On 8/1/14 the Greek government organized festivities for taking over the presidency of the EU. The protest organized by radical left organizations in Athens has been banned by the police on purely political grounds. The organizations of the left that organize the protest have decided to defy the ban and go on with the demonstrations. Several trade unions and political parties of the left denounced the ban.

Pavlos Antonopoulos, a trade unionist from the board of the union of civil servants (ADEDY) and member of the left wing organization ANTARSYA, was arrested and handcuffed for defying the demonstration ban. At Omonia Square in the center of Athens, several hundreds of protesters defied the ban of demonstrations against the festivities for the Greek EU Presidency. They were attacked with tear gas by the riot police. Pavlos Antonopoulos trial will be tomorrow.

Muhammad Altaf and Asadollah Panahimehr camped outside the interior ministry for over a month but no one is listening to their story, they said.

The two Iranians would be joined on Tuesday by Panahimehr’s wife Mehrangiz Hematmand and friend Salah Chanim who are also going on a hunger strike. The two men said in their open letter that they would not leave unless their petition was addressed by the state.

“The government of the Republic of Cyprus has pushed us to die or to commit suicide, which under these conditions seems like our only and best option, since the option to live a life in dignity in Cyprus has been taken away from us.

Under these conditions, we prefer to die instead to continue living in the conditions we are living now,” the open letter says.

All the petitioners are recognised refugees, having fled their countries out of fear for their lives and the lives of their family members.

According to the letter, Muhammad Altaf has petitioned to be granted citizenship or long term residency for over ten years but he still hasn’t received an answer.

“We strongly believe that we have undertaken all the appropriate measures and actions needed in order to solve our problems by ourselves and at the same time we have followed all the necessary procedures when help was needed by the competent authorities. Unfortunately, all those authorities which had the responsibility to help us solve our problems, ignored us and treated us with undignified ways, ways that would normally cause shame to any democratic country of the 21st century, like the Republic of Cyprus claims to be,” the letter says.

Altaf and the others make it clear that they are not interested in being handed money or staying in Cyprus.

“We would like to make clear once again that we do not ask for money or jobs. We are only asking to give us a residency status (citizenship or long term residency), which will truly enable us to live equally with Cypriot and other European citizens in the European Union, while at the same time it will allow us to leave the country in order to save our lives and families. However, the government of the Republic of Cyprus has been denying this residency status, without even providing us with a straightforward answer to our repeated requests”.

The Cyprus Mail contacted Asadollah’s son Sina, who shared his family history.

According to Sina, who is a student at the Higher Hotel Institute, he, his parents and his older brother Aidin came to Cyprus in 2003 after they fled their country. His father was immediately arrested and put to jail for five months without being charged. The authorities let his father free after he went on a 74-day hunger strike.

He found employment as a construction worker but was let go after the financial crisis hit. He has been unemployed for almost three years. ‘There’s no job for him. Nobody hires any more,” Sina says.

Sina’s mother Hematmand used to work for a former supermarket chain but had to leave to stay at home after Aidin committed suicide on November 16, 2011. Hematmand went back to work but was downgraded to a part-time employee. She was finally let go three months before the supermarket declared bankruptcy.

Sina says that he has written and visited numerous government agencies throughout the years to plead the case of his family but he has received no answer. “I have also written to European countries embassies, like Sweden and England. No answer from them either. We have also tried various media outlets in Cyprus. Still no response,” he says.

Concluding in their open letter, the four recognised refugees plead with Hasikos asking him not to let them die. If that happens, they included a last demand in their letter.

“Our last demand to the government of the Republic of Cyprus is to deliver our dead bodies to our families and beloved persons”, they write.

The Cyprus Mail contacted the Interior Minister, who said that he was aware of the situation and would act on it next week. “One way or another, we will resolve this issue next week,” Hasikos replied.

Source: http://cyprus-mail.com/2014/01/04/refugees-say-death-is-their-only-option-now/

The common backdrop is the 2008-09 financial crisis and its aftermath. Economic distress is almost a necessary condition for serious social or political instability, but it is not a sufficient one. Declines in income and high unemployment are not always followed by unrest. Only when economic trouble is accompanied by other elements of vulnerability is there a high risk of instability. Such factors include wide income-inequality, poor government, low levels of social provision, ethnic tensions and a history of unrest. Of particular importance in sparking unrest in recent times appears to have been an erosion of trust in governments and institutions: a crisis of democracy.

