It is now becoming ever more obvious that the system is falling apart, for generations we have been subject to our rulers rampant aggression and utter contempt, yet the populace at large, continued to hold onto that mythical thought of some sort of alliance between rulers and ruled. Now the truth is so blatantly obvious that this myth has evaporated, leaving bare the true nature of this incompatible relationship. The powerful rulers of society are aware of this now complete disconnect between ruled and ruler, aware that the illusion no longer holds, and the populace see the glaring truth. This makes them extremely dangerous, if they can’t hold onto their power by smoke and mirrors, by weaving illusions, then they will try to do so by force, we must prepare for this inevitability. The disconnect between ruled and ruler is now complete, the glaring inequality and disparity inherent in the system shows that their reality and ours is completely incompatible. We the public can no longer march to their tune, no longer pick up the sword to defend their wealth, no longer shed our blood in their petty power struggles, no longer sweat our lives away cementing their privileged position. Across the globe people are showing that they have finally grasped this irrefutable truth, open rebellion is in the air. The attempted containment will become more brutal, ever increasing restrictions, ever greater surveillance, ever greater punishments for dissent. We organise in solidarity and face it full on, or we revert to that illusion that there is compatibility between rich and powerful rulers and the ruled and once again accept our serfdom, in a tighter and more frightening new world order.
Those who call and struggle for a society where autonomy is the norm, where mutual aid is the accepted pattern, rather than profit, who call for the end of exploitation and authority over another individual, will always feel the wrath of the state. Anarchists openly make that demand and openly struggle for that eventuality. So anarchists are hounded and incarcerated in state after state, to survive the state needs control of the population and has developed an integrated apparatus to stifle, intimidate and eradicate those who would dare to challenge its drive for omnipotence. Those who find themselves enmeshed in the state's repression strategy, deserve our full unstinting support, they struggle and suffer for us all. A free society and the state can't live together, it has to be one or the other, there is no in-between arrangement, where you are half free, and half governed.
Photo: Embassy of Chile in Montevideo-Uruguay Medical attention to FRAN SOLAR Prisoners to the streets!
Last Saturday October 30 comrades and friends of Francisco Solar gathered in front of the $hilean embassy to express our hatred for the Chilean state and our unconditional solidarity with our comrade. The state and the capitalist enterprise that profits from the business of prison in a perverse alliance of negligence and annihilation are currently denying Francisco essential medical attention with the clear purpose of breaking him. With this gesture we salute our comrade and send him strength and resistance. May the gestures of solidarity expand through the internationalist call for the prisoners in struggle. AGAINST PRISON SOCIETY! DEATH TO THE STATE AND LONG LIVE ANARCHY!
I find it odd that on the main, the anarchist groupings have fallen in line with the state's dictate of isolation, separation, wait for further orders from the state before you decide how to live your life. Yes I am aware that we are still in a pandemic and have been for approximately two years, but was there really no alternative? No possibility of communities organising to protect themselves and in co-operation with other communities in a manner deemed best for them? Did it have to a state decision which in lots of instances was based on political ideology rather than medical expertise. The state will always have priorities that don't put the well-being of the people first, but somehow it convinced us to obey and to show solidarity with the state and its agenda. The state will always seek ways to control the population, our acceptance of its dictates in this case of the pandemic and our submissiveness gave the state an open door and straight road for population control, and they have seized it with both hands and vigour. Despite what we might be fed, this was and is a medical emergency, so why did we allow the politicians to be the main controllers of the decisions?
