DISABILITY BENEFITS TRANSFERED TO SHAREHOLDERS ACCOUNTS.

      At last the figures for how much ATOS will make from forcing disabled people of benefit has been revealed. This company is taking millions of tax payers money and handing it to its shareholders when in fact it could pay for disabled benefits.

This from "A World to Win"

And so it transpires that if ATOS can push 15% more people than their target through the humiliating and meaningless tests, their profits will soar to £40m on a £207m contract. Even if they fall 15% below target they will still make £28m.
The total value of ATOS UK-wide contracts is £400m. That suggests that they will make a profit of between £55m and £82m on the whole contract.
The ATOS profit of £82m alone would pay disability living allowance for more than 20,000 people a year. If you take the value of the whole contract, it could pay for 22,000 people for five years.

Read the full article HERE:

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A WORLD WIDE EPIDEMIC.

    Police in Milwaukee arrest and beat up a 22 year old man and the world now has a horrific video of a young man dying in the back of a police car. In Tunisia police rape a young woman and when she files a complaint, she is charged with indecency. 28-year-old Raul Rosas was tasered, hogtied and finally drowned with a garden hose in front of his minor children and numerous witnesses. Police use baton charges and rubber bullets against demonstrators in Madrid. From Australia, A 'WIDE culture of police violence' needs to be investigated by the new head of the Crime and Misconduct Commission 'as his major priority'. Then there is, Incredible Police's brutality in France. Police violence in Greece is not limited to "isolated incidents" and officers violating human rights can expect "persistent impunity", the world's leading human rights organisation has said.

      Pick your country and you come up with police brutality, and it is invariably carried out with impunity and against the ordinary people of the country concerned. The police's first duty is to defend those in power, so any organised resistance to that power, will be dealt with in a brutal fashion, and to maintain that element of "toughness", the brutality will be used against individuals to intimidate and subdue resistance and create an element of fear in those who might wish to object to what the state is up to. The illusion that the police are there to protect the general public is perpetuated  by an avalanche of corporate propaganda through movies, TV "cops and robbers" shows, and newspaper articles portraying the police as clean-cut heroes. However there is an endless catalogue of death at the hands of the police and police brutality, which belies this propaganda exercise, and which will always go unchecked as the state needs its bully boys. So, until we get rid of the state, police brutality will be with us.

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FROM ATHENS TO NEW YORK?

         Capitalism lurches from crisis to crisis, capitalism is crisis. During each of these troughs or financial convulsions, the people suffer more than usual, another feature of these inborn faults in the system is the rise of fascism. As the conditions of the people deteriorate fascism raises its ugly head from some dark corner of the sewers of the system. Capitalism's latest convulsions are world wide and so the stink of fascism is spreading across the globe. It will appear in many guises, not just the jackboots on the streets, though they will call on them when they feel the need. They can come disguised as a helping hand of the poor, to gain a foothold in the community. Greece's fascist group "Golden Dawn" works in that fashion and is rampant and openly violent on the streets in that country, and is more or less given a free hand by the authorities to attack and attempt to destroy any organised resistance to the system. Now New York is to be contaminated by the same group as the have set up camp in that city.

 This from Void Mirror:

Golden Dawn, G.D. (in Greek, Chrysi Avgi), the neo-Nazi, ultra-nationalistic party, which was recently elected to the Greek Parliament under the pretext of concern over unemployment, austerity and the economy, and while engaging in virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric and anti-democratic, nationalistic activities, has now established a chapter in New York City. Several groups and organizations have already publicly expressed their outrage and have called for immediate action.

Read the full article HERE:

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INSULT YOUR POSTMAN, BUT NOT A POLICEMAN!!!

        If you insult a bank manager, a shop assistant, a lawyer, or a bus driver, you wouldn't expect to disappear, why should it be different if  you insult a police officer??
This appeal from IUF:

To those who already sent messages in response to our first appeal we offer a huge “thank you!”. Over 4,000 message in the first few hours cannot have gone unnoticed by Algerian authorities. With your support we were able to locate Yacine.

Yacine is being held in custody. On Monday October 8 after all that he has endured he will face the charge of "insulting a police officer".

We are asking you to respond again, this time to the Algerian President to call for his release from custody and proper medical attention.

Please send a message to the Algerian President and Justice Minister immediately to secure the safe release of Yacine Zaïd.
Thank you in advance.
Ron Oswald,
General Secretary, IUF

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THERE'S MARX, AND THEN THERE'S MARX!!

      Today, 2nd. October is the anniversary of the birth of someone who could probably be called the greatest Marxist of them all. Though now dead, I think one of his sayings could be equally applied to most of us living in today's capitalist system. The quote:
"I've worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty."
I am of course talking about Groucho Marx.
Well if you don't laugh!!!

