GIVING VENT TO THE DREAMS.

       It was a few years ago, but it did get to the people's imagination and sowed a few seeds, who knows what grows from that and who knows the spark that starts the fire. Let's keep throwing seeds, the more the merrier.

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PROFIT BEFORE LIVES, THAT'S CAPITALISM.

     A little bit more on that pinnacle of capitalist development, that citadel of Mammon, Walmart. It would appear that fire safety would hit their profits, so they decided that it was more profitable to risk the lives of thousand of workers rather than face a small hike in costs.

This from Huffington  Post:

     Last year, Walmart reportedly decided against aiding factory upgrades that could have stopped fires like last month's blaze at a Bangladesh garment factory.

Bangladeshi suppliers of Walmart clothes wanted to upgrade their facilities to make them more fire-proof, and other retailers approved the plan, according to Bloomberg. The plan only fell through after Walmart and the Gap said they would not pay higher prices to make such upgrades feasible.

Read the full story HERE:

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SHOT DEAD FOR SHOPLIFTING.

       Who are these people, where do they come from. They carry a gun, even when off duty, and don't hesitate to draw it and fire it, even although there is no apparent danger to anybody. It can only be somebody that lacks any empathy, a mind set that sees no value in other people's lives. I think that could come under the heading of psychopath, but then I'm no psychologist. It is a value structure that is straight out of Hollywood, society is divided simplistically into two categories, there are "good guys" and there are "bad guys". Of course you are always one of the "good guys" and the "other" is always one of the "bad guys". 

    After all a fleeing shoplifter, especially from a store like Walmart, could be a dreadful threat to the foundations of capitalist society.

This from The Mail online:

A 27-year-old mother of two has been fatally shot by an off-duty sheriff's deputy after he suspected her of shoplifting at a Houston Walmart. Harris County Sheriff's deputies have said that victim Shelly Frey, Tisa Andrews and Yolanda Craig  were stealing when they were confronted by Louis Campbell a 26-year veteran of the force who works as a security guard at the store. According to Campbell the women ran to their car and when he rushed to open the door, they accelerated away - at which point he fired the deadly shot into the car which hit Frey in the neck.

Read the full story HERE:

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

        I'm always a day late, but as they say, "better late than never".  Noam Chomsky, born December 7 1928, He helped to raise the profile of ANARCHY and ANARCHISM.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

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THEY ARE SKINNING ALL OF US.

This from ContraInfo:

      On Saturday, December 8th, by 12pm anarchists and antispeciests held a gathering at Syntagma square against the fur industry and the animal exploitation machinery. At 13.30pm they began a protest march downtown. A relatively small demonstrator bloc, with some 150 participants, chanted slogans walking on Mitropoleos street with momentum. They then took to Pandrosou street, in the tourist area of Plaka. The comrades carried out direct actions, spraying graffiti and stencils on the walls, and throwing paints on windows of fur trade shops which are located in the district.

    The demo was fiercely attacked as comrades tried to head back to Monastiraki, amid a consumerist and indifferent crowd. When they approached Aiolou street, the repressive forces blocked access to Ermou street beforehand, which is the main shopping zone downtown. Specifically, cops dispersed the antispeciest bloc by excessive use of tear gases, stun grenades and physical violence.

     The fascists in uniform chased people on the surrounding streets. Several protesters were assaulted savagely by cops. No detention was reported, however some comrades were beaten so heavily that they were evacuated to a hospital, while at least three protesters suffer head injuries.

    The State/Capital shows no mercy, neither on people, nor on non-human animals, and once again its mercenaries protected the interests of exploiters.

They are skinning all of us, every living being, to warm the pockets of our killers. We are at war on all fronts.

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INSIGNIFICANT LITTLE US.

 

       To those among us who think that we are somehow unique and very, very special in this universe, just a little reminder.

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A WASTE OF SPACE.

