is reaching new levels as they backtrack on even the minimal promises of the past just as the risks become even starker.

The capitalist owners of the means of production and the bourgeois states that administer their system have comprehensively failed to tackle climate change, despite 25 years of warnings from scientists.

Huge pay rises for bosses, wage cuts for workers

The average pay rise for directors at Britain’s top 100 companies in 2012-3 was 40 per cent.

They now get an average of £3.3 million. The 40% rise comes after years of big boosts, but is even bigger than the 27% increase the bosses got in 2011-2.

This year’s rise was made up mostly of increased returns on shares handed out to directors as part of their pay, rather than of cash wages and bonuses.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us, average total weekly pay over the three months to August 2013 was only 0.7 per cent higher than a year before.

Bangladeshi wage increase

Bangladeshi workers have won a 77% increase in the minimum wage which will rise to 5,300 takas (£43) per month.

The increase comes after months of struggle following the Rana Plaza factory collapse in April, in which over 1,000 workers were killed. A 10-day wave of protests from 21 September saw tens of thousands of workers mobilise, demanding an even higher increase (8,114 takas, a 170% increase). Protests were continuing as recently as Thursday 14 November. Many protests had been met with police repression, including the use of tear-gas.

Fighting for LGBT liberation in Lithuania

Recently, there has – quite rightly – been a lot of attention and protest focused on increasing homophobia in Russia.

Its much-smaller neighbour, Lithuania, is also facing a rising tide of hostility to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights.

I recently attended a European TUC conference on gender equality in Lithuanian capital Vilnius, and took the opportunity to raise the issue of LGBT rights and to visit the Lithuanian Gay League (LGL).

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