The Street?

          We, the ordinary people are at war. I'm not talking about the war of missiles and drones, but the war we have fought for generations, the class war. Year in year out the conglomerate of corporate beasts have have grabbed more and more of the world's resources and in their never ending drive to increase profits, we have been hit time and time again with punishing austerity, inflation, cuts to social services, which translates into poverty and destitution for millions. Once again with great viciousness, the attack is on the ordinary people, and as winter approaches we are facing cold homes, insufficient food on the table, with the result being stunted children and elderly and vulnerable people dying earlier than would be normally.
           This is a constant fight and it will not be won in the marble halls of power, nor in the debating rooms of unions. It will be won on the streets, we surrender the streets at our peril. It is important that we take our anger and frustration on to the streets in organised vast numbers. To win that decent life for all, we must be prepared to do our debating with direct action on the streets, in our communities and workplaces. The good life will not be handed to you by the wealthy and powerful, we'll have to take what we create and turn it into a society of mutual aid that sees to the needs of all our people.
          Perhaps we can learn something from recent history, the mass protests of Gilets Jaunes

The following from Enough is Enough. 

           On November 17, 2018, a new kind of movement exploded in the face of many observers and took the trade unions and political parties, who were convinced they had a monopoly on protest, by surprise: the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement.

Originally published by Contre Attaque. Translated by Riot Turtle. 

 

         Officially 287,710 demonstrators, probably 10 times more, had spread around 2000 traffic circles across the country, created new spaces for discussion. The demonstrations were heterogeneous, many of them were not used to protesting. We all remember the call of truck driver Ghislain Coutard improvising a rallying symbol, the yellow safety vest. His anger and his genius call “We all have a yellow vest in the car! Put it on your dashboard in front of you all week long. It will be a little color code to show that you support the movement”.
        In the weeks that followed, a strange phenomenon: we all looked at each other on the streets, as if to count ourselves. And there are many of us… You know the rest: 65 weeks of mobilization, thousands of injured demonstrators and an estimated 1.800 injured among the forces of order. The mobilization was unprecedented, but so was the violent repression.
        In 2018 alone, the police fired 19,071 LBD bullets and launched 5,420 rounds of grenade ammunition. Total repression. The victories, unfortunately, are not as numerous. Although the carbon tax has been buried, the list of 42 demands has remained largely unheeded.
        The few measures that have been saved at the simulacrum of a citizens’ assembly will be further eroded by amendments in Parliament. Not sure that this is what the Gilets Jaunes had in mind when they demanded more direct democracy.
        4 years later, most of the initial Gilets Jaunes groups don’t exist anymore, but some activists persist and don’t hesitate to support other militant collectives. From their chaotic course, let us retain that the Gilets Jaunes movement knew how to show all the old street movements the need to renew the way to mobilize. A lesson still far from being integrated if we observe the success of the last call of the CGT in France…
          It would be good not to leave the monopoly of mobilizations to these union organizations again, who usually organize nice demonstrations and then leave. The success of the Sainte-Soline mobilization shows it, we have to fight in a different way. Mobilize people who use different strategies and create cohesion between “peaceful” and “determined” protests. The Gilets Jaunes knew how to blow on the embers of social movements, it’s up to us to set things on fire!

 

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Lives Matter.

       "Black Lives Matter" was a call that was long over due and certainly a worthy cause. The injustice and brutality that this group of people suffered because of the colour of their skin was vicious and blatant inhumanity. Then again, this entire system is based on injustice and inhumanity, I fear however that the cry for justice for one group, no matter how deserving, takes the focus off all the other injustices that riddle this flawed system. We have gross child poverty, extreme over surveillance, out of control policing, persecution of "whistle blowers", a judicial system that favours the wealthy, homelessness, evictions, unemployment, over crowded prisons, detention centres for migrants fleeing death and persecution, crumbling social services, a decaying education system, we have highly mechanised armies of our youth dying while creating havoc and bloodshed in other countries, at the dictate of the pampered and privileged few. We have a class of wealthy, powerful parasites who manage this system, are aware of the savagery, inequality and injustice, but they rely on them to uphold and bolster their over privileged position. We may get "justice" for black lives, to the phony standard of justice within this unjust system, then what? It would be another paracetamol for the people, making them feel better, but doing nothing to cure the ills that plague them.  