Trust has been in secular decline throughout the rich world since the 1970s. This trend accelerated and spread after the collapse of communism in 1989. And as opinion polls have documented, it has sped up again since the 2008–09 financial crisis.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a sister company of The Economist, measures the risk of social unrest in 150 countries around the world. It places a heavy emphasis on institutional and political weaknesses. And recent developments have indeed revealed a deep sense of popular dissatisfaction with political elites and institutions in many emerging markets.

The protesters in Turkey in 2013, for example, were dissatisfied with some abrupt decisions by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. In Bulgaria, what started off as protests against higher electricity bills turned into generalised anti-government demonstrations complaining of corruption—and led to the fall of the government. Protests have continued.

What to expect in 2014? The recession is now over or has eased in much of the world. Yet political reactions to economic distress have historically come with a lag. Austerity is still on the agenda in 2014 in many countries and this will fuel social unrest.

Restlessness on the rise

According to the EIU’s ratings, 65 countries (43% of the 150) will be at a high or very high risk of social unrest in 2014. For 54 countries the risk of instability is medium and for the remaining 31 countries it is low or very low. Compared with five years ago, 19 more countries are now in the high-risk categories.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), southern Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are well represented in the high-risk categories: 12 out of 18 MENA states, six of the seven Balkan countries, eight out of the 12 CIS states, five out of six southern European ones. More than 40% of the countries in eastern Europe are in the high-risk categories. This region was hit hard by the financial crisis and also has many of the underlying characteristics associated with unrest. Unsurprisingly, many high-risk countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. But there are also some in Latin America and Asia—including the world’s largest and most successful emerging market, China, where the authorities are perennially nervous about the risk of mass protests.

Laza Kekic: director, country forecasting services, Economist Intelligence Unit

Source: http://www.economist.com/news/21589143-where-protest-likeliest-break-out-ripe-rebellion

Banners stretched out along the railings of hospitals proclaimed: “Against the dismantling of the state” and “Hard-won rights cannot be stolen”.

Uncollected rubbish bins overflowed, littering the pavements of the capital Lisbon.

School gates were closed.

“The Portuguese will not accept more salary cuts and sacrifices,” said Ana Avoila, coordinator of the public sector unions, which estimated turnout for the strike varied between 70 percent and 100 percent.

Portugal’s state secretary for public services, Helder Rosalino, said she could “understand the discouragement of public workers” but she did not expect turnout to exceed 20 percent.

The 24-hour strike was launched jointly by public worker federations linked to the country’s two main unions, the CGTP, which is close to the Communist Party, and the UGT, close to the Socialist Party.

Unions are protesting new austerity measures unveiled in mid-October for the 2014 budget.

The budget increases the public sector work week to 40 hours from 35, cuts retirement pensions by 10 percent and lowers the salaries of those earning more than 600 euros gross a month by between 2.5 percent and 12 percent.

“If public sector workers want to bother the government that’s fine, but not at the cost of the children,” said 44-year-old construction worker Manuel Paulo, who found the gates closed at his 10-year-old son’s primary school in northern Lisbon.

The public sector protest follows a series of strikes in the transport sector, including railway and city bus services, which will culminate in a demonstration on Saturday in the capital.

Workers at river ferry companies Soflusa and Transtejo, which link Lisbon and its southern district, were holding partial strikes Friday.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/12/85921/Business/Economy/Portugal-schools,-hospitals-strike-against-new-cut.aspx

More than 4,000 riot police were dispatched to maintain order as some 25,000 protesters marched through the capital on Saturday. There were moments of tension when demonstrators passed near the headquarters of an extreme-right group, but police intervened when a few bottles were thrown.

Later, demonstrators threw eggs, firecrackers and smoke bombs outside the Finance Ministry. Police reacted by dispersing the protesters, detaining 11 of the demonstrators. There were no reports of injuries.

