Failed System.

            The rich developed West, overflowing with wealth, a parasite class living in obscene opulence side by side with outrageous child poverty. The UK, 5th or 6th richest nation on the planet belongs to that unique club where child poverty is above 26%, we are in keeping with other countries that fail miserably to see to the health and welfare of the next generation. In that rich conglomerate of nation states belonging to the world's largest trading block, the EU, (I know that UK is no longer a member, but these figures were compiled shortly before we left.) there are 12 nation states where child poverty is above 26%, with Bulgaria and Romania champions of European child poverty, with Bulgaria at approximately 46% and Romania approximately 49%.

 

 
          This is modern capitalism at work, luxury yachts, grand mansions, tax havens, power and privileges for a small band of leeching parasites and struggle and poverty for the many with children bearing the blunt of this greed driven system of exploitation for profit.
         Large corporations dictate economic policy to the various governments and they put the stamp of legitimacy on them, then enforce the implementation on the population, all to the detriment of the people and the benefit of the corporate parasite class.
         Child poverty will remain with us as long as we tolerate this capitalist system where the holy grail is the economy, where the only reason for any form of production is for profit. Common sense tells us that it would by much better and fairer for all in society, if we built it round a state free public ownership and co-operatives, organised by the communities in co-operation with each other, and all free from the profit motive. However don't expect our prancing political ballerinas and their corporate paymasters to arrange that for you, that task will have to be up to us, to throw their rule book in the bin and take control and shape society to see to the needs of all our people, only then will we see child poverty turn into something your read about in the history books.

 

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New Order.

           Capitalism is rapidly evolving, if that's the right word, being redesigned, would be a more accurate term, think Davos, that exclusive club for the rich and powerful. We are seeing the emergence of of a new world order of lords and serfs. More and more of the world's resources are being sewn up in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals, the billionaire class. The small ratbag of billionaires that control the corporate/financial world now shape the policies and direction of the various states. The states have become the managers of society for the benefit of the new billionaire lords of the world Manor. The state, once seen as some sort of guardian and manager of the people's resources, is being, willingly, denuded of all resources, and will be the policing apparatus of the population, to control it for the benefit of the corporate/financial billionaire class.
          The world's resources will be firmly in the hands of the small band of corporate/financial billionaires, the term public ownership is a word that will be destined for the dustbin of history. Of course there will be handouts to placate the population, to dampen discontent, they will be society's paracetamol, to make you feel better but having no effect on your real problems. The serfs will be used as needed, to keep the gushers of wealth flowing in the direction of their masters, then discarded when no longer needed, those who can't be used by the new corporate serfdom, will have to get by as best they can. It will be a totally privately owned world,

 

        The entire process is being accelerated by the present Covid19 pandemic. This is being used by the state to put in place population control systems, helping to mould a subservient population, necessary for the formation of this billionaire privately owned world. I don't see this as a conspiracy theory, more a grabbing of the opportunity by those that are driving this new corporate/financial state managed world

 

        We must see every restriction on our movements and activities, no matter how necessary they seem at the moment, as something we must fight hard and determinedly to have removed as we see them as no longer required. Every dictate, command, directive from the state must be questioned and abandoned when we see it as no longer necessary, public ownership must be fought for at ever turn. we mustn't allow the world and its resources to become the private property of a small power hunger group of billionaires. Our freedoms are being restricted on a daily basis, there may be an argument, to a degree, for that at the moment, but they must never become the norm, even in a watered down version. Otherwise we abandon our world to the manipulative, greedy, power hungry, profit seeking billionaire control freaks. An extremely powerful and dangerous group, with their own agenda to enhance their power, wealth, control and privileges.

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

Screw Them.

       Every second word from our mainstream media at the moment, seems to be "bailout", all the capitalist enterprises are hurting and are demanding a government bailout. We should remind them that this is capitalism, a world of their making, not ours, and in that magic world of capitalism, you start a business to extract profit by exploiting the ordinary people. If you fail to make money, then you go bust, simple capitalist rules. Nowhere does it say that if your business isn't making money by exploiting the people, then you have a right to turn to those being exploited and say, you'll have to give us lots of your tax money, so that we can keep our yachts and our Bentley's.

