ROSA PARKS LIVES.

      

       Another post on the Palestinian's fight against the Israeli state's apartheid. Apart from all its other injustices against the Palestinian people, the country that shouts about being the only democracy in the Middle East, doesn't let Palestinians ride on the same buses as Israeli settlers, and those courageous individuals that set about challenging that injustice have been forcibly removed from the buses by the Israeli army and the Israeli police, then arrested. Democracy my arse. This report from the CodePink Group.

Dear John,

       I just returned home to Washington after spending 72 hours in Israeli prison. Why? Because I was aboard the Canadian boat that tried to sail to Gaza, part of the most recent “Freedom Waves” flotilla that was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters, breaking international law. I was the only American civilian delegate* on the boat and am returning to the US with a clear message for our lawmakers: Tell Israel to lift the unlawful blockade on Gaza and stop enabling Israeli war crimes!

        There’s another dangerous passage – this time over land – that just happened this morning: six courageous Palestinian activists boarded a settler-only public bus and attempted to sit down and ride it from the Ramallah area into East Jerusalem, in the great tradition of the Freedom Rides that challenged segregation in the South. At approximately 5:15pm in the occupied West Bank today Israeli military forces boarded the buses and violently arrested the Freedom Riders. They were taken to a detention center at Atarot Prison and held for hours. Replay the livestream here.

► URGENT: Send a letter to the State Department.► Tweet this!
► Find local actions planned around the US today here. CODEPINKers plan to join actions in NYC, DC, LA, and SF.

       Want to do more? Palestinian Freedom Riders will be riding Veolia and Egged buses – Veolia is the target of an international BDS campaign. Are there Veolia buses, offices, or SuperShuttle (a Veolia subsidiary) in your city? Click here to download an organizing toolkit from Jewish Voice for Peace and find out how to participate in the Veolia boycott here. You can also make your local bus a vehicle for change: Join DC CODEPINK, Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine, Sabeel and allies to bring this ad campaign to your public transit.

        This courageous action is part of the Week Against the Apartheid Wall. Last week the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, held in South Africa, concluded that the situation in Palestine and Israel is apartheid. Read the findings here. Testimony on Ahava by CODEPINK’s Nancy K and Rae is included in a new book from the Russell Tribunal titled Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation.

* Would you like me to speak in your community or school? Email me at marnykit@gmail.com – I’m eager to share my experience on the flotilla, and also during past trips to Gaza with CODEPINK.

Riding the waves of change,
Kit Kittredge

… and the CODEPINK Middle East Team: Alli, Kristen, Nancy K, Medea, Rae, Sasha, and Tighe
PS: More breaking news: Occupy Wall Street was raided by police last night. Support the national day of action at the Occupy near you Thursday, Nov 17. Follow @womenows for the latest updates.

ann arky's home.

EXPLOITATION -- SHE GOT IT RIGHT.

          It is strange that the Western mainstream media made very little, if any mention, of the Occupy Wall St movement. That is until the eviction in Wall St., then, lo and behold, there it was on my TV  midday news. Now it was just an argument between some protesters and the city authorities. To have reported on the occupation before the evictions would have meant discussing why they were there. That is not what the media want to do, they don't want to show ordinary people being organised and conducting themselves in a democratic and dignified way, putting forward coherent and valid arguments against the present system. Much better to show them in conflict with the police. So as the evictions move across the American continent we can expect to see more cover in the mainstream media. However what we should take from this is that it is a national movement, across the whole country, and not as they would have us believe, a bunch of young hippies. Not only is it happening in America but it is also happening in Europe, and with the "austerity cuts" set to bite harder in Greece and Italy, almost immediately, and then to other countries, we should hope to see that the ordinary people across America and the whole of Europe will take the occupy movement to its natural and logical conclusion and occupy everything.

ann arky's home.

DIAMONDS AND DEPRIVATION??

