Tuesday 29 May 2012
London solidarity for Quebec rebels
A UK solidarity action with the Quebec rebels is being held in London on the evening of Wednesday May 30.
The Defend the Right to Protest Campaign has called for a demonstration outside Canada House (5 Trafalgar Square) at 6pm.
Below is what it says on its site:
Faced with the biggest protests ever seen in Quebec by students fighting against an 80% hike in fees, police have been importing the same tactics used against students and other anti-cuts protesters in Britain by the discredited Metropolitan police.
This includes the deployment of notorious kettling tactics to intimidate protesters and mass arrests of protesters with over 2,500 arrested so far, along with indiscriminate police violence which has seen people suffer serious injury.
It has also seen the introduction of a draconian new law, Bill 78, which bans any protest within 50 meters of university buildings, imposing severe financial penalties on those involved in pickets or other protests deemed illegal, and requiring eight hours notice for any protest involving more than fifty people.
Quebec students are fighting the same battles fought by students in Britain over the past two years. They are an inspiration to many around the world confronted with unprecedented cuts and austerity measures.
On Wednesday 30th May protests in solidarity with the Quebec struggle will take place across Canada.
The whole world is watching!
Join the protest in London in solidarity with the Quebec students struggle against fees, and call for:
* The scrapping of Bill 78
* An immediate cessation of kettling, mass arrests and other police tactics designed to intimidate and punish protesters
* The freeing of any imprisoned protesters – drop the charges, conditions and fines imposed on protesters
We’re inspired by the three month long Quebec student strike and the popular uprising in Quebec against austerity and the anti-protest Law 78 that has mobilized entire neighborhoods throughout the province to bang pots and pans at 8pm since the 22nd of May.
A New York Times op-ed compared Charest’s government to Putin’s after he cracked down on students with draconian anti-protest laws, riot copsand cancelled the school semester rather than to negotiate with student unions.
A record breaking 2500 people have been arrested, 2 have lost an eye, several have suffered critical head injuries, and the resistance is only spreading.
The movement has gone from being called the “Printemps d’Erable” to being called the Maple Spread. Solidarity casserole banging has spread from neighborhoods in Montreal, throughout the province, the country, as well as New York, Paris, Latin America and now it’s time for London to join in too.
On Wednesday, May 30, starting at 6pm, in front of Canada House by Trafalgar Square in London, we are showing solidarity by banging pots and pans and flying red squares.
Monday 28 May 2012
'When shit is fucked, fuck shit up'
ANGER is spreading over the Quebec authorities' fascistic new laws, as anti-neoliberal rebels call for global solidarity.
Reports The Edmonton Journal: "The unpredictable nightly protests that helped spur a government crackdown have largely been a Montreal-only affair — until now.
"Since Premier Jean Charest passed a law last week limiting protests in the province, defiant demonstrations have popped up in cities not known as hotbeds of activism.
"Small groups from Granby, south of Montreal, to Jonquiere, north of Quebec City, have joined Montrealers in taking to the streets with pots and pans to protest Bill 178.
"Their message is clear: This conflict is not just about tuition anymore."
And a call-out for worldwide solidarity with the struggle has been posted on Contra Info and elsewhere on the internet.
It says: "We want you to feel what we’re feeling. We know you feel something, but we want you to feel it like we feel it.
"We know that every time one of us goes to jail, every time a comrade in the streets loses their eye to the shrapnel of a concussion grenade or their ear to a rubber bullet to the head, that there are so many others who feel the heat of vengeance swell inside them.
"Knowing the global situation, knowing that people are approaching the breaking point not just here but everywhere, it needs to be insisted upon that what is happening in Québec is not exceptional.
"What has happened here can happen elsewhere and it needs to happen elsewhere. Everything we’re doing has been inspired by the revolts and uprisings that have taken hold in other places. If it can’t inspire social disruptions of its own, then it will die out quick.
"So this is a call out for solidarity as much as it’s our heartfelt hope that one day you’ll feel this around you as well. This needs to spread past Montréal, past Québec. Bring it to your cities and communities in whatever way you can, using whatever methods and means are at your disposal.
"Our hearts and heads are tired, but we’re still smiling.
We want to see the strike spread.
We want to see this social upheaval spread.
When shit is fucked, fuck shit up."
Friday 25 May 2012
UK anarchists sabotage railway
ANARCHISTS have sabotaged railway lines in a major English city as the insurrection against neoliberalism steps up across the world.
A statement was posted on Bristol Indymedia by the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) - May 22nd Group.
It reads: "On the morning of May 22nd we struck two points on the railway routes into Bristol, on the outer sides of Patchway (northern) and Parson Street (southern) stations.
"By lifting the concrete slabs running alongside the tracks and burning out the signalling cables found in the trench underneath, before carriges came on the line.
"We chose specifically chose these places so that employees of the Ministry of Defence, as well as military industry companies Raytheon/Thales/HP/QuinetiQ etc., in the business park near Filton Abbey Wood station, and the corportate hub of Bristol, near the Temple Meads station, were amongst the affected. Normal services weren't restored until the evening.
