European Democracy At Work.

      The Greek police probably rank as the most brutal police force in Europe, a very high percentage are members of Golden Dawn, the Greek right wing fascist group. Immigrants come in for some very brutal treatment from both Golden Dawn and the police, and thousands of immigrants end up in concentration camps dotted about the country. Of course it is not just immigrants that feel the harsh hand of the police, protesters old and young take a very high risk of injury if they take their protests to the streets. This is democratic Europe at work, repression by riot police tooled up like military units.

    Today students in Greece were heading to their university only to find it occupied by riot police, and were met with violent confrontation. The students gather in thousands in the centre of Athens, where they were again met by a massive riot police attack.
     Greece has been the financial Mafia's first stage of the experiment in creating a sweatshop Europe, and obviously the people will not take to this without resistance, and that's where the state's police brutality and repression come in. If they can beat the people of Greece into subservience, then the rest of us can look forward to the sweatshop Europe experiment spreading more rapidly to the rest of us.

This from Roar Mag:

     Schools in Greece have been occupied for a week. After today’s student protest, riot police blocked access to the university and attacked the students.

      It’s been some time since we last heard from the Greek movement. But, thanks to the Greek government and its riot police, today became a day of large student demonstrations, clashes with the cops, injuries and rising tension. First, let’s see what happened. Early in the morning, the Athens Law School students arrived at their university in order to carry out their assembly decision, which included a symbolic occupation of their university until the 17th of November — commemoration day of the 1973 student revolt against the military dictatorship.

       The problem was that the school was already occupied by the riot police. The Athenian Universities’ rectors had decided to apply a peculiar “lock out” of------

Read the full article HERE:

 

  

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Direct Action Gets Results.

      Our struggle take years, and direct action is a cornerstone of that struggle. It is inspirational to see this determined and positive direct action by ordinary people against the powerful multi-national oil corporations.

Once pristine forest lands. Where do the moose graze now?

Published on Nov 5, 2014

      Over the past four years, the Unist'ot'en clan of the Wet’suwet’en nation have literally built a strategy to keep three proposed oil and gas pipelines from crossing their land. Concerned about the environmental damage a leak could cause on land they've never given up, they've constructed a protection camp to block pipeline companies. As opposition to the development of Alberta's tar sands and to fracking projects grows across Canada, with First Nations communities on the front lines, the Unist'ot'en camp is an example of resistance that everyone is watching.

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Another Act Of Inhumanity By Israel.

       Some stories you hear or read shock you, others its surprise. This particular story filled my stomach with churning rage, but no surprise. Somehow it is what I would expect of that fascist apartheid state, the anger is because they get away with it time and time again, while the international community looks the other way.  This brutal state acts out its policy of land grabbing and genocide with impunity, so there is no surprise when they act against anybody who might try to help that neighbour, just anger. I am of course talking about the brutal state of Israel. A state that international justice seems incapable of criticising. It is up to the ordinary people of the world to do their damnedest to bring the state of Israel to its knees, We must boycott all Israeli goods, and publicise their every brutal and unjust action, of which there are many. So when purchasing goods, check the bar code number, and if it starts with  729, dump it, it was made in Israel. There are other codes for Israel, check them out HERE.

     This is the story that didn't surprise me, but filled we with anger and disgust.

This from The Local:

    Norway's doctor of peace for Gaza, Mads Gilbert, has been hit by a lifetime ban from entering the region by the Israeli government on Thursday.

     Israeli authorities cited security reasons as to why they have shut doctor Gilbert out from the Gaza Strip.

      The Norwegian 67-year-old has travelled to and from Gaza to treat Palestinians. This summer, the chief physician who lives and works in North Norway, was back working at Shifa hospital, Gaza, where he treated over 50 days many of the 11,000 injured. The doctor was attempting to return to the region in October to help in the hospital and was stopped by Israeli officials from entering. Gilbert says: “When we came back to the Erez border station, the Israeli soldiers told me that I could not go in to Gaza.”

    Now the Israeli government is stating it is for security reasons that Gilbert is banned, according to an email from the Norwegian embassy in Tel Aviv. The embassy took up the case on Gilbert's behalf after he was refused entry last month.

   Norway's Secretary of State, Bård Glad Pedersen, said to VG: “From the Norwegian perspective, we have raised Gilbert's exclusion from Gaza and asked Israel to change their decision. The humanitarian situation in Gaza is still difficult and there is a need for all health workers.”

     Gilbert himself believes the decision is connected to his critical comments against the state of Israel.