While “we” stay #home, the state offers the only alternative out of the lock-down, managing the situation and organizing the “solidarity”, with “our” tacit consent. Since when has delegating – especially to the state – been part of the anarchist toolbox? The gap left by the “radical left” in not criticizing and opposing the state measures is now mostly filled by fascist and other reactionary bullshit propaganda. In this context, the question arises for us whether people in the circles of the “radical left” are aware of the real consequences of the often used slogans? “Against capitalism” “Against the authorities” “for a self-organized and self-determined life” (for some also “destruction of state, borders, prisons”). Are these things that people want to fight for and stand by, whatever happens? Or are they empty words that look cool on stickers or t-shirts and are just a required part of a subculture? Because dear people, the struggle for another world, a revolution or revolutionary moments, in real life, will probably be so beautiful and full of emotions, but also full of suffering, difficult moments, losses, and will force us out of our comfort zones. Making the proposal to #Stayathome or to isolate ourselves and rely on the measures prescribed by the state, in our opinion, is not a good start if we want to learn how to struggle, live a self-determined and self-organized life and how to support each other in “times of crisis”.
I received this as a comment from comrade Loam, but thought it worthy of a post rather than a comment. Laid bare is the blatant corruption of the state apparatus thugs, even their own loaded judicial system couldn't swallow the crap they produced as "evidence". Today our flag flies that bit higher, our voice that bit louder.
Today we are experiencing a magnificent, complete and definitive victory in this trial which has turned out to be a conspiracy by the State against two members of Rouvikonas. Giorgos and Nikos risked life imprisonment this morning for murder, based on false testimony. But the prosecution witnesses have exposed the police manipulations and the prosecution has changed sides: the power has unmasked itself in its desire to violently neutralize the Greek anarchist group by classifying it as criminal organizations. Today, Giorgos and Nikos are free and the Rouvikonas group grows stronger. As the numerous messages that reach us show, the entire social movement recognizes itself in this victory, which is also theirs, against a Machiavellian and unscrupulous power. This victory also has no borders: it is also yours, you who, more than 2000 km away, mobilize in various ways in support of this crucial fight. A big thank you to all the support we receive from around the world, prove once again that we are everywhere! Our utopias are alive, resistant and persevering! The day will come when thieves of lives will be stripped of their pedestal and common interest will guide our thoughtful and concerted decisions. The day will come when we will go from the noun "power" to the verb "power", from the domination of others to the ability to freely choose our lives. The day will come when collective intelligence will end the agony of the Earth and those who inhabit it. Only those who give up have already lost. There is no reason to despair, but to act with determination to denounce the absurdity of authoritarian society and the collective suicide that is capitalism. We are the side of life against the side of death. We are the ones who authentically carry the motto Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, and not the political leaders who usurp these words, because we propose concrete freedom, real equality and universal brotherhood. This morning, at the end of the three trial sessions, the 3 judges and the 4 jurors found Giorgos and Nikos innocent: our comrades were unanimously acquitted. This 7-0 victory allows us to eliminate any possibility of appeal from the prosecution. Therefore, victory is final. We will celebrate tonight and tomorrow thinking of you!
Thanks again! The fight continues!
The international support committee of Giorgos and Nikos, Exarcheia on November 25, 2021.
For those who know the UK establishment for what it is, are well aware that it was never really against Nazism. It quite liked the idea of a subjugated population that salutes the flag and follows the leader. Nazi Germany was showing them the way, and they tried to follow. The following article reveals the connection between the high-end schools in UK and the Nazi youth moulding schools of Nazi Germany.
In spring 1936, teenage schoolboy – and later war hero – Dick Hargreaves was given the chance to go on an all-expenses-paid exchange trip to Germany. But this was no ordinary school exchange – Hargreaves’ destination was Oranienstein, one of a system of new elite boarding schools known as National Political Education Institutes (“Napolas” for short). These Nazi colleges were explicitly modelled on an amalgam of the British public schools, the Prussian cadet corps, and the harsh educational practices of ancient Sparta. The schools educated boys from the age of ten upwards, training them as future leaders of the Third Reich. By taking part in the exchange, Hargreaves and his ten companions from Dauntsey’s School in Wiltshire, England, would soon be exposed to the Napolas’ “total” programme of education, indoctrination and National Socialist propaganda. Hargreaves’ initial impressions, recorded in his diary at the time, are overwhelmingly favourable. The school, situated in the town of Diez an der Lahn, near Koblenz, is described as “a damn good place … a huge castle, done up modern and very posh – armchairs, super labs, stables … school bicycles and heaven [knows] what!” According to the diary, everyone is “extraordinarily decent”, and the boys’ Nazi uniforms are “very smart indeed – light khaki corduroy breeches, black riding boots, khaki coat, red arm band with swastika, brown coat lapels, blue shoulder straps and a dagger thing”.
