Conservatism amongst Nigerian workers

In a recent paper (Waterman 1974) I discussed the debate that has been taking place, largely amongst socialists, over the role of workers and unions in Africa. I identified three major positions that have emerged. One was the traditional Communist position that the workers and unions are the leading force for national and social revolution in Africa. Another was the Fanonist thesis (as well as a common liberal one) that the regularly-employed workers and their unions are a privileged and conservative 'labour aristocracy'. The third was the new Marxist one that whilst workers and unions could not be categorised wholesale as a labour aristocracy (having considerable radical potential), such a group did exist significantly amongst them

Communist Theory in the Nigerian Trade Union Movement

The subject of this paper is the Nigerian Trade Union Congress (NTUC), the Communist trade union organisation in Nigeria. More specifically, it is about the central leadership of the NTUC, since the organisation is in origin and structure a central, national and Lagos-based federation of trade unions. Even more specifically, it concerns the theoretical activity of this group, its view of Nigerian society and its organisational strategy. While this focus might seem excessively narrow for the study of a trade union organisation, it is perhaps justified for examination of a Marxist-oriented group. A true understanding of their environment has traditionally been considered a prerequisite of effective political action by Marxists. And Marxists working in the trade unions have traditionally paid great attention to organisational strategy

International labou's Y2K problem : a debate, a discussion and a dialogue : (a contribution to the ILO/ICFTU Conference on Organised Labour in the 21st Century)

The Institute of Social Studies is Europe's longest-established centre of higher education and research in development studies. Post-graduate teaching programmes range from six-week diploma courses to the PhD programme. Research at ISS is fundamental in the sense of laying a scientific basis for the formulation of appropriate development policies. The academic work of ISS is disseminated in the form of books, journal articles, teaching texts, monographs and working papers. The Working Paper series provides a forum for work in progress which seeks to elicit comments and generate discussion. The series includes the research of staff, PhD participants and visiting fellows, and outstanding research papers by graduate students. For further information contact

Union organisations, social movements and the Augean stables of global governance

The traditional international union organisations are currently engaged in a series of 'social partnership' initiatives at global level. Prominent amongst these is that addressed to 'global governance'. This project comes from outside and above the unions, is addressed to the existing hegemonic interstate instances, and is carried out primarily by lobbying. This orientation is increasingly challenged by a 'global justice and solidarity movement', more concerned with the democratisation of the global, and more oriented to consciousness-raising and mobilising than lobbying. The new movement, moreover, operates in places and spaces, with forms and understandings, that relate rather to a contemporary globalised-informatised capitalism than to the old national-industrial-colonial one which gave rise and shape to the international unions. Trade unions will have to abandon the discourse of global governance for that of global democracy, and to operate on the terrains of this new movement, if they are to effectively defend and advance worker rights and power under the new global despensation

The Bamako Appeal of Samir Amin: a post modern Janus?

The Bamako Appeal is an attempt to move the World Social Forum process from being some kind of agora for discussion of alternatives to neo-liberal globalisation, to the provision of an anti-capitalist leadership for the global justice and solidarity movement. Sponsored by prominent left activist intellectuals of the 'Thirdworldis' tradition, it has nonetheless adopted much of the language of the new movement. Because of its authors' apparent vanguardism, the BA has proven controversial within and around the leadership of the WSF. Such charters, declarations and manifestos are, however, common within the wider movement, occur within the WSF itself and should be welcomed. But the process by which the BA has appeared and been launched reproduces old movement practices that the new movement has been surpassing. The BA's chapter on labour suggests the possibility and necessity for a meaningfully global and open dialogue on the BA more generally. Whilst the BA is commonly seen as a deviation from or opposition to the WSF process, both of these instances reveal the simultaneous backward-looking and forward-looking nature of emancipatory movements

Reflections on the 2nd World Social Forum in Porto Alegre : what's left internationally?

This paper reflects on the implications for the international trade union movementand Left of the 60-70,000-strong World Social Forum II. The reflections concern the analytical, theoretical and strategic implications of and for this first major internationalmovement of the era of a globalized and informatized capitalism. Considered in turn are: 1.The Forum's Charter and the Call of Social Movements issued from it; 2. The impact of theForum on the Left as an 'old social movement'; 3. Its implications for feminism as a 'newsocial movement'; 4. The meaning of 'Left' in the light of the Forum; 5. The strategy problem the unions still imply for the global justice movement; 6. The necessity of moving themovement away from an organizational and toward a communicational logic; 7. The needfor a political-economy of global civil society construction. The Conclusion reflects on theconcept of revolution in the era of capitalist globalization, as well as the role of the globaljustice movement in surpassing the emancipatory model of the French Revolution

Extended haplotype association study in Crohn’s disease identifies a novel, Ashkenazi Jewish-specific missense mutation in the NF-κB pathway gene, HEATR3

