3 Years unpaid!!

       This is a strange one, but comes from a reliable source, can't understand why the workers have not pulled the workplace down by now. Working for a state entity and not having been paid for three years. This is totally and utterly unreservedly beyond any realms of tolerance. These people deserve our full support and solidarity, pressure must be brought to bear to end this act of modern slavery. 

The following appeal from Labour Start:

        I'm not sure if you saw this message which we sent out last week. This campaign has 4,018 supporters - but we need many more of you to sign up in order to support these workers in Ukraine who have not been paid for three years.
        If you have supported the campaign - thank you!
 If you haven't yet, please read on ...
        All over the world, working people are suffering due to the global pandemic and economic crisis. Many have lost their jobs. Many businesses are failing. But not all these problems are being caused by Covid.
        We've received an appeal for help from workers in Ukraine who have not received their wages for more than three YEARS. And the business that employs them - KVARSYT - is state-owned.
       According to Ukraine's constitution, every worker must be paid for their work. The decision of the management to not pay these workers is also in breach of ILO Convention 95, entitled 'Protection of Wages' (1949), which was ratified in 1961 by the Ukrainian government.
         Please take a moment to protest to the Ukrainian government - and to show your solidarity with these workers.

Click here to support the campaign.

And please spread the word to your friends, family and fellow union members.

Thank you.
Eric Lee

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

Prisons.

 

        Prison reform is the usual paracetamol, an attempt to make you feel better without attacking your real problem. Somehow there are those who call for better conditions for prisoners, better medical facilities, more education and recreational facilities, more family visits, etc.. What they seem to miss is that prisons, even if all these demands were met, would still be inhumane, institutions of repression and a form of cheap forced labour, abolition is the only humane answer. Forced incarceration of humans, as with other animals, is unacceptable in any civilised society. Those outside the prison system continually fight for justice and equality, it is only natural that those incarcerated with less justice and more inequality, will enter into struggle to relieve them from this inhumanity that swamps their lives.
     No matter how you dress them up, prisons are not "rehabilitation centres", "correction centres", or any other nice sounding name with which you wish to label them. The prime and only purpose of the judicial and prison system is to protect the status-quo of this unequal society. They are state institution to quell any dissent from the population, to turn the rebellious into the submissive, to intimidate and deter others from joining any organised attempt at changing the power, privilege and wealth structure of this unjust unequal society.
     The struggle for justice inside prisons is often is met with more savagery and brutality than those struggles outside those anonymous looking hellholes. So I believe they should always receive as much publicity as we can muster, their struggle is our struggle, there can be no justice and civilised society while the prison walls still stand.

      Bearing in mind that the prison system in the U$A is 100%, nothing more or less, than outright modern slavery, creating millions of dollars for the corporate world.

The following from AMW, English:

 

       Hundreds of prison rebels in the Cook Unit of the Eyman prison in Florence, Arizona surrounded prison staff and destroyed prison infrastructure during an uprising Wednesday afternoon. According to one prisoner, windows were broken during the uprising and the unit looked like it had “exploded.”
        Prisoners at the facility and their family members said that prisoners were moved to the recreation yard with their hands zip-tied behind their backs while officers searched their cells. “They came in with tear gas, flash bangs, pepper spray, and started shooting them at everyone,” one prisoner wrote in an email. “It was basically a war zone.”
      In response to the uprising, the facility has cancelled Thanksgiving video visitation.
       Over 400 prisoners at the facility have tested positive for COVID-19 during the pandemic and one has died, according to data maintained by the prison. Several family members of prisoners expressed concerns about conditions at the facility.
       The Arizona State Prison Complex at Eyman is Arizona’s single largest prison, imprisoning over 5,400 people.
      With prison pigs spreading the COVID-19 pandemic inside prisons, imprisoned comrades are taking action to defend themselves and rise up aginst the brutality of the prison enslavement system.

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

Non Serviam - I Will Not Serve.

 

         Still the brutal struggle for justice continues, since September 9th. the slaves encapsulated within the American corporate prison system, have been in open struggle with their slave masters. There heroic effort demands our solidarity. Prisons on the one hand are the states refuse tips, where they dump individuals that are a nuisance factor to their system, where the dump those surplus to the requirements of the system, but in recent times they have morphed into something even more sinister, they have become large profit making corporate entities, slave camps to be utilised by capital. There is no place for prisons in a free and democratic society.

Warming the heart of freedom.

