World Social Struggles Newswire Archive

For the past few years the weekend of June 11 was typically a time when we reflected on Jeff Free Luers' 22.5 year sentence and held events to recognize the anniversary of his incarceration. This year Jeff writes below that he wishes this year to focus on the Green Scare co-defendants. Please plan an event now! It's only 3 months away. And keep reading...

Details of various events which have taken place in the struggle against Shell in the West of Ireland in January, February and early March of this year.

As the revolt by workers against the first employment continues to spread in france,  http://libcom.org/blog has been set up to provide in-depth English language coverage of the riots, occupations, strikes and marches across the country.

Anarchist gay conscientious objector Mehmet Tarhan has been released (March 9th, 2006) following the decision of the Military Criminal Court of Cassation located in Ankara. Mehmet has been in Sivas military prison since April 2005 and was sentenced to four years of imprisonment by the local military court.

During the first week of May 2006 the European Social Forum will take place in Athens. At the same time the open assembly for the creation of the “Autonomous Spaces” / Open Public Ephemeral Zone will use a university space in the centre of Athens and will produce an ephemeral autonomous zone that will try to bring together all the grassroots anticapitalist, autonomous and antiauthoritarian collectives, groups and movements.

The London EVENING STANDARD is denounced by London mayor Ken Livingstone as a crass, racist paper. In fact the hatred between Ken Livingstone and the EVENING STANDARD has been rendered unforgettable now by the Nazi jibe affair.

So where does the EVENING STANDARD ‘disagree’ with Ken Livingstone
over the Crossrail Bill ?

Nowhere!

Not really. They are BOTH madly fanatical about Crossrail.

So much so that the EVENING STANDARD has published some rare pro-Ken Livingstone pieces in the past three years which can only have been so because both the Standard Livingstone utterly agrees on the Crossrail plan.

How come?

Because Ken Livingstone endered the interests the people affected by Big Business plan in return for ‘tolerance’ by the Blair regime. And in doing so, Livingstone has helped to discredit the office of Mayor in a more permanent way than is realised by any of the ‘mainstream commentators. Least of all by Livingstone himself.

In this discrediting of public office, the local Councils are not far behind Livingstone.

The role played by one London local Council, Tower Hamlets in London’s
East End, in allowing the Crossrail hole project to be prepared in the way that it ahs been so far as its contents affect m large parts of the community in the East End, has been the subject of ever heightening political tension in the area. With the scheduled local council elections on 4 May 2006, that role is expected e to be the cause of the loss of political Control by the Blair-loyalist Tower Hamlets Council But what will be the difference if an alliance of Opposition candidates is in a position the next tower Hamlertsncil? Will that Council make any significant will the people East be able to fend off the Crossrail attacks?

Riot police have stormed the Sorbonne University in Paris, forcing out students who have been occupying the building since Wednesday in protest against government labour laws.

Our friends from abroad continuously ask us to explain our views about the current situation in Venezuela. This reply is based on two recent texts by the editing team of El Libertario, already published in their entirety in the internet (in Spanish), and from which we extract our main points.

The UK House of Commons hybrid draft piece of legislation, the Crossrail Bill, is being ‘scrutinised’ by a small group of MPs, collected from mainly the three ‘major’ Political Parties. The process has been overstated in its relevant capacity to alter the substantive contents of any Bill. Given that the Crossrail Bill contains monumental powers that will enable the destruction of entire communities in the East End of London, the ability – or the chances - of the MPs committee on the Crossrail Bill to make any difference must be examined against the performance of another committee which in October 2002 ‘heard evidence’ from one Michael Keith, a councillor on the East End Borough of Tower Hamlets Council. The same Michael Keith is now leader of the same council and is widely associated with the promotion of the Crossrail Bill and plan as a whole. Keith is set to be among Tower Hamlets Councillors who would enjoy the chance to appear before the Crossrail committee to make the case for the Council’s defiance of the local community. The MPs need to be much more alert and vigilant this time round then their counterparts were on Tuesday 15 October 2002.

