Greetings From Athens.

Greetings from Athens.

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Awe Ri Best.

      To all those folks who follow this blog and also to the casual passers by, wishing you a great new year. May your goodwill be infectious and swell the happiness of humanity, Let's work harder to bring about that better world that lives in our hearts, let's realise the dream. Tomorrow belongs to us.

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The Real Growth Is Debt.

      The Oxbridge millionaire duo that sit on the thrones in The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, the Cameron-Osborne parasites, are still crowing about how they fixed the economy, of how we are all doing better, as unemployment is falling. Of course we all know that the employment being created is part-time, low paid, low skill, zero hours contacts, the thousands forced to call themselves, “self-employed” and lets not forget, the thousands who now work for no wage at all, the workfare slave force. 

        The true signs of this “growth” are in the figures. UK family debts are rising much faster than incomes. According to a recent survey, the Avia Family Finance Report, states that typical family income rose by 4% between July and December 2014, while average household debt has rocketed over the last six months from £6,740 to an eye watering £16,260. The debt comes from many sources, family credit card debt rose a staggering 71% from £1,720 to £2,940, personal loan debt went from £1,210 to £2,090, and increase of 72%, while that ever increasing modern commodity, the “pay-day loan” went from an average £350 to £1,290, a 269% increase. Another sign of our growth, is the growth of the overdraft, which over the last six months going from an average of £340 to strangling £1,490, a whopping 338% increase.

       The report goes on to show that while average debt is climbing, the amount we pay to clear that debt is falling. The amount spent since July 2013, on servicing our debt, excluding mortgages, has dropped from £262 to $208 a month. Some of the reasons for the ncreasing debt and the falling paying off of that debt, is simply harder times. Families are paying on average, £571 a month on rent/mortgages and council tax, compared to £514 six months ago. Public transport costs have also seen an increase from £102 to £188 a month, with driving going from £116 to £130. 

      In the real world of the you and I, outside the Cameron/Osborne illusionary world, the predictions are that things will get tougher in 2015.

      A recent Money Advice Service survey found approximately half (47%) are buying cheaper alternatives to their usual everyday products, while 41% are planning to spend less on socialising. A little more than 25% will spend less on presents next year, it also states that 25% will take a packed lunch to work to help cut day-to-day spending. 

        This then is the recovery, this is the growth of the millionaire cabal, and they will continue to carry out the dictates of the financial Mafia and punish the poor and drive more people into poverty as the pursue the ideology of the corporate world. Sweatshop Europe, here we caome. 

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Future Suspended.

      This video by Ross Domoney, may have been post before, but is well worth a second viewing, as it show some very basics of how the system works. Privatisation, plundering public assets and exclude the ordinary people. Creating poverty, breeding racism, dividing the people, while the financial Mafia walk off with the loot.

Future Suspended (2014)

Filmed and edited by Ross Domoney
Co-edited and script by Jaya Klara Brekke
Music composed, performed and recorded by Giorgos Triantafyllou
Assistant editing by Antonis Vradis, Christos Filippidis and Dimitris Dalakoglou
Research by Christos Filippidis, Dimitris Dalakoglou and Antonis Vradis

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Some Laugh, While Most Cry.

      The Greek parliament failed to elect a new president, at the third attempt, in spite of bribery and corruption to swing the vote. Now Greece is heading for a snap election, where it is expected that the left party Syriza will win an overall majority. This will of course see the big money leaving the Greek stage in lorry loads. Expect trouble as the die-hard establishment indulge in the usual array of dirty tricks to discredit and destroy the Syriza government if the do win. In the words of the song, "There may be trouble ahead---".

       Greece has suffered years of "austerity" destroying social services, its health service is practically defunct, its education system is in tatters, unemployment is in the stratosphere at 26%, with the youth of the country living with 50% unemployment. Twenty first century European capitalism at work.

      It is all part of the "restructuring" plan, which means destroying labour organisation, and creating a population that will be grateful for any job at any wage. Of course it is not just Greece that is getting the financial Mafia's "austerity" ideology shoved down its throat, Italy is heading down the same road, and Spain is well on the way to join Greece in the new Europe sweatshop economy. It is all just a matter of pace, but the direction is the same for the whole of Europe, UK included, or are you foolish enough to think that they will make an exception in our case?