        As everybody knows parliaments under the present system are a waste of space, a waste of energy and resources, some more than others. Some individuals in these parliaments are a greater waste of those resources and energy than others and it is is always amusing to see one waste of space call another bigger waste of space, just that. All part and parcel of the farce that is the representative system under capitalism.

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STRANGE HAPPENINGS.

       The strange happenings in a police car. A 17 year old student is searched, handcuffed with his hands behind his back and put in the back of a police car, then shoots himself??

US.NEWS:

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IN SOLIDARITY, "WE DO NOT FORGET".

     The latest From Athens on the demonstrations marking the death of Alexis Gigoropoulos, the youth murdered by the Greek police in 2008.

From The Greek Streets:

Extended riots in Exarcheia four years after the killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by police

Thursday, December 6, 2012

      On December 6, 2012, four years on from the cold-blooded murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by police, the Athens neighbourhood of Exarcheia saw yet another round of riots and clashes between people and the police.
       As of 22.30 GMT+2 (Athens time) intense clashes continued at Exarcheia square, as well as at Mesollogiou and Tzavela streets, which is where Alexis was murdered. Barricades have been set up in many side-streets leading to the square. Riot police have attempted to storm the square a few times, only to be fought back by the people. In one of those occasions an undercover policeman was discovered by the people and severely beaten.
      There is at least one heavily injured demonstrator. So far, at last 78 people have been detained of which 9 were arrested (i.e. charged).

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NATURAL GAS, OIL, MINERALS = WAR.

       It is sickening to think, that here we are in the West, shouting peace and democracy and yet have been fighting in wars more or less continuously since the end of WW2. We in the UK came out of that war and then continued for years, fighting numerous wars across the globe, in an attempt to hold on to “our colonies” as one by one the people of those “colonies”, done their best to kick our arse out of their homelands. Then there was, in no particular order, the Suez disaster, the Korean war, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. Not content with that little catalogue of death and destruction, we are ready to hold hands with that great liberator, the USA, and have a totally unequal go at Syria. It is the same old formula, there is this dreadful dictator, a real bad man, he has horrible weapons and he might use them, so we have to go in and sort it out. Remember Saddam and those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, that never were? Of course although Syria has such natural resources as, petroleum, phosphates, chrome, manganese ores, asphalt, iron ore, rock salt, marble, gypsum and hydropower, that doesn't influence the West, Assad's biggest crime is, like Saddam, he won't play ball with the Western corporate big boys. So they call on their minders, the Western States and their military arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The West will not stop its spread of death and destruction until the entire resource rich Middle East is in turmoil, making it so much easier to exploit all those rich natural resources. You either play ball with the Western corporate world, or the big bully boys will kick the shit out of you. Iran, beware, another bad, bad man, with weapons of mass destruction, who won't play ball with the Wester corporate world, the fact that Iran is sitting on such natural resources as, petroleum, natural gas, coal, chromium, copper, iron ore, lead, manganese, zinc and sulfur, will not influence the West one little bit, the death and destruction will be for the benefit of those getting the shit kicked out of them.

This from Russia Today:

     The arrival of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the 11 US Navy aircraft carriers that has the capacity to hold thousands of men, is now stationed at the coast of Syria, DEBKAfile reports. The aircraft carrier joined the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, which holds about 2,500 Marines.

      “We have (US) special operations forces at the right posture, they don’t have to be sent,” an unnamed US official told The Australian, which suggested that US military troops are already near Syria and ready to intervene in the conflict, if necessary.

     If the US decides to intervene militarily in Syria, it now has at its disposal 10,000 fighting men, 17 warships, 70 fighter-bombers, 10 destroyers and frigates and a guided military cruises. Some of the vessels are also equipped with Aegis missile interceptors to shoot down any missiles Syria might have at hand, according to DEBKAfile.

Read the full article HERE:

This from ZEROHEDGE:

     France is preparing its special forces for a mission in war-torn Syria, French weekly magazine Le Point reports.

