German President Gauck’s pro-poverty propaganda in Greece

Posted on March 11, 2014 by petrel41

This video is called Greece – Athens 2012.

German President Gauck visits Greece

11 March 2014

Last week, German President Joachim Gauck travelled to Greece for a three-day state visit. The trip served to strengthen the Greek government in its attacks on the rights and social achievements of working people. The anti-communist former pastor from East Germany exhibited all of the dishonesty and hypocrisy which have become his political trademarks.

He was very concerned at having to hear “what so many Greeks have to put up with in the seventh year of the crisis, and how those suffering most under the crisis did not cause it,” Gauck asserted. In the same breath, he stated that the austerity measures, which were in large part dictated by Germany, were tough but necessary, and that the path pursued thus far had to be maintained.

At the end of his trip, he shed crocodile tears in the village of Lingiades, the scene of one of many war crimes by the German army in Greece in World War II, and asked Greeks for forgiveness while briskly rejecting calls for reparations for the victims.

The surroundings of Gauck’s trip recall state visits conducted to totalitarian states. As was the case with the visit of German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble last June, large areas of the city centre of Athens were sealed off and a ban on demonstrations was enforced. When around 500 people approached the exclusion zone to protest against mass layoffs, they were attacked by police with batons and tear gas.

Gauck later indirectly thanked the government in Athens for its suppression of any expression of democratic opinion. He also praised the government for having prevented “chaos and anarchy”, also “in delicate phases.” He also explicitly thanked the trade unions for not using “their power to blockade,” and said they had thereby served Greece.

At the same time, Gauck noted repeatedly in his speech the need for “painful reforms,” and opposed describing them as a “dictate from outside actors”. In a discussion with opposition leader Alexis Tsipras, he stated that the reform measures were not an austerity program but an aid program.

In fact, it is an aid program for the country’s banks and creditors. They have been compensated for their toxic investments while Greek state debt has exploded, the social achievements of the working class have been destroyed and broad sections of the population have been ruined.

On average, wages have fallen by 40 percent over the past four years. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been destroyed and the education and health care systems have been decimated. At a rate of 28 percent, unemployment has reached a new record. Out of over one million registered unemployed, only 16.4 percent receive state support and health care.

As a result, every new layoff or spending cut is a question of life and death. Health minister Adonis Georgiades declared at the end of February that emergency patients would continue to be treated for free. However, according to the health minister, who was previously a member of the extreme right-wing Laos Party, “illnesses like cancer are not considered urgent, unless you are in the final stages.”

Gauck not only defended these measures, but called for their expansion throughout Europe. The Greek government is currently negotiating with the European Union (EU) over new cuts. According to reports, EU representatives are demanding the layoffs of 4,000 state workers by the end of the month, the easing of protection against sackings in the private sector and the cutting of public sector wages.

Gauck announced in an interview with the Greek daily Kathemerini that “painful reforms to stimulate the economy and employment,” enforced in Germany as part of the Agenda 2010 program of reforms, were to be carried out throughout Europe. “Although there is no reform blueprint,” the German President said, “wherever we can provide meaningful German experience, we will help and do so gladly.”

Gauck linked his call for the plundering of European workers with a revival of German militarism. In a repugnant manner he used the victims of the Nazi regime for this purpose.

On Friday, Gauck visited Ioannina, a town in the northwest of Greece, and the nearby village of Lingiades, where in October 1943 the German army committed a horrific war crime.

After an officer from the notorious 1 Alpine division Edelweiß was killed by Greek partisans, General Hubert Lanz ordered the extermination of the entire population of the village in retaliation. Wehrmacht soldiers herded the villagers into cellars, shot them and finally set the buildings ablaze. 82 people died, mainly women and children. The youngest was two months old. Lanz was convicted of war crimes at Nuremburg, but spent only four years in prison before becoming defence expert for the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and honorary chairman of the association for Alpine troops.