"The potential spread of such blockages in general poses a significant problem for the flow of commodites and for making sure that labour exploitation arrives on time, key concerns for transnational capitalism.
"Such actions are a time-honoured method of disturbing the 'social peace' myth: from similar sabotages in France; cash courier vehicles getting destroyed in Crete; the night-time smashing of train station ticket machines in Austrailia; resistance to highway developments eating even further into wild landscapes (such as Khimki forest in Russia) whilst displacing animals and people who are still refusing to assimilate into industrial civilisation (such as Bolivia's TIPNIS project in one of the most biodiverse regions in the world); to the iconic seizure and arson of the city bus in London last August.
"Not to mention our comrades of FAI/Fires on the Horizon, in Athens, and FAI/Individuals Conspiring for the Destruction of the Existent, in Curicó, defiant with their barricades...
"Everywhere the bosses want us scurrying around their metropolis, like consignments of human flesh in alientating containers on pre-determinated routes, in a frenetic hussle for survival, there is and will continue to be every reason to forcefully intervene in the smooth flow of the daily grind.
"In the United Kingdom of clockwork control and domestication, we're some of the 'unpatriotic ones' who find the 2012 Olympics, with the ensuing spectacle of wealth (when so many here struggle to feed themselves and their families), harmful developments and escalating police state, frankly offensive.
"But no union or movement calls our shots, and we have no inhibition to use guerrilla activity to hurt the national image and paralyze the economy however we can. Because simply, we don't want rich tourists - we want civil war."
Meanwhile in Italy a police chief has warned that anarchists now represent the biggest threat to the neoliberal state.
Agi.it reports that police chief Antonio Manganelli said: "Revolutionary anarchism is now the real terror threat to our country, not the Red Brigades or the international terrorism that concerns us like other countries.
"Revolutionary anarchists have created an international network starting from the Greek cells. It is a phenomenon to be reckoned with. They themselves in their own documents have stated that they have made the leap in quality to be able to carry out assassinations."
Quebec protesters resist plutofascism
MORE than 500 protesters have been arrested in Quebec, Canada, after they took to the streets to defy a neoliberal clamp-down.
The progression from phoney 'democracy' to real plutofascism could hardly be more clearly exposed than here.
The now-familiar laws are passed to increase student tuition fees as education and all other aspects of our society are privatised for the profit of the elite.
Faced with a massive and determined revolt by a new generation, what is the response of the authorities?
To back down and go along with the democratic consensus? No - to ramp up repression and pass draconian new laws to try and crush dissent.
Happily, the Quebec rebels are fighting the plutofascists every inch of the way, sending shockwaves across the world.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports, from Australia: "What began as a protest against university fee increases has expanded to a wider movement to oppose Bill 78, which was rushed through by legislators in Quebec in response to the demonstrations.
"The bill imposes severe restrictions on protests, making it illegal for protesters to gather without having given police eight hours' notice and securing a permit.
"On Wednesday night, police in Montreal used 'kettling' techniques - officers surrounding groups of protesters and not allowing them in or out of the resulting circle - before conducting a mass arrest."
Adds the BBC: "Bill 78, passed last Friday, requires marches to follow pre-approved
routes, but protesters say it infringes their democratic rights, and
have pledged to legally contest it."
Below is the artwork submitted by protesters to police when they were asked to provide a map of their route.
Tuesday 15 May 2012
Greece - heading for a revolution?
ALL eyes are now on Greece, as the neoliberal world order comes into direct and obvious conflict with democracy.
Protests against plutofascist 'austerity' continue all over the world, including in Spain, Italy, the USA and the UK.
But in Greece the conflict has moved on to another phase. The anti-capitalist rebels have successfully made the point that the global bankers are destroying their communities and effectively ignoring the will of the people.
While the years of full-on protest and riots did not succeed directly in sparking a revolution, they did expose to the general public the stark reality of the situation.
It is for this reason that the majority of the electorate backed anti-austerity parties in the recent general election.
With a re-run now lined up, the neoliberal elite fear a victory for Syriza and the left which would represent a serious challenge to their hegemony.
What will they do now? How will they stop the anticipated election result from becoming reality? Already there are dire warnings of a descent into chaos if the Greek population rejects the 'safety' of neoliberal slavery.
What further scaremongering and smears will be wheeled out? Can we expect a false flag 'terror' attack to try and change the course of the vote?
And if the left does win the elections, will the money men stand by and watch while these upstarts take over power and put their worldwide capitalist empire at risk of collapse?
Or will this be the time for them to once and for all drop the pretence of this phoney democracy with which they have been keeping us all in line for so long?
Looking a step further ahead, what would happen next if they denied the Greek people their choice and tried to impose a regime of their own liking?
Remember, the Spanish Revolution did not begin in 1936 as an uprising against the state, but was a defensive reaction to an extreme-right coup against a left-wing government.
With half of the Greek police reckoned to have voted Nazi in the last election, the scenarios are not so different.
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