       A statement of support to all rebelling prison strikers from CCF in Greek prisons.
 

NON SERVIAM – I WILL NOT SERVE YOU
“Worse than enslavement is getting used to it…” 

       Life in the modern civilized world comprises false representations, false patterns, and false formalities. Formalities that determine our upbringing within a family, our education, our professional career, our relationships, our emotions, our smiles or tears. Patterns that castrate the scope of our perception so that our thoughts are directed onto a moving walkway going only one direction. Representations that disguise the system’s functions and pathogenies so that we see life unfold only on stage, and never wonder what’s hidden backstage. So, the thousands of suicides of desperate debtors is just another statistic among the unpleasant consequences of the economic crisis, the impoverishment of the so-called third world is just an unfortunate fact, and its wounds will heal by charity organizations, the countless dead of modern crusades, the unfortunate victims of the absurdity of war, and the convict slaves in American prisons are simply antisocial elements that provide social services to Democracy.
      Prison itself is exile from life; a non-place and non-time behind the screen of a decent society, to make the ugliness that bothers the eyes of reputable citizens unseeable. Prisons are a proof of the perverse intelligence of authoritarian minds. They’re built onto walls echoing the screaming and weeping of thousands of people who’ve learned to sleep with anguish and despair. Prison is the country of captivity, the country where one learns to kneel before the “Forbidden”, a landfill for the disposal of human waste, an industrial dump where the social machine’s hazardous waste ends up. For most people, however, for all those who never learned to doubt, to question, to look beyond the obvious, prison is a security wall necessary to protect their peaceful and quiet life.
      It’s certainly hypocritical on the part of a society to display the supremacy of its democratic civilization, its humanitarian values and social sensitivities so vulgarly, when those deemed unfit to exist within the same society are piled up in souls’ warehouses. But it’s infinitely more hypocritical, and infuriating at the same time, to turn these imprisoned existences, these living dead, into a marketable value through a modern and sophisticated slave trade.
      Yet this is the reality for nearly 2.5 million inmates in US prisons, whom the modern Empire has turned into slaves. These prisoners-slaves are the lowest caste of social margins. They don’t only experience the cruelty of captivity, but are condemned to lose their human beingness altogether; to become slaves in the modern galleys of American hellholes to the financial benefit of privatized prisons and multinationals that, using part of this dirty money, support election campaigns of various politicians who promise order and security to their voters. In turn, the voters—predefined coefficients in a rigged equation—fulfill their role, and the solution is always obedience. That’s exactly why the happiest slaves are the greatest enemies of freedom.
      But there are other slaves who aren’t so happy. They are the “fallen angels” in a society whose authoritarian perversion treats humans as cogs. But these human cogs are slowly turning against this very society. Throughout the US and the prisons in that territory, an increasingly growing whisper starts to spread. On September 9th, this whisper is transformed into an angry cry of freedom, screaming in the face of the almighty corrections system the ancient cry of rebellion: “Non serviam – I will not serve.”

Continue reading:

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

Man's Inhumanity To Man.

      We can never do enough to highlight the the atrocities that are the prisons of this world. How can freedom breathe when the prisons are overflowing, how can we listen to political posturing, when, across the world, human beings are incarcerated in appalling conditions as slaves feeding the capitalist system. Conditions under capitalism make it so easy to get lost in our own little world and turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, that's how the system survives, divide and rule, solidarity is the weapon to bring it down. A letter of support to the striking prisoners in America and elsewhere, from prisoners in Greece:

“Gentlemen, the dragon will fly out” is a saying attributed to prisoner George Jackson. On August 21st 1971, holding a pistol, he opened all the cells in an adjustment unit, taking jailers hostage. George Jackson was killed in his attempt to escape…

Since September 9th, prisoners in the United States have called for action against slavery.

       A multitude of “invisible” slaves (there are about 2.5 million prisoners in the United States) are condemned to forced labor, or as jailers of their own selves (internal work in prisons, cleaning, repairs, technical operations), or as cheap meat in the service of corporate behemoths (Honda, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks, and many others). Besides, the 13th amendment to the US constitution clearly states: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…” To put it simply, detainees are considered slaves as part of their punishment.

       Prisons in America—and not just there–aren’t only bars, walls, surveillance cameras or lockdowns. They’re also an enormous lucrative business. Prisons are a dirty dealing for continuously supplied shackled labor force without name and without voice. They represent a modern slave trade, making billion-dollar profit, that not only supplies the companies-caretakers but also the industry of lawyers, judges, cops, corrections officers, private prisons.

