Greece is living through its biggest crisis since the downfall of the military junta in the summer of 1974 – a consequence of the world economic crisis and the historical decadence of the Greek bourgeois elite. The same internal tendencies – with more or less the same characteristics as in the USA in 2008, at the beginning of the world economic crisis – are manifested in Greece today in an explosive form.All the social conquests of the working class since 1974 have been lost in the last three years. Since the end of the second world war, there has never been, in a period of peace, such a dramatic decline in the standard of living of the majority of the population of any country in Europe, or such a violent redistribution of wealth in such a limited time.The crisis has given rise to an assault not only on the working class, but also on the middle class, which is being destroyed today. And here it should be noted that in 2009 the petty bourgeoisie is two or three times larger, as part of a proportion of the total population, than in the so-called developed capitalist countries.In November 2012, unemployment reached 30% – and 80% of the unemployed received no benefits. Since 2009, the real income of ordinary people has been reduced by 40%. And the downfall will continue in the next year.The minimum daily wage for people below the age of 25 is 22 euros, and for those above 25, 26 euros. Three million people, in a population of less than 11 million, are living below the poverty line. There are 40,000 homeless. The suicide rate is rising dramatically especially among the destroyed middle class. In tens of thousands of homes, the electricity has been cut off. Crime is rife.
I'm Dreaming of a Red and Black Christmas'Twas the night before Christmas, And all through the land,Factory workers were slaving to meet high demand,For video games, DVDs, and cheaply built toys,To be given the next morning to spoiled American girls and boys.The workers had had it, They were at their wits end,Worked day and night with no time off, The bosses would not bend.Then over the loudspeaker on one factory floor,Boomed a fat boss's voice, "WORK FASTER! PRODUCE MORE!”“Our profits are way up, but not quite enough,Our shareholders aren't happy – you've got to make more stuff!”That was the last straw. The workers would take no more abuse,So they stopped working and jammed up the machines 'till they were of no more good use.And with a collective burst of rage, the workers cried,“That's enough! We've had it with this shit!” They marched up to the boss's office and demanded, “If you don't give us some time off, we're all going to quit!”“Quit?!”, laughed the boss, “Go ahead, not a problem!”I'll have your replacements here by 4 AM tomorrow!”“Plenty of poor schmucks need a job so badly,I can pay them peanuts, and they'll take this shitty job – GLADLY!”“In fact,” smirked the boss, “I'll save you AND me the trouble...“YOU'RE ALL FIRED! Now get your asses out of here, ON THE DOUBLE!”Well, what happened next can't really be told,Because no worker who was there that day will tell,Of the action taken that was so bold. All we know for sure is that after that day,A whole new meaning was given to the phrase “Christmas sleigh”...On that cold snowy Christmas Eve night the news spread like wildfire,And suddenly, the workers' situation didn't seem so dire. Throughout the land in every factory around,Workers rose up with this new boldness they had found.They eliminated their bosses and formed democratic workers councils instead,And from that day ever after, it was called “Red and Black Christmas”,because hierarchy in the workplace... ...was finally dead.by adamgkrause
Read the full article HERE: As I keep saying, workers, know your history.A plot by the state against a weak government of the day, unable to govern on its own, amidst a grave economic crisis. Sounds familiar? Well, this is not actually about “plebgate” and the Tories – though it could just as well be – but Harold Wilson and Labour.Wilson was prime minister from 1964-70 and again from 1974 to his sudden and dramatic resignation in 1976. Later he would claim that the spy agency MI5 had wanted him out. And that army officers had been plotting a takeover.Wilson was right on both counts.In 1968, a period of mass upheavals in Britain and worldwide, senior army officers, together with press baron Lord Cecil King, Lord Mountbatten and intelligence agency figures, discussed staging a coup to overthrow a Labour government thought to be in the pockets of the trade unions.A global economic crisis followed America’s decision in 1971 to end the system of fixed currencies established at Bretton Woods after the Second World War. Inflation spiralled out of control. Oil prices tripled and miners took industrial action. Much of Britain was on a three-day week in 1973-4 as power supplies dwindled.
The plans for a coup were dusted down when Labour was returned to office in 1974 after miners’ industrial action had brought down the Tory government of Edward Heath. Heath asked voters to say “who rules Britain?”. A minority Labour government took office.Out of the blue, a series of joint police/army exercises were held at Heathrow Airport. The first of these was held in January 1974, while Heath was still in power but the remaining three were held in June, July and September. They were labelled “anti-terror” operations.
From a Friend.
"we were informed that it would shortly be demolished, in order to test the ground for chemical contamination, in order to show that Glasgow is serious about bidding for the 2018 Youth Olympics." Eh!
