Midwest Unrest writes:

"Chicago Transit Fare Strike"

Midwest Unrest

December 15, 2004: Fare Strike!

Riders Don't Pay! Workers Don't Collect!

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has slated January 2, 2005 as Doomsday. This is the day services are to be cut by 20%, 1250 jobs are to be terminated and paratransit fares will be increased by 100%. While CTA officials claim the only solution would be extra money from the state, we have been holding CTA president Frank Kruesi and his board responsible. It is the CTA who has known this crisis was coming and has made the decision to dump it on the backs of workers and riders. They are the ones who ignored it as they built their new $119 million Lake Street office. It is also Kruesi and his buddy mayor Daley who are still talking about spending almost 2 billion dollars on a new Circle line, just so rich folks can get from their neighborhoods to the airport a little bit quicker. If there is money for such luxury, there is no excuse for cutting our service, terminating our jobs and raising our fares!

eh writes:

Chavez Meets Workers in Madrid

Emilia Lucena, El Militante

It is nearly five o’clock. A shy autumn sun bathes the
Prado Avenue on our way to the headquarters of the
Workers’ Commissions (CCOO) in Madrid. When we arrive
there are already more than 300 people queuing to get
into the meeting hall. They patiently wait to attend
the meeting with Chavez which is scheduled for 7 pm.

JJ, North Star (A) Collective, FRAC writes:

"Anarchist Review of the Million Worker March"


The Million Worker March is a new beginning for the anti-globalization, anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-racist and anti-sexist, pro-union, pro-environment and anti-state commons in the US (here on out it will just be called anti-capitalist movement). In the past few years we as a movement have consistently been on the defense. This can be seen when we threw up our resistance to the WTO in Seattle in 99, to the IMF protests in D.C. in 2000, to the Philadelphia protests in 2000, FTAA in Miami in 2003, and many other battles. The momentum was building for a genuine resistance movement but the movement was dealt a backlash on 9/11 and the state buckled down and put our many movements into remission.

"A Brief Recent History of Venezuela's Labor Movement"

Jonah Gindin, Venezuelanalysis.com

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was elected in
1998, inaugurating a process of radical political and
social changes, it looked as though labor might be left
behind. The main labor central, the Confederation of
Venezuelan Workers (CTV) was one of his most avid
critics, and Chávez in turn lashed out verbally against
the CTV on a regular basis.

But the image of Chávez vs
Labor, repeatedly thrown at the unsuspecting casual
observer by the mainstream media, is precisely intended
to mislead. The unpleasant truth is that the CTV has
not adequately represented Venezuelan workers since the
1970s, if not before. The reality of Chávez vs the
CTV, then, does not exclude the active and enthusiastic
participation of a large proportion of Venezuelan
workers in his Bolívarian revolution (named after Latin
American Independence leader Simón Bolívar).

Anonymous Comrade writes "The Mississippi Clarion-Ledger is reporting that an army reserve platoon with members from the southeast United States has been arresested for refusing an order to deliver fuel to a base north of Bagdad."

Platoon Defies Orders in Iraq

Miss. soldier calls home, cites safety concerns

By Jeremy Hudson

A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a "suicide mission" to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday.

The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq — north of Baghdad — because their vehicles were considered "deadlined" or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook.

Sgt. McCook, a deputy at the Hinds County Detention Center, and the 16 other members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, S.C., were read their rights and moved from the military barracks into tents, Patricia McCook said her husband told her during a panicked phone call about 5 a.m. Thursday.

Anne Gray writes:

"Precarious Work/Casualisation

Common Struggles of Migrants and Nationals

A Workshop at the London (Alternative/Fringe) ESF

Saturday 16th October 2004

11.00 to 13.00 at the London School of Economics

(Go to room D702, Clement House, street called Aldwych; tube station Holborn)

Admission free both to ESF registrants and others

Migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and sans-papiers have a central thing in common with the established citizens of Europe; they are exploited workers. The session will focus on this central aspect of our lives. It will analyse how the bosses’ strategies to obtain 'disposable’ cheap labour are supported by states’ attempts to 'deregulate’ labour markets, to pressurise unemployed people into accepting unacceptable jobs, and to fortify immigration control. By bringing together the views and experiences of migrants and others, we can develop ways forward which will unite people of different origins to be more effective in their common struggle against exploitation.

hydrarchist writes

Precarity and n/european Identity:
an interview with Alex Foti (Chainworkers)


…………..

