We wombats don’t like being disturbed - if you irritate us, we sit on you until you die. The inanities of your world, like electric fences, or being hit by speeding cars, have never bothered us much.
But now you humans have gotten outta hand, with your wars and bombs and poverty and Global Warming and other such uncomfortable things, so we have decided to intervene.
We can help you fix your problems, so we can go back to ignoring you. Ok?
- The Revolutionary Wombats Association.
LeftStreamed, November 13, 2009: Finance, Class and Politics in the European Economic Crisis: Was the German Election a Turning Point?
As a result of the recent German elections, Conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was leading a coalition government with the social democratic SPD (Social Democratic Party) since 2005, will also lead Germany's next government, this time with support from the liberal FDP (Free Democratic Party). Though the social democrats expected that their party, the SPD, would continue the downward trend that began with the 2002 elections and continued in 2005, the loss of 11.2% of the vote came as a shock. The 23.0% they received in this year's election was even lower than the 29.2% with which the SPD started their electoral performance in post-war (West) Germany.
The 11.9% for the Left Party (Die Linke) does not look too impressive numerically, but it does signify the establishment of the party as a constant factor in Germany's political system. Considering that the party was only founded as a merger of East Germany's Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and West-German SPD dissidents in 2007, this is a remarkable achievement that indicates the desire for a left voice in the parliamentary arena.
At this point, the Left Party is the only party in opposition to the restoration of neoliberalism. It would also be the key point of coalescing if any further rightwing turn in German politics occurs. From this angle, the significance of the electoral boost of the Left Party lies less in increased presence in parliament. It lies in the stabilization of a political force that began, however vaguely, to advocate alternatives to neoliberalism at a time when that doctrine still seemed to be the only way of economic and social development. Whether the Left Party is ready to live up to these openings is an entirely different question. It is also possible that the party gets torn apart between the temptation of occupying government positions and building the base for independent working class political action, or even a wider rebellion.
In an interview last October 9th on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the renowned and award-winning documentarian, Michael Moore lied vulgarly about his encounter with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez during the Venice Film Festival this past September. In the interview, Moore responds to Kimmel’s request for an explanation of a photo of Moore with President Hugo Chávez. Apparently embarrased about the encounter with one of Latin America’s most prominent and influential heads of state, Moore proceed to completely make up a fairy-tale, attempting to pass it off as reality.
With a straight face, Moore stated he met President Chávez at 2 o’clock in the morning, after he and his wife had settled into bed in their Venice hotel room and heard a scandalous noise coming from the floor above. Moore states that he called down to the reception to find out “what the hell was going on”. “It’s the president of Venezuela”, the hotel clerk allegedly told Moore. Well, Michael couldn’t believe it, so despite his wife telling him “don’t go”, Moore set out, determined to find out if the true source of the scandal was really the Venezuelan president, the polemic Hugo Chávez.
Incrediously, Moore says he went upstairs and knocked right on Chávez’s door and a large man answered, who Moore claims was the president’s “bodyguard”. Chávez was right behind him and caught a glimpse of Moore and yelled out “Michael Moore, come on in!”. Anyone who has ever traveled or been close to President Chávez knows very well that it is absolutely impossible to just “go knock on his door”. Presidential security lines the hallways, elevators and all entrance points. Take it from someone who knows first hand. Moore’s story is complete and utter fiction. Also the man Moore identified in the interview as Chávez’s “bodyguard” is actually Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro, but hey, all latinos look alike!
The tale continues. Moore says he entered the room and a “bottle and a half of tequila later”, he was writing Chávez’s speeches! Of course, Michael, all of us Latin Americans drink tequila! Man, he couldn’t even get his alcohol right in his fairy tale! Tequila is Mexican, Michael. Venezuela makes rum. Get it straight. And anyway, President Chávez does not drink at all and is well known for his anti-alcohol position. But in Moore’s story, latinos are all a bunch of partiers! No work, just party, drinks and fun at 2am!
Moore is exceptionally full of himself towards the end of the interview with Jimmy Kimmel. He says Chávez asked him for advice about his upcoming United Nations speech. Moore sternly told the South American president to “say sorry for calling Bush the devil, “el diablo”” during his last UN intervention. And to say this time around it’s all about the “hope”! Way to defend Bush, Michael! Wait, didn’t you write, direct and film Farhenheit 9/11? Right, but when someone “non-US” tells it like it is, you get way patriotic. I get it.