    Isn't it time we all cried, "Human Lives Matter", and start to dismantle this entire system of injustice, inequality, inhumanity and brutality, and get rid of that class of pampered, privileged parasites that grow fat from these cogs of their inhumane system.

 Quote from John W. Whitehead:

     The powers-that-be want us to believe that our job as citizens begins and ends on Election Day. They want us to believe that we have no right to complain about the state of the nation unless we’ve cast our vote one way or the other. They want us to remain divided over politics, hostile to those with whom we disagree politically, and intolerant of anyone or anything whose solutions to what ails this country differ from our own.
     What they don’t want us talking about is the fact that the government is corrupt, the system is rigged, the politicians don’t represent us, the electoral college is a joke, most of the candidates are frauds, and, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we as a nation are repeating the mistakes of history—namely, allowing a totalitarian state to reign over us.

    Former concentration camp inmate Hannah Arendt warned against this when she wrote, “Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”

     As we once again find ourselves faced with the prospect of voting for the lesser of two evils, “we the people” have a decision to make: do we simply participate in the collapse of the American republic as it degenerates toward a totalitarian regime, or do we take a stand and reject the pathetic excuse for government that is being fobbed off on us?
      Never forget that the lesser of two evils is still evil.

       His description of the state system and its operators  fits equally this country or any other country on the planet, not just the US.

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

Capitalism, Born Of Greed, Survives By Greed.

       Looking at this insane world of capitalism, you become accustomed to its many contradictions. For example, if you live in a rich country you would imagine that you would be better treated financially than if you lived in a poorer country. Well not so if you happen to be a pensioner.

      If we take the 10 largest economies in the world, US, China, Japan, Germany, UK, France, India, Brazil, Italy, Canada, and look at how they treat their pensioners we get some strange results. If we take pensions as a percentage of the average wage, we find that all the richest economies with the exception of Canada, are at the bottom end of that table, with the poorer countries paying their pensioners a higher percentage of average wages. The two largest economies find themselves at the very bottom of the league, with the US paying its pensioners a miserable 17.3% of the average wage, while its main competitor China, paying a paltry 2.0%. The UK, fifth in the league of large economies, finds itself in the bottom half of the pension league, with a derisory 21.6% of average wage, almost half that of the poorer New Zealand, whose pensioners receive 40.1%. of the average wage. 

       Of course it is not just in pensions that we find this inequality and injustice, the system of capitalist economics is built on such inequality, it's how the system functions. Wealth is created by the vast majority of the people, but the wealth then flows up towards a small cabal of parasites, who surround themselves with opulence beyond our imagination. To maintain that life in the cocoon of unearned wealth, the parasites have to continually plunder the wealth produced by us the ordinary people. Hence the cuts in our standard of living, education, health care, and all social services. The differences in our conditions at the bottom of this insane system is brought about by the majority having to fight individual battles to gain some of the inadequate crumbs left by the parasites, creating different strata of poor and poorer. The system is not based on logic, rationalism or compassion, but on the control of all the means of production and distribution, and that, for the moment, is firmly in the hands of the parasites. So it will continue until we decide that we have had enough of this plundering of the produce of our labour, and we take control of those means of production and distribution. 

Pensions as % of average wage.

New Zealand 40.1%
Denmark 36.3%
Ireland 33.0%
Canada 32.2%
Netherlands 27.1%
Australia 27.1%
France 25.6%
Sweden 23.2%
UK 21.6%
Japan 20.1%
Spain 19.6%
Italy 19.1%
Germany 19.0%
US 17.3%
Turkey 6.0%
China 2.0%

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

The Death Of A Badge!!

      There is a lot of hatred and venom spewing about at the moment and it is directed at Thatcher. So she's dead, what has changed? During the “Thatcher era” communities were devastated, people's lives were torn asunder, youth saw its future shredded and the spectre of poverty and deprivation loomed ever larger. It was an attack on the living standards of the ordinary people. So like I said, what has changed??

