Support the Strike at York University Starting Nov 6, 2008, CUPE 3903, the union representing contract faculty, teaching and research assistants at York University in Toronto, Canada, went on an all-out legal strike. Significant issues include wage increase corresponding with cost of living increase, funding guarantees for graduate students (who also form significant number of workers at York U), improved working conditions (which mean improved learning conditions for students), and job security for contract faculty (some of whom have been teaching for several years on a sessional basis, carrying 1.5-2 times the load of the permanent faculty at 50-75% of the cost for YorkU). Find a summary of all outstanding issues at http://cupe3903.tao.ca.

"SPECIAL" NEW YORK TIMES BLANKETS CITIES WITH MESSAGE OF HOPE AND CHANGE Thousands of volunteers behind elaborate operation * PDF: http://www.nytimes-se.com/pdf * Ongoing video releases: http://www.nytimes-se.com/video * The New York Times responds: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/pranksters-spoof-the-times/ Hundreds of independent writers, artists, and activists are claiming credit for an elaborate project, 6 months in the making, in which 1.2 million copies of a "special edition" of the New York Times were distributed in cities across the U.S. by thousands of volunteers. The papers, dated July 4th of next year, were headlined with long-awaited news: "IRAQ WAR ENDS". The edition, which bears the same look and feel as the real deal, includes stories describing what the future could hold: national health care, the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for CEOs, etc. There was also a spoof site, at http://www.nytimes-se.com/.

Global day of action November 15th 2008 Call Resisting Capitalism and it ' Financial and Ecological ' crises during the G20 richest nations summit. Other worlds are possible - A Grassroots Anti-Capitalist call for action. On November 15, the G20 richest nations will convene in Washington to try to put the financial meltdown behind them and repair the international capitalist system. The factories continue to be closed, jobs cut, pensions destroyed, houses evicted, unemployment rises, uncertaintity, horrible anti-immigrant measures are pushed for by right-wingers, homelessness increase, relationships break down and food and basic housing spiral beyond the reach of the poor the world over while the environment around us collapses. We are living through a profound period of rapid and terrifying change, an intensification of the long crisis that is capitalism and this time the meltdown really is global. Even conservative media and staunch economic-rationalists are saying this could be the worst since the great depression... and they are trying to re-organise a Bretton Woods II project for a new capitalism. World over there is direct action and civil disobedience resistance taking many forms and proposals of many types circulating as always and now with new consideration given the cost we will be asked to pay to bail-out this rotten system - food riots, strikes for wage increases and backpay of stolen wages, price reduction campaigns, radical discussions on the crises, fuel protests,the sharing of radical everyday strategies for living in hard times, looting of supermarkets, as yet sporadic but hopefully growing resistance to evictions, sit-downs, protests at financial institutions and districts are spreading, thousands of the italian universities occupation movements saying " we will not pay for your crisis. " As the money and environmental crises intensify so too hopefully the struggles, with this as the stage we offer a humble proposal for this global day of action against capital, the G20 - hoping to see another thread of struggle emerge.

The Biggest ‘October Surprise’ Of All: A World Capitalist Crash Loren Goldner “There will be periods of 30 years which will pass with the seeming importance of a single day, and single days with the importance of 30 years.” (old Marxist maxim) (Note: To avoid reinventing the wheel, and under the pressure of recent epochal events, I have used fragments of other texts I have written in the past few years, making up no more than 15-20% of the following article. I ask the reader’s forbearance for any annoyance.) Given the fascination of the events of the past 14 months of “credit crunch”, many people (myself included) have sometimes tended to neglect the “deeper” sources of this crisis in production and reproduction. Analysis of a credit crisis has now become almost banal in the mainstream media. But as Marxists we know that there is rarely, if ever, a “pure” credit crisis without a deeper dimension in the material reproduction process (1). We recall Hegel’s three stages of the introduction of a new idea: 1) total silence and indifference 2) great hostility and denunciation 3) “that’s what we’ve always believed” It’s amazing to see how the media have gone in a year and a half from 1) to 3), barely stopping at 2), a marginal pastime over the last 30 years when dealing with “skeptics”. Suddenly the word “capitalism” has reappeared in popular discussion after decades of euphemisms such as “free-market economies” and Barack Obama’s support for massive government bailouts of Wall Street is attacked as “socialist” when in fact it is nothing but the old capitalist refrain of “privatization of profit, socialization of costs”.