Ahead of the march police detained some anarchists believed to pose a security threat.

The protests were accompanied Friday by a 24-hour nationwide strike that caused disruptions for travellers. Train service was guaranteed in most cities for morning and evening commutes, but airports in Rome, Naples, Milan and Bologna had to cancel some flights. Some school and health workers also went on strike.

The USB and COBAS unions organized Friday’s strike to protest austerity measures reducing transportation budgets. USB union co-ordinator Pierpaolo Leonardi accused the Italian government of imposing EU directives without concern for the impact on workers.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/italy-anti-austerity-protests-draw-thousands-to-rome-1.2126917

“The consciousness of a worker is not a curve that rises and falls with wages and prices; it is the accumulation of a lifetime of experience and socialization, inherited traditions, struggles successful and defeated . . . It is this weighty baggage that goes into the making of a worker’s consciousness and provides the basis for his behavior when conditions ripen . . . and the moment comes.”

– E. P. Thompson

In talking about the working class as of late I feel like Solomon “Sol” Roth in the futuristic movie, Soylent Green (1973): “There was a world, once, you punk.” Det. Thorn: “Yes, so you keep telling me.” Sol: “I was there. I can prove it.” Det. Thorn: “I know, I know. When you were young, people were better.” Sol: “Aw, nuts. People were always rotten. But the world ‘was’ beautiful.”

History is about feelings, and in order to understand it, you have to understand people. British historian E.P. Thompson had a love affair with the working class (not classes); he believed it was the motivating force behind most economic and social progress. Thompson could have easily been Sol except for the fact that his love affair was with the English working class.

In my case, I try not to romanticize the working class; at the same time, I consider many workers my teachers. I was very fortunate in the 1980s to have been part of the Keep GM Van Nuys Open campaign.

I will never forget an auto worker who told me that the thing that he would miss most if the plant shutdown was the feeling that he got after his shift was done and thousands of workers would pour into the parking lot. He felt overwhelmed, he was powerful, and he had a union.

During the GM struggle, I attended many meetings where I mostly listened. At one meeting at the International Association of Machinists Union Hall in Burbank, I sat next to my friend, Eloy Salazar, who was a member of the Machinists. He was proud of his hall and how Mexican Americans had played a leading role in the union. After the meeting he asked me, “Rudy, you got a minute?  I want to show you something.”

We went out into the lot where his new car was parked. It was a Cadillac, which he pointed out was an American made car, white with white leather seats. It kind of took me aback because in my world of so-called “cultural” workers there would have been instant criticism such “bourgie”. I reflected how Eloy who had worked hard as a machinist was proud of the product of his labor, and how in contrast I was apologetic for my Ray-Ban sunglasses. My world was one of theory; Eloy’s was one of the praxis.

My research put me into contact with labor leaders. Exploring the Great San Joaquin Valley Cotton Strike of 1933, the name that kept popping up was that of Pat Chambers, the lead organizer for the strike. Pat had done oral interviews for the Bancroft Library, but if he was alive I wanted to see him.  It was forty years after the fact so I sent out numerous emails.

One day he showed up at the Cal State Northridge campus and asked for me. When I heard he was there I was excited. Pat was a short man, 5” 6”, rotund and balding. He apologized for taking so long but he had to check me out, and it was important to him that I was an activist. In the next several years he would just show up, and was clearly emotional to see so many Chicanas/os in college.

Chambers was a pseudonym; he was a communist who at the time were hounded. Pat did not like the party leadership, saying that they caused too many problems and cost resources to hide them. It was clear that he was not an ideologue; he got into the party because he admired the Wobblies.

The strike involved 18,000 cotton pickers and their families; 80 percent were Mexicans.  It was a violent strike that saw three Mexican workers assassinated on picket lines at Pixley and Arvin. He described the Mexican women as the warriors who picketed and kept worker camps such as the one at Corcoran operating. The growers in collusion with the American Farm Bureau and the Chamber of Commerce kept the sheriffs and the elected officials pro-grower. To break the strike county and state officials denied workers relief and pressured the women to go back to work. Growers purposely starved at least nine infants to death.