       Not long ago yet another judicial scandal, the “kids for cash” case, was revealed. President Judge Mark Ciavarella convicted juveniles (from 10 to 18 years of age) for the slightest offense, taking million-dollar kickbacks from the owners of private prisons Powell and Mericle with the purpose of supplying them with thousands of children prison slaves.

      In Greece, incarceration is much more “velvet”, but it doesn’t cease to be incarceration. Greek prisons may not supply multinational companies with slaves, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a well-staged business operation. Not only do prisons fund an army of leeches (lawyers, cops, corrections officers, judges), but they make big business with construction companies (through overpriced contracts), pharmaceutical companies (after Greek hospitals, Greek prisons are the second best customer of the pharmaceutical industry, since handfuls of psychiatric drugs are administered to prisoners to keep them asleep), and large supermarket chains (always making sure to overprice items sold to prisoners).

Continue reading:

Let's Roar.

The problem's too big

the perpetrators unknown

you can't beat the system

all on your own.

So it's easy to withdraw

find your own little cage

turn a blind eye to the suffering

stifle your rage,

but the greed goes on

the poverty's still there,

you can't just leave it

for your children to bear.

Others feel as you do

eager to put things right

but locked in isolation

it's a hopeless fight,

so don't sit in silence

behind a closed door,

your voice can help raise

a whisper to a roar.

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

 

Slavery And The Prison Struggle.

       A fact that is little broadcast by our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is that it was the “abolition” of slavery, (we all know that it didn't really get abolished, just transformed), that gave a tremendous boost to the industrial revolution. As the slave owners were obliged to release their slaves, they were richly compensated by tax payers money for their loss. As they found themselves with buckets full of cash, they looked around to see how they could make it grow. So the the new industrial era got under way. This little map gives you some idea of the money that flowed into the pockets of the genteel folks of Edinburgh, who had their hands well dipped in slave ownership. This avalanche of tax payers money to slave owners, was repeated across the UK and elsewhere. 

 

      In support of the ongoing US prison strike, 325 has an interesting article that explains how today’s US prison system is more or less a continuation of the slave system that built empires. During the European imperialists expansion, slavery and indentured servitude were the backbone, the fertiliser, of capitalist growth and imperialist expansion. Little has changed, capitalism still thrives on slave labour, allied to cheap labour.

 

From 325:

 Prisons in the USA – The dark side of slavery in American society

        In order to be in the position to understand the importance and necessity of the us prisoners’ struggle, we first need to analyze the role of slavery in the foundation and evolution of the american state and its historical and integral ,until today, link with the capital.
      Slavery in its many forms was actually the foundation on which the omnipotence of american overlordship was gradually built. The root of this phenomenon can be traced back in the era when the christian empires of europe started a race to conquest unknown lands, founding colonialism regimes, in the era of brutal genocides of the indigenous populations and the slave trade of the non-white african population. Since then and until today, the social and political circumstances have rapidly changed, mainly because of a heavy blood tax that has been paid from beneath, towards the direction of the total shaking off of slavery as an institution. However, it continues up until today, more or less covered.
      Today’s prisoners’ class and racial composition, the spreading of private prisons, the institutionalization of enforced labor as a form of criminal sanction, the exploitation of prisoners by big companies highlight the fundamental connection between state-capitalism-slavery and prison.

Slavery in the first colonial systems

      During the first years of the “new world’s” colonization and until the early 18th century, most of the settlers were not free but were under a status of an idiotype slavery, known as “indentured servitude”, which aimed in equipping the colonies with cheap workforce. The “indentured servant” signed a contract according to which she/he was mortgaging her/his freedom and provide her/his work to a master for a period between 5 to 7 years and, in exchange, the latter covered her/his transportation expenses to the colony. In practice, it was happening by the signature of the contract between the “indentured servant” and the ship owner and the subsequent transferring of the contract to the new master, as soon as the ship arrived to the “new world”. The institution was initially introduced in 1619 through Virginia Company. It has been calculated that 80% of the refugees in the american colonies before american revolution were under this status, while only 40% managed to survive. “Interventured servants” consisted of three categories : -----------

Continue reading:

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

September 9th. Prison Strike.

