Tuesday, 26 January 2010

ATTEMPT TO BAN PROTEST OUTSIDE BLAIR INQUIRY

       Negotiations between the police and Stop the War broke down today when it became clear that the government is trying to hide our legitimate peaceful protest from Tony Blair when he gives evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Friday. After days in which we were told by the police that they would try to facilitate our protest, Stop the War has been told we will not be allowed to protest on the grass outside the QEII Conference Centre. This is a denial of our democratic rights and Stop the War will now call for the widest possible mobilisation, not just to express the majority view in this country that Tony Blair should be held to account for war crimes, but in defence of  the right to protest.
      Why should the public be denied the right to peaceful protest, particularly when the latest evidence given to the Chilcot Committee shows beyond doubt that Tony Blair knew he was taking Britain into an illegal war, and that he doctored legal advice to deceive his Cabinet, Parliament and the British public.
     Stop the War is calling on all its supporters, local groups and affiliated organisations to mobilise the widest possible support for the Blair protest on Friday. We urge everyone who can to join the demonstration at the QEII Conference Centre from 8am. Full details for the planned events are here: http://bit.ly/8mKM0T
Spread the word as widely as you can among your family, friends, work colleagues, fellow students etc, etc

Some Democracy???

      The politicians and the media always spout that we live in a democracy yet the shallowest look at the structure of our society makes it blindingly obvious that this is the big lie. Politicians are an elite, drawn from the minority group, the middle or upper class. All that is presented to us on a political level from politicians and the media is controlled and represented by the middle class and on the odd occasion, the upper class.        When, on the odd occasion, a working class person becomes an MP, they must convert to middle class behaviour. Working class individuals who join the political/media parasite club and don’t modify their accents and mannerism to conform to that of the middle/upper class, are ridiculed. In the recent BBC’s “Question Time”, January 14, Ken Clarke stated that class was no longer an issue in Britain. This was said without a smile or a giggle, in spite of the fact the he and the other three members of the panel and the chairman were all from that small privileged group of 7%, the “public school boys” and no doubt part of the old boys network.
      How can they claim it is a democracy when the vast majority of the top civil servants, (70%) are also drawn from the small 7% of the population that are public school privileged. These are the people that advise the middle class club that is our government of the day, on policies. Are they likely to come up with any policies that will damage their privileged position in society? As a group they are completely out of touch with the ordinary working class people of this country and can never really understand the problems and conditions faced by the working class. They will always legislate to make sure that the privileged class of parasites that they belong to will stay in that position at the expense of the majority. In this society wealth buys privilege and power, that allows you to put your kids into that small elite 7% of public school educated individuals who go on to safeguard the privileges of their class by filling all the top positions in the political and media field. Under these conditions it is impossible to have a democracy.
 

Timeless comment.

Some things are timeless and Hicks is as relevant today as he was when alive, just enjoy, a giggle never does any harm.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkZQ2Fx1j9E  

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Monday, 18 January 2010

Section 44 must go, says SACC

     Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC) welcomes Tuesday's ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that Stop and Search powers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 breach Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to respect for a private life). SACC says that Section 44 of the Terrorism Act should now be repealed.
   The judgement concerned a case brought by Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton, who were stopped by police while their way to a demonstration at an arms fair held in London in September 2003. However, the judgement was framed in very general terms and it seems almost certain that any use at all of Section 44 stop and search powers would be similarly in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
   Section 44 allows police to search people for items that could be used in connection with terrorism, without needing to have any reasonable grounds for suspicion. The searches can only be carried out in areas where authorisation for them has been granted. Most people are unlikely to know whether a particular place is in such an area or not, and police and the Government are secretive about these authorisations. The Strasbourg judges ruled that the stop and search power itself and the authorisation process "are neither sufficiently circumscribed nor subject to adequate legal safeguards against abuse."
    SACC has long argued that Section 44 stop and searches are unjust and arbitrary. We are glad that the European Court agrees with us. Any police force that continues to search people under Section 44 will be skating on very thin legal ice indeed. There is no need for arbitrary stop and search powers of this sort. Where police have reasonable suspicions about someone they have perfectly adequate search powers without relying on Section 44.
     Parliament should act urgently to clear up this mess by repealing Section 44. It needs to respect both the letter and the spirit of the Strasbourg ruling. MPs need to resist any Government attempt to re-bake Section 44 in a rights-proof form. When the Law Lords outlawed the arbitrary powers of detention contained in the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, the Government devised its bizarre control orders scheme in order to evade the ruling. This obstinacy lead to a catalogue of injustice and litigation. We don't want that to be repeated. We need a clean break. We need Section 44 to go.
     116 section 44 stop and searches were carried out by Scotland's regional police forces in 2007, 1376 were carried out in 2008 and 878 from 1 January to 31 August 2009, according to a statement made last September by justice minister Kenny MacAskill. The number of section 44 stop and searches carried out by British Transport Police in Scotland is unknown. 117,278 section 44 stop and searches were carried out in England and Wales in the year 2007/8.
      Section 44 stop and searches haven't prevented a single act of terrorism. All they have done is signal to Muslims they are the target of police suspicion (since they are disproportionately likely to be searched), signal to other communities that Muslims are to be regarded as suspicious (since they are observed being searched), and to promote amongst everyone an exaggerated fear of terrorism.
      SACC will continue to campaign for the repeal not only of Section 44 but of the whole of the Terrorism Act 2000, which manufactures injustice and fear in many other ways besides those considered in the Strasbourg ruling.
Notes
1. The Strasbourg ruling in the case of Gillan and Quinton v. the United Kingdom, can be read in full at http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?action=html&documentId=860909&portal=hbkm&source=externalbydocnumber

