Read the full article HERE:--------On October 8, thousands of indigenous people occupied the Parliament building in Quito. Can you describe for us what happened there?
In fact, the Indians arrived on October 7, on Monday, and there was a pitched battle in Quito that lasted five or six hours involving students, social movements, and other residents of Quito who were trying to keep the police busy in order to enable the indigenous comrades to enter. Recall that we are living in a State of Exception, so the military is on the streets and had blocked Quito’s main entrances, the North and South entrances, to prevent indigenous people from other provinces from entering. However, the people were so well-organized that the military did not have enough intelligence at their disposal to stop them. The fact that the fight took place in the city center also opened up gaps that enabled the indigenous people to reach the historic center.
Just as we pushed the police back, we saw the crowded trucks coming and the bikes that accompanied the indigenous caravan. It was a very exciting moment.
They went directly to El Arbolito Park, next to the Salesian University, where logistical support for the movement is organized. The following day, a rally took place at Parque El Arbolito and people agreed to take the Assembly (the parliament building in Quito). When we arrived there, a first delegation entered, then gradually more and more people entered, while there were thousands of people at the door of the Assembly wanting to enter. Police shot tear gas canisters at people, which created a mass panic. People could have been trampled to death because many could not breathe; people ran in various directions. Meanwhile, police continued to fire tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at protesters. At that moment, a very great repression began.
The Assembly, strategically speaking, is like a small fort perched on a hill; to protect it, the police positioned themselves at a higher point so that snipers could hit the protesters with tear gas canisters and also live rounds. As a result, the police inflicted a large number of injuries and some deaths, as they were in a strategic position.
The idea of going to the Assembly was one of the actions that the indigenous movement had decided to carry out during these days in Quito. Until yesterday [Wednesday, October 9], there was a lot of concern because there was no clear strategy, while the government refused to back down and kept increasing the repression. The fact that police sent tear gas into shelters and peace encalves such as the Salesian University and the Catholic University caused a great deal of outrage; in a way, this was a blow to the government, because the news circulated despite the news shutdown that the mainstream media and the government have been trying to maintain.
Today [Thursday, October 10], in the morning, eight police officers were captured by the movement and brought to the large popular and indigenous assembly at the House of Culture, where there were about 10,000 or 15,000 people. The reporters who were there ended up broadcasting the assembly live, even if they didn’t do it in the best way. In a way, this broke the media siege by disclosing, for example, the fact that an indigenous leader of Cotopaxi, Inocencio Tucumbi, had been killed. He had lost consciousness after inhaling a lot of tear gas and was then trampled by a police horse. That had not appeared in the mainstream media. Suddenly, the dead appeared on the big television channels and it became clear to the general public that—yes, the government is killing people and carrying out repression at an extreme level!--------
We are well aware that there are many genuine grassroots activists involved in Extinction Rebellion protests, people we know are on our side. But more and more questions are being asked about the nature of the organisation itself, about the true agenda of the leadership lurking behind a flimsy illusion of horizontality.
The non-existence of a mass radical anti-capitalist movement in the UK (let alone a radical ecological anti-capitalist one!) means that XR has appealed to a lot of people who have long been waiting for some kind of rebellion to finally emerge.
Perhaps they have been tolerant of XR’s eccentricities (starry-eyed love of the police, dogmatic non-violence bordering on control-freakery, connections with business interests, refusal to consistently condemn capitalism) because they are the only show in town and it is a question of XR or nothing.
The same is not true in France, though, where revolution is often in the air and where the last year has seen a full-on yellow-coloured challenge to the neoliberal state. XR have been active there too, but their fake radicalism and lame submissiveness to authority has shocked many eco-radicals and anti-capitalists, who have been voicing their concerns online.
On October 12 the “Désobéissance écolo Paris” collective published an open letter to Extinction Rebellion members, containing a wide-ranging critique of the organisation and its approach.
Then on Monday October 14 two reports appeared on the anti-capitalist Paris Luttes site. The first of these was entitled “Extinction Rebellion : ni désobéissance, ni obéissance, mais servilité et crédulité” – “Extinction Rebellion: Neither Disobedience or Obedience, but Servility and Credulity”.
