Category: collapse capitalism

STOP murderous capitalists preparing Iran War

Editor’s note: Over the past week various elements both in Washington DC and Tel Aviv have been promoting a renewed rhetoric of an Iranian threat. Back in July of this year, Professor Chomsky wrote the following commentary on the issue that resonates even louder today. 

Cambridge, Ma – The dire threat of Iran is widely recognised to be the most serious foreign policy crisis facing the Obama administration. General Petraeus informed the Senate Committee on Armed Services in March 2010 that “the Iranian regime is the primary state-level threat to stability” in the US Central Command area of responsibility, the Middle East and Central Asia, the primary region of US global concerns. The term “stability” here has its usual technical meaning: firmly under US control. In June 2010 Congress strengthened the sanctions against Iran, with even more severe penalties against foreign companies. The Obama administration has been rapidly expanding US offensive capacity in the African island of Diego Garcia, claimed by Britain, which had expelled the population so that the US could build the massive base it uses for attacks in the Central Command area. The Navy reports sending a submarine tender to the island to service nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines with Tomahawk missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads. Each submarine is reported to have the striking power of a typical carrier battle group. According to a US Navy cargo manifest obtained by

read long convincing evidence HERE  http://wobblygoblin.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/the-iranian-threat/

 

Occupy Patriarchy. Cuts violate and enslave Women

Austerity is violence on the bodies of women

In Rome, activist women responded to the #occupypatriarchy call out initiated by the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The group, composed of students, precarious workers and migrants, marched through the city centre’s high streets on November 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Recent reports and stats show how in Italy the new “welfare system” feeds on unpaid women’s work: the unpaid work of grandmothers looking after their grandchildren because nursery schools cannot be afforded, daughters supporting their elderly parents, mothers supporting their grown up children. With the cuts to social services the responsibility of that work falls on the women.

In these austere times, gender equality has become a “luxury item”. When the government seems to support policies on work/life balance, what they’re de facto supporting is the principle according to which a woman must undertake several jobs at the same time: all precarious, without the guarantees of the “official” job market, without wages and employment rights. This is violence masked up as austerity!

The crisis attacks every possibility of autonomy, self-determination and freedom of choice. This is, for example, the aim of the Tarzia Law, which wants to turn our formerly independent family planning centres into family and baby protection centres in the hands of non-qualified Catholic “advisers”. This goal has already been achieved in the region of Lazio, in what appears to be an experiment undertaken to legitimise the same savagery on a national scale. Independent family planning centres and abortion rights are an area of conflict on which women in Italy must keep fighting, especially with our new government and its Vatican friends.  

Sources: articles by Collettivo Le Malefiche and Le Ribellule.

From Italy Calling with thanks  https://italycalling.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/austerity-is-violence-on-the-bodies-of-women/

UK Biggest Strike Ever!!!

November 30 – biggest strike day EVER Print E-mail
Thursday, 24 November 2011 00:31
 Wednesday will see about three million public sector workers walking out on strike, as civil servants join teachers in opposing government cuts to pensions.PCS, UCU, NUT and ATL had all previously balloted for further industrial action, so their members will be out.  But added to them are a seemingly ever-growing list of other trade unions, including Unison, GMB, Unite, UCATT and NASUWT. (To see a more comprehensive list with breakdowns of ballot results, see Who’s out on Nov 30 on libcom.org.)

Nov 30: We’re All In It Together

As UK Prepares for Biggest Strike in Generations….

Well, it’s been a long time coming… Wednesday 30th November will see the first mass strike in the UK for four decades. 17 unions, including the biggest ones Unite, UCU, Unison, various teaching unions and PCS, have balloted to strike on pension reform which will see an estimated 3 million off work and, hopefully, cause massive disruption. Demonstrations and pickets are planned across the country – see http://www.n30strike.org for a complete list. Amongst the strikers are some unlikely suspects: 18,000 Border Agency workers are expected to strike leaving the government having to employ sinister private security firm Serco to take over for a day. Even the National Union of Probation Officers voted to join the strike four-to-one.

