Thieving Bosses.

       So Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, steps down from his cushy job of CEO of Amazon. I doubt if he will have any money worries stepping down from his extremely lucrative little number. It could be mere coincidence that he steps down as Amazon is found guilt of stealing more than $61 million from its workers, it seems that the company simple pocketed all those millions of dollars given by the public as tips for the workers. We know that all large corporation exploit their works to varying degrees, but this one surely takes the biscuit. Of course the media are never too hard on large corporations when they are caught blatantly pilfering their workers money, after all they are dependent on, owned by, and are the mouthpiece of, the corporate world, so we expect this usual whitewashing of their corporate bosses.

    However the point that I would like to make is that the company has been fined, well and good, but the decision of what to do with that money as it came in was made by one or more individuals at the top of the tree. They have names, they as individuals should be held to account for what was obvious theft and corruption, when do we see them brought to account? The anonymous company leaves those individuals sitting pretty, and able to carry on their devious deceptive corrupt endeavours. Actions always have names and faces.
       The following is an extract from Mint Press News, describing how the media reported this blatant stealing of workers money,

       Even worse, many more framed the news as a mere allegation, despite the fact that the FTC had made a formal ruling. Forbes, for instance, led with the headline “Amazon Will Pay $61.7 Million Settlement After Allegedly Withholding Tips From Delivery Drivers.” Others (Daily Caller, Daily Mail) did the same. Meanwhile, in a tweet on the news, Vox claimed that (emphasis added) “Amazon will pay $61.7 million in a settlement over allegations that the company used customer tips to subsidize the hourly wages of some delivery drivers.” Thus, the fact that Amazon had been caught stealing was watered down into a claim that it was merely “subsidizing” “some” of its employees’ wages.
     Perhaps the worst offender was business and tech news site ZDNet, whose headline was “Amazon will pay $61.7 million to settle Flex driver tip dispute with FTC,” which obscured the matter into a foggy and very technical sounding financial dispute. Only a very small number of outlets, including Slate and The Huffington Post, echoed the FTC’s decision by using the word “stole” in their headlines. 

Read the full article HERE:

 

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Inequality.

         This world is awash with wealth in all shapes and forms, but it is very thinly spread on the majority of the world's population. By far the largest heap of that wealth, though created by the many, is heaped on the few. It is poured over and accumulated by the few, those who own and manage this brutal system of exploitation. Ever since the inception of capitalism, this has been so, but the efficiency of the system of production and exploitation has raced ahead at an unbelievable speed, creating wealth at an ever growing rate, but the distribution has always gone in favour of those owners and mangers of the system. The discrepancy between those few and the many has reach utterly gross and unacceptable inhumane proportions. Poverty and deprivation sprawls over our cities and towns, doorways become beds, food banks the accepted way of life for millions, and death by starvation for many, many more. Yet, within reach and plain view, we see luxury cars, private jets, grand mansions, lavish yachts and a swaggering coterie who weave the illusion that they are entitled to this life style.
        The chasm between these two groups, the many who create all that wealth, and the few who plunder it, is creating an ever growing anger and the many are starting to openly seek redress and justice. However justice will only come when this entire system of exploitation is torn asunder and replaced by a system of equality and fairness, a sustainable system freed from the cancer that is profit, a system moulded round the needs of all our people, and an end to power and privilege for the few. Though the following article is about U$A, it applies equally across the planet.

The following from Struggle-la-lucha:
 

     Almost 13 million people in the U.S. are “officially” jobless. The real number is far higher. Many haven’t received an unemployment check in weeks. Then there’s Jeff Bezos, who runs Amazon and owns the Washington Post. His stash ballooned by another $72 billion in the last six months.
       Over a million people have died of the coronavirus around the world. More than 210,000 expired in the United States of Trump. But it’s been party time for the super rich. Millions line up at food pantries and worry about being evicted or losing their home. Meanwhile, U.S. billionaires gained another $845 billion in wealth according to the Institute for Policy Studies. 
        This nearly trillion-dollar gain during the pandemic is merely dessert for these parasites. They’ve been having a feast for nearly 50 years. If workers were receiving the same share of the economy as they had in 1975, their wages would have approximately doubled by 2018. The bottom quarter of wage earners would be taking home an average of $61,000 per year instead of $33,000. Those in the middle would be making $92,000 instead of $50,000.
      These figures represent another $2.5 trillion dollars stolen every year from poor and working people by the wealthy and powerful. The study showing this “Grand Theft Payday” was commissioned by Seattle’s Fair Work Center and carried out by the RAND Corporation, a Pentagon think tank. Inequality has become so massive and repulsive that it’s obvious to RAND analysts who usually work for the military-industrial complex.
Big Capital’s counterattack
        This massive transfer of income isn’t the result of sunspots or UFOs. It’s the product of a worldwide class struggle between the rich and the rest of us. The class struggle doesn’t just include workers on strike or future union organizing drives at Amazon or Walmart. Every fightback against oppression is a class struggle.
     The Black Lives Matter movement is a class struggle. So is the struggle of the Filipino people against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Rodrigo Duterte. Transgender people trying to survive is a class struggle.
       The height of the Black liberation struggle was in the 1960s and early 1970s. The master class was pushed back.
       The Vietnamese people defeated the Pentagon war machine. Africans in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique won independence. French workers carried out a general strike in 1968.
       Big Capital staged a counteroffensive. Dozens of Black Panther Party members were murdered by police. New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller massacred the Attica prisoners. Decades before Iraq was invaded, war criminals Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were destroying anti-poverty programs for President Richard Nixon.

Read the full article HERE:

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My Moan.

 

         So the covid19 pandemic again grows, did we really expect it would be other? A pandemic that has political ballerinas at the helm is bound to be a disaster. Especially if those same political ballerinas have a vested interest in the growth of the economy. All the decisions made in this fight against the pandemic will be made by people who have shares in companies, friends and family who own, run and/or are shareholders in businesses. Their decisions will be shaped by these facts, the strategy tainted by these influences, the economy will play an important part in all their decision making. This will move the health and welfare of the people down a notch, where as it should be at the top of the agenda.
        We have seen enough suffering and deaths with this method of trying to control this pandemic, it’s time we took the decision making out of the hands of economic vested interest and put full control in the hands of the medical and scientific minds, those who are experts in the field of disease and human health and welfare.
       Our political ballerinas will always feed you this crap about saving jobs, opening up the economy, which translates as, ”Get out there and get those tills ringing, our friends are losing money” and with scant regard to the results on the people. Only when the results, which were predictable, start to alarm the people, do they start to apply a temporary brake to their profit orientated strategy. 

 

          We have to demand that we take the economy out of the equation, and put the full strength of the medical and scientific establishment to takeover the tackling of this pandemic. Otherwise it will be a continual rivalry between those with power and wealth protecting that wealth and power and the risks to the general population. To date billions of tax payers money has been handed to big business, with the bullshit tag “to save jobs” We are always being told of the wonderful capitalist system, well let’s remind them this is capitalism, if your business isn’t making money then it should go bust. If it has an essential function for society, then take it into public ownership. All those billions should have gone into the health and welfare of the people, in the battle against this pandemic, which will never be won if the political ballerinas continue to hold control. So let's screw the economy and save the people.

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The Crowd.

        I have always maintained, in this capitalist society, that dissatisfaction and anger is always present, simmering just below the surface. Sometime it displays itself in a small burst, isolated and then quietly fades, sometimes it can be a mass display by a large group of people, finds its way into the media, and then disappears. Then there are those times of course when it is an explosion of released energy fueled by anger and fury, thousands take to the streets and, like in Chile recently, attack the symbols of the system, they burn banks, police stations and loot shops. No matter how small or how large, they are all part of that discontent and subdued anger. Sooner or later it will explode and the existing system will not be able to put its exploitative and repressive parts together again. Well that, in my mind, is the aim of all those bursts of anger, large or small.

I Am The Crowd.

I am the crowd

I swim in the quagmire of poverty

its hooks, its barbs, tear my flesh

rupture my dreams,

I hold my breath for centuries

hoping to break through, gasp pure air.

Through the murky mire

I see bright things, shiny things sparkle

I see women in fine dresses, men in silk shirts

I ask myself,

why do I swim in this cesspool?

I want the light and warmth of rectitude

to caress my labouring body,

seeds of my dreams to bloom

like wild flowers in a meadow.

One day I will use my boundless strength

to haul this torn, battered being

out of the morass

onto the warm grassy bank,

when I do;

woe betide you, women in fine dresses

woe betide you mister in your fine silk shirt

should you ever try to get in my way,

for I am the strength of the world, I am the crowd. 

       The following is a piece on one of those small bursts of anger, a small display of that underlying discontent that one day will explode.

From 325:

Amazon Vans Sabotaged in Solidarity with Striking Workers by Lorenzo Orsetti Anarchist Brigade: North Carolina (USA)

      We are seldom compelled to claim the ways we choose to attack. We are not specialists, nor anarchists isolated from the acts of sabotage and theft that we know occur daily by employees within the Amazon monster. We generally prefer our actions to be just another strike amongst the many, adding to the already existent chorus of rage and discontent. As the crisis deepens and the feelings of isolation and helplessness appear to be sinking in, it is important to remember that one way of regaining agency in our lives is through attack and disruption.

      It is not only the corona virus that is making our lives unbearable, but even more so, it is our continued daily lives under capitalism and state control. Amazon and other tech companies are exploiting the virus, accumulating unheard- of profits and pushing their nightmare tech world. Amazon claims to provide a safe future for society all the while continuing to put its lowest paid employees in danger of infection, biding their time until they can eliminate those positions completely and replace them with automation and robots.

Along with all these reasons, we chose to sneak into one of Amazon’s parking areas and slash the tires of eight delivery vans – for the sheer pleasure of feeling alive and for the continuation of resistance during a confusing time. We know this is just one drop in a vast sea, but to quote a fallen comrade, “Always remember that ‘every storm begins with a single raindrop.’ And try to be that raindrop yourself.”

In solidarity with the striking Amazon workers!

       For ourselves and towards an eternal mayday for all of us!

– Lorenzo Orsetti Anarchist Brigade in North Carolina

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Our Helping Hand.

       Have you received you “thank-you” letter from big business yet, no, me neither. Well I feel our generousity should at least by acknowledged. Figures are a bit out of date referring to 1012-13, but I don’t imagine much has changed since then.
       In year 2012-13 the government received from big business £41.3 billion in corporation tax receipts, but handed out £58.2 billion in grants, subsides and corporate tax benefits. Taxpayers, you and I, are handing out approximately £93 billion a year, that amounts to around more than £3.500 from each and every household in the UK, just to help big business along and swell their bank accounts. Figures from Guardian. 

       

Extracts from Guardian: 

 

Big business and government.

       -------Many of the companies receiving the largest public grants over the past few years previously paid little or zero corporation tax, the analysis shows. They include some of the best-known names in Britain, such as Amazon, Ford and Nissan. The figures intensify the pressure on George Osborne, the chancellor, just as he puts the finishing touches to his budget. At the heart of Wednesday’s announcement will be his plans to cut £12bn more from the social welfare bill.
       Yet that sum is less than the £14.5bn given to companies in direct subsidies and grants alone.------
And-
--------In 2012, Amazon was attacked by MPs on parliament’s public accounts committee for avoiding UK tax. Yet in the same period, the online retailer was awarded £16.5m in grants by the administrations of Scotland and Wales to help build distribution centres. To link the Wales plant to the transport network, the Welsh assembly built the mile-long “Ffordd Amazon road” at an additional cost of £3m------

        We all know we are being shafted by big business, aided and abetted by the state’s business orientated ideology and the state’s stamp of legitimacy, so that makes it alright!! How many MPs have shares in these companies, how many have friends in high places in big business?The real question is not, do we know this, but why do we put up with it and when are we going to get rid of this systematic plundering of the poor. When the cupboard is bare!!

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Public Being Groomed To Do Cops' Work.

     Facial recognition is the new eyes of big brother, and in this society big brother  is co-joined twins, one the state, the other big corporate business, they are joined at the hip. Each piece of technology sold to the public finds itself firmly linked to the state surveillance wing, and the public are the unsuspecting assistants in the control and monitoring of the population. Your are monitored and profiled every where you go, from the CCTV in places indoors and out, and there is always the cop in your pocket, the smart phone. Believe we it is smarter than you could believe.

