Rather long, but as always with Bertrand Russell, concise but in simple language.
Sunday, 7 October 2012
THE DYING ILLUSION OF DEMOCRACY.
Next month sees the culmination of the carnival of rich liars, otherwise known as the American Presidential elections. Millions will turn up and make their mark in favour of tweedle-dee or teedle-dum and things will roll on as usual. The rich will bask in the sun, in a lush cherry orchard surrounded by a fine wine lake, while the rest of the public will grind out a living as best they can as the pampered parsites continue to plunder the public purse. It is a process that has gone on for hundreds of years and rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but still the system is accepted by those same poor. Though I do believe that this latest world wide savage attack on the living standards of the ordinary people, is causing more and more to wake up to the fact that they are being conned. More and more people are looking for an alternative way of structuring our society, away from the parasite millionaire elitism that dominates and bleeds us dry.
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.
The following is from America but equally applies to any country, as the stench of putrid capitalism chokes the lungs of freedom across the planet. Let's hope that this time they take their occupation to the next step and occupy everything and taking control of their communities and their lives.
WHY:
WHEN: Starts at 5 PM Saturday, October 13th (the first anniversary of Occupy Chapel Hill) WHERE: Peace and Justice Plaza, Chapel Hill, NC
WHO:
Anyone who wants to change their world directly, instead of through the narrow choices and occasional elections of democracy
Anyone who doesn't trust another batch of politicians to fix the mess that the last batch of politicians started
Anyone let down by Obama's false hope
Anyone sick of choosing a "lesser" evil
Anyone who knows politicians just serve the rich
The November election is coming. It doesn't matter. The amount of issues Obama and Romney differ on is nothing compared to what they agree on: unparalleled military domination; a growing prison system, the largest in the world, whose racist policies maintain the white supremacy this country was founded on; earth destroying resource extraction; a capitalist economy that rewards ruthless competition without concern for human cost. Under Bush, the nascent Obama generation could imagine that a new personality in the White House could change the problems the last politician piloted us into. And a new politician realized the shifting calculus, promising us false hope and false change. But after the failure of that experiment, we can be sure that the problem isn't personal, it is systemic. No matter who comes along, voting will never get us out from under our rulers.
This country is obsessed with voting to an unhealthy degree. Most people don't even vote, but it seems to be the only way anyone can think of changing their world. But voting is not an expression of our power; it only demonstrates our powerlessness: it is an admission that we can only approach the resources and capabilities of our own society through the mediation of an elite, ruling class. When we let candidates prefabricate options for us, we relinquish control of our world and abdicate our agency in shaping it. Real power can never be delegated, nor lived through anyone else. Real power means individual and collective self-determination--our ability to decide for ourselves how we're going to live every day of our lives--not settling between two unsatisfying and irrelevant choices every four years.
On the one year anniversary of Occupy Chapel Hill, come demonstrate that people power will always be in conflict with with the interests of the ruling class, be they elected or not.
Saturday, 6 October 2012
ALL FROM THE SAME SWAMP.
Just another case of the authorities and the police closing ranks when accusations of police violence surface. One needs the other, so they will always cozy-up and support each other.
This from Polizeros:
Hundreds of Vermonters have called for an independent investigation of police violence in Burlington last July, but city officials including the mayor, the police chief, and now the five members of the city police commission have joined in effectively stonewalling any outside review of what led some police officers to shoot rubber pellets and pepper spray at non-violent and fleeing demonstrators.Read the full article HERE:
The Burlington City Council is divided on the question of how, or even whether to hold police accountable. The issue is expected to come before them at their next meeting October 15, in response the police commission’s unanimous vote against any independent assessment of police behavior.
Friday, 5 October 2012
THE WEAVING OF ILLUSIONS AND MYTHS.
