Picnic.

 

          Imagine 100 people go for a garden picnic, and on the table are 100 cakes during the picnic 44 of the people present eat 97 cakes between them, leaving 3 cakes for the other 56 people. I imagine the 56 people left with the 3 cakes would kick up merry hell. Yet we seem to accept this in real life, that’s how capitalism works. The world is our garden, the cakes is the wealth the world produces, so why do we that 56, not kick up merry hell at the situation which is a reality that blights the lives of millions right here and now in our only garden, the world we live in.

 Image courtesy of Visual Capitalism.

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Robbery With Violence.

 

     My few days escape was extremely pleasant, and it took the mind, momentarily, away from the manufactured, yet inevitable turmoil, inequality and horror of the capitalist system, even although it was still all around me. However, no matter where you hide you head, that capitalist nightmare is still there, biting at your backside. 

      Ten years since the so called "financial crisis", a euphemism for the gamblers vast loses, a period that seen the financial mafia demand that the various states reimburse them with what they had lost in their gambling frenzy. The public would have to pay for their greed driven gambling disaster. The plundering of the public purse would be politely know as "austerity". Ten years on and the gamblers are richer than ever, and the ordinary people are poorer than ever, and the mountain of debt that the financial Mafia ran up and was responsible for their plight, is now greater than ever. Considering the damage and misery inflicted on the ordinary people by this deliberate action, it is in fact robbery with violence.

     The financial Mafia is now merrily repeating its greed driven gambling frenzy, but with larger sums, while we the ordinary people continue our downward slide, thanks to the mountain of debt heaped on us by the mobsters of the financial world. So it is inevitable that another "financial crisis" is thundering along towards us. Do we accept a repeat of the last "solution", once again pile the debt into the public purse, while emptying the public coffers to reimburse the gamblers? Surely not, we must have learnt something from the last ten years.

      An extract from another interesting article from Roar Magazine by Jerome Roos.

      With inequality on the rise, global debt higher than ever and international tensions intensifying, the political backlash to the crash of 2008 has only just begun.

And:

       ------This new radical politics first showed its face in the global uprisings that rocked the established order from 2011 onwards. It has recently begun to consolidate itself in the form of vibrant grassroots movements, progressive political formations and explicitly socialist candidacies that collectively seek to challenge the untrammeled power and privileges of the “1 percent” from below.
        Even in the midst of the Syrian civil war, the bloodiest and most intractable conflict to have emerged in the shadow of the Great Recession, in a region so often deprived of hope for a better future, the struggle for democratic autonomy by the Kurds and their allies has demonstrated the concrete possibilities of a revolutionary political project in these tumultuous times.
      At this point, it is still far too early to tell whether this emerging anti-capitalist politics of the twenty-first century will be able to succeed in the face of a powerful nationalist backlash. But if the dramatic events since 2016 are anything to go by, the political fallout of the global financial crisis is only just getting started. The real confrontation, it seems, is yet to come.-------

It is well worth reading the full article HERE:

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There Is Something Rotten At The Heart Of The Sytem.

        Well here we are, the clocks have gone back an hour, the kids come home from school in semi-darkness, and Scotland's cold, raw, damp winter starts to inextricably envelop us. All very well if you can don decent winter clothing, and turn the heating up in your home. However, this is 2017 Britain, where thousands can't afford that nice warm winter jacket, where thousands of households are wrestling with eating or heating, an inhumane cruel choice. It is an indictment on this country that to be in a home without adequate heating or food can be considered fortunate, for let's not forget, there is an army of homeless and rough sleepers who will face this winter seeking out shelter of some sort, perhaps a doorway, a quiet lane, or under a bridge. This in 2017 in the sixth richest country in the world.