      Meanwhile, the suits with their unearned wealth, are laughing all the way to the bank, and clinking their Champagne glasses in celebration of their wonderful "austerity" plan.

     This from arrezafe, though in Spanish, I think you'll get the general drift of the Video.

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Workers Know your History, William Morris.

      Despite his wealthy upbringing and his Oxbridge background, William Morris, March 1834-October 1896, played an important part in the early development of socialism in the UK. 

From Wikipedia:

    In January 1881 Morris was involved in the establishment of the Radical Union, an amalgam of radical working-class groups which hoped to rival the Liberals, and became a member of its executive committee.^[154] However, he soon rejected liberal radicalism completely and moved toward socialism.^[155] In this period, British socialism was a small, fledgling and vaguely defined movement, with only a few hundred adherents. Britain's first socialist party, the Democratic Federation (DF), had been founded by Henry Hyndman, an adherent of the socio-political ideology of Marxism, with Morris joining the DF in January 1893.^[156] Morris began to read voraciously on the subject of socialism, including Henry George's Progress and Poverty, Alfred Russel Wallace's Land Nationalisation, and Karl Marx's Das Kapital, although admitted that Marx's economic analysis of capitalism gave him "agonies of confusion on the brain". Instead he preferred the writings of William Cobbett and Sergius Stepniak, although also read the critique of socialism produced by John Stuart Mill.^[157]

     Spirit of Revolt have just added the Second Series Vol.II No.2 of The Commune, The William Morris Issue, published by Guy Aldred in February 1927, to their read of the month, collection. It is well worth a read.

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First They Came For The Anarchists----!!!

       Proof, if ever it was needed, that Europe keeps lurching to the right. Spain has started dawn raids and dragging people from their homes because of their beliefs. No, it is not anti-religion, it is anti-free-thought, those having their doors knocked in are anarchists. Obviously the privileged, pampered establishment, see anarchism as the greatest threat to their plundering, repressive regime. First they give their repression an inoffensive name, the this case of the Spanish onslaught on freedom it is call “Operation Pandora”, rather than “let's kill the opposition”.
       As expected, the people of Spain didn't take this lying down, and there have been mass demonstrations in various parts of Spain, Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza, and Seville, to mention a few. These early morning raids are seen in Spain for what they are, state kidnappings, as the state comes down hard on those who would dare to resist its repression.

    The Spanish state, Like the rest of Europe is attempting to crush any resistance to the ideology of the financial Mafia, namely “austerity”, a brutal treatment meant only for the ordinary people.
       The financial Mafia are determined to force wages and conditions in Europe down to sweatshop standards, so as to compete with the Eastern sweatshop economies. And as the resistance grows, so does the repression. You don't have to have committed any crime, just hold a particular point of view that sees the plundering of the ordinary people as wrong, and you could see yourself facing the full force of the “law”.
     Europe today is no different from the 30's, it is in turmoil, as resistance grows as the capitalists carry out what they call economic and labour relation adjustments, which translates into getting rid of organised labour, so as to reduce wages and decimate conditions, and increase profit. World War II saved their bacon then, as the imperialists set about redrawing their borders, under the banner of “democracy” and patriotism. What will they dream up to save them this time, and will we let them? 

 

This from Contra Info:

      On December 16, Operation Pandora was unleashed. The State’s security forces burst into different houses and squats in Barcelona and Madrid, and eleven anarchist comrades were kidnapped.
    This kidnapping—and it couldn’t have been done any other way—was coordinated with the media, who helped justify and legitimate it with heart and soul, spreading the news that the police had carried out an operation against international anarchist terrorism. This kidnapping of eleven comrades set off a multitude of rallies and demonstrations that same day in different cities—Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and Zaragoza, for example—thousands of people coming out in solidarity with the kidnapped comrades and showing rage and hatred towards the State’s new repressive operation against the libertarian movement.

Read the full article HERE:

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A Time Of Celebration And Good Cheer!!!

      While the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, spews out images of throngs of people fighting their way into shops to spend hundreds of pounds in an attempt to buy happiness in a colourful box, let's not forget the reality of modern day Britain. The Britain where millions of us live, the Britain of the daily struggle, of trying to keep our heads above water. A world where we are surrounded by unimaginable wealth, but are witness to beggars, rough sleepers, homeless, food-banks, child poverty and fuel poverty. the question is why?