Reporting on the XR occupation in Châtelet, it said “Extinction Rebellion scuttled its own initiative in a total absence of strategic thinking and analysis of power struggles”.
It explained: “The ‘diversity of tactics’ working group on Wednesday evening had asked each of the six blockade points to start thinking about what we would say to the press, the authorities, the public, on the day that we were moved on.
“For instance, it was suggested, in the spirit of a convergence of struggles, that we say ‘we are not leaving without the passing of a law for carbon neutrality by 2025 and an amnesty for all activists incarcerated during the various Gilets Jaunes protests’. That would have been awesome.
“But the XR leadership decided, at a sparsely-attended assembly on Friday morning, October 11, to dismantle the camp, to move most of the equipment and to pull out from the six blockade points.
“In short, XR removed everything which made this public space a living space where we could discuss, debate, get to know each other.
“The given reason was, of course, the next day’s action, but anyone with a minimum of strategic sense should have seen that this camp, now that it was there, now that it had been reinforced by Gilets Jaunes and other anti-capitalist and environmental activists, the night before the weekend, had definite subversive potential. Predictably the action on Saturday October 12 was, on the other hand, a total flop”.
The article went on to comment: “This is not a case of ‘non-violent civil disobedience’ nor indeed of ‘obedience’ since there was no official warning from the police or the authorities. It was rather a case of servility: we ended the camp before even having been ordered to leave. This is exactly the opposite of struggle or rebellion”.-------
------- They added: “It was a rather pleasant surprise to see that many XR activists did not stay stuck in the XR box, did not shy away from more radical action, less focused on media PR, and were asking real political questions about the scope of these actions. As often happens, the grassroots could quickly outgrow the organisation”.
-------Research suggests it is the wealth and inclination of parents, rather than the ability and efforts of the child, that have the most bearing on a child’s educational success today. “If you’re a working class child, you’re starting the race halfway round the track behind the middle class child. Middle class parents do a lot via extra resources and activities.”It is well worth reading the full review HERE:
Less affluent children also get a more restrictive educational offer, she discovered. “It wasn’t until I talked to young people about their experiences that I realised how different and unequal their educations were. Because the schools that working class children mostly go to are not doing well in the league tables, there’s a lot of pressure on their teachers and heads to increase their league table position. That means they focus ruthlessly on reading, writing and arithmetic.”
Some children in these schools talked wistfully about hardly ever doing art, drama or dance: “These children come from families where their parents can’t afford to pay for them to do those activities out of school. It almost feels criminal. It feels very unfair.”
The difference between amounts spent on educating children privately or in the state sector is stark. She cites research from University College London that found £12,200 a year is the average spending on a privately educated primary pupil, compared with £4,800 on a state pupil. For secondary, it’s £15,000 compared with £6,200.
“Society has got more unfair, and the gap between the rich and poor is a lot greater than it was even 30 years ago. We’ve got to move back instead of going further in the direction of austerity, which seems to be punishing the poor.”
She believes the government’s support for academies and free schools is powerfully ideological. “It’s about opening up education to the markets. I found it particularly shocking – and I had to read some quite boring parliamentary reports to get the information – that masses of money has gone into the academy and free school programme, and it’s been taken out of the comprehensive school system.”
Reay found that free schools receive 60% more funding per pupil than local authority primaries and secondaries, and that £96m originally intended for improving underperforming schools was redistributed to academies.
To make things worse, an analysis of Department for Education data reveals that schools with the highest numbers of pupils on free school meals are facing the deepest funding cuts: in secondary schools with more than 40% of children on free school meals, the average loss per pupil will be £803. That’s £326 more than the average for secondary schools as a whole. And primary schools with high numbers of working class pupils are expected to lose £578 per pupil.
Another blow being inflicted on working class children is through the way they are treated in some super-strict schools, argues Reay. She says some academies operate on the principle that working class families are chaotic and children need school to impose control. “There’s lots of lining up in silence, standing to attention when an adult comes into the room, and mantras. I think it’s about disrespecting working class young people and their families. ------
Letter from John Bowden, long-term radical prisoner (UK)
There is a group of prisoners who although imprisoned for non-political offences subsequently become politicised or radicalised whilst in jail, and in both the USA and Britain this is a phenomenon that has become increasingly widespread.