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THE MIGHTY BUS-PASS OF DESTRUCTION!!!

     The other day while mucking about the house, I was half heartedly listening to some crap pouring out of the mouth of a politician, and I thought, Ah, another Tory having a go at he poor and the pensioners. According to this member of the crooks and liars club, it seems that the root of our financial troubles are free bus-passes and winter fuel allowances. Shock, horror, it wasn't a Tory, it was the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Johann Lamont. This particular member of the crooks and liars club believes that it is free bus-passes, free prescriptions and the freeze on council tax that has brought about all these austerity cuts. To her these universal benefits are responsible for the loss of 30,000 public sector jobs. So the gambling banksters are off the hook, it's those bloody pensioners that are responsible for our “double-dip recession”. I have tried hard to work out how my humble and much appreciated bus-pass has brought Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland to their knees, and I can't quite get it. All my analysis keeps taking me back to something the financial Mafia were up to, but who am I to understand the complexities of the gambling antics of the financial Mafia.

     So there you have it, come the next election you could vote Tory and have benefit cuts and an end to universal benefits, or you could vote Labour, and instead, just have benefit cuts and an end to universal benefits. There is however, a universal agreement between the main political parties, that all our problems will be solved if we strip the public naked and send all the tax money to the parasites that run the financial Mafia. The astute analysis of our political masters is that all the wealth we create in this country, can only support our corrupt financial institutions and there isn't enough left to be squandered on the social fabric of society.

      As winter approaches and the temperature starts to tumble, all those suffering fuel poverty, (aproximately a third of the population of Scotland) just feel good inside in the knowledge that you are saving the banksters from facing their gambling losses, what nobler cause could you serve.

      Of course we could re-organise our society so that it sees to the needs of all our people, and all that wealth that “WE” create, could go towards a fair and just society. All we have to do is ignore all politicians and get rid of the profit greedy parasites that are sitting on our backs.

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OUR "OCTOBER SONG".

       So September has gone, and October offers us the future, what will we do with it? Will our dreams fall like autumn leaves and our hearts cry for better spring? Perhaps, just perhaps, this will be our October song?

They who never ruled before
poured from their factory districts
across the bridges of Petrograd
to make October.
The moon was so startled
all global tides
shifted.
The lights went on all over Europe.
Nothing
can ever be the same again.

                                    — Dan Georgakis,
                                      "October Song"

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BLASPHEME AND WAIT FOR "HIS" ANSWER, NOT HIS MINIONS.

        Like the man said, the blasphemy laws just go to prove that their god is indeed a weak god and can be sorely damaged and offended by a mere mortal uttering words. He seems to be unable to defend himself and needs the help of a few mere mortals to do his work for him.

This from Left Hemispheres:

       On this International Blasphemy Day I hope you all will go forth and rise above being offensive for no reason. The goal is to reinforce the message that freedom of speech is a human right. Call it an extension of “free will” (if there is such a thing). We will not be bullied into silence. We cannot be subjugated with imaginary hell fire. Remember the difference between mocking the idea and mocking the person who holds the idea. And try to remind the believers that if their god were real he could probably take a fucking joke.

Read the full article HERE:

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - RICARDO FLORES MAGON.

       As September closes, a bit late to mention, but one not to be overlooked, Ricardo Flores Magon, he was born the 16th. September 1874. After a life of revolutionary struggle and years in prison, he was arrested in America in 1918 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for "obstructing the war effort" and died in Leavenworth Prison on the 21st. November 1922. 

"FAREWELL!"

WE cannot break our chains with weak desire,

with whines and supplicating cries.

'T'is not by crawling meekly in the mire

The free-winged eagle learns to mount the skies.

The gladiator, victor in the fight,

On whom the hard-contested laurels fall,

Goes not in the arena pale with fright

But steps forth fearlessly, defying all.

O victory, O victory, dear and fair,

Thou crownest him who does his best,

Who perishing, still unafraid to bear,

Goes down to dust, thy image in his breast.

Farewell, O comrades, I scorn life as a slave!

I begged no tyrant for my life, though sweet it was;

Though chained, I go unconquered to my grave,

Dying for my own birth-right --- and the world's.

Ricardo Flores Magon.

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ANARCHIST CINEMA.

      For those interested in cinema and the influence of anarchists and anarchism, on cinema, there is a well written article by Denmark Vesey on the DISSIDENT VOICE site, called "On the Need for an Explicitly 'Anarchist' Cinema"

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WORKERS, KNOW YOUR HISTORY, MARIUS JACOB.

