Get Out With Your Flints!!

       I have always said, "we never know the spark that will start the fire". If there is enough fire tinder around any tiny spark could start an uncontrollable blaze. As far as our society is concerned we are knee deep in combustible fire tinder. Increasing poverty, declining social services, high unemployment, thousands being forced to work for nothing, thousands having their benefits sanctioned. Every section of our communities are being attacked, the unemployed by means of workfare and benefit sanctions, the disabled at the hands of ATOS doing the governments bidding, the employed by wage freezes/cuts, zero hours contracts, massive increases in energy bills and then the bedroom tax. A few months ago, Brazil exploded when bus fares were increased a few pesetas, it wasn't the bus fares, it was the fact that the people of Brazil were, like us, knee deep in fire tinder, they were being pushed ever deeper into deprivation in the midst of blatant greed and corruption, the bus fare increase was the spark. When we suffer this type of attack and push to deprivation, in a country where the number of millionaires is increasing, where lavish extravaganzas are flaunted in front of our ever increasing poverty, where blatant greed and corruption, stride pompously through the corridors of power, the spark is inevitable. A country where there is a vast unbridgeable chasm between the ordinary people and the wealth of that country, where there is a complete disconnect between those who hold the power and the ordinary people, cannot and should not hold together. 

 

      Perhaps all we can do at the moment is keep working with those flints.

This from TruthDig: 

  Revolution usually erupts over events that would, in normal circumstances, be considered meaningless or minor acts of injustice by the state. But once the tinder of revolt has piled up, as it has in the United States, an insignificant spark easily ignites popular rebellion. No person or movement can ignite this tinder. No one knows where or when the eruption will take place. No one knows the form it will take. But it is certain now that a popular revolt is coming. The refusal by the corporate state to address even the minimal grievances of the citizenry, along with the abject failure to remedy the mounting state repression, the chronic unemployment and underemployment, the massive debt peonage that is crippling more than half of Americans, and the loss of hope and widespread despair, means that blowback is inevitable.

Read the full article HERE:

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Funny Money And The Banking System.

      Loan out money you don't have and charge interest, sounds like a right fiddle, but that is how "our" banking system works. This rather long documentary explains how the "money men" control governments, push and finance war to safeguard their monopoly of money control. They also they finance both sides in wars so as to guarantee their returns. War is the greatest creator of debt, and debt enriches banks.

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On The Matter Of Overthrowing The System.

 

     On this matter of overthrowing the present system, put recently by Russell Grant, (and millions of ordinary people), a couple of quotes from Chris Hedges points in the same direction:

     If we do not immediately engage in this battle we are finished, as climate scientists have made clear. I will defy corporate power in small and large ways. I will invest my energy now solely in acts of resistance, in civil disobedience and in defiance.

     Class struggle defines most of human history. Marx got this right. The sooner we realise that we are locked in deadly warfare with our ruling, corporate elite, the sooner we will realise that these elites must be overthrown.

     An increasing number of Americans are getting it. They know that we have been stripped of political power. They recognise that we have been shorn of our most basic and cherished civil liberties, and live under the gaze of the most intrusive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. Half the country lives in poverty. Many of the rest of us, if the corporate state is not overthrown, will join them. These truths are no longer hidden.

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Workfare Illegal,---For A While!!

     When you and I do something that is "illegal" we feel the full force of "the law", but when the government does something "illegal", it simply changes "the law" to make it legal.

Victory For Cait Reilly – Workfare Was Illegal Says Supreme Court

A unanimous verdict at the Supreme Court has judged that the workfare schemes in the Cait Reilly case were illegal.

This follows the DWP’s appeal after a lower court had found that the almost all the  Government’s workfare schemes were illegal.  Iain Duncan Smith was forced to rewrite the law after this judgement retrospectively making these schemes legal.

Read the full article HERE:

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When Will We Hear The Cry, Enough Is Enough?

      So Russell Grant thinks there is going to be a revolution, well all the factors are there, Living standards rapidly declining, more and more wealth flowing into a smaller and smaller group of arrogant parasites, necessary resources, oil, gas, water, etc. getting scarce, and a widespread feeling among the ordinary people, that those who are meant to represent them, are corrupt and in the thrall of the disgustingly rich, who are ripping us all off. A feeling that the old ways don't work. The latest two fingers to the so called “representative democracy” by the corporate/financial mafia, was the “big six” energy companies who were summoned to The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, to account for the recent massive price increases. However they were too busy ripping us off that couldn't make it, so sent their minions, a way of showing our arrogant greedy pompous MP's who is boss. No matter who turned up nothing would have happened, it is all a show to give that babbling brook of bullshit, the media, something to spout.

