UK, A Hungry Nation.

      While our Oxbridge millionaires, sitting in The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, mouth off about “growth” and “making the right decisions” and the blue corner waffles with the red corner with meaningless phrases and lots of “here, here's”, you and I see hunger and desperation. This is one of the richest nations on the planet, yet its people go hungry. The Trussell Trust, which has 400 food banks across the UK, states that it handed out food parcels to more than 350,000 people, between April and September this year. What makes this even more criminal is the fact that a third of these were children. The number of people relying on food banks for survival has tripled over the last year.

        Here in the UK it is not just a handful of families that are somehow in need of help. This is a national crisis caused by the deliberate actions of the bankster friendly government. This is a nation slowly being driven to deprivation by forced “austerity”. Some leading experts state that in the UK hunger has now reached the level of a “public health emergency” A recent letter to the British Medical Journal signed by a group of senior academics from two leading universities, the Medical Research Council and a group of doctors, said that the effect of Government policies on vulnerable people’s ability to afford food needed to be “urgently” monitored.

        There letter states that there has been a rapid rise in the number of people requiring emergency food aid, plus the doubling of the number of cases of malnutrition seen in hospitals, and a rapid fall in the number of calories being consumed by the public at large. They state that these are, “all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action,” Research into this problem, commissioned by the Government itself, has had its publication delayed, we can only speculate that the reason is that the government may find its result embarrassing.

        This is the meaning of “austerity”, this is the ConDem's “steady growth”, this is Osborne's “right decisions”, this is the financial mafia's plans falling into place. Sweatshop Britain leading the way to sweatshop Europe. We have been told that these policies will continue until 2020, how many food banks will we need by then, how many cases of malnutrition will the hospitals handle by then? This is the promise of another 7 years of falling wages, slashing benefits and social services, and rising prices. Where will your standard of living be by then? Do you honestly believe that at that magical 2020, everything will suddenly be great, and hunger and poverty will disappear? Accept it, if you accept this present system, you accept an endless downward spiral to poverty and deprivation. Surely you want more than this.

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

Time to Start Pushing.

     In these so called “difficult times” it is hard to grasp the difference between the rich and the poor. As you and I continue to struggle to maintain a decent standard of life, and millions fail in that attempt, the wealth of the richest parasites looks more and more like monopoly money. According to the Forbes “rich list”, the combined wealth of the world's 1,426 billionaires is a staggering $5.4 trillion. If they decided to fall out with us and form their own country, they would be the fourth richest country in the world, just behind Japan but ahead of Germany. Think of it, a country richer than Germany, with a population of just 1,426??

      At the other end of the scale, approximately one person every 3.5 seconds of each and every day, dies of hunger-related causes, a staggering 25,000 each day, most of these are children. At least 80% of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day. The world is a wealthy place but the split is criminal, with the poorest 40% of the world's population having 5% of the total income and the richest 20% accounting for 75%.

     In a world where 25,000 a day die every day because of hunger, there is an abundance of food. The problem is not the shortage of food, the problem is the system. In this capitalist system everything has to make a profit, the system traps people in poverty and the spiral is downward. Malnutrition means ill health and you are less able to earn your living, and in country after country that is a slow spiralling down to death.

      At one end, a small army with money to burn, obscene wealth for a handful of pampered parasites, private jets, yachts, mansions dotted across the world, the purchase of islands for family homes. All this off the sweat, tears and death of the many. At the other end, a multitude of hungry people, mother after mother watching her child slowly die of hunger.

     By any analysis, the system is unjust, immoral, plain wrong, stinkingly corrupt, unsustainable and not fit for purpose. That is not in doubt, the question is how long will we allow this murder for wealth to continue? How many more mothers will see their children slowly die of hunger while surrounded by food, before we say enough is enough? In a world of abundance, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to take food and distribute it to all who need it, those who stand in the way have to be pushed aside.

ann arky's home.

       CAPITALISM OR JUSTICE? YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH.

       According to a recent article by the BBC, the World Bank is warning that food prices are close to pushing millions more into extreme poverty. Since June 2010 an additional 44 million more people have been pushed into poverty. The bank claims that a further 10% rise in food prices would push 10 million more below the extreme poverty line of $1.25 a day, while a 30% price increase in the price of staples could lead to 34 million more poor. It is estimated that at the moment there are about 1.2 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day. The bank also warns that the prices of wheat, corn and soya all rocketing.

      While this disaster is unfolding the so called “financial crisis” (gamblers and spivs gone bust) is still with us and will unfold over the next year or so with the possibility of chaos and civil disobedience on a massive scale. Greece, at the moment, has almost daily mass demonstrations in most of its cities, with a general strike planned for this month. Spain has the Squares in its large cities occupied, and every other country in Europe has demonstrations and more planned on a unified front. The real pain has still to hit.

      Meanwhile the IMF is hell bent on screwing the people of various countries, most of Europe included, by handing governments loans, Of course we all know that nothing the IMF or the European Central Bank does, helps to alleviate the poverty in the world. On the contrary, for their loans they demand “deficit reduction” which translated into ordinary speak, means, cut all social spending, privatise everything in sight and send the money to the busted banks and bond market.

       This is capitalism, a system where the parasites with the money gamble and con their way to greater wealth for their little club, and when the gamble doesn't pay off, then they turn to the ordinary people and plunder their assets, decimate their standard of living to ensure that the gamblers and spivs don't lose out for their greed.