         Today, 29 September, we celebrate the life and birthday of ALEXANDRE MARIUS JACOB (1879-1954) he was a French illegalist anarchist whose avowed mission was to steal back from the major thieves: commerce, the aristocracy, the state. Although a lucid and articulate thinker and polemicist, he soon learned to avoid political milieux and cut to the chase, working with common criminals. He was by all accounts a phenomenal burglar — he was a model for the “gentleman-cambrioleur” Arsène Lupin. He had, for example, the panache to leave at the scenes of his crimes a calling card in the name of “Attila.” He devised the trick, often enacted in movies, of breaking into an apartment from the floor above by poking an umbrella through the ceiling and using it to catch the plaster. At one point he bought a hardware store, where he could dismantle safes at his leisure. But he was also famously Robin Hoodesque, redistributing the bulk of his takes to the poor. When he discovered that an intended victim was choked by debts, he left her 10,000 gold francs, and when he found that another one was a writer, he put everything back and left money for damages. Caught and sent to forced labor in French Guyana in 1903, he attempted escape seventeen times, and authorities complained about having to bring in new guards at frequent intervals, since he regularly converted his jailers to his principles. He spent his last few decades as a market peddler in rural France. He died 9 August 1954.

More on wikipedia:

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"I AM ONE OF MANY".

     One of my favourite quotations, it is from the poem "From the Paris Commune to the Kronstadt Rebellion" by Ken Roxroth.

They shall rise up heroes, there will be many,
None will prevail against them at last.
They go saying each: “I am one of many”;
Their hands empty save for history.
They die at bridges, bridge gates, and drawbridges.
Remember now there were others before;
The sepulchres are full at ford and bridgehead.
There will be children with flowers there,
And lambs and golden-eyed lions there,
And people remembering in the future.

     Today as poverty and repression sink their teeth into our daily lives, as turmoil and anger ravages our hopes, we should always be aware, "I am one of many" and recalling our history remember, "there were others before", but never forget, "none will prevail against them at last".

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THE IMF IMPLEMENTING CORPORATE FASCISM.

     This is democracy under the auspices of the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers). Spain has the highest unemployment in Europe and the instructions from the financial Mafia is, just as it is in Greece, Italy, UK, and other countries across Europe, more cuts, more unemployment, more misery for the people. The public purse has to be emptied into the coffers of the parasites that make up that financial Mafia, As long as they feel they can control the people on the streets, the cuts will go on and on. It is not a temporary adjustment, it is a shifting of all wealth into the hands of the few. Their move is towards a full corporate fascism, everything owned by the corporate world, no public assets, no public space, everything controlled by the boardroom, and the sad thing is, that they are almost there. This is an attempt to change the world, to put full power in the hands of the financial barons as they rape and plunder the planet to gratify their own greed and arrogance. Our living conditions are of no concern to them, a collapse of the social fabric of a society allows them a free hand to manipulate and control the worlds assets, while we scramble for a meager existence. 
Photos from VOID MIRROR:

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HOW THE QUEBEC STUDENT MOVEMENT WON.

        The student protests in Quebec reached a successful conclusion. They did not win by marching from A to B and then going home. They got organised to fight back and meet state violence with self defence force. They were determined not to be driven off the streets, not to be intimidated, they fought back. The state will always fall back on violence to gain control, control through intimidation is always in their armoury. It is a hard lesson to learn but to negotiate with the state you have to negotiate from a position of strength, it is the only thing that will make them concede.

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WHO CONTROLS GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD?

        The field of genetically-modified food needs to be under the control of the people who will end up eating it, not the corporations who stand to gain millions of pounds from forcing it onto our tables. It is an uncharted area and those who stand to get rich by it should not be in the decision making of its suitability for human consumption.

This from SumOfUs:  

        A recent French study of Monsanto genetically-modified corn has turned up shocking and disturbing images of rats weighed down with disgusting tumors the size of golf balls. The two-year study found that rats fed Monsanto’s NK603 corn developed more tumors and severe diseases than a control group fed natural corn.

        France has twice banned the corn from its country, but twice has seen that ban overturned by the European Food Safety Authority, most recently in May. According to the EFSA, it is because "there is no specific scientific evidence, in terms of risk to human and animal health or the environment" to support a ban. But the results of this new study are too big to ignore, and with our help the EU might finally listen. Russia has already banned the product, and the European Union should be next in line to protect consumers.

Tell EU GMO Head Elisabeth Waigmann to support a ban of GMO NK603 corn.

         Monsanto and other GMO companies have an enormous amount of lobbying power, but through direct citizen-consumer action, we can get our own voices heard, and have an enormous impact. Speaking up with the combined power of our voices, members of SumOfUs.org are able to counterbalance some of the biggest corporations in the world. Together, we are building a healthier, safer world.

Thank you,

-Paul, Claiborne and the rest of us

***********************

Further information:

Food and Chemical Toxicology: Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize, 19 September, 2012

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THE WORLD IS PROTESTING AGAINST THE STATE.

        Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France are in the news with unrest, people taking to the streets, mass protests, but  one country that doesn't get much coverage by that babbling brook of bullshit, the media, is Belarus. In that country the president, Lukashenko, has been in power since 1994 and at recent elections, of the 109 winning candidates all were from pro Lukashenk parties, it is not unusual for ballot papers to have just one name. His human rights record is so atrocious that he was banned from appearing at the London 2012 Olympics. Every action has to be sanctioned by the state, even distributing leaflets can have you in prison as it can be deemed "illegal mass media production". A simple act like attending a punk concert can see you arrested. Repression is brutal but still the people take to the streets in their fight for a better life.

       Is there a country on the planet where the people are happy with the state? People across the world are fighting for change, a better life, a better way of organising their lives, an end to the state and capitalism. It is a global struggle and we are winning.

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AND THEY EXPECT YOU TO VOTE FOR IT.

     They call it democracy, they expect you to run out and vote for the people responsible for this system, and sadly so many still do. 

A letter from Domokos Prison Greece, posted on Act For Freedom Now:

Diary of operation “Angela Davis” 18/8/2012

I come out of Keramikos station (athens). I look for an internet café, which is find closed. My detox from my avatar will last just a little longer. I make my way towards Thissio.

Two motorbikes stop in front of me. A herd of people fall on me and immobilize me. I don’t know what is going on. I scream. They cuff me and put a black hood over my head. They do not identify themselves to me. they put me in a car, a Toyota yaris or something.

It does not matter. They tell me “You messed up our summer you wanker! We have to deal with you now?”. So, I think. This is the punch line of the antiterrorist force. “Hey, we got him” notifies the driver on his mobile. “You sure its him?” wonders the one who is holding me in the back.

“What is your name?” they ask me. I tell them, they are relieved. I have heard stories with a beginning like this about a dozen times. I couldn’t imagine such a continue. Not even in my narrations. I am in an underground garage. At the entrance.

Read the full letter HERE:

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PEOPLE RE-ACT TO STATE VIOLENCE.

         According to the latest reports from the general strike in Greece, over 100,000 took to the streets in Athens and hundreds have been arrested and a considerable number injured, there are reports of water cannon moving into Exarcheia Square. No doubt that babbling brook of bullshit, the media, will spout about the violence of the people on the streets. There will be no mention of the violence of the state in implementing draconian cuts to the standard of living of the people, which is in reality a brutal assault on ordinary people. An assault that is causing ill health, malnutrition, metal health problems and suicides to mention a few of the direct results of the state's brutal assault on innocent people. What is happening on the streets is an attempt at self defence by the people, it is obvious the ballot box didn't work. What is being forced onto the people was never in any election manifesto. That being the case then it is also obvious that democracy doesn't exist. Never the less the people are expected to be subservient, humble, quiet and take what is thrown at them on the instructions of the financial Mafia.

       
          We should also remember that similar scenes have been taking place in Spain and Portugal this week, is this because these people are just violent people, or are they people that have been assaulted, too often, for too long, too severally and they feel it is now time to hit back and defend themselves. We should never forget that the violence always starts with the state, not the people, we only respond to how we are treated.

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GENERAL STRIKE, GREECE.

     September 26, a general strike in Greece, you can follow it live at Occupied London: HERE:

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MOMENTS OF EXCESS.

 

Another radio chat from The CircledA, enjoy MOMENTS OF EXCESS:

         This show is presented by Chickpea of Dissident Island Radio, features portions of an interview with Brian and Keir, two members of the Leeds-based collective writing and discussion group. Free Association about the project, its process and the complexities associated with anti-capitalist protest. The interview is peppered with samples from a copyleft of their recently published book 'Moments of Excess'. Accessible and enlightening in its deconstruction of capitalism, the Free Association's book and the group's continuing engagement in contemporary radical, anti-capitalist politics and political organising is particularly relevant not only to anarchists and anti-capitalists of all flavours but to all dissenters of 'capitalism as usual' in its ability to question and inspire, in entertaining ways, thought in the process, purpose and direction behind the contemporary political protest movements in the UK and beyond.

From The CircledA:

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THE FORGOTTEN PALESTINIANS.

     An interesting and informative talk on the Israeli state's treatment of Palestinians, given by Ilan Pappe Israeli historian.

This from Green Left TV:

       September 16, 2012 -- Green Left TV -- Celebrated Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, whose landmark publication The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine documented the removal of 700,000 Palestinians from their lands in 1948, has written a new book, The Forgotten Palestinians.

      In the book and at his September 16, 2012, community meeting at Sydney University above, Pappe reveals the situation for Palestinians who still live within Israel's borders.

      The meeting was the first event of Pappe's 2012 Australian lecture tour. It was hosted by the Sydney Peace Foundation with the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine and Leichhardt Friends of Hebron. Pappe was in Australia to deliver the annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture at the University of Adelaide.

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