Something this capitalist society always tries to conceal is that opportunities to "climb the ladder" social mobility, as it is called,, is vastly enhanced the higher up the ladder you are born. Conversely, the lower you are born the more difficult it will be to move off the rung you started from. In this type of society, wealth is not just comfort, it is privileges and opportunities, it is the gateway to more wealth, privileges and opportunities. However the myth that is perpetuated is that the world is filled with self made men/women who reached the dizzy heights of wealth, privilege and power all by their own effort and hard work. The truth being that most people in this world work very hard all their lives just to survive and never end up rich.
-------Every political system requires a justifying myth. The Soviet Union had Alexey Stakhanov, the miner reputed to have extracted 100 tonnes of coal in six hours. The US had Richard Hunter, the hero of Horatio Alger's rags-to-riches tales.Both stories contained a germ of truth. Stakhanov worked hard for a cause in which he believed, but his output was probably faked. When Alger wrote his novels, some poor people had become very rich in the US. But the further from its ideals (productivity in the Soviet Union, opportunity in the US) a system strays, the more fervently its justifying myths are propounded."There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire" ...
As the developed nations succumb to extreme inequality and social immobility, the myth of the self-made man becomes ever more potent. It is used to justify its polar opposite: an unassailable rent-seeking class, deploying its inherited money to finance the seizure of other people's wealth.
Thursday, 4 October 2012
MISERY NOW FOR PIE IN THE SKY, IN THE BYE AND BYE.
Unrest and anger spreads and intensifies across Greece as more "austerity cuts" are on the cards. More cuts to people's pensions, workers not having been paid for six months, and so it goes on, and all this is for the benefit of the Greek people, or so the people are being told. They are being asked to meekly accept abject poverty, deprivation and misery, all for their own good!!! They are being told that their country will have to sell off all the assets owned by the people, so that their government can pay the financial Mafia billions of Euros, and things will all come right in the bye and bye. Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland are not far behind, and yet there are those that still believe the problem will be contained, that the system will be fixed, and we will all get back to growth and eternal prosperity. What is being plundered from the public purse will never come back. If you believe that all those billions of Euros poured into the coffers of the financial Mafia will somehow find their way back to the public purse and create a decent society for all the people, then you are more stupid than naive.
The way that the system works now is that it is a downward spiral for the people, and a financial vacuum cleaner for the financial Mafia. Why should they hand it all back to make your life and my life better? If they can have you scrambling about in the gutter, fighting each other for the few jobs around and willing to accept whatever wage they decide to pay you, then they are doing fine. Perhaps you see corporate capitalism as a compassionate beast that at the moment has some problems, but a soon as it sorts them out it will start to reward you for your patience and suffering, Dream on my friend.
Watch video and read the full article HERE:Workers at the Skaramangas shipyard in Athens storm the ministry of defense; farmers in Heraclion, Crete raid the Heraclion airport, as tension ahead of the voting of new austerity cuts intensifies.
DISABILITY BENEFITS TRANSFERED TO SHAREHOLDERS ACCOUNTS.
At last the figures for how much ATOS will make from forcing disabled people of benefit has been revealed. This company is taking millions of tax payers money and handing it to its shareholders when in fact it could pay for disabled benefits.
And so it transpires that if ATOS can push 15% more people than their target through the humiliating and meaningless tests, their profits will soar to £40m on a £207m contract. Even if they fall 15% below target they will still make £28m.Read the full article HERE:
The total value of ATOS UK-wide contracts is £400m. That suggests that they will make a profit of between £55m and £82m on the whole contract.
The ATOS profit of £82m alone would pay disability living allowance for more than 20,000 people a year. If you take the value of the whole contract, it could pay for 22,000 people for five years.
A WORLD WIDE EPIDEMIC.
Police in Milwaukee arrest and beat up a 22 year old man and the world now has a horrific video of a young man dying in the back of a police car. In Tunisia police rape a young woman and when she files a complaint, she is charged with indecency. 28-year-old Raul Rosas was tasered, hogtied and finally drowned with a garden hose in front of his minor children and numerous witnesses. Police use baton charges and rubber bullets against demonstrators in Madrid. From Australia, A 'WIDE culture of police violence' needs to be investigated by
the new head of the Crime and Misconduct Commission 'as his major
priority'. Then there is, Incredible Police's brutality in France. Police violence in Greece is not limited to "isolated incidents" and
officers violating human rights can expect "persistent impunity", the
world's leading human rights organisation has said.
