History.

        

Just a reminder that when the British arrived in 1700s, India had 27% of global GDP. But after 200 years of theft and millions starved to death, by 1947 India had 3% of global GDP, 90% living below the poverty line, a literacy rate of 17% and life expectancy of 27. Ashok Kumar.

          Over the last week or more we have had a wall to wall master class in propaganda drumming up support for the symbol of brutal imperialism.  The media failed to give a dissenting voice a space. I thought, there must be dissenting voices against this cavalcade of pomp privilege and power, against this adoration of the symbol of imperial brutality. So with that in mind I publish in full this article from  

                                                Image couresy of Slavery Images.

Information Clearing House,

            As millions of Britons and admirers the world over mourned Queen Elizabeth II’s death Thursday, others — especially in nations formerly colonized by the British Empire — voiced reminders of the “horrendous cruelties” perpetrated against them during the monarch’s reign.
          “We do not mourn the death of Elizabeth, because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa’s history,” declared Julius Malema, head of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters party in South Africa.
          “Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952, reigning for 70 years as a head of an institution built up, sustained, and living off a brutal legacy of dehumanization of millions of people across the world,” he continued.
          “During her 70-year reign as queen, she never once acknowledged the atrocities that her family inflicted on native people that Britain invaded across the world,” Malema noted. “She willingly benefited from the wealth that was attained from the exploitation and murder of millions of people across the world.”“The British royal family stands on the shoulders of millions of slaves who were shipped away from the continent to serve the interests of racist white capital accumulation, at the center of which lies the British royal family,” Malema added.
         Larry Madowo, a CNN International correspondent from Kenya, said during a Thursday broadcast that “the fairytale is that Queen Elizabeth went up the treetops here in Kenya a princess and came down a queen because it’s when she was here in Kenya that she learned that her dad had died and she was to be the queen.”
        “But that also was the start of the eight years after that, that the … British colonial government cracked down brutally on the Mau Mau rebellion against the colonial administration,” he continued. “They herded more than a million people into concentration camps, where they were tortured and dehumanized.”
        In addition to rampant torture — including the systemic castration of suspected rebels and sympathizers, often with pliers — British forces and their local allies massacred unarmed civilians, disappeared their children, sadistically raped women and clubbed prisoners to death.
        “And so,” added Madowo, “across the African continent, there have been people who are saying, ‘I will not mourn for Queen Elizabeth, because my ancestors suffered great atrocities under her people that she never fully acknowledged that.”
         Indeed, instead of apologizing for its crimes and compensating its victims, the British government launched Operation Legacy, a massive effort to erase evidence of colonial crimes during the period of rapid decolonization in the 1950s-’70s.
        “If the queen had apologized for slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism and urged the Crown to offer reparations for the millions of lives taken in her/their names, then perhaps I would do the human thing and feel bad,” tweeted Cornell University professor Mukoma wa Ngugi. “As a Kenyan, I feel nothing. This theater is absurd.”
         Aldani Marki, an activist with the Organization of Solidarity with the Yemeni Struggle, asserted that “Queen Elizabeth is a colonizer and has blood on her hands.”
        “In 1963 the Yemeni people rebelled against British colonialism. In turn the Queen ordered her troops to violently suppress any and all dissent as fiercely as possible,” he tweeted. “The main punitive measure of Queen Elizabeth’s Aden colony was forced deportations of native Yemenis into Yemen’s desert heartland.”
         “This is Queen Elizabeth’s legacy,” Marki continued. “A legacy of colonial violence and plunder. A legacy of racial segregation and institutionalized racism.”
         “The queen’s England is today waging another war against Yemen together with the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.,” he added.
          Melissa Murray, a Jamaican-American professor at New York University School of Law, said that the queen’s death “will accelerate debates about colonialism, reparations, and the future of the Commonwealth” as “the residue of colonialism shadows day-to-day life in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean.”
           Numerous observers noted how the British Empire plundered around $45 trillion from India over two centuries of colonialism that resulted in millions of deaths, and how the Kohinoor — one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, with an estimated value of $200 million — was stolen from India to be set in the queen mother’s crown.
           “Why are Indians mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II?” asked Indian economist Manisha Kadyan on Twitter. “Her legacy is colonialism, slavery, racism, loot, and plundering. Despite having chances, she never apologized for [the] bloody history of her family. She reduced everything to a ‘difficult past episode’ on her visit to India. Evil.”
           An Indian historian tweeted, “there are only 22 countries that Britain never invaded throughout history.”
          “British ships transported a total of three million Africans to the New World as slaves,” he wrote. “An empire that brought misery and famine to Asia and Africa. No tears for the queen. No tears for the British monarchy.”
          Negative reaction to the queen’s passing was not limited to the Global South. Despite the historic reconciliation between Ireland and Britain this century, there were celebrations in Dublin — as a crowd singing “Lizzie’s in a Box” at a Celtic FC football match attests — and among the Irish diaspora.
           “I’m Irish,” tweeted MSNBC contributor Katelyn Burns, “hating the queen is a family matter.”
            Welsh leftists got in on the action too. The Welsh Underground Network tweeted a litany of reasons why “we will not mourn.”
             “We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the protection of known child molesters in the family,” the group said.
              “We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the active destruction of the Welsh language, and the Welsh culture,” the separatists added.
             Summing up the sentiments of many denizens of the Global South and decolonization defenders worldwide, Assal Rad, research director at the National Iranian American Council, tweeted, “If you have more sympathy for colonizers and oppressors than the people they oppress, you may need to evaluate your priorities.”

