So 2012's candle is
starting to flicker, soon to be extinguished. What does a look at the
year tell us? It saw the world's ordinary people assaulted and
ravished by the power of capital, aided and abetted by their
administrators, the state governments. It also saw some of the
fiercest fight backs against the full might of the state's repressive
power. From London to Washington, from Athens to Moscow, from Madrid
to Delhi, the ordinary people of this planet organised and protested
against the battering ram of the financial Mafia's austerity plan.
Sometimes it was bloody, with South African miners being gunned down
by the state's bully boys the police. Tear gas and and baton charges
were almost daily events in Athens. Death and injury were seen among
protesters time and time again.
This was not just
an aggressive attack on the living standards of the people, it was a
case of what little freedom we had being eroded. The state's
clandestine agencies stepped up surveillance on dissenting voices,
with more covert operations being mounted against legitimate protest
groups, they introduced new legislation criminalising acts of
protest, many civil liberties were torn up and binned.
What was also
visible over the last year was the disintegrating support for the
usual mainline parties. The usual flunky parties in the pocket of the
corporate world saw the people turn away in droves, with a mixture of
disgust and hatred. That support in some cases turned to apathy, but
mostly moved to the more radical wings of the political spectrum, the
radical right as well as the radical left.
Just as the
financial Mafia's drive for more austerity will not fade away in the
coming year, it is more likely to intensify, so the resistance will
grow and the struggle become more bitter, more fierce. However it
also means that there will be another front being fought, that for
the hearts and minds of the people, against that rising tide of
extreme right wing groupings. In every country where austerity has
been biting, and the people resisting, the extreme right has gained
ground. No doubt financed by many of those powerful people and
institutions that financed and backed the usual mainstream puppets
that are now discredited.
What little gains
the ordinary people have made by decades of bitter struggle,
resistance, and perseverance have been wiped away, what crumbs came
our way have been greedily stolen back. To stand still we
will have to re-double our efforts, as the financial Mafia's plan is
to push us further back, to something resembling the poverty of the
Victorian era.
2012 also saw a
continuation of the US corporate funded government acting as guardian
of the the world's corporate profit seekers. Bombing the shit out of
people across the globe, all in the name of peace and democracy of
course. Any country that wouldn't let the dollar and Western capital
control their assets, became the axis of evil, and felt the full fury
of Western “shock and awe” democracy. We all know the list, and
it is still growing with more on the agenda.
2013 will prove to
be a critical year, as the rate of the financial Mafia's drive for
“austerity” increases, so will our descent into serfdom. Unless
we can counter that with increased resistance, an abandoning of the
tradition politics, and a massive move towards politics from below,
with increased resistance, direct action, occupation and a desire not to fix the
system so that we can reclaim some of the crumbs we lost, but
dismantle it and replace it with a sustainable system of seeing to
the needs of all our people. A system of co-operation, mutual aid and
free from the profit motive.