Pick your country and you come up with police brutality, and it is invariably carried out with impunity and against the ordinary people of the country concerned. The police's first duty is to defend those in power, so any organised resistance to that power, will be dealt with in a brutal fashion, and to maintain that element of "toughness", the brutality will be used against individuals to intimidate and subdue resistance and create an element of fear in those who might wish to object to what the state is up to. The illusion that the police are there to protect the general public is perpetuated by an avalanche of corporate propaganda through movies, TV "cops and robbers" shows, and newspaper articles portraying the police as clean-cut heroes. However there is an endless catalogue of death at the hands of the police and police brutality, which belies this propaganda exercise, and which will always go unchecked as the state needs its bully boys. So, until we get rid of the state, police brutality will be with us.
FROM ATHENS TO NEW YORK?
Capitalism lurches from crisis to crisis, capitalism is crisis. During each of these troughs or financial convulsions, the people suffer more than usual, another feature of these inborn faults in the system is the rise of fascism. As the conditions of the people deteriorate fascism raises its ugly head from some dark corner of the sewers of the system. Capitalism's latest convulsions are world wide and so the stink of fascism is spreading across the globe. It will appear in many guises, not just the jackboots on the streets, though they will call on them when they feel the need. They can come disguised as a helping hand of the poor, to gain a foothold in the community. Greece's fascist group "Golden Dawn" works in that fashion and is rampant and openly violent on the streets in that country, and is more or less given a free hand by the authorities to attack and attempt to destroy any organised resistance to the system. Now New York is to be contaminated by the same group as the have set up camp in that city.
Golden Dawn, G.D. (in Greek, Chrysi Avgi), the neo-Nazi, ultra-nationalistic party, which was recently elected to the Greek Parliament under the pretext of concern over unemployment, austerity and the economy, and while engaging in virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric and anti-democratic, nationalistic activities, has now established a chapter in New York City. Several groups and organizations have already publicly expressed their outrage and have called for immediate action.
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
INSULT YOUR POSTMAN, BUT NOT A POLICEMAN!!!
If you insult a bank manager, a shop assistant, a lawyer, or a bus driver, you wouldn't expect to disappear, why should it be different if you insult a police officer??
This appeal from IUF:
To those who already sent messages in response to our first appeal we offer a huge “thank you!”. Over 4,000 message in the first few hours cannot have gone unnoticed by Algerian authorities. With your support we were able to locate Yacine.Please send a message to the Algerian President and Justice Minister immediately to secure the safe release of Yacine Zaïd.
Yacine is being held in custody. On Monday October 8 after all that he has endured he will face the charge of "insulting a police officer".
We are asking you to respond again, this time to the Algerian President to call for his release from custody and proper medical attention.
Thank you in advance.
Ron Oswald,
General Secretary, IUF
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
THERE'S MARX, AND THEN THERE'S MARX!!
Today, 2nd. October is the anniversary of the birth of someone who could probably be called the greatest Marxist of them all. Though now dead, I think one of his sayings could be equally applied to most of us living in today's capitalist system. The quote:
"I've worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty."
I am of course talking about Groucho Marx.
Well if you don't laugh!!!
"I've worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty."
I am of course talking about Groucho Marx.
Well if you don't laugh!!!
Monday, 1 October 2012
THE MIGHTY BUS-PASS OF DESTRUCTION!!!
The other day while mucking about the
house, I was half heartedly listening to some crap pouring out of the
mouth of a politician, and I thought, Ah, another Tory having a go at
he poor and the pensioners. According to this member of the crooks
and liars club, it seems that the root of our financial troubles are
free bus-passes and winter fuel allowances. Shock, horror, it wasn't a
Tory, it was the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Johann Lamont.