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

Death By Poverty.

      The world is watching a mass slaughter of the poor, some watch with horror, some with disdain, after all it is away over there in India. This shows up the glaring inequality and inefficiency of the capitalist system, it is the poor in India that are suffering the most, as is usual in this economic system. India is a very rich country, but millions of its citizens live in dire abject poverty. They are the ones who stand confused when told to self isolate, use sanitiser, wash your hands frequently, when their home can be a box in the midst of a refuse dump.

    The pain and anguish of the poor of India shrieks across the globe, but few hear it. Those extremely rich countries that can spend billions on arms, send a few plane loads of supplies, and puff out the chests expecting loud praise and acclaim. If ever there was an example that showed up the abject failure of capitalism to see to the needs of the people, India today is that example. What we are seeing is a crime against humanity, the cause in this case may be a virus, but how it manifests itself is the result of the capitalist economic system. The virus doesn't pick the poor by choice, it is the economic system that makes them vulnerable to its ravishes. The world is awash with wealth, so why are people dying because of poverty, it may be labelled covid19, but it is the poverty created by this insane economic system that feeds this death machine.

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk   

No Friend.

  

          The following article will be seen by many as good news, as indeed it is, but we should not be fooled into thinking that we can gain a fair and just world through the courts of law as they stand, we should not forget that they are inexorably linked to the police and the state and are no friend of the people. After all they are part and parcel of this unequal society and have a vested interest in keeping a hierarchical system where power lies in their hands and they hold a privileged position in that society. They would certainly draw the line at a horizontalist system where they hold no power, privileges or considerable wealth.
       We can only seek freedom and justice outside a system built on, and that relies on, power and wealth, and the privileges grabbed by these conditions.Never the less it is great news that an climate activist has been freed to carry on her fight against this ecologically disastrous system of profit privileges and greed.  Thanks Keith for the link.       

The following from World Review:

         A court ruling in India has delivered an urgent message this week - not just for their country’s own government, but for the world: “In my considered opinion, citizens are conscience keepers of government in any democratic nation,” said the judge. “The offence of sedition cannot be invoked to minister to the wounded vanity of the governments.”
       With these words, the judge released on bail the 22-year-old Indian climate activist, Disha Ravi. Her alleged offence? Editing and sharing an online “toolkit” which advised fellow activists on how to support the country’s farmers’ protests’.
       The protests, which farmers argue are necessary to defend their livelihoods in the face of new laws, have rocked the nation since last summer - becoming a symbol of wider revolt against both deregulated capitalism and state oppression, as Ravinder Kaur has written.
       Ravi’s post was consequently widely shared, including by the Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg. Yet the kickback to the toolkit was also swift: within hours, the hashtag #GretaThunbergExposed was circulating on Twitter, implying the climate campaigner was part of an international conspiracy against India.
       Effigies of Thunberg and other supportive international celebrities were burned in the streets, President Narendra Modi later appeared to echo the sentiment, claiming that some “foreign powers” were engaged in systematic efforts to “malign” the image of Indian tea, while the Delhi police alleged that Ravi was part of a global conspiracy to defame India and stir unrest.
       This week’s court ruling has attempted to squash these dangerous claims: “The freedom of speech and expression include the right to seek a global audience,” added the judge. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk    

The Empire Game.

       At the moment every avenue in the mainstream media is shouting VE. This is always portrayed as the gallant British fighting to destroy fascism, when in fact it was the British empire trying to stop the rising German empire, which had been muzzled since the end of WW1 and was now reasserting itself. The British empire couldn't tolerate this threat to its power, and resources. Soon all the other power mongers took sides and engulfed the world in a monumental orgy of slaughter, for power, markets and resources.
 

    Yes I know about the concentration camps, the mass killings and the slave labour by the German establishment. I also know about the British empire's concentration camps in South Africa, its mass slaughter, cruelty and brutality in India, and its fencing in of villages and savagery in Malaya, and the unimaginable savagery of the British in Kenya, and, and, and---. That's what empires do, and for centuries, the British empire was a pass-master at that brutal game.

     We should all know by now, that states don't wage war to save people, to free people from what every despotic regime it encounters. They do it for power, markets and resources, people are the cannon fodder to feed their greed driven orgy. WW2 was no different nor was the Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria imperialist ventures. Their so called saving the people from despots has lead to millions fleeing their homes, millions maimed and dead countries in turmoil, poverty and deprivation for the "freed people".

Enjoy:

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It's Time To Show Your Righteous Anger.

 

     I would say with confidence that our planet has never before seen such violent mass protests, with such prolonged intensity over such a wide area against the established authorities. This is something that we anarchists can take heart from, vast numbers of populations are taking to the streets not on single issues but simply against the established system, they are throwing off the yoke of authority, not asking for more favours from the powers that be.
     Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Haiti, France, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, and other areas are seeing the people in their thousands and more on the streets, like I said, not asking for more crumbs, but trying to put an end to this brutal neo-liberal authoritarian nightmare that has held the world in its grip for so long. Now India has joined the fray, the country that carries that phony label of the largest democracy in the world. How long before others take to the streets and display their righteous anger, hatred and disgust of a system of enslavement, poverty, deprivation and wars?

 

      An article by Pankaj Mishra from Bloomberg Opinion:

      India has exploded into protests against a citizenship law that explicitly discriminates against its 200 million-strong Muslim population. Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has responded with police firing on demonstrators and assaults on university campuses. The global wildfire of street protests, from Sudan to Chile, Lebanon to Hong Kong, has finally reached the country whose 1.3 billion population is mostly below the age of 25. The social, political, and economic implications couldn’t be more serious.
       It was only last month that students on the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University were throwing petrol bombs at the police, and fielding, in turn, teargas, rubber bullets and water cannons.
      This violent resistance to an authoritarian state is novel to Hong Kong. The Umbrella Movement that in 2014 first expressed a mass sentiment for greater autonomy from Beijing was strikingly peaceful. The campaigners for democracy in Hong Kong today have also traveled very far away from the Chinese students who occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989, and to whom they have been wrongly compared.
       Those students back in 1989 were deeply respectful of their state: Photographs of student petitioners kneeling on the steps of the Great Hall of the People are no less eloquent than the iconic picture of a protester facing a tank. That acknowledgement of the state’s authority as ultimate arbiter is now rapidly disappearing, in not only Hong Kong, but also India and many other countries. It is being replaced by the conviction that the state has lost its legitimacy through cruel and malign actions.
      Today’s protesters, who are overwhelmingly young, are usefully compared to the French student demonstrators in Paris in 1968. The latter occupied places of work and study, streets and squares. They also met police crackdowns with makeshift barricades and Molotov cocktails.
      Like today’s protesters, the French students erupted into violence amid a global escalation of street-fighting; they claimed to reject an older generation’s values and outlook. And they, too, couldn't be simply classified as left-wing, right-wing or centrists. Indeed, the French radicals confused many people at the time because they loathed the French communist party almost as much as they did the parties of the right. The French communists, in turn, dismissed the protesting students as “anarchist.”
    This commonplace pejorative confuses anarchism with disorganization. It should be remembered that anarchist politics is one of the modern world’s oldest, if little remembered, political and intellectual traditions. Today, it best describes the radical new turn to protests worldwide. Anarchist politics began to emerge from the mid-19th century onward, originally in societies where ruthless autocrats were in power — France, Russia, Italy, Spain, even China — and where hopes of change through the ballot box seemed wholly unrealistic.
     The anarchists — one of whom assassinated U.S. President McKinley in 1901 — sought freedom from what they saw as increasingly exploitative modes of economic production. But, unlike socialist critics of industrial capitalism, they aimed most of their energies at liberation from what they saw as tyrannical forms of collective organization — namely, the state and its bureaucracy, which in their view could be communist as well as capitalist.
      As Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the pioneering thinker of anarchism (and robust critic of Marx), put it, “To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so.”
     For many anarchists, the state, the bureaucracy and security forces were the deepest affront to human dignity and liberty. They sought to achieve democratic freedoms by a drastic reduction in the power of the hydra-headed state, and a simultaneous intensification of the power of individuals from below through coordinated action.
       Democracy for the anarchists was not a distant goal, to be reached through vertically integrated political parties, impersonal institutions and long electoral processes. It was an existential experience, instantly available to individuals by jointly defying oppressive authority and hierarchy.
       They saw democracy as a permanent state of revolt against the over-centralized state and its representatives and enforcers, including bureaucrats and the police. Success in this endeavor was measured by the scale and intensity of the revolt, and the strength of solidarity achieved, rather than by any (always unlikely) concession from the despised authorities.
      This is also how protesters today seem to perceive democracy as they struggle, without much hope of any conventional victory, against governments that are as ideologically driven as they are ruthless. Let there be no doubt: More open and unresolvable conflicts between ordinary citizens and authorities are likely to become the global norm rather than the exception. Certainly, militant disaffection today is not only more extensive than it was in the late 1960s. It also connotes a deeper political breakdown.
     Negotiations and compromise between different pressure groups and interests that have defined political society for ages suddenly seem quaint. Old-style political parties and movements are in disarray; societies, more polarized than ever before; and the young have never faced a more uncertain future. As angry, leaderless individuals revolt against increasingly authoritarian states and bureaucracies from Santiago to New Delhi, anarchist politics seems an idea whose time has come.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Release Of Some Bile.

        This little piece is just the release of some bile that has been bothering me for some time now.

       Europe, one of the supposed centres of the civilised world, an extremely wealthy enclave. The usual story put about of how the Europeans came so wealthy is that here was the heart of the industrial world, a continent of hard working intelligent people who introduced the world to a multitude of inventive industrial processes.
        Of course this mythical history of Europe, is built on a series of massive lies. The wealth of Europeans, was 100% built on savage brutality. We Europeans sailed forth and landed on a continent we called America, plunder it is lands and brutally killed its people, genocide was the foundation of the wealth that flowed from there to Europe, bolstered by the savage growth of slavery. It is estimated the the indigenous population varied between 5 million and 15 million, but by the end of the "Indian Wars" it had dropped to a little over a quarter of a million. We arrogantly rampaged through Arab Africa treating the indigenous population as lower animals slaughtering where we felt necessary, to allow us to plunder their resources. Sub-Sahara didn’t escape the European blood lust, we moved into a land where people had live for countless centuries and called it ours. Any resistance to this mindset was met with savage slaughter and genocide. In that vast and ancient country of India, once again we moved in, called it ours and subjected its people the some of the most horrifying slaughter imaginable, countless millions dying as our iron grip milked the country for the benefit of the wealthy Europeans, in this case mainly British. China wasn’t over looked in the European arrogant attitude of superiority, Asia and China received the same treatment as we intended to call the part of the world ours, and plunder with impunity. As usual local resistance would be met with the customary European savagery.
        The wealth of the Europeans is soaked in blood, for centuries we have prospered on the suffering and death of countless millions, and most of the conflicts across the planet today, are actions of that arrogant bunch of Europeans, (of course that includes those who settled in America), as they try to hold onto what they see as their right to plunder and control the world’s resources. Nothing has changed in the arrogant attitude of the established wealth of the Europeans, and nothing will change until we recognise that no group has the right to dominate any other group. Nothing will change until we get rid of this unjust system of arrogant wealth and power accumulation, and replace it with a system of social justice, a system built on sustainability and the needs of all our people.
Burrp. 