     It is a depressing picture, we live among opulent wealth, yet struggle to feed our families, worry about heating our homes in winter, and live with the knowledge that in this millionaire's club, there is nobody representing us, the ordinary people, the people who produce all this wealth. If that is not a tinderbox waiting for a spark, I don't know what is. What will be the spark? Will it be the increase in avoidable deaths this winter because of fuel poverty? Will it be the ever rising deaths among the sick and vulnerable victims of ATOS? Will it be the families who can no longer stand by and watch their kids going to school hungry? Or will it be that deep feeling in your stomach that enough is enough, and it is time to stand up and do something about this greed driven juggernaut? 

 

    Say the word,”REVOLUTION”, put it into your daily conversation, the more familiar we are with the thought the more likely we are to take up the idea. We have tried everything else and it has all failed miserably. If we want an end to this corrupt, vicious, repressive injustice, we have to think dramatically different, another world is possible, it is up to us. 

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Rent Strike, Miners' Strike And All That.

    Recently we had a French comrade visit the UK, and while touring and talking he also interviewed some of the local comrades. He has now put together those interviews in French and English, and they make interesting reading. The English version can be read HERE:

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Child Poverty, Fuel Poverty, Food Banks And An Early Death.

      Do you not get sick in your stomach, and very angry when you keep being fed this crap about how the economy is recovering and the UK is now doing well. That babbling brook of bullshit, the media, are always trotting out goody-goody figures of how things are now on the up and up, while the vast majority of us are facing the worst attack on our living conditions in living memory.

       In this Britain on the rise, we have the Trussell Trust which runs 400 food banks in the UK, claim that it has seen the numbers of those applying for food, triple in the last year. 2012-2013 saw 346,992 people relying on food banks to survive, of those 126,889 were children. In this prosperous growing economy we have 13 million people living below the poverty line.

       In this land of growing opportunity we have 3.5 million children living below the poverty line, that is 27% of all children. In some local areas that figure is dwarfed, by numbers like 50%-70%. Another interesting figure regarding child poverty is the fact that 66% of those children in poverty, are in homes where at least one person is working.

      From child poverty to adults relying on food banks, to fuel poverty, that is the  true picture of the UK's growing economy. It is estimated that 24,000 people in the UK will die from the cold this winter, simply because they can't afford to heat their homes. Cold homes bring on increased blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks, respiratory problems and a host of other problems. More than 6 million people in the UK are worried that they may not be able to heat their homes properly this winter. Millions of pensioners face the winter with dread and anxiety, as they know the dangers of a cold home, but can't afford to heat theirs.

 

       With this depressing picture of the real UK, we get those arrogant, pompous, parasitic millionaire MP's claiming that poverty is due to those scroungers and drug users living on benefit, however the facts don't bear that out. According to G Hay and L Bauld, Population estimates of problematic drug users in England who access DWP benefits, Department for Work and Pensions, 2008, suggest that 6.6 per cent of the total number of benefit claimants in England were problem drug users. While drug misuse may prove to be a key reason this group of people finds it hard to escape poverty, it clearly has no explanatory power for the other 93.4 per cent of claimants.

     The truth is the system is designed to syphon wealth upwards and it is working exceedingly well at the moment. If we want to eradicate child poverty, fuel poverty, and the need for food banks, and the attendant misery, then we have to destroy the system of capitalism. Turning to the managers of this exploitative system and asking them to share a little bit more of their wealth, (which we created) with us, may temporarily get you a few more crumbs, but they will keep the cake. and we will keep our poverty.

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Long Running Turkish Airline Strike.

More on the long running Turkish Airlines strike from Labour start.

   Turkish Airlines workers have been on strike for more than five months.
  Their employer is refusing to accept any of their collective bargaining proposals and refuses to reinstate 305 workers who were dismissed illegally for defending their right to strike.

Need I say more?
This is a campaign called by two global union federations, the IUF and ITF. Learn more about it and send off your message of protest here:

http://www.iuf.org/cgi-bin/campaigns/show_campaign.cgi?c=791

Please spread the word about this important campaign in your union.

Thanks very much.

Eric Lee

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

Glasgow Against ATOS.

A call out from  Glasgow Games Monitor 2014

Thursday 31st October 1pm.

