It's nice to see the kids make use of their art lessons after school.
Saturday, 15 September 2012
THE TIPPING POINT.
As people across Europe realise that the "austerity" cuts have not yet reached their full intensity and that there are no plans to reverse this direction, what then? As the poverty sinks in and the pain grows in depth and breadth, will it be quiet acquiescence and a grudging acceptance of deprivation for ourselves and future generations, while the millionaire parasites play their frivolous lives out in opulence? Will there be a tipping point when the people see the injustice clearly and say enough is enough? Will we reclaim the world for our children and grandchildren leaving them an inheritance that we can be proud of, an inheritance of justice and mutual aid, a sustainable world of peace and co-operation. How do we get there? By asking our lords and masters for a handful more crumbs to see us through the winter, or by taking control of our communities and shaping them to our desires in federation with all other like minded communities. Do we negotiate with the financial Mafia who have only one aim, to plunder the Earth for profit, or do we see them as the root cause of our problem and get rid of them? Do work for the total liberation from, and destruction of, this brutal corrupt system of capitalism by whatever means at our disposal, or do we just hope for the best?
THE NOISE IN THE STREET #1
If they asked us in what way we would like the world to work, we would affirm that we would like that we implement mutual aid, collaboration, collectivisation and self-management, but we think that at the moment a progressive change is impossible and will not happen alone. We must create a situation that creates a change. While people mutter, “this is difficult to believe”, in the streets we see that the police, paid by the tax-payers, and already militarised, tortures and kills our comrades. We have decided since some time to amplify our range of tactics to the use of direct action using sabotage, expropriation and the use of force if we need it for self-defence. We do not consider it as the only possible path but believe this radically increases the possibilities of change. We are currently seeing the growth of affinity groups in our city that show there is light at the end of the tunnel, along with attempts to revive various Federations and talks on the best methods for organizing ourself.
Friday, 14 September 2012
PRIVATE OR PUBLIC -- WHOSE WORLD WILL IT BE?
The latest move by the Greek government to appease the financial Mafia makes it obvious that this whole austerity thing is nothing really to do with debt reduction. The Greek government has a very profitable 34% stake in one of Europe's largest gambling companies OPAP, so one would imagine that it should hold on to that and use the profits to help fund its services. But no, to try to impress their masters in Brussels, they have decided to sell most of its money making share to the corporate greed mongers and allow them to reap the profits instead of the public. More and more of the public assets will be handed over to the corporate greed machine, and this is not just in Greece. It is the grand plan of the financial Mafia, not just in Europe, but across the world, to get its hands on all public assets to swell its coffers, and put an end for once and for all to anything being publicly owned or managed.
In this country the privatisation goes on unabated, with Gove breaking up the education system and Lansley being fired for not moving fast enough in the privatisation of the National Health Service. We are rapidly moving into a society where there will be no public assets and no public space, It will be a corporate world, everything will be under the control of those shiny suits in far away places, and their only criteria will be profit. The world as we know it will have gone and we will be mere products to be used or discarded as the various Chief Executives decide the best policies for their shareholders. They'll continue to shuffle their money around the globe in an attempt to keep down wage costs and fatten the bank accounts of the little army of parasitic shareholders.
Of course there is another world, a world where we share the resources and see to the needs of all our people. a world where we work in co-operation with one and other, creating a rich and sustainable future for our children and grandchildren. A world based on mutual aid where all those involved in that world shape that world, a world free from the profit motive and the greed of those corporate parasites that infest our world at present, a world free from capitalism.
TOMORROW’S WORLD!!
See the fat cat’s grinning smile
as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,
Chasing profit as it goes
firing millions of ordinary folk.
Raping and polluting land after land,
starting bloody wars.
Toxic waste, sweat shop wages
and oil covered sea shores.
Where have all the flowers gone
beneath this ozone free sky?
To join the birds, to join the fox
on yonder plutonium field to die.
Mercury fish, strontium lamb
trees that never show a leaf,
radio active beaches, toxic streams
good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.
In a world of epidemic, plague and famine
it’s bottled water and chemical food.
Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice
so you know its got to be good.
Beneath a sky that’s always black,
hurricane winds and endless drought,
its oxygen masks for the toxic air,
corporate profit’s what its all about.
Thursday, 13 September 2012
IF NOT NOW ----- WHEN? IF NOT US ----- WHO?