A friend of mine's father was one of those who designed and erected the Astronomically Aligned Sighthill Stone Circle, which is in danger of the being taken down in the near future with area re-development
There is information on the circle
www.sighthillstonecircle.net<http://www.sighthillstonecircle.net>
And there is a petition as well
http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/glasgow-city-council-scrap-their-plans-to-demolish-sighthill-park-and-its-stone-circleIn 1978-79 the Glasgow Parks Astronomy Project designed and built the first astronomically aligned stone circle for at least 3,500 years, in Sighthill Park in Glasgow. The circle was intended to be an educational tool and visitor attraction, but has been neglected by the City Council hitherto. Land & Environmental Services (successors to the Parks Dept) have wanted to renovate and complete it since 2001, but for various reasons it hasn’t happened yet. On November 26th (the day before a book about the circle was published worldwide!) we were informed that it would shortly be demolished, in order to test the ground for chemical contamination, in order to show that Glasgow is serious about bidding for the 2018 Youth Olympics. Sighthill Park was a chemical factory at one time, but in order for the Project to get planning approval to build the stone circle, the parks contractors had to test the site thoroughly for chemical contamination in 1978 and there was none. The circle is now attracting worldwide interest and should be a major attraction for the Olympic Village and subsequent development, rather than ‘an unfinished piece of 1970s public art’ as the Council employee concerned insists on describing it. The Herald, Sunday Express and BBC Scotland have all given support to the campaign, and there are several petitions in circulation. The main one has over 500 signatures to date. Any additions to this petiton would be great for the campaign. Thank you
Friends of Sighthill Stone Circle
www.sighthillstonecircle.net<http://www.sighthillstonecircle.net>
Under the pretext of the search, then, they materialise a long-standing wet dream of theirs: their raid into a space that is one of the spatial symbols of all those who stand in hostility against anything that represents sovereignty, imposition, sterilization, indifference, surrender, subjection. In this they are right. That’s who we are. Us and the thousands of demonstrators, the people in struggle, squatters, strikers, people fighting in the streets. We are the homeless, the punks and the rebels, the vegetarians and the feminists, the nocturnal ones and the workers, poor and the aggrieved, the victims of racism and the avengers of injustice. The minister called us an epicentre of lawlessness…
Read the full article HERE:Today, December 20th, 2012 at 7am police forces raided Villa Amalias squat. Pretext for this oppressive exhibition of power has been an ‘anonymous complaint’ to the police. Eight comrades (six Greek-born and two from abroad) who were inside the squat have been arrested and taken to the GADA police headquarters on Alexandras avenue, where they are still being held.Comrades who came to the area in solidarity with the squatters were also detained by repression motorcycle units, while the same happened to other comrades who were caught inside the Athens City Hall, on Liosion street, where they had gone to make an intervention against the repression mayor Giorgos Kaminis. (The latter were reportedly released after a while.)From the beginning of the raid, dozens of comrades gathered outside the squat; we remain on Acharnon street till this moment calling out for solidarity.Mayors and ministers just get it through your head: not even in your wildest dreams could you take Villa Amalias from us.
Read the full article HERE:The visiting room of the SeaTac Federal Detention Center is bleak. Prison is supposed to be bleak, but it's difficult to appreciate how bleak it is until you've walked inside—past the grim security checkpoint, the sallow-faced chaplain with the giant keys hanging from his pants, the many heavy doors that slam shut behind you like a metal thunderclap, the off-white walls and institutional lighting that seem to suck the color out of everyone's hair and clothes, the frosted-over windows to block any view of the outside world, and into the visiting room with its plastic chairs arranged in sets of four with a guard sitting in a high booth, presiding over the room like a bored judge.And the waiting. Lots and lots of waiting.
This story was produced with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.Read the full article HERE:
Two years ago, Harvard professor Kathryn Edin was in Baltimore interviewing public housing residents about how they got by. As a sociologist who had spent a quarter century studying poverty, she was no stranger to the trappings of life on the edge: families doubling or tripling up in apartments, relying on handouts from friends and relatives, selling blood plasma for cash. But as her fieldwork progressed, Edin began to notice a disturbing pattern. "Nobody was working and nobody was getting welfare," she says. Her research subjects were always pretty strapped, but "this was different. These people had nothing coming in."
Edin shared her observations with H. Luke Shaefer, a colleague from the University of Michigan. While the income numbers weren't literally nothing, they were pretty darn close. Families were subsisting on just a few thousand bucks a year. "We pretty much assumed that incomes this low are really, really rare," Shaefer told me. "It hadn't occurred to us to even look."