 

 

        I'll repeat what I keep saying, if you can't make money from exploiting us, then  great, screw you and go bust, we don't need you anyway. If what you do is essential for the welfare and health of the people, then let's take it into public ownership, rather than use tax payers money, that could be going to health, welfare, housing and education, rather than trying to keep parasites in the style to which they think they are entitled.
       So I'll say it again, loud and clear, screw the economy, and what we deem to be beneficial and/or necessary for society, we take and utilise to our mutual benefit. We don't "bailout" our exploiters, all to preserve their pampered, privileged, parasitical existence. You know it makes sense, they screw you, then when things are a bit difficult, they come with their begging bowl, telling us that we need them, just another of their many lies.

 

 

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A Truth From The IMF!!!!

        It is not very often that I agree, if ever, with a statement issued by the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers). However, the statement issued recently that, “Britain's public finances are worse than Gambia, Uganda and Kenya, because of privatisation” does hold up under examination. It puts UK public finances at the bottom of the world’s economies. It also states that the tendency of governments to focus on debt “misses large swaths of government activity and can fall victim to illusory fiscal practices”. We ordinary folk in the UK are fully aware of the fact that the UK government, for ideological reasons, and much to the detriment of the well being the ordinary folk, has pushed full throttle one of the most drastic privatisations of any economy since the early 1980s.
      Over the previous three years the Conservative government has forced privatisation to run rampant, by coercing local governments and local authorities to flog off public assets, usually at knock down prices, to pay for the day to day running costs. This is pushed out under the lie that all this suffering of the ordinary people is necessary to bring down the national deficit.
      The IMF also states that selling off public assets may not in any way improve the public finances. It also states: “For instance, privatisations increase revenue and lower deficits but also reduce the government’s asset holdings,” and “Similarly, cutting back maintenance expenditure reduces the deficit and lowers debt, but also reduces the value of infrastructure assets, which could cost more in the long term.”
      Of course every Joe Soap knows this, and we also know that it is all done following an ideology to enrich the corporate parasites' wealth and power. The repeated mantra, that to survive it is necessary to bring down the deficit, is pushed in an attempt to get the public to see their suffering as necessary.
      Another statement this time by the GMB union, that makes this purloining of the public purse more glaringly obvious, the example they give is that, privatised water companies, over the last five years, paid £6.5 billion in dividends and interest to its shareholders. That could have been £6.5 billion into the public purse, and the asset still in public hands for future generations.
      Yes, the IMF has pointed out the illusion that privatisation helps the country as a whole, but don’t expect it any time soon to come to the logical conclusion, that therefore, we would all be better of if we took all the UK assets into public ownership. That’s a statement that the members of the IMF would choke on. Ah, if only they would make that statement, then choke and die.

 

 

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Resistance Is Many Faceted.

       On my many visits to Greece, mainly Athens, I have always found the public transport cheap, and what is more it was publicly owned and run with the people in mind, lots of concession for those who needed them. However, since the Troika, (ECB, Expert Crooked Bastards, EC, Executive Criminals, IMF, International Mankind Fuckers) got a strangle hold on the Greek state, it has demanded that all public assets be transferred to their greedy corporate buddies. Everything in sight is being privatised, this includes the once publicly owned and reasonable transport system, of course this is happening in countries across the globe. Just another sign that the financial Mafia are out to bleed the public dry.  

        What this has meant is that fares are rising, control by the system is increasing and large sections of the community are being exclude from the once cheap transport system. It seems that this is not being accepted in a subservient manner by sections of the people, they have decided to hit back at the profiteers and hit them where it hurts, in their bank accounts. They are taking action that will slow down the whole process of control and cost the plunders of the public purse, lots of that stuff they worship, "money". 

