THE MYTH OF DEMOCRACY.

 

Taken from  an article on Killing King Abacus:   

   

        So indeed, on all fronts, the American ruling class is fighting for democracy, because democracy is perhaps the most effective swindle that any ruling class has ever come up with to keep those they rule in line. Abstract equality, the ideology of rights, the myth of the “common good” and the work ethic all work together to blind the exploited to the real conditions of their existence, to create false hopes for changing those conditions within the context of this society and to allow the masters of this world to present their interests as the interests of all. Our liberation depends on our rejection of the democratic swindle, not in favor of some other form of rule, but as an aspect of the rejection of all rule, of every form of domination and exploitation. If the most reasonable response the American soldiers in Iraq could make to their situation is mutiny and desertion, our most reasonable response here is to move toward insurrection through autonomous direct action and attack against the institutions that dominate our lives. But our reasons are not those of the rulers, and will appear to them as barbarous madness. But as to their opinion, why should we give a damn?

Read the full article HERE: 

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AH, - THE ILLUSION OF DEMOCRACY!

        When a government decides policy in line with decisions made by consulting the public and in line with the opinion of that public, you could say that you have some form of democracy. However, when government policy is guided after consultations with those with vested interests in policy that is contrary to the wishes of the public, then it is safe to say that democracy is an illusion and the government and those vested interests are working in unison against the public interest. That's where we are at at the moment.

The following is an extract from SCOTTISH LEFT REVIEW:

        Another story that stuck in my mind: in 2006-07 the then Scottish Executive policy was to keep Scottish Water in public hands (with a bit of an open mind on the question of mutualisation). The Water Industry Commission for Scotland is a Non-Departmental Public Body (quango) with the role of regulating the publicly-owned Scottish Water. It’s Chief Executive then was Alan Sutherland. That year WICS privately commissioned a London-based consultancy to ‘consider different options of ownership for Scottish Water’ (against government policy). They called this ‘Project Checkers’ (perhaps because this game is about ‘capturing’ passive opponents) and kept it completely secret – it was never published. The project cost £209,000 of public money. Of this £17,606.00 went to a non-executive director of two private water companies owned by the world’s biggest transnational water corporation which would clearly benefit from privatisation. The report concluded that privatisation was the way forward.

       That story again; a senior civil servant (effectively) who is there to implement government policy decides to use public money to build a case to lobby against government policy and does so by employing (at significant public expense) someone with a very clear commercial conflict of interests, producing the only outcome that was possible given the methodology used – a plea for another giant handover of a profitable public asset to the private sector.

Read the full article HERE:

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WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE TO SERVE?

That old debate about the individual and the collective from ReoCities:

CHOOSING TO SERVE.

        The more participatory a social system is, the more total its control is because the individual identifies herself with his role within the system. In other words, a democratic structure is the most efficient way yet developed to integrate individuals into a social system, to make them feel that they are essentially a part of a social machine. Partial rebellions, in the form of "radical "issues, which use democratic methods or demand more justice, equality or participation in democratic processes become lubricant for the machinery of social control.
      Those who rebel against the social context in its totality as they confront it in their lives are called hooligans, delinquents, enemies of "the People". They cannot be tolerated in a democratic system (not even the consensus process systems of certain so-called radical and anarchist groups) because their actions undermine the ideological basis of such systems, by showing that individual freedom grows out of self-determined activity, not any sort of decision-making process. Radical groups will merely expel such troublemakers, but within the larger social context, they must be punished, rehabilitated or destroyed if caught.
       Democracy is never anarchic, no matter how direct. Democratic decisions are not the decisions/actions of free individuals. They are merely choices made between the options offered by the social context, choices separated from the actions of individuals and used to control those actions, to subject them to the will of the group, the society. So to choose to participate in democratic processes is to choose to serve, to be a slave to a will outside of oneself. No free-spirited individual would accept the will of the majority or the group consensus as a way of determining how to live anymore than she would accept the will of a dictator or the central committee. I do not merely a want a say in how society creates my life. I want my life to by my own to create as I desire.

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COMING TO A CITY NEAR YOU.

