I WISH----.

A pleasant and moving thought, just enjoy and perhaps instead of wishing we should act.

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CONFERENCE TOWARDS DIRECT DEMOCRACY.

       It seems only natural that since Greece, (for the moment, others are to follow.)  is at the sharp end of the financial Mafia's onslaught on the social fabric of that part of society where we the ordinary people live, that they should be calling for a conference/discussion on where to go from here. It is important that we realise that this is not a Greek problem, it is the same ongoing struggle of people verses capital that has been waged since the advent of capitalism. Capital has devastated lives across the globe for centuries, but never on such a wide scale and never with such savage brutality. Today it is determined to install wide spread poverty and deprivation across the continent, in an endeavour to recoup the billions that it gambled and lost. As the  dissatisfaction grows among the ordinary people, so the opportunities arise to change the entire economic system under which we have suffered for centuries.

A call from comrades in Thessaloniki for a festival of direct democracy:

We are standing on a crossroad, where we were led by an on going long procedure during the last three years. The riot of 2008 was followed by an open public discussion in the squares of greek cities, where a huge part of greek society showed an active participation. Before the riot of December 2008 the state devaluated life by murdering a 15 year old boy (Alexandros Grigoropoulos), while during the summer of 2011 life devaluated the state by breathing free and fresh air in the squares, without and against the state’s authority.
The idea of direct democracy came in public discussion and managed to crack once and for all the “wall” of representation. The path is now open, but the question still remains, who is going to walk this path?
The topics of this festival deal with
the update of the meaning of direct democracy he presentation and networking of the new projects of a social and solidarious economy that [...]

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MORE POWER TO THE PUSSY.

        In Russia we are seeing the usual parallel, as the power of institutionalised religion grows, women's rights diminish. This has been highlighted by the recent "pussy Riots" trial where the state and the established religion does its damnedest to cement the patriarchal society in Russia.

An excellent article from, Second Council House of Virgo:

"So let us take off our crosses
And leave them in a tin
Let our weakness become virtue
Instead of sin."

Almost a hundred years ago, the Russian revolution saw a transformation in the status of women.  Yet in the country of Kollontai, who foretold a land free of both marriage and prostitution, where sexual relations were as simple as sipping a glass of water and women could not be bought, and of Armand, who oversaw the introduction of mass canteens, laundrettes, factory creches, and nursery schools to eradicate gender differences in domestic labour, the position of women has suffered a dramatic contraction.

As Russian society descended into chaos in the early 90s with soviet era industries sold off for pennies, the influx of Western currency saw young women in demand for the sexual services that they could provide.   In the 90s “The Hungry Duck”, one of Moscow’s most notorious nightclubs thrived on young Russian women hoping to pick up a rich Westerners or newly minted member of Russia’s emerging kleptocracy.  The soviet era dining halls and communal childcare facilities evaporated while municipal heating systems faltered and women were thrown back on their own resources to get by, finding that the sale of sexual services could give them cash in a country no longer paying wages.

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AN END TO POMP AND CEREMONY.

       Where else except in Greece would you see a military parade end like this, let's hope the idea catches on and we see and end to all that pomp and ceremony, and end to the display of state power.

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FROM CRISIS TO CRISIS, AND MORE OF THE SAME!!

      The media and our millionaire politicians keep going on about the "crisis", however what they fail to mention is that it is not "a" crisis, as capitalism "is" crisis. The capitalist system of economics has lurched from crisis to crisis. Most of these crises bring misery to millions of ordinary people, today's crisis is probably hitting billions of ordinary people. Today because of the nature of the capitalist beast the "crisis" is world wide. In Europe apart from the "financial" crisis, the German economy is in decline, France has returned to recession, the Italian economy is contracting, and just to screw things up a bit more, China's economy is slowing. All that translates into misery for millions of ordinary folk. World wide, this year alone a further 43 million has been added to those suffering hunger. According to Oxfam, almost one billion people are now hungry, that is a staggering one-in-seven of the Earth's population. This is not because we do not have the food and resources to solve this problem, but is because food is not grown to satisfy people's needs, it is grown to make a profit. That's capitalism, your needs can only be seen to if you have the money to create a profit for somebody else.

      As capitalism has grown to become a world wide economic system, hunger and poverty across the globe has grown, not diminished. In country after country as the capitalist system develops, so does the difference between rich and poor. There is nothing in the system that will make it other than this.  If we continue to look to capitalism to solve these problems, we will just move along to another crisis. Hundreds of years of a failed man made economic system, which produces poverty and deprivation for millions and luxuries for the few, surely merits  that we re-think the way we structure society. Let's move away from the billionaires paradise, to a place where we the ordinary people are in charge of the society that we live in, and create a system that sees to the needs of all our people. We have the resources, the ability and the need to destroy this parasite driven system of profit and greed. We can, and for our own benefit and that of future generations, we must, build a society based on mutual aid, justice, co-operation and sustainability. A society of communities in federation with other communities, controlled by all those who live in those communities.

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WHERE DOES MONEY COME FROM?

Money keeps growing, where does it come from, the money circulating in the world is way beyond the GDP of the world, why have we never got enough but others have billions? Do we need it? Quite a long video but worth the watching.

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ANARCHISM, A LONG PEDIGREE.

       How far back does capitalism go? It has been practised as an economic system for several hundred years, over that time it has developed and refined its procedures and institutions but has failed utterly to eliminate poverty in any one country, even the most developed, America and Britain for example. As it draws wealth to the centre, the periphery suffers, be it city, country or continent, it does not and cannot spread wealth evenly. It is a system that never has and never will see to the needs of all the people. It has been tried and it has failed miserably.

       Anarchism goes back much further, at least to the first century BC. It has only been tried in small pockets on the planet and though where tried, it did see to the needs of all its people, it was always crushed by the power hungry authoritarians. A way of organising society that has persisted for more than 2,000 years, which advocates tolerance and self-sufficiency, is surely worth a try today.

     The earliest  anarchist were probably the Cynics of ancient Greece who scorned all power structures, wealth and adherence to to convention.

     The following is a short extract from Fearless Speech by Michel Foucault, page 120, published by SEMIOTEXT(E)

     There is, however, very little positive doctrine in Cynic preaching: no direct affirmation of good or bad. Instead, the Cynics refer to freedom (eleutheria) and self-sufficiency (autarkeia) as the best criteria by which to assess any kind of behaviour or mode of life. For the Cynics, the main condition for human happiness is autarkeia, self-sufficiency or independence, where what you need to have or what you decide to do is dependent on nothing other than yourself. As a consequence -- since the Cynics had the most radical of attitudes--they preferred a completely natural life-style.  A natural life was supposed to eliminate all of the dependencies introduced by culture, society, civilization, opinion and so on. Consequently, most of their preaching seems to have been directed against social institutions, the arbitrariness of rules of law, and any sort of life-style that was dependent upon such institutions or laws. In short, their preaching was against all social institutions insofar as such institutions hindered one's freedom and independence.

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YES, MORE ON THE OLYMPICS.

----and a little more on the Olympics, this time from A World to Win:

Olympic dream and reality

It’s exactly a year since inner-city riots swept London and other parts of the country. They were sparked by bottled-up anger at the arrogance of the police and rapidly spread into a brief orgy of looting and general destructiveness that took many, including the police, by surprise.
As the medals stack up, politicians backed up by the tabloids are hailing the London Olympics as a great British success story draped in endless Union Jacks. So does the hiatus as millions are drawn into the spectacle mean that the alienation which lay behind the riots has been replaced by a new sense of community, as some would have it?
It’s true that the London Olympics are a showcase for aspects of the British character and mass behaviour not normally apparent in the hardscrabble struggles of daily life. In addition to the prowess of the athletes, thousands of young people have made it as a chance to be friendly and helpful to visitors.
It may be asked where has this great surge of sporting talent and determination, which saw British athletes win six gold medals in one day, come from?

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AND YET MORE ON THE OLYMPICS.

      Below is a statement by singer Morrissey on the Olympics. I can just hear the roar of approval from our “free press”!! I also feel sick in my stomach at what seems to be mass hysteria whipped up by the media, much the same way that Hitler's Nazi regime, for its own imperial dreams, whipped up the illusion of “The Fatherland”. I have a vision of all those flag waving individuals going home and this winter trying to make the decision as to whether to eat or heat. Perhaps they can all wrap themselves in the flag to keep warm.

----And, yet! I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The "dazzling royals" have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. It is lethal to witness. As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the "dazzling royals", laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought.
As I recently drove through Greece I noticed repeated graffiti seemingly everywhere on every available wall. In large blue letters it said WAKE UP WAKE UP. It could almost have been written with the British public in mind, because although the spirit of 1939 Germany now pervades throughout media-brand Britain, the 2013 grotesque inevitability of Lord and Lady Beckham (with Sir Jamie Horrible close at heel) is, believe me, a fate worse than life. WAKE UP WAKE UP.

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KRAFT PLAYS HARD BALL.

An appeal from IUF:

 

     Kraft Foods owns 49% of one of the largest biscuit factories in Africa, Societé Tunisienne de Biscuits (SAIDA).

    SAIDA workers are discovering what it means to be faced with Kraft's influence and a hostile management determined to limit or strip workers and their representatives of their rights.

     With negotiations over working conditions deadlocked, SAIDA management began harassing and provoking union representatives. Following an assembly held to discuss next steps with the membership, Zed Naloufi, the general secretary of the local union, was disciplined and summarily dismissed. His crime? Representing and meeting the members who elected him!

Act now! To send a message please click here.

Ron Oswald
General Secretary, IUF
International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF)
8, rampe du Pont-Rouge
1213 Petit Lancy, Switzerland

Tel: +41 22 793 22 33
Fax: +41 22 793 22 38
web-site: www.iuf.org

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A MULTI COLOURED RAG.

        We are into the second week of the Olympics and nobody can deny, there has been a lot of excellent sport. Though we all know that the modern day Olympics has nothing to do with sport. It is all about corporate identity, a corporate greed feast with particular brands trying to dominate the market. It is also about giving a public subsidy of tax payers money to big business, we are talking billions here. However, its most important function is to get the public all behind the flag, all that flag waving and shouting, creating the illusion that we are all in this together, we are one big happy family. Patriotism, the foundation of wars, the keeper of the state, forget your poverty and injustice, forget the gulf between rich and poor, forget the austerity cuts, unemployment, benefit cuts, lower pensions and deteriorating education system and health service, we are all team GB.

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.

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CORPORATE FASCISM IN ACTION.

     As the poverty and deprivation in Greece deepens the state is still working away at repression, protests are dealt with in brutal fashion and intimidation on the streets is wide spread. What is happening in Athens at the moment is probably reminiscent of the Nazi round ups before and during WW2. This is Europe 2012, this is democracy under the financial Mafia, this is corporate fascism on display, but will it be reported on mainstream media?

 

 From The Greek Streets, Sunday, August 5, 2012

      In the past few days, police have been conducting their largest ever pogrom operation in the centre of Athens. According to the released information, 1,500 people were detained by police in the first two days of the operation (August 2-3) and another 4,900 in its third day alone (August 4). The operation has been taking place in Athens and in Evros, at the NE border with Turkey. At least 1,630 people have been arrested and are facing deportation.

In an Orwellian twist, the racist pogrom operation has been named “Zeus Xenios” — the ancient god of travelers and hospitality.

     The racist operation is continuing for a fourth day today (Sunday, Aug 5). It appears that today’ s operation is centred around Omonoia Square, Monastiraki, Mars’ Fields (Pedion tou Areos) and Vathis Square, all in central Athens. We are getting reports that police stop, search and detain all migrants in their path, regardless of whether or not they carry documents.

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THOUGHTS ON M.Ps.

      Today politicians are not held in very high esteem, to put it mildly, but has it ever been different? They are seen for what they are, a bunch of self-centred, arrogant, duplicitous, power hungry careerists and yes men to the corporate world. Those who remember Glasgow's Year of Culture may have read Tom Leonard's The Moderate Member's Monologue, still relevant and worth a read.

The following are the opening lines:

Christ. Thank fuck I'm and M.P.  I mean naw, really. Majin been poor, eh. Majin been really poor. Majin no huvin a job ur sumthin. Ur been wan a they YTS people. Christ Almighty. Fuck me. Majin been under 25 eh. Fuckin hell. Aw jesus. Majin been really poor an a wummin ur sumhn, an yir man's left yi. (shakes his head) Majin livn ina council house. Christ. Ahv nuthn against council houses minji. loat a ma constituents live in thim. Aye. A wuz broat up in a council house. Thir aw right council houses. Yi ever seen a council house?---

(YTS was the 90's workfare.)

 

       Though I doubt that many of our present crop of M.Ps. were brought up in a council house. At the moment they seem to be a plague of millionaires.

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VALUABLE LIVESTOCK.

        Are you free, or are you owned by the livestock managers of the planet? In our era it is obvious that we are owned jointly by the financial Mafia and the corporate fascists. When you look at what is happening to the general public across the world it is difficult to find any evidence to support the contrary. Of course it doesn't have to be that way, we are creatures capable of rational thought and compassion, imagination, creativity and ability. We also have the inborn desire to be free, and the fences that corral us and the cabal that own us are not insurmountable objects, nor are they there by some divine order. We live under what is no more than a man made economic system, and it can be destroyed, and a system of compassion, mutual respect, sustainability, justice and mutual aid, can be built in its place. However, first we have to be aware of the truth, knowing the problem is more than 50% of the answer.

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THE EURO IS FINE.

     The latest Eurozone report is now available and is necessary reading for all Europeans.
Read the full report HERE:

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THE MEANING OF AUSTERITY.

       The word "austerity" is one we are all familiar with, but what exactly does it mean. Words always solicit meaning, they are not just designs on a piece of paper or noises that fall from our mouth. Say it "AUSTERITY" and try to visualise its meaning in the context of the capitalist world we live in. The word has pain, sorrow, it is a word that stifles potential and destroys creativity. It shreds the social fabric that is essential to be human, in a capitalist economy, this is the true meaning of that rather polite and simple word "AUSTERITY".

