In the shadow of the largest internal security operation in Canadian history, activists prepare to expose the truth about colonial politics.
From February 12-28 2010 Vancouver & Whistler will be host to the 2010 Winter Olympics and local activists are calling for a anti-olympic convergence to dispel the spectacle of the games. Vancouver is located in the province of British Colombia, Canada, on the traditional land of the Coast-Salish indigenous communities. This land was never legally ceded to the colony of British Colombia and no treaty exists between native communities and the government of Canada. This fact hasn't stopped the government from allowing the development of large settlements, such as the city of Vancouver itself with it's population of well over 1 million, nor the huge resource extracting industries that come with it. For this reason Indigenous rights activists are demanding "No Olympics on Stolen Native Land."
February 2, New York City: A delegation from the December 12th Movement and the Friday Haiti Relief Coalition departed from Kennedy Airport destined for Haiti on Monday morning. In the wake of the tremendous earthquake that shook the island nation, Black people throughout New York came together to begin their contribution to the relief process. More from NYC IMC: Pan African Unity Triumph! Black New Yorkers Deliver for Haiti
January 26, Houston: Sister Mawiyah was in Haiti when the earthquake hit on January 12. She has been doing missionary work there for the last 23 years and made it her home for the last five years. The name of her organization is Haitian American Ministries. Bro. Kofi had been notifying us that she was missing during the earthquake and was not responding. But around 2:00am on the morning of January 14, he received a text message from her that confirmed she was alive in the midst of thousands being found dead. I am still very traumatized from seeing that many dead bodies. Stories from Haiti.
January 23, Los Angeles: Despite the heavy rain, 24 people took part in an emergency vigil for Haiti at the Downtown Federal Building, Thursday eve, Jan 21. The vigil's purpose was asking people "to donate money to go to grassroots women and their families, and therefore communities, rather than to thieving elites and their corrupt NGOs." One very dedicated participant had been waiting for us since noon when the weekly vigil for Haiti usually takes place. Emergency Vigil in Support of Haiti
Escalating violence against anti-mining capmpaigners in Cabanas, El Salvador On 26th December, Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto became the third victim of a wave of violence against environmental campaigners in the Cabañas Region of El Salvador, where community members are protesting against the re-opening of a Gold Mine by Canadian Company Pacific Rim.
Dora Alicia was a member of the Cabañas Environmental Committee, and had been active in opposing the mine. She was eight months pregnant when she was shot dead, and her two year old son was also wounded in the attack.
Her murder comes six days after the fatal shooting of Ramiro Rivera Gomez, Vice President of the Cabañas Environmental Committee, who had survived being shot eight times in August this year. In June, another environmental campaigner, Gustavo Marcelo Rivera Moreno, had been tortured and killed. Many other members of the community have received death threats, including youth workers and journalists for the local community radio station Radio Victoria, and the local priest Father Luis Quintanilla narrowly escaped an attempted kidnapping.
In Mexico, Mariano Abarca Roblero campaigned against the environmentally destructive open-pit Barium mine Blackfire, a World Bank project. He was shot to death on the evening of November 27, 2009, in front of his house in Chicomuselo, Chiapas.
El pasado 20 de diciembre, Radio Ñomndaa, la Palabra del Agua, cumplió cinco años de vida. Es la primera radio comunitaria en el estado de Guerrero y la única en el idioma Ñomndaa. Se escucha por miles de personas de las comunidades amuzgas, y para muchas de ellas, es la primera vez en su vida que han podido escuchar música y noticias en su propio idioma. Desde el principio, Radio Ñomndaa ha estado bajo ataque del gobierno federal, estatal y especialmente el gobierno municipal de una cacique poderosa. Estas agresiones incluyen golpizas, detenciones y el ingreso a las instalaciones de la policía militar de la Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (AFI). La variada programación está orientada hacia fortalecer la comunidad para impulsar la construcción de una nueva sociedad.
Hotel workers in Puerto Rico are prepared to strike at three hotels: the Conrad Condado Plaza Hilton Hotel, the Caribe Hilton Hotel, and the El San Juan Hilton Hotel & Casino.
