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”.
Update Update Update The General Strike in Catalunya called for Wed 8th Nov by small Intersindical-CSC trade union has been supported by the USTEC education union and the main Republican civil groups, Òmnium and ANC .
The strike is to protest the jailing of protest leaders and Government ministers, the occupation of paramilitary security forces, the imposition of Direct Rule, etc
However the majority CCOO (ex comminist) and UGT (ex socialist) trade unions again came out against it and the anarchist CGT made a statement in favour but left it to their members to decide individually, arguing they haven’t time to consult them.
All schools and Universities and public offices will certainly close down as well as cities like Girona and LLeida which have a native Catalan majority.
But the bosses organisation Foment de Treball have taken a High Court case to declare the General Strike Illegal.
The neo-fascists in Madrid have been hiring fleets of coaches and even trains to bring in thousands of violent right wing ‘demonstrators’, as seen at last weekend’s huge demo openly led by thugs sporting swastikas, zieg heils and Francoist symbols.
The insidious campaign is to split Catalan society down the middle. over 40% of the population are workers from Spain, most are well integrated over generations with families who consider themselves Catalan. Mixed marriages are common and normal with the 2 languages coexisting perfectly in their homes. Tension between the communities has been minimal (as in ex Yugoslavia before politicians whipped up xenophobia for personal power).
The anarchists too are divided, actively calling and sup`porting the 3rd Oct General Strike from an anti nationalist workers standpoint, but reluctant to continue if a nationalist civil conflict in Catalunya is provoked.
The Spanish nationalist media these days has become a torrent of anti Catalan hatred and outright lies. With an explosion of racist attacks the General Strike on Wednesday and the ‘Mega Demo’ on Sat 11th could finally break the self imposed pacifist stance of the Catalan republicans, which is what the State needs to justify mass criminalization of the majority democratic movement.
we include below a translation of a key text
A triumph of popular mobilization
by LLuita Internationalista on Barcelona Indymedia The proclamation of the Catalan Republic is the expression of the will of the people of Catalonia to break with the Monarchy. It is the result of a permanent and massive popular mobilization (demos of over a million for 5 years) , which, until now, has forced the governments of the Generalitat Catalan Govt to apply the popular mandate. The regime of the transition, which Franco left “tied up and well tied up “ (by his legacy) is in its most serious crisis, cracked and may not survive. Continue reading “New Catalan Strike for Prisoners and Republic amid Far-right Repression”
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”
from KDN with thanksWhile battling the Islamic state, Kurds and other ethnic groups in Northern Syria are trying to install a political project. They call it the “Democratic Federation of Northern Syria”.
This project is at opposite to the religious project of part of the Syrian opposition, but also to the Arab nationalist project of the Syrian government. And it’s also opposed to an independent Kurdistan.”
We don’t want a Kurdistan for Kurds, but a democratic federation for everybody,” they say. From Qamishli to Kobane, from Membij to Raqqa, this story describes the difficult implementation of a new political experience in Syria, despite the obstacles of a the war and a suffocating embargo.
A written version of this report can be found in the September 2017 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique: “Une utopie au coeur du chaos Syrian” and “Experiment in self-rule in Rojava” in their English-language version (partly reproduced here below). a film made by Chris Den Hond and Mireille Court Duration: 45 min. Filmed in July 2017
Below is the first part of the script for the above video from the English version of Le Monde Diplomatique
Foster says he deliberately broke the law by turning off a valve of the Keystone pipeline in North Dakota because he felt action was necessary.
In October of last year, the group Climate Direct Action turned off a valve on the Keystone Pipeline. Last week, activist Michael Foster was convicted for being involved in the action.
If North Dakota courts, where he is being tried now, find him guilty, he could be facing up to 21 years in prison. The sentencing is set for January.
‘If we don’t stop, we can’t correct … it will be too late for this generation.’ – Michael Foster, activist
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 