      Today we have a bunch of millionaires continuing that same policy, today our education system is being torn apart and offered up to the corporate world, our health service is being handed on a plate to the same big corporate market casino, from these actions, deaths and injuries there will be. This same bunch of parasitical millionaires must also take responsibility for those vulnerable and unfortunate individuals on disability allowance who died shortly after being found “fit for work” by the government funded ATOS. As far as I am aware, to-date that number is in excess of 1,700. Not an unfortunate accident but the result of raw ideological brutality, equally as savage as the “Thatcher era”. We have the “bedroom tax” holding the threat of eviction over thousands of ordinary families. This month the tax rate to the richest in the land was reduced, while social services are being slashed, and today the spectre of poverty and deprivation still looms large over the ordinary people. Like I said, what has changed???

       Shouting, dancing and partying like crazy over the death of a badge, a badge of a system that is still in place, inflicting the same savage injuries on the ordinary people, and gathering pace. Celebrating as if we had won a victory while still mired in the sewage of those same policies. All this hitting out at a symbol, is like lashing out at a punch-bag in the gym, just remember no matter how hard you hit, you are not in the ring, it is not the real fight, the real fight has still to come and it is outside the gym of symbolism. 

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WHOSE RIGHT DIRECTION?

       David Cameron in his new year speech has said that Britain “is heading in the right direction”, and he really means it. As far as our millionaire parasite Prime Minister and his millionaire corporate cronies are concerned, we are “moving in the right direction”. Two years of shrinking incomes due to wage freezes/cuts and wage increases of less than inflation, have taken the country nearer to that corporate dream of a low wage sweatshop economy. It is all falling into place, low wages, part-time workers desperate to hold onto their carp job, temporary contracts that can be cancelled at a moments notice and a massive erosion of workers rights and entitlements. A few more years of this and our corporate masters will be able to compete with any sweatshop in the East. Their other success story is of course the cuts in social spending. To the corporate greed merchants, social spending is tax money, if we can get rid of all that mamby-pamby social spending nonsense, it would mean a reduction in taxes and therefore, an increase in their profits. In their philosophy of greed and exploitation, if people want services of any kind, social or otherwise, they can purchase them from the corporate world. Of course if you can't afford that, well, tough, that's not their problem.

     Yes Mr Cameron, you can hold your head up high among your millionaire corporate cronies, you have been successful in taking the people of this country well down the path of transformation from workers to serfs. However, if I were you, I would not get too confident and complacent, I do expect the people of this country will start to stand up and do to you, what you have done to them, and kick the shit out of you, and those millionaire corporate cronies. We will not quietly crawl into serfdom, we have been there before. 

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SOCIAL SERVICES AT No.10.

          Prime Minister David Cameron left his eight-year-old daughter in a pub following a Sunday lunch, after a mix-up with his wife Samantha. The couple's daughter Nancy wandered off to the toilets while they were arranging lifts and they only realised she was not with them when they got home, The Sun said. The media goes on to put a nice friendly spin on the matter, however our ”family orientated” millionaire prime Minister would no doubt be filled with indignation if he read about such an event happening in a housing scheme, the media would have a field day abusing the parents and calling for the social services to move in and care for the child. I hope the social services will make a call at the millionaire parents home to see where else the poor child may be being neglected. Whether the pub staff looked after her well or not is not the question, to go home from anywhere leaving your child behind is neglect of the highest order, where was their "duty of care". It shows their priorities.

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CAPITALISM IN CRISIS.

       

        Deleveraging, structural adjustments, severely adverse developments, how these words translate for you and I is, harsher conditions, slashing social spending, rising long term unemployment, as the billionaires, hedge funds and bond markets try to get out of the shit they dropped themselves in by their rampant greed. For those interested in information that hasn't been neutered via the mainstream media, you could do no better than visit, Capitalism in Crisis. The following is just a short extract.

      

       After four years---the financial crisis and the ensuing policy responses continue to cast long shadows. Economies and financial systems are still vulnerable to even modest shocks, and the likelihood of severely adverse developments has not decreased.

        In the advanced economies at the centre of the crisis, overall deleveraging and structural adjustment is still incomplete.

