The head of Britain's biggest union has urged a campaign of strikes and civil disobedience to fight government cuts. Speaking on the eve of the TUC congress, Unite leader Len McCluskey said no form of protest should be ruled out including "direct action".
He urged a "campaign of resistance so that the government will take stock and perhaps take a step back" from their "attack" on workers' jobs and pensions.
"I don't think we can rule anything out," he told the Andrew Marr Show.
The three-day TUC conference, which gets under way in London on Monday, is set to be the most highly-charged in recent years.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber, who will address delegates on Monday, has already warned that Britain faced widespread strikes this autumn unless ministers changed direction on plans to raise public sector workers' contributions to their pensions.
Mr McCluskey said the 1.5 million public sector workers in his union were in a "very angry mood" at what he called the coalition government's "ideological" assault on their jobs and pensions. He told the Andrew Marr Show: "The actions that will be taken will be widespread and I don't think we can rule anything out.
"I noticed recently senior citizens protesting in Bristol by walking backwards and forwards across a zebra crossing and bringing things to a standstill."
He also praised UK Uncut, which has targeted companies over alleged tax avoidance and staged sit-ins at banks, saying that that kind of "direct action" was what his members wanted, as well as traditional industrial action.
"They expect their leaders to give that type of leadership and to stand shoulder to shoulder with them when their terms and conditions are being attacked."
Mr McCluskey also criticised Labour leader Ed Miliband over his decision not to back public sector strikes in June.
Mr Miliband said the 24-hour walkout by about 300,000 teachers and civil servants was "wrong" at a time when negotiations between the unions and government over pension changes was still ongoing.
But Mr McCluskey, whose union backed Mr Miliband for the Labour leadership and is one of the party's biggest donors, said: "I think he made a fundamental error by attacking the strikes on 30 June, but he's learning in his job.
"He's got to be given time to construct his, hopefully, radical alternative and I hope that that will mean he understands he has to be on the side of ordinary working people."
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said he expected to "hear a bit of sabre rattling" during the TUC conference but he urged union leaders to consider strike action as "very much the last resort".
The Lib Dem minister told Sky News reforming pensions was "in the long term interests of the country" and further walkouts would be "irresponsible at a time when talks are still going on".
"These are tough discussions we are having but we have been making progress in these negotiations," said Mr Alexander. "I'm fully committed to these discussions... to try and make sure we can get to a position where we reach reforms everyone agrees are necessary."
Conservative Party deputy chairman Michael Fallon urged Mr Miliband to "stand up to the union barons and show he is on the side of hard-working families".
The Archbishop of Canterbury is planning to resign next year, nearly a decade before he is due to step down, it can be revealed.
Oh thank goodness. Any chance the next one will actually believe in God? Hoping that he is a Christian, and even an Anglican, is probably too much to ask for the chief prelate of the Church of England.
Dr Rowan Williams is understood to have told friends he is ready to quit the highest office in the Church of England to pursue a life in academia.
The news will trigger intense plotting behind the scenes over who should succeed the 61-year-old archbishop, who is not required to retire until he is 70.
Bishops have privately been arguing for Dr Williams to stand down, with the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, telling clergy he should give someone else a chance after nearly ten years in the post.
Lambeth Palace would not be drawn into confirming or denying whether the archbishop will be leaving next year.
Sources close to the archbishop say he will leave after the Queen's Diamond Jubilee next June and having seen the Church finally pass legislation to allow women to become bishops.
It is understood that Trinity College, Cambridge, is preparing to create a professorship for Dr Williams, who studied theology and was a chaplain at the university.
Mexican president Felipe Calderon Hinojosa shook up his cabinet Friday, allowing one minister to run for president in 2012, according to Mexican news reports.
Ernesto Javier Cordero Arroyo, minster of finance submittted his expected resignation Friday to begin his run for the president in 2012. Cordero has held the post since 2010.
His replacement, Jose Antonio Meade, took the Minister of Energy portfolio last fall replacing Georgina Kessel, who stepped down to become CEO of Mexico's National Bank of Public Works and Services (BANOBRAS). BANOBRAS' old boss, Alonso Garcia Tamez, left Calderon's government to enter the private sector.
