Showing posts with label why vote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label why vote. Show all posts

Tuesday 12 September 2023

Disobey.

       

                                        Image courtesy of Electoral Reform Society.

          At the moment, there's a lot of talk about elections in the UK and each of the crooks and liars parties are spouting their illusions to try and tempt you to run to the ballot box and put down your little X. Of course what you will get from whoever wins will be difficult to tell the difference from what we have already suffered at hands of our political ballerinas. A general election is a bit like tossing a two-headed coin and expecting a different result each time. The Tories are known as the party that attacks the working class, Labour are supposed to be their saviour. However it looks like we can expect Labour to be the party that cuts state pensions. Deputy Labour leader has stated that if they win the next election, they can't guarantee to keep the triple-lock on pensions and benefits. That's a sure vote winner among the Tories, to hell with the principles on which the Labour Party was founded, votes and power is what it is all about. That is power to keep the capitalist system rolling along making big bucks for the corporate world and their minders who worship in that edifice to pomp, power and privilege, the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption. When will we ever learn? 


Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Sunday 8 August 2021

Vote???


          For centuries now we have had capitalist representative democracy as the model for the world, what we should note is that this is a very clever pseudonym to give it appeal, it is not representative, nor democracy, but it is capitalism. What it has produced is a world with vast swaths of the planet living in poverty and deprivation, endless wars, a ruling cabal of ruthless billionaires and a planet that is heading for ecological disaster. This only exists because of our submissive attitude to the ballot box, the vote is the establishments hand out of paracetamol to the public, it makes them feel better but does nothing to cure their ills. Isn't time to change the way we structure our lives? Isn't it time we brought an end to this human disaster. Let's fashion our world on the bases of equality, justice, sustainability and humanity, free from the capitalist profit motive.

The following from Enough is Enough:

       Text from the German territory, where elections will take place in September: Who ever you vote for, we will be ungovernable! Going to the polls always means choosing the lesser of two evils. We don’t want to choose evils! 

#UNGOVERNABLE.

Originally published by Indymedia DE.

         Going to the polls always means choosing the lesser of two evils. We don’t want to choose evils!
         For centuries or even millennia, we have stood up for the equality of all living things, for the freedom not to harm ourselves and others, for fraternity worldwide!
         Freedom cannot be chosen, freedom has always been the freedom of those who take it. No matter which government plays its power games, we do not let ourselves be governed!
        We don’t let ourselves be banned from saving people on the high seas any more than we let ourselves be banned from creating places where people can get access and care, regardless of their purchasing power.
         We fight for a good climate of tomorrow, so that all those who come after us have a chance to live on a planet that we are willing to protect.
        We do not ask about origin, who you are is important, where you were born is not. The nation is against us, the nationality is only a game of the rulers to divide and disempower us.
        We empower ourselves, against any authority!
        We are paramedics, authors, lawyers, musicians, workers, anarchists, educators, artists, freelancers and many more!
        The ruling conditions are against you. If you are not useful to them, you will also be sorted out hard.
        We do not vote for the tyrants and their systems, for capitalism and its destructive power, for the authoritarian state and its oppression. We vote all this out and fight for a world society without domination of people over people!
         For a world in which it is worth to live. For a future full of meaning and valuable experiences.
        No government can ever bring us freedom, we can never be absorbed in their prefabricated identity structures. Only under.
        Who ever you Vote for, we will be #ungovernable! No matter who we vote for, we will remain ungovernable!
        Join the campaign and post your actions, events and practices from the world of tomorrow under the hashtag #ungovernable


 

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

Sunday 9 August 2020

Why Vote.

          Anarchists have always made it clear that to vote in this society is to perpetuate the injustices, inequalities and exploitation of capitalist economic system. You may modify slightly a piece of legislation here and a working condition there, but the same basic structure of exploitation, inequality and injustice will remain firmly in place. Voting in a capitalist state system guarantees the status-quo.
https://spiritofrevolt.info

          Spirit of Revolt  has a wealth of pamphlets, booklets and leaflets, etc.  explaining this basic principle of anarchism. One of our previous "Read of the Month" posts, helps explain this position, a pamphlet by Glasgow anarchists Bobby Lynn, Vote: What For.
         Again explaining in more detail our position of not voting, the following is an extract from Anarchist News

