Before 6.00am hundreds or thousands of people were blocking the main North -South A7 Motorway from France in the freezing winter night. Northbound the motorway was closed over 13 hours at the La Jonquera French border. Southbound it was still closed at 9.00pm at Ampolla
Another General Strike! Against the takeover by the Spanish State, the jailing without trial or bail of republican leaders and Government, the attacks by imported military police and thousands of fascist thugs… and a multitude of racist abuses that go back centuries.
The Employers HighCourt appeal has failed and the strike is legal.
Pla general de veins tallant la N-340 a les Cases d Alcanar de peu davant dels vehicles aturats Imatge del 6 de novembre de 2017 horitzontal Cedida Nuria Abril ACN
But it is supported from the streets and barrios, the youth, the 20% unemployed, women and old people flock to the mass pickets. It is supported by the 172 Committees of Defense of the Referendum ( the ‘soviets’ of the Catalan revvo), by Omnium and the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) whose leaders, the two Jordis are still jailed without bail.
Barcelona ring road this morning
This time we won’t try to do complete LIVE updates, just copy photos and videos where possible, mainly from La Directa live which illustrate the tactics and ways of shutting down an economy.
update..CORRUPT PRESIDENT..” The Chief Inspector of the Unit of Economic and Fiscal Crime (UDEF) of the National Police that investigated the Gürtel corruption case, Manuel Morocho Tapia, has been clear in the Congress Commission, affirming that president Mariano Rajoy and the group of general secretaries of the PP received .. money from the ‘B box’ of the PP”.
The UK state continues to promote capitalist rape culture and spend billions on Nuclear weapons.. meanwhile amazing Women’s Aid self defence and mutual care get their funding cut off… again. Even basic health care and other human rights are abandoned as resources are diverted to the already rich elite.
South Yorkshire Women’s Aid under threat again
Last March, the Women’s Aid centre in Doncaster was closed down after the Labour-run local council cut its funding, but was then able to reopen due to a successful campaign by service users and staff members — but the centre is now being threatened with closure for a second time.
Doncaster Council, whose 2106/7 financial statement showed £97.3 million in “usable reserves”, have said that there is no money to keep the centre open past December. Workers and service users are refusing to take this lying down, and visited a council meeting in September to bring councillors face-to-face with the suffering their cuts are causing. At 11:30am on Monday November 6th, they’ll be paying a return visit to Doncaster council at the Civic Building, and they’ve invited any supporters who can make it to join them, as they intend to keep on turning up to council meetings every Monday until the Women’s Aid centre, which is the only domestic violence service of its kind in South Yorkshire, is guaranteed adequate funding to stay open in future.
As well as helping turn up in person, there are a number of other ways to support their campaign, as they’re asking people to sign a petition, as well as crowdfunding donations to try and keep the service open. You can keep up with news from the campaign by checking the Women’s Lives Matter and Yorkshire Socialist Women and Non-Binary pages on facebook, or Save SY Women’s Aid on Twitter, or if you don’t do social media you can get in touch by emailing to womenslivesmatteryorkshire@gmail.com. Messages of support and solidarity via any of those channels will be appreciated by the campaigners. They’ve also sent the following message around appealing for support:
Dear Sisters, non-binary siblings and Brothers, We send this letter requesting your support for our campaign. If you’ve not learned of the campaign yet, we’ve included article links below.
Initially, as quoted in the articles below, Cllr Chris McGuiness cited the reason for funding withdrawal from the council to South Yorkshire Women’s Aid as lack of funds due to Tory spending cuts. Since then we investigated and published proof that there was over £90 million in council reserves.
This week Cllr Chris McGuiness DMBC cited this campaign as the reason that the council are not able to fund Women’s Aid! This campaign was only formed because the council withdrew funding and his comments are an attempt to drive a wedge between the supporting public and the brave staff who are speaking out about cuts. His comments are also an attempt to silence these courageous workers.
These are the only front line workers who have been brave enough to go on record and publicly speak about cuts to Women’s Aid centres in the UK. This is the last Women’s Aid in South Yorkshire. It serves communities from Doncaster, Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and the surrounding villages.
The campaign has received huge support from constituents as well as Union Branches and Political Party Branches across our region and further afield.
We ask that you reply with your name, trade union and any position held as a show of Solidarity and support.
Yours, in Solidarity, Jen, Amy and the Women’s Lives Matter Yorkshire campaigners:-
We the undersigned support the campaign to save the last Women’s Aid in South Yorkshire.
While ever domestic violence and abuse exist in our communities, there simply must be adequate services in place to support the victims.
We are aware that Women’s Aid offers support services, empowering educational courses and in addition has dedicated support worker for women from BAME community that the generic Council services in Doncaster simply don’t offer.
Two women a week die at the hands of their abuser.
Three women a week take their own lives as a result of being abused.
During the eight months that the service was previously closed by Doncaster Met Borough Council, 6623 cases of domestic abuse were reported to police in Doncaster alone.
Domestic abuse is prevalent in Doncaster and wider South Yorkshire region. The council domestic abuse support services have suffered cuts within their own service and cannot support the sheer volume of caseloads that they are presented with.
We are aware that the council’s own domestic abuse support service refers cases to South Yorkshire Womens Aid frequently, for the council to then deny any funding support to a service that they use themselves due to the inadequacy of their own service is nothing short of a shameful state of affairs.
Along with campaigners we ask that Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council reinstate funding to Doncaster South Yorkshire Womens Aid with immediate effect.
We ask this for the protection and support of women and girls across the community as well as for the protection and support of our own members within the community in Doncaster and surrounding South Yorkshire region.
Signed:
[your name here]
Campaigners celebrating success in the campaign to keep the centre open earlier this year, but already its threatened again
In an earlier email, they suggested a few different ways to support the campaign:
“Invite us to send a speaker to your union, group, organisation meetings.
Print off one of the the campaign slogans, “Save Women’sAid, Which side are you on?” take selfies on your own or your entire group, and tweet the photos to: @SaveWomensAid … Don’t forget to tag Doncaster Council @myDoncaster in your tweets.
Collect and donate toiletries and sanitary products. Often when someone flees their abuser they are left with only the clothes that they are standing in.
Collect and Donate raffle prizes, anything exciting or interesting that someone would feel encouraged to buy a ticket for. The more unusual the better.
Hold a collection for us at your meetings. We really need your support to keep the rent paid and the phone line running. For financial donations, here is the link to our crowd fund page: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/savesywa Or you can pass donations physically to the campaign in person.
Send us your Solidarity. We are holding our heads up but this is a very emotional campaign for us all and we will appreciate any and every message of support.
Keep an eye out for upcoming emails with details of events and demonstrations and please share the information via your online networks.”
This year is the centennial of two revolutions in Russia: one in which the people toppled the Tsar and another in which the Bolsheviks seized state power.
”100 years later it’s easy to say that people were not prepared to leap directly from Tsardom to a real people power revolution. Millions of us tried to do it and were bitterly betrayed by charismatic and ruthless power seekers”.
Within twenty years, the Bolsheviks had executed or imprisoned most of those who carried out the revolution. Today, as the hashtag #1917live trends on twitter, we should remember the #1917undead, the anarchists who strove to warn humanity that statist paths towards social change will never bring us to freedom.
Some of them, like Fanya and Aron Baron, were murdered in cold blood by authoritarian communists in the Soviet Union. Others managed to survive, betrayed by their supposed comrades, to witness the totalitarian results of the Bolshevik coup. Their voices cry out to us today from the grave. Let’s listen.
Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin had sought total centralized power in the name of the proletariat, promising that this was a step towards the “withering away” of the state. From this historical vantage point, their cynical efforts to blot out any model for social change besides the tyranny of state capitalism are clear enough; if it is still difficult to envision what anarchist revolution might look like on a massive scale, we can blame those who systematically exterminated anarchists in the name of socialism.
Being the foremost opponents of tyranny, the anarchists were among the first victims of Soviet prisons and firing squads. Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and many others tried to warn the world of the horrors of Lenin and Stalin, but most people only learned about the gulag archipelago much later from Aleksandr Solzenhitsyn.Continue reading “1917: Inspiring messages from the Anarchist un-Dead”
Seems like every State and Authoritarian on the planet is virulently against Catalans complaining about 500 years of macho Spanish colonialism. Of course, because their very own ‘cash cow’ populations could go copy-cat. Rebellion is brewing everywhere as wealth is funneled ever more to the tiny hierarchical elite.
The Spanish Right, unreformed, rabid and clerical have wallowed in repressive robbery and mass murder for centuries. But recently some of the tens of thousands of politicians have been caught with their greedy fat fingers in the public cash box.