‘Very smart indeed’: young German schoolboys reading a Nazi newspaper at NPEA Rügen, 1943. Dietrich Schulz Most interesting, though, is Dick’s dispassionate observation of the Nazi Mayday celebrations in the neighbouring town of Diez. On April 30, 1936, his diary records a trip “with our Kameraden” to watch the Maypole being hoisted and folk dances by the Hitler Youth. The boys heard speeches by some of the “big bugs of the town”. There was also community singing in which they all took part. There was a good bit of ‘Heiling’ which we also did because we were in a huge crowd. It was a magnificent scene – the old castle towering above the market place in which were thousands of enthusiastic peasants lit by torch and candle light… The following Friday, May 1, which was the spring festival or “Frühlingsfest”, Hargreaves’ diary records that the boys had to get up at six o’clock to salute the flag and parade. They then marched to Diez where they assembled with the local Hitler Youth to listen to a 90-minute speech by Hitler being broadcast on the radio. The same afternoon, the boys returned to Diez to hear another lengthy speech by “der Führer”. Hargreaves noted: He worked himself into such a frenzy and was able to move the crowd so tremendously that we saw three people faint. Not from fatigue or crush but just by his amazing oratory powers. Then after Hitler had been ‘Heiled’ off the earth Goering spoke for ½ hour! Here, the way in which foreign observers could easily be swept up in the fervour of “heiling” and Hitlerism around them is made poignantly clear – although the interminable speeches by Hitler and his henchmen seem to have palled soon enough. My decade-long research project on the history of the Napolas – just published as the book The Third Reich’s Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas – has shown that, during the 1930s, hundreds of pupils took part in this programme of exchanges and sporting tournaments. Just to take one example, between 1935 and 1938, Napola Oranienstein took part in exchanges with British private schools, including Westminster, St Paul’s, Tonbridge School, Dauntsey’s and Bingley School in Yorkshire. The school also entertained headmasters and exchange teachers from Shrewsbury School, Dauntsey’s and Bolton School, and was also involved in sports tournaments with Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Winchester, Shrewsbury, Bradfield and Bryanston.
Those who pick up the label of "anarchism" are a bit like Jacob and his coat of many colours. We come in various shades. Social anarchists, revolutionary anarchists, Stirner anarchists and anarchists without adjectives, and various other shades. However we all have one thing in common, we want a society without a state apparatus, without capitalism, without exploitation or hierarchy, and one that sees to the needs of all our people with fairness, a society built on respect for each other and an end to authority of one human over another. The following article is not new, it was first published in 2015, but I think it is still well worth a read. We might all be different shades, but we are looking in the same direction and with co-operation and solidarity we can get there.
[translator's note: Ruymán Rodríguez is a member of FAGC (Federación Anarquistas Gran Canaria or Gran Canaria’s Anarchist Federation), which centres most of its activity on the issues of housing, rent and homelessness. They are known for housing homeless people in squatted buildings run along anarchists’ principles without the members needing to share the same ideology. The biggest one so far, La Esperanza, houses more than 260 people, around 160 of them minors. More recently the FAGC has called for a rent strike to demand better conditions for renters during the COVID-19 crisis. The strike is supported today by more than 60.000 tenants. This is the first of a series of three articles written in 2015 where Ruymán explains how the FAGC sees the way forward for anarchism based on their experience these years] “Anarchism is not a romantic fable, but a hard awakening [...]”(Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness [Vox Clamantis en Deserto], 1990). The dichotomies between “anarchisms” evolve periodically. During the late 19th century it was between collectivists and communists, organisation and anti-organisation, individualists and syndicalists, pure syndicalists and anarcho-syndicalists, etc. Today this theoretical brawl, which seems to develop cyclically, has been established between insurrectionism and social anarchism. In the 19th century some anarchists wanted to unravel the Gordian knot by speaking of “anarchism without adjectives”, and in the late 20th century of “synthesis”. These days it is necessary to go beyond that.
