This is a video about protests in Iceland against the government and the central bank.
The economic crisis continues.
Iceland: Angry protests over economy force early elections: here.
The rise and fall of Wall Street fixture John Thain, who was fired yesterday by Bank of America, offers a glimpse into the criminal inner workings of US capitalism: here.
Britain: Demands for nationalization of banks from sections of big business: here.
Britain: Not all of finance is in ruins. Bonus culture is doing fine: here.
From British daily The Independent:
Ministers were accused last night of profiteering from the soaring numbers of people facing bankruptcy after they announced huge increases in fees at debtors’ courts.
Charges are to rise by up to 233 per cent for debt proceedings from next May, affecting hundreds of thousands of people who plunge into the red.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday
BAIL OUT PEOPLE
NOT WALL STREET!!
LABOR/COMMUNITY FIGHTBACK CONFERENCE!
New Speakers Added!
Susan Abulhawa,
Author of Scar of David
Hank Jones,
San Francisco 8
Hamid Khan,
South Asian Network, Taxi Drivers Organizer
Dave Welsh,
delegate,
SF Labor Council
Where: SEIU Local 721 – 500 S. Virgil Ave. Los Angeles (Near 6th St.)
When: Saturday, January 24th from 1 PM to 7 PM
Contact: (310) 677-6407
Sponsors And/Or Endorsers:
SEIU Local 721; Letter Carriers Union Local 214; Labor/Community Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions; Hermandad Mexicana Nacional; Familia Latina Unida Sin Fronteras, Maravatio, Michoacan, Mexico; BAYAN-USA; ANAKBAYAN; FMLN; Black Workers for Justice, Raleigh, NC; Free Iraq Now, Anaheim; The Hip Hop Citizen – Riverside; Plan of Action in a Changing Era – San Diego; Our Developing World – Saratoga; Puerto Rican Alliance Los Angeles; San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper; International Action Center; Rosie Martinez, Executive Board SEIU Local 721; Clarence Thomas, Executive Board ILWU Local 10; Dave Welsh, San Francisco Labor Council Delegate; Chris Silvera, Secretary Treasurer, Teamster Local 808; Rosa Clemente, 2008 Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate
What’s it about?
• Uniting and fighting against the war against working and poor people both here and abroad and for economic and social justice.
• Bringing together all workers and people affected by this crisis in a militant movement to win our rights, linking up community groups, churches, labor unions, anti-war and social justice activists and more.
• Uniting communities with union efforts to organize and protect working and poor people.
What do we want?
Panels & Workshops On:
* JOBS OR INCOME – the Right to a Job. Extend Unemployment Insurance; No Plant Closings and Runaway Shops; ban slave labor in the prisons; Labor/Community control of banks, auto industry.
* HOUSING FOR ALL – Housing is a human right – Moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.
* EDUCATION FOR ALL – Quality education is a human right. With the budget cuts, many schools in the most oppressed communities are in danger of being shut down. Stop prison construction – fund schools not prisons.
* DEFEND IMMIGRANT WORKERS. Attacks on immigrant labor are attacks against the entire working class and union movement. Stop the raids, deportations & family separations – Full legalization now.
* STOP THE REPRESSION OF COMMUNITIES hardest hit by the crisis, including racist police brutality, and the railroading of youth into the prison system. How do we deal with the lack of public services, community gathering places, and even the lack of any real food stores in many neighborhoods? How do we ensure that any stimulus package also goes to the communities hardest hit by the economic crisis, especially in communities of color?
* UNITE ORGANIZED LABOR AND ALL WORKERS to use their strategic position in the economy to fight for what we need: Awakened to the growing danger to their jobs, wages, benefits and pensions, workers will be looking for a new way out. Class solidarity and struggle offer that way.
* BUILD SOLIDARITY WITH WORKERS IN GAZA, IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, SOMALIA AND EVERYWHERE: People in the Middle East, the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia and Africa are fighting against the same banks, corporations and military industrial complex that rob and wage war against us here in this country on a daily basis. Unite our struggles to become stronger. Stop the War Machine, Fund People’s Needs Instead.
* FIGHT RACISM, SEXISM, HOMOPHOBIA AND OTHER ATTEMPTS TO DIVIDE OUR CLASS: The spontaneous protests of mainly Black and Latina/o people against the murder in Oakland by transit cops and the nationwide demonstrations against Prop 8 by the LGBT communities prove that people are ready to battle for social justice and equality. How can we further build united actions against oppression that will unify working and poor people?