     In our cities we have an abundance of empty properties, from shops, warehouses, workshops, offices and houses, but still we tolerate people sleeping rough and dying on our streets and lanes. Our political ballerinas have evolved a system whereby property is worth more than human life, and they have put in place a legal code that guarantees that relationship will be enforced. It is midnight, mid December, the temperature is plummeting, you are walking the streets seeking somewhere to lay your head for the night, you probably know that a night on the pavement might kill you. You come across an small empty, disused locked workshop, you enter find a corner and try to get some rest and survive. You are now a criminal, you could be forcibly removed, charged with criminal damage, and/or breaking and entering, the sanctity of that property is worth more than your life.

 Image by Robert Perry.

      Having lived a long life can be seen as a curse or a benefit, as it comes with memories. I think of all those children in poverty, the hungry families struggling as best they can in a cruel unforgiving system, the wandering homeless, that have plagued our country throughout my life, and I still hear, echoing from the that distant past, that looped tape, from the mouths of our parasitic political ballerinas, "we will end child poverty", "we will fix the housing problem", "we will eradicate poverty". They never seem to tire of mouthing their vacuous mantras, yet the must know within their hearts, that they are spouting, unmitigated, unadulterated, vicious bullshit.    

       The system will not allow for those unnecessary cruelties to be resolved, profit is the guiding factor, and history tells us that the gap between the rich and the poor is an ever widening chasm. A system that creates those who can purchase multi-million pound yachts, and fly in private jets to their private islands, needs the many to be exploited. We the many, produce an abundance of wealth in this world, the more the parasite class cream off for themselves, the less there is for us, the many. Until we crush and obliterate this system of profit first and foremost, we will continue to hear the false cruel mantras of our political ballerinas, "we will end child poverty", "we will fix the housing problem", "we will eradicate poverty" and we will continue to have some of our people die on the streets of our cities.

Image by Robert Perry.

      It is estimated that approximately 5,000 individuals rough sleep in Scotland each year. This year Winter Night Shelter, which is run by Glasgow City Mission stated that last year was their busiest year ever, with 605 people using their service on 4060 occasions. This is a staggering increase of 94% on the previous year. This is our country, the sixth richest country in the world, in 2017, there is something rotten at the heart of the system. 

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BHS, Capitalist Success Story.

 

       Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, are reporting the recent BHS event as if something had gone wrong. As far as capitalism is concerned it worked out perfectly. A guy buys it, makes a fortune and bleeds it dry, then walks away, much richer than when he bought it, capitalism at its best. Is there any idiot out there who thinks that BHS was all about the employees and the customers? These latter two are just components, just the disposable ball-bearings that make the system function, but can be dumped and a replaced by a new set. The BHS can be registered as one of the UK's greatest capitalist success stories, all that effort by the people, creating all that wealth for a small bunch of parasites. Sure some shareholders might have lost some of their filthy loot, but they made a fortune over the life of the company, and the really big fish made a real killing.

 Philip with one of his buddies.

         Let's look at the facts, a guy, let's say Philip Green, buys this "enterprise" and over 15 years he pays his wife £400 million in dividends, that averages out at around £28 million a year, and to add some cream to their cake, it is channelled through a tax haven. No sense in giving any of it back to the people who created that wealth. There are other avenues where the shysters can make more money, that illusion known as the "pension fund". This is where the employee and the employer put money aside so that when the employee retires there will be something there to help them get by. In the case of this particular, "pension fund", when our friend Philip bought the company, its "pension fund" was in surplus to the extent of £5 million. After his 15 years of plundering, wheeling and dealing, slicing and dicing, "stewardship", that £5 million surplus, is now a whopping £571 million deficit. So having cleaned the pot out, and saddling the company with a massive £1.6 billion debt problem, our bold entrepreneur, sells the company to a serial bankrupter, for £1.

 Philip's wee boat, paid for by people like you.

        Meanwhile, Philip walks off into the sunset, with an estimated £3.6 billion bank balance, to take control of his new £100 million+ super yacht, with some serious Bahamas sailing to think about. Far from being a disaster, BHS is text book capitalism, for other "entrepreneurs" to follow. We have seen it in the past, and we will see it in the future, as long as we tolerate this stinking system of greed and plunder. So get used to it, capitalism, milk the masses and live happily ever after, Ah, the beauty of capitalism.

