Void Network : Statement of Solidarity to the U.K. Student struggle

Statement from the occupation of Sussex University:

This afternoon, over 170 students occupied the lecture theatre in the Fulton building at the University of Sussex in protest of the trebling of tuition fees and the attack on our education system.

In light of Wednesday’s demonstration, which saw 52,000 people come out in opposition to the government’s proposed cuts to education and raising of fees, we feel it is necessary for further action to consolidate the efforts made so far and push on in the opposition to these ideologically motivated cuts to both education specifically and public services as a whole.

We reject the notion that these cuts are necessary or for the benefit of society. There are viable alternatives which are not being explored. While the government has suggested that ‘we are all in this together’, we completely reject this and are insulted that these cuts are being pushed through alongside reductions in corporate tax. We feel these cuts are targeting those who are most vulnerable in our society.

Furthermore, not only are these cuts damaging our current education, but are changing the face of the education system as we know it. The hole in finances left by government cuts will inevitably be filled by private interest. This marketization of education will destroy the prospect of free and critical academic enquiry, on which universities should be based. The trebling of tuition fees will further exclude another swathe of society and make university accessible only to the rich.

We reject the media manipulation of the occupation of Millbank. The cost of the damage to 30 Millbank is less than insignificant when set against the damage of lost livelihoods and destruction of public services for future generations.

This occupation recognises that Aaron Porter’s statements condemning the demonstration are counter-productive and serve only to divide and segregate the movement. We are disappointed that, as a national representative of students, Aaron Porter’s statements have detracted from the real issue at hand by focusing on the events at Millbank Tower.

We believe that this Tory led coalition government has no mandate for lifting the cap on tuition fees. Nick Clegg has openly manipulated student voters in his campaign for election, and following the recent exposure of plans to drop his pledge to reject any rise in tuition fees, this occupation condemns his dishonesty and undemocratic methods.

Education is a right, not a privilege.

- We demand the University of Sussex management makes a statement condemning all cuts to higher education and rise in tuition fees

- We are opposed to all cuts to public services

- We oppose a rise in tuition fees

- We call for solidarity and support for those arrested or victimised on Wednesday’s demonstration

- We stand in solidarity with others taking action, both nationally and internationally, in the fight against austerity measures.

- We call for all other university, college and school students and staff to strike and occupy in defence of the future of our education system, and to participate in the national day of action on the 24th November 2010.

please print in A3 black&white photocopy this
poster and spread it to your schools, universities and
local social centers

Statement of Solidarity to the U.K. Student struggle

VOID NETWORK // ATHENS GREECE

http://voidnetwork.blogspot.com

All we,…

the students, the working people, the unemployed and the lazy ones, girls and boys from Void Network / Athens Greece section we express our solidarity to the occupation of Sussex university and to all people that will participate in this and all other actions until the great demonstration of 24 November and beyond that....

.

The news coming from U.K. about the student’s struggle are making us all here in Athens having great hope about the arising of critical mind and the radicalization of a whole generation in all U.K…. Our thoughts and hearts are there with you…

We believe that Now(!) is the best moment for all students to deny their position in the machine, to break the process of reproduction of themselves as slaves to the economic system, to destroy the hegemonism, ignorance, apathy and racistic domination of the scientific, academic and economic elite of this planet, to create the conditions of constant free sharing of global knowledge and free distribution of the productions of it, to bring their emancipatory understandings to the center of the city, at the center of the political agenda of their society, to unite their struggle with all other people in struggle (the older and the younger ones, the immigrants and the family people, the retired ones and the workers, the excluded ones and the homeless ones, the lovers, the travelers, the ravers, the squatters, the freaks and the romantic ones, the employed, the unemployed and the lazy ones, the angry ones and the disappointed ones, the destructive ones and the creative ones).

Now is the time to create a new public discourse that includes all of us, that starts from the anxiety, the fear and the misery of the every-day student life and expands to the anxiety, the fear and the misery of all the ages, all the society.

Capitalism and State Democracy are destruction machines. Our blood and our minds are the powers of this machine. Now all of us, in one way or the other we know that this machine is bringing life on planet earth in extinction.

Our Life is the Death of the machine. Life of the machine is our Death.

Our best moments are these ones when we are together fighting against the machine. In the universities, in the working places, in the city center, in the forests, against the parliament, the royal palaces, the industries, the super markets and the luxury restaurants, in the T.V. stations and infront of police stations, prisons, and courthouses.

Now…you can see us…

We are all together…And, when we fight we are fighting for our lives….

Stay awake in the deep night of the western civilization…We become more and more millions on this planet night after night…and We Are Ready to Fight Back!

