Those Pesky Migrants!!

         How many EU citizens live in the UK? How many UK citizens live in the EU? January 2017 figures for the population of EU were 511,522,671, population of UK 65,808,573. If we subtract the population of the UK from the EU figure, giving us a figure of EU population of 445,714,098. Of that vast number of EU citizens, approximately 2.9 million have come to live in the UK. Of our much smaller population of around 65 million, 1.3 million have chosen to live in the EU. 

      The largest portion of UK citizens living in EU have settled in Spain, population wise, a much smaller country than UK, but it has 391,194 UK citizens settled in there.

     The following LINK https://epa.com.es/padron/britanicos-en-espana/ gives a breakdown of where that UK population have settled in Spain, and you can see that in the chart just how high in certain places the UK migrant population is in relation to the local population. Thanks Loam for the link: https://arrezafe.blogspot.com/

       Populations have always moved around and across borders, some by choice, others by necessity. Borders are imaginary lines drawn by power mongers who wish to hold onto what they see as their territory and their power base. The UK is a broth-pot of Roman, Viking, Norman, Saxon, Irish and a large mix of African, Eastern and Middle Eastern populations. However the racist duped element in this patch of the planet called the UK, see any new migrant as a threat, blind to the fact that their own ancestry is made of of a hotch-potch of migrants over the ages. We are all human and belong to the same family tree, if we really open our eyes we would see that the only real division between us is the one created by those same power mongers that create those imaginary lines/borders, and it is one of class. 

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A Little More On The "Migrant Crisis".

        The vast majority of people living in the UK are far from racists, of course we have a racist element, which is usually fed be fear propaganda spewing from our lords and masters the privileged political ballerinas, mainly the product of the Oxbridge sausage factory, which trains the wealthy in how to rule. As usual our "government" is well out of step with the UK public at large on this matter of racism.
       Just how racist is the UK government? A guide to how our prancing political ballerinas see migrants could be the way they react to the situation of migrants arriving at our shores.
     The recently released figures for migrants reaching Spain state that Spain’s maritime rescue service, in the last two days has rescued almost 550 migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Spain. This Saturday the figure was six small boats carrying 350 migrants, and on Sunday the figure was almost 200 migrants. Some of the small dinghies were carrying children. According to the EU’s border agency, Frontex, approximately 57,000 migrants landed in Spain last year, this is double the figure for 2017.
      Here in the UK, according to Home Office figures, in 2018, 504 migrants attempted to cross the English Channel, 228 were intercepted by the French authorities, and a mere 276 managed to reach UK shores/waters. This trickle was sufficient for our racist establishment to call it a “migrant crisis”. In a country of over 63 million of a population, 276 migrants landing on our shores in a year, is deemed a “migrant crisis”. Bearing in mind that almost all migrants who take the desperate chance to cross a dangerous expanse of water in makeshift over crowded craft, are fleeing some or all of the following, poverty, deprivation, violent repression, death and destruction, in most cases caused by Western foreign policy, we have no right to turn our backs on them. Our privileged political ballerinas can pour in extra resources, money being no object to funding racists policies, into funding this illusionary “migrant crisis”, while at the same time social service are cut to the bone, under the mantra, “we need to make savings as we can’t afford the money”. It is obvious where the priorities of this cabal of privileged parasites that lord it over us really lie.

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"Migrant Crisis", Or Political Cynicism?

         Politicians as a rule are self centred careerists prancing around seeking photo opportunities and spouting how they alone can lead the people to the promised land. However, when they gain power and become part of that cabal called the government, they add another quality to their repertoire, they become experts in cynicism. They will fashion any situation to push their policies and ideology, irrespective of the facts on the ground, or the human suffering involved.

     The "migrant crisis" is just the latest human tragedy to be used cynically by our political ballerinas to raise anti-immigrant fears. Home secretary Sajid Javid, is just the latest in a long line of cynical careerists to turn what is a human tragedy of Western imperialist policies, into a prop for his anti-immigrant ideology.

       The Latest "migrant crisis" is a few hundred desperate people, over several months, risking their lives in small boats, to seek asylum in the UK. The facts are that the UK receives around 28,000 asylum applications a year, the vast majority arrive by plane at airports. They do not "flood" in on boats and lorries. So how does a few hundred arriving in small boats, over several months, suddenly become a "migrant crisis"?

This extract from Freedom News:

      Vox Political speaks of a manufactured ‘migrant crisis’, maybe to create an anti-EU sentiment ahead of the Brexit vote.
          “Make no mistake”, Labour MP David Lammy said, “this is not in response to genuine concern for human life. This is Sajid Javid imitating Donald Trump’s “migrant caravan”manufactured emergency to whip up fear before the Brexit vote. Desperate and cynical.”
        The London Economics also accuses the Conservatives of using the refugees as political pawns ahead of a critical Brexit period.