German soldiers deported 1,725 Jews from Ioannina and the surrounding area to Auschwitz, of whom only one tenth survived the concentration camps.

Gauck held a speech in Lingiades and laid a wreath at the memorial for the murdered villagers. Germany was doubly guilty, said Gauck, because the perpetrators had not asked for forgiveness for a long time. He wanted to do this on their behalf now.

The hypocrisy of these words was hard to swallow. Only a day earlier, Gauck emphatically stated that no legal right to compensation for the victims could be deduced from Germany’s moral guilt.

When Greek President Karolos Papoulias, who fought the German occupiers at the age of 14, declared at a joint press conference on Thursday that Greece had never given up on reparation payments, Gauck responded, “You know that I can only answer that by saying that I believe the legal process has been concluded.”

Among the Greek demands is a loan imposed by the occupiers in 1942 on the Greek state through blackmail. Even the Third Reich recognised this loan as an official debt worth almost 500 million Reichmarks. But the federal republic declared it null and void and today takes the view that all Greek claims were satisfied in the global reparations agreement from the 1960s. At that time, Germany transferred the derisory sum of 115 million marks to Athens. The German government is also of the opinion that the bailout received by Greece as an EU member has invalidated all claims for reparations.

Gauck has made the visiting of memorials marking Nazi crimes a central part of his trips abroad. Prior to Lingiades, he visited Oradour in France, Lidice in the Czech Republic, and Sant’Anna di Stazzama in Italy. In the process he has systematically used the horrific crimes of the Nazis to justify the revival of German militarism.

While Green Party foreign minister Joschka Fischer once justified German participation in the war against Serbia by reference to Germany’s responsibility for Auschwitz, Gauck now legitimises every German military intervention, including the German government’s current collaboration with fascists in Ukraine, by claiming to be preventing alleged crimes.

“We can never believe”, Gauck said two weeks ago in an interview with Deutsche Welle, “that after German brutality, German criminality, Germany’s murderous acts were defeated that the danger has been banished. It is absolutely not. And we have seen in Europe, in Srebrenica, that sometimes just talking doesn’t help. And in Rwanda we have seen what happens when we don’t intervene.”

Germany could no longer use the crimes of the Nazis as a “justification” to hold back from military intervention, Gauck said.

In the same interview, Gauck explicitly justified the intervention in Ukraine, where the German government has worked closely with the fascist Svoboda Party, which bases itself on the anti-Semite and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and enjoys close ties to the German fascist National Democratic Party (NPD). As the strongest power in Europe, Germany could not afford to take a back seat, the president declared. “There are no reasonable grounds which could be brought forward against our intervention.”

Spanish government’s anti-women policies

Posted on March 10, 2014 by petrel41

By Laurie Penny in the New Statesman in Britain:

Porque Yo Decido: Spain’s war on abortion is not about morality – it’s about austerity

Attacking women’s rights isn’t just a diversion tactic. It’s a bid for votes from cultural conservatives.

8 March, 2014 – 17:43

Porque Yo Decido. Because I decide. That was the title of a manifesto handed to the Spanish government on 1 February on behalf of the millions of men and women across the country who oppose the conservative People’s Party’s push to ban abortion. “Because it’s my choice,” reads the manifesto. “I am free, and I live in a democracy, I demand from the government, any government, that it make laws that promote moral autonomy, preserve freedom of conscience, and guarantee plurality and diversity.”

In late December, the People’s Party (PP) government, led by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, approved a bill that will make abortion illegal in all but the most extreme medical circumstances and in cases of rape. “That was when the explosion of resistance happened,” says feminist activist Cristina Lestegas Perez. “Since then, there have been hundreds of street protests, debates, demonstrations, parades, conferences, seminars, exhibitions and performances all over the Spanish states and overseas.”

Under the Franco regime, abortion was illegal in Spain. In 1985, laws were passed permitting termination of pregnancy in very limited cases, but so many Spanish women were travelling to Britain to have abortions that dedicated flights had to be chartered. In 2010, the law was finally liberalised by the then socialist government to permit abortion up to the 14th week of pregnancy.