Bail Out The People Movement – http://www.bailoutpeople.org
International Action Center – http://www.iacenterla.org
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Hundreds lose jobs daily
‘This is not normal,’ says labor secretary
By Kristine L. Alave
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:14:00 01/24/2009
MANILA, Philippines—Hundreds of people in the Philippines are losing their jobs every day as the global economy slows, Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said Friday.
Between Dec. 1 and Jan. 19, some 15,600 workers were laid off, Roque said in a radio interview.
Over the same period, 19,000 others had their shifts or working hours reduced.
“Just for today it was reported to us that 458 people nationwide could lose their jobs,” Roque said.
He said most of the job cuts were happening in the electronics sector, which has suffered from plunging global demand.
The sector employs 480,000 people and accounts for nearly 70 percent of Philippine exports.
After US chip maker Intel Corp. announced the closure of a chip testing plant in Cavite this week with the loss of 1,800 jobs, Roque warned Thursday that up to 60,000 Filipinos could lose their jobs this year, mainly in the electronics and garments industries.
Roque said he did not keep comparative figures for previous years, but stressed: “This is not normal. This is not business as usual.”
Job creation is a chronic problem in the Philippines, where more than 27 million Filipinos—nearly one in three—live on a dollar a day or less, according to official figures.
About a third of the labor force is jobless or underemployed, and around eight million of the country’s able-bodied citizens have gone abroad for temporary work.
The overseas workers remitted some $15 billion to their families in the 11 months to November 2008, according to the central bank.
Roque stressed that jobs are still being created in the Philippines, citing 600 new hires reported Thursday in the Calabarzon industrial belt south of Manila, where most of the electronics jobs had been lost.
“These are mainly manufacturing jobs that have no connection to the electronics sector,” he said.
Meanwhile, about 3,000 Filipinos are still flying out of the Philippines daily for contractual work abroad, he added.
A total of 1.3 million Filipinos found work abroad last year, up 24 percent from calendar year 2007, he said.
‘Tip of the iceberg’
The closure of the Intel plant is just the “tip of the iceberg” and the Arroyo government should brace for more layoffs, plant shutdowns and dire economic indicators that will continue beyond 2010, economic and labor experts said on Friday.
“The most optimistic forecast is that the US economy will recover in 2010. The Philippines’ recovery will come after that. The Philippines’ recovery cannot precede that,” said Benjamin Diokno, a former labor secretary at a labor forum at the Asian Institute of Management sponsored by the Blas F. Ople Policy Center.
And even if the US and other major economies recover next year, their revival “will not be a strong one,” he said.
Diokno, who now teaches at the University of the Philippines’ School of Economics, estimated that 500,000 Filipinos here and abroad will lose their jobs as the global recession deepens.
“The economies of the top 10 export destinations of Philippine exports are expected to get worse in 2009 and a weak recovery is projected in 2010 … Weaker economies means lower demand for Philippine products. Weaker export demand means more layoffs,” he said.
Since last year, he said a major export firm, the watchmaker Timex Corp. has been scaling down its local operations and laying off employees.
“It’s just the tip of the iceberg. If two major exporters are in trouble, what more the smaller ones?” he said.
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration said more than 3,000 Filipinos working in Taiwanese factories were laid off during the month of December. Labor officials in Taiwan said the number could rise to 6,000 by June.
Rising underemployment
Rene Ofreneo, a professor at the UP School of Labor and Industrial Relations, said underemployment will grow in the coming years as more and more Filipinos take on jobs they have previously turned down just to survive in these hard times.
Diokno said the number of Filipinos taking on jobs that they do not like has been increasing. “The number of underemployed increased by 248,000 from 6,376,000 in April 2007 to 6,626,000 in April 2008,” he said.
Ofreneo and Diokno are pessimistic about the prospects of creating jobs for displaced Filipinos. According to Ofreneo, the government cannot just retrain overseas Filipino workers for new types of work as they tend to be more negative in their outlook.
Worst people to train
“The worst people to train are those in crisis. Those who should be retrained are people who still have jobs and looking for better work,” he said.
The two academics said the P330-billion economic stimulus package approved by Congress should be spent in modernizing the agricultural sector instead of building new highways and roads.
It should instead be used to improve the neglected rural sector by building irrigation facilities and farm-to-market roads.
The money would also be better spent on “maintenance of existing infrastructure and away from big projects,” said Diokno.
Government should also earmark funds for reforestation projects, said Diokno, as this is pro-poor and would create many jobs. With Abigail L. Ho and AFP
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