      Behind the veneer of designer names and brightly coloured shopping malls, there is another world. A world where hopes and dream die, and opportunity never knocks.

      Zero hours contracts and the minimum wage are the establishments method of guaranteeing poverty. Don't expect them to try to alleviate the problem, it suits them the way it is. It creates a pool of cheap labour.

      Poverty kills both the young and old, and those it doesn't kill, it scars for life. So who is responsible for those scars and those deaths?

      Poverty, a preventable phenomenon,  turns good people into bad parents, but not by their own desire.

      Fuel poverty in one of the richest countries in the world, is a crime, who is responsible?

     Don't expect the top layer of parasites to do anything about poverty, they need it to keep getting fat bank accounts. If we want to be rid of poverty, we will have to do the fixing ourselves.

      No matter how they do the numbers, no matter the illusion they try to weave, the truth is that the UK has millions living in poverty, Why?

     Food banks, a necessity in modern capitalist Britain, while the Oxbridge millionaires talk of a growing economy, Why?

      Employers will gladly pay you the minimum wage or less, if they could get away with it, and some do.

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

An Injury To One----!!!

       Divide and rule has always been the strategy of the rich and powerful, and the politically aware individuals among the ordinary people, have always called for unity in our struggle to combat the continuing onslaught against our conditions.

       However we are stuck in the past if we see the struggle on a national scale, calling for unity against our national government, as if that would solve the problem. It is not, and never has been a national struggle, it is an international struggle. The powers that be, will still use the same tactic of divide and rule but they work on a pan-European, pan-world scale. As we struggle with the austerity attack here in the UK, the exact same thing is going on across Europe, and elsewhere in the world.
 

      Our struggles are replicated across the world, but our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, doesn't give much cover to these struggles. Ireland for example where recently 100,000 people took to the streets in the continuing struggle against water charges. Or in Belgium, where a strike on December 15, across public and private sectors, brought thousands onto the streets in several areas across Belgium, bring the country to a standstill.
     We in each of the countries of Europe should see these struggles as our struggles and organise accordingly. An injury to one is an injury to all, is not a national slogan, it is a basic philosophy of all the ordinary people battling under the repressive capitalist system. We, here in the UK, should be organising in support of the Irish and the Belgium people. Likewise these countries should be involved in supporting our struggles here. Our unity is unbeatable, as small groups, they are, and will continue to, kick the shit out of us.

       Finance and corporate power doesn't recognise national borders as they attack the ordinary people, why should we the people, recognise these borders, in our struggle for justice?

On the Irish people's struggle against water charges:

 

      A European country in crisis. Men in black come to the rescue. With the complicity of the national government, they impose painful measures on the population. Men in black never forget to be nice to their friends, so the measures include a provision to privatize public water services. As a reaction, massive citizen’s mobilizations take place. The story sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
     We have already experienced this situation in Greece, and just a few months ago, Greek citizens won the battle, and water will remain in public hands. Now history repeats itself, and the struggle against water privatization and commodification is at boiling point in Ireland.

Continue reading:
On the Belgium strike:

     To understand the events, the political context should be pointed out. In Belgium, the attacks against workers have been going on for 25 years coming governments in which the social democrats participate. After the long political crisis following the 2010 , marked by the victory in Flanders of the NVA, the SP Prime Minister estimated that “to save the country” it had to step up these attacks, so that the Flemish traditional right could beat the neoliberal-nationalists and that the coalition with social democracy could be continued.

     This policy - which cost the workers the trifling sum of 20 billion Euros - was a terrible fiasco. Last May, the return of the coalition seemed the most likely option. But, to general surprise, the French-speaking Liberal party, put into the saddle by the Palace, formed a homogeneous rightwing coalition with the Flemish Christian Democrat , the Flemish Liberals and the NVA. This latter agreed to keep quiet on its separatist , in return for an ultra-neoliberal program.

Continue Reading:

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What Is Freedom?

   To all the the world, seasons greetings from Percy Bysshe Shelley:

XXXVIII
'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many-they are few.

XXXIX.
'What is Freedom?-ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well-
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.

XL.
''Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs, as in a cell
For the tyrants' use to dwell,

XLI.
'So that ye for them are made
Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,
With or without your own will bent
To their defence and nourishment.