If the parliament passes the bill, as it almost certainly will, Spain will once again have one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. Women will be forced to carry pregnancies to term even in cases of severe fetal abnormality. Teenage girls will require the consent of a parent to have an abortion under any circumstances. “This law will take Spanish women back to dictatorship times when we needed the consent of our fathers or husbands to do anything,” says lawyer Maria Alvarez, who has been active in the pro-choice protests from the start. “In my opinion, hearing a priest speaking about my uterus is disgusting and obscene. I haven’t seen any priests or bishops in any of the demos against domestic violence. They don’t give a damn about women. They want to control us. They won’t win this battle!”

The clause that allows for abortion in cases of rape gives the lie to the Spanish government’s claims to be “pro-life”. If one’s true and primary concern is the sanctity of human life, then how that life came about should not be an overwhelming consideration. However, if one’s real motive is restricting women’s sexual freedom, then it makes sense that women and girls who got pregnant without consenting to sex should be spared the punishment of forced childbirth. That, of course, is what’s really on the table when the global “pro-life” movement speaks, as the Spanish Justice Minister did, of “protecting” women by treating them like idiot criminals, incapable of making decisions about their own bodies and their own futures.

The Spanish government’s concern for the rights of unborn children appears to terminate swiftly once those children have been born. Six months ago, the Council of Europe, the continent’s main human rights watchdog, has warned Spain that its austerity programme could have a devastating impact on its children, 30 per cent of whom now live in poverty. And here we get to the crux of the issue, the real reason that the abortion rights question is back on the table in Spain. It’s not about morality. It’s about austerity.

In the years since the global economic crisis of 2008, politicians worldwide have used attacks on abortion, contraception and LGBT rights to distract attention from fiscal disaster. As the European parliamentary elections approach, the Rajoy administration has a great deal from which to distract voters’ attention. Unemployment stands at 26 per cent. The government has been mired in corruption scandals for many months. It has no coherent political narrative to offer those who voted for the PP out of despair except more austerity. To say that women’s right to decide what happens to their own bodies has been used as a political football is accurate only if one thinks back to those playground days when the boys who had the football routinely trampled over the entire yard, ruining everyone else’s games.

The PP, like many other conservative and neoliberal parties across the west, has no compelling story to offer its core voting base in a time of cuts, and is losing support to new parties that are further to the right, like the Vox party, which has been compared to the Tea Party in the United States and to UKIP in Britain. The new abortion law isn’t the only high-profile policing of women’s sexuality that the PP has been pushing. In July 2013, just corruption scandals involving senior ministers were reported, the government voted to forbid single women and lesbians from accessing fertility treatment except through prohibitively expensive private clinics. Attacking women’s rights isn’t just a diversion tactic. It’s a bid for votes from cultural conservatives.

The enormous pro-choice backlash in Spain is as much about democracy as it is about women’s freedom. In forcing through the new conservative abortion law against the wishes of 80 per cent of the population, the Spanish government has demonstrated its willingness to override public opinion in order to secure its own base. The 15M and Occupy movements of 2011-12 are long over but the core of popular left-wing sentiment in Spain is still deeply suspicious of representative democracy. Activists across the country share the sense that Spain is being dragged back to dictatorship times – a phrase that I hear repeated until it becomes a refrain – and not just over moral questions of women’s sexuality.

“It’s a big scandal,” said Ana Miranda Paz, a former MEP for Galicia and member of the Gender Equality Committee for the European Parliament. “The PP is using the next European campaign to get the votes of the most conservative part of Spanish society. The Rajoy goverment wants to bring us back to dictatorship, reducing equality, cutting the budget to improve education and sexual rights, cutting social rights and the public health system.”

The protests against the new law have spread far beyond the feminist community, and men, too, have been on the streets from the start. “The public response has been massive,” said Perez. “There is common opposition to the law from all the sectors: doctors, lawyers, judges, educators, housewives, politicians, labourers. It is really thrilling and motivating to witness such a shared resistance to a so-called gender issue.”

Right now, as I’m writing this piece, it’s International Women’s Day, and tens thousands of men and women in Spain and across the continent are marching against the Rajoy government’s determination to restrict women’s reproductive rights in the face of popular resistance.

“Me myself, I will be doing what is needed,” said Perez. “I will go to the protest and demonstrate that millions of men and women are against this retrogressive law. And on the next day, I will keep fighting for our rights with my dear fellow women and we will keep doing it day after day until we overthrow this law.”

International Women’s Day censorship in Canada

Posted on March 10, 2014 by petrel41

This video from Canada is called International Women’s Day Rally 2013 – Vancouver Art Gallery – Friday March 8 – Patriarchy Chant.

By Veronica Strong-Boag in Canada:

Women’s Day blog censored by Canadian Museum for Human Rights, says author

March 10, 2014

Author’s note: This post was commissioned as an IWD blog by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. It was initially approved and posted by the Museum on 4 March 2014. It was, however, almost immediately withdrawn as ‘Communications’ at the Museum deemed the one line comment on the current federal Conservative government unacceptable as written. The offer of a substantive footnote and illustrative example from the author brought no reply. ActiveHistory.ca has reposted this time-sensitive contribution here, to which examples of anti-women policies and a footnote have been added.

International Women’s Day on 8th March should be a key date in the human rights calendar. Its place is hard-won. When Charlotte Bunch, a leading figure in the creation of UN Women (2010), insisted in 1990 that women’s rights are human rights in the Human Rights Quarterly and Edward Broadbent, from the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, served in 1993 as a judge in the Vienna Tribunal on Women’s Human Rights, one half of humanity’s entitlement to fair dealing remained globally contested. That struggle continues.

Although recognition that women’s rights are human rights pre-dates even writings of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) in the western tradition, IWD emerged in 1908 with a mass women suffrage meeting organized by American socialists. By 1911 the idea had reached Europe, where again it persisted as a special interest of the left. Unlike ‘Mother’s Day,’ also first observed in 1908, which celebrated women as maternal and peace-loving, IWD initially concentrated on waged and industrial labour. Early champions such as the German socialist Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) intended to highlight tragedies such as the 1911 New York Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and economic oppression generally. When IWD became an official holiday in Russia after 1917 and in the new People’s Republic of China in 1949, even as both countries failed to offer equality, liberal democracies, not to mention dictatorships, shied away.

Champions of equality, however, persisted. 20th century wars and genocides prompted international action. The United Nations, like the earlier League of Nations, proved influential, producing Conventions on the Political Rights of Women (1952), on the Nationality of Married Women (1957), and on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages (1962). By the 1960s, the second great feminist wave took up the unfinished agenda of fundamental human rights. Its message infused International Women’s Year (1975), the International Decade of Women (1976-85), and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW; 1979).

IWD was another beneficiary. In 1977 the UN encouraged members to proclaim 8th March ‘the UN Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace.’ The linkage of women and peace (remember Mother’s Day) was familiar. Far newer was recognition of violence against women in both war and peace as a major human rights violation.

This was not the only shift. By the close of the 20th century, the IWD feminist grassroots in Canada as elsewhere emphasized the role of class, race, sexuality, and (dis)ability in further jeopardizing particular groups. Although Canadians grew increasingly sensitive to human rights, state approval included the threat of cooptation. In 2014 Canada’s Conservative government left its anti-woman record unmentioned (which included withdrawal of plans for a national child care program and major cuts to Status of Women Canada [2006], the prohibition of civil servants taking pay equity complaints to the Human Rights Commission [2009], the denial of international funding for abortion [2010], and major cuts to public services that employ and serve significant numbers of women)[1] as it dedicated IWD week to the ‘valuable contribution of women entrepreneurs.’