     They call it democracy, the people call it dictatorship, and it is, dictatorship by the financial Mafia. As usual, the state will do what is necessary to carry out it's instructions, handed down by the robber barons that make up the financial mafia. These scenes will be repeated in city after city where the people stand up against the "austerity plan" which is to plunder all public assets. If your one of those who think that voting sorts things out, just remember, no matter who you voted for, you will get the "austerity plan", and ConDem austerity is not that different from Labour austerity and across Europe we have Social Democratic austerity, Christian Democratic austerity and 57 other varieties. In each the colour is slightly different, but the smell is just the same. Sometimes to make the "austerity" seem a little more palatable, they will add a magic ingredient, called "growth". Then we can all rejoice, we will have austerity with growth.

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ANOTHER EGO WINS.

           Presedential elections in France, council elections in Scotland and bye-elections in the UK, they all have something in commom, they don't represent the people. They represent overblown egos or political parties that want to keep the existing system of corporate fascism. Under the present system elections have nothing to do with democracy and all to do with power and wealth.

Another excellent comment from The Commune:

      George Galloway’s victory in the Bradford West by-election has caused a stir, says duvinrouge.

        The people massively voted for a candidate to the left of Labour even with a Tory-FibDem coalition. This has got Labour nervous and inspired the Left. However, as much as Galloway appears to be on the side of ordinary people as opposed to the rich, he is another political ego on another stage of his trip. The whole parliamentary system is full of them, all dreaming about one day being Prime Minister. Today more and more people are fed up with the egos. Not just the political variety but the corporate whores as well. Increasingly people are realizing that they don’t need to put up with them. That society can be run without structures promoting power and control. That society is one of direct democracy. That is, communism. All over the world people have got a taste of direct democracy through the Occupy movement & their General Assemblies. Tahir Square has spawned workers’ councils. We can organize society to meet our needs rather than just being used to generate profit for an elite.

Out with the professional political egos ruling; in with delegates & assemblies!

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WHAT IS "THE COUNTRY"?

            It is a fact that governments pass legislation and if you do something that is outside that legislation then you will be penalised. However when that government wants to do something outside that legislation, it just simply changes the legislation. They call it democracy, I call it fascism. They also state that what they do is for the benefit of "the country", what is "the country"? All the so called "necessary" wage cuts, increase taxes, cuts in social benefits and increase unemployment, which drive the people into desperate deprivation, is for the benefit of "the country"! I'll ask the question again, what is "the country"? If not the people, is it the rocks and soil, or is it the rich and powerful? To answer the question all we have to do is to look at who benefits from all this necessary wage cuts, increase taxes, cuts in social benefits and increased unemployment, and it becomes obvious, to them "the country" is the rich and powerful. Well isn't it time that the people took "the country" back and organised it for the benefit of all  "the people" of that country?

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MOTOR-MOUTHED LOBBYISTS.

        You are probably an ordinary person who struggles to have a decent life and when it comes to elections, if you are still foolish enough to have any faith in the system, you'll cast your vote and that will be that. You will expect your elected representative to fight your corner and to argue to protect your interests in a fair and unbiased manner. If only it was that straight forward. Your elected representative will in all possibility also be employed as an advisor to some corporate body. This will mean of course that he/she will not support any legislation that might adversely affect his corporate paymaster, and he/she will also be wined and dined by well paid motor mouthed lobbyists pushing their particular paymaster's interests. This leaves your interests somewhat away down the line. They call it democracy, I call it corporate fascism.

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BANKERS CRIME -- PEOPLE PAY.

         A simple explanation on why we have "austerity" in Europe. The bankers hymn that we the people have all been living beyond our means and now we have to pay, is probably the biggest lie every put across an entire continent and yet lots of people swallow the lie. Probably partly by confusion and partly by ignorance of the facts. That is why any discussion that highlights that lie is worth giving voice to as widely as possible.

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HEALTH & PHARMACEUTICALS, PLC!!!