The interview ended with Michael fully praising himself for yet another one of President Chávez’s brilliant United Nations’ speeches. “When I heard the first few lines of his speech”, says Moore, “it was exactly what I had written for him!” Michael, Michael. Don’t you know that Chávez doesn’t use a teleprompter? Where we come from, speeches are made from the heart and soul, and not written by an elite team of 20 writers and then read from transparent screens. And Michael, do you really think that flattering yourself at this point, after you have lied so tremendously, is appropriate? Arrogantly, Moore joked that Chávez should give him a “year of free gasoline” for writing his speech. At least he didn’t say bananas.
Michael Moore has been known for his documentary work; filming and telling “facts”. But on this ocassion, Moore has turned into the worst of yellow journalists, a liar and story-teller on the big screen. Despite the fact that Moore insisted ”no cameras” document his meeting with President Chávez in Venice, the official Venezuelan presidential press snapped a few photos, and there were many witnesses. The photographs evidence a Michael Moore and a President Chávez serenly sitting in two chairs talking. No tequila, no parties, no scandals, just a normal meeting between a head of state and an invited guest. In fact, the real meeting lasted three hours, without tequila.
Michael Moore prohibited cameras in the meeting because, per his own words, it wasn’t “convenient” for him to been seen with Chávez. Despite the fact that every presidential meeting has been documented by the official press, this time, they defered to Moore with respect. He was, after all, an admired figure by millions of Venezuela. But, the presidential press was able to capture a few photos of the encounter. These photos now are the key evidence to expose Michael Moore’s vulgar lies about his meeting with President Chávez.
Moore’s comentaries about President Chávez asking him to “help” write his United Nations speech demonstrate Moore’s extreme ego. President Chávez is one of the most brilliant speakers in the world, with an immense capacity to bring together a variety of ideas while being coherent. Of course, Chávez nourishes his speeches and talks with ideas, experiencies and the writings of many, but for those of us who spend almost every day listening and watching President Chávez, we know that nobody writes his speeches, not even him! He speaks from his heart, and not from a teleprompter!
Moore’s declarations against President Chávez are offensive and insulting and a clear sign of his hipocresy and lack of ethic. How many times has we heard President Chávez acclaim Moore’s books and documentaries? And most recently, Chávez announced that Moore’s latest documentary, “Capitalism, a love story”, would premiere here in Venezuela.
Moore’s response to this admiration, acclaim and support is to lie and ridicule President Chávez and the people of Venezuela, and to attempt, lamely, to justify his meeting with Chávez. Because in the end, this whole ridiculous tale told by Moore about his “meeting” with President Chávez is an attempt to avoid admitting before the US media that he met for three hours with the South American “dictator”. And he probably learned a lot, and liked it!
This is even more apt, if you remember that bread evolved from beer (not the other way round). So, before people "broke bread", they were brewing beer (and breaking wind instead of heads).
A wonderful vision of the future in Palestine - one single secular state, with christians, jews, muslims and druze, all living under the one big beer tent.
Remember: World Peace - brought to you during Wiezn by beer-lovers everywhere under the Bayerische Reinheitsgebot of 1516.
Via the very excellent (and not a little bit frightening) blog Climate Code Red
A recent conference in Oxford attended by the best and brightest of the climate science academy examined the prospects and impacts of 4 degrees of global warming. The prognosis is not good. New Scientist have done a good summary with a Google Earth interactive guide (download .kmz file), but if you have a spare hour listen to some of the presentations available on the conference website; Prof. Schellenhuber's and Richard Betts' from the Met Office are a must.
Residents of Hato de Enmedio, Tegucigalpa, take control of their barrio. September 22, 2009.
By Federico Fuentes, Caracas
Green Left Weekly -- September 23, 2009 — Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya, overthrown in a military coup on June 28 and currently in the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa, has told Telesur TV that the coup regime is planning to take over the embassy. He says they plan to assassinate him.
Ricardo Arturo Salgado, an activist in the Honduran anti-coup resistance, told Green Left Weekly over the phone from Tegucigalpa that “the decision we have all taken is to fight with everything we have”. Aturo Salgado said there was an “intense reaction on the part of the resistance in many zones across Tegucigalpa, in what we call barrios and colonias [poor neighbourhoods]. I would say that there are some 15-20 highly populated barrios that frankly find themselves in a situation of total insurrection, fighting against the police, against the army and even against paramilitaries."
The mass resistance to the coup has continued for three months, with daily protests, strikes and road blockades. With Zelaya’s return the Honduras, a desperate coup regime has significantly increased repression. The people are increasingly in open rebellion.
“We have evidence that paramilitaries are participating in the street battles in some of the colonias. The police are trying to retake positions but the people’s insurrection is occurring in places that geographically are very far apart from one another'', Aturo Salgado told Green Left Weekly.
“In general, there is a situation of insurrection, with the advantage that the police helicopter that was being used [during daylight] to fire against the people cannot be used during the night.”
On the situation in Tegucigalpa, he said: “All the shops are closed and there is a shortage of food, of medicine. “At any moment we could see the looting of shops, because the people are entering into desperation mode. Moreover, it seems that, although there is not as much news regarding this, that in the interior of the country there are strong insurrectional mobilisations in very small zones. This has to do with the tactic of protesting close to home.
“The people are spontaneously taking the decision to resist and the line coming from the [National Reistance Front Against the Coup] was, for today, to resist close to one’s home. But tomorrow we are calling on everyone to march [in Tegucigalpa].''
Aturo Salgado confirmed to GLW that the national front has called a march for September 23 that will start at 8am outside the Pedagogical University Francisco Morazon.
He called on all alternative media outlets to join the campaign of informing the world about the truth of what is occurring in Honduras — and in denouncing the murderous plans of the coup regime.
September 22, 8:03 pm: An interesting development today in the popular barrios and colonias of greater Tegucigalpa: The coup's military curfew -- now extended for a total of 36 hours until 6 am tomorrow morning -- is causing major hardship for the great mass of Honduran citizens who live day to day. Small shop owners, street sellers, mercado workers and so many others generally don't have savings. If they don't work on a given day, they and their families don't have food to eat that night. A great many don't have refrigerators and they shop the same day for the food they will eat. The curfew is causing shortages of food and other basic products of daily life, and preventing many from being able to afford what little they need. And while the general view in the popular (read: poor) barrios have been anti-coup, the curfew has brought forward a rage and a higher level of organisation overnight.
Add to that the fact that the National Police have spent last night and today busting into those neighbourhoods to enforce the curfew -- because many citizens aren't paying it any mind as it interferes with their daily subsistence level survival -- and has overreacted with great violence, shooting tear-gas canisters into homes, invading people's houses, and such. This has caused a generalised phenomenon throughout the metropolitan area: People have come en masse out of their homes, chased the police out of many of those neighbourhoods, and erected barricades to keep them out. They are now organising to maintain those barricades. The coup regime thus, overnight, has lost any semblance of control of considerable tracts of urban Honduras. Tegucigalpa is beginning to look a lot like the city of Oaxaca, Mexico in 2006.
September 22, 8:46 pm: After a bizarre press conference held in English and translated into Spanish, in which a staffer, Carlos Lopez Contreras, represented coup "president" Micheletti (without Micheletti being present -- his handlers have hidden him away for good reason), and in "cadena nacional" (broadcast on all stations by law), the regime has extended the curfew now for 50 hours, until 6 pm September 23.
September 22, 8:54 pm: From Quotha.net, more detailed info on the neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood uprising underway in greater Tegucigalpa:
The de facto government, through its violence and denial of constitutional and human rights, has managed what Zelaya alone had not fully succeeded in doing: uniting the entire country in the struggle for freedom. Today, they resistance underwent an important shift: it went local. The following Tegucigalpa neighborhoods are defying the curfew and protesting against the coup d'etat:
Arturo Quesada
Barrio Morazán
Centroamérica Oeste
Cerro Grande
Ciudad Lempira
Colonia 21 de Febrero
Colonia 21 de Octubre
El Bosque
El Chile
Flor del Campo
Hato de Enmedio
Kennedy
La Fraternidad
Pantanal
Pedregal
Picachito
Reparto
Residencial Girasoles
Residencial Honduras
San José de la Vega
Sinaí
Víctor F. Ardón
Villa Olímpica
Villanueva
In some places people have repelled the police, while in others the terrain is in dispute. The police are using live ammunition. Barricades are everywhere. This list was current at 7pm (September 22) local time in Tegucigalpa.
The latest extension of the curfew just announced -- preventing Hondurans from working or shopping all day tomorrow, too -- will only exacerbate this situation.
* * *
Al Giordano from Narconews reports on September 23, 2009:
In recent days, the Honduran coup of "president" Roberto Micheletti has demonstrated, again, that it is incapable democratic governance. Peaceful Hondurans came to the Brazilian embassy to greet their only elected president, Manuel Zelaya, and they were violently driven away with water cannon, tear gas, billy clubs and rubber bullets. National Police then followed the dispersed crowd into the popular barrios to wound and maim them, and invaded homes that provided them refuge. That led to scenes like in the neighbourhood of Hato de Enmedio [see video above], and in more than 20 heavily populated slums in and around Tegucigalpa yesterday.
Clueless desk editors like those at the New York Times titled these conflicts "Riots in Honduras". But you don't need to be able to understand Spanish to see and hear, in the video above, that, distinct from rioters, the young people of the neighbourhood who came out and violated the military curfew to defend their neighbourhood from this police invasion know and have memorised complicated political slogans and rhymes which they chanted in unison. "Riots" are disorganised explosions. This neighbourhood, and others like it, however, have been forced by the realities of the coup to organise themselves to a greater extent than ever before.
In neighbourhoods like Hato de Enmedio, where a majority of Honduras' citizens live, you can also see in the video see that not even the main street in the barrio is paved. Many of the homes have dirt floors as well. And if a citizen is harmed by a robber or predator, you can call the police, but they won't come. People who live in neighbourhoods like this only see the police when they invade, like they did yesterday, to enforce an unenforceable curfew on people who, if they obeyed the curfew, would starve of hunger. A curfew is unsustainable on a people that live hand to mouth, day to day.
We can also see in that video the revelation that the tear-gas canisters shot by the National Police yesterday were stamped as property of the government of Perú, suggesting strongly that Peruvian President Alan García is a participant in smuggling arms to the Honduran coup regime.
Graham Brown, a retired coalminer from Australia's Hunter Valley, is on a national speaking tour to call for a serious program to create green jobs and phase out coal. The tour is being organised by Resistance, a socialist youth organisation. Details of the tour here.
BRISBANE: Fifteen hundred trade unionists and their supporters marched through the streets of Brisbane on July 3 to oppose the sell off of Queensland public assets. The protest had been called by the Electrical Trades Union and later was supported by the Queensland Council of Unions.Addressing the rally were speakers from the QCU, AFULE, ASU and the Rail Tram and Bus Union.
Mick Carr from the Maritime Union of Australia told the rally that there was no upside for a one off fixing of the debt by selling off public assets. Peter Simpson , state secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, said that his union wont be putting one cent into the ALP coffers at the next election if this legislation is still on the books.
He said it was time to put a line in the sand.
David Matters from the Rail Tram and Bus Union told everyone that his union, with community support, had won their fight against the prisatisation of the Brisbane City Council bus service in the 1990s.To applause he said, that it was time to put Anna Bligh under the control of working people.
But the surprize from among the speakers came from ALP state president and Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Secretary, Andrew Dettmar, who said that his union will not be supporting any politician at the next state election unless they make a no privatisation pledge.
The rally was followed by a march to state parliament .
In Wollongong the Socialist Alliance branch is doing great work. There's a significant coming together on the left which suggest that 'left unity' is indeed a very viable project when away from those who would dismiss its promise (and actuality).
Here are 2 reports featuring local SA members and supporters on the recent climate protests.
Chris Williams is the local Socialist Alliance convenor and Jess Moore is national co-organiser of socialist youth organisation Resistance.
Left-wing British MP George Galloway interviews author, activist, and UK SWP member Richard Seymour (of Lenin's Tomb fame) on his (apparently fantabulous) new book, The Liberal Defence of Murder.
That emergency appeal for humanitarian aid for Gaza that BBC refuses to broadcast? Watch it for yourself:
Popout
The video was made when the death toll was "just" "a few hundred," and it is completely apolitical (the word "Israel" doesn't even appear in the script), the power of its images alone is self-evident, making it rather clear why the BBC doesn't want it seen. Reality, in this case, has an anti-Israel bias.
Of course, this hasn't stopped the BBC from retreating in the face of Israeli pressure, for fear of this so-called bias, despite public protests. Veteran Labour socialist Tony Benn took them strongly to task on the matter:
We have 70,000 weekly telly viewers and god knows how many on the web, we have around 150 of you Facebook group members and about the same number in the Save The Union Show Cause (by the way, we haven't saved it yet!!!).
We want to change the media conversation about unions and workers rights. Let the people report for the people instead of the corporations that own them. Labour rights equals human rights!
The right to work in a safe workplace. The right to strong economic management and economic security. The right to education and opportunity. The right to put our own price on our own labour (our time and our bodies and our minds).
Let's make a year of positive outcomes, let's get onto every damn thing that happens.
We start production in February. So I'm opening a forum for content ideas right now. If anyone has ideas about themes, material, actions, events or whatever else that we might cover this year - now's the time.
If anyone wants to volunteer some time, do some research or admin work or learn and use the skills to make real media that speaks the voice of the labour movement - here is your chance. We will take some interns this year.
Message me, email production@skatv.org.au, or post on this page. All contributions will be considered and are most welcome, indeed sought after.
Israel's young conscientious objectors (shministim) tell why they refuse to serve in an army that occupies ``another people'', the Palestinians. From http://www.December18th.org.
Young Israeli `refusenik' soldiers and reservists protest the Gaza assault, January 8, 2009, Tel Aviv. From Social TV (http://www.tv.social.org.il/)
Click HERE for earlier statements by Israeli opponents of Israel's inhuman assault on Gaza.
Solidarity with refusers
By Adam Keller
Gush Shalom -- January 8, 2009 -- Courage to Refuse has resumed its activity after several years and asked everybody to join them in picketing the Ministry of Defence. Courage to Refuse was founded in 2002, by reservists such as paratrooper officer David Zonshein, sickened and disgusted by the things they had seen (and took part in) during the army's efforts to put down the second Intifada. At that time they had a considerable impact, and their call upon reservists to refuse serving the occupation worried the military authorities. But like other groups they were effectively derailed by Sharon's Gaza trick, which placed on the Israeli public a unilateral and woefully incomplete "Disengagement".
The beginning of the "Cast Lead" war in Gaza -– and specifically, the calling up of an increasing number of reservists, being massed at the Gaza Strip borders in preparation to be thrown in -- aroused Courage to Refuse back into action. Some of the activists themselves got call-up orders, and they got urgent calls from many others who were called up and were far from eager to comply. At least three reservists are known to have informed their officers of their outright refusal to go into Gaza, and many others have resorted to various means of "grey refusal" to avoid it.
For their part, the Courage to Refuse organisers drew up a new manifesto on which they are busily collecting the signatures of reservists, both those who were involved before and those were not (see below). A call was issued for a demonstration outside the Ministry of Defence on January 8: "Once again we feel the need to call upon reservists and conscripts to refuse taking part in the brutal killing perpetrated by the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza. The terrible bombing of the UNRWA school in Jabalya Refugee Camp, in which Israeli forces killed more than forty Palestinian civilians in a single moment, increased our determination to act -– coming after hundreds of civilians killed earlier, including many women and children. A killing perpetrated under the pretext of security, under the Blue and White Flag, and in the name of every citizen of Israel. A killing which must not be allowed to continue!"
Members of other groups, such as ourselves of Gush Shalom, were welcomed to join in, but with a caution: "Without in any way detracting from the importance of earlier demonstrations against the war, in order to make an effective appeal to reservists we should use a bit different language than of the slogans used in these. To restrain our anger, however justified, and moderate our narrative. Not to call the Minister of Defence `A murderer' nor term the IDF `a terrorist organisation' (even when at times speaking in this way seems right) but focus on the pure moral call upon soldiers to preserve the 'purity' of their arms and refuse to take part in this madness."
We "radicals" who joined the January 8 action respected the organisers' wishes. The slogans prepared by Courage to Refuse included "Revenge is not security", "Refuse to take part in the in the campaign of bloodshed", "No to the killing of civilians –- in Gaza and Sderot", "Barak creates terror in Gaza", "Refuse to fight in Gaza" (this Hebrew slogan can also be translated as "Refuse to fight against Gaza"), "Refuse to destroy Gaza and Sderot", "The destruction of Gaza produces terror", "Courage to talk -- not to kill". Some of placards had the national Star of David inscribed beside the slogan –- which is far from the rule in other anti-war protests. Even so, the call upon soldiders to refuse orders made it very radical confrontation with the present warlike atmosphere prevailing in the Israeli media and political system.
What next? So far, the military authorities refrained from imprisoning any of the refusing reservists, knowing from the earlier confrontations that any imprisoned refuser would become a focus of solidarity actions from which the movement could grow and snowball. However, the Courage to Refuse organisers now contemplate a sharper action -– i.e., going southwards to the Gaza Strip border, where the army concentrated the already mobilised thousands of reservists who might any day be sent into Gaza, with the government bent on escalating the war in defiance of the Security Council cease-fire resolution. The military authorities might find it impossible to ignore and tacitly tolerate the presence of agitators busily "subverting the troops".
The Gaza Refusal Manifesto
We, soldiers and officers of the IDF To whom the security and future are dear Who understand that the attack in Gaza intensifies the conflict, will bring additional long years of missiles upon growing circles of the Israeli population, and brings terrible disasters upon the peoples in Israel and Palestine alike. We understand that revenge is not security and that the IDF operation in Gaza perpetuates the conflict, and certainly does not help its solution. In light of the above, we hereby declare that we will not take part in the campaign of destruction in Gaza.
It would appear that even dead Palestinians aren't dead enough for Israel's purposes, if they happen to live in Gaza. Having killed over 1000 people in the past 3 weeks (including over 300 children), the Israeli Occupation (and Chid-murdering) Forces have decided to kill those terrorist babies one more time, for good measure. Or were there weapons hidden in the coffins? I forget.
Either way, as limbs and rotting guts from recently buried victims of Israel's war-crimes [or not. The International Criminal Court is doubly and triply washing its hands of jurisdiction in Gaza, on the back of endless petitions that Israel be tried for what most of the world can see plain as day. Of course, this didn't stop them in Sudan] were flung through the windows of neighbouring houses, Israel got along with their next stage of "fighting terror" - testing experimental weapons by burning refugees with white phosphorous that burns flesh down to the bone.
Because, you know, if they run away they must be guilty of something, right? Like being Palestinian? Or working for the United Nations?
Looks like Tzipi Livni's election campaign's coming along nicely, then. Especially now that those pesky Arab party's won't get to take part and interfere with the "only democracy in the Middle East". Mind you, Livni's idea of what constitutes democracy clearly leave a little to be desired:
Mind you, when you have Israeli academics whose solution to the Gaza issue is like that below, Livni seems positiviely moderate...
Apparently, Arnon Sofer, a Jewish Israeli intellectual, "teaches" at Haifa University that:
"When 2.5 million [Palestinians] live in a closed-off Gaza, those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day. If we don't kill, we will cease to exist. The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the [Jewish] boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings." (Jerusalem Post weekend supplement Up Front, May 21, 2004. quoted here)
But who cares, anyway? Israel certainly doesn't. They can't even be arsed keeping their story straight:
And just in case you thought Israel's upporters might be well-meaning but merely misguided, Max Blumenthal went along to the pro-Israel rallies in New York, attended by a number of major Democratic politicians, and some of the statements made there will send shivers down your spine [eat your heart out Paul Sheehan]:
We appeal to the youth to express its indignation, to protest, to condemn and to make, through its organised struggle, accountable politically and criminally those responsible for the police attacks.
Schools, universities, TEI (Technical Education Institutes), IEK (Vocational Training institutes) and evening schools should be closed down. The mass organisations should release statements condemning the police attacks and organise mass demonstrations and rallies. The youth along with the popular labor movement should participate organised in:
i) the demonstration organised by KKE and KNE throughout Greece against the state authoritarianism (in Athens at 18:00 in Omonia)
ii) in the general strike on Wednesday 10/12 along with the class oriented movement, PAME, in the rallies organised in 63 towns throughout Greece (in Athens at 10:30 in Omonia)
Dear comrades
Some information about the developments in Greece:
Activities of KKE (Communist party) and KNE (Greek Communist Youth)
Since the first moment KKE and KNE spoke out condemning the murder of the 15-year-old boy by the police, and highlighting the huge political responsibilities of ND’s government and noting that the anti-democratic and authoritarian measures and attitudes, the state repression, are the natural supplement of a policy that delivers blow after blow to the labour and social rights of the workers and the youth.
A KKE delegation went to central police headquarters in Athens on Sunday and lodged a protest over the death of the young boy, whose funeral will take place today at 3 pm.
Yesterday, December 8th, the KKE held a series of protests and demonstrations in the major cities of Greece against the state repression. In Athens the General Secretary of the CC pf KKE Aleka Papariga addressed a massive rally in the centre of the city. She noted that the events that led to the murder of the boy is an “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by a policy that considers people as the enemy, by a policy that detests the strike, the demonstration, the struggle.
Also, the MPs of KKE submitted a parliamentary question to the government over the case.
At the same time the KKE has also called upon the trade unions and other mass organizations of the people and the youth to organize their own mass protest actions, stressing that the state repression and authoritarianism target first and foremost the labour and peoples’ movement.
Since morning of Monday December 8th, all faculties are closed upon initiative of KNE
The students’ coordination board of Athens has decided to close all schools from 8-10 of December and has called for a demonstration on 9 of December in Athens, while strong local students’ protests take place all over the country.
Also today December 9th, 24-hours strikes have been declared by the professors in the secondary schools and higher education, while the civil servants will hold work stoppage after 12 pm. The funeral of the murdered boy.
Higher Education Professors are staging a 24-hour strike on Tuesday indicating their bereavement to the loss of 15-year-old Alexis. Kindergarten a primary schools will remain open. However, the teachers’ Federation is staging a strike. The funeral of the 15-year-old will take place at Faliron cemetery at 15:00
For Wednesday, December 10, the general strike that had been announced over the pensions, salaries, against lay-offs, for the right to education and healthcare, will be definitely linked to the events.
About the riots
At the same time KKE stressed that what is needed today is political condemnation of the government, of the whole net of mechanisms of intimidation and state repression, including the invisible ones. The reply to state autocracy is organised struggle within a mass movement in order to ensure the true causes were not covered up.
The continuous organized and co-ordinated riots that we witness parallel to the huge mobilizations and protests have little to do with spontaneous expression of anger and rage, and more and more take the form of open provocations against the growing wave of protest. In any case the way to react does not lie in retaliatory riots. On the contrary such events are quite accommodating for those that want to impose fear and intimidation to the people, who are trying to prevent the emergence of an organized and mighty mass movement that will be able to to sweep not only the ND and any other anti-peoples’ government, and pave the way for a real change at the level of the power in favour of the people. They will be used as an excuse for the further intensification of anti-democratic and repressive measures and attitudes.
The political context
The events found Greece in a moment when peoples’ unrest was growing, and the position of the ND government was already quite difficult. The recently announced “crisis measures” in favour of the monopolies, the demands of the industrialists for further reversal of labour and social rights – the even spoke of working week of 4 days!-, the state budget, the scandals, the rising toll of lay-offs have already built up dissatisfaction. At the same time centres of the establishment make concrete efforts in order to rejuvenate the system of the bi-partisan alteration that was loosing reliability before the eyes of the popular strata. In fact, at the last opinion polls PASOK appears to be on the lead. In the opinion of KKE the most urgent task is the stepping up of the mass, organized action of the labour and people’s movement. Only this can provide an adequate response to the anti-peoples policy and the repressive measures, can check and isolate maneuvers, provocations and plans to entrap the emerging radicalism, and at the same time pave the way for positive developments for the people.
There is also extensive discussion taking place at Lenin's Tomb.
István Mészáros: First of all, I would like to be fair to Gordon Brown. Our friend mentioned here that he promised to abolish boom and bust. And we must concede he managed to keep half of his promise. He abolished boom, but not bust. And there's compensation. We get the second half of it in great abundance. That is what we are talking about today.