For the moment, despite herculean efforts by loyalists, the IWD spirit often resides elsewhere than in official commitments. In 1991, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside inaugurated 14th February as a Day of Remembrance for murdered and missing women. As losses mounted across the country and around the world, that tragic record drew increasing censure. The UN appointed a special rapporteur on violence against women while the Native Women’s Association of Canada and the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action provided on-going proof of abuse for the UN CEDAW Committee. In 2014, nation-wide Valentine’s Day protests once again illuminated the plight of particularly disadvantaged women. The Canadian human rights calendar now properly includes the day previously evocative solely of romance.

The 8th of March should not, however, be abandoned. The IWD’s vision of ‘bread and roses’ does not rely on UN approval, for all its value. Like much feminist accomplishment, it has been hard forged on picket lines, in women’s shelters, in political life, and in private homes. With its rich history of resistance and celebration, IWD remains a key marker of how far we have come and how much remains to be done when it comes to women’s human rights in Canada and around the globe. On 8 March 2014, like many others, I will be renewing my commitment to a more just future.

Footnotes
1. For an introduction to this see Sylvia Bashevkin, “Regress trumps progress: women, feminism and the Harper government,” Perspective/FES Washington (July 2012), http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/id/09205.pdf.

Veronica Strong-Boag, the author and editor of many scholarly books and articles, received the Tyrrell Medal for excellence in Canadian history from the Royal Society of Canada in 2012 and is a former president of the Canadian Historical Association. She is a Professor Emerita at UBC and at the moment the Ashley Visiting Professor at Trent.

This blog post is reprinted with permission from activehistory.ca.

Caribbean countries demand reparations for slavery

Posted on March 10, 2014 by petrel41

This video from the USA says about itself:

12 YEARS A SLAVE – Official Trailer (HD)

19 July 2013

12 YEARS A SLAVE is based on an incredible true story of one man’s fight for survival and freedom. In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty (personified by a malevolent slave owner, portrayed by Michael Fassbender) as well as unexpected kindnesses, Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon’s chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist (Brad Pitt) forever alters his life.

Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Lupita Nyong’o, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, and Alfre Woodard.

Translated from NOS TV in the Netherlands today:

Fifteen Caribbean heads of state, united in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), demand from their ex-colonizers compensation for the damage they have caused during the period of slavery. They want the Netherlands to be held liable as well, because of its history of slavery in Suriname.

It is the first time that such a large group of countries are demanding reparations from their former colonizers. The countries also address the requirement to Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. CARICOM convened in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines today to discuss a plan with ten demands.

Dialogue

Reparations for the suffering caused by slavery are not just about hard cash, says the chairman of the committee, Sir Hilary Beckles: “Our goal is a dialogue with the European countries, they are responsible for the disadvantaged situation of the Caribbean countries today.”

McDonald’s boss tells sick worker to kill herself

Posted on March 10, 2014 by petrel41

This video from the USA is called Amy Goodman Reports From Fast-food Worker Strike at McDonald’s in New York City.

From Daily Kos blog in the USA:

Mon Mar 10, 2014 at 08:03 AM PDT

McDonald’s worker: Manager told me to ‘put a bullet in my head’

by Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor

Workers rallied at a Chicago McDonald’s Saturday afternoon to protest a manager’s extreme verbal abuse of a sick worker there. Carmen Navarrette, who’s been working at the McDonald’s for nine years, says that after she asked to go home after a diabetic episode, her manager told her she should “just put a bullet in [her] head.”

Several Chicago aldermen rallied with the workers, and:

“I stand with the workers of McDonald’s and call on the corporation to treat them with respect and dignity,” Ald. Muñoz of the 22nd ward, where Carmen Navarrette lives, said in a statement. “No one should be verbally abused or threatened at work.”