Drop ATOS from the Commonwealth Games – 

Lobby of Glasgow City Council
George Square, Glasgow G2 1DU

Lobby of Glasgow City Council, 

organised by Glasgow Against ATOS.

    We need you! On the 31st October, Councillors of Glasgow City Council will be
debating a motion to drop ATOS as a commonwealth games sponsor. Please come to George Square for a lobby of those councillors who are debating this motion.
     Thousands of people have died after going through the ATOS work capability assessment, ATOS are not fit to be a sponsor of the games and we ask that as many people and organisations let them now how we feel about this immoral company’s involvement in the Commonwealth Games next year.

      FANCY DRESS VERY MUCH ENCOURAGED, ITS HALLOWEEN AFTER ALL SO IF YOU’RE UP FOR IT GET YOUR BEST HAUNTING GEAR ON !

https://www.facebook.com/events/219037268264562/

See previous GM 2014 posts,

commentary and short film of testimonials:
Background: http://gamesmonitor2014.org/2013/10/04/crunch-vote-on-atos-commonwealth-games-role/
Commentary: http://gamesmonitor2014.org/2013/08/08/atos-kills-and-it-has-accomplices/
Short film of testimonials against ATOS: http://gamesmonitor2014.org/2013/10/24/unfit-for-2014-campaign-film/

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Workers, Remeber Your History, Jules Gustave Durand.

      We live under the yoke of a system that is not only unjust and exploitative, but it is also cruel, vicious and brutal. Through the years those who have fought that exploitation and injustice have felt the full force of that cruel, vicious brutality, and in some cases the fee paid for that challenge has been their liberty, their sanity, or their life. The history of the ordinary people is written in the blood and suffering of those who saw the injustice and stood up to that injustice, and who felt the full bare-knuckle force of this man made savage creation, the capitalist state. It is our duty to remember them, honour them, and pick up the challenge in their place.

     Jules Gustave Durand, Born September 6, 1880, in Le Harve. French anarchist, secretary of Le Harve Coalmen's Union and revolutionary trade unionist. Durand was an initiator of the French general strike of 1910, and was wrongly charged with the murder of a “blackleg” in a brawl. On the back of a series of corrupt witnesses and a hate campaign by the press he was sentenced to death on November 25, 1910. In a tremendous show of solidarity against this injustice protests and strikes closed the docks at Le Harve and spread across the channel to English ports and to some American ports. After further protests spearheaded by the League of Human Rights, he was released on February 15, 1911. Sadly, due to his inhumane treatment and spending 40 days restrained in a straightjacket he suffered a complete mental breakdown and spent the rest of his days in an asylum where he died in 1926. His case was re-opened and his name was cleared and on June 15, 1918, it was stated that he had been completely innocent of the charge.

     One of a legion who have paid dearly for daring to seek justice for all, and an end to exploitation.

Circled A Radio.

       Two recent events, the teachers strike in England and Tommy Robinson founder of the EDL coming out waving the multiculturalism flag. Perhaps Tommy is looking for a career as a Tory councilor. Both these topics are covered, in the latest from Circled A Radio, LISTEN HERE: 

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Britain's Slave Labour Force.

     What do you call a society that has thousands of people forced to work without any salary, for the benefit of the rich? Remember the Romans with their slaves, then in the not too distant past we had the imperial slave trade that built empires by taking hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people from Africa and using them as unpaid beasts of burden across Europe and America. Well that's all in the past now, or is it?

      According to the latest Labour Market Statistics, here in the UK we have 168,000 people being forced to work for no salary, a jump of 8,000 since last year. This also chops 168,000 off the unemployed list, more dodgy accounting. As in the past, these slaves are building empires, they are benefiting the rich. These slaves are friends and family of people like you and I, they are ordinary folks, who are being used by this system to undermine the wages and conditions of us all. Our lords and masters, the Oxbridge millionaire cabal, in The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, call it “workfare”, we should call it by its real name, modern day slavery. This is not just an attack on the unemployed, it is an attack on all our wages and conditions, it is an attempt to force our conditions low enough to compete with the eastern sweatshops, to create a European sweatshop economy that will give the financial Mafia a better return on their ill-gotten plunder. It is not a civilised society that forces people to work for nothing, leaving them in poverty, while their efforts benefit those with unimaginable wealth. 

      We live in a country under a system that hasn't enough jobs for everybody and punishes those who are unemployed. I say “not enough jobs”, not that, there isn't enough to do to improve our society. In a socially organised society we would utilise everybody's efforts for the common good, we would all gain from each others efforts and nobody would be superfluous to requirements, as in this society. As long as profit is the aim, people will be exploited, used and abused, the wellbeing of the people and profit for the few are two completely incompatible aims.

