In Bogotá during Colombia’s amazing 3 month national strike, two women hold placards that say, “We didn’t give birth to children of war” and “They got firearms, we got fire in our soul” / credit: Antonio Cascio
By: Raúl Zibechi
With his usual lucidity, William I. Robinson wonders if the worldwide wave of protests and mobilizations will be capable of confronting global capitalism (https://bit.ly/3MjvBsl). In effect, there has been an endless chain of protests and popular uprisings since the 2008 crisis. He recalls that in the years before the pandemic there were more than 100 large protests that brought down 30 governments.
He mentions the gigantic mobilization in the United States after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, which he defines as: “an anti-racist uprising that brought more than 25 million people, mostly young people, into the streets of hundreds of cities across the country, the largest mass protest in the history of the United States.”
In Latin America the uprisings and revolts in Ecuador, Chile, Nicaragua and especially Colombia, had an extension, duration and depth rarely seen on this continent. The Colombian protest paralyzed the country for three months, showed impressive levels of popular creativity (such as the 25 resistance points in Cali) and ways of articulation between peoples, in the street, below, absolutely unprecedented.
Robinson recalls that the dominant classes pushed the cycle of mobilization back at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the ‘70s, “through capitalist globalization and the neoliberal counter-revolution.” That was in the north, because in the global south they did it with pure bullets and massacres.
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The World Economic Forum claims that genetic modification is the way of the future
In February 2022, Chile passed a law prohibiting employers from discriminating against genetically impaired employees
There are studies suggesting that in some cases, COVID injections might lead to changes in human DNA; more research is needed
Disabled rights attorney Todd Callender looked at a Supreme Court case from 2013, which led him to believe that using mRNA to modify genomes may turn people into legal property of the patent holders (unless this interpretation is explicitly ruled out)
Making us biologically dependent on the “artificial immunity service” is bad for the people but sadly good for business
Reviewing the unprecedented proposals put forth by Zelensky presumably at his foreign handlers’ behest, they collectively represent the cutting edge of US-led Western hegemony.
Ukrainian President Zelensky gave ahighly disturbing speechat this week’sDavos Summitthat should alarm all peace-loving people in the world because of the literally unprecedented proposals that he shared. Apart from ranting about Russia like he pathologically does during every one of his public appearances, which one of CNN’s US intel sourcesadmittedlast month is always an “information operation” and therefore pure propaganda, he demanded that the US-led West implement a policy of maximum preemptive sanctions on the false pretext of averting future wars.
According to him, the US-led West’s presently unprecedented ones against Russia in response toitsongoingspecialmilitaryoperationin Ukraine aren’t enough and came too late. He wants them to do more by completely…
After 8.5 years in prison, after all these arbitrary actions against me, I decided to put an end to my 11 years of suffering, by putting a stop to the practice of pre-trial detention, or the additional punishment of escape through legal loopholes.
After 5 more months of pre-trial detention, I start a hunger strike for my release. This choice, with the deep motivation of the much desired freedom, I intend to support it with the same consistency that I have supported my choices so far and for which I am being persecuted.
“Woe to those who will accept prison as a condition of life, and from the brightest sunlight, the smallest ray” – The rallying cry of the Alikarnassos prison uprising
For 11 years I have experienced state vengeance against choices in line with my values and ideas.
The difficult journey, from which I choose to share some blatant vengeful acts of arbitrariness against me, began in the distant 2011, when an arrest warrant was issued against me for the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire case, for which I was eventually acquitted as there was not the slightest connection between me and the charge against me.
It was the incrimination of a relationship of solidarity with wanted anarchists that put me in their place when they were arrested.
After 2 years of being on the run, I too am now walking through the heavy doors of prison, as the existence of a warrant that entails a decade of incarceration has led to certain choices and consequent mistakes.
The comrades who were arrested at the time in the bank robbery in Velvento, Kozani, were tortured by the police, which is common, and then the Ministry of Public Order published photos of our swollen faces, provoking a public reaction. Of course, no police officer was accused of this by the blind Greek justice system.
note. a ‘SWEEP’ in this context means a mass police attack/eviction on a houseless camp in the US.
a ‘STRIKE’ here means a great success when you knock down all the pins, in bowling
Report on ongoing encampment defense in so-called Minneapolis, MN.
