Category: crooks and liars

all who usurp and abuse authority

Anger mounts after pensioner’s suicide

LATEST updates from the global uprising against neoliberalism and its shock doctrine of so-called ‘austerity’ measures.

Athens, Greece. Angry protests erupted after a 77 year old man committed suicide outside Parliament in Syntagma Square.

From the Greek Streets reports that the suicide note left by Dimitris Christoulas said: “The Tsolakoglou* [Quisling] occupation government literally nullified my ability to survive on a decent pension, for which I had already paid (without government aid) for 35 years.

“I am of an age that prevents me from offering a decent individual response (without of course ruling out the possibility of being the second person to take arms, should one person decide to do so), I find no solution other than a dignified end, before resorting to going through garbage in order to cover my nutritional needs.  “One day, I believe, the youth with no future will take up arms and hang the national traitors at Syntagma Square, just like the Italians did with Mussolini in 1945 (at Milan’s Piazzale Loreto)”

Montreal, Canda: Police arrested about 60 students opposed to planned university tuition hikes as they roved through downtown Montreal on Wednesday morning, at one point setting off a “pyrotechnic device,” reports the National Post.

California, USA: About 100 students protesting a plan to offer high-priced courses at Santa Monica College this summer tried to storm into a meeting of the college’s Board of Trustees on Tuesday evening.

Police attacked protesters with pepper srapy for chanting, “Let us in, let us in” and “No cuts, no fees, education should be free,” reports the LA Times.

Posted by The Vast Minority  http://www.blogger.com/profile/00763355868588009641

 

Occupy make fare free subway in NY

Occupy Wall Street Affiliates Chain Subway Gates Open For Fare Strike

Village Voice  A group calling itself the “Rank and File Initiative” claimed credit yesterday for opening up more than 20 subway stations throughout the city for free entry.

Chaining open emergency gates at stations on the F, L, R, Q, 3, and 6 lines during rush hour yesterday morning, the anonymous activists posted signs designed to resemble MTA service-change announcements that read “Free Entry, No Fare. Please Enter Through The Service Gate.”

This morning before rush hour, teams of activists, many from Occupy Wall Street, in conjunction with rank and file workers from the Transport Workers Union Local 100 and the Amalgamated Transit Union, opened up more than 20 stations across the city for free entry. As of 10:30 AM, the majority remain open. No property was damaged. Teams have chained open service gates and taped up turnstiles in a coordinated response to escalating service cuts, fare hikes, racist policing, assaults on transit workers’ working conditions and livelihoods — and the profiteering of the super-rich by way of a system they’ve rigged in their favor.

The release cites Albany’s chronic underfunding of public transit, which has led the MTA to borrow heavily just to maintain its operating budget — debt which must be serviced in part with transit fares that have gone up 50 percent over the last decade.

“This means Wall Street bondholders receive a huge share of what we put into the system through the Metrocards we buy and the taxes we pay,” the press statement reads. “More than $2 billion a year goes to debt service, and this number is expected to rise every year. If trends continue, by 2018 more than one out of every five dollars of MTA revenue will head to a banker’s pockets.”

Last night we spoke with a representative of the Rank And File Initiative, who wished to remain anonymous. He told us that teams set out in the early hours of yesterday morning, disguising their identities, to lock open gates at roughly 25 stations.

“It was three or four people to each station, so you can do the math of how many people were directly involved,” he said. Not every team was successful — one dispatched to a Bronx subway station had to abort their mission — “But everyone came safely back without getting caught, which was our first priority.”

A press release claiming credit for the action said it was carried out by activists affiliated with Occupy Wall Street, as well as by rank-and-file members of Transit Workers Union Local 100, which is currently in negotiations with the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Occupy’s public face is beginning to show itself more and more as spring carries on. The lack of a physical occupation site made it difficult for the movement to wage a public relations campaign, but it was never hibernating. Occupiers were hard at work, canvassing in low-income outer-borough neighborhoods, organizing Town Squares, preparing for their spring offensive, dealing with internal trauma and organizational difficulties, and waging policy reform initiatives like Occupy the SEC. These signs point to growing, not waning movement, and suggest that the American Autumn may become an entire year of consistent critique and political action.

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Climate Extinction wake up call: Destroy capitalism NOW

Climate change is already harshing the weather  By David Roberts

In a sane world, a 2011 filled with spectacularly bizarre weather followed by a winter and spring that are record-shatteringly hot – out of control hot; Biblical hot – would have everyone in the U.S. freaking the f*ck out about climate change.

