Police fire tear gas at protesters in Romania Romanian police fired tear gas and clashed with protesters during an anti-government rally, the third consecutive day of demonstrations against austerity cuts and falling living standards. The protests were the most serious since President Traian Basescu came to power in 2004 and were the result of pent-up frustration against public wage cuts, slashed benefits, ...

A group of community-minded gardeners have turned a former Athens airport into a blooming vegetable plot, showing how Greece's eroded soil holds the keys to a revival in farming and a way to buck the jobless trend. Written by Beatrice Yannacopoulou 'If we want to survive on this land we must first help to heal the earth,' said Nicola Netién, agro-ecologist, teacher and co-creator of the NGO Permaculture Res ...

A recent video which has been circulating the internet claims to be from a 48 hour strike which occurred in June and clearly shows police loading molotovs into a knapsack which belongs to a protester who has been arrested.  Once again the integrity (if they have any left) of the Greek police has been called into question.  This is not an isolated incident as far back as 2003 there are videos in which the Gr ...

Dear fellow-workers, once more we are witnessing a huge solidarity wave to our struggle that begun on 30/10. On that day, Greek Steelworks SA started the unjustified lay offs in an effort to terrorize us and force us to accept a modification of the collective wage agreement ruling an average  wage reduction of 40%, a reduction of working hours to 5 per day together with the introduction of shift work. The l ...

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 ...

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 ...

From the massive student strike at OccupyCal in Berkeley to the police crackdown of the OccupyWallStreet movement’s birthplace in New York City and dozens of actions and headlines in between — from coast to coast, last week was an important, up-and-down week for the growing Occupy movement. Where the movement heads in the weeks and months to come, however, will be even more critical to the fate of this peop ...

A Europe-wide austerity drive can only be defeated if UK nurses join forces with Portuguese teachers and Greek bus drivers. Maria is a softly spoken teacher, but she's clearly furious. As far as she is concerned, she is being mugged by the economic and political elite. "I think they are stealing from us," she tells me. "It's theft." Maria Juan spoke to me in the centre of Lisbon as thousands of striking wor ...

The 400 workers of the “GREEK STEELWORKS” (Helliniki Halivourgia) industry, are on strike, united as one fist, for more than three weeks. And they continue! They do not move back, they have chosen the path of honor and dignity, to defend the bread and the future of their children. They do not return to work, in fire and iron, for 500€. They demand, their 34 colleagues, who were laid off, to return to work. ...