There were few organizers other than Chambers and 4’ 8” Caroline Decker who was in her late teens or early 20s. Caroline was from a middle-class Jewish family; she dropped out of school to help organize oppressed workers. She was a communist because she was anti-fascist, and the Party was the only organization doing something about it, according to her. Years later when interviewing strikers, they would ask about Caroline Decker.

The strike drew celebrities such as Ella Winters and Langston Hughes. John Steinbeck interviewed Chambers and others about the bitter Taugus Ranch and the Cotton strike. Steinbeck modeled the protagonist after Pat.

Yet although the overwhelming majority of the strikers were Mexican and a minority black, Steinbeck decided much as in The Grapes of Wrath to whiten the characters and make them White Oklahomans because he did not believe that his readers would be sympathetic to Mexicans or blacks.

In 1934-5, the growers and their minions finally broke the union. Chambers and Decker among others were charged and tried for Criminal Syndicalism: “Any doctrine or precept advocating, teaching, or aiding and abetting the commission of crime, sabotage or unlawful acts of force and violence or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing a change in industrial ownership or control, or effecting any political change.”

Chambers and Decker along with other union organizers were convicted. Chambers spent two years in San Quentin, and Decker two at Tehachapi Women’s Prison before the convictions were reversed on appeal.

After this point Chambers dropped out of the Party and he went to work as a laborer. His last years were in the Local 51, San Pedro, California, of the International Pile Drivers Union.

Pat thought he had been forgotten. He was excited about the gains made by the farmworkers under César Chávez. In summer 1971, as Marc Grossman, a Chávez aide, tells it, Chambers went to the UFW’s headquarters just outside Delano. Chávez’s secretary informed Chávez that “an old guy” was in the lobby, asking to speak to someone about times past, Chávez answered, “I’m busy, have him talk to one of the organizers.”

About three hours later the secretary said the old man hadn’t left. “What’s his name?” Chávez asked. “Pat Chambers.” Chávez’s face lit up. Chambers, Chavez, and the UFW driver spent the rest of the afternoon driving around Delano.

Chambers had avoided visiting Delano during the five-year grape strike out of fear Chávez would be redbaited because of CAWIU’s Communist ties.

The Moment had arrived for workers in the 1930s. This was especially true of Mexican women who produced outstanding leaders such as Emma Tenayuca who I met at an activist reunion in San Antonio in 1989. At the age of 16, she began organizing workers. Emma was the lead organizer in the San Antonio Pecan Shellers’ Strike.  Jailed and hounded, “when conditions ripen . . . and the moment” came she rose to the occasion, and we learned from her “struggles successful and defeated . . .” form our consciousness.

RODOLFO ACUÑA, a professor emeritus at California State University Northridge, has published 20 books and over 200 public and scholarly articles. He is the founding chair of the first Chicano Studies Dept which today offers 166 sections per semester in Chicano Studies. His history book Occupied America has been banned in Arizona. In solidarity with Mexican Americans in Tucson, he has organized fundraisers and support groups to ground zero and written over two dozen articles exposing efforts there to nullify the U.S. Constitution.

Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/11/lessons-from-the-working-class/

Onder de noemer ‘Onze programma’s bezuinig je niet 123 weg’, voerden de publieke omroepen de afgelopen weken actie tegen de bezuinigingsplannen van Dekker. Presentatoren en andere BN’ers drukten in radio- en tv-spotjes de politiek op het hart dat extra snijden de doodsteek voor veel programma’s, series en films betekent.

Niet slopen maar bouwen
Namens de FNV sprak vice-voorzitter Ruud Kuin. Onder het motto ‘Niet slopen maar bouwen’ benadrukte hij het belang van een sterke publieke omroep. “Als je wil dat burgers meedoen, moet je ze ook toegang geven tot goede en betrouwbare informatie. Tot kwalitatief goede onderzoeksjournalistiek. En die kwaliteit wordt nu bedreigd. Minder geld is minder mensen. Minder mensen is minder tijd om echt iets goeds te maken. En minder tijd is uiteindelijk minder kwaliteit.”

