general strike in britain, against austerity measures

Public sector workers all across Britain are neither in their offices nor in schools today. Rather, they are on the streets.

In what is expected to be a 24-hour strike, hundreds of thousands of British workers and union members are staging a massive demonstration against proposed changes to the public pension scheme.

Led by four major academic and public service unions, the strike has closed or partially closed two-thirds of public schools and universities in England and Wales. Many museums are also closed, while a large number of airport and seaport workers have joined the picketers at public squares around the nation.

Causing momentary worry, operators at 999 call centers — the UK’s 911 equivalent — have joined the strike, but hundreds of police officers have taken up their spots at the phones. In total, 90 percent of civilian police department workers have joined their union’s rally.

The strike involves the pension portion of the government’s proposed austerity bill which is meant to raise 111 billion pounds. The pension changes would increase the retirement age for public workers from 60 to 66 by 2020 and would require workers to contribute more to their pension funds.
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“Our members are faced with everything they have ever worked for being taken away from them,” Public and Commercial Services Union spokesman Richard Simcox told IBTimes. “This can’t be right, and cannot go unopposed.”

“Asking [educators] to pay even more into a pension for reduced benefits is not the way to attract the most intelligent to teach,” said University and College Union general secretary Sally Hunt.

There was hope that negotiations between union heads and politicians would render the strike unnecessary, but a meeting with Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander angered the unions more than it assuaged them.

“It was disappointing that the meeting proved to be no different to any of the others — it was a farce,” commented Public and Commercial Services Union General Secretary Mark Serwotka.

“This is not a decision that has been taken lightly and it is not [an] action being entered into without proper thought,” Hunt said.

U.S./Pakistan relations continue to sour, over American drone base

US told to vacate Shamsi airbase: Mukhtar

The Defence Ministry Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar has said that trust deficit between Pakistan and the United States has increased after the Abbottabad raid on 2nd of May, the US has withheld the payments of Coalition Support Fund (CSF) while Pakistan has asked Washington to vacate the Shamsi airbase.

In an interaction with media persons here on Wednesday, the Defence Minister said it was not only Pakistan which had not been taken into confidence by the United States before raid at the hideout of Osama bin Laden, but key ally United Kingdom was also kept in the dark.

He said the United States has sought some time to shift its equipment from the Shamsi airbase. He said Pakistan is not in a position to enter into war with America but Islamabad will have a review afresh its relationship with Washington.

The Defence Minister said Pakistan was fighting the war against terror through its meagre resources as America has stopped payment of CSF. He said it would be difficult for Pakistan to continue this war for long as it has already suffered immensely in economic terms as well as in the loss of precious lives.

Ch Ahmad Mukhtar said Senator John Kerry was the first American leader to visit Pakistan after May 2 attack and he assured Pakistan that he was ready to give in writing with his blood that there was no danger to Pakistani nuclear assets from the United States. He categorically stated that nuclear assets were completely secure and there is no danger to them from any side.

US Rejects Pakistani Demand to Leave Air Base
 Officials Insist US Will Retain Control Over Shamsi Base

Fresh off of the public demand by Pakistani Defense Minister Chaudhry Mukhar that the United States must immediately vacate the Shamsi Air Base, a small airfield in Pakistani Balochistan which the US has been using for drone attacks, the Obama Administration has officially rejected the demand.

The consequences of this unprecedented stance remain to be seen, but US officials insist that Shamsi is not being vacated, nor will it be vacated, and that the US will rather continue to use the base. If they assume that the Pakistani government will simply let the matter drop or not, they seem intent on occupying the base outside of the Zardari government’s consent.

Pakistani Air Force officials say that the military has already informed the US personnel operating at the base that no security will be provided to them, though the district’s MP insists that there has been no local indication of removal since the government first broached the subject nearly two months ago.

The Shamsi air base has been the source of CIA drone strikes across Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the demand to vacate the base comes amid repeatedly Pakistani demands to stop unilateral drone strikes, which the US has repeatedly refused to do. Other Pakistani military officials say two bases were originally given over to the US, and that the US had already vacated the Jacobabad base some time ago.

athens police go on rampage, greek people fight back

from the greek streets

Amnesty warning on police violence

There are times when words lose their meaning. Strange times, when decrying junta cannot encapsulate quite what is happening: after all, for all their totalitarianism, the military regimes of the seventies could never have reached the sophistication nor the size of yesterday’s urban control operation in Athens. What happened was not the police attacking a demonstration, it was them attacking an entire city – an urbicide of highest order.

We were there, in the metro station-turn-shelter for the thousands in Syntagma square, where riot police had blocked us the light of the entrance and we chanted from the inside, our rage vibrating across its underground walls. We were there, at the west end of Syntagma, where the thugs of the Delta motorcycle police swept across its narrow streets, on Ermou, on Mitropoleos… We were there, chased, beaten by the killers in uniform that were beating and grabbing people in restaurants, dragging them out, smashing anything and everything up.

In times like these, words lose their meaning – but not without some glaring exceptions. Solidarity is one. It was inscribed in the impromptu medical centre in Syntagma. In the faces of the cafe owners, the restaurateurs who gave us shelter. In the will of random people to help those wounded at huge personal risk. In the determination of the thousands who retook Syntagma late in the night.

In times like these, the monster of power turns cannibalistic, scooping cities, thirsting for blood.

In times like these, the monster wants us scared, wounded, crouched into the darkness of the private.

In times like these, staying on the streets becomes literally a struggle of life and death. We will stay put, and we will win this struggle – have no doubt.

here’s an in-depth look at the greek economic crisis, from NBC, 

and this report, from the telegraph, uk:

Athens ablaze as Greece austerity riots continue into the night  (includes video)

Greek police fired teargas and battled masked demonstrators as they attacked the finance ministry on Wednesday after lawmakers passed the first of two austerity bills demanded by international lenders.

Smoke from flash bombs and teargas projectiles thrown by police to drive back the crowd filled the square outside parliament. One group of protesters attacked the nearby finance ministry on Syntagma Square, setting fire to a post office on the ground floor of the building.

Another group tried to set fire to an office block housing a branch of one of Greece’s biggest banks while across the square, the luxury King George Hotel was evacuated.

Inside parliament MPs voted by 155 to 138 to pass a framework bill on a bitterly contested package of tax hikes, spending targets and privatisations agreed as part of an EU/IMF bailout. The result cleared the way for a second vote to pass a separate bill enabling individual budget measures and the creation of a privatisation agency.

see also, greece general strike shuts airport strands travelers