2. Figures for Section 44 Stop and Search in Scotland can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/default.aspx?pq=S3W-26459

3. More about stop and search in Scotland at http://www.sacc.org.uk/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=422&catid=44

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Sunday, 17 January 2010

Community Action.

    Extract from BBC, more here 
   " Parents at a closure-threatened primary school in North Lanarkshire have occupied the building and are refusing to leave. Four women are staging the sit-in at St Matthew’s Primary in Wishaw. They are angry at proposals by North Lanarkshire Council which could see the school shut, along with three others in the region. The council said education officials were going to St Matthew’s to in a bid to resolve the situation. The protesters told BBC Scotland they had sleeping bags and food and were determined to remain in the school. A public consultation on the school closures is due to end on Friday.
      Parents at the other threatened primaries – Belvidere in Bellshill, Gartsherrie in Coatbridge and St Francis of Assisi, Cumbernauld – have also staged protests, held meetings and arranged petitions in a bid to keep the schools open."
   Where possible support should be shown by turning up at the school to boost morale, donating food etc. and picketing council offices. The communities belong to the people who live there, not a bunch of town planners who live elsewhere.   
 

Saturday, 16 January 2010

A Call for Solidarity.

Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, the only serving British soldier refusing to fight in Afghanistan, was released from the Military Correction Training Centre in mid December and is now awaiting the legal hearings prior to his court martial. The initial legal arguments will be heard on Friday 29 January. The army has decided that the hearing will be held at Bulford Camp , about 10 miles from Andover, probably because it thinks holding it in Wiltshire will diminish media coverage. Stop the War will be organising transport to go to Bulford to give support to Joe on the day of his first court martial hearing. If you would be interested in going, please inform the Stop the War office:
Call 020 7801 2768 or email office@stopwar.org.uk.

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Thursday, 7 January 2010

State insanity.

    The British state moves with steady stealth at introducing compulsory ID cards to enable you to access practically all transactions, banking, social benefits, doctors, and all aspects of our National Health Service, not to mention libraries etc. inspite of widespread opposition from all sections of society, the knowledgable in these matter and the lay person. Apart from the problems that would be created if some of the information on you card was wrong and the fact that the information could be compromised as it shuttles between the various institutions, there is the problem of mass errors when cards are produced.
     A little glimpse of this is happening in Germany at this moment in time. On the 1st. January 2010 over 30 million holders of bank cards in Germany found that they could not withdraw cash from their accounts nor could they make any purchases with their cards. The problem is still there at the date of his post. The problem, a fault in the chip, the estimated cost of putting it right, approximately $432 million. Of course retailers are considering sueing for the lost business which will of course add to the cost. Perhaps the Germans are lucky, it was just cash and purchases that were involved. If however it had been the British "super" ID card, that could have been 30 million people locked out of medical treatment and health care, prescriptions, benefit cash, as well as their bank accounts.
     Only the paranoid, authoritarian, control crazy state apparatus would push such an insane scheme knowing the possible chaos and life threatening situations that could arise under such conditions.
     Let's not drop the drive for a mass anti-ID card movement. Don't believe any of the crap coming from the government on this matter, no matter what they say, they are intent on getting these life threatening cards into everybodies wallet.