         In post after post I have went on about the ideological drive of this government to privatise everything in an attempt to recapitalise the corporate Mafia. This drive will change the way we live, will remove everything from public control into the hands of that corporate Mafia. It would appear that most people seem to think this means an array of businesses but don't connect this ideology to the health service. It's as if we are lulled into a sense of complacency believing that they can't privatise the health service. However we are just months away from having our National Health Service privatised for ever. The government's Health and Social Care Bill, if passed in to law, will mean the end of our free care at the point of need, Health Service. Our National Health Service will be opened up to market place competition between the big corporate beasts that seek profit before anything else. It means that those parts of the Health Service that don't make a profit will fall by the wayside, services like long term caring treatment, care of the elderly etc..

        Sixty years of free health care when you need it, will have been wiped out by a piece of legislation pushed through by a bunch of public school millionaire thugs who are working in the best interests of their millionaire friends in the corporate world. Neither the Conservatives or the Lib Dems had the privatising of the National Health Service in their manifestos. Neither of these parties have a mandate to privatise the National Health Service. No matter how they dress this bill up, it will not change the facts on the ground, big business will control the health service if this becomes law. Corporate this and corporate that, will control the shape, direction and content of the health service, it will no longer be OUR National Health Service, it will Health and Pharmaceuticals PLC.

          If you in any way think you live in a democracy, then this must be wrong on all counts. The public never asked for nor wants a corporate health service. The public never voted on or for a corporate health service, but that is what you are going to get unless you stop this bill becoming law. This can only be stopped by mass protests and mass lobbying of MPs, by the trade unions getting behind the public and organising to stop this decimation of our National Health Service. Grass roots organisations should for the time being, abandon other causes and direct their abilities and efforts to stopping this corporate grab to turn our National Health Service into a billion pounds gravy train for the shareholding parasites. This bill will become law in just a few months and then it will be too late, the National Health Service will be no more. Three months is not a lot of time but it is all we have.

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A PLAGUE ON OUR PLANET.

       The Cameron public school thug will go to any lengths to protect the “City”. He'll avoid any form of legislation that might hurt the financial leeches and prevent them from milking the system for all it is worth. He'll screw Europe and tell them to bugger off. His reasoning, well the “City” accounts for 10% of the total UK income. I wonder what proportion of our national income was produced by our shipyards, heavy and light engineering, steel works, and our coal mines, etc. and what was done to protect them? Well since they have all gone, what ever it was was not enough. Even with that lot gone, the “City” is only 10% of our total national income, what about the other 90%, where is that and what special protection will the Cameron parasite come up with for that. We have to accept that this system is under the total control of the financial parasites that shift their billions and trillions around, black-mailing country after country, making sure that no government has the power to interfere with their money making scams.

      

We're bankster, we don't obey no stinkin' laws.

        I have previously written about the coup taking place in Europe, first in Greece, where the thin veil of illusion of democracy was removed and a “technocrat” put in to replace the elected Prime Minister. This idea seemed to delight the financial parasites as it was quickly followed by the removal of the elected Prime Minister of Italy, who was replaced by a Goldman Sachs suit. Now a Leham Bros financial whiz kid who helped bankrupt that financial giant, has taken the reins in Spain, replacing the Prime Minister. Across the world country after country is told it has a deficit problem, even although it is one caused by the banks and their parasite billionaire/multimillionaire clients, they are told that the only answer is to get rid of the elected government and replace it with one of the banksters responsible for the problem in the first place. This is to ensure that no matter what happens, the parasite financial Mafia will not lose any of the money the greedily gambled. Leeches, parasites, vampire squids, call them what you will, there will never be a society of fairness and justice until we rid the planet of this plague.

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CHOMSKY ON ANARCHISM,

Always worth a listen, the words of Noam Chomsky.

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NATO, TRIBAL WARRIORS, AND OIL.

          After 7 months of NATO blasting the infrastructure of Libya so that a mixed bag of rival tribal groups and religious fundamentalists could take over, Libya is not a peaceful place. Over the last 4 days or so there have been clashes in and around Tripoli with armed groups firing all manner of weapons at each other. To the west of Tripoli there has been fierce fighting between the city of Zawiya and the tribal lands of Warshefana which was still continuing today Sunday. The residents of Tripoli are complaining that armed groups have taken over many “desirable” locations in the city, including a gated seaside resort.