Though negotiations between the workers and the Hilton Corporation are expected to continue, a strike is considered imminent. Major disruptions in most services would occur as the strike would involve more than 1,100 employees, including those in housekeeping, restaurants, kitchen, bars, room service, banquets, front desk, bell and door staff, swimming pool, telephone, maintenance, croupiers and slot cashiers. All the beaches of Puerto Rico are, by law, open to the public, and for the duration of the strike, the beaches adjacent to the hotels will be occupied by striking workers and hundreds of their friends and supporters.
There are major differences between the industrialised nations, the large developing nations of India and China, and the poorest and most vulnerable countries as typified by Tuvalu which proposed to fortify the Kyoto agreement, and Bolivia. Summary of Negotiations by Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne (video)
In Copenhagen 100,000 people marched, however after 3pm police charged into the march and made arbitrary mass arrests estimated to be about 1,000. Further protests are occurring the next week inside the conference center and on the streets, check Denmark Indymedia for details and reports.
Many thousands of people attended a global weekend of vigils organised by 350.org and other protests with Walk Against Warming In Australia attracting 90,000 people, with 40,000 attending a Melbourne rally. (Video)
The UN Cop15 Climate Conference is due to take place in Copenhagen from 7th-18th December. Billed as the last chance to save our future, is it any wonder that people are getting angry? Recently the 350.org campaign clearly represented people's desire to dramatically reduce emissions across the world, yet we've seen such mass displays of political expression before, such as the global anti-war demonstrations in 2003 which seemed to have little impact upon Governments. But it's not just about emissions. Those in the global south who have contributed least to the problem are now facing the effects. Increasingly climate campaigners are saying that we cannot trust the market with our future and that we must not rely upon 'false solutions'.
Indymedia.us is happy to announce that we've managed, after nearly a year of legal action on our behalf by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), to successfully fight back against a bogus subpoena request issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in conjunction with a grand jury investigation. The request demanded we turn over all IP address logs for a day in June of 2008 - not only did Indymedia.us object to this blatantly illegitimate and overly broad request, but, per accepted Indymedia best practices, we do not keep such logs in the first place, in order to maximally ensure the privacy of our site users. Also troubling was the fact that the indymedia.us sysadmin who received the subpoena was also bound by its gag order provision, making her unable to discuss the legal issue with the broader network of collectives cooperating on the indymedia.us site. We're happy that the EFF was ultimately able to get this demand for silence shown to be illegitimate as well --- one can only wonder how many ISPs silently capitulate to similarly broad and unconstitutional requests.
G20 Finance ministers failed to reach agreement on the financing required for a global agreement to stave off catastrophic climate change, according to WWF Scotland. The Finance Ministers of the G20 countries were meeting in St Andrews, Scotland on 6-7 November.
Outside the G20 Finance Ministers meeting in St Andrews students and civil society gathered with an alternative summit on Saturday and Students Blockading the G20 meeting on the road to the Fairmont Hotel in an attempt to disrupt the G20 finance ministers as they arrived at their St Andrews hotel location. A rally occured in St Andrews to say 'Nae Tae G20.' on November 7. (Photos) The students were protesting against the G20's current policies regarding the economic recession.
Africa abandons Barcelona's pre COP15 climate talks - Anger in the streets at rich nations inaction. Copenhagen Climate Treaty appears doomed - delays likely. Delay is not an option, delay kills.
On 31st October 2009 in City Square, Leeds, the English Defence League held a rally. The EDL is a nationalist, islamophobic organisation formed earlier this year and is widely viewed as racist.
A counter-demonstration was organised by Unite Against Fascism (UAF). Participants described it variously as being dull, jubilant and tightly controlled. Meanwhile, other anti-EDL groups attempted to confront EDL directly. Reports suggest that at least two large groups attempted to reach EDL to confront them at City Square, but were turned back towards the UAF rally by police (see time-line for first-hand accounts).