THERE WILL COME A TIME.
There will come a time when the hordes remember,
who bound our grand-parents to the yoke of oppression,
who sentenced our parents to deprivation,
who bid poverty sink its teeth into our heart,
who teach our children, greed is a noble art.
Who sent our sons through the gates of hell
to a litany of cambist brawls,
crammed coffers with blood-stained gold
while laughing in Ares' halls.
"Who does these terrible things to us?" they will ask,
and when they remember,
they'll bring an energy that is endless
to drive a fist that is fearless.
Then this merciless market-driven world will crumble
under an insurrection of integrity,
the poor will emerge from the dark husk of capitalism
to live in the light of social justice.
There will come a time when the hordes remember.
As the states across Europe stride ever further to the right and fascism shows it vile face from behind the tenuous illusion of democracy, and we live the hardship of financial corporatism's actions of plunder of the public purse, do we meekly accept this financial serfdom or strike out for justice and liberty to control our own lives? There are two questions that need to be answered now, and answered honestly and sincerely.
"Fear and embarrassment should give their position to daring and
decisiveness, anger should give birth to storms of rage and each one
should ask their heart, if not now... when? if not us... who?"
-Excerpt from a communique of the Conspiracy Cells of Fire
IT IS ONE BIG JOINED UP STRUGGLE.
The world is rapidly changing, no longer are we involved in isolated struggles in our own backyard. We have a world vision, through the means of modern communication we are a joined-up struggle, it is no longer the boss-man, it is the world corporate system that we see as the enemy. We can support and show solidarity across the planet as we see the struggle unfold, we can relate each struggle to our own struggle, it is one gigantic struggle for freedom, justice and sustainability. Anger and resistance is growing, we gain strength from knowing others are struggling with us for the same aims, that makes victory all the more certain.
Read the full article HERE:Look at what's happening in Quebec ... the boldness of the media democracy movement in Mexico ... the teenagers leading an education revolt in Chile ... the Pussy Riot inspired art war unnerving Putin in Russia ... and the new post-capitalist ways of living being forged in Greece and Spain. Witness the growing tempo of green riots across China, the South African miner strikes, the corruption protests of India, the freedom fight in Bahrain, the tremors of dissent in Saudi Arabia, the total loss of confidence in America's corporate-funded Coke-Pepsi election show. Then, add to that the crippling droughts, looming food scarcity, the end of easy oil and the tipping points hovering ominously on the horizon ...
SMILING FASCISTS IN EXPENSIVE SUITS.
The corporate beast is working hard at cementing its grip over our lives, it already holds tremendous sway over most elected governments with its financial clout. But they want to go even further and create what would be one massive corporate fascist regime, they want to over rule any legislation they deem hinders their plunder and rape of the planet. Legislation might be for the benefit and welfare of the people, but if it gets in the way of their sacred profits, then it will be over-ridden. New fascism doesn't come marching down the streets in jackboots, it sits in plush offices dressed in expensive suits, but it is just as brutal and ruthless. We ignore it at our peril.
Dear friends,
Details are leaking of a top-secret, global corporate power grab of breathtaking scope -- attacking everything from a free Internet to health and environmental regulations, and we have just 4 days to stop it.
We have four days to stop a top-secret global corporate power grab that attacks everything from a free Internet to environmental protections. This agreement is being negotiated right now by bureaucrats backed by corporate lobbyists. Click below to crash their secret meeting with our global call to kill the TPP deal:
Big business has a new plan to fatten their pockets: a giant global pact, with an international tribunal to enforce it, that is kept top secret for years (even from our lawmakers!) and then brought down like a Death Star on our democracies. Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Walmart and almost 600 other corporate lobbyists are all in on the draft -- including limits on smoking laws, affordable medicines and free speech on the Net.The latest round of negotiations ends in just 4 days -- but outcries in each of our countries could shake the confidence of negotiators and scuttle the talks forever. Let's get to a million against the global corporate takeover. Sign below and forward widely. Avaaz will project our petition counter on the walls of the conference so negotiators can see the opposition to their plan exploding in real time:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_corporate_death_star/?bwqhjab&v=17858
The deal, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is written to protect investors from government regulation, even if that regulation is passed in the public interest. Leaked versions suggest the TPP would undermine protections for air and water safety and reintroduce measures from the US Internet freedom attack as well as steamrolling efforts to produce generic affordable medicines. Worse still, lawmakers who fail to conform to the TPP’s rules face sanctions in an international tribunal -- a place where corporations can sue us for deals previous governments signed in secret! Negotiators say this is just a trade agreement, written to facilitate investment and profit for all. But the leaked draft imposes so many limits on citizen protections, it's clear this "trade" agreement is skewed to put corporate profit above people's needs -- that's not surprising since it's been drafted in secret with almost 600 corporate lobbyists.