       The outspoken peace activist wrote a letter to the global media in July this year, evoking the extreme conditions at the Gaza hospital he worked in.

Who is doctor Mads Gilbert?

• Born in Oslo, 1947.
  
• Head physician specialising in anesthesiology at University Hospital of North Norway.
  
• Over 30 years working in international conflict areas, especially Gaza.
  
• Awards include Fritt Ords Honorary Prize (2009).
  
• Appointed Commander to the Order of St Olaf (2013).
  
• Received PhD at University of Iowa.

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Police Brutality, Solidarity Is Our Weapon.

 Israeli police pepper spray an arrested injured man.

       Police brutality is everywhere, they are the first line of defence that the state uses to repress attempts to change the system. That is if we ignore the education system, where teachers are the soft police, the real first line of their defence, when that fails, the hard police come in to play. From America, where an Afro-American is killed every 28 hours by a white policeman, to regular incidents across Europe where heavy handed police tactics result in the death of an individual, then there is South Africa, where miners were gunned down en-mass, and Mexico where, recently, 43 students and teachers were abducted and murdered. In this country our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, always report such events here as an anomaly an unusual event. However, in this country, close to 900 people have died during or following contact with the police since 2004, yet as far as I am aware, not one single police officer has been convicted since 1969.

       Often these deaths are followed by protests, as in Ferguson, in America, and the ongoing protests in Mexico over the disappearance of the 43, and the present protests across France after the death of Remi Raisse from a police stun grenade. However solidarity across borders would have greater effect, the problem is universal, the response should be universal, it is the same system that is killing our people.

 Turkish police rush forward for an opportunity to boot a man on the ground.

This from Contra Info:

       On November 11th, 2014, anarchists symbolically occupied the offices of the AFP (Agence France-Presse) in the affluent neighbourhood of Kolonaki, central Athens, to protest the police murder of Rémi Raisse in the ZAD of Testet, France. Comrades handed out leaflets in Greek and French, reading: “From France to Greece, let us transform the foci of resistance into a signal of rebellion towards the oppressed of the whole earth. Solidarity is our weapon.”

Age is no protection from police brutality.

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Glasgow Games Monitor.

A wee message from The Glasgow Game Monitor 2014:

Hi all,

      We've updated the Housing Monster event page on the site. It now has youtube clips of all the films, a list of non-academic (accessible) reading materials, and some photos of the event. Please circulate to anyone who might be interested in viewing the films or accessing the reading material. http://gamesmonitor2014.org/fighting-the-housing-monster-film-and-discussion-event-sat-nov-1st-kpc-11am-4pm/

     We've added people who gave their names at the end of the event to the Games Monitor 2014 list. The traffic is very light at the moment but if you don't want to be on the list, our apologies, just unsubscribe at the bottom of the page. Also this is an announcements list, so if anyone wants to contact the group please contact us personally or use the contact address: gamesmonitor2014@googlemail.com Thanks to everyone who came, we all enjoyed the event! We'll let you know if anything else is planned. Cheers, Glasgow Games Monitor 2014

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Aftermath.

         Of all the war poets, my favourite is Siegfried Sassoon, Born, 8 September, 1886, died 1 September, 1967.

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A War Painted In Pastel Shades Of Lies.

 

       The babbling brook of bullshit, mainstream media, backs the establishment in painting WW1 in glorious pastel shades of lies, here is an extract from an excellent article stating some of the truths of WW1 From Stop The War:

     Dominic Alexander debunks ten myths being used by politicians and historians to rebrand World War I in the centenary of its outbreak.

---

1. The war was fought in defence of democracy
         This is contradicted by the basic facts. Germany had universal manhood suffrage while in Britain, including Ireland, some 40% of men still did not qualify for the vote. In Germany also, there were attempts to justify the war on the grounds that it was being fought to defend civilised values against a repressive, militaristic state, in the form of Russian autocracy.
2. Britain went to war due to a treaty obligation to defend the neutrality of Belgium
        There was no clear and accepted obligation on Britain to do this, and, in fact, before the Belgian issue appeared, the war party in the cabinet was already pushing for British intervention on the entirely different ground that there were naval obligations to France. These obligations had been developed in secret arrangements between the military of both countries, and were never subject to any kind of democratic accountability. The Germans even offered guarantees over Belgian integrity, which the British government refused to consider at all.
3. German aggression was the driving force for war
        However aggressive the German leadership may have been in 1914, the British establishment was at least as determined to

Read the full article HERE:

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Lest WE Forget.

     November 11, Remembrance Day, lest we forget, I can say no more than I have already said, so will just repeat something I posted back in July 2014.