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Capitalism, Born Of Greed, Survives By Greed.

       Looking at this insane world of capitalism, you become accustomed to its many contradictions. For example, if you live in a rich country you would imagine that you would be better treated financially than if you lived in a poorer country. Well not so if you happen to be a pensioner.

      If we take the 10 largest economies in the world, US, China, Japan, Germany, UK, France, India, Brazil, Italy, Canada, and look at how they treat their pensioners we get some strange results. If we take pensions as a percentage of the average wage, we find that all the richest economies with the exception of Canada, are at the bottom end of that table, with the poorer countries paying their pensioners a higher percentage of average wages. The two largest economies find themselves at the very bottom of the league, with the US paying its pensioners a miserable 17.3% of the average wage, while its main competitor China, paying a paltry 2.0%. The UK, fifth in the league of large economies, finds itself in the bottom half of the pension league, with a derisory 21.6% of average wage, almost half that of the poorer New Zealand, whose pensioners receive 40.1%. of the average wage. 

       Of course it is not just in pensions that we find this inequality and injustice, the system of capitalist economics is built on such inequality, it's how the system functions. Wealth is created by the vast majority of the people, but the wealth then flows up towards a small cabal of parasites, who surround themselves with opulence beyond our imagination. To maintain that life in the cocoon of unearned wealth, the parasites have to continually plunder the wealth produced by us the ordinary people. Hence the cuts in our standard of living, education, health care, and all social services. The differences in our conditions at the bottom of this insane system is brought about by the majority having to fight individual battles to gain some of the inadequate crumbs left by the parasites, creating different strata of poor and poorer. The system is not based on logic, rationalism or compassion, but on the control of all the means of production and distribution, and that, for the moment, is firmly in the hands of the parasites. So it will continue until we decide that we have had enough of this plundering of the produce of our labour, and we take control of those means of production and distribution. 

Pensions as % of average wage.

New Zealand 40.1%
Denmark 36.3%
Ireland 33.0%
Canada 32.2%
Netherlands 27.1%
Australia 27.1%
France 25.6%
Sweden 23.2%
UK 21.6%
Japan 20.1%
Spain 19.6%
Italy 19.1%
Germany 19.0%
US 17.3%
Turkey 6.0%
China 2.0%

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PROFIT BEFORE LIVES, THAT'S CAPITALISM.

     A little bit more on that pinnacle of capitalist development, that citadel of Mammon, Walmart. It would appear that fire safety would hit their profits, so they decided that it was more profitable to risk the lives of thousand of workers rather than face a small hike in costs.

This from Huffington  Post:

     Last year, Walmart reportedly decided against aiding factory upgrades that could have stopped fires like last month's blaze at a Bangladesh garment factory.

Bangladeshi suppliers of Walmart clothes wanted to upgrade their facilities to make them more fire-proof, and other retailers approved the plan, according to Bloomberg. The plan only fell through after Walmart and the Gap said they would not pay higher prices to make such upgrades feasible.

Read the full story HERE:

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TERRORISTS IN THE COMMUNITY.

     It is pleasing to see the finger pointed at the real terrorists, we all know them but they tend to be invisible as they are dressed in the livery of the establishment's flags of respectability.
From Contra Info:

      Terrorism is the lack of basic means of survival, having your wage or pension taken away, your house confiscated by the bank, living among the pollution that kills. Terrorism is living daily with fear of survival. To most of society, the terrorists and criminals are those who govern: the regime’s politicians, the rich, and the privileged castes, which exploit the workers and prosper by simply participating in the economic and political establishment. The enemies of society are those who—after years of stealing, getting rich, and taking advantage of a barbaric and grossly unjust system—are asking us to donate our blood in order to save the life of the regime’s putrid corpse now that the system is going through the biggest crisis in its history.
—Political letter to society
Pola Roupa, Nikos Maziotis, Kostas Gournas
Greece, April 2010

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