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

Union Busting In India.

     An appeal from IUF regarding illegal and brutal treatment of workers in India trying to form a union. Solidarity is our weapon.

     Earlier this year 162 workers out of 170 employed in three warehouses exclusively contracted by PepsiCo in West Bengal organized a union and submitted their demands. They were harassed, assaulted by company goons and then brutally fired.
    In May 2013, they were allowed to return to work, but under conditions that strip them of their human rights.
     They were told they can return to work if they declare they will never again join a union, made to sign false statements which they were told were legally binding, and told to cut up their union cards and step on them as they walked into the warehouses. Those who refused were told hey will never work again and that they will be blacklisted by all local employers.
    Despite threats, harassment, home visits by management and economic hardship, 28 of these unfairly dismissed workers have refused to surrender their rights. In August they formed the PepsiCo (Frito-Lays) Workers Action Committee and escalated the campaign.

CLICK HERE TO SEND A MESSAGE TO PEPSICO demanding unconditional reinstatement of the 28 workers with full back pay and full recognition of their trade union rights.

E-mail: iuf@iuf.org
Rampe du Pont-Rouge, 8, CH-1213, Petit-Lancy (Switzerland)
www.iuf.org
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Subscribe to IUF NEWS by e-mail

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

800 Workers Replaced By Scabs.

    The corporate world will do anything to crush any organising by their workforce. Everything from blacklisting union activists, to sacking those who speak out about wages and conditions. In some countries, and it could happen here, employers simply fire all the work force and start new, non-unionised workers in their place. What the employer doesn't want is for this to get out and create a backlash against their products, so please, spread the word on this one. Well Ansell makes medical gloves and condoms, we as members of the general public might not be able to boycott one, but sorry friends, solidarity, there are other brands.

This from Labour Start.

800 striking workers in Sri Lanka need our help.

    They are employed by Ansell, an Australian-based manufacturer of medical gloves and condoms. Ansell has replaced them with scabs in an attempt to break the union.

    They’ve also sacked union officials and even assaulted the branch union president.

    We’ve been asked by IndustriALL Global Union to mobilize thousands of people around the world to send messages of protest to Ansell.

Please take a moment to do so — click here.

It will make a difference.

Thanks very much.



Eric Lee

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

Let's Abolish Slavery!!!!

      When ever the powers that be talk of a rapidly growing economy, you can rest assured that it is growing on the backs of the poor, that growth is being feed by the life blood of people. Wealth accruing in the bank accounts of the rich is always being stolen from those who produce that wealth. In this type of economic system there are those who create the wealth, with little or no gain to themselves, and those who gain the wealth with little or no effort effort from themselves, I believe parasites is their proper title.

An appeal from Walk Free:

      It’s 3:15 am in Bhimnagar, India. With the family’s newest infant addition latched to her side, Kalawati* wakes up her husband, six-year-old daughter, and eight-year-old son to eat breakfast – a small handful of rice. The meal won’t satisfy anyone’s hunger but it’s all Kalawati’s children will eat until 1pm. They’re not heading to school; the whole family needs to begin their 18-hour work day at the brick kiln before the sun rises.