         An item of news that might not catch the eye of those at the receiving end of the financial Mafia’s drive for austerity cuts, I'm referring to the coming sale of the Sundrop yellow diamond. This is quite a pretty piece of shiny stuff, kinda like yellow glass. This piece of carbon rock that was dug out off the ground, might not be your thing or mine, but, it is expected to go in the auction for somewhere around £7 million. So as you and your friends sit around discussing the hardships being inflicted on you, don't for one moment think we are all in this together. The hardship is for you and I, the fat-richcats, responsible for devising these austerity cuts, have no intention of including themselves. They and their millionaire friends will be at the diamond auction, throwing in a bid or two for that Sundrop yellow diamond. After all, what is £7 million here or there for such a lovely piece of rock.

Times are hard, I had to drop out of the Sundrop diamond auction.

      Wages cut/frozen, pensions cut, education decimated, health care privatised, libraries closed, social benefits slashed, uneployment rising, the very fabric of what little social justice we have won, being viciously removed, and Victorian poverty the only future our kids are being offered. That's the deal, you sink in the shit, and those who created this mess and pass the legislation to ensure your poverty and the protection of their wealth, flutter around the diamond markets of the world nodding a million bid here and a million bid there.

       I see this diamond auction as a graphic display of all that is wrong in this corrupt and exploitive system. The few throw millions at trinkets, while the millions struggle to live a half decent life, and in most cases, fail miserable. Their failure is not down to their lack of ability, but directly linked to the grasping greed of those in control of this stinking system, the ones who throw the millions at glossy trinkets.

ann arky's home.

ISRAELI APARTHEID.

 

         Day and daily the Palestinian people face the harsh and brutal repression of the Israeli apartheid system. It took many years of struggle by the people of South Africa to dismantle the apartheid system in that country, and let's not forget the civil rights movement in America to break down such a system in that country, here we are in the 21 century and the stench of apartheid has not been removed from the earth. The fact that such an inhumane system is still pursued is not just an indictment against the Israeli state, but also an indictment against the international community, that includes you and I.

This is an appeal for support for the Palestinian people from AVAAZ.

  

Dear friends,

In hours, brave Palestinians will risk attack and arrest to board public buses that are forbidden to Arabs. This could be the beginning of a game-changing, non-violent Palestinian spring -- direct action to win freedom and a new state. Avaaz is webcasting the action LIVE -- click to watch, and provide the global solidarity the activists need to win:

     In the next few hours, history could be made in Palestine. A small number of brave Palestinians will risk attack and arrest to commit a forbidden act -- they will board a public bus.
     Lacking their own state, Palestinians are forbidden to use buses and roads reserved for non-Arabs -- part of a host of race-based rules that US President Jimmy Carter has called "apartheid". 50 years ago, African-Americans in the US challenged these rules by simply and non-violently refusing to follow them. In a few hours, Palestinians will take the same approach, and their actions will be live webcasted by Avaaz teams at the link below.
    As diplomats stall in the fight for a Palestinian state, the Palestinian people are taking the fight into their own hands, one public service at a time. And they're doing it with the simple, elegant and unstoppable moral force of non-violence in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The Palestinian spring begins right now - click below to watch it LIVE, register support, and give these brave activists the global solidarity and attention they urgently need to win:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/palestine_freedom_riders/?vl

     Non-violence is the game-changing force in this long-standing conflict. Boarding buses is a symbolic act, but so was Gandhi's salt march, and Rosa Park's own courageous ride on a segregated bus in the US. Just as non-violent protest was able to topple dictators in Egypt and Tunisia, so can it finally free the Palestinian people from 40 years of crippling military oppression by a foreign power.
     There are many dangers. Israel has been arming the extremist settler population, a tactic which is likely, if not intended, to provoke awful violence that will draw the news cameras away from the brave acts of non-violence. Even the Palestinian authorities are pushing back on the action which they fear will start a democratic protest movement that they cannot control. But these few brave Palestinians have had enough, and if we stand with them now, we can help them ignite a flame that will burn its way all the way to a free and peaceful Palestinian state:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/palestine_freedom_riders/?vl

     We have no idea what will happen in the next 24 hours. Maybe the authorities will crush this brave action. Maybe it will spark into a massive conflagration. Maybe it will sow the first seed of an unstoppable movement with tremendous integrity. But we can watch it live, and lend our voices to the effort. And maybe one day, we can tell our grandchildren that we were there when Palestinians boarded the buses that would ultimately take them to freedom.