Read the article in FULL:

      You would think that after 300 years or so of being hoodwink and exploited by a political system, we would have learnt by now that politicians are never on the side of the people.

     People risking their lives fleeing deprivation, death and destruction, in most cases caused by our Western imperialist foreign policies, deserve our fullest compassion and assistance. They should not, under any circumstance, be hounded as criminals, and thrown back to face that same deprivation, death and destruction. However, humanity is not a quality that governments are known for, that particular quality lies with the people.

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The Warmth Of A Dream.

       Sorry, I can't help it, perhaps it's my age, or perhaps it's my personality, perhaps I will be accused of putting a damper on the merry-making, but as the raucous parties die out and the merry chanting of "happy new year" fades into the background and they're filed in that cabinet called memories, my mind is filled with images. Images that confirm in my mind that in capitalism there is no real reason to be jubilant. Its daily savagery is everywhere to be seen. 

The Warmth Of A Dream.

He lay in a dark doorway, dreamed of home,

night frost locked his joints

morning rain chilled the marrow of his bone.

In the dream there was a sister,

a pram in a garden, a crowd of youngster

who called him "mister", a time of little pain.

Are these youngsters the same young men, who

now laugh at him, throw beer cans,

piss on him as he lies drunk in some dark lane?

When was that first step down this slippery slope,

when was that first step to no forgiveness.

No will to rise to beg for food,

numbness kills the pain,

The dream brings a warmth that feels good,

dark fog shades out consciousness,

an ambulance carries off a body washed in rain.

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I'll Walk With The Poets.

        I have always considered the tradition of making a "New Year's Resolution" as rather pointless, as I usually try to mould my life from day to day with the same fundamental principles of humanity that I personally hold dear.

       However, this year I have decided to make an exception and make a "New Year's Resolution" and it is that I will take council with the poets, the dreamers and the utopians, the future looks so much brighter that way.

      Here's wishing you all a future built by the poets, the dreamers and the utopians.

WALK WITH THE POETS.

My head has had enough of you,

you doomsday sooth-sayers, and

rationalists, that trap us in the world that is.

Go weave your tales of “can't be done”

to the dead, and those of no imagination.

I want to walk with the utopian,

the dreamer and the poet,

laugh with the child and sing with the wind.

Run with the deer, not with “the market trend”

Enough of, “this is the way it has to be”,

a world of poverty, wars and inequality.

Now, I'll create the world I want to see,

A world of sharing, peace and liberty.

I want the children to plan tomorrow,

the adult help them get there,

trees and flowers our treasured possessions,

with birds and animals their keepers.

Who wants a world that chains us to mortgages,

binds us to a labouring day, just to eat bread?

Who wants to spend their life, feeding fat-cats

while their own children go hungry?

No, this is not the world that has to be,

in our foolishness and misplaced trust,

this is a world that has slithered over us,

poisoning our mind, putrefying our spirit.

Let's call on the poet, let's welcome the dreamer,

let's take council with the utopian,

They'll help us create a better world for all.

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"Nation States are population containment zones for global capital use."

       It is obvious to anyone with at least two brain cells, that this world is very ill divided. The millions of ordinary people who labour day after day producing all the wealth on the planet, receive no more than the crumbs. While a small band of financial manipulators, peel of vast amounts of wealth which is used to buy up assets, assets that are essential to the survival of that vast army of labouring millions, such as water, electricity, food production and distribution, housing, health care, and anything else that can increase their wealth and power over the population. Of course they could not do this without the co-operation of the various governments of nation states, who do their bidding and clear the way for that small cabal of rich and powerful to plunder the planet.

       This stage of capitalism is not just a tragedy for those millions of ordinary people, but for all of us as we head at ever increasing speed towards a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, it is also speeding up the inevitable extinction of the human race by the plundering the Earth's resources, and the destruction of the entire environment. Just a glance at the workings of modern capitalism tells you its trajectory, but it is always illuminating to have it all explained and confirmed by authorities in the field.

          This from Real News, thanks Loam for the link.

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Our Short Escape.

       Hi all, back from our wee break, what a wonderful week it was, the place was a walker's paradise. We stayed at a small village called Dunure, the cottage was right on the beach, and the weather was very kind to us, extremely mild for Scotland at this time of year. Each day we walked part of the coastal walk. My daughter and family arrive for a couple of days as well as Stasia's sister, all keen walkers. The weather was so mild we sat outside the cottage after 10pm at night and had the most wonderful and ridiculous discussions, with the waves as background noise. On Friday, our last day friends Roger and Keith arrive for the day, adding to what was a already a fantastic holiday.

