Saturday 28 April 2012

Video for May 12 in London

May 2012 - a good month for rising up


MAY 2012 looks set to be another big month for the global uprising against neoliberalism.

May 1 itself is, of course, a traditional day of protest, with demonstrations and strikes expected all across the world.

More specifically, Occupy Wall Street have called for May 1 blockades of New York bridges, tunnels and ferries.

Said a statement: "We are announcing these blockades now as a fair warning to the rest of the working people of New York and New Jersey who are considering joining the strikes and mobilizations of the day: the city will be shut down, so enjoy the day without the 99%!"

In the UK the Bristol First of May Group says: "This is a national call-out for a week of anti-capitalist action, events and celebration throughout the UK in the first week of May 2012 to show resistance to capitalism and remember all those workers who lost their lives for a better life for us all.

"Beneath the road, the banks, the shopping malls and prisons lies the Beach,  Behind the politicians, the bureaucrats, the cops AND the robbers lies Freedom, Outside wage and debt slavery, false democracy, capitalism and state control lies our Future."

Spanish indignados are calling for people across the world to take to the streets on May 12 and May 15.

And this call has also been echoed in the UK with this statement: "Occupy London is set to strike back this May as people around the world take to the streets to mark one year since the indignados reclaimed their squares in Spain and Greece, and six months since the Occupy movement went global.

"The next wave is about to begin. Put May Day, 12 May and 15 May in your diary."

The rebellious season got off to an early start in Brighton, UK, where anti-fascists took to the streets on April 22 to oppose an extreme right march in the city and successfully delayed it and diverted its route, building barricades to block streets.

Saturday 14 April 2012

Neoliberals panicked by global uprising


NEOLIBERALS are beginning to panic in the face of growing global resistance to their brutal and corrupt system.

The illusion of democracy and 'government by consent' is evaporating in a heated spiral of popular defiance and increased repression.

Opposition is thus becoming deeper and more radical, as the obvious impossibility of reform opens a new generation's eyes to the necessity of revolution.

One example of this process is Spain, where the state has announced a package of draconian new laws to criminalise dissent.

Jorge Fernandez Diaz, the interior minister, said "serious disturbances of public order and intent to organise violent demonstrations through means such as social networking" would carry the same penalty as involvement in a criminal organisation under the new reform.

He also said that the measures would extend authorities' powers to deal with passive resistance as contempt of court.

The measures would make it "an offence to breach authority using mass active or passive resistance against security forces and to include as a crime of assault any threatening or intimidating behaviour," he said in Congress.

In addition attempts to disrupt public services such as transportation would also be made a crime. During the recent general strike picketers blockaded bus and train stations in an attempt to bring transportation to a halt.

"New measures are needed to combat the spiral of violence practised by 'anti-system' groups using urban guerrilla warfare," the Interior Ministry clarified in a later statement.

Catalonian interior minister Felip Puig has said he wants the new laws to "make people more frightened of the system" - a clear admission of the direction the neoliberal establishment is now heading.

In Britain, where the authorities fear more rioting could erupt during the corporate beanfeast known as the Olympics, a similar version of  'democracy' is being rolled out.

Police have decided to use chemical warfare against 'rioters' - by which they also mean protesters and strikers - and are stocking up on the tools of repression.

The Guardian revealed a spate of  recent spending by police forces around the UK on plastic bullets, referred to as attenuating energy projectiles (AEPs).

It reported: "Some forces appear to have decided to considerably boost their stocks. Leicestershire constabulary spent £19,630 buying AEPs in 2010-11, doubling its spending on the previous year. So far in 2011-12 it has spent more than £10,000.

"Even a relatively small force, Avon and Somerset, which faced serious disorder in Bristol last year during the English riots and on a previous occasion amid anger over a controversial Tesco store, has spent more than £70,000 in the last three years. It also currently possesses 28 AEP launchers. That is 16 more than the larger West Midlands police, which still nevertheless spend more than £53,000 stocking up on AEPs in the last three years.

"Gloucestershire police, whose territory was the scene of one of the more surprising outbreaks of rioting last summer, decided to considerably boost its AEP stocks last year. It spent £32,060 doing so, more than double its combined spending in 2009 and 2010. Elsewhere, Greater Manchester said it had sufficient supplies last year after spending more than £76,000 in the previous two years, while Nottinghamshire has spent £74,000 in the past three years."
 
Meanwhile, there are signs of how the flood of revolt may now be forced to flow, if the authorities try to block it in its conventional course.