       The list of companies and charities that have or are using “workfare” is like an A to Z phone directory. All of these companies should be boycotted, picketed, and publicly shamed. As long as they can pull in free labour, they will refrain from looking for new paid employees, they will cut the hours of existing employees, and so the downward spiral of our conditions continue. The system isn't broken, it was built this way, it's how capitalism works. 
Useful sites:

Wikipedia's A-Z of UK slave users. 
Boycott workfare.
The Void.

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Our Tomorrow??

Food for thought:

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Let's follow Our Dreams.

     Across the globe workers are treated like shit by the various corporate bodies. Conditions and wages are attacked to maximise profits, and if the workers dare to defend themselves, they can be booted out and face a life of poverty and deprivation. This is the system we tolerate, not by lack of imagination, but by the lack of determined will to change it to one that suits the needs of all our people. Pick a country, pick an industry, and the workers conditions are being savaged in the name of profit, for a bunch of parasitic shareholders. We can do better than this, we can follow our dreams and make them a reality.

This from IUF:

       Since June 2012 aviation workers in Turkey have been in dispute with Turkish Airlines (THY) over their right to strike and the dismissal of 305 workers who took industrial action on May 29, 2012 to protest the government's plan to ban strikes in the aviation sector. Turkish Airlines responded by sacking these workers via text message and email.
    The company refuses to reinstate the 305 and to accept any bargaining proposals put forward by Hava-Is, the aviation workers' union. On May 15, 2013, determined THY workers commenced an indefinite strike action.
     This is a crucial time for aviation workers in Turkey as the strike continues and the workers involved and the union representing them are under huge pressure.
     You can support the Turkish Airlines workers, CLICK HERE TO SEND A MESSAGE TO TURKISH AIRLINES, telling them to reinstate the dismissed workers and enter into good faith negotiations with Hava-Is, and to tell Turkey's Minister of Labour to act to ensure that THY respects its workers rights.

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The Leader Has Spoken.

     So the fire breathing dragon Len McCluskey, turned out to be a pantomime version. This is the man who bellowed fire about united strike action, general strike, a determined fight against the attack on wages and conditions, and when the first real battle looms, we find that his flame is really a hand held sparkler. So the workers of Grangmouth are handed on a plate to the greed driven, ruthless corporate entity Ineos. We all know there were alternatives, but the careerist McCluskey, didn't want to rock the boat too much, he is part of that club that puts "the economy" first and believes the workers must be lead and controlled.

This from A World To Win:

SNP claims that a capitalist Scotland would be in some way better for Scottish workers have been exploded. Ineos, like all Scotland's key industries from oil to whisky, is not "Scottish". They are run by freebooting global capitalist transnationals with no care for local conditions, except where they impact on profits.
The adjacent oil refinery, whose waste product is processed at the threatened plant, is owned by Petroineos, a refining and trading joint venture between Ineos and the Chinese government-owned PetroChina. Its other refinery is at Lavera, near Marseilles.
As the recession continues and fracking throws more cheap US coal and gas on to the world market, who knows what will happen to the offshore oil refining business. There is no such thing as security for workers, whatever the status of their country's governance.
- See more at: http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/grangemouth-workers-hung-out-to-dry.html#sthash.YBtw0dTe.dpuf

 

      SNP claims that a capitalist Scotland would be in some way better for Scottish workers have been exploded. Ineos, like all Scotland's key industries from oil to whisky, is not "Scottish". They are run by freebooting global capitalist transnationals with no care for local conditions, except where they impact on profits.

      The adjacent oil refinery, whose waste product is processed at the threatened plant, is owned by Petroineos, a refining and trading joint venture between Ineos and the Chinese government-owned PetroChina. Its other refinery is at Lavera, near Marseilles.

     As the recession continues and fracking throws more cheap US coal and gas on to the world market, who knows what will happen to the offshore oil refining business. There is no such thing as security for workers, whatever the status of their country's governance.

Read the full article here:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

SNP claims that a capitalist Scotland would be in some way better for Scottish workers have been exploded. Ineos, like all Scotland's key industries from oil to whisky, is not "Scottish". They are run by freebooting global capitalist transnationals with no care for local conditions, except where they impact on profits.
The adjacent oil refinery, whose waste product is processed at the threatened plant, is owned by Petroineos, a refining and trading joint venture between Ineos and the Chinese government-owned PetroChina. Its other refinery is at Lavera, near Marseilles.
As the recession continues and fracking throws more cheap US coal and gas on to the world market, who knows what will happen to the offshore oil refining business. There is no such thing as security for workers, whatever the status of their country's governance.
- See more at: http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/grangemouth-workers-hung-out-to-dry.html#sthash.YBtw0dTe.dpuf

Mental Health Prisons!!!