       That babbling brook of bullshit,the mainstream media, always gets it wrong. At the moment it is pouring out lots of hate rhetoric against Russia, but precious little against the murderous onslaught by the Israeli state against the people of Gaza.

     Also on the WW1 "celebrations", they throw their weight behind the establishment view, of it being a heroic and glorious battle for democracy, which we, being the democratic half of the contest, won of course. I wonder what the German people think about that?

      What we should never forget is that the blood letting that goes by the name of WW1 wasn't won, it was an armistice. It was stopped because the imperialist psychopaths were faced with mutinies, rebellion and spontaneous out breaks of truces between the ordinary soldiers on the front line, some of these young men paid with their lives in front of a firing squad for the act of humanity. At home, the imperialists were faced with another battle, strikes and civil unrest across the continent of Europe. Another factor that brought the war warmongering nut-cases to call a halt, to the greed driven slaughter, was the fact that the death toll continued to soar and the maimed continued to be carried home, they were simply running out of canon-fodder. WW1 was an unimaginable spilling of mainly young blood, to further the aims of greed driven imperialist ambitions, in other words, greed and nothing more.

   Up to the start of that unnecessary blood letting of WW1, Europe had no democracy to defend. After the bloody event, Europe had no democracy anywhere. 100 years after that imperialist blood letting, we the ordinary people are still fighting for democracy in Europe.

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War Is A Racket.

     Nice to hear the truth from a military mouth, Major General Smedley Butler, served as high ranking officer in the Marine Corps and then wrote a book called "War is a Racket". Perhaps a bit simplistic, but his hearts in the right place.

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A Class War Welcome For Iain Duncan Smith.

A call from The void:   

       

      Iain Duncan Smith is hosting a Jobs Fair at Chingford Assembly Hall, Station Road, Chingford, E4 this Friday November 14th.  Class War will be welcoming him from 10am and are planing to make a day of it.  Speakers including the future Chingford MP Marina Pepper, – the local Class War candidate – along with John McArdle from the Black Triangle campaign are expected to speak at noon.  Expect vengeance.  Please spread the word and help make this big.

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Can We Join The Dots?

 

      We all know capitalism produces wars between countries, and has done so more or less, since the system crawled out of the slime to infest the globe. What most people don't seem to recognise, is, it also causes wars within countries, wars between the ruling elite and the ordinary people. As capitalism is global it is difficult to find a country where the people are not in open conflict with the powers that be. The Ferguson riots in America, though classed as racial, racism is an aspect of capitalism. Mexico, the recent disappearance of 43 students and teachers and the ongoing violent protests, is the capitalist state attempting to crush any resistance to its exploitation. Recently we have seen over 100 protests across Ireland against watercharges, as capitalism tries to squeeze more profit from the ordinary people. In Brussels, there have been violent clashes as more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets against that common aspect of capitalism, “austerity”. In London we have just had more than a thousand masked anti-capitalist protesters take to the city centre.

      It would be extremely difficult to find a country where the people are not at odds with the system, across the globe unrest, anger and disgust are the feelings of the people, all have a growing hatred of a system that ties them to poverty, while they produce an abundance of wealth, that invariably ends up in the hands of a small greed driven bunch of parasites. With so much anger and unrest, it seems strange that the system is still managing to bleed us dry, perhaps we just have to join the dots between these world wide protests and we will see the system collapse.

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War.

A poem by my then, 11 year old grandson, Ros:

 WAR.

War is a bullet in someone's chest.
War smells like gunpowder.
War tastes like sour lemon.
War sounds like people screaming and crying.
War feels like a cold hand.
War looks like a broken picture of a family on the floor.
War lives in a box bullets.

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Remembrance Day, What Are We Forgetting?

      We are approaching "Remembrance Day", when we will be treated to  a cacophony hypocritical speeches by the solemn faces of those who sent us to war, expensive suits with the obligatory red poppy, who see war as a necessary way of protecting their wealth and power. We will hear the false voices of those who believe it is acceptable to shed the blood of others, while they reap the plunder and the spoils.

 

       What will be missing from this militaristic spectacle will be the voices of those who speak the truth of what war is, and why we still have wars. No one will be allowed to point the finger, no one will be held to account for the pointless slaughter of countless millions of young men and women, 99% of which come from that group that never see the "spoils of war", the ordinary people. To the victor and the vanquished, the result is the same, the ordinary people of both sides, pay with blood, and the ruling class lift the gold and the glory. They have always spoken of the war to end all wars, well, that has still to be fought, and it is called The Class War.

