How much more will it take?
Re-posted from arrezafe
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
views and poetry from an anarchist perspective.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
At this point, it's a pretty safe bet that Facebook keeps track of the groups we "like" or the games we play on the site. But now, it turns out that the company has also been keeping track of the notes and comments we don't publish -- even if we never intended to share them with anyone.
Who hasn't come home from a hard day at work or a frustrating conversation with a loved one, written a status on Facebook, and then decided at the last minute not to hit "post?" All this time, it may have seemed even safer than writing in a diary. But Facebook's policies enable to keep track of every single keystroke entered into the site -- meaning that the company can essentially peer into our private lives whenever it wants.
To make matters worse, in the United States, Facebook has been recorded sharing data with the National Security Agency. That hasn't extended beyond American borders, but where is the line?
We have the right to censor ourselves without Facebook looking over our shoulder. Tell Facebook to stay out of our private and unpublished posts!
Although Palestinians have lived under Israeli occupation and apartheid for over six decades, Western narratives usually paint them as hateful and violent, as if they were born with hatred rather than shaped by a life of displacement, discrimination, military rule, poverty and oppression.Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
And to deepen the injustice of these narratives, despite being born into these harsh circumstances, the vast majority of Palestinians have still adopted nonviolent strategies of resistance in their continuing struggle for equal rights and justice. Today this nonviolent resistance movement includes: weekly protests against Israel's separation wall, mass mobilisations against Israeli policies of displacement, hunger strikes against Israel's inhumane treatment of prisoners and staging protest camps against Israel's appropriation of land and illegal settlements.
Read the full article HERE:Once again we hear that Israel has bombed the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip "in retaliation" for something that they've done against Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country will "respond". Many people would agree that a person in his position has a duty to protect his citizens. Certainly, those in the White House and Downing Street do, which is why Israel gets away with murder, quite literally. It's all down to legitimate self-defence; or so we are led to believe.What, though, is the reality? Why is that right of self-defence never extended to the people of Palestine? After all, it is their land which is under occupation; it is their land which is being stolen and colonised; it is their land from which they are being excluded in a decades-long act of ethnic cleansing that its proponents hope will never end.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.ukThe Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure is an undertaking created through a general assembly of residents, social projects and collectives that live and act in the district of Exarchia.It’s addressed to the local community of Exarchia, doctors, psychologists, nurses, pharmacists, but also to any other resident who would like to help.Basic activity of the Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure is to offer free primary healthcare, immediate help and psychological support as well as to promote the concept of health for all, without any discrimination for reasons of race, skin color, origin, sexual identity or religion.Main political conviction of its participants is being able to provide solidarity reciprocally, rather than egoistically or philanthropically, given the fact that we are all potential migrants, homeless, unemployed, precarious workers without access to healthcare services.We believe that self-organized health structures are not solely a response to problems in provision of medical care, filling the gap left by the State. Therefore, what we apply in practice is the way we would like to see health in the society we are envisioning, a society of true solidarity and humanity.We perceive the project of the Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure as a living cell of social resistance and emancipation against contemporary barbarity, thus we collaborate with people’s assemblies and base unions.During the operation hours of the pathology treatment room (Wednesdays and Thursdays, 18–20pm), you are welcome to bring medications that you no longer need.56, Arachovis Street, VOX, Exarchia Square
Protesters Burn Coca-Cola Christmas Tree in Mexico CityA group of anarchist protesters used a Molotov cocktail to burn a Coca-Cola sponsored Christmas tree along Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma on Friday.The Mexico City Metro raised their ticket price from 3 to 5 pesos on Friday, effectively making it the most expensive in the world. Thousands jumped metro turnstiles in a protest called #PosMeSalto, with many taking it to the streets, as well.
In the last couple of days, our worst fears about the railway strike in South Korea have come true. Severe repression has kicked in as police stormed the headquarters of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) -- for the first time since the union became legal back in 1999. Smashing down glass doors, spraying pepper gas, the police arrested well over 100 union activists -- but didn't find the leaders of the striking railway workers they'd come to arrest.
The KCTU has decided to call a general strike for December 28th.
These Korean workers, fighting against privatization and for the basic human right to strike, are now on the very front lines of the battle against neo-liberalism and for human dignity.
I know that many of you will not see this message until after the Christmas holiday. I also know that 90% of the people receiving this message have not yet sent off their messages of protest and solidarity. If you're part of that 90%, please take a moment right now to send off your message demanding that the Korean government allow the railway workers to peacefully strike:
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.ukhttp://bit.ly/1aUdMGq
If have already send off your message, please try to recruit just one more person who's not done so. If everyone who supported this campaign recruited just one more person, it would be the largest online campaign LabourStart has ever waged. In addition, I'm going to ask you to do one more thing.
