Spaces of Hope

Appeal from Serbia for international solidarity actions – February 6th, 2012

2012-01-26T03:12:00.002Z

Dear comrades,

We would like to inform you that on February 8th, 2012, there will be a
renewed trial against four members of the Serbian Anarcho-Syndicalist
Initiative (ASI), as well as two unaffiliated Belgrade anarchists, as
part of the fabricated legal case of the Belgrade Six (BG6).

The six Belgrade libertarians have been accused of inciting, assisting
in and executing an attack on the Greek Embassy in Belgrade at the end
of August 2009, in solidarity with a hunger-striking Greek political
prisoner at the time (Thodoros Iliopoulos). Soon after the attack on
the embassy, BG6 (Tadej Kurepa, Ratibor Trivunac, Ivan Savic, Ivan
Vulovic, Nikola Mitrovic and Sanja Dojkic) were arrested and held in
custody for the next six months charged with ‘international terrorism’.

Thanks to a mass mobilization of support, both globally and locally,
they were released early before their trial date. In June 2010, they
were finally fully acquitted at a High Court in Belgrade, which decided
that there is no basis for a guilty verdict on any of the charges.

The prosecution filed a complaint, but the Court of Appeals failed to
respond until a moment when suitable political reasons emerged. Only
days after antimilitarist protests against the NATO summit that took
place in Belgrade in June 2011, at which Ratibor Trivunac was arrested,
the Court of Appeals granted the prosecution’s complaint and ruled on a
renewed case against BG6.

Currently, there are criminal proceedings against seven members of the
Belgrade local group of ASI and they are all politically motivated.

The renewal of the case against the BG6 can only be seen as the
continuation of state repression against those who stand up to pillage
and exploitation. Bearing in mind that Serbia is a peripheral
banana-state, ruled by a layer of compradorial bourgeoisie, it has been
shown that in this phase of the struggle, the greatest force against
the state repressive apparatus is INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY.

Therefore, we are calling all comrades and compañeras,
anarcho-syndicalists, revolutionary syndicalists and class struggle
anarchists everywhere to join in an international day of solidarity
with BG6, organized on February 6th globally in front of the embassies,
consulates and cultural institutions of the Republic of Serbia. The
protests should carry a clear demand for the ending of all legal
proceedings against the Belgrade libertarians and the dropping of
fabricated charges.

The freedom of our comrades depends largely on the activities of the
international libertarian movement, and we are convinced that
international solidarity will once again show its strength.

Freedom now to the BG6 and all prosecuted comrades!
Death to the State and capitalism!

The International Secretariat of ASI

Stamp on the weakest in society

2012-01-21T22:53:00.002Z

There is a concerted effort going on in the Western world, it seems, to make the weakest in society suffer for the debt crisis. Or more likely, the so-called debt crisis is used as an excuse to push through some cruel changes and put our society back several decades.

One such section of society are the disabled, and among the disabled, people with autistic spectrum conditions (ASC's) are feeling the chill winds of this new economic order. Autism affects people to various degrees, from the lucky well-functioning few who may be doing great work using their considerable talents within, e.g., science, maths, music or even the arts, to the other end of the spectrum, where they may have severe learning disabilities and no speech.

In between the two extremes are the majority who because of their social disability, have great problems fitting in with the rest of us. This results in huge suffering within the education system, for example, in work situations and in coping with everyday life generally. With the right support, this need not be the situation at all - however, support costs money.

With improved understanding of the condition and better diagnostic tools, there has been what has been called an "explosion" in the diagnosis of autism over the last two or three decades. In reality, these conditions have always been there, they are just now being detected and labelled.

The American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is used by many countries as the "bible" in the diagnosis of autism and many other conditions. The fifth edition of this manual is now being worked on (DSM V). It is being reassessed by an expert panel appointed by the American Psychiatric Association. It is expected that the new edition will narrow the criteria used to diagnose ASC's, so that "high funcioning" conditions, such as Asperger's syndrome, may be left out all together.