     The mission would only involve a relatively small amount of special forces, and a number of NATO countries — including the UK and the US — would be involved. The mission would be modelled on the Western intervention in Libya, the magazine reports.The action appears to be in response to fears that the regime is planning on using chemical weapons in the conflict. Earlier this week one US official told reporters that it was believed Bashar al-Assad's forces had moved two key components of a deadly nerve gas in preparation for an attack (a later report refuted this, however).

     Le Point says a large ground operation "is out of the question" and that a smaller action aimed largely at securing chemical weapon stockpiles. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today vowed a swift response if Assad's regime used chemical weapons.

Read the full article HERE:

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"WE DO NOT FORGET" - "WE DO NOT FORGIVE".

       Police brutality is known the world over, however, in Athens one act of particular callous brutality by the police, sparked some of the biggest riots and protests Athens had seen in years. It was on December 6th 2008 young Alexis Grogoropoulos was shot dead by police in Athens, his crime, sitting in a cafe with some young friends and jeering at the police. This callous murder brought to a head the simmering hatred the people felt for the police. Four years on as the people prepare to march to mark this young boy's brutal murder the slogans on the streets are, “we do not forget” and “we do not forgive”,

    From The Greek Streets:

The shot still echoes and people will march again. Posters calling for marches today.
” We do not Forget, We do not Forgive, We are going on…the ghost of December is always here, Solidarity, Self-Organisation, Direct Democracy, Newspaper Drasi”

” The State continues assassinating, destroying everything -We struggle for everything, Authoritarian Movement of Athens (AK)”

” A Ghost is looming above the city” Thursday 6/12 March 10:30 on Democracy Avenue, Anarchists by the Schools of Agioi Anargyroi and Kamatero.”

” We do not Forget we do not forgive, Local march in St Tryfon Square, Terpsithea” (Glyfada: South Athens)

“We do not forget, We do not forgive, We go forward” March in Agios Dimitris Square, Antifascists of Arta”

“Did you forget? We do not forget, murderers in uniform killed Alexis” poster from Chios

 ann arky's home.

TWO FACED LAW.

      Those who make the laws, can change the laws to suit themselves.
From the Dissenter:

      Think Progress reports that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that police can secretly videotape the inside of your home without a warrant.

      The case involves an undercover officer who entered a suspect’s home under false pretenses (claiming to be an interested buyer of contraband bald eagle feathers and pelts), carrying a concealed video camera. The footage from that camera was used as evidence in the suspect’s prosecution.

     The suspect claimed that the method for gathering the footage constituted a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights and that the evidence should have been suppressed. The court ruled that because what was revealed to the undercover officer during his visit was in plain sight, the fact that he was secretly recording it is irrelevant.

      Earlier this year, Iowa and Utah became the latest states to approve “Ag Gag laws” that criminalize undercover investigations of animal abuse on factory farms. When activists enter a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation under false pretenses (usually by getting hired) for the purpose of secretly videotaping the daily gratuitous atrocities committed against pigs, cows, chickens and other livestock, their conduct in states with Ag Gag laws is criminal. The FBI has recommended they be prosecuted as terrorists.

So:

     Cops lying about their identities and shooting undercover videos in your house = no problem.

      Animal rights activists lying about their identities and shooting undercover videos of animal abuse on factory farms = terrorism.

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - ETHEL MACDONALD.

      How could I have forgotten to mark the anniversary of the passing of one of Glasgow's memorable fighters. On the 1st. of December 1960 Glasgow anarchist and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, Ethel MacDonald, died from multiple sclerosis. We should always remember our own and always pay tribute to their selfless struggle for the better good of all.