Terrorizing Dissent, New Documentary on RNC Repression Release The Glass Bead Collective, Twin Cities Indymedia, and other independent media activists will release a new film, Terrorizing Dissent: Election Cut, an expose of events at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. Featuring first-person accounts and footage from more than forty cameras on the streets, "Terrorizing Dissent" focuses on the story of dissent suppressed. People charged with "conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism" speak out against the government's campaign to manipulate media coverage and label civil disobedience and community organizing as terrorism. Cut from hundreds of hours of donated footage, "Terrorizing Dissent: Election Cut" will be released for free on the Internet in HD, FLV and Quicktime formats, under the Creative Commons / CopyLeft license, and its producers encourage everyone to share this important film.

From the Occupied Faculty of La Sapienza, Rome National Call, Rome, 22.10.2008 To the faculties in mobilization, to the undergraduate and Ph.D. students, and to all the precarious researchers “We won’t pay for your crisis”, this is the slogan with which a few weeks ago we started our protest at the university of La Sapienza, Rome. A simple, yet at the same time immediate, slogan: the global crisis is the crisis of capitalism itself, of the financial and real estate speculation, of a system without rules or rights, of unscrupulous companies and managers. The burden of this crisis can’t fall on the educational system - from the school to the university - on the health system or generally on taxpayers. Our slogan has become famous, spreading by word of mouth, from town to town. From the students to the precarious workers, from the working to the research worlds, nobody wants to pay for the crisis, nobody wants to nationalize the losses, whereas for years the wealth has been distributed among few, very few people. And it is exactly the contagion that has been produced in these weeks, the multiplication of the mobilizations in the schools, in the universities, and in the cities that should have stirred up a lot of fear. It is well known that a fearful dog bites; similarly, the reaction of President Berlusconi was immediate: “police against who occupy universities and schools”, “we will get rid of violence in our Country”. Only yesterday Berlusconi declared that he was willing to increase the financial support to the banks and that the State and the public expense would stand surety for the companies’ loans: in a few words, cutbacks to education, less founds for the students, cutbacks to the health system, but public money for the companies, for the banks and the private sector. We are wondering where is violence: is it a violence to occupy universities and schools or instead that of a government who imposes the Law 133 to cutback the founds for the education system refusing the parliamentary debate? Is it the dissent violent or is it violent who intends to put it down by the police? Who is violent: who mobilizes for the public status of university and schools or who wants to sell them for a few private profits? Violence is on Berlusconi government’s side, while in the occupied schools and universities there is the great joy and indignation of who fights for his own future, or who doesn’t accept to be put in the corner or forced to be silent. We don’t want stay in silence in the corner, of who wants to be free.

Journal of Aesthetics & Protest issue #6, theory in 3 acts Over 300 pages of Contemporary action and thought. check out the website -http://www.joaap.org/6/index.html get a copy -http://www.joaap.org/6/issue6.htm An Atlas of Radical Cartography and others available for purchase here -http://www.joaap.org/press.htm -------------

La Sapienza University of Rome Occupied in Protest Against Privatization "University is not going to pay your crisis!!" This morning in La Sapienza University of Rome has taken place a general assembly , participated in by over 10.000 students, asking the Director Luigi Frati to suspend lessons and the academic year as a protest against law 133, that will cause definitive privatization of italian university, massive job cuts and huge cuts of public foundings for research and education.