The Ghosts Of Robespierre

MAN'S ENDLESS MARCH TO REALIZATION

17 notes

humanrightswatch: Bahrain: Detained Activists Allege Torture Since late April, 2013, in separate cases, Bahraini security officials have allegedly tortured a prominent rights activist and a woman arrested for protesting the Formula 1 grand prix race in April, including with electric shocks, and forced them to sign confessions. The allegations emerged two weeks after the Bahraini authorities indefinitely postponed the visit of the United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez. The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry report, issued in November 2011, concluded that five people detained in connection with protests earlier in 2011 had died as a result of torture in custody. Read more. 

humanrightswatch:

Bahrain: Detained Activists Allege Torture

Since late April, 2013, in separate cases, Bahraini security officials have allegedly tortured a prominent rights activist and a woman arrested for protesting the Formula 1 grand prix race in April, including with electric shocks, and forced them to sign confessions. The allegations emerged two weeks after the Bahraini authorities indefinitely postponed the visit of the United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez. The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry report, issued in November 2011, concluded that five people detained in connection with protests earlier in 2011 had died as a result of torture in custody.

Read more. 

248 notes

iloveriotporn:

After an anticapitalist demonstration 10th of May 2013 in Copenhagen, Denmark - called Reclaim The Streets (A part of the anticapitalist projekt Actionweek 19), things got out of hands for the danish police. Demonstrants started building barricares and there where some fights with the police. 22 was arrested, and one of them is being held in custody - charged for throwing bottles at the police. 

(via anarcho-queer)

9 notes

eupraxsophy:

On this day in 1954, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, because “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” which thereby violates the  Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

(via shrinkrants)

145 notes

breakingnews:

Greek member of parliament shouts ‘Heil Hitler’ during session

Washington Post: A Greek member of parliament from the far-right party Golden Dawn is heard shouting ’Heil Hitler’ during an argument with members of the a far-left party, according to reports. 

Here’s what’s thought to have happened: [Panayiotis] Iliopoulos, who had recently assaulted some immigrant vendors at an Athens port, got into an argument with members of Greece’s far-left Syriza party, whom he called “goats” and “filthy, scurrilous” people.

The parliament’s acting speaker, also a member of Syriza, asked Iliopoulos to leave. “Go away before we send you away,” he said, according to the Greek Reporter. As a scrum of Golden Dawn lawmakers filed out of the room, shouting angrily on the way out, “Heil Hitler” is audible at three different moments.

Reuters reports that Golden Dawn denies a neo-Nazi label though its emblem resembles the Swastika and there are published photographs of its supporters giving Nazi-style salutes.

172 notes

todayinlaborhistory: Today in labor history, April 25, 1886: The New York Times declares the struggle for an eight-hour workday to be “un-American” and calls public demonstrations for the shorter hours “labor disturbances brought about by foreigners.” (Photo: Inaccurate drawing by Thure de Thulstrup, May 15, 1886, Harper’s Weekly, depicting what happened in Chicago’s Haymarket Square earlier that month).

todayinlaborhistory:

Today in labor history, April 25, 1886: The New York Times declares the struggle for an eight-hour workday to be “un-American” and calls public demonstrations for the shorter hours “labor disturbances brought about by foreigners.” (Photo: Inaccurate drawing by Thure de Thulstrup, May 15, 1886, Harper’s Weekly, depicting what happened in Chicago’s Haymarket Square earlier that month).

(via shrinkrants)

2 notes

thearcus:

“More than a thousand disabled Kansans and their families staged a protest on the capital steps. Advocates say the state’s new long-term care plan for intellectually and developmentally disabled residents will jeopardize their well-being. Under the plan, called KanCare, three private insurance companies will dictate long-term coverage for the developmentally disabled beginning Jan. 1, 2014.” (Full story here.)

Photos via The Arc of Sedgwick County.

5 notes

Activists in Nairobi protested outside Kenya’s parliament buildings on Tuesday, calling on Members of Parliament to drop a proposed law that would raise their own wages from $78,500 to $126,000 in the first proposed legislation since Kenya’s March election. To symbolize what protesters called the MPs’ greed, they released nearly three dozen pigs and covered the pavement in blood. Kenyan police arrested at least 10 people, including protest organizer Boniface Mwangi, who wrote on Twitter that he was charged with animal cruelty.  REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

Activists in Nairobi protested outside Kenya’s parliament buildings on Tuesday, calling on Members of Parliament to drop a proposed law that would raise their own wages from $78,500 to $126,000 in the first proposed legislation since Kenya’s March election. To symbolize what protesters called the MPs’ greed, they released nearly three dozen pigs and covered the pavement in blood.

Kenyan police arrested at least 10 people, including protest organizer Boniface Mwangi, who wrote on Twitter that he was charged with animal cruelty. 

REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

(Source: neverdancewiththedevil)

269 notes

vicemag: New Laws Would Make Environmental Protest “Terrorism” Most people have heard of tree-sitting—a tactic environmentalists use to prevent old-growth trees from being cut down and whole forests decimated. In its heyday, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, members of groups like Earth First! climbed 100-foot-tall Redwoods and stayed there to save them. Beginning in 1997, one woman in Humboldt, California, named her tree Luna and stayed in it for two years, until enough money could be raised to prevent it from being axed. In 1998, in a Northern California old-growth forest, another treesitter named David Gypsy Chain was “accidentally” killed when loggers felled a tree that came crashing into the protester. He died instantly of massive head trauma. This style of protest was also hugely successful—that is, until a series of arrests in 2005 against radical environmentalists who were labeled “terrorists.” It scared the shit out of the environmental-activist community, and folks started drifting away. Now, there’s a vibrant national protest movement reviving those “direct action” tactics of civil disobedience again, and adding a new political savvy to the mix. They, too, have been incredibly effective. In Oregon, in the summer of 2011, one blockade took 50 cops, a backhoe, and a 125-foot-crane to remove treesitters. A few days later, activists locked themselves together in an Oregon Department of Forestry office. The group responsible, the Cascadia Forest Defenders, say they won’t stop until the Elliott State Forest is protected from clearcutting. As a result—surprise, surprise—politicians are trying to create new laws that make tree-sits and other direct-action techniques illegal. The bills even single out the Elliott State Forest campaign by name and allow corporations to sue protesters for costing them money. Continue

vicemag:

New Laws Would Make Environmental Protest “Terrorism”

Most people have heard of tree-sitting—a tactic environmentalists use to prevent old-growth trees from being cut down and whole forests decimated. In its heyday, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, members of groups like Earth First! climbed 100-foot-tall Redwoods and stayed there to save them. Beginning in 1997, one woman in Humboldt, California, named her tree Luna and stayed in it for two years, until enough money could be raised to prevent it from being axed. In 1998, in a Northern California old-growth forest, another treesitter named David Gypsy Chain was “accidentally” killed when loggers felled a tree that came crashing into the protester. He died instantly of massive head trauma.

This style of protest was also hugely successful—that is, until a series of arrests in 2005 against radical environmentalists who were labeled “terrorists.” It scared the shit out of the environmental-activist community, and folks started drifting away.

Now, there’s a vibrant national protest movement reviving those “direct action” tactics of civil disobedience again, and adding a new political savvy to the mix. They, too, have been incredibly effective. In Oregon, in the summer of 2011, one blockade took 50 cops, a backhoe, and a 125-foot-crane to remove treesitters. A few days later, activists locked themselves together in an Oregon Department of Forestry office. The group responsible, the Cascadia Forest Defenders, say they won’t stop until the Elliott State Forest is protected from clearcutting.

As a result—surprise, surprise—politicians are trying to create new laws that make tree-sits and other direct-action techniques illegal. The bills even single out the Elliott State Forest campaign by name and allow corporations to sue protesters for costing them money.

Continue

24 notes

Video suggests higher Bangladesh protest toll

aljazeera:

Al Jazeera has obtained video footage suggesting that the Bangladesh government has been providing inaccurate death tolls from recent violence. According to official figures, 11 people had died during fighting between police and protesters from Hifazat-e-Islam, an Islamic group, on May 6, a day protesters refer to as the “Siege of Dhaka”. Human Rights Watch, a US-based rights group, said that the exact number of deaths resulting from the protests are “unclear”.

6,759 notes

nezua:

theuppitynegras:

norttron:

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Philadelphia: High school students walk out of class and march to City Hall to protest severe budget cuts and planned school closings, May 9, 2013.

The budget cuts are absolutely horrific. Here are some of the proposed changes:

  • Schools with more than 1,000 students would no longer be required to have librarians or librarian assistants.
  • Schools would no longer be required to have counselors, and counselors’ caseloads would no longer be capped.
  • Teachers could be assigned to unlimited classes outside their subject area, and high school teachers could be assigned an extra class without pay.  There would be no limit on amount of consecutive time taught in a school day.
  • There would be no limit on class size
  • The district would no longer be required to provide copy machines, or “a sufficient number of instructional materials and textbooks.”
  • Counselors would no longer be guaranteed to have rooms with privacy and confidentiality, a telephone, a locked filing cabinet and a door.

There’s more here.

notice most of the posters are children of color

I just want you to notice

(via le-kif-kif)

476 notes

thepoliticalfreakshow: Bangladesh Walkout: 80% of Bangladesh’s Garment Workers Walk Out Of Work Today To Protest Horrible Working Conditions, Effectively Shutting Down Garment Factories Indefinitely Bangladesh’s entire renowned garment manufacturing hub has been shut down indefinitely, after 80% of its workers walked off the job. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association announced its decision to close the almost 500 factories in the Ashulia industrial zone “to ensure the security of our factories,” the AFP reports. But the move was something of a fait accompli; almost no work had taken place there since the April 24 collapse of the nearby Rana Plaza building. At the same time, three of the world’s biggest clothing purveyors—H&M, C&A, and Zara owner Inditex—signed a deal today legally obligating them to fund safety improvements for their Bangladesh factories, the New York Times reports. PVH, which owns Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, and Izod, which already had a similar contract in place, will also sign on. Meanwhile, search for victims at the Rana building is set to wrap up today, Reuters reports, with the latest death toll clocking in at 1,127 people. [AFP / New York Times / Reuters]

thepoliticalfreakshow:

Bangladesh Walkout: 80% of Bangladesh’s Garment Workers Walk Out Of Work Today To Protest Horrible Working Conditions, Effectively Shutting Down Garment Factories Indefinitely

Bangladesh’s entire renowned garment manufacturing hub has been shut down indefinitely, after 80% of its workers walked off the job. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association announced its decision to close the almost 500 factories in the Ashulia industrial zone “to ensure the security of our factories,” the AFP reports. But the move was something of a fait accompli; almost no work had taken place there since the April 24 collapse of the nearby Rana Plaza building.

At the same time, three of the world’s biggest clothing purveyors—H&M, C&A, and Zara owner Inditex—signed a deal today legally obligating them to fund safety improvements for their Bangladesh factories, the New York Times reports. PVH, which owns Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, and Izod, which already had a similar contract in place, will also sign on. Meanwhile, search for victims at the Rana building is set to wrap up today, Reuters reports, with the latest death toll clocking in at 1,127 people.

[AFP / New York Times / Reuters]

(via humanrightswatch)