Monday, 4 January 2010

BREAKING OUT OF THE ILLUSION.

        As anybody who has even a miniscule awareness of history knows capitalism has never delivered what its proponants declared it would, prosperity for all. In developed capitalist countries it has created wealth for a privileged few, struggle for the majority and poverty for the remainder. Its "mission statement" is an illusion.
      We are all aware of the endemic poverty in the "poor countries" the "Tthird World", most of it, if not all, due to international captalism.
      However, for capitalism's failings we need look no further than its "successes". In the world's biggest and richest economies, the developed capitalist economies, the proof that even at its highest developed level, the system of capitalism can't deliver prosperity for all.
     In America, that pinnacle of capitalism, we see its glaring flaws and failings. according to recent figures, one in eight Americans now receive food stamps, with 6 million of them claiming to have no other form of income. 25% of children in America are fed on food stamps. Added to that is the fact that 1.2 million children live in homes with no income.
   Japan, that other juggernaut of the capitalist eceonomy can boast of approximately 10,000 people sleeping on the streets of Tokyo, with thousands more renting a "cubicle", not much bigger than a coffin, in the cities "Capsule Hotels". These places are fast becoming one step away frm the street.
   Some capitalist ecomomists are proclaiming they have to make it worse for the many, insisting that governments must cut social spending to allow the money grabbers to start their greed feast all over again. While others state, the only formula to get the economy growing again is to cut social benefits and lower wages. Obviously the survival of the system is more important than the well being of the people.
   Under these conditions the people have the right to defend themselves by whatever means possible. That doesn't mean marching in an orderly fashion to some government building and asking to be employed in some lousy job for a crap wage.
   We have a better imagination than that, we can break out of the capitalist illusion. We can take control and shape society to see to the needs of all our people, instead of pandering to a greedy bunch of shareholders and financiers.

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Sunday, 3 January 2010

CLASS WAR

       Recent statements from the representatives of the parasite group such as Tessa Jowell's statement "Most people don't give a thought from one day to the next whether Eton exists." and "Class war for votes is not our plan." and Cameron ridiculing any talk of clas war, is how the parasite class would like us to think.
        However make no mistake the class war is in full swing with the parasite class plundering public resources and being "bailed-out" with workers money. According to the parasites, there is no class war when  they take from us, it is only labelled class war "nonesenses" when we complain.
         As for Eton and other institutions of privilege that support the parasites, perhaps we should take note of some figures. Although private education of young people only accounts for approximately 7% of the population, they go on to fill around 50% of places at the top universities. Then move on to account for 75% of judges,  70% of finance directors, 45% of top civil servants and let's not forget, 32% of MPs. From these positions they shape society to guarantee victory for the parasites in what they know to be a class war. In this society private education is the bricks and cement  of the class system, it perpetuates privilege and poverty.
       In the near future we will be expected to pay for the parasites "bail-out". We will be expected to quietly and with subservience accept higher unemployment, lower wages and pensions, accompanied with drastic cuts  in social services. those who resist will be demonised and called destructive, trouble makers, hooligans, extremists, etc..
        It is only if we accept that we are in a class war and take steps to organise accordingly can we hope to  turn the tide. We must organise to take control in the community and work-places, to take back all that is ours, and that is all production and distribution. The bigger the crisis in the capitalist system the greater our opportunity to create a society based on mutual aid and co-operation freed from the greed and profit motive of this system of privilege and exploitation.


Sunday, 20 December 2009

PROTO-FASCISM.

 Page 94/95;    
   Neoliberalism is not only an economic policy designed to cut government spending, pursue free trade policies, and liberate market forces from government regulations. It is also a political philosophy and ideology that affects every dimension of social life. Neoliberalism has heralded a radical shift that defines the citizen as consumer, disbands the social contract in the interests of privatized considerations, and separates capital from the context of place.Within this discourse, as Jean and John Comaroff have argued, "the personal is the only politics there is, the only politics with a tangible referent or emotional valence. It is in these privatized terms that action is organised, that the experience of inequity and antagonism takes meaningful shape." Unnder such circumstances, neoliberalism portends the death of politics as we know it, strips the social of its democratic values, and reconstructs agency in terms that are utterly privatized. It provides the conditions for an emerging form of proto-fascism that must be resisted at all costs. Neoliberalism not only enshrines unbridled individualism as a central feature  of proto-fascism, as Herbert Marcuse reminds us, it also destroys any vestige of democratic society by undercutting its "moral material and regulatory moorings," and in doing so, offers no language for understanding how the future might be grasped outside the narrow logic of the market. But there is even more at stake here than the obliteration of public concerns, the death of the social, the emergence of a market-based fundamentalism that undercuts our ability to understand how to translate privately experienced misery into collective action, and the elim ination of the gains of the welfare state. There is  also the growing threat of displacing "political sovereignty with the sovereignty of the market, as if the latter has a mind and morality of its own.'" As democracy becomes a burden under the reign of neoliberalism, civic discourse disappears and the reign of unfetered social Darwnism, with its survival-of-the-slickest philosophy, emerges as the template for a new form of proto-fascism. None of this will happen in the face of sufficient resistance, nor is the increasing move toward proto-fascism inevitable, but the conditions exist for democracy to lose all semblance of meaning----