Reports from the area around City Square were that most of the EDL supporters didn't go into their pen. Some were held between police lines and others regrouped on Boar Lane, before being brought back to the railway station by the police. Another group of EDL marched around the Albion Street area and responded violently when challenged about their inflammatory chanting.
This morning (28th october) around 9:00am dozens of costumed activists have blocked all access to the Charlemagne Building in Brussels, next to the Commission’s HQ, where Business Europe, the EU lobby of bosses and industrialists, is supposed to hold their conference on Copenhagen and climate change and hear Barroso self-congratulate himself on green capitalism. Belgian activists retort: Our Climate Ain’t None of Your Business!
For the last three years a ban on squatting has been in preparation in Dutch politics. A new act that is to ban squatting in the Netherlands has passed through parliament on October 15th. Squatting empty houses that have been empty for over a year is currently still legal in the Netherlands. The new act, an initiative by the Christian Democrats, the Christian Union and the conservative opposition party VVD, is to make squatting a felony punishable by at least one year and up to three years of prison when refusing to evict. Despite strong critique from the High Court, the union of city councils and even the Amsterdam police force, the christian/rightwing majority in The Hague is pushing this law through.
Lucha: Decía el Viejo Antonio que, la lucha es como un círculo. Se puede empezar en cualquier en cualquier punto, pero nunca termina. Subcomandante Marcos.
El pasado 12 de octubre se consumó lo que, desde hace tiempo denunciamos como parte de la estrategia etnofágica y etnocida del actual Estado-gobierno venezolano: el cuerpo ministerial de Chávez vino a entregar supuestos títulos a tres comunidades indígenas yukpa en la Sierra de Perijá, pretendiendo con ello, dar por saldado el proceso de demarcación de los hábitats correspondientes a este pueblo. Llama la atención la no presencia del Presidente Chávez en un acto esperado en la Sierra desde el año 2002, fecha en la que según disposición constitucional el Estado ha debido culminar el proceso de demarcación de todos los espacios territoriales indígenas del país; en su defecto, un enorme piquete de soldados cubrió el espacio del evento, supuestamente, para brindar seguridad a los Ministros (Interior y Justicia; Ambiente; de Pueblos Indígenas; entre otros funcionarios presentes), y que al menor asomo de protesta de las comunidades no favorecidas se activó de inmediato para aplacar sus abiertos reclamos. Se trató, en fin, de la acción a través de la cual los yukpa debían obligadamente aceptar la entrega de NADA.
Más de 150,000 personas marcharon el día del Paro Nacional contra las políticas neoliberales del gobierno de Luis Fortuño y los ricos. Hoy por hoy el país se prepara para organizar la Huelga General.
Como parte de las actividades programadas para el día del Paro Nacional del 15 de octubre, hubo dos grandes concentraciones: la de la coalición Todo Puerto Rico Por Puerto Rico comandada por el liderato de la Coalición Sindical compuesta de sucursales de uniones burocráticas estadounidenses, y la del Frente Amplio de Solidaridad y Lucha comandado por la UTIER. Pero en el Expreso Las Américas, en el área del elevado que pasa por encima de la Ave. Roosevelt, se dio una tercera concentración de manera improvisada.
El pasado 6 de Octubre, dos años después del Fraude que decidió la aprobación del Tratado de Libre Comercio con EEUU, se realizó una Caminata Popular por la Dignidad en la Zona Sur de Costa Rica. Más de 150 activistas marcharon desde la entrada del Territorio de Térraba, hasta el centro del cantón de Buenos Aires. Paso a paso se fue recorriendo el camino de 13 kilómetros. Distintas comunidades en todo lo ancho, largo y profundo del sur enfrentan luchas contra la expansión piñera, la construcción del "P.H. Diquís", la construcción del aeropuerto internacional en el territorio de Finca 9, los planes de construir marinas e implantar granjas industriales de atún en el Golfo Dulce y a favor de la ley de la Autonomia Indígena.