While telling workers to shoot themselves in the head may be an extreme example, fast food workers often report bullying and verbal abuse from managers. It’s just that, unless workers are organized enough to fight back, we don’t hear about it. Billionaire venture capitalists get space on the Wall Street Journal editorial page to claim that complaints about massive economic inequality are just like Nazi Germany, while fast food workers are insulted and made to work off the clock or while they’re sick and we only rarely hear about it.

Aside from the insults and abuse, not being allowed time off when they’re sick is typical for fast food workers outside the few cities and one state that have paid sick leave laws. A paid sick leave bill in Chicago has the support of a majority of aldermen, but no word on whether Mayor Rahm Emanuel supports it.

Monsanto’s RoundUp banned in the Netherlands in 2015

Posted on March 9, 2014 by petrel41

This video from the USA says about itself:

Dr. Stephanie Seneff presentation on harmful effects of glyphosate

24 October 2013

In her presentation entitled “Roundup: The Elephant in the Room,” Dr. Seneff outlines adverse health and environmental effects caused by chemicals that are being applied directly to foods we eat.

Translated from the Party for the Animals in the Netherlands:

Pesticides to be removed from shelves of garden centers

Thursday, March 6, 2014 13:01

From the end of 2015 on, the dangerous pesticide glyphosate may no longer be sold to individuals. Glyphosate is a component of RoundUp, which is also sold to individuals as weed control. The Dutch House of Representatives today voted for a motion by Esther Ouwehand [Party for the Animals MP], which prohibits the sale of glyphosate to individuals.

Glyphosate has increasingly been linked to health problems such as infertility, birth defects, damage to the nervous system, Parkinson’s disease and various forms of cancer. Besides the health risks for humans the use of chemical pesticides also leads to loss of biodiversity and increasingly difficulties in purifying drinking water.

In 2011, the House called for a total ban on the use of glyphosate for non-agriculture purposes. Because municipalities also use the poison in their weed control and even for individuals the pesticide is for sale everywhere. Contrary to the wishes of Parliament, however, the government made all kinds of exceptions to the requested prohibition. So people were allowed to use glyphosate weed killers in their gardens, but not on their terraces. Unclear, uncontrollable and irresponsible, given all the risks to health and the environment .

Now that the motion of the Party for the Animals has been voted for, the government should get pesticides with glyphosate, including the best-selling RoundUp, off the shelves.

Michelangelo’s David sculpture abused by merchants of death

Posted on March 9, 2014 by petrel41

This video is called Michelangelo‘s David (BBC).

From the BBC:

8 March 2014 Last updated at 20:14 GMT

Italy up in arms over Michelangelo‘s David rifle advert

Italy’s culture minister has expressed outrage over an advertisement by a US weapons firm showing Michelangelo’s David holding a rifle.

Dario Franceschini said the image was offensive and violated the law.

A number of Italian media web sites carried the image of the advertisement showing David holding a bolt-action rifle.

The advertisement, from Illinois-based ArmaLite, carries the line “a work of art” in promoting the $3,000 rifle.

This punk rock music video from Britain is called GANG OF FOUR – ‘ARMALITE RIFLE‘.

The lyrics are here. They are about the role of Armalite rifles in killing people in Northern Ireland.

The BBC article continues:

Mr Franceschini urged the company to withdraw the advertisement for the AR-50A1.

He said in a tweet: “The image of David, armed, offends and infringes the law. We will take action against the American company so that it immediately withdraws its campaign.”

Historical Heritage and Fine Arts Board curator Cristina Acidini has issued a legal notice to ArmaLite to withdraw the image, saying it distorts the artwork.

The government says it has copyright on the commercial use of images of David.

Angelo Tartuferi, director of Florence’s Accademia Gallery, where the statue is on display, told Repubblica newspaper: “The law says that the aesthetic value of the work cannot be distorted.

“In this case, not only is the choice in bad taste but also completely illegal.”

The marble statue of the Biblical hero was created by Michelangelo between 1501 and 1504 and is considered a masterpiece of the Renaissance.