This from Act For Freedom Now:

       In the early hours of Saturday December 2nd we attacked the centre of application collection and issuing of registered electronic travelcards of OASA, on 153 Thessalonikis street, Kallithea station, with an incendiary device. The above function was taken on by OASA as well as personnel from 2 companies which are in charge of installing and operating the new electronic systems of control on public transport (turnstiles, electronic tickets etc.), LG CNS and GEK TERNA. Our intervention resulted in the complete destruction of very expensive technological equipment (computers, scanners, special ticket printers etc) that belongs exclusively to the companies-contractors, as well as a massive amount of copies of registered electronic travel-cards and issuing applications.
        Our message is clear: just like you organize our exclusion from public transport and want to control our every movement in the cities, we organize to destroy your plans. Methodically, with rage and a plan we organize your worst nightmares!
      The incendiary attack on a main structure of the OASA-state-contractors plannings is added to the diverse factual moves of resistance against the systems of control, surveillance and exclusion which are set up on public transport recently. Against its restructuring, we chose to carry out a targeted act aiming at creating the greatest possible damage, the greatest possible cost for those who have received millions of euros in order to organize the exclusion of large parts of social strata from public transport. To factually contribute to the blocking of the unobstructed implementation of their plans, to further promote the wider social struggle for free transportation.
       While the ministry of Transport proceeds to the gradual closure of
turnstiles at the entrances of Metro stations and endless lines are formed at the electronic tickets and registered travelcards, we chose to express our rage. Instead if standing in lines and becoming desperate, instead of legitimizing the plans of state-contractors against our daily material interests, instead of being vulnerable towards inspectors and turnstiles, instead of thinking INDIVIDUALLY, we chose to organize and act COLLECTIVELY. We chose to attack and torch the shackles they offer us. We chose to break extortion itself and not negotiate the terms of acceptance. We could not care less about the “discomfort and indignation of the passengers” who rush to purchase the sought after ticket, waiting up to 1-2 hours in line. We are not them, we do not speak in their name.
        We are interested more in those who are thrown out of stations and buses because they do not desire to negotiate their every day need for transportation. This is the position we speak from, this is the position from which we chose to attack the condition of social control and discipline that dominates inside and of public transport. We keep our hate and rage for the daily scalpers and extortionists of our lives, all sorts of inspectors, snitches and cops we see on our path.
       OASA made an announcement the next day and mentioned that “the extensive and ethically unacceptable practices of the fake ticket networks and the bloodsucking of public wealth has ended and many will have to deal with the truth and justice”. This game played by OASA and the ministry of Transport who attempt to connect the diverse resistance movement with networks and alien interests, is one we have seen before and is ridiculous. We have one thing to say: SHUT YOUR MOUTHS!
         No political supervisors of the ministry of Transport ever, let alone Spirtzis (minister of Transport) because of his political-party background, can speak of networks and dark interests when addressing others. They should look in the mirror! They should first speak of the public transport bodies that have been set up and raised for decades now as realms of contractors and employment agencies through slavery practices and black-unpaid labour of thousands of workers cleaning and guarding the stations by outsourcing to other networks. They should first speak of the organized bloodsucking of public wealth of the national contractors of public projects that continue to plant toll booths everywhere and the structures (ports, airports etc.) that were built with the money and sweat of other people
so they can deliver them to all sorts of contractors and investors at will.
FACTUAL RESISTANCE TO THE CONTROL AND SURVEILLANCE OF OUR LIVES
FREE TRANSPORT FOR ALL
STRENGTH AND SOLIDARITY TO HUNGER STRIKERS, MEMBERS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY
STRUGGLE N.MAZIOTIS-POLA ROUPA

    

PFI, Private Fiddling Initiatives.

         In this greed driven capitalist system the financial Mafia and the moguls of the corporate juggernaut have refined the numerous ways they can steal from the public purse, of course with the unstinting assistance from their minders, the state apparatus. They work hand in glove with each other to further the plunder of that public purse.
       The capitalist greed merchants start their grand theft by first managing us, the ordinary people, to "work" for them in producing tremendous wealth, then let us lick the droppings from the cats saucer, then they move on to getting us to pay rip-off prices for the merchandise we produced.
       Of course there are other ways they dip their hands into the public cash machine. One of those devious rip-off schemes is the Public Finance Initiatives, (PFI). This is the con-trick of getting public bodies to engage in projects where the financial Mafia fund the infra structure of our NHS and other public institutions. Then, in theory, the infra structure becomes the property of that institution. In the UK this con-scheme started about 20 years ago, with a push from the corporate friendly State. Today, these public bodies now owe a staggering £300 billion in PFI debt. Our public institutions are in hock to the financial Mafia to that mouth dropping £300 billion, that's debt that you and I will have to pay the vampires from our taxes.