But there is hope: Australia is bucking against the international tribunal system, and New Zealand is objecting to the takeover of its medicine-pricing protections that keep drugs affordable. Massive public opposition, casting doubt over each country's ability to sell TPP at home, could derail the talks for good. Sign the petition now, and forward widely -- the delegates and lobbyists are watching the wave of opposition grow in real time:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_corporate_death_star/?bwqhjab&v=17858
US Candidate for Senate, Elizabeth Warren in a recent speech said: “Corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die. And that matters, because we don't run this country for corporations, we run it for people." Let’s reach one million to stop the corporate takeover of our governments.
With hope,
Iain, Pedro, Laura, Ari, Emma, Lisa, Luca, Ricken and the whole Avaaz team
Tuesday, 11 September 2012
HAVING A CHAT WITH THE MAN IN THE SKY.
Some years ago when I worked for SACRO, I used to take a woman to see her brother who was in Carstairs Mental Hospital. He was in there for murdering a stranger, he apparently heard voices that told him to do it. As I drove her there we would chat and she told me how God spoke to her and guided her. I could never separate the two. One was locked up because his voices told him to do unsociable things, the other was outside because her voices told her to sociable things, both were delusional.
However, our world is filled with these types of people and as we walk past them in the street, chat to them at the bus stop, they seem normal people and probably hold down a job. How many of our politicians, judiciary, and others in power, talk to and get answers from that man in the sky, how many are delusional. This video is of a person who is accepted as a normal person, given broadcast time and claims God spoke to him the other day. How many other "normal" people you meet are like him, speak to an imaginary man and get answers?
SPRING HAS NOT YET SPRUNG!!
Uprisings across the Middle East, sometimes popular uprisings of the ordinary people, but in most cases hi-jacked by Western interference with ulterior motives, or taken over by fundamentalists. At the end of the day they have usually ended up with another authoritarian power structure in place that sets about solidifying its position of power and doing its utmost to stifle any popular democratic challenge to its position.
Remember the "Arab Spring"? It was supposed to mean a new era of freedom for workers. But in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, union leaders and activists are being jailed and sacked in brutal attempts to crush independent trade unions.Global unions have launched online campaigns to protest and we need your support and the support of your fellow union members to put pressure on governments and companies in North Africa to begin to respect workers' rights.In Morocco, Said Elhairech, the general secretary of the Moroccan dockers union was arrested in Casablanca on false charges, including one relating to national security. Nearly three months later, he's still being held, denied bail. The International Transport Workers Federation has launched a global campaign to demand his release. Send your message to the Moroccan government today by clicking here.In Egypt, transnational food giant Kraft has sacked five members of the board of the newly-created independent union at the former Cadbury chocolate factory in Alexandria following a protest over the non-payment of a government-decreed social allowance. The IUF, the global union representing food workers, has an online protest here.And finally in Tunisia, Zed Naloufi, the general secretary of the union at Kraft SAIDA, was disciplined and summarily dismissed following a membership meeting. His crime? Representing and meeting the members who elected him. Support the IUF campaign demanding that Kraft reinstate him here.It will take you only a few minutes to support all three campaigns, but it's hugely important that you do so.And even more important that you recruit others to do so. Let's flood the Moroccan government and Kraft with thousands of email messages in the next few days.And in doing so, let's help turn the promise of the "Arab Spring" into a reality for North African workers.Thanks very much.
Eric Lee
AUSTERITY URBANISM.
As an old wrinkly who has lived practically all his life in Glasgow I have seen many changes, and it is with hand on heart I can say that very few of the changes were made with the welfare of the ordinary people in mind. Our elected crooks and liars have always been business orientated, always looked to placate the big buck corporate world. Sometimes the ordinary people have benefited, but mostly they have seen their communities devastated or simple wiped out. It could have been so different, but then again, the people are not in control.