From, Ethel MacDonald - Strugglepedia:

     Ethel MacDonald born in Motherwell, just outside Glasgow, 24 th. of February 1909. She was one of nine children. Leaving home at sixteen became active in women’s movements and the rights of the working class. From an early age Ethel was an active socialist, still only sixteen she joined the Bellshill, Independent Labour Party, (ILP). Worked as waitress and shop assistant,1931 she came in contact with Guy Aldred who asked her to become his secretary. Ethel left the ILP and joined Guy Aldred in the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation, (APCF).1934 the APCF split over the issue of the nature of its opposition to Labour Parliamentarianism. Guy Aldred lead the splinter group, Ethel joined him in the United Socialist Movement, and remained a member of the USM and a close comrade of Guy Aldred until her death in 1960. Ethel MacDonald stated that her first encounter with Guy Aldred was the moment which determined for future. 

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ECONOMIC BULLSHIT.

         Here we go, here we go, millionaire Osborne will take centre stage this afternoon and deliver what is meant to be taken as a profound calculated analysis and plan. When in fact it is a series of calculated guesses, smoke and mirrors and a ridged following of ideology. His master plan when he was handed the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer by his millionaire mate, David, was to suck all the money out of the public purse and transfer it to his corporate friends. Of course we were told that this would be painful, but difficult choices had to be made. However our misery would be short lived, we would just have to suffer until 2015, then all our finances would be in great order and we would once again be living the good times, (which never were for the most of us). Now, as 2015 approaches, it is not quite sorted yet, so once again, difficult choices have to be made. That translates into, screw more money from the public purse, hand more money to the corporate world. Sadly that means we will have to wait until 2018, until those ever so rosy good times return. What a load of bullshit.

 "These are difficult times".

      We are on a downward spiral, as far as the living standards of the ordinary people of the developed world are concerned. According to recently released figures, Europe is sinking deeper into recession. The people of Greece have been brutally assaulted by the financial mafia, Spain, Potrugal and Italy are circling the plug hole, Ireland has to intoduce further austerity measures. Here, we are in the hands of a member of the millionaire Etonian old boys club, telling us that we will have to face a few more years of being screwed for the benefit of his corporate friends. What they are trying to get you to swallow is that after ten years or so of slashing our living standards and destroying the fabric of our society, we will all be better off!!! Tell that to the working families that are living in poverty at this moment in time. Tell it to the unemployed youth and the thousands of homeless. Tell it to the one third of our chidren who at present are living below the poverty line. 

       This certainly a master plan, a rigid following of ideology, for the Western corporate world to survive and grow, it has to create a Western wide sweatshop economy. A low wage, unregulated labour force is it last gasp to compete with its Eastern corporate adversary. You and I are intended to be part of that subservient corporate dream. Is that what you want for yourself, your kids and grandkids? If not, we have to organise, resist and act, very quickly, after all that is the way that they work.

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IS CAPITALISM DYING OUT?

     I received the new edition of Ephemera, (on the net) and found it a very interesting magazine. I found one article in particular "Is capitalism dying out?"  by Steen Nepper Larsen, extremely thought provoking and recommend it as well worth a read. The entire magazine is packed full of thought provoking articles and well worth a visit.

     The following is just a very short quote from near the end of the above mentioned article:

Exit

Where Gorz envisages a capitalism dying out and negating itself in a fertile virtual sphere of communication that contains real political potentialities for radical social transformation, I see what Marx called ‘the civilizing influence of capital’ giving breath to ever newer forms of contradiction. Gorz is right in claiming that knowledge is not reducible to a commodity. He is also right to emphasize that neither the Marxist theory of value nor the dominant ‘liberal’ theory of economic value can grasp the process of transforming knowledge into value. But unfortunately he is mistaken in claiming that capitalism will soon disappear. Maybe it is capitalism’s ability to produce powerful conflicting and contradicting patterns of social life that keeps it alive and kicking. Capitalism manages to integrate major parts of human creativity, our innovative skills, desires and communicative utterances to foster and maintain its own logic of accumulation, and until now we have not been able to conquer its destructive aspects or find a way to live without its seemingly magnetic power.

490

ephemera 12(3): 486-491

reviews

Is capitalism dying out?