In the USA during the 1960s and 70s the radicalisation of ordinary black prisoners, in particular, was fostered by the centrality of imprisonment in the experience of black activists and revolutionaries like Malcolm X (who described prisons as “universities of revolution”), Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, H Rap Brown, Angela Davis and others. George Jackson described his own politicisation succinctly: “I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me”.
Thus those whom W.E.B. Dubois described as an “army of the wronged” increasingly defined themselves as political prisoners who were the products of an oppressive political-economic order. This belief underpinned the praxis of radical groups such as the Black Panthers and Symbionese Liberation Army, and prisons were seen as the epicentre of a broader social and political revolution. The call for recognition of radicalised prisoners claim to political status underpinned prisoners’ demands in a series of protests that punctuated the 1970s in U.S. Prisons such as Folsom, Soledad, San Quentin and, later, Attica.
The radicalisation of ordinary prisoners in both the UK and the USA was channeled through both identity politics and the prisoner union movement. In the UK such groups during the 1970s were highly active in organised protests and uprisings against oppressive prison conditions, particularly for long-term prisoners. The politicisation of ordinary prisoners who link their imprisonment to broader social and political inequality and oppression, and prison as the epicentre of their struggle, transforming them into proto-revolutionaries striking out against the capitalist state, is a spectre that terrifies those responsible for managing and enforcing prison repression.
Islamic radicalisation within prisons is currently considered by the state a primary “intelligence and security concern”, and a leaked UK Home Office document identifies prison as a “key site of radicalisation for young Muslims”, justifying measures like the political vetting of Imams before they are permitted to preach in jails and the creation of “separation wings” or isolation units for militant Muslim prisoners. In the UK the segregation or isolation of politicised and radicalised prisoners in separate wings and units is a method of control imported from British occupied and controlled Northern Ireland where during “The Troubles” Irish Republican prisoners of war were confined to the notorious H-Blocks of The Maze prison, which through the dirty protests and hunger strikes actually became an epicentre of the wider Irish Republican struggle. Concentrating radicalised prisoners in separation units and wings inevitably creates greater solidarity amongst those prisoners and re-enforces their radicalisation, and of course in any case political ideas and ideologies cannot be isolated or segregated, even within an oppressive institution like prison. The treatment of politicised prisoners is always inevitably brutal and discriminatory, and within total institutions whose fundamental purpose is to tame and subdue the rebellious and disobedient poor, prisoners who develop a political consciousness and psychologically liberate themselves from existential and penal obedience are perceived by the prison system as the most dangerous of all the imprisoned.
Prisoners serving indeterminate or life sentences for non-political offences but who subsequently become politicised whilst in prison have a very minimal chance of hope of ever being released, even when their actual risk to the public is considered minimal or even non-existent. Officially, the prime criterion determining the “suitability for release” of indeterminate sentenced prisoners is their assessment as “low-risk” to public safety, but in fact what actually determines a life sentence prisoner’s chance of release is not a perceived level of risk to the public, but their level of obedience to prison authority.Those life sentence prisoners who embrace an ideology considered by their jailers as “subversive” and “anti-authority” are viewed as the absolute antithesis of the “model prisoner” and therefore permanently “unsuitable for release”. Prisons are microcosms of the society that creates them, and the treatment of prisoners who identify with a political belief system that directly challenges the authority and legitimacy of the state reveals the fascist core of that state, which has implications for society generally, especially during times of social unrest.
John Bowden October 2019
Over the past days, women, children and elders from the diverse nations and Indigenous communities in Ecuador have paralyzed highways, and carried out assemblies in their communities, neighborhoods, and cities. These dignified women and men, who live at the middle of the world, have risen up to recover and take back their country, their present and their future, which is under threat once more by the same elites as always, allied to the predatory right wing patriarchs that monopolize political life.
With the declaration of a national strike and an Indigenous uprising, they have created a powerful space of discussion that questions the nefarious Decree 883, which dictates austerity measures, the most obvious of which is a dramatic increase in the cost of fuel. “If the price of gas rises, everything gets more expensive, transportation and food get more expensive,” said one Indigenous woman into a microphone in front of a crowd of mobilized community members in the Cotopaxi region.