Currently the field of candidates for president of the republic for the Partido Accion National (PAN) include Josefina Vasquez Mota, a Nuevo Leon federal deputy, Santiago Creel Miranda, a senator from Chihuahua state, and now Cordero Arroyo.
Cordero Arroyo, like Vazquez Mota is an economist by trade.
Earlier in the month, Cordero was involved in the burgeoning scandal involving Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) leader Humberto Moreira, when he announced he asked the national attorney general to investigate Moreira for his dealings while governor of Coahuila state. Moreira assumed the post of leader of PRI last spring.
It is unknown how Cordero's expected departure will affect the Moreira scandal. The Calderon government is for all intents and purposes a lame duck government. The PRI, their bitterest and long time rival is expected to retake the presidency in 2012 after an absence of 12 years, however, the Moreira scandal may affect that.
Others in the shuffling include Alejandro Poire Romero, who moves from national security advisor to head of Mexican intelligence. Poire Romero replaces Guillermo Valdes Castellanos, who has held the post since the start of the Calderon administration.
Taking Poire Romero's post as national security advisor is Alejandra Sota Mirafuentes, who served in various minor posts in PAN, in Calderon's election campaign and in the Calderon government itself, mostly with communications jobs.
Appointed to the Minister of Health is Salomon Chertorivski, who has served in Calderon's government as National Commissioner for the Protection of Social Health, and is an internationally known advocate for universal health care in Mexico. He replaces Jos" Angel Cordova Villalobos.
Several members of the Turkish Academy of Science (TUBA) are worried about the increased political control exercised over the academy by the Turkish government. After the recent alterations made to TUBA's administration and appointment rules, those concerned fear that TUBA may not remain a science academy or an academy at all....In June this year, a government ordinance demoted TUBA to the status of a directorate under the newly established Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology. This was followed, in August, by another government ordinance whereby one-third of TUBA members would be appointed directly by the government, one-third by the Higher Education Council, and the rest elected by the full members.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet on Sunday approved a plan to relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin from their unrecognized villages into settlements with official state status.
The plan emerges from the Prawer Report, drafted to find a solution to the problem of unrecognized villages in the Negev.
As part of the plan, some 20,000 to 30,000 Bedouon will be relocated to recognized settlements including Rahat, Khura and Ksayfe. The plan also includes financial compensation for those relocated, as well as alternate plots of land. The program is estimated to cost the state NIS 6.8 billion.
Opponents of the plan have accusing the government of evacuating people from their homes for no justified reason and against their will.
Bedouin representative called the decision "a declaration of war," and some 150 members of the community gathered outside the prime minister's office in Jerusalem on Sunday to protest the decision.
"This stupid government will be responsible for a Bedouin Intifada in the Negev," said Arab MK Taleb al-Sana, who took part in the protest.
Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, slammed the government's approval of the plan as a major violation of basic rights, pointing out that it would result in the uprooting of tens of thousands of people and the demolition of many Bedouin villages.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel in June submitted its objections to the Prawer Report and argued that the conditions it sets for recognizing Bedouin villages are prejudicial.
These include meeting minimal levels of population density, contiguity and economic sustainability. The criteria established, the organization maintains, flout principles of equality and justice in the distribution of resources. "If the same criteria were applied to the Jewish population, whole settlements - including community settlements, observatories, kibbutzim and moshavim - would be doomed," the association notes.
Moreover, according to its claims, Bedouin villages are planned without considering the needs of the population, which is largely agrarian and rural, not urban. The association also opposes making any planning for the Bedouin conditional on settling disputes over land ownership.
#3
I don't know the background of this, but usually the Bedouin are pretty harmless and generally not very anti-Israel. This seems like it would only just piss them off with little reward for the state.
#4
If I understand correctly, the official communities have things like electricity, running water, sewers, and schools. The unrecognized villages are collections of tents and hovels in the wilderness with none of those things.
Also, there are real problems with the Bedouin smuggling weapons and terrorists from/to Israel/Gaza/Egypt, along all the usual things. The Egyptians have problems with them, too. Or that's the impression I have. Perhaps someone who knows more would be kind enough to inform us.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is planning to resign next year, nearly a decade before he is due to step down, it can be revealed. 
