CHANGING TO A WOLRD OF POSSIBLE DREAMS.

          Never before in human history have we seen the people of the world rise up simultaneously on the same cause, all of the same mind, the system sinks, it is corrupt from top to bottom, it works against the interests of the majority of the people. Never in human history have people all across the globe wanted to change a world system and stood up to do something about it simultaneously. The mould has been broken, people across the world have seen through the smoke and mirrors of corrupt illusion and they will change it. Change breeds change, once people's minds open to new ideas the world becomes a new and exciting place with the possibility of realising dreams. Our dreams, not their nightmares.

From The Commune:

         In my opinion, it is very likely that the historians of the future will look upon yesterday as the day a truly global anti-capitalist movement was born. Following the example of Occupy Wall Street, Los Angeles, Boston, and hundreds of US towns and cities, a huge number of small and large occupations began on every continent except Antarctica (see Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America).

         All proclaim their opposition to the capitalist status quo – with its obscene riches at one pole and sickening poverty at the other. All of this has been organised online, completely outside the clutches of the decaying trade union bureaucracies, for whom ‘international solidarity’ is just some words they used to say a few decades back. The old organisations of timid protest seek influence on the margins, but they are ignored and seen to be as irrelevant as they actually are. It is highly appropriate that this moment has been crowned by the apparently successful resisting of the attempt by New York’s mayor and second richest man to retake Liberty Park. There is a sense that the powers that be are losing control by the hour, if not the second if you follow it all on Twitter

READ ON.

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UK SHOW TRIALS.

         As usual The Commune  has come up with an excellent article on the upper class hatred of the working class as displayed in the recent "show trials" after the August riots. Taimour Lay explains the meaning of these post-riot show trials'.

         The criminal courts’ reaction to the riots was to instinctively follow the hysteria of a panicking government and a shocked police. Of 3000 people arrested, 1000 were charged in August alone. Magistrates have been sending hundreds to jail (an average of five months for theft or handling stolen goods), with the majority remanded in custody until a Crown Court can hand down an even longer term.

- 3000 arrested nationwide

- London’s Met police set ‘target’ of 3000 convictions

- six months jail for stealing a £3.50 bottle of water

- five-month sentence given to mother-of-two who ‘handled’ stolen pair of shorts

- burglary charge and jail threat for stealing two scoops of ice-cream

- rioters’ families face being turfed out of council houses, benefit cuts

        It is hard to overstate quite how extraordinary this spasm of rushed ‘justice’ has been. Sentencing principles have been thrown out the window: it hasn’t helped defendants to plead guilty, be young, have a clean record, turn themselves in, express remorse, come from an abusive home or take a bottle of water as opposed to a plasma TV. Bail rights have been systematically disregarded. These are show-trials if the only aim is deterrence.

Continue reading HERE.

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DIRECT ACTION AT UNI. GETS RESULTS.

     

       The following is part of an account, taken from The Commune of the Free Hetherington occupation which ended this week after a long and successful campaign. Once again proving that direct action gets results. 

       Liam Turbett reports on a victorious conclusion to Glasgow’s seven-month university occupation

After over 200 days in occupation, the Free Hetherington occupation at Glasgow University finally ended on Wednesday 31^st August. The decision to leave followed direct negotiations with senior management, who allowed the occupiers to declare victory by handing over several major concessions.

Police tried in vain to evict the occupation.

 As previously reported in The Commune, the Free Hetherington was established in early February, when students and anti-cuts activists from across Glasgow took over a disused post-graduate social space at the heart of the Glasgow University campus, transforminglanguage teaching, anthropology and the entire department of adult education entirely.

SOLIDARITY.

        Senior management’s initial approach of ignoring the occupation and hoping it would falter away failed, and now famously, on 22^nd March an attempt was made to end it by force. With dozens of police, alongside the dog unit, the force helicopter and university security charging in to drag out the 15 or so occupants, around 500 students and supporters rapidly gathered outside. Hundreds then marched on the historic administrative centre of the university, and forced their way into the University Senate, which was held for the rest of the day. By midnight, management had handed the Hetherington building back, in exchange for the occupiers leaving the Senate rooms. In doing so, they handed legitimacy to the occupation, strong-arming them into negotiations, and the day’s events reaffirmed the level of support that the anti-cuts movement at the university could draw on.