        This is the bunch of self interested groups, now armed to the teeth, that we have unleashed on the Libyan people. We spent billions of our tax payers money destroying many of the Libyan towns and cities, then handed the rubble to tribal warriors and religious fundamentalists, but we did get our hands on the oil. The oil that gave the Libyan people free health care, free education, a lump sum on the birth of their first child, a deposit for newly weds to help to purchase their first house, cheap fuel and free clean drinking water. Now that the West controls the oil, and now that Libya has joined the “free democratic capitalist West” how much of the oil money will the Libyan people see, and how much will go towards their “free” infrastructure and social services,? Oh, and bye-bye 19p a gallon petrol. That's capitalism for you.

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EUROPEAN COUP - TWICE OVER!!

        Here in the West the powers that be always state that they are not involved in regime change. Whether it be Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or elsewhere, they will emphasise that regime change is illegal and not on their agenda. However, nearer home we have seen regime change, right here in Europe. Recently we have seen the Greek government put under pressure from the financial markets because the Prime Minister had the audacity to want to give the people the right to decide on the conditions of their bailout by means of a referendum. The “markets” went bananas, and pressure was put on the Prime Minister to resign. Without any attempt to involve the people, the Prime Minister resigned and an interim government formed with a banker at its head, guess whose side we'll be on?

        No election, no referendum, just a change of regime at the behest of the financial markets. This was rapidly followed by the same procedure in Italy, where the Italian Prime Minister was forced to resign. The change of regime was again not at the request of the people, but from pressure from the financial markets. Two European countries forced into regime change by powers outside their borders. No bombs, no military invasion but never the less a powerful force dictating what was to happen to the people of a sovereign country. The elected government of two separate European countries, usurped by a foreign power, in other words, a coup in two countries within a couple of weeks of each other. European democracy at work.

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THE MARCH OF THE DOLLAR EMPIRE.

       

          As the dollar empire gets into a frenzy to attack Iran, we can look around the Middle East and see that there are only two countries, with any resources, left, that are not under the heel of the dollar empire. One is Iran and the other Syria, there used to be Libya and Iraq, but they have been sorted out. If you are not in the dollar club, your are labelled evil, corrupt, repressive. Of course you can get away with these qualities if you happen to be in the dollar club, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain for example. America may be waning, but it is not giving up on its attempt to control the entire world. Any country that doesn't allow the dollar to dominate there economy is deemed to be evil and has to be converted to the faith of the mighty dollar. Once it has the whole of the resource rich part of the Middle East under its dollar dominance, Africa is the next battle ground. It is a continent rich in a multitude of valuable resources and America will do its damnedest to see that the other empires, China and Russia don't get the biggest bit of the pie.

         We in the West will rush in and FREE the African people from their evil, corrupt and repressive regimes and replace them with nice friendly dollar worshipping leaders. Of course to do this it will employ thousands of our young people to shed their blood as the dollar marches forward slaughtering those we are freeing. Call it what you will, imperialism, corporatism, corporate capitalism, corporate fascism, all of them would fit. What you can't call it, is democracy at work.

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MILITARY DEMOCRACY???

      

          I have never been one to think that democracy will come via a military government. In most cases the top Military are in too cozy a relationship with those at the top you wish to get rid of, they are part and parcel of the same state apparatus. So I thought it would only be a matter of time before there were the usual fractures between the new ruling elite and the real people of Egypt, and now the new ruling class are beginning to show where their plans are heading, the usual control over the working class. Below is an appeal from LabourStart.

        The Egyptian revolution last winter was an inspiration to the whole world. And workers were at the heart of it. Their strikes brought down the Mubarak regime.

But today, Egypt's Military rulers continue to criminalise strikes.

     That hasn't stopped Egyptian workers from walking off the job in their hundreds of thousands. Today, a major strike wave is sweeping the country, with schools, hospital and public transport systems shut down. Those workers face the risk of brutal repression unless the country's military rulers start recognizing their basic human right to join and form trade unions, and to strike.