VOID NETWORK // ATHENS GREECE

http://voidnetwork.blogspot.com

Student fees protest in London U.K.: 'This is just the beginning' // Student protest: we are all in this together

Void Network and Void Mirror international blog publishes 

two articles from today's 

Guardian newspaper

about the student struggle in 

U.K. and Ireland, a struggle 

that 

creates hopes to all of 

us about 

the arising of critical thought and fearless action 

against neo-liberal capitalism 

and social, economical and 

political  inequality and totalitarianism 

in United Kingdom. 

We express our solidarity 

to all students and workers 

that participated in the 

attacks against targets of 

authority and control in 

London and all over U.K.

Your Fight is our Fight! 

Student fees protest: 

'This is just the beginning'

• Tory HQ attacked as demonstration spirals out of control
• 35 arrested and 14 injured in violent clashes at Millbank
• Police admit being caught out by scale of student action

• by Jeevan Vasagar, Paul Lewis and Nicholas Watt
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 10 November 2010 21.38 GMT

Tens of thousands of students took to the streets of London today in a demonstration that spiralled out of control when a fringe group of protesters hurled missiles at police and occupied the building housing Conservative party headquarters.

Tonight both ministers and protesters acknowledged that the demonstration – by far the largest and most dramatic yet in response to the government's austerity measures – was "just the beginning" of public anger over cuts. Police, meanwhile, were criticised for failing to anticipate the scale of the disorder.

An estimated 52,000 people, according to the National Union of Students, marched through central London to display their anger over government plans to increase tuition fees while cutting state funding for university teaching. A wing of the protest turned violent as around 200 people stormed 30 Millbank, the central London building that is home to Tory HQ, where police wielding batons clashed with a crowd hurling placard sticks, eggs and some bottles. Demonstrators shattered windows and waved anarchist flags from the roof of the building, while masked activists traded punches with police to chants of "Tory scum".

Police conceded that they had failed to anticipate the level of violence from protesters who trashed the lobby of the Millbank building. Missiles including a fire extinguisher were thrown from the roof and clashes saw 14 people – a mix of officers and protesters – taken to hospital and 35 arrests. Sir Paul Stephenson, Met police commissioner, said the force should have anticipated the level ofviolence better. He said: "It's not acceptable. It's an embarrassment for London and for us."

While Tory headquarters suffered the brunt of the violence, Liberal Democrat headquarters in nearby Cowley Street were not targeted. "This is not what we pay the Met commissioner to do," one senior Conservative told the Guardian. "It looks like they put heavy security around Lib Dem HQ but completely forgot about our party HQ."

Lady Warsi, the Tory party chair, was in her office when protesters broke in. She initially had no police protection as the protesters made their way up the fire stairs to the roof. Police who eventually made it to Tory HQ decided not to evacuate staff from the building but to concentrate on removing the demonstrators.

The NUS president, Aaron Porter, condemned the actions of "a minority of idiots" but hailed the turnout as the biggest student demonstration in generations. The largely good-natured protest was organised by the NUS and the lecturers' union the UCU, who have attacked coalition plans to raise tuition fees as high as £9,000 while making 40% cuts to university teaching budgets. The higher fees will be introduced for undergraduates starting in 2012, if the proposals are sanctioned by the Commons in a vote due before Christmas. The NUS president told protesters: "We're in the fight of our lives. We face an unprecedented attack on our future before it has even begun. They're proposing barbaric cuts that would brutalise our colleges and universities."

Inside parliament the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg – the focus of much anger among protesters for his now abandoned pledge to scrap all tuition fees – came under sustained attack, facing 10 questions on tuition fees during his stand-in performance during prime minister's questions. He said there was consensus across the parties about the need to reform the system.

Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman, said the rise in fees was not part of the effort to tackle the deficit but about Clegg "going along with Tory plans to shove the cost of higher education on to students and their families". She said: "We all know what it's like: you are at freshers' week, you meet up with a dodgy bloke and you do things that you regret. Isn't it true he has been led astray by the Tories, isn't that the truth of it?"

Meanwhile one student won an unexpected concession from the coalition yesterday. In answer to a question from a Chinese student during his trip to China, David Cameron said: "Raising tuition fees will do two things. It will make sure our universities are well funded and we won't go on increasing so fast the fees for overseas students … We have done the difficult thing. We have put up contributions for British students. Yes, foreign students will still pay a significant amount of money, but we should now be able to keep that growth under control."