Extract from; 
AGAINST THE NEW AUTHORITARIANISM   by HENRY GIROUX   1-894037-23-5

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Saturday, 19 December 2009

DEATHS FROM "FRIENDLY FIRE".

     In war we always seem to accept killing but deaths from "friendly fire" are always considered more deplorable. They will make headline news and the inevitable enquiry will follow. But how much more "friendly fire" can you get than being killed by your own family?
     According to the United Nations Population Fund there are an estimated 5,000 women killed each year in what distorted minds call "honour" killings.  Figures from The United Nations Development Fund for Women state that 22 women a day are killed in India because of dowry related affairs. While in South Africa one woman is murdered every six hours by a family member or partner. United Nations special adviser, Asma Jahangir, in a report to the the Commission on Human Rights said, "The perpetrators of these crimes are mostly male family members of  the murdered women who go unpunished or receive reduced sentences on the justification of having murdered to defend their misconceived notions of family honour."
   No country seems to be immune to these male murders of females, a recent survey of cases that received media coverage between 1998 and 2007 concluded that in the UK there were an average of 12 cases investigated a year.
    What state has our civilization reached when we still have male family members killing their own female family members on some personal and transitory notion of honour?
    Of course it will continue as long as we have two classes of citizens, one the so called dominant and the other, the expected to be, submissive. It will only change when each human being respects and accepts as equall all other human beings, giving to each the rights that they claim for themselves.
    Of course you and I know that the present system doesn't lend itself to all being equall, we are graded according to our consumer ability, our macho attitude, our success at exploiting others, possessions mean power, power gives you extra rights.

Monday, 14 December 2009

TO DIE EARNING YOUR DAILY BREAD.

        Day and daily we hear of deaths across the world, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine etc. and they often make headline news. However closer to home the deaths continue, day and daily, ordinary folks die at work, often due to lack of or faulty safety equipment, over-worked through pressure from bosses causing mistakes and a multitude of other avoidable reasons. Today we pay our respects to another worked killed at work but we will probably not read about it in the press.
       Ray Jessop  died yesterday following an  accident at work. Ray, a painter by trade, he fell from a  ladder and died of his injuries soon after.
       Ray was a founder member of the short-lived Hull GMB.  He signed up in January 2002, and was one of only three  members who stayed with the OBU after the collapse of the  Hull branch. Few of the the current membership would have  known him; his last attendance at an event outside of Hull  was at the pre-onference "way ahead" meeting in July 2004. Also he was not in his element at meetings: in  the minutes of the 2003 AGM he is listed as "Softly spoken bloke with long hair and earrings (who the minute-taker couldn't hear)".  But he could always be relied to take part in direct action. He was up for anything in that line. Many causes  have benefitted from his support, practical and financial.  He was a stalwart of the animal rights movement, of the campaign against the arms trade, of the Palestine Solidarity movement. He will be missed in the ranks of these and other radical organisations.
     Ray was 51 years old. As far as I know he leaves no partner or children. Although he was a very outgoing and sociable fellow, we never seem to have got round to discussing his private life.
Details thanks to IWW members.

Sunday, 13 December 2009

A SUGAR COATED BUSH??


     I have always maintained that voting at elections to change a leader is much the same as voting for a new suit for a psychopath. Nothing really changes, it is just at first it looks a bit different. Watching the hysteria after the Obama election I felt saddened that so many people could be fooled by this switch of clothes, same old shit, nice new suit. Now we have Obama, a sugar coated Bush, preaching the " just war", extolling the self sacrificing America giving up its young folks to help the world, and for this duplicity he receives the Nobel Peace Prize and you can feel your stomach churn. The best comment I have read of the Obama acceptance speech at the Nobel Peace Prize event is here

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Saturday, 12 December 2009

OGIES OF REPRESSION.