XLII.
''Tis to see your children weak
With their mothers pine and peak,
When the winter winds are bleak,-
They are dying whilst I speak.

XLIII.
''Tis to hunger for such diet
As the rich man in his riot
Casts to the fat dogs that lie
Surfeiting beneath his eye;

XLIV.
''Tis to let the Ghost of Gold
Take from Toil a thousandfold
More than e'er its substance could
In the tyrannies of old.

XLV.
'Paper coin-that forgery
Of the title-deeds, which ye
Hold to something of the worth
Of the inheritance of Earth.

XLVI.
''Tis to be a slave in soul
And to hold no strong control
Over your own wills, but be
All that others make of ye.

XLVII.
'And at length when ye complain
With a murmur weak and vain
'Tis to see the Tyrant's crew
Ride over your wives and you-
Blood is on the grass like dew.

XLVIII.
'Then it is to feel revenge
Fiercely thirsting to exchange
Blood for blood-and wrong for wrong-
Do not thus when ye are strong.

Excerpt from The Mask of Anarchy.

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Censorship.

       Call for support and solidarity for two American animal rights activists.

Call for action: Flood the jail with magazines

     After lawsuit is filed against Kevin’s jail over magazine policy, a call to mass-mail magazines.

     On behalf of Kevin, we are asking anyone who publishes a magazine, newsletter, or any periodical to send copies to Kevin this week.

       This week, a lawsuit was filed against the jail by Prison Legal News over its refusal to allow magazines (except PLN) into prisoners.

We would like to have as many periodicals as possible mailed into the Kankakee County Jail as soon as possible. This will accomplish two objectives:  

• Testing the jail’s willingness to comply with the law.
• Allowing us monitor what, if any, magazines are rejected or not passed on to prisoners.

If you publish a magazine

    We’re asking anyone involved with any kind of periodical (zine, newsletter, magazine, etc) to mail a copy to Kevin. It must be clearly marked as coming from the publisher to be allowed in. And if your budget allows, please add tracking so it can be confirmed if magazines are being delivered to the jail but not Kevin.

On behalf of Kevin and all prisoners, thanks for the support.

***

Please send Kevin a letter of support:
(Note: Kevin Johnson is his legal name.)

Kevin Johnson #469551
Jerome Combs Detention Center
3050 South Justice Way
Kankakee, IL 60901

Tyler Lang was released from state custody in November 2013. He is currently out on bond awaiting trial on the federal charges.

Who are Tyler and Kevin:

     Tyler Lang and Kevin Olliff are two Los Angeles animal rights activists who were arrested in rural Illinois for “possession of burglary tools.” After a traffic stop in which they refused consent to a police search, their car was searched anyway. Inside, police allege they found bolt cutters, wire cutters, muriatic acid, ski masks, and cammo clothing.
      Police believe these items were “burglary tools” intended to be used in a crime, and arrested Kevin and Tyler. The two are held on felony charges which carry up to 3 years in prison. They have remained in jail since their arrest on August 14th.
      There is no evidence linking them to any crime or intended crime, nor were they arrested on anyone’s property, and their history as animal advocates is the only basis for these serious felony charges.
      There are additional details which cannot yet be released, but will be posted here as soon as we are able to share more.

More details HERE:

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Will You Just Watch----?

Will you just watch----?

 In the World

I will be the change I wish to see
A voice to let us know how it's supposed to be
The hungering in your soul just to be free
Stuck under society's pillow trying to breathe

I will be the change I wish to see
In a world full of love for the ego trip
Easily shown on the Las Vegas Strip
Acid rains cancel flights, ruin your trip

How do you explain the fun is useless?
A convenient distraction from you're useless
behavior making sure that drugs are used less

Expansion beyond what we are taught
Accepting of being little better then not
An earnest curiosity awakened, you're caught
Trapped in the war of ideals being fought

Should I rhyme every thyme I want spaghetti
I'll eat up every voracious soliloquey I let me
Showing like a fallacious epiphany to bet me
Cooking poetry with gracious mystery, you get me?

I will be the change I want to see
A voice to be heard over society's chorus
Screaming out "this hatred isn't for us"
Too bullheaded to listen blame it on the Taurus
Planting my seed now grow a **** forest.

I will be the change I want to see
I will be the change I want to see
Will you just watch? 

By Adriel Jacobs 

 

 

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