With hope and determination,
Ricken, Emma, Alice, Raluca, Pascal, Diego and the rest of the Avaaz team

 

Sources:
I Woke Up This Morning with My Mind Set on Freedom
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/clarence-b-jones/i-woke-up-this-morning-wi_b_1087407.html

Freedom Riders: 1961 and the struggle for racial justice
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/books/review/19foner.html

Palestinian Freedom Rides echo the Civil Rights Movement
http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/topics/news/3888-freedom-rides

'Freedom Rides' to Resume in Palestine
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=17242

---

 

ann arky's home.

POLICE BRUTALITY.

This short video speaks for itself. Whether it be at a protest, on the streets at night, police brutality is brutality and has no legal basis and is unnecessary and provocative. Minimum force is the only way to treat another human being.

ann arky's home.

THE PRIVATISATION OF OUR HEALTH SERVICE.

        The privatisation of the National Health Service is steadily moving along. It is of course disguised as many things, from incompetence of management, inefficiency of all the staff and the service they give, and of course the big propaganda lie, that the corporate world could do it all much better and much cheaper. The fact that our health service probably rates with the best in the world, is never taken into account, we still have to move towards the American model. America, a country where there are over 46 million people who have no health cover what so ever.

       Our millionaire ConDem cabinet, of course will do everything in their power to see that the corporate world gets its greedy hands on all our public assets, and the Health Service is seen as a prize gem, where billions can be made. After all those who rule the corporate world are the friends and old school mates of our millionaire cabal in the Westminster Houses of Corruption and Hypocrisy. So they will do what they can to help their friends, and besides, most of them will have a million or two invested in the various private healthcare companies across the globe.

        Reading the letters in The Guardian on line, recently, there were two that I thought threw a lot of light on the subject of the National Health Service privatisation, here they are.

Your report (11 November) that the management of Hinchingbrooke hospital will be taken over by the private company Circle Healthcare and that the government sees this as a solution for "cash-strapped NHS hospitals" like this one which "has accumulated debts of £40m" fails to question the economics behind this idea. Surely, as a service free to patients, an NHS hospital cannot make money or get into debt.

The 20 hospitals said to be struggling financially are short of cash because of the artificial constraints of the internal market initiated under John Major, much loved by New Labour and currently being converted towards full privatisation under the Con-Dem government. For 30 years our governments have told us to love the free market, but privatised public services are run under rigged markets to allow private companies to profit at the expense of taxpayers. Now the economic imbalances of the NHS's internal market are being used as propaganda in moving towards full privatisation of health on the disastrous American model, a real free market that favours the rich.

When will the media attack the gobbledegook economics of Cameron and Lansley? A free NHS has the amount of money the government decides to spend on it. Its hospitals do not get into "debt".
Name omitted. London

• It is perhaps little wonder Circle Healthcare was given the go-ahead to run the Hinchingbrooke hospital. The company recruited a former aide to health secretary Andrew Lansley as head of communications. Christina Lineen spent two years working for Lansley prior to him becoming health secretary. In addition, Conservative MP for Boston & Skegness Mark Simmonds, who was a minister when the healthcare reforms were drawn up, was paid £50,000 a year to work just 10 hours a month as "strategic adviser" to Circle Healthcare. These cases are of course not alone; members from all main parties have direct links to companies that will benefit from the increase in NHS privatisation. Our democracy is broken.
Name omitted. London

 ann arky's home.

NATO, TRIBAL WARRIORS, AND OIL.