   --------As anarchists we simply think that our policy should be the destruction of the State rather than looking to work with it. We believe this stance is essential if we are to be able to promote anarchism, and if we are going to mark a divide between others and ourselves, and place ourselves firmly outside the activity and the political games of all the other parties. We believe this is essential so as not to be seen as another bunch of leftists after votes, and to avoid being tainted by the inevitable failure of any government to meet our needs. We believe in revolution and have a revolutionary ideology and we want to win people over to anarchism. If people started associating Anarchism with the political parties, then it would be difficult for people to understand what  Anarchism actually is.
        By arguing for our anti-electoral position we can get our ideas across about the nature of the current system, how elected politicians are controlled and shaped by the state, and how the state acts to protect capitalism. In addition, it allows us to present our ideas of direct action and encourage those disillusioned with political parties and the current system to become anarchists by presenting a viable alternative to the sham of party politics. For, after all, a sizeable percentage of not just non-voters but voters too are disillusioned with the current set-up. Many who do not vote do so for essentially political reasons, such as being fed up with the political system, failing to see any major differences between the parties, or recognition that the candidates do not represent their interests. Many who do vote do so simply against the other candidate, seeing them as the least-worst option. This is an opportunity when people are talking a little more about politics to challenge the notion that important decisions can only be made by a few, and put across our anarchist ideas.
        We started with a quote from Vernon Richards, and we will finish with one:
“If the anarchist movement has a role to play in practical politics it is surely that of suggesting to, and persuading, as many people as possible that their freedom from the Hitlers, Francos and the rest, depends not on the right to vote or securing a majority of votes ‘for the candidate of one’s choice,’ but on
evolving new forms of political and social organisation which aim at the direct participation of the people, with the consequent weakening of the power, as well of the social role, of government in the life of the community.”
[“Anarchists and Voting”, pp. 176-87, The Raven, no. 14, pp. 177-8]

       So… Don’t vote, or spoil your vote if you want, and let’s start making a real difference.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Monday 8 July 2019

Why Vote, It Only Encourages Them.

      When it comes to what I call the "Crooks and Liars Competition", electing your new master, anarchists usually abstain, some might make their way to the ballot box and destroy the ballot paper. However you have to hand it to our Greek comrades, they do things a little bit different in that neck of the capitalist swamp. I like the way the article refers to the "perpetrators" as "self-styled anarchists"!!  Does that mean that their anarchism was not imposed on them?

Protecting your freedom to select a new master.

     A group of ten self-styled anarchists stormed a polling station in Exarcheia, the infamous neighborhood of Athens, stole a ballot box and set it on fire a few minutes before the voting ended for the general elections.
       The perpetrators used a sledgehammer to threaten electoral clerks before grabbing the ballot box and making off with it. According to Greek electoral law, the voting at the polling station will be repeated next Sunday.
 
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Wednesday 6 November 2013

Why Vote??


      I posted this some time ago, but saw it again on arrezafe, and decided it was worth another outing.




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

Thursday 24 October 2013

Why Vote?


     It is nice when that shit producing box call a TV pours out something resembling the truth, and nice to see pompous, arrogant Paxman eventually silenced.


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

Friday 20 July 2012

VOTE FOR NOBODY.


     We have always know that this type of society gives a myriad of choices, almost limitless, but all about how to make micro adjustments to the system, the choice that is denied everybody is the choice to change to an alternative system.
This extract is from an article on Void Mirror that details this in more detail:



Policy-makers nit-pick over the finer details but preserve the core, and in the wider population, in opinion polls, national elections and everyday conversation, ‘everyone is asked their opinion about every detail in order to prevent them having one about the totality.’ And so we’re left with a set of choices; pointless policy debates over taxation, budgets, bail-outs, bonuses, regulation – everything on the agenda is a set piece of fine-tuning and tweaking but never questioning the legitimacy of the whole - the social machine in its entirety.
Continue READING:

ann arky's home.

Friday 27 January 2012

THE HIGH OFFICE OF PRESIDENT!!!


        I for one can never get my head round why such idiots with such bizarre beliefs get massive support when running for the US presedency. The media in the West lampoon Islamic fundamentalists for what they describe as crazy and dangerous views, yet report with some reverence the views of such crackpots like the bunch that is running for the Republican nomination for the US Presidency.
       Take just two, this from WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE. 