The following is an extract from John Halloway's Of Despair and Hope:

         To the misfits of the world, to all of us who do not conform to the closing of humanity: Now, more than ever, the world looks two ways at once. One face looks towards a dark, depressing world. A world of closing doors. A closing of lives, of possibilities, of hopes. These are times of austerity. You must learn to live with reality. You must obey if you want to survive, give up your dreams. Do not expect to live by doing what you like. You will be lucky to find a job at all. Perhaps you can study, but only if your parents have money. And, even then, do not think that you can study something critical. Criticism has fled from the universities and so much the better. What is the point of criticising when we all know that the world is set in its course? There is no alternative, just the reality of the rule of money, so forget your dreams. Obey, work hard in whatever scrap of employment you can find, or else look forward to a life of hunting through garbage cans, because there will be no welfare state to protect you. Look, look at Greece and be warned! That is the impoverishment you can expect, that is what will happen to you if you do not submit, that is the punishment meted out in this school of life to naughty children, to those who hope too much, to those who want too much. This lesson of despair was learnt very well, too well, by Dimitris Christoulas, who shot himself in Sintagma Square in the centre of Athens just a few weeks ago. A 77-year old ex-pharmacist whose pension was wiped out by the austerity measures imposed by the governments of Europe, he said “I can find no other solution than to put an end to my life before I start sifting through garbage cans for my food.” This is the meaning of austerity.

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THE STATE CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT REPRESSION.

        We all know the the state survives by repression, and in times of heightened unrest that repression becomes heavier on those who complain most. The economic crisis of the of the financial Mafia, that crisis being their attempts to get back from the public purse, all the money they lost gambling, is creating poverty and misery among the general population. This in turn triggers greater unrest, however, the state will not try to alleviate that poverty and misery, instead it will come down hard on that unrest. It will do this through the usual state apparatus, it will do it by intimidation and finding scapegoats. Today in America the unrest is spreading across all sections of the general public, so the state has decided to to use the bogeyman of “anarchists” and is seeking out those most vociferous in their argument against the present economic system, labelling them “anarchists” and will attempt to make an example of them. The hope of course will be to intimidate anyone from raising their voice in protest. It is not a new tactic but never the less brutal for that. That is why it is important that we continually show solidarity with all those who are at the receiving end of that brutal state repression, be it this country or some other state control population.

This from Committee Against Political Repression:

        This grand jury is a tool of political repression. It is attempting to turn individuals against each other by coercing those subpoenaed to testify against their communities. The secret nature of grand jury proceedings creates mistrust and can undermine solidarity. And imprisoning us takes us from our loved ones and our responsibilities.
       But our passion for freedom is stronger than the state’s prisons. Our refusal to cooperate with the grand jury is a reflection of our own desires for a liberated world and our support for others who are working to bring that world into being. We support the efforts of all those who will be resisting this grand jury.
    If you would like to join us, please visit: http://nopoliticalrepression.wordpress.com. There you can find out how to sign on to a solidarity statement, donate money to our defense and support campaign, and write us should we be imprisoned.

Read the full article HERE:

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BABY I'M AN ANARCHIST.

      A little bit of music goes a long way to lifting the spirit. So just enjoy.

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THE HUMAN STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE.

      A moving and personal tale from the one who is there. Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ, is an insight into what happens when our political lords and masters follow the grand plan as dictated by the financial Mafia. It is a personal view of social disintegration and the struggle to survive.

         While for many outside, the main symptoms of the current economic crisis are the soup kitchens in central Athens, or perhaps the violent confrontations that light up TV screens from time to time,there is another quieter yet just as significant trend sweeping Greece. Thousands upon thousands of Greeks are on the move, leaving the larger cities for the countryside or smaller provincial towns or leaving the country to try their luck abroad. As with so many other economic and social upheavals the current one has forced people to move. However, there are no endless trails of refugees marching along dusty roads, or convoys of dispossessed Okies with their belonging strapped to the top of a car. Instead it's the steady rhythm of friends, neighbours and colleagues gradually slipping away.

        There are no firm figures for the numbers involved and those official statistics that do surface in the media often contradict themselves, however, the plan fact is that I see it with my own eyes every day. In every apartment block in every street no entrance hall is complete without a handful of For Rent or For Sale signs, apartments lay empty for months on end, even though the removal vans seem to be doing a roaring trade.

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ANAHEIM ARREST.

         Since the police in Anaheim in California shot an unarmed man in the back, there have been protests on a daily basis, and of course the usual arrests. It doesn't look much like democracy in the good ol' US of A.

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