Prowling through some old material I came across some bits and pieces from 1996 that highlights that nothing ever changes on the agenda of the ruling class. It is always the same attack, cut spending on the needs of the ordinary people. The poem below was written during a school closure campaign in 1996 by Freddie Anderson, Irish born Glasgow based anarchist, poet, play-write and activist. Freddie was born 11 September 1922 and died 10 December 2001. Of course we have moved on since then, it's not just schools closures we are looking at, it's libraries, community centres, swimming pools, to name but a few.
WHO’S TO BLAME?
Whenever misrule grabs state power and keeps in bond the nation, the foremost of its great misdeeds are cuts in education for learning is a noble thing and in its grans pursuit we throw old prejudice aside and seek to find the Truth. So those who shut our school-house doors do so with vile intent be they local councillors or a gangster government, they’ll blame each other endlessly for crimes they common share, conveniently forgetting that two must make a pair. Now who are the bigger vandals the louts who burn our schools or the scoundrels who just close them down according to the rules.
It keeps repeating itself, workers complain about poor conditions and/or low wages, their request for this to be alleviated is met with refusal, they opt for the only road left open to them, they take strike action, and as always, the state steps in on the side of big business and sends in its militarised police thugs to intimidate and beat up the strikers and their supporters. Is there any further explanation need on how this system of capitalism works? Further information on the ongoing metal workers strike in Cádiz Spain and the support by the students. This from Enough is Enough:
Cadiz. Spain. November 23, 2021. Today the youth of Cadiz took to the streets in great numbers to support the strike of metal workers – what an example of dignity and solidarity! But as thousands of us peacefully participated in the demonstration called by the students’ union, a perfectly coordinated group of riot police brutally attacked the demonstration. It is an absolute disgrace that these forces were sent by the central government to fight us! Despite this unprovoked police violence, we want to say loud and clear that we will not be intimidated and that we fully support the metal workers. Therefore, on Friday, November 26th, we call to once again leave the lecture halls and fill the streets for a new day of student strike! Originally published by Sindicato de Estudiantes. Translated by Riot Turtle. The images of police repression against the student demonstration in Cadiz fill social networks around the world. The videos are clear. The police stormed the front line of the demonstration without a word. A pure provocation aimed at intimidating and criminalizing a just and exemplary struggle. And we must congratulate ourselves for the courageous resistance of many workers and youth against this mean aggression. The students’ union blames this aggression against peaceful demonstrators on the government’s sub-delegate in Cadiz, José Pacheco of the PSOE, who every day uses brutal repression against the metal workers’ strike. Today it was the students, but yesterday it was the workers and the residents of Puerto Real who were victims of the tanks and the beatings of the riot police. Is this the way the governing coalition defends us? Is this the way it protects working families and young people who are fighting for jobs and a decent future? It’s unfortunate that this government is actually siding with the bosses and sending riot police to beat us up. They are turning away from their social base and putting themselves on the other side of the barricade. The Student Union demands the immediate resignation of José Pacheco and the immediate dismissal of the police officers in Cadiz who have committed these acts of aggression against young people and struggling workers. We also demand the resignation of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who ultimately decides on these types of operations. We also demand that the leaders of Unidas Podemos back up their words with deeds. They are part of the government and share seats in the Council of Ministers with the PSOE. They cannot simply issue a statement complaining about the repression. They have to put an end to police violence, which is why they are where they are, and they have to side with the real workers. We don’t want posturing and pats on the back. We want the repression to stop and we want these insatiable bosses to fulfill the just demands of our striking parents. Youth is the future, we are told. But this system and the capitalist policies that pave the way for mass unemployment, precarity, privatization of health and education, lack of decent and affordable housing…. It condemns us to not get it. That is why we will not give up. The metal strike is our struggle too. And its victory will be our victory. Tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday, we will hold general assemblies in all study centers, institutes and faculties to denounce the police repression and to massively support the student strike on Friday the 26th with a demonstration starting at 11 am at Puerta Terra.