         Our NHS is sinking under a totally engineered, state and corporate greed burden. Between 1997 and 2007 approximately 90% of capital investment in the NHS was PFI. The result is that today the NHS is cracking at the seams from lack of funding, yet it has to pay out to private companies a staggering £2 billion per year. £2 billion of our cash that could be improving the service to the people, is flowing into the bank accounts of private companies. Will it end, well not likely, as by the time that the infrastructure is paid off, it will need upgrading, repairing or replacing, and so the merry-go-round continues, shovelling our cash into the pockets of the vampire squid, the corporate world. It is a brilliant scheme for transferring public money to private bank accounts, and let's not talk about the quality of some of those PFI built infrastructures, that's another story.

       If you are foolish enough to want to continue this plunder of the public purse, then stay with the present greed driven corrupt system of capitalism. If on the other hand you would like to live on a society that sees to the needs of all our people, without the rip-off from greed driven power mongers, parasites and vultures, then you have to look at demolishing this man made economic system of exploitation and corruption. Stop appealing to the parasites, to be a little more kind to you, and to give you a little more of the wealth that you created, they don't understand that language. 

        Only the ordinary people can create a society that looks after the ordinary people, only when we control our communities and our work places, can we hope to create that better world. Forget that middle class approach of petitioning for improvements, within the parameters capitalist system, forget the pointless appealing for reform, where some extra crumbs come you way. Forget a bigger crust, take over the bakery.

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

Who Owns The Basics of Life?

    Some things are necessary for survival, like water, shelter and food, without any one of these basics your survival is in jeopardy, yet we tolerate a system where by if you don't have enough of that stuff called money, you can be denied these basic necessities. Probably one reason this cruel unjust system survives is because you don't die suddenly. With poverty you can be denied one or all of these basics, not enough money means cheap crap food, not enough food, and you die, rather slowly. We won't see people fall over and die in the street, they will just simply deteriorate and die young, the shock factor isn't there. Likewise the homeless, a hidden slow death by poverty, murder by shareholders. Across the world day in day out, millions of lives are shortened by not having access to clean drinking water. Why should the flow and distribution of the very basics of life be under the control of the Davos Club, that group of greedy, pampered, parasitical, millionaire shareholders?

      Under our millionaire's scheme of "debt reduction" and "austerity cuts" we are seeing more and more of our public assets being handed over to those shiny suits of the Davos Club. Soon there will be nothing that belongs to the people. In the UK they already own, among other things, our energy resources and we have seen the prices rocket, as they pursue ever greater profits. Social housing has long been under attack and is disappearing, financial institutions own our homes, and they are working hard at getting our water.

      These corporate conditions will produce a world where we will be completely at the mercy of those greedy, pampered, parasitical, millionaire shareholders of the Davos Club, for everything we need, and if you are poor, your only means of survival will be dependent on charity organisations. Of course we can take everything back, creating co-operatives and community controlled enterprises, it is happening in all sorts of places across the globe. People have seen enough of "free market", "neo-liberalism", which translates into ripping-off the people and widespread deprivation. The tide is turning, it has to, it must be our world, or it is a destroyed world of abject poverty.

We are the ones who knead and yet we have no bread,
we are the ones who dig for coal and yet we are cold.

We are the ones who have nothing,
and we are coming to take the world.

~ Tassos Livaditis (Greek poet, 1922-1988)

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PIRATES OF THE PUBLIC PURSE.