Dimitris Christoulas, the Greek pensioner who killed himself in front of the parliament (see video) and Trenton Oldfield, the anti-elitist swimmer who disrupted the upper class boat race in London are examples of  how rejection of neoliberalism will manifest itself if protests are met with chemicals and bullets.

There is a clear fork in the path ahead for humanity - one way leads to the wretched misery of plutofascism and the other to our liberation.
                   
 

Friday 6 April 2012

Azawad formally declares its independence


THE people of Azawad have today, Friday April 6 2012, formally declared their irrevocable independence.

The statement from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (Mouvement National De Liberation de l'Azawad - MNLA) refers to the "complete liberation of the territory of Azawad" achieved in the remarkable final uprising which began in January this year.

It recalls that in 1960 Azawad was attached to the state of Mali, created by France - the former colonial power - without the consent of its people.

And it mentions the massacres, extortion, humiliation, despoilment and genocide carried out against Azawad in 1963, 1990, 2006, 2010 and 2012.

It condemns the "inhuman behaviour" of Mali in using various droughts (1967, 1973, 1984, 2010….) to try and wipe out the people of Azaward at the same time as it had asked for and received generous humanitarian aid from overseas.

The statement says that the accumulation of more than 50 years of bad governance, corruption and political-financial-military collusion had put the existnce of the Azawad people at risk and endangered the stability of the sub-region and international peace.

Announcing the permanence of the borders of the liberated territory and Azawad's total commitment to the United Nations charter, the statement calls on the international community to recognise the new independent state of Azawad with minimum delay.

Azawad consists of the regions of Timbuktu, Kidal, Gao, as well as a part of Mopti region and borders Mali and Burkina Faso to the south, Mauritania to the west and northwest, Algeria to the north, and Niger to the east and southeast. It straddles a portion of the Sahara and the Sahelian zone.

Azawad is said to be an Arabic corruption of the Berber word "Azawagh", a dry river basin that covers western Niger, northeastern Mali, and southern Algeria. The name translates to "land of transhumance".

"Killing the 1% is the only way out"


POLITICS are corrupt and the only way out for mankind is to kill the 1% who own everything.

This is the view expressed by acclaimed Finnish film director Aki Kaurismäki in an interview with the English newspaper The Guardian. 

Kaurismäki is quoted as saying: "For mankind, I can't see any way out except terrorism. We kill the 1%. The only way for mankind to get out of this misery is to kill the 1% who own everything. The 1% who have put us in the position where humanity has no value. The rich. And the politicians who are the puppies of the rich."

Asked by the interviewer if he had ever thought of 'going into politics', he replies: "No, never. Politics are corrupt."

The director has previously boycotted the Oscars ceremony in protest at US imperialist foreign policy.  His latest film, Le Havre, is about the plight of an African child immigrant in Europe.

Wednesday 4 April 2012

Anger mounts in global uprising

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.

Sunday 1 April 2012

Victory declared by Azawad rebels!

 
WITH the liberation of Timbuktu, rebels have proclaimed an astonishing victory in the Sahara Desert.

The political bureau of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (Mouvement National De Liberation de l'Azawad - MNLA) issued a statement on Sunday April 1 speaking of an unprecedented day in the history of its people.

The successful battle began in January, as Vast Minority reported at the time.

The political fight for a free Azawad turned into an armed conflict after brutal attacks on the population by the US-backed state of Mali.

On January 17 armed resistance fighters attacked military compounds in Menaka, Adaramboukare and Tessalit in the north of the African country.

Fighting continued for some time and there was a serious clash at Aguelhok.

The Mali state flooded the area with tanks, aircraft and troops and more fighting broke out on the morning of Thursday January 26.

But the Malian army suffered heavy losses and was forced to retreat - events which then led to a military coup in the south

Mossa Ag Attaher, spokesman for the MNLA, told French newspaper Le Monde back in January that the aim of the struggle was to liberate Azawad from Malian colonialism.

He explained that Azawad consisted of three regions currently part of Mali - Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal.

The MNLA was fighting for the aspirations of the Touareg people and also those of the Songhai, Peuls and Moors.

They had a right to choose their own form of government, to self-determination and, if they so desired, to independence, he said. 

The MNLA is the result of a fusion between the Mouvement National de l'Azawad (MNA), a group of young intellectuals and political activists, and the guerrillas of the former Alliance Touareg Niger Mali (ATNM).

These elements were joined by groups of former Touareg rebels who fled Mali in the 1990s to join the Libyan army and returned to Azawad, with plenty of weaponry, during the NATO war on the Gaddafi regime.