Steen Nepper Larsen

You can read the full article HERE:

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BANISH THEM TO THE "SCUM VILLAGE"!!!

       I read this article in TheTelegraph and thought perhaps I should try to keep it quiet, as it is the sort of thing that our government of pampered Oxbridge millionaires would jump at. Think how it would fit into their austerity plans, think of the savings to the social spending bill, housing thousands in caravans with little or no facilities or amenities. It would be in keeping with their plans for tougher sentences, (more people in prison for longer terms). If you can't get them into prison to form a cheap pool of labour, then dump them in “scum villages” They already have plans to open up the prisons to more of their corporate friends as a means of a cheap captive labour force, not covered by the normal health and safety regulations and with no union rights. This Dutch plan  would just fit nicely into their "deficit reduction" plans.

      Apartheid comes in many forms and in this corporate world, we are divided into our various groups, to be exclude or included. The most common form of Apartheid in the Western world is what I call “financial Apartheid”. You are exclude from whole speres of society because of your lack of money. With this “scum villages” plan you would be excluded because you behaviour doesn't fit their shape of “normal” and you would be banished to the shany towns dotted around their efficient profit producing labour camps.

Extract from The Telegraph article:

Amsterdam to create 'scum villages'

      Amsterdam is to create "Scum villages" where nuisance neighbours and anti-social tenants will be exiled from the city and rehoused in caravans or containers with "minimal services" under constant police supervision.

       The new punishment housing camps have been dubbed "scum villages" because the plan echoes a proposal from Geert Wilders, the leader of a populist Dutch Right-wing party, for special units to deal with persistent troublemakers. "Repeat offenders should be forcibly removed from their neighbourhood and sent to a village for scum," he suggested last year. "Put all the trash together." Whilst denying that the new projects would be punishment camps for "scum", a spokesman for the city mayor stressed that the special residential units would aim to enforce good behaviour.

Read the full article HERE:

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IT'S A CLASS WAR INSTRUMENT!!

         All this hullabaloo about regulate the press, don't regulate the press, is a distraction from the real problem regarding our corrupt babbling brook of bullshit, the media. Anybody with a grain of sense would say a free press is essential, but our problem is that it is not a free press in the first place. It is a tightly controlled press in the hands of a small group of rich and powerful people who will always come down on the side of the rich and powerful people. For example, the Murdoch clan's global corporation, the Independent and the London Standard are the mouthpieces of Russian oligarchs and then we have Viscount Rothermere controlling shareholder and chairman of the Daily Mail. With such a rightwing bunch of extremely rich people controlling our “FREE” press, there is no way that they will advocate greater unionisation among the working class, workers control, true democracy, etc. What you get is them pushing their own agenda to suit their own class. Our “FREE” press is a propaganda machine for the corporate world we live in, and will always be biased against any organising by the ordinary people to take control of their own lives and shape society to the needs of the people. 

      The Lord Leveson “thingy” is just more smoke and mirrors, creating the illusion that something is being done and the real propblem is those few bad, bad people who have tainted this fine institution. Once we see a few wrists of the lesser mortals being slapped, they can get back to trying to mould public oppinion in favour of their beloved system of corporate capitalism. Our press is a class instrument, owned and controlled by the rich and powerful class, and will always be used against any group that might in any way attempt to re-dress that balance between the rich and powerful, and the ordinary people. Our “FREE” press is an instrument of control used by the state and the corporate world to further the ends of their class. A “FREE” press would be controlled by no one and be the voice of all the people to the benefit of all those people. So just view “The Leveson Report” as another chapter in one of the many soap operas with which our babbling brook of bullshit fill their pages. 

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - ERNST TOLLER.

      A day late, but we should always remember our own, even if it is a wee bit late.