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Workfare, A Capitalist Epidemic.

       Here in the UK we protest against the government about workfare, a scheme whereby the unemployed work for businesses, but get no salary. We behave as if this was just our problem, the result of us having a nasty government. However, like I keep saying, these greed driven capitalist ideas are not a UK phenomenon, the capitalist disease is world wide. Take Greece for example:

 GreekReporter notes the solution to Greece's problems...

     Centre of planning and Economic Research in Greece has proposed a controversial measure in order to deal with the problem of increasing unemployment in the country.  The measure includes unpaid work for the young and unemployed up to 24 years old, so that companies would have a strong motive to hire young employees. Practically, what is proposed is the abolition of the basic salary for a year. At the same time the “export” of young unemployed persons was also proposed to other countries abroad, as Greek businesses do not appear able to hire new personnel.

     Then of course there is that country at the other end of the world in what lots of people see as a benign but pleasant land, Canada, where the Bank of Canada Governor stated:

   ------that the employment situation is so bad that young people should consider working for free. As The Globe & Mail reports, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz said 'Adult children stuck in their parents’ basements because they can’t find adequate employment should take unpaid work to bolster résumés as they wait for the recovery to take hold'.

 

      Similar schemes are in place or are being considered in other countries, including France, and of course Bill Clinton set the ball rolling in that direction in America as far back as the 90's. Our problem is not British workfare schemes, it is the capitalist system. I have no doubt that if we were successful in getting rid of the various workfare schemes, the system, no matter the colour of the government, would come up with other similar means of cutting labour costs and increasing company profits. Until we finally demolish the system of capitalism, we will be plagued by exploitation by various variations of workfare schemes, and poverty will be our domain.

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When Will We Ever Learn?

  

     Written almost 500 years ago, and sounds like an anarchist analysis, certainly still makes excellent sense today.

The Politics of Obedience:Discourse of Voluntary Servitude

by Éttiene de la Boétie.

         “What is so remarkable is that La Boétie did this in 1552 or 1553 - four-hundred-and-forty years ago! It is also interesting that modern tyrants use the same formula today to subjugate and dominate their victims. Here are the main elements of the La Boétie analysis as I see it:” (FrederickMann)

The only power tyrants have is the power relinquished to them by their victims.

• The tyrant is often a weak little man. He has no special qualities that set him apart from anyone else - yet the gullible idolize him.
• The victims bring about their own subjection - they "win their enslavement."
• If without violence the tyrant is simply not obeyed, he becomes "naked and undone and as nothing."
• Once you resolve to serve no more, you are free.
• We are all born free and naturally free.
• Grown-up adults should adopt reason as their guide and never become slaves of anybody.
• People can be enslaved through either force or deception.
• When people lose their freedom through deceit, it is because they mislead themselves.
• People born into slavery regard it as a natural condition.
• In general, people are shaped more by their environment than by their natural capacities - if they allow it.
• Habit and custom are powerful forces that keep people enslaved.
• There are always some people who cannot be tamed, subjected, or enslaved. Even if freedom were to be entirely extinguished, these people would re-invent it.
• Lovers of freedom tend to be ineffective because they are not known to one another.
• People who lose their freedom also lose their valor (strength of mind, bravery).
• Among free people there is competition to do good for humanity.
• People seem to be most gullible towards those who deliberately set out to fool them. It is as if people have a need to be deceived.
• Tyrants stupefy their victims with "pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes."
• Tyrants parade like "workers of magic."
• Tyrants can only give back part of what they first took from their victims.
• Tyrants attain their positions through: (a) Force; (b) Birth; or (c) Election.
• Tyrants create a power structure, consisting of a multi-layered hierarchy, staffed by a conspiracy of accomplices. Accomplices receive their positions as a favor from the tyrant.
• The worst dregs of society gather around the tyrant - they are people of weak character who trade servility for unearned wealth.
• Accomplices can profit greatly from their positions in the hierarchy.
• If people withdraw their support, the tyrant topples over from his own corrupted weight.

From
LeDiscourse of Voluntary Servitude by Éttiene de la Boétie.(abridged and edited from the Harry Kurz translation)

    "Let us therefore learn while there is yet time, let us learn to claim our liberty. Let us open our eyes to our natural freedom for the sake of our honor, for the very love of virtue. As for me, I truly believe I am right, since there is nothing so contrary to reason as self-imposed tyranny. I believe the time will come when support will be withdrawn from tyrants and their accomplices. Then let us watch them all fall from their own corrupted weight."

 When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?

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