      Of course while we strolled around steeped in a mixture of pleasure and tranquility, the world still rolled on with all its problems, injustices, wars, poverty and deprivation. These little escapes belie the truth of our world today. Something we can never turn our backs on for long.

A few photos from Dunure.

Dunure Castle ruins, not where the peasants lived.

       Some views from the front of the cottage.

     View from a cliff part of the coastal walk.

     Sunrise view of the Isle of Arran from the front of the cottage.

       The morning we were leaving the sea took an angry turn,(I say sea, but it is really the Firth of Clyde.) I like to think it was because we were leaving.

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A Wee Visit To Rabbie's Patch.

       Tomorrow Stasia and I will be escaping for a week or so to a lonely cottage on the Ayrshire coast. A chance to recharge our batteries, relax and just drift. Some members of the family will be dropping in for a wee visits, just to add that rich flavour to the break. Also might be another opportunity to visit Rabbie Burns' cottage, who knows.

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Pointless Consumerism Or Pleasurable Solstice?

        At this time of year it is difficult to escape the continuous onslaught of the pressure to indulge in pointless consumerism and the pressure to sink into excessive gluttony. It is the time of year when the corporate juggernaut gets desperate fearing that it hasn't stripped you of all your cash and loaded you with enough debt, to stuff their coffers. The wave of jingoism and totally misleading adverts form a goo that fogs the minds of many, especially the young and parents of the young, it is all about pressure and is difficult to escape. As usual, a few calming words of wisdom from Not Buying Anything. Happy solstice everybody.

      Winter solstice is one of my favourite events of the year, perhaps because I was born on this day almost 6 decades ago (that was fast). If I had delusions of grandeur, I might have thought that the light returned because I came into the world.
       "Did I do that?" Even if I am not responsible for this wondrous photonic turn of events, it is still a time of year that I cherish.
        First of all, solstice is a celebration that is based on observable facts, and I find that comforting in its solidity. One does not "believe" or "not believe" in this well established annual celestial occurrence.
        It is a celebration based on science, which can also be just as magical and amazing as any fabrication of the imagination. The rational part of my brain likes that this event is as real as it gets.
        Best of all is the fact that this is a celebration for everyone, and in a world that is increasingly fractured along religious, political, and tribal lines, such an event is of infinite value.
        Today we celebrate something that is 100% inclusive, even if our Southern Hemisphere brothers and sisters are celebrating the longest day of the year while we celebrate the shortest.
       It is solstice everywhere on the planet, and the wonder of nature joins us all together in one great human family on the best home in the known universe.
      Now, the light returns, and I find that pretty amazing, even if I didn't do it. Happy solstice, my human family, wherever you happen to be. This is a celebration for everyone.
      Note: In lieu of sending a birthday present, please donate to a charity of your choice. I don't need, or want, anything (although a cure for multiple sclerosis would be nice, and the permanent end of war would be brilliant).

 

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Dare To Criticise Israel??

       I have always known that the USA is not the democratic paradise it spouts to the world at large, but I didn't know that several states make it obligatory to sign a pro-Israeli certificate before you can work for any state funded institution!!!

This from an article by The Intercept: 

       A children’s speech pathologist who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin, Texas, has been told that she can no longer work with the public school district, after she refused to sign an oath vowing that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel or “otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm” on that foreign nation. A lawsuit on her behalf was filed early Monday morning in a federal court in the Western District of Texas, alleging a violation of her First Amendment right of free speech.

      The child language specialist, Bahia Amawi, is a U.S. citizen who received a master’s degree in speech pathology in 1999 and, since then, has specialized in evaluations for young children with language difficulties (see video below). Amawi was born in Austria and has lived in the U.S. for the last 30 years, fluently speaks three languages (English, German, and Arabic), and has four U.S.-born American children of her own.
    Amawi began working in 2009 on a contract basis with the Pflugerville Independent School District, which includes Austin, to provide assessments and support for school children from the county’s growing Arabic-speaking immigrant community. The children with whom she has worked span the ages of 3 to 11. Ever since her work for the school district began in 2009, her contract was renewed each year with no controversy or problem.
      But this year, all of that changed. On August 13, the school district once again offered to extend her contract for another year by sending her essentially the same contract and set of certifications she has received and signed at the end of each year since 2009.
      She was prepared to sign her contract renewal until she noticed one new, and extremely significant, addition: a certification she was required to sign pledging that she “does not currently boycott Israel,” that she “will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract,” and that she shall refrain from any action “that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel, or with a person or entity doing business in Israeli or in an Israel-controlled territory.”

        The language of the affirmation Amawi was told she must sign reads like Orwellian — or McCarthyite — self-parody, the classic political loyalty oath that every American should instinctively shudder upon reading:

        That language would bar Amawi not only from refraining from buying goods from companies located within Israel, but also from any Israeli companies operating in the occupied West Bank (“an Israeli-controlled territory”). The oath given to Amawi would also likely prohibit her even from advocating such a boycott given that such speech could be seen as “intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel.”