   This system throws up many anomalies, for example, we produce an abundance of wealth, but the majority struggle for a decent life. Is that beyond our imagination to put right? I'm sure we can all come up with a fairer way of producing and distributing the wealth we create, but it would have to be outside capitalism to have any pretence at fairness. Another anomaly in this quagmire of greed we call the capitalist system, is “law and order”. The figures for England and Wales, for the year ending March 2013, state that there were 8.6 million crimes. This is a decrease of 9% on the previous year, it is also the lowest figure since 1981 and is less than half the peak figure of 1995.

     So there we have it, falling crime rates across the country, and that's where the anomaly comes in. The prison population in this country has been rising steadily over the years. In England and Wales since 1993 to the present time the prison population has grown from 40,000, to today's figure of 97,000, in Scotland it rose from approximately 6,000 in 1997 to today's figure of around 7,000. Only in Northern Ireland has the figure fallen I,600 in 1996 to approximately 1,400 today, but Northern Ireland is a special case because of the “troubles” and the state's brutal repression, in the 80's and 90's.

        This land of falling crime has more than 150 prisons and we incarcerate more of our people than any other European country. In England and Wales it is 149 per 100,000 of the population, with Scotland following close behind with 139 per 100,000. How do you square that circle, falling crime, increase prison population? One way to look at it, is that across the country as a whole, we have approximately 1% of the population with mental health problems, our prison population has 10% with mental health problems. So that would be one answer, we lock people up who have mental health problems, instead of offering them care and treatment. Just another brutal statistic from a brutal, uncaring, exploitative system.

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Wealth Tourists.

     Our Etonian millionaires in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, at the moment are on their bandwagon of "health tourists". People they deem to be coming to this country, getting health treatment and not contributing. With their dodgy accountancy they reckon that we are being done for about £500 million. Of course there is no way of verifying their figures, but to them, that sounds like a nice number, and it gives them another stick to beat up immigrants. However, they are not saying or doing much about those "wealth tourists", those who  make a killing in this country and plant the loot in a cosy wee tax haven. Now we know that figure is into the billions, but most of those indulging in that, happen to belong to the same club as our Etonian parasites. These "wealth tourists" use all the facilities in this country, its infrastructure, and contribute virtually nothing, they live in the world of tax loopholes, tax havens, off-shore accounts, hedge funds, Eurobonds, and they own most of this country's assets. We the tax payer provide them with all the infrastructure to allow them to rip us off.  It is this ratbag of "wealth tourists" that are bleeding us dry, not the odd immigrant that gets health treatment. 

     Of course to you and I, we believe that in any civilised society, everybody is entitled to the health care they need, no matter where they are from or where they live, but to our millionaire parasites, health care is a commodity to be sold and make a profit from. That is a fundamental difference between a social society and a corporate society.

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Why Vote?

     It is nice when that shit producing box call a TV pours out something resembling the truth, and nice to see pompous, arrogant Paxman eventually silenced.

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Their Power Is Illusionary.

       A week away indulging myself, coffee, reading, walking, looking and talking, but as they say, a week is a long time in politics. In that week there were riots in Hamburg, in Rio de Janeiro the cops dragged an eighteen year old youth up a dark alleyway and beat him to death, in Barcelona there was a weekend of demonstrations against austerity. Also in Barcelona, October 20 saw an animal rights demonstration in the city centre, and on October 22, in Rome there were protests against evictions. Here in the UK, Chinatown in London shut down in protest at UK Border Agency raids. If you work your way through the various news avenues, you'll find these sort of events occurring across the globe. City after city sees the population in discontent, disgust and anger, at a system the produces an abundance of wealth, but leaves the people who produce that wealth, in various levels of poverty and deprivation, a system that requires violence and repression to keep it in place.


 

 

      It is obvious that this system is not what the people want, it is forced on them by the power of the state and their masters, the financial/corporate Mafia. It can be destroyed, and a system created that sees to the needs of all our people, those who produce and transport everything on this Earth. The planet is being raped and plundered, and we are being shafted, by a small well organised bunch of parasites, but their power is illusionary, they have power if you believe they have power, however, without our obedience, they are nothing.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk