The Non-Political Party System.

         Since the formation of the European Union, the possibility of democracy through the party political system is now even more remote than ever. The EU functions at a level beyond the legitimacy of the local party system, and imposes legislation on the national governments, creating a power more remote and disconnected from the people than ever before. National governments are now simply bureaucratic organisations that implement policies of that greater bureaucratic institution, the EU. This in turn creates an even greater disconnect between the political class and the people. 

 

     The various parties have lost any real difference, they are merely bureaucratic bodies vying with each for the power to manage the national bureaucratic institution, within the terms laid down by the EU. Our so called democracy. based on the party political system, is not about the party asking the people what they want, but more a matter of telling the people what they will get. Hardly democracy. The party political system is depoliticised at the national level, we might be able to protest against, and influence, the building of a motorway going through a public park, but the fundamental shape of our society is governed by that higher bureaucratic institution, the EU. Which in turn moves in the direction dictated by the “economy” and the needs of the transnational corporations. This disconnect between the people and the political parties creates ever more disillusionment and scepticism among the ordinary people.

          Hopefully this will be fertile ground for the desire to control our own lives and to determine the shape of our society. Perhaps our anger, disenchantment, scepticism, disillusionment and frustration at a system that doesn't engage with us, yet controls our lives to our detriment, will engender the birth of true democracy. Whatever, it will have to be outside the present system of political parties and freed from the strangle hold of the “economy” and its beneficiaries and drivers, the transnational corporations.

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

THE PAINFUL END TO AN EXPERIMENT!!!

 

       The plundering of the public purse by the financial Mafia and the resultant misery that falls on the ordinary people, forces people in all different directions. Some stay on the belief that things can only get better, others decide to stay and fight for something better, while others cut that bound with friends and family and leave for some foreign land. None of these options are easy, all inflict misery and hardship, some physical, others emotional, some both.

Another excellent article from Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ.  

 

Is the European experiment grinding to halt? 

      Earlier this morning I got a call from a friend, saying that she'd found a job but I was at a loss whether to congratulate her or not, as she will not only leave her country but her two young children as well. For the next nine months my friend will be teaching English at a private school in the Gulf States. In doing so she'll be following a path trailed by many other friends and acquaintances over the last few years.

     Her children will remain here to be looked after by grandparents for the duration, a story reminiscent of the sacrifices that many Greeks were obliged to make in the 60's and 70's as guest workers who went north to find jobs in the booming economies of northern Europe and especially in German factories then powering the country's export led economic miracle.

     As with so many other Greeks six years of recession has forced my friend to consider working abroad as the only alternative to a slow slide into poverty at home so repeating a story that has been told and re-told so often here over the last 100 years. However, this latest generation is both luckier and unluckier than their parents and forebears.

Continue Reading HERE:

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TIME'S UP!!!

        

          We all know that the banks control the governments, finance rules the world. We all should know that the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers) is a cartel that works to put every country into debt, then demands that the debt mountain be reduced by every country selling of all its publicly owned assets, thus putting more money into the hands of the private sector. Soon the corporate world will own everything and we will have a society without any public assets or public spaces, it will be total corporate fascism. We are nearly there it is on course to happen very soon, unless we do something to screw the system and take control of our own communities and our lives.

         The following is a short extract from a very interesting article, taken from the Freedom Socialist Party, which puts in in plain language, well worth the read.  Of course I'm not saying political parties are the answer, I see them as more the problem, but the article does help explain the methodology behind the corrupt financial system we live under.       

 ------

           Here’s the hitch. Workers, the main consumers, cannot afford to buy endless commodities. In this case, the rock of over-production runs into the hard place of not enough customers. And once again, recession or depression ensues.

The crises of over-production always underlie financial crashes, and the banks cannot fix this problem. But they do prop up their profits through government bailouts and by bleeding the working-class goose that crafts the real golden eggs. The bubbles get bigger, and there are still not enough worker-consumers who can afford to buy, buy, buy.

           Time’s up. The only way out of the quagmire is to dispose of a destructive economic system. Liberal commentators, top union officials and Democratic Party supporters argue for the party to vote for reforms such as more spending to create jobs, meaningful regulation of Wall Street, taxing the rich and corporate giants. Conservative libertarians advise turning back the clock a century or two and going back to “civilized” capitalism without monopolies.

But finance capital has all the power, and there is no way to regulate it within capitalism. For proof, none of the crooks in suits are in jail for their massive, fraudulent sale of questionable mortgage “investments.”

         A whistleblower recently revealed that the Securities and Exchange Commission has been shredding the results of its investigations of the U.S. financial industry for twenty years!

Working people need to militantly organize now in defense of expanded social services, union protections and free speech. In fighting for our rights, we can consolidate the power to overthrow this system and get one that works.

         READ THE FULL ARTICLE.

 ann arky's home.

THE STATE AND ITS HATERD OF UNIONS.

The trial of the leader of the Fiji Trades Union Congress

 is due to start this week.

SOLIDARITY.

         Fiji's military government has dramatically stepped up its harassment of trade unionists. Recently FTUC President Daniel Urai was arrested for holding an ‘illegal’ meeting, and his trial is due to start on 2 September. Meetings of the FTUC itself have also been prevented. Fiji has been under a military dictatorship since 2006, as a result of which Fiji has been suspended from the Commonwealth and the Pacific Islands Forum. The European Union has also suspended overseas aid payments to the regime. Leaders and activists of the Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) have been assaulted or detained on several occasions. In February, Felix Anthony, General Secretary of the FTUC and of the Sugar Workers’ Union affiliated to the ITF and the IUF was taken from home by three uniformed military officers and subjected to threats. His family including children were also threatened. A new government decree issued on 29 July will, 'effectively abolish all trade unions in Fiji', according to the FTUC. Fiji has ratified the two relevant core ILO Conventions - Convention 98(1974) and Convention 87 (2002) and is obliged to observe the workers' rights enshrined in them. Moreover, as a member state of the ILO, the Government of Fiji has an obligation to adhere to the Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work adopted by the ILO in 1998.

An appeal from LabourStart.

       The trade unions of the Pacific island nation of Fiji are under attack. Please take a moment to join thousands of other trade unionists from around the world to send your message of protest:

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=1086
Please spread the word by email, on Facebook, and elsewhere.
This is extremely urgent.
Thank you!

ann arky's home.

MISSILES FOR LUNCH!!!

"THERE GOES THE KIDS' LUNCHES."

      

      While the ratbag of NATO and its helpers blast away at Libya with missiles costing anything up to £800,000 each and noting that they have fired well over 100 of these in the few weeks since the No-fly zone started we should try to get this into some sort of proportion. Every year 15 million children die of hunger, for the price of one missile we could feed a school full of children with lunch for 5 years. Throughout the 90's well over 100 million children died from illness and starvation. Those deaths could have been prevented for the price of ten stealth bombers, or the equivalent of what the world spends on its military in two days. According to United Nations Food and Agriculture, one in twelve people in the world are malnourished including 160 million children under the age of 5.

         The assets of the world’s three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet. According to UNICEF, nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion live on less than $1 per day, while the world’s 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world’s people. To satisfy the world’s sanitation and food requirements would cost a mere US$13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.

      To say that poverty will always be with us is a lie, however to say that death by starvation can't be resolved is a crime against humanity.

       As long as we have a system of exploitation where the wealth produced by the many is syphoned off to a few pampered parasites, as long as we have a state system where states seek power over other states by military power, for whatever reason, we will have massive starvation and the resulting misery and deaths.

ann arky's home.