       As states feel the crunch of collapse they muster their repressive forces, aware of the fact that the people will only take so much. The closer to collapse the state goes the more severe the repression. The police are given a free hand, the military sit in the background waiting their comands, the media pours out its disinformation, all the right wing fascist groups are encouraged to come out of the sewers on to the streets.  Divide, intimidate and misinform the usual strategy of the state is put into overdrive as the survival of the system is what matters, not the will and welfare of the people. As Greece races forward to defaulting on its debt the powers that be are aware of what that will mean, the collapse of any form of social services. so it will try to pre-empt the people's dissatisfaction by every repressive means available. Control  in any form is the states only means of survival. Greece is just a little further down the road than lots of other states, but most are facing the finacial crunch that will put people under stress and onto the streets. We should watch very carefully what is happening in Greece and learn how to be one step ahead of the brutal reprssion that is coming our way.
   More from Greece:
9-12-2009 : RECENT DAYS HAVE SEEN
INCREDIBLE JUNTA ORGIES IN GREECE.
EXAMPLES:
1) Cops with guns in the demonstrations.
2) Motorbike raids against protesters.
3) Cops following peaceful demonstrators in their tracks, wild and indiscriminate arrests.
4) Staged events such as the alleged assassination attempt against the rector of the Pritanea.
5) An enormous number of vague and even criminal charges and arresting people young and old.
6) Closing schools on the pretext of swine flu and the merciless beating of students who wanted to get to their schools.
7) Undercover cops kidnapping young protesters.
8) Higher level visible collaboration between Golden Dawn neo-nazis and the Police.
9) Secret meetings between Chrysohoides and the bosses of the TV channels and journalists to decide on how TV reporting was going to be done over these days.
10) Secret covert cameras and helicopters hovering constantly.

Read the full article here:  http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/10260

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Thursday, 10 December 2009

TERRORISTS IN UNIFORMS.

The Greek assasination from an eye witness,

this story should be widely distributed ;




       An Exarchia resident whose balcony overlooks the spot where Alexis Grigoropoulos was murdered.

I'm not so involved in any political activities. I'm not an activist. I can only speak about the killing. I can't take a position on all the other things that happened because all these other things are very complicated and I don't have clear thoughts on them.
Exarchia has always been an alternative, counterculture neighborhood. For many years it was a frequent occurrence that something would happen on a street corner in Exarchia and suddenly everyone from the cafes and the bars and the sidewalks would pour out into the streets and run to see what was happening. Usually it was incidents between people and police, some fights, confrontations, insults, shouting matches. In the old times it happened very often. Then there was a period when this didn't happen so much, but in the last years it has started becoming more common again.-----
 
    Read the full story here;  http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/10247
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Wednesday, 9 December 2009

Bankers bonuses my f**=>^****"

    All this talk of hitting bankers' bonuses is just hogwash. It makes people think that somebody is being made to pay for the real mess and pain that is coming our way. So the bankers are whinging about their £1.5 million bonus being cut to a mere £750,000 each, (gee, how unfair, how will they ever manage) and we are supposed to think that they are hurting?? They will be laughing and in clover for the rest of their lives while you and I face savage cuts to all social services, wage freezes/cuts plus high unemployment. Do we need the bankers and their dodgy dealings, ripping off all and sundry? Forget the bankers and their bonuses, it is the system that has to be destroyed, don't expect the corporate world or the financial institutions to be altruistic, ethical or even honest, that would be bad for their businesses. We need a fairer, more humane and just system that sees to the needs of all our people, not one that tends to the needs of a bunch of greedy parasites. We can create a social system based on mutual aid, voluntary co-operation and sustainability, a system freed from the corporate greed and profit motive of this system of sweaty palmed money crazy shareholders.

Monday, 7 December 2009

CRISIS/OPPORTUNITY?