Steunbetuigingen
Meerdere artiesten beklommen het podium om hun steun te betuigen, onder wie Freek de Jonge, Pieter Derks, Tim Knol, De Staat, Lenny Kuhr en de blazers van het Residentie Orkest. Rond het middaguur overhandigden MAX-directeur Jan Slagter en NPO-voorzitter Henk Hagoort de petitie aan staatssecretaris Sander Dekker. De Nederlandse Publieke Omroep (NPO) zette woensdag 45 bussen in om demonstranten vanuit het hele land naar Den Haag te brengen. In totaal maakten daarvan zo’n 2250 omroepmedewerkers en sympathisanten gebruik.

Source: http://www.fnv-kiem.nl/nieuws/media-en-communicatie/2378

Dear parents, dear students,

We, the professors and employees of the National Technical University of Athens, welcome you to the largest and oldest Technical Institution in the country. We congratulate you, students and your parents who supported you, as we know well how hard you have worked to make your dream come true, to study in a good, public, internationally prestigious Greek University.

Today at our University, while we are preparing to begin the academic year, to register fresh undergraduate and postgraduate students, to say farewell to its successful graduates, to start the new curriculum, to open its classrooms and laboratories, something strange and dramatic happened.

The government announced that they suspend 550 of our administrative employees, that is 65% of our administrative staff. At the same time, they announce the labour reserve of 40% of the professors in the next year. To put it in a nutshell, it seems they want to reduce the size of the university in half. Our economic potential has already been reduced more than half, the funds for classes, buildings, libraries, salaries. At the same time, they have laid off the contract professors, they have been refusing for years to appoint the newly elected lecturers and professors, while our Schools have been bleeding from retirements. Even worse than that, they have recently seized 30 million euros from the research reserves, money that had not been given to us by the government, but we had ensured ourselves, the professors, young researchers and our management, through European or Greek research programmes. Money, that is, that we had brought here and which we recycled on studies, on scholarships, on educational and research infrastructure.

And yet, the government does not want to reduce the size of the National Technical University in half, as they have increased the number of admissions of undergraduate students! They are planning something much worse: half of the administrative employees, half of the professors, with tiny budgets will have to educate thousands of students. How will that happen? Obviously, classes will be reduced, academic textbooks will cease to be free of charge, libraries will be closed (we possess the best technical library in the country), secretariats will dissolve, buildings will be left without maintenance (we possess some of the best university infrastructure in the Balkans, in Athens, an excellent technological-cultural park in Lavrion and an important research centre in Metsovo-Epirus), our pioneering web centre will dissolve, laboratories will be closed and postgraduate programmes will cease to exist.

Briefly, the National Technical University of Athens is being pushed into becoming a post-secondary training institution, a vocational training institute, with easy and fast-to-get certificates, for a future of certain unemployment, with few impoverished workers and professors who will not care about how to teach but only about how to survive. Then you will be asked to pay tuition fees. This will not happen in the distant future, it is happening now.

Dear parents, dear students,

Under these circumstances, we have decided that we cannot function anymore, we cannot endure the downfall anymore. We cannot wait until our next colleague is fired, until it is our turn to be fired, until we do not have a computer, an office, a classroom, an auditorium, a research laboratory. Until the six out of the nine historic academic Departments of the National Technical University of Athens cease to exist, until our students are forced to pay tuition fees to get their education. We cannot imagine how it is possible that our colleagues, who on September 16th will be made redundant, young people with children, with other laid-off and unemployed members in their families, will work with a smile, just before they pick up their things from their offices for the last time, at the secretariats of the Schools registering our students. We cannot imagine how it is possible that the professors who know that in a few months they will suffer the same fate, will find the courage to teach in the auditoriums, will stand upright and dignified as academics. And you will say: Greece already has one million of unemployed citizens, Athens has forty thousand homeless people in the streets, one third of households lives under the poverty line, the salaries of those lucky enough to get paid are reduced in half or a third. Yes, this is the reality. You are also in the same condition, any parent of you can be unemployed, any home can be in danger of being auctioned, your paycheck is not enough, your children’s education is at risk. You do not know if and how they will manage to graduate with a degree.