This particular member of the crooks and liars club believes that it
is free bus-passes, free prescriptions and the freeze on council tax
that has brought about all these austerity cuts. To her these
universal benefits are responsible for the loss of 30,000 public
sector jobs. So the gambling banksters are off the hook, it's those
bloody pensioners that are responsible for our “double-dip
recession”. I have tried hard to work out how my humble and much
appreciated bus-pass has brought Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland to
their knees, and I can't quite get it. All my analysis keeps taking
me back to something the financial Mafia were up to, but who am I to
understand the complexities of the gambling antics of the financial
Mafia.
So there you have it, come the next
election you could vote Tory and have benefit cuts and an end to
universal benefits, or you could vote Labour, and instead, just have
benefit cuts and an end to universal benefits. There is however, a
universal agreement between the main political parties, that all our
problems will be solved if we strip the public naked and send all the
tax money to the parasites that run the financial Mafia. The astute
analysis of our political masters is that all the wealth we create in
this country, can only support our corrupt financial institutions and
there isn't enough left to be squandered on the social fabric of
society.
As winter approaches and the
temperature starts to tumble, all those suffering fuel poverty,
(aproximately a third of the population of Scotland) just feel good
inside in the knowledge that you are saving the banksters from facing
their gambling losses, what nobler cause could you serve.
Of course we could re-organise our
society so that it sees to the needs of all our people, and all that
wealth that “WE” create, could go towards a fair and just society.
All we have to do is ignore all politicians and get rid of the profit greedy parasites that are
sitting on our backs.
OUR "OCTOBER SONG".
So September has gone, and October offers us the future, what will we do with it? Will our dreams fall like autumn leaves and our hearts cry for better spring? Perhaps, just perhaps, this will be our October song?
They who never ruled before
poured from their factory districts
across the bridges of Petrograd
to make October.
The moon was so startled
all global tides
shifted.
The lights went on all over Europe.
Nothing
can ever be the same again.
— Dan Georgakis,
"October Song"
Sunday, 30 September 2012
BLASPHEME AND WAIT FOR "HIS" ANSWER, NOT HIS MINIONS.
Like the man said, the blasphemy laws just go to prove that their god is indeed a weak god and can be sorely damaged and offended by a mere mortal uttering words. He seems to be unable to defend himself and needs the help of a few mere mortals to do his work for him.
Read the full article HERE:
On this International Blasphemy Day I hope you all will go forth and rise above being offensive for no reason. The goal is to reinforce the message that freedom of speech is a human right. Call it an extension of “free will” (if there is such a thing). We will not be bullied into silence. We cannot be subjugated with imaginary hell fire. Remember the difference between mocking the idea and mocking the person who holds the idea. And try to remind the believers that if their god were real he could probably take a fucking joke.
WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - RICARDO FLORES MAGON.
As September closes, a bit late to mention, but one not to be overlooked, Ricardo Flores Magon, he was born the 16th. September 1874. After a life of revolutionary struggle and years in prison, he was arrested in America in 1918 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for "obstructing the war effort" and died in Leavenworth Prison on the 21st. November 1922.
"FAREWELL!"
WE cannot break our chains with weak
desire,
with whines and supplicating cries.
'T'is not by crawling meekly in the
mire
The free-winged eagle learns to mount
the skies.
The gladiator, victor in the fight,
On whom the hard-contested laurels
fall,
Goes not in the arena pale with fright
But steps forth fearlessly, defying
all.
O victory, O victory, dear and fair,
Thou crownest him who does his best,
Who perishing, still unafraid to bear,
Goes down to dust, thy image in his
breast.
Farewell, O comrades, I scorn life as a
slave!
I begged no tyrant for my life, though
sweet it was;
Though chained, I go unconquered to my
grave,
Dying for my own birth-right --- and
the world's.
Ricardo Flores Magon.