DURBAN — On Saturday, September 26, about 40 heavily armed men ambushed a meeting of the Kennedy Road Development Committee of Abahlali baseMjondolo, South Africa's shack dwellers’ movement. The men were apparently shouting, “the AmaMpondo are taking over Kennedy. Kennedy is for the amaZulu!” The ensuing violence has resulted in between two and eight deaths, and hundreds of homes burned. As of Sunday night only leaders of Abahlali baseMjondolo have been jailed --- many of whom are members of the movement's security team and some of the youth who were not present at the time of the attack. Many have fled the settlement and people's homes are being destroyed, including the home of Abahlali President, S'bu Zikode.
It is clear that the attacks have been on political and ethnic grounds, and there is growing concern regarding the involvement of local authorities including the police, ANC, and ward council. The violence appears to be a planned attempt to break this peaceful and democratic movement. Please read and sign a petition demanding an end to the violence.
Τα καπιταλιστικά Δυτικά ΜΜΕ με λίγες εξαιρέσεις έχουν αποτύχει να μεταδώσουν πληροφορίες για τη συμμετοχή του εκτελεστικού αποσπάσματος του Τάγματος 3-16 στην de facto κυβέρνηση του Micheletti, δεν έχουν ασχοληθεί καθόλου με τις «εξαφανίσεις», μιλάνε για λιγότερες εκτελέσεις δίχως δίκες απ’ όσες γίνονται, και έχουν σχεδόν πλήρως αποκρύψει την ακόμη ανεξιχνίαστη ιστορία των εκτελεστικών αποσμπασμάτων της δεκαετίας του 1980. Η κυβέρνηση του Zelaya επίσης περιείχε μέλη των εκτελεστικών αποσπασμάτων (ισπανικά), κάτι με το οποίο η CODEH και άλλες τοπικές οργανώσεις ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων στην Ονδούρα ποτέ δεν συμφώνησαν. Το σχέδιο των Obama-Clinton-Lula "Arias" «περιέργως» δεν αναφαίρεται αν προτείνει ή όχι την απαγόρεψη συμμετοχής μελών των εκτελεστικών αποσπασμάτων σε οποιαδήποτε «συμφωνημένη» κυβέρνηση συνεργασίας.
Από τις 6 Ιούλη η Λ'Ακούιλα θα φιλοξενεί τη πιό κυνική συνάντηση των G8 στην ιστορία.
Ακόμη και αν οι εργασίες στη Μανταλένα (το πρώτο μέρος) έχουν ήδη αρχίσει, η κυβέρνηση του Μπερλουσκόνι πονηρώς έχει αποφασίσει να εκμεταλευτεί τη «κατάσταση άμεσης ανάγκης» του σεισμού, μεταφέροντας όλη την οργάνωση των G8 σε μια περιοχή κοντά στη Λ'Ακούιλα, μια κομόπολη που είχε ζημιές από το μεγάλο σεισμό της 6ης Απρίλη 2009. Οι «ευκαιρίες και τα πλεονεκτήματα» της G8 είναι ακόμη δύσκολο να τα δούμε. Ακόμη και αν η οργάνωση των G8 είναι υπό σκληρή κριτική. Αλλά η κυβέρνηση του Μπερλουσκόνι δεν ενδιαφέρεται. Και τη τελευταία μέρα της συνάντησης θα βγάλουν μια αισιόδοξη ανακοίνωση, ενώ σε όλο το κόσμο θα κριτικάρονται. Η κυβέρνηση προσπαθεί όσο μπορεί να αποφύγει τις διαδηλώσεις, μεταχειρίζοντας τη κατάσταση εκτάκτου ανάγκης για να κρατά το πλυθησμό ύσηχο και να απαγορεύει κάθε διαδήλωση. Η μόνη «κατάσταση εκτάκτου ανάγκης», σ'αυτή τη πόλη που οι άνθρωποι ζουν σε σκηνές, είναι λόγω των διαδηλώσεων. Και το ξόδεμα 500 εκατομμυρίων ευρώπουλων κλεμμένων από το ταμείο επανίδρυσης της Λ'Ακούιλα για να χτιστούν τα νέα κτίρια της «Guardia di Finanza» (Οικονομική Αστυνομία) που θα φιλοξενίσουν τη συνάντηση, δεν είναι πρόβλημα.