Additional reporting by Rachel Williams and Matthew Taylor

original article published here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/10/student-fees-protest-conservative-hq

Student protest: 
we are all in this together


The Occupation of Conservative Party HQ is about so much more
than fees. At last the country is starting to fight back


by Nina Power / Guardian

Today's protest against the education cuts was uplifting: students, staff and others from all over the country gathered in their thousands to walk the route between Embankment and Tate Britain, pausing to boo at Downing Street. The weather was bright and clear, and the mood decidedly upbeat. Staff, students and others marched together under banners from colleges all over the country, while drums and chants protesting at the fees rang out for miles. There were a sizable number of Lib Dems protesting against their own party's U-turn on fees, and a sit-in outside parliament – the peace protesters who reside there were happy to give the students a quick lesson in the true meaning of anarchy.

Numbers were massive too, with around 52,000 turning out – more than double the NUS's original estimate. Police helicopters circled above the crowds, as protesters carried giant vultures, carrots, coffins and effigies of Tory politicians. But media reports will inevitably focus on one thing, namely the spontaneous occupation of and protest in Tory HQ at 30 Millbank Tower. Aaron Porter, the NUS president, was quick to condemn the breakaway protesters, describing their actions as "despicable".

As I write, about 200 people have occupied the building, and bonfires burn outside. Some arrests have been made and eight people – protesters and police officers – have been injured. Protesters have broken windows and made their way on to the roof. Twitter reports indicate that some have taken a sofa from inside Millbank and put it outside, with the quite reasonable argument that "if we're going to bekettled we may as well be comfy".

Direct action this most certainly was, the kind writers such as John Pilgerhave recently been calling for. It is hard to see the violence as simply the wilfulness of a small minority – it is a genuine expression of frustration against the few who seem determined to make the future a miserable, small-minded and debt-filled place for the many.

The protest as a whole was extremely important, not just because of the large numbers it attracted, and shouldn't be understood simply in economic terms as a complaint against fees. It also represented the serious anger many feel about cuts to universities as they currently stand, and the ideological devastation of the education system if the coalition gets its way. It was a protest against the narrowing of horizons; a protest against Lib Dem hypocrisy; a protest against the increasingly utilitarian approach to human life that sees degrees as nothing but "investments" by individuals, and denies any link between education and the broader social good.

The protesters – students and others – who occupied Tory HQ will no doubt continue to be condemned in the days to come. But their anger is justified: the coalition government is ruining Britain for reasons of ideological perversity. The protests in France and Greece and the student occupations here, such as the recent takeover of Deptford Town Hall by Goldsmiths students on the day cuts were announced, are indicators of a new militancy. At this point, what have we got to lose?

The best moments on any protests are when there is a real feeling of common purpose and a recognition that we are all on the same side. This is the true meaning of "big society" – the very thing that the coalition seems set on destroying, despite its rhetoric. This protest – in both its peaceful and more violent dimensions – is a sign of a country unafraid to fight back, for the first time in a long time.

This article published originaly here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/10/student-protests-conservative-party-hq-occupation


for a report from Leeds Class War anarchist group click here:
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/12706


for more photos and videos:
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1223725

"Cocaine Culture: A global apartheid of decadence and death" by Blake Sifton

"Cocaine Culture: 

A global apartheid of 

decadence and death" 

by Blake Sifton

Capitalism has always required disposable populations in order to function. In our system of global apartheid other people must toil in fields and sweatshops, die in resource wars and watch as their countries are poisoned in order for us to enjoy comfortable, privileged lives.

As this reality becomes clearer I am alarmed by the hypocrisy of many of my contemporaries. Young, educated and progressive, they are well informed about the world’s problems and sick over the endemic violence, oppression and environmental degradation that they see.

And so they march in protest, volunteer abroad, shop ‘green’ and insist on drinking fair trade coffee. But when the weekend comes and they let loose at parties, they see no contradiction in snorting cocaine, one of the most exploitative commodities on earth.

They do not seem to care that for coke to make its way up their American noses, Mexican heads must roll in the streets of Juárez. Their indifference does not bode well for the rest of the country.

Decadence and a thirst for instant gratification fuel the insatiable demand for cocaine in the US, while hyper-individualism and a sense of entitlement allow private dealers to legally sell assault weapons with no questions asked and a complete disregard for where they end up.

The trickle down effect of these attitudes is the unbridled brutality ravaging Mexico and the horrific deaths of tens of thousands of people over the last three and a half years. We need to look in the mirror and recognize our own responsibility for the bloodbath next door.

The United States consumes 300 metric tons of cocaine a year, half of the world’s annual demand.

While it is produced in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, 90 percent of all cocaine that ends up in the US passes through Mexico.