          After 7 months of NATO blasting the infrastructure of Libya so that a mixed bag of rival tribal groups and religious fundamentalists could take over, Libya is not a peaceful place. Over the last 4 days or so there have been clashes in and around Tripoli with armed groups firing all manner of weapons at each other. To the west of Tripoli there has been fierce fighting between the city of Zawiya and the tribal lands of Warshefana which was still continuing today Sunday. The residents of Tripoli are complaining that armed groups have taken over many “desirable” locations in the city, including a gated seaside resort.

        This is the bunch of self interested groups, now armed to the teeth, that we have unleashed on the Libyan people. We spent billions of our tax payers money destroying many of the Libyan towns and cities, then handed the rubble to tribal warriors and religious fundamentalists, but we did get our hands on the oil. The oil that gave the Libyan people free health care, free education, a lump sum on the birth of their first child, a deposit for newly weds to help to purchase their first house, cheap fuel and free clean drinking water. Now that the West controls the oil, and now that Libya has joined the “free democratic capitalist West” how much of the oil money will the Libyan people see, and how much will go towards their “free” infrastructure and social services,? Oh, and bye-bye 19p a gallon petrol. That's capitalism for you.

ann arky's home.

AUSTERITY MEASURES = DANCING IN THE STREETS!!!

       After the Italian parliament passed the legislation to introduce “austerity measures” demanded by the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers) The mainstream media started spouting such headlines as “Italian austerity measures welcomed”. I wonder who was welcoming them, I doubt that the ordinary Italian will welcome them, I don't see them dancing on the streets once these “austerity” measures bite. So after the coup in Italy by the corporate financial world, the people's living standards are to be slashed, and the measures are “welcomed”. It is obvious who they are talking about, it's got to be the wanker bankers. It is only natural that they will want the tax payers money to end up in their coffers rather than being spent on such wasteful things as the fabric of civilised society. Health care, education, pensions, if people want such luxuries then let them buy them from the corporate world at a profit, that makes sense to to the financial Mafia. The concept of social care and mutual aid are abhorrent to those who have money flowing through their veins.

These are difficult times, we welcome austerity measures.

         A coup by the corporate financial world in two European countries in recent weeks, first Greece, now Italy, who is next to see the thin veneer of democracy thrown aside? Is the elected government of Spain in their sights, are they the next government to be forced to set aside the elected government and set up an unelected “interim” government of “intellectuals”? By that they mean someone that the IMF consider a safe pair of hands to do the transfer of taxpayers money to the banks, after all they need liquidity, and what better kind than that which comes free from the tax payer. Of course these countries in which there has been or will be a coup, will be allowed to have elections AFTER the full set of “austerity” measures are in place and there has been a fire sale of all their public assets. I believe the proper name for such a system is corporate fascism. 

 

ann arky's home.

TURNING PAPER INTO MONEY.

         Like you I have always been puzzled by money, how does it come about, and why can one bunch print paper and call it money and if I or any other bunch of people do it it is an offence. This little video is a simple lesson in capitalist economics. I particularly like his theory that a man's willy is central to holiness!!

 

ann arky's home.

POMP, PRIVILEGE, PARASITES AND PISS ARTISTS.

          Is this the inside story of Eton, the training ground for the off-spring of parasites. Eton, where privilege is taught as a given, a place where its output, is people who have never lived a day in the real world, but get handed the job of telling people in the real world how to live. Eton, the home of pomp, privilege, parasites and piss artists.

ann arky's home.

THE ANARCHIST CRITIC.

The latest issue of The Anarchist Critic, Issue 95, can be viewed and downloaded as a PDF HERE.

ann arky's home.

OCCUPY WALL STREET.

       The Occupy movement is still growing, it may be stagnant in some towns and cities but that's not the story in most cities, irrespective of what the mainstream media spout. This a report from the Occupy Wall St event by somebody who is there doing his thing. It would be good to give live reports from all over the world a much wider audience, so that the public are aware of what is going on and encourage more to participate.

Listen to internet radio with polizeros on Blog Talk
Radio

ann arky's home.

WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY.