This from Strickland distribution:
austerity urbanism:
A walk through the fictional city
Saturday 15th September 2012
Ah fancy a walk'n a talk.
As part of a series of projects for Transmission Gallery,
The Strickland Distribution is hosting a public walk on Saturday 15th
September to investigate contemporary forms of cultural (de)generation.
Led by writer & researcher Neil Gray, with contributions from
housing & community groups; activists & artists, the walk will
take a circular route beginning and ending at the Speirs Wharf canalside
‘cultural quarter’, via the post- industrial and brown-field landscapes
of North-West Glasgow.The
writer, Iain Sinclair once said of regeneration that “any puddle will
do”, referring to the frequency of waterside regeneration in the UK – no
matter how bitter the climate or inauspicious the view.
The canalside Masterplan for the cultural quarter is a
neoliberal mixture of soft policy options borrowing from Charles
Landry’s ‘creative city’, Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’, Andres
Duany’s ‘new urbanism’, and so-called ‘smart growth’ principles. The
masterplan is specifically framed in the language of austerity,
admitting the partial, fragmentary nature of the regeneration approach
in a time of economic crisis.
While apparently less
bullish than other large-scale gentrification projects in Glasgow,
ultimately ‘smart growth’ is about the extraction of value from land and
property, and the increase of a socio-spatial tax base, making the ‘new
urbanism’ a strategy for the few at the expense of the many despite its
green pretensions and community participation rhetoric. The new
urbanism is a separate, privileged spatial project with limited
boundaries. This walk will cross those boundaries exploring the wider
spatial relations of the area, revealing the planning blight and social
contradictions that are a direct result of an underlying ideology of
growth which the new urbanism not only leaves unchallenged but actively
supports.
The walk will critically illuminate the ‘arts-led
property strategy’; the rent-gap and blight; the continuing crisis in
housing, and the commodification of social spaces. Rather than present
gentrification as an inevitable process, the walk will explore the
possibility that capitalism is increasingly unable to reproduce the most
basic conditions of everyday life for a majority of the population,
deferring a crisis of productivity to a crisis of urbanism. This walk in
the fictional city will examine urban reality against the urban myths
of city boosters.
The walk is proposed as an investigative history from
below: a critical exploration of gentrification in the context of
austerity urbanism. City boosters and planners promote top-down
solutions to urban crisis, yet radical social change can only ever come
from broad-based pressure from
below. This walk aims to provide the means for collaborative exchange,
instigating & sustaining wider solidarity & activity between
anti-gentrification researchers, activists, community groups &
artists. We welcome all those with such an interest.
Saturday 15th September, (1–5pm): Meet outside
Cowcaddens subway entrance at 1pm. Please bring appropriate footwear and
clothing. The ground will occasionally be rough.
Transmission Gallery
28 King Street
Glasgow G1 5QP
Scotland
Tel.:+44 (0)141 552 7141
THE BEAST LIVES ON.
Officially the Iraq war is over, though the Americans are still in that country, so this video may seem dated, but we are still doing the same in Afghanistan, recently 200 Marines have been sent to Guatamala to fight in the "war against drugs" and we are looking at ways to bring down Iran. The beast lives and continues to devour innocent lives and will do so until the people say no and demolish this corporate/military fascist reign of blood for money.
Monday, 10 September 2012
DIRTY GOLD.
The Eldorado Gold Corporation is a large Canadian gold mining company with 7 operating mines, three under construction, three development projects, plus an extensive program of exploration. They operate in China, Brazil, Romania, Greece and Turkey and aim to produce 1.7 million ounces of gold annually by 2016.
We all know that gold mining is probably one of the worst industries regards pollution. see "A simple band of gold", but it nets vast fortunes for the corporate world, how much of that wealth will find its way down to the people who live near the mining area or the general public at large? It is a safe bet to say, not much at all, if any. The company will savagely decimate the land and walk away with the loot, swelling the coffers of the billionaires in the corporate world.