Communities in the mountains, in the Amazon and along the coast are standing up together. Through their speeches, posters and songs, they are producing a plurality of meanings, and weaving rejection to the issues that affect them: resisting poverty, resisting being subjected to the economic measures and agenda of the International Monetary Fund, and stopping the extractive regime that is destroying their collective wealth.
A long term struggle has been activated
As part of this powerful uprising, which is connected to strikes in the cities, calling up historic Indigenous struggles for land and water, and against oil and gas camps and mining projects which sow misery wherever they operate, is clear. In Ecuador we can tell that a long term struggle has been activated, because while today we see that effort and energy are devoted to rolling back economic austerity, the power of the Indigenous and community struggle demonstrates the frustration of the people with state aggression against their communities.
On October 5, the government of Lenin Moreno declared a sixty day State of Emergency to avoid demonstrations, gatherings and public actions. In response, the president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), together with members of the Popular Front and the Unified Workers’ Front, responded: “Don’t play with fire, the destiny of 17 million people is at stake.”
In the days following, the CONAIE has announced that Indigenous communities have also declared themselves in a State of Emergency, and stated that they will not allow police of the army to destroy the homes of those they detain, or mistreat women and children. Their communiqué makes clear that anyone found taking part in human rights violations will be brought before Indigenous justice.
The communities that are rising up are doing so with the aim of re-establishing the order of communal life. Indigenous justice does not threaten or contradict the Constitution, nor does it allow rights and guarantees that have been won through organization to be ignored in such an arbitrary and crude manner. The State of Emergency, through an Indigenous lens, is against the detention of more than 477 people, the attacks on many others, and the killing of one.
The images from Ecuador that are spreading around the world today show the decision and the energy of the youth, of children, of women and elders. These images have profoundly moved Indigenous people throughout the continent. The speeches of Indigenous leaders in Ecuador have been seen thousands of times on social media. Their speeches are expansive, they nurture Indigenous struggles and at the same time, they include cities in their demands.
The dignity of community struggles
Students around the country have also powerfully spoken out. The green kerchiefs from recent feminist struggles for legal abortion can also be seen in the images of the demonstrations in the cities, as organized women add their voices and bring with them the capacity to sustain a strike. The cacerolazos (pots and pans demonstrations) convened by womens’ collectives force us to take note of the double workday and the exploitation of women via unpaid work, it also demonstrates how the paquetazo (series of economic reforms ordered by the IMF) will impact them. Urban women recognize the dignity of community struggles, and seek to add their voices, their screams of frustration, by self-organizing to take the streets.
On October 8th, at the barricades in the Pastaza region, the people demanded the resignation of Lenin Moreno, in other parts of the country, interior ministry buildings have been occupied. The Indigenous movement entered Quito from the south, receiving support and solidarity from working class and poor neighborhoods who joined them to chant: “Join in, pueblo, join the struggle against this government that is against us.”
Social organizations represented by workers unions and others in the cities will now join in the massive National Strike on October 9th. An Indigenous uprising is, once again, at the heart of the struggle, opening a horizon of re-appropriation in the face of an attempt to expropriate all of the peoples of Ecuador. The Indigenous mobilization calls for the generalization of protest actions so that the struggle can grow stronger.
This moment of struggle is a moment to re-appropriate strength and self determination, a time of rebellion towards the production of a renewed sense of struggle, woven together with diverse voices that warn, clearly and firmly: “Not Moreno or Correa, not Lasso or Nebot! The struggle is ours!” This makes clear that this uprising will not end in new alliances between power brokers or in other kinds of patriarchal pacts.
On October 7, Lenin Moreno moved the seat of his government to the coastal city of Guayaquil. His actions remind us of the nervous and fearful priests and colonial bureaucrats during the colonial period, who hid in walled houses and called for military aid, fearing the moment that Indians in resistance would, in the words of Bartolina Sisa, reign again.
From our communities, from the cities we live in, we are and will continue to follow and express solidarity with what is taking place in Ecuador. The strength of Indigenous communities nurtures ours. We raise our voices together and show our support for popular and Indigenous resistance. Here and there, we resist being overseen by the state, and we yell once again that we are moved by a desire to change every single thing.