       I have always said that the "austerity" (I love that word, it makes it sound so efficient and harmless), cuts to date are nothing, compared to what is still to come. 2013 will be crunch time, that's when the boot goes in with a vengeance. Homeless set to soar, workfare propping up the corporate profits as people are "obliged" to work for nothing more than their job seekers benefits, disability allowances disappearing, condemning thousand of vulnerable people to isolation and worse, and the only jobs on offer will be low paid part-time. Meanwhile the grand plan of transferring all the public purse to the millionaires' old boys club goes on unabated and all public assets become corporate assets. On top of all the already legislated cuts that have been in the pipeline, we are faced with massive increases in energy prices and increase rail fares. Plus Osborne has stated that all government departments will have to find extra efficiency savings, (cuts), on top of what has already been passed. However, we have to be careful when we talk about "austerity", it is not quite universal. While you and I struggle to pay our way, there are those in this twisted Alice-in-Wonderland system that are doing just fine, mostly, those who do nothing, Company directors, traders in the financial Mafia, and of course, those millionaires who pass all this "austerity" legislation. 

       An interesting article from A World to Win:

Unions should resist rail and fuel price rises with civil disobedience

      Millions of people who commute to work are a just a few weeks away from a massive cut in incomes that will intensify the dramatic fall in living standards that the recession and austerity measures have already created.
       As people struggle back to work after the Christmas holidays, they will be hit by a double whammy of steep rail fare increases and the bills for electricity and gas that in some cases will show rises of nearly 11%. his amounts to a huge transfer of wealth to the train operators and energy companies like E.On which yesterday announced increases averaging 8.7%. These will naturally impact harder on poorer households, adding to five million already in fuel poverty.
     So too will the rail fare rises. Passengers on many routes face fare increases of up to 10% next month. Season tickets and peak fares are regulated and will rise by an average 4.2%. Many commuters pay huge amounts already. For example, an annual season ticket from St Albans to London is around £3,000. That will go up by over £120 in January.
Off-peak and anytime tickets in England and Wales are set to soar, according to the watchdog Passenger Focus because they are not regulated. An anytime return from London to Norwich will now be 9.2% dearer at £107.70. A day return from Holyhead-Llandudno will be 6.5% more expensive.
      The ConDem coalition is pushing ahead with plans to reduce the £3 billion plus subsidy to the rail industry, a process that began under New Labour. That will result in ticket office closures and other “efficiency” savings.
      The rail unions have launched a campaign to bring the railways back into public ownership. Today they were holding protests in Swansea and Cardiff. More actions are planned before Christmas.
They handed out Christmas cards with a "seasonal message" from the train companies, which promised commuters will have a 2013 "packed full of cancelled trains, staff cuts and ticket office closures" while the train companies are "making huge profits".
Rob Jenks, of transport and travel union TSSA, said:

     We want to point out the dramatic rise in rail fares, a 30% increase in rail fares, compared to the average increase in people's wages of 11.9%.  So you can see there's a huge gap between what people can afford to pay and what people are having to pay.
      It's about fares, it's also about all the cuts the industry is facing as the government tries to allegedly balance the books but without taking the opportunity to actually look at what public ownership would bring and all the savings that would make by cutting out profit and various other things.

     The Action for Rail campaign says that since privatisation, more than £11 billion of public funds has been “misspent” on debt write-offs, dividend payments to private investors,  and higher interest payments in order to keep Network Rail’s debts off the government balance sheet.

     At the same time, privatisation has failed to deliver on its promises. Genuine private investment makes an insignificant contribution to the railways, representing about one per cent of the total money that goes into the railway each year.  Our fares are among the highest in Europe, many of our services are overcrowded and rely on obsolete rolling stock.

       Obviously, there is no way the Coalition is going to contemplate public ownership as an option. And nor is Labour. Shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle has only pledged to make sure that the limit on fare rises is applied more strictly. That’s really worth waiting for!
       The savage reduction in living standards that will greet millions on January 1 is unprecedented. Rail unions ought to step up their action. RMT general secretary Bob Crow has in the past talked of a campaign of civil disobedience to fight the government. There couldn’t be a better time to put his words into action than right now.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
11 December 2012

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