This interview took place in July 2004 at the Mill Squat in Amsterdam, during the period it was liberated from the destiny of selling 'traditional' Dutch parephenalia to tourists. Merijn Oudenampsen and Gavin Sullivan from the Greenpepper magazine spoke with Milano-based organiser Alex Foti - formerly of the Italian flexwork syndicate ChainWorkers (www.chainworkers.org) - about precarity, european labour conflict, and the spread of new syndicalist modes of subvertised collective action across Neuropa. Alex Foti is guest written editor for the upcoming Precarity issue of the Greenpepper Magazine and will be part of the PrecarityPingPong! launch and critical debate during the London ESF at Middlex University, White Hart Lane Campus, Tottenham on 15 October 2004 between 3:00 – 5:00 pm. See www.greenpeppermagazine.org for details.


…………..

GreenPepper: Alex, can you introduce yourself, and the Chainworkers?

Alex Foti: I am a union and media activist from Milan, Italy and have been part of the ChainWorkers CreW since it’s inception in 1999 - 2000. Most noteworthy, we are associated with the MayDay parade - which this year reached its fourth edition, bringing around 100,000 temp workers, partimers freelancers and other types of non-standard workers onto the streets in a joyful (but angry) expression of dissent around sub-standard conditions of work and living. This year the MayDay parade took the form of a major picket line throughout the shopping arteries of Milan. In fact, within the city limits of Milan, no major chain store or retail outfit was open for trading – either because they had become scared by the campaign we had developed in the months prior to MayDay, or because of the flying pickets that 2000-3000 people did in the morning prior to the start of the MayDay parade. This year, the parade was a EuroMayDay parade because it was done together with sisters and brothers in Barcelona, and organised in assemblies that took place throughout Milan, Barcelona, Rome, and (most crucially) Paris - with the participation of the Intermittents: the temp stagehands and part-time actors that recently blocked the Cannes film festival.

"Exploring a Socialist Alternative to Neo-Liberalism"

M. Vijaya Kumar

(Excerpt from the paper presented at the National Seminar on Neo-Liberal Globalization: Critique & Alternatives at Hyderabad, India on 22-08-2004)

Fighting Globalization & Capitalism

Globalization has been overhyped, conflictual, contradictory and open to resistance and democratic intervention and transformation and not just as a monolithic juggernaut of domination. Globalization involves both a disorganization and reorganization of capitalism, a tremendous restructuring process, which creates openings for progressive social change and intervention. The information economy represents a major restructuring of the spatial relations between capital and labour; this does not indicate that their productive relations are necessarily altered in any significant manner. The information society/information economy despite claims to the contrary is not technologically determined. Indeed, as with capitalism in general there is a central contradiction in the development of the information society. The supposition that the class struggle is over is ridiculous if the issue of the ownership of knowledge resources is the focus of analysis; the suggestion that we have move
d beyond
capitalism is rendered non-sensical if we look at the division of ownership and the conditions of workers throughout the information economy. Just as all organized resistance to capitalism appeared to be stomped out it now threatens to rise again from the very ground.

Flint writes "When a state is determined to pursue war, and all forms of indirect symbolic protest actions have failed to sway politicians to halt their imperialist aggression, the only remaining option is direct action by the working class. One option is a general strike by workers that can effect the production and transpiration of military capital, that is the materials essential for the war machine. The other is to deprive the military of the labor it needs to fight the war. The slogan from the Vietnam War protests deliberately speaks to this, "What if they had a war, and no one came?" The U.S. military is overwhelmingly recruited from the working class, and convincing our class as a whole to refuse to work for this blood money may be our best chance for both ending the war in Iraq and limiting the imperialist ambitions of the U.S. for future decades.

Blood Money:

The Human-Capital Equation of the U.S. Occupation of Iraq

by Stephen "Flint" Arthur

"Endless development of armed force. Every day we hear of fresh inventions for the more effectual destruction of our fellow-men, fresh expenditure, fresh loans, fresh taxation. Clamorous patriotism, reckless jingoism; the stirring up of international jealousy have become the most lucrative line in politics and journalism. Childhood itself has not been spared; schoolboys are swept into the ranks, to be trained up in hatred... drilled in blind obedience to the government of the moment, whatever the colour of its flag, and when they come to the years of manhood to be laden like pack-horses with cartridges, provisions and the rest of it; to have a rifle thrust into their hands and be taught to charge at the bugle call and slaughter one another right and left like wild beasts, without asking themselves why or for what purpose. Whether they have before them starvelings... or their own brothers roused to revolt by famine-the bugle sounds, the killing must commence."
Peter Kropotkin - War!

"Federal Reserve Bank Says 'Belief in Hell' Boosts Economic Growth"

Alister Bull, Reuters News Service

WASHINGTON — Economists searching for reasons why some nations are
richer than others have found that those with a wide belief in hell
are less corrupt and more prosperous, according to a report by the
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.