 

        It is well documented, but little publicised, that the American prison system is nothing more than continuation of the slave labour system that existed prior to the 13th. amendment, that supposedly abolished slavery. American prisons are profit making corporations, where human rights are non-existent, a vast slave empire hidden from public scrutiny. It is also a model that is being replicated here in the UK and else where. A society that cages its people is a society that must be abolished, and remade in the interest of all its people. Modifying prison regulations and prison reform, still leave you with the barbarity of humans in cages, an unacceptable situation.
       The coming September 9th. American prison strike demands support across all borders, solidarity knows no borders.

 This from Contr Info:

Call for International Anarchist Action
in Solidarity with US Prison Strike

 

        On September 9th [the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion], prisoners across the United States will begin a strike that will be a general work stoppage against prison slavery. In short, prisoners will refuse to work; they will refuse to keep the prisons running by their own labors. Prisoners are striking not just for better conditions or changes in parole rules, but against prison slavery. Prisoners state that under the 13th Amendment which abolished racial slavery, at the same time it allowed human beings to be worked for free or next to nothing as long as they were prisoners. Prisoners see the current system of prison slavery to thus be a continuation of racial slavery, which is a system that generates billions of dollars in profits each year for major corporations in key industries such as fossil fuels, fast food, banking, and the US military.
      Soon after the passing of the 13th Amendment, many former slaves were soon locked up in prisons on petty offenses, quickly returned to their former roles as slaves. Over a century later, the Drug War sought to deal with the growing unemployment rate brought on by changes in the economy (outsourcing, financialization, deregulation, etc.), as well as the threat of black insurrection which grew in the 1960s and 70s, by throwing more and more people in prison. At the same time, the state and corporations continued to look towards prison labor as a source to generate massive profits.
       Due to all of these factors, at the present time round 1 in 100 American adults is locked behind bars, and many more are on probation, parole, house arrest, or in immigrant detention facilities. While African-Americans, Native, Latino, and poor whites make up the bulk of the prison population, black, brown, and red convicts make up much a higher percentage of inmates than their white counter-parts. For instance, there are currently more African-American people locked within the prison industrial complex than were held in racialized slavery prior to the American civil war in the 1860s. It is in this climate that prison rebels have organized themselves to carry out the strike.

Read the full article HERE:

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

Modern Slavery.

An appeal from Walk Free:

“The situation of migrant rights in Thailand continues to be deplorable... The case is unjust and unfair and I’m fighting it for myself and also for Thai campaigners who face the same sort of legal harassment.” (Andy Hall, following his court hearing)1

On Monday, British activist Andy Hall was indicted for criminal defamation and computer crime in a case brought about by Thai pineapple company Natural Fruit. This follows two years of persecution, after Natural Fruit took the decision to target Andy for researching alleged labour abuses at one of their factories rather than investigate the claims.

We’re horrified by this decision, which not only violates Andy’s right to free expression but also undermines wider research into labour rights abuses in Thailand and the work of other activists.

We’re doing everything in our power to try to help him: last week, the Walk Free community sent over 300,000 emails to the Thai government, urging the authorities to do everything they can to get these charges dropped. We also delivered over 180,000 signatures calling for Andy’s release to Thai officials in Thailand and the UK.

In just a few weeks Andy will have to return to court where he will be charged and possibly detained pending bail. Will you join the international outcry in support of Andy and send a message to challenge this injustice?

Call on the Thai government to drop the charges against Andy Hall now.

In solidarity,

Zoe, Jamison, Jayde, Leena and the whole Walk Free team

P.S. If found guilty, Andy faces 7 years in jail and charges of $11 million. Sonja Vartiala, executive director of Finnwatch, the organisation that released the report Andy provided the research for, has warned that, “At this point, the prospects for Andy Hall to receive a fair trial are looking grim.”2 Take action to demand that these charges are dropped NOW.

1 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/11819811/British-campaigner-indicted-in-Thailand-over-report-which-alleged-abuses-at-fruit-juice-business.html

2 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/11819811/British-campaigner-indicted-in-Thailand-over-report-which-alleged-abuses-at-fruit-juice-business.html

movement of people everywhere, fighting to end one of the world's greatest evils: Modern slavery.

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

It's Just Over The Wall!!!

