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From Corporate Watch this week...

Tesco, the country's largest retailer, is planning scores of new supermarkets across Britain as ministers discuss proposed new rules that would limit new store openings by locally dominant chains. According to data leaked to The Times, Tesco has 76 outstanding planning applications, from convenience stores to hypermarkets, mostly lodged in the past year. Asda and Sainsbury have submitted around 45 between them. According to a report in The Times, one tactic used by supermarket chains faced with local opposition to new stores is the use of 'trojan horses', or front companies that file planning applications, only to be quietly acquired by the supermarkets later. Link: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/article6943579.ece
Visit Tescopoly's website for more on Tesco dominance in the retail sector: www.tescopoly.org/

I have a friend who has been espousing doomsday rhetoric for the past year, it turns out he's quite right...

The Telegraph reported today that, "Société Générale has advised clients to be ready for a possible "global economic collapse" over the next two years, mapping a strategy of defensive investments to avoid wealth destruction.

In a report entitled "Worst-case debt scenario", the bank's asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.

Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of "deleveraging", for years."

Read the full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6599281/Societe-Generale-tells-clients-how-to-prepare-for-global-collapse.html

Little gem in Private Eye this week, another attempt by Labour to privatise a successful service, this time Britain's most punctual trains, has once again backfired. The government promised 300m to Tyne and Wear Metro's much overdue upgrade, but only if the train operation was put out to tender to the private sector.

However, all the private bidders failed to make the grade. The final contenders turned out to be the existing operator and Deutche Bahn, the German government's rail firm. In the past few years DB has bought Britain's biggest rail-freight firm, two passenger tain operators (Chiltern and Wrexham & Shropshire) and half of London Overground. So the "publicly owned, publicly accountable" railway Tony Blair promised in 1995 is emerging. Blair just didn't say it was the German public who would own it.

After two days hitching rides on tractors through the mountainous back roads of Honduras, hiding from military checkpoints in car boots, Honduras' democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya quietly slipped into the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa last Monday (21st).

Zelaya promptly appeared on the embassy balcony to announce his return, sparking a siege of the embassy and a wave of protest and repression across the country.On hearing of Zelaya's return, thousands immediately descended on the embassy to show their support and protect the president. Afterseeing their laughing denial of Zelaya's return disproved, the coup regime responded by announcing a national curfew, cut off theembassy's electricity and water and sent hundreds of soldiers and police to surround the embassy.

At 5am the next morning the military began to disperse the peaceful crowd with tear gas, rubberbullets, water cannons and live rounds.During the assault, police also attacked the offices of the Committee for Detained and Disappeared Persons of Honduras (COFADEH), firing tear gas into the building. COFADEH Director Bertha Oliva said:'The people can't even walk the streets in peace.They're being beaten just for stepping out of doors. [Thepolice] hunt them as if for sport.' COFADEH alone documented 36serious injuries and at least two deaths while independent reports indicated police arrested around 350 people and detained them in the Villa Olympica football stadium.

After dispersing the crowds, masked police and soldiers cordoned off the streets around the embassy, preventing access even for international journalists and human rights workers. A few hours later they wheeled in a pick-up with massive speakers in the back and beganto direct a constant stream of loud music at the embassy building. Honduran congressman Marvin Ponce, who was with Zelaya in the embassy, described the regime's reaction as: 'a reflectio nof their philosophies, this government of putschists. They don't respect human rights. They don't want a political dialogue.'

Despite the curfew remaining in place throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, Hondurans have continued to take to the streets, with thousands marching against the coup, setting up barricades of burning tires and participating in protest caravans of hundreds of vehicles. Attempting to regain control, police and military have been confronting marchers on the city streets and in residential areas, raiding houses in poor neighbourhoods in search of dissidents.

Coup leader Roberto Micheletti initially demanded Brazil either grant Zelaya asylum in Brazil, or turn him over to be tried. However, he now appears to be cracking, first stating: 'I will talk with anybody anywhere at any time, including with former President Manuel Zelaya', before inviting an Organisation of American States (OAS) delegation to the country to broker an agreement. Short of a full-on assault on the embassy of the country with Latin America's biggest air force, it might be the only chance he's got.

* For background see SchNEWS 691, 682

** See also www.narconews.com and www.hondurasresists.blogspot.com