We never quite get there, though. We don’t seem to be grappling with the fact that this kind of volatility is rapidly becoming the new normal — or that we are totally unprepared.

If the public does tune in to what little media coverage there is of the climate-weather connection, they end up wading through technical discussions about attribution…………

What the public needs to know is that volatility like we’ve seen recently is on the rise because of climate change. Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, global average temperature would continue rising for a good half-century just in response to past GHG emissions. Rising temperature will drive more and more extreme weather. This will create all sorts of health, agricultural, energy, and economic issues for which we are grossly unprepared.

That’s it. Why can’t that simple message seem to capture the popular imagination? How much freaky weather does it take?
Read more: Article, Climate Change, media

Some Related Links,, of 1000’s

3 million Filipinos affected by 2 typhoons  http://feww.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/3-million-filipinos-affected-by-2-typhoons/

Up to 10 Million People Affected in Pakistan Floods  http://feww.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/pakistan-flood-death-toll-tops-1000/

Mega Heatwaves Could Kill Tens of Thousands in the U.S.  (FIRE-EARTH Forecast)   http://feww.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/mega-heatwaves-could-kill-thousands-in-the-u-s/

Back to the Primordial Future  https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=post
Mass Die-offs  (FIRE-EARTH Forecast)  http://feww.wordpress.com/mass-extinction/

The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities  (EDRO Forecast)  http://edro.wordpress.com/collapsing-cities
2011 Disaster Calendar  http://feww.wordpress.com/2011-disaster-calendar/

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29M: No trabajes, No consumas. /General Strike

Cada vez somos más las personas que exigimos compaginar la Huelga General del 29 de marzo con una HUELGA DE CONSUMO. La Reforma Laboral del desPPido ha supuesto el mayor atentado a los derechos laborales de la historia reciente, a lo que debemos sumar el retraso en la edad de jubilación a los 67 años, la subida de impuestos a los que menos tenemos y los recortes a la sanidad y la enseñanza, mientras que bancos, multinacionales, políticos y especuladores en general, los mismos que han causado esta crisis, siguen enriqueciéndose a nuestra costa y para ello no les importa llevar al planeta al borde del desastre ecológico.

Huelga de Consumo  Vs  Huelga General
El derecho a la huelga es algo  legítimo  que ejerce libremente la clase trabajadora para demostrar al empresariado que se está en desacuerdo con su gestión. Lo cierto es que la idea principal de la huelga es conseguir que el empresario pierda dinero. La huelga es el mejor  mecanismo de presión en procesos productivos industriales y algunos servicios. Si no se produce o no se vende  el empresario deja de ganar un dinero.
Sin embargo en parte del sector de servicios y empleados públicos, una huelga no tiene tanto efecto sobre el empresario, ya que si el trabajo hoy no se hace, no sucederá nada especialmente grave, en ocasiones por los abusivos servicios mínimos o el miedo al despido. El retraso que se acumule se irá recuperando poco a poco.
En definitiva en una sociedad industrial la huelga general es la mejor medida de presión. Pero ese escenario ha ido cambiado con el tiempo, pasando a una sociedad basada en el consumo, donde lo que de verdad hace daño a todas las empresas es no consumir.
Imagina un día de huelga general y de consumo, de paro absoluto. Sin apenas consumo, sin compra de alimentos, prensa, tabaco, sin uso del transporte privado ni colectivo, sin movimientos bancarios, sin llamadas, sin gestiones con la administración, un día de total retiro del mundanal ruido. Bancos, centros comerciales, supermercados, gasolineras, comercios, centros de atención al cliente, todos ellos sin clientela. Si algún trabajador no secunda la huelga general por miedo al despido estaría cruzado de brazos.

29 de marzo de 2012: HUELGA GENERAL Y DE CONSUMO
29M: No trabajes, No consumas
Publicado por TINTA NEGRA, anARTchist blog

 

Angry Afghans to expel US private guards

The conflict in Afghanistan is at a decisive juncture, and the West is facing defeat on a scale not seen since Vietnam. Few want to face facts, and the result is a gap between rhetoric and reality of a kind that only wars gone badly wrong produce.

Lost in the rolling crisis that began with the Quran burning is an important upcoming date. At the end of this month, some say the 20th March, the Karzai regime will see through its threat to force out the private security companies who guard the contractors that carry out development projects across Afghanistan.

It never made any sense, a knee jerk reaction, to take over and punish a whole country because the US believed the twin tower bombers had a base there. 10 years of hellish war for an idiotic immoral revenge attack by the US war machine.