    
         There are currently 26 states where this legislation is now law and 13 where the legislation is pending, that would cover well over half the states in America. It would seem that in America you can advocate boycotts of all manner of things in your own country but dare not speak to harm Israel, strange?

Read the full article HERE:  

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Anger And Frustration Will Open The Gates to Change.

Today's Western Democracy. 

 

      It should be obvious to all that the idea of voting for a different party to "govern" you, will only produce the same tasteless loaf of bread, just cooked in a different oven. Real change can never come from keeping the same basic principles of profit and continuous growth. Likewise relying on those parties which wish to participate in the management of this system will only lead to new faces sitting on the throne of power. As this awareness grows it becomes obvious that it is not party ideology that will force change, it is anger and frustration. Only when the people start to say to hell with this being shit on generation after generation, and decide to do something about it, without waiting for their esteemed leaders to tell what and when, only then will we see real change. The first burst of anger may not be successful but it will set the pattern as people start to feel the strength and power they hold. They will forge their own answers in the heat of struggle, there will be no need to stop to see what the rule book says. Each answer will be born from the problems that arise.

      All the more reason we should be paying particular attention to the Yellow Vests actions and seeing the possibilities inherent in that form of struggle. The new future can only come about by destroying the corrupt and decadent present. The Yellow Vests may not be the birth of the new future, but it could be the consummation of that birth, that is up to all of us.

       Anarchist News has is a well documented and detailed article on the Yellow Vests which is well worth reading in full:

       Since November, France has been shaken by the yellow vest movement, a grassroots reaction to President Macron’s proposal to increase fuel taxes in order to force the poor to pay for the transition to “ecological” technologies. Like the Occupy movement, the yellow vest movement cohered around shared tactics and frustration rather than common goals or values; consequently, the movement has been a battleground for many different political agendas and factions. The far right initially took advantage of the movement’s “apolitical” character to gain influence, especially online; but as the movement spread and the clashes with the police intensified, anarchists and other uncontrollable rebels also staked out ground within the movement.

Continue reading HERE:

https://anarchistnews.org/content/yellow-vest-movement-showdown-state 

       

         Also worth a read is the article by David Graeber:

       If one feature of any truly revolutionary moment is the complete failure of conventional categories to describe what’s happening around us, then that’s a pretty good sign we’re living in revolutionary times.

      It strikes me that the profound confusion, even incredulity, displayed by the French commentariat—and even more, the world commentariat—in the face of each successive “Acte” of the Gilets Jaunes drama, now rapidly approaching its insurrectionary climax, is a result of a near total inability to take account of the ways that power, labour, and the movements ranged against power, have changed over the last 50 years, and particularly, since 2008. Intellectuals have for the most part done an extremely poor job understanding these changes.

Continue reading HERE:
http://news.infoshop.org/europe/the-yellow-vests-show-how-much-the-ground-moves-under-our-feet/?platform=hootsuite

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Sanctioned, A Vindictive Act Of Intimidation.

    I always find it amazing we accept how certain words used quite liberally in this society never convey their true meaning. Words like "austerity", it can be spoken by what seems a calm unemotional fashion, concealing its real life meaning. To those who spout it most, it means being careful with money, balancing the books, being prudent. When in actual fact, in this society, it means misery, low wages, cuts in social services, deteriorating health service and education system, and much more in the way of misery for vast swaths of ordinary people.

      Another word that can be used in a seeming innocuous manner is "sanctioned". Again our political ballerinas use this word in civilised tones as if they were oblivious to its true meaning. Its true meaning being, increased poverty, deprivation, stress, homelessness, mental health problems, family break-ups, suicides and more. Not a word that should be banded about with emotionless calm.

     "Sanctioning" someone who is on benefit is a sadistic, savage, callous act of vindictive brutality, meant to intimidate and bludgeon the poor in our society, into submissiveness. All caring and civilised people in this country should be up in arms at the very idea of such a vicious, life threatening act based on "upper class" ideology that see the poor as a group that need to be punished for their poverty.

       How long will we accept the cruelty that flows freely from this ideology of the wealthy ruling cabal of parasites, an ideology that thinks in terms of rewarding the rich and punishing the poor. How long will we accept such words as "austerity and sanctions" being used with calm politeness before we take to the streets to vent our anger and disgust with this system of hypocrisy and avoidable injustice and inequality?

 This image taken from    Humanity Torbay

 

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Richard Wolff On The Yellow Vests.

       At the risk of boring some of my readers, another view point of the Yellow Vests. However I do think we have to look very closely at what is happening in France, to look and learn. Thanks Loam for the link.

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