Ernst Toller:

     Born December 1st 1893, a German Expressionist involved with other writers in forming an insurrectionary Bavarian "government" during workers revolt, in which anarchists were among the principal activists: Ehrich Mühsam, Gustav Landauer, Ernst Toller, Ret Marut (aka B. Traven), & others, fought for the development of Workers' Councils & self-managed co-operatives. He spent several years in prison and was forced to flee Nazi Germany. Eventually settled in America, and despite success as playwright & poet, Ernst Toller committed suicide in his Manhattan hotel room, on May 22 1939, convinced his plays are passé.

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THE END OF THE WORLD!!

An interesting approach to news broadcasting with some interesting facts.

WHO CAN LIVE ON PIE-IN-THE-SKY?

         As the “financial crisis” rumbles on and on, more and more people are becoming homeless, and in London alone there has been a 43% increase in “rough sleepers” in the year to March 2012. This is likely to be an under estimate, as it is almost impossible to get an accurate figure. Those unfortunate enough to find themselves homeless, face a multitude of problems, in spite of this, recent figures show that one in five homeless people have had their benefits cut or stopped altogether, in the first year of the government's workfare program. Will this situation be remedied any time soon?

       On Wednesday our millionaire Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne will make his up-date statement on the economy, and according to Carl Emmerson, deputy director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, “Since the budget, the outlook for the UK economy has deteriorated and government receipts have disappointed by even more than this year's weak growth would normally suggest," so it doesn't bode well for the most vulnerable in our society. The millionaire cabal of Tories have already annouced that the “austerity” will have to continue well beyond their orginal estimate, and could run to 2018. Again this is an estimate based on pie-in-the-sky figures of growth and guess work from the banksters who gambled and lost billions, creating this “financil crisis” in the first place.

 "You have to make sacrifices to get the debt down."

      So what does the future hold if your not one of the millionaires? For starters, working longer to get your pension, which will be buttons, assuming you still have a job to cling onto. Wage cuts/freezes, or at best a wage increase lower than inflation, which is in fact a wage cut. Social benefits cut or eliminated, social spending slashed. More cuts to education, a privatised health service, an if you are working, it is more likey to be part-time and low paid. And what for? Does anybody believe that even if they annouce in 2018 that the financial crisis is over, that we will all see a dramatic improvement in our living standards? Our employers will increase our wages above inflation to get us back to where we were? Our new smiling millionaire government will pour extra money into education, social spending and re-nationalise the health service? They will also see that we all have affordable housing, and homelessness, child poverty, fuel poverty, will all be things of the past? Dream on my friend, your “austerity” is here as a way for the future. The UK will be part of that great big European sweatshop to allow our corporate masters to compete with those Eastern sweatshops. That is the grand-plan, the deficit reduction is just the smoke and mirrors. Be warned, organise, take action and resist, or humbly wallk into their scheme of things. 

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LEFT CAREERISTS!!

     Recently I posted an article advertising a conference to be held in London on December 1st, called "Up-the-Anti". Looking at the sponsors, it looked like it might be a  great springboard for greater things. I didn't manage to the conference but this report on the conference from The Commune dispelled my illusions. It would be interesting to hear other reports from other sources.

‘up the anti’ –

when will the left learn?

2 12 2012

     The Anti-Capitalist Initiative’s (ACI) gathering of elements of the British Left on the 1^st December 2012 in London was yet more proof of their inability to adapt to today’s world, says duvinrouge.

     Despite a promising start will an inspirational speech from Joana Ramiro, followed by Preeti Paul from IOPS setting out a vision of what we are fighting for, the day then descended into tedious waffle from pseudo-intellectuals lacking any ability to inspire. This wasn’t entirely the fault of the speakers; it was the old, out of date approach of having a top table of ‘experts’ preaching to an audience in that typical hierarchical fashion socialist organisations are so well known for. These high-priests of theory are often employed by universities, write books, & mainly come from middle-class families. Participation is limited to an handful of ‘questions’ which sound more like mini-speeches from windbags who aspire to be on the top table next time around.

     When will these people learn that this format will never appeal to the working class?

Read the full report HERE:  

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