        Egypt's new independent unions and the International Trade Union Confederation have today launched a major campaign to pressure the new regime to enact a labour law that recognizes workers' rights.

      It's extremely important that you and other members of your union act today by sending off a short message. It will take you less than a minute to do this.

Click here to send off your message.

Please pass this message on to other members of your union.
Thank you!



Eric Lee

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HAS OUR TIME COME!!!

        Today the various states only survive with an delusional and perpetual threat, which in turn allows the state to continually increase surveillance and control over it citizens. The individuals ever increasing desire for freedom is always a threat to the state and its power. The time has long since gone, if it ever existed, when the state was deemed to do the bidding of its citizens and be the protector of the individuals freedom. Today the state is what I call the corporate world's minder and hit squad, its main function being to protect and further the markets and resources of the various corporate groupings around the world. Invariably that is what wars are all about. The desire for freedom by the individual is a grasp at anarchism, though few recognise it as such, but the states ever tightening grip on our freedom of movement and expression drives us ever further along that path. Has our time come??

      The following is a short extract from WHAT PISSED ME OFF!! It might provoke a little bit of debate, and that can't be a bad thing.

       Democracy today consists in the invention or reinvention of spaces, movements, ways of life, economic exchanges and political practices that resist the imprint of the state and which foster relations of equal liberty. The struggles that take place today against capitalism and the state are democratic struggles. At the same time, however, we might sound a certain note of dissatisfaction with the term “democracy.” We can echo Bakunin, who finds the term democracy “not sufficient.” As Derrida himself said of democracy: “[A]s a term it’s not sacred. I can some day or other, say, ‘No, it’s not the right term. The situation allows or demands that we use another term …’” The situation is changing, and the new forms of autonomous politics that are currently emerging demand the use of another term: anarchism.

       Shipwrecked on the craggy shores of state power, anarchism is now moving to the forefront of our political imagination. There has been a certain paradigm shift in politics away from the state and formal representative institutions, which still exist but increasingly as empty vessels without life, and toward movements. Here new political challenges and questions emerge – concerning freedom beyond securities, democracy beyond the state, politics beyond the party, economic organization beyond capitalism, globalization beyond borders, life beyond biopolitics – challenges and questions that anarchism is best equipped to respond to with the originality and innovation that our new situation demands.  Read the article in full.

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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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POLICING THE POLICE!!!

      Next month in London there will be a demonstration by at least 2,000 police officers. They will be demonstrating against cuts to the police service. How ironic??

   
     I believe that all politcal activists, trade unionists and students should come together and organise to police this event, just in case there is any trouble. You have a month to rehearse your kettling tactics and snatch procedures.

       If this is a free and fair democracy, then there is no other way to police this event. If the police insist on policing it themselves, then fair and democratic procedures demand that all other demonstrations should be policed by those, and only those, who organise the demonstration. Or does our democracy not work like that?

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MORE AN THAT,- LAND OF THE FREE!!!.

       The following information was gleaned from an article on DISSIDENT VOICE, the full article is well worth a read, very detailed and informative.

       While it is becoming more widely know that the US imprisons a greater proportion of its citizens than any other country in the world, it should also be noted that the US, that Land of the Free has seen an increase in the number of peaceful protesters being arrested since Obama came to office. Since the Obama inauguration there have been over 2,600 arrests of activists protesting in the US. Recent research shows that since the start of 2011 over 670 individuals have been arrested at protests in the US. More than 1290 during 2010 and 665 arrested during 2009.

       There has been a steady increase in the number of people arrested at protests since 2009 and these protests have covered a wide range of campaigns. They have been protests against US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantanamo, strip mining, home foreclosures, Nuclear weapons, immigration policies, mistreatment of hotel workers, police brutality budget cut backs, the mistreatment of Bradley Manning, Blackwater, attempts to cut back on collective bargaining.

      What is also happening in the US is that there is a steady increase in the number of Americans willing to risk arrest and imprisonment for acts of civil disobedience. That itself is a healthy sign that the American people are becoming more aware of the total lack of democracy in their country.

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