ANARCHIST CINEMA.
For those interested in cinema and the influence of anarchists and anarchism, on cinema, there is a well written article by Denmark Vesey on the DISSIDENT VOICE site, called "On the Need for an Explicitly 'Anarchist' Cinema"
Saturday, 29 September 2012
WORKERS, KNOW YOUR HISTORY, MARIUS JACOB.
Today, 29 September, we celebrate the life and birthday of ALEXANDRE MARIUS JACOB (1879-1954) he was
a French illegalist anarchist whose avowed mission was to steal back
from the major thieves: commerce, the aristocracy, the state.
Although a lucid and articulate thinker and polemicist, he soon
learned to avoid political milieux and cut to the chase, working with
common criminals. He was by all accounts a phenomenal burglar — he
was a model for the “gentleman-cambrioleur” Arsène Lupin. He
had, for example, the panache to leave at the scenes of his crimes a
calling card in the name of “Attila.” He devised the trick, often
enacted in movies, of breaking into an apartment from the floor above
by poking an umbrella through the ceiling and using it to catch the
plaster. At one point he bought a hardware store, where he could
dismantle safes at his leisure. But he was also famously Robin
Hoodesque, redistributing the bulk of his takes to the poor. When he
discovered that an intended victim was choked by debts, he left her
10,000 gold francs, and when he found that another one was a writer,
he put everything back and left money for damages. Caught and sent to
forced labor in French Guyana in 1903, he attempted escape seventeen
times, and authorities complained about having to bring in new guards
at frequent intervals, since he regularly converted his jailers to
his principles. He spent his last few decades as a market peddler in
rural France. He died 9 August 1954.
"I AM ONE OF MANY".
One of my favourite quotations, it is from the poem "From the Paris Commune to the Kronstadt Rebellion" by Ken Roxroth.
They shall rise up heroes, there will be many,
None will prevail against them at last.
They go saying each: “I am one of many”;
Their hands empty save for history.
They die at bridges, bridge gates, and drawbridges.
Remember now there were others before;
The sepulchres are full at ford and bridgehead.
There will be children with flowers there,
And lambs and golden-eyed lions there,
And people remembering in the future.
Today as poverty and repression sink their teeth into our daily lives, as turmoil and anger ravages our hopes, we should always be aware, "I am one of many" and recalling our history remember, "there were others before", but never forget, "none will prevail against them at last".
Friday, 28 September 2012
THE IMF IMPLEMENTING CORPORATE FASCISM.
This is democracy under the auspices of the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers). Spain has the highest unemployment in Europe and the instructions from the financial Mafia is, just as it is in Greece, Italy, UK, and other countries across Europe, more cuts, more unemployment, more misery for the people. The public purse has to be emptied into the coffers of the parasites that make up that financial Mafia, As long as they feel they can control the people on the streets, the cuts will go on and on. It is not a temporary adjustment, it is a shifting of all wealth into the hands of the few. Their move is towards a full corporate fascism, everything owned by the corporate world, no public assets, no public space, everything controlled by the boardroom, and the sad thing is, that they are almost there. This is an attempt to change the world, to put full power in the hands of the financial barons as they rape and plunder the planet to gratify their own greed and arrogance. Our living conditions are of no concern to them, a collapse of the social fabric of a society allows them a free hand to manipulate and control the worlds assets, while we scramble for a meager existence.
Photos from VOID MIRROR:
Photos from VOID MIRROR:
Thursday, 27 September 2012
HOW THE QUEBEC STUDENT MOVEMENT WON.
The student protests in Quebec reached a successful conclusion. They did not win by marching from A to B and then going home. They got organised to fight back and meet state violence with self defence force. They were determined not to be driven off the streets, not to be intimidated, they fought back. The state will always fall back on violence to gain control, control through intimidation is always in their armoury. It is a hard lesson to learn but to negotiate with the state you have to negotiate from a position of strength, it is the only thing that will make them concede.
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