Monday, September 10, 2012
1,500-2,000 demonstrators gathered in the village of Skouries in Chalkidiki on September 9 to protest again the commencing of the extraction of gold by the Canadian mining company Eldorado Gold. The demonstration soon clashed with police protecting the mining facilities and at least five demonstrators were injured, including a SYRIZA MP. It is reported that the police used tear-gas inside the forest (photo below) causing serious risk for a widespread fire (with demonstrators putting off the fire in many cases), and rubber bullets.At least 15 people were detained and taken to the local police station (in Ierissos) where demonstrators immediately gathered in solidarity, demanding their release. As a result, the detainees were transferred to nearby police stations in Chalkidiki, while four demonstrators have been transferred to Thessaloniki.
WHO WILL SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY?
As I have often said on this blog, crisis can be an opportunity to re-shape our world to a better place for all. However we of the left are not the only ones that see this crisis as an opportunity. Capitalism itself, is a beast of renewal and can fashion itself from the rubble of its own creation. Also the far right will seize the moment and pray on the fears and anxieties of the people.
Venerated investment banks have vanished overnight, titans of industry have permanently shuttered their doors, and rich nations have lurched perilously close to default. The ideology of the free market, once seemingly unassailable, lies in tatters. While the death knell of capitalism may not yet be tolling, the crisis is undoubtedly of a different order of magnitude than anything seen in decades.
Sunday, 9 September 2012
CIRCLING VULTURES WAITING FOR HUNT TO DELIVER.
We now have a new Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, remember how he squirmed out of a spot of bother not so long ago, it seems now, as usual with the members of the old boys club, all is forgiven. Obviously Andrew Lansley wasn't offering up the Health Service to the corporate world fast enough. The corporate vultures will be perched near by to see just how fast this new guy will get on with the carve up.
- Take the original solution and dilute 1 part solution with 9 parts distilled water
- Take this new solution and dilute 1 part solution with 9 parts distilled water
- Repeat until the desired potency is achieved
How to sell off the NHS
- Take a fully public funded national health service and hand over key services to private capital
- Take this 'low fat' NHS and hand over critical assets to private capital
- Take this NHS Lite and dilute with yet more private capital
- Repeat until the vultures are fed and there's no meat left on the carcass.
SHITHEADS IN EVERY COUNTRY.
It is the normal behaviour of fascist scum, during difficult economic times, to come crawling out the sewers where they normally live, to scapegoat different groups and create divisions in the ranks of the ordinary people. The state will always lean lightly on the fascist scum as they make it more difficult for the ordinary people to organise while this rat bag of vermin roam the streets beating and intimidating their target groups, preaching hate and violence to all those whom they deem to be different from from their mythical stereotypes. You can't reason with vermin, it has to be destroyed or it will destroy all that is decent in people's relationships. This video was Greece, but the shitheads are doing their best to spout their putrid ideology here in the UK as well as most countries in Europe. The anxieties and anger of the people, at the economic onslaught being forced on them, is where they try to sow their malignant seeds. Resistance to their muck should be the aim of all those who hope for justice, freedom and a decent society that sees to the needs of all our people.
This from OMADEON:
The Greek Neo-Nazi Party “Golden Dawn” issued official announcements, that they wanted to “apply the law” to illegal immigrant street-sellers “without a license to sell”. This pretext, however, was proved a shameless lie: -The nazis also destroyed the merchandise of immigrants with official licenses. Some black people (see the videos below) showed their papers to the nazis, but their goods were smashed anyway, after being told that “blacks are unwanted in Greece, anyway”. So, these violent attacks were nothing but pure racism; very similar to Adolf Hitler’s S.A. attacks on Jewish shops, just because they were Jewish, long before the Nazis took power in 1933.
IT IS A BRUTAL AND RUTHLESS SYSTEM.
Some facts and figures that might surprise you, and then again it might not, if you happen to one of the unfortunate individuals that have been repossessed, made unemployed or are struggle to cope with your debt. Perhaps one of the most brutal facts is that 105 properties are repossessed every day. Another feature of our wonderful system of capitalism, is that in this country one person is declared insolvent every 63 seconds, and over the last year, on average, 1602 people have been declared redundant every day.
Saturday, 8 September 2012
ISRAELI APARTHEID.
A state and religious enforced injustice that has gone on under the eyes of the world, is reinforced by America and ignored by the UN. How much longer can the Zionist state of Israel get away with this crime. A crime that a multitude of labels seem to fit, occupation, apartheid, genocide, all labels that have no place in the 21st. century. How much longer must the Palestinians suffer this barbarity at the hands of those blinded by religious fervour?
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