Http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

  - - - "We estimated in 2009 that the world had about $30 trillion in ghost assets. Almost half went up in smoke in six months between September 2008 and March 2009. For our team. It's now the other half's turn, the 15 trillion USD of ghost assets remaining, purely and simply vanishing between July 2011 and January 2012. “The insolvency of the global financial system, and of the Western financial system in the first place, returns again to the front of the stage after just over a year of political cosmetics aimed at burying this fundamental problem under truckloads of cash.”

       Do we need a system that throws the majority of the population into deprivation, and robs them of the future and all hope, so that the billionaires can try to recover their losses from their addiction to the gambling casino?

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       THE IMF, PREDATOR!!

        Recently the Cameron/ Clegg cabal of millionaires were waiting for the IMF to pass judgement on the Osborne hatchet job being perpetrated on the British public. Of course there were loud cheers from the millionaire public school thugs when the IMF gave its vote of approval. Only an idiot would have expected any other verdict. If we consider what the IMF is, we get the general picture. It was created back in 1944 when the it became obvious who the winners were going to be in the final stages of WW2. The new masters of the world came together to form an organisation that would create a world financial system that would guarantee the world's wealth and resources would flow rapidly and only towards them, they wanted total control, the birth of the IMF. According to an examination by ActionAid, of the Malawi famine of 2002/3 its conclusions were that the IMF policies, “bears responsibility for the disaster.” IMF restructuring has devastated countries across Africa and South America. It is an organisation that works towards complete privatisation and low wages. After the 2008 collapse, the IMF congratulated Hungary for continuing to pursue its deficit reduction arrangements by slashing public services. The Hungarian people however had other ideas and got rid of that government, electing a government that promised to make the banks pay for their errors and greed. It introduced a levy on the banks and the IMF blasted the Hungarian government and its people with all the threats it could muster stating that the banks would flee the country and in an act of intimidation, it shut down its entire Hungarian program. Hungary didn't collapse, its people benefited.

 

         IMF policies have nothing to offer the people of any country, its only purpose is to keep syphoning the wealth up to the elite, to create an ever more powerful corporate world that controls all the planet's resources. Its policies have created famine, deprivation, abject poverty and death to thousands, if not millions across the globe. So why should it do anything else except applaud millionaire Osborne and his millionaire public school thugs when they devastate the public services, destroy the social fabric of our society, slash wages and pensions, and privatise everything in sight. All to make sure that “our” deficit is cleared, which in other terms means that we make sure that the bankers and the bond markets don't lose any of their unearned money that they greedily gambled and lost. It is two different worlds, it is their world of every lower wages and no social services controlled by a bunch of parasites, or it is our world of a decent society with all the social services necessary to keep it a decent society, a society based on needs, mutual aid and sustainability.

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POVERT OR DIGNITY?

       

      At the stroke of midnight 29 September Spain kicked off its general strike. As the day unfolds we will see where the will of the people lies. Will the people of Europe stop work with the Spanish and have fun with their families or will they take to the streets in protest. Hopefully it will be a mixture of both with a complete stop to all non-essential work across the whole of Europe. Why should the people of Europe allow their living standards to be hacked to pieces at the behest of the millionaires gambling club called the bond markets? Whose debt is it? Who screwed up their own honey pot? Who stands to gain with these cuts?

Who stands to suffer? Just some of the questions that will never be answered by the mouthpieces of the bond markets, ie; the politicians.

        We should however never lose sight of the real purpose behind all these cuts, not only will it safe guard the wealth of the millionaires club but will also transfer all public assets to the private sector, giving them even more of our wealth with which to gamble. This era is crucial, it is the final move by the corporate world to seize what remains of public assets, turning our world into a corporate empire where the people own nothing. No public spaces, no social services, everything bought from the corporate institutions. You can have what you want, but at a price that feeds the pampered parasites in charge of that corporate empire. There will of course be charities who will try to copy with the worst of the poverty and deprivation, co-operation and mutual aid will be seen as signs of insanity.

       They are about to attempt to change the world in their favour forever, it is up to us to change this world in our favour forever. Only by breaking out of the system of profit before everything and changing to wellfare of the people first and foremost based on mutual aid and sustainability can we hope to achieve that aim.

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