Happy International Women’s Day today!

Posted on March 8, 2014 by petrel41

From the New Statesman in Britain:

We mustn’t forget the revolutionary roots of International Women’s Day

Now marked with Google doodles and special shopping displays, in the early 20th century, International Women’s Day was a fierce, worldwide campaign for worker’s rights.

by Rebecca Winson

Published 8 March, 2014 – 10:00

International Women’s Day: a day, according to the UN, to “reflect on progress made”, to “celebrate acts by ordinary women”. Few would say that it fails to do this. Last year Google marked it with a doodle, and there were events from streets marches to window displays of Selfridges, who marked it with a short film showing famous female designers and presenters.

Yet all this fails to reflect exactly what the day means. Amid pastel Gifs and shop windows full of well-off women, barely a whisper could be heard about those who brought the day into being. Perhaps it’s not surprising: next to them, modern feminists look a little wet. They forged International Women’s Day (IWD) in the midst of fire, bloody strikes, starving workers and revolution.

Luise Zietz and Clara Zetkin were the first to come up with the idea. Inspired by growing numbers of female activists, in 1910 they proposed to the second Socialist International the organisation of a day worldwide dedicated to promoting women’s rights.

Against a backdrop of ambivalence from male unions, women had been organising for decades. Cap-makers, match girls and laundresses had all picketed at the turn of the 20th century, and as Zetkin and Zietz made their proposal, the “Uprising of the 20,000” was drawing worldwide attention. A bloody strike by New York’s garment workers, it was led by Clara Lemlich, a 23-year-old Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant who rallied tens of thousands of women to the picket lines even after thugs hired by her employers broke her ribs.

The first IWD took place on 19 March 1911. Over a million women across Europe took to the streets calling for equal rights. Jubilation at the day’s success was short-lived: less than a week later fire ripped through the sweatshop where Clara Lemlich worked, killing 146 workers who had been locked inside by their employers. Lemlich lost a cousin to the flames, collapsing in hysterics when she was unable to find her body. The tragedy – still one of the worst industrial disasters in US history – brought universal condemnation, focusing future IWD campaigning fiercely on worker’s rights.

IWD was just solidifying into a proudly left-wing tradition when the First World War broke out in 1914, and socialist organisation collapsed in chaos. In 1917, however, IWD took on significance again, when a group of Russian women triggered one of the most monumental events of the 20th century. Marching in St Petersburg, they were unexpectedly joined by workers from surrounding factories, supporting their calls for “Bread and Peace”. Within hours a full scale revolution had broken out. Tsar Nicholas abdicated, a new government was set up, and six months later, the Bolsheviks took control.

We all know what happened next, and it may well be distaste at the system of government that the event kickstarted which is responsible for its revolutionary roots being swept under the carpet. Some historians claim its origins were deliberately hushed up in the McCarthy era, some see it as changing politics – but whatever was responsible, the disparity between what the day was then and what it is now shouldn’t pass without comment.

From being a day devoted to campaigning for the poorest women, to becoming one on which Walmart can claim to promote equality: IWD is a perfect example of feminism’s failure to connect with the poor. Get up in arms about that accusation all you want (and please do, it would be great to see some mass mobs in feminism), but the fact remains that, for all the grasps at intersectionality and the spat-ridden Twittering of recent years, there are still women who find themselves in the same position that Clara Lemlich did in 1910: scrabbling through rubble for the body of a loved one. We consistently fail to connect with the whole embarrassing mess of it.

Sweatshops still exist across the world, as do trafficking, slavery, horrendous working conditions and unsanitary living conditions. On our own doorstep, women are bearing the brunt of the cuts. Single mothers, poor teenagers in inner-cities, ordinary working women who struggle to put food on the table. What do we debate on Twitter, on our much-fought-over platforms in the press? Pink toys, boobs in newspapers and women on banknotes: none of which is unimportant, but which have all risen to the top of the debate because of our reluctance to deal with anything filthier.