      Everything is normal, well at first. The Glasgow slum, Garngad, where I was born, like all slums, was an unhealthy bog of deprivation, but not to me as a child, it was normal, it was all I knew. It was only when we look over the wall that we see, there is another world, and its different. Modern slavery is just like Garngad, it's the world we are born into, it is what we are trained to accept, it is “normal”. The “normal” doesn't equate with freedom. By our quiet acquiescence to institutions, traditions and the power of authority, we are enslaved, we accept the confines of our “slum”. There are those who have looked over the wall and seen a different world, a better world. Lets do to our modern slavery what we have done to our slums, knock them down and build that better world we can see over the wall.

An interesting article by Jason McQinn:

        Thus the whole set of modern institutions of enslavement (hiding behind these abstractions) have become the primary contemporary incarnation of traditionally rich and powerful bullies. This is the central fact of modern civilization, the paradigm upon which the entire social world rests: a system of enslaving institutions, in which people have been trained from birth to participate and identify, while also being trained to call the various forms of this slavery “freedom.”
       Especially amongst the most depraved slaves to modern bullies – those who sing their praises the most strongly, continuously and publicly, the people who make up the modern mass media, one cannot possibly count the times that identifications with these bullies are repeated over and over and over. For those who haven’t already gotten the message through exposure to parental submission and humiliation, or private and public schooling, the mass media (including social media) insist on telling us ad nauseam that we are beholden to “our government,” “our military,” “our businesses,” “our police,” “our laws” and on and on….
       In a world of modern slavery in which slavery is invisible because liberty has been largely reduced to following laws and orders issued, not (for the most part at least) by particular persons, but ever increasingly by abstractions (incarnated by institutions), is modern slavery still slavery when there are fewer and fewer people left able and willing to point it out? That remains to be decided. Where do you stand?
       We can each refuse idenfication with our enslavement by rebelling against it here and now at every opportunity. By refusing to let ourselves be encompassed in the silent consent implied whenever “we” or “our” includes the abstractions or institutions of modern slavery. It’s “their” system, not “ours” or “mine.” It’s the system of those who continue to believe in it, not of those who genuinely fight it. If you identify with it, you’re a part of it. The more you refuse identification with it the more its power is reduced by each and every one of us whenever we act on this refusal.

Read the full article HERE:

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

When Is It Right To Buy A Person?

An appeal from Walk Free:

      Andy Hall could face 7 years in prison for doing something you and I do everyday -- talking about modern slavery.

         Andy Hall is a British campaigner with a special focus on the rights of migrant workers. Two years ago, on behalf of Finnwatch, he undertook an investigation into Natural Fruit, part of NatGroup, a Thai company that processes pineapples and supplies retailers around the world. Finnwatch's final report paints a picture suggesting modern slavery: "...passports and work permits confiscated; compulsory and excessive overtime; fines and unclear deductions from wages; debt bondage and violence by guards and superiors."1

      Instead of focusing on addressing these serious allegations, Natural Fruit decided to try and silence Andy with lawsuits. They have pursued civil and criminal charges and now Andy could face a prison sentence and $10 million in legal damages for his investigations.

       Are you as outraged as we are? Now is your chance to join the call for justice. Stand with Andy Hall: demand that Natural Fruit drop all charges against him and thoroughly investigate and take action to ensure there is no modern slavery or exploitation in their business.

        Now is a crucial time in Andy’s prosecution. In just three days his trial will begin. Although Natural Fruit’s behaviour is deeply disturbing it proves that the company cares about its public image. By coming together over the next few days, with activists all around the world that are standing in solidarity with Andy, we can show Natural Fruit’s senior management what we think about these excessive and intimidating charges.

        If this case proceeds and Natural Fruit are successful this would not only be a grave miscarriage of justice for Andy. This process could set a dangerous precedent for other companies in Thailand that might take a similar approach when allegations are raised of modern slavery in their supply chains. This threatens the work of anti-slavery campaigners but also workers in Thailand who might be too afraid to come forward and report abuse.

     Andy Hall is one of us -- please join the growing global outcry over his prosecution and fight for the rights of anti-slavery campaigners and their efforts to end worker exploitation.

      Demand justice for Andy and workers vulnerable to exploitation and modern slavery in Thailand now.

In solidarity,

The whole Walk Free team

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

Financial Mafia's World Wide Slavery.

      

      We all know that policies such as Workfare, and Work Related Activity Group, create slave labour, misery and stress, and this is aggravated by sanctions. People point the finger at the Cameron Cabal, as if this was their creation and if we could just get rid of that bunch of Oxbridge parasites, it would all be better. What we should realise is that these policies are not indigenous to the UK, the Cameron Cabal don't have the brains to think up such devious ways of getting the corporate wage bills down, they merely follow the instructions of the financial Mafia. These policies are taking place in other countries.