Minneapolis encampment defenders sought to “strike” back against camp sweeps on Tuesday 5/25 with a, “You Sweep? We Strike!,” breakfast and bowling event at a longstanding encampment.
Defenders of camps have been organizing weekly morning get-togethers to defend against potential evictions, and display to the city that camps have popular support as the safest alternative for unhoused neighbors while the city refuses to provide housing.
— Twin Cities Encampment Responders (@TCparkresponder) May 25, 2022
Sweeps split up communities and families; cops and public works employees allow residents only a short time to spare whatever meager belongings they can from the bulldozers.
The city recently shifted responsibility for camp evictions to the Department of Regulatory Services, whose director Saray Garnett-Hochuli recently gave a tirade before the city council in which she declared camps “will not be tolerated” in the city. Hochuli also falsely claimed that a police officer had a leg broken by camp defenders, whom she portrays as violent outside agitators.
We demand Hochuli and city departments stay in their lane, stop playing gutter politics and leave camps alone.
Colombia celebrará elecciones presidenciales en unos días y por primera vez en décadas la izquierda tiene una posibilidad real de ganar. ¿Qué ha pasado para que el país esté a punto de dar semejante viraje? ¿Cómo llega Colombia a estas elecciones y cuál ha sido su camino hacia el cambio?
11:30 La cosa no termina hasta que termina. La derecha aún puede ganar. ¡No se olviden de suscribirse al canal y activar la campañita! También estoy en otras redes:
In a demonstration of repressive policing, Seville cops attacked and destroyed the squatted space on the day it opened for community use – having spent six months largely ignoring it while it was cleared and made useable. The politically-charged eviction at a former concert hall targeted a site that was about to provide a community hub for challenging rampant gentrification in the city. In a statement the Lioness collective described the scene:
After several months of collective work and some very intense weeks preparing the space, on Thursday May 19th it was finally time to make it public and open the space to anyone who wanted to get closer and get involved. Many people came to show their support and joy. There was finally a Self-Managed Okupado Social Center in Seville, after so many years.
We didn’t lose our cool when the police approached, as we were prepared to face the situation, with about a hundred people nearby, with the assembly well organised and united, including a mediator and a lawyer. We told the police that the building had been occupied by us for weeks, so they would need a court order to evict us, which they obviously didn’t have.
After standing for hours in front of the doors, at around 10pm an officer asked to speak to the comrades inside. Then the disappointment became clear: the police put on their helmets, took an aggressive posture and went to the door. They pushed us back without a second thought, until we were in a position where it would be impossible to see what they were doing to the comrades inside. So, in front of everyone out on the pavement, and in front of many cell phone cameras recording and recording everything that was happening, they opened the door by force, with great violence. When they entered, threatening them with tasers, they forced comrades to lie on the ground to later identify them and force them out.
To put the icing on the cake of the series of rules they were breaking, half of the cops weren’t wearing identification badges, because “if there is a fire it burns” or because “I dropped it”, among other regrettable excuses. They refused to identify themselves, and told the lawyer that we should wait to receive the official police report (which was never given to us).
Prior to the occupation, the hall had been rotting for nine years and was full of rubbish.
So they ended the space that had just been born, in a building which which had been abandoned for nine years and to which we were going to give a new life, as you can read in our opening manifesto. But, as we said at the time: They may trash the spaces, but never the ideas.
While the anger and frustration we feel at this situation is enormous, we are not surprised either. It is already common practice in our city that the powerful, and the repressive agents who protect them, ignore their own laws. Many spaces have already been illegally evicted, in the heat of the moment, without order and in an intimidating and violent way. We already know that private property is defended above everything and everyone.
All this only strengthens us in what we do, what we think and who we are. We will never forget the moment of unfurling the banner and reading the manifesto, nor the many hours that dozens and dozens of people spent defending our space, their space. Let’s keep squatting and resisting. WE RETURN.
ONE LOST, ANOTHER OCCUPATION!
I WOULD BE ASHAMED TO BE A POLICEMAN!
IN YOUR HOME AND IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD, LIBERTARIAN FEMINISM!