Day and daily, across the world in towns and cities people struggle to have a lifestyle of co-operation and mutual aid, free from the ever tightening shackles of the state and and its attendant thuggish support systems. The state has to have control over the population as it tries to create a society to suit the needs of the financial and corporate world. There is no room in such a society for liberated autonomous individuals and groups, the subservient population is the desired dream of both state and corporate capitalism, all serving the desire of the privileged and powerful as they pillage and plunder the Earth's resources for their own personal gain. However the human spirt will resit subservience in a variety of ways from clandestine to open resistance and struggle, and that resistance is growing daily as the state's repression and violence tries ever harder to repress and stifle that unending desire for freedom and justice for all. The state apparatus that controls the patch of the Earth's surface labelled Greece by the power mongers, is always among those at the forefront of repressing that human desire for that world of caring and sharing, for peace between all cultures and for a society that sees to the needs of all our people. However the resilience of the ordinary people knows no bounds and will triumph in the end. Borders will fall, we will be brothers and sister, the world will be ours.
The new season started in low-tension conflictuality with the government despite the fact that during summer huge fires burned one-third of Greek forests. And this destruction clearly occured with the responsibility of the government. In our squatted community of Prosfygika, on Alexandras Avenue, we run an intense campaign against the repression and gentrification of our neighborhood. We organized several info-events in squares for people to know that the state and the companies want to kick out hundreds of people from the communities houses. On 5th October, we intervened to the leftist former-government radio station Kokkino and newspaper Avgi with the target to make them publish our statement. We specifically target this party because it is one of the main actor of the gentrification process, pushing the state mechanism to forward its plans.
We also intervened on 14/10 to the main company owning the technical responsibility: Anaplasi ΑΕ (Aνάπλαση Α.Ε.) having as a president the mayor of Athens Kostas Bakogiannis. After our interventions “a crew” of Syriza officials, ex-president of Anaplasi A.E., wanna be athens mayor, and ex regional president came to our neighborhood to make research to prove that the neighborhood needs gentrification. This first period of campaign ended up October 16. with a demonstration from our neighborhood to the wider area of Ambelokipi. Even though we were not so numerous, we managed to follow a big route in central streets with full guarding equipped with helmets, sticks, gasmasks. Lately, a new law is getting imposed in Greece which is not allowing protestors to take the whole street but confining them to one street-lane or even in some cases to the pavement, surrounded by riot cops pressuring them. So the demonstrations became very tense.
This campaign is a small preview and a warning addressed to the state, of what will happen if they attack to our neighborhood. At the same time, another anti-repression campaign was going on “against the obligatory DNA capture” also known as the case of the “14” with the general slogan “sabotage the state data”. Last year, anarchist students were arrested because they occupied a building of the Zografos University to protest against the lockout of Polytechnio. The police stated that they found in the squatted building a beer bottle with a male DNA samples matching another sample gathered after one of the 6 December 2014 the attack of cops. With the excuse of this ridiculous connection, they want to oblige the 14 arrested males comrades of the occupation to give their DNA. Denying it, they are now under the threat of arrestation. Based on this case, the anarchist movement, and especially the student part of it, launched a campaign with aggressive actions and public informative events. For the end of the campaign, we commonly organized a demonstration that should pass by all the univerisities of the Athens center. However, the demonstration was directly attacked by the riot cops with beatings and tear gas.
Western justice in the so called democracies, is always a bit of a lottery, so much depends on how biased the prosecution is and how the courts accept loaded and flimsy so called evidence. The word of the state official will always take precedence over the word of the ordinary citizen. Just remember, they are not there to protect you or to see that justice is done, but they are there to protect the established system of power, wealth and privileges for the few. The following article is just one example of how Western just works, take a longer look and you will find this sort of "legal proceedings" occurring again and again.