No prison, no punishment, of course, but the far right PP almost got voted out. And one way they could keep power was by BLAMING THE CATALANS. For 5 years we have suffered an incessant racist campaign against these hospitable and long suffering people. And now provoking a tidal wave of racist and sexist male violence against them.
Until finally… We want back the democratic Republic your military took from us by murder and massacre. We don’t want your King, appointed by a fascist dictator, or your Constitution, agreed only under the threat of 40 more years of total repression.
Hopefully the blind authoritarianism of the stomping PP nationalists will be the death throes of the imperial mentality,. If not the Catalans will resist, the debts won’t be paid, and the entire economic House of Cards could tumble down.
Then maybe we can build something better in Iberia.
New Joint Declaration from Anarchist Trade Unions
viaJulius Gavroche, with thanks…….. The government of Catalonia declares its independence from Spain; the Spanish government in response dismisses the Catalan government, assumes direct control of the region and declares regional elections for the 21st of December. What happens from hereon in is unknown. Below is a statement from the country’s principal anarchist labour unions before the unfolding of events …
The undersigned organisations, national labour unions, share our preoccupation with the situation in Catalonia, because of the State repression unleashed, because of the decrease in rights and freedoms that this presupposes and will presuppose, and because of the growth of a rancid nationalism that again shows its face in a great part of the country. Continue reading “All Authoritarians Condemn Catalonia : Anarchists call for Revolution”
Zionists recreate vast ‘Warsaw Ghetto-like’ Concentration Camp in October 2017
Israel seals off West Bank and Gaza. 11-day border closure traps 4 million Palestinians for week-long Jewish holiday.
by. Farah Najjar (photos have been added) Source: Al Jazeera News Palestinians prohibited from entering Israel despite having work permits stand to lose their livelihood for the next 10 days
Israeli authorities have sealed off the occupied West Bank and the already besieged Gaza Strip for 11 days, as Jewish celebrations for the Sukkot holiday commence.
At midnight on Tuesday, all crossings to the West Bank and Gaza Strip were closed off to some four million Palestinians in the territories.
Yesterday 20th Sept 2017 was a key day in Catalonia as thousands of military police invaded Barcelona city and began searching government offices of the local government, which is having its finances seized, and arresting public officials.
The response was unbelievable, on an ordinary weekday gigantic crowds appeared in Barcelona, Catalonia and around Spain. The police were blockaded and frustrated and withdrew when they finally could.
The day was a victory despite everything in that it showed it will be impossible to stop the Referendum without tens of thousands more imported police who are needed elsewhere. the only other option would be to call in the army.
we reproduce here part of a live feed, roughly translated
Catalunya: Multitudinous mobilization against the ‘state of exception’ and in defense of freedoms and referendum
By the National. cat
From this morning and in response to the police intervention against the institutions of the Generalitat and the headquarters of the CUP, mobilizations continue in defense of democratic freedoms and the right to decide, and against the state of emergency and de facto suspension ‘of Catalan self-government, including the control of its finances by the state.
From this morning and in response to the police intervention against the institutions of the Generalitat and the headquarters of the CUP, mobilizations continue in defense of democratic freedoms and the right to decide, and against the state of emergency and de facto suspension ‘of Catalan self-government, including the control of its finances by the state.
We reproduce the live information about the events published by El Nacional. cat.
23:32
Assange: “Rajoy is doomed”
23:30 The father of Guillem Agulló, the young man killed by a fascist group in Valencia, has attended gatherings against repression
23:30 The father of Guillem Agulló, the young man killed by a fascist group in Valencia, has attended gatherings against repression
The fight between the majority of Catalans and the Spanish State is escalating by the hour. Support for holding an Independence Referendum on 1st Oct is growing in reaction to a flood of repression.
The far-right PP government, direct successor to the fascist Franco regime has ordered thousands of militarized Guardia Civil into Catalonia where they are trying to try prevent the Referendum.
Some Key Events
On 11th Sept over one million people demonstrated in favour of the Referendum, in perfect order and for the sixth year running.
After a 48 hr ultimatum was ignored the State is seizing the bank accounts of the local Catalan Government, threatening all public employees,health, pensions, etc. http://www.elpuntavui.cat/barcelona.html
Before 6.00am hundreds or thousands of people were blocking the main North -South A7 Motorway from France in the freezing winter night. Northbound the motorway was closed over 13 hours at the La Jonquera French border. Southbound it was still closed at 9.00pm at Ampolla
The Free 