“The coca plant doesn’t grow on Mexican soil. Mexico is merely the straw between the South American refineries and the gringo’s nose,” explains Alberto Giordano, the publisher of Narco News, an online newspaper that covers the war on drugs and Latin American social movements.

The annual profit made transporting cocaine through Mexico is estimated to be close to $10 billion dollars. Seeking to erode the considerable influence they have held over Mexican society for decades, President Felipe Calderón declared war on the drug cartels when he took office in 2006.

Since then however Mexico has endured a nightmarish wave of unimaginable violence as the cartels – under pressure from the Mexican military – fight each other for control of the smuggling routes to the US market. With so much American money at stake there are no limits to the carnage plaguing Mexico.

Casualty levels are higher than many bitter civil wars as police, soldiers, politicians, judges, journalists and innocent bystanders are all kidnapped and killed on a daily basis. Previously unimaginable atrocities, including massacres at rehab centers and preteen parties, now occur regularly.

In an attempt to intimidate and one-up each other the cartels often torture and execute rivals, throwing their severed heads onto barroom floors and city streets or hanging them from overpasses. In an especially incomprehensible act, assassins removed a man’s face and stitched it onto a soccer ball.

Professor John Bailey, Director of the Mexico Project at Georgetown University, says, “It’s the cartels’ way of sending a message. You could call it savage semiotics.”

While American indulgence creates the financial incentive for mass murder, Mexican poverty provides the willing participants. Deprived of other opportunities, there is no shortage of individuals ready to take the lives of others.

“Murders are cheap in Mexico. You can hire asicario to kill for you for $100,” Bailey says.

Bruce Bagley, an expert on narcotics trafficking at the University of Miami explains what is driving Mexicans to kill:

“There are so many young men in Mexico with only partial socialization who want to move up. These young men, often teenagers as young as 13, don’t see any real opportunities for themselves or their families. They can either migrate illegally to the United States or they can choose the get rich quick, life is short, essentially meaningless path of working for the cartels.”

“They don’t think they’re going to live long anyway, so they’re willing to use extreme, cruel violence to move up in the world.”

The death toll in the Mexican drug war officially surpassed 23,000 recently. However, the real number is likely higher as many bodies disappear, often dissolved in vats of acid in a practice known as making “Mexican stew.”

Despite the violence Mexican society has somehow managed to stagger along while, Giordano believes, “Events like these would splat the psychology of many North Americans like melons off the back of a truck.”

The US got a small taste of the trauma in March when three Americans linked to the consulate in Ciudad Juárez were murdered as they left a children’s birthday party. It is no secret that it often takes an American death for the US to notice bloodshed abroad and President Obama was indeed “Deeply saddened and outraged.”

But no mention was made of the fact that the victims were cut down with weapons likely purchased in the United States. Mexico has some of the strictest gun control legislation in the world, making it almost impossible to buy a gun legally.

However, just across the border are the American states with the softest gun laws in the country.

The Mexican government seized more than 20,000 weapons from drug gangs in 2008 alone. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 90 percent of guns seized in Mexico and traced over the last five years came from the US.

Most are purchased from gun shows in Texas and Arizona where private dealers can legally sell military-style weapons without running a criminal background check or recording the buyer’s name.

This unfettered individualism means assault rifles, armor-piercing handguns and .50 caliber sniper rifles are all easily obtained from the US civilian gun market.

“Our laws allow us to carry guns around and that’s our sovereign decision. But we have a responsibility to ensure that these weapons don’t harm other countries,” argues Bagley.

He believes that the gun lobby helps Americans absolve themselves, “The American public doesn’t think about it. The NRA has done everything they can to dilute any sense of American responsibility.”

We need to ask ourselves how we reached this point of zero empathy for those hurt by our way of life.

Andrew McCann puts the issue this way:

“The idea of a population, caught on one side of a border, banished from ‘society’ and thus subject to a lethal violence exercised with apparent impunity, raises one of the most pressing questions: Under what circumstances, and through what structures of victimization and neglect, does a population become disposable – or killable?”

The war on drugs is undeniably lost and many people – including the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil – argue that the key to ending the violence is to legalize narcotics in order to cut the cartels’ profits and remove the incentive for violence.

But we cannot deny our own culpability in the disaster down south. There is nothing radical about indulging in a substance that directly kills impoverished people in the developing world. We need a cultural revolution to reevaluate our priorities and break the cycle of decadence and death.

—Blake Sifton


This article published in October 2010 at Adbusters magazine:
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/91/cocaine-land-free.html

for more photos from the War On Drugs in Mexico here:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/mexicos_drug_war.html