19 years in prison without evidence In April, 2021 the anarchist Vangelis Stathopoulos was sentenced by the Criminal Court of Appeal to 19 years in prison. Our comrade has been in custody since November 2019, in the first repressive operation of New Democracy – after coming to power – regarding the imprisonment of militants through trumped up charges and blatant plots. Vangelis Stathopoulos, when asked, provided first aid to an injured comrade. The court of appeal, presided over by Maria Giannakopoulou – the same judge who had convicted Tasos Theofilou in the first instance – sentenced him to 19 years in prison for participation in the “Revolutionary Self-Defence” organisation and for theft in an ΟΠΑΠ store (the biggest Gambling company in Greece). Based on what data? On the basis of the same evidence with which many militants have been imprisoned over the past years: the well-known “anonymous phone calls” of the anti-terrorist police, the anti-scientific “dna samples” of the anti-terrorist police and the “testimonies” dictated by the police. It is significant that during his arrest, the commander of the Anti-Terrorist Service, Lefteris Hardalias, told him: “We know you have nothing to do with the robbery at OΠΑΠ, but you will find the icing on the cake tomorrow.” The cherry on the cake was the police’s methodical claim that Vangelis Stathopoulos was involved in the ‘Revolutionary Self-Defense’ organization. In a court of law, in which 3 witnesses testified they were with Vangelis in the centre of Athens at the time of the theft at the OPAP store in Cholargos. In a court, in which even the prosecution witnesses themselves testified that they did not identify Vangelis in any of the organisation’s attacks, nor in the theft. In a court, in which a biologist/technical consultant testified that this particular dna sample could be anyone’s. In the same court, our comrade was sentenced to 19 years.
The struggle of the ordinary people for a society of fairness, justice and that sees to the needs of all our people is continuous. At times it simmers just below the surface, other times it explodes into action, When the anger and discontent surface it can be a short brutal battle, other times it can be a long drawn out affair, with many paying a high price for their desire for justice. One of the recent longer strike actions has been the Indian farmers strike, against government legislation that would have allowed the international aggro-businesses to dominate and decimate the lives of thousands of small farmers. The strike lasted approximately one year and has just ended with the Indian government withdrawing the hated legislation, a victory for the striking farmers. However many paid for the victory with their lives. Another recent and ongoing strike on this continuous struggle of the people for fairness and justice is happening at the moment in Spain with the metal workers in Cadiz. The battle is continuous and at times brutal but the end will only come with victory and the formation of a fair and just society that sees to the needs of all our people, free from the greed motive of the corporate parasite class.
The struggle has rapidly developed into a rebellion against the union bureaucracies and a clash with Spain’s government coalition, made up of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and the pseudo-left Podemos party. Workers occupied the Puerto Real industrial area and built barricades with industrial equipment, burning cars and rail tracks to block police from the area. Bonfires have been lit at the entrances to the factories, manned by pickets, halting production. Military shipbuilder Navantia, European multinational aerospace firm Airbus, construction multinational Dragados, aerospace supplier Alestis and stainless steel manufacturer Acerinox, and their subcontractors are all affected. Workers at petrochemical plants in La Linea, Algeciras, and Los Barrios have also stopped work, and picketers there blocked major highways. The strike is widely supported in the region, which has the highest unemployment rate in Spain, with 23 percent unemployment and over 40 percent among youth. The trade unions report that 98 percent of workers are striking as anger surges across the region.
Across the globe, people are angry and taking that anger to the streets. To more and more people it is becoming obvious that the dominant economic system on the planet is not working for the better good of the many, but simply protecting and enhancing the wealth, power and privileges of the few. Of course as the anger among the people grows, so the repression of the state increases. Any written word, spoken word or action, that attempts to end this exploitation of the people and the plundering of the planet is now labelled criminal, or terrorist, allowing the state to unleash its brutal forces of intimidation backed up by its loaded so called judicial system. However the rebellion continues. The youth of France are angry and on the streets, the Yellow Vests are still on the streets in vast numbers. Russia has mass demonstrations against state repression. People's anger walks the streets of Greece, South America is in a constant state of rebellion No state is immune from the anger of the people and it grows by the day. When will this storm of anger finally wash away the greed, inequality, injustice and brutality of this economic system of privilege and insanity. When will we end this economic system that spawns wars, brutality, deprivation and obscene inequality.