Curious, they began pulling together detailed household Census data for the past 15 years. There was reason for pessimism. Welfare reform had placed strict time limits on general assistance and America's ongoing economic woes were demonstrating just how far the jobless could fall in the absence of a strong safety net. The researchers were already aware of a rise in "deep poverty," a term used to describe households living at less than half of the federal poverty threshold, or $11,000 a year for a family of four. Since 2000, the number of people in that category has grown to more than 20 million—a whopping 60 percent increase. And the rate has grown from 4.5 percent of the population to 6.6 percent in 2011, the highest in recent memory save 2010, which was just a tad worse (6.7 percent).
But Edin and Shaefer wanted to see just how deep that poverty went. In doing so, they relied on a World Bank marker used to study the poor in developing nations: This designation, which they dubbed "extreme" poverty, makes deep poverty look like a cakewalk. It means scraping by on less than $2 per person per day, or $2,920 per year for a family of four.
In a report (PDF) published earlier this year by the University of Michigan's National Poverty Center, Edin and Shaefer estimated that nearly 1 in 5 low-income American households were living in extreme povery; since 1996, the number of households in that category had increased by about 130 percent (118 percent if you use the latest numbers available). Among the truly destitute were 2.8 million children. Even if you counted food stamps as cash, half of those kids were still being raised in homes whose weekly take wasn't enough to cover a trip to Applebee's.
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Read the full article HERE:There are a million factors that contributed to this, but I'd be remised if i didn't point out the hypocrisy and jingoistic nature of most of these responses. This is the shit we fund in Gaza, this is what our drones do daily throughout Islamic World. Tens of thousands of thousands of people have been killed by the American Empire in the past 10 years, and you'd be hard pressed to find as many American tears for our victims overseas. That is not to take anything away from this tragedy or equivocate, this was an utterly horrific act. If we really want to put an end to end to the mass shootings, we must begin to heal the society and culture that spawns them.
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Read the full article HERE:
The first problem is that in Greece now we have 25 per cent unemployment, with youth unemployment reaching 58 per cent and unemployment in areas that used to be highly industrialised sometimes reaching 70-80 per cent. Many industries either close because we have very low consumption or, as in the case of the big multinationals like Coca-Cola, they are leaving.
Around 170,000 small companies have closed in the past three years. It is almost impossible to set up a new company today in Greece because you can’t get the finance. The banks are taking 80 per cent of the money that Greece is getting from the EU and IMF. But they are not lending a euro to the people.
Unemployment benefit only lasts for one year, and then you get nothing to survive on – only help from friends and family, from social networks and working for very little in the black economy. The problem up to now hasn’t been as severe as it could have been because of very strong family and friendship networks – if someone had difficulty in paying bills, for example, others would support them. But it isn’t possible to sustain this kind of support indefinitely.
Read the full article HERE:Don't do it, Wiggo!
Bradley Wiggins, heroic winner of the Tour de France, Olympic gold medallist and BBC sports personality of the year, with sideburns that help mark him out from the crowd, is reported to have accepted a knighthood. My message to him is simple: don’t do it Wiggo!Don’t let us see a picture of you kneeling before the Queen to become Sir Bradley. Do what Olympic opening ceremony creator Danny Boyle has done and say “No”.You were brought up by your mum in a small flat in Kilburn, north London. Your absent father’s passion for cycling rubbed off on you and the legendary Herne Hill velodrome in south London, was where you started out.You became popular through your common touch, your rapport with ordinary people. So much so that the French took you to their hearts, especially when you made jokes in their language.So why join the establishment? Why join the elite? Why help out the ConDem government, which is recommending you to Buckingham Palace? As US baseball fans might respond, “say it ain’t so, Wiggo”.
On Wednesday, December 5th, 2012 the residents of the Borel favela (Morro do Borel, occupied since 1921 in Rio de Janeiro) went out in the streets in a collective effort to break the curfew that the cops of the local UPP (‘Police Pacification Unit’) have imposed in the area since November 28th.
Read the full article HERE:
In response to a recent increase in crime, Paragould Mayor Mike Gaskill and Police Chief Todd Stovall offered residents at a town hall meeting Thursday night at West View Baptist Church what could be considered an extreme solution — armed officers patrolling the streets on foot. Stovall told the group of almost 40 residents that beginning in 2013, the department would deploy a new street crimes unit to high crime areas on foot to take back the streets.
"[Police are] going to be in SWAT gear and have AR-15s around their neck," Stovall said. "If you're out walking, we're going to stop you, ask why you're out walking, check for your ID."
Stovall said while some people may be offended by the actions of his department, they should not be. "We're going to do it to everybody," he said. "Criminals don't like being talked to."