The Reykjavík offices of the much loathed Landsvirkjun, the Icelandic National Power Company, were gatecrashed yesterday by over thirty angry young people who banged drums, shouted and blew whistles in defiance against Landsvirkjun, heavy industry and ecocidal dams in the Icelandic highlands.

The prospect of Iran developing a nuclear capability (which would realistically entail at least a five-year time frame) did not prevent John Bolton, US representative to the UN, stating that a “painful” response would be inflicted on Iran if it failed to comply with UN (American) dictates! Questions of the UN’s independence aside, is the focus on Iran a distraction from the debacle that is Iraq or is the USA following their PNAC strategy with little regard for consequences?

In France, students mobilise against the CPE: All together in the struggle against capitalism! University and high-school students, future unemployed, future part-time or temporary workers: All together in the struggle against capitalism!

Since yesterday evening, the legendary university Sorbonne in the Latin
Quarter of Paris is occupied. Even though the CRS (French Riot Police)
was present, the occupation could be held throughout the night...A new
chance for social change?

While UK Prime Minister Tony Blair seems destined to go down as the holder of the 'highest political office in the land' who most disgraced that office by his contempt for 'the constitution' and in abusing the democratic associations with that election-linked office of Prime Minister [the Prime Minister is NOT elected in the UK, yet, contrary to the overwhelmingly banal assertors in the media that it is] , the legacy he is likely to leave behind for the denegation of parts of the UK inner cities will linger even longer than the Daily Mail-type headlines about his sleazy regime. That Blair is bent on letting Big Business defile the East End under the cover of Crossrail is seen in his administration’s frequent appearances in the Brick Lane area, pleading with the community for 'cooperation' with the Crossrail hole programme of destruction of the very same community! These EXCLUSIVELY written Khoodeelaaronline items are linked with the way that the CROSSRAIL hole attacks on the East End have been conceived and are being pushed against the community

For anyone who has heard something about the prisoners arrested on 4th February in Barcelona but is unclear on the details, here's the story. If it's unfamiliar, you too should read on. This a story of overt police repression in Europe. If we don't resist, we'll be next...

The campaign in the Brick Lane London E1 area against the hybrid 'Crossrail Bill' [UK House of Commons] is getting heightened this week. Campaigners are setting out conditions for individual councillors to show their full commitment to oppose the Crossrail hole attacks. The constitutional implications of this are significant. This includes the possibility of individual councillors being taken to court on their undertaking. Of they refuse to give such clear undertaking then the claim that local democracy works will be exposed as seriously false. Ordinary people will have to defe3nd the community against the Crossrail; attacks. And against similar environemntal, economic and social attacks moiyunted under covers of democracy.

It is up to ordinary people to raise the level of debate about the undemocratic surveillance practices of the many faceless and unaccountable agents who make daily intrusions on individual privacy, and about the apologists and propagandists for the War nn Terror who applaud every new attack on human rights and freedoms as "prudent" or "necessary". If there is no discussion of reverse surveillance in the national media, create it on the streets on a citizen to citizen basis. If nobody is talking about the outrageous assaults on privacy and human rights embodied in the new antiterrorist acts forced through US, UK and Australian legislatures, start talking about it to your neighbours and friends.

Watch the programme to see about the British police and UK government cover up in the Jean Menezes case.

Watergate investigative reporter CARL BERNSTEIN was shown in a BBC News 24 'Hardtack' interview with Stephen Sackur this morning [8 March 2006].Bernstein decried the media in the USA where local communities were fed up of being denied the coverage of their lives and of issues that mattered to their local communities. Bernstein could have been equally talking about the East End of London where the campaign against Crossrail whole attacks is being systematically excluded coverage by the so-called independent local press. One of those 'titles' is reviewed here by Khoodeelaaronline

Boring bill title, but a massive change to the so-called democracy in this country. The Bill would allow the government to introduce, amend, or replace any legislation it likes, on the say so of a single government minister. Things like creating new offences punishable by up to 2yrs imprisonment, abolising local government, introducing house arrest, and giving the police greater powers of arrest and interrogation. It could also be used to set up new courts, and in effect re-write the rules on immigration, nationality, divorce, inheritance and the appointment of judges – all without any parliamentary scrutiny...