The mainstream media, incredibly, is completely ignoring this important struggle. LabourStart has tons of links to news stories, but these are largely from Korean media.
If you visit the websites of the BBC, CNN, and Sky News, you won't see a single word about the strike, the repression, and so on.
I've just written to all of them asking them why they're not covering the Korean strike. I think it would help if you added your voices to mine.
Here's how to do it:
Read the full article HERE:"We refuse to live in a prison" (translated from Catalan)Today, the society in which we are obliged to live appears ever more like a prison. Our movements are registered and our conversations listened to and controlled systematically via our cellphones. Our emails are analysed and maps of our social networks are created using, for example, Facebook and Twitter.The national press gets indignant about the tracking of [European] politicians by the NSA but what's certain is that for a long time they have been not only complicit, but directly promoting the sharing of data on a large part of the population between European agencies and the NSA. And on the other hand, we have not seen the same indignation for the dozens of cases of spying on activists carried out by CESICAT [an extralegal or private security apparatus formed by the government of Catalunya, as part of its bid for independence].An element of devastating quotidianity in this web of social control are the surveillance cameras. They seek to train us to accept "for our own safety" being filmed from the moment we leave our houses in the morning until the moment when we come home at night. Some cities are already installing systems of integrated surveillance with all the cameras in a region linked up to facial and other recognition software.None of this surprises us, since the very nature of the State is to want to exercise absolute power over life. Freedom is not possible under a power that aims to control and surveille our lives in their entirety. Any attempt to transform this world in accordance with our needs or to recover control over our own lives will be surveilled and punished by the State as an act of criminality. For this reason the struggle for freedom must take the path of illegality.We refuse to live in a prison. We refuse to be listened to and followed. We refuse to have our movements recorded. We refuse to allow anyone to be obliged to grow up in a world in which they will be recorded, filmed, Twittered, and localised 24 hours a day.
Read the full report HERE:Last week students demonstrated in Turin, Italy's main unions rallied outside parliament, and protesters marched in Venice and Ancona. An Italian neo-fascist fringe group also scaled the front of the European Commission's Rome headquarters and tore down the EU flag.
Ten people including the deputy president of Casapound, far-right activists who aid the poor and venerate former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, were arrested and charged with theft, resisting authority and unauthorised protest, police said.
‘The myth of capitalism has crumbled,’ he announced, ‘that the market is an omnipotent God that fixes everything with his invisible hand. We’ve seen this is a great lie, a stupid fundamentalism: we’ve seen that in times of crisis, markets have had to resort to the state, and that states are putting money into the banks.-----If there were any justice in the world the big bankers, and the governments that allowed them to perpetrate their economic terrorism, would be in jail. And those same people who caused the crisis are the ones who now want to fix it. The pyromaniac wants to play the fireman! Mrs Merkel and Mr Sarkozy want to speak for the banks and fix what they caused.
For fourteen years Danielle Heard has fought cancer -- a disease that has left her disabled.
Despite everything she's been through, she's now got another fight on her hands: avoiding homelessness because of the bedroom tax.
The cruel, unfair "Bedroom Tax" means that Danielle's parents must now pay an extra £80 a month in rent; they're now worried that they could lose their home if they can't stretch the budget to make ends meet.
Right now, a staggering 50,000 people across Britain like Danielle and her family face losing their home because of the bedroom tax.
That's not right, and it's not fair.
Take action today: Join us in calling on David Cameron to repeal the bedroom tax and stop penalising hard working families like Danielle's.
Read the full article HERE:“There has been a lot of talk recently about the latest scheme to help people who are unemployed, with mention of “compulsory volunteering” as part of the “Help to Work” programme. DWP do not refer to it as volunteering, but others are starting to, which is muddying the waters. These “Community Work Placements” are NOT volunteering, as people are not freely choosing to participate in them, but rather will be faced with benefits sanctions if they do not engage in the compulsory placements.
Read the full article HERE:International Migrants Day 2013 is a day to recognize and celebrate the millions of people around the world who have left their homeland in search of a better future or a new opportunity. First proclaimed by the United Nations in 2000, December 18th invites countries to celebrate International Migrants Day “through the dissemination of information …and through the sharing of experiences and the design of actions to ensure their protection.” In this spirit, based on the latest Pew Research study, Latin Times has compiled 7 Facts And Statistics About Migrants In 2013.