This would be a severe blow for campaigners, parents and carers who have fought long and hard to get recognition of these conditions, and even harder for support from governments and local authorities. Even under the present guidelines, it has been the case that you do not get either a diagnosis OR support unless you fight tooth and nail for it.

People with ASC's are extremely vulnerable due to their neurological make up and limited understanding of social rules and the intensions of other people. They are highly susceptible to depression and anxiety.

If the diagnostic criteria are tightened, the suspicion of the autistic community will be that the panel of experts have been "sat on" by central government, as part of the general onslaught on the benefits and living conditions on the most vulnerable in society.

House of Lords give the Government a bloody nose

2012-01-21T22:48:00.002Z

The government's plans to reform welfare were badly hit on Wednesday (11 January 2012) when it suffered three defeats in the House of Lords on proposed benefit cuts.
Plans to means-test employment and support allowance (ESA) payments for disabled people after only a year were rejected by peers.
The means test would have applied to cancer patients and stroke survivors, and was denounced by Lord Patel, a crossbencher and former president of the Royal College of Obstetricians, as an immoral attack on the sick, the vulnerable and the poor. "If we are going to rob the poor to pay the rich, then we enter into a different form of morality," Patel said.
The government was defeated by 224 votes to 186, even though Lord Freud, the welfare minister, claimed that the cost of the amendment would be £1.6bn spread over five years.
The other defeats were over plans to time-limit ESA for those undergoing cancer treatment, and to restrict access to ESA for young people with disabilities or illness.
The defeats do not augur well for the government's chances in future votes in the Lords on the bill, which includes housing benefit caps. The bill is at report stage before returning to the Commons.
Some peers warned the Lords they should not vote down the measure to restrict ESA payments to a year since the cost of doing so would be so high and MPs would be certain to reverse the result. Patel, backed by the shadow welfare minister, Lord McKenzie, proposed that the government's plan to time-limit contributory ESA to a year should be extended to two years. At that point, irrespective of how much someone has paid into the system, a means test set at an income of £16,000 would start to apply, leading to annual cuts in benefit of £94 a week.
Freud countered that the 365-day time limit was not arbitrary and was similar to limits imposed in France, Ireland and Spain, and struck a "reasonable balance between the needs of sick, disabled people claiming benefit and those who have to contribute towards the cost".
He said one year was the right balance between restricting costs and allowing people to adapt to their changed circumstances and was double the time allowed for contributory jobseekers' allowance.
With a few exceptions, the Liberal Democrats voted with the government as they generally have throughout the divisions in the Lords on the welfare bill, but their support was overwhelmed by a big turnout from Labour and crossbenchers. The Labour peerage is armed with welfare experts including Lady Lister and Lady Hollis.
Crossbenchers have also been furiously lobbied by disabilitycampaigners arguing that they should not be made to suffer for the economic crisis.
Many Liberal Democrats have been uncomfortable voting with the government, but feel forced to do so if they are to abide by their coalition commitment to bring the deficit under control.
In a report out on Thursday, the Commons public accounts committee finds that fundamental changes to the benefits system, including the introduction of a new means-tested universal credit to replace some existing means-tested benefits, may fail without the formation of a new body.
Margaret Hodge, the chair of the committee, said that the government must learn from past experience and co-ordinate benefits more effectively.
"At present, there are nine central government departments and 152 local authorities administering 30 different means-tested benefits, yet there is no one body responsible for co-ordinating means-testing across government," she said.
"There needs to be a single body responsible for overseeing the interaction between different benefits, means-tested or not, and ensuring consistency and value for money."
A DWP spokesman said: "This report highlights exactly why we need universal credit. It has been designed across departments with the benefits and challenges raised by the PAC in mind.
"It will mean more people getting the money they are entitled to whilst reducing complexity and fraud in the system."

Lords inflict triple welfare bill defeat on government,

Patrick Wintour and Rajeev Syal
The Guardian, Thursday 12 January 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/11/lords-welfare-bill-defeat-for-government

Cairo Dispatch

2012-01-16T23:09:00.001Z

Just three weeks after the events written about below, there is blood in Tahrir Square again. It fighting started last Friday, when the military attacked a sit-in outside the cabinet building. As in November, it escalated into days of clashes, with a combination of army soldiers and Interior Ministry paramilitary troops exchanging rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails with anti-junta protesters. Occasionally, usually in the dead of night, the army sweeps into the square, firing their guns and trying to clear it. The protesters return a few hours later. At least thirteen people have been killed so far. Activists had called the sit-in “Occupy Cabinet.”