The government wants public sector workers to forgo 3% of their salary as pension contributions, which equates to a pay cut. So far workers have had to accept a two year pay freeze during a time of high inflation (in other words a pay cut), if they haven’t already been thrown out on their arse during the waves of mass redundancies (a total pay cut). The government’s arguments are designed to play on long term disgruntlement among the private sector that they have to deal with, on the whole, a shockingly shit pensions scenario and the public sector have had it a bit better off. Rather than aiming to sort out the private pensions mess which leaves millions in poverty on retirement, the PM wants the country to believe the public sector pensions are ‘gold plated’, unfair and unsustainable. Actually, most public workers end up with less than £5000 a year pension. They’ve also been reformed already: through a mix of negotiated and underhand changes, public sector pensions have been reduced to the tune of 25p in each pound over the last few years.

read lots more here WITH THANKS

http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/Nov-30-Were-All-In-It-Together/

Greedy climate politicians trash the World

greedy politicians doom our children

note. posts on NH3 the CO2-Free fuel now have their own blog HERE.. http://co2freefuelexistsnow.wordpress.com/

The latest climate Talks in Durban are set to be an obscene farce as countries vie to be the greediest, stupidest, cruelest and most destructive. We need a revolution NOW, since the Nation States  REFUSE to adopt any reformist solutions, in the name of humanity and the millions of other species threatened with extinction…lets Occupy the Environment

Not content with burying the remains of the Kyoto Protocol the proposal is to  DO NOTHING until at least 2015. Continue reading “Greedy climate politicians trash the World”

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy


The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class’s venality

guardian.co.uk, US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

 The New York Times reported that “New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers” covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that “It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk.”
In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on “how to suppress” Occupy protests.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memothat revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors’, city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Sat 26 Nov. Buy Nothing Day.//.Dia Sin Comprar NADA

in the US they celebrate it on'black Friday'. here on Sat 26th Nov

On its twentieth anniversary, Ad Busters plan to take it up a gear, marrying Buy Nothing Day with Occupy in order to #OCCUPYXMAS

En su 20 aniversario Ad Busters intentan casar el DIA SIN COMPRAR con el movimiento OCCUPY..para OCUPAR NAVIDAD

This year Ad Busters effectively merged Occupy and Buy Nothing Day to create Occupy Christmas, or for shoppers and shop keepers, a general nuisance. The havoc has already begun State-side as hundreds of people occupy store fronts and shopping malls with sit-ins and flash mobs. It will certainly be interesting to see how this translates across the pond and if the momentum will carry through to December 25th.

For those who want to take part in one of the most exciting anti-capitalist movements of recent times or just refrain from spending money for a day, there is a point to be made and pennies to be saved. Either way take solace in nothing and appreciate that you have something.

When: Friday 25th November (US only, but feel free to take part, or not) Saturday 26th November
Where: Everywhere and nowhere
Cost: nothing

Further information:

Occupy Xmas

AdBusters

Occupy Seattle, Occupy Everything

Building Occupied in Seattle!

by Estudiante Insurgente

From Tides of Flame

On Saturday, November 19th, a group of about 60 people marched from the occupation at Seattle Central Community College in solidarity with Occupy Oakland and against the police repression and evictions of occupations across the country. At the beginning of the march, it was announced that a building would be taken over at the end of the march.

The group moved through Capitol Hill chanting “Banks and landlords, we don’t need ‘em/ All we want is total freedom!” before plunging down 12th Avenue to the King County Juvenile Detention Center. The group stopped outside the main cell areas and made noise for the children and teenagers imprisoned inside. Marchers chanted “Our passion for freedom is stronger than their prisons,” and screamed that those on the inside would not be forgotten.

After the noise demo, the group marched into the Central District, one of the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in the country. The term ‘skid row’ was coined here at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Central District was 80% black in 1970. Now it is 15% black, with many new condo developments and apartments having sprung up within the last decade. As the march came closer to the soon-to-be-occupied building, the majority of the drivers passing by yelled and honked their horns in approval.

The group surrounded an abandoned building on 23rd and Alder. A banner reading “OCCUPY EVERYTHING – NO BANKS – NO LANDLORDS (A)” had been draped across the front façade. Someone opened the front door and everyone streamed inside, celebrating the occupation of this new space. People started redecorating with paint and other items while a group outside held an assembly to figure out what to do. At the time of this writing, people are still occupying the building. The current plan is to hold it until Sunday where a public re-furbishing of the building can take place.