Humanitarian NGOs that operate without security will be unaffected. But the contractors who carry out projects funded by Western governments face the prospect of operating under the protection of a hastily raised “Afghan Public Protection Force”.

Would you put your business and your life in the hands of such a force?

According to the New York Times, some companies are wrapping up their projects in Afghanistan and leaving; others allow their employees to illegally keep personal weapons; and all are scrambling to make new arrangements.

In the kind of corporate buffoonery that neoliberal privatisation creates, and which has damaged the Western war effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan, one US company is considering suing the US government. The contractors had been assured that they would have a secure environment in which to operate.

As one frightened US employee of an aid company commented, “We’re easy pickings” for insurgents and angry Afghans.

 

And there are a lot of angry Afghans. Abdul Samad is one of them. He lost 11 relatives to the ‘rogue’ sergeant (and friends) in Panjwai. Along with those who have demonstrated against the Quran burnings, the Taliban, and the silent majority of Afghans.

Mr. Samad has one demand: It is time for the Americans to leave, all of them.

summary..Read full article HERE  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/201231593938401477.html

US takes 80 million hostages in Iran!

According to the BBC foreign trade with Iran was be stopped from March, cutting all exports and imports to 80 million people.

This is because SWIFT, the monopoly banking agency will no longer permit money exchange, due to US and UK sanction pressure. The unilateral US moves are totally illegal under international law.

No country can be self sufficient, food, industry, medicines,.. almost everything we use has imported components. 

This is barbaric trade war with no UN approval. The US is 1000’s of times stronger than Iran, militarily, and only interested in controlling their oil, not their hypothetical nuclear bomb, indeed the US has helped sell Israel, India and Pakistan the bomb, and all these countries have a history of attacking their neighbours.

The BBC says the SWIFT sanctions will stop trade, but of course they are financed by the neo imperialist UK regime. Both the Chinese and the Russians want to continue trading, if they can find a way.

Nobody with any sense can support national/religious states like Iran or Israel, but vicious and violent economic attacks on Iran will only strengthen the government, as happened many times before.

Iran as a nation has existed for 4000 years, and will continue when these insane capitalist and religious bullies have disappeared.

BBC story here  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17390456

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CNT calls a General Strike in Spain, March 29

by Phil Dickens  The CNT rejects any kind of negotiation over the rights conquered by the working class through years of struggle. We call for this strike with the primary objective of immediately repealing the the labor reform that was approved yesterday by the Parliament, which we consider a head-on assault against the working class. This reform continues the measures started by the previous government, such as the labor reform of 2010 and the cuts to public employee salaries, to pensions, and to public services, cuts which are being deepened by the current government.

bloggers note..This article misleads a little. The big unions finally and reluctantly confirmed the General Strike for March 29th 3 days ago and the CNT is joining in.

The CNT demands the end of an economic policy designed to make the workers pay for the crisis of the banks and the employers. This policy has led to an unacceptable number of unemployed workers, a number which does not stop growing, as well as to an impoverishment and worsening of the working class’s living conditions.

The CNT also calls this strike against the cuts. The strike will happen the day before the setting of the General State Budget which will incorporate a brutal attack against public services and social rights.
The CNT rejects the agreement reached in February between the CCOO and UGT unions and the employers’ confederation, the CEOE, as well as the amendments that those unions have presented to the parliamentary process of the labor reform. The CNT rejects these amendments as a valid alternative, since they share the spirit of the reform and assume the logic of the employers and the government, who suppose that the only escape from their crisis must come through the workers surrendering their rights, placing the working class into a position of weakness from the start. The same logic has already led these unions to accept the raising of the retirement age to 67, even after the general strike of September 29, 2010.

For the CNT, the strike on March 29 must be only the beginning of a growing and sustained process of mobilization, one which includes the entire working class and the sectors that are most disadvantaged and affected by the capitalist crisis. This mobilization must put the brakes on the dynamic of constant assaults on our rights, while laying the bases for the recovery and conquest of new social rights with the goal of a deep social transformation.

All of these reasons have led the CNT to make this call for March 29 on its own account. With this call the CNT wants to give coverage to everyone who is taking up positions for a real and continued confrontation that will pay back the assaults on the working class with the same force with which we are receiving them, together with all workers’ organizations that share these objectives and reject the policies of agreement and social peace……

….,It’s time for all workers – unemployed or employed, retired, on the black market, students, and the precarious – to say “Enough!” We must seize the streets rather than abandon them in order to impose our strength and our demands.

March 29 – everyone in the street, everyone on the strike.

http://cnt.es/en/news/cnt-calls-general-strike-march-29