¡Nos queremos vivas, libres y desendeudadas en todas partes! We want to be alive, free and without debt, everywhere! ¡Que se sigan tejiendo entramados comunitarios y populares de lucha! May community weavings of popular struggle continue to be woven! ¡Que siga creciendo la dignidad! May dignity continue to flourish!
Signed,
Gladys Tzul Tzul, Guatemala
Raquel Gutiérrez, México
Claudia López, Bolivia
Mariana Menéndez, Uruguay
Noel Sosa, Uruguay
Veronica Gago, Argentina
Luci Caballero, Argentina
Jovita Tzul Tzul, Guatemala
Ita del Cielo, México
Victoria Furtado, Uruguay
Siboney Mora, Uruguay
Dunia Mokrani, Bolivia
Claudia Cuellar, Bolivia
Silvia Federici, United States
Dawn Paley, Canada
At least '320,000 people homeless in Britain'
Fifth of people in working UK household trapped in relative poverty.
There were 4.1 million children living in poverty in the UK in 2017-18.
There are expected to be 5.2 million children living in poverty in the UK by 2022
47% of children living in lone-parent families are in poverty.
Children from Black and minority ethnic groups are more likely to be in poverty: 45 per cent are now in poverty, compared with 26 per cent of children in White British families.
London the richest city in UK has the highest rate of child poverty in the UK.
70 per cent of children growing up in poverty live in a household where at least one person works.
Figures show a homeless person dying every 19 hours in UK.
More information from that area: AMWAbout 50 police officers have been taken hostage and indigenous groups have blocked roads and highways, as protests against the state’s neoliberal economic policies continued in Ecuador.On October 3, in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, anarchists, some carrying red and black flags, fought alongside students, setting flaming barricades and throwing rocks at riot police, who they forced to retreat. Anarchists have been on the forefront of the struggle against IMF-imposed “reforms” and against the police-state that is attempting to enforce these “reforms” with brutality.Protests began when Ecuador’s corrupt president Lenin Moreno announced the end of fuel subsidies. Moreno’s regime, though nominally left-wing, has strengthened relations with the imperialist United States, launching a joint security effort and intelligence sharing operation.President Lenin Moreno says he will not bring back subsidies and has declared a two-month national emergency.Some of the protests were organized by transport unions who have since stopped their action. Other sectors are calling for a national strike on Wednesday.An umbrella group for indigenous groups in the country, the Confederation of Indigenous Nations in Ecuador (Conaie) said it was declaring a “state of exception” in indigenous areas, where soldiers and police officers would be detained and would face “indigenous justice.”Luis Iguamba, leader of the Kayambi people from northern Ecuador, said they would keep up the pressure on the government.“We are fighting for everyone and we are fighting to foresee the rights we all have and we can’t allow this. So, everyone, be on the lookout and keep up the fight. Let’s radicalise the strike,” he said.Indigenous-led protests have toppled three presidents in the last few decades.Their intervention follows protests on Thursday and Friday that saw roads in the capital Quito and the city of Guayaquil strewn with makeshift barricades and burning tires.Hundreds of people were arrested, dozens of police officers hurt, several police cars destroyed and a local government building was attacked, the authorities said.Ecuador’s government has agreed to cut public spending as part of a loan deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).The agreement, signed in March, allows Ecuador to borrow $4.2bn.Anarchists and indigenous groups are likely to continue resistance against the neoliberal policies of the Moreno regime.