Sibilla predict a storm? At dawn on 11 November, a number of searches were carried out in various Italian cities and six comrades were served with orders for precautionary measures: in prison for Alfredo, under house arrest for Michele, and an obligation to remain and sign three times a week for four other comrades. The comrades are suspected of the crime of art. 270 bis (subversive association for the purpose of terrorism and subversion of the democratic order) for the conception, editing, printing and dissemination, including via computer and telematic tools, of the anarchist paper “Vetriolo“, for wall writings with content considered outrageous and instigatory and for an episode of damage. They were also charged with Article 414 (incitement to commit crimes), for drawing up and disseminating communiqués containing incitement to commit crimes against the State in person, for the purposes of terrorism and subversion of the democratic order. In addition to this, two counter-information websites, roundrobin.info and malacoda.noblogs.org, were obliterated because they were considered an aggravating factor in the specific crime of incitement (through a digital instrument). The investigation starts in the year 2017 in Milan, from the beginning of the newspaper’s editorial experience, then was passed to the Perugia prosecutor’s office until today, and reviews the content of the anarchist propaganda articles that are declared dangerous for their communicative effectiveness and the spreading of the radical idea.
We all know that governments start wars, always preceded with the usual bubblegum and popcorn patriotic propaganda about standing up to evil, defending democracy and other phoney bullshit. No matter the trumpeting before the slaughter, the aim is always the same, power and control over resources, defending the wealth, power and privileges of the pampered parasites that control our lives. We also know that it entails the slaughter of the targeted civilian population, of course labelled a just and good cause.
Why do we continue to be fooled by this smoke and mirrors of the state, we know wars never benefit the ordinary people of the aggressor state, nor of the people at the receiving end of the bloodshed, and we know that the ordinary people's blood is shed on both sides, but not that of the psychopaths that plan, gain from and execute these barbaric acts.
I shall not serve.
Wars only happen if we obey, so why obey, so many willingly serve this savagery and as long as we have those who serve we will have leaders and wars. Servitude and all its attendant evils disappear if we just walk away and disobey. We could do well to remember the words of Étienne de La Boétie.
“The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.”
As the British establishment wanted to be seen as one of the big boys in the power broker stage, it decided to build two massive aircraft carriers. Though we are short on cash for health and social facilities, our privileged pampered political ballerinas decide that £7.6 billion was snip for two of these beasts of destruction. Of course there is another £6.2 billion to kit them out with the hardware to blow other countries to smithereens. You would also imagine that these beasts were for the UK to blow its trumpet in various spots around the globe. However what we find is that while this brute scuttles around the Mediterranean there are more U$A F-35B fighters on board than UK fighters. A total of 8 UK F-35Bs compared to 10 from the US Marine Corp. Are we the UK tax payer in some way subsidising the U$A war machine?
Another little point, each of these F-35B fighters costs approximately £93 million and today we just plonked one into the Mediterranean Sea. No doubt there will be a few tut-tuts from the top brass as they go about replacing this £93 million killer machine. Think what would £93 million would do for you local community. The £93 million for the F-35B fighter doesn't take into account arming the beast with missiles at from £250,000 to £800,000 a pop, and they usually carry a few. This is the face of the insanity built into our system, while we cut social care, public sports facilities, libraries, community centres and have a health system cracking at the seams and a grossly underfunded education system, rising poverty and homelessness, we can pour billions into weapons of mass destruction, as we parade around the world as one of the U$A bully's big sidekicks.
A wee follow up on my previous post, "Milking It", with a further look at how our "democracy" works. A picture of the merry-go-round of the rich, privileged and pampered parasites that gorge on the wealth created by you and I, the ordinary citizen. If you have any illusions that this system is there to benefit you and I, you are naive in the extreme, we are being screwed on a daily basis and we tolerate this situation. Thanks Loam for the link.