The beginnings of CNT in Spain, a time of extreme poverty and brutal repression. Don't ever believe that the present system can't return you to those conditions. Cheap labour is the dream and life blood of the corporate system and the present austerity cuts is a step in that direction. Workers, know your history and learn from that history. The answer is there, we don't need to re-invent the wheel.
        Read some of Glasgow's working class history HERE.

ann arky's home.

EUROPEAN COUP - TWICE OVER!!

        Here in the West the powers that be always state that they are not involved in regime change. Whether it be Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or elsewhere, they will emphasise that regime change is illegal and not on their agenda. However, nearer home we have seen regime change, right here in Europe. Recently we have seen the Greek government put under pressure from the financial markets because the Prime Minister had the audacity to want to give the people the right to decide on the conditions of their bailout by means of a referendum. The “markets” went bananas, and pressure was put on the Prime Minister to resign. Without any attempt to involve the people, the Prime Minister resigned and an interim government formed with a banker at its head, guess whose side we'll be on?

        No election, no referendum, just a change of regime at the behest of the financial markets. This was rapidly followed by the same procedure in Italy, where the Italian Prime Minister was forced to resign. The change of regime was again not at the request of the people, but from pressure from the financial markets. Two European countries forced into regime change by powers outside their borders. No bombs, no military invasion but never the less a powerful force dictating what was to happen to the people of a sovereign country. The elected government of two separate European countries, usurped by a foreign power, in other words, a coup in two countries within a couple of weeks of each other. European democracy at work.

ann arky's home.

SOLIDARITY WORKS.

       Those how took part in the campaign for the realse of the two trade union leaders in Fiji, will be delighted to know and should feel proud, that they have been released. Solidarity works, direct action and solidarity the keystones to changing the world. 

From Labour Start;

     Less than 24 hours after we launched a publicity blitz in support of our online campaign demanding the release of the two jailed trade union leaders from Fiji (pictured above), they have both been released. That campaign is now over.
      There is still much work to be done regarding Fiji - it is still a military dictatorship which doesn't respect workers' rights. But it is still a victory - for us, for Felix and Daniel, and for the international trade union movement.
       Online campaigns work! Please make sure to visit http://www.labourstart.org/actnowen.shtml and sign up to any campaigns you've not yet supported. And spread the word in your union.

 And while we're celebrating - three more things you should know:

SOLIDARITY.

Korea's Hanjin workers - also the subject of a big LabourStart campaign earlier this year - have now won a victory. We'll have lots more coverage in the next few hours and days, but here's one report.

Are pineapples's an "ethical" fruit? Read about Make Fruit Fair's online campaign in support of workers rights in Costa Rica.

Finally, it's Monica's birthday on Monday. Who's Monica and why should you care? Click here.

Thanks!
Eric Lee

ann arky's home.

PRISON FOR UNION LEADERS.

           In most of the developed countries in the world we can take union participation for granted, but we should never lose sight of the fact that, it is because of the courage and determination of those early groups and individuals who fought long and courageously for that very basic right, sometimes ending in prison, sometimes paying with their lives. Their determined struggle allows us to play our part on our union, but it is not like that in other developing countries, where the employers in conjunction with the state, will do anything and everything, legal or illegal to prevent workers from becoming organised. They are going through now what we went through  in our not so distant past. A show of solidarity can make all the difference to those being persecuted and also to those doing the persecution, they don't like the adverse publicity from abroad.

An appeal from Labour Start.

       The military dictatorship ruling Fiji has arrested the country's two most prominent trade union leaders. 

    On November 4, police arrested Felix Anthony, General Secretary of the Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) and searched both the union headquarters as well as his home.

       Anthony’s arrest follows closely the arrest of Daniel Urai, President of the FTUC, who has remained in detention since his return from the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting in Perth, Australia in late October.
       The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is calling on trade unionists around the world to mobilise in our thousands and send messages of protest to the Fijian government.

Please take a moment to send your message today:

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=1155
And please forward this message to as many people as possible.

Thank you.
Eric Lee

ann arky's home.