For five days last month, Tahrir Square felt like a war zone, at least to someone who has never been to one. Half of the streetlights had stopped working, probably knocked out by projectiles launched by the riot police, making the side streets dark except for occasional blue flashes from an ambulance. The sound of protesters beating war drums against the sheet metal storefront shutters was pierced intermittently by the whistle . . . crash of fresh tear gas canisters. The tear gas left the thousands of protesters with burning eyes, making the square at times look like a massive, weepy funeral. Motorcycles noisily ferried wounded street fighters away from the battlefront, to the makeshift field hospital set up next to a Hardees. Lines of young men in gas masks or with scarves over their faces marched in the opposite direction, toward the front lines, holding hands and chanting as they readied themselves to reenter the fray of flying Molotov cocktails and rocks and birdshot.

If, like me, you empathize with Egypt’s revolutionaries, the atmosphere was inspiring. Young men were risking and in some cases giving their lives (more than forty died) to defend the revolution stolen from them by the ruling military junta. The fight started when a group of riot police attacked a peaceful sit-in and quickly escalated into a street battle when thousands came to protect Tahrir and fight the Central Security Forces, the black-clad, baton- and shotgun-wielding paramilitary troops of the much-hated Ministry of the Interior. For those five days of fighting, it felt again like the revolution was alive again and that the people were ready to reclaim it from the military.

I say all of this to establish my sympathy with the three American study abroad students who were arrested and subsequently deported for fighting alongside Egyptian revolutionaries earlier this month. We don’t know exactly what Luke Gates, Derrik Sweeney, and Gregory Porter were up to around Tahrir Square before they were arrested, paraded before the state television cameras, and according to Sweeney beaten by the Egyptian police.

But some of the evidence we do have, particularly from Luke Gates’s Twitter stream, suggests that they did participate in the fighting. (One tweet: its only scary cuz i feel so reckless. Another: we were throwing rocks and one guy accidentally threw his phone.) If I had a less complicated understanding of Egypt’s revolution and fewer instincts for self-preservation, I might have done the same, swept away by the excitement. They may be nothing more than naïve kids, but I respect what I assume was part of their motivation for joining the fighting: a sense of solidarity with the Egyptian revolution. (Gates wrote, back to tahrir tonight, as police set fires to everything, no doubt they will blame it on protesters, suggesting he’d come to share Egyptians’ hatred of the Interior Ministry’s dirty tricks.)

After returning home to Missouri, Sweeney told CBS: “You do get passionate about it. It’s about a passion for democracy and liberty and values that I think Americans can stand for, too.” The Egyptians’ revolution against corruption, brutality, and plutocracy is sympathetic to many Americans. Thousands across the country in their own way have, taken up the same causes at the Occupy protests. But throwing rocks is not the best way to show transnational solidarity, especially not in this year of global uprisings, when every day new connections are forged between activists around the world.

In December 1936, George Orwell left England for Spain, where he joined the socialist militias in their war against the fascists. I recently re-read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, and was struck by its resonance with my experience as a non-national supporter of the Egyptian revolution. Orwell’s description of arriving in Barcelona speaks directly to anyone who stepped into the Tahrir Square occupation last winter:

Many of the normal motives of civilized life—snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.—had simply ceased to exist . . . Of course such a state of affairs could not last. It was simply a temporary and local phase in an enormous game that is being played over the whole surface of the earth. But it lasted long enough to have its effect upon anyone who experienced it. However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one had been in contact with something strange and valuable. One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism.

Tahrir is much changed since those first eighteen days, before Mubarak fell, but that spirit that makes hope more normal than apathy or cynicism still exists among the revolutionaries.