       Today will be the same for Kalawati’s children as the last – hauling buckets of water, mixing mud to make bricks, putting the mixture into brick moulds, a lunch of molasses and water, stacking bricks into piles, digging up soil for the next day’s bricks. At the end of the day, both children will try to rub the ache out of their backs while Kalawati helplessly suggests they try walking around to ease the pain knowing that it won’t work.

       That’s not the extreme in the possible tortures of a day in the life of a child slave in India. There are days when children are beaten to force them into submission; days when a mother is forced to watch a brick kiln owner dangle her son over a 700°C flame simply to frighten her. Rather, it’s just the typical day that the Indian Parliament could act on to make a distant memory for every Indian child forever.

    The Indian Parliament has extended their session to Friday, 6 September to progress a number of important bills before they prepare for election. They are paying attention to what voters are saying as well as the opinions of activists rallying all over the world in defence of the child slaves of India.

     Kalawati won’t have the chance to speak out for her children, but you can – tell the Indian Parliament to pass the Child and Adolescent Labour Abolition Bill TODAY: http://walkfree.org/indiachildslavery

      If passed, the Child and Adolescent Labour Abolition Bill would:
1) prohibit employment of children under 14 years of age;
2) outline harsh sentences for violators; and
3) provide for monitoring of suspected cases of child slavery.

     This legislation would put an end to the enslavement of children in India, but it risks not passing without a demonstration of mass public support.

Will you help? Take action now: http://walkfree.org/indiachildslavery

      Kalawati wants the same futures for her children as every other parent. And she has one more wish – that her children will know a life outside of slavery.

Thank you,

Debra, Ryan, Jessica, Kate, Mich, Amy and the Walk Free Team

*Name changed to protect identity

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

Ruthless Suzuki.

      All those shiny Suzuki cars are not quite that shiny, they are stained with the sweat, hardship and poverty of thousands of ordinary people. Like all corporate bodies, Suzuki is ruthless in its quest for increased profit. If that means crushing any attempt by the workers to organise for better conditions, and intimidation backed up by the state, then that's OK in their rule book.
     This is an appeal from Labour Start for solidarity in support of the workers' struggle at Suzuki.





     Workers at the Maruti Suzuki auto factory in India have decided to escalate their ongoing struggle for justice by launching an indefinite sit-in demonstration and hunger strike starting on 18 July.
     The are protesting the continued jailing (for a full year) of 147 workers, the arrest warrants targeting 66 more, and the sacking of 2,300 workers by the company.
     The workers have asked for our help to send messages of protest to India. It will take you just a few seconds to send off your message. Please click here to do so.

Thank you -- and please spread the word.



Eric Lee

ann arky's home.

India, an Economic Giant!!!!

      Our babbling brook of bullshit, the media, continually spews out a vision of India as one of the world's economic giants, which in corporate greed, it is. As they follow Cameron around that country, what we see is an army of well fed, well manicured, wealthy parasites, living off the cream of a country where deprivation is endemic. Campaign after celebrity campaign goes on about the poverty in Africa, and believe me that is real poverty, but what we don't hear is that India has around 450 million people living in “dire” poverty. This is equivalent to all the poor of all the countries in Africa combined. A country lauded for its economic growth and it has more than 450 million people living on 12 rupees or less a day, (this is the measure of “dire” poverty). This army of deprivation has seen practically no reduction in the past 30 years. A recent document by the Planning Commission states that the poor of rural India were better fed 30 years ago than they are now. The Indian government's own figures reveal that of its 856 million rural population, 50% live in poverty trying to survive on less than 20 rupees a day.

       This wonderful economic growth that the Western corporate world looks at with envy, creates the same pattern as corporate growth the world over, glaring brutal inequalities. India is fourth in the billionaire league with 61 billionaires, who have a combined wealth of $250 billion, The 100 richest people in that country have assets equivalent to a quarter of the country's GDP, with its richest man having a personal wealth of $20 billion. Compare that with the fact that every second child born in India is stunted and under weight due to poverty and malnutrition.

