PICUM - the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants - released its report “Ten Ways to Protect Undocumented Migrant Workers” at a reception yesterday at the European Parliament. Keynote speakers included MEP Anne Van Lancker and Wiebke Düvel, representing the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

Activists from Andalucia in the south of spain have released this call for a joint european action day on October 29th, 2005. It refers to the numerous deaths of migrants and refugees when trying to enter the spanish enclaves Ceuta and Melilla in north of Morocco over the past few weeks.

Within the Euromayday-process a new proposal just circulate: to create a ring of european precarity websites of research/action projects. The project, obviously, is free and "in progress": the document is only a mean to diffuse the proposal and to open it to multiplicity and different european subjects, groups and network. Clearly, when we speak of research, we are not talking about accademic or sociological inquiry, but about a political and militant research, finalized to action of struggle and action of precarious.

Here comes a text by José Pérez de Lama, aka osfa, member of Indymedia Estrecho, that tries to summarize the events of the last few weeks in and around Ceuta and Melilla. It is written in Spanish and supposed to appear in the next issue of Greenpepper magazin http://www.greenpeppermagazine.org that is entirely devoted on the topic of "emergency".

Since September 30th the news have been continuously reporting about a "storm on fortress europe". Hundreds of illegalized immigrants have been trying to cross the fences around the spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta, situated on moroccan territory. In this book we tried to collect articles, eyewhitness reports and political analysis about what is going on the north of morroco.

In a press release from Thursday, October 13, 2005, IOM, the so called "International Organization for migration" claims: "Malian Migrants Return Home". After a week of terrifying news the strategy of scandalization of the border brings forth to its expected result: postgovernmental organizations like the IOM take over control. Read yourself!

Laborers, labor union activists, unionists, academicians and mass organizations in Turkey are organizing The First International Labor Film And Video Festival in Istanbul and Ankara , in Turkey between 29th of April 7 th of May 2006, during the May Day celebration.

This non-competitive festival is devoted to the screening of video and film on the lives and struggle of working class people all around the world, for the exchange and collectivizing of the experiences of the filmmakers, as documentary or fiction works of groups and individuals, committed to labor struggle; to spread the works that show the struggle of workers, unemployed, students, farmers and women as well as screening films that show the popular uprisings across the world. We believe this will help arouse interest in labor films and promote their production in Turkey and around the world.

We just finished talking to Helena Maleno and the last information are the following:

They still continue a convoy with about seven to ten busses through the West-Sahara. We have been behind them all night, passing Tantin, a village somewhere near the border with Mauritania and they where directing towards Tayoune even more nearby the border. So this convoy does not go to Algeria but to Mauritania!

The situation continues to be difficult. We keep talking to them by mobil and related to the last informations are are besides the ayslum seekers students from Tangiers on these busses. They have been told to get on the there.

The UNI Commerce Global Summit in Chicago decided to step up the campaign against Wal-Mart to change its anti-union policies in North America and its low wage, low road approach that threatens to become a dismal model for globalisation. A global day of action for 2006 is being planned and cooperation is being stepped up with other global unions in Wal-Mart's huge supply change covering textile and garment, food and transport workers. The Congress, which challenged 21st century employers to end the race to the bottom and ensure labour rights are respected around the world, brought together 1335 participants from 422 unions in 122 countries in Chicago from 22 to 25 August 2005.

The UK-based journal "New Internationalist" has devoted its monthly issue to "A migrants nurse's story". It approaches the subject by telling the story of one individual, Nancy Wambui Itotia, a migrant nurse working in Britain. "Instead of simply looking at the ‘pull’ factors which have brought her to work in Europe, it examines more closely the ‘push’ factors which have caused her to leave Africa." http://www.newint.org/issue379/contents.htm