International Women’s Day – and perhaps feminism in general – now veers dangerously close to paint-by-numbers protest. Femen have called for an international women’s strike on IWD 2017, which might have been heartening had they not chosen to wait three years in order to coincide with the headline-grabbing centenary of the February Revolution.

When Clara Lemlich died, aged 96, she was organising her care workers into a union. International Women’s Day shouldn’t just be about the poor in order to respect women like her, but because of what she knew to the last: that to make society better for everyone, you have to start with the ones who have it worst. On 8 March, that’s what we should be reflecting upon.

Haitians on International Women’s Day: here.

It’s March 8, International Women’s Day and the eighth day of women’s history month and so I have decided to blog about the work I do in celebration of women’s history, present and future: here.

International Women’s Day: ‘When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she’s a bitch’ – feminist quotes from female icons to inspire you: here.

15 Works of Art Depicting Women in Science [Photo Essay]: here.

Five female mathematicians you’ve probably never heard of, but should know: here.

Inside Alaska’s New “War on Women”: here.

Lebanese march against domestic violence in rare non-partisan protest: here.

March 3, 1913: A historic moment in the fight for women’s voting rights: here.

Greek governmental anti-worker violence

Posted on March 8, 2014 by petrel41

From daily News Line in Britain:

Saturday, 8 March 2014

GREEK RIOT POLICE ATTACK DEMONSTRATORS

SACKED Finance Ministry cleaners demanding re-employment, occupied the Athens district tax office in Kallithea yesterday morning.

At the same time, state teachers on the ‘mobility scheme’ occupied the Kallithea technical college and school guards occupied the Kallithea Town Hall against their prospective sackings.

The Greek government has put some 14,000 public sector workers on the ‘mobility scheme’ since last summer, promising re-employment. Workers feel that this is an excuse for mass sackings by the end of the ‘mobility scheme’ period on March 23.

Those immediately affected are state secondary school teachers, ministries’ civil servants, school guards and municipal police.

Last summer, the Greek government sacked over 2,500 ERT workers (Public Television and Radio Corporation) and the 500 Finance Ministry cleaners. Both of these sections of workers have launched a fight with meetings and demonstrations which is continuing today.

The Greek armed riot police have been attacking nearly all of these workers’ mobilisations.

Last Thursday morning, squads of the armed riot police attacked fiercely in the Athens city centre a demonstration of workers organised by the KKE (Greek Communist Party) protesting against unemployment. Several workers were injured by the riot police tear-gas, truncheons and shields, including a KKE parliamentary deputy who was hit in the head.

The Greek coalition government had declared the Athens city centre around the Vouli building (Greek parliament) out of bounds for meetings and marches due to the visit of the German Head of State Joachim Gauck.

On Thursday afternoon, about 1,000 teachers, school guards, and civil servants on ‘mobility schemes’ attempted to march to the Vouli but were stopped by riot police who had placed police buses across all streets.

At the mass meetings, trade union leaders used high rhetoric to condemn the government and the riot police, but refused to call for a general strike and the overthrow of the government.

These trade union leaders organise weekly demonstrations of sections of workers as a protest, spreading illusions that somehow the Greek regime, installed on the orders of the EU and the IMF, will change its policies of mass sackings.

The EC-IMF-ECB troika representatives are in Athens dictating terms to the Greek government on mass sackings and the recapitalisation of the bankrupt Greek banks.

Although almost 50bn euros have been put into the Greek banks in the last three years, reports state that a further 6-10bn euros is necessary.

The opposition party Syriza (Coalition of Radical Left) have stated that Greek banks should be nationalised.

Meanwhile, in the eastern Aegean on Wednesday, a Greek Coast Guard patrol boat fired on a dingy with three Iranian refugees. Doctors at the hospital on the island of Chios said that all three persons had bullet wounds on their bodies.

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