For decades France has been one of the most important arms suppliers to the four corners of the world. With a flourishing industrial-military complex, it regularly carries out wars, supports irregular troops (such as that of general Haftar in Libya) and is also training on its own territory… and that of its neighbours. In the context of the ‘Motorized Ability’ program signed in June 2019 with one of NATO’s privileged partners, Belgium, it will supply the latter with 450 armoured vehicles (382 Griffon troops transporters and 60 Jaguar recognition vehicles), which will be delivered from 2025. Another aspect of this agreement is the strengthening of ‘strategic partnership’ between French and Belgian ground troops, which takes form in particular with conjoint training. This might seem quite banal, were it not for the fact that the army decided to train not only in barracks and appointed centres [1] that reproduce cities in miniature… but directly among the civilian population by performing exercises on a real scale.That’s how more than 1,000 Belgian and French military will occupy the provinces of Namur (ten municipalities located in the triangle Walcourt-Hastière-Couvin) and Hainaut (triangle Beaumont-Chimay-Froidchapelle) from 18th to 25th September 2019.‘The goal is to start a French-Belgian military cooperation by integrating units in both countries in a civilian environment. It will also allow us to exchange skills and improve our inter-operations action in many sectors, such as radio communication and weapons use’. Yes, you read right, the goal is that of operating on a large scale ‘in a civilian environment’ as happened after the 2015 attacks, but above all that of carrying out an operation meant to improve ‘weapons use’. More precisely, 150 vehicles and 600 soldiers (fifty fifty for each of the States involved) will be deployed in twenty villages, with over 300 taking care of assignment (personnel, examiners, logistics) and… and… and… 100 soldiers who will play the part of rural insurgents euphemistically called ‘opponents’, who hide among the population.This military training operation, called ‘Celtic uprise’ (a reference to Brexit), has ‘a fictitious country in crisis’ as its scenario, and the goal of the murderers in uniform is no longer simply hidden behind vague humanitarian pretexts to aid the population, as it was years ago, but this time it also officially includes ‘patrolling, making sensitive points secure’ and of course ‘antiterrorism actions’. It’s been known for some time that the army has been preparing for interventions within the European borders in case of urban insurrections or rural guerrillas, scenarios that even NATO projections took seriously. As for us, it’s time we took seriously the proposals that insist on the need to be involved in it now [2]; to map carefully industries and technological companies, but also everything that is sensitive to the correct operational functioning of domination: communication networks, transport routes, resources and energy networks, strategic supplies of raw material and food; to develop technical skills and precise knowledge in order to put them out of use; to think today of forms of informal coordination and develop anarchist projectualities, valid in times of peace as well as of war, because the distinction between the two is no longer appropriate…[1]. Such as the 12,000 hectares of CENTAC (combat training centre) in Mailly-le-camp (Aube) and the 6,000 hectares of CENZUB (urban action training centre) in Sissonne (Aisne).
I keep hearing that "the consumer is doing the heavy lifting" for the economy, that they are "holding up", and "aren't fatigued yet". Isn't this backwards?
I remember a time when the economy worked for the people, existed for the people, functioned for the people. Now, the people work for the economy. Now, nothing is more important than the economy.
So we get the following situations:
The environment is generally collapsing... but the consumer is still buying.
Manufacturing is down... but the consumer is still buying.
There is a "Retail Apocalypse"... but the consumer is still buying.
There is a global political crisis... but the consumer is still buying.
Depression and suicide have reached depressing proportions... but the consumer is still buying.
We are getting fatter and less fit... but the consumer is still buying.
Everything is breaking down, but not to worry - the consumer is still buying.
If I understand this correctly, as long as we keep buying, everything will appear to be fine. The only disaster that could befall the world that would actually matter is if The Consumer stopped buying.
If The Consumer even dared to slow their acquisitional frenzy, there would be an immediate emergency declared that would require special and intense activity to repair.
We would need to really DO something in that case. We wouldn't want to put the billionaire lifestyle at risk now, would we?
"I buy, therefore I am", will be the new motto to live by if the economic manipulators get their way. Today's Consumers will be tomorrow's Buybots.
So don't worry about all those pesky and unimportant emergencies scientists and environmental activists keep making up, just keep buying.
Everything will be fine. Well, the economy will be fine, at least, and what is more important than that?
That is the system as it exists, and I'm not buying it. Our planetary community needs something better, and soon.
It is well worth reading the entire article to try and understand who really is pushing this particular campaign.------It also turns out not to be entirely coincidental that Rentzhog came across Greta’s little protest. He later admitted had already done PR work for her mother and was “tipped off” about the event in advance.
So the bottom line is this: from the very first day of her “rebellion”, Greta Thunberg was being promoted by two corporate PR professionals paid for their skills in “brand development” and “storytelling”.
Since then, of course, she has addressed the UN, the WEF, the European Parliament, featured on the cover of Time magazine, which named her a “next generation leader”, met Barack Obama and Emmanuel Macron and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
This is all rather strange in a world where the usual reward for environmental activism is a criminal record.-------
