On the 17th of October, our boss was clear : 5 hours a day and 40% salary reduction. Two days later, after a general assembly of 280 attendees the workers' response was "If you proceed, we will go on strike". On the 31st of October and only 5 minutes before 3 in the afternoon, the first dismissal was delivered to a workers' house; followed by another 18 in the same evening. Within one hour of the first dism ...

Tax havens help rich people hide money that should be spent on schools, hospitals, roads and other public services For example … Switzerland, not only one of the world’s biggest financial centres but also one of the world’s largest tax havens,[1] Switzerland takes first place on the 2011 Financial Secrecy Index.[2]     The dirty details Switzerland is home to about a third of the world’s offshore ...

Officers within the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department have confirmed that undercover cops infiltrated the Occupy LA encampment and conducted clandestine surveillance on the protesters in the days leading up to last month’s raid and eviction. Before cops launched a crack-down on the Occupy LA encampment on November 30, officials secretly kept tabs on protesters, using undercover officers to monitor ...

Call out for the 2nd pan-Dutch Assembly of the Open Assemblies. The last 3 years, no matter where we live, our lives are strongly influenced by the crisis. This crisis broke out in 2008 and transformed itself to a sovereign-debt crisis particularly in the EU-periphery. This crisis was not created by the people. The bankers and the financial institutions with the support of the governments are responsible fo ...

The OECD has come very close to predicting a depression for Europe unless EU leaders conjure up a lender-of-last resort very quickly, and somehow manage to make the world believe that the EFSF bail-out fund really exists. Even if disaster is avoided, the eurozone growth forecast is dreadful. Italy, Portugal, Greece will all contract through 2012, while Spain, France, Netherlands, and Germany will bounce alo ...

By Amie Ferris-Rotman for reuters.com ATHENS (Reuters) - For self-made businessman Dimitrios, the threats began with a phone call from a man who said they knew where his daughter was. At first the 57-year-old window installer kept quiet about the calls. When his car was torched in front of his house, he hid the blackened metal shell from his family. But when he awoke to his wife's screams at a huge banner t ...

By Kassandra at neurope.eu When, in late October, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed with the-then Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to grant Greece the €110 billion mega-loan, the latter agreed, in return for the loan, to purchase military supplies from Germany and France, worth €10.5bn. The purchases made were to be in equal parts between Germany and France. T ...

By Occupied London. On Sunday, trade unionists of GENOP-DEI, the union of the Public Power Corporation, occupied the building issuing the electricity disconnection orders for households that have failed to pay their bills. As of a few weeks ago, the latest bills now include the latest property tax imposed by the government, typically including hundreds of euros per property, making payment for thousands a n ...

On Sunday 20 of November, public-transport workers of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague went on a 24-hour strike. The government decided to reduce the funding of public transport by 40%. More than half of the employes currently working in pubic transport will be laid off. At the same time, the service will be more expensive for the citizens and their quality dramatically worsen. In Amsterdam, it is estimat ...

A brief history of the racist/fascist/neonazi penetration of Greece’s new ‘technocratic’ government It will prove George Papandreou’s ugliest legacy: that his last-minute childish maneuvering to maximise his waning hold on power (while negotiating his eviction from the PM’s job), has brought into the new ‘national unity’ government four self-declared racists (some of whom are neo-Fascists and one a neo-Nazi ...