The Ashkenazi Jewish population has a several-fold higher prevalence of Crohn’s disease compared to non-Jewish European ancestry populations and has a unique genetic history. Haplotype association is critical to Crohn’s disease etiology in this population, most notably at NOD2, in which three causal, uncommon, and conditionally independent NOD2 variants reside on a shared background haplotype. We present an analysis of extended haplotypes which showed significantly greater association to Crohn’s disease in the Ashkenazi Jewish population compared to a non-Jewish population (145 haplotypes and no haplotypes with P-value < 10−3, respectively). Two haplotype regions, one each on chromosomes 16 and 21, conferred increased disease risk within established Crohn’s disease loci. We performed exome sequencing of 55 Ashkenazi Jewish individuals and follow-up genotyping focused on variants in these two regions. We observed Ashkenazi Jewish-specific nominal association at R755C in TRPM2 on chromosome 21. Within the chromosome 16 region, R642S of HEATR3 and rs9922362 of BRD7 showed genome-wide significance. Expression studies of HEATR3 demonstrated a positive role in NOD2-mediated NF-κB signaling. The BRD7 signal showed conditional dependence with only the downstream rare Crohn’s disease-causal variants in NOD2, but not with the background haplotype; this elaborates NOD2 as a key illustration of synthetic association

Ligation of the Jugular Veins Does Not Result in Brain Inflammation or Demyelination in Mice

An alternative hypothesis has been proposed implicating chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI) as a potential cause of multiple sclerosis (MS). We aimed to evaluate the validity of this hypothesis in a controlled animal model. Animal experiments were approved by the institutional animal care committee. The jugular veins in SJL mice were ligated bilaterally (n = 20), and the mice were observed for up to six months after ligation. Sham-operated mice (n = 15) and mice induced with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (n = 8) were used as negative and positive controls, respectively. The animals were evaluated using CT venography and 99mTc-exametazime to assess for structural and hemodynamic changes. Imaging was performed to evaluate for signs of blood-brain barrier (BBB) breakdown and neuroinflammation. Flow cytometry and histopathology were performed to assess inflammatory cell populations and demyelination. There were both structural changes (stenosis, collaterals) in the jugular venous drainage and hemodynamic disturbances in the brain on Tc99m-exametazime scintigraphy (p = 0.024). In the JVL mice, gadolinium MRI and immunofluorescence imaging for barrier molecules did not reveal evidence of BBB breakdown (p = 0.58). Myeloperoxidase, matrix metalloproteinase, and protease molecular imaging did not reveal signs of increased neuroinflammation (all p>0.05). Flow cytometry and histopathology also did not reveal increase in inflammatory cell infiltration or population shifts. No evidence of demyelination was found, and the mice remained without clinical signs. Despite the structural and hemodynamic changes, we did not identify changes in the BBB permeability, neuroinflammation, demyelination, or clinical signs in the JVL group compared to the sham group. Therefore, our murine model does not support CCSVI as a cause of demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis

Myocardial Infarction Accelerates Atherosclerosis

During progression of atherosclerosis, myeloid cells destabilize lipid-rich plaque in the arterial wall and cause its rupture, thus triggering myocardial infarction and stroke. Survivors of acute coronary syndromes have a high risk of recurrent events for unknown reasons. Here we show that the systemic response to ischemic injury aggravates chronic atherosclerosis. After myocardial infarction or stroke, apoE$^{−/−}$ mice developed larger atherosclerotic lesions with a more advanced morphology. This disease acceleration persisted over many weeks and was associated with markedly increased monocyte recruitment. When seeking the source of surplus monocytes in plaque, we found that myocardial infarction liberated hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells from bone marrow niches via sympathetic nervous system signaling. The progenitors then seeded the spleen yielding a sustained boost in monocyte production. These observations provide new mechanistic insight into atherogenesis and provide a novel therapeutic opportunity to mitigate disease progression

A Generic System for the Expression and Purification of Soluble and Stable Influenza Neuraminidase

The influenza surface glycoprotein neuraminidase (NA) is essential for the efficient spread of the virus. Antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and Relenza (zanamivir) that inhibit NA enzyme activity have been shown to be effective in the treatment of influenza infections. The recent ‘swine flu’ pandemic and world-wide emergence of Tamiflu-resistant seasonal human influenza A(H1N1) H274Y have highlighted the need for the ongoing development of new anti-virals, efficient production of vaccine proteins and novel diagnostic tools. Each of these goals could benefit from the production of large quantities of highly pure and stable NA. This publication describes a generic expression system for NAs in a baculovirus Expression Vector System (BEVS) that is capable of expressing milligram amounts of recombinant NA. To construct NAs with increased stability, the natural influenza NA stalk was replaced by two different artificial tetramerization domains that drive the formation of catalytically active NA homotetramers: GCN4-pLI from yeast or the Tetrabrachion tetramerization domain from Staphylothermus marinus. Both recombinant NAs are secreted as FLAG-tagged proteins to allow for rapid and simple purification. The Tetrabrachion-based NA showed good solubility, increased stability and biochemical properties closer to the original viral NA than the GCN4-pLI based construct. The expressed quantities and high quality of the purified recombinant NA suggest that this expression system is capable of producing recombinant NA for a broad range of applications including high-throughput drug screening, protein crystallisation, or vaccine development