      Now their is a new toy being sold by big business that is being incorporated into the state surveillance system, the door bell camera.

This from325:

      Report from insurrectionary anarchist publication Anathema on the growth of networks of surveillance being developed by Amazon and local police departments.
     In November, The Intercept reported that internal documents at Ring, the home security company owned by Amazon, reveal that the company is planning to create automated neighborhood “watch lists” by incorporating facial recognition technology into its increasingly vast network of “smart home” doorbell cameras. The feature would alert camera-owners via smartphone when someone deemed “suspicious” pops up on their cameras. Like the old-fashioned “neighborhood watch” that Ring wants to replace, the feature would extend the power of the police and as well as make certain areas of town more dangerous for anyone Ring camera owners deem “suspicious.”
      Ring’s documents do not define what “suspicious” means. In practice, this will likely be defined by gentrifiers and cops, whose systemic racism is well documented. At its core, the watch list would identify people who “don’t belong” in certain areas; this means black and brown people, poor people, and anyone whose appearance deviates from social norms. Ring’s Neighbors program — an online discussion forum between camera owners — is already well known for its aggressive racism and for generally heightening distrust and paranoia within neighborhoods. For many people, Ring’s new feature would make it dangerous to be in certain neighborhoods at all — a victory for the forces of gentrification everywhere. Ring doorbell cameras have already allowed police to significantly expand their operations, simply by appropriating private citizens’ technology for no additional expense. The technology therefore has immense “value,” not only for the company, but for the state. For decades it’s been steadily expanding policing in order to keep its increasingly immiserated people under control, while struggling to balance its own budgets.

  Read the rest of this entry

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We Can Do It All By Ourselves.

          Still on the subject of climate emergency. A wee message that history has taught us over the years, all the peaceful marches and demonstrations are only seen by the state as complaints, and the don't pay any attention to complainers. Remember the Iraq war!! Millions on the march across country after country, but the powers that be went ahead with their plans for domination and blew the hell out of Iraq and its people.
          Take you complaint to the various states regarding the climate emergency and they will sort it out in their own time with their own agenda that will not do too much damage to profits of their corporate pay masters.
         We can shut down those responsible for this emergency, and we can do it quickly, all by our selves, all we need is the vision and the will to so so.

       This from Crimethinc:

 

 No Government Will Save the Planet for Us

       From September 20 to 27, tens of thousands will take to the streets to denounce the causes of climate change and call on governments to address what may be the most drastic crisis facing humanity in the 21st century. These mass actions will showcase the growing anger of a new generation that has known nothing but crisis, war, and the threat of environmental collapse. We have prepared the following text as a flier encouraging climate activists to consider how to interrupt the causes of climate change via direct action rather than petitioning the state to do solve the problem for us. Please print these out and distribute them at climate protests and everywhere else you can.
      Finally, people are filling the streets to call on governments to address the climate crisis, the most serious threat facing humanity in the 21st century. This is long overdue. But what good will it do to petition the same sector of society that created this problem? Time and again, we have learned that the state does not exist to serve our needs but to protect those who are profiting on the causes of this crisis.
      The most effective way to pressure politicians and executives to address the climate crisis is to show that whatever they fail to do, we will do ourselves. This means moving beyond symbolic displays of “non-violence” to build the capacity to shut down the fossil fuel economy ourselves. No amount of media attention or progressive rhetoric can substitute for this. If we fail to build this capacity, we can be sure that the timeline for the transition to less destructive technologies will be set by those who profit on the fossil fuel economy.
      Several examples from recent social movements show that we have the power to shut down the economy ourselves.
        In 2011-2012, the Occupy Movement demonstrated that tens of thousands of people could make decisions without top-down organization, meeting their needs collectively and carrying out massive demonstrations. On one day of action, participants shut down ports up and down the West Coast, confirming that coordinated blockades can disrupt the global supply chain of energy and commodities.
      In 2016, people converged to fight the Dakota Access Pipeline, a corporate project threatening Native land and water. Tens of thousands established a network of camps to block construction, demonstrating a new way to live and fight together. The Obama administration canceled the pipeline, causing many occupiers to go home, but the Trump administration reinstated it—confirming that we must never count on the government to do anything for us.
        In France, occupiers blocked the construction of a new airport at la ZAD, the “Zone to Defend.” Farmers teamed up with anarchists and environmentalists, establishing an autonomous village that provided infrastructure for the struggle. After years of struggle, the French government gave up and canceled the airport.
      We have seen train blockades in a variety of struggles. In Olympia, Washington, anarchists blocked trains carrying fracking proppants in 2016 and in 2017, forcing the company to stop transporting the commodity. In Harlan County, Kentucky, coal miners have blocked a coal-carrying train after the Black Jewel company refused to pay wages they owed to workers. It only takes a few dozen people to shut down a key node in the supply chains of the global fossil fuel economy. Imagine what we could do on a bigger scale!
        Governments serve to protect the economy from those it exploits. The state exists to evict, to police, to wage war, to oppress, and above all to defend the property of the wealthy few. The perils of climate change have been known for years, but governments have done little in response, focusing instead on fighting wars for oil, militarizing their borders to keep out climate refugees, and attacking the social movements that could bring about the sort of systemic change that is our only hope of survival.
       The capitalist economy is literally killing us. Let’s begin the process of shutting it down.