Some Pas Forgione quotes from Australia:

     The federal government has plans to expand Work for the Dole. From July next year it will be compulsory for job-seekers aged 18-30 to do 25 hours of work a week.

        In the same week that employment minister Eric Abetz announced the government would expand Work for the Dole to all job seekers under 50 and that job seekers would have to apply for double the number of jobs than previously, billionaire miner Andrew Forrest released his own recommendations for welfare reform — some of the most punitive ever proposed.

       The federal government is considering a proposal to force young unemployed people into strict military-style boot camps. The plan is an inadequate, simplistic response to the complex problem of youth unemployment. The fact that Labor is seriously exploring the scheme is another indication of how increasingly right-wing the party has become on welfare policy.
    The proposal, promoted as a “possible vote winner” to be announced before the upcoming election, would force early school leavers aged 15 to 21 into tough, hard-line boot camps, though precise details remain sketchy.

 
      So it is not our little bunch of Oxbridge millionaire parasites that are responsible for the misery and exploitation heaped on us, it is the world wide system of the festering marriage of capitalism and state. The shape of our society and the quality of our lives are decided in the grand marble halls of the faceless financial Mafia. Until we, across the globe, sort out that mob, our lives will continue down the spiral of exploitation and poverty.   

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

THE WORLD WE HAVE CREATED.

        Perhaps a little on the long side, but informative, if at times both depressing and inspiring.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzNQixqun79Db2lyR2VWa3JOUWs/edit?pli=1

ann arky's home.

MODERN SLAVERY.

        Where have the slaves gone? We used to speak of wage slaves but that seems to be out of fashion, but we are still in that position, modern slavery exits as a way of life across the planet, but we slaves are brainwashed into believing that slavery has been abolished, it is an illusion.. A quote from an interesting article on Modern Slavery:

Read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

THIS WORLD WE HAVE CREATED.

    

      The following is something I posted about a year ago on another BLOG.  I repeat it here as I feel it is just as relevant, or even more so, today than ever. Looking at the true picture of our world and realising that not one of the governments of the world has any intentions of attacking the true cause of the situation, corporate capitalism and the state system, it becomes obvious it is up to the poor of this world, the ordinary people, to put things to right. Don't expect the bloated parasites who are in control at the moment, to do anything that might in any way deprive them of their unearned, unsustainable opulence.   

     I should add that some of the figures in the article will now be much worse as a year in corporate capitalism has done nothing but add to the misery of the world's poor. The actual number without access to clean drinking water rises by the hour. 

      It is difficult to grasp the state of the world that we have created. A world where there is an abundance of almost everything conceivable and yet to the vast majority of the world’s population it is all out of reach. A world where a small elite live a life of obscene and wasteful wealth while millions die of starvation and millions of children die from the lack of clean drinking water. In this capitalist made world there are small enclaves where the rich, in safety, play games with their expensive toys, private jets, luxury cars, yachts and several holiday homes in “exotic” locations. While just over that financial apartheid wall there is the stench of squalor and death for countless millions living in total deprivation and endless wars,

      In this capitalist created world, 8 million people die every year from poverty, One billion children live in abject poverty, 640 million do not have access to appropriate shelter, 140 million have never attended school, 400 million do not have access to clean uncontaminated water, 500 million do not have basic sanitation, 270 million have no access to health care, and 90 million are severely food deprived. Approximately 12.3 million people worldwide live in conditions of “modern slavery,”while over one billion people live on less than one dollar of income per day and over three billion live on less than two dollars per day. Then there is the strata in between that manage to scrape a reasonable existence that seems to keep them from revolt.

        All this misery in spite of the fact that the world economy actually produces one and a half times the amount of food necessary to provide the entire human population with adequate and nutritious meals. The fact that the capitalist system will not allow this to be shared out to those in need tells us that it is not a natural problem but a political problem. Perhaps the words of Derrick Jensen come close to capturing something of that world.

       “We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means—all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity … What this means is that corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have…I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that they can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host … For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.”

     Do you honestly believe that voting in a bunch of privileged parasites will rid this world of the poverty, misery and deprivation, not to mention wars and destruction being perpetrated by corporate capitalism? Most people in government are millionaires, they get fat on the corruption of  the corporate world, we live in a time when state and corporate capitalism or one unified body, it is known as corporate fascism. 

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