      This is the pattern of corporate capitalist growth in country after country. Billionaires grow bloated on wealth stolen from the ones who actually create that wealth. Private jets, holiday islands purchased for friends and family, sumptuous homes dotted around the globe, personal assistants, personal trainers. All this wealth belongs to those who produce it, yet they are the ones that live in deprivation, our wealth is plundered daily by that small army of parasites, who, like all parasites, will continue to feed of our sweat and toil as long as we allow them. We need to wash our society and get rid of those parasites. 

     I'll repeat the verse from the last post:

We are the ones who knead and yet we have no bread,
we are the ones who dig for coal and yet we are cold.

We are the ones who have nothing,
and we are coming to take the world.

~ Tassos Livaditis (Greek poet, 1922-1988)

ann arky's home.

THE CORPORATE WORLD FOSTERS CHILD SLAVERY.

        An appeal from AVAAZ regarding child slave labour in India. Slavery is abhorrent in any form, but child slavery must rank at the bottom of the barrel. No child should be denied an education, no child should have its potential destroy, no child should be denied its childhood.

  
Dear friends,

India is stalling the toughest child labour law in its history... because politicians say it’s not a ‘priority’! But the majority of MPs support it and all they need is a massive public push to bring it to a vote. Let´s raise our voices for India´s children. Sign now:

     The Indian Parliament is closing without passing the toughest child labour law in its history. Worse, the bill is supported by the majority of MPs, but it was ignored for weeks, because they felt it was not a ‘priority’!

     India is the world’s child labour capital -- kids as young as five are sold to traffickers and forced to work as modern-day slaves, abused and beaten. The historic new bill would ban outright any child labour under 14 and provide stipends for poor families to keep their children in school. But MPs have let it fall off their agenda, and Indian child rights groups say they badly need our help, now, to ramp up the public pressure.

     If the Avaaz community comes together, we can create a wave of attention to the bill, and push MPs to vote. Sign this urgent petition and forward it widely -- when we reach 1 million we’ll deliver our message to the Parliament with former child workers:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/india_child_labour_g1/?bwqhjab&v=20550

    A staggering 215 million children work in mines, quarries, and factories around the world. All nations have signed an agreement to put the eradication of child labour at the heart of their national education plans. But, India is home to the largest child labour force in the world. If the new law passes, it would ban all child labour for under 14-year-olds and all harmful work for under 18s. The law even has provisions to ensure it doesn’t hurt the poorest families -- enshrining the right to free education and proposing stipends to compensate any losses.

     Critics say the real problem isn’t the law, it’s bad enforcement. And it’s true that in the last three years in India less than 10% of the 450,000 reports of child labour were prosecuted under the existing, weak, law. But the new law packs some serious punch. The police will no longer have to wait for a court order to act. All forms of commercial child labour under 14 will be criminalised, and instead of meaningless fines or short prison sentences, the criminals will face tough penalties.

    While the majority of MPs say they'll support the bill, there's no political urgency to bring it to a vote. But each day they delay, more children are forced into a life of sweatshop misery. It’s up to us to push them over the edge. Sign the petition to India's MPs now, and share widely:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/india_child_labour_g1/?bwqhjab&v=20550

     The Avaaz community has campaigned to protect the children and the most vulnerable, time and time again. Just weeks ago, 1.2 million of us got together to help pass the most comprehensive education plan in Pakistan. How we treat our children is a reflection on our moral compass -- and it´s time to take firm steps against their abuse. Let’s join together to speak out for the future of India’s suffering children.

With hope and determination,

Jamie, Alice, Alex, Alaphia, Lisa, Jeremy, Ricken, Dalia, Rewan, Michelle and the whole Avaaz team

MORE INFORMATION:

India proposes ban on child labor (Washington Post)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/india-proposes-ban-on-child-labor/2012/08/29/ef9d802a-f1f2-11e1-a612-3cfc842a6d89_story.html

Getting ready for the new law against child labour (The Hindu)
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3878212.ece

Over 60 million child laborers in India (India Tribune)
http://www.indiatribune.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2884:over-60-million-child-laborers-in-india

35 child workers rescued from Delhi factories (Business Line)
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/economy/35-child-workers-rescued-from-delhi-factories/article1694550.ece

End Child Labour and Educational Disadvantage - report and film
http://educationenvoy.org/

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CARBON CAPTURE, WHO PAYS?