There are many other passages in Orwell’s book that remind me of life in Egypt. (Even his condescending observations— “Whenever it is conceivably possible, the business of today is put off until mañana”—are echoed by the Orientalist drivel one often hears from recent Anglo-American arrivals. “Of course the conference started an hour late, you know how things are here, they’re on Egyptian time.”) But while Orwell and the non-national leftists who fought alongside him in the trenches of Catalonia were invited into the Spanish struggle against fascism, foreigners decidedly have not been invited to join Egypt’s revolution against Mubarak’s crony corporatism and the military junta’s monopoly on all forms of power. This is in part because Egypt’s uprising has been characterized by flag-waving nationalism and also because the counter-revolution has put forth a narrative that the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square are participating in a foreign plot—varyingly Israeli, American, Iranian, Palestinian or Qatari—to destabilize Egypt. It’s a fatuous argument, but a population that has been conspired against for so long is a fertile ground for conspiracy.

Even those who know that there is no foreign conspiracy aren’t ready to welcome foreign rock throwers. About the three American students, an Egyptian friend active in the protests said, “Didn’t they know it was the most counter-productive thing for the revolution they could do?” He’s right. I have lived in Cairo for two years, work at an Egyptian newspaper that makes no secret of its pro-revolution stance, and have friends and colleagues who are genuine revolutionaries. But although I’ve been tempted, I’ve never joined in a chant against Mubarak or the junta, never carried a sign condemning Egypt’s rulers, and I’ve certainly never thrown a Molotov cocktail at Central Security Forces.

Transnational solidarity is rarely an easy path to travel. Even during the Spanish Civil War, when the lines seemed so clearly drawn—fascism and its opponents—complications arose. Indeed, the Spanish case in some respects is a good reminder of why foreigners shouldn’t be invited to fight in domestic conflicts. The Soviet Union co-opted the Spanish struggle and turned it into a proxy war against Trotskyism, run by intelligence agents from Moscow, while the Nazis turned Republican–held cities into bombing ranges for their emerging air force. Even when ideology binds movements together, their national and nationalist characteristics can’t be ignored, and that’s particularly true when there is no overarching ideology. The revolutionaries of Tahrir Square wave Egypt’s red, white, and black flag and sing their national anthem at protests. When they demand “bread, freedom, and social justice,” they are speaking for their countrymen, not the workers of the world.

There is no unifying internationalist ideology in the global uprisings to date, but there is a complex nexus of financial and political power that the Egyptian revolutionaries—and their counterparts from Oakland to Athens—are fighting against. Consider tear gas. The seemingly endless supply used to blanket downtown Cairo last month, asphyxiating protesters and burning the eyes of shopkeepers a mile away, was made by Combined Systems Inc., a Pennsylvania-based weapons producer. The tools of crowd control come with American labels, and the business relationship is increasingly a tactical one. “We saw the firm stance the US took against Occupy Wall Street,” a presenter on Egyptian state television reportedly said about the protesters in Tahrir. “[The tear gas] is used by police forces in many countries around the world including our own,” said US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner when asked about Egyptian deaths from tear gas.

People occupying public spaces around the world are challenging the fundamental structures of power. Along the way they are constructing multilateral relations that transcend borders and bypass state structures. Egyptian revolutionaries have visited Occupy Wall Street and held teach-ins. Occupy protesters from Oakland and Eugene are Skyping with protesters in Egypt to trade tactics and strategies. In mid-November, Egyptians organized an International Day to Defend the Egyptian Revolution that saw protests in more than twenty cities around the world. During the tear gas bombardment of Tahrir, activists in New York demonstrated outside Combined Systems’ New York distributor’s office. These actions and connections are not simply about adding another body to the fight as Orwell—or the American students—did.

Early this year, I met an Egyptian revolutionary named Sherief Gaber; at the time he had two black eyes and a swollen nose from getting a brick to his face during a battle with pro-Mubarak thugs. Gaber was one of those who made the call for the international day of solidarity with Egypt. He believes there’s great potential in a transnational network that can oppose and shame multinational corporations. But he also sees a more basic outcome from global solidarity. “It’s the simple fact of saying, ‘We’re not alone’ and ‘We’re not wrong.’”