Παρόλο το κυνισμό και τις ατασθαλίες της κυβερνήσεως, αυτή η G8 έχει καταπολεμηθεί με διαδηλώσεις και στην Λ'Ακούιλα, όπου ο κόσμος ακόμη διαμαρτύρεται ενάντια στη βοήθεια που έχει δοθεί για το σεισμό, αλλά και σε όλες τις περιοχές της Ιταλίας.
Το πρωί αυτής της Κυριακής, Ο πρόεδρος της Ονδούρας, Μελ Ζελάϊα (Mel Zelaya) απήχθη από το στρατό και μεταφέρθηκε με το ζόρι στη Κόστα Ρίκα (Costa Rica). Σύμφωνα με τις εφημερίδες της Ονδούρας, ο πρόεδρος του κογγρέσου, Ρομπέρτο Μικελέττι (Roberto Micheletti), θα πάρει την προεδρία. Προηγουμένως και λίαν συντόμως έπειτα από το πραξικόπηρα στην Ονδούρα, το Ράδιο Ελευθερία μεταδίδει ένα ζωντανό χρονικό σχετικά με το τί συμβαίνει στην Ονδούρα, της αντιπολίτευσης και τις κινήσεις των λαϊκών και ιθαγενών οργανώσεων ενάντια στο πραξικόπημα, από τη νίκη της νέας βουλής, και γράφει μία νέα σελίς της δίχως να χρειάζεται άλλον κίνημα της Κεντρικής Αμερικής. Ακούστε μετάδωση του Ράδιο Ελευθερία από κάπου στην Ονδούρα: http://208.43.218.127:8070/ Παρακαλούμε τα εθνικά και διεθνή αυτόνομες ομάδες να μεταδώσουν στα ελεύθερα ράδιά σας ή να κάνετε καθρεφτησμό της μετάδωσης αυτής. Καθρεφτήσματα: 1 | 2 | 3 Περισσότερες πληροφορίες στο Ανεξάρτητο Μέσων Κέντρο της Ονδούρας Ανεξαρτομέσο Ονδούρας (Independent Media Center of Honduras Indymedia Honduras): http://honduras.mediosindependientes.org Περισσότερες πληροφορίες στο Ράδιο είναι ένα από το λιγότερο: http://www.radioeslodemenos.org/ Λέπτό προς λεπτό από τον Κάος (Kaos) στο Δίκτυον: http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/secuestrado-presidente-honduras-militares Πληροφορίες και μετάδωση από την Ένωση Ραδίων και Συμμετεχόντων Προγραμμάτων του Ελ Σαλβαδόρ (Association of Radios and Participating Programs of El Salvador) (HARPS): http://www.arpas.org.sv/ Ξέρουμε οτι θα κλείσουν τα ελεύθερα μέσα στην Ονδούρα. Αυτό το προϊνό το Ράδιο Προοδευτισμός (Radio Progreso), ένα από τα παλιότερα κομμουνιτάριανά ράδιο στην ύπηρο το έκλεισαν από το ο στρατός. Άλλα κομμουνιτάριανά ράδια αποφάσησαν να προστατέψουν τον εξοπλισμό τους. Η ηλεκτρική ενέργεια, το τηλέφωνο και το Διαδύκτιο έχουν παύσει από τους πραξικοποιματίες που προσπαθούν να σταματήσουν τις επικοινωνίες και να κρύψουν τη πληροφορίες. Και η κατάσταση ανυχηθεί εμάς επειδή τα δίκτυα κομμουνιταριανών ράδιων στη πόλη Λέντσα (Lenca) και τη πόλη Γαριφούνα (Garífuna), μένουν, όπως και τα ελεύθερα μέσα: ΚΟΜΜΟΥΝΑ, Αντίσταση, το ΚΟΦΑΝΤΕΧ και τα υπόλοιπα των ομάδων των ανεξάρτητων και κομμουνιταριανών μέσων κίνημα στην Ονδούρα. *** Μετάφραση από Καναδό σύντροφο που μαθαίνει Ελληνικά.