We know that, too, we are people just like you, with families, with small children or with children who study. We grew up in the same streets, at the same school desks. We have been serving a great academic Institution with history, with prestige. We have received from our professors a Technical University of knowledge, scientific vanguard, innovation, research, democracy and dignity. If you shut your ears for a while to the low-level domestic media and search for the international rankings, you will see how high the National Technical University of Athens stands worldwide. You will see how important its courses are, how recognized its professors are globally, how its postgraduate students excel in European and American universities, how high the standards of our Greek engineers are.

Therefore, for all these reasons, dear parents and students,

The professors and employees of the National Technical University of Athens have decided to stand up with our heads high, instead of remaining idle and hopeless. We will do everything in our power to deliver the Technical University as it is today, and even improved, to the next generations, as it has been delivered to us. We remember something else, too: During two major and critical times of History –the War and the Dictatorship- the flame of the Institution’s emblem, Prometheus shone in the darkness. The Greek people took that flame in their hands and won. We do not forget and ask you to come here, with us, to stand by us in the noble struggle we begin.

The National Technical University of Athens Assembly of September 6th, 2013

President Jacob Zuma admitted that he could only plead with companies and unions to find a peaceful solution and avoid seriously damaging the economy, already hit by sluggish growth and a contagion of strikes in other sectors.

But the parties remain poles apart. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) accused captains of industry of “arrogance” forcing it to embark on nationwide industrial action “that will change the gold mining landscape forever”.

The dispute over pay comes a year after 46 people died during unrest in the platinum belt and amid signs that the century-old mining industry model is broken. For years South Africa was the world’s top gold producer, accounting for more than two-thirds of output in 1970, but it has slipped to fifth place with just 6% of global production.

The NUM is demanding rises of up to 60% after talks broke down. The union, which represents about 64% of South Africa’s 120,000 gold miners, said it rejected “with contempt slave wages as represented by an increase of a meagre 6.5% or R300 (£18.68) per month”. It claims bosses have continuously awarded themselves huge bonuses.

“The NUM has noted government’s wishes that industrial action be avoided and dares the state to explain which side it is on,” spokesperson Lesiba Seshoka added. “The union is aware of the devastating impact industrial action would have on the economy, which is largely a white man’s economy with no benefits for poor black mineworkers.”

A wave of strikes across South Africa, including in the auto industry and construction sectors, has sent the rand to four-year lows. A shutdown in gold production will cost the country more than £22m a day, according to estimates, and the NUM has suggested it could go on until Christmas.

Zuma urged mining houses and unions to reach a wage agreement soon, conceding: “Government can only appeal to parties to find a solution. I don’t think we can tell the management of the mine ‘accept what the workers are saying’, nor can we tell the workers [that].

“We just appeal that the two parties must find one another because a protracted strike is not helpful to the country nor to the industry itself. The strike hurts both sides. Both sides must be ready to give and to take as well.”

But the troubles afflicting mining over the past two years, including thepolice massacre of striking workers in Marikana and its aftermath, have exposed the limitations of the African National Congress.

Aubrey Matshiqi, a political analyst and research fellow at the Helen Suzman Foundation, said: “The sense I get is the government is becoming increasingly helpless. What might save the mining sector is the relationship between employer and union: you need courage on both sides to be very honest about their needs and willingness to sacrifice. The worst thing they can do is to marry themselves to short-term gains.”

All is not yet lost for the industry, Matshiqi insisted. “It’s a crisis but I don’t think it’s inevitable that it will deepen. A deepening is avoidable depending on how the protagonists conduct themselves.”

Even the NUM’s demands are eclipsed by the more radical Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, which is pushing for 150% pay rises, claiming that the industry is still locked into apartheid-era pay structures despite 19 years of democracy. The gold mining companies are the London-listed AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields, Rand Uranium, Harmony Gold, Evander Gold, Sibanye Gold and Village Main Reef. They say the demands are unrealistic, given rising costs and falling bullion prices.

Matshiqi warned: “Listening to the unions this morning, I heard a hardening of attitudes which may facilitate violence. If one union accepts the offer and the other doesn’t, violence may be the way one union thinks it can keep the strike going. This calls for a high level of maturity on both sides.” rest.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/03/south-africa-gold-miners-strike