-¿Cuántos años tienes?

-Veintiuno.- Respondo.

-Dios mío, veintiuno… ¿Y qué vas a hacer?

Quien pregunta es un compañero de trabajo. Del trabajo en el que estoy por un convenio de la Universidad en el que yo pago, ellos me enseñan. No cobro nada, soy becaria, y a día de hoy, aún no tengo muy claro si lo sigo siendo del Estado, porque como todos los años, a 14 de Noviembre, aún no se sabe nada de las Ayudas Generales a los estudiantes.

Él me mira con pena, quizá con compasión. Tampoco nos separan tantos años, pero los suficientes como para pertenecer a una generación diferente; yo a una generación de los que nos vemos obligados a seguir la conversación con la respuesta más fácil.

-No lo sé. Supongo que irme fuera. Ya tengo amigos que han huido al acabar la carrera.

Pero os aseguro que esas palabras me queman por…

Esto es un resumen de la jornada de lo que ha sido la huelga general en Barcelona. No hace falta escribir mucho, pues las fotos hablan solas de la indignación de los ciudadanos.

A pocos minutos para que termine el día, este día 14 de noviembre del 2012, se puede decir que la huelga general convocada para hoy por sindicatos como Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO.), Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), Unión Sindical Obrera (USO) o la Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) no ha sido un éxito en Alcalá de Henares. A pesar de que las organizaciones sindicales pretendieran vender lo contrario este mediodía en la Plaza de Cervantes, donde pasadas las 12.00 horas ha habido una concentración a la que han acudido cientos de alcalaínos.

We are ordinary people, outraged like you. Some calls us Indignados others 15M or Occupy Movement, describing those who is pushed at the brink of the global disastrous system or already fallen out of it.

We are sometimes highly educated, most of the time working in a precarious condition or unemployed and often homeless people who have risen up globally in 2011 and 2012.

We revolt not only defend our own rights or rights of those like us, but also of others who has worse or relatively better conditions than ourselves. We have been standing up against the system for the sake of the entire planet and life.

We do not claim to be representing others, or even each other of us and we reject those who claim to be able do so. Instead we choose to fight not only for our selves but also for the others who cant…

By Brandon Jourdan

This is a rush edit of some selects from the general strike in Portugal. A more detailed report of the strike and of the situation in Portugal will be online soon at http://www.globaluprisings.org.

YouTube Version

I really think one of the important vocab families to know, if you’re going to live in Italy (or hell, even visit for that matter!) is the whole family of words that revolve around “demonstrations.” Manifestazione is a way to say that a public protest is going to take place, and sciopero, many of you already know, is strike.

A sciopero is a bit different from a manifestazione, and sometimes, as in the case of the event yesterday (pictured above), they take place simultaneously. When transport workers strike (sciopero), they don’t generally take to the streets and protest (manifestazione)–they just don’t show up for work, and your buses don’t run.

When something happens like yesterday’s huge manifestazione, that’s cause for even more concern, in my opinion.

Yesterday has been dubbed with the Twitter hashtag #N14, which stands for November 14. It was an international “European Anti-Austerity Day” and protests…

Police squads weee seen running from around the city to quell a general strike as violent episodes from a minority of the protesters start to appear in the general strike.

Images on sale at Corbis, Demotix, Alamy

Day Two of the Farmy Round up. Wow. It takes two days to walkabout the farmy now.  So much to see. Here is a grubby Paisley Daisy…

..with her good friend Queenie Wineti.  We tried to breed daisy twice this season but both times it did not take.  Then it was too late in the season to try again. A cow is pregnant for nine months and then I will milk for at least 8 months, so it is best if she calves in the early spring. So I am going to wait so that I get her into a better breeding pattern. She and Queenie the little Hereford beef heifer will be bred in the early summer of next year. I am going to try and milk Daisy right through the winter if it does not get too too cold. 

Then we plan to find a little Jersey milk…

But thats ok. I left the gate open for them.

Queenie is not amused, but in all honesty Queenie is very seldom amused. She is a solemn cow.

Have you ever looked up and realised your day is almost gone and you have not even Thought about dinner. Well Dinner was not my main concern yesterday there was too much to do, but this ability of time to speed up and slow down is definitely most unsettling.

Yesterday it just zoomed past and off it went into the distance, disappearing in a wee poof of cloud.  

And you are left thinking .. what just happened.

Until I put the Shush Sisters into Stalkers Garden. Then things got more exciting.   This garden is designed to be cleaned up by the pigs. 

They eat all the greens, root out all the old vegetables and chomp on those, eat any bugs…

…not break INS.

I know this is hard to see but at the end of the pig sty is .. well WAS a fence.. 

The Shush sisters have been loitering in their summer fields, and hanging out in the sun-room on the South side of the barn, which meant that I had moved the Bobby Blanc into the nice clean pig sty, as it has access to the outdoors which his pen did not.  This was  a temporary arrangement while I cleaned his quarters.

Look who bashed down the fence, that they have ignored for the whole summer, and broke INTO the pig sty. 

Letting the calf out to frolic with the sheep. 

I had only been gone about an hour and a half, visiting the Old Codger, and back I came to a muddle and two fat stuffed cows, who had been leaning over the short pig sty fence…