s0metim3s writes:

"Lessons from the Pietariat"

Mute Magazine

Sometimes it's hard to tell self-congratulation from self-abasement. Not a Proper Job, a tempting directory for artists, was launched in London in October at a party advertised as follows: 'If you live a creative lifestyle, you are by definition a member of the 'Not a Proper Job' club. So come join us and celebrate not having a Proper Job. Birds of a feather should flock together!'

nolympics writes:

"Mara Salvatrucha, Social War and the Decline of the Revolutionary Movements in Central America"

Ramor Ryan

Once this was a place of great hope. During the late 1980’s, the Sandinistas were consolidating the revolution in Nicaragua, the FMLN were on the brink of overthrowing the government in El Salvador and the radical movements in Guatemala and Honduras were gaining ground. Today it is a region convulsed by massive delinquency and chronic state corruption whose economies are surviving tenuously on remittance money sent by migrants. The defeat of the revolutionary movements has ushered in an era of social disintegration resulting in a veritable neo-liberal dystopia.

Chicken Bus Diaries

People in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have always had travel like this. 100 people crush into generic American school buses. The old school buses earn the chicken moniker because of the propensity of people to bring their livestock onboard. Sometimes the animals are tied up in boxes on the roof. In other Latin American countries the passengers cram on the roof too, but not here in Central America. The way the drivers swing the buses around the mountain curves would pitch anything off the roof that was not tied down. But the bus service is cheap and abundant, catering for the poorest passenger, and it must be said they are painted in the most exquisite manner — each bus a blaze of color and a work of art.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Paul McCartney, Super Bowl Anarchist?

Anonymous Comrade

Fox and the Super Bowl thought they had it all figured out. They figured they'd avoid controversy all together by featuring unarguably one of, if not the most respected pop musicians of all time. Simple and sweet, one act, a maturing white man playing four of what most would agree are some of the greatest pop songs ever recorded. Classics, (as in Coca Cola Classic) sung by a classic, who laid the groundwork for popular music period. No dancers, no big current names, no young blood, instead a seasoned professional reciting what amounts at this point to elevator music.

Despite this idiot proof plan, despite the projections of patriotic images, Fox/NFL would not get there way so easily. Despite the giant card display that taunted "Na Na Na" in red white and blue at the colonized world, watching from their couches, a statement as controversial if not more than last years was made. The broadcast delay and the censors could do nothing.

Marx and Makhno Meet McDonalds's:

Casualized Workers in Paris Win Several Strikes,
Honorably Lose Another with Combined
Union and Non-Union, Legal and Illegal Tactics

Loren Goldner (1), Break Their Haughty Power

Over the last several years, a revolving network of militants in Paris, France, have developed a strategy and tactics for winning strikes by marginal, low-paid, outsourced and immigrant workers against international chains, in situations where the strikers are often ignored by unions to which they nominally belong, or are actually obstructed by them.

While some of these methods benefit from aspects of French labor law that are more favorable to strikers than one finds in the backward U.S. of A, the overall strategy can certainly find its uses in other countries.