      How much longer can we afford to allow such a system of greed and exploitation to decimate our world, a world that we will leave to our children and grandchildren. Do we leave them a future of poverty and greed, devoid of hope and opportunity, or do we leave them a world that will allow them to develop to their full potential, free from the fear of deprivation, a sustainable world that sees to the needs of all. The choice is ours!!!

ann arky's home.

MISSILES FOR LUNCH!!!

"THERE GOES THE KIDS' LUNCHES."

      

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

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

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

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

ann arky's home.

ARE YOU PROUD?

     All the mainstream media pour out stuff that is supposed to make you think that the only type of society that the human race is capable of organising is international corporate capitalism. WE are meant to believe that the only game in town is this system of greed and exploitation. We are also expected to swallow the crap that it is the only way to eradicate poverty and bring ever increasing wealth and well being to humanity. They pour this crap over you day in day out, even when the evidence to the contrary is everywhere to be seen.

    Capitalism has been nothing but boom bust boom recession with the world's wealth flowing into ever few hands at every step of the way. According to recent figures released this recession has pushed another 100 million people into poverty, this is on top of the fact that before the recession there were already 1,029,999,199 people classified as under nourished, approximately 9,351,160 people die each year from hunger, 1,454,972,999, (and rising rapidly) have no access to clean drinking water, and 4,684,945 have died from water related diseases this year so far. All this from a system that produces unimaginable wealth for a bunch of pampered parasites and can afford to spend, this year so far to the 5 December 2010 at 21:39, $3,409,887,641 world wide on armaments. The reason that you have to state the time with that last figure is that it is rising so rapidly that you can't give an accurate figure without the time factor.

      Wealth flows into all manner of sophisticated weaponry to destroy life at an immeasurable rate, while millions live in abject poverty and deprivation. This is capitalism's success story, war and weapons make millions for the corporate world, spending to lift people out of deprivation is not on the same scale when it comes to the corporate world making money.

     If we want rid of the poverty and deprivation, in most cases, it is brought about by the corporate system, then we will have to get rid of the corporate capitalist system. No modifications, no green capitalism, it doesn't work, greed is the driving engine of the system. You can't have compassionate capitalism, the shareholders would squeal because they could make much, much more by being greedy and ruthless. Profit is the name of the game.

     Why do we accept that there is no alternative when we know within our hearts that there is. We know that co-operation and mutual aid would produce a fairer system, we know that removing the profit motive and creating a society that sees to the needs of all our people would produce a fairer society. We know that if we got the parasites off our backs and took control of all the means of production and distribution we could create a sustainable fairer society that we would be proud to leave to our children and grandchildren. Look around and ask yourself, would you be proud to leave this type of society to your children and grandchildren?

ann arky's home.

YOU CAN'T EAT MONEY.

       

        This article first appeared on annarky 1 blog on April 6 2010 but I think it is worth repeating. It is just one field where the big money funds manipulate and speculate to increase their wealth at the expense of the ordinary people. Crisis after crisis is inflicted on the ordinary people to the benefit of the pampered parasites that feed of the people, all in the name of profit, it is called capitalism.

    

         "Over the last year we have seen food prices rise at an alarming rate with the pundits pointing in all directions as the possible area to blame. It is drought and other adverse weather conditions, it is the increase population, it is the bio-fuel drive, it is increase demand from the growing middle class in China and India and so they go on. There is absolutely no doubt these factors do play a part in the increase but what is driving the prices up quicker than any other factor is undoubtedly the speculators, “non commercial traders” as they are called in the financial circles.

        Before 2007 the percentage of trading in the world’s food markets controlled by speculators was about 12%, today it is 43%. That is a lot of extra money being pushed into the food market with the result that prices start to rocket. What we are talking about is greed little people with millions scurrying around looking of ways of turning their millions into billions and they don’t give a damn of the consequences to the rest of us. The other bunch of greedy speculators that are pushing the price of food through the roof are of course the speculators in the oil futures markets. We live oil, as it its price goes up so does food transportation, fertilisers and the energy required to process that food. These two groups are holding the world’s population to ransom in their quest for ever more millions for themselves and their shareholders.

       In 2007 before the prices started to shoot up there were 800 million people on this planet who could not get enough to eat, with the daily increases in prices this figure is also shooting up dramatically. We are now hearing of food riots in countries across the globe, the speculators are starving the world in an attempt to increase their already over abundant wealth. Our political “Leaders” are meeting here and there in capitals across the world and making noises but they don’t have the muscle nor the will to control the big corporate greedy beast that is devouring our planet.

       While those government representatives are uttering vacuous mush on the subject the developed governments are subsidising one of the elements of the price increases, bio-fuel. It is stated that by 2017 40% of the maize production in the US will be for bio-fuel. This will certainly increase the speculators wealth and will certainly help keep the internal combustion engine going but will do nothing but more harm to that ever growing, starving multitude of 800 million+ .

      This is the capitalist system, it is not set in tablets of stone, it is not the only way to organise our societies, it is a man made system that fosters greed in parallel with poverty. It can be removed and a fairer and more humane system set up in its place if the people so desire."

 

       Only when we organise to finally put the parasites and their greed driven system in the dustbin of history will we ever see an end to the suffering of millions of hungry people.

ann arky's home.