Another end of the world is possible!

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Tomorrow's World, For People Or For Profit.

 

        (ANTIMEDIA) Technology powerhouses Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Google, and Amazon announced yesterday they have joined forces to create the Partnershipon Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Benefit People and Society.

       So the big Western technology giants have teamed together to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of people and society!!! Well let’s not forget, those big boys, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Google and Amazon, are part and parcel of the big corporate cabal that is in constant overdrive to control everything in this world, benefiting people and society is not high on their agenda, profit is. It is obvious that in a capitalist society, as robots and hi-tec appliances grow in number and sophistication, employing people will go down, but profits will go up.

      All this hi-tec growth, reducing labour, would be a wonderful thing, if society was organised to benefit all the people and see to their needs, on an equal and fair basis. However that’s not the way our society is organised, as production improves, more labour will be flung on the scrap heap, after all, capitalism is about profit for the corporations, not about people’s needs. So we should be extremely worried by this coming together of some of the biggest corporations on the planet, to plan for a world where people are superfluous. Added to that there is a great deal of anxiety among lots of scientists and other experts on this drive for artificial intelligence, with a belief that we are opening an uncontrollable can of worms.

This from Tarcoteca 

--------- It should come as no surprise that software programmed by humans, who are flawed, will reflect and even amplify those human flaws. The White House released a report in May highlighting the major potential for discrimination in “Big Data.” A quick look at the table of contents shows that mitigating discrimination is a challenge in every area. A report published byProPublica showed risk assessment programs used by courtrooms across the nation turned up significant racial disparities, falsely labeling black defendants as future criminals at twice the rate of whites.
        Though the public is skeptical of AI, most people are unaware of these shortcomings.
        Even so, a poll conducted by the British Science Association shows “60 per cent think that the use of robots or programmes equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to fewer jobs within ten years, and 36 per cent of the public believe that the development of AI poses a threat to the long term survival of humanity.”

Read the full article HERE:

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The Myth Of Fair Capitalism.

 

       So the Labour Party attacks Tesco for employing cheap foreign labour, I suppose if Tesco listens, everything will be alright! You would think that by now it would have sunk into the heads of the "Party of The People" that in that great big cesspool of corporate scum, they're all the same. Why select one small target, do the believe that Tesco is somehow different from the other corporate abusers? What about "zero-hours contracts", what about "workfare" what about the slave like conditions in firms such as Amazon, and so it goes on. It's the same old waffling by the party system, so much time and resources spent trying to convince us that capitalism can be made compassionate and fair, it's all a matter of speaking to them. We just have to convince the blood-sucking corporate parasites that they shouldn't suck us quite so dry and then everything will be fine. 

      We are listening to millionaires who have money invested in the corporate world of greed, so they are hardly likely to want to rock the boat too much, it might affect the value of their shares. Only when the people own and run all the services and means of production will we see compassion and fairness in the transactions. Until then, the fight is against the system, there is no corporate body that has the interests and welfare of the people on its agenda, it is profit first, profit second and profit third.

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