Rick Santorum, Republican candidate for President, said this about education in a speech in Florida:
“It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college,” said the former Pennsylvania senator. “The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination. If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure that there wasn’t one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right? . . . If they taught Judeo-Christian principles in those colleges and universities, they would be stripped of every dollar. If they teach radical secular ideology, they get all the government support that they can possibly give them. Because you know 62 percent of children who enter college with a faith conviction leave without it.”
Yeah, the ACLU has such awesome power over government spending on schools.
Santorum’s solution? Stop supporting higher education:
“I’ll bet you there are people in this room who give money to colleges and universities who are undermining the very principles of our country every single day by indoctrinating kids with left-wing ideology. And you continue to give to these colleges and universities. Let me have a suggestion: Stop it.”
Can Republicans get any more stupid?
But giving the ex-Senator a run for his money is
Ralph Shortey, a state senator from Oklahoma, who thinks that food companies are putting aborted fetuses in food, and has introduced a bill in the state legislature to prohibit the use of fetuses or fetal cells in food. Of course nobody is doing this or intends to.___.


           One would imagine that the people of any country who look to someone to represent them would pick somebody they consider holds similar views to themselves and is in some way as reasonable and rational, or even more so, then themselves. So is this what we are seeing in America? Or are these just the rightwing nutcases that the rightwing nutcase media want to push in the hope of stifling any alternative view from surfacing? When you hear the views of this bunch I would imagine that most reasonable Americans will realise the truth of that statement, "Why Vote, it changes nothing".

Saturday 2 April 2011

HEALTH PROBLEMS = PROFIT??

       The pampered cabal of millionaire parasites that are governing us at the moment are pushing through rapid and massive changes to the NHS that will change it beyond all recognition, and not for the benefit of the ordinary people. The speed and scale of these changes is unprecedented and there will be winners and losers. The losers will be the millions of ordinary patients and the winners will be the corporate world of pharmaceutical giants and the corporate providers.
DID YOU VOTE FUR THIS?

      What these changes will do is open up the NHS to private profit, diverting tax payers cash from the NHS into the bank accounts of shareholders, money from the sick, I suppose you could call it, "sick money". Did you vote for this?

     The changes will result in longer waiting times for patients. With no cap on the amount hospitals can earn from private patients, NHS patients will keep sliding further down the queue. Did you vote for this?

     Under these proposals there will be a post code lottery. The care patients can expect will vary from place to place, creating health inequalities and hurting vulnerable people. Did you vote for this?

    Hospitals will have to compete for cash in the corporate world and those that fail as profit providers to that corporate world will die from lack of funding and will eventually have to close. Did you vote for this?
I STARTED TO INVEST IN THE SICK.

     To top it all most of the GP's in the NHS don't want this system to go ahead. They certainly didn't vote for this!!

     We are being governed by a group of pampered parasitical millionaires that have no mandate to carry out any of these changes. The vast majority of the people of this country did not vote for a Conservative government. I'm sure those that vote Liberal Democrat weren't voting for a Conservative government and although Labour looks like a Conservative party, its members did not vote for a conservative government. So who do they represent? Well their own class of course, the millionaires of the corporate world. Of all the changes introduced by this bunch of public school thugs, who stands to lose the most? You and I. Who will sail through this “deficit cutting”, “austerity cuts”, “recession”, “financial crisis”, totally unaware of unemployment, benefit cuts and inflation? Why the Cameron/Clegg club and their millionaire friends. Who stands to gain from these changes? Why the same millionaire's glee club, the corporate world.

What did you vote for??

Thursday 8 April 2010

WHY WASTE YOUR TIME VOTING?


     
      Another election trundling towards us like a dinosaur from the ancient past. All the same old verbal waffle, the same patronising claptrap and theatrical performances. The same old sleaze mongers and corporate poodles trying to tell us, everything will be different this time if we vote them into the pig trough that is the Westminster House of Corruption.
      Surely we have learnt enough to know that voting will change nothing for us the ordinary people. Politics and the party political system is all about big business and how the shareholders minders, the government, can further their aims and protect their wealth and privileges. The very questions they ask are part of the problem, the way they form and frame the problems is restricting the debate to a narrow vein that suits them.
     To break out of this straight jacket imposed by the privileged parasites we have to ignore the party political circus and the election and start to talk to each other at street level and at community level, perhaps there we will begin to formulate our answers round the problems that we ourselves can identify with in our everyday lives. Our lives are dependent on Prime Ministers, shareholders, parasites and sleazy politicians, only if we hand them the power by abdicating control of our own lives. We the ordinary people make, grow and distribute everything in this world, they need us to maintain their privileged position, we don't need them. We can do it all in a fairer and more just manner without the profit motive. Our lives would be so much richer if took control of our communities in federation with all other communities and sent the party political system and its bed companion the corporate world, to the dustbin of history. So to sort our problems, don't vote, talk to your neighbours and workmates about your problems and see what answers you develop. I'm sure it will be much better than the crap that is dropped on you by the present system.