- Max Strasser

Image: A protester throws a tear gas canister back at riot police near Tahrir Square in Cairo, November 22, 2011. From theatlantic.com.

http://nplusonemag.com/cairo-dispatch

Occupy Boston Declaration

2012-01-12T00:23:00.002Z

[The following is the text of a flier handed out at an Occupy Boston meeting on the Boston Common in December, 2011 the day after the police forcibly removed Occupiers from Dewey Square, Boston.--ed]

"We are the 99% ... and most likely you are too!

Our goal: 'A society that prioritizes the needs of all before the profits of a few.'

From the 'Declaration of Occupation',
passed by consensus, at General Assemply, Dewey Square, Nov. 29, 2011

Let's ask a scandalous question:

Who needs a 1% in the first place? Why should we allow the super-rich, and institutions controlled by the super-rich, to run our lives?

Why can't the 99% run this world ourselves? Why can't we share the wealth and run our economy along lines of mass participatory democracy? Why can't we remake this society's political and economic systems, along egalitarian and socially just prindiples?

Why should we accept a world where billions go hungry while billionaires bathe in ill-made money they literally can't find anything productive to do with? (They hoard it, and pour it into reckless speculation, into usurious loans, as well as into obscene material consumption ... not to mention the bribing of politicians, and on and on...

Why should we accept an economic system where those who don't have money have no rights to have their basic human needs met? Where people must go into debt and into wage-slavery to obtain housing or education? A system where homeless people huddle in the shadow of empty bank-owned foreclosed homes that cry out for new occupants? A system where food rots and people starve until speculators say the price is right?

Why should we accept a system that poisons the planet and destroys the very environment upon which the life of our species (among others) depends? A system that sees the wages and benefits paid to workers as a 'cost' of production that is to be minimized and squeezed whenever possible so that profit can be increased? A system that year after year spends trillions on war and military occupations, while cutting back on social programs and benefits that poor and working people depend on? A system that spends money on opening up new prisons as it shutters factories and schools? Accept this?

Why should we, the 99% settle for a reformed version of this system, of better 'populist' rhetoric from politicians who have been bred to serve the 1% Why on earth whould we respect or fall into line for politicians who represent this system? Why settle for kindlier, gentler tyrants? For a slightly less predatory and toxic capitalism?

Why not instead, go...
For the whole thing?

Of course if and when we do, they will tell us we are being 'crazy'. That we 'are not being realistic.' That things are 'under control.' That things will be O.K.. Above all, the cynicism: that 'this is just the way it is' Our goals are 'impossible' or 'unrealistic'. They call us 'utopian.'

But who is really being realistic and who utopian here?

Isn't it the case that if the 99% doesn't go for the whole thing, that if we leave a 1% in control of the collective wealth of this society when this movement is done, then whatever reforms or concessions a mass movement manages to win from this elite will eventually be evaded, eroded, and undermined by the army of lawyers, lobbyists, and campaign finance-pimps? Moreover, how can we even have a meaningful, informed mass dialogue in this country when the1%owns, controls, and manage the media ... making the very discourse in our faces, in our eyes, and in our mouths a toxic, deluded manipulated thing? The list goes on and on...I for one am sick of making these lists. Let's get to the root instead: capitalism, a system designed for the endless accumulation of profit, a system that renders all other human and planetary needs external to that singular, predatory, virus-drive. It's a sick system and the 99% can be the cure.

We need to do better than just reforming this toxic mess of a 1% profit-driven system. We can and must not just speak truth to power, but build genuine people's power, with the goal of overthgrowing and overthrowing the rule of the 1% across all aspects of our lives. Let us reject and repulse -- TOGETHER -- the tyrant's grasp of capitalist elites over our economic, political, and social lives.

'Together we're unstoppable ... Another World is Possible!'
a slogan from Dewey Square

'99 to 1. Those are Great odds!'

This text is written by Jay Jubilee, just one member of the Socialist Caucus @Occupy Boston
E-Mai: j4jubilee@gmail.com"

reposted from www.NewDemocracyWorld.org