      We all know that the corporate world will make a killing wherever possible and they will dress it up as if they were some sort of compassionate caring body looking out for the well being of the planet. Carbon capture is one of those brilliant ideas where the developed world goes about its business of destroying the environment, while pointing to how it is all be sorted by raping and plundering of the undeveloped world.
This from WideOpenExposure:

     Hundreds of hydroelectric dams in Panama. Incinerators burning garbage in India. Biogas extracted from palm oil in Honduras. Eucalyptus forests harvested for charcoal in Brazil. What do these projects have in common? They are all receiving carbon credits for offsetting pollution created somewhere else. But what impact are these offsets having? Are they actually reducing emissions? And what about the people and the communities where these projects have been set up?
    THE CARBON RUSH takes us around the world to meet the people most impacted. They are the least heard in the cacophony surrounding in this emerging "green-gold" multi-billion dollar carbon industry.
     From indigenous rain forest dwellers having their way of life completely threatened, to dozens of Campesinos assassinated, to the livelihood of waste pickers at landfills taken away, THE CARBON RUSH travels across four continents and brings us up close to projects working through the United Nations, Kyoto Protocol designed Clean Development Mechanism. This groundbreaking documentary feature asks the fundamental questions "What happens when we manipulate markets to solve the climate crisis? Who stands to gain and who stands to suffer?"

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HOW MUCH IS A WOMB WORTH?

      We all know that capitalism has no morality, but capitalism is nothing but for the people who run the system, so it follows that those individuals have no morality. We read day in and day out about how this corporate body and that corporate body put profit before human life and limb, all in the interest of fluffing up a group of shareholders' bank accounts. It's how the system works, profit is the GOD and people are sacrificed on its high altar. However, even a hard nosed anti-capitalist like myself is sometimes stunned by the depth of depravity that the system, by that I mean the people who work he system, will sink to. It seems that thousands of women, mainly poor women, in the state of Chhattisgarh in India, have had their wombs removed so that the hospital could claim an insurance cheque form the government. The stories that are coming out are that women went in for minor complaints were told that they would contract cancer if they didn't have their womb removed. Some of those women, being poor were intimidated by the medical staff and though they had gone in for a back complaint or some other minor ailment, had their wombs removed. It doesn't seem to be the odd rogue doctor, but seems to be across the state. According to some estimates, there have been 50,000 hysterectomies performed across the state in the last 30 months. In each of these cases the clinic/hospital can claim from the government, 30,000 Rupees, approximately £348 per operation. This is no back street con trick, this is done by those Oh so respectable professionals in their shiny suits, those pillars of society who drive home to their des-res in the leafy suburbs. Human bodies are just another commodity from which to extract profit, after all that's what the system is all about. 

Information from BBC article:

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NESTLE, SERIAL ABUSER.

         

          Another appeal from LabourStart for solidarity in an attempt  to get Nestle to stop abusing workers as they try to organise into a trade union. One thing the corporate world does not like is organised workers, it is more difficult to exploit them, organised workers can stand up to the corporate greed merchants, individuals can be eliminated. 

      

            Nestlé is the world's largest food company. It is also a serial abuser of workers' rights.

This afternoon, the IUF - the global union federation for food workers - launched a major campaign calling on Nestlé to respect workers' rights.

         The campaign call comes in the wake of Nestlé sacking workers in both Indonesia and Pakistan for daring to organize themselves into trade unions.

          Last week, I asked you to help striking Suzuki workers in India. 96 hours after we launched the campaign, the company had reached agreement with the union and the strike was over.

This is going to be a longer and harder fight.

That's why it's so important that you not only send off your protest to Nestlé, but that you forward on this email.

Thank you!

Eric Lee

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