JUNE 30 - J30, - TOMORROW'S WORLD??

I have the hope that the day will dawn

when the Idea will conquer brutal force;

that after the struggle and the lingering travail,

another voice, more sonorous, happier than mine

shall know then how to sing the triumphant hymn.

 Jose Rizal, “Mi Retiro” (22 October 1895)

 

      The long suffering public sector workers are at last coming together in defence of their conditions. Having to face a full frontal assault on their jobs, pensions and living standards by the millionaire public school thugs, they have joined hands and called a strike for June 30. We have to realise that this is not their fight alone, all our living standards are under attack. Our social services are to be decimated to save money, to hand to the bond markets and the banks. Our public assets are to be sold off, to give the money to the bond markets and the banks. Ask yourself, how does this help the ordinary people of this country? Lower wages, work longer, less jobs, a privatised health service, an education system deprived of resources and no public facilities, everything corporate owned, is this a society that will benefit you and I? This is where we are going, unless we organise and unite to stop this advance of corporate fascism.

      On June 30, we must all show our solidarity with the strikers. Those not on strike should have a wee sickie, none of us should go anywhere near a business, buy nothing on that day, pay no bills. Let's make it a day of no commerce what so ever, hit them where it hurts, in their money. If you are not on the streets supporting the strikers then get on your bike, paint the shed, take the kids for a walk, read a book, visit your granny, you could even try and write your memoirs, but don't spend money in any shape or form. You can survive a day without spending a penny, literally, not figuratively.

       This should only be the first phase of a struggle to take society out of the control of the millionaire bankers and bond markets. The first step in turning society in a different direction, to change society away from the corporate towards a needs based society, built on justice and mutual aid. Strikes by themselves will achieve little, we have to have the desire to change the basic structure of a society that has failed the people time and time again. The present structure of society is based on greed and profit and only benefits the millionaire corporate class, asking them, “please sir can I have some more” is not the answer. If we want a decent world for our kids and grand kids, we, the ordinary people have to build it now. If not, our kids will be faced with another June 30 in an attempt to protect their meagre living standards and this June 30 will have been a waste of time.

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THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT???

      With all the nuclear plants around the world and what is happening at the moment in Fukushima, Japan, I can't help but feel that as far as this planet is concerned,--The future is bright.

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TOMORROW'S WORLD -- THEIR'S OR OUR'S??

      We live in an ever changing world and though it is filled with hope and dreams, it  can also be a very depressing place at times. It is through this fog of depression that we have to continually plan and build a better world for our children and our grandchildren, we can't leave them the nightmare that we have put on the horizon.

      The following is a short extract from "We Have to Dismantle This" by Derrick Jenson.

       The unprecedented reality of the present is one of enormous sorrow and cynicism, “a great tear in the human heart”, as Richard Rodriguez put it. A time of ever-mounting everyday horrors, of which any newspaper is full, accompanies a spreading environmental apocalypse. Alienation and the more literal contaminants compete for the leading role in the deadly dialectic of life in divided, technology-ridden society. Cancer, unknown before civilization, now seems epidemic in a society increasingly barren and literally malignant.

       Soon, apparently, everyone will be using drugs; prescription and illegal becoming a relatively unimportant distinction. Attention Deficit Disorder is one example of an oppressive effort to medicalize the rampant restlessness and anxiety caused by a lifeworld ever more shrivelled and unfulfilling. The ruling order will evidently go to any lengths to deny social reality; its techno-psychiatry views human suffering as chiefly biological in nature and genetic in origin.

        New strains of disease, impervious to industrial medicine, begin to spread globally while fundamentalism (Christian, Judaic, Islamic) is also on the rise, a sign of deeply-felt misery and frustration. And here at home New Age spirituality (Adorno’s “philosophy for dunces”) and the countless varieties of “healing” therapies wear thin in their delusional pointlessness. To assert that we can be whole/enlightened/healed within the present madness amounts to endorsing the madness.

        The gap between rich and poor is widening markedly in this land of the homeless and the imprisoned. Anger rises and massive denial, cornerstone of the system’s survival, is now at least having a troubled sleep. A false world is beginning to get the amount of support it deserves: distrust of public institutions is almost total. But the social landscape seems frozen and the pain of youth is perhaps the greatest of all. It was recently announced (10/94) that the suicide rate among young men ages 15 to 19 more than doubled between 1985 and 1991. Teen suicide is the response of a growing number who evidently cannot imagine maturity in such a place as this.    

 

TOMORROW’S WORLD!!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile

as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,

Chasing profit as it goes

firing millions of ordinary folk.

Raping and polluting land after land,

starting bloody wars.

Toxic waste, sweat shop wages

and oil covered sea shores.

Where have all the flowers gone

beneath this ozone free sky?

To join the birds, to join the fox

on yonder plutonium field to die.

Mercury fish, strontium lamb

trees that never show a leaf,

radio active beaches, toxic streams

good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.

In a world of epidemic, plague and famine

it’s bottled water and chemical food.

Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice

so you know its got to be good.

Beneath a sky that’s always black,

hurricane winds and endless drought,

its oxygen masks for the toxic air,

corporate profit’s what its all about.

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THOUGHT FOR TODAY.

     

      There are many ways of saying that to get the best from humanity we must treat each other with affection, tenderness, love and respect. These principles are at the root of anarchism and are encapsulated in the terms mutual aid, free association and voluntary co-operation. However to get people to listen to or read long winded statements on political theory can be a daunting task. It would be nice if we could find a phrase or paragraph that said it beautifully, simply and sincerely that perhaps could lead to that change of consciousness and opened people's eyes to the possibilities within anarchism. The following, though far from perfect, does come close and is worth reading over a few times. 

       Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance--which his growth requires--who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly."     Walden-H.D.Thoreau

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