Continue reading the article in The Commune

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WHAT IS NATO DOING IN LYBIA?

       As the Western take over of Lybia continues with more than 6,000 NATO attacks on Tripoli so far, and the Western imperialists keep mouthing noises about doing it to protect civilians, we have to ask questions. Why not Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia etc. where civilians are being killed on a daily basis? Why did the West support this particular uprising? The information coming out of Libya doesn't show them as a democratic group. There are reports of them moving into towns and villages and  "cleansing" them of "black" Libyans. These are Libyans who found themselves there because of Libya's previous connection with the slave trade. There have also been reports of looting as they enter towns and villages. Hardly the actions of a movement driven by the desire for true democracy.

The following extract is taken from The Commune and the full article can be read HERE.

       Joe Thorne looks at the evidence, and draws some conclusions.

Libyan Proverb "The calamity of a people is beneficial to others"

             The NATO powers are not intervening in Syria or Bahrain, where pro-democracy movements are also subject to brutal suppression. They did not intervene in Gaza during Cast Lead, or in Tamil Eelam during the offensive which wiped out thousands of Tamils. While millions of dollars are spent on cruise missiles and aerial bombing, UNICEF, the same powers in their guise as protectors of children, say they are worried that because of insufficient resources to deal with famine “65,000 children in Kenya alone are at acute risk of dying.” Indeed, “Britain trained and equipped some of the Libyan special forces who inflicted such horrors on cities like Misrata. Western states continue to train Saudi forces, and this may well have much the same effect.”

We don’t need to labour the point: the NATO powers are not ‘humanitarians’, their motives are not ‘humanitarian’, and what they do has nothing to do with the defence of human life. Could it be the case that their malign motives are a given, but the objective outcome of their policy may nonetheless be welcome? It was not the case in Kosovo or Iraq. The point of reminding ourselves of NATO’s hypocrisy is not just that they are hypocrites: it is to understand how the specific, very much non-humanitarian, objectives of the NATO powers will play out in their actual policy in the coming weeks, months, and years.

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THE CLYDE WORKERS' COMMITTEE.

The following is a short extract from a recent article in "The Commune", you can read the full article HERE. 

SOLIDARITY.

"A week on, the feedback from the TUC demonstration seems broadly positive. To seasoned marchers, it might have seemed like just another trudge along Embankment – but for many it was their first demonstration, and the sheer weight of numbers carried some exhilaration with it.

And yet, we remember: eight years ago, on those same streets, there were twice the numbers, or more.  And what difference did it make? Labour ignored us, the war went ahead. And, if they can, the present government will ignore us in their turn. We know, if we are honest, that orderly demonstrations in central London will not stop the cuts. Such demonstrations pose no threat to the profit or power of the ruling class: and this, we know, is what makes the difference.

Our task now is to sharpen exhilaration with analysis, and ask: what will it really take to stop the cuts?"

 

      Glasgow, like most cities with an industrial history, has experience of workers taking control of industrial disputes by means of workers on the shop floor as opposed to allowing the union officials dictate the line of action. This principle was what gave The Clyde Workers' Committee, CWC, such strength and success. What started as The Labour Withholding Committee, LWC on Clydeside at the beginning of the first world war soon developed in to CWC as the workers realised that the only way that they could guarantee any sort of success was for the workers to dictate the direction and timing and all other aspects of any industrial action. Relying on the established unions with their top officials who are no more than another aspect of  industrial management was doomed to fail as compromise is the only game the know.

   

      In saying that, any battle to stop the cuts can only meet with temporary success as the system will inevitable claw any gains back again, at a later date. To end the cuts we have to end the system under which the cuts are deemed necessary. In other words, as long as we have capitalism, the workers will have to struggle to even maintain their standard of living. Under the present system, stopping the cuts this year, just means that there will be another "crisis" and the issue will have to be resolved again.

     

       The workers aims for a decent life free from the fear of deprivation, and the aims of the corporate world for ever increasing profits, are totally and utterly incompatible.

 

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