It has been one hell of a couple of weeks. Our condolences to all who have suffered from the fires. With the devastating heat seemingly past, it seems time to rebuild and regrow for us all. There's nothing that says new life like a seedling. Well maybe an actual golden phoenix would be better. But a carrot is plenty cool too... Welcome to a permablitz newsletter, our first for 2009. With lots of amazing stuff in it. Like Permablitz: The Movie!, the Dawning Era of the Chook, a food swap at the Sustainable Living Festival, a call out for your experiences with the heat, wisdom from a handlebar moustache, plus of course upcoming blitzes, courses and much much more.

www.permablitz.net

For all you Valentines (feb 14th) who love Mother Earth

Sustainable Living Foundation, Friends of the Earth, and Greenleap Strategic Institute present the third sustainability convergence 'breakthrough: from recession to sustainability'

http://www.melbourne.foe.org.au/?q=node/404

As we face a looming financial crisis, what are the threats and opportunities to social and environmental movements? How do we break the 'business as usual' model? How do we 'bail out' the planet? This convergence seeks to bring together people from across Melbourne to start to develop a pathway through the recession to a sustainable economy.

What would this look like and how we would we get there? What about livelihood and good work, what about community resilience? What about our place in the world? How do we respond effectively to the looming crisis of climate change? And what does this mean for the social and environmental movements in the short term?

A PDF of the February 2009 issue of the irregular workers' bulletin Tea Break, written and designed by users of libcom.org, for general distribution. The freesheet focuses on wildcat strikes at refineries across the country, addressing issues raised by the conflict. http://libcom.org/library/tea-break-exploitation-oil

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Workers occupied Kherson Engineering Factory (Ukraine) & elected a workers' council and list their demands. The workers of the Kherson Engineering Factory occupied an administrative building on the premises at 9.30 today. The factory guards offered little resistance, and none of the occupiers were injured. A 5-person workers' council was elected by a mass meeting at the factory gates, with Aleksey Nimchinov mandated to negotiate on behalf of the workers. The council has taken the former technical director's office as a meeting room. The chair of the council, Leonid Nimchinov, has called on workers throughout the country to undertake similar actions in solidarity. Attempts are to be made to contact the workers of the Lviv Bus Plant and other factories.

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1688/1/

Written by Michael Fox Wednesday, 28 January 2009 I

n the dying days of Brazil's military dictatorship, in late January 1984, a group of nearly a hundred "landless" farmers from across Brazil met in Cascavel, Paran' to debate the founding of a movement for agrarian reform which would unite landless campesinos and farm workers from around the country. It was an unlikely challenge in the world's fifth largest nation, where even today less than two percent of landowners control nearly half of the total territory.

SPARKS Rank & File Transport workers paper

According to the editor of Vic Rail news in Sparks - there has been a lot of interest by V-Line workers in the articles/interviews in the section - now various V-Line workers are getting involved and wanting to be interviewed for the section.

CONTRIBUTIONS: Sparks welcomes contributions in the shape of poems, cartoons, songs, articles by transport workers. Please mail to SPARKS PO Box 92, BROADWAY 2007 NSW Australia OR email rworker@chaos.apana.org.au

DISTRIBUTORS: SPARKS is always looking for people within the transport industry to distribute sparks on the shop floor. Please write or email rworker@chaos.apana.org.au for details.

http://www.fortunecity.com/banners/interstitial.html?http://www.rebelworker.org/storage/sparks/latest.pdf

What is Democratic Unionism?

Solidarity Letter and Call To Stop the War in Gaza

The end of 2008 showed a new wave of violence against humanity with the Israeli war against the Palestinian people in the Gaza strip. The attack by Israel occupation forces starting on the 27th of December– under the pretext of a war against Hammas - have already killed hundreds of Palestinians and injured thousands peoples, many of them are women and children. The war in the Gaza strip is destroying houses, schools, hospitals and also Palestinian farmland.

Palestinian people in the Gaza strip are currently facing a lack of medicines, water, accommodation and food. Meanwhile, Palestinian farmers are not able to produce their own food. The situation is getting more tragic day by day. In our fight for human rights and against war, our international peasant's movement condemns the brutal military strikes by Israel.

Greek Uprising, Echoes of Castoriadis: 1968, Autonomy & the Self-Managed Society

December, 31 2008 By Spannos, Chris

http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/3728

Autonomous, the word (Auto + Nom(os)), is, of course, derived from the Greek. Auto meaning "self," "same," and "spontaneous," and nomos meaning "law" or "custom"---as in, "one who gives oneself his or her own law is practicing the act of self-governance."

Cornelius Castoriadis

Inspired by the recent Greek rebellion, I am reminded of the Late Greek/French theorist of Autonomy and Self-Management, Cornelius Castoriadis, who made the distinction between those that think society's institutions, laws, traditions, beliefs, and behaviors are either the product of divine intervention (i.e. god/s) or hardwired into historical outcomes, and those who are aware of their self-conscious ability to transform society into something new and better. He called the latter "Autonomy."

Sustainable Living Foundation, Friends of the Earth, and Greenleap Institute present /

the 2009 sustainability convergence/ 'breakthrough: from recession to sustainability'

As we face a looming financial crisis, what are the threats and opportunities to social and environmental movements?

How do we break the 'business as usual' model? How do we 'bail out' the planet?

This convergence seeks to bring together people from across Melbourne to start to develop a pathway through the recession to a sustainable economy.

What would this look like and how we would we get there? What about livelihood and good work, what about community resilience? What about our place in the world? How do we respond effectively to the looming crisis of climate change? And what does this mean for the social and environmental movements in the short term? This one day forum will look at the opportunities and threats connected to the economic downturn – political, financial, cultural.

Chorus

Bump me into parliament

Bounce me any way at all

Bang me into parliament

On next election day

(For Rudd Inc.)

Climate change it causes rage

as sea levels are rising

official channels just for you

cos we want you compromising

(More:)

eco refugees can't come

although we flooded them out

but for the economy to rise

capos we shall bail out. _________

________________

Tuesday 10am December 16th went to Munro Street and met up with the cheerful fluro-safety vest wearing CLIMATE RESPONSE crew who were busily loading sandbags in front of Federal ALP* MP Kelvin "5%" Thompson's office at Munro Street Coburg.

( * ALP = Another Liberal Party; Note: K T is the local business man's friend especially if you were 'powerful' like Tony Mokbel for whom KT wrote references.)

Several people took photographs which should be forthcoming.

Carbon scheme a recipe for disaster

http://www.foe.org.au/media-releases/2008-media-releases/carbon-scheme-a-recipe-for-disaster

The government's carbon trading scheme and emissions targets announced today are a recipe for disaster and will not deliver a safe climate, Friends of the Earth Australia said today.

More than 60 environmental and social groups have joined together to denounce these targets. Carbon scheme a recipe for disaster Monday, 15 December 2008 “The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, announced by the government, is a polluters paradise and could have been comfortably proposed by John Howard.”