        Workers today have a great opportunity to compare the present with the past and to be alive to the acts of imperialism that might have, in an earlier time, gone un-noticed by vast swathes of the people of the planet. We the workers have a greater connectivity through the internet and therefore can react more quickly in solidarity with our comrades across the globe.
       No longer can the imperialist conceal their deeds by semantics, censorship and propaganda, the world has shrunk, the internet has turned it into a village and we are aware of the village bullies. We are aware of the rising corporate fascism, regionally and globally, backed up by the militarization of the state. We are also aware of the ever deepening crisis in the capitalist system and know that it needs wars, war contracts feed the shareholders of the military industrial complex that is capitalism today. We have become aware of the continuing rhetoric pouring from Western leaders referring to the peaceful West yet we can’t recall a year when the West was not involved in a war somewhere in the world.
       The workers of the world are now becoming conscious of their homogeneity, perhaps it is the brutality of a system that we created that is causing this consciousness and also the knowledge that we have the ability to destroy such a man made system and create a more just, moral, humane and sustainable system. A system based on mutual aid and voluntary co-operation rather than the profit and greed of the present system.
      However the change must come in the near future if we are to prevent WW3. The crisis the corporate world is facing means that the competing imperialists cannot compete in friendly fashion, they must win to survive and each will do what it believes is necessry to survive and expand. In the eyes of the imperialists, the destruction of the people is an acceptable price to pay for the survival of the system.
 

Thursday, 3 December 2009

Politicians and freedom of speech don't go together.

It seems that the truth and freedom of speech can cost you your job. According to a recent ITN news report:

     A Labour election candidate who called the Queen a "parasite" and "vermin" has been sacked. Would-be local councillor Peter White was axed by party bosses after being forced to apologise for an online rant about the monarch. A Labour spokesman said: "Mr White appeared before a panel of the regional board of the London Labour Party who, after hearing the evidence, decided to remove him from the panel of candidates." The 26-year-old had been due to fight for a seat on Havering Borough Council in east London next year. His comments were posted on the Facebook page of Tory MP Andrew Rosindell, who is campaigning for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee to be marked with a public holiday. Mr White posted: "What is the point of celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of someone who is born into a position of privilege? She is a parasite and milks this country for everything she can."
    He added: "Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with a public holiday but lets (sic) have one that means something, rather than celebrating vermin." 
 
    So there you have it, Labour does not support freedom of speech.  Indulge in that sort of thing and it could cost you your job.
 

Wednesday, 2 December 2009

PATRIOTISM.

PATRIOTISM.



No, I shall not die for the fluttering flag,
if truth be known, ‘tis nothing but a multi-coloured rag
held aloft by some foolish hand
inciting worker and peasant to kill
on some green and wooded hill,
peasant and worker from some other land.

Nor shall I shed blood for the fluttering rag
that brings out fools to stand and brag
of brutal deeds painted grand,
deeds where rustic and craftsman lie so still
killed by my brothers' misguided hand.

No allegiance have I for the Nation
this man made autocratic creation
that divides my brothers in a world so small,
binds us to a country's cause, right or wrong,
bids us follow its drum, sing its song,
then sheds our blood in some border brawl.

No, I'll be no slave to flag or nation,
have no ear for power oration,
though its iron heel is on my breast,
my back feels its leather thong,
at patriotism's barracoon, I'll be no guest.
 

Tuesday, 1 December 2009

CO2 and War.

       So Copenhagen is going to save the planet? They will go into a huddle and dine and wine and have some photo shoots then announce their plan to save the planet. The rich and powerful developed will help the poor and weak to develop while at the same time curtailing the profits of the big corporations so that we cut CO2 emissions and we will all live happily ever after. Well so some sort of fairy tale goes. What they don’t mention is that the rich and powerful need the poor and weak for cheap material and goods, it is this continual searching for cheaper labour and cheaper materials that makes them rich and powerful.
      Of course if they are rally serious about CO2 emissions then they will have to put a ban on wars!! Any scientist worth his salt will tell that what ever savings you make in your CO2 is massively off set by a war. The actual war, manufacturing tons of munitions, all that moving thousands of tons of equipment and arms across the world to be destroyed, shipping all the thousands of people involved, some of them never to return alive or in an able bodied condition, then ensuring they are fed, is an enormous explosion of CO2 into the atmosphere. Then of course you start to blow up all those munitions and keep replacing them, manufacturing more and having them shipped across the world in a continuous logistic nightmare. Then when the explosions stop and the dust settles, and you start to ship what is left back home leaving behind a devastated landscape and thousands of dead, and the need for a colossal rebuilding program, if the poor devastated country can afford that.
       So all the crap that will come out of Copenhagen will not address in any way one of the most gigantic waste of time and resources known to man, war. It will talk of wind turbines and aid to the poor, which will never materialise. Remember the summit to lift Africa out of poverty? They’re still waiting for all that aid that was promised. Summits are great fun for the pompous and the arrogant, it helps to create the illusion that they are actually doing something about the problems we face, when in fact the are the reasons we have these problems.